Valiant mtof-2 Page 17

  "Here," Ruth said, handing over the harp.

  "We'll take care of him," Lolli said.

  "I'll be there as soon as I can." Luis hesitated shutting the door.

  The taxi started to move and Val saw Ruth's pale face staring from the back window, her lips mouthing something Val couldn't make out as the car got farther and farther away.

  Chapter 12

  And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine Burned like the ruby fire set In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine, Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate, Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.

  —Oscar Wilde, "In the Gold Room: A Harmony"

  A horse-drawn carriage had stopped beneath the arch of the bridge support. It was a long way from the park or anywhere else that a carriage should be and the dun horse looked restless in the pale, dawn light. There was no driver.

  "Do you think someone took a ride to the supermarket?" Val asked.

  "That's no horse," Luis said, pulling Val wide of it. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips cracked with cold. "Be glad you can't see what it really is."

  It looked like any other city horse, with its big sagging back and fat hooves. Val squinted at it until the image blurred, but she still didn't know what Luis saw and she decided not to ask. "Come on."

  Sticking near the opposite wall, she crept beneath the overpass, Luis right behind her. She knocked on the stump, but as they slipped through the doorway, Val heard someone banging down the bridge stairs.

  It was too late for them to do anything but gape at Greyan. His hands were covered in blood, blood that dripped off the tips of his fingers and clotted on the dusty steps, too bright to seem real. He held his bronze knives together in one hand. They, too, glistened with gore.

  "It is done," the ogre said. He looked tired. "Little humans, let me lesson you to intrude no more in the dealings of the fey."

  "Where's Ravus?" Val demanded. "What happened?"

  "Would you fight me again, mortal? Your loyalty is commendable, if misplaced. Save your courage for a more worthy foe." He pushed past her and walked down the remaining steps. "I have no lust for dealing more death today."

  Everything narrowed to that moment, that word. Death. Surely not, Val told herself, touching the cold stone wall for support. For a moment, she didn't think she could walk the rest of the way up the stairs. She couldn't bear it.

  Luis walked slowly up the steps, up to the landing, and then back down. He brought his finger to his lips. "She's in there."

  Val started moving, too fast, and Luis's hand clamped down on her arm. "Quiet," he hissed.

  Val nodded, not daring to ask about Ravus. Together, they inched up the steps, each footfall causing a little puff of dust, the creak of the iron frame, the jangle of the harp strings, things that Val hoped were hidden by the steady rumble of traffic overhead. As they neared the landing, she heard Mabry's voice, full of anxiety. "Where do you keep it? I know you have to have some poison somewhere. Come now, do me one last service."

  Val waited to hear Ravus's answer, but he didn't speak.

  Luis looked grim.

  "You used to be so eager to please," Mabry went on bitterly. Something fell inside the room and Val thought she heard the sharp sound of shattering glass.

  Val crept forward, parting the plastic sheeting. Ravus's desk was turned over, his books and papers scattered across the room. The armchair was sliced cleanly across the back, leaking feathers and foam. A few candles flickered from the floor, some encircled with rivulets of wax. The stone of the walls was grooved with deep cuts. Ravus lay stretched out on his back, one hand over his chest as blood rose between his fingers. Dark, wet streaks painted the floor, as though he had crawled across it. Mabry bent over a cabinet, one hand rummaging through the contents, the other holding a dish that contained the red remains of something.

  Val crawled closer, heedless of Luis's warning fingers digging into her skin, fear numbing her to anything but the sight of Ravus's body.

  "Do you know how long I've waited for you to die?" Mabry asked, her voice almost frantic now. "Finally, I would be free from exile. Free to return to the Bright Court and my work. But now all the pleasure I thought to have from your death is robbed from me.

  "Someone has to appear to have murdered all those faeries, so at least you were good for one thing. No one likes loose ends." Mabry selected a vial from the cabinet and took a breath. "This will have to do—my new Lady is impatient and wants things taken care of before Midwinter. Isn't it ironic that after all this time, after all your loyalty, it is I who was chosen to be her agent in the Unseelie Court? I would not have thought the Queen of the Seelie Court would want a double agent of her own. Perhaps I can come to enjoy working for Silarial. After all, she's proven to be as ruthless a mistress as my own dear Lady."

  Val parted the plastic sheeting and crawled into the room. Ravus's head was turned toward the wall where Tamson's sword hung, his golden eyes dull and unfocused. There was a deep pit in his chest that his hand half-covered, as though he were pledging something in death. The room reeked of a weird, heavy sweetness that made Val want to gag.

  I cross my heart and hope to die.

  Val was shaking as she stood, no longer caring about Mabry, about politics or plans or anything except Ravus.

  She couldn't look away from the blood that stained the edges of his lips and pinked his teeth. His skin was far too pale, the green of it the only color left.

  Mabry spun, the plate in her hand clearly holding the piece of flesh missing from Ravus's chest. His heart. Val felt dizziness threaten to overwhelm her. She wanted to scream, but her throat closed up on the sound.

  "Luis," said Mabry, "your brother will be sorry to hear you tired so quickly of my hospitality."

  Val half-turned. Luis was standing behind her, a muscle in his jaw trembling.

  "And my harp." Mabry's voice held a certain, teasing pleasure that was at odds with their surroundings, with the broken furnishings and the blood. "Ravus, look what your servants have brought. A little music."

  "Why are you talking to him?" Val shouted. "Can't you see he's dead?"

  At the sound of her voice, Ravus shifted his head slightly. "Val?" he groaned.

  Val jumped, edging back, away from his body. It wasn't possible for him to speak. Hope warred with horror and she felt the gorge rise in her throat.

  "Go ahead, Luis," Mabry said. "Play it. I'm sure he would rest easier knowing."

  Luis strummed one string and Tamson's voice echoed through the chamber, recounting his tale. In the moment that Tamson said the word "betrayed," the glass sword fell from the wall, cracking deep under the surface, like ice on a lake.

  "Tamson," Ravus said softly. His head came up, eyes hard with hate, but his arm was too slippery with blood to support him. He fell back with a groan.

  Mabry's lip curled and she stalked over to Ravus. "Oh, to see your face when you stuck your sword through him. Your hair will be the next string in my harp, wailing your pathetic story for all time."

  "Get away from him," Val said, picking up the broken leg of a table.

  Mabry held up the plate. "Surprising, isn't it, that trolls can live a time without their hearts? He's got perhaps an hour if I don't hurry him along, but I'll dash his heart to the ground if you don't stay out of my way."

  Val went still, dropping the wood.

  "Well and good," Mabry said. "I'll leave him in your capable hands."

  Her hooves clattered down the steps, gown sweeping after her.

  Val dropped to her knees beside Ravus. A long, clawed finger reached up to touch her face. His lips were smeared a dark crimson. "I wished for you to come. I shouldn't have, but I did."

  "Tell me what to bring you," Val said. "What herbs to combine."

  He shook his head. "This I cannot heal."

  "Then I'll go get your heart." Val said, her voice hard. She jumped up, ducking through the plastic and down the stairs. She hit the wall and
pushed through the doorway onto the street. The cold air stung her hot face, but both Mabry and the carriage were gone.

  Everything had spun madly, dizzily so far out of control that she couldn't stop it. There was no way. No plan.

  The only thing she had any power over was herself. She could walk away from here, run away again and again until she was so cold and numb that she felt nothing at all. At least she would be the one making the decision; she would be in control. She wouldn't have to watch Ravus die.

  There, squatting on the sidewalk, she choked with dry-eyed sobs. It was like being sick when there was nothing left in her stomach. She ground her nails into the wrist of her hand, the pain focusing her mind until she could force herself to walk back up the stairs and not scream.

  Luis was kneeling near Ravus, their hands clasped.

  "A cord of amaranth," the troll said hoarsely, a red bubble forming at his lip. "The sleep of a child, the scent of summer. Weave it into a crown for your brother and set it on his head with your own hands."

  "I don't know how to get those things," Luis said, his voice breaking.

  Val stared at them both, then at the wall and the dusty blinds. "Forgive me," she said.

  Ravus turned to her, but she couldn't wait for his answer. She tugged at the cloth, ripping down the curtains, and the room flooded with light. Dust motes danced through the air.

  "What are you doing?" Luis screamed.

  Val ignored him, rushing to the next window.

  Ravus pushed himself up on one elbow. He opened his mouth to speak, but his skin had already gone to gray and his mouth froze, slightly parted, words silenced. He became stone, a statue made by the hand of some twisted sculptor, and the smeared blood turned to rubble.

  Luis ran to where she was ripping down more drapes. "Are you crazy?"

  "We need time to stop Mabry," Val shouted back. "He won't die while he's stone. He won't die until dusk."

  Luis nodded slowly. "I thought I could—I didn't think of the sunlight."

  "Ravus can weave the crown for Dave himself when he wakes up. That was what you asked him about, wasn't it?" Val picked up Tamson's sword, shining so brightly in the sunlight that she could not look at it directly. She held the hilt between the palms of her two hands. "We'll find Mabry and then we'll save them both."

  Luis took a step back from her. "I thought magic swords weren't supposed to break."

  Val sat down cross-legged on the floor, letting the sword rest across her knees. The crack was visible underneath the glass, but when she ran her fingers over the surface, it was smooth.

  "Mabry said something about being an agent in the Unseelie Court."

  "A double agent." Luis spun the ball on his lip ring with his thumb and index finger as he considered. "And she was looking for poison."

  "The faeries in the park said Silarial had come to see Mabry. They thought Mabry had some evidence. Maybe they made some kind of deal?"

  "A deal for her to poison someone?"

  "Okay," Val said. "If Silarial knew Mabry had been responsible for the poisoning of the Seelie exiles, then she really had Mabry over a barrel. She'd have to do whatever Silarial said to save her skin. Even go back to her own court and kill someone."

  "My brother poisoned them, didn't he?" Luis asked.

  "What?"

  "That's what Dave did for Mabry. He poisoned all those faeries so it would look like Ravus was behind their deaths. What she did for Dave was tie me up in her house. That's what you meant when you said Silarial is responsible. You mean she orchestrated it, but someone else did the poisoning."

  "I didn't mean that. We don't know that."

  Luis said nothing.

  "I'm surprised you care," Val said, frustration and fear making her snap. "I didn't think you would think killing faeries was all that big of a deal."

  "You thought I was the killer, didn't you?" Luis turned his face away from her.

  "Of course I did." Val knew she was being cruel, but the words poured past her lips like they were living things, like they were spiders and worms and beetles eager to get out of her mouth. "All your talk about faeries being dangerous and then, oh look, they're getting killed with rat poison. If you'd ever guessed Dave was the poisoner, what would you have done? Would you have really stopped him?"

  "Of course I would have," Luis spat.

  "Oh, come on. You hate faeries."

  "I'm afraid of them," Luis shouted, then took a deep breath. "My dad had the Sight and it made him crazy. My mom's dead. My brother is catatonic. I'm a one-eyed fucking bum at seventeen. Faeryland must be a nonstop party."

  "Well, then, break out the champagne," Val said, walking so close to him that she could feel the heat of his body. She swept her hand around the room. "Another one of them's dead."

  "That's not what I meant." Luis turned away from her, the light washing the color from his face. He walked to Ravus's body, reached out a hand to touch the stone, and then pulled back as though he was about to be burned. "I just don't know what we can do."

  "Who do you think Silarial wants Mabry to poison? It has to be someone in the Unseelie Court."

  "That's what Ravus called the Night Court."

  Val walked to the map on the wall of Ravus's room. There, outside New York City, far from the pins marking each of the poisonings, were two black marks, one in Upstate New York, the other in New Jersey. She touched the one in Jersey. "Here."

  "But who? This is way over our heads."

  "Isn't there a new king there?" Val asked. "Mabry said something about Midwinter. Could he be the one she's supposed to make dead?"

  "Maybe."

  "Even if he isn't—it doesn't matter. All we need to know is where she is."

  "But the Courts aren't places humans are supposed to be, especially the Unseelie Court. Most faeries won't even go there."

  "We have to go—we have to get Ravus's heart. He's going to die if we don't."

  "What are we going to do? Go down there and ask for it?"

  "Pretty much," Val said. As she got up, she saw a tiny vial of Never lying beside asphodel and rose hips. She lifted it up.

  "What's that for?" Luis asked, although he must have known perfectly well.

  Her thoughts strayed to Dave, but even his pallid skin and blackened mouth didn't make her any less hungry for Never. She might need it. She needed it now. One pinch and all this pain would be gone.

  But she stuffed it into her pack and fished out the return train tickets she'd bought weeks before, holding them out to Luis. The paper was so worn from riding around in her bag that it felt as soft as cloth between her fingers, but when Luis took his, the ticket sliced shallowly over her flesh. For a moment, her skin seemed so surprised that it forgot to bleed.

  Chapter 13

  Immediately after the monsters, die the heroes.

  —Roberto Calasso,

  The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

  Val perched in her seat for a few moments, then paced restlessly in the aisle. Each time the conductor passed her, she asked him what the next stop was, were they running late, could they go faster. He said they couldn't. Glancing over at the sword swaddled in a dirty blanket and tied with shoelaces, he hurried on.

  Val had had to show the hilt to prove that it was merely decorative when she boarded. It was only glass, after all. She'd explained that she was making a delivery.

  Luis spoke softly into Val's cell, his head turned against the window. He'd called all the hospitals he could think of before he thought to call Ruth's phone and now that he'd gotten her, his body had relaxed, his fingers no longer digging into the canvas of Val's backpack, jaw no longer clenched so tight that the muscles in his face jumped.

  He clicked off the phone. "You only have a little power left."

  Val nodded. "What did she say?"

  "Dave is in critical condition. Lolli fucked off. She couldn't handle the hospital, hates the smell or something. They're giving Ruth a hard time because she won't tell them what Dave took, and, of co
urse, they won't let her in to see him, 'cause she's not family."

  Val fingered the torn edge of the plastic seat, nostrils flaring as she breathed hard. It was more fury, heaped on what already felt like too much fury to bear. "Maybe you—"

  "Nothing I could do." Luis looked out the window. "He's not going to make it, is he?"

  "He will," Val said firmly. She could save Ravus. Ravus could save Dave. Like black dominoes, set up in winding rows, and the most important thing was that she didn't tip over.

  Looking at her own hands, splintered and smudged with dirt, it was hard to imagine that they would be the hands that saved anyone.

  Her thoughts settled on the Never in her bag.

  It promised to sing down her veins, to make her swifter and stronger and finer than she was. She wouldn't be stupid about it. She wouldn't wind up like Dave. Not more than a pinch. Not more than once today. She just needed it now, to keep herself together, to face Mabry, to let all the rage and sorrow be swallowed up into something larger than herself.

  Luis settled on the other side of the seat, lying down as much as he could, eyes closed, arms folded across his chest, head pillowed on her backpack and pushed up against the metal lip of the window. He wouldn't know if she slipped into the bathroom.

  Val stood, but something caught her eye. The cloth wrapping had slipped, revealing a little of the glass sword, ethereal in the sunlight. It made her think of icicles hanging from Ravus's mother's hair.

  Balance. Like a well-made sword. Perfect balance.

  She couldn't trust herself with Never working inside of her, making her alternately formidable or distracted, dreamy or intense. Off balance. Unbalanced. She didn't know how long she could keep herself from taking it, but she could keep putting it off for another moment. And maybe a moment after that. Val bit her lip and resumed her pacing.