Sparrow Falling (24 page)

“I hoped I might... persuade someone to help me.”

“You want me to help you,” Charlotte said, her tone flat.

“No. If I put you in danger Eveline would never forgive me.”

“Why would you tell her?”

“She will ask me about you.”

“You mean you wouldn’t lie?”

“I try not to. Not...”
Not to her.
He shrugged.

Charlotte stood. “When the performance is arranged, come here. To this room. I’ll tell them to let you in. I’ll get you some help.” And without further farewell, she was gone.

“I
’LL PAY WELL,
” Liu said.

The goblin grinned.

“I can get you pearls. And coral,” Liu said.

The goblin’s eyes sharpened. “Indeed? But I mislike the Lower World now. It bellows and shudders, it grates, it stinks, it offends against the whole person all at once. For such an errand, are pearls enough? Even coral has small healing powers against all that roar and rumpus.”

“What, then?” Liu knew he was not being as careful as he should, that this fellow would claw him for all he could get, but he felt time pressing on him like a weight, shortening his breath and his patience.

“Oh, a little thing, a tiny thing. The very smallest, easiest thing. A scale.”

“A scale.”

“From the owner of that most splendid palace, that my friend is visiting.”

“Now why?”

“And why would you need to know that, my sharp-eared one? Hmm? But if my price is too high I am sure you can find another who will run your errand... and remain discreet.”

Liu sighed, and shook his head. “It will be difficult. Very difficult.”

“Too difficult, then.”

“No.” Liu gave the goblin a mournful look. “I honour my debts. Deliver this for me, now, and you will have your scale, though it comes drenched in my blood. But it must get there before moonrise in the lower world.”

“Oh, no fear for that, bright eyes. No fear for that. And it is to be left... in this place? Are you sure? Such a precious burden should, surely, be delivered in person.”

“It is to be as I have said.” It was not enough, to keep Evvie safe, but it was the best he could do. There was no time for more.

The Sparrow School

E
VVIE, DRESSED IN
her servant’s gear, neat, respectable, and as close to invisible to the eyes of lords and ladies as it was possible for a normal human girl to be, approached the oak tree.

It was dusk. The wood shivered with the last birdsong; small creatures scuttered and fussed in the under growth. An owl floated silently overhead, like a ghost or a dream.

The bundle lay on the ground. She heard it whimpering.

Liu was nowhere to be seen.

She moved towards it as though in a dream, half-expecting to look down and see her own childish legs and feet, the skirt of a long-gone woollen dress. She knelt on the wet leaf-mould and folded back the blanket.

The ghost of her sister’s face looked out at her. She gave a little sobbing cry, and jolted back, as though a spider had run over her hand.

The movement sent a piece of paper sliding to the ground, and she caught it.

I’m sorry, it had to look like this. I hope it does what you need.

Be careful.

There was no signature, but a faint paw-print, narrow and light.

The Crepuscular

R
UMOURS THAT THE
Harp was to perform, to try to regain the Queen’s favour, swelled and shivered through the Courts, drawing hundreds of the denizens of Faerie. They gathered in a shimmering, muttering mass, bright-eyed, whispering behind their hands, drawn by the promise of a scandal, the fear of being left out of a notable event, the hope of a clue into the Queen’s heart.

In the Valley of Sighs, strange vapours curled among the trees. Distracting sounds and obscuring motions shifted the attention of the guards, whose thoughts were already on the court. Some had been granted permission to attend, and were already there; others were still sending petitions and pleas, bouquets, bibelots, sonnets, sestinas... and anxiously watching for returning messengers.

Only the Harp seemed calm; and was largely ignored. When escorts came for him, those still remaining pretended indifference.

In the Queen’s Court, the crowds pressed close. Every balcony and bannister, every lamp and vine and bloom and pedestal shivered with wings and eyes.

The Harp stood in the room’s centre, waiting.

The Queen was late, as was her pleasure and privilege.

The Harp stood with eyes closed and hands folded.
He makes such a show of indifference,
the whisper went around.
But if he were truly indifferent, he would not be here...

Eventually, the Queen arrived, in a fuss of servants and fans and goblets of nectar and singing birds. Her gown was of spider-web and moonlight, her hair dressed with dew. Having declared gems out of fashion, she wore only a single perfect pearl on the finest of chains.

“Well, Sir Harp,” she said. “I understand you wish to play for me. Is that so?”

“Yes, Lady.”

“And why should I permit it? I may, in a moment of weakness and due to the softness of my heart, have given you permission to leave the Valley, but I am not sure I can allow you to trouble my Court with your wailings.”

“Oh, Mother, do let him,” Aiden said. “If he succeeds, or fails, he will provide a most amusing spectacle, and an object lesson for those who seek to return to your favour, will he not?”

“W
HERE ARE WE
going?” the Harp said, with a kind of weary resignation.

“It is the Court of Ao Guang – the Dragon King of the East China Sea,” Liu said.

“You are taking me to be a slave to another tyrant.”

“If you used that sort of language it is no wonder the Queen banished you,” Liu said. He knew he was being snappish, and unfair. Guilt and weariness had worn his nerves too close to his skin.

“It is the nature of tyrants to dislike the truth,” the Harp said, closing his eyes again. “It is the nature of true art to speak it, whether the artist will or no. What does it matter now?”

“I had to do this.”

“That is what the Queen said. She had to have my voice, my music... and when I first failed to please her, she made me a monster.”

“I am not doing this for myself!”

“No?”

“No.”

“Tell me, then.”

“Ao Guang wanted you, because he hates the Queen. Please, please don’t tell him you were out of favour. Please. Only by bringing him something she valued can I save my father.”

“Your father has displeased him?”

“Yes. It is all a foolish misunderstanding but...”

“And what will you bring next time Ao Guang is displeased? The girl, Charlotte? Or her sister? Tyrants cannot be satisfied. They are a dry and bottomless well, and one may drop into them everything one loves and everything one is, and they will never be filled up.”

“What would you suggest, then, O most wise Harp, O true artist?” Liu snapped. “That I should let my father be destroyed when I could have helped him?”

“I did not say that it was in my nature to speak truth, only that it is the nature of true art to reveal it. As for wisdom, I gave up all claim to that when I accepted the Queen’s invitation.”

Liu slumped down by the side of the Harp, and put his head in his hands. “Please. Just... please.”

“Why did you not bring
him
the facsimile?”

“Because once it fades, my father would still be here, and still at his mercy.”

“And when the one you have left behind fades?”

Liu shrugged. “I think it will not. Not yet.”
And when it does, will the Queen remember that I was there? Will Aiden tell her that I was party to deceiving her?

Well, there was nothing he could do now. Aiden and the Queen had their own games to play, and that particular one might still be on the board long after Liu himself was nothing but dust and bone.

The Russian Embassy

“O
H, ISN’T IT
splendid!” Cora breathed.

“Really, my dear, there’s no need to gawp. It’s not as though you’ve never attended a function before. Now, let’s see who’s here...” Stug looked around the room. It was certainly colourful. The sombre clothes of businessmen and government officials set off the splendour of white or scarlet dress uniforms glittering with rows of medals. The ambassador himself was impossible to miss, in his dark green diplomatic uniform, the jacket embroidered with twining leafy branches and small gold stars. Under his arm was a matching bicorn hat, also fringed with gold, and he wore a pale sash with thin bands of colour. He had no beard – Stug would have expected a Russian to have a beard – but an impressive set of sideburns. The woman hovering nearby was, presumably, his wife – Stug normally had no interest in such accoutrements of the powerful, but he checked her over, to see whether she seemed abnormally anxious. He knew that mothers had powerful instincts when it came to the safety of their offspring – though judging by the Huntridge girl’s mother perhaps not all of them. Not that the girl was in any danger. And nor would the Russian infant be. None at all. In fact it would probably live longer than it would here, especially if there was another war, and the ambassador was forced to return to Russia, which was, so far as Stug was concerned, little but a palace of barbarian splendour in the midst of a wilderness of snow, bears and brutalised peasants.

The woman seemed calm enough – there was no glancing over her shoulder, no summoning of servants. She was acting the elegant social hostess, calm and pleasant, and apparently reasonably fluent in English.

Cora was already in amongst a crowd who were exclaiming over the ice-sculpture of a double-headed eagle that towered over their heads. The candle-flames threw their reflections deep into its glassy substance. This flaunting symbol of the power of the Romanovs could hardly be objected to, here in the Russian embassy, but Stug thought it a little vulgar. As he watched twin drops of meltwater dripped from the eagles’ beaks, little flecks of fire in the candlelight.

He found himself rubbing his mouth and forced his hand away. He must not seem anxious, or distracted. There were useful people here he should talk with, remind them who he was. The Sparrow girl was completely in his power, and he already knew she was practised at thievery and deception. Why, at first even he had been fooled by her respectable appearance.

Stug hoped the girl wouldn’t be foolish enough to come looking for him or send some scruffy street-urchin to track him down. He surreptitiously wiped his hands against his coat. Surely she wouldn’t. That would attract notice, something neither of them could afford.

He glanced at the fabulously gilded clock that towered over one end of the room, and blinked. Surely that couldn’t be right? He wanted to check his watch, but it would seem so ill-mannered. Nonetheless his hand crept towards his pocket.

“Ah, Mr Stug. An illustrious gathering, isn’t it?”

Robert Delaney. Of course, he would be here, damn the man.

Stug snatched his hand from his watch-pocket, and held it out. “Indeed, indeed.”

“A great relief, it has to be said,” Delaney said, glancing around. “When you consider how things were a bare week ago. De Staal is a neat-footed man, to have got us all through it, though don’t let anyone know I gave him so much credit.”

“Through...”

“My dear chap...” Delaney lowered his voice. “I know as a businessman you don’t concern yourself overly with politics unless they’re of direct interest, but even you must have realised. Came damn close to war, you know. Damn close. Had things been otherwise, this might have been another Duchess of Richmond’s ball.”

“Duchess of Richmond? Is she here?”

“I’m talking of the night before Waterloo, old chap. Are you feeling quite the thing?”

“Oh, oh, yes, quite. Well, it’s all calm now, then.”

“Insomuch as things ever are, these days.” Delaney sighed. “Sometimes I think that perhaps I should get out of politics. Retire to the estate, you know. Grow potatoes and whatnot. Leave the game to younger chaps. It’s no good for the nerves, all this, knowing what rests on the right word at the right time. Or the wrong one.”

“Oh, surely you’re at the peak,” Stug said. “A shame to terminate such a brilliant career.” Inwardly, he shook his head. Weakness, and at the very heart of government! It wasn’t by giving in, losing one’s nerve, that one succeeded. It was by taking the world in both fists and forcing it to do one’s bidding. And if a small voice whispered to him of the possibility of war, he crushed it. It wasn’t his affair, it was the duty of politicians to trouble themselves about such things. If the man couldn’t stomach his job, maybe he should leave it. But then Stug would have to find another useful connection in government, and these things took time, and patience. “I can’t imagine,” he said, “that they could find someone sufficiently able to replace you.”

“You flatter me, old chap – but perhaps you’re right. Besides, my wife would never let me hear the last of it. Speaking of wives, how is dear Cora?”

“Blooming, as you see,” Stug said, waving in the direction of Cora, who was now chattering like a squirrel with some plump, overdressed female with a pink face.

“Marvellous, marvellous. I must say,” Delaney said, “you’re a lucky man.”

Stug smiled.
I don’t believe in luck. I make my own.
And Delaney was part of it. Should suspicion ever fall on Stug, however unlikely that might be, why, he had been right here, with his wife, talking to a government official. He would leave at a perfectly respectable time, meet the girl, make his delivery, and everything would be done. Everything would be completed. Cora would never even know what had happened. And one day soon she would say to him, “My dear, I have news...”

Ao Guang’s Palace

L
IU HAD CALLED
in a great many favours so as not to have to pass through the Lower World to reach Ao Guang’s Court; he did not dare. He had no idea how long ago the Harp had first been taken to the Queen’s court, but he knew it was at least two centuries, and feared that if the Harp were to even brush the reality he had been born to, the descending years would crush him to shards and powder.