“I suspect nothing, but I wonder plenty. If you have no ideas regarding who might have blown up part of Windsor Castle to prevent us using the Old Way to get back, then we are dealing with someone extremely clever. Who amongst the Tuatha Dé Danann would be able to arrange an explosion on this plane less than an hour after you used it? Or, more to the point, who was following you in Tír na nÓg and saw you leave that particular way?”
Flidais frowned at my last sentence. The idea that she might have been followed disturbed her more than anything else. The challenge faded from her eyes and she looked away, considering the problem.
“I suppose Ogma could have done it. His designs have been inscrutable for a long while.”
The thought chilled me but had occurred to me before. Granuaile gasped, because it hadn’t occurred to her.
Flidais continued, “But Midhir has been keeping to himself recently. He has a mind for such things. And he is a patron of that Fae lord you shamed during your visit to Court, the one in charge of the rangers. What did you call him?”
“Lord Grundlebeard.”
“That’s it.”
“What’s his real name?”
“I never knew it. The irony is that no one ever paid attention to him until you singled him out for ridicule. Everyone calls him Grundlebeard now.”
“Bollocks. Now we don’t have any choice but to stay and fight.”
“It is the best course, Druid—your pardon. At Court you are always Siodhachan, but I know you use other names outside it. Do you still go by Atticus, or do you have a new name?”
“Atticus is fine.”
<Maybe you should change it to Swoony McMushypants.>
Granuaile choked back a laugh and then coughed to mask her amusement, while Flidais’s lips pursed in an effort not to smile. She’d heard Oberon’s comment too.
“All right, where do you recommend we fight?” I asked, pretending my hound hadn’t said anything. “Not near the castle, I hope. That’s going to be flooded with British security in short order. In fact, I bet we’re on a satellite camera right now and someone’s going to be reviewing this and wondering who the hell we are. We should stay underneath the canopy and maybe go invisible for a while.”
Flidais scowled at the sky. “I have heard of these satellites. Perfidious creatures.” I didn’t question her word choice, and neither did Granuaile or Oberon. Now was not the time to explain orbital surveillance to a being who had yet to use a computer or a cell phone. Satellites, to her, were as magical as the Fae were to humans. “Yes. We will return to the forest and sort ourselves for a defense.”
Helicopters and distant sirens sounded behind us as we turned our backs on Windsor Castle and jogged through the Home Park toward Windsor Forest again. Once underneath the canopy, we dropped our camouflage and returned to the small clearing in the middle of the forest. Three marijuana plants grew nervously on the western perimeter, seemingly aware that they didn’t belong there, dreading the day when they would be harvested and smoked by a bearded and half-baked local.
<What’s the plan, Atticus?>
Still working on it, actually.
Flidais left her chariot and stags plainly visible just underneath the trees, a clear signal that she was now involved and doing a bit of hunting of her own. We entered the forest together from the northwestern side of the clearing, creating one trail, but after about a hundred yards we decided to split up our forces.
“Before we do, however,” Flidais said, “we might be able to take advantage of something.” She stared at Granuaile while she said this, and Granuaile understandably grew wary.
“Uh … what did you have in mind?” she asked.
“Have you taught her how to modify the camouflage binding, Atticus?” the huntress said. The correct answer would be “yes” if I wished to avoid looking clueless, but since I truly was clueless, there was no use pretending.
“I didn’t know it could be modified. It’s one of the base spells tattooed into our skin.”
“You can’t modify the base spell, of course, but you can add your own flourishes on top of it. I’m surprised you haven’t tried it.”
“I’m full of surprises.” And I didn’t know why she was speaking of camouflage when Granuaile had the ability to turn fully invisible.
“Yes.” The goddess smirked, her eyes taking in Granuaile’s clothes. “Well, I have noticed that Granuaile and I could be mistaken for twins if we made a little bit of an effort. That could give us an advantage, so allow me to make the effort.”
I’d noticed the resemblance before, as had others. Ogma had mistaken Granuaile for Flidais once while we were visiting Tír na nÓg.
Keeping her eyes on Granuaile, Flidais began to speak a binding in Old Irish. I recognized the words for camouflage at the beginning, but she kept speaking past the point where it should have ended, targeting Granuaile’s black outfit and reflecting it onto her own clothing before energizing the binding. Her hunting leathers all turned black.
“Whoa,” Granuaile and I said in stereo.
Oberon shuddered. <I just got chills! Coming soon on BBC One, The Dark Druids of Windsor!>
Flidais removed the bracer on her left arm, which protected her skin from the lash of her bowstring. That gave her the same sleeveless look as Granuaile.
“All right. Hair next,” the huntress said, for that was a significant difference. The color was almost identical, but Flidais had quite a bit more curl and frizz to hers than Granuaile did, and it made her look a bit like an eighties rocker.
“Maybe if we tie it up in a knot?” Granuaile said.
“Yes, but first I need to straighten.” Flidais improvised a binding that had simply never occurred to me—or to Granuaile either—and the kinks smoothed out until her hair lay flat and wavy like Granuaile’s.
<Great big bears, Atticus, think of how much money she could make in Hollywood! Speak some gibberish and you get Oscar-night hairdos in five minutes!>
“Amazing,” Granuaile said, smiling.
“Tie up your hair as you like and I will copy it,” Flidais said.
Granuaile gathered and twisted her hair behind her in a practiced series of movements. When she was finished, it was tight against her scalp, pulled back from her ears, and piled in a neat sort of bun on top. Flidais studied it for a few seconds and then produced a matching bun on her head.
“Not bad at all,” Granuaile said.
“Here, let’s face him,” the huntress said.
They turned toward me, side by side, so that I could compare. Same height and build, same skin tone, though Granuaile had a few more freckles. The hair looked identical now. Up close you could tell that Flidais’s clothes were made of a different material, but from even a mild distance away it would simply be a black silhouette. Likewise, the minor differences in facial features could be easily distinguished up close, but from a distance in a combat situation, anyone would have trouble telling them apart.
“That’ll work,” I said. “How shall we proceed?”
“We will appear from the flanks one at a time and throw a knife before going invisible again. We will alternate until we run out of knives—we only have five total, correct?”
Granuaile nodded. She had three, to Flidais’s two.
“Then you should go first,” Flidais said. “To them it will appear that the same person is teleporting around them. Quite the distraction. Someone should be able to take advantage of that.” She arched an eyebrow at me and I nodded.
“If it turns out to be possible, target Diana,” I said. “She’s probably a bit more invested in this than Artemis is, and anything we can do to slow her down would be good.”