Whiskey and Water (61 page)

The fading light made him restless. There
was somewhere he was meant to be. He and she, together. There had been
something they were sent to do.

But it was peaceful here by the water, and
there was no way for a swan to carry a swan.

The plop of feet in mud lifted his head.
It rose on a curve of neck, bead-shiny eyes blinking. He could bite; he had
wings like iron bars. If the monster was returning, he would fight.

But it wasn't. Something white and shining
climbed out of the pond, duck-weed in her wet mane, water lilies garlanding
pale shoulders. She placed tiny hooves in the Bunyip's furrowed footprints, a
child trying on a big man's shoes, and stepped onto the bank.

A fragile thing, fine as porcelain . . .
until she dropped her steel-horned head and shook like a dog, rolling from the
tip of her nose down neck and shoulders and haunches, shedding muddy water and vegetation
onto the bank and into the air. She finished with a satisfied shiver, arched a
doe-slender neck, and minced one step toward the swans.

Silently, he folded his wings and
withdrew.

The unicorn dropped beside the stricken
swan, grass bending under her knees, and nosed the extended wing. Seashell
nostrils flared in an ash-soft muzzle, riffling the swan's plumage to reveal smoke-colored
down. She sighed, and laid the rapier edge of her horn across the bird's broad
back so that her beard and mane darkened the shining plumage with water, and
shut her eyes.

And maybe the swan's breathing eased, and
the hammering of her small heart slowed. For such is the virtue of unicorns.

The male swan watched, and when he heard
the other swan sigh and her straggling wing flicked closed, he spread his own
feathers wide and bowed to the unicorn. She didn't raise her head, but she winked
at him, the droop of silent-screen lashes against a satin cheek.

The sun was just settling its last curve
under the edge of the world when he beat an ungainly path into the air.

Black swans fly by night. But he had a
long way to go.

Autumn would not drink, but she had washed
the blood from her hair and her hands and cursed her mistakes. After Jason and
Moira had left, Christian had returned. Returned, and when she'd opened the door
to him, he hadn't been alone.

No.

She bit her lips, shook her head violently
and swallowed two short sips of air. She wouldn't cry for Gypsy now. She
wouldn't worry about the cat.

She'd survive, and she'd deal with it
later.

The Devil had left her a basin, a pitcher,
a tray with cold frothy milk and sharp-smelling cheese and fruit piled high in
a bowl beside a silver knife. A knife sharp as a razor: she tested it before
she slipped it up her sleeve and bound it there with a fillet torn from a
sheet.

Of course, if they gave her a knife, they
did not care if she used it.

The hearth lay cold. The long curtains
rippled at the windows. And when she leaned out, her hair falling over her
shoulders like Rapunzel's bobbed four stories shy, all she saw was the sky, and
the stones, and the long relentless sea. Salt air wore at her throat, wet curls
coiling along her temples. The water she'd soaked with was cool and smelled
sweet, and the pitcher never ran dry no matter how she poured it. If she could
taste, just taste —

—but no.

So she watched the gulls, her back to
temptation, and tried not to think of thirst, or Gypsy's blood on her shirt,
the spots she couldn't wash out. She was standing there still when the piebald
horse appeared and paused at the top of the beach.

From the vantage of her tower, she saw,
before he did, the beautiful monster that rose out of the sea. She shouted a
warning, but it was ripped from her lips by the wind.

Whiskey heard the sound of hooves before
any of his riders, and turned his back to the wind. It cowled his mane between
his ears, furled his tail along his flank. He did not bow to those who cantered
down the bank in single file, mounted in order upon a black horse, a bay horse,
and a red, though their hair glowed gold, and blue-lit black, and red in the
half-light, and so he knew their names before he could see their faces or catch
their scents with the wind at his back.

He didn't bow, and neither did his Queen.
Carel slid down his side, however, to greet them on her own two feet, her boots
in solid connection with the flinty ground.

The Morningstar spoke first, granting
pride of place to the Queen. :Àine is host of the duel,: he said. :And no. The
timing is not a coincidence, Your Majesty.:

"Have you ears everywhere?"

He smiled, his hair writhing in the
breeze, under the shadows of his crown. The velvet he wore was as black as his
mare, and his wings were folded tight in shadows, barely visible in the
gloaming. :I am the very Devil for it. Will you observe the duel, Elaine? And
you, Lady Merlin? As my guests? I'm entitled to a few.:

"Can I forbid it?" The Queen
spoke to Ian, who avoided her eyes.

So her attention went to Keith. He smiled
and kissed his gauntlet to her. "Fear not, lady. Trust a wolf to
know."

"It gets us inside," Carel said.

The Queen frowned. Whiskey shifted under
her, restlessly. "It gets us inside," she said. "Very
well."

They fell in line with the Devil, behind
Ian and before Keith on his blood-bay warhorse, the Queen riding Whiskey and
ridden in turn by Gharne. Carel walked at the piebald stallion's off shoulder,
her hand on the Queen's knee to guide her as she studied the white towers
looming overhead. The causeway was wide enough for a carriage, but they rode it
single file.

"I see Autumn," Carel said.
"She's pointing — " The Merlin squeezed the Queen's knee, and pointed
as well.

"Mistress," Whiskey said, as
Bunyip heaved himself from the sea, "light down."

When the sun set, it grew no darker. New
York City's head was in the clouds and wreathed in light. It refracted through
water vapor, the city-glow a pink translucence that rendered everything soft
and plain, even on what should have been the dark waters of the Arthur Kill.

The tide had begun falling, as if in
pursuit of the last light of the sun, and the moon —a dying crescent—had set in
the afternoon, before the clouds rolled in. The hulk of the submarine chaser
rested in mud—the ship was no more seaworthy than a brick —so the water slid
down her hull without affecting the pitch of the crumbling deck, and echoed
strangely when the wavelets tapped her hull.

PC-1277
was trapped alongside a derelict tug, between two
crumbling floating cranes, a possible jump from deck to deck, but she was not
their kind. She was born a warrior, a defender of shores and shipping whose
career was brought to a close not by a U-boat torpedo, but by the sea and its
storms: a September hurricane met off Florida in 1944 had doomed her.

She told Matthew as much, while Don paced
her perimeter and Matthew crouched on her cluttered deck, stuffed his glove in
his pocket, and let his fingers stroke her tired skin. An old lady, long
forgotten by the suitors of her youth — an old maid now and fading, her
armaments stripped, her crew scattered, even her railings salvaged, leaving
only the empty sockets—but her gaping hatch-ways and welded doors recalled what
she had been. She told him of high seas and hungry men, of devil boats cutting
the dark wave bottoms. She told him of purpose, the percussion of her guns and
the wild song of sonar thrumming her, and the deep frustration engendered by
the mocking touch of the sea stroking the length of her engineless hull.

She was not made for this. But everything
of worth had been stripped from her when she was scrapped. They had not even
had the decency to scuttle her. She who had shone in her battleship livery stank
now of mildew, rotting metal, guano, the urine of trespassers who would not
understand her service or her sacrifice. All she had left was to wait for the mercy
of the sea. And in a manner he might not have, not so long ago, Matthew
understood, and he wept for her, trapped by her wounds in the harbor that is
not what ships are built for.

And then he lifted his hand from her
deck—his cheeks freezing with moisture, damp flakes of paint clinging to his
fingerprints—and raised his head. Through the pastel light and the drifting
snow, he heard the purr of an outboard motor.

The last light of the sun stained the
underbelly of those western clouds. Jane, damn her to Hell, was right on time.
And equipped with a rope ladder, apparently, because a moment later, the thump
of the motorboat brushing the derelict's hull was echoed by the thump of
grapples striking her deck and then the creak of cables taking weight, and Felix
hauled himself over the submarine chaser's stern and turned to offer Jane a
hand.

She joined him gracefully, as if her years
were no more than a decoration. Her eyes widened in the rose-colored glow, as
she looked from Matthew to Don and back again.

Matthew shrugged cold shoulders in his
coat. A mistake; he felt scabs crack. "Remember when I said I'd follow you
to the ends of the earth, Jane? Well, here we are—"

She glanced succinctly at Felix before
turning back. "Where's Christopher?"

"I was hoping you'd know."

"Oh," she said, her bracelet
glittering black, sliding the length of her forearm as she pressed at her mouth.
"Shit."

"Mmm." He should be worried that
it wasn't Jane behind Kit's disappearance. He shouldn't allow himself this
sharp surge of vindication at her shock. "So. How does it feel when
your
allies turn on you?"

She looked down before she moved forward,
studying the footing. Debris cluttered the old ship's deck.
PT-1217
was
173 feet in length; Matthew had room to step back, if he needed it.

But he was not yet ready to give Jane any
ground.

"Why think my allies had anything to
do with it? Why not your man's own cowardice?" "I think your allies
because I think
you
would follow the forms, Jane. To the letter."

She smiled. "I always do. So it's you
and me, then?"

"Yes." He turned to make sure
Don was ready. "So it's you and me."

"Good." Despite the cold, she
shrugged off her coat and handed it to Felix. Matthew hung on to his own. She
wore painter's pants, laced boots, a man's white shirt that hung like a smock
even tucked in and with the sleeves rolled up. It had been her husband's. Jane,
like Matthew, had chosen symbols all her own. "Let me know when you're
ready to yield, then. Are you ready, Matthew Magus?"

Yes," he said. "I'm ready."

"Good. Let us begin."

bridge was guarded by the Bunyip.

The duelist," Lucifer said,
indicating Ian. "His second. His patron, and family guests. We are
invited." "I have business with the Kelpie," Bunyip answered,
conical neck swelling with his voice. "The rest may pass."

The Queen had rested her hand on Whiskey's
shoulder after dismounting. It remained there, warm on warm hide, sleek hairs
scratching her palm. "You speak of my servant," she said, and
stroked his withers absently.

"Will you stand his champion then?"

"Mistress," Whiskey said,
arching his neck like a drawn shortbow, "this is mine."

She knew the tone. It wasn't all that
foreign a visitor in her own voice. She knotted fingers in the root of his mane
and tugged, hard enough to flex the meaty crest of his neck back and forth over
the bone. "See to it, then," she answered, bored and bland, and
scratched him with her nails as she took her hand away. She joined Lucifer,
leaving Whiskey behind. Bunyip's eyes were half the size of her head, vast
fires glaring through black glass. "Let us pass." Gharne, who had
been still as a silk stole around her shoulders, lifted his poison-arrow head
and smiled.

Bunyip stepped aside, and the Queen
stepped with him, eye to eye. The others filed across, three horsemen and Carel
on foot, and the Queen did not turn away until their feet were dry on the far
side of the narrow bridge. And then she walked past Bunyip, leaving Whiskey
alone, and behind.

She paused over the water, before her feet
left the wooden bridge, and spoke without turning. "Whiskey."

"Mistress?"

He couldn't see her smile as she started
walking again. "Come and find me when you're done."

Four hundred years Prometheus labored to
lay magic in chains, protect the fragile cult of science, nurture its programs
and its principles. Their age of power bound the earth and sea in girdling
chains, tamed magic into technology, brought Faerie and all its wilderness to
heel.

Their own great work crippled them. The
wild unkind magic could not be captured without limiting the Promethean magic
too; every link of a chain that binds is also bound. The elevation of
technology, the transmutation of medieval alchemy into the ascendance of the
age or reason, the creation of what was to have been a truly human millennium
accomplished what the Fae could not, and bound the Promethean magic as well.

When the Dragon shattered her chains and
Faerie took back its place, science—the arts of technology—was too firmly
rooted to be much perturbed. But the Promethean powers remained channeled, a river
turning a shattered waterwheel.