They shared a carriage, knees almost brushing in its close confines, and arrived at Dr. Andrews’s house a little before noon. The footman escorted them up to the drawing room on the piano nobile. This was where Andrews had displayed his menagerie, before illness forced him to disband it. The room was less comfortable than the back parlor, and despite the chill in the air, no fire burnt in the grate: an unusual piece of carelessness, from Andrews’s usually scrupulous servants. Nor was Andrews there.
They heard the man’s coughing before he entered the room. Galen was appalled. Andrews had finally agreed to spend less time in the Onyx Hall, for the sake of his mind; it seemed his body had paid the price. Or perhaps this decline would have happened anyway, his health finally abandoning the fight against the disease that was killing him. He should have been in bed, enduring his last days in what comfort could be managed, but it seemed his will was too strong to allow him that surrender.
Lune saw it, too. She swept past Galen and took Dr. Andrews by the arm, helping him into a chair. “Thank you,” the man whispered, his voice a ghost of what it had been before.
Then he saw Galen, and surprise sparked another bout of coughing. When it ended, Andrews rasped, “Mr. St. Clair—you were supposed to be at Sothings Park.”
“I came to see the mercury,” Galen said, his own voice as hushed as if he stood at someone’s deathbed.
Andrews shook his head. “I don’t have it yet.”
Lune and Galen exchanged looks of mutual confusion. “But your letter said—”
“Need you.” He pointed at Lune. “It won’t work with a nymph. We need the connection to the Onyx Hall. Just as the Dragon acquired an association with air by its transmission to the comet, so are you completed by your realm.”
“Dr. Andrews, no.” It hurt all the more because Galen had believed their problem finished at last. “If this mercury depends on a connection to the Onyx Hall, it cannot be used; the power of the Hall is exactly what the Dragon desires. You would give our enemy precisely the thing we fight to keep it from.”
Andrews’s breath rattled audibly in his chest, and he clutched his ever-present handkerchief as if it were the only thing anchoring his spirit to his body. “There is no other choice, Mr. St. Clair. If the Dragon’s power is as great as you say, then it must be matched by a source equally strong; only the Onyx Hall will suffice. Else sulphur will obliterate mercury and the work will be lost.”
Galen rose slowly to his feet. His entire body was trembling, and the dark, bare space of the drawing room seemed to be closing in on him, narrowing his world to himself and Dr. Andrews alone. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to; the salvation of London depended on it. “How—how would the extraction be done?”
The dying man finally met Galen’s eyes, and what he saw revealed there struck him dumb with horror.
Andrews whispered, “I’m sorry.”
The doors to the drawing room opened. In came six people Galen didn’t recognise: ordinary laboring men, or so they appeared to be, except he knew without question that they were fae under glamour.
Sanists.
“There is no drawing of blood,” Andrews said. “No extraction of the necessary element without harm to the patient. I tried, Mr. St. Clair, but they all died. If there was any other way, I swear to you, I would use it, but—”
“Dr. Andrews.” Lune spoke his name, but addressed all of them, with courage and dignity that would give the hardest assassin pause. “I understand your desperation, but you must listen to me. The philosopher’s stone is not your salvation. Not if it is created from the Dragon. It’s a creature of destruction; even if you take me, with all the power of the Onyx Hall behind me, I won’t be able to stop it.”
Andrews shivered. “But it’s perfection. It creates perfection.”
“And so it may do—by annihilating that which is not perfect.” Lune spread her arms, seeming to encompass the entire city within her embrace. “After London burnt, men submitted plans to the King, grand designs for transforming it into the jewel of Europe, sweeping away the old tangle of streets to create something better. They failed. But if London were to burn again—why, then, they would have another chance. Dr. Andrews, you cannot do this. It will destroy us all.”
For one timeless, breathless moment, Galen thought she had persuaded him. Andrews’s mouth wavered, uncertainty breaking through the desperation.
Then the doctor made his choice.
What he would have said to excuse it, Galen never learned. He charged forward, blindly, but one of the Sanists was there before he got two steps, grabbing him and wrestling him back. Another trapped Lune with brawny arms. “You shouldn’t have come, Mr. St. Clair,” Dr. Andrews gasped, in between coughs. “I meant to spare you this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”
Galen screamed. It didn’t last more than a heartbeat before silence blanketed the room. A third Sanist came forward with rowan-wood shackles to bind Lune’s good and crippled hands together. Her silver eyes sought him out, and their touch pierced Galen to the bone.
Still screaming, feeling it tear out of his chest even if nothing reached his ears, Galen fought like a wild animal. He clawed free of his captor and snatched the nearest thing that came to hand, his chair, swinging it like a tavern brawler. The Sanist knocked it aside contemptuously and punched him in the face. Light burst all across Galen’s vision. He felt the wall beneath his hands, holding him up; then a second blow struck him in the stomach, driving all the air from him, knocking him back. He raised his hands in feeble defence, but it did him no good as the fist came at him a third time.
This one sent him staggering backward, out of control, and into the window.
Glass shattered against his back. The wooden sill caught his knees; Galen threw his hand out, trying to catch himself. Pain flared across his palm—he lost his grip—then he was tumbling over the projecting lintel of the front door below, scrabbling for purchase on its edge and then slipping free. Galen hit the front steps and went sprawling in the street.
He looked up to see his captor’s face at the window, staring in surprised fury. Gasping for air that would not come, Galen staggered to his feet and ran, limping, for the corner of the square. No shouts came from behind him—of course not, the silencing charm—but he ran as if the hounds of Hell chased him, because soon they would. Out onto Holborn, and there was a hackney; he flung himself into the carriage, ignoring the startled protests of the man inside, and rattled away into the faceless masses of the street, where no pursuer could find him.
When the hackney driver stopped to throw him out, Galen poured the entire contents of his purse into the man’s hands, demanding he be taken back to the City.
Only after he staggered out again in Newgate Street, wrapping his handkerchief around his bleeding left hand, did he realise his error. This was the obvious entrance to seek if he were returning to the Onyx Hall. Galen whirled in the narrow alley, trying to look in all directions at once, and nearly fell.
Then he looked up, and he did fall, straight into the mud.
A hand dangled over the edge of the roof, at the back of the pawnbroker’s. An unmoving hand, he realised—a hand too delicate to belong to anyone human. Galen lurched to his feet and crept forward, half-crouched, ready to run again.
When the fingers did not so much as twitch, he climbed onto a crate, and looked over the edge of the roof.
Irrith lay unconscious, sprawled across the tiles of the building’s back extension. Galen thought she was dead. Her skin held a gray pallor, as if the light of her soul had almost gone out. But when he cradled her face in his hands, she stirred, ever so faintly.