ageless to me. She didn’t look a day over fifty, her rich chestnut hair worn short, not a touch of gray in its waves.
The Guildhouse rose into view as we entered Park Square. The building had started out life in the eighteen hundreds as an armory, a solid granite fortress for an army cadet group that preceded the National Guard in pre-Convergence Boston. When the group fell on hard financial times after Convergence, the Guild bought the place for its Boston headquarters.
Manus ap Eagan had overseen the reconstruction in those early years. He had expanded the concept of druid hedges—essence barriers—into the formidable shield dome. When activated to the extreme, it was visible as a wall of thickened air, impenetrable to everything short of bunker-buster-level bombs. The fey knew how to protect themselves. The dome acted like a body shield for the building, a transparent layer of essence that protected the Guildhouse from attack. Rumor had it that even a nuke would only dent it. High Queen Maeve loved the idea, particularly early on, when humans were more antagonistic to the arrival of the fey.
In time, floors were added, and the building grew over the Boston skyline, flouting the laws of nature and local zoning. Towers, sky bridges, and random wings joined together in a mishmash of Victorian, Gothic, and fairy architecture. Essence defied the forces of physics, allowing for tall towers to be anchored by slender buttresses or steep-gabled additions to hang off the building with little physical support. Beautiful in a surreal, amusing way, the building had become one part monolith and one part confection. I shuddered to think what a pretender like macGoren would do to the place if given the chance.
The car engine coughed and recovered as we passed through the shield dome. Engines didn’t work well around essence. Brownie security guards in dark maroon uniforms that offset their pale hair and tawny skin gathered along the sidewalk in front of the lobby. Their security role included community relations, which meant making it clear to the local community that if it didn’t comply with their directions, the guard could go boggie. A brownie in its boggart aspect was a fearsome thing, all tooth and claw.
Today, the guards remained attentive and at ease. They worked the street level since the people they encountered were human and solitaries, not powerful in the essence department. They might take Briallen down if there were enough of them, but few were powerful contenders. They had nothing to fear from me, of course, provided the black mass in my head stayed put.
I helped Briallen from the car out of courtesy. She was no invalid. As we walked under the portico to the main entrance, something tickled against me, and my body shield shimmered. It wasn’t a full shield anymore, small patches here and there, and malfunctioned by triggering on its own.
I paused in the archway beneath the great dragon head carved above the lintel. Gargoyles once clustered on the ceiling and columns of the portico. They were fey in the sense they were sentient stone, even the ones that didn’t look human or animal. They appeared after Convergence, moving without being seen, speaking to people on rare occasions. No one ever sensed essence from them, though, which made them an interesting puzzle. They were attracted to essence and sought it out. Every Guildhouse had them anchored to the walls and ceilings. The Boston gargoyles were all gone now. They had moved to Boston Common and taken up residence around a giant stone pillar there that generated enormous amounts of essence.
Briallen glanced at me, but I shook my head. Whatever I was sensing must have been a new security measure. “This isn’t a trap. Tell me again this isn’t a trap,” I said.
“It’s not a trap,” Briallen said. Her expression held a touch of uncertainty, which didn’t make me comfortable. She had nothing to fear, but over the last months, the Guild had been trying
The Guildhouse rose into view as we entered Park Square. The building had started out life in the eighteen hundreds as an armory, a solid granite fortress for an army cadet group that preceded the National Guard in pre-Convergence Boston. When the group fell on hard financial times after Convergence, the Guild bought the place for its Boston headquarters.
Manus ap Eagan had overseen the reconstruction in those early years. He had expanded the concept of druid hedges—essence barriers—into the formidable shield dome. When activated to the extreme, it was visible as a wall of thickened air, impenetrable to everything short of bunker-buster-level bombs. The fey knew how to protect themselves. The dome acted like a body shield for the building, a transparent layer of essence that protected the Guildhouse from attack. Rumor had it that even a nuke would only dent it. High Queen Maeve loved the idea, particularly early on, when humans were more antagonistic to the arrival of the fey.
In time, floors were added, and the building grew over the Boston skyline, flouting the laws of nature and local zoning. Towers, sky bridges, and random wings joined together in a mishmash of Victorian, Gothic, and fairy architecture. Essence defied the forces of physics, allowing for tall towers to be anchored by slender buttresses or steep-gabled additions to hang off the building with little physical support. Beautiful in a surreal, amusing way, the building had become one part monolith and one part confection. I shuddered to think what a pretender like macGoren would do to the place if given the chance.
The car engine coughed and recovered as we passed through the shield dome. Engines didn’t work well around essence. Brownie security guards in dark maroon uniforms that offset their pale hair and tawny skin gathered along the sidewalk in front of the lobby. Their security role included community relations, which meant making it clear to the local community that if it didn’t comply with their directions, the guard could go boggie. A brownie in its boggart aspect was a fearsome thing, all tooth and claw.
Today, the guards remained attentive and at ease. They worked the street level since the people they encountered were human and solitaries, not powerful in the essence department. They might take Briallen down if there were enough of them, but few were powerful contenders. They had nothing to fear from me, of course, provided the black mass in my head stayed put.
I helped Briallen from the car out of courtesy. She was no invalid. As we walked under the portico to the main entrance, something tickled against me, and my body shield shimmered. It wasn’t a full shield anymore, small patches here and there, and malfunctioned by triggering on its own.
I paused in the archway beneath the great dragon head carved above the lintel. Gargoyles once clustered on the ceiling and columns of the portico. They were fey in the sense they were sentient stone, even the ones that didn’t look human or animal. They appeared after Convergence, moving without being seen, speaking to people on rare occasions. No one ever sensed essence from them, though, which made them an interesting puzzle. They were attracted to essence and sought it out. Every Guildhouse had them anchored to the walls and ceilings. The Boston gargoyles were all gone now. They had moved to Boston Common and taken up residence around a giant stone pillar there that generated enormous amounts of essence.
Briallen glanced at me, but I shook my head. Whatever I was sensing must have been a new security measure. “This isn’t a trap. Tell me again this isn’t a trap,” I said.
“It’s not a trap,” Briallen said. Her expression held a touch of uncertainty, which didn’t make me comfortable. She had nothing to fear, but over the last months, the Guild had been trying
Similar Books
