Yes, if I must. She had her pistol. But only iron shot. Could she even bear to load the gun?
It was that or the knife, and that would mean going within reach of the link-bearer’s brawny arms. But even as Irrith marshaled the will to go upstairs, she heard something that stopped her where she stood.
Voices. Valentin Aspell’s, sibilant and oily, recognizable anywhere. And a hoarse, whispery reply, coming from a chest that could no longer manage anything more.
Dr. Andrews.
“Will you live until the morning?” the Lord Keeper asked cynically.
“I will. I must.” A pause for coughing. “I have not endured this long only to die now.”
“We’ll need bread.”
Irrith tensed. Bread would be in the kitchen. But it seemed Andrews was prepared, for she heard a soft clink, as of a bowl placed on the floor. “Or should it be the doorstep?” Aspell must have shaken his head, for Andrews recited the rote phrases, tithing bread to the fae. When it was done, Andrews said, “Send your people in pairs. I don’t want suspicion.”
“Dr. Andrews,” Valentin Aspell said, with an edge sharp enough to draw blood, “do not presume to tell me my business.”
Footsteps, and the front door opening and closing. He was gone.
Irrith sank onto the bottom step, mouth open. What was that?
She didn’t have long to wonder. More footsteps, these light and uncertain, but headed toward the head of the stairs. Blood and Bone! She couldn’t go back into the kitchen—not with all that iron—
Her eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that she saw a second door, close by her hand. Irrith pushed this one open and slipped through, praying there would not be another world of iron behind it.
The chamber smelled of alcohol and less pleasant things, but no iron scraped across her nerves. Unfortunately, luck was spitting upon her again; light came through the gap of the door, heralding an approaching candle. Irrith’s hand bumped a table, and she dove underneath it just before the candle entered the room.
Andrews was dressed, despite the black hour. She watched his feet shuffle unsteadily around the room, light blooming in his wake, as he lit a set of lamps. It revealed two more tables apart from the one she hid under, all three of them large, heavy things, and shelves along the walls. Then the rustle of paper, as he turned the pages of a book.
Pressed into the corner of the walls, concealed by the table, Irrith wondered what to do. Stand up and announce herself? But then she would have to explain what she was doing in Andrews’s cellar, and whether she’d heard that strange and worrisome conversation. Any kind of cooperation between him and the Sanists troubled her. How could Aspell—
Her entire face creased into a silent wail. My fault. Again. I told him about the alchemical plan; he must have gone to Dr. Andrews. But what are they planning?
Gentle tinkling: the doctor was ringing a bell. A moment later, he repeated it, more insistently. She heard him cough, then mutter something too faint to be made out. His feet shuffled from the room, and back up the stairs. Blessing whatever servant was failing to respond, Irrith slipped from under the table, intending to escape while she could.
Horror turned her to stone.
One of the other tables held a crumbled, indistinct shape, so far gone all that could be told was that it had once been very small. The other was much newer: a river nymph, pale and cold and unmoving.
And the third…
Irrith staggered away from the table that had sheltered her. Savennis’s clouded eyes stared blindly at the ceiling, as if refusing to look at the gaping hole in his chest. Alcohol, and less pleasant things: she’d been smelling old blood. It stained the table, the shackles that held Savennis, the cracks between the stone flags of the floor, where no amount of scrubbing could remove it.
Her mind refused to put the pieces together, the corpses and the blood and the knives, the rowan chains no faerie could break and the jars of alcohol holding things she didn’t want to recognise. Dr. Andrews. Valentin Aspell. There was a picture here, but she could not see it around the scream that filled her mind.
She ran. Even iron couldn’t keep her out of the kitchen, her one route to safety; she was through the window and up the stairs before she knew she was moving, running away from Red Lion Square, back to something like safety.
But time had passed; people were beginning to move, in the murky predawn light. She tried to put up a glamour, lost it before she’d gone ten steps. Irrith snatched desperately at everything she knew of London, every black alley and hidden nook, every series of rooftops that afforded her a road away from where people could see. She had to make it back to the Onyx Hall. Had to stop Aspell, whatever he was planning for the morning. She had to.
She made it down Holborn, past the flat new space of the Fleet Market where sellers were beginning to set up their wares, through the broken mouth of Newgate, until she was on the roof of the pawnbroker’s that held the hidden entrance.
Church bells caught her there, and she fell.
The usher, it seemed, had been given new instructions. “Lord Galen, Prince of the Stone, and his wife Lady Delphia!”
The lady in question colored at the unaccustomed title, but sallied bravely forward with her arm in his. Galen nodded at the curtsies and bows they received, and approached Lune in her chair of estate. “Lord Galen,” the Queen said, with a smile that warmed her worried eyes. “We did not expect to see you here so soon after your wedding.”
“The comet may still be concealed in the light of the sun,” Galen said, “but that’s no excuse for laziness on my part. And my lady wife was eager to spend more time in the Onyx Hall.” Now that she could do so with greater ease. No one could object if Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair chose to wander off in each other’s company.
“Lady Delphia,” Lune said, and received another curtsy in reply. “If you are so eager, then we’ll put you into the keeping of Lady Amadea, our chamberlain, who will acquaint you with the other ladies.”
Amadea seemed pleased enough, though some of the others were clearly not so sure. Galen kissed his wife’s hand and let her go. She would do well enough in the Lady Chamberlain’s company.
A brief exchange was occurring at the door behind him, someone handing a note to the usher, who passed it to a nearby lord, who brought it to Lune with a bow. The Queen unfolded it, and Galen saw surprise break over her like a wave. “Lord Galen, if you would—”
He followed her into the small privy chamber beyond. His curiosity didn’t last long; Lune said in a voice that carried no farther than the two of them, “Dr. Andrews says he has succeeded at last. Sophic mercury, extracted in a form we can use, like drawing blood from a patient. He’s invited me to Red Lion Square to see.”
“Only you?”
“You, Lord Galen, are supposed to be at Sothings Park still, enjoying your connubial bliss. No doubt a letter is seeking you there, without result. In a moment we’ll go back out, and my courtiers will hear me send you to Holborn, to consult with Dr. Andrews.”
Amusement rippled inside him. It felt good; the knot of tension that had bound his heart since Abd ar-Rashid first brought up the moon queen was coming untied at last. Lune did not seem so relieved, but her determination was unmistakable. “I’ll find you waiting for me in Newgate, won’t I?”
“I thought the Fleet Market would be an appropriate rendezvous. Meet me there in half an hour.”