Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(30)

“Aye,” agreed Nick. “Powerful. Also old—and smart. A person didn’t survive long in the high court if he weren’t smart.” The little man looked down at his hands.

“That’s not really where the story starts,” said the boy sitting at Thomas’s feet. “It starts with Butte. With fae who came here hiding among the humans. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that all the fae don’t get along together, will it, Mr. Hao?”

“We vampires are the soul of brotherly love,” Thomas responded dryly. “I assumed that the fae were the same.”

The boy laughed until tears ran out of his eyes.

“It was not as funny as all that,” said the woman.

“Brotherly love,” repeated the boy. “Ayah. I’ll remember that. Anyway, the fae came. From northern Europe and the British Isles mostly, like the people. Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Cornish, and Irish—they all came.”

Italian, too, thought Thomas. The Serbians, the Czech, the Ukrainians.

The boy sat up straight now, his eyes on the woman and the big man, turned slightly away from Thomas. “Once upon a time, the Irish fae would have squashed them all, but then came the ironmongers and their Christ and they bound the old places. Left us crippled and weak.”

“It didn’t hurt us as badly,” said the woman softly. “We have more iron-kissed among us, we Finns and Nordic folk.”

“Iron-kissed?” asked Thomas.

“Those who work metals: dwarves, hiisi—some of them anyway, metal mages. So for thirty years we controlled the land here, and among us was one, a hiisi, who . . . was not kind to the other fae.”

The boy laughed as if he thought she were funny, too.

She looked at him. “Most of us were too afraid to object.” It wasn’t an apology . . . not quite. “He had a talent for finding what you held dear, and then using it to make you do his bidding.”

“Yes,” the boy said dryly. “You suffered too, didn’t you, you poor things.”

She bit her lip and turned away. Apparently she was ashamed.

“And then came the Flanagan,” said the old man. He might look fragile and aged, but his voice told a different story. It rumbled in Thomas’s ears—British with a hint of Welsh or Cornish.

“I knew we’d get to him sooner or later,” said Nick. “Flanagan changed things.”

“For the better,” rumbled the giant. “Even we could see that.”

The woman snorted inelegantly. “He pushed the hiisi—this was an old and powerful hiisi—into summoning the Iku-Tursas. The Flanagan could have worked something out, but he pushed and pushed and would not compromise.”

Thomas frowned. Iku-Tursas. The name sounded familiar. He’d had some friends in school: Juhani Koskinen, Matti Makela, and another boy who was also Finnish. They told him a story once.

“The dragon,” Thomas said. “But I thought it was a sea serpent.”

The fae looked at him in surprise, except for the woman, who smiled and sat back. “Most people don’t know Finnish stories.”

“They didn’t grow up here,” said Thomas.

“The Tursas is a little more than a mere sea dragon, vampire,” said the boy coolly. “It can take many forms. It attacked the Flanagan when he was down in the mines.”

“No,” said the big man at the same time the old man did. The bench under Thomas slid forward a little bit in eagerness, as if it wanted to go to the old man. Forest fae of some sort, he thought, setting his feet down a little firmer.

“It attacked the miners,” said Nick. “Playing with them a little. The place where they’d be working would start leaking water. It was the Speculator Mine—the one Flanagan was working for as a mining engineer. Modern, safe, well ventilated—the Flanagan insisted upon it.”

“High-court fae always did love the silly humans,” murmured the boy as if to himself.

The woman snorted again and reached out with a boot to nudge him hard. “I’ve heard you might come from high court yourself,” she said.

He jumped up, fierce with indignation. “You take it back! You take that back right now.”

She smiled at him. “Of course, I never believed it. Too much stupid, not enough looks.”

He shook himself like a wet cat. “Damned piru,” he snapped.

“Easy prey,” she purred.

Piru, thought Thomas. Finnish fae, he remembered. But was it one of the witty demons prone to games of wit, or one of the air ladies who hung out and looked beautiful until something ticked them off? He looked at the woman and decided for the clever demon; she looked a little too substantial to be floating around.

“It picked groups of miners with fae among them to frighten,” said Nick, picking up his story from where he’d left off. “Eventually one of them figured out that the water they’d been hitting wasn’t just an accident of geology. He took the tale to the Flanagan.”

“He was supposed to charge off to confront the Finnish fae who was tormenting his people,” said the old man. “He would have, too, if certain people hadn’t gone to him and told him that what he faced wasn’t just any fae.”

“There was betrayal on both sides,” said the woman. “Some did not think that the Flanagan was strong enough to keep his promises and it would be the less powerful fae who would suffer. Others looked to him for justice and a way out from under the hiisi’s thumb.” She rubbed absently at the fabric of the couch where she sat. “It didn’t matter. He went anyway.”