Whiskey and Water (47 page)

Voices below climbed past her up the
stair. She paused with one hand on the silken old banister and listened. Autumn
and Carel, and the tingly rumble of the old guy, Gypsy, with the barrel chest
and the beard. Her teacher, or whatever.

He sounded okay. He'd smelled okay too.
And he'd known what he was talking about, when he asked her about her scars.

She turned, still steadying herself,
breaking the octagonal shaft of sun that tumbled through the skylight at the
landing, gilding the dust and cat hair hanging on the draft. "Geoff . .
."

Her voice fell dead, without an echo. She
let go the banister and put her fingers against her mouth, as if she could
stuff his name back in. But the word was long flown.

When Carel walked from the kitchen down
the hall to wake Matthew's stray, she found the girl sitting on the steps, her
head bowed over her hands. Jewels didn't hear Carel coming, and Carel paused
there a few moments and watched as the sunlight slid over her shoulders in time
with each careful breath.

That nullity still clung around her, a
kind of flex and oddness in the air. She was striking in her emptiness.

"Jewels?"

She looked up. She hadn't been crying. The
pastel smudges under her eyes were stains of exhaustion. "Merlin."
She reached up to grab the banister, translucent fingers paler than the oak,
and pulled herself to her feet. "Thank you for — "

Whatever it was, it was too complicated to
fold down into words or approximate with anything but the broadest and vaguest
of gestures. Carel nodded anyway, and stepped against the wall, creating a
space for Jewels to walk through.

She did it without looking up. As the girl
passed, a weight like warm wool settled on Carel, a shadow that nevertheless
felt like sunlight, a stern, uncompromising heat.
She will never have power,
Mist murmured, like a mountain whispering into Carel's ear.
She is not
the destination, but the path.
The weight of scalding coils stroked Carel's
skin.
What would you have me do about it?
The Dragon laughed, and did
not answer.
The sacrifice is half complete.

Carel understood. Faerie had been given a
Dragon Prince, in Keith MacNeill. A precious animal, born for a task. That task
was always the same, within the limits of history. The Dragon Prince came to liberate
a fettered people, and he paid for that disenthrallment in innocent blood and
his own damnation, as Keith had when he put every Promethean in Faerie — save
one—to the sword, as Arthur had when he—like Herod — sentenced each babe of an
age to die.

But that was only half the price. The
Dragon Prince also stood to sacrifice: a Summer King, brought low when the
winter threatened. And the hand that laid him down would be, always, family,
however one defined the term. Arthur had his Mordred and his Morgan and his
Gwenhwyfar, Vlad had his Radu, Harold had his Tostig, and Hermann the Cheruscan
had his whole damned clan.

Carel had been the Queen's lover for seven
years, as long as the Queen had been Keith's wife. As long as Keith had claimed
his throne. Surely, that made them —
something
to one another.

Carel could fulfill the geas, become the
betrayer, and spare Ian and Elaine.

She let the Dragon feel the frail, mortal
force of her rage.
You unforgivable bitch.

The anger of ants, the rice paper fury of
something so small and obscure it barely bears noticing. She was the Merlin,
the voice of the Dragon. Interlocutor and
pet,
and while she had a
certain influence, a certain power of her own, there was no doubt who the
mistress was. The Dragon settled over her, a gentling hand on the collar, and
sighed.

Carel, following Jewels into the kitchen,
sighed in echo. Keith knew. Keith had known all along what the price was.

Mist stayed silent. The bowed boards
creaked under Jewels' footsteps, though she walked ever so lightly and her
feet were bare. She paused beside the table where Gypsy sat and cleared her
throat. "Reporting for duty," she quipped, as bravely as she could.
Her hands kept twisting in the hem of her shirt.

Gypsy peered up at her and smiled.
"Have a seat." He swept crumbs off the bare boards with one rough
hand, clearing a space. "Do you know what you want to learn?"

She licked her lips and shrugged under her
tangled hair. "First, or in general?"

First," he said, after a thoughtful
pursing of his lips. She shook her head. "Well, we'll start with something
straightforward, then. Autumn?"

The sound of her name summoned her
attention. She'd been trading glances with Carel, who still leaned in the
doorway, while she set the kettle on. She knew something was wrong, and she
also knew enough not to ask.

"Yes?" She turned with the
celadon teapot in her hand.

"Never mind," he answered,
laughing. "You anticipated my request. A cup for the young lady?"

Jewels didn't like tea, and she in
particular didn't like strong tea drunk plain, with leathery particles of leaf
that caught between her teeth. But she drank it, grateful the cup was small,
and set it down with a shiver for the tannin.

She was aware that Autumn and Carel had
left the room, and she and Gypsy sat alone at the table beside the crowns-of-thorns
and the jade plants thronging the window. He leaned forward on his elbows, a
little moisture in his beard from the tea, the edges of his mustache
caffeine-yellowed. He smelled of garlic, faintly, and more strongly of green
Speed Stick.

"So tell me," he said,
"what do you see?'

She frowned, and glanced at the sea-green
interior. "A dirty cup?" Archly enough that he laughed, making her
confident to continue, "You want me to read the tea leaves."

"Sure," he said. "Do you
know how?"

"There are shapes," she said,
"that are supposed to be symbols. Its called tasseomancy."

"Good. Knowing the right word for
something is important. There is power in words, and in names. You'll learn to
use them with precision. What do you see?"

"What am I looking for?"

"Energy patterns. Masquerading as
pictures or words."

She unfocused her eyes, and tried to look
at the tea leaves as if they were clouds surfing an unrippled sky. She tried to
unpin herself from her body as she did when she cut, or was cut, to find the rush
and ride it, feel the power like a river that she knew had to be there.

There was nothing but clotted leaves in
the bottom of her cup, a few flecks stuck to the sides. If she squinted just
right, she could almost make herself believe this bit or that bit resembled
something —a deformed face, a lopsided beetle—but she couldn't pretend the
shapes were anything other than her brain seeking patterns, as brains do. She
didn't see energy, either—just a few drops of thin brown liquid, and the
particles of fermented leaves. "No," she said. "I don't see
it."

Gypsy bit his lip and lifted the cup out
of her hands. He frowned at it, and shook his head. "That's amazing,"
he said, after a few moments of study.

She climbed out of her chair and leaned
over him, cheek pressed to his hair. "What?" "I don't see
anything, either."

"Nor will you," Carel said.
She'd stopped outside the doorway again, Autumn just behind her. They had the
crinkled look of people who have been talking and have something unpleasant to
impart. "She cannot learn."

Jewels snapped upright as if kicked.
"Can't?"

The Merlin nodded. From the way Gypsy's
breathing quickened, Jewels guessed the news before Carel said it.
"There's damage. And it's not the sort that can be repaired."

Jewels gasped. The taste of sour tea
filled her mouth again as she swallowed frantically. She couldn't deny it.
Couldn't even start to deny it. That was the worst: Jewels knew exactly what
the Merlin meant, and she was right.
"Damn
him," she said, and
knotted her fists at her sides. "Damn him straight to hell."

"If it's any consolation," Carel
answered, "I have it on the best authority that he's there."

Gypsy didn't rise. He reached out and put
his left hand on Jewels' elbow. She didn't jerk away—too shaken, too stunned.
Too
angry
to give any ground to anybody. "He has no power over
me," Jewels said, like a mantra, and Gypsy turned to Carel and Autumn,
louvered up shaggy eyebrows, and said, "What do you mean, there's no
fixing her? That's ridiculous. And
cruel."

Carel, merciless with the Dragon in her
eyes, said, "You can't reattach a limb that's been blown to pieces.
That's a fairy tale for you."

What do you mean?"

Carel folded her arms. "Unfair, but
not untrue."

Jewels nodded. She put her hand on Gypsy's
hand, felt a kind of rough affection for the way he'd lurched to her defense,
and patted once or twice. "No," she said. "Not fair, not the
Fair Folk and not magic. But I know. It's true. And the best part is, I did it
to myself."

Autumn stepped into the kitchen and put
the water back on, running one thumb across the chipped enamel of the stove
while blue flame licked the kettle's sooty belly. This time, she got the cocoa
down, and a mug as big as Gypsy's two cupped hands. "Do you want to talk
about it? Maybe ..."

But she let it trail, and fall. Maybe,
more often, not.

"If I tell you," Jewels said,
"I have to tell you how I started to cut."

"Tell me." Carel shifted her
weight. She wore a pale peasant blouse over low-waisted jeans that showed a
soft curve of belly, peach cotton catching shadows in its hollows from the
darkness of her skin. Neither the girly clothing nor the braids dangling over
her shoulders did anything to ease the force of her charisma brought to bear.

The kettle whistled before Jewels found
the words. She took the cup Autumn gave her, and stared at it without sitting
back down. "I cut myself," she said. "In the beginning. I'd get
a razor blade, and I'd pretend very hard that I was cutting off the pieces he'd
made bad. And if I cut off the dirty bits, like cutting mold off cheese, what
was left would still be fine."

The mug burned her hands. It was still hot
enough that she should hold it by the handle, but she didn't. "And?"
Autumn asked, stepping back.

Cocoa slopped onto her finger and stung.
She raised the hand to her mouth and sucked it. "I guess I cut off too
much."

Amazing how level your voice could be in a
hopeless case.

King of New York

"S
top the bleeding," the red-haired
woman had snapped, thrusting a wad of cloth into Don's hands, and Don was doing
his best. Don, hands shaking, had eased Matthew onto hastily cleared flagstones
before the hearth, while Kit helped the woman—who could
not
actually be
Morgan le Fey—rummage through baskets and beakers and the drawers of an ancient
apothecary's desk, familiar as if he lived there. Judging by the way her hand
strayed to his shoulder, occasionally, and the way he pulled away when it did,
he probably once had.

Two dogs as big as Don whined in the
corner, under an unshuttered window that framed dripping roses. And Don knelt
on the floor, trying to find where the gore seeped from.

Matthew breathed shallowly, drenched in
his own red blood. Saturated clothes left daubs on the stones as Don shoved
them aside, looking for wounds. The monster had gone for the throat, and the chest
and shoulder of Matthew's shirt were shredded.

But there were no injuries. Not on his
knee under the torn jeans, where there should have been an oozing,
gravel-studded wound. Not on his breast or on his throat, though his skin was
pale and clammy and his heartbeat flickered in the hollow of his jaw, thin and
thready and close. His nose had healed too, set a little crookeder than before.
Don touched Matthew's throat to be sure and felt whole skin, unwounded.

Which is not to say unmarked. Once Don
satisfied himself that Matthew was not about to expire on him, checked his
airway and breathing and heartbeat and sought—as best he could —for evidence of
internal injuries, he had a moment to just
look.

The bands of tattoos that embraced Matthew's
body were dense and dark, some of the heaviest blackwork Donall had seen. Don's
fingers prickled where he touched them, although not on the pale flesh between,
and the ring on his finger grew warm. There were some scars, older ones,
including a knife wound over the heart that must have turned on Matthew's rib
cage, because Don couldn't see how he would be alive if it hadn't.

He was reaching unconsciously toward his
own chest, to touch cloth over the centipede scar, when a warm hand brushed his
shoulder. "May I see?"

She smelled warm and wonderful, like
rosemary dried on a window ledge, her streaked braid falling over her breast.
He straightened creaky knees and stepped back. "He's not bleeding."

"I see that." Said without
harshness. "But he has bled."

"Lost a lot of volume, I think. How
can he not be hurt?"