Chapter 402 — For the King I

Chapter 402: Chapter 402 — For the King I

James was on the sofa with the television on and not watching it when his phone buzzed against his leg.

**Ciara Keane:** Are you free later this afternoon?

He looked at it for a second. Since Floor 40, every message he had had from Ciara was about something official. There had been forms and Bureau statements, and which service was on which day. This one did not read like that.

**James:** Should be. Everything ok?

**Ciara Keane:** Nothing’s wrong. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about. Would rather do it in person.

**James:** Sure. Where?

A pin came through. It was a restaurant in Ranelagh he did not know.

**Ciara Keane:** An hour?

**James:** See you there.

---

He went upstairs and changed out of the tracksuit he had been wearing for most of three days into jeans and a dark jumper Maeve had picked for him in town, the one he had not turned the label over on. He came back down and took his keys out of the bowl by the door.

His mother was in the kitchen doorway with a tea towel.

"Where are you off to?"

"Ciara Keane wants to see me. From Fianna."

His mother nodded the way she nodded at anything that got him out of the house.

Nyra was on the stairs. "Look at that," she said, without looking up from her phone. "Somewhere that isn’t Guild Zero. Is that a jumper? Did someone dress you?"

"Bye, Nyra."

"That’s a yes."

He shut the door on whatever she said next.

The Taycan was at the kerb. He got in and the dash lit and the car made no sound at all, and he pulled out into the road.

He thought about it on the way.

It could be Fianna. Something might have gone wrong at their headquarters, or with the families, or with the Bureau’s paperwork on the three. It might be something left over from the expedition, some loose end from the alliance agreement he had signed and forgotten. It might be money, though Ciara did not seem like somebody who would ask for a meeting in a restaurant about money.

He thought about ringing Maeve. Maeve would know in thirty seconds whether there was anything outstanding between the two guilds.

He did not ring her. Ciara had come to him, personally, with no one copied in, and wanted it face to face. Whatever it was, she wanted to say it to him first.

---

The restaurant had big windows onto the street and booths along one wall in dark green upholstery. The small tables in the middle were set far enough apart that you could talk without the next table hearing. There was music on, low enough to sit under the voices, and the place smelled of roasted coffee and something with garlic in it coming out of the kitchen.

A waiter came toward him with a menu and the beginning of a question about a reservation. James had already seen Ciara, in a booth near the back.

She was not on her own.

Declan Byrne sat across from her with a drink already in front of him.

James walked down the room, wondering why she had not said.

Ciara stood up when he got to the table.

She looked nothing like the Guild Master who had come through his secured reception in fitted kit. Her dark hair was down and loose over one shoulder, and her light eyes looked paler against it. She had on a fitted black top that sat close over her full chest and narrow waist, and high-waisted trousers that showed off the strong, curvy shape of her. It was a simple outfit, and it suited her very well. James noticed, as he had before, how attractive she was, and then he looked at her face.

The tiredness was still under her eyes. It had not gone since the funerals. She had just learned to carry it.

"Thanks for coming," she said.

"Course."

Declan half stood and shifted his chair along to give James room. He was in a dark jacket, lean as ever, his hair untidier than it had been on Floor 39. "James."

"Declan."

James sat.

---

For a while they talked about nothing much.

Ciara asked about Finn. James told her Finn was in at the guild every day, training on his own, not saying much. Then he told her about Cillian sitting in the car park and going home, and Maeve’s out-of-office. He said they were all coming back in, slowly, and that it was nowhere near normal.

"No," said Ciara. "It isn’t, is it."

Declan said a few things. He said Fianna’s building had been very quiet, and that the Bureau had been decent about the forms. Mostly he let Ciara talk and turned his glass slowly on the table.

The waiter brought James a coffee he did not remember ordering.

He drank half of it, and then put it down.

"Why did you want to meet?"

Ciara glanced at Declan. It was very brief. Declan nodded.

"The two of us have been talking," she said. "For the last couple of weeks. About Fianna. About what happens now."

James waited.

"You remember what I said in your founders’ room. Before Thirty-Nine."

"All five or none."

"All five or none. Nobody transfers. We go in as Fianna." She turned her own glass on the table, a quarter turn, the way Declan had. "I meant that. I’d never really thought about leaving. We built that guild. All of us did. It wasn’t just where we worked."

"I know."

"But I go into that building now and there are three of them missing, everywhere. Mara’s coffee cup is still on the shelf in the kitchen. Nobody can bring themselves to move it." Her voice did not change. "We keep walking round the space where the team used to be and pretending we’re still the team."

"We’re not stopping," Declan said. It was the first thing he had volunteered. "Either of us. We’re climbing. We’ve talked about rebuilding Fianna, getting three new people in. We could. But I don’t think either of us believes that three strangers in those places would be Fianna. They’d just be people standing where Darragh and Mara and Ren used to stand."

Ciara looked at James.

"We’d like to join Guild Zero," she said. "Both of us. Permanently."

James sat back.

He had not seen that coming at all. He had walked in thinking about forms.

"You’re sure? You were completely against it two months ago. You made it a condition."

"I made it a condition because I was protecting my team," said Ciara. "And Fianna’s independence. That’s what it was about. It was never about Guild Zero. I didn’t have anything against you." She paused. "And now I’ve fought beside you. I know how you call. I know what Finn does when it goes wrong, and Maeve, and Cillian. I know how your people work. We could keep climbing with you, and I think we’d be good at it."

James thought about it properly.

He did not have to wonder what they could do. He had watched Ciara turn the Echo of Wrath into Ronan with a plane set at an angle. He had watched Declan’s curses slow a fallen angel by the fraction of a step that let a shield arrive on time. They were two of the best Challengers in Ireland, and they were offering.

But it was a few weeks after Ronan’s funeral, and they were asking to come into the guild whose top party had just lost its wall. He was not deciding that on his own over a coffee he had not ordered.

"I’m open to it," he said. "Personally. I mean that. But I’m not answering for the others. I need to talk to Finn and Maeve and Cillian first, and I’m not going to give you a yes I can’t stand behind."

"That’s fair," said Ciara.

"We didn’t expect you to say yes across the table," said Declan. "Take whatever time you need."

Something in the booth loosened after that. Ciara ordered another drink. Declan told a story about the Bureau officer who had come to Fianna with the forms and had been so nervous that he had brought them in the wrong order three times. Ciara nearly laughed. They finished their drinks, and James paid before either of them could argue, and they went out onto the street together.

It was getting dark. The streetlights had come on.

"I’ll ring you," said James, "once I’ve talked to them."

"Okay."

Ciara and Declan went off down the street toward the Luas stop, side by side, not talking. James stood by the car for a moment and watched them go.

Two months ago Fianna had been the third-ranked guild in Ireland, and Ciara had been someone he knew from a national board. Now she was asking to come in.

He got into the car.

---

He asked the other three to come up to the founders’ room at ten the next morning.

They were all back in the building by then, more or less. Finn had been in all week. Maeve’s out-of-office had come off. Cillian came in at ten past with a takeaway coffee and sat down without saying much. The chair at Finn’s left stayed pushed in.

James told them.

He told them all of it. There was the restaurant, and Declan being there, and what Ciara had said about the empty kitchen. Then he told them what she had asked.

Finn sat up.

"Both of them?"

"Both."

"Permanently?"

"That’s what she said."

Finn let out a breath. James could see him already working it.

"I mean, that’s huge," Finn said. "You saw her on Thirty-Nine. She put that thing into Ronan’s shield with a plane. Every time it changed targets, she was there before it was. And Declan’s curses on Forty—" He stopped, and went on. "We’d not have got through Turiel’s second phase without them. The party size isn’t fixed any more. We could actually use them."

Maeve had her pen out but was not writing.

"It’s not a couple of free agents walking in off the street," she said. "Fianna’s a registered guild. Ciara’s its Guild Master. There’s contracts, there’s sponsors, there’s whatever they owe the Bureau. We’d need to know what happens to Fianna if its Guild Master leaves it." She looked at James. "And what do they actually want? To be Guild Zero members, like the recruits, or to come up on expeditions with us?"

"With us, I think. That’s how she put it. Climbing with us. We didn’t get as far as roles."

Cillian had not said anything.

James saw him put his coffee down, very carefully, on the table in front of him.

"Are we actually doing this?" said Cillian.

Everybody looked at him.

"I’m just asking. Are we actually sitting here, three weeks after we buried him, talking about putting two new people in the party?" His voice was quiet, but it was not steady. "Because that’s what this is. That’s what it sounds like. It sounds like everyone’s looking for something to put in the gap."

"That’s not—" Finn started.

"It’s what it *sounds* like, Finn."

"They’re not strangers," said Finn. He did not raise his voice. "They’re not people we picked off a list to stand where Ronan stood. They were in there with us. They lost three. More than us. They’re allowed to decide where they want to go next."

"I’m not saying they’re not allowed."

"Then what are you saying?"

"I’m saying knowing what they can do doesn’t mean they belong in Team Zero." Cillian’s hands had gone flat on the table. "Have we even worked out what Team Zero is now? Without him? Because I haven’t. I don’t know what it looks like. And now we’ve got this, and it’s very convenient, isn’t it? The answer turns up before anybody’s asked the question. So we never have to ask it."

"I haven’t promised her anything," said James.

"You told her you were interested."

"I told her I was open to it. Personally. And that I wasn’t deciding without the three of you."

"Mate, she’s a Guild Master. She heard *the Guild Master of Guild Zero is interested*. You know what she heard."

That got under James’s skin. He had been careful. He had been very careful at that table.

"I’m not trying to replace Ronan," he said, sharper than he meant to. "Nobody said anything about replacing him. I’m not taking his name off anything."

"I didn’t say you—"

"Okay," said Maeve. "Stop. Both of you."

She did not shout. She put her pen down on the table, and that was enough.

"There are two different things on this table and we keep talking about them like they’re one," she said. "Guild Zero is a guild. Team Zero is the five of us. If Ciara and Declan join Guild Zero, they’re guild members. That doesn’t make them founders. It doesn’t put anyone in Ronan’s chair." She looked at James. "And inviting someone into the guild is not the same decision as who goes up on the next floor. Don’t let them become one decision just because they arrived on the same day."

Finn nodded slowly. "That’s fair."

"That is fair," said James.

"But we can’t say no just because it’s soon," Finn said. He was looking at Cillian, not at James. "We can’t spend the next six months acting like the old formation’s still there, Cill. It isn’t. He’s gone. Whatever we do next, we have to do it knowing that. Even if we don’t take them, the five of us aren’t five any more."

Cillian looked at the table for a long moment.

"I know," he said.

He sounded very tired.

"I know all of that. I get the argument. I do." He rubbed his face with both hands. "It’s just everything’s going so fast. Three weeks. And I’m not ready to stand in a room and watch somebody else take the place where he used to stand. That’s all it is. It’s not about them. I’m just not ready."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

James let the sharpness go.

"I’m not either," he said. "If I’m honest. I don’t know what the next expedition looks like. I don’t know what we look like. She asked and it caught me completely off guard, and I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t." He looked at Cillian. "But I don’t think they deserve a no just because the timing’s awful. They deserve us actually thinking about it."

Cillian nodded, without looking up.

They talked for another hour.

Maeve went through what she would need to find out about Fianna’s obligations, the sponsors and the Bureau registration, and what happened to a guild whose Guild Master walked out of it. Finn talked about how Ciara’s planes would work with Maeve’s dome, and where Declan would stand. Cillian kept coming back to the one question underneath all of it. Were they ready to put people back into a floor with them at all, any people, let alone new ones? James mostly listened. Every time he felt himself leaning toward an answer, he made himself sit back.

At the end of it nobody had changed their mind very much.

"Then we leave it," said Maeve. "For now. James tells Ciara we’re still thinking. We come back to it when we’ve all had time."

"Fine," said Finn.

"Fine," said Cillian.

Nobody voted.

Finn put his hand on Cillian’s shoulder on the way out, briefly, and Cillian let him.