Blood and Iron (37 page)

The smile grew, spawning dimples. “Spite has very little to do with any of it, Dragon Prince.”

She carried herself differently in skirts, more proudly, with a conscious sway to her hips: as if they reminded her of older times. The brocaded hem brushed the floor as she stood on one foot to slide her slippers on, her unbraided hair falling around her face like draped silk. Not surprising, after all: he knew wearing the short-sword made him stand straighter too.

Fyodor slouched against one of the peeled doorposts, long fingers laced over lean biceps, vastly amused by the charcoal gray Edwardian suit and rose red cravat that Morgan had dressed him in. “Fata Morgana,” he said, when she turned back to the wolves, draping her hair behind her shoulder. “The witches in my childhood stories are very different, my lady.”

“Baba Yaga has a cauldron also.”

“Do you fly in yours?” Fyodor straightened away from the doorframe as she came toward him, and bowed over her hand with courtly Old World grace.

“Sometimes.” Keith was surprised that she blushed when the black wolf's lips touched her fingers. “But mostly I make stew. Shall we visit my sister's court?”

Fyodor's larynx dipped as he swallowed. His scent sharpened with interest.
Now there's a complication,
Keith thought, and shook his head.
Well, it doesn't hurt me to have him interested in Annwn, now does it? Hush up and use what you're given, wolf.

Morgan whistled her dogs and shut the door behind her guests. Her raven fluttered down from the rooftop to join them as they climbed the low slope to the wood's edge, the red dog and the gray dog casting left and right. The bird had a twisted wing; Keith noticed when it settled in a beech beside the path.

“Your bird is hurt,” Fyodor said, and Keith wasn't sure if his attention had been drawn by Keith's, or if he'd noticed on his own.

Spear-shaped yellow leaves fell around them as they came into the wood. Morgan caught one in her hand and turned it toward the sky to examine it. A little sunlight came through the clouds and the branches, illuminating the brown-edged nibbles between the veins until they shone like glowing eyes. “He came to me because of it,” she said, letting the leaf fall. Her smile was very white, and she offered it to Keith rather than Fyodor.

Keith leaned forward as the slope increased, his left hand guiding Caledfwlch's blade. They passed through the woods with magical quickness, crossing a broad, shallow stream on a bridge that Keith had never seen before. The boards creaked under his feet, and frogs splashed along the banks. For a moment he thought he heard something large shift beneath the silvered boards, but Morgan never broke stride and he and Fyodor paced her heels as if teamed. The wolfhounds rustled leaves and pushed through bushes; the crow cawed once, sharply, still flitting from branch to branch.

They came out of the wood in less time than Keith would have imagined possible, at the top of the long hill overlooking the Mebd's palace and the sea. Breakers combed the sand far below; Keith was certain at least one of them showed patches of white and dark that weren't merely seafoam and sea wrack buried in the glassy gray-green depths of the water. He looked away, preferring the view of the palace, gold spires gleaming softly in the watery overcast light. “Well, Younger Brother?”

“Amazing,” Fyodor said, when Keith and Morgan had held their silence for a little while. He raised his head, scenting the breeze, picking out the scents of ocean and palace and wood. “I had thought it would be . . .”

“Less like a castle in a fairy tale?” Morgan offered.

Fyodor shook his head, curls bouncing like springs. “
More
like a fairy tale. Less
real
.”

“Wait until you meet who lives there,” Morgan said, and led them down the hillside, wolfhounds bouncing at her heels.

Fyodor Stephanovich is taking his introduction to Annwn shockingly well,
Keith thought as they crossed the courtyard past the fountain and came up the low steps to the main doors.
But then, people—and wolves—are more likely to surprise you with pragmatism than with panics.
The black wolf did crane his neck a little as they entered the great hall, which was currently empty of Fae. The broad-paned glass ceiling showed overcast now, but when night fell the clouds would tear off as they always did, and the starlight would fall through.

“And where is the mother of your son?” Fyodor asked, picking his feet up precisely so his borrowed boots would not scuff in the herbs strewn across the patterned stone.

“Around somewhere,” Keith answered, dropping his hand to tousle the ears of Morgan's gray dog. She leaned against his hip with a breathy sigh. “We should meet the Queen.”

“We should,” Morgan said. “If she will see us.” The witch clapped her hands together, a hollow report that echoed back from the vaulted roof. “Otherwise, we will entertain ourselves until dinner is served, I imagine.”

The patter of bare feet answered Morgan's summons. Rather than the page girl, Keith watched Fyodor's reaction, enjoying how the black wolf's scent peaked to surprise and then curiosity at the sight of a child garbed in ragged velvet castoffs three sizes too large for her. A child, more intriguingly, with a hare's powerful legs and long ears laid close to her neck among the hair. She had antlers too, three-pointed tines like a young stag's; they almost overbalanced her when she curtsied. “Your Highness?” she said, her gray eyes downcast.

“Monkshood,” Morgan said, earning a shy smile. “Canst say where I might find the Queen?”

A moment passed, Keith watching Fyodor's idle contemplation of the surroundings, and then the page returned and led them to the retiring-room where the Mebd sat by the window, at her sewing. “A Wolf-prince and the Dragon Prince,” she said, tilting her head back to examine Fyodor without rising from her chair. “You're dressed well, at least.” A disdainful glance leveled at Morgan, which could have been playful and could have been in deadly earnest. “And then there's thee: sackcloth and ashes do not besuit our dignity, sister.”

Keith wasn't sure if that was the royal
our
or the collective one, but he nonetheless filed the comment for further consideration. “Your Majesty,” Keith said, when Morgan did not step forward. “May I present Fyodor Stephanovich. I ask, madam, that you set your case before him.”

The Mebd shrugged, but she stood and set her embroidery hoop aside. “My case?” she said, tilting her head back to look the black wolf in the eye. Morgan laid her hand on Keith's elbow; he didn't bother to shake it off, but he saw no need for the reminder. “ 'Tis not so much a case, my lord wolf, as an inevitability. We will combine to survive, or we will face destruction. The alliances are shifting; I see an opportunity for Faerie to win free of Hell, and in so doing to soften the wrath of the Prometheans. Your brother wolf”— she nodded to Keith, her long neck inclining—“is a gift to us, an indication that the time is ripe.”

Fyodor's slow smile showed long ivory teeth and curved crow's-tracks down his leathery cheeks. “Yes,” he said. “Doomed Princes, ancient unbreakable patterns: it's all very dramatic, I'm sure. But what's the truth behind it, Your Majesty?”

She paced in a circle, regarding him, her train sweeping the rug. Keith stepped back against the wall, Morgan beside him, and kept himself out of the way.

“The truth behind it is, we do what we must,” she said, making a dimple. “It's not so much a matter of prophecy or of portents as of geasa, and of the relationship between predator and prey.” Delicate fingers brushed Fyodor's sleeve. “Surely a wolf can understand a kinship such as that.”

Morgan leaned her shoulder on Keith's as they slouched against the paneling, her arms crossed as if in imitation of his own. Keith managed shallow breaths through his nose, the scent of Fyodor's curiosity and the Mebd's craft sharp in the little room, overpowering the tang of rosemary that hung around Morgan.

“A wolf can understand plain speaking,” Fyodor said, cocking his head. Keith stopped himself as he was about to step out from the wall to cover the other wolf's flank: instinct of the pack, and he knew now why Morgan kept so close. “Tell me, Mebd of the Faeries, to what use would you put my pack?”

My pack,
Keith thought, amused that he couldn't deny it. Fyodor should have been the Dragon Prince.

“You should ask the red wolf what purpose he'd put the Daoine Sidhe to,” she said, coyly. “Since it's to him we'll pledge our troth—”

“A troth already given Hell,” Keith said. “You'd see me break you from that treaty—”

“Aye,” the Mebd admitted. “For your son's sake, and my heir's. And break the bondage the Prometheans have placed over us as well—”

“Why the wolves?” Fyodor, still quiet, his accented voice like crumbling chocolate.

“Wolves need not fear iron,” Morgan said, when it became apparent that the Mebd would not answer. “Prometheus is armed against the Fae. There is little they can do to harm the pack, unless they were to learn in advance of your assistance.”

“Our assistance is not promised,” Fyodor said, with a sideways glance at Keith. Keith offered him his toothiest, least reassuring smile. “And the pack is less than it was.”

“Faerie is not what it was either.” The Mebd turned her arm over to show him the inside of her wrist. She drew her sleeve up and showed him pale and livid scars that marked her alabaster skin. “The Queen is the land,” she said, and Keith thought she came as close to pleading as he had ever heard a Faerie come. “Surely you've heard that. The Prometheans leech us, Fyodor Stephanovich, with chains of iron and blood and witching woods, and it's only by feeding Annwn on our own heart's blood that we have kept any strength at all. You know what will befall when we are conquered. You
know,
wolf of the Ukraine.”

He nodded and stepped away from the Queen, lowering his eyes, looking down. “
Da,
yes. The humans are proud of their Alexandrian solutions—”

“Genocide,” she said calmly. “It will be a slaughter, Fyodor Stephanovich.”

He nodded—“I have seen it done”—and his voice, so calm, might have been a blunt knife peeling Keith's skin back.
This is the wolf the pack needs. Not me.
“And what will it be if the wolves come to fight with you and Faerie conquers the mortal realm, Your Majesty? Will all strictures be burst and the Fae rule again as childlike gods over men?”

“We have no interest in ruling them.”

“No,” Morgan said, her eyes on the Mebd's, sparing a glance for neither wolf. “The Fae wish merely to reign. Never rule. But you will prey upon them.”

The Mebd smiled, and lifted one shoulder and let it fall. Fyodor shook his head, and this time he looked at Keith, who was suddenly aware of his own tongue-tied silence. “And is not the Dragon Prince born to be betrayed by one of his own consanguineous line?”

“He is,” Morgan said.

“I'm prepared,” Keith answered.

Fyodor smiled. “Then who is to say that your betrayer will not be a brother wolf? Will you kill me if I oppose you to the end of the challenge, Keith MacNeill? If I fight you for your chance to stand as Sire to the pack?”

Keith opened his mouth to answer, to say
Yes, I'll fight. For Ian and his future if nothing else—
but the thoughts went spiky and dangerous, and wouldn't quite permit themselves to be shaped into words.

“Stay for dinner,” the Mebd said, moving into the line of sight between Keith and Fyodor, looking from one to the other. “Stay with us. We'll announce your betrothal tonight, my lord Prince. Do you suppose tomorrow is too soon to marry?”

Chapter Seventeen

I an found Seeker at breakfast and sat beside her, chair scraping and skipping across the tiles as he dragged it closer. He picked up a plate and piled it with steaming rolls. Seeker pushed her meal around aimlessly.

"Did you forget me?”

She looked up and frowned. “For . . . oh. Dinner. Ian, I'm so sorry. . . .”

He shook his head, skin glimmering like ivory. A faint flush colored his cheeks like the sunward side of peaches. “It's all right. I imagine the conversation with Her Majesty upset you. And I had a long talk with Hope.” He busied himself tearing a roll open, the sharp nails on his thumbs pressing through the crust and releasing the fragrance of fresh-baked wheat. He spread honey and butter over the ragged crumb.

The smell made Seeker's stomach clench, and she leaned back. “Hope?”

He looked up at her, serious. “She and I are lovers, mother.” He pressed the halves of the roll together. Dripping butter and honey, they slipped and stuck. “She's with child.”

Seeker bit her tongue on the easy response. “I'm going to be a grandmother.”

“Yes.” He smiled and tore a piece from the roll, tucking it into his mouth. “I told father last night.” A rolling shrug, and he set the rest of the bread down, pouring tea for himself. “Pity you missed dinner. There was quite the little drama. I think I'll have a chair moved up here for you, so you can sit by me. Instead of tormenting poor Peaseblossom.”

“It's good for him to have his cage rattled once in a while. What sort of a drama?” She pushed her plate away; food was hopeless. She pulled her mug closer instead, so she could cradle the warmth in her palms.

“The Mebd set the date of your marriage.”

This time, she did choke. “When?” she asked, the glare she directed at him heating her own face more than his.

“Tonight,” he answered, with apparent unconcern. “See what happens when you don't pay attention?”