Delphia came forward, hands rising and then hesitating. But there was no one in the Hall of Figures save they two, and so she went on as she had begun, wrapping her arms around his stiff body and laying her cheek along his. After a moment Galen uncrossed his own arms and laid his hands on her waist, feeling the rigid armour of her stays. Irrith rarely wore any—a comparison he should not be making, not when Delphia would be his wife.
“I don’t understand everything you’ve said,” she murmured. “Comets and Dragons and all of that. But I’m sure it will be all right.”
Meaningless words. As she admitted, she had no understanding of the circumstances—the Dragon’s power, the details of their plan, any of it. Still, he needed to hear that assurance, empty though it was.
I’m sure it will be all right.
Galen disengaged from her embrace, forcing himself to concentrate upon her face, and not the fiery memorial behind. “Thank you. Now come; there are more—and more pleasant—parts of the Onyx Hall to see.”
On certain days—May Day, Midsummer, All Hallows’ Eve—the fae went out into the mortal world to uphold their ancient traditions.
During the Christmas season, they stayed below.
Deprived of Galen’s company, and bored as a result, Irrith went to the night garden. There she passed the day playing increasingly absurd dice games with Ktistes, sprite and centaur taking turns to add a new rule with every new round. They threw the dice upon the polished boards of his pavilion, chatting upon inconsequential subjects with determined carelessness, until Irrith, rising to stretch, caught sight of something outside.
A holly nymph, spirit of one of the garden’s trees, stood on the dewed grass with her head tilted back, staring upward.
“What is it?” Ktistes asked. Irrith didn’t answer; by then, her feet were already carrying her down the ramp and onto the grass, into open space where she could see the ceiling above.
A comet blazed across the night garden.
The faerie lights that formed its sky had drawn inward, leaving most of the ceiling black and empty. The tail of the comet pierced that blackness like a sword, trailing back from a core of brightness too painful to look at directly. It stretched nearly from one side of the garden to the other, a radiant omen of doom.
The knocking of Ktistes’s hooves against the wood sounded hollow as death behind Irrith. Then the centaur was there, and she put one hand against his flank, needing the support.
“Someone has seen it,” he whispered—a tiny sound, coming from so great a body. “We must find out who.”
Does it matter? Irrith wondered. Her muscles were wound so tight she thought her bones might snap. We are out of time.
The comet—and the Dragon it carried—had returned.
PART SIX
DISSOLUTIO
Winter 1759
Distance shrinks to nothing at the touch of eyes. A man in a night-black field, peering up at the sky, seeing its wonders magnified beyond their natural size.
Seeing the comet.
The Dragon coils within its prison. Its being is light, part of the growing brilliance that shrouds the comet’s dark core. Matter could not leap the distance between this traveller and that night-dark field, but light can, light does.
Freedom awaits.
Freedom, yes—but little more. There is no power there. Grass, and trees, and the man with the watching eyes; these things could be burnt, and there would be joy in that.
The Dragon wants more than joy.
It wants the city, and the shadow beneath it.
Patience. After so many years, the beast has learned its meaning. The light streams outward now, a banner through the void; it is a declaration of war, growing brighter with each passing instant. Other eyes will come, forging links between Earth and the far-distant comet, and in time one will—must—lead to the Dragon’s prey.
It can wait.
For now.
“It was a German.” For once Galen came in without pausing for a bow, brandishing the folded letter Wilhas had given him. “Johann Palitzsch, in Saxony. A gentleman farmer, if you can believe it; he practices astronomy as a pastime.”
The people assembled to hear him were a motley sort of war council, seated around the chamber’s grand table. Peregrin and his lieutenant Sir Cerenel, representing those who were prepared to fight. Cuddy for the dwarves, who were still in their workroom, swearing over Niklas’s most recent attempt at a trap. The alchemical scholars: Dr. Andrews and Lady Feidelm, Wrain and the exhausted Savennis, and even the genie Abd ar-Rashid. Irrith. Rosamund Goodemeade. And Lune herself, who stood tensely behind her own chair, gloved hands resting on its back.
The Queen said, “And nothing has happened to him.”
She phrased it as a statement, but the tension in her eyes said she wasn’t certain. Galen hastened to reassure her. “Nothing at all, or the Hanoverian fae would have said. The Dragon did not leap down.”
Lune let her breath out slowly, good hand relaxing. “Then that is our first question answered. Either it needs a closer approach to Earth, or it does indeed want this place, and will not settle for another. Though I wouldn’t test that with a sighting by anyone in England, whether at Greenwich or not.”
Which led all eyes to Irrith. The sprite grinned, though it was a strained thing. “They’d be lucky to find the moon, through the clouds we have right now.”
Galen returned her smile. “Lord Macclesfield says Messier has been complaining since November that the skies above Paris are very frequently cloudy. He’s scarce been able to take any observations at all.”
“But will it hold?” Wrain asked.
Irrith frowned in doubt. With this meeting being held in Lune’s council chamber, Ktistes could not join them; the sprite was the only one speaking for the clouds. “How much longer do we need them?”
Once Galen would have needed to consult his notes, but at this point the dates were engraved in his memory. “Perihelion is mid-March. We can’t be sure how long the comet will remain visible afterward, though. To be safe, call it three months, the inverse of Palitzsch’s sighting. Can we stay hidden until Midsummer?”
The sprite chewed on her lower lip. Her hands were clasped around her knees, and her shoulders hunched inward. “Maybe,” she said, drawing the word out. “I’ll have to ask Ktistes. But we might be able to hold it that long.”
Sighs of relief sounded all around the room, from almost everyone there. Not Irrith, though, or Galen, or Lune.
The Queen met his eyes, and he saw his own thoughts mirrored in her. They think we can avoid the question. Put it off until the next century. And perhaps they could, if the clouds held. But they both knew the risk of complacency: all it took was one slip, one tear in the veil, and they could find themselves facing a battle for which they were unprepared.