Iron and Magic Read online

  He’d thought sex would get old, but it never did. A new day, a new interesting woman. Eventually, he ran out of new things to try and realized that the difference between good sex and great sex was passion. Great sex was less frequent, but he had no problem settling for good sex.

  Marriage wasn’t even in his vocabulary.

  Still, if Hugh ever got married, he would’ve expected the woman to be eager. Excited even.

  The harpy at the other end of the hallway acted as if he were some revolting creature that crawled out from under a damp rock. The woman drove him nuts. Hugh alternated between wanting to strangle her and trying not to laugh as she fought off his verbal jabs. Making her snarl in frustration was the only thing that made the situation tolerable.

  He was mortal now. Eventually he would age. He would die. The thought turned Hugh’s blood to ice. He couldn’t even remember how old he was. He would die, and soon. His magic would keep him alive for a while, but he wouldn’t last much more than another eighty years. Maybe a hundred.

  Voron’s ghost congealed from his memories. When Hugh was a child, Voron was larger than life. Tall, powerful, unstoppable. A different man looked at him now, old, gray, somehow less, as if age leached the color from his hair and skin. The ghost raised his sword.

  Go away, old man.

  Hugh pushed the memory aside. This hay ride had a definite end. He no longer had forever.

  The stones of the bailey turned even more inviting. Instead of thinking about what do to with his meager lifespan, he could just stop both, his life and his thinking.

  “Mmm,” came a low feminine noise from the bed.

  He turned. Caitlyn from the kitchen was too worried about what “the White Lady” would think, so he’d moved on to Vanessa. A brunette, with big boobs, long legs, a small butt, and lots of enthusiasm, she worked in the castle as a paralegal. She was also low maintenance.

  Vanessa turned on her side and rested her head on her bent elbow, popping her chest to offer him a better view. He’d set the ground rules from the start, although he doubted she would stick to them. She was an opportunist.

  She measured him with her gaze, pausing on his bare crotch. “Are we gonna keep doing this after you’re married?”

  “Scared of Elara?”

  She shook her head. “If the Lady didn’t want me here, she would tell me. The Lady knows everything. She knows what I’m saying right now.”

  Interesting. Hugh leaned against the windowsill, studying her. “How?”

  Vanessa waved her fingers at him. “Magic.”

  “The tech is up.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She knows.”

  “Why do you call her the Lady?”

  Vanessa shrugged one shoulder. “That’s just what she is. She isn’t like the rest of us.”

  “What makes her special?”

  “If you wait long enough, she’ll show you.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “She protects us,” Vanessa said.

  “From whom?”

  “From everyone. The undead. The Remaining.”

  He leaned forward. “Who are the Remaining?”

  “We started out together, then we split,” Vanessa said. “We call those who stayed behind the Remaining. They call us the Departed.”

  “Why did you split?”

  Vanessa yawned. “It’s long and complicated.”

  “You are afraid of Elara.”

  “No, I’m just not stupid.”

  Hugh moved toward the bed, leaned over her, and fixed her with his stare. She shrank back. Alarm flared in her eyes.

  He glanced at the door, then back at her. She slid off the bed, grabbed her clothes, yanked her dress on, and hurried out, almost at a run, her underwear in her hands.

  She would be back. He had her.

  Vanessa was a born flunky. She feared Elara but she also felt some contempt for his future bride, or she wouldn’t have climbed into his bed to test her leash. Elara must’ve been kind to her. That was a mistake.

  He’d seen Vanessa’s type enough over the years to recognize it instantly. Her kind of people understood strength and overt shows of power. They loudly proclaimed their support for the overzealous cops, local tyrants, and anyone willing to show brute strength. Vanessa respected authority that made her fear. As long as he terrified her, she would obey him and try to please, but she could never be trusted. If Elara scared her enough, Vanessa would spill his secrets. If she ever got a taste of real power, she would be petty and cruel.

  Hugh turned to the window. The day was peaceful and quiet. He supposed he should shower and get dressed. He was getting married, after all. And he would buy food and safety for the Dogs with his marriage. And get a castle as a dowry. Once the moat was done…

  The moat. The tech was up, it was midafternoon, and he’d ordered the construction to start this morning. Where were the fucking bulldozers?

  “It’s a beautiful dress,” Nadia said.

  “Very beautiful,” Beth agreed, brushing her hair.

  Elara hid a sigh. They were doing their best to make her feel better. This wasn’t the way she imagined the day of her wedding. This was some hellish caricature of it.

  She was doing it for the right reasons. She promised to protect her people and d’Ambray’s troops would protect them. The Iron Dogs seemed barely human, but they’d been inside the walls for a week and she couldn’t fault them. They’d taken over patrols. They ran and did endless amounts of push-ups. They were unerringly polite to her people. The castle had come with the barracks, but there weren’t enough spaces for all of them in the building, so she had to relegate them to tents in the bailey while the left wing was renovated. There wasn’t a whisper of complaint.

  They had almost no supplies, except for what they could carry and a covered wagon. They brought the wagon in and unloaded two dozen sealed plastic drums, which they dragged inside and locked in a room in the barracks. None of the spying and scrying her people had done had managed to shed any light on what was in the barrels. It wasn’t money. D’Ambray was broke, so broke, that the contract they’d signed specified a week’s worth of clothes for every Iron Dog. They didn’t even have spare underwear.

  Tonight she would have to marry that insufferable ass.

  Some girls dreamed about getting married and planned their wedding. Elara never had. But when she thought about it occasionally, she always imagined getting married to someone who loved her.

  “Have you decided what to do about the hair, my lady?” Eve asked from the back.

  She’d given up on trying to get them to stop calling her that. At least when she was in earshot, they’d stopped referring to her as the White Lady. Having people pretend she was some medieval queen was better than the actual worship, Elara reminded herself. Worship had to be avoided at all costs.

  “I don’t know.”

  Her hair, the mark of her curse, fell around her face in soft waves after being twisted at the nape of her neck for the whole day. If she straightened it, the long white strands would reach past her butt. The hair was a pain. Elara had wanted to cut it for years, but it became a symbol of her magic, and she’d learned long ago that symbols were important.

  “We could do a full updo,” Beth offered. “Something with flowers. We could do a very loose braid.”

  “Or a waterfall braid,” Nadia said.

  Elara bit down on another sigh. She almost told them she didn’t care, but it would hurt their feelings.

  “We could leave it down,” Eve suggested. “You almost never wear it down.”

  She didn’t wear it down, because she hated it. She still remembered her real hair, the dark, chocolate-brown curls. Three years ago, just after they left West Virginia, she got two bottles of hair dye and soaked the white strands in it. She kept it on until her scalp began to itch. When she walked out of the shower, her hair was still pristine white. Not a single strand took the dye.

  “Let me think about it.”

  “There a
re only two hours left,” Eve murmured.

  “It’s not like they can have a wedding without me.”

  A soft knock echoed through the room. Rook.

  Eve opened the door. “She is busy.”

  “Let him in.”

  Elara drew her thin white robe around herself, hiding the translucent white camisole she wore underneath.

  The door swung open. The spy stepped inside, his hair hidden by the hoodie he always wore. She waited for a report, but he just stood there. He’d brought her something private.

  “Give us a minute,” she said. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

  The three women left the room, with Beth closing the door behind her. Rook approached and held out a piece of paper.

  Vanessa and Hugh:

  V: Are we gonna keep doing this after you’re married?

  H: Scared of Elara?

  V: If the Lady didn’t want me here, she would tell me.

  Elara read the rest of the conversation. Hardly surprising. That was the one thing that always set her teeth on edge about Vanessa. The woman didn’t have an ounce of loyalty in her. Still, she was one of her people.

  “Where is he now?”

  He pulled on his pants and ran outside to the construction crew.

  That meant he would be at her door in a minute.

  “Thank you.”

  Rook nodded and slipped outside the door. Elara barred it and sat at her vanity. She had to do something about her hair. She couldn’t care less about what it looked like, but the wedding had to appear genuine. She had to keep up appearances. She would manufacture the glow for the sake of her people.

  Someone pounded on her door.

  “Go away.” Elara dipped her fingers into a small tub of lotion.

  “Open the door.”

  There was something about his voice that made people want to obey. Some imperceptible quality. It was probably very handy in the middle of battle.

  “Go away. I’m not dressed, and you can’t see me before the wedding.”

  “Open the door.”

  “No.” She dabbed the lotion on her face and in the hollow of her neck and worked it into her skin.

  The door took a hit with a hard thud. It was a heavy wooden door, reinforced with steel, but the few days she’d spent with d’Ambray convinced her that he could be extremely single-minded.

  “If you break it, the money for the replacement will come out of your discretionary budget.”

  Elara raised her hair up in a semblance of an updo. Ugh.

  “Do you really want to do this through the door?”

  “I don’t want to do it at all.”

  “You cut the gas for my bulldozers.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s expensive.”

  A furious silence fell. She imagined him on the other side of the door steaming and smiled.

  “I need it. I need the gas.”

  “We all need things.”

  “Elara! We need to stay alive. The moat will keep us alive.”

  Moat, moat, moat… Moat? Moat. Moat! Ugh.

  “You want to dig a trench that is ten feet deep and seventy-five feet wide. That’s ridiculously large.”

  “It has to be that large to function.”

  Elara sighed and picked up the eyeshadow. Maybe rose gold?

  “How are you planning to fill it up?”

  “With water from the lake.”

  “Are you planning to make the water flow up the hill?”

  “No, I’ll pump it in.”

  She put down her eyeshadow. “You want to pump the water into that massive trench? Do you have any idea how much fuel that will take? So we’ll be paying for the gas for that too?”

  “It’s necessary.”

  “Won’t the water just seep into the ground?”

  “We’ll line the bottom with concrete.”

  “So magic can crack it.”

  “No, the magic won’t crack it, because we’ll use Roman concrete mixed by hand.”

  Rose gold was working out nicely. “Don’t you need volcanic ash for Roman concrete?”

  Another silence. She’d had a detailed discussion with the Dog he assigned as foreman before she took away their gasoline. It wasn’t her first construction project.

  “Where are you going to get volcanic ash?” she asked.

  “I’ll have it shipped from Asheville.”

  “I wasn’t aware Asheville had suddenly sprouted volcanoes.” She blended a darker shade of the eyeshadow into the crease of her eyes.

  “Asheville had a Cherufe manifestation five years ago. They have an entire mountain of volcanic ash and we can buy it dirt cheap.”

  “More money.”

  “Elara,” he growled.

  “You’re building a money pit, except it’s not a pit, it’s a moat. Why not just line it with money and set that on fire when the vampires come?”

  “It wouldn’t burn long enough. You will give me this moat. I’m trying to keep you and everyone in this place alive. Can you put a price on the safety of your people?”

  “Yes, I can. The total operating cost of a single bulldozer is two hundred and thirty-seven dollars per hour. We have to factor in heavy use in soil that has been undisturbed for at least ten years; gasoline; lubricant; undercarriage adjustment for impact, abrasiveness and so on; repair reserve, parts and labor; and operator cost, since people do not work for free. Now we have to calculate the number of cubic yards of soil we must remove and transport somewhere else. Based on the dimensions of your trench—"

  “Give me the moat or the wedding is off.”

  For a moment, she literally saw red. Elara jumped to her feet and jerked the door open. He stood on the other side, wearing nothing except jeans and boots.

  “I can’t believe you! You would endanger this wedding for your stupid moat?”

  Hugh towered over her, his blue eyes dark. “Here is some math for you. Your settlement holds four thousand and forty-seven people, of which five hundred and three are children under the age of eighteen. When Nez comes, and he will, you will have three choices. You can evacuate, which means Nez will chase us down and slaughter everyone. You can hole up in the castle with the adults and send the children off, serving Nez a herd of hostages on a silver platter. Or you can hide everyone in the castle, which is the only real option you have.”

  He leaned closer, his face vicious. “This place was designed for a staff of three hundred. It can comfortably hold five hundred in a pinch. You’ll have to pack four thousand terrified people, half of them parents with children, in here like sardines. Sanitation will go first. Sewage will start backing up. Water will be next. Your well will run dry. You’ll try to conserve it, while Nez lobs chunks of corpses his plague spreaders have seeded with diseases over your wall, but it won’t matter. The well will run dry anyway within a few weeks. Your people will start dying. Children and the infirm will be at the front of the line. You will watch them go one by one.”

  She blinked.

  “We can’t withstand a siege. We have to hit Nez so hard and so fast on his first charge, that he’ll decide besieging us is too expensive. To do that, we need defenses that work against undead. The moat is such a defense. Without it, this place is a death trap. I realize you don’t understand it, but you’re not in charge of our defenses. I am.”

  White ice exploded inside Elara. “You have some nerve,” she snarled. “Your moat will cut my budget by a third!”

  “Our budget.”

  “Not yet, it’s not! I have to fund the school for this year. I have to feed three hundred extra people who earn no money. It doesn’t grow on trees. Did Roland not explain to you the concept of money when he doled out your allowance?”

  Hugh’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know if you’re too thick to see it or if you’re on a power trip, so I’ll make it real simple for you: give me the moat or I’ll take my people and leave. I’m not dying here because you’re an idiot.�
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  “Arrogant dickhead!”

  “Screeching harpy.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Bitch.”

  The hunger clawed at her from the inside. It took every drop of her will to keep it from ripping out. She actually trembled with rage.

  “You want to leave? Do it.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” he warned.

  “Take your people and leave.”

  A stomp made them turn toward the hallway.

  Johanna handshaped the letter E and moved it down her hair, indicating length. “Elara.”

  Johanna didn’t use the name sign she invented for her often, and normally that would’ve stopped Elara in her tracks, but she was too irritated.

  “What?” she snarled.

  “Important fighting moment,” Johanna said. “But heads of the Lexington Red Guard and Louisville Mage College are downstairs.” She pointed to the floor.

  Hugh turned to her. “Why?”

  Johanna brushed back her blond hair. “We invited them for the wedding to build good relations and to have witnesses. Don’t be dumb.”

  She moved her fingers, her gestures brisk.

  “We need witnesses. Many, many witnesses. Wrap it up. Slap each other if you need to. Get dressed. Don’t mind me.” She took a step back. “I will wait. Five minutes.”

  Hugh was looking at her. Elara realized her robe was hanging open, showing off the thin white camisole that left most of her breasts bare and barely covered half of her butt. Suddenly she was sharply aware that he was half-naked and standing too close. Elara pulled the robe closed and glared back at him.