“Are we negotiating with Beauclaire and Goreu?” asked Adam softly. “Or the Council of the Gray Lords?”
“The Council,” Goreu said. “Beauclaire to represent the majority and I the minority opinion. It took some doing for that to happen. If they’d been able to locate Órlaith, this would have been much more difficult.”
“Goreu,” I said, “did you hurt Zee?”
He met my eyes. “No.”
“So why did you cringe from him?”
He smiled. “Because it was the action that the male who I pretend to be would have done once the wristlets had proven him weaker than the half-dead daughter of one of the Old Kings. Such a fae would know that Zee was a threat he could not face.”
“They believed that?” asked Adam. “That a Gray Lord would be so weak?”
“They remember the Old Kings,” Uncle Mike answered. “They remember what Zee can do—they fear him themselves. And Goreu is powerful enough that the battles he fought to become a Gray Lord looked . . . like a political animal wiggling his way into power.” He smiled. “And most of them would have been afraid to share those wristlets with the daughter of the Dragon Under the Hill.”
“All right,” I said, and looked to Adam.
“You know that we would sign a nonaggression pact,” he said. “So why the story hour?”
“Because nothing is that simple,” agreed Goreu. “The humans might believe that your killing of the troll was enough to make us sign such an agreement. But those of Faery know better. It would be a loss of face—and might spell the downfall of the Gray Lords. The individuals are strong—but there are those, like your Zee and Uncle Mike”—he nodded to Uncle Mike, who grinned and drank his cider—“who hide what they are. If we appear too weak, we shall be brought down—and chaos will rule. That would not be good for anyone. So.” He stood up. “Two things. First, a show of force, something to demonstrate that it is no weakness of the fae that makes us sign a treaty. Beauclaire should be ready for his demonstration.”
I felt a slow, rolling anxiety. Beauclaire had once, not long ago, told me that he could create hurricanes and tidal waves. That he could drown cities. The Columbia was a mile wide and sixty feet deep.
12
We followed Uncle Mike and Goreu through the double doors marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. I’d expected a kitchen, but there was only a stairway that led up or down. We took the up. Uncle Mike’s shouldn’t have had an up. From the outside, it was clearly a single-story building. Apparently, that was an illusion or this was a different kind of stairway. We climbed more than one floor. I started counting on the third-floor landing, and I counted seven more. I don’t know that there is a ten-story building in the Tri-Cities—maybe the new hospital building in Richland.
Goreu said, opening the door at the top of the stairs, “We wanted you to have a good view.”
It was windy, but warm enough, as we stepped out onto a flat roof, the kind of roof I’d have expected Uncle Mike’s to have, with battered machines happily humming away, keeping the tavern a steady temperature, and a knee-high barricade to keep people from walking off the edge. Just the right height for a tripping hazard, I thought. Someone stood on the edge of the roof, looking out over the river.
I’d once caught a glimpse of Beauclaire without the glamour that made him appear human. It hadn’t prepared me for the whole deal. He was, unlike a lot of fae, almost entirely human-shaped, and his height was somewhere between tall and average, an inch or so taller than Adam and of a similar build.
He turned to greet us, and I could see the hints of the Beauclaire I knew, parts that he’d pulled into his glamour—but he didn’t look like a human. His cheekbones were high and flat beneath eyes like expensive emeralds, clear and deep. Other than his eyes, his coloring came from the sun: his skin would have been the envy of a California bikini enthusiast; his hair, which reached past his shoulders in a thick, straight fall, held all the colors of gold with hints of red. Was he beautiful? I couldn’t tell. He was extraordinary.
“You are just in time,” he said. “I have pushed the last of the humans off the bridge—so I am ready for our little demonstration.”
Goreu huffed a laugh, then turned to us. “He didn’t mean that like it sounded. He encouraged the people who have been working on the bridge to find something else to do. We don’t need to kill people for this demonstration.”
“One of our Council members was convinced we should flood one of the towns—Burbank or Richland,” Uncle Mike said. “It took a while to persuade her that killing that many people would ensure that we’d never get a treaty of any kind with you, and it would play right into the hands of our foes on the Council.”
I shivered, though it wasn’t cold, and walked as close to the edge as I dared. We had a spectacular view, not as scary as the one from on top of the crane the other day, but spectacular. The Lampson crane was to our left, but it was the view of the Columbia and the Cable Bridge that was breathtaking in a different way than it had been from on top of the crane. From the crane, it had looked distant and small. From our current vantage point, it felt like we were standing right on top of it—and it was huge.
Beauclaire raised his hand and said something. It might have been a word, but it sounded bigger than that. It resonated in my chest and in my throat. Below us, under the center of the bridge, the water of the Columbia started to swirl.
Magic, thick and rich and warm as the noonday sun in August, pressed down on me, and I went to my knees. Adam put his hand under my elbow, but he had to wrap his arms around me before I could stand. I breathed like a racehorse, and my face grew hot, then very cold, and still the power moved.
The swirling water started small, but grew until the whole river circled beneath the bridge like traffic negotiating the stupid roundabouts that had been showing up where the four-way stop signs used to be. Gradually, the water moved faster, climbing the banks on the outside edge as the center dropped.
The pressure of the water made the bridge groan, I could hear it from where we stood. Overhead, a helicopter flew in and hovered.
Adam said something that I, consumed by the force of Beauclaire’s magic, missed, his voice just another rumble in my ears and chest.
I heard Goreu’s reply, though it didn’t make much sense to me at the time. “Our helicopter. We called the news agencies about ten minutes ago, but we wanted to make sure this was recorded for the media. We’ll give the footage to the local stations and let them disseminate it. That worked well enough for your killing of the troll.” He looked at me. “She is sensitive to magic.”
Adam grunted rather than answering, and Goreu smiled at him. For a moment, he looked less human to me, too, and I had the feeling that the real Goreu was a lot bigger than his glamour would suggest. But the bridge groaned again, and all my attention returned to the sight before us.
The water on the outside of the whirlpool was level with the bridge deck, much higher than the banks of the river, though Beauclaire’s magic kept all the water where he wanted it. Beyond the whirlpool, the Columbia’s waves grew choppy and white-edged, but the level of the river didn’t appear to be affected.
The whirlpool quit growing, but it continued to speed up and drain the middle to feed the edge until I could see bare ground beneath the bridge. The circle grew until the entire section between the two towers was empty of water. The bridge was shaking under the force of the water that now hit the railed edge before rushing over or under the bridge with twisting force.
Beauclaire spoke another word—and for a moment my eyes wouldn’t focus. When I could see again, there was no more dirt beneath the bridge. There was just . . . nothing, a hole, so deep that, from our perspective, I could not see the bottom.