Whiskey and Water (64 page)

She
shared
her
box with only one hooded advisor,
someone slim and not too tall and wrapped in a red velvet cloak. There were no
bleachers beneath her chair. Instead, the Nuckelavee rocked uncomfortably on
the beach, brushing sand from its raw limbs with clacking lobster claws.

And Àine's red smile never wavered.

Within the tall wings of the palace, the
sea rolled smooth and shining. Ian had been carried within, Gharne hovering
beside. The Queen might have been beside him as well, but the Queen had made
the Fae choice, not the mortal one, and come to watch her husband die.

The architect of that death sat beside
her, and studied the blood under her nails. The babble from the stands drove
her mad. She wanted silence, the silence of the graveside, woeful anticipation.
Not this festival atmosphere.

It was more than the duel. No matter how
Autumn was returned to her—or reclaimed—Àine would not leave this place alive.
Carel would leave no stone upon a stone.

There were liberties one did not permit
one's enemies, if one wished to walk a free woman again. The Queen shifted,
stern and fair, turning her emerald wedding ring with the nails of her opposite
hand. "Carel?"

"Mist demands her sacrifice,"
Carel said. "My choices aren't mine."

"Ian lives. And what you did will
keep me on the throne."

"He does," Carel answered.
"It will."

"I have become my mother." The
Queen let her hands fall. "She'll rip down a whole world to reclaim me.
And I'll—"

Carel leaned across empty chairs and laid
her hand on the Queen's thigh. "You'll kill them with your pride."

"Is it pride?"

"Ian's a man," Carel said. It
was almost her own voice: someone else spoke through her, but she agreed with
the Dragon this time. "He's laid a child of his own in the ground. And
you'll sell yourself and cripple those who care for you to bear his burdens for
him."

"I gave him back his heart — "

"Then let him use it," Carel
said, and squeezed the Queen's leg before she drew back her hand. The Queen's
mouth worked, but she never turned.

Down on the sand, Keith MacNeill drew the
sword he'd resheathed previously and cut through the torch-bright darkness.
Michael watched him, frowning. She seemed very small, wings folded into
non-presence, arms folded over her chest. Keith made two of her.

She stood before him, unworried as a swan,
and when she unfolded her arms and lifted her hand, it too held a blade. Not
the rapier she'd worn in Hell, a frail symbol for a mortal guise, but her
own
sword, a bar of molten light that illuminated the courtyard fiercely,
outshining the torches, casting moon-sharp shadows.

She stood unmoving. She did not breathe or
blink. But Carel's lips shaped soundless words, though whatever she prayed to
did not answer. The Queen seemed not to pray at all, but her hand slipped into her
pocket and returned to her lap once more. No marshal took the field. No referee
would curb this fight.

As Keith stepped forward, the babble of
the crowds hushed for a moment, and then peaked in jeers and shouting. As if
she heard nothing, the Queen rose from her chair without unfolding her hands,
and stepped to the railing of the gallery. She paused, and did not speak.

The Faerie folk fell silent again, and
this time, they stayed silent. And Michael moved, finally, pointing with her chin
over Keith's shoulder.

He'd paused when the crowd quieted. Now he
turned, slowly, until he faced the gallery. The Queen held out her knotted
hands. He came to her, reaching up with his sword, over the heads of the
Unseelie on their raked benches. Faeries flinched from his iron gloves, his
iron blade.

The Queen leaned down and out, and laid a
favor on the flat of the upraised sword. It could have been anything, a scrap
of silk, a fresh-cut flower. But what she let fall from her hands, unfurling as
it slid down into Keith's hands, was the coiled dark snake of a braid. Keith
reached and caught it in a gauntleted hand; it fell over his palm and lay
there, limp and soft. "More favor than I deserve, my lady."

"Renounce your challenge," she
said. "You're dying for the Devil's honor. I can't think of a stupider thing."

"Elaine," he said. He leaned his
sword against his hip, and kissed her braid before knotting it around his arm.
"My blood is for buying your freedom. From Prometheus, from Hell, and from
the damned Dragon too. It's a gift. Accept it. This is the end of the story
now."

"Shove it down my throat, why don't
you?" She sat down, lifting her gaze over his head while Àine's creatures
hooted in the stands. "Die if you must. But I'll not thank you for
it."

"I love you too," he said, and
turned away again.

To find himself face-to-face with the
archangel, who stood before him having refolded her empty hands. "I will
not fight you." She looked away from him, up at the gallery, at Carel and
Carel's doubled regard. "Angels do not serve dragons."

Carel fell back against her chair as if
something had released her, and let go of a long, sibilant sigh. Keith's
fingers gripped his sword. "I'm a danger as long as I live."

"So too is any man."

Keith gestured. "If you don't fight —
"

Michael's wings unfolded from her
shoulders, fountaining into the night. She turned to the box from which the
Queen had remonstrated with Keith, and looked past the Queen and the Merlin to
the Devil who folded himself into the shadows behind. He had propped one
bootheel on the seat of the chair, and sat with his fingers laced around his
knee, beautiful as the failing light of the sun.

"Morningstar, old Snake. Come
down."

:I'm quite comfortable, thank you. Do you
really mean to refuse my champion?:

"Will you fight me yourself? "

:If
you
won't meet my champion, I
don't believe I must. Like Gwenhwyfar's, my innocence is proven in the absence
of contenders against it.: Lucifer looked down at his hands, and then, as a
motion drew his attention, across the courtyard. Michael followed the flicker
of his eyes without physically turning. Àine had risen, her hooded advisor
beside her.

Michael sighed.
"He
will not
be maneuvered on a technicality. And all you ever had to do was apologize."

"
I'll
fight," Christian
said, sliding the red cloak off his shoulders and standing up beside the
Unseelie Queen. "But not you, Michael. Or your champion,
Morningstar."

:The factions become plain,: Lucifer
drawled. He dropped the booted foot to the floor of the gallery and let his
hands rest in his lap. When he stood, the incandescence of his wings swept
through Carel and the Queen. He stepped from the lip of the gallery and
dropped, landing lightly on the sand. :So it's been your game with Àine all
along?:

Christian didn't bother with the
theatrics. One moment he stood beside Àine. The next, he stood upon the sand.
"I could hardly let you go crawling to Heaven for forgiveness."

:I thought it would be Satan,: Lucifer
admitted. He stalked forward, unconcerned. :You've grown more guile than I
knew. But I shan't fight you either, Christian. Duels are
boring.
And I
am not about to apologize for being what I was made. You may rest in comfort.:

Christian stopped, mouth open, and looked
from Lucifer to Michael and back again. For her part, Michael only stared at
Lucifer, one eyebrow climbing, and blinked three times before she managed, "You're
sincere."

He smiled at her, who would not smile in
return. :What did you think?:

"I thought you were Lucifer,"
she said.

And the castle doors burst off their
hinges, swept aside by an unheralded flood.

Matthew dragged himself onto the deck
through a mind-altering haze of pain. His left shoulder felt like twisted
cable, and the gauze over Fortitude's carved face was soaked, sliding wet and
sticky on his skin. He'd broken the scabs, and whatever muscles tore or
stretched when he caught at the decking were stiffening now. His right knee
bulged against the inside of his jeans. It would be a long time before he ran again.

Halos and flickers of darkness teased his
vision. He sprawled on his back, staring up at the rose-colored sky, and
watched comets and wreaths of light hurtle through his field of vision like
falling angels. Wings, the taste of ink.

The whole undead fleet held its breath. He
could touch them all, the ships of war and the ships of commerce, each a shadow
imprinting the pained light of his consciousness, bending the membrane of awareness.
His power lingered, still unmasterable. Beautiful and useless, unless he wanted
to indiscriminately fry the laptops and pacemakers of hapless students and
passersby. In a moment of ire, he let it roll out and heard the glass of
somebody's wristwatch crack before Jane gasped.

All that strength, and no way to use it to
fight. Jane's trick with the decking was like juggling ice when Matthew tried
it. The scar across his right hand flared when he tried again. Another hurt.
Just one more hurt. You'd hardly think he'd notice.

Don heard Matthew grunt in pain a second
after Jane yelped and grabbed her wrist, and the flashlight Felix trained
gingerly through the hole in the decking popped like an old-fashioned
flashbulb.
Don
hadn't been looking at the light, but listening, eyes on
the dark receding sea, hoping Matthew hadn't impaled himself on anything when
he fell.

He moved faster than Felix, and definitely
faster than Jane. She must have heard it, because she stepped around Felix and
headed for the prow, hopping and scrambling over jumbled debris. Don just ran,
rust and ruin cracking under his boots, his longer legs an advantage. Matthew
was visible as soon as he came around the superstructure, his coat a bloody
stain. Don squatted beside him, grabbed his wrist, heard him groan again.

"Shoulder," Matthew said.
"Tore my knee."

Don slid under his right arm, which seemed
unhurt, and took his weight on that side. Matthew was helping, at least, and
seemed clearheaded, though his voice was clipped and sharp with hurt and he slumped
against Don, hard, his eyes squinted shut and his head dropped forward, toward
his chest.

"Are you all right?" Don asked.
"Are you okay?"

Stupid question. All he had.

"When she kills me," Matthew
said, picking his chin up, "give her what she wants. She'll take you back.
That's the point of this exercise."

"Matthew — "

"The city needs you," Matthew
said. "Cop who can talk to Faeries. Cop who's a Mage. Used to be Magi
everywhere, keeping things together. If we had that—"

Don swallowed. He could see it.
"Jane's crazy. You want — "

Matthew grinned at him, eyes glittering
behind glasses that had miraculously stayed stuck to his nose, though they were
spattered with muck and rusty water. "Jane's crazy. You're not."

"Matthew," Jane said, drawing up
some twenty feet away, beside the battered superstructure, "yield." "Let's
talk," he said. He pushed Don away. Don gave him a look, and went,
reluctantly, three steps.

Watching Matthew, not watching Jane.
"The question is, do you have the guts to do it?" "Do
what?"

Matthew balanced on one leg, not daring to
put any weight on the right one. The pain was nauseating. "Felix has a
gun. Ask him for it."

She glanced at Felix. The soft light eased
her face, made her look startled and a little bit young. "I always carry
one in America," Felix said. "You have to kill him, Jane."

Her gesture swept Matthew aside, and Felix's
protestations. "He's finished."

"He didn't yield." Neither did
Felix, even when Jane swung her glare around like a torch. She might need
coaxing, but this was a ritual. If Matthew didn't surrender and Jane didn't end
things, she was not anointed. No one stayed archmage on a draw.

But she stared at him, frowning.
"Felix, to think I ever suspected that I might have been wrong about you."

Maybe it was the scorn in her voice, her
masks forgotten for a moment. Maybe it was the plain, frustrated necessity.
But Felix's hand dropped into his pocket, and came back with a snub-nosed
Belgian semiautomatic. He stepped away from Jane, and raised the little gun.

Matthew wobbled. He spread his arms, for
balance as much as in surrender. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Felix. You make
me tired."

"Wanker," Felix said, and
squeezed three times fast.

Matthew didn't expect it to hurt. Perhaps
an impact, a blow like a kick in the chest. But Don was there, stepping in
front of him, a bulky shadow as the shots echoed like handclaps over the water
and slammed into his chest. He was knocked back, staggered—
bang, bang. Bang.
One step. Two.

Felix swore and shifted his aim, the
barrel of the little automatic centered between Matthew's eyes. Matthew
stepped forward before he remembered he couldn't. The right knee wouldn't hold
him. It knuckled over, slid, squished horribly, and failed. He might have
caught himself, a wobbling, hopping hitch, but the metal was slick from the
snow.