A Star Shall Fall

PART FOUR ^{CONJUNCTIO Summer 1758}

The first vapors wisp free. Tenuous as ghosts, they soon vanish into the blackness; but they are there. The comet’s surface is warming.

Inert blackness converts to a radiant glow. Encouraged by the sun, the subtle matter bursts forth, creating something like air around the solid core. For the first time in more than seventy years, the beast begins to breathe.

Cold. Still too cold. Its awareness is sluggish, stupid, like a lizard left too long in shadow. Once it was mighty, a beast of flame and char, consuming all within its path. The efforts of humans were nothing, a mockery, a mere game for the creature they fought. To be reduced to this, drinking in the sun’s nourishment like a babe at the teat, is a terrible fall indeed.

But with every passing moment, its strength returns, and its mind. Dreams resolve into thoughts. Memories of the past, and plans for the future.

Wisps, as yet. But growing stronger, as the sun draws near.

“How appropriate,” Dr. Andrews said, with an unsteady laugh. “You’re taking me to Bedlam.”

“What? Oh—no, I assure you,” Galen hastened to say, once he’d pieced together Andrews’s meaning. In the darkness beyond Edward’s lantern, the broad expanse of the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem—Bedlam—was nothing more than a shadow against the stars, hulking above the old City wall. “Though some of the lunatics may be, er, joining us.” Londoners liked to go and poke at them with sticks for entertainment; the Onyx Court took it further, and invited them to participate in the fun. Tonight of all nights, the mad had a place among the faeries.

Midsummer Eve was swelteringly warm this year. Galen wished it wouldn’t be against the royal dignity of a Prince to shuck off his coat and wig and dance in his shirt. Andrews would probably look askance at him, though, even if Lune didn’t.

And then there was Irrith to consider.

As if his thoughts had summoned her, the sprite appeared in the gap that had once been Moorgate. Her apparel was an alarming blend of styles, masculine and feminine, mortal and faerie. On top she wore something like a woman’s riding habit, with a short jacket that showed off her tiny waist and sleeves that fell open at the elbows, but beneath it were tight-fitting breeches of doeskin, and on her curls perched a charming little three-cornered hat. And in bright colors, too: for occasions such as this, the Onyx Court laid aside its love of dark colors, and decked itself in all the splendour of summer. Whatever bird had sacrificed its feathers for her jacket, it came from nowhere in this world.

Irrith curtsied as they drew near, an incongruous motion that had the virtue of displaying the glimmering spiderweb lace of her sleeves. “Lord Galen,” she said, “Dr. Andrews. Her Majesty sent me to make sure you don’t get caught by the enchantments.” Her smile twinkled even in the darkness. “She would hate for you to be wandering lost for a year and a day.”

Galen simply nodded; his throat had gone too dry for anything else. The sly glance Irrith delivered to him was more restrained than it might have been, but it still set off half a dozen conflicting reactions within him. One of them made him glad for the length of his waistcoat. Others made him want to run away, fast.

Instead he gestured Dr. Andrews forward, while Edward extinguished the lamp. They all joined hands, Irrith letting out a sigh that indicated just how much she regretted forgoing the opportunity to play with the newcomer, and went forward. Dizzying vertigo gripped Galen for a moment—brief visions of other streets, moonlit forests, a muddy village—and then they were around the corner of Bedlam’s western wing, and standing in the lower Moor Fields.

London had long since burst the confines of its wall to consume the land to the north, but this place remained, defended by tradition less visible but far more enduring than the stones of that wall. By day, Moor Fields was a shabby stretch of much-abused grass, stretching from Bedlam’s entrance up to the artillery ground; nearby laundresses still staked their washing out to dry there. By night, it was a haunt for prostitutes and molly-boys. But on Midsummer Eve, it belonged to the fae, as it had since the founding of the Onyx Hall.

Faerie lights danced through the branches of the trees that marked off the lower field, casting colorful light upon the improbably vibrant grass. A great bonfire burnt where the paths came together, without need of wood to feed it, and all around that beacon danced the revellers, faerie and mortal alike. Some wore outrageous mockeries of the most excessive mortal fashions, rendered in moss and mist and leaves. Others wore nothing at all. Galen blushed away from a lushly rounded apple maiden wearing only a few soft petals from her tree, none of them covering anything significant. Rural fae from miles around flocked to London for Midsummer and May Day, and they brought their rural customs with them.

Lune had offered a splendid escort to bring the Prince and his visitor to the celebration. Ordinarily Galen would have entered with the Queen, accompanied by all the pomp appropriate to their joint stations, and she’d frowned at the notion of him coming virtually alone. But he thought it best for Andrews to have an escort he recognised, and an entrance that would draw less attention. Seeing the doctor’s wide, unblinking eyes, he rather thought he’d made the right choice.

And there would be pomp soon enough. Irrith was leading them north and east, skirting the crowd around the bonfire. A filthy, unshaven man lay on his back in the grass, hips bucking, rutting with nothing while a pair of pucks watched and laughed. At least he’s enjoying himself, Galen thought. The tricks played on this night were usually of a benevolent sort, or at least not permanently harmful. All Hallows’ Eve was a much less pleasant story.

Something more like dignity reigned in the northeast quarter of the field. There, two long tables stood arrayed before the trees, with dozens of mouthwatering dishes laid upon their white silk. “Remember,” Galen whispered to Andrews, “eat nothing whatsoever. There is food here that is safe, but there are also a great many fae who would think it sport to lead you falsely.”

“And they can even disguise themselves to make me think you are vouching for its safety,” Andrews said. He smiled tensely. “I am not likely to forget.”

Then there was no more time for warnings, for Irrith had brought them into the presence of the Queen.

Lune sat in a gap between the two tables, in a chair of estate carved from birch and horn, with a canopy of starlight above her head. Galen’s own chair was at her left hand, awaiting him. A truly tiny hob stood with a crystal platter above his head, piled with strawberries and a bowl of cream for the Queen’s pleasure, but he backed away with careful haste when he saw their approach, leaving Lune alone.

Galen bowed, and nudged the momentarily paralised Andrews into doing the same. “Your Grace, I bring a guest to these revels. Dr. Rufus Andrews.”

Even had he not loved her, Galen would have thought the Queen the most radiant star of this night. What fabric her dress was made of, he could not begin to guess; it floated like the wind itself, weightless and pure, with shades of blue shifting through it like living embroidery. Her stomacher glittered with gems, and someone had threaded brilliant blue flowers into her silver hair, creating a style that was somehow both regal and carefree, as if the coronet grew there by nature.

“You are welcome, Dr. Andrews,” Lune said. Galen shivered at the sound of her voice. It carried distinctly, muting the noise of the dancers into distant murmuring, without her ever having to raise it. “You come to us on a special night. We are not so festive the year round; even faeries—perhaps especially faeries—need variety. But we hope you will not abandon us when we return to our more sober ways.”

Andrews stood open-mouthed for a moment before he realised she was waiting for him to reply. “I—have no fear that I will grow tired of your company, in any form.”

“We are glad to hear it.” Lune gestured with one graceful hand at the revelry all around. “We’ve made it known that you are our especial guest here tonight, and under the patronage of both myself and Lord Galen. No one will visit mischief upon you.” Her smile took on a roguish edge. “Save that which you ask for, of course.”

Clutching his hat in his hands, Andrews bowed his thanks. “If I may, your Grace—curiosity prods me—”

Lune motioned for him to continue.

“How do you prevent interference?” He nodded over his shoulder, at the elegant sweep of Bedlam, belying the squalor within. “Your handmaiden mentioned enchantments, but surely it cannot be easy, keeping such a crowd as this from drawing the attention of the guards there, and the people who live in the houses alongside.”

Galen said, “The simplest part of it is an illusion, deceiving all those who look this way. Moor Fields appears to be deserted for the night. More difficult is persuading those who sometimes haunt this space to take themselves elsewhere until tomorrow.”

“And then there are the ones who blunder forward anyway,” Irrith added. “But those are mostly the mad, who can see through our illusions, and are welcome here regardless.”

Andrews shook his head, then froze, apparently fearing he’d offended the Queen. “Those illusions alone—the implications for optics are astounding.”

Irrith muttered to Galen, in an exaggerated whisper, “Don’t let him anywhere near the dwarves. They’ll be talking until half-past the end of the world.”

Galen hazarded a glance at the Queen. She was, as usual, neutrally pleasant, but he thought he discerned in the set of her eyes, the line of her swanlike throat, that she understood and shared his sudden thought. That is exactly who we must put him with. The dwarves, and more. There were scholars in the Onyx Hall, faeries who turned their thoughts to their own world. Not many, but Wrain would be ideal for this—or perhaps Lady Feidelm, the Irish faerie who warned them of the comet’s return. She’d been exiled from Connacht for being too loyal to London interests, and stripped of her prophetic gifts in the process, but she still had a remarkable mind. Bringing them all together with Dr. Andrews might be very useful indeed.

“You have the freedom of this field,” Lune said, in a clear tone of friendly dismissal. “Lord Galen will see to your needs.”

Andrews bowed, backed away, and then walked apart with the stiff and rapid strides of a man who wants to reach safety before his knees give out.

Galen followed, and so did Irrith. It was disconcerting to have the sprite there, so close. They hadn’t touched since that first night, had scarcely seen one another for ten minutes altogether. He wasn’t at all sure how to behave. Whores were a different matter; one didn’t encounter them at social events. At least not the class of prostitute Galen could afford, on his allowance from his father.

Someone had set out a cluster of India-back chairs, a bizarre note of middling domesticity amidst faerie extravagance. Andrews sank into one, then looked up wryly at the still-standing Galen. “If I don’t miss my guess, then among these folk, I ought not to sit without your leave; I should be deferring to you as I would to the Prince of Wales.”

“More like the King,” Irrith said. “If the King were the Queen—that is, if he had his throne because he married her. And if he weren’t some stupid German.”

“Dunce the Second,” Andrews said. He seemed bemused enough to take Irrith’s rambling and impolitic answer in stride. “Son of Dunce the First. Given the elegance of your Queen, I’m not surprised at your low opinion of him. I don’t suppose I might be tucked away into a safe corner where I could enjoy a good conversation with, say, one or two faeries of less intimidating mien? I confess that, in coming here, I expected more creatures the size of my thumb, and fewer who might credibly pass as some of the Greeks’ ancient goddesses.”

Galen had already anticipated that desire. “Since you mention the Greeks—there is one here, a fellow by the name of Ktistes, who has already expressed an interest in making your acquaintance. Though his own interests lie more in architecture and astronomy, he is quite a scholar in his own right.”

“Because of his grandsire, Kheiron,” Irrith added.

Andrews blinked once, very deliberately. Then again. Then he said, “Was not Chiron a centaur?”

“And still is,” the sprite answered him, with blithe innocence. “I think Ktistes said he’s still alive. But he retreated from this world after the Romans’ little empire fell apart.”

The older man buried his head in his hands, knocking his hat to the ground. “Good God.”

Galen yelped, but too late. The word rolled outward from where Andrews sat, dimming the faerie lights and withering the grass to its usual dusty brown. The music faltered, and from all around the fields, fae stopped what they were doing and turned to stare in their direction.

Andrews felt it. He sat up, and a moment later the understanding of what he’d done dawned upon him. “I—I’m sorry—”

I have to do something. Galen held up his hands and called out as loudly as he could, “Carry on. It was an error, and it will not happen again. Please, continue dancing.”

The music picked up again, sounding thin at first in the suddenly quiet air, but slowly the noise grew as the fae returned to their diversions. Galen let out the breath he’d been holding, and turned back to see Irrith sitting on the grass, pale and wide-eyed. “I hope,” Galen said, trying to make the best of it, “that this demonstration will help you remember in the future why such words are not appreciated here.”

Chastened, Andrews nodded. Galen picked up his hat for him and knocked bits of grass off it before handing it back. “Come. I think it might be best if I brought you to Ktistes.” The centaur would be somewhere on the edge of the festivities, away from the venomous looks of the nearby fae, who had taken the brunt of that careless word.

Once Ktistes and the doctor were settled, Galen left them to their conversation, intending to go apologise to the Queen. Before he got that far, though, the sylph Lady Yfaen accosted him. “Lord Galen—I understand from Mrs. Vesey and her Grace that this Dr. Andrews of yours is a member of the Royal Society.”

“He is,” Galen said. “I’m very sorry for his mistake—”

She waved it away. “That isn’t what concerns me. Rather—” She bit her lip. “To put it very bluntly… how can we be certain he won’t tell them about us? Isn’t that what they do there? Learn about new things, and then tell others about them?”

To ask him that called into question his judgment as Prince. But Galen knew very well how green he was, in the eyes of the fae; he would do better to answer her concern than to object to her speaking of it. “That is what they do,” he agreed, “but do not fear Dr. Andrews. I’ve impressed upon him the need for secrecy—and indeed, I think his error here tonight has helped with that.

“More to the point, I know what he wants. He has no interest in running to anyone with his first, unformed thoughts; he prefers to keep matters secret until he can astound the world, as Isaac Newton did, with a singular work that will change their thinking forever. If he begins such a work, I will know about it, in plenty of time to convince him to keep silent.” His duty to the Onyx Court made him add, reluctantly, “Or to prevent him from speaking, if need be.”

Yfaen lowered into a small curtsy. “You know him far better than I, Lord Galen. If you trust his discretion, then I will trust you.”

She said it, but he wondered if she meant it. Yfaen, though friends with Mrs. Vesey, and therefore hardly an enemy, still had doubts. How much worst must it be among the Sanists, and those who scorned him as Prince?

He doubted the answer was one he wanted to hear. And there was no cure for it but to do his best, and pray that would be good enough.

Irrith’s cabinet was her favourite solace, almost as good as going among mortals themselves, and far cheaper when it came to bread. She ran her hands over the shelves and little drawers, picking objects at random: an embroidered handkerchief, a toothbrush, a locket with a curl of hair inside. A child’s doll, with one arm missing. The polished buckle of a shoe, blood stiffening its hinge. Every one of them a fragment of a story, a life, reeking of passion or mortal ingenuity. She could spend hours studying them and never grow bored.

Unless she was interrupted. When a knock came at her door, she closed the panels of her cabinet, sighing, and went to see who it was.

She would have been less stunned if a poleax had been waiting outside to fall on her head. Valentin Aspell said, “Dame Irrith. If I might have a moment of your time?”

What in Mab’s name is the Lord Keeper doing here? Her immediate, suspicious answer was, nothing good. Irrith had never liked Valentin Aspell. As far as she was concerned, he was an oily, untrustworthy snake. But he’d served the Queen for a long time, and might be here on her business. Grudgingly, Irrith opened the door wider and let him in.

He surveyed the room as he entered. It wasn’t as nice as the chamber Irrith had lost; this one was plain black stone, with only her scant furnishings for contrast. The cabinet was nice, though. It, too, was a mortal thing, built of lacquered wood, with brass fittings on its many drawers and doors, and Irrith had long ago fitted it with a detector lock. Fae had ways around charms, but few of them knew how to defeat the complicated mechanism—and if they tried, the lock would tell her.

Aspell said, “I am sorry for the loss of your previous chamber. It was one of the more unusual in the Onyx Hall, and the Queen had shown you great kindness in bestowing it.”

Now she definitely didn’t trust him. Irrith had never once seen Aspell use compliments or sympathy without intending to get something in return. But he was used to people who played the same game, dancing around the target before finally stabbing it. Not people like her. “Why are you here?”

It didn’t discomfit him as much as she’d hoped. “To ask you a question,” the Lord Keeper said. “May I sit?”

Irrith wanted to refuse, but that would be petty. She waved him to one of her two chairs—both of them old and uncomfortable, since she didn’t entertain guests often. He flicked his coat clear with a smooth gesture and coiled onto the more battered of the two. “Thank you. Dame Irrith, you absented yourself from the Onyx Hall for about fifty years, and that gives you a certain perspective that we who dwell here lack. You also know the Queen moderately well.”

“Not so well,” she said warily. “I’m not one of her ladies.”

“Well enough for my purposes. Tell me: do you find her as she once was?”

The question was both perplexing and worrying—the latter mostly because it was Aspell who asked it, and Irrith distrusted everything he said. “What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “I would prefer not to prompt you. Your uninfluenced opinion is what I need right now.”

Irrith bit her lip and perched on the edge of the other chair. Had Lune changed?

“Lots of people are different,” she said, after some consideration. “That’s one of the odd things about this place. Fae don’t often change, not in so short a time as fifty years, but the folk here do.” She gestured toward Aspell. “When I left, you were wearing one of those enormous long wigs with all the curls. Now it’s—I think they call that kind a Ramillies? Which, by the way, looks less ridiculous. Guns and cricket and backgammon…”

Despite his assertion that he wouldn’t prompt her, Aspell said, “I do not mean our activities or dress.”

“Ways of thinking, too,” Irrith said. She suspected what he was after, and didn’t want to say it. “This business of having a treasury—who ever heard of something like that in a faerie court? It’s so orderly. And—”

“Dame Irrith,” Aspell said, and it was enough.

She stared down, biting her lip, digging one bare toe into the ragged rush mat that might have covered this floor for the last two hundred years. “I suppose she’s tired.”

“Tired,” he repeated.

“With all that’s going on—trying to make arrangements with someone in Greece so we can hide ourselves with the clouds, and I know she’s still searching for a weapon against the Dragon; and then of course there’s all the usual affairs of the court, people scheming against one another and causing mischief above, and it’s a good thing we don’t always have to sleep, because when would she find the time?”

The Lord Keeper let out a slow sigh. “Dame Irrith… I do not ask out of malice. I am concerned for the Queen, and for the Onyx Court. If you think it simple weariness, then that is one matter; within a year, one way or another, the threat of the comet will be ended, and her Majesty can rest. But if you think it something more, then for the good of the Onyx Court, I beg you to tell me.”

All the suspicion that had been wafting through her mind since he asked that first question hardened into a leaden ball. “Why do you want to know?”

Aspell lifted one elegant hand. “I mean no trap, Dame Irrith. Yes, I have some spies in my keeping, but I haven’t come to lure you into indiscreet speech, which I can then clap you in prison for. Her Majesty knows that not all fae who speak of such things would call themselves Sanists, and not all who call themselves Sanists are treasonous. There can be loyalty in opposition. The ultimate concern of most on both sides is the preservation of our shared home, though they differ on how.”

She’d been on the verge of throwing him out. His mention of loyalty, though, loosened the knot around her heart. I don’t mean any harm to Lune, or the Onyx Hall. But the situation… it does worry me. She’d been carefully avoiding such thoughts ever since talking to Magrat in the Crow’s Head, for fear they would make her a Sanist.

And maybe she was. But that didn’t have to be treason.

“Maybe,” she said, the admission as grudging as any she’d ever made. “It might be affecting her. The palace. With the wall going away. They’re connected, after all, and she’s used that in the past—against the Dragon, for example. The damage might be sapping her strength.”

The Lord Keeper’s mouth had thinned into a frown when she began speaking; now the frown deepened. “Or she is giving her strength, in an effort to slow the damage. She might even be doing it unconsciously.”

That sounded like Lune. The question slipped out of Irrith’s mouth. “What happens when her strength runs out?”

He said nothing, merely lifted his narrow brows.

She scowled at him as if it had been a trap. “It won’t. She’s strong. Fifty years of this has barely made a mark on her; she could go for a hundred more. And Ktistes is working to mend the palace, anyway.”

“I wish him all the good fortune in the world.” Aspell sighed again, looking melancholy. “I could also wish her Grace had better support to sustain her in these crises.”

“Support?”

He opened his mouth, then hesitated. “It isn’t my place to question the Queen’s choices. The selection of the Prince is and always has been her prerogative.”

Galen. In some respects, he was the best support Lune could hope for; the young man worshipped her, and would do without hesitation anything she asked of him.

But that wasn’t enough, was it? Lune needed someone who wouldn’t just react, but act. Someone who thought ahead, or sideways, and came up with ideas she never would have dreamt of. Someone she could trust to address problems on his own, so that she didn’t need to handle it all herself.

And Galen was not that man.

He wanted to be. Perhaps someday he would be. He’d shown signs of it already; this notion of Dr. Andrews and the Royal Society was different, at least, and might bear fruit. But he was more a Prince-in-training than an actual Prince.

Irrith remembered the obelisk in the night garden, with its names and dates. “Lune didn’t expect to lose the last Prince so soon, did she?”

Aspell shook his head. Six years. The least of them had gone for decades longer. She would have expected more time, to find and educate a suitable successor.

Was Galen really the best she could do?

“I have said too much,” Aspell murmured, shaking his head again. “Such matters are the Queen’s affair, and none of mine. I thank you, Dame Irrith, for speaking honestly with me. Uncomfortable as it may be to consider such matters, I feel it’s vital to face them, and to consider possible solutions.”

Like replacing the Queen. The wounded mistress of a wounded realm. Irrith shuddered inwardly. She didn’t want to see Lune deposed, but with the Hall fraying…

Aspell reached into one pocket and pulled out a small mother-of-pearl box that he laid atop her cabinet. “For your aid, Dame Irrith. Good day.”

She ignored the box for hours after he left, before curiosity finally overcame her reluctance and spite. Inside lay two items: a locket containing a miniature of some fellow’s beloved and a snippet of her hair, and a piece of mortal bread.

Irrith shut the box, shoved it into her cabinet, and wondered if she’d done the right thing.

Islington seemed much closer than it had been. The Aldersgate entrance was still just as far from the Goodemeades’ home as ever, but the land in between had changed; the streets now stretched well beyond Smithfield and the Charterhouse, before suddenly giving way to the market gardens and green grass Irrith expected. After that, Islington was only a brief walk. It didn’t seem right—as if someday she would leave the Onyx Hall and walk past houses and shops, churches and manicured little parks, and find herself at the Angel Inn without ever having left the city at all.

Her mood didn’t help with such discontented thoughts. Ordinarily a visit to the Goodemeades was a happy occasion, for they were always eager to feed guests. Today, however, she had a purpose in mind, and it was not a happy one.

Only the Queen herself knew why she’d chosen Galen St. Clair as her Prince. But if there were two souls in London who could guess at Lune’s reasons, their names were Rosamund and Gertrude.

The brownies had guests when she arrived, two apple maidens and an oak man from the fields around London. They welcomed Irrith, though, settling her down with a plate of food and a mug of their excellent mead, and perhaps it was a good thing; the hospitality loosened her tight muscles and made her questions easier to face. By the time the tree spirits were bid farewell, Irrith felt prepared for whatever the Goodemeades might say to her.

“Now, my dear,” Rosamund said, as Gertrude whisked away the dishes. “You came in here with a face as long as a week of mourning, and though it’s brightened up since then, I’m guessing you didn’t come just for cakes and mead. What troubles you?”

Irrith licked crumbs from her fingers. “Something I have no right to ask, but I will anyway. It’s about the Prince.”

“And the way he’s in love with Lune?” Gertrude asked, coming back in. Her plump hands tugged her apron straight. “Poor lad. He’d make a fine ballad, but it must be dreary living.”

“Did Lune know how he felt before she chose him?” The brownies nodded in unison. “Is that why she chose him?”

Gertrude went still. Rosamund busied herself with brushing the last few crumbs from the tabletop. Glancing from one to the other, Irrith said, “I promise, I’m not malicious. I just—I don’t understand. He isn’t political, and he doesn’t have connections in the mortal world, not like some of the men before him. I know the previous one died awfully fast; is it just that Lune expected to have more time to educate Galen?”

Rosamund pursed her lips, then tossed the crumbs into the fire. “Well, for questions one has no right to ask—but that’s hardly ever stopped us, now, has it? Irrith, my dear, a little whisper has reached our ears that you’re sharing Lord Galen’s bed.”

If she’d stopped to consider it, she never would have believed they could keep it secret, not in the Onyx Hall. But she hadn’t, and so the mention surprised her. “I am. I didn’t think the Queen would mind.”

“She doesn’t. He’s hardly the first Prince to enjoy a little dalliance among her subjects. It’s more a matter of how it affects you. Do you love him?”

Irrith laughed, incredulous. “Love? Can you really imagine me shackling my heart to some mortal who will be dead in a few years? Not hardly. He interests me, certainly.” That mild description fell far short of the truth. Fascinated would be closer. Entranced.

The brownies exchanged one of their usual inscrutable glances. After untold ages of practice, they were very good at them. Rosamund said, “But you’re on his side.”

With Valentin Aspell’s oily concern fresh in her memory, Irrith didn’t have to guess what she might mean. “Well, he seems determined to hurt himself with this adoration of the Queen—but no, I don’t want to add to it.”

“Good,” Gertrude said, with unexpected firmness. “Because the truth of the matter is something Galen must never learn.”

Irrith’s eyes widened. Rosamund laid a reassuring hand over hers and said, “Now, Gertie, it isn’t so bad as all that. Just that things have changed, Irrith, and they’ve made new problems for Lune, that none of us ever foresaw.”

“Isn’t that always the case?” Irrith asked sourly, thinking of the comet.

The sisters sighed in rueful agreement. “The problem in this case,” Rosamund said, “is that there have usually been three requirements for the Prince, and two of them don’t fit together very well anymore.”

Three requirements? “He has to be someone Lune likes.”

“And he has to be a gentleman,” Gertrude said.

“And,” Rosamund finished, “he has to be born within the walls of the City.”

Gertrude held up a cautionary hand. “Might be within the sound of the bells. But no one’s quite dared test that yet.”

Irrith thought of the City as it had become—not London as a whole, but the City of London, the central part, and specifically the part within the increasingly broken wall. Galen, when he told her where he lived, said Leicester Fields was no longer as fashionable as it had been, that the better sort of people were moving farther west. No one wanted to be within the narrow, twisty, dirty lanes of the City, which had scarce been changed even by the Great Fire. There was a broad new street cutting up from the river to the Guildhall, called Queen Street south of Cheapside and King Street north, but that was the biggest difference. Most of the City was still as it had been these hundreds of years, and that was not good enough for fashion.

She murmured, “So he was the only gentleman who fit?”

“There have never been all that many gentlemen in the Onyx Hall,” Gertrude reminded her. “Well, there aren’t that many gentlemen at all, are there? Not compared to ordinary folk. Peers are even rarer. So most of the ones who get brought below are common. Lord Hamilton was the grandson of a viscount; for all that he wasn’t what anyone would call wealthy, and that was good enough for them as cared. But then he died, and Lune had to choose someone new.”

“Galen was a bit of luck,” Rosamund added. “His mother went into labour without much warning, and they couldn’t move her; so he was born in the house where she’d gone to have dinner.”

Irrith just kept blinking, trying to absorb it all. No, they hadn’t foreseen that—who would expect that London would grow so much, and all the wealthy people would move out to its western edge? “She’s going to have to stop choosing gentlemen. The place of birth has to do with the Hall’s enchantments, doesn’t it, and we can hardly ask her to work with someone she doesn’t like—but the rank, that’s just because no one wants their Queen to be paired with a commoner.”

The brownies looked unhappy. Gertrude said, “If she can. There was an apothecary a few years ago who might have done, but her lords and ladies didn’t much like the idea.”

Rosamund snorted. “And then he ran mad and flung himself off Westminster Bridge, so maybe it’s just as well. Not a stable mind, I fear.”

“Galen isn’t bad,” Gertrude hastened to say. “A trifle green, to be sure, but that’s nothing time won’t cure. Especially if those around him help out—give him advice when he needs it, that sort of thing. He’s too embarrassed to ask for it, poor dear.”

No wonder Gertrude had said he must never know. Hearing this laid out so baldly would only cripple him with doubt. And Galen had enough trouble with that already.

“You will help him, won’t you, my dear?” Gertrude gave Irrith an entreating look that would have melted the heart of a stone.

Irrith nodded. “Yes. I will.”

If I can.

Nothing brought home to Galen the importance of this evening like his first sight of Sothings Park.

His mother, seated by his side in the carriage, breathed out her nose in something that was almost a snort of disdain, but the look in her eyes was a mixture of envy, hope, and regret. It wasn’t that Sothings Park was especially impressive; Aldgrange, the St. Clair estate in Essex, was much larger and grander, if sadly run down for want of money to maintain it. But the fact that the Northwoods could afford to rent not only a townhouse in Grosvenor Square far superior to anything in Leicester Fields, but also this little manor, just far enough outside London to be pleasantly situated, made it clear without words what Miss Delphia Northwood could offer in exchange for the St. Clair name.

The prospect cheered Charles St. Clair sufficiently that he had hired out two carriages for the evening, and neither of them common hackneys. Galen’s sisters followed in the second one, for the Northwoods had invited them all to dinner today at Sothings Park.

It was not the first meal shared between the two families. Since that encounter at Mrs. Vesey’s in May, Galen had dined in Grosvenor Square four times, twice with his mother and father along, and the Northwoods had come to Leicester Fields twice. He had met Miss Northwood’s younger sister Temperance, and missed her brother Robert only because he was somewhere in Italy at the moment. In short, Galen was perfectly well acquainted with the Northwood family.

He would have been less nervous had he gone to dine with the lions in the Tower of London.

The carriages pulled to a halt in front of the austere entrance, built in the revived Palladian style. Galen handed his mother down, wondering if she felt his own arm trembling. He’d mastered it by the time they were shown in to the parlour where the Northwoods awaited them, but it still lurked inside, where no one could see.

They soon went into dinner, and the dining room on the piano nobile was fully as grand as could be hoped. The amiable chatter between Mrs. St. Clair and their hostess revealed that the furnishings there, from the mahogany table to the spoons upon it, were the property of the Northwoods, and not rented with the house. Irene was young enough to gape at that, before Cynthia nudged her into better behavior.

For his own part, Galen was caught between contradictory impulses to look at Miss Northwood, and to look everywhere but at her. She was once more clothed in a sacque gown too elegant for her plainness, with ruffles and bows and sewn-in pearls, but she might as well have been a magnet, so difficult was it not to stare. Cynthia made easy conversation with her, and drew Galen into it at convenient times; he formed a resolution to fall on his knees and thank her as soon as they returned home.

By such means did he survive the interminable courses of dinner, though he ate at little as he could without giving offence.

The Northwoods had chosen to dine at the fashionably late hour of five o’clock, and the drawing room in which the men rejoined the ladies after their drinks had a splendid view of the sunset and Sothings Park’s gardens. Galen managed to conduct a credible conversation with Mrs. Northwood on the subject of the roses there, despite a tongue that felt like it belonged to a stranger, and when she said “You should go down, before the light is gone, and see them for yourself,” he made his reply without a single stumble.

“That would be delightful. Might I impose on Miss Northwood to guide me?”

Mrs. Northwood’s broad smile answered him well enough on its own. “I’m sure she would be more than glad to.”

Whether she was glad, nervous, or any other thing about it, Galen did not see; he was too nervous to look at her face. They descended the staircase in awkward silence, went out through the doors the same, and only when they reached the first rosebush did Miss Northwood say anything, which was, “I’ve always quite liked this one.”

They ambled along the paths, here touching a bloom, there bending to sniff one, and if there was any mercy in the world, Galen thought, then eight people were not watching their progress from the drawing room windows above.

Perhaps Miss Northwood was thinking the same, for she said, “This arbour is a pleasant place to sit, if you would like to rest.”

It also happened to feature a green, leafy roof that would shield them from prying eyes. The sun was low enough now that its light blazed across the bench upon which Miss Northwood had seated herself, making the space quite warm, but if she did not mind then Galen did not either.

He couldn’t sit. Galen took a deep breath, considered her upturned face, and let the air out in one swift gust. “You know why we’re out here.”

That wasn’t what he’d intended to say, but the intelligent regard in her eyes, free of all the coquetry and feigned innocence that might have attended this moment, prodded him to discard his more carefully crafted opening. Miss Northwood said, “Quite by ourselves. It isn’t hard to guess.”

“I will be honest with you,” Galen told her, interlacing his fingers behind his back. “Which may not be advisable, not if I wish to meet with success on the other side of it—but my conscience will not permit me to do otherwise. You are aware, Miss Northwood, of my family’s situation.”

She nodded, and when he still hesitated, laid it out plainly. “A good name, but not the income to support it. Due, if you will forgive me saying it, to your father’s financial imprudence.”

He could hardly wince at her blunt honesty, given what he had said, and what he intended to say. And her assessment was perhaps to be expected from a young woman with both a banker father and a brain. “Indeed. I also have three sisters in need of a future. Because of these things, my father has pressed me not only to marry, but to marry well. Which is to say, richly.”

Miss Northwood cast her gaze down with a resigned half smile. “I’ve always been aware that my marriage portion is the better part of my appeal to suitors.”

Galen had to swallow before he could go on. This might have been easier indoors, where he could have a glass of wine to wet his throat. But then he might drink too much, and people would be listening at keyholes besides. “I am a romantic, Miss Northwood. I wish with all my heart that I were on my knee before you now, pouring out a declaration of love that would do a poet proud. Unfortunately, it would be false. I… I do not love you.”

Her eyes were still downcast, making her thoughts hard to read. Galen hurried on. “I mean no insult to you. The truth is that, did care for my sisters not compel me, I wouldn’t be looking to marry at all. But I must consider them, and their happiness, and so I vowed that although money might be my father’s foremost concern, it would not be mine. Love might be too much to hope for, but I would not propose marriage to any woman I did not respect.”

“Respect.” It came out an unsteady laugh. “Do you find that in short supply, where women are concerned?”

“I don’t mean the respect any gentleman must have for a decent young woman,” Galen answered her. “I mean the sort of respect I have for Mrs. Vesey, or Mrs. Montagu, or Mrs. Carter. Respect of the mind, Miss Northwood.”

In the rosy light, he could not tell if she colored, but the sudden, embarrassed tuck of her chin suggested it.

Galen went on with quiet determination. “But while I may have resigned myself to an unromantic future, Miss Northwood, I won’t ask you to do the same. Tell me now, and honestly: is there another man for whom you entertain such feelings? I would not be the cause of your permanent separation from the one you love, if such a one exists—or if you prefer to seek love, instead of settling for me.”

She snapped her fan open for a few rapid beats, then snapped it shut again and rose to pace a few steps away. “There is no such man, Mr. St. Clair. Whether there would ever be one… who can say?”

When she turned to face him, her mouth had settled into a startlingly hard line. Dread curled in Galen’s stomach, bringing with it a sour taste familiar from his disastrous walk with Dr. Andrews. Had he stepped so wrong again?

Miss Northwood said, “You aren’t the only young man to show interest in my hand. You know that, of course—but do you know which one my father favours the most?”

Galen shook his head, mute.

“William Beckford’s illegitimate son,” she said, biting each syllable off with her teeth.

He was dumbstruck. Miss Northwood nodded, a tight, stiff motion. “Indeed. He would prefer Mr. Beckford himself, except that Maria Hamilton got there two years ago; and any children they have will take far too long to grow up.”

“But—” Words were still slow to come. “I thought your father wanted respectability.”

“He does, very ardently. On the other hand, he might forgo a gentleman for me, when plantation wealth could buy Temperance a duke.” Miss Northwood’s hands balled into fists, fan swinging free from her wrist. “If Mr. Beckford persuades the Prime Minister to attack the French at Martinique, as I know he wishes to, then no doubt my prospective husband would be the happy recipient of a new plantation himself. And I? Would be a slaveholder’s wife.”

Mrs. Northwood kept a Negro page, in imitation of those fashionable ladies who also had the wealth for such an exotic touch. Galen wondered how Miss Northwood felt about that. “I needn’t ask your opinion on this prospect,” he said slowly, choosing his words with care. “Do you mean then that you would choose me to escape it?”

The fight went out of her hands, and her shoulders slumped. “I would shame to use you in such fashion—but you’ve been honest with me, Mr. St. Clair. I thought it only fair to do the same.”

Now he did sit, and pull out a handkerchief to blot the sweat from his face. The warm scent of roses surrounded him like a too close embrace. “I—” God, how desperately he wished for something to wet his throat. “I suppose I’m flattered, that I am preferred to the bastard son of a Jamaican plantation owner.”

She was at his side, in a rush of silk. “Oh, Mr. St. Clair—I didn’t mean it that way. Rather to let you understand what you would be taking me away from. Not a secret love, but a match I would avoid at any cost.” Miss Northwood hesitated, then settled herself on the bench across from him, smoothing her skirts over her knees with uncertain fingers. “But before—when you spoke of resigning yourself to an unromantic future—the look in your eyes… Mr. St. Clair, is there one you love?”

The handkerchief twisted in his hands. Ladies had an advantage, with their fans they could hide behind. “Yes,” he admitted, in little more than a whisper. “That honesty, too, I think I owe you. But I will never—can never—be with the lady in question.”

“Your father won’t permit it?”

Galen laughed at the mere thought. “He wouldn’t, if he knew… but no, Miss Northwood. The reasons go far deeper than a father’s disapproval. Nor is it a question of wealth, or any other such thing. If you imagine me in the position of a young fool in love with the moon, you’ll have a fair sense of just how hopeless my situation is.

“Given that, there is nothing to be gained by delaying my choice. I promise you that, whatever sentiments repose in my heart, you shall have no cause to reproach me for my behavior. It is all I shall ever be able to offer any woman.”

He busied himself tucking away the handkerchief, to regain a modicum of his composure. The task done, he found Miss Northwood sitting with her hands folded, and a look in her eyes that said she was preparing to accept, despite—as he had said at the beginning—the reasons his honesty had given her for refusal.

Before she could answer, he spoke again.

“I suppose there is one thing more I can offer. Should you come under my roof, you will never again have reason to conceal your purpose at Mrs. Vesey’s. We shall have a library, and you shall buy what books you like for it; you may attend what lectures will admit ladies, learn what languages your talents suit you for, and if your mind inclines to it, you may write.” He thought he would have to force a smile past the lump in his throat, but it came with surprising ease. “I may detest Dr. Johnson on many counts, but in this matter, he and I have no disagreement at all: an educated woman is an ornament not only to her family, but to the nation that bore her. I shall do everything in my power to aid you.”

Her lips parted during the speech, and remained open in a small, astonished O; when he finished, she sat without speaking for quite a few moments—and then she answered him, in a strangely breathless voice. “Oh, Mr. St. Clair. I was all prepared to say that unlike you, I am not a romantic, and would willingly accept an offer of stability, respect, and friendship, even were my alternative not so terrible. But then you said those words, and I discovered that some part of me is a romantic after all.”

Her voice wavered on the last words, but the waver turned out to be a smile. Galen rose without thinking and crossed to her, then knelt and took her hands. “If talk of books and writing is your notion of romance, Miss Northwood, then we are happily matched indeed. If you will consent to be my wife, then I will go this minute and beg your father for your hand.”

The setting sun gave her a halo of fiery splendor. “You will not have to beg hard, Mr. St. Clair. I do consent.”

“Betrothed?” Irrith said in disbelief. “The Dragon will be here in a matter of months. Is this the best time to be talking marriage?”

Galen collapsed into a chair, sighing. “Likely not. But if I waited longer, I might have lost Miss Northwood to another—and besides, I promised my father I would find a wife before the end of the Season, which is upon us now.”

Irrith hardly cared about that. True, the quality would be departing soon for their country homes; they were the beau monde, the folk Carline liked best. Irrith preferred the ordinary Londoners, who stayed in the city all year. “You’ll be so busy, though, with the wedding, and setting up away from your father, and all the rest of it.”

“As it happens, no.” Galen’s smile was equal parts amusement and smugness. “Drawing up a marriage settlement can take time, and Miss Northwood and I have both made it clear to our families that we are perfectly content to be wed in the spring. Which gives her time to reconsider.”

“Maybe I’m misunderstanding your mortal customs, but I thought the lady reconsidering was considered a bad thing.”

He shrugged. “Usually. But I want Miss Northwood to be certain she’s happy with her choice. If her mind changes before spring—if, for example, she falls in love elsewhere—she’s welcome to cry off. I have told her so.”

Love. Irrith raised an eyebrow. “What does the Queen say?”

It was a cruel blow, but one he would have taken sooner or later. Galen’s qualified happiness faded visibly. “I haven’t told her yet.”

“You are aware that she keeps spies, yes?” Including, Irrith suspected, Edward Thorne, who was currently in an adjoining room, attempting to remove the dirt Galen had pressed into his stockings when he knelt to propose to Miss Delphia Northwood.

Galen sat forward in his chair and put his head in his hands. After a moment, he pulled off his wig, giving his scalp a good scratch. The sight reminded Irrith of the last time she’d seen his head bare—and Galen soon recalled it, too, for he blushed and hastily pulled the wig back on. “Dame Irrith—”

So they were back to titles. “Yes, Lord Galen?” she inquired, too sweetly.

It was so easy to call anguish up in his expressive face. “We cannot—I am promised to another, now.”

He never ceased to enchant her, the way different parts of him could say different things, all at the same time. His eyes told a much less certain story than his mouth. It wasn’t the manipulative artifice of someone like Valentin Aspell, either; Galen felt all these things, honestly and completely, even when they contradicted each other. However did he manage it?

She would not surrender the game, not so long as his eyes were still playing. “Promised, Galen. Not married.”

“But her Grace—”

“I thought we dealt with that matter already.”

“I cannot give myself to three women at once!”

The adjoining room was far too silent. Irrith hoped Edward Thorne was entertained. “You aren’t giving all of yourself—just pieces. Lune has your love. Miss Northwood has your promise. I don’t ask for either of those things; your body is enough for me.”

He turned very red, and shot up out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box. “You would treat me like some kind of male prostitute?”

Where had this anger come from? Irrith rose to her own feet, letting her own hurt show. “Did I say that? Did I imply it? What have I paid you, that gives you the right to accuse me like that? I’m only acting on what I saw in you. When you look at me, you see something you wish you could be: a person who doesn’t care what’s proper, who does what she likes and smiles at it all, a person without any chains. And it attracts you. But you’re too scared, too worried about what Lune thinks, and your father, and everyone else, to do what you want, and so I did it for you. How is that wrong?”

All the anger had gone out of him while she worked herself up to a shout. He wasn’t really mad, she realised—not at her. At himself, yes, for letting his father sell him in marriage, and for wanting what he thought he shouldn’t. Irrith had listened to farmers in Berkshire complain about the bad behaviour of the so-called polite folk, keeping mistresses under the same roof as their wives, and had thought it common; and maybe it was, but not with Galen.

At least, he didn’t want it to be.

He’d retreated behind his chair; now she followed him, standing so close their buttons touched. “I’ll go away when you marry,” Irrith whispered, realizing only after it came out that for the first time in her timeless life, she was willing to let go of a mortal before she tired of him, for his sake. Because otherwise it would hurt him too much. “Let me enjoy this now, Galen. You love the Queen, and you want to hold faith with Miss Northwood, and you want to honour your father and help your sisters and learn great things and save the Onyx Hall—you want so much, and so intensely, and there’s nothing like that for us, don’t you understand? Nothing except you.”

By the end she wasn’t even sure she was making sense. It didn’t matter, though, because this time Galen was the one to move; his arms lifted her onto her toes so he could more easily reach her mouth, and for a few moments Irrith forgot to think about the listening Edward Thorne at all.

But the servant must have been waiting, for when Irrith lost her balance and staggered, breaking Galen’s embrace, he coughed politely from the doorway. “Lord Galen,” Thorne said, for all the world as if he’d seen nothing at all, “you asked me to remind you of Dr. Andrews.”

He might have been speaking Greek. “Yes, thank you,” Galen said distractedly, then came to himself with a jump. “Oh, yes. Irrith, I’m sorry—I’m to meet with Dr. Andrews, now that we’ve made a place for him in the Onyx Hall, and to introduce him to a few scholars who have volunteered their assistance. We must get him started on his work.”

She could hardly begrudge it. If they didn’t save the palace, there would be no more Galens for her to play with. “May I come?”

“If you wish to—though I fear it will be terribly boring. We cannot expect to solve our problems on the first day.” Galen accepted Thorne’s ministrations, straightening what Irrith had disarranged.

“If I grow bored, I’ll leave.” Andrews was a consumptive, after all. She wasn’t hoping for him to drop dead in front of her—that wouldn’t help Galen at all—but it was interesting to watch a man die by degrees. “Until then, I should like to hear what he has to say.”

Following on his Midsummer thought, Galen had assembled a small group of faerie scholars to work with Dr. Andrews. Lady Feidelm; a lesser courtier named Savennis; Wrain, a sticklike sprite who looked to be half again Irrith’s height but no more than her slight weight. The von das Tickens said they would look in from time to time, or rather Wilhas did; Niklas, being his usual unsociable self, declined. Ktistes would follow their efforts from his garden pavilion.

They met in the chamber Galen had arranged for Dr. Andrews’s use, and settled into chairs near the hearth. “How do you like your laboratory?” he asked, gesturing toward the other end of the room. Servants had brought in suitable furniture, and he’d tried to equip the place with things he thought Dr. Andrews might need: bookshelves, a writing desk, a large table for experimentation. Proper equipment would have to wait until the doctor made more specific requests.

“This place is incredible,” Dr. Andrews admitted. “The palace, that is—though I do appreciate the laboratory. To think that all this lies beneath the feet of unsuspecting Londoners…” He shook his head, lost for anything else to say.

“And they will stay unsuspecting, won’t they?”

Galen glared at Irrith. Andrews might not hear the threat shading that question, but he did. Fortunately, Andrews hastened to reassure her. “Oh, yes, my dear. I’ve been given a miraculous opportunity here; I would not squander it so easily.”

She bristled at the condescending address. Andrews had lost his fear of Irrith on Midsummer’s Eve, but it seemed Galen had not made it sufficiently clear that for all her youthful appearance, Irrith was both a lady knight of the court, and a hundred times older than Andrews could ever hope to be. An old man’s tendency to call every young woman “my dear” would not please her.

Hurrying to smooth over that ripple, Galen said, “I imagine you have a great many questions—indeed, I know you have them, as you’ve already shared several with me.”

Andrews began to count them off on his fingers. “Why are certain aspects of religion disquieting to the fae? Why can I say ‘Heaven’ without troubling anyone, but not other words? Why is iron anathema? How are glamours created? What are they composed of? Why can the mad see through them? Why does tithed food protect, and what would happen if someone were to tithe stuffs other than bread or milk—ale, perhaps, or meat? How was this palace created, and how is it both here and not here in the space below London?” Having run out of fingers somewhere in his count, he stopped and, with a shrug both sheepish and helpless, he said, “What is a faerie in the first place?”

Irrith gaped at him. “I thought you were a doctor, not some windy old philosopher.”

“Philosophy is the root of knowledge,” Wrain told her, having listened quietly to Andrews’s litany. “And the mortal belief is that one cannot truly answer final questions without first understanding the foundational ones.”

“Mortal belief?” Andrews repeated.

Lady Feidelm smiled at him. She was an imposing creature, as tall as Andrews himself, but friendly in her way. “We do not work by reason, as you do, Dr. Andrews. Though from time to time we craft some new design, as Dame Irrith is doing to conceal our land from the comet, we do not experiment for the improvement of our charms. What you see as a craft is not so to us; it is instinct, and our very being.”

He had a notebook out, and was bracing it against the arm of his chair as he scribbled notes with a small pencil. “Yes—but so, too, is gravity a kind of instinct; objects do not reason how they fall to earth. Yet it can be investigated by determined minds. Mr. St. Clair, I believe I will need to work both here and at my house; though you have been very generous in providing this chamber, there are some experiments I will have to conduct elsewhere, lest I make myself very unwelcome here.”

The astonishment was near universal. Galen said, “Surely you don’t mean to experiment with iron, or the divine name.”

Andrews looked up from his notes. He took in the various reactions, ranging from Irrith’s appalled gape to the wary consideration of the scholars. “Mr. St. Clair,” the doctor said, laying his pencil down, “you’ve asked my assistance in defeating a faerie creature. To do so, I will need to understand the weaknesses of the fae—what their effect is, and on what basis they operate. I will be glad to hear the opinions of these gentlemen, and this lady, but without judicious experimentation, I fear I will not be able to add much to what they already know.” He paused, then added, “I assure you, I mean no harm.”

“I will work with the doctor.” That was Savennis, who had said nothing since his introduction to Dr. Andrews. The quiet courtier grimaced. “It may not be pleasant, but I believe he’s right: it is necessary.”

Galen had seen what happened when unprepared fae were struck with holy force. And even now, the wound in Lune’s shoulder pained her, legacy of an iron knife a century before. Savennis’s courage in even facing that bane awed him. “Her Grace and I will reward you for your service,” he promised the pale, bookish faerie. “And Dr. Andrews, you will inform me of everything you intend to do with Savennis, before you attempt it. If I say something goes too far, you will heed me.”

“Of course,” Andrews murmured, and relief shone in Savennis’s eyes.

The exchange cast a nervous pall over the room, which Galen did his best to lighten. “I’ve arranged for a servant, a hob named Podder, to see to your needs here, and to bring your reports to me and the Queen. Beyond that, I think I’ve done what I can for now; I will leave the rest of you to your philosophizing. Dame Irrith, do you wish to stay?”

The sprite was perched on the edge of her chair, toes turned inward like a young girl’s, but a pensive look on her face that no young girl had ever worn. She shook her head slowly, then brightened as a thought came to her. “You, Lord Galen, have business elsewhere, I think—telling the Queen your happy news.”

He cursed her even as Andrews said, “Happy news? Are you perhaps betrothed, Mr. St. Clair?”

“I am,” he said, masking his dread with a smile. She’s right, and you know it. You must tell Lune. “To Miss Northwood, whom I have told you of. We’re to be married in the spring.”

Andrews shook his hand vigorously, pouring out good wishes for them both, which the fae echoed as if speaking phrases in a foreign language. Irrith watched all of this with good-natured malice. “I will return when I can,” Galen said, retrieving his hand from the doctor. “In the meantime, may all the powers of Heaven and Faerie both speed you in your work.”

Galen sank to his knee on the carpet before Lune and said, “Your Grace, I have come to inform you that I am betrothed.”

Silence answered him. She couldn’t have been taken entirely by surprise; she knew he was seeking a wife, and the formality of his posture made this more than an ordinary visit. But Lune said nothing.

At first. Just as Galen bit his lip, though, Lune spoke. “My congratulations, Lord Galen. Is your future bride the Miss Northwood I’ve been hearing of?”

“Yes, madam.” She’d probably sent her spies to examine the lady more directly; Lune liked to be well informed.

He hesitated, then lifted his head, away from contemplation of the carpet’s plush surface. Lune’s thoughts were impossible to read. “Madam,” he said, distress roughening it, “please, believe me when I say this will change nothing. The Onyx Court is and shall remain the priority of my life.” You will remain the priority of my life.

Every movement she made was flawlessly graceful. Lune extended one hand, drew him to his feet. Even through the layers of his coat and shirt, the touch made him shiver. Her shoes brought him to very near his height; Lune was a tall woman, and he was not a tall man. It seemed fitting. He would not have felt right, looking down upon her.

I love you.

Words he could never say.

Lune smiled, her hand rising to his shoulder. “You needn’t worry, Galen. No one doubts your dedication to this court, least of all myself. Nor should you doubt your contributions; you have brought us Dr. Andrews, who I’m very sure will be a great help to us in our struggle. I do not thank you often enough, except as rote courtesy, so let me say it now: you have my gratitude, for all you have done, and all you will do. And that will not change when you wed.”

Nobility came so easily to her. He fancied it a relic of the past, preserved in this world out of time; in this fallen age, when even the highest descended to the riots of the theatre and tavern, debauching themselves with drinking and smoking, whoring and fisticuffs, Lune seemed the living memory of true noble grace. Or perhaps only fae ever attained that ideal, and mortals merely aspired to it, falling short of the true glory.

“So thoughtful.” Lune put one finger under his chin and tilted it up. His breath stopped. “There is always so much behind your eyes, Galen. Most of it melancholy, I think. I’m sorry you came to this court in such a troubled time. I fear you’ve seen little of its gaiety, and much of its tragedy.”

He wanted so badly to catch her hand in his. “Your tragedy,” he managed to say, “is more precious to me than the best the mortal world has to offer.”

Lune stilled. More soberly, she said, “Be cautious of that feeling, Galen. You’ve drunk a cup of faerie wine; your body and soul will always crave more. But if you discard your world to live wholly in mine, it will break you. You’ll become a shadow of yourself, desperate and mad, destroyed by the very thing you desire, and what’s more—cruel as it is—you will no longer serve this court. I need you mortal, Galen. Even though I know the price it bears.”

Death. But how could he say to her that it wasn’t faerie wine he craved, it was her? They had kissed once, when she raised him to the rank of Prince, sealing the bond between them. He still dreamt of that kiss. And now she stood so close, mere inches away, so that all he would have to do was lean forward…

Galen stepped back. Unsteadily, he said, “I would die a hundred times for you. And for this court. I know you will live forever, and another man might envy it; but I will be what you need, do what you need, and count my life well spent when it ends.”

“I know,” Lune whispered, and sorrow filled her eyes. No doubt he wasn’t the first man to say that to her. The obelisk in the garden bore the names of those who had gone before. And she bore enough of a human touch to mourn them.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and made himself lighten his tone. “The wedding will be in the spring. By then, I’m sure, we’ll have disposed of this threat, and I can enjoy the gaiety you spoke of with a free heart.”

Lune accepted his diversion, crossing the carpet to study the small orrery the von das Tickens had put in this, her private closet. “I shall have to consider what gift to give you, and your bride. Not faerie gold, I promise you: something that will last.”

“I treasure it already,” Galen said. He meant the response to be light, but did not quite succeed. Bowing, he added, “I should go. Lady Feidelm and the others are with Dr. Andrews, to answer his questions about faerie matters, but I would like to aid them.”

She nodded, not turning to face him. “Let me know what comes of it.”

“I will.” Hand over his heart, Galen bowed again, and retreated from her chamber.

Once well away, he collapsed against the cool stone, breathing fast. “You’re mad,” he whispered to himself, hearing it echo into the darkness. “Desperate and mad, and you know she does not love you.”

But if he saved the Onyx Hall, then he might at least be worthy of her.

Even a fancy as strong as his could not sustain the image of himself in armor, riding a brave steed, facing down the Dragon like a knight of old. He would find a way, though. He would save the palace, and the Queen, and then, perhaps…

A hopeless dream. But he could not let it go.

Lune stopped her pacing when the usher entered and bowed. “The Lord Keeper is here as you requested, madam.”

She waved for him to be escorted in, and made herself breathe slowly, however much frustration tried to speed it. Once Aspell had made his greetings and the usher departed, she said, “Hairy How reported to me this morning that another delivery of tithed bread has been stolen.”

“That will disturb your subjects, your Grace.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that,” she snapped, and he promptly bowed an apology. Lune made herself moderate her voice. “I have no intention of letting this become common knowledge, Valentin. The Hall has enough troubles already. But it does mean I’ll have to reduce the allowance to your spies.”

He frowned. “Madam, they’ll be less effective—”

Another thing she didn’t need him to tell her. “I’m afraid it’s necessary, at least in the short term. The treaty I’ve arranged with the Greeks—presuming I can get their final agreement—requires some work above, and the fae who carry it out will need protection.”

“As you wish, madam.”

Lune almost dismissed him, but paused before saying the words. There were many causes that could explain the disappearance of the tithe; indeed, it was a pattern that fed on itself. Less bread coming into the Onyx Hall meant less available to her subjects, which caused them to hoard it, which caused its value to rise; some fae were in debt to a staggering degree. Which could, in turn, cause a few clever souls to think of waylaying her messengers.

That was one of the less sinister explanations. Others were not so innocent. “Valentin… give me your opinion. Could this be a Sanist plot?”

His sinuous body stiffened. “Sanists? What benefit could they gain from intercepting the tithe?”

“Aside from making me look like a poor Queen?”

Her dry answer seemed to miss him entirely, for he was frowning. “Or another possibility. Madam, I’ve had no luck in discovering any meeting of the leading cabal. It occurred to me they might be meeting above—but the great difficulty in that was explaining how they could afford to do so. I thought they kept mortals on hand to provide them with bread; my spies have been following that possibility. If they are the ones ambushing your messengers, though…”

Sun and Moon. If they were meeting above, Aspell would never find them; the city had grown too big, with a thousand mortals for every faerie below. It would be simplicity itself for conspirators to blend in among them and vanish.

He bowed anyway and said, “I will pursue this possibility, madam.”

“I may have to keep funding your spies,” she said grimly. “One to accompany every delivery as it comes in. Catching the thieves may be our only hope of finding their masters.”

“An excellent idea, your Grace,” Valentin Aspell said. “Whether Sanists are involved or not, we must keep the tithe coming. I will put my people to the task at once.”

Magrat was in the same position as always, hunched in her corner of the Crow’s Head, gin cup in hand. Her lipless mouth quirked when Irrith approached. “Let me guess. You’ve come to call in your favour.”

Irrith dropped onto the stool across from her. “Something small, like I promised. Just the recommendation of a few names. I need stealthy sorts, goblins or pucks, to help me break into a mortal place.”

“The house of that fellow the Prince has brought among us? I hear things about him, you know.”

Almost every conversation with Magrat went this way, the church grim trying to tempt her listener with vague promises of information for sale. Sometimes the information was real; sometimes it wasn’t. “Not him,” Irrith said. “But I won’t tell you where, so don’t bother asking. We’ll be stealing something for the Onyx Hall, and I need hands to help carry it. Who do you recommend?”

Disappointed by the failure of her bait, Magrat set her gin down and began to count possibilities off on her fingers. “Scadd. Greymalkin, or Beggabow. Your old friend Angrisla—”

“She’s here?” Irrith asked, surprised. “I thought she went north.”

“And you went to Berkshire. People come back, sometimes.” Magrat tilted her head sideways, thinking. “Dead Rick, if you want someone to listen or sniff for guards. Lacca. Charcoal Eddie, assuming you can put up with his sense of humor. Something for the Onyx Hall, you said—is this for the Queen?”

Irrith wasn’t a good enough liar to say no and be believed, and her hesitation was answer enough. “Careful,” Magrat warned her. “Some folk in this place are Sanists.”

The word still made Irrith twitch, despite what Aspell had said. “So?” she said, a little too loudly. “What’s going on with her and the Hall doesn’t change the fact that we’re in danger—all of us. If we don’t do something about that, there won’t be any palace or Queen to fight over anymore.”

“Watch what you say, little sprite.” The low, rumbling voice came from the next table over, where a thrumpin with a face to shame a demon sat. “You haven’t been here but a bare year—less—and you don’t know much. She may say it’s all to defend this place, but some of the things the Queen does are making it even weaker.”

“Like what?” Irrith demanded.

“Like that Calendar Room,” the thrumpin’s drinking companion said. “Why do you think she kept it secret? Because it’s feeding off the future of the Onyx Hall, every time someone goes inside, draining tomorrow away so we’ll have nothing left!”

They’d drawn a great deal of attention now, of all different kinds. A knocker with a thick Cornish accent laughed. “Aye, sure—and that’s why she told us all about it, I suppose? Fool. If it were destroying the Hall, we’d never have heard a whisper of its existence.”

“What about the earthquakes, then?” the thrumpin said, standing up. He wasn’t much taller than the knocker, but much thicker bodied, so he seemed to loom over the goblin. “Cannon, they said—like hell. Cannon don’t shake the whole of London. Mark me well, that was the Hall almost falling apart. And it killed Lord Hamilton, too!”

“He died six years later!” someone yelled.

In the corner, gin cup once more in her hands, Magrat was cackling to herself. “You’ve done it now, Berkshire. Want to make any wagers?”

“Wagers? On what?”

Irrith got her answer a moment later when the first tin cup flew. Who its original target was, she didn’t know, but it caught the thrumpin in the ear and he bellowed in rage. He tried to shove through the crowd, the knocker shoved him back, and then the skinny mine spirit went down—tripped by either a stool or someone’s foot, and no chance of telling which. Then the brawl was on, Sanists against loyalists, except the two sides seemed to fall apart early on, with various goblins and pucks gleefully provoking chaos wherever they could.

Rather than be a part of that chaos, Irrith dove under the table and watched the legs stagger by. Magrat poked her with a foot. “For this entertainment,” the church grim said, leaning down to speak under the table’s edge, “I’ll give you a bit more for free. Don’t take Lacca.”

“Why not?” Irrith asked, wincing as someone howled in pain.

“Because she’s over there chewing on that knocker’s arm,” Magrat said, grinning toothily. “Most Sanists don’t have anything personal against the Queen. She’s different.”

A sour taste filled Irrith’s mouth. Too far. Aspell’s one thing; Lacca’s another. “Thanks for the warning,” she said, and settled against the wall to wait for the brawl to end.

The hour being a little after midday, many people were awake and about their business in London when the earth beneath their feet suddenly bucked as if to throw them off.

The shock was felt in all the neighbouring towns, and even so far as Gravesend, and caused much distress. But nowhere was any person so angered as in the subterranean chambers of the Queen of the Onyx Court.

“You told me this would be safe!” Lune raged.

Gertrude had tried and failed to make her Grace lie down. Lord Hamilton was more tractable; he at least sat in a chair, sipping occasionally from the medicinal mead the brownie had given him. Lune insisted on pacing, her skirts whipping into a small vortex every time she turned.

If Ktistes could have fit in her chamber, she would have had the centaur there; as it was, the von das Tickens stood alone against her anger. “It vas safe,” Niklas growled, unimpressed by the royal anger. “Nobody vas hurt. Even that horse-man says the charms are not damaged. Just a little shaking of the ground, is all.”

She glared silver murder at him. “You caused an earthquake. I should have heeded my instincts and my common sense, when you first suggested using explosives.”

“We don’t have much choice, Lune.” Hamilton had recovered enough to argue with her. The sudden jolt had dropped them both where they stood. Which they had expected—such an alteration to their realm could not help but affect them—it was the echo into the world above that came as an unpleasant surprise. The Onyx Hall both did and did not exist in the earth beneath the City, and apparently the blast had crossed that boundary. “We need a high-ceilinged chamber in which to construct the clock. Nothing suitable exists in the Hall, not that can be made secure. And unless we find some better way to hang the pendulum than off a moonbeam, we’ll need some way to draw the light down, of which the Monument is our best option. We’re lucky to have even one zenith telescope inside the City walls.”

Inside the walls. That was a goodly portion of the problem. “The Sanists will find all the fodder they need in this,” Lune said. Her angry stride weakened, and she put one hand out for support, catching the black wall. “If I admit we’ve been blasting a new chamber, changing the fabric of the palace…”

“Then lie,” Gertrude suggested, cheerful as always.

The Queen nodded, anger giving way to thoughtful calculation. “We can’t hide it, that’s for certain. But another story…” Inspiration straightened her back once more. “We need Peregrin. A cannon blast could explain it—development of a weapon against the Dragon. That’s the best we can hope to make of it, I think.”

“Von moment,” Wilhas said delicately, as Gertrude went to the door. “There is a small complication.”

Lune’s expression chilled once more. “What?”

“Ve need to do it again,” Niklas said bluntly.

Hamilton groaned and reached for the mead again. “You didn’t blast far enough?”

The dwarves shook their heads, mirror images of each other in red and blond. “Not even halfvay,” Niklas said. “Ve need a bigger charge. Not yet—it vill take a little vile to prepare—but next month, I think.”

Lune said, without much hope, “Is there any way to prevent it from disturbing the Hall and the City again?” More shaking of heads. She finally sank into a chair, head rolling back. Her exhaustion was as much of the will as of the body. “Then I will definitely need to speak to Peregrin. When will you do it?”

“March eighth,” Wilhas said. “The new moon is good for these things. Ve just missed it this time, and that I think did not help.”

One month later, to the day. Lune rubbed at her eyes, then said, “Get it right the second time, gentlemen. A third earthquake in as many months, and Londoners will be convinced the end is at hand.”

The blank front wall of Montagu House was well lit by moonlight as five fae came strolling up Great Russell Street. Irrith would have preferred to wait for the new moon; faerie charms were always helped along by details like that. But they needed to steal their target in time for Lune to trade it to the Greeks in time for them to provide help creating clouds in time to hide from the comet, and no one felt comfortable wasting two perfectly good weeks just to make the thieves’ lives easier.

They paused at the corner of Bloomsbury Square. Five simple fellows out for a walk, never mind the late hour; Irrith hoped no constables would pass by, keeping the houses of the wealthy safe. She squinted down the street, then nodded to the sharp-faced fellow that was the disguise of Charcoal Eddie. “See those rooms above the gate? That’s where the porter lives. But don’t have him open the main gate; it’ll be much too noisy. Use the eastern door instead—”

“I remember,” the puck said, annoyed. “I flew over it this morning. Eastern door in the little courtyard. Give me three minutes.” Without bothering to make sure they were still alone, he hopped into the air, and flashed off down Great Russell Street in the form of a shabby-feathered raven.

“Do you know where to find the stand?” Angrisla murmured into her ear. Unlike Eddie, the mara was keeping very careful watch indeed over the square and the surrounding streets.

Irrith shook her head. “Lord Galen said they’ve brought everything into Montagu House for sorting, but things are still being moved around. It’s big, though. We shouldn’t have much trouble.” Assuming the Greeks were right, that it was even there to begin with. One piece of old bronze looked much like another, to Irrith; how could they be certain?

In the quiet street, the sound of a bolt being shot back echoed like a gun. Irrith jumped, and got a disgusted look from Dead Rick. “Come on,” she muttered, and under the cover of cloaking charms, they all went forward.

The warm weather meant the porter had been sleeping with his window open; it also meant he was standing in the courtyard stark naked, with his eyes shut and gentle snores issuing forth. Eddie was lounging against the stable wall, smirking. “Do we keep him with us?”

“We’ll get the front door open, then send him back to bed,” Irrith said. “If anyone does come upon us while we’re searching, it’ll be easier to hide without a naked sleeping mortal wandering around.”

The puck pouted, but he was being well rewarded for his help; he made no more protest. “This way, ladies and gents,” he said, and gestured toward a nearby arch.

Even with charms, Irrith felt terribly exposed in the great open courtyard of Montagu House. Windows lined the house’s front and the two wings, which any sleepless servant could glance out of, and she kept thinking she saw movement in the shadows of the front colonnade. Greymalkin, the last of their party, regarded her with pitying contempt. “Missing the trees, Berkshire?”

She was, but not for a whole loaf of bread would she have admitted it. “Just keep watching,” Irrith hissed, and stood nervously as the porter unlocked the front door.

Once they were inside the darkened house, it was better. She sent Eddie to escort the porter back to bed and then keep watch, while she and the others followed the directions Galen had given, up the staircase on the left and into the collection rooms of the British Museum above.

“Ash and Thorn,” Dead Rick muttered when Irrith threw the curtains open. She flinched, thinking of the Sanist newspaper that had taken that name. He was a skriker; had he been the dog who attacked her at Tyburn? But he seemed to mean the words only as an oath. “What is all of this for?”

Curiosity, Irrith thought. It was like her cabinet, ten times over—no, a hundred times. The walls were lined with cases the height of a giant. Their top shelves were enclosed in glass, held shut by prominent locks; their drawers, when Greymalkin slid one out, proved to be covered over with wires, their openings too small even for her slender fingers. And all of it, shelves and drawers and opened crates on the floor, was crammed with objects of a thousand kinds. In the moonlight from the windows, she saw coins and masks, dried plants and dead butterflies, an astrolabe and a polished round crystal the size of her fist.

She wanted nothing more than to spend the whole night looking through it all—well, not the dead plants and insects. Those served no purpose she could see. But the things made by men… those could occupy her for days.

Especially since there was more than one room. “Let’s move on,” Irrith said reluctantly. “The stand must be somewhere else.”

The antiquities, unfortunately, were scattered through many rooms. The fae went through them quickly, passing statue after statue, baskets, drums—and even the goblins, accustomed to moving in darkness, seemed skittish. Irrith kept thinking she heard voices, just beyond the edge of understanding. Or things, moving in the shadows. Some of these objects came from far-off lands, and she wondered what they’d brought with them.

“Damn it,” she muttered, almost for reassurance. The stand had to be here somewhere. Up in the attics, perhaps? Galen hadn’t been able to tell them where the unsorted items were. The new museum had been given so many collections from other folk, they were still struggling to put it all in some kind of order.

“Hsst!” Angrisla stood at the far side of the room. “What’s through here?”

“Manuscripts,” Irrith said; the mara was already gone, vanished through the door. The room beyond was pitch-black, but that hardly bothered a nightmare. After a moment, her hideous face appeared in the doorway. “Bronze, about your height?”

Irrith’s heart leapt. “Three legs?”

Angrisla nodded, and they all hurried to see.

It stood in a corner of the manuscript room, with—Irrith snorted—a Chinese vase sitting on it. “Doesn’t look like much,” Greymalkin said.

She was right. Ktistes had shown so much reverence when speaking of this, Irrith had expected… she didn’t know what, but something much grander than what they found. The stand was nothing more than a plain bronze tripod, with only a little decoration down its legs, and a shallow bowl at the top.

Dead Rick sniffed it, as if his nose could somehow find its value. “What do the Greeks want it for, anyway? If it’s so useful, why would the Queen give it up?”

“For something we can’t do ourselves,” Irrith said. “Ktistes said some old Greek woman used to sit in that bowl and give prophecies. But it won’t work for us.” She moved the Chinese vase onto the floor and beckoned for the others to help. “Come on; I can’t carry this on my own.”

Angrisla took the bowl, and Dead Rick ended up with the tripod itself. Irrith left the vase precisely where the stand had been and closed the drapes and doors behind them. The theft would be obvious, but no sense leaving more signs than they had to.

Out in the courtyard, she became aware of noises coming from the gatehouse chambers. Muffled cries, like a man having a bad dream, interspersed with Charcoal Eddie’s cawing laughter. “Blood and Bone,” Irrith swore. Greymalkin was grinning. “Go on—get the tripod out of here. I’ll follow in a minute, with Eddie.” She ran for the gate.

Upstairs, the puck was perched at the foot of the porter’s bed, his glamour discarded. The porter and his wife both twitched and moaned, the sheets tangled around their feet. “What are you doing?” Irrith demanded in a strangled whisper.

He sneered at her. “Getting my reward. The Queen said I could play with the porter afterward.”

“Later,” Irrith said, and grabbed his arm. Eddie fell off the bed with a yelp. “After we’re gone with the tripod, and they’ve stopped worrying about the theft. Then you can come play with him all you like.” Ignoring the puck’s protests, she dragged him back down to the courtyard and out onto Great Russell Street.

Angrisla was waiting with the bowl at the far side of Bloomsbury Square. Irrith’s heart missed a beat. “Where’s Dead Rick? And Greymalkin?”

“Gone on ahead.” The mara’s black eyes missed nothing. She said, “He’ll deliver it safely, Irrith—don’t worry. He’s loyal.”

How could Angrisla be sure, if she’d been gone from the Onyx Hall? But it reassured Irrith anyway. “Let’s get home, then, and collect our rewards from the Queen.”

When the maid knocked on the door to Dr. Andrews’s bedchamber, the voice from the other side was reassuringly strong. “Come in.”

She opened it, curtsied, and announced, “Mr. St. Clair to see you, sir,” then stood aside to let Galen pass. Entering, he saw the cause of Dr. Andrews’s vigor: Gertrude Goodemeade, half again as tall as she should be, but still recognizably herself. The empty cup in her hands said she’d already fed the ailing man another dose of her restorative draught, the best medicine the fae could offer. What was in it, Galen had no idea—beyond a base of the Goodemeades’ namesake brew—but Andrews had agreed to drink it. Though the draught was no cure for consumption, it did help him regain his strength, and the doctor’s recent collapse made him desperate enough that he would accept anything that offered him a chance.

The disguised brownie curtsied to Galen, though she refrained from addressing him by title. Andrews said, “Mr. St. Clair. As you can see, I am not yet dead.”

“You’re looking much better,” Galen replied honestly. “Much more improvement, sir, and you’ll be in better health than you were when first I met you.”

That last was an exaggeration, made to bolster the man’s spirits. Andrews still lay propped up against pillows, and his colour was far from good. “As much as I would welcome that,” the doctor said, “I will settle for sufficient strength to rise from this bed. I’m eager to return to work.”

Gertrude clucked her tongue. “Now, Dr. Andrews—I might be no physician, but I think you’ll agree I’ve seen my share of sick men. You know full well that too much eagerness might land you right back where you are right now. And the air in that place is too cool; it wouldn’t be good for your lungs.”

“It’s also dry, though,” Galen said. “Isn’t that supposed to help? We could always bring in something to warm the space. And perhaps some of its… subtler qualities might help.”

His attempt to hint at his sudden inspiration failed; the other two looked baffled. Galen cast a wary eye upon the bedchamber door. Andrews insisted his servants were the model of discretion, and Galen admittedly had seen nothing to disprove it. Still, he lowered his voice before he went on. “The passage of time—or lack thereof. Men grow no older while in that place, do they? Might that not also pause the progress of his disease?”

It had seemed like a brilliant idea; he was therefore crushed when Gertrude shook her head. “Folk have died of disease there, Galen. One of your predecessors used to keep patients in the Billingsgate warren, because the space was clean and quiet. Some got better, it’s true, but not all.”

He should not have said it in front of Dr. Andrews. The man’s expression showed the broken pieces of hope, and the powerful desire to cling to what remained of them. “Still—” He paused as if he was going to cough, but drew a clear breath and forged on. “Part of my difficulty is the encroachment of weakness, and some of that is age. Even if it offered me only small help…”

“It would be better than nothing,” Galen agreed. “Come, Gertrude—is it not worth a try?”

“You know the risks,” Gertrude said in an urgent whisper. “Dr. Andrews, surely they warned you; to stay too long below brings its own kind of weakness.”

If she thought that would dissuade anyone, she was wrong. Andrews merely said, “I would trade that risk for the one I face now.”

The brownie bit her lip uncertainly, turning the empty cup around in her hands. Galen willed her to see the man lying in his nightshirt, pale and burnt thin by disease, the man in whom he had placed his hopes of a solution against the Dragon. The fae were Andrews’s one hope of survival, and at the moment, he was theirs. If this had the smallest chance of extending his life, and therefore the time in which they might find solutions to their problems…

“Isn’t for me to decide,” she said at last, taking refuge in lack of authority. “It’s yours, Lord Galen, and the Queen’s. If you think it worth trying, and she agrees, then so be it.”

“I will consult with her immediately,” Galen said, before Andrews could even ask. The pieces of hope were beginning to knit themselves back together. Fear of them breaking again, however, made him add, “The Queen has more experience of this than I. If she says it would do more harm than good, I’ll have to heed her.”

Andrews sagged back against his pillows. “I understand.”

They left him then, for whatever good the draught had done him, he still needed rest. No servants scurried guiltily away when Galen opened the door, so it seemed their imprudently direct words had not been overheard. Gertrude waited until they reached the square, though, before she took him by the sleeve.

“I have experience of this, too, Lord Galen,” she said. Her face was suited for merriment, not somberness, but her eyes made up all the difference. “If you do bring him below—not just for an afternoon here, a day there, but for days on end—you must watch him carefully. Mortal minds don’t fare well among us, and it is his mind, as much as his body, that you need.”

Once it had felt peculiar, addressing a woman who scarcely came up past his waist; now it felt even more peculiar, seeing Gertrude under a glamour of height. Though it should not have, the difference lent weight to her warning. “I won’t forget it, Gertrude. I’ll watch him myself; he’s my responsibility, after all, and my friend beyond that.”

It didn’t erase her worry, but she nodded. “That’s the best anyone can ask for, then.”

With the theft of the tripod from the British Museum’s collections, few barriers remained between the fae and the creation of a veil to conceal England from the comet. Galen, considering that business all but done, had almost forgotten the debt he owed—until Edward brought him a letter written in a flowing, foreign hand.

The genie.

Galen cursed. Mrs. Carter had confirmed the inscription on the bowl; it was an adaptation of some Arabic invocation, summoning clouds and rain. Lune had given Irrith permission to use it, which meant Abd ar-Rashid had done them a genuine service. Now Galen must do him one in turn.

At least he had an easy means of discharging his duty. Galen wrote to Dr. Andrews, whose health had improved distinctly since his removal to the Onyx Hall. The man was sleeping below more nights than not, with Podder to see to his needs; it was simple enough to arrange a meeting between him and Abd ar-Rashid.

The genie was too polite to complain of the delay, beyond the gentle nudge of that one letter. Galen was rather more worried about Dr. Andrews. Given the man’s new familiarity with the fae, it seemed silly to disguise Abd ar-Rashid as anything other than what he was; but how would the doctor respond to an Arab? Would that strangeness be just one more drop in the sea that was the Onyx Hall, or would it be one too many?

Andrews seemed composed enough, and even friendly, when Podder showed them in. He was sitting up in a chair, dressed properly once more, and if he didn’t rise to greet them, that was easily explained by his health. “You will forgive me, I hope, Mr. Abd ar-Rashid,” the doctor said, indicating his seated position, and the genie hastened to assure him of it. “Mr. St. Clair tells me you come here for learning.”

“It is so,” the genie said, settling into his own chair. “Heard I of your Royal Society, and wish to converse with its Fellows upon many topics. A physician, you are?”

Andrews smiled ruefully. “I was, until my illness forced me to retire from such work. But I daresay I could spare the effort for a bit of tutoring; indeed, with instruction, I expect you could assist me in basic tasks, which would be a great boon to the work Mr. St. Clair has asked me to do.”

All Galen’s happy satisfaction drained down to his stomach and congealed into something more like embarrassed horror. Oh, God. He misunderstood me completely.

Abd ar-Rashid’s excellent manners kept him from saying anything immediately offensive, but his back stiffened. Choosing his words with care Galen suspected had nothing to do with his imperfect English, the genie said, “I fear there is a… confusion? A physician I am already, studying the medical arts since the days of Ibn Sina.”

“Yes, well, we’ve come on a bit since Avicenna,” Andrews said with a dismissive wave. “He was good enough for his time, I suppose, but after seven hundred years anyone would be a trifle… hmm… outdated?”

“O doctor,” the genie replied in that same, even tone, “wrote Ibn Sina, seven hundred years ago, in the Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb, that the disease afflicting you can go to others—but maybe the physicians of England forget, as I see you do not keep away from the healthy.”

Andrews went from patronizing to affronted with remarkable speed. “Contagion? Balderdash; that’s as great a piece of nonsense as the innkeeper who thought it was caused by faeries. They have assured me it is not so.”

Once Galen belatedly found his tongue, the words poured out. “My apologies to you both; I fear the misunderstanding here is entirely of my doing. Dr. Andrews, Lord Abd ar-Rashid is a travelling scholar, who spent the last several years among the academies of Paris. He asked me to provide him with an introduction to the scholars of the Royal Society, and given his… nature, I thought it best to begin with you. I do beg your pardon for giving the wrong impression, but he wishes to exchange ideas. I have no doubt that English and Arabic physicians both have learned many useful things over the years, which each of you could benefit from—and surely, gentlemen, you share more than you differ. The four humors, for example—”

They shared something indeed, turning on him. “We physicians of learning are finished with that idea,” Abd ar-Rashid said, his accented reply interweaving with Andrews’s heated, “Only quacks and unlettered country doctors still follow that notion.” Then they both stopped, each eyeing the other like a pair of wary tomcats.

“Paracelsus,” Dr. Andrews said, as if testing something.

The genie nodded. “Iatrochimie—I do not know it in English—though little was the understanding of chemistry to guide him, and he went wrong often.”

Which was perfectly incomprehensible to Galen, but Andrews nodded grudgingly in return. Though the two embracing each other as brothers in medicine seemed unlikely, at least Andrews was no longer regarding the Arab as he might a precocious child. “A different perspective might be refreshing, I suppose,” the doctor allowed. “I would be interested to hear what you learned in Paris, sir. My correspondence with gentlemen there has fallen sadly by the wayside during my illness.”

Which left the genie, who had recovered a kind of blankness that Galen suspected meant his thoughts were not fit to be shared. “Lord Abd ar-Rashid,” Galen said, “if you would consent to work with Dr. Andrews, addressing a certain philosophical problem we face, then her Grace and I would be most grateful. We could offer you lodgings within the Onyx Hall, and the protection of mortal bread, should you need it.”

The genie thawed a bit at the offer of hospitality—or perhaps it was the philosophical problem. If he was half so curious as reports made him out to be, then that would be like the scent of game to a bloodhound. And he’d made some acquaintances among the fae of the Onyx Hall; if he didn’t already know of the comet, he would soon. Galen had judged, and Lune agreed, that there wasn’t much to be gained in trying to keep that secret from the foreigner. Much better to offer him honesty, and see if they could gain his help.

“O Prince,” Abd ar-Rashid said at last, “the lodgings and the bread I need not. But I appreciate the offer. If Dr. Andrews agrees, so, too, do I.”

It was the best he was likely to get. Galen could only hope this partnership would grow less thorny over time. Abd ar-Rashid might make a valuable addition to their scholarly circle. He had, after all, studied in foreign lands, where many strange things were known.

“Good,” Galen said, with heartier cheer than he felt. “Then I shall leave you to your conversation, gentlemen, and see about fetching you a salamander.”

Irrith held the pole at arm’s length, walking with slow care to ensure the brass box swinging from the wood didn’t accidentally brush into her. Even with that precaution, she could feel the heat radiating from the metal. The salamander had been most unhappy when she slammed the lid shut on its head.

She had to bang the end of the pole into the door in lieu of a knock. Podder opened it, and shied back when he saw her burden. Edging past the nervous hob, Irrith came into Dr. Andrews’s laboratory.

The mortal man was waiting for her, along with Galen and a dark foreigner she’d seen around the Onyx Hall. He must be the Arabic genie Segraine had mentioned, Abdar-something. “Ah, my dear, very good,” the doctor said, waving her forward, toward a contraption Irrith recognised as being one of Niklas von das Ticken’s discarded Dragon-cages. It stood well above the bare floor, on a slab of stone, with a bucket of water waiting at each corner. “In here, if you would.”

She dropped the brass box inside and slid the pole free. “He’s been burning since I grabbed him,” she said by way of explanation. “Can’t touch the latch, but if you have something long enough to reach through…”

Their servant Podder fetched a thin-bladed knife and handed it to Galen, who approached the cage warily. After some fumbling, he succeeded in lifting the latch, and the salamander immediately poured free of its prison. The creature hissed and spat sparks when it discovered the new confinement of the cage.

“Take good care of that one,” Irrith said, leaning on her pole. “It was a right bastard to catch; I don’t fancy going after another.”

Dr. Andrews was peering through the bars, drawing closer and closer; he leapt back when a lick of flame almost singed his nose. Rubbing his hands with undisguised eagerness, he said, “I fear we may need several, my dear. The chances of our correctly extracting pure phlogiston on the first attempt are dubious at best.”

“Pure what?”

“Phlogiston.” Galen smiled at her. He looked happy, she realised; he truly enjoyed this sort of thing, poking and prodding at creatures to learn what made them go. Far more than he enjoyed politics, and she could understand that very well. “Fire—in its pure form.”

Irrith grinned back. “I can spare you the effort, then. Here’s your flodgy-thing.” She prodded the salamander with the end of her pole. It attacked the wood with astonishing speed; fast as she drew back, she didn’t save the tip from catching fire. “See?”

With two delicate fingers, Galen guided the burning end down into a bucket, where it died in a hiss of steam. “We know the nature of the salamander, Irrith; that’s why we asked you to catch one. But we need to separate the fire from the creature.”

“But the fire is the creature,” Irrith told him. Clearly he did not understand, whatever he claimed. “That’s what a salamander is: elemental fire.”

“That is an outdated theory, my dear,” Andrews said. She was beginning to grit her teeth every time he called her that. Irrith didn’t need her title, but she would have appreciated the simple courtesy of her name—especially coming from someone whose entire span, cradle to grave, was scarcely a flicker of her own. “Robert Boyle showed the insufficiency of the classical elements as a means of describing the world, so that now we think there are many more elements, though so far the definition of them has proved beyond us. Phlogiston may be one of them, but it is not elemental fire, and this creature cannot be composed of it.”

Irrith had forgotten the Arab, standing silent watch over this exchange; she jumped when he spoke. “The lady is correct. Created were my kind out of smokeless fire. This salamander is the same, perhaps.”

Andrews’s mouth took on a sour cast, and Irrith smirked at him. “See? Faeries are different.”

The mortals against the immortals. Galen was even standing next to Dr. Andrews, though the genie was a little distance away, half-aloof. In mollifying tones, the Prince said, “It doesn’t work that way, Irrith. The whole object of natural philosophy is to discover the laws of the world—laws that must and do apply in all places equally.”

“The world! But we’re in a different one, aren’t we? Or halfway between two, I suppose.” She gestured with the charred pole, skimming it over the cage in a shallow arc just for the pleasure of watching Dr. Andrews twitch apprehensively. “I bet you have a law saying time has to pass at the same speed everywhere, but faerie realms don’t obey that one, either.”

Galen hesitated, but Dr. Andrews did not. “Let me demonstrate something to you, my dear. I haven’t yet devised an experiment to investigate the illusions spoken of at Midsummer, but I can show you something simpler.”

He went to one corner of the room, where various prisms, lenses, mirrors, cards, and other items were piled on a table. “Mr. St. Clair, are you familiar with the basics of optics? Excellent. Then if you would aid me—I intend to conduct Newton’s experimentum crucis. That should be enough to begin with.”

Together the men set up a pair of prisms and two cards, one with a small hole pierced in it. “Now,” Andrews said, holding up a small box, “this contains a faerie light, which we may use as our source. In Newton’s time, there were two competing theories of light: one being that a prism creates its rainbow effect by ‘tinging’ the light as it passes through, and the other being that it merely bends the light, separating its different components by the different angles of their passage. That latter is the true theory, as I will now show. If we pass our source through the first prism—” Lifting the box’s hinged flap, he created a rainbow against the first card. Podder whispered to the faerie lights around the room, so that they dimmed and the rainbow appeared more clearly. “Thank you, Podder. Now, if we position this card so that the hole permits the violet light through, we may send that portion through a second prism, and when it strikes the second card—Mr. St. Clair, if you would—”

Galen moved the pieces into position. A moment later, the card fluttered from his hand, whispering to a halt on the stone.

But not before everyone had seen a second, stranger rainbow cast across its white face.

In the near darkness, Dr. Andrews stuttered, “I—it should have—”

“Been violet.” The genie’s accented voice lent a touch of strangeness to an already strange scene. “As in Newton’s essay ‘Of Colours.’ But he used sunlight.”

Not a faerie light. Irrith heard a creak: Andrews collapsing into a chair, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Podder hastily brightened the room again, revealing the doctor white as a sheet, and hardly breathing.

“Our world is different,” Irrith said, and thought it very virtuous of herself that she let only a little of her smugness show through.

The urge to gloat faded, however, when she saw Galen. He was still on his feet, but he looked almost as appalled as Dr. Andrews, as if someone had come along and told him Heaven was empty, with no one watching over him. “What?” Irrith said, uncertain now. “Isn’t this good? You have what you were after.”

Galen’s head moved side to side, blindly; it might have been stirred by the wind. “No. It isn’t good. Because if nature as we understand it does not operate the same here…”

Dr. Andrews’s whisper would have been inaudible in a less-silent room. “Then nothing we know is of any use.”

“I do not think so.”

That came from the genie. Abd ar-Rashid, that was his name. He looked from Andrews to Galen to Irrith, then went on in a more judicious manner. “It is only my idea, uncertain in truth. But I am wondering, for some time…” His sharp-tipped fingers played against each other, a nervous gesture that made him seem much more familiar than foreign. “That which is right in your world, appears to be wrong in ours. Perhaps that which is wrong in your world becomes right, in places such as this.”

“Earth, water, air, and fire,” Irrith said. She pursed her lips in doubt. “For salamanders and sylphs and the like, maybe—but we aren’t all elemental creatures.”

“No. But mixtures of those four, perhaps, as not true of mortal substances.”

Andrews was still white and unreassured. “But there have been many wrong ideas—more wrong ideas than right. How are we to know which ones apply?”

Galen exhaled sharply; it might have been a laugh. Certainly a faint, mad light was growing in his eyes. “Even as Boyle did, and Newton, and all the others. We experiment. At great speed, I should think; though once the Dragon is disposed of, we’ll have greater leisure to explore the laws of faerie science.”

Those two words formed such an incongruous pair that Irrith stifled her own laugh. She didn’t want to mock the Prince. On the other hand, she knew enough of what he meant by experimentation to doubt whether it would work; surely her world and the people who inhabited were not some kind of clockwork device, predictable once one found the gears. But he seemed to think it worth pursuing, and he knew enough of faerie things that she trusted he would get something of use out of it.

Abd ar-Rashid said, “Speaks alchemy of four elements, and three principles, and such. These ideas from Arabia, and I know something of them; perhaps they are of some use here.”

It brought Andrews upright in his chair, and then onto his feet once more. “Yes. It failed the mortals who tried it, but it should be easy enough to determine whether we find different results in this place.” The hand-rubbing was back, this time with blazing eagerness that made him look almost healthy for a moment. “Come, gentlemen. Mr. St. Clair is right. We haven’t a moment to waste.”

Lune came to Galen in his own chambers—a startling reversal of their usual habit. Once they were settled in the parlor, she dismissed Edward Thorne and her own attendants, with Sir Peregrin to guard the door and make certain no one listened in.

“The Delphic tripod has been delivered to the Greeks,” she said, without preamble. “We have their agreement, and their aid. In three days’ time, we shall take action to hide this island from the comet. The effect will not be complete until a fortnight has passed; Savennis has advised Irrith that it would be more effective to link it to the waning of the moon, rather than the new moon itself. But when it is done, we should—I hope—have some protection.”

Galen’s muscles kept drawing themselves tight, despite efforts to release them. “For how long?”

The Queen shook her silver head. “No one can say for sure. This has never been done before.”

She didn’t ask what progress he made, with Dr. Andrews and his scholarly coterie. Their reports to her were quite thorough. So far it was more theory than experiment, but they had done enough to confirm the genie’s suggestion, that the old model of matter, discredited for the natural world, was yet applicable to the supernatural. It felt like a step backward: symbolic laws in place of mechanical ones, effects governed more by poetry than physics. The Royal Society would weep if it knew. So long as their circle could manipulate it to their benefit, though, Galen did not care what basis faerie science operated on.

Lune broke his distracted reverie. “There is one other change you should be aware of.”

Something in her tone warned him. Gut tightening again, Galen waited for her to go on.

“I will not be there with you.”

It struck like a blow. “At Greenwich?” She nodded. “But—why?”

By way of answer, she handed him a folded piece of paper, that he soon recognised as one of the Onyx Hall’s news-sheets. The Ash and Thorn, of course, and when he unfolded it he saw immediately what provoked her declaration. The article was unsigned, but it might as well have borne the identification A Sanist.

Galen’s exclamation was a poor outlet for his fury. “If they paid an ounce of attention, they would know another portion of wall was taken down just after Midsummer! This has nothing to do with a few hours’ absence on your part.”

“I’m sure they know of the destruction,” Lune said, with a sigh of profound weariness. “But to their logic, the two are not separable. Had I stayed below, perhaps the wall would have stayed up, or its loss would have had no effect. And the logic is less important than the theme, which is that I am failing to do my duty by the Onyx Hall. My reckless visit to the Moor Fields is simply the miniature of my insistence upon remaining Queen.”

He handed back the paper before he could fling it into the fire. The Sanists he could not dispose of, however much he wished to; instead he concentrated on the more immediate matter. “So you will not be at Greenwich.”

Lune’s mouth curved into a sly smile. “That isn’t what I said. I will not be with you; as far as anyone other than yourself, Peregrin, and Lady Ailis are concerned, I will be in my chamber, like a good and virtuous Queen. But true virtue—not the sham they demand of me—means I will be at Greenwich, disguised. Thus will both our need and the Sanists’ concerns be addressed.”

This did not seem the wisest of ideas. Fae could detect a glamour, after all, though seeing through it took effort they rarely bothered to expend. Then Galen remembered the dancers: twelve of Lune’s ladies and attendants, robed and masked, who would take part in the ceremony to conceal Britain. Ailis was close enough to Lune in height that no one would notice the difference.

“I will not leave you to do this alone,” Lune said. “Not because I do not trust you, but because I do not wish to discover, too late, that my absence produced a fatal weakness in our concealment. Though I fear you’ll have to bear the final burden alone.”

“The Sanists, though.” Galen clenched his fists until his knuckles ached. “Bowing to their demands, or even giving the appearance of it—do you not fear the precedent that sets?”

The smile had lost some of its vigour when she spoke of the possibility of weakness; now it faded entirely from view. “I do. But I must choose my battles, mustn’t I? A faerie has the same number of hours in her day as a man does—unless she goes to a place outside of time, and I cannot mend the rift with the Sanists while cloistered away in the Calendar Room, or self-exiled to Faerie. That I must address the problem they pose is beyond question. If I can postpone it until after the Dragon, however, then I will do so.”

Galen couldn’t fault her desire. Nor did he have to remind her of the if in that sentence. “We certainly don’t need the distraction. Very well, madam; I will not see you at Greenwich. And may our efforts prove sufficient for our need.”

For the second time in a century, the fae of London invaded and occupied the Royal Observatory.

Performing so large an endeavour in so open a space made Irrith deeply nervous. This was not Moor Fields, protected by centuries of tradition, where the only folk awake at late hours had no good purpose anyway; this was a royal establishment, with men who often worked at night, and a hospital full of naval men just beyond the base of the hill. She tried to reassure herself that at least poor sickly Bradley was getting a good night’s sleep for once, but it didn’t go far. The observatory swarmed with faeries, and she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if someone chanced to wander up the hill with a message for the Astronomer Royal.

To Segraine, who waited at her side, Irrith said, “How exactly did it come to this?”

“To what?” the lady knight asked.

Irrith gestured at the fae busily clearing the courtyard of the observatory. “My plan. It started so simply: hide from the comet. Somehow it’s come to involve two faerie tricks, one mortal proverb, a deal with Greek wind spirits, a magic Arab bowl, and an entire observatory.”

“And a German story,” Wilhas von das Ticken reminded her, from the other side. “Although, in fairness, you had the flute idea before ve told you about the Pied Piper.”

“Together with assorted nymphs, masks, pitchers, and enough will-o’-the-wisps to light up the length of the Thames,” Irrith said, with resigned amusement. “I suppose we’re trying to hide all of Britain, and I should have known that would mean something large, but—Blood and Bone, I didn’t expect something so motley.”

Segraine shrugged. “It’s the Onyx Hall. I doubt you’ll find a more motley faerie court in all of Britain.”

Looking past Wilhas and Niklas to Ktistes and the Irish Lady Feidelm, Irrith had to agree. All that was missing was Abd ar-Rashid. But no one seemed to be certain just how much they were trusting the heathen, and so he had not been invited to this night’s effort—even though he’d provided the mirrored bowl that would be the centrepiece of their ceremony. A bowl that, rumour had it, was crafted on their behalf by a Dutch Jew: another patch in the ragged cloak that would conceal Britain.

No genie—and no Queen. Irrith went to stand by Galen, who kept his hands locked behind his back as if afraid of what they would do. “I’ll go to the Onyx Hall this minute and fetch her, if you like,” Irrith muttered to him. “She should be here.” Whatever the Sanists said. Irrith wasn’t certain whether the loss of more wall, and more Hall with it, had anything to do with Lune’s visit to the Moor Fields, but even if it did, the Queen should still be here. That was the whole idea of the Onyx Court, to have faerie Queen and mortal Prince working together.

Galen’s answering smile showed a strange mixture of serenity and nerves. “No, Irrith—it won’t be necessary. We have everything we need.”

“I hope so,” she murmured, waving everyone into position. The pucks’ hands glowed with will-o’-the-wisps, casting an eerie light over the space. “Because I don’t want to do this a second time.”

Then she hushed the crowd, because the dancers were entering.

They’d climbed up the hill from the bank of the Thames, right past Greenwich Hospital, with their faerie faces in plain sight. Or rather, faces not their own: they wore masks of shimmering water, that covered even their eyes. How they could see to walk, Irrith didn’t know. Their robes were softly shifting fog, and they bore pitchers of river water in their hands, for they were representing the nephelae, the Greek nymphs of clouds and rains.

Il Veloce, one of the Onyx Hall’s Italian fauns, began to play a meandering tune on a syrinx, guiding the masked nymphs into a circle around the mirrored bowl that rested in the centre of the courtyard. Their dance was a simple thing—they could hardly manage more, burdened as they were—but its movement swirled in gentle, liquid arcs, bringing them gradually inward. One by one, the nephelae poured the contents of their pitchers into the bowl.

It would have been prettier if it were clean, Irrith thought with grumpy distaste. But prettiness wasn’t to the purpose. For the making of clouds, the Thames’s cloudy water was very good indeed.

The hairs on her arms and neck were rising, in response to the presence gathering above. The night was clear—for the moment—but something waited in the sky, a power both foreign and familiar. Lune’s negotiations through Ktistes had spoken of the winds by their Greek names, because the Greeks knew how to form deals with them, but surely these were the same winds that had blown across England since the beginning of time. Call them Boreas, Euros, Notos, and Zephyros, or simply North, East, South, and West; it makes no difference. Some fragment of their power had agreed to serve as temporary shepherds for what the earth-dwelling fae would create tonight.

The time for that creation had come. Galen walked alone across the courtyard to the mirrored bowl. He turned a little as he searched for a good grip on the Arabic-inscribed rim, and so she saw the strain on his face as he heaved the thing upward; it had not been light when empty, and now it contained twelve pitchers’ worth of water. Lune should have been there to help him, Irrith fumed. Instead the Prince had to set his feet and force it above his head without aid. Hurry, Irrith whispered silently. Before he drops it.

As if they heard her, the nephelae drew close, lifting their fog-robed arms toward the bowl’s rim.

The water within began to stir.

At first it was just a wisp, too faint to be certain it had been there at all. Then a mist arose, clearly visible above the rim, glowing faintly in the night. The mist thickened, and grew, and billowed slowly upward, into the empty and waiting sky.

Mortals said that clouds, however dark, contained silver linings. If clouds were the clothes of Britain, then to turn those linings outward required something of silver: a bowl, whose mirrored interior showed the world upside down, reflecting skyward the clouds that were born in its heart. Up they floated, to be met by their guides; will-o’-the-wisps leapt free of their holders’ hands and, to the tune of Il Veloce’s continued piping, danced away from the hilltop, toward the island’s far-distant edges. Errant breezes stirred Irrith’s hair against her cheeks, little brushes this way and that, as the winds above coaxed the nebulous masses of the clouds toward their new homes.

Still the clouds issued from the bowl. One of the dancers was the sylph Yfaen, and another was a river nymph, both with some touch on the weather; Irrith had never seen such a large effort from either. How much water could be left inside, with so much fog already streaming outward from Greenwich? It wasn’t nearly enough to cover the entire island, but that was the purpose of the next two weeks: to grow from this seed, until all of Britain was protected.

Surely they had enough for that now. Yet Galen still stood, arms trembling, head thrown back, teeth clenched with the effort of keeping the bowl aloft. His body arched like a bow beneath the weight. Irrith almost ran to support him, but her hands would not reach so high, and she couldn’t disrupt the ceremony. Lune should have been here. He can’t do this alone.

At least one nephele seemed to think the same. Her hand twitched foward, as if to take some of the burden. But whether that broke the ceremony, or she was simply too late, it did no good; with a cry, Galen dropped the bowl. It clanged off his left shoulder as he tried to wrench clear, its remaining water leaping outward, and then the metal rim struck the ground, denting and sending the whole thing rolling away.

Irrith hurried forward, cursing under her breath. The nephele was supporting Galen on his good side, while he let out a flood of his own foul language. Even in pain, though, he remained aware of those around him; not a single word belonging to Heaven slipped out.

“You did well,” Irrith said, knowing he wouldn’t believe her. “We have enough to protect us.”

“Yes,” the nephele murmured, too quietly for anyone beyond Irrith and Galen to hear. “You did very well indeed.” And then her eyes flicked upward, toward Irrith, and even through the shimmering uncertainty of her mask, they gleamed silver.

The sprite had enough sense not to blurt out the realization that came into her head. She waited until she could say something safe, then offered, “He should sit down. Once he’s feeling better, I’ll take him back to the Onyx Hall. I’m sure the Queen will want his report.”

“I’m sure she will.” The nephele rose with fluid grace and backed away. “Thank you, Dame Irrith.”

You’re welcome, madam. Irrith glanced around at the hovering fae, then at Galen. He was standing on his own now, with his right hand clasped to his injured shoulder, and his face beaded with sweat. Even with his brow knitted in pain, though, he watched the disguised Queen go, and joy brightened his eyes.

Sighing, Irrith tugged him away from the fallen bowl. “Come on, Lord Galen. You’ve taken care of Britain; now let others take care of you.”