[Merry Gentry 05] - Mistral's Kiss

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Segna had tried to kill me twice now, but I couldn’t hate her. It would have been so much easier if I could have hated her.

  CHAPTER 13

  IF I HADN’T BEEN AFRAID OF GETTING STABBED ON THE BONES, I would have swum out to where Sholto and Agnes stood holding Segna. The other two guards, Ivar and Fyfe, were still in the water, still close, but not holding the fallen woman. The water reached to my shoulders, stinging in the claw marks that Segna had made on me, and plenty deep enough to swim in, if it hadn’t hidden those bones beneath its surface. My blood trailed into the black water, lost.

  Sholto was cradling Segna’s head and upper body as well as he could with only one good arm. Agnes was still beside him, helping hold her sister hag above the water. I stumbled on the soft bottom and went under. I came up sputtering.

  Agnes’s voice came clear to me as she said to Sholto, “How can you want that weak thing? How can that be what you want?”

  I heard earth sliding, water moving. I turned to find Doyle and Frost in the water, wading toward me.

  Agnes yelled, “It is her kill or she will never be queen.”

  “We do not come to kill for her,” Doyle said.

  Frost said, “We come to guard her, as your king’s guard protects him.” His face was an arrogant mask. His pale, expensive suit soaked up the dirty water. His long silver hair trailed in the water. Somehow, he seemed more dirtied by the water than anyone else, as if it spoiled his white-and-silver beauty more grievously.

  Doyle’s blackness just seemed to melt into the water. The fact that his long braid trailed in the water didn’t bother him. The only thing he worried about keeping clean was his gun. Modern guns shoot just fine wet, but he’d begun using firearms when dry powder meant life or death, and old habits die hard.

  I waited for them to reach me, because I wanted the comfort of their presence while I did this. What I really wanted to do was fall into their arms and start screaming. I didn’t want to kill anymore—I wanted life for my people. I wanted to bring life back to faerie, not death. Not death.

  I waited, and let their hands give me solace. Let them lift me above the soft, treacherous bottom and guide me through the water. I didn’t collapse against them, but I let myself take courage from the strength of their hands.

  A bone brushed my leg. “Bone,” I said.

  “A ridge of bone, by the feel of it,” Doyle said.

  “Are you hoping Segna dies before you get here?” Agnes asked, voice derisive. The tears shining on her face made me discount the tone. She was losing someone she had lived with, fought beside, loved, for centuries. She’d hated me before this; now she’d hate me even more. I did not want her as my enemy, but it seemed as if no matter what I did, I couldn’t avoid it.

  “I’m trying not to share her fate,” I said.

  “I hope you do,” Agnes said.

  Sholto, tears plain on his face, looked at her. “If you ever raise a hand to Meredith again, I will be done with you.”

  Agnes stared at him, searched his face, as she held Segna’s body. She stared into the face of the man she loved. Whatever she saw there made her bow her head. “I will do as my king bids.” The words were bitter; it seemed to tighten my own throat just to hear them. They must have burned in Agnes’s throat.

  “Swear it,” Sholto said.

  “What oath would you have of me?” she asked, head still bowed.

  “The oath that Meredith gave, that will do.”

  She shivered, and it wasn’t from cold. “I swear by the darkness that eats all things that I will not harm the princess here and now.”

  “No,” Sholto said, “swear that you will never harm her.”

  She bowed lower, dry black hair trailing into the water. “I cannot make that oath, my king.”

  “Why can you not?”

  “Because I mean her harm.”

  “You will not swear to never hurt her?” He sounded surprised.

  “I will not; cannot.”

  Ivar of the bird voice said, “May I suggest, Your Highness, that she swear the oath to not harm the princess now, so we can all move about freely. We can deal with her treachery later, once we’ve dealt with the urgencies of the present moment.”

  Sholto clutched Segna to him, and her yellowed hands with their broken claws grasped at him. “You are right,” he said. He looked at Agnes, who was still bent over the water and Segna’s body. “Make what oath you will, Agnes.”

  She straightened up, the water streaming from her hair. “I swear by the darkness that eats all things that I will not harm the princess in this moment.”

  “May I suggest something, King Sholto?” Doyle asked.

  “Yes,” Sholto answered, though his eyes were on the dying woman in his arms.

  “Black Agnes should add to her oath that she will not harm the princess while we are here in your garden.”

  Sholto just nodded and whispered, “Do as he says, Agnes.”

  “Do the sidhe guards give orders to our king now?” she said.

  “Do it, Agnes!” he screamed at her, and the scream ended in a sob. He folded his body over Segna and wept openly.

  She glared at me, not Doyle, while she spoke, and each word seemed dragged out of her. “I swear by the darkness that eats all things that I will not harm the princess while we stand in the dead gardens.”

  “I think that is as good as we get from her,” Frost said, voice low.

  Doyle nodded. “Aye.”

  They both looked at me, as if they knew this was a bad idea. I addressed their look aloud. “There’s no way around this, only through it. We have to live through this moment to get to the next.”

  Sholto raised his face enough to say, “Segna will not live through this moment.”

  He hadn’t been this upset in Los Angeles when I’d done something much more horrible to Nerys the Grey, his other hag. I didn’t point this out, but I couldn’t help noting it. They had both been his lovers—but then again, I knew better than most that you don’t feel for your lovers all the same. Segna meant something to him, and Nerys had not. Simple, painful, true.

  I looked past the dying hag to Black Agnes, who watched Sholto intently. I realized in that moment that she didn’t just weep for Segna’s death, but like me remembered that he hadn’t wept for Nerys. Was she wondering if he would weep for her? Or did she already know that he had loved Segna more? I wasn’t sure, but I could tell it was a raw and painful thought that cut across her features. She stared at the weeping king, and her thoughts carved loss across her face. She would not come out of this night’s work simply mourning Segna.

  She seemed to feel the weight of my gaze, because she turned. She looked at me, the grief in her face changing into a fine, burning hatred. I saw my death in her eyes. Agnes would kill me, if she could.

  Doyle’s hand tightened on my arm. Frost stepped over the bones in front of us, hidden by the water, and put his broad shoulders in the way of Agnes’s look, as if her look alone could somehow hurt me. That time was past. But there would be more nights, and more ways of making one mortal princess dead.

  “She has given her oath,” Sholto said in a choked voice. “It is all we can do tonight.” That last was some acknowledgment that he saw what we saw in Agnes’s face. I’d liked to have believed that he could keep a tight enough rein on the hag, but her look said there would not be a leash of honor, or love, stronger than her hate.

  I didn’t want to kill Segna, didn’t want to end her life while Sholto wept for her. And now I knew that I must also kill Agnes or she’d see me dead. I might not do the deed myself, and it might not happen today, but I would have to call for her death. She was too dangerous, too well placed among the sluagh to be allowed to live.

  As I let the thought come all the way up to the front of my mind, I didn’t know whether to laugh, or weep. I didn’t want to kill one hag, and had hated killing the first, yet I was already planning the death of the third.

  Frost and Doyle lifted me over the hidden
ridge of bones. They half floated me to Sholto, where he cried over the hag. They tried to let me go, but I sank to my chin when they released me. They grabbed me in the same moment, both fishing me higher above the black water.

  “She must stand on her own two feet for this kill,” Agnes said, her voice holding some of the deadly heat of her look.

  “I don’t know if I’m tall enough,” I said.

  “I have to agree with the hag,” Fyfe said. “The princess must stand on her own for the kill to be hers.”

  Frost and Doyle exchanged glances, still holding me between them. “Let me down slowly,” I said. “I think I can touch bottom.”

  They did what I asked. If I kept my chin pointed up, I could just barely keep the dirty water out of my mouth.

  “We have no weapons with us that will kill the immortal,” Doyle said.

  “Nor we,” Ivar said.

  Sholto looked at me, his face raw with grief, and I fought to meet that look. He moved, and a tiny wave slapped my face. I began treading water, so I could keep my head above the surface. As I did so, my leg brushed something—I thought it was a bone, but it moved. It was Segna’s arm, limp in the water. My leg brushed it again, and the arm convulsed.

  “The bones are a killing thing,” I said.

  Then Segna said in a rattling voice, thick with things that should never be in the throat of the living, “Kiss me one…last…time.”

  Sholto leaned over her with a sob.

  Ivar moved everyone back to give us room. He made certain that Agnes moved back, too, which meant that Segna’s body began to sink below the water. I moved forward, tried to help catch her, as I treaded water. I got a hand on her body, felt the weight of her cloak wrap around my legs. I felt her tense a heartbeat before her arm, which was behind me now, swept forward. I had time to turn and put both hands on her arm, to keep the claws from my side.

  “Merry!” Doyle yelled.

  I had time to see her other arm sweeping up behind me. I let go of the arm I was already fending off, and tried to sweep the second arm away from me. Segna’s body rolled under the water, and took me with her.

  CHAPTER 14

  I HAD TIME TO TAKE A BREATH, THEN WE WERE UNDERWATER. Segna’s face loomed under the dirty water. Her mouth opened, screaming at me, blood blossoming from her mouth. My hands dug desperately into her arms, too small to encircle them, as I forced them away from me and she dragged me deeper into the water.

  Too late I realized that there were other ways to kill me than claws—she was trying to impale me on submerged bone. I kicked my feet to stay above the bone, to not let her spit me upon it. The point of bone held me on its tip, and I kicked and pushed to keep it from piercing my skin. Segna pushed and fought against me. The strength in her arms and body was almost too much for me. She was wounded, dying, and it was all I could do to keep her from killing me.

  My chest was tight; I needed to breathe. Claws, bones, and even the water itself could kill. If I couldn’t push her off me, all she had to do was simply hold me underwater.

  I prayed, “Goddess help me!”

  A pale hand shone in the water, and Segna was pulled backward, my grip on her arms pulling me with her. We broke the surface together, both of us gasping for breath. Her breath ended in a spattering cough that covered my face in her blood. For a moment I couldn’t see who had pulled her back. I had to blink her blood out of my eyes to see Sholto with his arm across her upper body. He held her one-armed and yelled, “Get out, Meredith, get out!”

  I did what he said: I let her go and pushed backward, trusting that there were no bones just behind me.

  Segna didn’t try to catch me. She used her newly freed hands to claw down Sholto’s arm, making a crimson ruin of his white flesh.

  I treaded water, looking around for Doyle and Frost, and the others. There were no others. I was paddling in a lake—a deep, cold lake—no longer the shallow, stagnant pool we’d been wading in before. There was a small island close at hand, but the shore was far away, and it was not a shore I knew. I screamed, “Doyle!” But there was no answer. In truth, I hadn’t expected one, for I could already see that we were either in a vision, or somewhere else in faerie. I didn’t know which, and I didn’t know where.

  Sholto cried out behind me. I turned in time to see him go under in a wash of red. Segna struck at the water where he’d vanished with the dagger from her belt. Did she realize it was him she attacked now, or did she still think she was killing me?

  I screamed, “Segna!”

  The sound seemed to reach her, because she hesitated. She turned in the water and blinked at me.

  I pushed myself high enough out of the water so she could see me. Sholto had not yet resurfaced.

  Segna screamed at me, the sound ending in a wet cough. Blood poured down her chin, but she started moving toward me.

  I screamed, “Sholto!” hoping Segna would realize what she’d done and turn back to rescue him. But she kept swimming, weakly, toward me.

  “He is only white flesh now,” she growled, in that too thick, too wet voice. “He is only sidhe, not sluagh.”

  So much for her helping Sholto—obviously it was up to me. I took a good breath and dived. The water was clearer here, and I saw Sholto like a pale shadow sinking toward the bottom, blood trailing upward in a cloud.

  I screamed his name, and the sound echoed through the water. His body jerked, and just then something grabbed my hair and yanked me upward.

  Segna pulled me through the water. I could see that she was making for the bare island. My naked back hit the rocks, scraped along them, as she struggled from the lake. She pulled me with her, until both of us were free of the water. She lay panting on the rock, her hand still tangled in my hair. I tried to ease away from that hand, but it convulsed tighter, wrenching my hair as if she meant to take it out by the roots. She started dragging me closer to where she lay.

  I fought to get up on all fours so she wouldn’t scrape more of my skin off on the bare rock. In order to do so, I had to take my gaze off her for an instant.

  It was a mistake. She jerked me down with that strength that could have torn a horse apart. Jerked me down, onto my stomach. I wedged an arm under my body to keep me off the rocks.

  Then I saw that she still held the dagger. She pressed it to my cheek. I gazed at her along the line of the blade. She was lying down, almost flat against the rocks.

  “I’ll scar you,” she said. “Ruin that pretty face.”

  “Sholto is drowning.”

  “The sluagh cannot die by water. If he is sidhe enough to drown, then let him.”

  “He loves you,” I said.

  She made a harsh sound that spattered her chin with more blood. “Not as much as he loves the thought of sidhe flesh in his bed.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  The tip of her blade wavered above my cheek. “How much sidhe are you? How well do you heal?”

  I thought it was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer it. Would she die of her wounds before she hurt me, or would she heal?

  She coughed blood onto the stones, and it was as if she wondered the same thing. She used her grip on my hair to force me onto my back, dragging me closer as she did it. I couldn’t stop her—I could not fight against such strength. She crawled on top of me and put her blade tip over my throat. I grabbed her hand, wrapped both my hands around it, and still trembled with the effort to hold her off me.

  “So weak,” she gasped above me. “Why do we follow the sidhe? If I were not dying, you could not hold me off.”

  My voice came out tight with strain as I said, “I’m only part sidhe.”

  “But you’re sidhe enough for him to want you,” she growled. “Glow for me, sidhe! Show me that precious Seelie magic. Show me the magic that makes us follow the sidhe.”

  Her words were fatal. She was right. I had magic. Magic that no one else had. I called my hand of blood. As I summoned it, I tried not to think about the fact that I could have done it
sooner—before she hurt Sholto.

  I wielded the hand of blood. I could have made her bleed out from just a tiny cut, and these were not tiny cuts. I started to glow under the press of her body. My body shone through the blood she was dripping on me. I whispered, “Not Seelie magic, Segna, Unseelie magic. Bleed for me.”

  She didn’t understand at first. She kept trying to shove the blade into my throat, and I kept holding her just off me. She dug her hand into my hair so that her claws raked my scalp, bloodied me. I called blood, and her wounds gushed.

  The blood poured over me, hot—hotter than my own skin. I turned my head away to keep my eyes clear of it. My hands grew slippery with her blood, and I was afraid that her knife would slip past my defenses before I could bleed her out. So much blood; it poured and poured and poured. Could a night-hag bleed to death? Could they even be killed this way? I didn’t know, I just didn’t know.

  The tip of her knife pierced my skin like a sharp bite. My arms were shaking with the effort to keep her off me. I screamed, “Bleed for me!” I spat her blood out of my mouth, and still her knife wormed another fraction into my throat. Barely, barely below the skin—I wasn’t hurt yet, but I would be soon.

  Then her hand hesitated, pulled backward. I blinked up at her through a mask of her own blood. Her eyes were wide and startled. There was a white spear sticking out through her throat.

  Sholto stood above her, bandages gone, his wound bare to the air, both hands gripping the spear. He pulled the spear out with a wrenching motion. A fountain of blood spilled out of her neck. I whispered, “Bleed.” She collapsed in a pool of crimson, the knife still clasped in her hand.

  Sholto stood over her and drove the white spear into her back. She spasmed underneath him, her mouth opening and closing, hands and feet scrabbling at the bare rock.

  Only when she stopped moving completely did he take the spear out. He stood swaying, but used the tip to send her dagger spinning into the lake. Then he collapsed to his knees beside her, leaning on the spear like a crutch.