No, it’s more than that. Even if we knew for sure… Lune is done with waiting. And so am I.
The time has come to face our enemy.
The thought should have terrified him. In some respects, it did. But Galen discovered, to his surprise, that even fear could not last forever. The omen in the night garden, Palitzsch’s sighting of the comet, lanced a wound that had festered for years. He no longer had to dread this moment. It had come, at long last, and now they would make their answer.
Lune straightened, and with that simple motion a regal mantle settled over her shoulders. Here in the crowded council chamber, she commanded as much respect as she would have done seated on her throne. “Thank you, Dame Irrith. Warn us if that cover seems in danger of breaking.”
Her eyes sought out and held every person in the room, from Dr. Andrews to Wrain. “Understand this: we mean to answer this threat. We hide, not like mice, hoping the eagle will pass us over, but like cats, awaiting the best moment to strike.
“Lord Galen estimates our danger shall last at least until Midsummer. I say now that we will not wait that long. Sir Peregrin, how ready are your knights?”
The Captain of the Onyx Guard stood and bowed. “Your Grace, they would fight today if you called upon them.”
The imperious demeanour softened a bit, and she gave her captain a wry look. “I’m sure they would. But how stands their skill?”
“They’re ready,” he assured her. “Spear-knights and others alike. They’ll train from now until you need them, because a soldier must always keep his skills in practice; but if they were to fight today, I would send them into battle with pride.”
“Good. You are our third line of defence; the clouds are the first. Which brings us to the alchemists.” Lune looked to Dr. Andrews. Galen held his breath, wondering if she was about to do something terribly foolish. He almost melted in relief when she said, “Lord Galen and I set you the task of finding a suitable procedure to refine sophic mercury. Do you have one yet?”
Thin to begin with, Andrews had worn down to a skeleton held together by little more than passionate hope. His febrile eyes shifted restlessly, unable to hold Lune’s gaze. “I’m not sure, madam. There are still fundamental questions—”
“Dr. Andrews,” Galen broke in, before the man could say anything injudicious in front of the others. “I understand your uncertainty, but the time for hedging is past. You needn’t say it will be ready tomorrow. In a few weeks—perhaps mid-February—the comet will draw too close behind the sun for anyone to see it, even with a telescope; the clouds can protect us until then. After that, I doubt if anyone will be able to sight it until perihelion at the earliest, in mid-March. That gives you more than two months. Can you be prepared by then?”
The doctor licked his lips, then said, “Yes.”
Andrews’s answer might be a guess, rather than a promise, but Galen counted it as victory nonetheless. Without a date to aim for, the scholars could ponder their questions endlessly, never arriving at a firm conclusion. Placing a boundary would do them good. And if the procedure were truly not ready then, they could always extend the time—so long as the clouds held out.
“You have until perihelion, then,” Galen said. “After that, the comet will draw nearer to the Earth, and our danger will be at its greatest. As soon as you are ready, we will dismiss the clouds, call the Dragon down, and end this.”
Andrews nodded, and wiped sweat from his pale brow.
Lune still stood alone, behind her chair. Galen circled the table and positioned himself at her side. For once—perhaps for the first time—it felt right. Queen and Prince, shoulder to shoulder, against the threats that faced their court.
Their court. His as well as hers.
“Until March, then,” Lune said. “May Fate and Faerie bless us all.”
If, upon her arrival in the Onyx Hall, anyone had asked Irrith how she would spend her final weeks before the confrontation with the comet, she would have confidently predicted a wild adventure through the streets of London, visiting taverns and shops and the houses of mortals, enjoying the city as if she might never see it again.
Instead she divided her time between the Temple of Arms and Dr. Andrews’s laboratory, wishing she could be of greater use in either place. But she had done her part; their first defence was holding, and others were far more qualified to contribute to the second and third than she was. Especially on the alchemical side. Galen had abandoned her bed, though, and the laboratory was the surest place to find him.
Him, and half the Onyx Hall. An exaggeration, of course, but right now the room held Galen and Dr. Andrews, Wrain and poor Savennis, Lady Feidelm and Abd ar-Rashid. Even Podder had been pressed into service; when Irrith entered, he sat with a penknife and a pile of quills, carving each to a fresh point.
It wasn’t entirely true Irrith was of no use. “Lune’s had word from the Cour du Lys,” she announced to the various mortals and fae. “Messier thinks he’s spotted the comet from Paris.”
Galen slammed shut the book he’d been consulting. “Damnation. Is it public yet?”
Irrith grinned. “No. The French king—the faerie one—has done Lune a favour. Delisle, the fellow in charge of the observatory at Cluny, has told Messier not to announce anything just yet. Messier’s furious.”
“Good,” Galen said, fingers curling around the book’s edge. “The silence, not the fury. The fewer people who are aware of this, the better.”
She smiled at him, but in his distraction, he didn’t return it. What his scruples over marriage had failed to accomplish, the sighting of the comet had done; Galen had little time for anything but preparation these days.
No one did. Irrith hadn’t realised just how complicated this “alchemical plan” would turn out to be. She wandered toward Abd ar-Rashid and stood frowning over the Arab’s shoulder. He was sketching something with a careful hand, but she could make no sense of it. “What is that?” she asked.
The genie answered without looking up. “We need a vessel, an alembic, in which to effect our work. The intent is to use the Monument to the Great Fire, the chamber in its base.”
That explained the general shape, but—“What about that stuff at the top?”
The pen lifted from its line and paused. “Mirrors,” Abd ar-Rashid said. His accent had improved to the point that she could detect impatience in the answer. “And lenses. I am told that observation from London will bring the Dragon down, but the Monument is a zenith telescope; it cannot be pointed at its target. Since the comet will not pass directly above, we must direct the observer’s gaze.”
She could understand the difficulty easily enough, but not Abd ar-Rashid’s sketch of a possible answer. Much simpler was the question Dr. Andrews asked of the room at large, utterly without warning. “What happens when a faerie dies?”
Podder dropped his penknife. Irrith said, “How do you mean?”
The doctor had been frowning over some notes in his hand. Now he put them down and frowned at the wall across from him instead. “After a faerie dies, I should say. Suppose this Dragon is killed, instead of trapped or transformed. Will its body decay, according to the ordinary way of such things?”
That, at least, was a topic Irrith was qualified to speak on. “It won’t rot, no. They just fall to dust over time, bones and all.”