Blood and Iron (15 page)

Seeker sighed.

It was going to be a long autumn.

A day or two later—time was not always predictable, in Faerie—Seeker called Whiskey to her, away from Kadiska, and set Gharne to watch the other Seeker. From a safe distance, she warned him. “And don't let the Merlin see you.” They spoke on the lawn of the palace; Whiskey cropped the greensward a few yards away, blunt white teeth tearing the grass with a sound of ripped paper. Slow rivulets of water dripped down his flanks like beads of sweat, plastered his mane to the high white arch of his neck, slicked dark feathers against his fetlocks as if he waded through dewy meadows.

Seeker strolled across the grass and crouched before him. An ebony swath dripped down his face from ears to muzzle as if smeared on with a paint roller, surrounding his eyes and his nostrils in black, spatters of shining darkness marking his cheeks. Black strands mingled the white at the top of his mane. “You had no problems?” She picked a teasel out of his forelock.

“ ‘She turned about her milk-white steed, and pulled True Thomas up behind,' ” he quoted through a mouthful of grass. “She was amenable.”

“Amenable? I thought I told you to keep her busy.”

“I did,” he snorted. “Pleasant company. Sharp teeth.” A big hoof landed next to Seeker's knee.

“Don't step on me.” She saw something under the fall of his mane and stood, lifting the wet coarse-matted hairs. He shuddered irritably, twitching her away as he might a fly. “I owe you a currying. Be still.” A red perforated wound adorned the crest of his neck. “Sharp teeth indeed.”

“It's less satisfying when you cannot eat them, after.”

“Poor horsey.” She withdrew, rubbing her hand on her jeans.

“Why are they always milk-white steeds?” He raised his shining wet head, Roman-nosed and noble, to look her in the eye. “ ‘First came by the black steed / then came by the brown.' ”

“ ‘Then Tam Lin on a milk-white steed, with a gold crown on his brow.' ” Seeker smiled, pretending her unease forgotten. “White horses are a symbol of death, as well you know. And is half your fault, I suspect.”

“Rhiannon,” he said.

“The White Mare. Second wife of Manannan mac Llyr, who is said by some to have been the father or the grandfather of the Queens of Faerie. Rhiannon, the unjustly accused. ”

“She is remembered.” He stamped and sidled away, lowering his head as if distracted by the grass, but Seeker did not see him chewing. “Have you another task for me then, my mistress?”

She reached up and tucked her braids behind her ear. Her fingers lingered for a moment; she jerked them away once she noticed. “You'll accompany me to court,” she said. “I need someone to watch my back.”

The clipped ends of silver nails winked in his hooves as he straightened and turned toward her, shifting restively, his neck a fine long arch into the draft-horse power of his chest. “How deep is the danger?”

“I don't know.”

Whiskey's tail smacked flies. He crouched back, light on the forehand, ready to rear, ready to whirl. “I like that answer less than I might.”

“It would be easier if you'd just get the third challenge out of the way, so we could be sure what lies between us.”

Droplets of water flew as he shook his head. “I'll get around to it eventually. Get up if you're going to ride.”

Matthew unhooked his toes from the foot bar of the incline board as his phone began to ring. He slid a twenty-pound weight off his chest and laid it on the mat, digging in the pocket of his shorts for his rings with one hand while he unhooked the cell from his waistband with the other. “Szczegielniak.”

A soft, listening silence on the other end of the line. Something made him hesitate before he pressed the disconnect button: a feeling, a tingle in his fingertips. “Matthew Szczegielniak,” he tried again. “Is this a wrong number?”

“Dr. Szczegielniak.” A low woman's voice, musical enough to send a thrill up his spine.

He knew who was on the other end of that line. “Dr. Bierce. Call me Matthew. I'm very pleased you called.” The mat dented under his soft-soled gym shoes as he stood. He cradled the phone between hunched shoulder and ear while pushing his rings onto each finger.
And he shall have music wherever he goes.

“This may amaze you, but you're not the first white boy to slip me his number in a bar.”

Startled, reaching for his towel, Matthew laughed. His glasses were in their case in the mesh pocket of his gym bag, and once his hands were dry he fished them out and slid them up his nose. “No,” he answered. “I imagine I'm not. I imagine also that you're not calling me because you have a taste for blonds.”

“You don't think so?”

Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin,
he thought. Which was a pity, he decided. Because given half a chance, he could develop a taste for her laugh. He spoke before she could quite stop laughing and sink him with a comeback. And he was certain, even on brief acquaintance, that she could indeed sink him with a comeback. “Can I help you, Dr. Bierce?”

“I want to hear the other side of the story.” Calmly, with a lilting inflection. “Are you busy for dinner tonight? I can come down to the city . . .”

Matthew hesitated and checked his watch as he stretched the metal band over his wrist. A big man nearby dropped free weights with a clatter; Matthew turned away, blocking the noise with his body. “I have Circle tonight,” he said. “And plans to visit my brother beforehand. How about a somewhat early dinner? Or . . .”

“Or?” Still musical, but a rising inflection now that betrayed her curiosity.

“Or you could come with me,” Matthew said, proud of how smoothly his voice came out, without defensiveness or tension. “And I can show you what I'm fighting against.”

Chapter Seven

Whiskey's hooves rang satisfactorily on the flagstones of the palace as Seeker brought her weight back and eased him to a halt. Unbridled, unsaddled, he tossed his sharp-etched head and peered imperiously through a waterfall of forelock that Seeker had brushed until it shone like wet silk. Greater and lesser Faeries withdrew from the courtyard, stealing glances at the giant pale stallion from the white edges of their eyes.

“They fear you,” he said under his breath as Seeker threw her leg over his haunches and slid down his side.

“They fear you more. Come and see the Queen.”

He chuckled bitterly. “I'd rather not be displayed before
that
one as a trophy, if it's all the same to you.”

“Come, little treachery,” Seeker said. “Think of yourself as my loyal retainer. Shift, if you please. Dress nicely.”
And why is it that Whiskey's clothes come and go with him when he changes, when Keith's do not?

He shook himself once, and reared up on his hind legs. A murmur ran through the observers as he collapsed into himself and stood before her, a handsome, narrow man nattily dressed in a raw-silk suit. He swept a mocking barefoot bow. “Loyal retainer,” he said, and, stepping closer, “How is it that you came to know my Name?”

“Morgan taught me,” she replied in an undertone. The doormen stepped aside, bowing as they opened the great double portal. The gilded wood was only a little brighter than the translucent golden stone of the palace's high, graceful walls. Seeker hung glamouries on herself as she walked, making herself presentable for her Queen. “I don't know how she learned it.”

“From my father, no doubt.” He fell into step beside her, a frown in his voice. The rings on his toes clattered on the cobbles like tiny horseshoes. “She has her ways of getting men to tell her things.”

“Women too,” Seeker admitted as they climbed the steps and entered the door.

“Has she taught you any other Names?”

“Three or four others. Never told me whose they were, however.”

He seemed as if he would add something, but two figures hurried across the checkered stone floor of the entryway toward them, seeming slight in the scope of the lofty, pillared space. One
was
small, froglike in silhouette except the hair-tufted head with its ridiculous ears. The other, Seeker took a moment to recognize: a slender young High Faerie with hair like moonlit water and flawless golden skin. “Hope,” she said, gaping.

Hope dropped a competent curtsy. “It's been too long.”

Seeker rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the tightness between them. “The Queen's speeded time while I was away,” she said. “How long has it been, Hope?” Whiskey weighed at her shoulder, a swordlike burden, both comforting and uneasy.

“Some few years,” Puck said, coming up. “Your young acquaintance shows quite the talent for music and glamourie. ”

“Really?” Seeker frowned at her own surprise. “Tell me more. I am going to importune Her Majesty now, if she's available.”

Hope let one shoulder lift and fall beneath gold-and-brown brocade. “The Mebd had me apprenticed to Cairbre. I'm to be ready to become her
rigbarddan,
she says, eventually.”

“It will take you a few hundred years to learn every poem the royal poet knows.”
And a few hundred more before she's bored with the position.
But Hope had to know that by now. In the few days Seeker had been away, Hope had grown from abused girl to aristocratic young woman. It was in every line as she tilted her head to the side, listening to laughter floating down the sweeping stairwell—in the calluses on her fingertips and the smile at the edge of her eyes.
And Cairbre's more to her than teacher, or I miss my guess.

Seeker sighed. She looked up and sideways at Whiskey. The wound on his neck was still visible, a serrated circle that could never be mistaken for anything but the imprint of pointed teeth.
You've a Merlin to seduce and betray,
she reminded herself.
That should keep you busy for a while.

“Seeker,” Hope said.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.” She stopped Seeker's disclaimer with an upraised palm. “Just thank you. That's all.”

The Puck cleared his throat. “Politics,” he said.

Seeker nodded. “Can we speak after I meet with the Queen?” And then she realized what had been troubling her about his manner. “You're quiet, Robin. And very stern, for a jester.”

He touched the back of her hand with knobby, black-nailed fingers. “There are emissaries at court.”

Seeker shut her teeth on her initial reply and lowered her voice. “Emissaries.”

“From Àine. And I am barred from the councils, Seeker. And there are rumors afoot that the Mebd plans to name an heir.” The Puck turned aside and summoned a page, sending the child ahead.

“Ah.” She'd never heard of such a thing. She could tell from the way Whiskey shifted from foot to foot that it troubled him too. “She's got no children.”

“Nary one living. But she has a sister.”

“Barren too,” Hope reminded them. Puck shot her a smile, and Seeker could see he had been testing her.

“Like Gwenhwyfar.” It just came out, and Seeker regretted the words at once. She concentrated on the sound of her bootheels falling on the stone. The other three kept pace with her, even little Puck hobbling on his twisted limbs.

“Do you know the story of Gwenhwyfach?”

“Gwenhwyfar's wicked sister, according to some.” Seeker paused in the hallway, not far from the Queen's study. Between guardposts, incidentally. “According to others, a cousin. Why?”

“The Mebd had a daughter,” Hope said, her voice dropping to tones that would not carry, but would not attract the attention a whisper might. “One. Although the lays that speak of it are not sung here, Cairbre tells me they are heard in the Cat Anna's hall. She married a mortal King. Her name was Findabair.”

Seeker's jaw dropped. “Gwenhwyfar.”

The silence that followed was broken by Whiskey's laughter, a mocking nicker. “You mean you didn't
know
that? Oh, human memory is shorter than I thought.”

Hope and Robin left Seeker at the Mebd's waiting room, but Whiskey accompanied her inside. Seeker paced restlessly across intricate mosaic tile and piled carpets, wearing a path from the outer door to the inner one; the water-horse stood beside the first of those portals unmoving, his eyes locked on the gold-framed oil painting hanging on the wall. She imagined she could see his tail flicking invisible midges, tension in the line of his neck and the square of his shoulders. In his other shape, his ears would be laid back hard against his skull.

It's not the threat to me,
she realized.
It's something about the Mebd.

Seeker composed herself when the latch lifted. The door opened into the waiting room, and behind its ivory-inlaid frame the Mebd stood with her white hands folded before the jeweled embroidery of her kirtle. A human-looking Fae who seemed perhaps seventeen came into the room before her to hold the door. He was black of hair and pale of skin, slender as a rapier in ebony velvet picked out with silver. Sour old Peaseblossom, the Mebd's councilor, stood at her left hand, his twiggy face drawn down in a frown and his antlers draped with jeweled velvet cords.

She dropped a low curtsy, illusory skirts pooling on the tile around her boots. “Your Majesty.”

The Mebd slipped into the room. “Seeker,” she said, as the lad beside her took her arm.

Seeker kept her eyes downcast. “I bring you news that might best be discussed in private, Majesty.”

Peaseblossom rustled into the room, the dags on his houppelande fluttering red and black as he closed the inlaid door. “A little courtesy to the Queen, Each-Uisge.”