Though I haven't posted To Coin a War for some time, I've been working right along on this novel. The first act is now completed and I'm beginning the next with this first scene from Chapter 10 called "A Sliver of Silver." (Images below courtesy of pixabay.com.)

Midsummer arrived over Aduaine on the wings of a visiting lyre bird. The delicate buttercups of spring matured and fell back, making room for stalks of savory, lupins, and spears of asp. Groups of young Irish men gathered at the manor homes that dotted the shire. Hog slop was handled by the maids as their brother knights sparred and jousted with twitchy muscles, hemp hats and tunics discarded on lawns, shoulders gleaming in the sun under a sheen of sweat. Dust twinkled over their heads in that same sunshine, a flitter of gemdots evading grasp.

The wives of Aduaine leaned out of windows, sighing, seeing, imagining the various routes a summer freeze might take… before returning to their toil.

And under tall grasses near Jabbot Field a swelling lay: a long mound of earth, expanded low. Gently each afternoon it hummed, its energy warming loam and carrying word. Walking alongside the low mound, one could spot (just on the north end) a tiny stone glinting when the branches of the Brooding Tree above shifted in their shapelings. Dislodging this tiny stone revealed a tunnel, large enough, only, for one worm to wriggle through. It was here that the entrance to the Great Hall of the Tuatha Faeries of Denaan was to be found.

Inside the mound, faeries bustled. Brighid lounged, along with her aunts and mother, eager to recount the events of evensong last. She laughed, settling into a velvet sofa like a layer of dust. This sofa was one of 16 sofas scattered throughout the Great Room of the Tuatha mound, each colored in burgundy with paisley patterns of muted grey. A chandelier of candles hung from the root-strewn ceiling; its 21 flames absorbed the room’s dank and dark and cast a haunting glow upon her face.

From the Great Room, tunnels protruded in every direction, leading to almost every moundhouse in Aduaine. Faeries appeared before the dirt walls as twinkling orbs, in a rush on their way somewhere. Few bothered to materialize, perhaps because there was a spindly human male sitting on his bum in the center of the room, quite out of place.

Tewey barely fit in the mound, his buttocks taking up one whole sofa, forcing bony knees into his chin. His head brushed against the roots of the ceiling. He hadn’t entered through the worm hole; his jacket was much too clean for that. Instead, he was morphed. Brighid had heard him rustling about near the mound and whispering her name. It was easy enough to reduce him to the size of a scent in the nose, only a molecule wide. Only now had she plumped him back up, on the sofa next to hers.

“Cold in here.” Tewey shivered.

Brighid, lit lightly from within, vibrated with joy. “Well! That went well!” She leaned back on the sofa, ignoring Tewey’s discomfort.

“A faery is a bit of a small furnace,” Babda soothed Tewey. She conjured a wool blanket through her darkened imaginings; it appeared in her hands, woolen and scratchy, and she covered Tewey’s shoulders like a mother.

“I must say, neice,” Fódla stood nearby in workmen’s clothes, “it went along with more ease than I thought t’would.”

Tewey rubbed his hands together. “Ah, but you wouldn’t have made it this far without me. I am the one, mind you, who reminded Leannán of his secret.”

“Yes,” Brighid agreed. “Thank you, Tewey.”

“Oh?” Babda looked surprised. “What secret was that, Tewey?”

“You know very well that he’s been consorting with faeries. That’s the last thing a Lord would want known.”

“Brighid, dear,” Babda fingered the fringe on Tewey’s new blanket, “you didn’t tell me Leannán had sought faery counsel.”

“Didn’t I?”

Flames on the chandelier seemed to jump, leaping up like tiny lions to escape themselves.

“No, my dear, you did not. Pray tell, what did he want?”

“Oh, but the gift he made, mother! Let me show you.”

“Wait, young Brighid,” the words of Ériu caught her hem. “I must anon, but before’t: where do we go from here? I’m not in complete understanding of the plan. It’s generally been my function to hatch the idea—”

“And mine,” interrupted Fódla, “to organize it. This one seems to have entirely come from you, Brighid.”

“If you would, neicy,” Ériu sat gingerly on the arm of a sofa, “please explain the long game.”

Brighid turned to face the matron faeries, her eyes raised to the ceiling. She looked like a woman in love, removing a ring from her finger, gathering her thoughts, and beginning slowly to speak.

“Until now, Balor has been free to hand in his thievery. I cared not, except inasmuch as I, as we were left out.

“Now mark me, mother and aunts, his thievery was well conceal’d. One coin had always weighed one ounce of silver: one to one. One to one. One to one…” She repeated the phrase, entranced, staring at her ring. “But Balor,” she looked up, fire-eyed. “Balor the Prince decided to pry some wealth from the simple Irish coin, clipping its edge of a sliver of silver. A sliver of silver…” Brighid transformed her ring into a silver coin, rib-edged and enshining. She held it up to the light of the chandelier.

“This was Balor’s first theft: taking some silver from your coin, Tewey. This coin with which he makes you payment… this coin he feeds into this economy… it is worth less now than it was before because it weighs only .98 ounces. The granary merchant weighs it, finds it wanting. A second coin must be surrendered, change to be made. This makes Tewey two percent poorer.”

“Yes,” Tewey frowned, renewing an old anger. “Balor’s first theft made Tewey poorer.”

“Balor’s second theft,” Brighid continued, “went even further. He amassed these clippings in a cauldron in the casemates of Carrickfergus Castle and there he melted and smelted them down, creating 10 new coins. Now, there are 510 coins in the shire, but still only 500 ounces of silver. With this simple notation in Balor’s ledger, 510 in circulation, even the unclipped coins are now worth less.”

Tewey raised a finger. “And after he outlawed the weighing of monies —”

“Mmm, after he outlawed the weighing of monies, no maid in the shire can prove she possess an unsullied coin. Now, all coins are worth two percent less.”

“Point nine-eight ounces. Right miss?” He spoke, then winced.

“With our bank, we control the monies. And we needn’t be so clumsy as to clip it; there are cleverer ways to steal from the men of Eire. There is yet a third theft of which not even Balor has conceived. Such an alliterative scheme could only come from the mind of a poet,” Brighid pointed at her temple, “and the third theft will be ours to make.”

“And what is the third theft, Brighid?” Ériu asked.

“Auntie mine, I shall chronicle the third theft in verse, in one week’s time at the solstice gathering.”

“Under the Taunting Tree at Carrickfergus?” Babda asked, aghast. “Bold, my dear.”

Brighid dismissed her clucking with the back of her hand. “In the meantime, Tewey, as the agent of the Bonny Bank, it will be your job to collect Balor’s clipped coins and change them over for the bank’s paper pounds.”

“But —”

“You needn’t worry, Tewey; Balor has agreed.”

“Yes, ma’am, tho — if I could but ask,” Tewey’s lips twitched, squirrel-like, “and as a fully heeled agent of the Bonny Bank of Ulster, am I to be paid in silver or paper?”

“For you, Tewey, we’ll weigh out some silver.”

Tewey’s face shewn in relaxed relief. “Though, if I might just also inquire… when?”