The Dragon might or might not have a body when it returned, but it would have a heart; that much, they were certain of. Lune thanked the spear-knights and made a speech Irrith didn’t bother listening to. She waited impatiently until court was adjourned, then drifted in Aspell’s direction, knowing better than to run straight for him. Still, the Lord Keeper glared when she drew near. “I am quite busy, Dame Irrith.”
“I have something to tell you,” she whispered. He was the one who brought her into this; if her inability to skulk well bothered him, it was his own damned fault.
His thin-lipped mouth barely moved in response. “Crow’s Head. Two hours.”
For a meeting like this, it was probably the safest place in the Onyx Hall, given the copies of The Ash and Thorn scattered around. And it wouldn’t be easy to slip spies past Hafdean, the surly hob who kept the place. Irrith, lacking a pocket-watch, went early, and sat beneath the preserved human head mounted prominently on the wall. Magrat wasn’t in her usual place. Perhaps the church grim was off haunting some religious folk.
Eventually Hafdean nudged her in passing. Irrith hadn’t seen Aspell come in, nor anyone under a glamour, but she wasn’t surprised; she went through a door at the back of the main room and found herself in a small chamber that undoubtedly had another, hidden exit. Aspell was there, pacing. “You had best not make a habit of this, Dame Irrith. What do you want?”
“To tell you something Lune isn’t making public,” Irrith said, ignoring the insult in his tone. “I think only she and the Prince know about this.” Galen had brought it up while they lay in bed together, not so much conversing with Irrith as talking at her, voicing his fears like that would exorcise them. “Do you know what Dr. Andrews has been up to?”
The Lord Keeper waved dismissively. “Some mortal thing, involving experiments and calculations. Savennis and those other bookish sorts are helping him.”
As she’d suspected. The Queen was keeping this very quiet indeed. But Aspell needed to know, so he wouldn’t do anything rash.
Irrith explained to him about the philosopher’s stone, as well as she understood it. “It isn’t ready yet; they need the other half, this mercury, and apparently that will be difficult to create. Still, it’s different from anything anybody’s thought of in the last fifty years, and I think it’s more likely to work than those bloody spear-knights.”
Aspell’s pacing had halted while she spoke; now he leaned against the dirty wall and crossed his arms. “And you are telling me this because…”
“Because you need to know they do have a plan. Not to trap or kill the Dragon, but to change it. That’s better than—than what you were talking about. Before.” Even in the Crow’s Head—perhaps especially in the Crow’s Head—she didn’t feel comfortable naming it directly.
He seemed amused. “So you’ve brought me this confidence in order that I might know we have other hopes. And therefore not pursue this one too far?”
“Yes!” she said angrily, hands tightening into fists. “You said it was a last resort; I’m telling you we have others that can come before it.”
His thin mouth hardened into a stone line. “Dame Irrith, I think you fail to understand something very important: if it does come to that extremity, we shall have little or no time in which to act. A last resort is, by its nature, the thing one does when the alternative is immediate disaster. We cannot abandon our preparations unless there is a surety of success with some other plan—and in truth, not even then, for this is too great a threat to admit of complacency.”
For all the soundness of his argument, it still produced a queasy feeling in Irrith’s stomach. “What preparations, though? You said you would do nothing against the Queen’s will.”
“Indeed.” He drew close, much closer than she liked, and dropped his voice so not even the sharpest-eared goblin at the keyhole could have overheard what he said next. “You already know what I mean, Dame Irrith. The Queen must agree to sacrifice herself. And if she is to do that in time to save London, then it must not come as a surprise; her mind must be prepared for the idea. When the choice comes, there will be no time for explanations or arguments.”
Cold ran down Irrith’s back as if someone had poured the deepest, blackest waters of the Thames over her head. He was right—and right that she already knew. After all, what had that conversation with Lune on All Hallows’ Eve been, if not an attempt to raise the specter of death in Lune’s mind?
She whispered, “Galen would never let her. He loves Lune too much. He’d die before he let harm come to her.”
“Can he be prepared?”
To give up Lune? Not a chance. So she might lose them both: Lune, in trying to save the city, and Galen, in trying to save her.
It felt like someone had placed iron bands around her heart. She didn’t want to lose either one. Even wounded, Lune still commanded Irrith’s respect and admiration; were it not for those two physical flaws, Irrith would have no desire to see her replaced. Who else could balance out this lunatic court, faeries and mortals and ambassadors from distant lands?
But it did little good to save the Queen and lose her court. “So you want me to make certain she’s thought about this. Before the Dragon comes.”
“You are close to her,” Aspell said, still in that all-but-silent murmur. “And she respects your honesty. If you say it to her, she will listen. She may not agree—not immediately—but the idea will stay in her mind.”
Irrith thought he held her influence in much too high esteem; she wouldn’t call herself “close” to Lune. But it couldn’t hurt to try. If they found some better way, then Lune would never have to face that choice at all.
“Very well,” she muttered, staring blindly at her toes. “I’ll do what I can.” Let him think I mean only what he asked for.
She would speak to Lune, yes. The rest of her time, she would spend in the Temple of Arms, training to battle the Dragon. If it came to Lune sacrificing herself, it would only be after Irrith had done everything possible to prevent it.
I don’t know that I’m willing to die to protect her. But by Ash and Thorn, I’m willing to fight.
Abd ar-Rashid had gone into the Calendar Room again, to contemplate ways of obtaining sophic mercury without danger to Lune; he would not emerge for eleven days. Lune herself spent half her waking hours with the Goodemeades, using their countless connections of friendship to persuade undecided faeries to stay. Neither of these were matters Galen could help with, and Dr. Andrews had gone back to Red Lion Square for a much needed respite.
In that brief lull, Galen decided that he had put a certain matter off for much too long, and went in search of Irrith.
He found her at last in the Temple of Arms, where he was not looking for her; the sprite was friends with Dame Segraine, and he thought the lady knight might know where to find her. He was startled instead to discover Irrith practicing against the musket targets, with her mouth set in a fierce grimace.