It would be like a brutal and bloody dance, Moira thought. Sword, sacrifice and magic playing the tune. And the blood, of course. There must always be blood.
“The first preparations in the morning then.” She’d risen to pour and pass short cups of whiskey for each. “Then we’ll each do our part, and the gods willing, we’ll end this. And end it, fittingly I think, with the symbols of Geall. Well, to us then and the hell with them.”
When they’d drunk, she walked over to the vielle. “Would you play?” she asked Cian. “There should be music. We’ll have music, and send it out to the night. I hope she hears it, and trembles.”
“You don’t play,” Hoyt began.
“I didn’t speak Cantonese once upon a time. Things change.” Still Cian felt a little odd, sitting down with the vielle, testing the strings for tune.
“What is that thing?” Blair wondered. “Like a violin with gout?”
“Well, it would be a predecessor.” He began to play, slowly, feeling his way back from war to music. The oddness faded away with the quiet, haunting notes.
“It’s lovely,” Glenna said. “A little heartbreaking.” Because she couldn’t resist, she went for paper and charcoal to sketch him as he played.
From outside, pipes and harps began to play, blending in with Cian’s music.
Each note, Moira thought, like a tear.
“You’ve a hand with that,” Larkin told Cian when the notes faded away. “And a heart for music, that’s the truth. But would you be after playing something a bit livelier? You know, with a little jump to it?”
Larkin lifted his pipe and blew out quick, cheerful notes, so those echoes of melancholy were swept away in joy. More music poured in from outside, drums and fifes, as Cian matched melody and rhythm. With a quick hoot of approval, Larkin stomped his feet, his knees like loose hinges while Moira clapped the time.
“Come on then.” Tossing his pipe to Blair, Larkin grabbed Moira’s hands. “Let’s show this lot how Geallians dance.”
Laughing, Moira swung into step with him in what Cian saw was cousin to an Irish step-dance. Quick feet, still shoulders, all energy. He bent over the vielle, smiling a little at the persistence of the human heart as shadows and firelight played over his face.
“We won’t let them get the better of us.” Hoyt yanked Glenna to her feet.
“I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can. It’s in the blood.”
The floorboards rang with booted feet, and it flowed out into the night, the dance, the tune, the laughter. It was, Cian thought, so human of them, to take the joy, to not only use it, but to squeeze every drop of it.
There, his brother, the sorcerer who prized his dignity as much as his power, whirling around with his sexy red-headed witch who giggled like a girl as she tried to do the steps.
The kick-your-face-and-your-ass demon hunter mixing a little twenty-first-century hip-hop into the folk dance to make her shape-shifting cowboy grin.
And the queen of Geall, loyal, devoted and carrying the weight of he
r world, flushed and glowing with the simple pleasure of music.
They might die tomorrow, every one, but by the gods, they danced tonight. Lilith, for all her eons, all her power and ambition would never understand them. And the magic of them, the light of them, might just carry the day.
For the first time, he believed—whether he survived or not—humankind would triumph. It couldn’t be snuffed out, not even by itself. Though he’d seen, too often, it try.
There were too many others like these five, who would fight and sweat and bleed. And dance.
He continued to play when Hoyt paused long enough to drink some ale. “Send it to her,” Cian murmured.
“Look at my Glenna, dancing as if she’d been born to it.” Hoyt blinked, frowned. “What’s that you said?”
Cian glanced up, no longer smiling though the music he played was as cheerful as a red balloon. “Send Lilith the music, send it out, just as Moira said. You can do that. Let’s rub her fucking face in it.”
“Then we will.” Hoyt laid a hand on Cian’s shoulder. “Damn right we will.”
Power rippled, warming Cian’s shoulder as he played, and played.