Blood and Iron (19 page)

“Jane Andraste,” Jane answered, giving Carel a quick, delicate squeeze before withdrawing her hand, the considering gesture of a cat that has tapped something of interest and is waiting to see if it will jump, and in which direction.

Carel smiled and let her hand hang in the air for a moment longer, making it plain that Jane had broken the contact first. “I understand I'm here to observe a ritual.”

“If you like,” Jane said. She glanced at Matthew. “We're raising power for another Circle.”

Jane pivoted in her designer shoes and pressed one side of the double doors open with her fingertips; solid oak swung away from her touch, hung so perfectly it moved like rice paper. “One that won't happen for some time. You'll find this interesting.”

Carel's wariness was a dance, a bride's hesitation-march or the scoop and sway of a pavane. As they walked from the foyer into the lounge, she inspected the marble-tiled floors and the pale furniture distributed in cozy conversation groups, around which clustered a dozen or so Promethean Magi dressed as executives, schoolteachers, artists, Bohemians. Neither Carel nor Jane looked out of place among them; one would be hard pressed to find a broader spectrum of intriguing-looking people.

Carel ignored the Magi, most of whom glanced up only briefly when she entered. She paused out of the sunlight, in front of an abstract canvas, angling her head to follow the textured splashes of gray and silver and pewter and platinum gracing its cream-pale surface.

“Beautiful.”

Jane smiled. “Isn't it? One of our members in Paris.”

Carel smiled. “And what's your talent, Matthew?”

“Alas . . .” He shrugged. “I am peculiarly suited to the appreciation of art, having none of my own.”

Jane snorted, her cool facade cracking into charm. Carel glanced at her, surprised. “Oh, don't think we're all seriousness and stealth, Merlin. Can I fetch you coffee?”

“I notice,” Carel said, turning her back on the painting, “that you are rather unforthcoming about the actual purposes of your ritual. The one you're raising power for, I should say, and not this evening's event.”

“Oh,” Jane said. “We mean to go into Faerie and take back all the children they've stolen.”

Fyodor was not drinking vodka. Almost, Keith thought, as if that might be too much the stereotype. Instead, the black wolf leaned back in his chair, spidery hands cupped around the bell of a brandy glass full of slivovitz, and chewed his lower lip with crooked ivory teeth. “There aren't many of us left, Elder Brother,” he said, his thumb leaving a faint oily smudge as it stroked the curve of his glass. “And you'd risk the pack for one cub. A cub not even blooded in the pack, at that.”

“What the man fails out of fear,” Keith answered, his own glass—ginger beer, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it—sweating on the sandstone coaster before him, “the wolf must persevere, out of loyalty.” Giving the proverb its proper form this time, and not the revised version he had offered Elaine. “Vanya thought you might have sympathy. ”

They were alone in the second-floor study, an odd-shaped little space that had been a retiring-room at some point in the house's long and checkered career, and Keith had his boots up on the table. Fyodor, a study in angles and elbows, leaned forward with his wrists on his knees and his drink dangling between them, caressed and examined, but untasted. “I have a great deal of sympathy,” he replied. “For loss, most of all.” His shrug rearranged bony shoulders like a ridgeline shifting; the light of the lamp glinted amber in the depths of his eyes.

“Vanya wants to see us allies,” Keith said.

Fyodor nodded. “
I
want to see us allies, Elder Brother. We each have things to offer, yes?”

“Yes,” Keith said, watching a droplet roll down the side of his glass. When he glanced up, Fyodor's eyes were still expectant as a hound's. “I am not a warrior.”

“All men are warriors when pressed to it. Or else they are victims. And I do not think you are a victim, Keith MacNeill.”

“Of my own stupidity, perhaps.” Keith shrugged to soften the words, his posture as relaxed as possible without submission. “Convince me.”

“Of what shall I convince you, my friend?”

“Convince me of why you are a man who should be King.”

Fyodor chuckled, a low rattle in his throat. “Sire.”

“As it were.” Keith dismissed the title with a wave. “Why?”

“Because,” Fyodor said, and sipped the plum brandy in his glass before he set it on the coffee table. He stood, his long hands sliding into his pockets, and took the two cramped strides that the room permitted. “I have lost a family, yes? A human family, and an
oborotni
family. And I will not lose the pack.”

“Vanya said you were cousins.” Keith debated standing, and decided it would weaken his authority to show too much concern.

“We are,” Fyodor answered. The fabric of his trousers stretched across his knuckles as his hands twisted into fists. “He is all I have left of Kiev—”

“Kiev.” Keith shook his head. “Have you been to America? ”

“No.”

“You should go. It gives one revolutionary ideas.” He grinned up at Fyodor, half human reassurance and half baring of teeth.

Fyodor twisted over his shoulder to stare at Keith, one curl falling across his forehead. “I have had enough of revolution, I think.”

“And enough of war?”

“Oh,” Fyodor said, “I can still fight.” The dark gold eyes went slitted with the black wolf's smile.

“
Can
and
will
are different words—”

“How ironic that the competition should come down to the claims of two wolves who are not keen on a fight, yes?”

“Ah.” Keith pulled his feet down, finally, and leaned forward to claim his glass. “Yes. What if I offer that the appearance of strength is often enough to dissuade the enemy?”

Fyodor pulled his hands from his pockets. He slouched against the wall and folded his arms, left over right, and his smile melted into a frown. “It is your son.”

“It is.”

“He's of the pack.”

“He is.”

"And I do not wish to fight you, Keith MacNeill.”

Keith finished his soft drink and left the glass behind when he stood. “Fyodor Stephanovich, the feeling is mutual. For one thing, it would only weaken the pack to lose you.”

“Lose me?”

“Are you confident, Younger Brother?”

Keith smiled, close-lipped, and turned it into a shrug. “Good enough. So am I.”

There were dark lines of blood on the Merlin's wrist, where Kelly's fingernails had broken her skin. She rubbed them absently as she watched Jane walk away. “That's the lieutenant governor of New York, isn't it?”

“It's a day job. To us she's the archmage.”

“How does she manage to keep a secret life like this out of the media?” Carel's gesture took in the workroom, as the Prometheans dismissively called it: the former ballroom to which the gallery served as antechamber and reception room.

“Have you ever heard of a politician who
didn't
belong to some sort of private club?”

“Not one quite like this.” Her hands swept wider, indicating the tall windows lining three walls. The workroom encompassed the width of the building and most of the length, a city block of satiny hardwood floor with an inlaid border and a scattered design of oriental dragons worked in cherry, purpleheart, and woods Matthew didn't even know the names of. There was no furniture, and the focal point was an iron spiral stair at the far end, wide enough for three to climb abreast.

“This is something,” the Merlin said, and crouched down beside one of the inlaid dragons, tracing the detail work with her fingertips. “His eyes are steel.”

“The better to see you with, my dear,” Matthew answered, offering her a hand up again. She barely leaned on it as she rose, all calculated power. “They're all different, you know.”

“The dragons?”

“Everything, really. Would you like to sit with me?”

She turned in place, watching the rest of the Magi begin to trickle into the workroom. “Are you going to make me dress up in a black robe and chant?”

“Not at all. But you will have to button your collar.”

She tilted her chin, lips paling where they pressed together, but she allowed him to fasten the top button on her tunic. “All part of your ritual, I take it?”

“Everything is ritual if you look at it right,” he answered, rubbing his hands together as cold started to creep through his rings. “The comings and goings of the trains, the patterns of traffic, the routines of life. Even the way the city breathes at night means something. Our magic is the opportunistic sort. We use what we find . . .”

Carel nodded. “Someone told me once that Magi used magic rather than making it. And you also put your members in positions of power and influence?”

“What secret society doesn't?”

“Indeed.” She smoothed a braid behind her ear; it had wriggled loose of the scrunchie. “Do you read conflicting portents in entrails and in the flights of birds?”

“When they conflict.” Matthew shrugged, uncomfortable under the intentness of her gaze.
Does she ever flinch?
He knew the answer; her tempered ruthlessness was not all that different from Jane's. He led Carel to a place by the wall and settled down against it. “The floor's clean. Pull some up.”

She folded her legs and plunked down beside him, velvet skirts spreading over the inlaid wood. “Tell me about your tattoos,” she said, reaching out to run a thumb across the back of his wrist, her fingers folding around the heel of his hand to steady her touch. Despite himself, he turned and raised his eyes to the light falling past the curtains, through the windows. “Are they part of your magic, Matthew Magus?”

“Something like that,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. She had the eyes of a predator.
What did you expect?

“Kelly has them too.”

“Kelly was a wizard before me. He taught me.”
At first. Until he ran out of things to teach.
Unwilling to explain, and she knew it and pressed him anyway, knowing he would be equally unwilling to risk offending her. He couldn't look away from the splintering light in her eyes, although the chill from his hands contracted his shoulders as if a shadow fell across him.

“The tattoos aren't Promethean—”

“They are, though,” Matthew said. “They were supposed to link us together. Make our power one. And protect us.”

“But you're not twins.”

“Symbolically speaking, we were, after we got the artwork done,” he said, and leaned his back against the wall, lacing his fingers together. The cold in his hands was nothing, was expected . . . wasn't the sort of Fae thing he would have to jump up and oppose. And if it needed opposing, there were those here far more equipped to do so than he. He smoothed his hair with both hands, making sure it remained tucked into its tight ponytail. It had stayed put, for once. He folded his arms, knowing exactly how defensive he must seem.

Carel sighed and sat back against the wall beside him, tucking her skirts around her legs and drawing up her knees. “I suppose I should make sure you don't mean me to be a sacrifice.”

“Perish the thought.” Jane stood over them, a tall familiar man beside her. “I'm afraid that honor is long claimed,” she continued. “And today is about taking rather than giving. Merlin, if you don't mind . . .”

Matthew was rising to his feet, and Carel had already proved how adept she was at reading a situation. She stood beside him, extending her hand. Matthew kept his balled up and shoved them into his pockets. A scent hung on the Merlin's hair, green and rich, elusive. Ylang-ylang and jasmine, perhaps. Or lavender and marjoram.

“Charmed,” Carel said, looking directly into the tall man's eyes. Even Matthew, whose taste did not run that way at all, could see that he was beautiful, his black hair slicked back, his suit impeccably tailored and his claret tie fastened with a silver stickpin, a fleur-de-lis that matched the discreet medallions on his cordovan loafers. “And you might be . . . ?”

“You may call me Murchaud,” he said.

She examined him from shoes to chin, and deliberately raised her gaze to his eyes. Jane cleared her throat. “Did you enjoy your visit with Matthew's brother?”

Carel turned her head and looked at Jane—as much as looked
through
Jane—and slowly rolled her shoulders. “And what have you lost to the Faeries, Jane Andraste, to pull you into this war? You're very far and a very long time from where you grew up, or my talent placing accents deserts me. . . .”

Jane actually blanched, and for one awed moment Matthew thought she might even step back, but she held her ground and met the Merlin's challenge smiling. He could imagine how it must sting. “A child,” she said. “Like any mother, I'll do what's needful to get her back.”

“You are a driven woman.”

“I've had a very long time to work at it,” Jane answered, smoothing the pockets of her suitcoat absently. “And where are you from, then?”

“All over,” Carel said. “New York and Texas, mostly. I was an army brat. And touché, as they say. And you, Murchaud? A Fae lord in New York City, at the side of the Promethean archmage?”

“Not Fae,” he answered, bending over her hand. “No longer. If you called me a Duke of Hell, my lady, t'would not be far off. Fortunate we are to have so lovely a Merlin to treat with.”