In Ashes Lie (14 page)

“Pitch and tar,” the hob Tom Toggin said when the wherryman was done. He was not swearing, Jack realized after a moment. “Or oil. Or hemp. Prob’ly pitch, it going up like that.”

And then it was Jack’s turn to curse. Seizing the oarsman’s shoulder, he said, “You know the wharves well, yes? How many of the warehouses contain such material?”

The man seemed to have lost the ability to blink. “Er—don’t rightly know—”

“How many?”

The boat drifted aimlessly on the current as the man shrugged. “Most of ’em?”

Another roar, another wash of heat. The next warehouse in the row had caught.

And in the heart of the flames, something stirred. It might have been nothing more than a curling tongue of light, a ripple of fire along the collapsing line of a roof. But the fae in the boat saw with different eyes than a mortal might, and Tom Toggin grabbed Jack’s sleeve, pointing with a finger that shook from pure terror.

Salamanders,
Jack thought, curious despite his concern. There were a few in the Onyx Hall, creatures of elemental fire; he kept meaning to study them. But from what he knew, they were hardly a thing to inspire such fear.

Then he looked more closely, and his eyes widened.

He had seen such a thing before, yes—but much, much smaller.

In the hottest part of the blaze, a sinuous shape uncoiled, flexing its newfound power. Not a salamander, a mere lizard born of fire’s light. Conceived in the inferno’s womb and fed by the combustible treasures of London’s wharves, it was far larger, far stronger, and worthy of a greater name.

Christ,
Jack thought, staring in abject horror.
It’s huge.

The Dragon of the Fire roared.

Word spread through the Onyx Hall, faster than the flames above.
A Dragon has been born.

A Dragon. Such had not been seen in England for many a forgotten age.

It was a source of great excitement, almost enough to distract the fae from the Cailleach Bheur. These were not the deep reaches of Faerie, far removed from the mortal world; few creatures of such power still existed here, and those few that did mostly slept. When they thought of the Dragon, they saw only the grandeur of it, and did not think of London.

But Lune did, even before Irrith came to tell her that another church was in flames.

“I forget the name,” the sprite said, wiping soot from her face, left behind when the icy wind had dried all the sweat. “At the north end of the bridge. Jack—Lord John, that is—says it had a water tower.”

Even through the leaden weariness inflicted by the Cailleach, the exhaustion of decrepit age, Lune knew what she meant. The church of St. Magnus the Martyr, at the foot of London Bridge.

Where, thanks to the innovation of a clever Dutchman, water-wheels in the northernmost races churned the Thames upward, through leaden pipes that arched over the steeple of the church, from whence they fell with sufficient force to propel water through a goodly portion of the City’s riverside district. Thus were houses supplied—and the men fighting the Fire.

“It knows,” she whispered, and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.
The Dragon knows how we oppose it, and fights back.

We.
But the Onyx Court was already engaged in one battle, against the Cailleach Bheur—if battle it could be called, when her scouts could not find the Hag’s location, nor her advisers craft any means of blocking the deathly wind. How could they fight a second in the streets above? Fear gibbered at the edges of her vision, a hundred variants of death braiding into one terrifying whole. Death by fire, by ice, by the withering of age or the putrefaction of plague, creeping closer with every moment that passed—

No.
Lune snarled it away. This was her oath, and her burden. She could no more abandon mortal London to the Fire than she could leave her court to the Hag. If Jack was brave enough to face a Dragon, she must give him all possible aid.

She forced herself to think. The church was under attack; the Bridge itself would not long be safe. The stones could not burn, but houses and shops had crowded its length for centuries, choking the roadway with timber and plaster. And where people traveled, so too could the Fire: down the Bridge to the crowded suburb of Southwark. Then they would lose all hope of controlling its spread.

Her fingernails had dug deeply enough into her palms to cut. Lune pried them free, wincing, and said, “Find Dame Segraine. Tell her to call out every water nymph, every asrai and draca in this court, and marshal them at the Queenhithe entrance. If a fae can
swim,
send him out to fight. We must keep the Dragon from crossing the river.”

Nearly a quarter mile of the riverfront was alight now, by Jack’s best estimate, the cheap weather-boarded tenements that crowded about the wharves going up like dry tinder. The conflagration had roared through Stockfishmonger Row, Churchyard Alley, Red Cross Alley; men stood in lines, slinging full buckets up from the river, empty ones back down, but they might as well have pissed on the blaze, for all the good it did. The city’s few fire-carts could not even make it into those warrens, nor close enough to the river to fill their tanks. The Clerkenwell engine had fallen in.

He sagged back against a shop on Cannon Street, breathing mercifully clean air. The road was filled wall-to-wall with carts and men on foot; what belongings could be evacuated had been brought here. The livery companies were rescuing records and plate from their company halls, while the poorer folk of the Coldharbour tenements ran with what they could carry on their backs, unable to afford the rising price of a wherry or cart.

Not everyone out there was a dockside laborer, though. One finely dressed gentleman, holding a kerchief over his nose to filter out the drifting smoke, stopped at Jack’s side. “Where is the Lord Mayor?”

Jack wiped his streaming eyes and straightened, taking advantage of his height to crane over the shouting masses. “I think I see him—here, let me lead you.”

The fellow kept hard at Jack’s heels, forcing between two stopped carts whose drivers swore uselessly at each other. Sir Thomas Bludworth, when they came upon him, was a wretched sight; the Lord Mayor of London mopped at his face with the kerchief around his neck, staring and lost, trying ineffectually to direct the men around him.

“My lord,” the gentleman said, loudly enough to get Bludworth’s attention, “I have carried word to his Majesty at Whitehall of the troubles here, and he bids me tell you to spare no houses, but to pull them down before the fire in every direction.”

It was the only thing that might work. They had no hope of quenching the flames; but if they could create wide enough breaks, too wide to leap, then they might at least contain it. Bludworth blinked, seeming not to understand the words, nor to recognize the man before him. “Samuel Pepys,” the gentleman said, in the tone of one reminding a fellow he has always thought an idiot. “My Lord Mayor, the King commands—”

Bludworth jerked, as if coming awake. “Lord,” he cried, “what can I do? I am spent. People will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses, but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.”

Pepys bowed—hiding, Jack thought, an unsympathetic expression. He then stepped closer to the Lord Mayor, so he need not cry his next news to the world. “His Majesty has given orders to send in his Life Guards, or perhaps some of the Coldstream; the Duke of York also, and Lord Arlington. You are to notify them at once if you need more soldiers, for the keeping of the peace, and carrying out the demolitions.”

“Oh, no, no,” Bludworth said immediately, flapping his hands. “I need no more soldiers, no, we have the Trained Bands—but for myself, I must go and refresh myself; I have been up all night.” Still babbling, he slipped away, leaving Pepys staring.

“He has
not
been pulling houses down,” Jack said in his wake. “He fears to do so, without the permission of the men who own them—and there’s no chance of getting that in time. But I’ll help you spread the word.”
It should have begun hours ago. Before a simple fire turned into a God-damned Dragon.

Once, he would have been delighted for the chance to see a dragon, to observe its characteristics and perhaps learn something of its nature. Not anymore. The creature was destruction; that was all he cared to know. That, and how to stop it.

Pepys did not see the Dragon, no more than any man fighting the Fire did. They spoke of it as if it had a will, as if it hungered and schemed and sought to overcome their defenses, but they did not realize the truth of those words. Nevertheless, the gentleman had enough wit to see that decisive action was necessary. He gripped Jack’s hand in thanks. “There is a contingent of the Life Guards in Cornhill; will you go to them?”

Nodding, Jack gathered in his breath and set off as quickly as he could down a side lane. He did not get a dozen paces off Cannon Street, though, before a wild-eyed man grabbed him by the sleeve, with the hand
not
waving a rusted sword. “Arm yourself, man!”

“Arm myself? For what?”

“They’ve fired St. Laurence Pountney!”

“They?” His sword-bearing friend had other friends, pounding up behind him, all equally ill armed. Jack, carrying only an eating-knife, began to think about losing himself once more in the Cannon masses.

One of the men said, “The papists, of course! Thousands of them! French papists are firing houses and churches—one of them threw a fire-ball into the steeple of St. Laurence!”

The last thing Jack felt like doing was laughing, but he made his best effort at light derision. “A good arm he must have, then; it’s one of the tallest steeples in town. I saw the church go, my friends; it was nothing more than a spark, that melted through the leading into the timber underneath.” A spark flung with intent. But not by anything human, nor anything their swords could touch.

“But the papists—”

“
There are no papists.
All you’ll find here are men throwing themselves, body and soul, into
stopping
the Fire.” Men, and fae; Christ, he was supposed to be waiting in Cannon Street for Irrith to find him, with word on the efforts of the river fae. He fought the urge to shake the clowns facing him. “If you want to be of use, put down those weapons, and go fetch a fire-hook from your parish church. The King has given orders; the houses are to be pulled down.”

They stared. Jack was no commander of men, but he had used his last ounce of patience, and the raw force left behind sufficed.
“Go!”

They went.

At Jack’s renewed touch, the worst of the Cailleach’s chill receded, leaving Lune drained and shaking.
Sun and Moon. This, then, is the consequence of being connected to one’s realm; I suffer as it does. And worse than my subjects do.

“The King is at Queenhithe,” he said, once she had caught her breath, “with the Duke of York, to give heart to the people. They hope to stop the Fire at Three Cranes Wharf in the west, and St. Botolph’s Wharf in the east. There’s great fear that it will reach the Tower, and the munitions stored there.”

The mere thought chilled her as badly as the wind. No doubt the work of emptying the Tower had already begun, but how long would it take to clear the fortress of all its powder? Such an explosion could destroy the City.

Jack was white underneath the filth that marred his face, and he had long since stripped to his linen shirt against the heat of the Fire; now he shivered madly, despite the cloak that wrapped him. “The wind is checking the spread eastward, of course, but that’s not much blessing, for it also feeds the flames west. Our efforts slow the Fire’s progress, but don’t stop it. When we made a gap, we were driven back before we could clear the debris. We might as well have laid a path for the damned thing. If—”

He hesitated, looking down at her, then completed the thought. “If we did not have to contend with the wind, we might stand a chance.”

She had all morning to think of that. A wind did not have a wellspring, not as a river did; the Cailleach was not crouched outside the eastern wall, puffing away at London. But Lune had tried another method of stopping her. “I sent a messenger, asking for a brief truce,” she said. “Nicneven’s quarrel is with me and my court, not the mortals of London.”

“And?”

Jack read the answer in her eyes, sparing her from having to say it. He gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and said, “She doesn’t care.”

Or at least her commander here did not. There was an encampment of Scottish fae somewhere outside the City, awaiting their chance to attack. Once the court was weakened enough, or fled, they would move in and claim what they had come for.

As if he could read her thoughts, Jack said, “Why not give it to her?”

Lune turned away, wrapping her own cloak more tightly. “No. I am not giving Nicneven Ifarren Vidar.”

Faint noises told her Jack started and stopped three replies before he spoke clearly. “So you’ve said, and I’m sure you have your reasons—and perhaps when we have a little leisure, you’ll see fit to share them with me. But Lune...what will that mean for London?”

The Fire still scorched her mind, spreading ever outward. The City had not seen a disaster this great in ages, and it showed no sign of ending. But the true problem was not Nicneven and the Cailleach Bheur, not for the people above; for them, the Cailleach’s breath was mere wind. The problem was the Dragon, the elemental, ravening force that devoured all in its path.
That
was what they must strike at.

But what power could stand against it, with half the riverside its domain?

The river.

“Come with me,” Lune said, and swept from the room without looking to see if Jack would follow.