Whiskey and Water (65 page)

The gun tracked him down.

He fell and hit the deck sliding, crying
out, expecting Don to land on top of him. Bleeding. Dying, probably.

The bullets punched through Don's coat and
shirt and struck his vest like so many hammerblows. It knocked the wind out of
him, but he was a big man and Felix only had a little gun. He lunged for his weapon,
hand across his chest. He wouldn't be fast enough, and he couldn't get in the
way of Felix's shot again, not with Matthew on the ground.

Something hit Felix from the side, a
flurry of black and silver wings, the weight and momentum of the bird knocking
the gun off-line, spinning Felix half around, though he kept the weapon and
kept his feet. The fourth bullet smoked a hole in Donall's sleeve.

The fifth one missed him cleanly.

Don flinched, leveled his gun, and
returned fire as coolly as if he shot men every day. Two bullets, center of
mass.

The black bird vanished over the starboard
gunwale. Felix went down like somebody had jerked the rug from under his feet.
And Don, wincing, turned the weapon on Jane. "Let's just take the end of
this as read, okay?"

Silently, she raised her hands.

"Don't shoot her," Matthew said,
a gasp between gritted teeth. "It invalidates the forms."

Don nodded. "I don't usually shoot
people who aren't shooting back." The semiautomatic wavered, but he nodded
toward Felix. "Man, that is going to be
hard
to explain."

"I'll handle it," Jane said.
"Now put the gun away, Don. Matthew and I have business to finish." He
would have. The urge to obedience was automatic. But some of what Matthew had
told him stuck.
Just oxytocin,
so he steadied his hand on the grips.
"Matthew?"

"That's fine, Don," he said.
"Did you see what hit Felix?"

"Looked like, I dunno ... a black
swan. Do swans come black?"

"See if he's breathing and call him a
chopper, would you?"

"How much you bet I cannot get a cell
signal?" But Don pulled his coat open, bruised chest muscles protesting
lateral movement, and holstered his gun. "Can you stand on your own?"

Matthew pushed himself to his left knee.
He looked at Jane, not Donall. "Do I have to?" "Matthew. Don't
do this."

"Stop me," he said. And stood.

No sorcery to it. One foot down, balanced
by his fingertips and then his own tired strength. He stood on one leg, the old
ship restless under his boot, the snow frosting his hair. Raw air chapped his cheeks
under the grit of silt and rusty moisture. He slid his fingers into his pocket,
found wet iron, closed his left hand.

"You can't hurt me," Jane said.

"No," Matthew answered. He
smiled, and found the strength, and slipped it around her like a warm fur coat,
before she even felt him coming. "Come here, Jane."

And she answered. He could not go to her,
and so she came to him. One step, and then two, as if conquering her own fear
in the face of temptation. Shaking, she paused in front of him, and reached out
to brush one palm down the rusty sleeve of his magic coat. "I always liked
that jacket."

"So did Felix."

"Liking isn't the same as coveting.
Exactly." She smiled, and leaned on him. It would have been nice to earn
that smile. Nice to feel the trust, the partnership, the old friendship they
had had. Nice to smile back, reach out and take her hand.

Dammit. He had
Liked
Jane Andraste.

The power sang across his nerves like a
bow on fiddle strings. He understood it now, the cage she'd hung on him, and
in the pain of his knee and the pain of the lion sliced into his shoulder and
the numbness of his right hand, he found an answer.

Not the Dragon's answer.

His own.

"Jane," he said, "hold out
your hands."

And still grinning at him, still sure she
was winning, she did it, and held perfectly still, smiling like a bride, while
he slid ten iron rings on her fingers, and bound each one—and all her
power—tight.

Wingbeats drew Matthew's and Don's
attention. Two more swans sailed overhead, as if following the first one.

And one of these was black, and one was
white.

*                                                            *       *

Autumn hadn't begun to worry until the
water reached her chest. The room filled faster than she'd anticipated, as if
the pitcher had a sense of the needful volume.

The open window would keep her own escape
attempt from drowning her and she'd lashed herself to the heavy bed. The
weight of the tall canopy vanishing into shadows kept it from floating off the
floor even when the feather bed she'd clambered onto waterlogged and squished
under her feet.

The flaw in her plan was revealed when the
door lock creaked under the water's weight, but did not give. The lock was too
strong, and the water kept rising beyond the point when it should have been plunging
from the window, rolling in a cataract down the tower wall. Water surged
against her. Not just rising, swirling —but lapping back and forth, slopping
from wall to wall. Waves—they
were
waves—-rocked her, slapped her thighs
and stomach, rising past the window ledge, climbing her hips and chest. Spray
struck her face, and she tasted salt. She spat, clearing her mouth.

Not fresh water for drinking or bathing,
but the harsh metal of sea-water. She choked on the pungency as it rose across
the open window and did not fall.

Every lap of the waves bulged the door
against its frame and knocked Autumn against the bedpost. She clutched the
thigh-thick column and clung, though now the sea in her mouth tasted of blood
and she'd split her cheek and cracked a tooth into pulpy agony.

Wood creaked, cracked, did not shatter.
The smack and splinter of spray stung her face, filled her nose, salt in her
throat constricting delicate tissues. The weight of the water shifted around
her like a living creature, broke over her head. She came up spluttering,
deafened by the impact. Something brushed her, moving in the water, a hard
knock like a shark bumping its prey.

And then one great undertow hauled and
twisted, bruised flesh slammed against the tight-wound sheets until linen
threads snapped and her fingers slipped on the wet, swollen wood. The door
banged against its frame one more time, and the whole great tower groaned. She
imagined fine rock dust worn between the cracks in the mortared stones, and
almost felt it sway.

The lock shattered the frame.

Water flooded the spiral stair floor to
head height, pouring from the tower room as endlessly as it had from the
pitcher. Like a cataract over a spillway, the water slammed around curves,
thundering, tumbling. Water without end, yanking Autumn against the sheets,
shredding her clothes and tangling her hair and breaking open swollen flesh.
Her nails split on wood. The massive bed creaked and shifted under her, scraped
across the floor, grinding toward the wall.

The water was gone.

A white horse stood, splotched black on
his face and chest, streaked red from terrible wounds on his neck and shoulders
and flanks, hung with sea wrack and draggled with salt water, in the center of
the tower prison. "Merlin sends her regards," he said in a clear
human voice. "May I suggest you flee?"

He spun on his haunches and charged for
the broken door before Autumn could answer, leaving her alone to struggle from
her improvised ropes.

Whiskey followed the escaped water down
the stair, his shoes ringing like an avalanche of silver coins, the beat
syncopated by an injured foreleg. He crashed into the courtyard in the midst
of the wave that sucked the ankles of the Fae on the bleachers and broke in a
great cresting wall over the angels—fallen and otherwise—and the Dragon Prince
left standing on the sand.

It could have knocked them aside, driven
them into the sea. Instead, Lucifer gestured and it shattered against them as
if on pillars of stone. Water swirled over their heads in jadelike colors,
green and mauve and violet, netted white with foam.

Whiskey skidded to a halt on cobbles,
pearls as big as a woman's fist peeling under his scraping hooves. His mane
hung matted across his face, his right foreleg almost dragging. It would
support his weight, but little more; the muscle was scored at the shoulder and
every movement was like a brand pressed to his flesh. The confined tsunami
drained quickly, trickling between cobbles and eroding lightning tracks across
the sand.

Whiskey confronted three dripping angels
and a Dragon Prince with seaweed in his hair, and managed not to fall. Or fall
over laughing. Lucifer, in particular, with the vanes of his feathers soaked
and spiked against the shafts and his hair shocked into tight coils dripping
across his face, was not the sort of sight one expected to behold twice in a
lifetime.

The Devil lifted one hand, and examined
the soggy lace at his cuff. :Whiskey,: he said.

Whiskey huffed, ears pricked. "I
don't suppose something sort of half elephant seal and half grizzly bear came
through here?"

The Bunyip hit him from the left side, a
thunderous wave that knocked him onto his bad leg and sent him rolling into the
bleachers, scattering and crushing Unseelie courtiers. He let go of the equine
form, let it slip into water, and fought current with countercurrent, eddy and
whirl, patterns of direction and misdirection and sheer blunt force as they
slammed each other this way and that.

As the Bunyip struck, Lucifer took Keith
by the shoulder, and relocated them both —dry, and perfectly clean—to the
gallery, out of the way of the war underway on the sand. The sea raged below, a
black head or a white one every so often emerging from the vortexes and
breakers, as Unseelie dragged each other clear. At the top of the courtyard,
away from the water, the horses screamed, while Michael rose straight up on
slowly beating wings. And Christian relocated himself as easily as before,
regaining his place at Àine's side.

She turned to him with a little smile as
the slap of hard water shook the box under their feet. "Do you see a
reason not to assist our ally?"

"The time for subtlety is past,"
he said, and shrugged. "By all means, do your worst. They'll bring the
walls down in a minute if you let them, anyway."

Àine leaned over the rail of the gallery,
a few drops of spray jeweling the sweep of her long dark hair. "Nuckelavee,"
she said, "kill the Kelpie."

It glared at her from both distorted
heads, and stumped forward on its seaweed-shaggy limbs. The sea rose within the
confines of the courtyard, and Unseelie continued to teleport, fly, and
shamble for higher ground while their Queen watched, unconcerned.

Unlike Whiskey and Bunyip, Nuckelavee did
not crash into the waves as part of the water itself. Instead, it waded into
the surf and the ocean began to drain away. Nuckelavee lurched through the troughs
and caps and wiped them away with sweeps of its chitinous claws, until the
castle trembled with the impact of giant bodies striking one another.

Bunyip bled from gaping wounds, runnels of
blood soaking the hide, filming the shining claws. Blubber gleamed like wax in
the depths of the slashes and cuts, but the injuries were nothing to Whiskey's.
The wounded leg was broken now, his muzzle torn from one nostril almost to the
opposite eye, showing teeth through the gash in his lip. He limped on three
legs, bleeding until the pearly cobblestones gleamed crimson, badly enough hurt
that he was reduced to backing away, keeping distance, acquiring new injuries
every time the Bunyip lunged. And now Nuckelavee circled from the other
direction, penning Whiskey into an ever-smaller range of motion with each
dragging step.

The Queen's hands tightened on the gilt
arms of her chair. Keith, behind her, squeezed her shoulder just as hard. She
lifted her hand as if to brush his off, and grabbed the fingers instead.
"Help him," she said. Not to Keith. To Carel.

And Carel shook her head. "I am not
permitted." "Your damned Dragon," the Queen said. "What good
is she?" In the courtyard below, Nuckelavee grasped after Whiskey. Whiskey
avoided the clutch of ragged claws, but not the rake. Another slash marked his
hide, parting skin and flesh to bare bone near his spine. He screamed and
lashed out, a savage hind hoof spilling putrescence down Nuckelavee's gut. The
blow wasn't hard enough; Whiskey could only ground one forehoof to kick. Keith
reached for
bid
sword, and Carel clutched his wrist.

"He can serve the Queen," Carel
said, pitiless, "or he can serve the sea." The combat became an untrackable
whirl, claws and hooves and flashing teeth. Bunyip struck Whiskey a glancing
blow with one ponderous claw, knocking the water-horse end over end. Whiskey
rolled, sprawled, and heaved himself up without pause. His head hung low on his
powerful neck. He wobbled, scrabbled, found his purchase and his balance—and
went down again, with no sound but a grunt, breaking his knee open on the
stone.

"He'll die for your pride,
Elaine."

The Queen's nails parted the skin of
Keith's hand. "I take it back," she said. She shoved Keith's hand off
and stood. "Whiskey," she called, as the black beast and the red one
closed on him from opposite sides, "give me back my name!"