“I think you should,” Irrith said. “It’s only fair.”
He made a wordless, frustrated noise. “But I’ll have to ask the Queen first. And that will be…”
Uncomfortable. To put it mildly. Oh, how Irrith wished she could be a fly on the wall for that conversation.
Another, heavier sigh. “I’ll consider it,” Galen said.
Irrith crawled over to where he sat and put her hands on his shoulders. “Tomorrow. I think you’ve done enough thinking for tonight.”
Since establishing his residence in the Onyx Hall, Dr. Andrews had thrown himself into the work the fae set for him. Podder had unearthed notebooks belonging to Jack Ellin, a previous Prince, which indicated that he suspected the refraction of a prism might have an unknown effect upon the Dragon’s spirit; that was why they’d used a modification of Newton’s reflecting telescope for its exile. Andrews, remembering their startling results with the experimentum crucis, had decided to conduct further optical experiments with the salamander.
Galen was delayed by Mrs. Vesey’s insistence upon him dining with her and Miss Northwood, but he hurried to Billingsgate as soon as he could and descended into the warren that held Andrews’s chambers. Upon entering the laboratory, he found Andrews pacing in agitation. The man’s face was pale and dewed with sweat, and the rims of his eyes were red. “What result?” Galen asked.
The doctor gestured to the other end of the room. “See for yourself. The light faded too fast for me to try.”
The apparatus stood facing a sheet tacked to the wall, a prism on a stand. The stand’s platform held a blackened pair of tongs and—
Galen poked at the shrivelled thing with one fingertip. “What is this? It doesn’t look like a salamander.”
“It’s the heart of one.”
He shot upright. On the table nearby lay an empty cage and an unmoving form: the corpse of the captured salamander. Its belly gaped open, revealing a charred cavity where the heart had been.
“A curious thing,” Andrews said, still pacing. “I would swear the creature had nothing but a heart. No lungs, no intestines. I can’t be sure; even making the incision without being burnt was difficult. And everything seemed to alter subtly when it died.”
Horrified, Galen spun to face him. “You cut this creature open while it lived?”
That finally halted the doctor. Andrews, much taken aback, said, “How else am I to understand how it functions?”
“But—you—” Galen flung one hand toward the prism. “I thought this was an experiment with light!”
“It was.” Andrews came forward and collected the leather gloves he’d evidently dropped on the floor. “And how was I to get that light? Oh, certainly the creature spat fire while it lived—but it was only fire. I could detect nothing strange about it at all. It is the essence of the creature we wished to pass through the prism, and I’m told it was the Dragon’s heart they used before. Unfortunately, this one burnt out too quickly.” He paused, gloves in hand. “Animal vivisection is a common practice in medicine, Mr. St. Clair. We must know how the body works before we can heal it.”
Galen could not stop looking at the salamander’s corpse. He knew well enough that their research sometimes involved uncomfortable things; he had, with reluctance, authorised Andrews’s work with Savennis, observing the effects of prayers and church bells both with and without the protection of bread, and the faerie’s sensitivity to the proximity of iron. This went further, though—and Galen had not thought to include the salamander under his authority. It wasn’t an intelligent creature, of course, not like Savennis. Still. He, as Prince, had brought into the Onyx Hall a mortal who killed a faerie.
“You should have consulted me before you did this,” he said quietly.
Andrews, tidying up his equipment, paused again. “Ah. I didn’t realise. Will this anger the Queen?”
“I don’t know. And that is why you must consult me.” Galen yanked his hat off, then made himself stop before he could fling it across the room. Is this not what you brought him here for? To apply mortal methods of learning to your faerie problem?
The doctor nodded with good grace. “I see. My apologies, Mr. St. Clair. I did not mean to cause trouble.” Then his expression brightened. “Oh—but my experience with the salamander gave me an interesting thought. Come, let’s sit down, and I will tell you about it.”
Sitting down meant going to the other end of the room from the corpse and its shrivelled coal of a heart. Galen doubted that was coincidence. He went willingly, but waved away Andrews’s offer of coffee.
“It had to do with what that Arab fellow said,” Andrews began, “concerning alchemy. Now, most alchemists were mountebanks or poor deluded fools, and I very much doubt if any of them ever made an ounce of gold out of anything else, unless it was the hopes of their credulous clients. But what if it works here? Among the faeries?”
Galen frowned. “Dr. Andrews—I love a good conjecture as much as the next man, but how does this help us against the Dragon?”
“It doesn’t,” the doctor said, with far more excitement than those words merited. “But it may provide a way to make the Dragon help us.”
Which explained the excitement, but not its cause. “I don’t follow you.”
“Do you know anything of alchemy?” Galen shook his head. “It wasn’t just about turning dross into gold. That transformation, as they conceived it, consisted of purging a metal of its flaws and impurities, bringing it into a more perfected state. And the same thing, Mr. St. Clair, could be done to the human body.”
Galen shook his head a second time, still not following.
“I am talking,” Dr. Andrews said, “of the philosopher’s stone.”
He’d heard the phrase, in much the same way he’d heard of faeries before he saw Lune in the night sky. A foolish fable, indicating something dreamt of but unreal. In this case, the means of achieving mankind’s dearest dream.
Immortality.
But what could the Dragon have to do with that? Dr. Andrews said, “The details are complicated—indeed, over the centuries men devised a hundred variants upon the theme, and as I said, I doubt very much if any of them worked. Much of it, however, comes down to two substances: philosophic sulphur, and philosophic mercury.
“These are not to be confused with the substances we know, brimstone and quicksilver. They represent principles, an opposing pair. Sulphur is hot, dry, and active; it is fire and air, the red or sun king, brightly burning.”
“In other words,” Galen said, his mouth drying out, “the Dragon.”
Andrews nodded. “It seems very likely that this beast is the embodiment of the sulphuric principle. Mr. St. Clair, if the alchemist can conjoin and reconcile those two opposing principles… he creates the philosopher’s stone.”
Had they been sitting in Andrews’s house on Red Lion Square, it would have seemed absurd. The philosopher’s stone? Immortality? But they were in the Onyx Hall, where even the mundane trappings of chairs and carpets and tables could not disguise the fey quality of the place, the hushed mystery of London’s shadow.
Here, perhaps, it might be possible.
Andrews might as well have reached inside Galen’s head and turned his brain upside down. Not to fight or imprison or banish the Dragon, but to use it. Transform a threat into a tool, and once they had done so…
Galen’s fancy immediately slipped its leash, imagining not just the defeat of the Dragon, but the consequences of that success. Fame, fortune—the King was almost seventy-five. What might he give to the men who could restore his youth?