With one swift move, she thrust the London Sword into the floor, to serve as her conduit and anchor point. Beneath her skirts, she kicked off her shoes, settling her bare feet against the black stone. Measuring out her breathing like the ticking of a slow clock, Lune closed her eyes, and sank her mind into the wounded body of the Hall.
Her realm. A part of her flesh, a part of her spirit, for nearly three hundred years. She had done all she could outside—in the chambers of the palace; in the world above—but there remained one final thing she could do for Hodge.
She could hold.
Soundlessly, the black stone of the wall grew shut, sealing the way to the outer room. Darkness closed in about the London Stone, and the Queen of the Onyx Court.
The London Stone, Onyx Halclass="underline" September 16, 1884
When Dead Rick took Eliza’s hands in his own, he found her fingers ice cold. The smile she attempted showed equal parts embarrassment and tension. Quietly enough that only he could hear, she whispered, “What if I can’t do it?”
An echo of her words in the Academy; she kept saying it, though fortunately never where anyone else could hear. Dead Rick squeezed her fingers. “You can. You ain’t one of them fake ones; you’ve got the knack for it. And you’re in the right place. They’ll come, never fear.”
If they could. Just because Galen St. Clair haunted the Hall after his death didn’t mean the ghosts of the other Princes could be drawn back. But Eliza needed confidence as much as anything else, so he gave it to her, and was repaid in the strength of her grip. “You ready?” he asked, and biting her lip, she nodded.
They’d set a chair facing Lune’s, a little distance from the London Stone. With the Queen insubstantial from the effort of holding her realm together, she had no hand for Eliza to take; Hodge had offered, but in the end the mortal woman had refused. “I’d feel a fraud,” she’d said, and Dead Rick understood why. His restored memories included a few recollections of spiritualist meetings; the theatrical ritual some mediums engaged in bordered on the ludicrous. Instead it was this: Lune in her trance, with Hodge at her left hand, and Eliza facing them in her chair.
She’d spent days preparing for this, listening to stories about the past Princes, those men who had ruled the Onyx Court alongside their immortal Queen. As many days as they dared: according to the railway newspapers, a test train would be traveling around the entirety of the Inner Circle tomorrow. The proper opening of the new stations was not planned until the beginning of October; Cyma was doing her best to persuade certain gentlemen the date should be after the eclipse. But if the Hall were to last until then, the Queen would need more strength.
The Irishwoman shifted on her seat, brushing sweat-lank strands of hair from her face. She took a breath, and then another, each one slower and deeper than the one before. Silence settled over the room like a blanket, her breathing the only sound.
Dead Rick clamped his arms across his ribs, and waited.
The moments passed, one by one. Hodge swayed, then steadied. We should ’ave given ’im a chair, whether ’e wanted it or not. Eliza’s breathing had gone all but inaudible, though the scent of her sweat grew. The woman held her breath—then let it out explosively. “I can’t do it.”
He crossed to her before anyone else could move, kneeling and gripping her cold, shaking hands. “Yes, you can.”
“I can’t—”
“I’ll ’elp you.” Dead Rick tightened his grip. “Skriker, ain’t I? I knows death. Look into my eyes, and I’ll show you.”
Just like they had done seven years before. They’d both traveled a long road to come back to where they started, and been changed by the journey. Not weakened—no, Dead Rick thought, she’s stronger than she ever was. The Eliza of seven years ago could not have done this. But the one in front of him, he believed, could.
She sniffed back the wetness of tears and clutched his fingers painfully tight. Dead Rick stared up at her, not moving, not blinking, casting his thoughts upon death. Age, the rot of the body, impending calamity that cut the thread of life short. The final breath, rattling free of the chest. Eyes clouding over. Blood growing cold. And the soul, slipping free… had this been All Hallows’ Eve, it would have been as easy as breathing, but they could not wait for that night to come. Instead he filled his mind with ages of such nights, reaching for the connection he felt then, the sense that one could pass across that boundary with only a blink.
Eliza’s hands grew colder and colder, and her breathing stilled almost to nothing.
Barely moving his lips, Dead Rick whispered, “Call ’em.”
In a voice so distant it might have arisen from some source less material than lungs and throat, Eliza began to recite the names of the Princes of the Stone.
“Michael Deven. Antony Ware. Jack Ellin. Joseph Winslow.”
Through the stone beneath his knees, Dead Rick felt Lune reach out, echoing Eliza’s call.
“Alan Fitzwarren. Hamilton Birch. Galen St. Clair. Matthew Abingdon.”
Behind Eliza’s left shoulder, a glimmer, taking familiar shape. Galen’s ghost was certainly here.
“Robert Shaw. Geoffrey Franklin. Henry Brandon. Alexander Messina.”
Names Dead Rick remembered. He’d been here almost since the beginning—not the earliest days of the Hall, but not long after Lune became Queen. Memories swirled through his head: faces, voices, the individual habits of each man who stood at Lune’s side, for thirty years or three.
“Benjamin Hodge,” Eliza whispered, and began the litany again.
A chill that had nothing to do with cold swept through the room. Dead Rick’s vision blackened at the edges, as if he were holding his breath—but this was different; the blackness closing in was not any kind of blindness. He could still see through it, could see more clearly, the ghostly figure of Galen St. Clair whispering along with Eliza and Lune.
Hodge joined them; so did Dead Rick. The names echoed off the stone, again and again, a mesmerizing litany. The room grew colder still, and then the air began to thicken into shapes.
Alexander Messina came first, the most recently dead: a dark man, showing his Italian ancestry, and dressed like a prosperous tradesman. Then the others, in irregular order: Colonel Robert Shaw, color bleeding slowly into his red-coated uniform. Dr. Jack Ellin, mouth ready for its usual wry smile. Dr. Hamilton Birch, a man in his middle years, showing no sign of the unnatural age that had killed him. Sir Antony Ware, a solid and dependable presence. Matthew Abingdon and Joseph Winslow; Alan Fitzwarren and Henry Brandon and Geoffrey Franklin, bearded and clean-shaven, dressed in all the styles of centuries past.
Michael Deven came last of all, into the gap at Lune’s right hand. A dark-haired Elizabethan gentleman, in doublet and hose, and Dead Rick felt the swell of unspeakable joy in Lune’s heart, as the man she had loved three hundred years ago returned at last to her side.
Joy, and also the lifting of his hackles. Not at the ghosts, but at the tension shivering through the air. It was as if cords stretched from each dead man and the single living one to the London Stone, and those cords were drawn to their tightest. At the same time, the stone beneath his feet suddenly felt more stonelike, in a way he had forgotten—not the photographic loss of his memories, but simply the forgetfulness brought on by more recent experience. Not until now, when the solidity returned, did he realize how insubstantial the Onyx Hall had grown over the last century and more of decay.