Blood and Iron (17 page)

“Kelly.” Matthew put his hand through the electric eye to hold the door, gesturing her past. “His name is Kelly.”

Matthew had been in enough hospitals to know that it's untrue that they all smell the same. The ventilation differs, the smell of the cleansers, the top note of the air freshener sharp over the bottom note of human musk and adhesive and gauze. Some hospitals smell of desperation and rot and unchanged sheets. Some smell of hope.

To Matthew, this one smelled of guilty consciences and delayed vengeance, and by the way Carel stiffened as they stepped into the tiled corridor, she caught the aroma too. She paced by his side, skirt rippling with her strides, her chin held high, her knapsack slung casually over one shoulder. If he hadn't noticed the way her free hand tugged the hem of her embroidered tunic down, he never would have recognized her fear for what it was. He would have seen only the arrogance.

She carries herself like a Mage already.
He paused, his hand on the door to Kelly's room, and turned to her. The darkness of her irises flickered with splintered color for a moment as she met his gaze, and she smiled. “You're so very, very angry at them.”

He jerked away, burned. His hand dropped back to his side.
Not a Mage,
he corrected himself.
The Merlin. And don't you ever dare let yourself forget it.

“Yes,” he said, stepping back to give her precedence. He gestured her hand to the doorknob. “In a moment, you'll see.”

Her eyes dropped, her beads clinking as she tilted her head. “As you wish.”

“Go in.”

Carel pushed open the door. “Private room,” she whispered. “Professordom pay better in New York than out in the boondocks?”

“Not significantly.”

“
You
must introduce
me
.” Said firmly, and she stood against the door panel to permit him to enter first.

Straightening his shoulders in a parody of pride, he walked past the Merlin and into his brother's sickroom. “Kelly?”

I wonder how he'll be today.
There was a narrow corridor between the door and the room itself, like the entryway to a hotel room. A mirrored door concealed the bathroom on his left. On his right was the louvered slide of a closet, tidily shut. “Kell, it's Matthew.”

Faintly, Matthew heard his brother singing. He jammed his hands into his pockets, walking forward as if it didn't hurt. Surprised to find Carel's hand resting on the crook of his arm, steadying him while making it seem he was leading her. She peered around his shoulder. “He's singing?”

“He sings a lot,” Matthew answered, and moved away from her hand. Kelly sat in his wheelchair, facing the window, the light of a sunset flushing the sky. “Kell?”

“ ‘Light down, light down, true Thomas.' ” Kelly's voice rose off-key, on a strange high warble. “ ‘And lean your head upon my knee / Abide and rest a little space / And I will show you ferlies three. . . .' ”

Carel slid her hand free and swayed forward, in time to the limping rhythm of the ballad. Matthew kicked the door shut and followed, waiting to see if Kelly would turn his head. Carel's intake of breath was sharp as she finally got a good look.

“He can't be your brother.” She cast a glance sideways to confirm it. Matthew caught himself leaning forward so his hair would cover his face. “Unless you're older than you look.”

“No,” Matthew answered. “But he's much younger than he looks, Lady Merlin.” He crouched beside Kelly's chair, and took his brother's papery claw in his fingers. Kelly's head wobbled on an old man's plucked-chicken neck; his rheumy eyes were cloudy between the red edges of his eyelids. Softly, Matthew stroked a thumb across the bumpy back of his brother's hand, and reached up to brush greasy yellowed wisps away from Kelly's forehead. “Kelly's two years older than I am.”

Kelly's voice was a buzzing mumble. “ ‘Oh, see you not yon narrow road / So thick beset with thorn and briers / That is the path of righteousness / Though after it but few enquire. . . .' ”

The Merlin blinked. She set her back against the narrow strip of eggshell Sheetrock between the window and the side wall and folded her arms across her chest. “Strange days,” she muttered, fingering a black opal ring. “What happened to him?”

“Stolen away by Faeries. Kelly, can you hear me?”

" 'And see you not that broad, broad road . . .' ”

“And the Faeries brought him back?”

“ ‘That lies across that lily leven?' ”

“When he couldn't dance anymore,” Matthew answered, and gently tugged at the blankets wrapping his brother's knees. Carel stepped forward; Kelly's head lolled.

“Have you sung to him?”

“When he sings so well to himself?” Sharper than Matthew had intended, but he felt skin below the blankets now, and it was hard enough to talk at all.

The Merlin laid a callused hand on Matthew's shoulder and drew a breath, and came in on the second word of Kelly's next warbling line.

“ ‘That is the path of wickedness / Though some call it the road to Heaven. / And see you not that bonnie road / That winds about the fernie brae / That is the road to fair Elfland / Where thou and I this night maun gae. . . .' ”

Kelly's voice faltered. Lashes flickered across his glazed, empty eyes, and he turned toward the sound as Carel kept singing, her voice hitching softly as if she bore some secret pain.

“ ‘But Thomas, you must hold your tongue / Whatever you may hear or see / For if you speak word in Elfin land / You'll ne'er get back to your ain country.' ”

Carel glanced down and the song died. “Oh, dear lord.”

Withered claws protruded from the cuffs of Kelly's pajamas, leathery hooks resting uselessly against the stirrups of the wheelchair. The only thing Matthew had ever seen to compare with it were photos of Chinese foot-binding, the deformed and folded extremities of women intentionally crippled for life. “They took him for a night. One night, and all his life—Kelly! No!”

His brother hadn't looked down from Carel's face, and now, instantly, he moved. His twisted right hand lashed out and caught the sleeve of Carel's tunic before she could step back, and he used that grip to haul himself to his ruined feet. His face showed no pain—only transcendence, as Matthew grasped his waist, trying to take his weight. The wheelchair glided backward; Matthew's grip was all that kept Kelly from crashing to his knees, his hand straining the fabric.

“Lady,” Kelly whimpered. “Lady, I see you.”

Carel got her free hand up, an arm under Kelly's arm, her hand splayed across his back as Matthew held his feet away from the floor. She bent her knees and lifted, taking Kelly's weight. Her knapsack struck Matthew alongside his head. Something hard inside it—a ceramic mug?—clinked against his skull; he saw stars, heaved, got his brother deposited on the bed and almost fell backward himself. “Lady!” Kelly wailed.

Carel's grip on Matthew's shoulder saved him, something shattering with a crunching sound as she dropped her knapsack on the tiles. He reached out blindly with some idea of clasping her hand in thanks, but she wasn't looking at him. She seemed, in fact, to have forgotten his presence as she moved forward, crouching beside Kelly on the white chenille hospital bedspread and wrapping his hand in both of her own. “What do you see?” she asked, as Matthew came up beside her, close enough to feel the warmth of her body through her velvet tunic.

“Lady, I see
you,
” Kelly answered, in a clear, crisp voice that brought blood to Matthew's mouth. “I see the light all around you. The shattered light. And I hear the song.”

“The song?” Matthew laid his hands over Carel's. She let him, without looking up.

Kelly didn't answer, but Carel hummed a bar of “Thomas the Rhymer,” and he nodded. “Yes.” He blinked and lifted his head from the pillow. Bruises were already darkening beneath Kelly's fragile skin. He smelled sweet and stale, the mustiness of age clinging to his skin.

“Kelly,” Matthew said, hopelessly.

“Matt?”

His name. Which Kelly hadn't said in a decade and a half now. The blood in Matthew's mouth was sweet as his brother's eyes flickered, cleared, focused on his own. “Kell—”

“Has she come to take me back?”

“Kelly?”

Kelly shook his head, turned back to Carel. “Lady,” he said. “Have you come to take me home?” He didn't seem to notice as Matthew squeezed his hand once, chest burning, and then had to—
had to
—step away, unable to breathe, his fingers prickling numb as he scrubbed his hands against his trousers and Kelly whispered to the Merlin, “Please. Please, my lady. I can still hear the music. Please won't you take me back home?”

Chapter Eight

Keith dreamed of dragons again, and awoke cold in his bed, curled into a ball that would have had his tail tucked tight across his nose and eyes if he had been in wolf's shape. It was still dark, the night air cold through the open window and scented heavily with the sea. Keith tautened, head up, weak human ears straining as if he could still hear the scrape of scales on stone, the rustle of leathery wings unfolded and resettled. The hiss of the waves and the susurrus of wind across the window sash could have been a giant, rhythmic breathing. His breath steamed into the air as he lifted his head; in the moonlight, the shadows moved as if they had weight.

“Mist?”

Nothing. Silence, and the ocean moving below, the chuckle of the waves against the stone. The clouds blew across the moon like a great eye closing, and Keith rolled out of bed and padded to the clothes chest in the testicle-shrinking cold. He pulled out wool socks and thick trousers, a rag wool sweater that he dragged on over a thick cotton turtleneck. The trousers needed braces; he edged the sweater up around his shoulders to get them on and then tugged it down again.

It would have been easier to shift into a wolf, of course— but hardly conducive to a lengthy visit if he arrived naked and chilled to the bone. Keith stomped his heavy boots on and tugged open the door, mindful of creaking hinges in the night. The stairs, at least, were stone, and the house slept on.

He let himself out the kitchen door, glancing up once at the windows on the east side of the house. The several rooms shared by the Russian wolves were silent and dark. Keith turned away and set out down the beach, not just wandering tonight. He didn't expect to find peace, precisely. But perhaps a cup of tea and a warm fireside, away from the pack and its demands.

He never doubted that Fionnghuala would be awake and awaiting him. And lights gleamed in her windows as he approached. He could see her moving about the table in the kitchen, the steam rising from the spout of her cozied teapot as she lifted and poured. The wind brought him the scent of orange pekoe and woodsmoke, and Fionnghuala's perfume—

And the scent of a man. A wolf.

Ivan Ilyich.
Keith smoothed his lips over bared teeth, raised his fist to the door, and knocked. It opened smoothly, on silent hinges; the werewolf tilted his head and smiled. He could see Vanya behind Fionnghuala, leaning forward over the wax-finished table, his elbows on either side of a mug of tea. “You have company, Nuala. I'm sorry—”

“I have room for one more,” she said, and shuffled aside to let him enter through the close-cracked door. She shut it crisply, trapping the warm air inside, and rolled her shoulders back. “Keith, you couldn't sleep?”

Keith shook his head slightly, wry agreement, and moved forward until he was standing across the table from the Russian wolf. Ivan Ilyich tipped his head back, showing his throat as if unconsciously, and didn't stand. “I did not know you were a friend of Nuala's,” he said. “Good morning, Elder Brother.”

“Good morning, Vanya,” Keith answered, and pulled out the bench opposite to sit, with a glance at Fionnghuala for permission. He repeated her question to the younger wolf. “Couldn't sleep?”

“I don't sleep much,” Vanya answered, with a self-deprecating shrug. “And my Elder Brother's nightmares would keep any wolf awake.”

Nightmares. Fyodor. Interesting.
“So you come to sit with our American witch.” Keith grinned at Fionnghuala, a doggy showing of teeth, and looked down when she grinned back.

“Best conversation on
this
seaside,” Vanya answered, with an arch look.

Oh, the wolf has a sense of whimsy, does he?
Keith accepted the pottery mug their hostess slipped in front of him and shrugged. “I tend to find it so. And your eyes are full of questions, wolf.”

“Are they?” Vanya leaned back in his chair, tension cabling across his face even as Fionnghuala kicked the far bench out from under the table and arranged her gray-brown skirt over it, settling herself. She wore an apron as white as a patch of snow on lichen-covered rock; Keith resisted the urge to reach out and stroke his fingers across it to see if it was cold.

She laced her fingers around her own mug and smiled without teeth. “I'll not have you fencing at my table, with words or with blades,” she said. “This is not the pack's ground.”

“No.” Keith blew across his tea to cool it. “It isn't, is it? All right, then, Vanya. What's your first question for a Scottish wolf?”

“Why do you want to be Sire?”

“I don't,” Keith answered calmly.
There is the matter of the Faerie Queen.
But that was not the sort of thing that one could say. “But my father expects it.”

“Your father will be dead before the issue comes to a . . .
discussion
.” A delicately chosen word, and Vanya made sure that Keith appreciated the delicacy with which he had chosen it. Yes, a discussion that would end with one wolf dead upon the earth.