Sun and Moon. We must return the Cailleach’s staff.
She had not asked how Cerenel got it. She was afraid to know. But for the use they had of it, she would pay almost any price; it had saved them all. Irrith brought a report as Lune dressed, with news of fires everywhere beaten down; some few still burned here and there, but the great danger was past. Tomorrow the King would address the people in Moor Fields, and commence the work of rebuilding his great City.
She scarce believed it could be done, despite all Jack’s bold words. To hear of the destruction was one thing, to feel its progress above her another; to walk the blowing ashes in person was yet another entirely. When the breeze cleared gaps in the dust, she had looked from Aldersgate down to the river, past the shattered ruin of St. Paul’s. And the wasteland to either side stretched farther than she could see.
Enough. Nicneven waits.
As did Jack Ellin. Lune met him outside her bedchamber. The man was haggard, but hale; she wondered how much mead his attendant had poured down his throat. Well, when it wore off, he could sleep for a year, if he wished. “Shall we?” he asked, and offered her his arm. Lune wrapped the paralyzed claw of her hand around it, and together they went above, into the ashes of London.
The Goodemeades had offered Rose House for the parley, perhaps in a clever scheme to soften Nicneven with hospitality while they awaited the outcome of the battle. Certainly the sisters did not seem hostages when Lune and Jack joined them—though it seemed, by Gertrude’s petulance, that she had not convinced the Gyre-Carling to accept any food. The two Queens sat in comfortable chairs, facing one another, both attended by guards, with Jack at Lune’s side, and Cerenel at Nicneven’s.
“First,” the Gyre-Carling said, bypassing all the ordinary courtesies of such a meeting. “You will return the staff of the Cailleach Bheur.”
Without the Dragon to fight, Lune had no need to carry it herself; the Onyx Guard had drawn straws, and Segraine had lost. The lady knight presented it with a bow, and either Nicneven was not bothered by its touch, or she was too proud to admit it, for she took the staff in her ungloved hand before passing it to one of her own attendants.
“We are grateful for the use of it,” Lune said, and the Gyre-Carling’s mouth twisted poisonously. “Moreover we must thank your knight Sir Cerenel, for without his aid, our battle with the Dragon would have gone much harder.”
Nicneven glared at Cerenel. What is here? The knight bowed to his Queen, then to Lune, and said, “For a past service I rendered to the Court of Fife, her Highness permitted me to claim a boon of her. I chose the staff of the Cailleach. She was most…gracious in granting my wish, but on the understanding that I would leave her service, and her realm, once it was returned.”
Lune heard the unspoken implication. He had been a hostage for its safe return, even as the Goodemeades were hostages for Vidar. For the first time, she wondered if contact with the Dragon could have broken even that ancient wood.
Then she noticed the all-too-innocent expressions on the Goodemeades’ faces. They had been scheming, it seemed—with Cerenel. Whose exile the sisters had never approved of, either when Lune forced it on him, or when he returned to it in bitter freedom.
Cerenel, who was no longer Nicneven’s knight.
“I believe,” Lune said, as if just now recalling it, “that we still owe you a boon, as well.”
Cerenel bowed again. “Your Majesty is likewise most gracious. I would be grateful for the hospitality of your court, as I find myself without a home.”
All the lingering ache briefly vanished from her hands and shoulder, and Lune smiled at him. Cerenel had a home, as he had told her years before: London. And now, after too many years away, he would at last return to it.
Nicneven had no such joy in her face. She glared again, not blinking as Cerenel offered his last bow, and waited until he was gone from her side before speaking again. “Now. The traitor. So I may be gone from this place.”
Lune was more than ready to see her go. Turning to Sir Peregrin, she said, “Bring us Ifarren Vidar.”
He came down the staircase with unsteady steps, bound again by the rowan-wood shackles, and haggard as a skeleton from his iron imprisonment. Vidar had come out of the box unconscious, which Lune was grateful for; it allowed her to face the Dragon without distraction. The Scottish and English fae who kept watch over him in his prison said he recovered his senses soon enough, though, and cursed them all with fine inventiveness. Now he merely waited, black and contemptuous.
“I want him to suffer,” Nicneven said without preamble.
Lune tried to remember the Scottish policy on torture—not that Nicneven would care what mortal kings and queens considered legal. “He is yours, as promised. What you do with him beyond that is not our concern, save to say that he is a confessed traitor, and worthy of death.”
Vidar let out an ugly laugh. “So your fine principles have fallen to expediency after all. Or was your heart too soft to keep me in that box?”
They had taken him out the Crutched Friars entrance and around the outside of the City; though he must have smelled the smoke, in the darkness he could not see the pall that still hung over London. Locked in iron, Vidar did not know the great changes that had befallen the world outside.
Lune faced him with tranquility. She did not have to convince Vidar of her principles; it was enough that she knew them, as did those around her. “The Prince and I merely remand you to the justice of the Gyre-Carling, as a gesture of our goodwill.”
That got a curled lip from Nicneven, who showed no particular evidence of goodwill. But she surprised Lune by saying, “You shall have your part. Vidar will die, but not by my hand.”
Lune blinked. “You wish us to execute him?”
“Not you.” Now the other Queen did smile, and it held all the hatred that had been thwarted in the Onyx Hall. “Let the mortals kill him.”
“What?” Vidar snarled.
For once, the Gyre-Carling’s wolfish look was not turned against Lune. “I have no love for such dealings—but it is a fitting end for you. Let those you despise be your executioners. The Onyx Court can arrange it, I’m sure. A stoning, perhaps; I imagine you have folk enough afraid of witches and uncanny things.”
Fury and fear were mingled in equal parts in Vidar’s expression. The Gyre-Carling could not have devised a crueler sentence for him had she tried. The passion of her hatred was fierce indeed.
It made Lune uneasy. While she could do what Nicneven asked, it smelled too much of revenge, instead of justice. Antony’s fine principles left a mark upon me, after all.
But it was, as Nicneven said, fitting. Vidar had always used mortals in pursuit of his own power, without regard for their well-being. And he went beyond the ordinary cruelty of Invidiana’s days during their own years of war: fostering riots, encouraging the Army’s madness, feeding all the worst impulses of England’s people. He was not the sole author of their suffering, but he played his part.
Perhaps she could consider it their justice, too.
But bringing mortals into the process meant bringing in the Prince of the Stone. Lune turned to Jack, and he shrugged. To him, Ifarren Vidar was a name accompanied by a curse, and now a bound prisoner rousing hatred that began long before his birth. Whatever opinion he had, it would be more impartial than hers.
“Mortal affairs are yours to decide, my lord,” Lune said, and enjoyed Nicneven’s expression of disgust. “The fae of this court accede to the Gyre-Carling’s request. Can a suitable way be found?”