They’re crammed in, perching on the crates, leaning against the walls and sitting on the ground. The cavern’s full, buzzing with tension. Then I hear McBride’s voice at the front, and I know what brought them together.
For ten years we’ve been hiding out in these caves, paying for the bloody rebellion my sister led. Too hungry to get organized, too sick and too bruised to care who was in charge. It’s taken a decade to come close to stability again, but the day my people could fill their bellies without fear of where the next meal would come from, there was McBride. He has the age and experience I lack, and his talk of fighting back and finishing what my sister, Orla, started makes my people itch for action.
Victory, to his faction, is beating the trodairí at any cost. Casualties are glorious sacrifices to the cause. Firepower is the only measure of strength. Because, futile though the fight might be, there’s a satisfaction in direct action that these people crave. It’s the easier path—I feel myself tugged that way too, sometimes. So did Orla. And that’s what killed her in the end.
These people remember my sister, and how she fought to the last and faced her execution fearlessly. Her death buys me their sympathy, and thus their attention, but every time McBride opens his mouth, I lose a few more of them. Nobody wants to listen to a teenager speaking for peace when their children are sick and their very freedoms are being bled away by TerraDyn’s harsh regulations. McBride knows it. I know it too. They all wish I were more like Orla.
Judging by the air of tension in the crowd, it seems he’s jumped on my absence to stir them up and inch ever closer to breaking the ceasefire. Only fear of retaliation and lack of resources has stopped McBride’s lieutenants from carrying out their own raids without the support of the rest of us. That, and I’ve got the key to the munitions locker—and I’m not about to let McBride get his hands on it.
I tuck my gun away and start to work toward the front of the crowd.
He hasn’t noticed me yet. His square, shadowed jaw is tense, brows crowding together as he calls out in impassioned tones, “How many times are we going to hide in our caves, watching while they take our loved ones away? How much longer are we going to wait for change?” He’s pacing back and forth at the front of the cavern, the nervous energy of his steps infecting the crowd, making them all shift on their feet and itch for action. “On one thing, Flynn Cormac and I agree: violence must only ever be a last resort. We are not the trodairí with their so-called Fury, their imaginary disease, their excuse for the shows of violence supposed to keep us cowed. But I say today we are past our last resort, and we are past the point of no return.”
My own heart beats hard as I listen in spite of myself. He sounds like my sister, except Orla’s eyes never carried that feverish gleam. When she spoke of last resorts, she meant it. But these people don’t see McBride as I do. They’re too desperate for change to recognize the madness behind his words.
“But what about Flynn, you’re saying. He wouldn’t want this. He’d tell us to talk to them, reason with them—but look where reasoning has gotten him! No sign, no word; I’ll tell you where it’s gotten him, why he hasn’t come back. This very moment he’s in a trodairí prison cell. They’ve got Orla’s little brother bound and bloodied, no doubt trying to beat our location out of him. We would betray the memory of his sister if we let them take him without getting an answer from us.”
I stop in my tracks. He’s trying to lead our people in an attack on the trodairí to free me. McBride’s only guessing as to where I am, but all he needs is one spark to ignite my people. And what better to win over the reluctant ones, those who’ve been listening to me, than a mission of rescue? Because rescue or no, once open war breaks out, all of the Fianna will have no choice but to fight for their lives.
The anger that surges up in me would impress even Jubilee Chase. I bow my head, letting my fists curl, riding it out. Waiting until I can be sure my voice will be strong and steady before I call out.
“McBride, I’m touched. I had no idea you cared so much.”
The heads nearest me snap around, voices rising in shock and relief. I push my way into the free space in front of McBride’s platform. He’s stopped in his tracks, staring blankly at me for a half a beat too long. Then relief floods his strong features, and he jumps down off the platform to approach me. “You’re alive!” he exclaims, and though he claps a hand to my shoulder, the eyes that meet mine are anything but warm. “I’d been imagining the worst.”
I’ll bet you were.
I reach for calm. “I had an opportunity to do some information-gathering, and I took it. No way to get a signal back without risking discovery.”
McBride’s brows lift a little. “Taking action, Cormac,” he replies, lips curling. From a distance, it might look like a smile. “Glad to hear it. What’d you learn?”
I can’t tell them I saw a facility that was gone a few hours later; they’ll think I’ve lost my mind. “Nothing concrete yet.” I try not to wince at the weight of his hand on my shoulder. He’s a head taller than I am, and strongly built. If he ever wanted to take me out once and for all, he’d have the upper hand and then some. “But as long as we know nothing’s changed on the base, we know they’re not coming for us. And we can keep looking for a way out of this.”
McBride squeezes my shoulder. “Sometimes the only way out is through,” he replies, raising his voice a little to make it carry farther.
I turn away, using the movement to wrench my shoulder free of his bruising grip. It’s not the time to dance this dance with him, the same steps, the same push and pull. I have a bigger problem in the form of the trodaire in my currach, who I need to move before she wakes up under that tarp and makes a noise. Because one thing is certain: if McBride’s people find her, Captain Chase will be dead by tomorrow.
The energy in the crowd has shifted—with me standing here, the immediate need to fight is gone, but they’re slow to come down, not sure where to turn. I can’t let them latch on to me, not until the trodaire is stashed somewhere safe.
I catch Turlough Doyle’s eye, then jerk my gaze toward McBride, who’s regrouping and turning back for the platform, no doubt figuring out a way to use my return in his rhetoric.