Blood and Iron (53 page)

“No a second time. Do you have another?”

The Merlin looked up again. “Third time, right?” she said to me, and I nodded. “Fly,” Carel said to her Dragon. “Go into the sky, Mist, as you used to do, and fly from one place to another, in daylight and by moonlight, and do not rest until you have circled the globe and every nation has seen you.”

“Done,” Mist said, and spread her wings. “You'll want to leave the cavern before I go.”

I swallowed hard.
And that's why she's the Merlin and you're not,
I reminded myself.
Because the Dragon listens to her.

"Keep the sword,” I said, and tugged Carel's hand, bringing her away.

Chapter Twenty-five

There were willing hands to help Matthew back to the workroom. There was clean water and there were fresh clothes; Jane came into the men's room with him, barricaded the door, and made a point of seeing to it that he washed and changed. And there was an ache like slivers under Matthew's skin, an itch like the itch of an old half-forgotten scar.

He did as Jane bid, bathed and dressed himself, followed her into the antechamber and sat down in one of the steel gray modern chairs, drank the whiskey-laced tea she shoved into his hands. He pushed the sleeve of his borrowed pullover up and rubbed at the tattoos winding his wrist: just so much ink now, black and stark against the blanched paleness of his skin, as empty as print to an illiterate.

“I would rather it had been me,” he said, a sentiment so trite that he laughed. And laughed harder when Jane answered the only way she could.

“I'm glad it wasn't. You're going to hate me for a while.”

“Probably.”

“I'd make book on it.” Jane crouched in front of him, knees tidily together, one hand splayed on the floor for balance. Prometheans drifted about the cool white room behind her, aimlessly meandering or moving into knots for quiet conversation. There had been a ritual here too, while the remote team had been in Times Square. All that power they'd squirreled away had needed to be released, focused, channeled. There had been work enough for all. Matthew drained the last of the tea and set the cup on the floor. To hell with it. Tonight, somebody else could clean up after him.

There was a fleck of blood dried on his glasses, a perfect round spot. He pulled them off and scratched at it with his fingernail, spat on the glass and polished it on the borrowed pullover before he remembered it wasn't his. He slid the spectacles back up his nose and took a deep breath. “I want to go inside.”

“Matthew—”

He lurched to his feet so abruptly that Jane jumped back, barely keeping her balance. “You brought Kelly's— you brought Kelly back. I want to see him.”

She stared at him, worrying her lower lip with her thumb, and after a moment she nodded. “Promise me you'll stay calm—”

“I'd be a fool to promise that when I can't deliver it,” Matthew said in measured tones, running both hands through his hair so that grimy unwashed strands caught in his rings. He yanked them loose, harder than he should have, feeling each trapped hair stretch and break. “You'll just have to trust me, Jane.”
Like I trusted you.

She offered him her hand without visible hesitation, and then paused abruptly and reached into her jacket pocket. “Phone.” She pulled it out, the vibration blurring her fingers, and squinted at it to push the green button. “Jane Andraste. ”

A line appeared between her eyebrows almost instantly. Without lowering the phone, she caught Matthew's eye and jerked her chin and her thumb toward a control panel on the wall. He understood and moved toward it, his sudden silence and efficiency drawing the eyes and attention of colleagues who had been allowing him privacy in his grief. He thumbed a switch; a panel slid aside, revealing a flatscreen television as long as Matthew was tall.

“Put on CNN,” Jane said.

Matthew obeyed and stepped back, at first not quite able to comprehend what he was seeing. Image after image, obviously shot in different nations at different times, showed vivid footage of enormous black wings and eyes like magma slipping across a series of dawning skies. Enormous beasts, no two quite alike, the time stamps showing a steady progression of movement from east to west.

“Christ,” Matthew said. “What's that?” He turned to look at Jane.

The cell phone was still in her hand, but her hand hung at her side. Her jaw tensed as she swallowed. “The gauntlet thrown back, Matthew. We're in it now.”

Keith looked up from his maps and his charts, spread on a wooden trestle in the early-morning sun, and rubbed the crease between his eyes with his thumb knuckle. “Why New York?”

“A little bird told me,” Elaine answered, pausing before his tent. She pulled off her gloves and slapped them against her thigh. “A pigeon, in matter of fact. Pigeons, it turns out, know all sorts of things. A Central Park pigeon.”

Keith pushed the map away, flat-handed, and sat back as his wife came to stand beside him. She looked up, across the bridge. He said, “Weyland's not doing any better than we were. You don't think they'll let him just tear it down.”

Smokeless heat rippled from the forge Weyland Smith had set up by the bridge. He whittled away at it with fire and steel while Hope and Whiskey helped as they were able, ice and chill winds at their disposal. Everyone else stayed well away. “I thought about climbing it, Jack up a beanstalk,” Elaine said.

Tents and pavilions were springing up around the vale and up the hillside—a regular encampment. The table Keith worked at stood by the door of his command tent, which was hung with red and saffron banners.

“It's Hallowmas, in this realm and that,” Keith said, trying to keep the distance in his heart from coloring his tone. “The calendars are matched, and at midnight the clocks will be as well. They'll come tonight.”

“And we'll be taking the fight to them. New York City. Times Square.”

“It seems strange that they didn't press their advantage after raising this,” he said, gesturing to the bridge.

“Three things—”

“It always is.”

“Touché. First, I imagine it wearied them, and they want to be strong for the fight. And second, it leaches our strength. The longer it stays there, the more it drains us. Although they reckoned without the Mebd's sacrifice, and Arthur's.”

“And third,” Keith said, sliding an arm around Elaine's waist, “Mist may be keeping them busy.”

“And third, what's days in Faerie currently is but a few hours in New York. I'm sure they'll be along presently.” She leaned her hip against his shoulder. “But yes, Mist is. I've been in and out of the mortal world with Carel while you've been drilling your armies. I'm a little concerned they may resort to nuclear weapons in an attempt to halt her progress.”

“Would that hurt her?”

“Not in the long run.” Elaine sat down on the bench beside him and leaned her face against his shoulder. “She seems to be starting in the Far East and working her way west.”

“That makes sense,” Keith said, and kissed his wife's neck. He longed to comfort her and knew it was futile, and had just enough sense to stay silent.
Arthur and Gwenhwyfar had a long time together, before the end . . .
which was a fresh grief all its own.
I wish I had known him better, Arthur of Britain.
Keith sighed and closed his eyes. “It doesn't answer my question, Elaine. Why New York?”

“Where else? Where else in all the world?”

“Kuala Lumpur? Hong Kong? Palo Alto? London?”

“Palo Alto makes a lot of sense, actually. But New York City is where the kings of commerce reign. The others are regional capitals at best. Besides, I trust what pigeons tell me.” She shook her head, slumping against him as if exhaustion weighed her bones. “Something else. The mortal media is in an uproar.”

“Yes?”

“In addition to the dragons—and they think Mist is many dragons, not one, because they haven't realized she never looks the same way twice—and the preachers prophesying the end times, it seems that there've been sightings of mythical beasts. Centaurs and griffins. A wyvern or two. The willow tree in the center of Carel's campus uprooted itself the other night and walked off; the official explanation is vandals with a crane.”

“I see.” He grinned. It crinkled the corners of his eyes and made her smile in return. The sadness in her eyes told him the truth. For a chilly moment, he felt the coldness that passed for love in her, then he closed his eyes and bent and kissed the back of her hand. Then he looked down and busied himself weighting his papers with smooth-washed rocks.

“We won't win,” she said.

“No,” Keith said, standing and drawing her up with him. “But if I can echo the steps of my forebears, Elaine, then neither will they. A turning point. That's all I have to give.”

“A rock they cannot break.”

“Exactly. And it took more than one Dragon Prince to shatter Rome, you know.” A rolling shrug. He squeezed her hand. “When are you leaving, and who are you taking?”

“Sometime around moonrise. I'm hoping the battle will be joined here first, and we can flank them. I'll take Whiskey and Carel. Hope. Jack-in-Irons. And perhaps my father.”

“A nice cross section. I'll be frightened for you.” He stroked her hair, ignoring the calculated way she leaned into the caress. It was the best she could give, and he would take it as she offered: in faith. He tilted her head to kiss her nose. “Elaine. Come inside with me.” He gestured to the tent.

“Now?”

He read protests in her eyes.
We have things to do. Plans to lay. Troops to drill.
It didn't matter. “Who knows when we'll get the chance again?”

Or if.
He didn't need to say it.

She glanced down the hill, her attention drawn by the ringing of Weyland's hammer on iron. Whiskey stood beside him, holding a wooden-handled wedge as if it weighed nothing. The water-horse looked uphill as if feeling eyes upon him. He met Keith's gaze, and perhaps Elaine's. He nodded, once, and turned back to his task.

Keith squeezed Elaine tighter as she stiffened. “All the comforting things a normal husband would say right about now are lies, Elaine.”

“I know,” she said, and led him into the shadows of the tent, the door flap cutting the sunlight when she let it fall between the two of them and the day.

The sun was going down crimson over the beechwood that evening when I called Whiskey away from the fireside and slung my leg over his spine. I leaned down close to his neck and took comfort in the warm, oceanic smell of him. He no longer seemed wild and strange, but like an old and faithful friend. He whickered and stamped. I stroked his smooth-curried mane before I guided him out of the firelight and toward those dark and ruined woods. We passed through the encampment along the way. Jack-in-Irons crouched hulking on the shattered bole of a tree four feet thick, dragging a whetstone as big as my head along the moon-arc of his blade. The crescent was not reflected in the sky overhead, and I wondered if I would live to see the old moon in the new moon's arms on the morrow. The Unseelie camped apart from the rest of the Faerie host, with Keith's pack arrayed between them. A stocky blond wolf I recognized as one of Keith's closer attendants raised a short blade in salute to me as I passed, and I nodded in return. “Hail, Shadowhand!” he called, and I heard a few more voices echo.
“You are among the heroes now.”
The gesture distracted me, but not enough to miss Ian in the shadows. I shifted my weight on Whiskey's back to bring him to a stop. Ian came forward and laid a hand on Whiskey's shoulder.

It was a strange thing, like being half blinded, and I wasn't yet used to not being able to sense things all around me, an eye in every shadow. I'd traded the powers of the Seeker for the powers of the Queen; some gifts go with the office. Another would have to watch the shadows for me now.

“Mother.” He smiled, and the hand he reached up to lay over mine was warm to the touch. “I've been meeting the pack.”

“What do you think of them?”

He sighed and shook his head, silhouetted in the twilight. “I have so much to learn.” His hand squeezed mine. “And—you were right about Hope. And thank you for stopping me.”

It stung that his words didn't mean more to me than they did. Whiskey snorted and his tail flickered, however, as if he felt my pain for me. He probably did, at that.
Oh, I have done you a disservice, Uisgebaugh.

"You're welcome,” I said, and bent down to kiss my son's hair and tuck an elflock behind his subtly pointed ear. “Fight well tonight, if it comes to that.”

“You too, mother.” He stepped back, releasing Whiskey and me to the failing light. “Mother. If you were going to name a child, what name would it be?”

I looked away, into the darkness and the blasted wood. “Ask Morgan,” I said. “And never tell me.” I turned back so he would see me smile through the shadows, and Whiskey bore me into the trees before I so much as shifted my weight.

“I'm sorry, Elaine,” my stallion said when we were out of earshot of the camp. “I'm sorry. I will try to endure this better, for you.”

“Hellfire.” It came out with no force behind it. I wanted to tell him that it was my fault, that he was never meant to be burdened with the worries and loves of a mortal soul. I said something else entirely. “We'll spill that blood tonight, Uisgebaugh. They'll sing of this destruction for a thousand years, and some will call us heroes for it.”