Free Cold Iron by D. L. McDermott

“No.”
    He considered telling her pretty lies but knew it would not serve. “If this is about the voice you used in Clonmel, then I agree with you. Your abilities are better kept secret.”
    She eyed him warily. “What abilities?”
    “The ones you hide so well. The voice you used to throw me across the room at the inn. That’s one. But there are others, aren’t there? You know, I think, the names of all the trees and flowers you encounter, without ever having studied them. You can tell when a woman is pregnant before she herself suspects. And you know how to find us —the Fae.”
    She backed away from him. Her breathing had changed. Now she was truly a hunted animal, her instincts telling her to fight or flee. He was an experienced hunter. He must not move a muscle, or she would be gone.
    “How do you know all that?” she asked.
    Patience was what was needed here. Not his strongest suit. But she must come to it on her own. “Wrong question, Beth. Try again.”
    “No. I don’t want to know. Whatever it is, it isn’t anything good. Tell me about the sword instead. The Summoner. Can anyone use it?”
    The change of subject took him off guard, and he answered her honestly. “To kill, yes. To summon the Court, no. Only a Druid,” he hesitated, then added, “or the most powerful of Fae sorcerers, can use the sword to summon the Court back from their exile.”
    She took another step back from him. “You said the Fae are all underground or imprisoned.”
    “It’s been thousands of years, Beth. Wards fade. Spells dissipate. Bonds can be broken. I told you I didn’t take the old woman’s sister, remember? There are Fae roaming the earth. That’s why you have so many legends about encounters with them. Cautionary tales. If the wrong one got hold of the Summoner, you wouldn’t like the results.”
    “This is North America, not Ireland, not Europe. Fairy mounds aren’t thick on the ground here.”
    He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Have you ever looked?”
    S he hadn’t. She’d never scrutinized a map of North America for ancient Celtic sites, because everyone knew where the Celts had settled: Europe, Britain, Ireland. But she had sometimes had that same feeling, that clenching deep in her belly, when she drove through the New England woods or passed by a grand and ancient house. If there were Celtic remains in North America, if she could find them, it would be the greatest archaeological discovery of the age.
    Conn’s knowing question fired her imagination. If she rescued her career from Frank and oblivion first, she could use her skills to find Celtic sites where no one had ever looked before.
    She knew better than to talk about her disturbing abilities—with anyone. As a girl, before she had found a use for her strange powers, they had frightened her. Sometimes they frightened her still. When she’d tried to tell Frank about her uncanny knack for finding sites, he had mocked her. When she’d shown him, used her skill to locate their first discovery, he had refused to acknowledge what she’d done. Anytime she’d raised the subject, he’d treated her to a frosty silence.
    Except for that night. The dinner. The wine. There had been maps. She remembered that much. And Frank coaxing, forcing her to look at them. And later Egan—but she didn’t remember that. Didn’t want to remember that. When Conn had teased her about her abilities a moment ago, she’d felt buried memories threatening to surface and had not wanted to be touched. At all. By anyone. Ever again.
    What had happened with Egan and Frank had happened because of her strange abilities. They never would have drugged her otherwise. She did not think about the events of that night, because she could not think about the events of that night. There was no way she was going to talk about her strange talents with this even stranger creature.
    “If you take the sword and the gold, I’ll lose my job. Dave Monroe will think I’m an addict, or crazy,