Whiskey and Water (18 page)

"You said to me, 'Come home, Elaine.
Don't stay with the monsters now that you don't have to anymore.' Do you
remember?"

"I do."

"And now?"

"And now you're Queen of the
monsters."

"Yes," she said, with a
bloodless smile. "I am. And you're the hamstrung smith, aren't you,
Matthew? Crippled, flesh and heart. Lame as Vulcan, or Weyland. You remember
Weyland Smith as well, I imagine."

"It's all paid for, the blood and the
transmutation." His folded fingers slid down her cheek; he couldn't quite
feel the softness of her skin against the backs, but he brushed it with his
thumb, and she leaned into the caress like a cat. He returned the hand to his
side. He would have stepped back, away from the challenge in her regard, but
intransigence made him hold his ground.

She laughed. Behind her, Carel was pouring
tea. "Playing with fire, Promethean. No, it was not one of mine murdered
your girl. Though it'll make no difference to Jane. Has she Magi around her
again?" Matthew shrugged. "She's barely gotten them through
apprenticeship. Don't your auguries tell you?" "She's lost none of
her wit at keeping secrets." She turned away for a moment and accepted the
cup from Carel, then extended it to him. Do you want another war,
Matthew?"

"No," he said. "No. I do
not want a war. You know what she can do if she chooses."

He took the cup and the saucer, and
hesitated. The steam smelled or fermentation, tannin, roses. He didn't drink.

The Queen nodded. The Promethean
juggernaut was a tectonic force: it relied upon the manipulation of history and
the weight of collective consciousness for its power. It might take thirty
years to accomplish its goals, and Jane Andraste would no doubt be dead before
they came to fruition, but if she lived long enough to set the machine rolling
again it could mean another four hundred years of cold war, and Faerie would
not withstand that. The Prometheans had paid a graver price in the past war
than the Fae, but Faerie was worn to the bone by long years of attrition. The
Queen ruled a divided and exhausted kingdom, and the Prometheus Club had
succeeded in one goal: the iron world remained largely inviolate, its
preconceptions strong.

Faerie had to prevent a siege. They could
not endure one.

The Queen gestured to Matthew's cup.
"It's safe," she said. "You have my permission to come and go as
you please, Matthew Magus, anywhere in Faerie."

"Thank you," he said, and
touched his lips to the rim of the cup he'd taken from the Elf-queen's own hand.
The tea was hot, and faintly sweet, but not as if with honey.

"Was it my grandmother's
murder?" Ian, his black-clad body sharp as a sundial shadow cast on the white
stone behind him.

"I don't think so," Matthew
said. "It doesn't taste like Jane manufacturing support. She's ruthless enough,
but she would be flashier."
And might yet be.

The clink of china as Carel stirred her
own tea startled them out of the silence that dragged after.

"Maybe somebody is giving Jane an
excuse," she said, without raising her eyes from the cup and the spoon.
Her opals and silver and amber glittered on her fingers when she set the spoon
aside.

Yes," Matthew said. The Prince was
nodding too—as if he knew Jane Andraste at all. "But why those children in
particular, I don't know."

Still." The Queen paced a few steps
away, her train shimmering behind her. Crystals caught rainbows out of the
sunlight and sprinkled them over her form. "We have an enemy in common, it
would seem.

And from the look on your
face"—without turning —"you'd rather me safely on the other side of
the war."

Where you belong," Matthew said, and
let the wryness drip off it. He finished his tea; it was good, and he was dry.
They had spent a long time walking.

His comment got a turn, a lift of her
head, and her face rearranged in an arrogant grin. "What do you want,
Matthew Magus?"

"Want, Your Majesty?"

"Want. That thing that's so much more
pleasant than
need."

He blinked. The cup rattled on the saucer.
He set them both aside. He fancied he heard the others holding their breath.

Such a simple question.

He shook his head. "I haven't given
it a lot of thought lately, Your Majesty."

"Consider," she said, "asking
Mist for direction. If she doesn't eat you, you might learn something. And if
war comes again, Matthew Magus, those who won't choose a side will be the enemy
of all." An ironic statement? The last time, she and Matthew had both
abandoned their 'sides.' The Queen's smile widened, and she turned inside the
helix of her gown, the train an elegant swirl.

"Oh, look," she continued, and
lifted a hand in a little girl's wave, fingers wiggling inside the pointed sleeve
of her kirtle. "The children are coming."

"Excuse me," Carel said,
reaching into her pocket. "I need to make a call."

Of course, the Merlin's cell phone would
work in Faerie. Matthew rubbed the line between his eyes. He
had
to
learn how she managed that.

Tuesday morning, Autumn got up early. November
was tree-digging season, but the operative word in summer help was
summer,
and
the day off had set her behind. She checked her messages and found no word from
Carel: unsurprising, as she'd slept with her phone on the nightstand, and its
warble would have woken her. The big rickety bed they shared was cold with one
person in it, even with Rumpelstiltskin purring against the small of her back.

She called one of Carel's teaching
assistants—the ambitious one, Wade —and told him Dr. Bierce had been summoned
home to Texas to handle a family emergency. "I had no idea she was from
Texas," he said. "She doesn't talk like it."

Not unless she wants to,
Autumn thought, and thanked him for taking
Carel's classes. He wouldn't mind. He was, after all, the ambitious one.

After she hung up, she showered, braided
her hair, shoveled down a bowl of Grape-Nuts and listened to the forecast while
the teakettle was heating, then wrestled into jeans and a T-shirt, layering a
flannel shirt and a sweatshirt over that. It might warm up later, or they might
get wind or a little rain. This time of year, there was no telling what
partly
cloudy
might mean. She grunted when she bent down to twist the cords on her
boots through the speed lacers: winter was definitely coming, because her
pants were getting tight.

She made sure she had her ID. She'd stop
at the school on the way in to work and vote in the dark, before the sun came
up and the lines got bad.

Fortified with sweet tea in a travel mug,
Autumn crunched through low-lying mist and across frost-laced maple leaves, and
tossed her pack behind the seat of her secondhand crew-cab Chevy. They wouldn't
be selling plants this time of year, but she was looking forward to a good
physical day digging and moving trees now that the heat of summer was gone. If
she had time she'd push some dirt around too, and make new holes to plant more
trees in tomorrow. It all had to get done before the ground froze, and there
were the hoop houses to set up too.

She had the big green pickup backed
halfway down the fissured asphalt drive when her phone made its noise. In
traffic, she would have let the call go to voice mail, but in the driveway she
hit the brake and left the transmission in reverse. Her arm snaked back and
slid the phone from its pocket. She read the name on the display and had it
against her ear by the second ring. "Hey, sweetheart. I called Wade for you,
and told him your cousin Cate blew up and you had to go to Texas. How's the
weather in Hy Bréàsil this morning?"

Card's laugh rolled as musical as her
voice, even over the tinny little speaker. "Still here. I just ducked out
on a queen, a prince, a Mage, and a semiretired goddess to call and say I love
you. How's that evil cat?" Sulking. Do you know when you might be
home?"

"How long have I been gone?"

Time ran differently in Faerie. Autumn
pinned the phone to her ear with her shoulder and skinned up the left sleeve of
her Windbreaker and her sweatshirt. "Twenty-one hours, more or less,"
she said. She let the cloth fall back as a late-traveling V of Canada geese
honked overhead, gaining altitude.

"It's been about six here. I should
be home very soon. I'll ask Elaine to move things along a little."

"That'd be nice. We have that Hort
Society potluck tonight, if you can make it."

"I'll do my best. What am I supposed
to be cooking?" "You're
not
bringing back Faerie food for a bunch
of landscape designers." Autumn put the truck in neutral and set the
parking brake. She slumped in the driver's seat and kicked her knee up against
the steering wheel, leaning unconsciously into the small distant voice over the
phone.

"Aw,
Morn."
But Carel was
laughing, silently. Autumn heard the clink of her beads as her shoulders shook.
Autumn closed her eyes and breathed deeply, letting the sound warm her.
Sometimes you waited a lifetime for the right one.

Sometimes it only felt that way.

"Hey," Carel said, and now
Autumn could hear gravel crunching under her boots, and a soft passage of notes
in the background, under indistinct voices. "Is that control-freak high
priestess of yours still trying to shanghai every passing pagan into her
coven?"

"We don't say 'control freak.' We say
'She hasn't processed her insecurity issues.' You are s
uch
a bad
lesbian."

"Am I really? " Low and sultry,
like the flick of fingers across the nape of Autumn's neck. This time Autumn
laughed.

"The worst. S'why I love you. You
have a victim in mind? " "For lesbianism?" "For
Moira."

"Oh, yes. An old friend of mine
rescued this skinny little Otherkin girl off the street. She's, oh, twentyish.
Hippie type. And wants magic so bad she can taste it when she closes her eyes.
I was thinking — "

"She might fit in with Lily and
Michael. Right. What's her name? Autumn's breath clouded the windshield. She
rolled the driver's-side window down and flipped the defogger on. The morning
air was still crisp, the haze not yet burning off. She shifted the phone to the
other ear, and watched the foundation lights around the old house illuminate
tendrils of mist between the maples and silver birches. It almost looked
tangible sometimes, at night and lit from below: shapes like ghosts and
wandering animals. And sometimes real deer snuck right up to the house, never
mind the fencing, and devoured the irises. An outline there, in fact, had a
long horizontal line like an animal's back. If Autumn squinted, she thought she
could see the wet shine of eyes. Her right thumb hovered over the horn.

"Jewels." Carel paused when
Autumn gasped. "You
don't
know her." Magic was coincidence,
but there were limits.

"No," Autumn said. "But
you're not going to believe this."

"What?"

Autumn blinked at the fog-pale shape. It
could be a stray Angora goat or a young llama. There were people in the
neighborhood with livestock, and livestock got out. But as it picked its way
around the corner of the shed and paused by the cellar hatch, she saw it
clearly: white as egrets, with burrs snarled in its silvery beard. It lowered
its head and rooted among the leaves Autumn had heaped over the flower beds and
weighted with stones, using its horn to sweep the earth bare.

"Carel, there's a unicorn eating your
lily bulbs."

Silence.

"Carel?"

"Well," the Merlin said.
"Whatever you do, don't go near it. Those suckers have a temper like you wouldn't
believe."

The raven with the draggled wing sailed
low over the gardens. Roses glowed in warm whites and colors, side by side with
chrysanthemum and hollyhock and the high, wind-silvered walls of burgundy and violet
lilac bushes. The scent that scrolled from them under the warmth of the sun was
heady and powerful, thick enough to texture the air under his wings. There was
jasmine too, redolent and sweet, and iris and crocus and lilies jumbled
together, a thousand seasons or none at all.

Bright day in the Summerlands.

His shadow flicked across graveled paths
and geometric hedges, across all the bright flowers and the scented fruit
trees, and set a rabbit scurrying before it realized he wasn't a hawk. There
were people by the golden palace, women and men, dark and fair, and more
passing under the arbor to join them. His sister's hair blazed like red amber
in the sun.

The raven settled on Morgan's shoulder
with a snap of wings. Her hair was sliding from the braid, so the bird preened
a strand behind her ear, whispering a few words as he did. The Queen had drunk
at the hazel pool, and the secret language of birds was plain to her, so the
raven spoke softly and briefly.

The birds don't have the answer,
he said, as she rubbed her temple against
his head. His feathers rasped stray hairs out of place again, and it tickled
when he smoothed them.
Bat they are asking. Something winged will know. Oh,
and the pigeons had an interesting story
—