Blood and Iron (24 page)

And how Janet went into the cold night and broke in on the Queen's progress, and pulled Tam Lin down from the shoulders of his milk white steed—Seeker and Whiskey both chuckled, remembering their earlier conversation— and held him through transformations into a mad hound, a viper, a bar of red-hot iron, until the Faerie Queen's magic was exhausted and Tam Lin stood before her wrapped in Janet's own green mantle. And so Janet defeated the Faerie Queen, and was cursed by her, and won Tam Lin away.

So the story ended. How the tithe was met that year was not recorded, but it must have
been
met. And the Mebd had learned a thing or two about holding on to men's bodies and souls since.

But even the Queen of Faerie couldn't shake the echoes, the tug of Tam Lin's thread on the pattern of the whole damned tapestry. One never can, when one is made of stories. And as long as Tam Lin was sung, reimagined, or remembered, the Mebd's failures would also be.

The ballads were a true history of Faerie, and a false one. They were true because all stories are true, and false because stories have echoes and interplay and Faerie is the result of the tension between those. The pattern of a tapestry was not the substance of the strands.

But pattern could be manipulated by how the strands were woven—which pulled taut, which brought to the surface, which drawn beneath. And more than one version of a story could be true at once. And moreover, the stories of the past affect the future, and echo and repeat and replay themselves over and over again, in infinite variation, through courage and determination.

It's been so long,
Seeker thought. “Only this,” she said, “and nothing more.”

Whiskey whickered against her neck. Water sloshed in the tub, splattering the flagstones, and her body curved like a bow under its touch, and the touch of its master.

“Shall we sing another?” he asked, long moments later. “She doesn't hate ‘Thomas the Rhymer' quite so much. Perhaps ‘Scarborough Faire'?”

Seeker sat upright in the sudsy water, wetting the floor further. “Janet was Fae.”

“Yes. She always wears green.”

“And claims the roses he guards for her own. Wait. It's a true story, Whiskey? That's why the Queen won't hear it.”

“The Queen hates losing. And all stories are true.”

“But Tam Lin was bound to her.”

“He was.” He spoke against her neck, letting her feel the pinch of his even white teeth. She floated, still lulled despite wild ideas tickling the back of her mind. Fatigue held her like gray cotton wool, and the water was warm as blood.

“Was he human?”

“As human as you are. Which is to say, human in some part.”

“His eyes were gray. He was one of us, you mean. A changeling, this man Thomas. A knight and a bard.”

“So it is recorded.” She felt him smile against her neck.

“And yet Janet won him free.” Seeker knew she was restating the obvious. She was on the verge of something, and didn't know what. Didn't know how to get there from where she was, or from what angle to examine what Whiskey had handed her. She thought about raising her hand, and it barely stirred in the water.

“She will not hear it sung,” Whiskey reminded her.

“How did she do it? Janet, I mean.”

“ ‘I fear you go with child. . . .' ” he sang softly. “It wouldn't be in the song if it wasn't important. ‘She held him fast and feared him not, the father of her child.' And there it is again. She had a greater claim than the Mebd.”

Seeker pulled away and stood, water sheeting down her body. She wobbled and caught the edge of the tub. “Help me dress.”

He kissed her neck and brought a towel. “You must sleep.”

“I must
be
somewhere. I can't leave Carel alone without at least checking on her.”

“Mistress. As you wish it.”

She stepped out of the water and accepted the clothes he pulled from her wardrobe. He had to steady her so she could drag the trousers on, but she wouldn't meet his gaze. “Be good while I'm gone,” she said, and padded away, barefoot, her wet hair darkening the shoulders of her blouse.

She pretended not to hear him humming the chorus to “Scarborough Faire” as the door closed between them.

Chapter Eleven

Matthew paused, key in the lock, as the warmth in his hands gave way to aching cold. His sweat had chilled on his skin, but the stable sweetness of apples and animal lingered like a woman's perfume. He cursed, pulling out his cell phone, kicking the door shut, and hooking his sweat-soaked shorts down with his thumb before toeing off his running shoes. “Jane,” he said, when she answered on the first ring. “The wards. I'm rolling.”

“On the island?”

“Close,” he said. “Just got in from a run; I'm half-naked. Let me drag some pants on and I'm all over it. Can I come by after? I have something I need to tell you.” He pinned the phone between his jaw and his shoulder, wrinkling his nose at the reek of his own cold sweat as he yanked jeans on.

“I'm in Albany,” she said, muffled against his ear. “I'll meet you, unless you want to come to the penthouse.”

His boots were on their sides under the bed. He crouched on the edge and started stuffing his feet inside. “Here is good. If you wanted to pick up takeout—ow!” His hands twinged, hard. “Jane, I have to go. It's a Seeker.”

“Go,” she said, and he flipped the phone closed and grabbed a sweater off a chairback on his way out the door.

He felt her moving, tasted her sweetness like venomed blood. Traffic was at its worst and he would have to run it, but she was close. So very close.

The coldness was pain like arthritis by the time he shortened his stride in a floodlit alley and checked his hair with both hands, smoothing stray strands and tightening the elastic. Not Elaine, which meant he wouldn't have to explain to Jane how Elaine had slipped through his fingers again.

He curled those fingers tight, tilting his head back, already knowing what he would see. A fire escape, yes, and an open window at the top of it, pale curtains printed with bright cartoon dinosaurs blowing out into the cold, cold night
. . . and pray God we are not too late,
Matthew thought, and crouched, and leapt, the iron of the fire escape gritting under his palms, rasping on his rings. They cut his hands as he chinned himself, rust shaking across his face. Enough iron to keep any Fae at a distance.
Any Fae but a Seeker, that is.

Matthew got his feet up onto the escape and stood. He couldn't manage the Seekers' trick of moving in profound silence, or Elaine's ability to spread shadowy wings and glide, but he thought he managed the rickety contraption with admirable silence, wishing all the while that he had his camouflage jacket to hang a pass-unseen upon.

Blistered paint slid as he laid a hand on either side of the open window frame and swung his legs up over the sill, not pausing to check the layout of the room. The good news was, Kadiska couldn't step through shadows with the human prey; she had to hunt in the mortal world, and she had to return to Faerie the hard way, through the path under the thorns.

Small mercies,
Matthew thought, as his boots scuffed carpet and he came down in a crouch, one hand spidered for balance.
Christ. That's a cradle.

“Who's been sleeping in my bed?” he asked, rising, his right hand spread to grab. The Seeker was waiting for him in the narrow room, back to the corner between the crib and a single bed with two huddled dark heads.
Shit.

The Seeker rolled her shoulders, lifting her head on a strong neck. Light trickled through the window along with the cold night air, casting a shadow on the wall behind her. It rose and flared, cobra hood, the sigil on its neck visible as an interference pattern, a curve of lesser darkness. The Seeker hissed, and her shadow hissed with her.

Matthew had attention only for the bundle clutched to her breast. “You'll not pass me. Not with that child, you won't—”

“Matthew Magus. How will you stop me, mortal man?” He clawed both hands and spread them wide, a wrestler moving for a grip. “Come find out. Here, kitty, kitty—”

The teeth she showed when she laughed were filed to points. “Such a pretty lad,” she said. “I remember your brother very well. Good sport in that one.”

He stepped back, hesitated, bootheel snagged on the rucked, water-damaged carpet. “Don't talk about him,” Matthew said. “You don't deserve to talk about him.”

“Good sport indeed,” she continued, moving toward him.

The baby in her arms was silent: ensorceled, and there would be a simulacrum left in the crib, a changeling. A fey mockery to die by sunrise, and leave the grieving family to wonder. Crib death. Elf-stroke.
How little we remember.

“Kelly, wasn't it?” Her shadow towered, from the snake to a shape with tufted ears laid flat, a lynx. Her bare footsteps could not have been more silent. She lowered her arms, showing him the dark beaded skin of her breasts, holding the child to one side. “I remember him.”

“You're lying.” Matthew moved to block the window. “You will not pass me, Seeker. Not while you hold that mortal child.”

“Not mortal,” the Seeker answered. A crimson scarf bound her hair back from her face. Tiny mirrors sewn to it flashed when she angled her head. “Not mortal. Mine.” She smiled, showing flesh-tearing teeth, and undressed him quite meticulously with her eyes. “Your brother had lovely patterns from his shoulders to his thighs. Very black, on so much white, white skin. Do you have marks like that?”

“I wouldn't show you if I did,” Matthew said softly, through the rage that wanted to take the bit and run. “Give me back that child.”

“You're all red,” she said, a half step closer. He leaned closer, for all he willed himself not to, feeling her power, the serpent's hypnotic romance. Her perfume should have dizzied him, but suddenly all he could smell was the clean animal heat of the unicorn. “Let me lick the rust from your skin, Matthew Magus.”

“Birds should know about snakes,” he said.

The Seeker smiled. The baby in her arms might have been a corpse, but Matthew heard it breathing: a thin, slow sound like the rattle of a poltergeist's chains. “Snakes know all about birds.” She leaned close as if to press her lips to his.

He grabbed her by the chin, one-handed, snatched at cloth with the other and brought a steel-toed boot down hard on her bare, horny foot. She jerked away; he felt the savagery of ice in his fingers, across his palm where the rust pressed between his flesh and hers. Felt the blankets in his left hand slipping and released the Seeker, abandoned the knee-crushing side-kick that would have been his next move. Slipping—

Falling.

In pain and shock, the Seeker hurled the baby at him, and Matthew didn't have a grip on it. Just a brushing contact, fuzzy cloth against his fingertips, and he turned the momentum that would have been a kick into a pratfall, went down hard, striking on the arch of his back. Agony kicked his breath away, a rattle rather than a shout. It didn't matter, because the thing that struck his chest on the way down was the blanket-swaddled infant, and he landed on the bottom, and when he did the child began to scream.

And scream, and scream, and scream.

From the corner of his black-edged vision, he saw the shadows flicker as the Seeker made her exit. Pushed himself painfully over onto both knees and a hand, the motion making him gag as if he'd been kicked in the kidney.

Knees, check. Hand down, and sound of a door opening elsewhere. Two bodies in the twin bed awake now and one of them screaming, each of them clinging to the other. Knees, feet, move. He set the baby in the cradle, rust-stain handprints all over the white of the blanket reminding him to chant a quick mantra and blur his fingerprints, his DNA. The infant's scrunched and screaming face was engraved into his memory as—gagging on his own pain—he tore apart the changeling construct with iron-ringed hands.
Fire escape. Fire escape. Go, go, go—

The bedroom door rattled. Matthew dove for the window at a hobble more than a run, leaving the screaming children behind.

By the time Seeker tracked down a page who could show her to Carel's room, the door was standing open, the Merlin reading at a rolltop desk. She looked up when Seeker tapped on the doorframe and nodded her in. The Mebd— or her castellan—had provided a fine, airy room for the Merlin's use. Gray-and-green patterned silk curtains coiled in a light breeze from the open windows; the air was damp with rising mist. The walls were carven to resemble the slender trunks of trees, blending into the arches overhead like the vaults of branches in an open wood.

The Merlin pushed her crackling book aside and stood. “It's been an interesting morning. You look . . .”

“Terrible?”

Concern folded lines between Carel's brows. She caught Seeker by the elbow. “Sit. What happened?”

“No sleep,” Seeker answered.

She let Carel guide her to a chair, the warm smell of vanilla following the swing of Carel's braids. After the vanilla came the scent of roses: pouchong tea. Carel wiped out the gray stoneware mug sitting on her desktop and poured from a tea cozy-swaddled pot. She pushed the mug into the other woman's hand. “Don't mind my germs.”