Blood and Iron (31 page)

Matthew frowned, nibbling his thumbnail, noticing she'd sidestepped his question about the wards quite neatly. “I'm not sure I understand what you mean.”

“A marriage is a state of dynamic tension. It works as long as nobody gets the upper hand and keeps it.” She leaned forward as they came up the hill toward Beach Hall, walking faster, digging in. She wore black Chinese slippers that made leaflike scuffing sounds on the cement of the sidewalk.

“And?” The tall Gothic doors of the big gray building opened and closed as students passed through them. Carel paused at the base of the stairs; Matthew hesitated one step up, turning back so he could see her face. “And, Carel?”

“And you're in danger of winning,” she said, and walked up the stairs. He turned to pace her; she pinned him at the door to the hall with a single level glance.

She is the sorcerer, and this is her tower. I cannot pass within without passing into her power.
He stopped, his boot just shy of the threshold, blocking the door that the Merlin held open while students continued to pass through the other side. “This isn't a partnership,” he said. “The Fae are parasites. They have the morality of a tapeworm.”

“A medieval man might have said they have the morality of a wolf,” Carel answered, something resonant in her voice. “Rapacious and cunning, and taking what they wish when they wish it, unless they can be made to fear. But
we
know more of wolves than that cold shepherd watching his flock, do we not?”

“It's hardly the same thing—”

“One cannot have safety without eliminating risk,” the Merlin answered. “Sheep are pretty dull, Matthew. Is your sympathy with the lion or with the lamb?”

That drew him up short. “Can it be with both?”

She smiled, and tilted her head to one side, speaking over her shoulder as she let the door swing closed between them. “When the lamb must die for the lion to live? That, Matthew Magus, is what I am trying to find out.”

Seeker lay awake in the light of a single candle, her awareness flitting from shadow to shadow
otherwise
through the darkened palace. Keith's arm lay across her waist, his breathing heavy and even against her neck. She smelled the blood from his wound and tears stung her unblinking eyes, while she riffled shadows like a pack of cards. She wasn't sure what she sought, and the palace wasn't silent at night, or even restful; a whole nocturnal kingdom sprang to life when the candles were doused and the curtains drawn.

From shadow to shadow she followed the sound of music: a great standing harp, played softly; a falling rill of notes like water, sad and slow; and a woman's voice.
Hope,
she thought, picking out the words. “ ‘Fain would I be / in my ain country. . . .'”

Half knowing what she would see, Seeker peered through shadows and found the room where the apprentice bard sat, clad only in the long rippled tumble of her own midnight hair, a lone candle burning beside her. Ian lay propped on his belly just a few feet away, once-crisp white sheets tangling his legs, watching her play.

Candlelight played across his shoulders, muscled with sword practice, and the hard little dimples on the back of his arms . . . and the fine white scars that laced his skin here and there. He stood and crossed the room to his lover, picked up her hair in both hands and rubbed his face along the length while she sang to him and smiled.

Ian covered Hope's hands with his own and stilled them on the strings—covered her lips with his own and hushed her voice before he led her back to the bed. Seeker closed her eyes and let shadows fall before her like the velvet draperies concealing the Mebd's throne.

She pressed her face against Keith's shoulder. Distantly, to her surprise, she heard a rumble of thunder. He murmured in his sleep, or perhaps it was a growl, and pulled her into the curve of his body. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of his breathing, felt the warmth of his breath stirring her hair. He woke before sunrise and kissed her, seeming surprised to find her awake.

“Leaving me?”

“In a little. Not because I want to,” he murmured, and tasted her shoulder. “But it might be better if people thought they could play us off against each other. We need every advantage we can get.”

“Keith . . .” He was warm, and he smelled of sweat and faintly of brimstone and cold rain.

His hand cupped her breast; he brushed the backs of his fingers down her jaw, across her lips, as if feeling her breath when she spoke. “I'd forgotten how soft your skin was,” he said.

“You keep talking like we're in this together.”

“If not us, then who?”

She couldn't sleep after he left, either. Instead, she wrapped the belt of her dressing gown tight, poured herself a glass of whiskey—pretending it was late at night and not early in the morning—and tossed another log on the embers of the fire before settling against the soft brocade of her wing chair to watch the flames consume it. Oak, this time, to burn pale and long. Her feet were not quite warm through when a scratching at the window roused her.

She stood and set her glass aside, picking her way across the room to push the draperies back. Rain streaked the glass and doused the dark shape beyond it, and she wondered. She swung the window open.

“When was the last time it rained in Faerie?” Whiskey asked her. “Come with me and feel it on your skin.”

She leaned out the casement and let the rain fall on the back of her neck, cold as a Kelpie's heart. “Uisgebaugh. Out on such a night,” she said.

“You smell of whiskey,” he said. “There's something poetic in that.” He leaned forward, as if to kiss her face.

“Stop.”

And he stopped, frozen in place as if pinned. “Does he know you're using him?”

“Yes,” she said. “As surely as Tam Lin used Janet. She got what she wanted in the end, though, didn't she?”

“She got what she deserved.” He made a dismissive gesture with one shovel-sized hand, the silver on his thumb glittering wet in the darkness. “Your werewolf might have claim enough on you to break the binding. But he's not strong enough, is he? Not as strong as the Mebd.”

“He's the Dragon Prince. If not him, who is?”

“You are,” Whiskey said. “I am. But I'm Tuatha de Danaan. Full-Fae, and not only am I bound to you . . . but only someone with a soul could lay claim of love on you.”

“Alas,” she said, mocking. “One less reason to free you.”

“One more,” he said. “I'd make a better ally than I do a slave, my lady.”

“An ally like Cliodhna. I don't need those.”

“Come out into the rain.”

“Come into your power, you mean.”

“Careless woman. No, I'm saving that for if I need it. I'd rather have my freedom given than take it.”

“Why?” Something rose up in her, unbidden. A memory.
You go to judgment with what you are born with and what you have earned, less what you have given away.
“It's worth something to you, freedom given rather than taken at the price of my life. It's worth something rare, isn't it?”

He snorted, blowing raindrops from his lip. “It is,” he said unwillingly.

She looked him in the eye. “What?” she demanded.

He shook coarse dark hair and pawed the earth. “The tithe,” he answered, the words dragged from him by the force of her command. “Free me, of your own will, and I cannot be chosen.”

“Is that a danger?”

“Lady,” he said, “your own father went to pay that toll. A willing sacrifice is worth more than one unwilling. But still. Have you not asked yourself why so few of the full-Fae remain, and why so few of their children?”

“The palace stands all but empty,” she said. “Isn't there a way out of it? If it's destroying Faerie?”

“The bargain was made long ago,” he answered. “It was meant to protect us, when the new religion came and the old gods were under attack. Mac Llyr chose to live under the overlordship of Hell rather than face destruction at the hands of the angels. His own sister went to pay that tithe.” Rain dripped down his face. The light was growing—still dim, but growing. “We chose a lesser place that was still a place. And there is a way out of it. The Mebd could go, and Àine with her. My father's heirs.”

“It's happening now. The Magi, the iron and steel.”

“They'll drive Hell out as well,” he said. “The Devil is out of fashion.”

“The Dragon Prince comes to protect those under threat of conquest and destruction. He's here for us. For this war.”

Whiskey snorted.

“I'll free you. You have my word on it. I'll free you. After the war.”

“You could die in the war, mistress.”

“So could we all.”

He nodded then, considering. “Is your word good?”

“You've my oath.”

“I may still kill you if I can.”

“I'll chance it,” she said, and moved to close the window.

He stopped her with a hand on her arm, thumb pressing the wet silk of her robe against her arm. “Come out into the rain. Ride with me. There was thunder, earlier.”

“I'm to be married.”

“So you are,” he said, “and you'll need me more than ever, then.” And he took her hand and drew her down from the window, and up onto his back, and so away through the garden and the parklands beyond at a canter and then at a wild, wild run.

Keith returned home through the thorn-tree path. He wasn't surprised to find Fionnghuala at the MacNeill house; he'd stopped at her cottage on his way home, and there weren't many other places she might be at teatime. He
was
surprised to find her sitting by the fieldstone hearth in the parlor with Fyodor Stephanovich, Eremei Fyodorovich, and Vanya—with no sign of Eoghan, although his scent was fresh in the house. “Father?” Keith said by way of announcing himself.

“Upstairs,” Fionnghuala answered, standing to greet him and smoothing her skirts with a shake.

Vanya leaned against the hearth behind her. He straightened but did not step forward, his hands folded tidily over powerful forearms. “He was tired,” Vanya said, his voice making the euphemism an obvious politeness.

He is dying, you mean.
Someone nudged Keith's elbow: the young wolf Eremei Fyodorovich, pressing a whiskey into his hand. He held it up to the light curiously and smiled. “Thank you, Younger Brother.”

“You're welcome,” the young wolf said, and withdrew. Fyodor himself stayed silent, sprawled in a chair too low for his long legs, his strange eyes watchful over hollow cheeks. Assessing his son's manners, Keith thought. Assessing the competition.

There was a message in Fyodor playing host through Eremei. And Keith answered that communication when he set the glass down untasted on the side table. Caledfwlch dragged at his belt, and he knew every eye in the room stole glances at it.

“You're wounded, brother,” Fyodor said, rising out of his chair like a stream of smoke. “You smell of blood.”

“Aye,” Keith answered, turning his gaze from the black wolf to Vanya, trying to put his question into his eyes. Vanya tipped his head toward Fyodor, the obvious answer.
Try him. I cannot speak for my cousin in this.

Damn,
Keith thought, as Fionnghuala rubbed her hands together and glanced about the room, obviously at a loss to follow the conversation. “Gentlemen?”

“There are complications,” Keith said, meeting Fyodor's gaze and showing his teeth in a smile that was also a warning. He picked the offered glass up off the side table again, lacing his fingers around it. “We need to speak, Fyodor Stephanovich. More even than we did before.”

“I do not wish to kill you,” Fyodor said. He kept his hands low, palms pressed against his thighs, his pointed chin tucked tight to cover the softness of his throat. “It's very near.”

“Yes,” Keith answered. “And I meant—” He shook his head, raised his glass, and knocked Fyodor's whiskey down. “I meant to step aside, Fyodor Stephanovich. But the situation has changed.”

Something—Keith's scent, the brittleness in his voice— must have alerted the other wolves in the room. Fionnghuala knotted her hands in the folds of the skirt she'd carefully smoothed over her knees.

“Meaning you will no longer stand aside?” Vanya, gently, moving forward to refill Keith's glass and return it to his hand. Offerings, younger wolf to elder: the powerful sting of the whiskey's scent brought tears to Keith's eyes.

“Meaning I no longer can,” Keith said, and made sure he had Fyodor's gaze before he continued. The black wolf waited, his lanky form relaxed. “Fyodor Stephanovich, have you heard of a thing called the Dragon Prince?”

A slow, painstakingly precise nod.

“It seems I am he,” Keith continued, “and the consequences if I do not claim my princedom are too heavy to contemplate.”

The fire popped sharply in the quiet that followed. “How do you know?” Vanya, of course, after a speaking glance from Eremei that obviously urged the question on him.

“The Dragon told me,” Keith answered, and leaned his head back helplessly. “There's more. Fyodor—” He was interrupted as Fionnghuala cleared her throat.

“Gentlemen?”

“You're confused, madam?” Fyodor, with a toothy human smile, turned his attention on her.

She shook back the waves of her hair. “No. Not precisely. But wondering if Eoghan should be present for this discussion. ”

“No,” Keith said, flatly enough that he startled himself. “My father has . . . ideas. And I'd prefer to settle this through compromise if possible. Tell me you won't fight me, Fyodor.” Coldness filled Keith's belly; he tried to put the urgency into his voice, into his eyes.