In Ashes Lie (54 page)

“Ifarren Vidar.”

“He betrayed her, and she does not forgive that lightly. At his urging, she surrendered the Sword of Nuada to the Irish, believing they would help her destroy this place. And in the taking and retaking of the Onyx Hall, she lost warriors—fae she cared for, as any Queen must.”

The bitterness Lune might have expected in that last touch was not there. She found, to her surprise, that she sincerely wanted to lay aside this embassy, and speak to Cerenel in his own right. Perhaps they could mend the breach she had created. But Nicneven could not be laid aside, and so Lune answered his point. “I have no doubt of her hatred for Ifarren Vidar. But the substance of the Gyre-Carling’s words to me have not changed, have they? She may couch it in terms of offered peace, but that is simply the other face of the original coin. If I do not give her the traitor, then it is war between us once more, and the threatened destruction of the Onyx Hall.”

Reluctantly, Cerenel nodded.

“Then my answer is unchanged,” Lune said. “I have sentenced Vidar to eternal imprisonment, and there he shall stay.”

She could sense Jack’s uncertainty; no doubt Cerenel could, as well. Her new Prince did not yet understand these matters, for all he learned as quickly as he could. This was a poor time for him to come among them, as it would have been for any man. Cerenel’s reaction was the one that surprised her: disappointment, and worry. Even fear?
He came because he wanted this to succeed, and trusted no other with it. And now he has failed.

“Madam,” Cerenel said, going unexpectedly to one knee, “I do not wish to bear you these words, but my Queen’s instructions were clear. I am to tell you that the Gyre-Carling
will
have him, by one means or another.”

The threat had never been so deeply concealed, after all. “Has she more soldiers, then?” Lune asked, with contemptuous bravado. “What other treasures has she sold to the Irish, for their aid? It does not matter. The Onyx Hall rose to fight them once before, and it can do so again. Let her waste their lives, if she will.”

“Not soldiers, madam.” Cerenel’s fingers whitened against the carpet, and desperation laced his voice. “She has another ally—one you cannot fight. Even now she comes. Give over Vidar, and your realm will be left unharmed. Remain obstinate, and all will suffer, from you down to your humblest subject.”

She could not begin to imagine what he meant, but neither would she ask. Cerenel could not be allowed to know it troubled her. Jack was already showing too much, gaze flicking between the kneeling ambassador and the Queen at his side, hands curling on the arms of his chair. But Lune felt the weight of the Onyx Hall upon her shoulders, the mantle of her sovereignty, and knew herself at the precipice. Whatever ally Nicneven had found, Lune could not acknowledge it as her superior, as a force that held power over her realm.

If only Nicneven had not threatened,
she thought with grim resignation.
If I could make this decision on some ground other than coercion.

But even then, no. She remembered Vidar’s words:
It is what Invidiana would have done.
She would not let the Gyre-Carling kill him, just to protect her own power.

Lune rose to her feet, towering over Cerenel; a belated instant later, Jack mirrored her, following the gesture she made behind her back. “We do not fear the Gyre-Carling or her minions,” Lune said, pronouncing it with razor clarity. “Return that message to her. Tell her Vidar shall stay imprisoned until it is our pleasure to release him. Tell her that if our presence here, our dealings with mortals, trouble her so greatly, then we invite her to retire from this world into the deep reaches of Faerie, where she need not concern herself with such matters. No threat from her shall shift us from our course.”

Bleak with disappointment, but fighting not to show it, Cerenel bowed his head, rose, and backed from the chamber, leaving Lune and Jack Ellin alone.

“What—” the Prince said, after a moment of staring silence.

“Another time,” Lune cut him off, sinking exhausted into her chair and rubbing her brow with one hand.
There
must
be some way to end this threat, without sacrificing myself and the Onyx Hall to the Gyre-Carling of Fife.
“There is more you should hear, but I have not the will for it now. Please.”

He hovered for a moment, obviously frustrated by all he wanted to ask, but finally he nodded. “As you wish.” Then he, too, left her, and Lune sagged wearily in her chair, listening to the shadowed silence of her home.

She thought at first she imagined it—the stir of a curl against her cheek. Then it came again, for longer this time, bringing with it a chilling whisper of age and death.

Wind, in the unmoving air of the Onyx Hall.

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 1666

The Battle for London

T
he City still burns.

The wind has fallen to deathly calm, but in its absence the flames do not simply wink out. Yet at Temple Bar, and Holborn Bridge, and all about the fringes of London, men bend their backs with renewed will, determined to overmaster at last the beast that has driven them so far.

Gunpowder still shatters the air with its detonations, clearing space the sparks, robbed of their ally the wind, cannot leap. Though at Cripplegate the battle yet rages in strength—led by the Lord Mayor, eager to redeem his earlier ignominy—much of the leveled ground now lies smoking, such that when daybreak comes men will walk across its embers, and see what they have lost.

An unfortunate few see more than that.

On the heights around the cathedral, where the ashes of the books still blow, little tongues of flame race along the ground.

They seek one another, blending together like droplets of water, merging into a greater whole. Salamanders crawl atop each other, the larger consuming the smaller, and growing ever more, until a coiling body takes shape, crusted with black cinders like scales, that crack to reveal the fiery flesh beneath.

It is legion, and too powerful to be slain so simply. Calling all its children from across the City, the Dragon lifts its head from the ashes, and scents its prey once more.

Armored in the fine clothes he’d worn for his creation as Prince of the Stone, Jack Ellin went forth to do battle.

Only now, when the breath of the Cailleach Bheur had subsided at last, did he realize how much the Blue Hag’s touch had worn on
him,
too. Even if age and the slow decay of flesh were natural to his kind, no one liked to be reminded for days on end of how he would, in time, fall to dust. Free now of that ominous whisper, he felt a tiny surge of life infusing his weary limbs. Enough, he hoped, to see him through this confrontation with the Gyre-Carling.

And before that, a confrontation with Lune.

He found her still dressing in her wardrobe. Her ladies fussed around her, smoothing the fashionably wide neckline of her gown, kneeling to place silver shoes on her feet. Two miniature sprites hovered in the air, tucking the scorched ends of her hair out of sight, until her coiffure gleamed like polished metal under the faerie lights of the chamber. The melting frost on the walls steamed in the warmer air.

“Good, you are prepared,” Lune said when she saw him. Nianna dabbed color on her lips between phrases, trying and failing to conceal her vexation with the Queen’s insistence on speaking. “Nicneven should be at Aldgate soon.”

“What should I expect of her?”

She gave a tiny shrug, so as not to interfere with Carline sliding an earring into her lobe. “As much as a mouse might. You are beneath her notice. I would say to make her acknowledge you if you can, but tonight of all nights, we might be better served not to annoy her.”

If saving what remained of London meant lying down on the presence chamber floor and letting Nicneven walk over his face, he would do it. But Jack had something of far greater use in mind. “Allow me,” he said, claiming Lune’s rings from Amadea without waiting for the chamberlain to respond. “I would speak with her Majesty alone.”

Amadea raised her eyebrows at him again; he wondered if Antony had not claimed private audiences so much. Perhaps the old Prince had not minded public confrontations.

The ladies curtsied and took their leave. When the door closed, Jack came forward and began sliding the rings onto Lune’s fingers. She had the bones of a bird, and her skin was cool to the touch. “Do you intend to give her Vidar?” he asked.

“No.”

“Why?”

Her fingers curled around his. Jack met the silver gaze squarely, rings clutched in his free hand. Lune stared at him for a moment, then shook her head, curls dancing. “I have not the time to explain.”

“You have time for nothing else. This is the thread upon which your kingdom hangs, Lune. Your people cannot endure more of the Cailleach’s assault—and why should they? For the sake of a creature I
know
to be your enemy?”

The point edging her sleeve shivered briefly; then she pulled free of his grasp. “Not for his sake,” Lune said. “For the sake of the Onyx Hall.”

Now it was Jack’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “The same Onyx Hall that twice almost became a Dragon’s meal? This is how you protect it?”

Lune winced. “I never anticipated that. Had it been just the Cailleach...”

“Then London would not have burnt. But it
has,
and the Onyx Hall very nearly joined it. So tell me, Lune, just how you are protecting
anything
by protecting Ifarren Vidar.”

She bowed her head, half-ringed hand closing over the gloved one. “Because that is how faerie sovereignty works,” she said, weary and flat. “I cannot bend to Nicneven’s will and still be Queen. If she had threatened something other than my realm, perhaps. If she had threatened
me.
But the Onyx Hall is the lever she would use to move me. And if I succumb, then I acknowledge her power over it. I admit that she could destroy it, and give in to prevent that. Which means I surrender it to her.”

Lune lifted her gaze at last, and he saw to his great shock that tears rimmed the lids of her eyes.
I did not think she
could
weep.
“She would obliterate this place. But resistance, it seems, will bring about the same end.”

Some day, when the two of them sat at peace before a comfortable fire, Jack would question her more; Lune’s explanation opened up a wealth of ideas he had never considered before. But he wanted that comfortable fire to be inside the Onyx Hall, and that meant finding a way out of this trap.

“Let me do it,” he said, with sudden inspiration. “Let
me
give her Vidar. Then you acknowledge nothing—it is all my doing!” And if it cost him his title, so be it. He didn’t mind, so long as he could still come among the fae.

But Lune flinched again, as she had done when he suggested sending knives after Nicneven. “No! She would kill him.”

Jack spread his hands in bafflement. “He’s a condemned traitor, Lune! From what I gather, you were about to sentence him to death yourself, before you decided it was somehow more
merciful
to stick him in an iron box for all eternity. You would not kill him then; you will not kill him now.
Why
?”

Lune turned her back on him—to conceal, Jack thought, the emotions she was too weary to hide behind her accustomed mask. The long, stiff line of her bodice kept her back straight; above it, her shoulders were rigid with unspoken tension. “You have heard of Invidiana?”

“Some, yes.”

“She did not hesitate to kill any she could not use. Any who threatened the security of her power. Killing Vidar...” Lune’s breath wavered when she released it. “He said it to me himself, during his trial. It is what she would have done.”

Jack’s lips parted, but no words came out. He blinked several times, trying to encompass what she said, trying to find some response that would not send her out of the room in a rage. Finally he bowed his head, tucking the forgotten rings into his pocket, lest he drop them. “Let me see if I understand. We have here a fellow who has been traitorous to every sovereign he ever served. He betrayed Invidiana to her enemies and sold Nicneven to the Irish; in fact, he will sell anyone to anybody if it might gain him power. He confessed his guilt during his trial. Your own
people
want him dead. And you can buy peace for your entire realm simply by letting Nicneven carry out the sentence you intended to deliver—had he not said the one thing that would convince you it was wrong. But because he said it, you will not do what you should.”

Lune stiffened even further. “Invidiana—”

“Is
gone!
Will you let her shadow dictate your choices?” Jack buried his hands in his hair, and realized too late he had just destroyed Lewan Erle’s careful arrangement.
To Hell with elegance.
“Are you Lune, or merely
not
Invidiana?”

She spun to face him, eyes wide. But what answer she would have given, Jack never learned, because at that moment Valentin Aspell bowed himself into the room. He could have strangled the Lord Keeper.

The serpentine fellow’s words, though, explained his intrusion all too swiftly. “Your Grace, my lord—the Gyre-Carling has arrived.”

 

Lune had spent hours planning what she would say to Nicneven, and now all the words had fled.

Are you Lune, or merely not Invidiana?

No respite, no time to regain her equilibrium. They could not afford to keep Nicneven waiting. Side by side, Lune and Jack Ellin hurried through the Onyx Hall to the great presence chamber, where they would receive the Gyre-Carling of Fife.