he 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 caught the moonlight and 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 cat’s, 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?” Greyan asked and 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 nauseous 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, but beside Greyan’s bulk, terribly outmatched.
“Do you deny you are a murderer?”
“Stop,” said one of the others, a voice in shadow that was attached to a body too long and spindly for Val to identify. “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 mouth full of jagged teeth. Val reached around and picked up a length of pipe that was lying among 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’ weapon was unbalanced by being held backwards, and slippery with his own blood. Greyan’s 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’ 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 Grayan’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 one had been <I>Avenging Souls</I>. 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.
