good cook,” she said, and sat when Marg did. “I’m trying to get better at it, as there’s no easy takeout near the cottage, and Marco’s not here to put something together. He’s a really good cook.”
“He’s a good friend to you. Finola was particularly taken with him.”
“She has an eye for handsome lads.” Sedric set the pot on the table, then began to ladle stew into the bowls.
“She does that. I’m told he’s musical, as you are.”
“Oh, I’m not like Marco. He’s what you’d call a natural. My father called him that, and taught us to play—the piano, the violin, the flute. But when—when he had to leave, Marco took more lessons. I . . . didn’t.”
Because it wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have, she sampled the stew. “Oh, it’s just wonderful. You grow your own vegetables.”
“The soil is for growing. You have a talent there as well.”
“I think I do. It’s something I want to learn more about. We live in an apartment, so there really isn’t anywhere to plant, and before . . . There wasn’t time with my job and all the rest for a real hobby or interest.”
“Your time is yours now,” Sedric commented.
“I’m getting used to that. I want to ask—and if you don’t want to answer or talk about it now, it can wait, but you’ve given me a lot of money. For me, it’s a fortune. Where did it come from?”
“Well now, money is easy enough to come by. We have no currency here, but—”
“No currency? None?”
“And no need. We barter and trade, and tribes, communities, take care of those who fall into the hard times. Others may appeal to the taoiseach and his council for help—a death, a sickness, or some other misfortune that causes them troubles.”
She had to say it again. “No money?”
“It’s metal or paper or some other form that has no real value above what a people ascribe to it.” Sedric shrugged, buttered some bread.
“But you gave me money.”
“In the world you’ve lived in you require it for safety, security, for food, a roof, a bed. I am your grandmother. Your father and I agreed to see to your needs. We have things of value here that can be sold outside. So it was done.”
“Thank you. Having the money changed my life, it gave me a freedom I didn’t have before. It sounds shallow sitting here, saying that, but it’s true.”
“Every world has its own rules and laws and cultures.”
“Sedric told me you have people who live outside.”
“Of course. Some may find a life outside more suitable, or happier. All are free to choose. Some from the outside choose Talamh; some from Talamh choose the outside.”
“When they choose to leave, they take an oath? You were explaining before.”
“Most sacred,” Marg agreed. “The most sacred of all is to cause no harm, to take no life except to defend life, not with magicks or without. Even then, if it’s done to protect or defend life, it must be judged. The taking of a life, the causing of harm in any other circumstance is punished by a stripping of power and banishment.”
“Banished to where?”
Sedric laid a hand on Marg’s and answered. “There is a world where the single portal opens only from the outside. Those who break the oath and are judged to have done so are taken there, where they must live without magicks.”
A kind of prison, Breen realized. “How do you know if they broke the oath?”
“We have Watchers, and their gift is empathy. They know, and must tell the council. We are people of the land, we are artists and craftsmen, storytellers, but we are also a world of laws. Most are not unlike the laws you know. To take a life, to take what is not yours or not given freely, to force another to lie with you, to neglect a child or animal. All of these acts cause harm, and our first law is to cause no harm.”
The answers had more questions buzzing in her brain, but a glance from Sedric had her holding them back.
Enough, she thought again, for one day.
“I want to thank you for the paper, and the pen. I’m looking forward to trying to write with them.”
“I hope you’ll enjoy them, and work well. But also take time from the work to see more of Talamh. To let me teach you, to help you wake.”
“To wake what I had that broke the glass when I was little.”
“That and more.”
“I’d like