Whiskey and Water (60 page)

He hadn't even thought of it. And from
Morgan's reaction, it was plain on his face. The truth was probably the most
dismissive thing he could have said to Jewels, and he considered it for thirty
seconds before he said it anyway, because it
was
true. "I did
dumber things when I was your age, kid. And I've lived with them. So I guess
you ought to get the chance to live with your dumb ass too."

She rocked with it, took it like a blow,
but she didn't snap back at him the way he would have at that age, and she
didn't look down. Matthew gave her a break, and turned his own attention to
Morgan. "If something's happened to Kit, then Jane's my problem
tonight."

She grabbed his wrist. "You can't
fight,
you idiot."

"I know." He shook her hand off,
gently, and peeled down his glove. It's a pisser, isn't it? Can you ask Don for
me, if he'll stand my second? He went back to New York."

"Wait." Jewels, her face very
hard in the light through the crazed windowpanes. "I can help."

hard to find with the entire castle
assembled in the throne room, clucking and ruffling about the smashed doors.
The one Jewels was given was about ten feet square, now stripped of whatever
furnishings it had previously contained. The naked floor was tiled with black
portoro marble shaded with saffron and ochre veins, the surface so polished
that reflection gave it the illusion of depth. The air was cooled by tall windows
and brightened by sun and candelabras, with four dozen beeswax tapers giving
forth golden light and a honeyed scent in the crystal chandelier.

Reflected in the center of the
mirror-bright marble stood a single armless silver chair, fluted and filigreed
and seemingly fragile as an eggshell. Matthew regarded it impassively.
"You can't give me a weapon."

Jewels shook her head. She dropped down by
the door, beside her tray of implements, and unlaced her shoes with bird-deft
hands. "I can give you a shield."

She stood and kicked her feet bare while
Matthew closed the door. Morgan would have come with them, but
Matthew—surprising Jewels— had demurred. "Thank you," he'd said.
"We'll do this alone."

He folded his shirt and coat onto the
tile, piled his jeans on top, and weighted them with his boots before seating
himself straddling the back of the chair.

"Nice boxers."

"Fuck you." He turned to grin at
her, hollowing the muscle in his shoulder, tautening the line of his neck. He
tapped the back of the chair with his bad hand. "If I start raving, go and
kill the first wicked queen you run across."

"Sorry?"

"Forget it. I'll send you some books
when I go home."

"I'll drop you an e-mail. So what do
you want?"

He pulled at a rung of the chairback,
thinking. He'd thought she would have something in mind. "Fortitude,"
he said, on the theory that the snap decision is usually the best one.

He'd also expected her to answer snidely.
Well,
I don't have any idea how to draw that.
But she
hmmed
and stroked
his back lightly with something stinging cold. Alcohol. The air peeled it off
his skin and left a reeking chill behind. "The lion?"

"Yes."

"You're sure? You'll wear it the rest
of your life."

The more he thought, the more it pleased
him. If anything meant home and strength and heart and culture more to him than
the New York Public Library lions, he couldn't have named it. "I'm
sure." "Should I leave room for Patience later? If you want
him?"

The chair was cold, edgy against his
thighs. He hadn't expected kindness, either. "Sure, Jewels. That'd be
nice."

Her hands left his shoulders, returned
long enough to deliver a reassuring pat, and lifted again. He watched her
reflection in the floor as she went to collect the tray. "I didn't expect
you'd trust me. After" —
Christian
— "everything."

"It's your way of getting something
back for Geoffrey, am I right? And maybe Lily too?"

"Lily and I never got along so
great." The tray was lacquer, gold cranes on white. It had little feet
that clicked when she set it beside the chair.

"Oh."

"But she tried to warn me about
Christian. He killed her for it, didn't he?"

"Honestly?"

"Yeah."

"Honestly, yes." Something firm
but not sharp moved over his skin. A felt-tip pen. "Probably. So why, if
not for them?"

Her hand stayed steady. It was her breath
that caught.

"Jewels?"

Gypsy," she said. The pen slid
smoothly along a sweeping line. Gypsy told me the truth with a straight face,
and he didn't act sorry for me. So I help you, you help Carel, Carel tears the
Cat Anna's head off and stuffs it up her ass."

Admiring: "Simple."

"Yeah."

He shut up and let her draw in peace.

Matthew's skin was flexible under Jewels'
finger pads, the grain fine for an older man's. She caught herself stroking the
tigery streaks where the bars of his tattoos had been, and pressed her fingers
against her palm with the heel of her hand.

The lion formed quickly. There was a trick
to it: negative space, and a simple, deliberate line. Suggestion rather than
detail, the drowsy eyes, the Byronesque curl of the mane. A hint of a knowing smile.

"There." She dropped her
Sharpie. "Want to see?"

"You're the professional. I'll trust
you this time."

She snorted and picked up a knife.

"Aren't you supposed to reassure me
now?"

"Man," she said, "let me
reassure you. This is going to hurt like hell."

Heat followed her blade like a line of
alizarin crimson following the stroke of a brush. That was all, at first. Heat.
No pressure. And then the sizzle of insulted flesh, distinct and meaningful. He
closed his eyes, pictured the line as if on a canvas, drew it with his mind. A
cheek? A shoulder? The heavy drape of living mane? Flesh made symbol, carved in
stone. Stone made symbol, carved in flesh. He hissed. Jewels steadied him.

"Shield," she said. "Good.
Again. If you want it to scar pretty, scrub it out every day. It has to granulate,
not scab."

"Not the easiest spot to reach."

"What, pretty boy doesn't have
somebody to do it for him?" The blade retraced its path. Worse, this time.
Scorching over already inflamed skin like a toothpick across sunburn. Maybe
easier if he watched. Her reflection in the floor was gawky disgrace, bony
elbows on walking-stick arms upthrust like she was tossing a salad.

She moved the towel to catch the slight
ooze of blood that splayed along his ribs, sticky threads like faux tears drawn
on a clown's cheek, rays diverging from an arc.

"Same line?"

"You get a better scar if you pull
out a wedge."

Of course you did.

He closed his eyes again as she peeled the
wasted skin away. He drew the next arc with her, in his mind, a fraction behind
the knife. It hurt no worse than the ink had, and he knew his body's kinks well
enough by now not to be shocked when he responded. By the fifth stroke, he
sobbed through gritted teeth. By the seventh, the buzz took hold: he floated
watching over her shoulder by the time she was done.

She had line like a Chinese calligrapher.
It was Fortitude, no mistaking: the weight of his paw, the arch of his brow,
the somnolent fearlessness, suggested—
rendered—
in a few dozen lines.
"Beautiful," he said, forgetting he wasn't standing behind her.

"How do you know?"

I know. The ink hadn't been gone a day.
Some
of us are not meant to go through Life unbranded.

She bandaged the pattern with clean gauze
and something that burned as much as it soothed. She washed the blood off his
back before she kissed him on the forehead and left him alone with his pain, to
take what rest he might before the war.

John Barleycorn Must Die

L
ands that know the sea, know the sea is hunger. Salt
water is entropy, the antithesis of space, that great preserver. Water, the
universal solvent. Water, the end of all things. Water, the grave of time.

Between Staten Island, New York, and the
coast of New Jersey lies a tidal strait called the Arthur Kill, which links Newark and Raritan bays. The Arthur Kill is ten miles long and six hundred feet wide, dredged
to forty-one feet. It is the artery through which lifeblood feeds the dragon's
greedy heart, in the shape of container vessels vast as unpeopled cities,
ships with names like
Sovereign Maersk, P&O Nedlloyd Rotterdam,
Atlantic Compass.
Three bridges bind the Arthur Kill shore to shore: the Bayonne, the Goethals, the Outerbridge Crossing.

It is clotted with dead ships like the
dragon's broken dreams, sorrowing hulks deliquescing into a voracious sea. Not
one, or two, or a dozen scattered cadavers groove the tidal mud, but an oceanic
necropolis or tugs and ferries, of submarine chasers and tramp steamers: proud
hulls staved, hatchways yawning open, decks pitched and listing. And the Whitte
Brothers Marine Scrap Yard is the elephant's ossuary at its heart. Matthew
stood on the oxidizing deck
of PC-1217,
the wind sliding icy hands under
his collar, and watched the sun set behind New Jersey and the massed cold
corpses of things that sailed, and sail no more. The snow Fionnghuala had
promised drifted down halfheartedly, chill shavings from a leaden sky, but the
clouds ended with the city and the narrow band beyond the overcast burned like
smelted ore.

The wind was cold enough to sear, but it
didn't dull the ache of Matthew's shoulder. "Man," Don said, from the
lee of some slanted debris, "wouldn't it be nice if she didn't
show?"

"It would answer some questions about
where Kit is." Matthew snaked his right arm under his left, taking some of
the weight off his shoulder, easing the stretch of the skin. "She'll show.
The sun isn't down yet. And Felix wouldn't let her miss it, just in case."

Àine's castle gleamed in the evening light
like a jumble of bones weathered white on the strand, the curled tip of a
finger extending. Behind the surrounding ocean, the sky shone lustrous pewter.
Whiskey stamped to a halt atop the rocky isthmus, his hide steaming gently in
the evening chill; he set his hooves abruptly enough that Carel clutched the
Queen's waist.

"She's changed it."

"If by
changed
you mean
relocated
wholesale,
then yes, she has." The Queen knotted her hands in his
crest and drew herself up his neck. High enough to see clearly; not high enough
to escape his acrid, horsey sweat. "The sea's to our advantage."

"She has allies of her own."

"And Autumn," Carel added.
"And Cairbre."

"1 shall not treasure his
safety," the Queen answered. Ian had told her enough. "I wish Kadiska
were here."

Whiskey snorted, dropping his muzzle
toward the stones. "If wishes were horses — "

The Queen kicked him in the ribs; he
forbore bucking for Carel's sake. The Queen would have stayed on, anyway. The
Queen wasn't much of a warrior, but she could ride.

Long, curling combers broke against the
headland and rolled down the sides in a V made ragged by the rocky seabed.
Whiskey kicked a round black rock down the slope. He pricked his ears and
lifted his head into the wind, letting it tease his mane, and watched the black
shapes drifting against the sunset: albatross, pelican, tern. The largest among
them detached itself and soared landward above the white towers, where the
white silk banners cracked in the stiffening breeze.

The shadow rippled over gold like a
fistful of sheer gauze veil. It banked past them, turning to sail into the
wind, and shot over Carel's head as the Merlin ducked to one side; it settled
on the Queen's shoulder with a flare of membranous wings. They vanished against
a slender black body as the tail looped the Queen's throat, and Gharne rubbed
his velour cheek against the coarse chop of her hair. "It suits you.

Carel sat back up as the Queen dropped her
seat-bones on Whiskey's back. "The whole world rides my back," the
Kelpie said, shaking out his mane again.

But he might not have spoken.
"Gharne," Carel said. "Have you seen her?"

"In the tower," he answered.
"Your lady is not dead yet."

He could not rouse her. She sprawled on
grass, one wing folded but the other reaching, flight feathers splayed like a
woman's white fingers from the black point of her sleeve. He prodded with his
bill, rolled the weight of her head on her ribbon-limp neck. She breathed, at
least—but she breathed, and that was all.

At last, he settled in the cold grass
beside her and draped his own wing over her body, his chin upon her shoulder,
flank to flank as if the echo of his heart could steady her racing one. At
least he could keep her warm.

The magic of men is not for swans. They
are not poets and they are not witches. They are not Magi. They have living
wings; they have no need for metaphorical ones. So he waited by her until the
day 'was failing, until blue evening stole over them and the only sound was
the lapping water.