Blood and Iron (10 page)

“We Magi have done nothing but defend our species from yours,” he answered, tilting his head so that the flash of light off his spectacles would hide his eyes.

“And I have done nothing but recoup in some small way the losses you mortals have inflicted upon Faerie,” the Seeker answered, with a sidelong glance at the Merlin that told Matthew she knew it wasn't as simple as that, no matter what she said. That maybe she didn't believe it herself. “One might argue that it's the Prometheus Club's
fault
. When Faerie was stronger, the Seekers were farther between. ”

“When Faerie was stronger,” Matthew countered, “there wasn't a cradle without iron and thorn hung over it that did not go unplundered, and Elf-knights and Elf-queens stole men and women off horseback and out of their beds.”

The Seeker shrugged. “Is your argument that there is wrong on both sides of the war? I've heard that before—”

“War?” The Merlin's first word into the conversation that she'd watched with the bright intentness of a bird. Her voice was rich and soft and deep, lovelier than her face or the velvet of her skin, and he shivered and took an involuntary step forward until the Seeker blocked him with an upraised hand.

Matthew shook his head to clear it, iron clinking in his ear. “My argument is that the greater wrong is yours, and that the lady should know the facts before she chooses.”

The lady in question glanced from his eyes to the Seeker's and back again.

“It's hers to decide,” Seeker said. Her sidestep reinserted her between Merlin and Mage, irony sly on her expression when the Merlin couldn't see it.
Of course the wrong is Faerie's,
the expression said.
Of course I know it.

What she could
say
was another story. And Matthew didn't miss the curve of the Merlin's lips as she considered Seeker's gesture.
Half-besotted already.
But of course that was a Seeker's gift—and curse, as much as the cool eyes he could feel regarding him from the shadows, and the deadly insubstantial claws that curved at her fingertips.

“I'm Matthew—”

“—Szczegielniak,” the Merlin finished, and Matthew blinked. For proof of magic afoot in the world, meeting two people in the space of a few days who didn't screw up his name was a start. “Yes, I heard. And I'm Carel, and I'm afraid you have both mistaken me for someone else.”

“No mistake,” Matthew said, his sentence interrupted as someone behind him cleared his throat—the bouncer— and Matthew was all too aware what he looked like: a tattooed, ponytailed, pierced bit of rough trade blocking two women on their way out the door. Even if one of those women was Matthew's size, and carried herself like a black belt. “But if you feel a bit like a spider with everyone pulling on a different leg—”

“More like the best-dowered girl at the debutantes' ball,” the Merlin answered. Utterly fearless, and her eyes looked through him as if she saw his scars and strengths and they were both the same to her. “I might find this a little spooky.” Her darkly opalescent eyes flickered up, over Matthew's shoulder.

“Is there a problem here?”

Such an original line.
Matthew opened his mouth, turned his head to explain. The bouncer wasn't looking at him, though, but rather at the two women.
Dangerous if I had plans to put a knife in his ribs.

“Just a conversation,” Seeker answered, her gaze still meeting Matthew's through the flimsy barrier of his spectacles, and he felt that rush of charm and compulsion again.
And you not even Fae,
he thought, and wondered if this was what it had been like for Kelly—this intoxication and sudden undertow like swift water. Magic was the only thing Matthew knew to compare. “I'm sure we'll see you somewhere later, Matthew.”

“Yes,” he said, stepping aside—and incidentally sidling out from under the bouncer's grasp. “I'm sure.” And slipped his business card into the Merlin's pocket as she and the Seeker walked past him and the bouncer, out the open door and into the streetlit darkness beyond.

Seeker swirled weak coffee in a too-small mug, leaning over the Formica tabletop in a narrow booth. Across from her, the Merlin—Carel Bierce—pushed biscuits and gravy around with her fork, frowning. She'd twisted her beaded braids back in a purple velveteen scrunchie, and she too was drinking the offensive Denny's coffee because it was there, and hot.

They were alone except for the staff. At least the waitress had left the carafe.

“This is disgusting,” the Merlin said, pushing her plate away. “I should have had the pie.”

“It's Denny's.” Seeker hadn't ordered. She waved the waitress, who looked as if she wished she were chewing gum, closer. “My friend would like some pie.”

“What kind?”

“Peanut butter,” the Merlin said. She lifted the carafe and refilled her mug, her other hand encircling its narrow waist. “I'm done with the sausage gravy, thanks.”

The waitress picked it up and shot a glance at Seeker. “Apple, please,” Seeker said. “With ice cream.”

“It'll be terrible.” The Merlin peeled open a packet of creamer and dripped it into her coffee, pearl after pearl. She shot a glance at the waitress as if worried of giving offense.

“It always was,” Seeker answered.

“Do you pay with fairy money?” She swirled the coffee, watching the ribbons of creamer make spirals in her mug.

“Of course.” Seeker pulled the carafe over, but it rattled empty. She opened the lid and set it on the edge of the table. The last swallow in her mug was cold. The Merlin stared at her.

“Who was that man in the Tiger?” But her eyes held another name—
Elaine Elizabeth Andraste
—and Seeker could have cursed Matthew for sharing that name with this . . . this dream made real, this elegant, vibrating creature across the scarred beige table.

Seeker pushed herself back against the red plastic padding of the booth and shrugged. “A Mage,” she answered. “A member of a thing called the Prometheus Club, which has been at war with Faerie for hundreds of years.”

“He doesn't look that old.” Dry and sharp.

Seeker laughed, and spindled a paper napkin between her hands. “It's a stupid war—”

“Are there any wars that aren't?”

“Some.” Seeker shook her head. “When you're fighting to protect yourself.”

“And yet you had a civil conversation with him.”

“It's not that kind of a fight. More a . . . cold war. Move and countermove, politics and sorcery.”

“The Iron Curtain,” Carel said, brief flash of white teeth behind the burgundy of her lips.

Seeker nodded slowly.

“Why should I trust you over him? Matthew, I mean?”

“You shouldn't trust either of us.” Seeker pushed at her geasa, wondering how much truth she could get away with. She nibbled her thumbnail, feeling no pressure back.
Control the Merlin—well, if truth will let me do it . . .
“Tell me what you know about magic, Carel.”

“I just . . .” Her eyes changed, away from the music— dark as moss-covered stones, now, and as prosaic. “Sometimes I look at somebody, and I know what they need to hear. Sometimes I find a song, and it seems to mean something, and I sing it. And things happen. People react. But I don't know where it comes from.”

“I felt you reading me tonight,” Seeker said after a pause.

She nodded. “Sometimes I just know,” she said. Seeker's eye was drawn to the sway of a knotty lump of blue-and-gold glass that finished one escaped braid. It clicked on the edge of the Formica tabletop, and the Merlin tossed it absently behind her shoulder. “I've—this is going to sound crazy.”

“Nothing sounds crazy to me anymore.” The pie came, along with more coffee, and Seeker picked up her stainless steel fork. Her fingertips tingled. She set it down again.

“I see things.” The Merlin began peeling the cookie-crumb crust away from the filling of her pie. “Like now.” Her gaze on Seeker's hands was intent. “You—when you picked up that fork, the light around your fingertips went bruised. I could see that it hurt you. At the bar—I looked at you and I saw . . . chains.” Her voice trailed off. “And ghosts,” she added after a silence.

“Yes,” Seeker answered when she had finished her coffee. She felt a press of
need
—the Mebd's will. But the Merlin had to choose her side. She was mortal, and couldn't be bound . . . which led Seeker briefly into musing: if Morgan's father was truly an Elf-knight, how was it that she had escaped binding, all those long centuries? And how could she bear the touch of iron?
Magic. And Morgan. They're practically synonyms, after all.
“Do you ever see things that don't exist?”

"Like what?” The Merlin's hand trembled, and she spun the fork nimbly. Her nails were filed short, French manicured.

“You said ghosts. Mythical beasts? Griffins, chimerae . . .”

“I saw a unicorn once. When I was in high school.” The Merlin let her shoulders rise and fall in a fluid, expressive shrug. Her neck twisted to the side, waterbird-graceful. “Why am I telling you this?”

Seeker turned her hands over, showing the palms. Movement in the shadows distracted her; she narrowed her awareness with an effort. “Because I'll believe you. And because you've been lonely for a long time, and the neo-Pagans and the witches can't offer the thing that you need. Because your magic is not their magic. And you know I have something to offer.”

“Ah, what's in it for you? I sing enough ballads to know the Elf-knight and the demon lover always make a girl pay.”

Seeker hadn't an answer, so she forced herself to pick up her fork and take a bite of metal-poisoned pie. It wouldn't hurt her badly . . . which was why she was Seeker, and other Fae were not.
Otherwise
sight showed her footsteps beyond the door, and Seeker frowned and swallowed. She'd known she wouldn't have long. Still.
Already.
She didn't stand, but she turned to face Kadiska as the other Seeker padded up to the booth. The Merlin's eyes grew wide as she looked up at the new arrival.

Kadiska wore red velvet pantaloons slung low across her belly, showing her navel and the beaded lines of scars. Gold cloth wound her breasts, golden sandals wound her ankles, and a shawl of cloudlike wool wrapped her shoulders and muffled her arms. Except when she reached out, as she did now, and ran her fingers through Seeker's hair, tucking the dark strands behind an ear in which an emerald still glittered.

The waitress was staring.

“I hope you haven't entrusted this one with too many secrets, ” Kadiska said to the Merlin. “What the Faeries touch cannot be trusted, and they tell naught but lies wrapped in the skin of truth. Wolves in wool coats.” Her filed teeth flashed as she smiled and drew her arm back inside her pashmina.

“And who might you be?” The Merlin poured herself more coffee. “Someone else come to explain magic to me?”

“I represent a competing offer,” Kadiska said.

Seeker blinked: Matthew's words, almost exactly.
How long
has
she been following us?

Kadiska settled herself back on her heels and crossed her arms. “You have power, lady, and that power is of interest to my Queen. As it is to the one who holds my esteemed counterpart's leash.” Kadiska grinned wolfishly at Seeker, who sighed and drank more coffee.

The Merlin's silence shattered into a laugh. “I begin to see. So I do have something you want.”

“It's always about bargains,” Seeker said. “Your power makes you a target.”

The Merlin lifted her chin, cord-fine braids whispering across her shirt. “I'm expected to choose a side?”

“The sides are going to force you to choose. Now that we know you exist.” Seeker raised her gaze to Kadiska, daring the Unseelie Seeker to say something.

Kadiska tilted her head slightly and shrugged acquiescence.

“Well.” The Merlin sidled out of the booth and stood. Kadiska stepped aside to give her room, and she dug in her wallet for money, tossing it on the table next to the picked-over pie. Seeker blinked at the warm aroma of sandalwood and myrrh that rose from the gesture. “I'm not looking for a job. I like the ones I have, and I'm not interested in being bargained for. Or with. So if you ladies will excuse me . . .”

“Bargained for?” Seeker scrambled to her feet. “
Taught
is still the offer on the table.”

The Merlin, walking away, did not answer.

“Thanks,” Seeker said, when the glass door shut behind their quarry.

Kadiska dropped a warm arm around Seeker's shoulders. “Where would the fun be if the chase were easy? Besides, I think she likes you.”

“Oh, wonderful. Maybe she'd like you too, if you got those teeth capped. Want my pie?”

Kadiska's necklaces rasped on one another as she stepped away. “No, thank you,” she said. “But I'll bet you an amber ring you'll have her in bed before I will.”

Chapter Five

The lake drained into a stream which tumbled over a cement dam and through a culvert under the road. Below the culvert was a secret place, a miniature valley full of wildflowers and overhung by willows. Someone—some student from a nearby dormitory, no doubt—had knotted a single-board rope swing to a high branch of one of the willows, so it swayed over the brook.

It was midafternoon of the next day and a few miles northeast. Seeker straddled the rope, her feet dragging on the bank of the stream, her head leaned against her forearms. She swallowed what would have been the next in a series of sighs.