“With good reason.”
The SUV came to a stop before a stream crossed by two heavy wooden beams as far apart as the distance between its tires. On the far side, the road dwindled to a trail leading to a brick house with multiple turrets and tile roofs and chimney pots only half visible in the trees. Warm light from its windows winked at them invitingly. “I’m not so sure about that bridge,” Jill said.
Raven patted the dashboard reassuringly. “Nobody’s going to ask you to do anything you can’t, old girl.”
“I didn’t say I can’t. Of course I can. I was just taking a second to see whether there’s enough space to turn around on the other side. So I can get back. I could cross this thing backward if I had to. But I’d rather not.”
“We can—”
“It doesn’t matter. There’s room to turn around, I can see that. But if I had to, I could have crossed it backward.”
“Jill, you’re astonishing,” Raven said. “You’re the best.”
“Shuddup. I’m trying to work.”
Slowly, cautiously, Jill eased them across the beams.
* * *
Esme was dead to the world, so Cat said, “Take care of the kid, will you, Jill?”
“Can do. If she wakes up, I’ll just slap on Blinding Nemo.”
The house was softly lit by exterior floodlights so the unlikely passerby could admire its complex brickwork patterns, the green copper drainpipes, and the polished brass sheela-na-gig knocker on the front door. Raven led Cat around the back. Then, with a clasp knife, she jimmied the lock.
“You told me this was a friend’s house,” Cat said.
“She’s the kind of friend I want to owe as few favors as possible—and, believe me, she keeps track of everything, even if it’s only opening a door for you.”
Then they were inside. “Don’t touch anything,” Raven said. “Half of it’s ensorcelled to an alarm system.” She flicked a light switch.
Cat froze in astonishment.
The room was immense and tidily cluttered: with taxidermy dodoes in bell jars; with iron swords and bronze spears and stone axes hung on the wall in a starburst; with devotional statuettes of Fascinus arranged between a death mask of Queen Titania and the trophy spine of a Nephilim warrior; with a diorama of the Battle of Mag Itha carved inside a ruby the size of a roc’s egg, a framed map of a city with the unlikely name of Perth Amboy, and the carapace of a millipede eight feet long; with what looked at first glance to be a suit of armor but was actually a bronze automaton; with the fossilized scat of (so their labels read) twenty distinct kings; with stacks of 16 mm film cans, reel-to-reel computer tapes, and mimeographed fanzines; with a glove large enough to crawl inside and an ivory tusk that could only have come from Behemoth itself; with vitrines crammed with magic talismans, rings, coins, pins, twigs, boots, brooches, spoons, pendants, daggers, gems; with Disney memorabilia, Han dynasty vases, and brass serpent horns in the manner of Tubal-Cain; with tiaras, crowns, and shackles; with hand-painted ties; with a rack of aluminum briefcases; with vacuum tubes the size of an ottoman, ocher-stained cave bear skulls, a copper leaf large enough to crush a bystander if it fell over; with a lightning bolt frozen in the instant it grounded itself; with a mountain so small it could fit on a dinner plate and an onyx bowl filled with glass mice; with a granite anvil, a pyramid of beer cans, and the busty figurehead from a wooden ship; with golden apples and bells of lead; with a bust of a dog-headed man in Edwardian garb, a gold-plated electric chair, and a thousand things more, all a delight to the eye and each an invitation to avarice.
The room was also cold as ice.
“We should have brought parkas,” Cat whispered.
“We won’t be here long. Her office is over there.”
Without knocking, Raven threw open the door. Cat followed her in. There, a scholar sat at her desk, scribbling. Her hair was long and straight and as white as her skin, her pearls, and her Oscar de la Renta suit.
The scholar looked up in surprise. Then, standing, she swept forward and took Raven’s hands in hers. “Orlando! My darling! You’ve come around at last. Oh, what a feast we shall have.” She raised one of the hands to her mouth.
Raven yanked it away. “None of that now, Sasha!”
“Not yet? Ah well, I can wait. But where are my manners?” Sasha disappeared into a side room and returned with a bowl of mixed apples and bananas. Placing it on her desk, she poured lamp oil over the fruit and touched a match to them. They went up in flames and Cat edged closer to catch some of their heat. “To business. Doubtless, you are here for a reason.” She glanced sidelong at Cat. “Perhaps, something to do with the amuse-bouche you brought me?”
“This is exactly why your social life is so barren,” Raven said, with just a snap of anger. “My friend, never mind her name, has an appointment in one of the undersea cities and it’s none of your business which one or why. She needs a means of getting to the city and something to keep her alive while she’s there. Surely you’ve got a knickknack or two that will do the trick somewhere in this metastasized junk shop of yours.”
“Don’t be insulting, sweetmeats.” Sasha plucked a rose from a vase on her desk, stared at it until it was blanched with frost, then bit off the flower and crunched it to nothing. The stem and leaves crumbled to powder and dissolved in the air. “If I cared about your friend’s name or intentions or why she wanted to see her brother in Ys, I’d know it already.”
Unexpectedly, Raven laughed. “I keep forgetting how shrewd you are when you’re sober. So. I told you what I want. You can put it on my tab.”
“There was a time,” Sasha said, “when I had a key to the ocean and a pennywhistle that would summon help whenever it was most needed. Exactly what you need now. But they were stolen from me. So…” She flicked her fingers, as if dismissing a trifle. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”
“You wouldn’t have said any of that if there wasn’t a bargain to be struck.” Cat had been staying as close to the flaming fruit bowl as she could, and that helped, but now her teeth started chattering. Raven glanced at her and added, “Let’s wrap this up quick. My friend and I are both freezing.”
“Shall I get you coats?” Sasha asked solicitously.
“At the rates you charge? Not a chance.”
“Then we’ll continue this discussion in the kitchen. It’s warmer there.” Sasha swept out of the office and, having no alternative, Cat and Raven followed.
The kitchen was not exactly warm but there was some residual heat from the Viking gas stove, so it was markedly less cold. The stove was eight feet long, an industrial model whose surface was covered with burners, grills, and griddles. There was a residual smell—pork?—of whatever had been roasted in it last. Crude metal hooks had been hammered into the brick wall to one side and from them hung dozens of butchering utensils.
“See my knives,” Sasha said in a tone that was clearly meant to be seductive. “I keep them so, so very sharp. For you, my darling, only for you.”
“Charming,” Raven said, “I’m sure.”
The opposite wall had shelf upon shelf with jars and boxes clustered upon them. “Behold my spices! Some are very close to being extinct. I would let you choose as many as you wish to make a rub for your sweet, tender body. Guests come and go here. The cooking can get, I admit, a tad perfunctory at times. But when you finally surrender, my squab, the night will last forever. I will linger over your preparation. I will marinate you and baste you and roast you as slowly as ever a meal was prepared. Your shrieks and squeals will add flavor to my art. Oh, Orlando! Why wait? You’re here, I’m here, the tools and ingredients are as fine as can be. What better time to surrender to your fate?”
“We have a haint’s agreement, remember? When I deem what I’ve received to be worth the price. We’re not even close yet.”
“Oh, my tart, tangy, succulent thing! Must you always remain the one who got away? Tsk. Then follow me to the library.” And Sasha led them back into the cold.
Sasha snapped her fingers in Cat’s face to get her attention, then gestured toward a shelf filled with oversized books. Raven was tugging at the largest of them, a monstrous thing bound in gold-tooled red leather. “Stop mooning about and give your friend a hand.”
Under Sasha’s critical eye, Cat and Raven struggled the book down from its shelf. “Holy dogs,” Cat groaned. “This fucker must be four feet tall.”
“Fifty inches,” Sasha corrected her. “It’s a double oliphaunt folio and extremely rare, so please do treat it with respect.”
Cat and Raven eased the book onto the ground, kneeling to do so. Gracefully crouching, Sasha ran a finger halfway down the edge of the pages. She tugged open the book just far enough to read the page number, then let two pages slide from under her finger. “Open it here.”
Together, Cat and Raven threw back the cover. They eased the pages over onto it so that the book lay flat. Inside, rather than print, was a stairway leading down into darkness. All three stood and Sasha said, “You’re looking for a woman with abundant golden-red hair. She’s carrying a leather satchel that contains the key, the pennywhistle, and a great many things more. Return me the satchel and you can use the two for as long as you need. The stairway will open for you when you’re ready to return.”
“I’m holding you to those exact words,” Raven said, and started down the stairs.
“Wait,” Cat said. “I can’t be making any long trips now. I have obligations.” She didn’t want to mention Esme in front of Sasha.
“You’ll be back in no time at all,” Sasha said. “I guarantee it.”
“C’mon,” Raven grunted.
Swallowing back her misgivings, Cat followed Raven downward. After a bit, she commented, “I’ve been down stairs a lot like this before. Nothing good ever happens to me at the bottom.”
“That’s because nothing good has happened to you for a very long time. I’ll bet Esme has told you she brings luck. Technically, that’s true—but the luck she brings is bad. She survives in some extremely dangerous surroundings by eating the good luck of those around her. Now you know. So hush up and let me concentrate.”
The stairs were steep and narrow but the air was dry and, for a mercy, warm.
* * *
They emerged in a train station crowded with a colorful mélange of commercial travelers, military on leave, haints, dwarves, kobolds, tourists, and excursionists of all kinds. “So we’re looking for a redhead,” Raven said. “In a train station. This is just swell, this is—” She stopped. “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
Wordlessly, Raven pointed to a sign: BROCIELANDE STATION.
For a second, Cat didn’t get it. “But Brocielande Station doesn’t exist anymore. It was destroyed the first day of the—” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh.”
Sasha had sent them far away and into the past. Into a very bad place on a very bad day, if Cat’s premonition was right—the day the War for the West began at Brocielande Station.
“Now it’s urgent,” Raven said. “We’ve got to find the woman with the hair and the satchel and get out of here before the dragons arrive. You go that way and I’ll go this.”
Raven started away, but Cat grabbed her arm and yanked her back. “Too late.” She pointed to the east, where a line of specks, invisible to anyone who didn’t know what to look for, were coming in “low and slow” as her instructors had put it, for an antipersonnel run. Low so the dragons could see their targets. Slow so they could either strafe them or lay down a line of incendiaries with maximum effectiveness. Low and slow to maximize the body count.
This being the day of the infamous Brocielande Station raid, Cat knew for a fact that they’d be dropping the mixture of Greek fire and gasoline that was commonly known as golden fire. It was in all the history books.
Pulling Raven after her, Cat went to the edge of the platform and looked down. The platform was made of reinforced concrete and had a little bit of an overhang. From platform top down to the rails was a drop of six feet. “Do as I say and don’t argue,” she told Raven. “We’re going to jump down there. Then we’ll lie down flat as close to the wall as we can. Try not to move. Don’t look up. Can you do it?”
The dragons were audible now, a low grumble hanging in the air. Passengers stood transfixed, a scattering of them pointing at the distant specks. Their stillness held for an instant and then broke as some ran inside the station and others toward open ground. Both of which, Cat knew from her studies, would prove to be bad choices.
It was possible now to see more than one line of dragons—there were at least five waves and possibly more beyond the limits of vision, all evenly spaced. At a professional level, Cat had to admire the tightness of that pattern. Those pilots knew their stuff. She shook Raven hard. “Can you do it?”
Raven nodded.
“Good.” Cat stepped off the platform. To make sure Raven followed, she didn’t let go of the trickster’s arm.
They landed in a tangle, rolled to the wall, and lay head-to-head alongside it. “This would be a funny time for a train to pull in,” Raven muttered.
“The station is under attack. Trains are the least of your worries. Keep your head down! The less of this you see, the happier you’ll be.”
The dragon-thunder was growing louder. Cat could feel it in the pit of her stomach.
Now at last the air raid sirens blared, so loud that speech was impossible.
Cat waited. And waited. The roar of dragons grew louder and mingled with the sirens. It seemed impossible for so much time to have passed without the war machines having arrived. Yet still the sound of their engines grew.
Raven’s eyes were screwed shut and her cheeks were wet with tears. Cat wanted to say something comforting but to her profound disgust found that she herself was shivering with fear. Luckily, it was too noisy for talk anyway.
Then, at last, the dragons were upon them.
* * *
After the fact, the accounts of the raid would peg its duration at anywhere from twenty to forty-five minutes. But Cat knew better.
It lasted forever.
There had been over a hundred locomotives in the rail yards when the raid began. Only three escaped alive. While Cat cowered, the remainder died. As for the civilians, “Bullets and golden fire fell on them all, as impartial as the rain,” one historian would later write.
Eternity had no duration. It simply was.
When finally the dragons were gone, there was no sound save for the ringing in Cat’s ears. Sometime during the raid, probably when the station’s roof collapsed, the sirens had been silenced. Slowly, Cat got to her feet. She reached down a hand to help Raven up. Her friend said something she couldn’t quite make out. “What’s that?”
Raven shouted, barely audibly, “I said: I hope I didn’t piss myself.”
“If you did, I don’t think anybody here’s going to hold it against you.”
Together, they trudged up the tracks to the end of the platform, where there was a metal ladder bolted to the cement. They climbed up it.
And found themselves in Gehenna.
The remains of the station house were still burning. Flames and smoke and grit were everywhere. Where the golden fire had fallen, there were lumps of charcoal that had once been bodies. Where it had not, there were yet more bodies. Some of them were moving. Dimly, Cat heard screams and sobbing.
“You know about triage?” Helen asked. “Those who will die whatever you do, those who will live even if ignored, and those who need your help?”
“I’m career military.”
In a kind of daze, Cat and Raven wandered among the fallen, looking for someone to help. There were others, though not many, doing the same thing. With Raven’s aid, Cat improvised a bandage to stop an unconscious dwarf from bleeding out, then tied a tourniquet above an elfling’s blasted hand. She was midway through a spell to bring sleep to the wounded girl when, with a shrill cry, Raven disappeared from her side.
“… by the Labrys and the Orchid and the Mercy of the Night,” Cat finished, and was rewarded by seeing the child’s eyes close in slumber. Then she stood and saw Raven, not far away, kneeling over a woman with long red-gold hair.
Raven was holding a baby in her arms and, Cat saw with unspeakable gratitude, it appeared to be whole and uninjured, though it was crying vigorously. The poor thing was clearly frightened half to death, but it would get over that soon enough. Its mother had obviously sheltered it with her body. Obviously, she was not going to live.
Cat leaned close to hear what Raven was saying to the woman. “… to me. Please! Talk to me!”
Raven’s face was contorted with desperation. So Cat said, “Here. Let me.” She sat down alongside the woman and, summoning up lore acquired in a military first-aid class, placed her hands to either side of the woman’s head. She visualized all her body-energy as a glowing fluid. Then she let a fraction of that strength flow from one hand to the other, invigorating the dying body.
The woman’s eyes opened the merest slit. Her lips moved silently. Knowing it was dangerous to them both, but doing it anyway, Cat gave her just enough more strength to speak audibly. “Are you Death?” the woman asked. “Am I dying? Where is my son?”
“She’s not. You are. He’s right here and he’s fine,” Raven said. “A little thing like a dragon raid can’t harm this fella.”
“That’s … good.”
“Listen to me,” Raven said. “I have to know. Is your last name Whilk?”
The faintest trace of a smile appeared on the woman’s ashen face. “Some … times.” Then her eyes closed again.
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