Valiant (10 page)

Val thought of Tom, dealing out his tarot deck into patterns on her kitchen counter. “This is what crosses you,” he’d said, turning over a card with the image of a blindfolded woman holding swords in both her hands. “Two of swords.”

“No one can tell the future,” Val had said. “Not with something you can buy at Barnes and Noble.”

Her mother had walked over to them and smiled down at Tom. “Will you do my cards?” she’d asked.

Tom had grinned back and they’d started talking about ghosts and crystals and psychic shit. Val should have known right then. But she’d poured a glass of soda, perched on a stool, and watched as Tom read a future for her mother in which he would have a part.

She walked up the steps, bought a ticket for the midnight show and walked into the café area. It was deserted. An array of small, metal tables with marble tops surrounded a pair of brown leather couches. Val flopped down on one sofa and stared up at the single chandelier glittering in the center of the room, hanging from a mural of the sky. She rested there, watching it glitter for a few moments and enjoying the luxury of heat before she forced herself into the bathroom. There was a half hour before the movie started and she wanted to get cleaned up.

Wadding up paper towels, Val gave herself a half-decent sponge bath, scrubbing her underpants with soap before putting them back on damp, and gargling mouthsful of water. Then, sitting down in one of the stalls, she leaned her head against the painted metal wall and closed her eyes, letting the hot air from the ducts wash over her.
Just a moment,
she told herself.
I’ll get up in just a moment.

A woman with dark eyes and a thin face leaned over her. “
Pardon
?”

Val leaped to her feet and the cleaning woman backed away from her with a yelp, mop held out in front of her.

Embarrassed and stumbling, Val grabbed her backpack and rushed for the exit. She pushed through the metal doors as the suit-clad ushers started toward her.

Disoriented, Val saw that it was still dark. Had she missed the movie? Had she been asleep for only a moment?

“What time is it?” she demanded from a couple trying to flag down a cab.

The woman looked at her watch nervously, as though Val was going to snatch it off her wrist. “Almost three.”

“Thanks,” Val muttered. Although she’d gotten less than four hours of sleep sitting on a toilet, now that she was walking again, she found that she felt far better. The dizziness was almost gone and the smell of Asian food from an all-night restaurant a few blocks away made her stomach rumble in hunger.

She started walking in the direction of the smell.

A black SUV with tinted windows pulled up next to her, windows down. Two guys were sitting in the front seats.

“Hey,” the guy on the passenger side said. “You know where the Bulgarian disco is? I thought it was off Canal, but now we’re all turned around.” He had blond streaks in his carefully gelled hair.

Val shook her head. “It’s probably closed by now anyway.”

The driver leaned over. He was dark-haired and dark-skinned, with large, liquid eyes. “We’re just looking to party. You like to party?”

“No,” Val said. “I’m just going to get some food.” She pointed toward the mock-Japanese exterior of the restaurant, glad it wasn’t that far off, but painfully aware of the deserted streets between her and it.

“I could go for some fried rice,” said the blond. The SUV rolled forward, keeping up with her as she walked. “Come on, we’re just regular guys. We’re not freaks or anything.”

“Look,” Val said. “I don’t want to party, okay? Just let me alone.”

“Okay, okay.” The blond looked at his friend, who shrugged. “Can we at least give you a ride? It’s not safe for you to be out here walking around on your own.”

“Thanks, but I’m okay.” Val wondered if she could outrun them, wondered if she should just take off and get a head start. But she kept walking, as if she weren’t scared, as if they were only two nice, concerned guys trying to talk her into their truck.

She had comfrey in her shoe and madwort in her pocket and a plastic hand under the back of her shirt, but she wasn’t sure how any of those things could help her.

The doors click unlocked as the truck rolled to a stop and she made a decision. Turning toward the open window, she smiled and said, “What makes you think I’m not one of the dangerous people?”

“I’m sure you’re dangerous,” said the driver, all smiles and insinuation.

“What if I told you that I just cut off some chick’s hand?” Val said.

“What?” The blond guy looked at her in confusion.

“No, really. See?” Val pitched the mannequin hand through the window. It landed in the driver’s lap.

The truck swerved and the blond yelped.

Val took off across the street, sprinting toward the restaurant.

“Fucking freak,” the blond shouted as they pulled away from the curb, tires squealing.

Val’s heart was beating double time as she walked into the safe heat of Dojo. Sitting down at a table with a sigh of relief, she ordered a huge bowl of steaming miso soup, cold sesame noodles dripping with peanut glaze, and ginger fried chicken that she ate with her fingers. When she was done, she thought she would fall asleep again, right at the table.

But she had one more delivery to do.

The street looked mostly unused and the sides of it were strewn with trash—broken glass, dried condoms, a ripped pair of pantyhose. Still, the smell of dew on the pavement, on the rust of the fence and the sparse grass, along with the empty streets made Williamsburg seem far away from Manhattan.

She ducked under a chain-link fence. The lot was empty, but she could see a ditch between the cracked concrete and the small hills. She stepped into it, using it like a path to walk out to where black rocks marked the space between the beach and the river.

Something was there. At first Val thought it was a lump of drying seaweed, a stray plastic bag, but as she got closer she realized it was a woman with green hair, lying facedown on the rocks, half in and half out of the water. Rushing over, Val saw the flies buzzing around the woman’s torso and her tail drifting with the current, scales catching the streetlights to shine like silver.

It was the corpse of a mermaid.

To these I turn, in these I trust—

Brother Lead and Sister Steel.

—S
IEGFRIED
S
ASSOON
,
T
HE
O
LD
H
UNTSMAN AND
O
THER
P
OEMS

The first time Val saw anything dead was at the mall by her dad’s house when she was twelve. She’d tossed a penny into the fountain by the food court and wished for a pair of running shoes. A few minutes later, she reconsidered and rushed back to try and find her coin and do the wish over. But what she saw, floating on the still water, was the limp body of a sparrow. She’d reached in and lifted it up and water had poured out of its tiny beak like from a cup. It smelled awful, like meat left in the refrigerator to defrost and forgotten. She had stared at it a moment before she realized it was dead.

As Val ran through the streets and over the Manhattan Bridge, breath gusting into the air, she thought of the little drowned bird. Now she’d seen two dead things.

The magical doorway under the bridge opened the same way that it had last time, but as she stepped onto the dark landing, she saw she wasn’t alone. Someone was heading down the steps, and it was only when the candle he cradled made the silver loops through his lip and nose glitter and the white of his eyes shine that she realized it was Luis. He looked as startled as she was and in that uncertain light, exhausted.

“Luis?” Val asked.

“I hoped that you were long gone.” Luis’s voice was soft and remorseless. “I hoped that you ran back to Mommy and Daddy in the suburbs. That’s all you bridge-and-tunnel girls know—running away when things get tough. Run to the big bad city and then run home.”

“Fuck you,” Val said. “You know nothing about me.”

“Well, you don’t know shit about me, either. You think I’ve been a dick to you, but I’ve done you nothing but favors.”

“What is your problem with me? You hated me the minute I showed up!”

“Any friend of Lolli’s is going to stir shit up, and that’s just what you did. And here I am, getting interrogated by an angry troll because of you two bitches. What do you think my problem is?”

Anger made Val’s face hot, even in the cold stairwell. “I think this: The only thing special about you is that you have the Sight. You talk shit about faeries, but you love that you’re the one who can see them. That’s why you’re disgustingly jealous of anyone else that so much as talks to one.”

Luis gaped at her as if he’d been slapped.

Words fell from Val’s mouth before she even realized what she was about to say. “And I think something else, too. Rats might be able to chew their way through copper or whatever, but the only reason they survive is because there are bazillions of them. That’s what’s so special about rats—they fuck all the time and have a million rat babies.”

“Stop,” Luis said, holding up his hand as if to ward off her words. His voice dropped low, the anger seeming to go out of him like a popped balloon. “Fine. Yeah. To Ravus and the rest of the faerie folk, that’s all humans are—pathetic things that breed like crazy and die so fast you can’t tell the difference between one and another. Look, I have spent the past I don’t know how long answering questions after drinking some kind of noxious crap that made me tell the truth. All because of you and Lolli breaking in here. I’m tired and I’m pissed.” He rubbed his face with his hand. “You’re not the first straggler that Lolli brought home, you know. You don’t understand what you’re playing around with.”

Val was unnerved by the sudden change in Luis’s tone. “What do you mean?”

“There was another girl a couple of months ago—another stray Lolli decided to bring underground. It was when Lolli first got the idea that they could inject the potions. Lolli and the girl, Nancy, wanted to cop some dope, but didn’t have any money. Then Lolli started talking about what else they could shoot and they did some of the stuff from one of Dave’s deliveries. All of a sudden, they start talking like they can see things that aren’t there and, even worse, Dave starts seeing the shit, too. Nancy got hit by a train and she was grinning right up until it hit her.”

Val looked away from the flickering candle, into the darkness. “That sounds like an accident.”

“Of course it was a fucking accident. But Lolli loved the stuff, even after that. She got Dave to do it.”

“Did she know what it was?” Val asked. “Did she know about the faeries? About Ravus?”

“She knew. I told Dave about Ravus because Dave’s my brother, even though he’s an idiot. He told Lolli because she’s a tease and he would do anything to impress her. And Lolli told Nancy, because Lolli can’t keep her fucking mouth shut.”

Val could hear Lolli’s brittle laugh in her mind. “What’s the big deal if she tells people?”

Luis sighed. “Look at this.” He pointed at the pale pupil of his left eye. “Disgusting, right? One day when I was eight, my mother takes me to the Fulton Fish Market with her. She’s buying some soft-shell crabs—bargaining with the fish guy, really getting into it because she loved to haggle—and I see this guy carrying an armful of gory sealskins. He sees me looking and grins real big. His teeth are like a shark’s: tiny, sharp, and set too far apart.”

Val clutched the banister, paint flaking under her fingernails.

“‘You can see me?’ he asks, and because I’m a dumb kid, I nod. My mother is right next to me, but she doesn’t notice anything. ‘Do you see me with both eyes?’ he wants to know. I’m nervous now and that’s the only thing that keeps me from telling him the truth. I point to my right eye. He drops the skins and they make a horrible, wet sound, falling all together like that.”

Wax dripped down the side of the candle and onto Luis’s thumb, but he didn’t flinch or change the way he held it. More wax followed, forming a steady drip onto the stairs. “The guy grabs me by the arm and pushes his thumb into my eye. His face doesn’t change at all while he’s doing it. It hurts so bad and I’m screaming and that’s when my mother finally turns around, finally sees me. And do you know what she and the soft-shell crab guy decide? That I scratched my own fucking eye somehow. That I ran into something. That I blinded myself.”

The hair was standing up along Val’s arms and she had that chill running down her spine, the one that told her just how freaked out she really was. She thought about the sealskins in his story, about the mermaid body she’d seen by the river, and came to no conclusions, except that there was no escape from horrible things. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it sucks to be me,” Luis said. “One wrong step and they decide I don’t need my other eye. That’s what the big deal is.

“Dave and Lolli don’t get it.” His voice dropped to a whisper and he leaned close to her. “They’re playing around with that drug, stealing from Ravus when I’m supposed to be repaying a debt. Then they bring you in.” He stopped, but she saw the panic in his eyes. “You’re stirring shit up. Lolli is getting worse instead of better.”

The troll appeared at the top of the ledge and looked down at Val. His voice was low and deep as a drum. “I cannot think what it was you came back for. Is there something you require?”

“The last delivery,” she said. “It was a…mermaid? She’s dead.”

He went quiet, stared.

Val swallowed. “She looks like she’s been dead awhile.”

Ravus started down the stairs, frockcoat billowing. “Show me.” His features changed as he got closer, the green of his skin fading, his features shifting until he looked human, like a gawky boy only a little older than Luis, a boy with odd, golden eyes and shaggy black hair.

“You didn’t change your—,” Val said.

“That’s the way glamour is,” said Ravus, cutting her off. “There’s always some hint of what you were. Feet turned backward, a tail, a hollow back. Some clue to your true nature.”

“I’ll just get out of here,” Luis said. “I was on my way anyhow.”

“Luis and I have had an interesting conversation about you and the manner of our meeting,” said the troll. It was disorienting to hear that deep, rich voice come from a young man.

“Yeah,” Luis said, with a half-smile. “He conversed. I groveled.”

That made Ravus smile in turn, but even as a man, his teeth looked a touch too long at the incisors. “I think this death concerns you too, Luis. Put off sleep a little longer and let’s see what we might learn.”

The only sounds on the waterfront came from waves lapping against the stones at the edge of the shore when Ravus, Val, and Luis arrived. The body was still there, hair flowing like seagrass, necklaces of shell and pearl and sand-dollar doves caught around her neck like strangling ropes, white face looking like a reflection of the moon on the water. Tiny fish darted around her body and swam in and out between her parted lips.

Ravus knelt down, cupped the back of the mermaid’s skull in long fingers, and lifted up her head. Her mouth opened farther, showing thin, translucent teeth that looked like they might be made from cartilage. Ravus brought his face so close to the mermaid’s that, for a moment, it looked like he might kiss her. Instead he sniffed twice before gently lowering her back into the water.

He looked at Luis with shadowed eyes, then shouldered off his frockcoat and spread it on the ground. He turned to Val. “If you take her tail, we can move her onto the cloth. I need to get her back to my workroom.”

“Was she poisoned?” Luis asked. “Do you know what killed her?”

“I have a theory,” said Ravus. He pushed back his hair with a wet hand, then waded into the East River.

“I’ll help,” Luis said, starting forward.

Ravus shook his head. “You can’t. All that iron you insist on wearing could burn her skin. I don’t want the evidence contaminated more than it has to be.”

“The iron keeps me safe,” Luis said, touching his lip ring. “Safer, anyway.”

Ravus smiled. “At the very least, it is going to keep you safe from a repugnant task.”

Val waded into the water and lifted the slippery tail, its ends as ragged as torn cloth. The fish scales glittered like liquid silver as they flaked off on Val’s hand. There were patches of pale flesh exposed along the mermaid’s side, where fish had already started to feed on her.

“What a petty drama to watch play out,” said a voice coming from the valley between the mounds.

“Greyan.” Ravus looked toward the shadows.

Val recognized the creature that came forward, the mannequin maker with the greening beard. But behind him were other folk she didn’t know, faeries with long arms and blackened hands, with eyes like birds, faces like cats, tattered wings that were as thin as smoke and as bright as the neon lights from a distant bar sign.

“Another death,” one of them said, and there was a low murmur.

“What is it that you are delivering this time?” Greyan asked. There was a burst of uncomfortable laughter.

“I came to discover what I could,” said Ravus. He nodded to Val. Together, they moved the body onto the coat. Val felt nauseated as she realized that the fishy smell was coming from the flesh in her hands.

Greyan took a step forward, his horns white in the streetlight. “And look what is discovered.”

“What are you implying?” Ravus demanded. In his human guise, he looked thin and tall, and beside Greyan’s bulk, terribly outmatched.

“Do you deny you are a murderer?”

“Stop,” said one of the others, a voice in shadow attached to what appeared to be a long and spindly body. “We know him. He has made harmless potions for us all.”

“Do we know him?” Greyan moved closer and from the folds of his cracked leather coat pulled out two short, curved sickles with dark bronze blades. He crossed them over his chest like an entombed pharaoh. “He went into exile because of a murder.”

“Have a care,” said a tiny creature. “Would you have all of us be judged now by the reason for our exile?”

“You know that I cannot refute the charge of murderer,” Ravus said. “Just as
I know
it is cowardly to wave a sword at someone who has sworn not to swing a blade again.”

“Fancy words. You think you’re still a courtier,” Greyan said. “But your clever tongue won’t help you here.”

One of the creatures smirked at Val. It had eyes like a parrot and a mouthful of jagged teeth. Val reached around and picked up a length of pipe from the rocks. It felt so cold that it burned her fingers.

Ravus held up his hands to Greyan. “I don’t wish to fight you.”

“Then that’s your ruin.” He swung one sickle at Ravus.

The troll dodged the sickle and ripped a sword out of the hand of another faerie, his fist wrapping around the sharp metal. Red blood ran from his palm. His mouth curled with something like pleasure and his glamour slipped away as though it was forgotten.

“You need what I make,” Ravus spat. Fury twisted his face, making his features dreadful, forcing his fangs to bite into the flesh of his upper lip. He licked away the blood and his eyes seemed as full of glee as they were of rage. He tightened his grip on the blade of the sword, even as it bit deeper into his skin. “I give it freely, but were I the poisoner, were it my whim to kill one of the hundred I help, you would still have to live at my indulgence.”

“I will live at no one’s indulgence.” Greyan swept his sickles toward Ravus.

Ravus swung the hilt of the sword, blocking the strike. The two circled each other, trading blows. Ravus’s weapon was unbalanced by being held backward, and slippery with his own blood. Greyan struck quickly with his short bronze sickles, but each time Ravus parried.

“Enough,” shouted Greyan.