A Star Shall Fall (14 page)

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

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

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

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

Were it not for Lune.

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

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

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

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

The Onyx Hall, London: February 11, 1758

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Bread. Three pieces.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This time, they had a point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Onyx Hall, London: February 12, 1758

My own court should not be a distraction to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of which, she knew, were spread deliberately.

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