It was a miserable time to go looking; with the aristocracy and landed gentry departed to their country estates for the summer and autumn, London’s social calendar offered few prospects for success. The St. Clairs only stayed because Aldgrange, their Essex estate, was too expensive to maintain for residence. “I can offer you a promise,” Galen said, seeing a way to postpone his fate. “I’ll make an offer to a suitable young lady before the end of the next Season. Will that suffice?”
His father regarded him with a cynical eye. “If you fail to make good on it, you’ll suffer the consequences.” The presentation of his back dismissed Galen. Suppressing a sigh, the young man headed for the door.
That gave him until early summer. If London’s safety was achieved by then, did he dare defy the old man, and break his promise? But there was Cynthia to consider, and his younger sisters; he could not pay their dowries in faerie gold.
No, there was no escape to be had. In this, his father was right: he had a duty. Come what may, I must find myself a wife.
The clamour and stench of the city struck Irrith full in the face as she slipped out of a nonexistent gap between two buildings on Cloak Lane. She wrinkled her nose, but grinned despite her distaste. That was the smell of humanity, true enough, right down to their coal smoke and shit.
The street to either side of her teemed with a solid mass of people—none of whom noticed her sudden appearance, thanks to the enchantments that protected the Onyx Hall. A giant wagon sat at rest just to her right, its driver standing on the seat and swearing at whatever blocked his way. Things might change, but obscenity wasn’t one of them: he insulted the offender’s parentage, cleanliness, and sexual habits as his father and grandfather had done for ages before him.
Yet something seemed wrong. The street was full, but it didn’t seem like day. The sprite glanced upward, trying to determine what time it was. Though Onyx Hall didn’t stand outside of time as some faerie realms did, its unchanging gloom made it seem as if it did.
The sky above glowered with unnatural darkness. Heavy, smoke-stained clouds sat low in the air, but it wasn’t merely an impending storm; the light had a strange quality, ominous and weird, like nothing she had ever seen before. Irrith couldn’t even tell whether it was morning or afternoon.
Unease rippled down her spine. Around her, the city went about its business—but now she noticed that others shared her discomfort. They cast nervous glances skyward, or fixed their eyes upon their shoes, trying to ignore this upset to the natural order.
Frowning, she began to make her way along the street, ducking under a low-hanging shop sign and slipping into the stream of passersby where they eddied around the halted wagon. Despite pavements on either side of the street, and the ragged boys with their brooms at the crossings, her stockings and coat were spattered with mud before she went twenty paces; she had forgotten to think of pattens, when she put together the glamour that disguised her.
Up ahead, a knot of people stood talking, tin cups in their hands. These they seemed to have purchased from a shop crammed into a narrow alcove on the ground floor of a larger building. Upon drawing close, Irrith caught a surprising evergreen scent.
“Drunk for a penny!” the man behind the counter called out, when he saw her looking. “A small price, to lose your cares.”
Irrith generally found it simpler to look like a man, when she went above, but she hadn’t bothered to make it a gentleman. Most of the fellows standing about were rough sorts, who probably had little more than a penny to spend. Irrith fished a leaf out of her pocket, charming it as she went, and handed the resulting silver two-penny piece over to the seller. “Only one,” she said hastily, wrinkling her nose at the spiritous evergreen reek. He gave her a tin cup and her change, and Irrith, seeing the barrel, finally realised where she was: a gin shop.
She’d heard of the drink in Berkshire, but never tasted any. One sip later, she decided a single taste was enough. The gin seemed determined to eat away at her mouth, throat, and nose. Coughing, she nodded her thanks and stepped aside.
The sallow-skinned fellow next to her was staring at the blackened sky with a grim expression. “What’s causing it?” Irrith asked him.
He had the cadaverous face of a potter, which went all too well with his reply. “Why, the comet, of course.”
Irrith dropped her gin cup. “The comet?”
Her informant waved a hand skyward. “The one that smart cove said would be coming back. Halley. It’s here.”
“And now,” someone else slurred, “the world’ll burn right up.”
The disguised sprite retrieved her cup from the dirt. Most of the gin had spilled, and now she wished she had it back. “But—I thought it wasn’t supposed to come for another year.” Her heart beat double-time. It can’t be true.
A woman dressed like a maidservant nodded agreement. “My mistress was reading the Gentleman’s Magazine, and she told me not to be afeared, as this was a different comet. Though how they can tell, God only knows. Them stars look all the same to me.”
“Then how d’you explain the sky?” the potter demanded.
No one could. But Irrith discovered, to her startlement, that the mortals of London had not forgotten Halley’s prediction, any more than the fae had. They even seemed to have a presentiment of its danger. “Mark my words,” the potter said, “this comet or the next, one of them’ll crash right into us, and then it’ll be Noah’s Flood all over again.”
“Fire, not flood,” the maidservant insisted. “We’ll pass through the comet’s tail and burn, just like this fellow said.”
Irrith listened with wide eyes. Not everyone shared that fear; someone started an argument with the maidservant, quoting some other magazine to prove they were in no danger. No one mentioned a Dragon. Still, she wondered whether the black sky was in truth a sign. Even if this wasn’t the same comet—which it didn’t appear to be, as London wasn’t on fire—it seemed a terrible omen.
When the argument faded out, she abandoned the gin shop and wandered onward. Her intent had been to enjoy herself today, swindling shopkeepers and picking up new curiosities for her cabinet, but in the grim light she just didn’t have the heart. Irrith stopped in the middle of Cheapside, surrounded by fine shops, and made a face of equal parts frustration and worry.
She’d left for Berkshire fifty years ago because there were things she hated about London. Mostly the faerie courtiers: vipers, all of them, saying one thing and meaning another, then biting you when your back was turned. The longer she stayed, the greater her risk of getting caught in their political coils.
But she also loved the City. She loved it for the smart stone and brick buildings that stood where plaster and timber had once been. For the gin shops, with the poor and working folk standing around drinking poison and talking of what their mistress read in the newspaper today. For the little boxes people rode in, carried along on long poles, and the bewildering variety of their wig styles, and the Chinese wallpaper being sold in the shop in front of her.
A few days here would not be enough to scratch that itch. Not after fifty years of absence, and not if this might all come to an end in a year and a half.
She could always run for Berkshire at the first scent of politics.
Irrith jumped sideways to avoid a carriage forcing a path through the crowd, and found herself against a wall plastered with advertisements. One of them caught her eye, with a word that did not belong on a sheet of paper stuck to the wall of a Cheapside shop.