Whiskey and Water (39 page)

Who is that?" Across the floor, Ian
paused with his hand on Cairbre's sleeve, in the act of drawing the bard into
one of the privy alcoves. They had left Jewels behind, with instructions to
stay out of trouble.

Cairbre didn't turn. "Another story
of the Devil," he said. "Nothing to concern ourselves with." He pushed
an arras aside and entered the dark cubby. A pointed arch paned in diamonds
looked over a vast and empty sea, or perhaps an abyss only. With no moon to
cast reflections, it was impossible to tell.

"Many devils?" Ian asked.

"One for everyone, some would
say." The bard held the tapestry for as long as it took Ian to step within.
"I hold it is a lesser number, or Hell would not seem such a lonely place.
And I know what you're about to suggest ..."

Ian folded his arms and leaned back against
the wall. He could have claimed the velvet-upholstered seat by the window, but
it held no allure. "And why not? What's wrong with it?"

"Do you think
be w
ould let
himself be played that way?" The brush of the back of Cairbre's hand encompassed
the palace they stood within, the realm that sprawled around them, and the lord
of all of it. "Do you think he wouldn't notice, if you tried? Like a
sparrow playing off hawks against each other."

"When one hawk's on your tail
..." Ian answered, and let it hang there. He joined Cairbre at the window,
and they gazed down over the end of things. " 'And all was without form
and void, and darkness was upon the waters,' " Ian muttered, and grinned
behind his hand when Cairbre flinched at the scripture, cupping scarred fingers
over his ear. "What did you in New York with Àine?"

"Your Highness?" Cairbre raised
an eyebrow in profound innocence, turning away from the window.

"The Cat Anna. The Queen of the
Unseelie Court. You met her in New York. Would you demean yourself with a
lie?"

"I was looking after your
interests," Cairbre said, after thinking it over.

"By consorting with my mother's
enemies? I should turn you into a tree."

"Your mother usurped your place —
"

"Which I will deal with on my own, at
the proper time."

" —and she killed Hope," Cairbre
finished.

That brought the Prince up short, as
Cairbre had planned. Ian's lover, Cairbre's daughter. Dead in Times Square.

Ian's arms stayed folded and his chin
dropped, a stubborn gleam in his green eyes. "As soon say she killed Murchaud.
Her father and her granddaughter. No, though I could have hated her then. Those
deaths are the Dragon's — "

"I cannot," Cairbre said,
meditatively, "seek vengeance on a dragon."

"And must you have vengeance?"

"I need it. If you were the Elf-knight
you play at being, you would not hesitate. And you deserve the throne, my
liege."

Ian grasped Cairbre's shoulder. "It's
treason to say that. And treason to call me that." "Then let it be
treason — "

"No." Ian squeezed, hard, his
fingers narrow on Cairbre's meaty shoulder, and drew a grunt. "I'll handle
that in my own time. Stay away from Àine — "

"Is that an order . . . Your
Highness?"

Not
my Liege.
Not this time. The
relief went down bitter. "Yes. Can you be trusted to obey it?" The
bard stared at him. "Whelp," he said. "What a King you would
have made."

Ian reached out and slid the curtain back,
releasing their close atmosphere into the cooler drafts of the enormous
ballroom. "I'm my mother's heir."

Ian and Cairbre were not the only ones to
note the figure out of
Paradise Lost
gyring from the rafters. A couple
who had paused by the entry in particular paused to watch, the woman bird-thin
in a dress the color of smoke, hung from one bony shoulder in an almost Grecian
style. The silk was no softer than the weathered skin it exposed; Fionnghuala
looked very different with her hair upswept and dark pearls gleaming in her
earlobes, but the feathered cloak she wore like the richest stole toiled any
chance she might have had of remaining incognito. It draped her shoulders more
softly than ermine, the blood-dark silk-and-velvet lining clinging to her form.

Michael, muttering darkly to herself, had
changed her appearance somewhat. She was at her ease in a man's pearl-gray
cutaway coat over a jade waistcoat that matched her pinions. Her hair was
greased severely back, a green velvet ribbon trailing over her shoulders and a
black silk bag adding the illusion of fullness to a tiny, almost hypothetical
ponytail. She wore her wings manifest, a great bowering archway of feathers
that rose over her and framed her slight body, and a rapier gleamed at her hip.
The carrier hung mostly concealed under her waistcoat, the cutaway falling
clear of the scabbard. It could have looked ridiculous, a heedless jigsaw of
eras and styles, but her carriage made it sublime.

Fionnghuala was drinking champagne.
Michael was not drinking. "I should not be here."

"You promised you would speak with
him," Fionnghuala answered. She stepped closer to Michael and lowered her
voice, but her eyes never left Lucifer, who was turning in a slow, deliberate
circle to greet the black-winged monster closing on him. "It is to all our
benefit if they
speak,
Michael. If He pushes Lucifer far enough — "

"The significance of the Dragon
Prince is not lost on me." Michael ran her nails along the rapier's hilt. "And
the question of benefit is still open. Some of us don't mind fighting."

The devils bowed to one another, one
cruel-eyed and smoking, rose petals sizzling under his footsteps, the other
white and fair and wearing a crown of dancing shadows on his brow. Around the room,
guests stepped into the shadows, crowded against the walls. Finally, the
theater they'd come to witness.

"Do you think they'll brawl?"

"It's the Morningstar's party,"
Michael said. "Satan will purr and provoke, but he would only be humiliated
if he started something here. Which is not to say that he won't arrogate any
attention he can muster.

"You don't suppose he was invited, do
you?

"Why not?" a third voice
interjected. Nuala turned her head, already knowing who she'd see. Christian
had come up behind them silently, dressed as a pop-culture superhero, boots and
gloves and a scarlet body stocking revealing his physique, a mask that did
nothing to conceal his identity shadowing his eyes.

He continued, "
I
was. Perhaps
he considers it's better to know where the Devil is than leave him lying about
unattended."

"Perhaps he means me to think he is
gathering support to renew his war with Heaven," Michael said, without any
sign that Christian had startled or discomfited her. She might have been
expecting the Devil to speak. "Would you fight?"

"I'm a lover," Christian
answered, fiddling his mask. "And you two are blocking this doorway far
more effectively than you are my love life. Perhaps we could step to one
side?"

Michael glowered; Fionnghuala placed the
angel's hand on her own elbow and led her aside. "Do we give way before
devils?" Michael asked under her breath. Christian's wink said he heard
it, but he passed with a hint of a bow.

"We do when we're causing a fire
hazard." Fionnghuala's cloak rustled and hissed where it brushed Michael's
wings.

The archangel didn't laugh. But she did
send a single, searing glance over her shoulder in the direction of the
other
devils. "Pray let us greet our host and the guest of honor, that I may
receive my measure of scorn from each and we may be away."

Fionnghuala nudged Michael, a disrespect
bred of familiarity, and when she glared said sweetly, "It's not just
Lucifer who is prone to moments of arrogance."

"Maybe not," Michael answered.
"But
I
know how to hold my tongue to my betters. When I can find them."

They turned to follow Christian. The other
guests were still gathered the walls, attempting unobtrusiveness or having
simply forgotten to reclaim the center of the ballroom. In particular,
Fionnghuala noticed that Marlowe and the blond Mage, Matthew, were engaged in a
head-bent conversation with Lily Wakeman and the boy she had brought along, the
mortal from the dance club. None of them seemed to have noticed Christian's
entrance. After Satan's arrival, perhaps the guests were exhausted, and Michael
had been mistaken for another servant in angel drag. Now, though, heads turned,
voices stilled.

Lily did not look. If anything, she bent
closer in her four-cornered conversation, as if she meant to physically step
between Matthew and Geoff. The former was lecturing—practically haranguing—the latter.
Matthew's low tones were more than compensated by the violence of his gestures;
even Kit found it politic to lay one hand on Matthew's shoulder, as if to
soothe a nervous horse. Matthew was not pleased to find Geoff in Hell.

Geoff, surprisingly, was holding his own.
Whatever responsibility Matthew considered himself to have assumed for Geoffrey
and Jewels, they were not, in the final analysis, Matthew's problem. And Geoff was
unwilling to place himself in the position of becoming Matthew's problem,
thank you very much.

Fionnghuala turned her attention that way,
allowing Michael to sweep her along, and stared at the back of Lily's neck.

It took thirty seconds of concentration,
but Lily's chin came up. Her head turned, her expression silencing Matthew
midsentence. He shut his mouth and shoved his hands in his pockets.

Fionnghuala squeezed Michael's arm. The
angel tugged her glare free of the Morningstar and glowered until Nuala jerked
her chin at Lily and the men. The angel's wings fanned, half embracing Nuala like
an upended bathtub trapping a madonna.

"Watch," Fionnghuala said,
squeezing her arm. "This will work much better than breaking lightbulbs
with your brain."

Lily's nostrils flared as Christian
covered the distance remaining and paused beside his brothers, taking Satan's
hand. The justifications thronging her belly failed as swiftly as she could
invent them.
But I'm here,
she tried, a fine stab at denial denied when
logic answered,
You're not embracing a bat winged devil ad a friend.

I will think about this later.
Abruptly, she didn't want Christian to see
her, to know she was here. It felt like an enormous betrayal to have come.
Crushed rose petals cloyed, as if the air writhed with invisible maggots,
dizzying.

Lily glanced around, reflexively, to see
who might have noticed her staring, to get her eyes off Christian before he
felt her dismay. And found the gray-haired woman of the previous evening
staring back at her, beside a green-winged angel "who wore an eerily
familiar profile, an aquiline nose and a contemplative frown.

"Michael," Lily said, and felt
her knees go weak as they hadn't when she saw Christian on promenade in Hell.
"Fuck me. Is everybody I know a devil?"

"What?" Matthew started to turn,
Kit beside him. Geoff stepped forward, but whatever he was about to say died
on his lips as Lily squeezed his hand, and reached out and grabbed Matthew's
with her other one.

"Take me home," she said,
turning her back on Fionnghuala, and Michael, and the whole glorious mess.
"Get me the fuck out of here. Take me home
now."

East
Village Buffalo Poppy

T
o his credit, although Geoff cast a longing look across
the ballroom toward Jewels and her new lord, he never once looked as if he was
about to abandon Lily. He gritted his teeth and nodded gamely, and turned
toward Matthew with a frown. "Can you get us home?"

The implied trust surprised Matthew. Kit's
surprise ran parallel, though he hid his smile behind his hand. He hadn't
expected chivalry from this ragged-haired, lovesick boy.

And then he checked himself. A boy who
wasn't so much younger than he, Kit Marlowe, had been in Rheims, where he had
first become a pawn of the Prometheans. Scholar, cobbler, poet, spy—it was easy
to forget, in four hundred years of living, in and out of Faerie, in and out of
Hell, that twenty-five years was not so very little. "I'll take you
home," he said, releasing his grip on Matthew's arm. "Let us find a
mirror, shall we?"

"A mirror? What do you need a mirror
for?"

Marlowe patted Matthew on the shoulder,
and Matthew found himself grinning in naked relief; notorious rakehell,
sodomite, and playboy he might be remembered as, but lately Christopher Marlowe
was the only person who seemed willing to touch Matthew without some
implication lying predatory behind it.

"I'll teach you a trick,"
Marlowe said. His gesture swept up Lily and Geoff as he turned. "Follow
me." Kit knew his way around Hell. They left the ballroom behind quickly, eluding
the scent of flowers and the strains of music with a few sharp turns down
dustless corridors. There were no roses and lilies here, just long hallways
broad enough for a procession, empty of everything but perfectly placed
statuary, well-framed paintings, and the occasional chair crafted of rare hardwoods
and upholstered in silk and brocades.