Whiskey and Water (66 page)

The wide world crystallized. Whiskey heard
her through the pain, through the dull distraction of injury. The sea rushed
into him, the dam that had held it back for seven years gone in the space of a
few words. Savage power filled him, flooded him until he brimmed, salt water
pricking from the cobbles under his knee, puddling and coursing down to the
ocean below.

A broken arm is less than a broken leg. He
folded into another shape and stood, water dripping down the backs of bony
hands, over thick nails, water plastering his clothes to his lanky body as he
braced his feet and grinned, pulling his split lip wide. Nuckelavee and Bunyip
towered over him now, but he'd meet them on his feet.

The blade at his belt came with the human
seeming. It was short, eight inches, no more. But it was better than nothing,
and comfortable to wield one-handed.

The moon was high. He was himself again;
cold joy drenched him in a lucid cataract. And there were only two of them.

He slid the knife free and waited for the
enemies to come.

"Want your shadow, Bunyip? " he
asked. "What will you give to have it back?"

"I'll take it when I've killed
you," the Bunyip answered.

He pounced, a rippling arc of muscle. But
Whiskey was no longer where he had been standing when the Bunyip landed. He
dove for the Nuckelavee, rolled between its knees when it clacked and hopped after
him, and cried out when his broken arm and slashed shoulder struck the cobbles.
Still he rolled and kept rolling, the momentum enough to find his feet, and
threw himself at the creature's festering back.

The knife bit deep, suck of flesh and
scrape of bone, and Nuckelavee gave a thin bubbling scream. Whiplash as it
twisted threw Whiskey onto the stones. The knife and his breath were knocked
from him; he pushed himself up and fell back, gasping, as a massive shape
undulated toward him.

One enemy down.

Bunyip was coming.

One enemy down, and Whiskey down as well.

In the guttering torchlight, he first
thought he saw only shadows. But then there were feathers, three swans
descending, one white and two black. They came down like a gentling hand, their
bodies rising and falling between their wings, their necks stretched, bugling
their un-pleasing whistle.

The white swan stood, unfolding into a
frail human form, her cloak blurring from her hands as she swirled it over her
head and cast it like a net across the shoulders of the other two. They did not
rise, one huddled inside the embrace of the other, an ash-colored head bent over
one whose locks caught unnatural violet accents in the firelight.

Kit shielded Lily against his chest.

She fisted both hands in Fionnghuala's
cloak, as the swanmay stood, naked and defiant, behind them, no less stern and
wonderful for the marks of age stretching her softened flesh. She reached down
and laid her hand on the nape of Kit's neck, and Kit ducked his head, pressed
his lips against Lily's ear, and whispered something through her hair.

"Garndukgu-Wurrpbu," Lily said,
her voice rasping as if her throat were raw, her pronunciation eerily perfect
on the very first try. Better than Kit's, which was just good enough.

Bunyip flinched, and kept coming. Behind
him, the Nuckelavee went to its knees, crawling toward the sea, its horse-head
leaving streaked, hideous strings of mucus on the cobblestones as it was
dragged.

Àine shouted to him to turn back to the
attack, hauling with the reins of her power. He tried, as he had no choice, and
crashed to his belly on the stones.

"Again!" Kit steadied Lily's shaking
shoulders.
"Mean it."

She gasped and crowded against him. He
leaned his forehead against her shoulder, as if willing her to understand.
Willing her to read it in her gift, in her bones. "Christian took his
magic back," she said, and Bun-yip glided closer.

"Use you your own.
Garndukgu-Wurrpbu," he chanted. He squeezed her, shook her, the velvet of
her borrowed doublet denting under his palms. She jerked again, trying to
squirm away from the monster. "Garndukgu-Wurrpbu!"

"Garndukgu-Wurrpbu," she answered.
A croak. Kit got his fingers under her arms, lifted, pulled her up. Fionnghuala
stood behind them, holding her cloak over their shoulders, shielding them with
her wings. "Garndukgu-Wurrpbu!" Lily shouted. She coughed, a hand
pressed to her throat. Kit echoed, called again, remembering the Bunyip's
mockery of his own small power.

"Shout it, sorceress," he said.
"Push
him back."

His touch was unlike Christian's. Hard, a
little painful, each finger indenting her flesh. He wasn't any taller than she
was, and he wasn't any stronger. And he was there, right there with her,
holding her up, facing the monster anyway.

If he could do it, she could do it too.

"Garndukgu-Wurrpbu!" she yelled,
and
pushed.

And felt something pushing back. Something
yielding, but massive, unmovable, implacable. Sliding, as if she buried both
hands in a mountainous water balloon and tried to shove it off her face. It
slopped over her, slid away when she tried to contain it. She spread her hands
out, using the name like a whip, like a plow blade, to sting and shove. She
leaned harder. It would roll over her. She would drown. It would crush her, and
there was nobody to save her, nobody to charge to the rescue.

But there was Kit, pushing beside her,
pushing as hard as he could. She could push harder than Kit. She could push
harder than Fionnghuala, than Whiskey who crawled up on her left side and
dragged himself to his knees, slipping something black and soft as gauzy silk
into her hand.

She
was the rescue now.

When it gave, it gave like punching
through a wall of glass. A sudden crack, a sensation like sharpness, like
shattering. And then she was up to her elbows in cold like ice water and the
Bunyip was slumped before her, and Kit had his fingers laced through her hands,
dragging them to her head, urging, "Knot your hair, Lily. Lily, knot your
hair."

Once Upon a Time in New York City

C
hristian vanished before Kit even let go of Lily's
hands, and Michael drifted to earth beside them a moment later, quietly
ridiculous with Matthew borne in her arms as if he weighed nothing at all.

Don had stayed behind to manage Jane and
explain the body and the motorboat to the authorities.

Kit shrugged Fionnghuala's cloak off his
shoulders, half fearing he'd fall back into a swan's shape as he did. But he
stayed a man, and stood savoring free air for a moment before he wrapped the
naked swanmay in her feathers.

The feathers shed all around them. He
winced and caught a handful before they could fall. They crumbled into shadows
in his hand. Fionnghuala tugged the cloak around her shoulders. "Magic
well-spent," she said, when Kit frowned.

Lily was stroking the cobweb fabric.
"What's this?"

"Bunyip's shadow," Whiskey told
her. He sat cross-legged on the stones. "A little bit of insurance, sorceress.
He'll try to kill you again now that you've bound him. It'll pay to have the
strength to deal with it."

"Bound him?"

"What do you think this was?"

"Like a slave."

"Like a slave," Whiskey said. He
shuddered as he pushed himself to his feet. Lily got a grip on his unwounded
biceps and hauled, the shadow fluttering between her fingers. When he stood
without wobbling, she twined her fingers through the shadow and held it to the
light. Torchlight wouldn't shine through it, for all its transparency.
"Exactly like."

"I don't want— " She licked her
lips. "If I let him go he'll kill me," she said, understanding the
ice in Whiskey's pale blue gaze.

' Give me the shadow," he said.
"I'll bargain for you."

"Can I trust
you?"

He stroked her arm with the back of his hand.
His wounds were already sealing. "Never." She held out the bit of
cobweb. "Isn't it yours?"

He winked, and turned away. Limping
heavily, he walked to where Bunyip lay, heaving, on the stones.

Lily was vaguely aware that, across the
courtyard, Carel had broken away from Keith and Elaine and was running from the
gallery to the stair, where Autumn—battered and bruise-cheeked—had appeared, holding
herself up half by her grip on the doorframe. Lily turned back to Fionnghuala,
Kit, and Matthew.

She heard a glad cry. It ached more than
it soothed.

Michael had laid the Mage on the stones
and stood back, arms folded over her narrow chest.

"Thanks for the help," Matthew
said to Kit, and Kit swept a somewhat unsteady bow. Fionnghuala crouched
beside the Mage, a knife in her hand, slicing Matthew's filthy jeans open from
thigh to ankle along the seam. "This is bad," she said. She dusted
more feathers from his leg, from her shoulders, from her hair. "I can't
heal it now."

"No," he said. He brushed aside
a few feathers himself, rubbing his fingers together, as if bemused. "I see
that. But there's always the emergency room."

"She cured Lily," Kit said.
"Lily was dying."

"Cured?" Lily looked at them
both, then down at her hands. She came to squat beside them. "Unicorn's
horn," Fionnghuala said. "Cures what ails you."

"But I'm-"

Fionnghuala laid her hands on Lily's
cheeks and kissed her. "As someone once said, 'I am that I am.' You won't
die now. What you make of the rest of it is your own choice."

Kit coughed. Matthew blinked, then winced
as Fionnghuala laid a cool palm on his skin. "Ow."

She frowned. "Doctor."

"Morgan," Kit said, and gestured
toward the inland end of the courtyard, where the witch stood framed against
the darkness of the front gate, her wolfhounds at her side.

Fionnghuala stood. " 'Twill serve,
though this shall need surgery. And now excuse me. I have a devil with whom to
deal."

Carel led Autumn to the corner by the
well, and Autumn let her do it. Shaking, leaning hard on the Merlin as the
Merlin curled an arm around her shoulders, she squeezed her over and over again
and brushed her fingers across her face.

As for Carel, she sat Autumn down on the
bench beside the well cover and touched all of Autumn's wounds, silently,
wincing more than Autumn. "I think you'll be okay," she said,
finally. "You'll need a dentist. Have you touched food or drink?"

Autumn shook her head, and Carel turned to
draw water. "I'll make you some safe." What was the point in being
Merlin, otherwise?

"Rumpelstiltskin?" Autumn asked,
as Carel brought her the dipper from the bucket.

"I found him," Carel said.
"He was under the wine rack. He's safe."

"Gypsy?"

Carel shook her head as Autumn cupped her
hands around the dipper to hold it steady, drinking with lowered eyes. "I
didn't think so," she said. She sobbed, once, tightly, her hands whitening
on the ladle before Carel pulled it back, and bent forward between her knees.
"There's a fish in the well."

Carel turned to look: a carp, red-flecked
and golden, with black freckles on its back. It hung in the water, fanning
slowly, staring up at her with bubble eyes. She knew its expression.
"Cairbre?"

It bobbed in the water, up and down. The
Merlin dropped to her knees beside the well, and reached down, her brown wrists
encompassing the fish as it swam between them. She scooped it up, and drew it out
of the water, her fingers slipping into its gills and holding it tight as it
twisted.

She hauled it up into the light of the
torches. "Give me a reason not to kill you."

Helpless, it flopped, gasping. It had been
expecting rescue. Carel stared at it while its struggles grew more frantic.
"You won." Scales gritted her fingers, slick with slime. "Ian's
King. Elaine is free."

The carp stilled, hanging heavily in her
hands, a heavy muscled cylinder. It gaped, glossy eyes darkening, and waited.

"Stay a fish," she said, and
dropped it into the water.

Autumn reached out and touched her
shoulder. "Carel?"

"I can't promise it won't happen
again," Carel said. "I can't keep you safe. I wouldn't blame
you." Autumn's lips thinned. She shook her head. "I'm tired of
falling out of love," she said, and slid her hand down the Merlin's arm to
squeeze her fingers.

Morgan saw to Ian first, and Carel, Keith,
and Elaine left her alone to do it. As for
them,
once Carel had assured
herself that Autumn was likely to live,
they
found Àine on the
battlements, the wind and the rising sun limning graceful limbs through her
robes. Her hair lashed and flew around her, and she waited with folded hands.

"You're not Queen anymore," Àine
said. She glanced from Keith to Carel. "The Devil's left me to pay the
piper."

"So he has," Elaine said. She
glanced at Keith. He folded a hand around the hilt of his sword, and slid it
free, frowning.