In Ashes Lie (18 page)

They had their orders from her the day before. Lune brought the goblins because her guard could not be trusted; she could not risk them hesitating in their arrest. Even now the knights hovered in confusion, on the balls of their feet, wanting to move but not knowing to what end. Leslic drew himself up nobly. “Majesty,” he swore, “I had no intention of giving you untithed bread.”

Which was true, as his earlier protest had not been. Leslic might seed the court with ordinary bread, never offered as a gift to the fae, but he was not foolish enough to give it to the Queen. Some of his followers, on the other hand, needed little to encourage them in their folly. Lune refused to contrive a false incident for Leslic’s downfall, however richly he deserved it; but she could and would tangle him in the fringes of his own schemes. And she needed this, an open offense, something appalling enough that her people would repudiate Leslic of their own accord, robbing him and all his faction of the influence they enjoyed.

“If you wish it,” she said, exquisite in her courtesy, “you may defend yourself in wager of battle. If you are guiltless of changing tithed bread for untithed so as to spread fear and dissension, then by all means, sir—prove it with your blade.”

A flush crept upward from his collar. That was an accusation he could not defeat; just as Cerenel’s negligence had ensured his loss in the duel of honor, so Leslic’s guilt would damn him if he fought for his innocence. They were not mortals, to rise or fall by their skill with a blade.

She broke her gaze from his at last to survey the antechamber. Her knights, courtiers, and ladies were all suitably shocked—even those who had spoken fair to Leslic in the past. “He stands silent,” she said, as if it needed pointing out. “And we have abundant evidence of his guilt. His...and others’.”

Rooting out the Ascendants in their entirety would cripple her court, but she didn’t need to. The four chief malignants would suffice; without them, the rest would crumble back into line. Even now, the other three should be in the custody of her loyalists.

Gesturing at the goblins who still held Leslic, she said, “Take him to the Tower. We shall question him there about the masters he serves—once we have fulfilled our duties tonight.” At another snap of her fingers, a spriggan came out of the shadows, bearing safe bread. “Come. All Hallows’ Eve awaits us.”

“You’re sending me
away
?”

The courtyard of the Royal Exchange was a poor place for a private conversation, but Benjamin Hipley had sought Antony out there, and did not look minded to hold his peace. Glancing around, Antony pulled him into the corner of the arcade, where a stretch of the bench that ringed it sat empty. “You speak as though you are the first to be asked to serve the Onyx Court elsewhere.”

Ben’s native discretion did not fail him; he kept his voice low, though intense. “It’s not a matter of leaving London. I cannot leave
you.
Not at such a time.”

The damp chill of the air stifled business, leaving the courtyard only half-full of its usual gentry. The flowerlike array of colors that once prevailed had given way to the sad hues favored by the godly; though the fabrics were still rich, a dull green was the brightest thing in sight. For all the fae reflected the tastes of the world above, sometimes they did so by inversion. Court nowadays was enough to make a man’s eyes bleed.

Antony gestured at his own staid murrey doublet. “I am a respectable baronet, an alderman, and a member of Parliament. By the skin of my teeth, but it suffices. I will be safe.”

Ben shook his head. “You need me here. The machinations in Parliament, over this treaty with the King—”

“I need you more
there.
I can watch Parliament on my own, but I cannot keep one eye on Westminster and one on Hertfordshire. Henry Ireton has called a ‘General Council of the Army’ at St. Albans, and it has the potential to destroy everything. He hates the treaty like poison. His idea of peace is to see the King punished like any other man.”

The blood drained from Hipley’s face. “He goes that far?”

It was the logical extension of all that had gone before, yet it still had power to appall. Pym had undermined the foundations of sovereignty itself, until men like Ireton could look at the King and see a common criminal.

But not everyone felt that way, God be thanked. “You’re not the only one to flinch,” Antony said grimly. “General Cromwell is delaying in the North; I think he hesitates to oppose a fellow officer openly, but he would see us follow a different course. Fairfax argues against it as well. Those two are greatly loved in the Army, and without them, Ireton may achieve nothing—but I cannot afford to let him go unwatched.”

The truth was that they needed agents within the Army, men or disguised fae placed close enough to the generals and lower officers that they could supply both intelligence and action as needed. But the Army was beyond their reach: forged out of the disastrous chaos of Parliament’s early armies, it had become a finely honed weapon that crushed the Royalists at every turn. And between their common soldiers, who liked the Leveller arguments that
they
should rule England, and their fiercely Puritan officers, there had never been any good chance to position such agents. Antony had sat in Westminster through all those years of war, exerting what force he could in Parliament, but the sieges and battles, the capture of prisoners and the smuggling of information, had gone on in a hundred locations across the kingdom, miles away from the men who thought the power was still in their hands.

Until they reached this point. A General Council of the Army at St. Albans, and Henry Ireton their self-appointed champion, preparing to tear England’s wounds yet wider.

Scowling, Ben rose and moved a few steps away, pausing with his back to Antony. At last the intelligencer asked, “Will the treaty conclude in time?”

The question every man in Parliament would give his fortune to answer. They had already extended the deadline for the negotiations once. England wanted
peace
; it wanted an end to the chaos and upheaval caused by the disruption of government and the forced quartering of soldiers and the lack of uniformity in religion.

Some of England did. But not all.

“We stand at a precipice,” Antony said, just loudly enough for Ben to hear. “The King is poised to retake all he had, making no concessions he cannot squirm out of once power is his again. Those who sue for peace tie hope over their eyes like a blindfold, telling themselves he can be trusted. But our alternative is the Army, and the Levellers, and Independency in religion. We know it; our treaty commissioners know it. Charles knows it, and so he sits in his prison on the Isle of Wight and waits.”

Ben turned back, his hands curled at his sides, not quite fists. “You haven’t answered my question.”

Antony offered him a baring of teeth that might stand in for a smile. “Whether or not it concludes in time depends on what Ireton and the Army do. Get to St. Albans—tell me what you find there—and I will answer your question then.”

The greater presence chamber had never been Lune’s favorite part of the Onyx Hall, being too grand, too chill—too full of the memory of Invidiana. For formal state occasions, however, she could not avoid it. Anything less would be an insult to the dignitaries who gathered for this ceremony.

So she sat upon her silver throne, and a selection of her courtiers waited in bright array across the black-and-white
pietre dura
floor. Eochu Airt stood to one side, in the full splendor of what passed for court dress among the Irish, with gold torcs banding his neck and arms.

He made a poisonously polite nod to the empty seat next to hers on the dais. “I see your Prince could not be here today.”

Lune pressed her lips together. Antony’s reply to her messenger had been brusque to the point of rudeness: he was at Westminster, and could not leave. The General Council of the Army had presented a Remonstrance to the Commons, a listing of their grievances, like the one the Commons had once presented to the King. Lune did not know their demands; her messenger had not tarried, but come back with stinging ears to relay Antony’s words. He did say, though, that the Remonstrance had already been two hours in the reading, and showed no signs of ending soon.

Antony’s refusal vexed her, but perhaps it was just as well. “He sends his regrets, my lord, and wishes you all good speed.”

A snort answered that. “At Parliament, I see. Voting again to gut my land and hang it out to dry?”

Her ladies whispered behind their fans. Only their eyes showed, glinting like jewels in the masks they had adopted and elaborated from mortal fashion; even Lune could not read their expressions from that alone. “My lord ambassador, nothing happens in isolation. Lord Antony wishes the Army disbanded as much as you do. With the soldiers owed arrears of pay, however, and fearing reprisals for their wartime actions, setting them loose would threaten stability here.”

“And so he votes to send them to Ireland. Where England sends all of its refuse.”

Now it was not lips but teeth she was pressing together. “Had the mortals of your land not risen in rebellion—”

“Had they not done so, we would not now have a free Ireland!”

“You will not have it for long.” Try as she might to be angry with Eochu Airt, in truth, Lune felt sadness; the Irish, mortal and fae alike, were so blinded by success and the hope it brought that they did not see the hammer poised above them.

She tried to find the words to make at least this one sidhe see. “Had they settled with Charles during the war, they might have won something.”
And brought the King to victory in the bargain.
“But the Vatican’s ambassador encouraged them to overreach, and now, wanting the whole of their freedom, they will instead lose the whole. Their Catholic Confederation will survive only so long as England’s attention is divided. Once we have peace here,
someone
—Charles or Parliament—will crush them.”

“With the very Army your Prince voted to send. Just as he voted to save Strafford’s life.”

Against Lune’s wishes, in both cases. If she could have persuaded the Prince to vote against sending regiments across, it might have gone some way to healing that injury. But Antony—understandably, damn him—was more concerned with England’s well-being than Ireland’s. In the end the proposal had failed by a single vote... but not his.

“The hammer has not yet fallen upon you,” Lune said, doing what little she could to mollify the sidhe. “I will do everything in my power to stay it.”

Whatever response Eochu Airt might have made, he swallowed it when the great doors at the other end of the chamber swung open. Lune’s Lord Herald spoke in a voice that echoed from the high ceiling. “From the Court of Temair in Ireland, the ambassador of Nuada Ard-Rí, Lady Feidelm of the Far-Seeing Eye!”

An imposing sidhe woman appeared in the opening. Her green silk tunic, clasped at the shoulders with silver and gold, was stiff with red-gold embroidery; her cloak, thrown back, revealed strong white shoulders. The branch she held, however, was mere silver, compared to Eochu Airt’s gold. She knelt briefly, then rose and advanced until she came to the foot of the dais, where she knelt again.

“Lady Feidelm,” Lune said, “we welcome you to the Onyx Court, and tender our thanks to our royal cousin Nuada.”

The new ambassador’s voice was rich and finely trained. “His Majesty sends his greetings, and begs your kind pardon for calling away Lord Eochu Airt, whose services are needed in Emain Macha, serving King Conchobar of Ulster.”

Lune smiled pleasantly at the old ambassador, who stood mute and unreadable. “We shall sorely miss his presence at court, for he has been an unfailing advocate on Temair’s behalf, and an ornament to our days, with poetry and song.”

A lovely mask of courteous speech, laid over the simple truth that Eochu Airt had asked to go. He could not be quit of them soon enough. What remained to be seen was what Feidelm’s appointment signaled. If the lady were amenable, Lune hoped to negotiate for aid against Nicneven.

But that would have to wait. Lune beckoned to Lord Valentin, who came forward with a parchment already prepared. When the revocation of Eochu Airt’s diplomatic status was done, and Feidelm proclaimed in his place—
then
she would see the dance Temair followed now.

The feasting and presentation of gifts ran through the night, with music and dancing and a contest of poetry between the old and new ambassadors. Eochu Airt begged leave to retire when it was done, though, and soon after Lune withdrew to walk with Feidelm in the garden.

The sidhe hailed from Connacht, and spoke as openly of King Ailill and Queen Medb as she did of the High Kings of Temair. The different perspective was useful to Lune, after years of Eochu Airt’s Ulster-bred sentiments. More useful still was the lack of hostility; Feidelm might not be an ally, but she clearly intended to form her own opinion of Lune, rather than adopting her predecessor’s. It was as close to a tabula rasa as Lune would get, and with Nicneven temporarily set back by the removal of Sir Leslic, Lune had the leisure to try and mend her relations with Temair.

“Lady Feidelm,” she said as they wandered the paths, “I know from the branch you bear that you are a poetess. Yet for you to be called ‘the Far-Seeing Eye’—are not such matters the province of your druids?”

“The
imbas forosna
is the province of poets,” the sidhe replied in her rich lilt, trailing her fingers over the flank of a marble stag that stood along the path. “For my skill at that, I am so named.”

“We have no seer at this court,” Lune said, and did not have to feign the regret in her voice. “And we live in most unpredictable times, when all the world seems upside-down. Might I prevail upon you to see on our behalf, and give some sense of what lies ahead?”