A Study in Drowning(86)

She had to leave him here, in his madness, or she would be dragged down with him.

“Preston,” Effy said urgently. “Let’s go.”

Hands still joined, they took a cautious step backward. But before they could flee toward the door, quick as a flash Ianto had his musket in his hands, the black mouth of the barrel staring down at them. Effy’s throat went dry. She froze in place.

And then, most unexpectedly, Ianto asked, “Do you know the tale of Llyr’s very first king?”

Neither of them managed to speak, but that did not deter Ianto. He took another pace toward them, musket still aimed high. His chains shook like lots being cast.

“Llyr’s very first king was just a tribal chieftain who won all his wars,” he said. “He had the beards of all his enemies to prove it, and he wove them together into a great cloak of hair. He had tents and huts and even houses, but when his kingdom was at last united, he wanted to build a castle. He found the best builders among his new subjects, and they began to dig a foundation. But every night when they went to sleep, they would find that the foundation was flooded with water, even though they could not remember hearing any rain.

“The king, understandably, was bewildered and vexed. Angry. But his court wizard, a very old man who had seen many tribal chieftains live and die, told the king that the land was angry with him in return. All the trees he had cut down in his quest, all the grass he had burned—why should the land allow him to build anything, when he had treated it so cruelly? The court wizard told the king that if he wanted his castle to grow tall and strong, he would have to give something back to the land. A sacrifice.

“And so the king ordered his men to go find him a child, a fatherless child. He tied the orphan boy to a stake within the foundation of his castle, and then went to sleep. When he returned in the morning, he found that indeed the water had come, and the boy had drowned, but when his builders went to repair the foundation, the next night it stood strong and dry. The castle was thus built, and to this day no storm or conqueror has been able to tear it down.”

All through Ianto’s speech, the wind had not ceased its wailing, and rainwater pelted his back. From somewhere down below, Effy had begun to hear creaking, crashing sounds: floorboards crumbling inexorably against the cliffside and into the sea.

“That’s a myth, a legend,” Preston said, voice edged with desperation. “It isn’t true; it isn’t real. But death is real, and we’re going to die if we stay.”

Ianto gave a low and bitter laugh. “All this time spent in the Bottom Hundred and you still don’t understand. What your scientists and academics call myths are as real as anything else. How else could a land and a people survive Drowning?”

Effy shut her eyes against the stinging wind. When she first came to Hiraeth, she had believed that, too. Believed in Angharad and rowan berries and mountain ash and girdles of iron. But stories were devious things, things with agendas. They could cheat and steal and lie to your face. They could crumble away under your feet.

“You are mad,” she said, opening her eyes to the barrel of the musket hovering ever closer.

“Call me mad if you like,” Ianto said, and as he stepped forward, the chains rattled, “but all I see before me are a drowning foundation and two fatherless children.”

The gun was jammed against her back before Effy had even made sense of his words. Preston was stammering out protests as Ianto herded them back out into the hallway, around the holes where the floorboards had at last given way, and down the stairs. Water was dripping down the ruined faces of Saint Eupheme and Saint Marinell, making it look as though they were weeping.

A torrent of water slid down the steps beside them, carrying the shattered painting of the Fairy King with it. The glass had cracked, but the painting was untarnished behind it, the features of his face still sharp and clear. It was as if the water couldn’t touch him at all.

Ianto stopped them in front of the door to the basement. He shook the end of the musket as if he were giving a reproachful wag of his finger. “I noticed that my key was missing, Euphemia,” he said. “You hardly needed to be so deceitful about it, you know. I would have given it up to you, for a price.”

His hand grasped at her face then, cupping her chin and turning it up toward him. His eyes were cloudless, crystal clear. He held her face so tightly that it hurt, and Effy gave a quiet whimper.

“Don’t touch her,” Preston snarled.

Ianto let go of her roughly, fingernail scraping down her cheek and drawing blood. “I’ve heard quite enough from you. Smug and smarmy since the first day I let you into my home. I think this will be a fitting way to go—just like your father. A death by water.”

“No!” Effy cried as Ianto swung the door open. Black water was pouring in from all the cracks in the wall, inching farther up the steps.

Without letting go of his musket, Ianto shifted the chains from his shoulder. Effy saw now that there was a stake tied to the end of them. He seized Preston by the arm, swinging him forward toward the dark water. Preston’s boots scrabbled against the slick stone, hands flying out to catch himself on the threshold, but Ianto grabbed the front of his shirt and held him so he didn’t fall.

Effy realized only then that he wasn’t going to hurl Preston down. Instead, he began wrapping the chains around Preston’s wrists.

“Stop!” Effy threw herself against Ianto’s back, but she was like a small wave lapping at solid stone. He shrugged her off with a mindless twitch.