Blood and Iron (57 page)

Keith spotted Cairbre in the press, standing over the body of his horse, laying about himself with a mace and a buckler and roaring songs like a wild beast. No one could strike him; no one could get close without being struck down in a red veil of blood, and his music stopped the bullets in midair. They hung there like swarms of bees until they were bashed aside by the arc of his mace or the swing of his cloak. It was breathtaking.

“To me!” Keith shouted, riding down the cluster of Magi to Cairbre's left. “To me!”

The bard glanced up as Keith rode down on him. He transferred his hair-clotted mace to his shield hand as Magi scattered, then pulled something from the saddle on his fallen horse. Petunia skidded in the bloody mud and slowed to a prancing walk, shaking foam from his bit. Wolves and Fae closed around them, surged past them. Blades clashed on bayonets; they stood in a momentary lull in the eye of the battle, a paltry shelter of flesh and bone. “Up,” Keith said, offering Cairbre his hand.

“It's not every day an Elf rides pillion behind the King,” Cairbre said, and instead of giving Keith his hand he gave him a hide-and-wood-cased harp. Keith looked at it curiously, and Cairbre stepped up behind him as easily as if he had walked up a mounting block. The bard settled his cloak and reached around Keith to take the harp, to open the case and hang it on Petunia's saddle. The wood of the instrument gleamed red, despite the flickering green of Morgan's witchcraft: a red so dark no light could alter it.

“The Red Harp,” Keith said. “Can it help us?”

“It can't shatter guns the way it can blades,” Cairbre said, his rich baritone hoarse with shouting. He shifted against Keith's back, hooking his mace onto his belt. “And the time for mending hearts is past. But what it can do it will do, aye, my King.” He took a breath, braced the harp between his thigh and the saddle, and ran his fingers down the strings.

Something took root in Keith's breast: a seed of hope, a thread of heartening strength. He drew a breath and glanced around. The Magi had broken under the madcap charge but had not fled the field. Rather they'd regrouped in front of the tree line, more bunched than before, ready to receive the Fae. A shattering green bolt of power burst overhead, splattering against the shield of Cairbre's music like acid thrown against glass. Keith turned his head to watch the rivulets run down the inside of the sky.

He glanced left and right, at the ragged assemblage of Fae and wolves, and shook his head. “Sorry excuse for an army,” he said, but the magic in what Cairbre played made it come out fondly, and he could see the strength returning to disheartened and exhausted shoulders.

Keith raised his sword again. Witchery reflected the length of it, so it looked like a stroke of lightning in his hand. “Forward!” he cried, pressing his knees to Petunia's sides. The bay curvetted, tossing his mane, and danced forward. Keith's army moved around him.

And suddenly, savagely, the world went blind and dark.

There was a battle raging not ten feet off, and no one even looked in their direction. Matthew crouched beside the Weyland Smith and ran his fingers up and down the metal of the bridge. “You want this taken down?”

“Yes.” The bandy-legged smith hefted his hammer, crouched so low his knees rose up beside his ears.

“You know I helped to put it here.”

“Aye,” the smith said. “And it's my task to cut it off at the root, and I cannot give over until my task is completed. Such is my geas.” He blinked at Matthew shrewdly through the darkness. His eyelashes were long and black, weird against the shaggy white beard and brows that framed his face. “And judging by the look on you, son, if I may say so, you seem unhappy at the manner in which your own geas plays itself out.”

“I haven't any geasa,” Matthew said. “I'm a mortal man, free to make my own fate.”

“The old people believed that even mortal men had geasa, Matthew Magus.”

“How do you know my name?” Sharper than he'd intended, and he jerked back when the old man reached out and gripped his wrist, but his fingers were like welded chain.

“It's written in your eyes,” Weyland said, his own eyes glittering like water in deep caverns. “Now tell me how to tear this old bridge down.”

“Blood,” Matthew said, and stopped trying to pull his hands away. Instead, he turned them over, showing smooth palms callused from the weight room and not much else. “My blood tempered it. You use my blood to tear it down.”

Weyland let go. “I knew I could count on you, son.”

Trembling, Matthew fumbled his pocketknife out. He opened the blade, checked to make sure the thumb lock was set, and held it out to Weyland, handle first.

“You do for yourself, lad,” the old man said kindly, his eyebrows waggling over glinting eyes. A levinbolt splattered against thin air off to Matthew's left; he risked a glance and saw the Fae surrounded, a red-bearded warrior on a great red horse urging them forward, a black-haired Fae cradling a harp riding pillion. The image struck Matthew with its absurdity and power. He laughed and shook his head. “It's all madness, isn't it? Why should I let you tear this down, when my brother gave his life to build it?”

“Because your brother gave his life to build it,” Weyland answered. “Here, dab your blood on this hammer. We'll bring the house down. It's too late to save your friends if we do this thing, Matthew Magus.”

“I know,” Matthew said. A ragged cheer broke out from the Promethean ranks. The big redheaded man had slumped forward in his saddle, the sword fallen from his hands as he clutched his eyes. Other Fae fell to their knees, tripped and sprawled full length on the ground. The ragged dome of light that glowed around them had torn, Matthew saw, its greenness sickly now rather than rich and deep. The storm that had raged earlier had broken entirely, and when he craned his head straight back he saw the bridge standing twisted against a field of stars. Razored blue edges glittered, and he blinked and sighed ruefully. “More fool I,” he said, and folded the knife tidily and put it in his pocket. “This blood won't do it. I ought to know that—”

“Matthew Magus?”

“—I touched a unicorn.” Matthew reached up, standing on tiptoe. He could almost brush one of the unblunted edges with his fingertips. “ ‘Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,' ” he muttered. “And when was the last time I listened to
that
advice?”

He crouched, knowing that the smith moved away around the circumference of the bridge, not caring. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath.

Off to his left, only the rippling, failing light and the savage tones of the musician's harp kept the Prometheans at bay. The Fae had fallen, or were stumbling about, blinded and deafened. Warfetter, and whoever had cast it, had gotten every last one of them except the bard, and whatever fey sorcerers hid in darkness, managing the barrier that kept the Prometheans from their fallen comrades. Matthew tried to imagine the power behind that manifestation, and failed.

He sprang directly upward, his shoulder striking the iron of the bridge a breathtaking blow, his hands stretched upward like a drowning man's, his right hand striking the embedded blade and slicing cleanly down to bone, severing muscles and tendons. Hot blood fell on Matthew's face before he landed, spattering his borrowed shirt, dripping on the harrowed earth.

It hurt. He gasped with the pain, falling forward, cradling his right hand in his left. He pushed it forward when it would have curled itself against his chest, offering it to Weyland, his blood and his pain. “There,” he said. “That's the blood to do it.”

Weyland did not answer. He held out his hammer, and Matthew smeared it with the dripping blood. He stripped his pullover over his head and ripped a sleeve off and wound it around his hand, knotting it with his teeth. It might not stop the bleeding, but it would soak up the blood.

“You'd better stand back, son,” Weyland said, considering the bridge with a craftsman's eye. “I expect this thing will come down hard.”

Times Square is a triangle: a strange hex-sign marking Manhattan like a rune carven into the blade of a knife. I put the Times Tower at my back and moved forward to claim the center of that space, stiff and upright though iron dragged me down. Water oozed from Whiskey's every footstep. “Tonight it is good Halloween / The Faerie Court will ride.” The Merlin raised her voice as I passed her, her mahogany bay prancing in a nervous spiral as the mare tried to watch the strange lights and buildings and the armed, swarming men in blue all at once. I thought of monster movies and I thought of rubber suits.
No one will ever believe this. Never believe a word of it.

Murchaud's voice joined Carel's, heartbreaking and pure, the song of an angel of Hell, and Hope's voice rose up a moment behind it. Cairbre the bard chose her for a reason. And then I smiled, bittersweet, and knew who Hope's father was, and how Cairbre had come to be where a Promethean might capture him.
“Jenet, she's kilted her green kirtle well above the knee / And ta'en herself to Miles Cross as fast as she can go.”

“Shit,” I murmured under my breath. “It always ends at the crossroads.”

“That's because they're magic,” Whiskey said. He leaned from hoof to hoof, light on the forehand, his ears pinned flat. Frightened, which surprised me.

Reflecting the rippling neon as if he were cast in chrome, my shining pale steed moved forward, and the bay and the black flanked him on either side. Carel turned her head to grin at me. Lights and images flashed on every side, hung on the weary stone of buildings old by New World standards, and on the shining steel and glass curtain walls of skyscrapers. JVC. ABC. WB. Neon and flickering light, a thousand colors, an aurora that blotted out the stars—a glamour of light and color and modernity, I suddenly realized, over the ancient truth of the city. The city, a beast all its own: a beast of stone with iron teeth and a heart of hot meat, pulsing living blood through its arteries and avenues. Times Square and neon, bustle and media, blinking lights crying “buy, consume, desire.” Peter Jennings with his hair blown out of order standing outside the ABC television studio, beside a camera crew, gawking like the rest of them and then suddenly straightening his tie, slicking a hand through graying locks, and turning back inside to do his job.

Broadway and Seventh Avenue. The nerve center of the beast. The beast the mortals think they've chained, and tamed.

The Dragon whose pearl is the heart of the world.

“Fuck me,” Hope said softly, as they finished their song. “I never meant to return here.”

The last strain of Carel's voice died away into a silence, a silence unholy for New York City. No sirens, no shouting, no loud conversation. The sound of weapons cocking fell into that hush. Whiskey snorted blood.

“Hope,” I said to the woman beside my stirrup. “Carel. Shut it down.”

“Your Majesty,” they answered in unison, and as the un-horse unveiled his flame-shot wings behind me, electricity hissed and Carel raised her hands as if in surrender. Sparks geysered from billboards and LED screens as Hope brought her lightning down like a lance—once, twice, and again.

And the lights went out on Broadway.

I expected screams in the darkness that followed, or gunfire, but the cameras were our ally.
Those
lights stayed on, flooding the scene with a sharp-shadowed unreality that reminded me of the grass under our hooves in Faerie. Those lights, and the lights in windows and inside buildings. Garbled words through a bullhorn, and then clearly, “Keep your hands where we can see them.” Police were trying to move bystanders along and hustling the media inside, but it was too much, too fast, and they didn't have control.

And I needed to act before they did.

I smiled and held up both hands, riding toward the SWAT van. Moonlight surrounded me and lightning crackled overhead, the air stinking of ozone. A deeper hush greeted me as my companions let me ride from between them, broken only by the measured tones of Whiskey's hooves upon the asphalt. I gnawed my lip, chewing back a frantic laugh.
Klatu verata nikto.

“People of New York City! I am Elaine Andraste, Queen of the Daoine Sidhe, and I come as an emissary from the kingdoms of Faerie and of Hell. We wish to treat with your leaders. We come in peace, and in proof I remind you that while your men fired their weapons first, we returned no harm.”

I winced at my tone. I'd forgotten how to talk like a mortal.

Someone cleared his throat. Floodlights seared the night and I thought a scuffle might break out between the camera crews—three of them now—and the cops. “Fairies,” someone said. “We're supposed to believe you're
fairies?
”

Not exactly approved negotiation technique.
I lowered my hands, but kept them spread wide. “Fae folk and a Duke of Hell, sir.” I couldn't see past the lights. I wondered how the battle was going in Annwn, and how long I had before the Magi sent someone to deal with me. I wondered if it would be Matthew.

I didn't want to kill Matthew. I half liked him, and I could certainly see his side of the argument.

“I see.” He couldn't keep the dryness from his voice. “You want to talk to the mayor. I imagine he's a little busy dealing with the blackout, Elaine. Do you mind if I call you Elaine?”

Ah, that's more like the textbooks. He's getting his feet under him. Time to knock them out again.
“Hope.”

She must have been frightened. Lightning hammered sky to earth and sky again, a bolt so blue it seared images across my vision. My hair lifted in the wind and sparked, end to end. Two of the floodlights shattered, spewing glass and fire. They weren't the camera crews' lights. Clever girl.