“Madam,” Cerenel said, going unexpectedly to one knee, “I do not wish to bear you these words, but my Queen’s instructions were clear. I am to tell you that the Gyre-Carling will have him, by one means or another.”
The threat had never been so deeply concealed, after all. “Has she more soldiers, then?” Lune asked, with contemptuous bravado. “What other treasures has she sold to the Irish, for their aid? It does not matter. The Onyx Hall rose to fight them once before, and it can do so again. Let her waste their lives, if she will.”
“Not soldiers, madam.” Cerenel’s fingers whitened against the carpet, and desperation laced his voice. “She has another ally—one you cannot fight. Even now she comes. Give over Vidar, and your realm will be left unharmed. Remain obstinate, and all will suffer, from you down to your humblest subject.”
She could not begin to imagine what he meant, but neither would she ask. Cerenel could not be allowed to know it troubled her. Jack was already showing too much, gaze flicking between the kneeling ambassador and the Queen at his side, hands curling on the arms of his chair. But Lune felt the weight of the Onyx Hall upon her shoulders, the mantle of her sovereignty, and knew herself at the precipice. Whatever ally Nicneven had found, Lune could not acknowledge it as her superior, as a force that held power over her realm.
If only Nicneven had not threatened, she thought with grim resignation. If I could make this decision on some ground other than coercion.
But even then, no. She remembered Vidar’s words: It is what Invidiana would have done. She would not let the Gyre-Carling kill him, just to protect her own power.
Lune rose to her feet, towering over Cerenel; a belated instant later, Jack mirrored her, following the gesture she made behind her back. “We do not fear the Gyre-Carling or her minions,” Lune said, pronouncing it with razor clarity. “Return that message to her. Tell her Vidar shall stay imprisoned until it is our pleasure to release him. Tell her that if our presence here, our dealings with mortals, trouble her so greatly, then we invite her to retire from this world into the deep reaches of Faerie, where she need not concern herself with such matters. No threat from her shall shift us from our course.”
Bleak with disappointment, but fighting not to show it, Cerenel bowed his head, rose, and backed from the chamber, leaving Lune and Jack Ellin alone.
“What—” the Prince said, after a moment of staring silence.
“Another time,” Lune cut him off, sinking exhausted into her chair and rubbing her brow with one hand. There must be some way to end this threat, without sacrificing myself and the Onyx Hall to the Gyre-Carling of Fife. “There is more you should hear, but I have not the will for it now. Please.”
He hovered for a moment, obviously frustrated by all he wanted to ask, but finally he nodded. “As you wish.” Then he, too, left her, and Lune sagged wearily in her chair, listening to the shadowed silence of her home.
She thought at first she imagined it—the stir of a curl against her cheek. Then it came again, for longer this time, bringing with it a chilling whisper of age and death.
Wind, in the unmoving air of the Onyx Hall.
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 1666
The Battle for London
The City still burns.
The wind has fallen to deathly calm, but in its absence the flames do not simply wink out. Yet at Temple Bar, and Holborn Bridge, and all about the fringes of London, men bend their backs with renewed will, determined to overmaster at last the beast that has driven them so far.
Gunpowder still shatters the air with its detonations, clearing space the sparks, robbed of their ally the wind, cannot leap. Though at Cripplegate the battle yet rages in strength—led by the Lord Mayor, eager to redeem his earlier ignominy—much of the leveled ground now lies smoking, such that when daybreak comes men will walk across its embers, and see what they have lost.
An unfortunate few see more than that.
On the heights around the cathedral, where the ashes of the books still blow, little tongues of flame race along the ground.
They seek one another, blending together like droplets of water, merging into a greater whole. Salamanders crawl atop each other, the larger consuming the smaller, and growing ever more, until a coiling body takes shape, crusted with black cinders like scales, that crack to reveal the fiery flesh beneath.
It is legion, and too powerful to be slain so simply. Calling all its children from across the City, the Dragon lifts its head from the ashes, and scents its prey once more.
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: one o’clock in the morning
Armored in the fine clothes he’d worn for his creation as Prince of the Stone, Jack Ellin went forth to do battle.
Only now, when the breath of the Cailleach Bheur had subsided at last, did he realize how much the Blue Hag’s touch had worn on him, too. Even if age and the slow decay of flesh were natural to his kind, no one liked to be reminded for days on end of how he would, in time, fall to dust. Free now of that ominous whisper, he felt a tiny surge of life infusing his weary limbs. Enough, he hoped, to see him through this confrontation with the Gyre-Carling.
And before that, a confrontation with Lune.
He found her still dressing in her wardrobe. Her ladies fussed around her, smoothing the fashionably wide neckline of her gown, kneeling to place silver shoes on her feet. Two miniature sprites hovered in the air, tucking the scorched ends of her hair out of sight, until her coiffure gleamed like polished metal under the faerie lights of the chamber. The melting frost on the walls steamed in the warmer air.
“Good, you are prepared,” Lune said when she saw him. Nianna dabbed color on her lips between phrases, trying and failing to conceal her vexation with the Queen’s insistence on speaking. “Nicneven should be at Aldgate soon.”
“What should I expect of her?”
She gave a tiny shrug, so as not to interfere with Carline sliding an earring into her lobe. “As much as a mouse might. You are beneath her notice. I would say to make her acknowledge you if you can, but tonight of all nights, we might be better served not to annoy her.”
If saving what remained of London meant lying down on the presence chamber floor and letting Nicneven walk over his face, he would do it. But Jack had something of far greater use in mind. “Allow me,” he said, claiming Lune’s rings from Amadea without waiting for the chamberlain to respond. “I would speak with her Majesty alone.”
Amadea raised her eyebrows at him again; he wondered if Antony had not claimed private audiences so much. Perhaps the old Prince had not minded public confrontations.
The ladies curtsied and took their leave. When the door closed, Jack came forward and began sliding the rings onto Lune’s fingers. She had the bones of a bird, and her skin was cool to the touch. “Do you intend to give her Vidar?” he asked.