This moment wasn’t hers; she was all but a stranger here, ignorant of so much that she hardly dared open her mouth. But she had to do something to lift the blackness from Dead Rick’s heart, and so she said, “How did this place get made? Can’t you make another one?”
The fierce blaze in the skriker’s eye repaid her courage tenfold. “You said it two ’undred years ago, your Grace—that if the palace burned down, we’d build another one! If we can’t save the Hall, then let it go, and start over!”
But Hodge shook his head. “The giants of London are dead; Father Thames ’asn’t spoken in more than a ’undred years; the city’s shot through with iron. We know what they did the first time, but the world’s changed too much for that to work.”
“Then find a new way,” Eliza said, with all the bold confidence of a woman who had no idea what such a way might be, but wasn’t letting that stop her. “Pull Nadrett’s machines to bits and figure out how to make them work with something other than souls.”
For a moment, she thought Hodge would say no. The weariness was in him, too, going beyond what she thought any man could endure; it would have been easier for him to give up, to send the faeries away, and then to die alongside Lune, with the last of the Onyx Hall.
But he wasn’t some overbred twig off the royal tree of Europe. This Prince was made of sterner stuff, and had the will to go down fighting. “It can’t ’urt to try,” Hodge said, and managed a smile. “Any more than not trying will. I can only die once.”
Dead Rick stood, bowing to both the Queen and the Prince, and said, “I think I might know somebody who can ’elp you put that off a bit.”
The Galenic Academy, Onyx Halclass="underline" September 7, 1884
The closing of the Inner Circle had, in one brutal move, severed the Onyx Hall into two pieces, along the line of Cannon Street. For days afterward, the southern half shuddered through its death throes, the last of the Goblin Market fracturing smaller and smaller, taking with it anyone, faerie or mortal, not smart enough to run for the door while they could.
For the northern half, survival took precedence over security: Dead Rick and Eliza helped the Academy’s engineers dismantle the great loom and move it to the chamber outside where Lune sat in desperate trance, supported by the ghost of Galen St. Clair. The young man had not hesitated, once Yvoir freed his spirit from the plate found in the West Ham factory; he had only to hear that Lune needed his aid, and went immediately to her side. In the meanwhile, Bonecruncher and others had braved the dying southern half to gather as much material as they could, salvaging it to feed the loom, so they could weave protection for what had become the two most vital pieces of the Hall.
The London Stone and the Galenic Academy.
The former would hold their present for as long as it could. The latter, perhaps, held their future.
It was the irrational hope born in those moments after Nadrett’s death: that they could, in these final days, discover some acceptable use for the horror he had invented. Some way to make a new home for themselves, on some foundation other than the destruction of mortal souls.
“I’m sorry to say that was, in part, my doing,” said the bearded man who presented himself to the Academy, five days after the raid. The Goodemeades had brought him, introducing the fellow as Frederic Myers, of the London Fairy Society. “I do not remember the details—it seems that memory has somehow been taken from me—but according to what Fjothar and I have reconstructed, some years ago, Nadrett sought out my expertise on ghosts.
“His original interest was in the notion of the ‘astral plane’—a place where spirits dwell. I believe he was interested in establishing some dominion there, if he could. A different portion of my research, however, proved more fruitful to him: the physical manifestation of spirits. I theorized that ectoplasm, as I called it—the ghost-substance—was an emanation created by the human soul itself.”
Here Fjothar took up the thread. He was a svartálfar, with patches of wiry hair sticking out in all directions; he had a habit of pulling on these as he spoke. “We all know that mortal souls can shelter fae against iron and faith; it is that property which allows tithed bread to do its work, and also protects changelings who take a mortal’s place. With Mr. Myers’s help—and, I suspect, the assistance of Red Rotch, a former Academy scholar who was killed some time ago in the Goblin Market—Nadrett discovered that ectoplasm is in fact solid aether. And it retains its protective capability.”
With her usual bluntness, Irrith said, “But if we have to grind people’s souls down into thread to make use of it, then we might as well put our coats on now, because that isn’t going to happen.”
They had gathered in the Presentation Hall, all those who remained, to pool their knowledge and answer the final question: could they, with the Academy’s wisdom and Nadrett’s machines, with their memories of the past and their visions of the future, find a way to build a new palace? They made a strange assortment, ranged across the benches and chairs and boxes scavenged for seating; not just scholars, but courtiers and mortal allies and Goblin Market refugees. Everyone who cared enough to risk staying. Damned if I know what I can add, Dead Rick thought wryly, but I ain’t about to run now. Not after what I said to Lune.
They’d salvaged what they could from West Ham. Whether anything could be done for the empty human shells that had operated the machines was doubtful; Mrs. Chase was attempting to find caretakers for them all. Those faeries not killed had fled, and nobody had the energy to chase them, nor to do more than beg the constables not to speak of what they’d seen. All their remaining will went into the scientific problem instead. Parts of the equipment were intact or repairable, and some fellow with a strong stomach had examined the fabric for its secrets—but could they turn any of it to good?
Bonecruncher helped Rosamund up onto a barrel so she could stand high enough to be seen by the others. “A human seer helped before,” the brownie said, once she had everyone’s attention. “Back when the Hall was created. He and a faerie woman worked together to do it, and his spirit is part of what has protected this place. One possibility—and it’s only a possibility, mind you—is that somebody else could do the same.”
Creaks and scuffing sounded around the room, as every mortal in the place shifted and tried to avoid meeting anyone’s eye, lest they be asked to volunteer. Not just the men; Dead Rick saw Eliza bite her lip. If she tried to do it, he would stop her.
But her thoughts, it seemed, went in another direction. Hesitantly, as if not sure she had the right to speak up in this place, Eliza said, “Would ghosts do? Could ye… harvest this stuff from them somehow, without harming them?”
“I know a genuine medium,” Cyma offered, from where she sat on the far side of the room, a wide-eyed Louisa Kittering at her side.
So do I, Dead Rick thought. Did Eliza mean to offer her services? Before she could, though, others in the room took the idea and began to elaborate upon it. Ch’ien Mu, the Chinese faerie in charge of the great loom, seemed very excited by the prospect; he began muttering, “Weft thread! I say before, if we have aether for weft, it is stable.” Fjothar tried to explain something about the configuration created by Nadrett’s machine, but it was lost in the hubbub, scholars and nonscholars alike flinging suggestions atop one another, making a confused jumble of it all.
Dead Rick couldn’t understand more than one word in ten. Instead he watched Abd ar-Rashid. The Scholarch listened quietly for a time, hands folded behind his back, before bringing out something like a golden pen. Without speaking, the genie began to move the pen through the air, and lines of glowing gold appeared in its wake, as if he were writing on an invisible slate.