Fire & Water

by Alexis Hall

  “This is getting political.” Julian frowned, which was kind of adorable and terrifying at the same time. “I’m not sure I’m happy about that. But I can see it’s important to you.”

  Note to self: if you’re going to your girlfriend for emotional support after you’ve had a horrible week, it’s a bad move to start asking her to fight a war for your ex. I leaned against her shoulder. “It is. It really is. And I know it’s kind of shitty to try to get you on side for it but...” Fuck, this was difficult. “I’m actually scared here. I mean we’ve fought some creepy shit, but this is different. I know it’s just a guy but that’s the problem. It’s a guy, and he’s an arsehole and he has a whole bunch of arseholes working for him and he wants to hurt me, and he wants to hurt people I care about and it’s personal and it’s horrible and he fights really fucking dirty.” I took a breath. It kind of felt good to get all of this out. “So, yeah, sorry. But this is kind of bugging me right now.”

  Without saying anything, Julian put an arm around me and held me for a while. She made such a thing of being an immortal sex fiend that I sometimes forgot how tender she could be. And right then I knew that whatever else happened, she was in my corner. And it helped. It helped a whole hell of a lot.

  At last she looked down at me. She had her serious face on, she didn’t have serious face very often, so when she did I tended to pay attention. “I can talk to the others,” she said. “I’m not certain, but I think I can persuade my fellow princes that the man you describe is—shall we say—bad for business.”

  “You don’t have to. I don’t want you to do this just for me.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What better reason to do anything than to show off in front of your lover? And I’m not being entirely unselfish, we like to keep the magicians on a short leash and if this man has you worried, then he has me worried. The lady Nimue might be a smug self-righteous little upstart with ideas well beyond her station, but she isn’t completely impossible to work with. After all, we have one or two things in common.”

  “We’d need to move fast.” I made an emphatic gesture, and got a fresh round of stabbing pains for my trouble. “Once King gets the Tears, things are going to start going his way really soon, and when that happens it’s going to be a world of too late.”

  Julian’s laugh was like faintly patronising music. “I do love, sweeting, how quickly you can transition from oh, you mustn’t do such things on my account to now, let me tell you exactly how to do them. If you weren’t injured and we weren’t about to assemble a council of war, I’d be quite overcome by how decisive and commanding you were capable of being.”

  “Y’know,” I said. “I’m not that injured.” Okay, I was exactly that injured, but a girl had to get her priorities right.

  “You encourage all my worst habits.” Julian’s eyes sparkled. “It’s one of the things I like best about you.”

  I twisted around and kissed her. It hurt like fuck, basically everywhere, but I kind of felt it was worth it. To my surprise, Julian drew back. She never drew back. My head swam like I’d just downed the whiskey after one too many.

  “I’ve said this precisely twelve times in the last eight centuries,” she told me, with an odd little smile. “But you should rest.”

  “Haven’t you met me? I don’t do rest.”

  “And look where it’s got you.” She put a hand on my chest and gently, but very, very firmly pushed me onto my back. “Tonight, you’re going to lie down and be still, and let me look after you.”

  I blinked blearily. “That doesn’t sound very fun for you.”

  She dropped down to the floor next to me and sat cross-legged, watching me with those too bright eyes of hers. After a moment or two, she took my hand. “It has its compensations, sweeting.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Councils & Conclaves

  When Julian said she’d do something, she did it. I got that she was a motherfucking vampire prince, but she managed to get some of the most powerful supernatural beings in England around a table really fucking quickly. True, they all lived in town apart from Sebastian, but they were also stubborn bastards. I’d have assumed they felt bad about the way they’d almost had us both executed, except feeling bad about stuff wasn’t really in their job description. The meeting was scheduled for the following evening, which meant that I had pretty much a full day to recover from my injuries. To be honest I really fucking needed it, and it was kind of cool to watch Julian do her thing. One of the weird quirks of dating a woman who was eight hundred years old is that she was like a bunch of different people. Surprisingly caring Julian was different from flighty sexually insatiable Julian, and they were both different from has-been-playing-supernatural-power-politics-since-Henry-the-Eighth-was-a-bachelor Julian. She bargained, she wrangled, she called in markers and she sure as shit got things done.

  A part of me felt pretty fucking guilty about taking what amounted to a day off and leaving Corin behind, but it was clear by this point that firefighting was getting me nowhere. I needed to do something about King. It needed to be something drastic, it needed to be something sudden, and it needed to be something he wouldn’t expect. I was hoping he wouldn’t expect the undead. But perhaps even hoping that was getting ahead of myself.

  Right now what I really needed to hope was that the princes of England would be at least vaguely willing to listen to me. Which wasn’t hugely likely given that I’d personally killed the progeny of one and the mentor of another. Aside from Julian, the closest thing I had to an ally amongst them was Sebastian Douglas, the Prince of Wands. And when I say “ally” I mean he’d voted not to execute me for reasons I was sure were purely selfish. The one thing I had going for me was that I was pretty certain Arty King really did represent a threat to their interests. Vampire politics were cutthroat—not that cutting a vampire’s throat technically did it any harm—and nobody survived long in that environment by letting personal distaste get in the way of personal gain.

  After some wrangling, the meeting had been slated to take place at PCM Consulting, the tasteful City palace of Thomas Pryce, the Prince of Coins. It had been the only sensible venue really. Mercy had only been in her role for a year, and Julian was already pushing her luck by getting everybody together at less than twenty-four hours’ notice. The last time I’d been to PCM it had been with the late Aeglica Thrice-Risen and he’d thrown the Prince of Coins out of a window onto a piece of offensively expensive corporate art. That time, we’d been met by armed guards. This time, well, we didn’t exactly get the red carpet rolled out, but the staff greeted us politely and showed us through to the meeting room, which was an improvement over, y’know, guns. We were the first to arrive after Pryce himself, who gave us about as warm a welcome as you’d expect from somebody who hated both our guts. Mercy and Sebastian showed up soon afterwards.

  “Well?” Pryce did not sound long on patience.

  “Aren’t we in an abrasive mood?” Julian swung back in her chair, propping her knee-high pirate boots on the conference table. “I have asked you to meet with me because my companion here would like to enlist our assistance with the small matter of Mr. King.”

  Pryce massaged his forehead with one hand. He looked genuinely pained. “Are you honestly telling me that you assembled this council simply because your mortal plaything wishes to get us to—if you will pardon the analogy—do her homework for her? Wasn’t it only last year that you stood in front of us and argued that your judgement hadn’t been compromised?”

  Julian smiled. “You’re so sweet when you’re being condescending. I never said this wasn’t personal. Mr. King touched my things. I don’t like it when people touch my things. But Kate makes a strong case that we should treat the gentleman as undesirable and my judgement was that she made it well enough for it to be put before the rest of you.”

  “Then let her.” Mercy dragged a talon along the pristine glass tabletop. “I am sure she
can speak for herself.”

  Right. My turn. I hated this part. Talking to important vampires was kind of like getting dressed down by the head teacher. If your school went in for extrajudicial execution. At times like this, they told you to imagine the audience naked, but I really didn’t think that would help with this lot. Mercy was terrifying enough with her clothes on, and the other two would have no problem looking infuriatingly superior even with their cocks out. “Okay,” I said. “Here it is. I get that this is just a mortal thing, and just a wizard thing, but Arty King is about to get his hands on something called the Tears of Hypnos, and if he does it will mean he can...” What, exactly? One of the big drawbacks of my job was that I spent about half my life neck deep in shit I only partly understood.

  Pryce was glaring at me like I was on Dragons’ Den and I’d admitted that I didn’t know what my turnover was. “It will mean he can...” he prompted.

  “It will mean that he can weaken the borders between reality and the Dream,” said Sebastian. I was getting really fucking suspicious of the way this guy kept pulling my arse out of the fire. “All magicians, after one fashion or another, alter reality according to their will. They make what might be into what is. Most supplement their abilities by aligning themselves with some power or other—with Hell, or with the Old Ones, the fair folk, or with the elemental principles—but their true power comes from the Dream. From the vast, fathomless potential of everything that can be conceived or imagined. It is part place, part state of mind. It has parallels with the World of Forms, or the Jungian collective unconscious, although in truth it is more complex than either of these. They wrap themselves in stories and echoes of legends in order to draw closer to it, and it allows them to work their will in the world. The Tears allow them to do the same, but more strongly and more clearly. In the hands of a skilled magician, they are a dangerous weapon.”

  “Dangerous to whom?” Pryce again. You had to hand it to him, he got to the heart of the matter.

  “To anybody who does not fit with the magician’s view of the world.”

  “You know,” observed Julian. “If you were already aware that this stuff existed, and if it really does what you say it does, did it not occur to you to mention it at any time over the past, say, three hundred fucking years?”

  Sebastian arched an eyebrow. “I am the Prince of Wands, dear. Guardian of secrets within and without. Keeper of knowledge. If I were to list for you all of the deadly arcane mysteries to which I am privy, I assure you it would take three centuries.”

  “You’re a smug prick, Sebastian.” I knew I was dating Julian for a reason.

  “I endeavour to give satisfaction.”

  Mercy turned to me. At least, I assume she did, she still hadn’t let go of the Edwardian Widow vibe so she was veiled. “If what Sebastian says is true, this weapon would be a danger to us whoever wielded it.”

  Yeah, I’d hoped they wouldn’t notice that. “There’s a difference. Arty King is a ruthless, violent bastard. Nim isn’t.”

  “Violence and ruthlessness are tools we all use.” Mercy’s voice was low and menacing. Even more menacing than usual. “Even your queen.” She sat back, folding her claws with surprising delicacy in front of her. “But I have had dealings with this Mr. King before. The man is...vulgar. Whatever this weapon may be, he is the mortal I would least trust to control it.”

  On the whole, things could have been going worse. If it came to it, I was pretty sure I could sell Nim on “nobody gets the Tears” as a plan. The sheer amount of death and bullshit these things had caused made it pretty appealing even to me if I was being honest. “So...” I began, not quite wanting to jinx it, “are we actually agreeing about this?”

  “I suspect,” said Sebastian, “that we all agree Mr. King cannot be permitted to wield the Tears of Hypnos. I suspect further that most of us agree that no other mortal magician may be permitted to possess them. I do not wish to speak for this assembly, but I believe that you would be well advised to inform your queen of this decision. Let her know”—he looked around the table for assent and seemed to get it—“that she will have the support of the Princes of England in her struggle against the usurper, but that should she or any other sorcerer attempt to take possession of, or to wield, the weapon he currently possesses, that sorcerer will suffer swift and bloody retribution.”

  The rest of the vampires nodded in agreement. Even Julian looked pretty down with it, but then swift and bloody retribution was kind of one of her hobbies. There wasn’t much more to be said. At least, there wasn’t much more for me to say, but the vampires seemed to be settling in for a late-night undead networking session which I wasn’t invited to. Julian walked me out.

  “Thanks for putting that together.”

  She smiled, kissed me quickly and affectionately. “Think nothing of it. We talk a lot about being above the petty concerns of the living, but the truth is that we need to know about these kinds of things. We can’t let rough men run around with unstoppable mystical power any more than you can.”

  “How socially responsible of you.” I thought about it for a moment. “Seriously, though, that went way easier than I’d expected.”

  “We had Sebastian on side. People tend not to go against Sebastian. It ends badly for them.”

  That was reassuring. “And does that make it a good thing he’s being so helpful, or really not a good thing?”

  “I wish I knew. I gave up trying to second-guess him long ago. Just when you think you know what he’s going to do next, it turns out he’s already done it.” She looked very serious for a moment. “You’ll be careful out there, won’t you? I know you trust the Witch Queen, but take it from somebody with experience: power makes people do strange things.”

  I gave her a squeeze. “I’ll be fine. I’m like eighty or ninety percent sure that Nimue isn’t going to suddenly turn evil and betray me.”

  “Stop being silly. This could easily become very nasty. Now run along and have fun with the wizards.”

  I was getting heartily sick of travelling by bullshit faery carriage, but Julian had laid on a car because motherfucking vampire prince. I kind of felt I deserved a bit of luxury, what with all the getting shot and the going to Hell and everything else. I leaned back in the plush seats and let the driver whisk me home in style. The flat was empty when I got in. Empty and still kind of trashed from my very brief tussle with... Alissa, I suppose it was? Admittedly it was also kind of trashed because I was bad at keeping my place tidy, but the fight had made a non-zero contribution to the overall chaos.

  I needed to get in touch with Nimue, and I only really had one way I knew how to do it.

  I went to bed.

  The problem with dreams as a form of communication is that they’re not the kind of thing you can switch on and off. It was bad enough getting to sleep when you had something important to do the next morning. Getting to sleep when you had something to do that same night, and when it was something you had to be asleep to get done was a recipe for hours staring at nothing and trying desperately to count imaginary farm animals. I fucking hated the whole fucking process. No lights, no cues, no sense of how much time was passing. Just a nagging idea that you were fucking up somehow and you weren’t sure what you were fucking up or how to unfuck it. Just a sense of dislocation and uncertainty. Just disorientation and fatigue and...and...

  * * *

  And I awoke in the Dream of a hall in the Dream of a city. Ancient stone. Arches and chandeliers. Stained glass and coats of arms. The echo of a place that had stood through fire and through plague. A place of meeting and of ceremony.

  Nimue sat at a round table. A sword lay in front of her. To her right, Fisher. The staff clutched in his hand was wound around with snakes and topped with wings. To her left, Rose Red, a mirror behind her, a crown sparkling on her brow. An apple on the table. Inviting and threatening at the same time.

  “Umm...�
�� I said. “Hi?”

  Nimue looked at me. “You’re safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should have taken my offer, Miss Kane.” Fisher looked different here. Fainter. The wound in his side was more obvious. “This whole situation could have been avoided.”

  “King’s got the Tears, then?” I hadn’t been sure.

  Fisher nodded. “He took them from me last night. The girl betrayed my location, he came in force. In my current state I was not a match for him.”

  “So now,” Rose Red added, “we’re pooling our resources. Because if we don’t we are fucked.”

  If it hadn’t been for Nimue I’d have been inclined to say they deserved it. This was what you got for chasing after mysterious magic widgets.

  “I’ve spoken to the vampires,” I said.

  Rose Red let out a kind of sputter. “Excuse me, princess, you’ve what?”

  Nimue raised a hand. “Let her finish.”

  “The Princes of England agree that Arty King can’t be allowed to keep the Tears of Hypnos, but they don’t think any of you should be allowed to have them either.”

  “That isn’t their call.” Fisher again.

  “It is not.” Nimue. “But they are within their rights to make their position known to us.” A faint smile crossed her lips. “You have served me well, Kate.”

  Gee, thanks. That was the trouble with Nim, it was hard to be her friend when she kept trying to be your sovereign. “So, what now?”

  A harsh, scraping sound. Rose Red raked her nails over the rough stone surface of the table. “Now we scratch his eyes out, honey.”

  “King is strongest in the south.” With a wave of her hand, Nimue conjured a wavering, misty image of the city in front of us. “The river will be the first battleground, and the one it is most vital that we win. It is a barrier and an artery. Before that we must weaken his influences to the north, west, and east. Rose, I look to you to fight in the deep earth and the shadow—my agent in the dark places may still live, but I cannot reach him, and so you cannot rely on his support. Fisher, you will take the battle to the upper air and the places between. I will begin the fight in the quiet waters and the edges of eternity. Kate, you will assist me.”