Blood and Iron

Elizabeth Bear

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Praise for the novels of Elizabeth Bear

“A gritty and painstakingly well-informed peek inside a future world we’d all better hope we don’t get, liberally seasoned with VR delights and enigmatically weird alien artifacts.… Elizabeth Bear builds her future nightmare tale with style and conviction and a constant return to the twists of the human heart.”

—Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon

“Very exciting, very polished, very impressive.”

—Mike Resnick, author of Starship: Mutiny

“Gritty, insightful, and daring.”

—David Brin, author of the Uplift novels and Kiln People

“A glorious hybrid: hard science, dystopian geopolitics, and wide-eyed sense of wonder seamlessly blended into a single book.”

—Peter Watts, author of Starfish and Maelstrom

“What Bear has done … is create a world that is all too plausible, one racked by environmental devastation and political chaos.… She conducts a tour of this society’s darker corners, offering an unnerving peek into a future humankind would be wise to avoid.”

—SciFi.com

“Elizabeth Bear has carved herself out a fantastic little world.… It’s rare to find a book with so many characters you genuinely care about. It’s a roller coaster of a good thriller, too.”

—SF Crowsnest

“An enthralling roller-coaster ride through a dark and possible near future.”

—Starlog

But first ye’ll let the black gae by,

And then ye’ll let the brown;

Then I’ll ride on a milk-white steed,

You’ll pull me to the ground.

—“Tam Lin,” Child Ballad version #39C

Chapter One

Matthew the Magician leaned against a wrought iron lamppost on Forty-second Street, idly picking at the edges of his ten iron rings and listening to his city breathe into the warm September night. That breath rippled up from underground, a hot draft exhaled in time with the harsh pulse of subway trains. A quiet night, as nights went in the belly of the beast …

… until his hands grew cold under the rings that focused his otherwise senses, and he raised his eyes to the night. Trip trap, trip trap. Who’s that tripping across my bridge, Brer Fox?

Even before the vague sensation of cold resolved into something more defined, he had an idea who might have come to trouble him.

He tugged the placket of his camouflage coat together and stepped out of the shadows, into the dapples and patterns of light that were the substance of New York City at night. The coldness gave him direction; he followed it cautiously, although he could tell his targets were not nearby. And not together—which gave him pause. The stronger chill, the one that sank into the bones of his left hand, had the flavor of age and wildness about it. Ancient hunger, and the musk of a predator.

But the right-hand one was closer, and carried the blood-sharp sweetness he had expected. Besides, whatever was hunting the waterfront was too old and too deep for one lone Mage to face. He dug his cell phone from his pocket as he moved, and called it in.

Then he picked up the trail of the Faerie huntress just off Broadway and followed her toward Times Square. She moved quickly, erratically, as obviously on a scent as Matthew himself—and, as obviously, she had not yet noticed him. He kept to the shadows, running when he had to, his hands balled into fists around the ice in his palms.

She flitted from shadow to shadow, but he finally caught sight of her silhouetted against the lights in the eye-shattering cacophony of Times Square. She was big-boned, too thin for her frame, in a green peacoat and blue jeans, her dark hair falling loose except for a few seemingly random braids swinging among the uncut tresses. Her nose was a stubborn, Grecian edifice, her chin notched as if by a thumb. She walked quickly, boots clicking, glancing up now and then at the buildings arrayed like broken teeth against the sky.

Only tourists look up in New York City, he thought, and noticed that she too drew her large long-fingered hands from the pockets of her peacoat to rub them as if they hurt. She wore no iron rings; the city itself pained her.

Slime splashed Matthew’s boots as he followed. His quarry prowled past a pack of lean young men on a street corner, and one grabbed at her shoulder. She didn’t turn, but Matthew—trotting to catch up—saw the shadows writhe around the man who reached, and saw him recoil, staring at his own hand.

Glamourie, Matthew diagnosed, before ice jabbed his palms, and he ran faster. Don’t touch that, boy. You don’t know where it’s been.

That’s the Seeker of the Daoine Sidhe. You’re outclassed—

… and so am I.

A blur, another chill on the air, made Matthew turn. The cold of Faerie magic pierced the warmth of the night; the Seeker’s will cast a shadow as she paused under a streetlight, again chafing her hands. He drew his own awareness tight as the coiled life inside an acorn, slowing to a trot as he sidestepped through crowds, hoping the magecraft in his rings would hide him from her otherwise senses—what the uninitiated might call second sight.

She raised her chin like a hound scenting the wind and turned on the ball of one booted foot. Matthew forced himself to keep walking, moving steadily, watching his quarry from the corner of his eye as she raised a hand and stepped from the light into a shadow —

—gone.

Dammit.

Her reappearance, three blocks distant, sent a twinge of cold through his bones. Oh, no, you don’t, my lady. Whatever you’re after is mine.

Matthew ran.

Seeker hated stepping out of the shadows almost as much as she hated the cold ache of the iron city in her bones. Shattered images taunted her: an inkblot silhouette settling on Liberty’s torch; a gaunt and curious willow following a jogger through Central Park; demonlings leaping among the flashing LEDs of Times Square; a unicorn bowing its cold and final beauty to a savage, cage-eyed panther in the Central Park Zoo. She could not lay a hand on that cold silver neck without taking back a charred obscenity—could not have stroked that purity without leaving a smear of tarnish in her wake.

Seeker moved in a place of Names and glamours, of knotted hairs and deadly magics. Reaching into a silent blankness among the images that surrounded her, she found a Mage, dark-eyed and golden-haired and as human as she once was, wearing a jacket of army camouflage he’d no doubt chosen for symbolism over fashion, slipping along a filth-encrusted alleyway. He snarled into the shadows without stopping—I see you too. Sorceries hung around him on threads of cold iron and brass.

His glance was assured, mocking. The mortal Magi had a long and unpleasant rivalry with the Fair Folk. She riffled shadows faster: long ripples curled white foam and black against the wharves; that unicorn turned away, flickering silver through the night; the whole otherwise reality, magical and unseen by mortals, except a lucky—or unlucky—few. Seeker tossed her hair, braids moving among the strands. A man with a blade lashed out at a huddled girl. His image shuddered, a reflection split by a stone. His victim emerged brightly from the ripples.

Seeker stepped forward, shadow between shadow again and then out. She waited while the man noticed her and glanced from his prey. His gaze traveled up Seeker’s boots and raked her face, tension becoming dismissal when he glimpsed dark, straight hair and her angular jaw. Just a woman, she read on his face.

“Leave her,” Seeker said. “She’s mine now.”

He snarled, and lifted the knife.

“You are out of your depth. I warn you twice.” She smiled at him, a very little smile that hurt the corners of her mouth.

He swiped. She stepped aside, her shadow lashing a tail on the concrete. As he overreached, her left hand stroked one of the braids binding thin sections of her hair.

She spoke a word.

A Name.

“Gharne!”

Casual with the blade as a butcher, the pimp slashed for Seeker’s face—a feint at her vanity. She leaned away, fearless as the cat whose shadow she wore. Wingbeats sounded over her shoulder; her assailant’s eyes widened. He threw up arms to protect his own pretty face.

In Faerie, you are granted three chances only. Never, never more. A winged black silhouette like an inkstain with teeth took him high on the chest. He sprawled across the girl still crying on the pavement. Seeker clawed after the shadow of that Mage, for safety’s sake, and didn’t find him.

Beak bloody, the inky thing gouged for the pimp’s heart. The girl dragged herself away, his blood like a sash across her chest. Seeker’s familiar demon hunkered over dying bubbles, hell-lit eyes focused on his mistress.

“Good hunting,” he said.

She squatted and laid a gentling hand on his neck. “Enjoy your meal, Gharne. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” His beak dipped as she turned to collect the girl.

The girl, who had vanished into warrenlike alleys as if she had never been. Sure. Now she ran.

Seeker’s footsteps followed comfortably; the scent of her quarry hung on the reeking air. The shadow that paced her was that of a running doe, four footsteps meeting Seeker’s two.

“Seeker!” A voice like the crack of a whip. She stopped, made a mid-motion spin on cat’s-paws.

The human Mage grinned at her. “I know your Name,” he said.

“Much good may it do you. It’s claimed.”

“Ah,” he said. “What if it wasn’t?” He stepped forward, extending his hand.

“Since when do Magi have any power over bindings?”

“We don’t.” His hair was a slick yellow ponytail revealing iron rings spiraling his ear. He wore round spectacles that hid his eyes in reflected twinkle.

“Then why ask? You exist to destroy Faerie, Magus, and I exist to defend it.”

“That’s not what we want.”

“Don’t lie to me, Magus,” she snapped. “Trust me, I see no wrong in destroying Faerie. But you—you should know it’s not safe to talk to fey things. This isn’t a fucking fairy tale.”

“Really?” That extended hand came down on her wrist. Something burned, searing her flesh. Cold iron rings on his fingers. “My name’s Matthew. Szczegielniak. I’ll give you that for free, not that it will help you; I’m a mortal man. And this looks like a fairy tale to me. What are you hunting tonight?”

She swore and jerked back. “Seeker,” she reminded him. “It takes more than blood and iron to wound me.”

He shrugged. “It was worth a try. I have other allies.” His hand slid under his jacket. He has a knife, she thought. A gun.

Before he could pull the weapon, Seeker crouched and leapt, over his head and away. “Look me up!” he yelled after her. “Szczegielniak! I’m in the book! We can help!”

Matthew watched her rise, his cell phone warm, winking in the palm of his hand. The number was on speed dial, even if he didn’t have it memorized, and he was out of time—he could dial, or he could follow her up the fire escape and, as likely as not, he could lose her on the rooftops.

He pressed the button with his thumb. It rang one time.

“Matthew?”

“I lost her, Jane,” he said, as the chill in his hands ebbed and eased. “I’m sorry.”

“Her?”

“Yes. Elaine.”

“Damn—” A pause, a whisper of breath he could picture, Jane’s silver-black hair blown from her eyes. “That’s the closest in some time. Did you speak to her, at least?’

“I gave her my name,” Matthew said, unzipping his jacket one-handed as he walked out of the alley and toward the lights. “There’s always the hope that she’ll call.”

“She can’t,” the transmitted voice of his archmage answered. “She would if she could. She’s forbidden.”

The shadow of an owl floated up the wall. Matthew was right. She should be put a stop to. Her footsteps fell light and level across the rooftop. She saw as the owl sees; she leapt the twenty feet from rooftop to rooftop as the doe leaps—until the cliff-edge of a warehouse brought her to a halt near the river.

Lifting her face, she sniffed the wind and sent her awareness otherwise, then leapt the roof-edge parapet into emptiness. The girl was below. Seeker smelled her. And another … Damn that Mage for delaying me—

—which was worth a wry grin. The Mage was less likely damned than she. She spread the owl’s soft wings and floated down beside brick. She touched pavement. Predatory tunnel vision leached the edges of her awareness. She ran until the companion shadow of her doe deserted her, exhausted, and the shade of the cat ran beside her: hunter, leaper, stalker of prey.

Someone else stalked the same prey. The shadows showed her his footsteps: long black feet, pearly bare toenails, water dripping from his tattered cuff. A slow puddle spread where he passed, wet prints following him across the pavement.

Seeker pelted toward him, and he paced toward his prey.

The girl huddled in a doorway. Seeker glimpsed as much otherwise, and past her quarry saw the stalking enemy. Black of skin and long of face, clad in the rags of white pants and a shirt of archaic cut—and the very shadows seemed to recoil from his presence. He strode past the doorway and the girl.

Seeker turned the corner in time to see his sure steps hesitate. He paused, turned back. Delight or something passing for it creased his face as he smiled with square white teeth. “Are you hurt, child? Can I help you?”

She hesitated, but took his hand. As he helped her up, Seeker dug in and ran. The black cat still paced her; the tall man had not heard her footsteps. He turned the girl away, an arm around her shoulder, and she whispered something too soft to hear through the shadows.

When he replied, his voice was low but clear. “You’re a pretty one to be out so late alone.”

She glanced down and blushed: a child, vulnerable, whom the unicorn might once have adored. The dark man looked sideways at her, as if used to viewing life from only one eye at a time. White ringed his crystalline blue iris.

“Tell me, child,” the thin man asked the girl, “have you ever ridden a horse?”

The exhausted cat-shadow vanished like a wind on water. Seeker’s footsteps echoed, and she faltered to a stop. She had only the owl left, who couldn’t help her now. And Gharne, but this would eat her familiar in half a bite, yawning.

But I know something he doesn’t.

Shadows lay tangled on the ground behind man and girl, hers slight and mortal, his suddenly powerful, mane-tossing in fury.

“Kelpie!” Seeker shouted as he turned. A challenge, a demand. Not his Name. Kelpie came about to face her, his bare wet feet clattering on the stone.

He threw the girl down; she rolled and landed roughly, got her hands under her and started dragging herself away. Shadows twisted and writhed in Seeker’s mind, slithering across her face. Kelpie relaxed, waiting.

“I charge you stay, child,” Kelpie whispered. He stepped forward, his haunches and shoulders bulging.

Seeker shifted her weight, crouched, braced. I’m dead. Even if I guess right, I’m not strong enough to bind that.

They faced one another across ten cracked feet of asphalt. Seeker drew a brackish breath. “The child is claimed.”

He snorted, vapor curling from nostrils grown broad and fierce. “Hardly by you, changeling. Or you should not leave your toys unattended, if she was.”

Her hands shook. And he was deeper by far. He came on.

“The child is mine,” Seeker repeated, “and the Mebd’s.”

“Contest me.” Grotesquely swelling, and the girl’s horror at last fixed on him. He towered. They stood in a shallow sea.

“By my hand and my heart,” she replied. “By the name of your soul …” A gamble. A gamble, and maybe he would back down.

Hah.

You never knew.

The impact of Kelpie’s hooves splattered Seeker’s boots. His mane tossed froth-white. Pale hide shone under streetlights, wet and taut over muscle like bent and knotted ropes. He whinnied laughter, mane raining salt water, taste of the hurricane on his breath, as it was always meant to be.

He was glorious as he came to kill her, but Seeker remembered a teacher’s voice in her ear. Calm. Maternal. “Four things, if you forget all else, to be hoarded against need.”

He reared and Seeker cringed under his hooves, a lock of wet hair tangled between her fingers. Jewels of water shattered around her; behind Kelpie, the girl crouched in a puddle.

“To bind a thing, you must know its right Name,” he said.

“By this lock of my hair, I know you to me.…” Her hands trembled. His weight bore her down—beyond control, beyond thought, beyond panic. Four Names: Scian. Lile. Maat …

The hooves came down.

There was no time to move and so she stood. Her will bent against his; strength crushed strength like blind, slick behemoths striving in the depths of the sea. Resilient, muscular, vast. Please, please, please …

“… Uisgebaugh!”

Her fingers twisted the tangle into her hair as hooves shuddered above her. He all but vibrated—all power, all courage, and wilderness surged in his Caribbean eyes.

His shadow fell across her face. She reached out, gasping, and bent his power back like the fingers of a hand. Until he failed.

Squarely and sullen, his neck bent like a bow, he came to earth. Seeker wiped from her cheek, below the eye, some flecks of salt water that must have been thrown from his shaking mane.

“Mistress,” he muttered.

She stepped away. “Fetch the girl.”

The moon rose over the ocean, wearing a weary smile, her light reflected on billowing waves and Kelpie’s sleek mane. His magic moved him quickly, for he was a part of this water and all water everywhere: all tides and currents, the great cycle that falls and flows and falls again into the vast blue cauldron of the ocean … and where there was water, there was also Kelpie.

And Seeker and the girl sat his back—Seeker shaking wet hair from her eyes, the girl growing stiffer in the cold.

Storm clouds massed on the horizon, black in the silver-lit sky. Distant lightning flashed, but Seeker didn’t delight in its rumble. She saw the misery in her burden’s face revealed in every flicker. The girl shivered and sobbed. She cried for water, and Kelpie gave her sweet water. She cried of the cold, and Seeker cloaked her. She cried for her pimp to come and save her, and Seeker bit her lip on a scathing Gladly would I send you to join him.

“Have courage, girl. There’s worse to come.”

They’d be rid of her soon. And then Kelpie and Seeker would continue their business. Though Seeker had bound him once, Kelpie might try two times more to kill her. If he failed thrice, he would belong to her—until she chose to unknot that lock of hair … or he died. Should she die first, his heart would stop with hers.

That was why Seeker was here, on his back, following his paths from the iron world to the moonlight one. If it had been merely her quarry and herself, she would have taken the thorn-tree road, her own path through the shadows not being made for sharing. But she judged it better to keep the Kelpie close and under her command, rather than trusting whatever devices he could get up to in her absence.

Waves pitched up and sideways, the sea hungry and unkempt. The ocean reached out contemptuously; the tips of the girl’s fingers slid through Seeker’s as a wave struck her from the Kelpie’s back. She clawed upward, spluttering, shocked that the ocean should be so terrible.

Seeker leaned out, her fingers knotted perilously in Kelpie’s pale mane, and clutched at the girl’s grasping hand. She felt no fear, no rush of courage—only an overwhelming weariness that threatened to drown her as surely as the ocean would the girl. Seeker’s fingers locked on her charge’s wet wrist; she hauled the girl gasping and choking across Kelpie’s withers. He tossed his head, eyes rolling, reflecting lightning as water sheeted down his face.

“Is this your storm?”

“Mistress, no.” He might omit, but he could not fail to answer. And she had charged him to bring them safely to Annwn. “We are opposed.”

“By whom?”

His shrug rolled his shoulders under her. “Magi? The Unseelie? I know not.”

Seeker licked at the salt cracking her lips. “You need a name,” she said.

“I have a Name.”

“And shall I call you so before the court?”

He snorted and kept swimming, great muscles writhing under her thighs. She tightened her fingers in his mane.

Wet and wept out, the girl eventually curled into Seeker’s arms. With her easy breathing, the storm subsided, and for a moment the Kelpie forgot himself enough to twist a look over his shoulder, one blue eye meeting Seeker’s in surmise.

“Whiskey,” he said. “Call me that.”

The clouds shuddered to pieces before a setting moon and the easterly sky grayed. Seeker shook her charge awake. “Dawn and the clouds are breaking; you must see this.”

The girl’s eyes flickered open, the color of lichen: neither gray nor green nor hazel. Seeker had seen such eyes before, in the mirror and elsewhere. The girl seemed calmer now. Nothing was ever as bad in the morning as it had been in the night before. “Who …?” and then her eyes registered Seeker and she sat up, squinting in mounting brightness.

“What do you see, girl?”

She grimaced.

“Water. Waves. The sky.” She glanced over her shoulder, skin like honey once the makeup had washed away, her dark hair matted as stiff with salt as it had been with hair spray. “My name is Hope.”

Seeker made an odd sound, a strangled laugh. “Certainly, it is.” Then she leaned forward and kissed the girl’s stone-colored eyes and her salt-wet mouth. The girl flinched, and when Seeker drew back, stared at her. Seeker pointed westward, where green hills welled up, visible to the otherwise eye. Taller swells on the ocean, hills like the call of the heart for home.

The sunlight touched those hills with gold.

Seeker’s voice rose, off-key. “ ‘What are yonder high, high hills, the sun shines sweetly in? Those are the hills of Heaven, my love, where you will never win.…’ ”

Dawn in the Western Isles. How she’d grown to hate it.

Hope jerked against Seeker’s grasp, her face lit in wonder as Seeker sighed once, quietly. They were lovely, high downs and the white faces of cliffs wrapped in rainbows struck from the golden mist. “The Westlands, Hope. Hy Bréàsil. Annwn. Tir Na Nog. Your home.”

Whiskey snorted and surged forward—the end of his journey in sight. Seeker wondered if he truly swam so fast, or if his magic shortened the distance. Morgan would know.…

The Mebd’s castle came into sight around a rocky curve of land, the reaching arm of stone protecting a half-moon of white sand at the base of a terraced, magical lawn. At the crest of the hill a beechwood harbored mist and chill morning. The line of trees vanished behind the palace, a fantasia of latticed golden stone translucent in the slanted light, green banners snapping in the stiff sea breeze.

A cluster of fair-haired fey ladies and Elf-knights waited along the beach. The impact of the Kelpie’s hooves on the sand jarred his riders as he heaved himself from the ocean. Leaving the water was such an effort for his kind.

The courtiers of the Mebd came down to meet them, to receive Seeker’s burden. Seeker handed the girl down willingly. And as she was off-balance, her steed melted beneath her with a breaking crash. Seeker rolled, scooping up a handful of sand. “An old trick, little treachery. And hardly your best …”

The wave struck before she saw it, knocking the precious bit of earth from her hand. It sucked her under, churning; she struggled for the surface, breathlessness an iron band across her chest, fingertips breaking into blessed air as she dragged herself upward. Sweet breath filled her lungs in the moment before he knocked her under. He was implacable as the bottomless lochs of Scotland, and he liked to play with his prey.

Violent currents twisted her. She struck for the bottom, hoping he would think her disoriented. One hand clawed through rocks, into sand. A sharp shell gashed her, blackness billowing. But she brought cupped hands to her mouth, blowing into them through the blood and watching the bubbles rise through water gone still and silent.

She drifted, knowing he could push her back if she struggled upward, wait for her to drown. Hoping that he needed a more direct vengeance—until a mammoth blow, a wall of water, slammed her chest, would have hammered the air from her lungs if she had any left, struck again. She spread her hands, the silvery net between them terribly frail.

She cast the net into the sea.

The ocean grew still, as if lost in memory. When she broke the surface, gasping and fuming, a cheer went up, and when the Kelpie arose behind her draped in her net as if in seaweed, a laugh. Seeker was not well loved. But nothing tamed is fond of that which still has freedom, and it amused the Mebd’s courtiers to see one of the wild Fae bound.

Chapter Two

The Mebd awaited her, but Seeker did not hurry to dress. She stood before her mirror, feet bare on damp stone, a white linen shift brushing the tops of her knees. The tarnished silver backing of the looking glass mottled her reflection.

“Hurry,” said Robin from the doorway. “Herself will not be pleased at the delay.”

Seeker reflected an arch glance at the Puck. “The more you talk,” she said, “the longer it takes.” She turned back to the mirror and examined her face while Puck hopped on one foot, long ears twitching. She hid her smile, spread her arms, and spun thrice, hair flying about her.

Rippling folds of cloth of silver flared as she whirled, swaying heavily when she set her heel and stopped. Pewter-colored brocade skirts brushed the floor, the bodice pushing Seeker’s bosom higher and cinching her waist.

She examined herself critically. Nothing but glamourie, and gone on the stroke of midnight. Fortunately, there were no clocks in Faerie. Seeker motioned as if tugging on gloves, and gloves appeared—darker gray than her gown, and of kid. Puck tapped his foot.

“Coming, Robin. Really, you’d think it was something important, and not the same audience every time.”

He made no answer, and Seeker snorted in irritation. She too tapped her heel on the stones, but the third time she made the gesture she was greeted not by the pat pat of bare skin but by a musical jingle. She raised her skirts in one hand and thrust a foot out, inspecting a slipper of gray-and-white vair decked with tiny silver chimes.

“ ‘Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes—’ ” she commented, and Puck cut her off.

“And she’ll be beheaded by morning if she delays longer.”

“That doesn’t rhyme, Robin.”

“Or scan, either. It’s modern poetry. Are you ready?”

“My hair’s not done.” Seeker angled her head and lifted her hands, running gloved fingers through glossy black strands. They fell into place, narrow braids twining accent to pearls and silver, the crude knot with which she had bound the Kelpie smoothing itself into a ladderlike four-strand braid bound with silver wire and a single pearl black and shining as a moonlit sea. Seeker touched her ears and throat to conjure quiet jewelry, and passed a hand across her face. “How do I look?”

“Well enough,” Puck replied, tugging her toward the door. His legs were much shorter, but she had to step quickly to keep up. Her slippers jangled like sleigh bells; she took short breaths of air laden with the scents of wisteria and mist.

They hurried through vaulted corridors wrought of translucent golden stone, past the doorways of rooms that had stood empty for all the twenty-five years of Seeker’s service, immaculately clean, waiting like grooms abandoned at the altar.

The Mebd’s palace was bigger inside than out, and Seeker could not imagine it full. Its forlorn elegance spanned distances she associated with city neighborhoods and college campuses, and seemed designed for mourning. A certain misty forsakenness became it.

To think of these echoing passages teeming with Fae was daunting, both in the idea of that much alien extravagance, and the vivid realization of how much Faerie had lost.

The small ones had sickened first: the nature spirits, the little lives of brooks and trees. Some prospered, finding niches in wild places or under the aegis of sympathetic householders, but most limped, faltered, died. Imps and pixies, brownies and sprites, were not comfortable in kitchens full of stainless appliances and gardens sown with commercially propagated flowers. This was the true triumph of the Prometheans: to turn even the red, red rose into a warding that kept the Fair Folk at bay. And if the roses lost their scent along the way, it was a small price for safety, for preeminence.

William Butler Yeats, who should have known, reported conflicting theories about the Fae. Some, he said, called them the last remnants of the Pagan gods, shrunk now and small, half-forgotten. Some said they were angels too bad to serve in Heaven, and too good to be damned to Hell. Other stories listed them with the Nephilim, among the children of angels who were tempted by the daughters of men, and so fell.

In any case, this much was true: they would not abide the name of the Divine; they preyed on the iron world to enslave knights, courtesans, paramours, poets, and lemans, and—as recorded in the ballad of Tam or Tom or Thomas Lin or Lynn or Lane or Line—at the end of every seven years, they paid a tithe to Hell. They brought home children of Fae descent as well, like young Hope, to replenish their fading line.

And they took mortals to pay that tribute.

Seeker’s quarter-century in Faerie had taught her how worthwhile was the price—the scent of a rose, the life of a Fae—for human safety. Annwn’s Queens were immoral as glaciers, righteous as stones. They locked their hearts in secret places, and they had learned to lock away the hearts of their lovers and playthings too.

Janet never would have won Tam Lin back from Queens so armed with bitter experience as the Mebd and the Cat Anna.

“Don’t hum that,” Robin said, and Seeker jerked guiltily.

“Hum what?”

He glanced over his shoulder, then whistled a few quick bars of music, his mulish ears wobbling flat.

If I had known, if I had known, Tam Lin

I would have taken your heart

And put in place of your heart, a stone—

Seeker snorted. “Well, she knows better now, doesn’t she?”

Robin Goodfellow answered her with a grimace, and picked up his pace. “She can see through the glamours, of course,” he said, with a rude gesture to her dress.

“Of course,” Seeker replied, “but she expects the courtesy.” And one day I would love to go before her in my robe and slippers. Especially when she insists on hauling me into court the instant I return, weary and salt-stained.

“Aye,” Puck answered, and fell silent until they stood before the dark Gothic doors leading to the throne room. An intricate relief worked into the panels cried out for hands to stroke its maidens and men at love and at war; hounds and horse in pursuit of wolves and stags; animal-headed spirals of three points, with the legs of hares or horses interwoven in the knotwork. On either side of the portal a grim guard stood, helm shuttered and a green-and-violet cloak slung around its shoulders, stiff as its own tasseled halberd. Seeker didn’t know if they were men, Fae, or merely animate suits of armor. She’d never bothered to find out.

The Puck stepped away as she squared herself before the door, flicked illusory bell-skirts straight, and stiffened her spine. Mute on brazen hinges, the weighty doors swung open.

Her slippers chiming into the silence of a hundred broken conversations, Seeker entered the presence chamber of the Mebd of the Daoine Sidhe.

At first all Seeker saw was the jostle of silks and colors, the flutter of ribbons and cloaks adorning lords and ladies of the Fae—each taller and blonder than the next, and all taller and blonder than she. They had halted midstep in their dance, and as Seeker pressed forward into the vaulted hall the lines of the pavane parted before her. She stalked down their ranks, a solitary silver-clad figure amid a prismatic shimmer of green and gold and orange, of umber and periwinkle, ruby and cobalt. She heard the whispers as she passed, the rising murmur of voices over the rustle of stiff skirts and the jingle of her shoes. These were the high lords and ladies of the Fae, Elf-knights and green women—not the half-blood changelings that she was charged with returning to the nest, although even some of those rose among the ranks. Still, they drew back from her. Word of the Kelpie has spread, I see.

She tasted a bitter nugget of joy at seeing them afraid.

The last rows parted before her, revealing the Mebd, imperious on her gilded chair of estate, robed in a luxury of emerald and aubergine. A mantle of darkest forest-green silk swathed her, so brocaded with embroidery that the fabric was almost invisible. A wimple of finest white lawn hid her throat, and although the Mebd’s hair was concealed by the veil of violet silk, Seeker knew it was golden as wheatstraw. And knotted with more knots and braids and bindings than there are stars in the summer night. Concealed behind velvet drapes and under a velvet pall, the shrouded figure of her throne hulked at the back of the dais—rarely used and never uncovered.

The Mebd’s pet curled on a velvet cushion beside her chair of estate. A naked human boy who appeared perhaps six, green eyes bright beneath a fetching mop of ebony curls, he fiddled idly with his golden collar. Seeker’s eyes avoided him, and she’d learned to hide the sting of tears in her eyes. It had been the same engaging lad curled there for a quarter of a mortal century—longer, in Faerie. The Mebd had ways of keeping things as they suited her.

Seeker came to the foot of the dais and dropped a curtsey that puddled her gown like spilled quicksilver on the azurite-and-malachite tiled floor. Bound, like Whiskey. Poor little treachery. Her throat burned with pity. Her eyes stayed lowered until the Mebd cleared her throat and said, softly, “Rise.”

“Your Majesty.” Seeker stood and looked into the eyes of her mistress. They shifted color when the Mebd smiled—perfect lips curving like a harvest moon—violet to jade and then violet again. Seeker was not invited to speak further.

The Mebd’s voice was resonant as a dulcimer. “You’ve brought us charming gifts again, my Seeker, and we are well pleased with you. So well pleased that we have another task—one that, we think, will much challenge your skills.”

Seeker concentrated on the formal rhythms of the Queen’s speech. Where was the trap? “Your Majesty.”

The Mebd inclined her magnificently encumbered head. “We have learned that a Merlin has come into his maturity.”

She had thought herself ready for anything—any announcement, any task. Not so. Seeker’s mouth fell open and she staggered back, tripping on the train of her gown. Silently, she cursed the bravado that had made her add chimes to her shoes; they jangled madly as a falcon’s belled jesses.

The Mebd continued, imperturbable. “Your predecessors have had some success with previous Merlins, as you well know. Nimue, Viviane … their names are remembered. Merlins are rarer now than in days of old. One does not succeed the next so neatly. And this Merlin has not yet met his Dragon, has not yet grown into his power.” The Mebd paused, waiting for Seeker, but all she could manage was a dry-mouthed nod.

Patient, the Mebd waited until Seeker found her voice. “You wish me to entrap him. Your Majesty.”

The Mebd’s smile warmed, reaching her eyes. “Bind the Merlin, Seeker, and we bind the Dragon. And that is a power that we have been too long without. You must hurry, of course. Doubtless our sister has taken an interest as well.”

Seeker tried a breath, the next question seasick in the back of her mouth. “Majesty …”

The Mebd waited, eyebrow arched, while Seeker swallowed hard and tried again. “Majesty. Is there a … one of the other sort, as well?” Seeker waited for the slow oscillation of her liege’s head, but denial did not come.

“Bind the Merlin,” the Mebd said instead, leaning forward, “bind the Dragon. Bind the Dragon; bind the King.”

Keith MacNeill waited in a place out of the moonlight, his nose stinging with the scent of roses, and watched as the woman he had loved seated herself on the carven bone bench beside a sleeping man’s bier. He had been awaiting his moment. He had been watching her for hours.

The Seeker had exchanged her glamoured gown for slacks, boots and a tunic, her elaborate hairstyle for a single thick black braid with smaller braids wound through it. Emeralds glittered in her ears. They were real emeralds, set in white platinum, wrought by a mortal craftsman. Keith remembered.

She bent over a book sewn into a doeskin binding, writing with a gold-pointed fountain pen. The little chapel was silent. Few came there anymore except attendants and caretakers.

Every so often, Seeker raised her head to glance at the bier, the moonlight falling through latticed walls across the sleeping man’s face. Keith could see the sleeper clearly from his vantage place: a warrior in his middle years, perhaps, tall and broad of shoulder, no longer as narrow in the hip as a boy. His hair was reddish blond, graying beside closed eyes. Combed long and neat over his shoulders, it stirred in his breath where a lock lay across his face: his beard darker red and trimmed to follow the line of an arrogant jaw. Keith noticed the aquiline features and the fullness of his lips in repose, the way his big, scarred hands folded over the hilt of the bronze sword laid the length of his chest.

Bronze, and not the star-iron one he once had carried.

Seeker sucked the cap of her fountain pen and added a few more words. When she glanced up, her gaze fell on the sleeping man’s face. She paused and marked her place in the book with the pen before standing. Moonlight caught on the twisted strands of her hair, casting her shadow like a stain on the alabaster floor as she came forward.

She laid her hands on the edge of the High King’s bier and leaned forward, nostrils flaring. Keith’s twitched in sympathy. A heavy funk of crushed roses surrounded the sleeper.

Tenderly, she brushed the disordered hair from his cheek. “Arthur, you son of a bitch.”

Her voice came out low, snarled as neglected ribbons. “You could have been the best of all of them. I know the price. But did it have to be the babies?”

Of course he didn’t answer. His eyelashes lay against his cheek without fluttering, undisturbed by her voice. She let her weight rest for a moment on her hands before turning aside, reaching for her notebook.

Soundless on cool tile, Keith stepped forward. “Elaine.”

She stiffened, glancing back at the sleeping King. Keith bit down on a chuckle as Seeker raised her eyes to him.

He stood casually naked behind the bier and raised both hands to smooth back hair disarrayed by his previous run. Quarter-moon, and he could do as he pleased. Elaine would know that. He saw her glance at the sky. “ ‘The wind from one door closing opens another,’ ” she said, and the savagery in her voice as she quoted his own platitude pushed him a step back.

Keith drew a breath like boiling lead and looked down at Arthur. “He tried so hard, poor bastard. It’s just not fair.”

Seeker glared. He flinched; it had not always been so. “What are you doing here?”

His small, hopeful attempt at a smile slid from his lips. “I’ve a word for you, Seeker,” he said, formally.

Her chin rose, her jaw etched in moonlight. “Your word?”

“A message.”

“What’s that?”

“Mist requests you attend her. Tonight.”

“Mist … requests? How do you know what Mist requests?”

Keith began turning, his form blurring as he spoke. “It came to me in a dream.” And nails clicked on pale marble as a powerful red-pelted wolf trotted back into the night.

Jane Andraste was already waiting when Matthew arrived. She held the door to her penthouse open, a rail-narrow woman with silver-streaked hair twisted precisely in a chignon to complement her pearls. Her suit fit as if tailored for her.

It probably had been. And only Jane would be so carefully dressed, even at home in the middle of the night.

Matthew glanced down at her shoes, fingering his rings. Jane caught him at it and winked … and then looked down at her own hand as she extended it to him. Her skin was soft with age, the bones and tendons visible.

“My apologies, Jane,” he said, as she extricated her hand from his and turned to latch the door. “My failure—”

“Not a failure.” She smiled. “Call it a qualified success.”

Matthew wasn’t quite so ready to forgive himself, but the tightness across his chest eased at her words.

“Are you hungry, Matthew?” Always gracious, even in declining to answer.

“I could eat,” he admitted, as she led him over antique rugs toward the modern stainless steel and white-tile kitchen. “I laid hands on her, Jane.”

The archmage shrugged, running water into the coffeepot. “Frustrating,” she said, and then fell silent as she measured the coffee into the filter and turned the switch. She came back to the counter. “But anticipated. Trust an old wizard when she says you did well. Cream, no sugar, yes?”

“How do you manage to remember things like that?”

“Talent,” she said, and tipped her head toward the breakfast table in the corner. “Sit, Matthew. If you hover, you’re going to make me spill your coffee.”

“I see.” He pulled out a padded chair and sat, leaning against the back support gratefully. Despite the aroma of brewing coffee, his eyes kept trying to drift closed. “The Seeker—Elaine Andraste—”

“You’ll have another chance at my daughter yet, I expect,” Jane said. “We have rituals to set up, a spirit-trace on her and on the pointy-toothed Unseelie Seeker as well. Would you like the milk warmed in the microwave?”

“The hotter the better,” Matthew answered, pressing fingertips to his throbbing temples. He loosened the elastic on his ponytail and finger-combed the chin-length locks that fell free, sighing in relief. A warrior or a wizard bound his hair and fastened his clothing and left no unknotted strings about his person when he went into battle, but the ponytail always gave Matthew a headache. “Please don’t play coy, archmage. I’m too tired for guessing games.”

“Unfair of me,” she conceded as the microwave beeped, and poured his coffee into the cup, atop the steaming milk.

“That’s a speedy coffeemaker. Why the spirit-trace?”

“Isn’t it great?” She slid the cup in front of him and started assembling her own. If she hadn’t splashed the counter, he never would have known her hands were shaking. “The Unseelie Seeker has been in and out of North America on mysterious errands for the past two months. And now Elaine has joined her—”

“Elaine was strong enough to bind the Kelpie.”

Jane cupped her coffee in both hands and blew across the steam so it curled from her lips like a musing dragon’s breath. “Their competition can only help us,” Jane said. “But whatever they’re both seeking is something we must find first.”

“Something? Or someone?”

“I suspect the latter,” Jane Andraste said. Her cup clicked on the white-tile counter as she reached behind herself to set it down. “Soup or sandwich?”

“Soup and toast?” he said hopefully. She grinned.

“I envy a young man’s appetite.”

While she opened cans and clattered spoons, he waited for his coffee to cool enough to drink. “Someone,” he reminded, when the aroma of chicken stock filled the kitchen.

She chuckled and turned back, raising her wooden spoon. “What could we do with a Merlin, Matthew?”

Matthew blinked. “What couldn’t we do? But if you expect one, doesn’t that mean a Dragon Prince won’t be far behind?”

“Not necessarily,” she answered, stirring the soup before it could scorch. “But it’s time.”

“That could be everything Prometheus needs—”

“Yes,” she said, and reached for the ladle on the drainboard. “Everything we need to win this. Once, and finally.”

The pain she hid so carefully spoke to a like pain in Matthew, and he leaned back, refusing to give in to it. Everyone’s lost someone, he told himself firmly. Your circumstances are not special.

Seeker paused in the darkness at the base of the down, in a narrow valley overgrown with gorse and heather. The moon was slipping over the edge of the world and a cold fog coiled her ankles like an anxious cat; she closed her eyes and ducked her head. Three deep breaths brought little calm.

Seeker raised her face, looked around, and set off down the bank of a rocky stream that ran along the bottom of the vale. She saw in the dark with owl-eye facility, now that her shadow-bound familiars were rested. If the sun would break through the mist once in a while. If it would thunder and rain. Why is it, I wonder, that we are permitted moonlight and not sunlight? What’s so terrible about weather? She laughed at the thought, her voice echoing strangely off the moss-and-ivy-hung rocks. The sound was eerie; it struck her to silence again.

Below a sheer escarpment, Seeker splashed through the brook, slick rocks turning under leather-soled boots. She could see the shadow of a greater darkness behind the thick tapestry of brier-rose and ivy. A frog jumped under her footstep; she recoiled, almost falling as she put her foot down hard. She windmilled her arms, regaining balance, and thought she heard the echo of a bubbling, neighing laugh.

She closed her lips on the first comment that came to mind, counting silently to five. “Behave yourself,” she said softly, “unless you plan to challenge me again today, Uisgebaugh.”

The narrow brook chortled over the rocks in answer. Seeker stepped onto the bank as the music of trickling water changed to the clatter of hooves. “I shall bide my time. I am patient.”

“So the legends tell me.” She glanced over her shoulder. Whiskey stood just as he must have risen, dripping, out of the chattering stream. He bowed his head to her with a little toss of his mane that made the gesture into mockery.

Then he snorted, a giant pale shape in the darkness, his black-splashed head raised, Roman nose in profile against the sky. “Walk into that cave, mistress, and you’ll never walk out. There’s something in there older, even, than I.”

“Your concern flatters me.”

“Hardly. Your death means my death, unless I kill you myself. I am knotted in your hair.”

Seeker had heard the ritual words before. So close after the werewolf’s visit, they all but burned her. “I am sorry.” She turned back to the green-shrouded entrance of the cave. She reached out and took a handful of hanging vines, careful to grab the canes of brier-rose between the thorns.

It was in bloom, out of season or not. The roses never faded in the Blessed Isles. Seeker was tempted to strip the five-petaled blossoms from it with her bare hands for spite.

“Permit me to protect you.”

“If you want to protect me,” Seeker answered, lifting greenery aside, “don’t tell the Mebd.” She pushed into the cave.

When the curtain of vines fell behind her, shutting the Kelpie and the starlight away, the darkness was absolute. Even her cat’s vision could not penetrate it. Seeker felt the dry stone of the cave under her boots and raised her right hand, calling foxlight around her fingers. It cast a flickering St. Elmo’s fire throughout the arched stone tunnel, revealing the marks of chisels and hammers and the gold-flecked veins of quartz for which the dwarves had delved. Vapor coiled her limbs.

Cool air redolent of moldering leaves and old charred wood filling her lungs, Seeker started down the tunnel. It descended to a shallow, spiraling slope broad enough for two lanes of traffic. The floor was almost polished, chiseled with patterns of ivy and roses to echo those that hung by the entryway. In the souls of the craftsmen who carved this mine, utility was no excuse for a thing to be anything but beautiful.

The odors of rot and burning grew stronger as she crept under the earth. She let the foxlight die off her fingers when a dull crimson glow began to cast relief shadows along the carvings. When the threads of mist lit orange-red, she almost hesitated. But if she stopped, she wouldn’t start again.

Seeker took a final step around the corner into a painful light. The tunnel opened halfway up the wall of a cavern as vast and changeable as a view of the sea. Mist coiled within it like twisted pennants, drifting in banners and streams on cool currents of air. And within the mist … lay Mist.

Fog-white tendrils scrolled about her face, a face that transformed from moment to moment while the Dragon lifted her massive head. Eyes gleaming in streaked planes of hot light, translucent as fire opals, considered Seeker. When the Dragon bent her neck to shift a wing long as a battlefield, an ashen sheen rippled over char-dark scales. The hide between glared golden, scarlet, lava cracking as it flowed.

Stirring the sea of gold and jewels on which she nested with one lazy five-taloned hand, the Dragon blinked. She shifted again—scales now more black, like sharp-chipped obsidian; now red as magma; now a dark hot gold like molten steel. The wings first spread wide and then the body coiled sinuous and narrow—the head horned and then maned and then antlered a moment later.

The eyes remained unchanged.

The Dragon’s voice rang like forged iron. “Elaine Elizabeth Andraste, Seeker of the Changed. Enter freely into my domain, secure in love and trust.”

“Dana,” Seeker tried to say, or one of the Dragon’s other Names. “Mist.” Her knees went to water. She fell under the density of the Dragon’s presence, ducking her face toward bedrock. Carven stone scored her palms; the heat of blood smeared the petals on the bas-relief briers. She managed one breath, and then another, and then her voice. “Grandmother Dragon. I am not Elaine Andraste. I have no Name.”

Hot breath surrounded her, fragrant of summer. The voice was tolerant and amused, maternal in its enormity. “Of course you have a name, child. Your mother gave it you, did she not?”

“I am the Seeker of the Changed. The Queen of the Daoine Sidhe has me tangled in her hair.” Something stiffened her spine as she said the words, however, and Seeker raised her eyes to meet Mist’s. “She’s stripped me of such insignificant things.”

The Dragon chuckled, rattling small stones loose from the tunnel roof. Seeker felt the vibration between her teeth. “Foolish child. Has no one ever explained the rules to you?”

“Yes.” It’s no worse than being condescended to by the Mebd, and you bow your head to her. But another rogue voice whispered, But here you have a choice, and Seeker pressed her slashed hand against the stone and, wincing with pain, pushed herself to her feet. “I know the rules. I’ve spent my three chances, Grandmother Dragon.”

“Chances are nothing. These are the older rules, and even the Mebd must abide them—that in life one may be bound or bought, but in the end you go to judgment naked, clad only in what you were born with and what you have earned, lessened only by what you have sold or given away. That which is taken by force, for good or for ill, goes unconsidered. Understand?”

It is perilous to admit weakness. It is even more perilous to lie to dragons. “Mist, I do not.”

“No matter. You will. For mortal men, immortality is of the soul—but for Faerie immortality is of the body only, as they have no souls. And you were born mortal, Elaine Andraste.” The ever-changing head rocked from side to side.

“I was born a changeling. I am of Faerie now.”

Mist seemed to ignore the statement. Pricked ears swiveled forward at the top of the mountainous head—then they smoothed into scales and antlers emerged in their place. The Dragon that is all dragons. Seeker thought the Dragon smiled.

“Perhaps that is as it is.” Wryness colored the voice, and a forked tongue thick as a hawser darted forward to taste Seeker’s sweat. And then a lightning shift, quick as the flicker of that tongue. “Your task is to bind me.”

Seeker blinked at the suddenness of it. “Yes.” A sour taste filled her mouth, her heart hammering in her chest. If she slays me, I don’t have to worry about the Mebd—or my crimes in her service—anymore. Another realization, a heartbeat later, like a ragged follower to the first—But I don’t want to die.

And if I die, Gharne and Uisgebaugh die with me.

“Here, in this place, you stand in the heart of my power. Even your Queen cannot protect you.”

“Yes.” A cold fear, like a dagger pressed up through the diaphragm and under Seeker’s breastbone.

“And despite this, you came before me.”

Seeker swallowed. Dangerous to lie to dragons. Gold coins rattled like beach pebbles beneath the Dragon’s feet. Seeker thought of the sound of a shaken length of chain. She understood that she was being tested, but she did not know the nature of the test. “Yes.”

“Why?”

What is the right answer? Quickly, without thinking, Seeker closed her eyes and blurted, “Because you asked nicely.”

Silence—a great and echoing silence—followed by laughter that knocked Seeker from her feet again and rolled her aside, literal gales of laughter. Seeker curled into a ball, huddled on the knotty carven granite, arms drawn up to protect her face. It went on for a long time, smelling of roses and the end of winter, and at last trailed off with a satisfied sigh.

Seeker risked uncoiling enough to open her eyes and look out. The Dragon’s enormous red-shattered eye hung over her, blinking lazily. “You’ll do,” the Dragon said. “When the time comes, remember this conversation. What I have told you will prove useful. And take some pains to conceal it from your mistress—she would be angry.”