Valiant

Wax dripped down the side of the candle and onto Luis's thumb, but he didn't flinch or change the way he held it. More wax followed, forming a steady drip onto the stairs. "The guy grabs me by the arm and pushes his thumb into my eye. His face doesn't change at all while he's doing it. It hurts so bad and I'm screaming and that's when my mother finally turns around, finally sees me. And do you know what she and the soft-shell crab guy decide? That I scratched my own fucking eye somehow. That I ran into something. That I blinded myself."



The hair was standing up along Val's arms and she had that chill running down her spine, the one that told her just how freaked out she really was. She thought about the sealskins in his story, about the mermaid body she'd seen by the river, and came to no conclusions, except that there was no escape from horrible things. "Why are you telling me this?"



"Because it sucks to be me," Luis said. "One wrong step and they decide I don't need my other eye. That's what the big deal is.



"Dave and Lolli don't get it." His voice dropped to a whisper and he leaned close to her. "They're playing around with that drug, stealing from Ravus when I'm supposed to be repaying a debt. Then they bring you in." He stopped, but she saw the panic in his eyes. "You're stirring shit up. Lolli is getting worse instead of better."



The troll appeared at the top of the ledge and looked down at Val. His voice was low and deep as a drum. "I cannot think what it was you came back for. Is there something you require?"



"The last delivery," she said. "It was a… mermaid? She's dead."



He went quiet, stared.



Val swallowed. "She looks like she's been dead awhile."



Ravus started down the stairs, frockcoat billowing. "Show me." His features changed as he got closer, the green of his skin fading, his features shifting until he looked human, like a gawky boy only a little older than Luis, a boy with odd, golden eyes and shaggy black hair.



"You didn't change your—," Val said.



"That's the way glamour is," said Ravus, cutting her off. "There's always some hint of what you were. Feet turned backward, a tail, a hollow back. Some clue to your true nature."



"I'll just get out of here," Luis said. "I was on my way anyhow."



"Luis and I have had an interesting conversation about you and the manner of our meeting." said the troll. It was disorienting to hear that deep, rich voice come from a young man.



"Yeah," Luis said, with a half-smile. "He conversed. I groveled."



That made Ravus smile in turn, but even as a man, his teeth looked a touch too long at the incisors. "I think this death concerns you too, Luis. Put off sleep a little longer and let's see what we might learn."



The only sounds on the waterfront came from waves lapping against the stones at the edge of the shore when Ravus, Val, and Luis arrived. The body was still there, hair flowing like seagrass, necklaces of shell and pearl and sand-dollar doves caught around her neck like strangling ropes, white face looking like a reflection of the moon on the water. Tiny fish darted around her body and swam in and out between her parted lips.



Ravus knelt down, cupped the back of the mermaid's skull in long fingers, and lifted up her head. Her mouth opened farther, showing thin, translucent teeth that looked like they might be made from cartilage. Ravus brought his face so close to the mermaid's that, for a moment, it looked like he might kiss her. Instead he sniffed twice before gently lowering her back into the water.



He looked at Luis with shadowed eyes, then shouldered off his frockcoat and spread it on the ground. He turned to Val. "If you take her tail, we can move her onto the cloth. I need to get her back to my workroom."



"Was she poisoned?" Luis asked. "Do you know what killed her?"



"I have a theory," said Ravus. He pushed back his hair with a wet hand, then waded into the East River.



"I'll help," Luis said, starting forward.



Ravus shook his head. "You can't. All that iron you insist on wearing could burn her skin. I don't want the evidence contaminated more than it has to be."



"The iron keeps me safe," Luis said, touching his lip ring. "Safer, anyway."



Ravus smiled. "At the very least, it is going to keep you safe from a repugnant task."



Val waded into the water and lifted the slippery tail, its ends as ragged as torn cloth. The fish scales glittered like liquid silver as they flaked off on Val's hand. There were patches of pale flesh exposed along the mermaid's side, where fish had already started to feed on her.



"What a petty drama to watch play out," said a voice coming from the valley between the mounds.



"Greyan." Ravus looked toward the shadows.



Val recognized the creature that came forward, the mannequin maker with the greening beard. But behind him were other folk she didn't know, faeries with long arms and blackened hands, with eyes like birds, faces like cats, tattered wings that were as thin as smoke and as bright as the neon lights from a distant bar sign.



"Another death," one of them said, and there was a low murmur.



"What is it that you are delivering this time?" Greyan asked. There was a burst of uncomfortable laughter.



"I came to discover what I could," said Ravus. He nodded to Val. Together, they moved the body onto the coat. Val felt nauseated as she realized that the fishy smell was coming from the flesh in her hands.



Greyan took a step forward, his horns white in the streetlight. "And look what is discovered."



"What are you implying?" Ravus demanded. In his human guise, he looked thin and tall, and beside Greyan's bulk, terribly outmatched.



"Do you deny you are a murderer?"



"Stop," said one of the others, a voice in shadow attached to what appeared to be a long and spindly body. "We know him. He has made harmless potions for us all."



"Do we know him?" Greyan moved closer and from the folds of his cracked leather coat pulled out two short, curved sickles with dark bronze blades. He crossed them over his chest like an entombed pharaoh. "He went into exile because of a murder."



"Have a care," said a tiny creature. "Would you have all of us be judged now by the reason for our exile?"



"You know that I cannot refute the charge of murderer," Ravus said. "Just as I know it is cowardly to wave a sword at someone who has sworn not to swing a blade again."



"Fancy words. You think you're still a courtier," Greyan said. "But your clever tongue won't help you here."



One of the creatures smirked at Val. It had eyes like a parrot and a mouthful of jagged teeth. Val reached around and picked up a length of pipe from the rocks. It felt so cold that it burned her fingers.



Ravus held up his hands to Greyan. "I don't wish to fight you."



"Then that's your ruin." He swung one sickle at Ravus.



The troll dodged the sickle and ripped a sword out of the hand of another faerie, his fist wrapping around the sharp metal. Red blood ran from his palm. His mouth curled with something like pleasure and his glamour slipped away as though it was forgotten.



"You need what I make," Ravus spat. Fury twisted his face, making his features dreadful, forcing his fangs to bite into the flesh of his upper lip. He licked away the blood and his eyes seemed as full of glee as they were of rage. He tightened his grip on the blade of the sword, even as it bit deeper into his skin. "I give it freely, but were I the poisoner, were it my whim to kill one of the hundred I help, you would still have to live at my indulgence."



"I will live at no one's indulgence." Greyan swept his sickles toward Ravus.



Ravus swung the hilt of the sword, blocking the strike. The two circled each other, trading blows. Ravus's weapon was unbalanced by being held backward, and slippery with his own blood. Greyan struck quickly with his short bronze sickles, but each time Ravus parried.



"Enough," shouted Greyan.



A faerie with a long and looping tail rushed forward, gripping one of Ravus's arms. Another stepped forward holding a silver knife in the shape of a leaf.



Just then Greyan swung at Ravus's wrist and Val moved before she knew she was moving. Instinct took over. All the lacrosse practices and video games came together somehow, and she swung the pipe at Greyan's side. It hit with a soft, fleshy sizzle, throwing him off balance for a moment. Then he wheeled toward her, both bronze blades slamming down. Val barely had time to raise the pipe and brace herself before they hit, making the metal spark. She twisted to the side and Greyan stared at her in amazement before slamming the bronze blades into her leg.



Val felt cold all over and the background noises faded to a rushing in her ears. Her leg didn't even really hurt that much, although blood was soaking through her already-ripped cargo pants.



In Val's other life, the one where she'd been almost a jock and didn't believe in faeries, she and Tom had played video games and fooled around in the finished basement of his house after school. Her favorite game was Avenging Souls. Her character, Akara, had a curved scimitar, a power move that let her chop off the heads of three of her opponents at once, and lots of health points. You could see them at the top of the screen, blue orbs that would turn to red with a popping noise the more wounded Akara got. That's all that happened. Akara didn't slow down when she got hurt, didn't stumble, scream, or faint.



Val did all those things.



Someone gripped Val's arm too tightly. She could feel nails against her skin. It hurt. Everything hurt. Val opened her eyes.



A young man was standing over her and at first she didn't know him. She pulled back, scuttling away from him. Then she saw the inky black hair and the swollen lips and the gold-flecked eyes. Luis stood in the background.



"Val," Luis said. "It's Ravus. Ravus."



"Don't touch me," said Val, wanting the pain to stop.



A bitter smile touched his mouth as his hands left her. "You could have died," Ravus said quietly.



Val took that as an encouraging sign that she wasn't actually dying.



Val woke, warm and sleepy. For a moment, she thought that she was back in her own bed, back at home. She wondered if she'd overslept and was missing school. Then she thought that maybe she'd been sick, but when she opened her eyes, she saw the flickering candlelight and the shadowy roof far above her. She was wrapped in a cocoon of lavender-scented blankets on top of a pile of cushions and rugs. Overhead the steady roar of traffic sounded almost like rain.



Val propped herself up on her elbow. Ravus was standing behind his worktable, chopping a block of some dark substance. She watched him for a moment, watched his long, efficient fingers cradling the knife, then she swung out one leg from under the covers. It was bare and bandaged at the thigh, wrapped with leaves and oddly numb.



He glanced over at her. "You're awake." She flushed, embarrassed that he must have taken off her pants and that they'd been filthy. "Where's Luis?"



"He went back to the tunnels. I'm making you a draught. Do you think you can drink it?" Val nodded. "Is it some kind of potion?" He snorted. "It's naught but cocoa."



"Oh," Val said, feeling foolish. She looked over at him again. "Your hand isn't bandaged."



Ravus held it up, the palm unscarred. "Trolls heal fast. I'm hard to kill, Val."



She looked at his hand, at the table of ingredients, and shook her head. "How does it work, the magic? How do you take ordinary things and make them magical?"



He looked at her sharply and then resumed chopping at the brown bar. "Is that what you think I do?"



"Isn't it?"



"I don't make things magical," he said. "I could, perhaps, but not in any quantity or potency. It would be beyond me, beyond almost anyone save a high Lord or Lady of Faerie. These things…" His hand swept over the worktable, over the hardened nuggets of chewed gum, the various wrappers and cans, the lipstick-stained butts of cigarettes. "Are already magical. People have made them so." He picked up a silvery gum wrapper. "A mirror that never cracks." He picked up a tissue with a blotted lipstick mouth on it. "A kiss that never ends." A cigarette. "The breath of a man."



"But mirrors and kisses aren't magical either."



At that he laughed. "So you don't believe a kiss is efficacious in transforming a beast or waking the dead?"



"And I'm wrong?"



"No," he said, characteristically wry. "You're quite correct. But, luckily, this potion is intended to do neither of those things."



She smiled at that. She thought about the way she noticed all his glances, his sighs, the subtle changes in his face. She thought about what it might mean and she worried.



"Why do you always look like you do?" she asked. "You could look like anything. Anyone."



Ravus put down his mortar with a scowl and walked around the table. She felt a thrill run through her that was only part terror.



She was very conscious of lying in what must be his bed, but she didn't want to get out without any pants on.



"Ah, you mean with glamour?" He hesitated. "Make myself look less terrifying? Less hideous?"



"You're not—," Val began, but he held up his hand and she stopped.



"My mother was very beautiful. Doubtless, I have a broader idea of beauty than you do."



Val said nothing, nodding. She didn't want to think too closely about whether she had a broad idea of beauty. She'd always thought that she had a fairly narrow one, one that included her mother and other people who tried too hard. She'd always been a little contemptuous of beauty, as though it was something you had to trade away some other vital thing for.