A Star Shall Fall

PART TWO ^{DESTILLATIO Winter 1758}

With stately grace, the planets mark the passage of time, scribing out the different arcs of their years. The ellipses contract as the comet moves inward, the years growing ever shorter, as if time itself runs faster. They cluster about the sun, the little planets do: round balls of stone and stranger things, Mercury, Venus, Mars.

And in their midst, Earth.

It is scarcely a speck in the distance. Scarcely even that. The sun is god to the comet, the beacon that calls it home and bids it farewell as it leaves, and the sun is bright in the void. But for the creature that rides the comet, the sun is nothing: only the spark that will set it alight once more.

Earth is everything. For while the beast sleeps, it dreams, and remembers the City where it was born.

A light snow began falling as Galen disembarked from his chair outside Dr. Andrews’s house. He welcomed the sight; it had been a gray, dreary Christmas, and a bit of sugar frosting might make London more attractive—at least until the coal smoke turned it to black crusts.

He paid the chair-men and hurried across to the door, shivering. The footman took a dreadfully long time to answer, and bowed deeply as he let Galen in. “My apologies, Mr. St. Clair. Dr. Andrews is in his laboratory at present. If you would be so kind as to wait in the parlor, he will be with you shortly.”

Galen agreed, and was led upstairs to the back parlor. While he waited, he chafed his cold hands in front of the fire and surveyed the room. It had the kind of vague ordinariness that characterised the homes of many bachelors; Andrews put out sufficient effort to furnish his parlour with chairs, tables, and so on, but with no wife to make it fashionable, the result was utterly forgettable.

“Ah, Mr. St. Clair.” Dr. Andrews entered behind him, still buttoning his waistcoat. “I was unaware of the hour, or I would have been more ready to receive you.”

“Quite all right. Your footman said you were in your laboratory…” Galen’s voice trailed off as he noticed a smear on the back of Andrews’s hand.

The doctor saw it and hastily fetched out a handkerchief with which to scrub it away. “Yes, in my basement. I have a room down there where I conduct dissections. My apologies; I don’t usually come upstairs with blood on my hands. Shall I have the maid brew coffee for us?”

He rang a bell, and gestured Galen to a chair. “I never touch spirits myself, and only occasionally take wine,” the older gentleman confided, “but coffee has become my great vice.”

Faced with that admission, Galen didn’t try to hide his own guilty smile. “Mine as well. Its effects are most wonderful: it clears the mind, steadies the hand, aids digestion—”

“It’s fortified my own health wondrously,” Andrews said. “Indeed, just last week I advised a certain lady to adminster regular doses to her sickly child, to fend off infections.”

“Very wise,” Galen said. “But I was under the impression you don’t practice medicine any longer?”

Andrews made an indeterminate gesture that could have been meant to convey anything at all. “By and large, no. But I make exceptions for a few trusted families.”

No doubt the most influential and respectable ones. Galen quite understood. “Your time is mostly taken up with your studies?”

“And illness,” Andrews said bluntly, as the maid entered with the coffee tray. Judging by the speed of her return, the doctor had not been lying about his fondness for the drink; it must have been nearly prepared already when Galen arrived. She laid the tray on a pillar-and-claw table to one side, then curtsied out of the room again when Andrews waved her off. He poured the coffee himself. “You will have guessed, I am sure, that I suffer from consumption.”

“My heartfelt sympathies,” Galen said. “I had an aunt taken by the same disease, and two of her children.”

Andrews passed him a coffee bowl. “With so many diseases in the world, I sometimes wonder that any of us reach maturity. But it produces this happy coincidence in my life, that my time is occupied by two facets of the same issue.”

“You study your own illness?”

“What else should I do, with the time I have left? Particularly if I wish to increase the amount of that time.”

“Then that is why you remain in London,” Galen said, understanding. Most consumptives who could afford it went to more healthful climates, where the air was warmer and drier, and might prolong their lives. The damp, chilly rains of London were not good for such men.

But Andrews looked puzzled. “What has London to do with it?”

Now uncertain, Galen said, “The Royal Society. I presumed there were men among its number who shared your interest, and that you wished to remain here to work more closely with them, without the delay of letters.”

The doctor was drinking coffee as he responded; Galen could not tell whether a routine coughing fit struck him just then, or whether the answer caused Andrews to choke on some of his drink. Galen hovered at the edge of his chair, not certain what he should do, as the gentleman hastily put down his bowl and snatched out a handkerchief.

“I would to God that were true,” Andrews said. “Come, Mr. St. Clair, you’ve seen what our meetings are like. Nice, orderly business, suitable for gentlemen, and occasionally someone from the Continent, or elsewhere in Britain, performs a bit of experimentation that actually does ‘improve our natural knowledge,’ as the name would have it. But the weekly activity is often tedious and trivial in the extreme.”

Galen took refuge in the contemplation of his coffee. “I would not say so, Dr. Andrews.”

“Of course not. You’re a polite young man. No, I go to Crane Court because I must leave my house occasionally or go mad, and it seems as good a destination as any. But I have a very convenient arrangement here, and no desire to disrupt it by going elsewhere. Besides,” the doctor added with blunt honesty, “I had rather die in England, not in some foreign city.”

Shame left a sour taste in Galen’s mouth. He was cultivating this friendship in the hope of some benefit for the Onyx Court; he’d never thought to consider Andrews’s own problems. The fae could not, so far as he knew, cure diseases. Still, there might be some chance that they could aid the man. “I’m no physician myself, Dr. Andrews, but I’ll gladly lend you any assistance I may. It would be a grand thing indeed, if we learned more about consumption, that would allow us to save others from it.”

The red tinge that rimmed all late consumptives’ eyes lent a strange cast to Andrews’s expression. “Not just that disease, Mr. St. Clair. England has already produced Sir Isaac Newton, who unlocked the mysteries of the mechanical universe. He touched but little, though, on the mysteries of living bodies. We need a second genius.”

“And you intend to be that man?” Galen asked, before he could consider how rude the question was.

Andrews’s mocking smile seemed to be directed at himself. “I’m unlikely to succeed. Newton was younger than I am now when he turned the world on its head with his Principia Mathematica. But I can think of no higher purpose than to dedicate what remains of my life to pursuing that star.”

Indeed, the fire of that purpose burnt in his eyes. It sparked an idea within Galen—one far enough beyond the scope of his original plan that he hesitated to even consider it.

If Andrews worked with the fae—directly, with full knowledge of what they were…

That would be quite a risk. Galen would have to make very certain the man was trustworthy. It could be worth the gamble, though. Otherwise Galen himself would have to translate what he learned from Dr. Andrews to a faerie context, with much danger of error. He’d been doing that for two months now, with little result. Wouldn’t it be far more productive to bring the two together?

Not today, of course. Still, that inspiration put Galen on his feet, hand over his heart. “Dr. Andrews, I owe you a debt for your patronage at the Royal Society. I repeat my offer of a moment before, foolish though it may be. The work you undertake, sir, could be the salvation of more people than you know. I will do everything in my power to aid you.”

Ktistes, as royal surveyor and architect, had taken great care to explain to Irrith which parts of the Onyx Hall were fraying due to the piecemeal destruction of the wall, so that she might avoid them.

She figured out for herself that one of the places on that list was nowhere near the wall.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed. The Onyx Hall was a rabbit warren, tangled threads with even less rhyme or reason than the streets above; moreover, the warped reflection from above to below meant the bad patches weren’t at the edges of the palace, but rather snaked tortuously through its middle. But there was an inconsistency in the centaur’s list, and it wedged itself into a corner of Irrith’s mind like a bit of grit in her shoe, chafing her. And when she realised what was bothering her—why, then there was nothing to do but seek out the cause.

Not Ktistes. He would only lie again. Irrith went to the source.

The passage toward the supposed bad patch ran behind the bathing chambers, where salamanders curled beneath great copper boilers of water that could be tipped into the pools. The entrance to the passage was barred by two waist-height bronze pillars supporting a rowan-wood beam. It was no real barrier; rowan might not like the fae, but a simple branch could hardly stop anyone continuing on. The point was to warn the idle traveller that she should go no farther.

Irrith was not an idle traveller. She was bored beyond the telling of it: the bribe Tom Toggin had given her to bring the delivery to London was all but spent, leaving her with no bread to go safely above, and little to amuse her down here. Investigation at least promised a bit of entertainment. She ducked under the beam, and continued down the passage.

The blackness closed in around her, broken only by the faerie light she’d brought along, and carried doubt with it. Maybe this was a bad patch. Maybe she was about to find that out the hard way.

Upon that thought, disorientation struck her, and Irrith staggered. When she straightened, she found herself staring at the rowan-wood barrier, and the ordinary corridor beyond.

Ktistes had warned her of this. One of the first effects of the fraying was that fae might enter one part of the Onyx Hall and end up in another one entirely, though the centaur feared worse might happen in time. This, clearly, was what he meant.

Or perhaps it was just meant to seem that way.

Some of the pucks in the Vale adored this charm, disorienting a traveller so that he wandered into a stream or a bull’s enclosure. But there were ways around such tricks—if it was indeed a trick.

Irrith squared her shoulders and began walking backward, searching for the floor with her toes, one careful step at a time.

She felt the unease—the vertigo—but this time it was like rain, slipping off an oilcloth cloak. Irrith grinned in satisfaction. Caught you.

Then the floor gave way beneath her and she fell.

Her chin smacked against the lip of the hole and she tasted blood, but she managed to stop her fall, fingers straining along the edge of the black stone. Irrith waited until her head cleared, then dragged herself painfully upward until she could fling a leg onto the floor and roll to safety.

She lay panting for a moment, then spat out the blood and peered over the edge. The bottom of the pit was well-padded with cushions. Definitely the Queen’s work. Most of the people who keep secrets in this place would fill it with spikes instead.

The pit crossed the corridor from one side to the other, but it wasn’t so wide that an agile sprite couldn’t leap it. Irrith took the precaution of a silencing charm before she made her attempt, and tucked into a tidy somersault on the other side. Two obstacles cleared, and she was careful as she went onward, lest she run headlong into a third. But the remainder of the passage was clear, and then it turned a corner, into a short, pillared vault with old-fashioned round arches, the antechamber to a larger, well-lit room beyond. From that room came an angry voice.

“Dieser verdammten Federantrieb brechen andauernd!”

The words were abrupt and loud enough that Irrith almost jumped from her skin, before she heard them properly. Once she did, she blinked—for that was certainly not English.

Nor was the second voice that answered him. “Aber natürlich! Ich sage dir doch, dass er soviel Zugkraft nicht aushalten werden.”

The tone was bickering, and resigned; the words weren’t directed at her. Concealing herself behind a pillar, Irrith peeked into the chamber Ktistes and the Queen did not want her to find.

Two fae grumbled over a pair of worktables strewn with unfamiliar oddments and tools. The tables would scarcely have been knee-height to a human, and even for Irrith they were low, but they perfectly suited the two, who were hob-size and thick with muscle. The implements they held were incongruously delicate in their blunt-knuckled hands, and both, she saw, had tied their long beards out of the way, the better to see the tiny things they peered at.

What were they working on? Irrith risked a longer look. The faerie lights above the tables reflected off minute bits of metal, too small to identify at this distance. But she noticed something odd: a quiet, regular rattle, underlying the humming of the blond-bearded faerie.

The chamber, she realised, was filled with clocks.

One perched atop a bracket on the wall behind the strangers. Two pendulum clocks stood in opposite corners, and a very small piece teetered on the edge of a table, a breath away from falling. A pocket-watch on the floor below it seemed to have fallen already.

Tom Toggin had brought clocks to the Vale. And Irrith had heard rumors, about the crazy German dwarves that came to England with the new German king, and now made clocks and watches for the Queen.

But what were they doing, hidden away down here?

She was still trying to figure that out when every clock in the room began to chime the hour. It wasn’t just the ones she could see; from the sound of it, the entire wall to both sides of the entrance, invisible from her concealment behind the pillar, was covered in clocks. And the two dwarves literally dropped the pieces they were working on in order to hurry to a door on the other side of the chamber.

Its face held what looked like sundial, though what use one could be in the sunless realm of the Onyx Hall, Irrith didn’t know. Its blade spun without warning, making her twitch; then the red-bearded dwarf seized hold of it, and two things happened at once: first, the bronze-bound door creaked open, and second, a sound too deep to hear shook the very marrow of Irrith’s bones.

A sound like the single tick of the Earth’s own clock.

Her teeth ached with the force of it, and her skull rang like a drum. Irrith had heard many tremendous sounds in her life, up to and including the roar of the Dragon itself, but she’d never encountered anything like this—as if she’d just heard one of the numberless moments of her immortal life tick away.

She was still standing there, jaw hanging slack, when the door finished opening and a puck stepped out and saw her.

“Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing here?”

The looks on the two dwarves’ faces would have been comical, if only she could have stayed to appreciate them. But instinct set in, as if she were running wild in the forests of Berkshire, and Irrith bolted.

She didn’t get very far. Three strides took her to the far end of the pillared vault, and then she ran full-force into something that felt remarkably like an invisible wall.

A voice came through the ensuing fog, but she couldn’t have said whether it spoke German or English. By the time she had her senses back, she was surrounded: the two dwarves and the puck stood over her, where she had collapsed on the floor. All three wore identical expressions of suspicion.

The red dwarf demanded, “Vy vere you spying on us?”

Resisting the urge to mock his thick German accent—she was, after all, caught in their trap—Irrith said, “I wasn’t spying.”

“Vat do you call it ven you hide and vatch vat others are doing?”

Could he have chosen a question with more Ws in it? Irrith stifled a laugh. Her face felt too bruised for laughing, anyway. “I call it curiosity.”

The third faerie scowled. He, at least, was English: a lubberkin, though surprisingly warlike. “Curiosity. Right. You just happened to slip past the defences because you were curious.”

Did he expect those defences would make her less curious? They just made it obvious there was something to find. The red-bearded dwarf was much more menacing. He cracked his knuckles and said, “Ve vill dispose of her.”

“Now see here,” Irrith said hastily, climbing to her feet and mustering as much dignity as she could manage, so soon after knocking herself silly. “I’m a lady knight of the Onyx Court.”

“So?” the dwarf said, unimpressed.

The lubberkin drew the blond one aside and bent to mutter in his ear. Irrith, losing a staring match with the other dwarf, could still overhear the whisper. “She might be a Sanist. Watch her; I’ll go inform the Queen.”

A Sanist? Irrith didn’t ask. The puck searched her for weapons and found none, then said, “I’ll be back soon to deal with you. Don’t try anything foolish.” Then he walked out through the same pillars that had stopped Irrith before, leaving her with two German dwarves and a suspicion that maybe she should have asked Ktistes after all.

“Interesting,” Lune said, one slender fingertip tapping against her cheek.

She said nothing more, but Galen relaxed. Family affairs had kept him from coming below for several days after his encounter with Dr. Andrews, and in the interval he’d had more than enough time to question his notion of working directly with the man. If Lune agreed, though…

“The decision is in your hands,” she said. “If you believe it would be useful to bring this man into the Onyx Court, that is within your prerogative as Prince.”

Which he knew, full well. Lune had explained it when she chose him for the position. He had authority over all matters involving the interaction between mortals and fae, including the decision to bring them below. This was the first time, however, that Galen had attempted to exercise that prerogative.

The prospect made him nervous in the extreme. There were ways to repair the mistake if someone chose poorly—but far better, of course, not to err in the first place. The watchful gaze of Lune’s Lord Keeper, Valentin Aspell, made him dreadfully aware of that. “I won’t do it yet,” Galen said, and made himself stop twisting his fingers. “I don’t know the man well enough—and it’s worth exploring his knowledge further, to be sure it’s worth the effort. But I’ll inform you before I reveal anything to him.”

One of Lune’s gentleman ushers entered the privy chamber, then, and bowed deeply. “Madam, the lubberkin Cuddy is here, but will not tell me his business. He insists it is worthy of your attention.”

The usher had doubt writ large on his feathered face, but Lune and Galen both straightened. Cuddy was out already? A quick count in his head told Galen that the timing was right; it had been eleven days, though just barely. And anything he had to tell them so soon after his emergence was certainly worthy of the Queen’s time.

Lune gestured Aspell out. “We will hear Cuddy alone, Lord Valentin. Make certain we aren’t disturbed for anything less than the Dragon itself.”

The serpentine lord bowed himself out. A moment later, Cuddy entered, and the usher closed the door behind him. “Majesty,” the lubberkin said, going to one knee, “there was a spy, outside the dwarves’ workshop, who observed me coming out. I fear the Sanists have found the room at last.”

Galen’s gut tightened. “Who is the spy?”

The lubberkin shook his head. “I don’t know her name. I could describe her—”

“No need,” Lune said. “We will go see her ourselves. Is she secure?”

Cuddy leapt to open the door for her, but took care to answer before he turned the handle. “The brothers are watching her, in the pillar trap. I don’t know how she made it past the others; I came immediately to you, madam.”

Then they were out into the more public space of the presence chamber, where some of the more favoured courtiers congregated in idleness. All surged to their feet as the usher announced, “The Queen, and the Prince of the Stone!” A wave of bows and curtsies eddied around them as they passed, and curious whispers rose in their wake.

They went by a secret path, one of many that honeycombed the Onyx Hall, until they reached the entrance to the main passage. Cuddy moved the rowan-wood barrier aside, and Lune laid a palm upon the stone of the floor. The defences, recognizing her touch, let them pass unhindered.

Two stocky figures waited at the edge of the pillar-trap, and one slender one that leapt to her feet as they approached. Galen recognised her instantly, and was surprised at himself; there were many fae in the Onyx Hall, and he’d seen her only twice. But Irrith had made a vivid impression—though that impression consisted mostly of mud.

“Your Grace!” she exclaimed, and dropped back down.

Galen winced. Her knees must have struck the floor hard, though she didn’t make a sound. Lune said, in a tone both startled and wary, “Irrith? Sun and Moon—what are you doing here?”

“Proving that Ktistes is a bad liar,” the sprite said. Then, belatedly noticing her own impudence, she added, “Madam.”

“The centaur?” Galen shook his head in confusion. “What do you mean, he’s a liar?”

She hesitated, one hand going to the stone as if to push herself upright, before remembering no one had given her permission to rise. “He told me this was a bad patch. Because of the wall. But it isn’t near the wall at all, is it? I think we’re somewhere around Fish Street. My lord.”

Her accuracy startled Galen. Few fae attempted to trace the connections to London above, beyond the entrances. Only he and Lune, bound into the sovereignty of the Onyx Hall, understood them instinctively.

“The way was barred with rowan wood,” Lune said. Since that first exclamation, the emotions had drained out of her voice, leaving it cool and unreadable. “Even if you believed the reason to be false, you knew you were forbidden to pass. And if that had not made it clear, the other defences must have. Yet you continued on. Why?”

Galen wondered at her coolness. Cuddy had accused Irrith of being a Sanist, but he doubted it; the sprite had been gone from the Onyx Hall since before that problem began. There was no reason to think she’d been swayed by them in the few short months since her return. He doubted Irrith even read a newspaper.

Those shifting green eyes held an echo of old hurt. “Madam… nobody sent me. I really was just curious. And I suppose it was foolish of me, but I—I’ve learned my lesson. I know better than to tell anyone anything I’ve seen.”

The weary bitterness of it took him aback. It didn’t fit with the Irrith he’d seen before. She and the Queen were clearly having a conversation of their own, separate from the four who watched them; and glancing around, he saw that Cuddy and the dwarves understood no more than he did.

A division that only sharpened when Lune waved one hand in dismissal. “That doesn’t matter anymore, Irrith. It’s been moved. This, however, is a different matter.”

Whatever “it” was, the revelation of its movement was enough to make Irrith’s eyes nearly start from her head. Then the rest of the Queen’s reply sank in, and the sprite twisted enough to glance over her shoulder, at the dwarves’ workshop behind her. The sundial door hung slightly ajar, but gave her no glimpse within. “I’ve hardly seen anything—but of course that doesn’t matter, does it, your Grace? I know there’s something here. Though…” She curled her fingers halfway in, as if stopping short of fists, then said, “I won’t be the last to come down here. Those defences didn’t stop me, and you rule over a court of very curious fae, madam.”

She was right. It had worked so far—and, with any luck, would only need to work a little while longer—but the defences were not remotely enough. Galen could hardly tell her why there weren’t more: the massive enchantment just a short distance away, behind the sundial door, made it unwise in the extreme to place many other charms nearby. If they tried, Ktistes feared this might become a broken part of the Onyx Hall in truth.

Very quietly, Irrith said, “I could give you my word.”

Galen happened to be looking directly at Lune when she said it; he therefore caught the minute narrowing of the Queen’s eyes, the tightening of her sculpted lips. Fae could not break their sworn words, which made Irrith’s offer the perfect solution. If she swore, she would be incapable of telling what she’d seen. Why did that prospect disturb Lune?

He didn’t know, any more than he knew what Irrith had almost told in the past. The one thing he did know was that this entire affair risked being magnified far beyond its merits. Finding Irrith here had clearly disturbed Lune, enough that her response might be too harsh.

Saying that, however, was more than a little difficult. “Madam,” Galen began diffidently, then choked on the rest.

Lune’s lips pressed together again, before she turned her attention to him. “Yes?”

Now he had to say something. Holding his hands out in placation, Galen went on, “I know that Dame Irrith, as a faerie, falls under your authority instead of mine. But if I may… offer a suggestion…”

The Queen gestured him onward, with a hint of impatience.

He felt like a very sharp stone had lodged in his throat. Around that obstruction, Galen said, “It may be that in this instance, there is more to be gained by revelation than by secrecy. Not just as concerns Dame Irrith, but the court as a whole.”

Cuddy failed to repress a snort, and Lune’s eyebrows rose into two doubtful arches. “What gain do you see?”

Galen spent little time among the fae outside of the Queen’s company, but Edward Thorne heard things, and passed them on to his master. “There’s a great deal of fear in your realm that time is running out. We have a year—perhaps less, if an astronomer makes an early discovery. If your subjects were to know there’s more time—”

He stopped because he could see Lune working through the complications and counterarguments. “It hasn’t harmed the Hall,” she murmured, almost inaudibly. “Though some, of course, will try to say that it has. But if we leave unspecified the details of its operation—to silence, or at least confuse, those who would demand to know why we haven’t disposed of the cometary threat already—”

“They’re asking that anyway,” Galen reminded her. Then he wished he’d found a more tactful phrasing. “But this, at least, is a concrete step, something they can point to when they ask themselves whether—”

The rest of that sentence was swallowed, courtesy of more belated tact, but Lune finished it for him. “Whether we’ve accomplished anything at all.”

Everyone else had stayed well out of this exchange. Irrith looked to be holding her breath. Galen said, “If the question of secrecy is removed, then Dame Irrith has nothing to betray, whether by accident or design.”

Lune smiled. The sun might have risen in that small portico, by the warmth it gave him. And Irrith, too, was beaming at him with undisguised gratitude. This place keeps too many secrets, Galen thought, heaving an inward sigh of relief. I am glad to unveil at least one of them.

“I will draft an announcement,” Lune said. “In the meantime, Irrith, you might as well see what you came for. Galen, if you would be so kind as to show her the Calendar Room? I shall be in my chambers.” With a swirl of rich skirts, she was gone.

Irrith wasn’t entirely certain how pleased she was to see the pale figure of the Queen depart, leaving her with two crazy dwarves, one unfriendly-looking puck, and a very youthful Prince. But Galen stepped forward, all courtesy, to lift her to her feet, and though she didn’t physically need the aid, she accepted it gladly.

“This way,” the Prince said, and left the pillars for the broader space of the workshop beyond.

Remembering her previous experience, Irrith prodded the gap between the pillars with one finger. It encountered a familiar wall. “Er—Lord Galen—”

He turned, saw her still there, and flushed enchantingly. “Ah. Yes.” Galen came back and extended one hand, courteous as a dance. Irrith took it, and he led her into the chamber.

Peculiar equipment and half-finished projects crowded the space. Not just clocks and watches, either: she spotted the cousin of one of the objects Tom Toggin had brought to the Vale, that Galen had called an armillary sphere. This one, however, had far too many rings, set at cockeyed angles to one another, as if someone had tried to wrench the heavenly circuits they represented into a more useful configuration.

Perhaps they had. Like everything else that occupied the Queen’s attention nowadays, Irrith guessed this had to do with the return of the comet.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing past the armillary sphere to something even more peculiar.

“An orrery.” The answer came from the blond-bearded dwarf, who appeared to have discarded all animosity once the Queen was done with Irrith. His red-bearded friend, unfortunately, seemed less easily won over.

Irrith peered at the object. It had gears like a clock, and thin arms that held balls of various sizes. “And an orrery is…”

“A model of the heavens. It is more useful than an armillary sphere.” He came over to demonstrate, cranking the arms around so they circled the gold ball in the centre. Irrith guessed that represented the sun, but that was where her comprehension ended.

The dwarf smiled when she looked at him, though it was hard to find behind the beard. “I am Wilhas von das Ticken. This is my brother Niklas.” Beard or no beard, it was easy to tell when the other dwarf scowled.

Well, if he didn’t like her, she might as well go directly to the question she really wanted answered. Pointing at the door with the sundial on it, Irrith said, “So what’s that?”

Galen cleared his throat and said, “Er, yes. Dame Irrith—I don’t know what news reaches you out in the Vale, but perhaps you recall the measures taken a few years ago, to correct the calendar?” Irrith nodded. Berkshire mortals were still confused by it, checking their almanacs to see which fairs and festivals were being held on the same date as before, and which ones on the same day, regardless of the calendar. “Parliament took great pains to make sure everyone understood that this was merely a change of style, to correct for the inaccuracies that had accumulated through the centuries, and that although September second, 1752, would be followed by September fourteenth, they would not lose any genuine time.”

Wilhas snickered quietly into his beard.

Grinning a little himself, Galen said, “That… wasn’t entirely true.”

Irrith’s eyes went to the heavy door, with the sundial nailed to its surface. “So that…”

“Is the Calendar Room,” the Prince said. “It contains within it the eleven days skipped over when the adjustment occurred. All of the eleven days: those lost by every man, woman, and child in the whole of Great Britain.”

The sprite hadn’t the faintest clue how many mortals dwelt in the kingdom, but even her most inadequate guess was staggering. “How much time is in there?”

“The von das Tickens could tell you,” Galen said. “I don’t bother to keep count. More than the Onyx Court is ever likely to use, even given the way the room operates. Once the door is closed, it won’t open again until eleven days later—from the perspective of one standing outside. Within the chamber, however, it’s a different matter. If you spend one day inside, you will come out eleven days later. If you spend fourteen years inside, you will still come out eleven days later.”

When Irrith stared at him, he shrugged, with an embarrassed grin. “No, I can’t tell you how it works. This was made before I came to the Onyx Hall. You can ask Wilhas if you like, but I fear the explanation would make your head spin.”

The dwarf answered with his own cheerful shrug. “Ve could go inside and shut the door. I am sure that vith enough time, I could make her understand.”

By the time Irrith realised she was moving, she’d already drifted several paces toward the door. “May—may I see?”

Galen bowed and swung the door open. One half-eager, half-reluctant step at a time, Irrith rounded the obstacle of his body and looked into the room.

And saw the clock.

Movement and stillness: somehow both at once. Irrith knew without question that the pendulum was swinging in a broad arc across the floor, though its motion was so slow as to be imperceptible. She stared at it, unblinking, incapable of blinking, because the stone describing that arc was too large to look away from, inescapable, oppressive in its weight, as if she faced a rough-hewn chunk of Time itself—

Then something else filled her vision, because Galen had taken her by the shoulders and wrenched her around, putting the clock behind her. His face was so young—his whole life less than an eyeblink in the great duration of the universe, less than the thought of an eyeblink. Mortal. Ephemeral. That was how Irrith felt, and if she was ephemeral, then what did that make him?

The Prince was talking. Words. She focused on them. “—strikes most people like that, at first,” he was saying. “You become accustomed, eventually. As much as anyone can. I cannot say I have. Not entirely.”

Words. Tongue, and lips, and air. “That weight—”

“Twenty-five tons, or so they tell me. But it isn’t the physical burden you feel. The clock ticks once a day, and when it does… it’s like hearing the heartbeat of the Earth itself.”

She’d heard it, when they opened the door and the puck came out. Irrith might be a faerie, and immortal, but the Earth was far older than she. No wonder that sight, that sound, made her feel like a mayfly.

“Now you understand one of the limitations of the room,” Galen said ruefully. “Even faeries don’t find it comfortable. Mortals…” His eyes darkened with something deeper than fear. “But it gives us more time, and so we use it.”

His hands were still on her shoulders. Irrith suspected Galen was, in the ordinary way of things, a gentleman much concerned with propriety, but he seemed to have forgotten such things in the urgency of distracting her from the clock. The two points of warmth, seeping through her coat and shirt, were comforting against the chill that had sunk into her bones.

It would be easy to stay turned away, to go out through the pillars and never look back. But that would mean letting her fear win. And if this boy of a Prince could face the clock, then so could she.

Irrith disengaged gently, squared her shoulders, and turned back to the doorway.

This time she was prepared; this time, it wasn’t so bad. She was able to drag her attention away from the terrible inexorability of that pendulum and up to the clock face above it. Flawless gold gleamed in a disc the height of a giant, its face marked with twenty-four hours. Behind it lay an incomprehensible mass of gears, ruled over by a device like an inverted V, and a sharp-toothed wheel. Actually toothed, so it seemed to Irrith—or were those claws? The mechanism was much too high up for her to be sure.

And then there was the pulley, a massive cylinder wrapped with a cable unlike any she’d ever seen. From it hung an absurdly little ball. “As it falls, it helps drive the clock,” he said over her shoulder. “Once a year, they pull it up to the top again.”

Against her will, she turned back to the pendulum. It hung, not from a cable, but from a softly glowing pillar of light, that vanished into the darkness above. “And where does that go?”

“To the moon.” Galen spread his hands when she eyed him suspiciously. “If it’s a lie, Dame Irrith, then they’ve lied to me, too. It has to do with the mechanics of the clock. They had to hang the pendulum from something very far distant, and so they drew down a beam from the moon.”

Irrith shivered and turned elsewhere. The rest of the room was ordinary by comparison: tables, shelves, every flat surface crammed with books and paper and bottles of ink and flocks of quill pens. She tried to imagine staying here for days, let alone years, and shuddered again.

Unnerving—but also fascinating. Faerie magic was a familiar thing. This, with its gears and pulleys and calculations, was unlike anything she’d seen before. A collision of two worlds, with results she could only imagine.

And I thought it strange when fae began carrying guns.

Galen bowed her out of the room as she exited. “So now you’ve seen it. I expect the Queen will put a guard on this room, to prevent any interference by others… but if you’d like to assist with our efforts against the Dragon, I am certain I can arrange for you to be permitted back here.”

Irrith wasn’t sure she wanted to set foot across that threshold again. She wasn’t even sure she didn’t want to run back to the Vale, where there was earth instead of the Earth, and the fae lived as they had for ages. The Prince meant so kindly, though, that she said, “Thank you, Lord Galen. I—I’ll think about it.”

He bowed again, and offered his arm. “Then let me guide you back to the rest of the Onyx Hall.”

In the dark of night on September second, they moved the last components into place.

Gold drawn from the sun itself, hammered into a perfect disk fifteen feet in height, its face marked with twenty-four engraved hours. The hands were starlight, glittering and cold. Behind it, gears of metal, catching pinions of stone, riding arbors of wood, all taken from every corner of Britain. The toothed escapement wheel was the stuff of nightmares itself, for this theft would happen while most of the kingdom slept: every human who lay at rest when the hour passed midnight would add eleven days to the total stored in this room.

And that hour had almost come. The von das Tickens hauled on a rope, snarling German curses to each other, lifting the pulley into place. The block was a tree trunk, perfectly circular, its rings marking off a hundred years. The tree was native; the cable wrapping it was not. Lune had bargained hard with the svartalfar for it, a length woven from the roots of a mountain, the noise of a cat’s footfall, the breath of a fish. Nothing less could hold the stupendous burden of the driving weight: a sphere of old age, heavy all out of proportion to its size. The Welsh giant Idris stood ready to wind the pulley for the first time. He would return every year on this date to wind it again, as long as the Queen could persuade him, for only a giant’s strength could achieve it.

“Hurry,” Hamilton Birch, Prince of the Stone, whispered under his breath. His pocket-watch lay clutched in one sweat-slick hand. If they missed their moment, there would be no second chance.

The pulley was slotted into place. The giant bent to the crank, grunting. The driving weight began to rise from the floor.

And the Queen of the Onyx Court stood, dressed in silver, waiting with both healthy and crippled hands outspread.

The driving weight reached the top of its drop and hung there, too heavy to sway, while Idris braced himself against the crank. “One minute,” Lord Hamilton called out, glancing through the sundial door to check his pocket-watch against the more accurate regulator in the dwarves’ workshop.

Lune tilted her chin up and raised her arms toward the black ceiling above.

Far, far above; the dwarves and Ktistes had altered this chamber, raising its ceiling to make room for the clock. And there was something in the stone now, not quite an entrance, more like a hatch, that would permit only one thing through.

Moonlight.

The quarter moon hung low in the sky above. Its light struck a lens placed at the top of the Monument to the Great Fire, then a mirror behind; the silvered metal reflected it downward, through the hollow shaft of that great pillar, into the chamber at its base—and then still farther. Obedient to Lune’s call, the light passed through, and shone down into the chamber of the clock.

Onto the second stone waiting on the floor, just in front of the Queen.

As the pocket-watch’s hands reached midnight, and the regulator outside struck the hour, the dwarves dragged the wooden supports free. The pendulum bob, a sarsen stolen from Stonehenge, hung in midair, suspended by only a beam of moonlight.

And then it began to move.

Idris had let go of his crank, releasing the driving weight to begin its imperceptible drop. Lune stepped back, hands dropping to her sides. Hamilton watched, breath held tight in his chest.

When the regulator began tolling, it was September second in the world outside this room. When it struck the final chime, the date was September fourteenth.

And all the days in between, the dates never lived by a single soul in Britain, came flooding into this room. Hamilton felt them come, slipping past like the wasted days of his youth, scented with the experiences that might have been. An enormity of time, and none at all, shivering him to the core of his soul.

When the last of them had passed, Niklas von das Ticken hauled the sundial door shut, and spun its inner face to lock the mechanism.

Leaving the five of them alone with the clock.

“Vell,” his brother Wilhas said, “ve have eleven days, before ve may open it for the first time. Who vould like to play chess?”

For the most part the economy of the St. Clair household was the province of Galen’s mother, who did her best to reduce expenditures while still presenting a respectable face to the outside world. There were a few points, however, upon which his father had strong opinions, and one of them was the greater expense of a hired carriage over a sedan chair. But Islington was a miserable distance to go on such a cold day, and so Galen paid for the greater shelter of a carriage, riding with foot-warmer and heavy cloak past the grasping edges of the city and through the still-green fields to the village north of London.

He came this way every month to spend an afternoon in the company of the two people he trusted to teach him what he needed to know, without censure for his ignorance.

The driver deposited him on the icy ground in front of the Angel Inn. After paying the man, Galen deposited his foot-warmer in the inn; then it was back out into the cold, ostensibly to do business with someone in town.

His path, however, took him away from the houses, to the back of the coaching inn, and the winter-dead rosebush that stood behind it.

Rubbing his hands together in a vain attempt to restore circulation, Galen said to the bush, “I don’t suppose a lost and freezing traveller could beg for a hot drink?”

The rosebush didn’t answer him. After a moment, though, the branches shifted and wove themselves into an ice-gilded arch, over steps that beckoned him inside.

The warmth of the chamber below enveloped him like a loving embrace. Galen let his breath out in a moan of pure pleasure. “Ladies, I would steal you for my father’s house if I could. Or, better yet, make my home here, and never leave.”

Galen’s fashionable friends would have dismissed this place as “rustic,” and so it was. Fashion had never touched the furnishings here. Bare wooden beams held up the ceiling, and the furniture was heavy oak, its primary decoration being the years of oil rubbed into its surfaces. The chairs were ridiculous things, their upholstery stuffed with far too much padding, but Galen doubted more comfortable seats existed in all of Britain. Flowers bloomed here and there, despite the cold above, and the smell was of all good things: fresh-baked bread, gentle woodsmoke, and the sweet honey of the sisters’ excellent mead.

The sisters themselves looked like a pair of poetic country housewives, rendered in three-foot miniature. At least until Gertrude Goodemeade advanced on him with the demeanour of an overwhelmingly friendly army sergeant. Then Galen laughed and fumbled with numb fingers at the neck of his cloak, surrendering it with a bow.

Her sister Rosamund, almost Gertrude’s twin save for the embroidery of their aprons, handed him a cup of mead once his gloves were gone. “Drink that up, Lord Galen, and come sit by the fire. You look frozen through.”

Dr. Andrews’s belief in the curative powers of coffee was nothing next to the sisters’ opinion of the mead they brewed. It warmed Galen down to his toes. These were, in his estimation, the two kindest fae in all of Britain. A pair of Border brownies, resident here in Islington for long enough they should have lost their northern accents, Gertrude and Rosamund Goodemeade called nearly everyone friend, and suited action to word.

While he drained the cup, Rosamund stoked the fire, and Gertrude fetched out the tea set. With her resolutely country mode of dress, it was comical to watch her go through the refined ritual of serving the tea, for all the world as if she were the Duchess of Portland, and drinking from porcelain bowls. He would not have laughed at her for all the world, though.

Because these two were his best support, better even than Cynthia, who could only advise him in one half of his life. Ever since his investiture as Prince, had had relied upon the sisters to teach him the many things about the Onyx Court he should and did not know. Galen hardly imagined the Prince of Wales ever turned to countrywomen for such things, but the Goodemeades were different. Beneath their cheery and provincial exteriors lurked two very alert minds indeed.

“Now,” Rosamund said when they were all supplied with tea, “what shall it be this month, Lord Galen?”

He’d been sitting on this question for nearly a week, awaiting his chance to ask it. “What can you tell me about that sprite from Berkshire, Dame Irrith?”

“Oh, we’ve known her since the end of the war,” Rosamund said. It took Galen a moment to realise which one she meant. Would he ever grow accustomed to their habit of referencing the previous century’s civil wars as if they were recent memory? They cared little for battles in foreign lands, but remembered those at home quite well. “She’s been by to see us once—”

“Twice,” Gertrude corrected her. “Oh, but you were in the city the second time; I’d forgotten.”

Galen frowned over the dark surface of the bohea in his tea bowl. “I… Dame Irrith found the Calendar Room. I convinced the Queen it would be better to admit the place’s existence than to punish her. But there seemed to be something between them, and I was hoping you knew what it was.”

That last was merely a bit of politeness; sometimes he wondered if there was anything in the Onyx Hall the Goodemeades didn’t know. Rosamund sighed unhappily. “Aye, we do. Old history, from your perspective, and not a piece we share with most people; it can lead in dangerous directions. But since it’s important to the safety of Lune’s throne, you should probably know.” Her brow furrowed. “Indeed, Lune should’ve told you. I wonder… well, no matter.”

She wondered why Lune hadn’t. There’d been no reason to, of course, before Irrith’s return. Since then—“I think her Grace is more concerned with the comet.”

Two curly heads nodded acceptance, if only for the sake of his pride. Rosamund said, “The nasty details of it are neither here nor there, but the heart of it is this: some troublemakers in the Onyx Hall almost tricked Irrith into telling them the location of the London Stone.”

Galen’s heart skipped a beat. The London Stone… it was easy enough to find, if one meant the ordinary lump of limestone that stood on the north side of Cannon Street. Nowadays it was more an obstruction to passersby than anything else, its history as the heart of London forgotten by most. In the Onyx Hall, however, its function as the site of oaths saw very specific use, every time a new Prince was crowned.

The Stone held both Galen’s sovereignty and Lune’s. Whatever oaths the chosen man swore, whatever rituals the Queen conducted, no one became Prince in truth until he laid his hand upon the faerie reflection of the London Stone. That was why it was hidden away, concealed from all eyes: if someone gained access to it, he could, in theory, try to take the Onyx Hall for himself.

Rosamund was nodding. “You don’t need me to tell you the danger. This was right after we had word of the comet’s return, and right after they passed that law making England and Scotland one kingdom, too. Which Lune’s enemies used against her. They—”

“Wait,” Galen said, startled. “The Act of Union? How could that be relevant?”

Gertrude made a huffy noise, and crossed her arms. “It got rid of the Kingdom of England, and you think it’s nothing?”

She wasn’t really angry; he’d never seen either of the brownies truly angry. She did seem offended, though. Still baffled, Galen said, “But the two lands have been ruled by the same monarch for over a hundred and fifty years. It hardly makes any difference, except in government.”

He regretted the words as soon as he spoke them. Galen never would have thought such friendly hazel eyes could blaze, but there Gertrude was, arms clamped down hard, lips pressed white, and child-size though she might be, there was nothing childish about her expression. This was real anger.

Rosamund laid a calming hand on her sister’s knee, for all the good it did. “Faeries are… provincial creatures, Lord Galen, even those that live in London. And Lune’s whole purpose—well, part of it, anyway—is to protect England. So how does it look if suddenly there’s no England anymore?”

Galen was still half-distracted by the seething Gertrude. He managed to catch himself, though, before he pointed out there was still an England; it was just part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, now. He also managed to catch the undoubtedly disastrous impulse to ask what they thought of Britain’s new German kings. Though had the Scottish Stuarts been any better, in their eyes?

It’s a strange day, when faerie politics seem the safer topic, he thought ruefully. “Lune’s enemies, then, were using that, and the return of the comet, as an argument to… remove her?” That sounded unpleasantly familiar.

Gertrude had recovered her temper enough to speak. “Yes. Ungrateful bast—”

“Gertrude!” Rosamund exclaimed, going scarlet.

“Well, they are!”

“That doesn’t mean you call them such—”

“Ladies!” Galen was off his chair, whisking Gertrude’s tea bowl out of the way before she could hurl it to the floor for emphasis. They were Rosamund’s favourite pattern—with roses around the rim, naturally—and he did not want to discover whether that would tip the sisters over into a real fight. “I’m sorry I asked. I thank you very much for the explanation, but had I known—”

Rosamund’s ire vanished as if it had never been, and she began assuring him that it wasn’t his fault, he was welcome to ask as many questions as he liked, whenever he liked. Gertrude, apparently still smarting from his comments about the Act of Union, retrieved her bowl and drained its contents, slops and all. By the time she was done, she’d calmed down enough that Galen ventured one last query. “Did the Queen banish her?”

“Irrith?” Gertrude shook her head and began gathering up the tea things. “No, Lune knew she meant no harm. As Rose said, she was tricked. But Irrith left because it was too much of everything she hates about this place: politics, and deceit, and folk stabbing each other in the back.”

Galen sympathised. Were it not for Lune, he would gladly spend all his time among the common fae, and avoid the intrigue of the courtiers.

Were it not for Lune.

“Thank you,” he said. “It makes more sense now. Cuddy thought Irrith was a Sanist, and I believe her Grace suspected it, too, at least briefly.”

“Irrith?” Rosamund shook her head emphatically. “She’s loyal to Lune. Has been for a hundred years. She would never do anything to hurt her.”

He was glad to hear it. Then Gertrude said, “We’d love to have you stay longer, but I think you should be going, my dear; it’s started to sleet.”

How she could tell, with her home buried underground, Galen didn’t know, but he emerged into the bitter air to discover she was right. He rode back to Westminster with fresh coals in the foot-warmer fighting back the chill, and brooded upon Irrith all the way.

Raucous laughter advertised Irrith’s destination before she could see it. This was the underbelly of the Onyx Hall, far from the elegant diversions of the courtiers; here, the dank chill of the river pervaded the stones, and the comforts of upper society were rarely seen. The furnishings of the room Irrith sought were nothing like the delicate mortal fashions that surrounded the Queen and the Prince. Spindle-legged chairs that had been stylish at the restoration of the monarchy clustered around heavy tables that had seen old Elizabeth Tudor’s day, and all of them blackened with ages of use.

But a few novelties reached this place. The fae gathered in the Crow’s Head—common folk, all—drank coffee and tea and gin, alongside the familiar beer and ale. It was a fashion in its own right, though one few courtiers would gamble with; those were mortal drinks, and not given in tithe. Consuming them could change a faerie. Irrith, catching a human serving-boy by the shoulder, chose the safety of faerie ale.

Magrat, she saw, was not so cautious. The church grim sat hunched in a corner, watching the world through the gap between her bony knees, a gin cup clutched in her skeletal hand. It was her usual posture, and Irrith could understand why; the church Magrat had haunted was destroyed back when fat Henry chose a new wife over loyalty to the Catholic Church. She was hardly the only grim dispossessed of her home during those times, either. Some, Irrith heard, had taken to haunting Quaker meetings and the like. It rarely turned out well, though; the white-hot faith of the Methodists and Baptists and other dissenters was too uncomfortable, even for a church grim’s tolerance. Many abandoned the mortal world entirely, fleeing into Faerie itself.

And a few, like Magrat, made new homes elsewhere. The goblin, who had once known whether the dead were destined for Heaven or Hell, now traded in different sorts of information. It wasn’t political; Magrat didn’t give a priest’s damn what use those secrets were put to. She only cared if she got paid.

Irrith slid onto the bench across from her and got a nod. “You cost me a child’s first nightmare,” the goblin said, without much rancor. “I bet Dead Rick you wouldn’t return, after that business over the Stone.”

The sprite’s stomach turned over. Blood and Bone—how had that become public knowledge? It had been a state secret when she left.

“Don’t worry,” Magrat told her, after a swig of gin. “No one’ll be after you for that anymore. Your knowledge turned to worthless dust when the mortals moved the thing to the north side of Cannon Street. Mab only knows where it is down here, now.”

Moved the Stone? Irrith did her best to keep the shock from her face. The London Stone was the heart of the Onyx Hall. If the mortals had moved it… she was surprised any of the palace was holding together anymore.

Secrecy now was rather like closing the stable door after the horse had bolted, but she owed it to Lune anyway. “I came to buy, not sell,” Irrith said. “Tell me about the Sanists.”

Magrat had no eyebrows, but the gray-tinged skin above her black eyes rose into furrows. “Sanists, is it? That’ll cost you.”

It always cost her. But Irrith knew it didn’t have to cost as much as Magrat made out. “What do you want?”

“Bread. Three pieces.”

Irrith laughed in the goblin’s face. “For that, I could buy the name of the next Prince. This isn’t worth bread, Magrat, and I don’t have any to give anyway. It’s more valuable than oaths, these days.” An exaggeration, but not by much. “How about the memory of a kiss?”

Magrat rolled her eyes in exaggerated disgust. Irrith added, “Not just any kiss. The last one given by a young man to his lady love, before he went off and got killed by the Jacobites.” It was all that remained of Tom Toggin’s bribe, and Irrith had been saving it for special use. The lady had feared, when her lover went off, that he was going to die, tinging the memory with a presentiment of grief.

“Done,” the grim said without hesitation, and spat in her hand. Irrith did the same, and they shook. She hadn’t brought the captured memory with her, of course; too many fae here had wandering fingers. The handshake was enough to secure the deal. “It’s cheap information,” Magrat admitted. “Lots of people know about the Sanists. But I can tell you more than most. It’s funny you should ask me, really, when you’ve dealt with them yourself.”

“I have?” It gave Irrith an unpleasant start. She’d wondered at the lubberkin’s whisper—had he somehow hit the mark?

Magrat waggled her over-long fingers in the air. “Not under that name. They didn’t start calling themselves Sanists until after you’d left. And Carline doesn’t let herself be seen anywhere near those folk—not publicly.”

A second start, more unpleasant than the first. Carline. Formerly one of the Queen’s ladies of the bedchamber, and the reason Irrith had left the Onyx Hall, intending never to return. “You’re talking about people who want to replace the Queen.”

The church grim unbent one spindly leg to shove something across the floor toward Irrith. “See for yourself.”

The thing turned out to be a torn, filthy sheet of paper. Irrith picked it up and found a title printed across the top in large block letters. The Ash and Thorn. Dated 10 February 1758.

“A newspaper?” Irrith lowered it to stare at Magrat. “There’s a newspaper in the Onyx Hall?”

“Two, actually. What good’s one newspaper, if it doesn’t have another to argue with? The Sun and Moon is the one loyalists read. This one publishes Sanists.”

Irrith’s stare shifted outward, to swing around the Crow’s Head. She’d noticed other fae reading things that looked like newspapers, but she’d assumed they’d been brought down from above. No doubt some of them had—but not all. She couldn’t concentrate enough to read the one in her hand, so she dumbly echoed Magrat’s words. “Sanists. Published in a newspaper. You’re saying they make their treason public?”

The grim waggled her hand. “Yes and no. Mostly they don’t talk about replacing her. They just mention what a shame it is, the Queen wounded and unhealing, and look how the Hall suffers, too, bits of it fraying away. And then, if they’re feeling bold, they wonder how it might be made well.”

Irrith’s fingers clenched in the filthy paper. This wasn’t Carline’s old treason; that had been simple, damnable ambition, using things like the comet’s return as an excuse to gather support against Lune. This time—Blood and Bone.

This time, they had a point.

“Mens sana in corpore sano,” Magrat said. “That’s Latin, you know. ‘A sound mind in a sound body’—not that anyone in this black warren’s terribly sound, but nobody asked me before picking the name. What the Sanists want to know is, how can we make the palace strong when its Queen isn’t?”

She didn’t have to say anything more. Irrith knew exactly what she meant. Lune had taken two wounds in the past: one from an iron knife, and one from the Dragon. Neither would ever heal properly. Which meant the faerie realm was ruled over by a Queen who wasn’t whole.

The Queen was her realm. It was the basic principle of faerie sovereignty; the bond between the two was the foundation for authority. Carline had tried to find the London Stone because that was the focal point, the place where she could, perhaps, wrest authority away. Now, it seemed, she was trying something else: the force of popular opinion, and the weight of faerie tradition.

What if the Sanists were right? What if what London needed, for its own sake, was a new Queen?

Irrith glanced away, to keep Magrat from reading her expression. Not a good plan: the Crow’s Head was filled with other fae, some of them eavesdropping, some not, but all of them probably willing to sell rumors if offered a price. The galley-beggar sliding past her in the close quarters of the tavern had no ears to hear with, nor eyes to see—nor, for that matter, a head to put such things in—but that wouldn’t stop him. If he could drink the coffee in his hand, he could carry tales, too.

“Welcome back to London,” Magrat said dryly. “A nest of vipers, all with their tails tied together, because nobody’s quite willing to give this place up. Except you, fifty years ago.”

When she’d abandoned Turkish carpets and dirty rushes in favour of clean dirt and wild strawberries, politics and spying and insurrection for hunting beneath the summer moon. It would be easy enough to escape this snare again; all she had to do was put down her ale cup, walk out the nearest entrance, and return to the Vale.

Easy enough to leave. Staying away was harder. All it had taken was Tom Toggin, and the recollection of the coming threat, to drag her back into the city. Because, as Magrat said, she wasn’t quite willing to give it up.

Out of the corner of her eye, Irrith saw the church grim’s lipless mouth twitch. Suddenly suspicious, the sprite demanded, “Have you made another bet with Dead Rick? Maybe one about how I’ll go crawling back to the Vale before the season is out?”

The grim’s smile was all teeth. “That’s what he thinks. I’d be obliged if you didn’t; I stand to win a pair of eyes off him.”

Gambling, at least, was something Irrith understood. So was a challenge. She returned Magrat’s grin fiercely. “All right. I could see my way clear to obliging you… if you give me something in return.”

“Iron blast your soul,” the goblin said, but the venom was only halfhearted. “I should’ve known better than to tell you that. All right, what do you want?”

“More information. Not now; I’ll save the debt for later. And I’ll make it something small.”

Magrat thought it over, then spat in her hand again. Wet palms joined, the church grim said, “I’m counting on your stubbornness. Don’t you disappoint me.”

My own court should not be a distraction to me.

Lune recognised the foolishness of that sentiment, even as she thought it. Political difficulties did not resolve themselves just because there was an external threat; some might, but others worsened. For every faerie who decided a wounded Queen was a problem for later, after the defeat of the Dragon, there was another who felt that now more than ever, they needed a sovereign who was whole.

The best she could do was to keep one finger on that pulse, and try to anticipate where real trouble might break out. To that end, she met in private with her Lord Keeper, Valentin Aspell.

“As you might expect, madam,” the lord said in his quiet, sibilant voice, “the reaction is mixed. Some take it as a hopeful sign: if you can achieve something as great as the Calendar Room, then surely you can mend the Onyx Hall.”

He let a hint of reproach through. The major responsibility of the Lord Keeper, at least publicly, was the maintenance of enchanted items; the Calendar Room, while hardly something that would fit into the royal treasury, might have fallen under his authority. Lune had shared the secret only with those few who needed to know, however, and Aspell had not been one of them.

Hopeful signs were good. She knew better than to believe they comprised the majority, though. “What of the rest?”

The Lord Keeper picked up a neatly bound stack of newspapers, grimacing as the cheap ink came off on his fingers. “Sanist reactions are as you would expect. The profound lack of logic and reasoning on display is nothing short of astounding; some have leapt to the conclusion that the Calendar Room operates by draining your life, madam, and that you are therefore mortal now.”

Lune sighed. She knew better than to think the common subjects of her realm were all stupid; some goblins and pucks were very clever indeed, just as some of her courtiers were utter fools. But many of those common fae were uneducated, knowing nothing beyond what their own natures inclined them to, and that made them easy prey for rumors.

Some of which, she knew, were spread deliberately.

Aspell shook his head before she could ask. “I do agree with you, madam, that there is a leadership of some kind among the Sanists—a group actively seeking your replacement. But they are more careful than the fools who drink in the Crow’s Head. I doubt we’ll be able to find them until they make a clear move.”

The fact that he was right made it no easier to swallow. And even if she broke up the Sanist leadership, the sentiments would remain; it might give her a brief respite, but nothing more.

She lifted one hand to pinch her brow, then made herself lower it. While there was no great warmth between the two of them, she couldn’t fault Aspell’s effectiveness; he’d served her almost continually since her accession to the throne, and proved his use more times than she could count. Sooner or later he would find the right thread to pull, and unravel this knot.

She just hoped it came sooner. It would be pleasant to have one less problem to deal with.

“Keep watch over Carline,” Lune said at last. “If she isn’t involved, they may yet approach her. Inform me if you uncover any signs of trouble.”

Ordinarily she put the Lord Keeper’s spies to a variety of uses, but they were useless in the matter of the comet, and the Sanists were by far her second greatest worry. Anything else could wait. Valentin Aspell bowed deeply and said, “Madam, I will do everything I can.”

Miserably chill rain washed across Westminster in sporadic waves, but the interior of Gregory’s was warm, and laden with the competing scents of coffee, wig powder, perfume. The close of the Christmas holidays, the sitting of Parliament, and the prospect of approaching spring meant the quality were returning to London from their country estates, and marshaling themselves for the beginning of the Season.

Of Galen’s companions, two had retired in such fashion, while one—like him—had stayed in London, for lack of money to make that country estate habitable. Today was the first renewed gathering of their usual club, which Mayhew had dubbed the Feckless Scions. It was more a joke than anything else. They were just a small group of friends meeting in a coffeehouse; nothing like so organised as White’s, or even the clubs of the whores or the Negroes. It was, however, the only one Galen belonged to. There was one for men associated with the fae, but it was an awkward thing; they were too mismatched of a lot, and as Prince, he felt very self-conscious in attending.

Besides, those men would not have been able to help him with his current problem. Galen drained his coffee cup, clapped it onto the table, and said, “Friends, I need your assistance. I have to find a wife.”

His declaration met with appalled looks. Jonathan Hurst, eldest of their coterie at twenty-five, said, “What for? By any decent standard, you’ve got at least five more years of free whoring ahead of you, before being shackled to a wife.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve sired a bastard,” Laurence Byrd said suspiciously.

Peter Mayhew smacked him on the shoulder. “He said find a wife, idiot. If he had a bastard, logic says it would come with a woman attached.”

“Not if the mother’s dead, or unsuitable! He might need another woman to raise the child for him.”

“I don’t,” Galen said, before their speculations could saddle him with enough scandal to occupy society gossips for a week. “There’s no child—at least not that I know of. But my father is forcing my hand.”

Noises of comprehension sounded around the table. All had met his father, and knew Charles St. Clair’s manner. “It had to happen sooner or later,” Byrd agreed, his countenance now sympathetically gloomy. “Well, there’s one silver lining: the sooner you’re married, the sooner you get out from under his thumb. You have that to look forward to, at least.”

For what it was worth. Galen knew better than to believe his wedding and departure from Leicester Fields would mean freedom from his father. He knew men of thirty years’ age who still flinched when their sires spoke.

None of his companions suffered quite so much under the patriarchal hand. Byrd’s and Mayhew’s fathers were both of a more amiable nature, and Hurst’s had died seven years ago—though that had the unfortunate effect of making him responsible for two headstrong younger brothers, both of them disinclined to respect him as the patriarch of their household.

“My round,” Mayhew said, and got up to buy more coffee, threading his way through the room.

Hurst tugged the folded cuffs of his coat straight with a precise motion and said, “All right. You’ve asked our aid, and we shall give it. What do you need?”

“A wife,” Byrd reminded him.

“And any female creature of marriageable age will do? Provided, one imagines, that she has two legs, two eyes, and all the other parts customary to such a creature—”

Galen laughed. “I took your meaning, Hurst, and he did, too. He’s just being an ass. As to your question…” Laughter turned to a sigh. “The primary requirement, as you might imagine, is wealth.”

Hurst nodded. “Your sisters.”

Mayhew had just come back, and the bowls rattled against the table as the he set them down. He was the youngest of their group: eighteen, and precisely Daphne’s age. Galen knew full well that his friend harbored a not-so-secret tendre for his middle sister. He also knew, unfortunately, that the Mayhews were in even worse straits than the St. Clairs. Regardless of what wealth Galen acquired with his marriage, his father would never consent to let Daphne wed someone of such low status.

“How large of a settlement do you need?” Byrd asked. If he noticed Mayhew’s discomfiture, he gave no sign, but simply took one of the cups.

Choosing a number left a bad taste in Galen’s mouth, but he’d promised himself, while Edward shaved him that morning, that he would approach this in precisely the same way he did the threat of the Dragon: identify what needed to be done, evaluate potential methods of achieving it, and then pursue them one by one until he attained success. It was a wretched manner of seeking marriage, but it was also the only way he could bring himself to do it at all.

“Five thousand,” he said at last. “More, if possible.” Which made it unlikely he’d snare the daughter of a gentleman. Those with good fortunes were seeking better prey than him.

His companions nodded, and Hurst said, “Anything else?”

Now it became a matter, not of necessity, but of desire. And that was far more treacherous territory. “The usual,” Galen said, trying to make light of it. “An agreeable nature, good habits of cleanliness, no insanity in the bloodline—”

“No fondness for lapdogs,” Byrd suggested. “Can’t stand the damn things. I’ll never visit if you marry a woman with a dog.”

But Hurst didn’t break his gaze from Galen. He, too, sought a wife, though less urgently; as head of his own household, it was now incumbent upon him to secure an heir. “You’re a romantic, St. Clair,” he said, over Byrd’s complaints about useless dogs. “Surely you must desire more in a wife than a moderate fortune and a clean bill of health.”

Byrd ceased his tirade. Mayhew, too, was watching. They would not let it go, he knew; they understood him too well.

A faerie queen, he thought, images of Lune filling his mind. Seated on her throne, or taking her ease in the garden, ethereal as the moon.

He closed his eyes. “A serene manner,” he said, releasing the words one by one, as if laying treasures on the table. “Well-educated, not just in languages and music and dancing, but history and literature. And above all, a quick mind, curious and clever. Someone I can converse with, in more than mere flirtation.”

Silence greeted his description. Galen made himself open his eyes once more, and found himself facing three very different expressions. Byrd, ever the cynic, recovered his tongue first. “You’ll have to keep such a wife on a leash; curiosity and marital stability rarely go hand in hand.” Mayhew smacked him again.

“I’m quite serious,” Galen insisted, flushing. “Fortune is well and good, but that is my father’s requirement, not mine. And he isn’t the one who will be living with her until death do us part. I’m damned if I’ll take a wife I don’t respect.”

It silenced Byrd, and put a thoughtful look on Hurst’s face. “It narrows your field, at least, and that is a virtue; you’ll be pursuing specific targets, which they often appreciate. Judith Chamberlain might do.”

“Too old,” was Byrd’s immediate verdict. “He can’t take a wife half again as old as he is.”

Which was an exaggeration, but Hurst let it pass. “Abigail Watts. Cecily Palmer. Northwood’s eldest—what’s her name—”

“Philadelphia,” Mayhew supplied, after a moment’s pause.

Byrd had objections to them all. “Abby Watts would never tolerate a mistress. The Palmer girl’s mad for another fellow; she’d be the one straying from you, St. Clair. And Philadelphia—phaw! Can you imagine a more unwieldy name?”

“Well, damn it all, Byrd; you’ll shoot down every girl in England if we give you half a chance!”

He met Mayhew’s accusation with a shrug. “As they merit, my friend.”

“Every marriage is a compromise,” Hurst said—a declaration so authoritative, it could almost make one forget he was still unmarried himself.

“I’ll compromise on beauty,” Galen said; none could meet the standard of Lune, anyway. “But not upon fortune, nor upon respect. If that means there end up being lapdogs, then Byrd, you’ll just have to endure.” He drew a small book and pencil from his pocket. Opening it to a blank page, he asked Hurst, “Which names did you suggest, again?”

Irrith didn’t have the temperament for spying and intrigue, nor the inclination to publish her thoughts in either of the Onyx Hall’s newspapers. But reading The Ash and Thorn for a few weeks vexed her enough that she did the one thing she was good at, which was to go after the source of her problem.

Carline.

Not Lady Carline, not anymore; she’d lost her position in Lune’s bedchamber after her ill-fated attempt to trick Irrith. She still occupied the same rooms as always, though, and that was where Irrith sought her out, pounding on the door with an impatient fist.

A mortal servant opened the door, a wrinkled old woman quite unlike the beautiful youths that had waited on the elf-lady before. The woman eyed her dubiously. “What do you want?”

“Carline. And my business with her is serious, so don’t even—”

“Irrith?” The surprised call was unmistakably Carline’s velvety tone.

The woman scowled and let Irrith pass. The chamber beyond was embarrasingly luxurious, with red-cushioned benches in some Oriental style; Carline lounged upon one of these, wine in hand. She rose as Irrith entered. “Why, it is you. I’d heard you were in London once more, but I confess, I never thought you would come to me.”

The fallen lady’s lush body showed to great advantage even in the relatively plain gown she was wearing, and she towered nearly a head over Irrith. Undaunted, the sprite put her hands on her hips and glared upward. “I wouldn’t have, except that I have something to say to you.”

The black eyebrows rose. “I see you haven’t changed. Or rather, you’ve changed back to what you were before I tried to refine you. Very well, be blunt: say what you have come for.”

“Stop trying to overthrow the Queen.”

The previous rise had been an elegant affectation; this time, Carline’s brows shot upward like startled crows. “I beg your pardon?”

Irrith dug a folded copy of the most recent Ash and Thorn out of her pocket and waved it. “You didn’t stop, did you, even after Lune found out. I told you fifty years ago, Carline: you don’t just vote your monarch out.”

“The mortals did,” Carline said. She’d recovered from her surprise, and set her wineglass down with a clink. “Seventy years ago. And now the Jacobite pretenders try to regain the throne through the votes of swords—which is better? But I have no wish to debate political philosophy with you, Irrith, as entertaining as it would be to watch the result. Since I have somewhere I must be, let me say this instead: come with me. I’d like to show you something.”

Irrith recoiled, sensing a trap. “No.”

“What do you expect—that I’ll knife you and leave you in an alley? I promise, I mean no harm.”

Carline might be taller, but she’d never be able to kill Irrith, especially not when Irrith had a pistol in her other pocket. “I’ve learned my lesson about trusting you.”

The former lady sighed in disappointment. “I confess, that was an error on my part. I didn’t think you clever enough to realise what I was doing. Well, I have learned my lesson; no more tricks.” She tilted her head and looked down at Irrith with an expression that might almost be called fond. “You had a certain charm, though. Unlettered, uncultured—I enjoyed introducing you to the beau monde and watching you scandalise them. Consider this a favour, in repayment for that diversion. I’ll even give you bread. And when it’s over, I’ll answer the demand you came to make.”

That Carline was dangerous, Irrith had no doubt. But it was danger of a sort that could be avoided, so long as she kept her eyes open. And the offer, she had to admit, had aroused her curiosity. “Very well. But if you’re deceiving me after all, you’ll find out just how uncultured I can be.”

Carline led her above and west. At first Irrith thought this more of her usual beau monde business, entertaining herself with society’s high-born and beautiful people. But their destination lay in a warren of narrow streets just north of the Strand, where a crowd of people both fine and not waited outside a large building. “Three shillings for a floor seat,” Carline said. “I will find you afterward.”

It was a theatre. “Where will you be?” Irrith asked, but her companion had already vanished into the crowd.

If this was a deception, it wasn’t Carline’s usual style. Irrith frowned, paid, and went inside. There she found herself a seat on one of the backless benches that covered the floor. The theatre, being crowded, she had to fight for a place, but being in London made her remember the use of her elbows. Soon she had a patch of green cushion large enough for her rump, just in time for the play to begin.

She’d been to the theatre before, though not this particular one. It amused her to watch mortals invent and play out stories that never happened. With their studied gestures and bombastic delivery of lines, they almost became something other than humanity, strange beasts in a ritual pageant.

She’d never seen anything like this before.

It was as if real people were on the stage, unaware of the audience observing them. They laughed and shouted and wept, for all the world as if these things were happening to them in truth. If their words were more eloquent and their lives more strange than any real person’s would have been, it only heightened the effect, like a polishing cloth bringing out the fine grain of wood.

It was magic. The charms and enchantments of faerie-kind were nothing to this. During one of the pauses for applause, Irrith realised she’d even seen this play before; it was an old one, The City Heiress, written by a woman last century. But this new style of acting made it all seem fresh. They wove an illusion with nothing more than the tools of ordinary life, until the audience vanished and there was nothing but the story on the stage. Here was a rich heiress, and here, the two men who would woo her, and Irrith had to struggle to remember they were simply mortals playing a part.

Mortals—and one faerie.

Irrith’s jaw fell slack when Carline walked onto the stage. That it was the elf-lady, she had no doubt; Carline looked almost exactly like herself, the glamour only serving to remove the faerie cast from her features. But she was dressed in sumptuous clothes befitting a wealthy man’s mistress, for that was the role she was playing: Diana, mistress to the younger of the two would-be suitors.

It broke the magic, and for that, Irrith resented her. In the scenes that didn’t include Diana, she could briefly lose herself once more, but every time the faerie actress reappeared Irrith was back in a noisy and boisterous theatre, watching people in costumes pretend to be something they were not. And Carline was no good at it: she could not counterfeit emotion, not as the humans could. For fae, there was little distance between pretence and feeling, and without the latter it was hard to manage the former.

When the play ended, Irrith turned to the drunken young gentleman at her side. “What was that woman doing up there?” she demanded.

“Mrs. Pritchard?” He seemed to have forgotten Irrith’s use of her elbows, for he peered at her in a friendly enough manner, albeit an unsteady one. “Too old for the role of Charlot, but she’s so splendid that—”

“Not the heiress,” Irrith said impatiently. “The other one. The mistress. Diana.”

“Oh, her.” The gentleman blinked, then turned to his companion. Her occupation was obvious enough, for he seemed to have forgotten her name. The woman, painted an inch thick, merely shrugged. He echoed the shrug back at Irrith. “She plays here on occasion. Don’t know why Garrick lets her; she isn’t any good.”

Irrith could guess. Further application of her elbows got her through the crowd and out the lobby once more, and then she followed two gentlemen around to the back of the theatre.

They had come to see Mrs. Pritchard, but were turned away at the door. Irrith loitered a little distance off until Carline emerged, dressed once more in plain clothing.

The sprite shook her head in disbelief as Carline came toward her. “All right, so you’ve charmed the manager into letting you make a public display of yourself. Why did I have to see this?”

Carline looked hurt—genuinely so. “Mr. Garrick knows my worth. Some of the best people in London have come to see me perform. Did you not enjoy the play?”

She sounded like she truly believed it: that the rich gentlemen and their ladies came to see her, rather than the splendid Mrs. Pritchard. “I enjoyed it,” Irrith said grudgingly. “But what did this have to do with anything?”

She jumped back when Carline tried to grab her arm. “Stop that,” the lady said through her teeth. “We’ve drawn attention, Irrith, and unless you want to make new friends, you’ll come with me, quickly.”

Glancing around, Irrith saw they were almost alone in the alley, save for two pipe-smoking actors, one prostitute trying to drum up a bit of business, and a rough-looking fellow taking far too much interest in herself and Carline. They went swiftly around a corner, then another, then a third; the elf-lady clearly knew her way through this warren. They emerged without warning into an open space, edged with taverns doing roaring business: Covent Garden Market, Irrith realised, much seedier than when she last saw it.

There were prostitutes and thieves here, too, but being out in the open gave them a measure of safety from the latter, and Carline’s company deterred many of the former. Not all, though; one half-fed wretch asked through bruised lips if the gentleman might perhaps like the company of two ladies. “No, thank you,” Irrith said, and hastened past.

Carline breathed deep of the reeking air, then let it out in a gusty sigh. “I brought you here so you could see the truth. This is what I’m doing these days—not scheming, or plotting, or egging on the Sanists. You’ve no reason to believe me, Irrith, but I swear to you: I don’t want Lune’s crown.”

She was right; Irrith had no reason to believe her. “You wanted it before.”

“That’s true.” She looked thoughtfully across the riotous square. “But with Lune’s crown come Lune’s problems, don’t they? It was one thing fifty years ago: the Dragon’s return just announced, and all that time in which to figure out how to get rid of it. Now we’ve scarcely a year left. The Queen can say what she likes about that Calendar Room, but I know the truth; she hasn’t got a plan. The Onyx Hall will burn, and maybe London, too. Why should I make that my fault, instead of hers?”

Irrith tasted bile. “So you’ll wait until afterward. Until it’s all been destroyed.”

Carline gave her a pitying look. “And how would that profit me? I have no desire to rule over ashes. No, little sprite: my political ambitions are finished. My intention is to spend this last year doing everything I’ve always wanted to, everything that can only be done in London, and then when that bearded star appears in the sky, I will go someplace where it is not.” Now her eyes fixed on a distant point—a point, Irrith suspected, not in this world. “Faerie, I think. I have no desire to exile myself to some rustic hovel like your Vale. But I haven’t decided; it may be France instead.”

Her words cut close to the bone. Hadn’t Irrith thought almost the same thing, when she arrived in the autumn? Enjoy the Onyx Court while it lasted, then abandon it to its doom.

Now the bile in her throat was for herself. She’d never thought to feel kinship with Carline.

As if hearing those thoughts, the elf-lady laughed softly. “I’m not the only one, either. It was different when the Dragon took us by surprise, birthing itself out of the Great Fire; we were trapped, with little choice but to fight. Now we know it’s coming. Only the foolhardy wish to stand in its path.”

Despite the evidence of the past, Irrith found that she believed Carline. The lady really was done. “So what do the Sanists want?”

She got a shrug in reply. “Precisely what they say they want, I imagine. A new sovereign—presumably one who has both health and a plan for defeating the Dragon. But it won’t be me. In truth, I think they’ll get only half of what they want, and they know it; they can build whatever court they please after this one is gone.”

If that was true, Irrith despised them. Lune was wounded, yes, and that was a problem in need of an answer. Letting the Dragon destroy the court, though, was no answer at all. “What about the mortals?”

“What of them?”

That sounded like honest confusion, not artful innocence. Irrith said, “If the Dragon destroys the Onyx Hall, and the court is broken—what will become of mortal London?”

“It will continue on, as it always has,” Carline said dismissively. “Even if their city is destroyed again, they’ll simply rebuild; they’ve done it before. But you don’t mean that, do you?” Her eyes regarded Irrith with cool irony. “What you mean is, however will they cope, without faeries beneath their feet?”

They were speaking far too frankly, in far too public of a place; even if nobody nearby had reason to understand or care, it still made Irrith twitch. Back in the Vale, fae did not stand in the village square discussing Wayland’s affairs. But Carline’s sardonic question demanded an answer. “We’ve done so much for them.”

The twist of Carline’s lips mocked her assertion. “Have we?”

“We stopped the Dragon. Without us, it would have burnt down the rest of London.”

“And with us, it only burnt down most of London. Such a gift to the people of this city! It isn’t just that we failed to stop it sooner; we fed it. With our wars and our magics. Without us, would it even have become a Dragon? Or would it have stayed a simple fire, the kind London has seen before? Consider that, Irrith, before you speak so righteously of what we’ve done: it may be that our very presence in this city, the enchantments that bind the world above to the world below, transform London’s troubles into something more than they can handle alone… or create trouble where none was before.” Carline’s smile was poisonous. “Without us, the comet would be nothing more than a light in the sky.”

Irrith felt as if she’d swallowed fire. Carline was wrong; she had to be. The Onyx Court was important—

To whom? To fae like Irrith—and yes, like Carline—who wanted to be close to mortals, to observe them and talk to them and bask in the reflected glow of their passion. Brief lives, flickering in and out like fireflies, and all the more brilliant because of it. But what benefit did the fireflies gain?

Carline recognised the selfishness of it, as Irrith had not. And far from repenting, she embraced it, revelled in it. But when the music stopped, she would leave the dance.

Would Irrith do the same?

“Think about it, little sprite,” Carline said softly, leaning in uncomfortably close. “Decide whether you believe the Queen, that this place, this court, is so grand as to be worth preserving. Or admit the truth of it—use these mortals while you can—and then move on. You have eternity to live; do you want to risk it for those who would be better off without us?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. Perhaps she knew Irrith didn’t have one to give. Without a backward glance, Carline left Irrith standing in the clamour of Covent Garden Market, surrounded and alone.

Galen paced the deck of the barge with restless strides, staggering occasionally when the river slapped its side and tilted the vessel without warning. It didn’t disturb the consort of viols who entertained the barge’s passengers, seated as they were midway down the deck, but he had taken refuge in the bow, where the small turbulences of the river were felt most strongly.

Better that than to take a carriage. As the barge drew near the western bank and the waiting stair, he could see an unmoving line of conveyances clogging the road to the entrance of the Vauxhall Spring Gardens. Had his family gone that route, he would have spent even more time listening to his parents quarrel about the respectability of the place, with even less opportunity to escape it.

A footstep behind him, coming down unexpectedly hard as the barge juddered in the rough water. It was a windy night, and when Galen turned, he saw Cynthia clapping one hand to her gypsy hat, lest a sudden gust carry it away. He came forward and retied the bow beneath his sister’s chin, and she smiled her thanks. “The barge-men hardly need to row,” she said, brushing one hand over her sarcenet skirts. “They could just get the ladies on deck, and we’d sail all the way upriver.”

Galen offered his arm to steady her. From farther down the boat, he heard his father say to his mother, in a tone that ought to brook no argument, “I don’t give a damn what goes on in the bushes, so long as the father has money to hush it up.”

He winced. Cynthia tightened her hand on his arm, and they stayed where they were as the other passengers crowded the rail in anticipation of arrival. “That’s his sentiment,” she reminded him, rising on her toes to murmur it in his ear. “Not yours.”

As if he could so easily disown his relations. “I’m tarred with it regardless,” Galen said. He tried to summon some enthusiasm for this night, and failed. “I’ve come in search of a fortune, and everyone will know it. What young lady wants to wed such a man?”

Another squeeze of Cynthia’s hand. “I don’t see such a man at all.”

“You’re my sister, and partisan.”

“Yes—but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. I see a man determined to do what’s best for his family, particularly as it concerns the future happiness of his sisters. Young ladies find that sort of thing very touching.”

The barge thudded gently into the lower end of the river stair and was made fast. Passengers began to disembark, gentlemen assisting ladies to solid land once more. “Touching,” Galen said, amused despite himself. “So I’m a charity cause, now.”

“Everything is a charity cause, to a kind-hearted young lady,” Cynthia answered brightly, not so much accompanying as steering him toward the barge’s rail. “It’s our profession, you know, and being touched in the heart is our foremost skill. I myself got very poor marks in it, burdened as I am with too much sense—but then, you aren’t looking to marry me.”

That last comment got an alarmed and confused look from their mother, who clearly was not certain what they were talking about, but was just as certain it showed too much levity for the occasion. “Cynthia, do not hang upon his arm,” she admonished her eldest daughter, making shooing motions with her folded fan. “From a distance it will look as if you two are in company, when people cannot see you are related, and then they will not approach.”

Galen could hardly blame his mother for her concern. She had a nervous disposition to begin with, and his agreement with his father had put her into a pother. Nothing would do but that both Galen and Cynthia were promised to be married by the end of the Season; only then would she rest easy. She might not like the pleasure gardens as a hunting ground for spouses—there were far too many opportunities for illicit liaisons, in the dark byways of the walks—but the charity event tonight was respectable enough, and likely to draw the sort of man and woman both he and Cynthia needed.

Bracing himself, he helped his sister to the stair, then his mother. The elder St. Clair glared away any prospect of aid, so he waited until the old man had passed, before following like a docile sheep.

On the roadway above, Cynthia contrived to fall back so they could walk together, following the line of people to the waiting carriages, and the building that marked the entrance to the Spring Gardens. “All will be well,” she assured him, letting their parents draw a bit ahead. “If it helps, think on this: you may believe you’re the hunter, but in truth you’re hunted. All those mothers with unwed daughters, looking to trap you in their snares. You hardly stand a chance, poor boy.”

A hint of pain hid behind those light words. No such happy snares awaited Cynthia; she had no profit to offer a prospective husband, beyond her good nature. “Then I shall hunt on your behalf,” Galen promised.

She hadn’t Daphne’s beauty, but Cynthia was the only one of the St. Clair children to inherit their mother’s dimples. They flickered briefly in the lantern light as the garden entrance drew near. “We can work together, like a pair of hounds. I’ll bring suitable young ladies to you, and you shall find gentlemen for me. With such an alliance, success cannot be far away.”

Galen smiled down at his sister, feeling his spirit lighten. “If there are any young men here worthy of your good heart, my dear, I shall not fail to lay them at your feet.” And with those words, they passed through the building into the Spring Gardens beyond.

Despite the windy night, the Grand Walk was well lit by globes hung from the trees. Beneath those lights circulated the cream of London’s society, from wealthy merchants to the aristocracy itself, to the accompaniment of music from the orchestra in the grove.

And half of them at least were hunting spouses, for themselves or for their offspring.

At least he needn’t winnow the grain from the chaff. Tonight’s ridotto al fresco was a charity event, to benefit some worthy cause or another—the Foundling Hospital, perhaps, or soldiers wounded in the Jacobite Rebellion. On an ordinary night, anyone who could afford the shilling entrance fee could come inside. Poorer folks saved their pennies, then dressed in their shabby best to gawk at the music and the paintings and the splendour of their betters.

His mother had a point, Galen was forced to admit; the place wasn’t entirely reputable. Hopefully Cynthia knew to keep far away from the Druid Walk and other such dark corners, where young bloods laid snares for unchaperoned young ladies. It should be safer tonight, with the prostitutes chased out, but not every peer’s son respected a woman’s dignity as he should.

Food was laid out in the Rotunda to their left, slightly better than the usual overpriced fare of the gardens. Peter Mayhew lurked there, and his face fell when he saw that Daphne hadn’t accompanied them. “Hurst is about somewhere,” he told Galen, gesturing vaguely at the expanse of the gardens. “If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re here; I believe he intends to spend the night hunting on your behalf.”

It seemed Galen would have all the assistance he could stomach, and more. He was grateful to spot Dr. Andrews near the orchestra, the one man in London with whom he could talk something other than marriage prospects.

The stick-thin man turned when Galen called his name. “Ah, Mr. St. Clair. Here to support the good efforts of the Marine Society?”

So it was the Navy they were benefitting. “Yes, of course,” Galen said, as if he’d known. Andrews’s mouth compressed, not quite concealing amusement. To prove he wasn’t entirely ignorant of the evening’s design, Galen added, “Mr. Lowe will be singing later, I believe. Have you had the pleasure of hearing him? A fine tenor indeed.”

“A fine voice, but an inferior grasp of musical art,” Andrews said. “One would think the latter could be taught, and the former could not, but it seems beyond Mr. Lowe’s capacity. Nevertheless, a splendid singer—I do not mean to belittle him. Hanway would not engage him for this event, otherwise.”

“How go your studies?” Galen asked, and they spent an enjoyable if gruesome few minutes discussing the medical arts. This entirely inappropriate conversation, however, was interrupted by the arrival of Cynthia, with another young lady in tow. “Oh, I do apologise—Galen, I wanted to introduce you to my friend Miss Northwood.”

He bowed, sighing inwardly. From one duty to another, this one less pleasant. Northwood; that was one of the names Hurst had suggested. The one whose given name Byrd had derided.

Philadelphia certainly was a grand name for its bearer. She was excessively thin, and had the kind of plainness that showed its worst in fine dress; elegance merely heightened the lack of it in her face. Not ugly, just very unexceptional—the sort who attracted compliments for her fine straight teeth. And even those only appeared briefly, in an awkward smile.

“We’d be poor gentlemen indeed if we objected to the company of two pretty girls,” Galen said, substituting courtesy for truth. “And if you overheard our topic—I promise you, we can be more civilised. Just a few minutes ago Dr. Andrews and I were discussing the singer, Mr. Lowe. Have you heard him, Miss Northwood?”

“Once,” she said, in a soft contralto. “Not the most subtle in his interpretation of the melody—but you hardly notice that fault, past the glory of his voice.”

Which earned her Dr. Andrews’s instant approval. The two of them immediately commenced a debate over whose musical interpretation was superior to Lowe’s, while Cynthia cast Galen a look he could interpret all too easily. So this was her assistance to him: Miss Northwood as a prospective target. He had not known they were friends.

She seemed pleasant enough. And Galen had said that beauty was not his chiefest requirement. In fact—noting the colorful chiné silk of her gown, the intricate cording around its neckline—he recalled now why Hurst would have suggested her. Philadelphia Northwood’s father was one of the Directors of the Bank of England. Wealthy, and eager for his daughter to marry into a better family. In short, exactly what Galen was looking for.

He marshaled his courage and waited for an opportune moment. When it came, he said, “Miss Northwood—do you dance?”

She raised her eyebrows at him. Galen had the distinct impression this was not a question she was often asked; young men, seeing her, no doubt assumed that plainness on her part meant bruised toes on theirs, and inquired elsewhere. But the musicians were striking up a contredanse, and a platform had been built in the Grove for the purpose. She said, “I do, Mr. St. Clair—when invited.”

“Then please allow me to extend my invitation,” he said, proffering his arm to accompany the words.

Cynthia’s encouraging smile pursued them as they went to join the other dancers. This was easy enough, easier than conversation; he’d been through many hours of dancing lessons, and no doubt she had, too. He settled his hat more firmly upon his head, so the trickster wind could not snatch it away, and gave his hand to Miss Northwood, who accepted it with a curtsy.

She danced like an instruction book, every movement precisely as her own dancing master must have dictated it to her, without any particular flair or grace. But neither did she step upon his toes, and once he was certain of that safety, Galen realised he must make conversation after all. “I was not aware you were friends with my sister,” he began, seizing upon the first safe topic that came to mind.

“Cynthia and I share certain charity interests,” Miss Northwood replied, as they circled each other in an allemande. “The Society for the Improvement of Education Among the Indigent Poor.”

A perfectly respectable thing for polite young ladies to do. “And do you fill all your days with the improvement of one thing or another?” he asked, with a smile to show he meant no disdain. “Or do you spare an hour here and there for more frivolous pursuits?”

Her careful mask of pleasantry briefly deepened to something more genuine as they joined hands for a promenade. “I am no Methodist, Mr. St. Clair. If I filled every day with nothing but good works, I would soon burn my candle to a stub. The occasional frivolous diversion, I find, restores some of its lost wax—if I may be forgiven my execrable choice of metaphor, which I fear has taken a wrong turn somewhere. I should have gone with lamp oil.”

It startled a laugh out of him—a real one, not the polite chuckle every gentleman cultivated for genteel conversation. “Forgiven, Miss Northwood. What manner of diversion do you prefer?”

She hesitated for only the most fleeting of instants; had the dance oriented him away from her at that moment, he would have missed it. “I enjoy reading.”

As many plain young ladies did, their time unoccupied by the demands of flirtation and social intrigue. “Novels?”

Her answering look was sharp, before she moved to change places with the lady of the neighbouring couple. By the time they were rejoined, the careful mask was back. “Sometimes. Also history, philosophy, translations of classical works—”

Galen realised his mistake. He should have detected it sooner; Cynthia knew him, and knew where his priorities would be in courting. “I apologise, Miss Northwood. Were it not at our estate in Essex, I would show you my own library, and you would see I’m of your mind. These days, I must make do with a circulating library.” It was the only way he could get new books; his father firmly condemned the expense of purchasing them.

“Make do?” She laughed. “They are a wonderful institution, for if I purchased every book I wished to read, my father would put me on bread and water to make up the expense.”

Not just the refuge of a plain girl who could get nothing better; she had actual passion for learning. Vauxhall is a terrible place for her, Galen thought. It advertised every good quality she did not possess, while hiding those she did. She would do much better in another context.

The dance was ending, which was a good thing for them both. Their inattention had caused their steps to degenerate, his as well as hers. “Miss Northwood,” he said as he made his final bow, “have you been to see the curiosities of the British Museum?”

“I thought it wasn’t open to the public yet.”

He smiled. “It isn’t, but they can be persuaded to admit the occasional select visitor. I would be delighted to arrange a small party.” Cynthia would help, he was sure. And for the chance of snaring such wealth, his father would not begrudge the expense.

Having uttered those words, he saw that the smile Miss Northwood had offered upon meeting him was a false thing, her attempt at the coquetry expected of a marriageable young woman. This was the real Miss Northwood, and the frank honesty of this smile was much more charming. “Mr. St. Clair, I would walk barefoot to Bloomsbury for the chance.”

As they approached the edge of the crowd, Galen saw Cynthia raise an inquisitive eyebrow. He nodded at her, gratitude warming his heart. There may be other prospects. Nothing is certain yet. But thank you, beloved sister—this is a very good place to start.

There were two elf-knights at the chamber door, members of the Onyx Guard, but it was the valet Irrith couldn’t get past. “Lord Galen is occupied,” he said.

Irrith scowled ferociously. The servant didn’t so much as blink. He was faerie-blooded, that was obvious; it showed in the set of his eyes. Clearly he’d seen enough of fae to be less than impressed with the scowl of one slender sprite.

She had nothing to bribe him with, either. Flirtation was out of the question; Irrith was not Carline, in inclination or skill. She had to resort to something like the honest truth. “It has to do with the Dragon.”

The word was practically a magic key, opening doors throughout the Onyx Hall. But not this door, it seemed. “Very good, ma’am,” the servant said with a bow. “If you would care to leave your message with me—”

“I would not. Listen, nocky boy; I have a question for the Prince, and until I get an answer—”

The door suddenly swung farther open, revealing Lord Galen, in a state of half-dress. His shirtsleeves billowed silk-white out of his unbuttoned waistcoat, and his wig was missing. Irrith fought not to goggle. He looked very different without its carefully styled curls—somehow both older and younger, and definitely less foppish.

Galen ran one self-conscious hand over his cropped scalp, as if only just now realizing that perhaps it did not do to meet a lady at his door with his head so very bare. His hair was chestnut brown, darker than her own. “Dame Irrith. Come in.”

He did not say, So I don’t have to listen to you and my man argue forever. Irrith didn’t much care why he let her in; she obeyed with speed, slipping past the servant, and even restraining herself from smirking at him.

The Prince’s chambers were much changed from the last time she saw them—which was, after all, more than fifty years and several Princes ago. They were light! Someone, perhaps at Galen’s instigation, had covered the black walls with some kind of paint or paper in an agreeable shade of pale blue. Carpets softened the stone floors, and elegant chairs stood about, as well as a few sturdier pieces. No doubt those were there for the convenience of the Onyx Court’s more massive fae.

Irrith bowed, but Galen dismissed it with a wave of his hand, gesturing her to sit at a small table. “Would you like anything to drink? No? Thank you, Edward; that will be all.”

The man bowed and retired to an inner room. If he was a proper Onyx Court servant, he’d be eavesdropping at the keyhole. Well, let him, Irrith thought. Lune wouldn’t let him serve the Prince if she didn’t trust his discretion.

It was hard to attach that title to Galen, young as he was, and so uncertain. He seemed to breathe easier, though, away from Lune. He hesitated for a moment, before apparently deciding not to retire and dress properly; instead he seated himself across from Irrith. “So. You have something to say about the Dragon.”

“I,” Irrith said, and stopped. “Um. That is—”

A grin lurked at the corner of his mouth. “It was something you said to get past Edward.” Irrith looked down in embarrassment. “It’s all right; my time isn’t so precious as he thinks. What did you want?”

She felt very odd, sitting in this light and delicate room. It didn’t feel like the Onyx Hall at all—more like some fashionable gentleman’s parlor, that happened to have no windows. A little piece of the mortal world, brought down here intact. “You’re mortal,” Irrith said.

The grin came back, lurking more obviously. “I am,” Galen agreed.

“And you’re a part of the Onyx Court. The Prince, even. So you must believe this place is worthwhile. Right?”

It didn’t quite kill the grin, but Galen’s eyebrows rose. “Of course I do.”

“Why?”

He stared at her, lips slightly parted. Watching the play of emotions across his face was entrancing. Galen had a very expressive face, wide-eyed, with a sensitive mouth and skin that easily betrayed a blush. And his mood changed so quickly, so easily! She could observe him for a week without pause and never grow bored.

That sensitive mouth opened and closed a couple of times, as Galen searched for words. At last he said, “Her Grace told me you fought for the Onyx Hall during the Great Fire. Did you not think it worth preserving then?”

“I did.”

“Have you changed your mind?”

Irrith squirmed on the padded seat. “I… don’t know. It just seems to me—like we, the fae, cling to you. To mortals. Because you give us things, feelings, experiences, that we can’t get otherwise. But what do you get in return? Oh, sometimes we inspire the occasional artist—but is a painting or a piece of music that important? And sometimes a mortal falls in love with a faerie, but how often does that turn out well for them?”

Irrith damned her thoughtless tongue even as the words came out, too late to be stopped. Galen flushed a fascinating, fragile pink. Did he really believe no one in the Onyx Hall knew of his unrequited love, when his every mannerism shouted it to the world?

Out of pity for his discomfort, Irrith said, “I agree with the Queen, as far as it goes. I like the idea of mortals and fae having some kind of harmony…” She sighed. “Even in the Vale, we’re drifting apart. People are more concerned with London newspapers, the latest fashion or gossip about the aristocracy, the next ball or concert or whatever gathering is planned. It doesn’t touch Wayland’s realm, of course; we’re perfectly safe inside. But fae are going out less and less. And if we don’t go out, then what’s the point of being there at all? Why not just go into Faerie?” Or to France. Like Carline.

“Because we need you,” Galen said.

“Do you? Why?”

He sighed and ran his hands over his scalp again. One of his fingernails was bitten down to the quick. “I don’t know if I can explain it.”

If he couldn’t, then who could? “You’re Prince of the Stone,” Irrith reminded him. “The mortal half of the Onyx Court’s rulership. You of all people should have an answer.”

The compression of his mouth, the shift in his eyes, illustrated a welter of emotions. Embarrassment, nervousness, frustration. Irrith had clearly reminded him of something he knew, and tried not to think of. He’s a very odd Prince, she thought; she had seen enough to compare. And it isn’t just him being new, either.

Galen said, seemingly out of nowhere, “There is such beauty here—and such ugliness, too.”

Magrat’s face suggested itself. “And that’s somehow good for mortals?”

“In a way.” He rose from the table, hands half-raised, cradling empty air as if trying to grasp the idea in his mind. “Whatever a faerie is—beautiful or ugly; friendly or cruel; amusing or appallingly rude—you’re pure. They say evil exists in the world because without it, good would have no meaning. I wonder sometimes if that’s what the fae are. Not evil—I don’t mean that—” Galen’s half-distracted words stuttered into apology, before he saw Irrith hadn’t taken offence. “More like the, the pigments a painter works with. The pure colors, before they’re blended. When you hate, you hate. When you love—”

“We love forever.” Or at least Lune did. Irrith had never given her heart, and had no intention of ever doing so. “But how does that help London?”

“How does water help, or air, or the downward pull of gravity? Those things simply are, and without them, there is no London.”

Irrith shook her head impatiently, hopping off her own chair. “There was a London, though, before there was an Onyx Court. It hasn’t always been here, you know. I never saw the city until a hundred years ago, but I can’t imagine it was somehow less real, less full of life, back when they didn’t have a bunch of mischievous, meddlesome faeries being friendly and ugly and all the rest of it beneath their feet.”

“A hundred years,” Galen said, on a breath of startled laughter. “The charms and enchantments, you know—those I can accept, without much trouble. It’s the immortality my mind can’t encompass. You don’t look a hundred years old.”

She was far older than that. She suspected, though, that Galen didn’t need to hear her talk about the Black Death, or any of the other fragments she remembered from humanity’s long-distant past. Instead she went back to the original point. “What would happen, if we all left? Not just London—all of Wayland’s court, and Herne’s, and every other faerie realm in England. No more faeries. What would you lose?”

Galen looked as if the mere thought was enough to break him into splinters. “I—”

He would lose Lune. A more thoughtless young man might have said it; Irrith had known many mortals who scarcely past their own desires. Galen, for all his youth and uncertainty, had a larger heart than that. But why? It frustrated her, that she could not understand. What made him care so much about the fae?

At some point his hands had curled into helpless fists; now they relaxed, one joint at a time. Galen’s eyes—nearly the same blue as the walls—were unfocused, gazing off into the distance, and in them was a well of feeling deep enough for Irrith to drown in. Then he blinked, and so did she; the spell was broken. Galen said ruefully, “You want a single answer, one thing I can name that will account for all the fae at once. I don’t know if it’s that simple—if it can be that simple. The good comes in many diverse ways. Some of it is grand, like the saving of England from the Spanish Armada; some of it is slight, like the rescue of a single child from starvation in a gutter. If I must name a single thing…” He turned to her, and the longing in his eyes made Irrith shiver down to her toes. “You are our bridge to Faerie. If you leave, then it goes beyond our reach. And that would be a terrible loss.”

He believed it. He really did. Irrith was used to fae hungering for the brightness of mortals, but to see that hunger reflected back in his eyes…

“I’m not leaving.”

Her own voice, speaking without instructions. But the words, Irrith realised, were true. She repeated them. “I’m not leaving. Others probably will, because it’s easier than fighting. But I’ll stay. If nothing else, London deserves this much good of us: that we mend the things we broke.”

That sounded good. And it was easier than saying the other thing in her mind, the one called forth by Galen’s eyes. I cannot refuse you.

Odd as it was, a mortal wanted something from her—and she wanted to give it, if she could.

Galen caught up her hand and kissed it, then gripped her fingers as if holding fast to a rope. “Thank you, Dame Irrith.”

Common words, a courtesy tossed back and forth a thousand times a day. But the words, and the touch of his hands, stayed with her long after she departed.