Men in doublets, top hats, Roman armor; women in crinolines and farthingales and glittering dresses that scarcely covered anything at all. Indians. Germans. Chinese. Iceni. People who dwelt there thousands of years before the Onyx Hall ever was; people who would dwell there in centuries to come. The flood kept going, into the past, into the future, everything the city had been, everything it could be—for Francis Merriman had been a seer, and through him, they saw it all.
London.
The weave flung itself outward, sweeping through the City of London, Westminster, Southwark, Whitechapel, and beyond. Every hair on Dead Rick’s body stood on end. He had a body; gravity had returned, and so had air, and the proper spaces between things. He wasn’t in every London at once, all the centuries interlaced; he was in a room, clutching Eliza, and the simultaneous pressure and tension that had threatened to destroy him were gone.
Nearby, the Ephemeral Engine clattered away, tireless and steady.
Movement in his arms. Warmth, too, and when he drew back enough to see, Eliza’s eyes were open and alert. She had survived.
And so, he realized, had he.
Dead Rick sagged to the floor, exhausted beyond the telling of it. The tiles were cool against his cheek, and he might have stayed there forever; but Eliza, damn her, had actual energy, though Mab knew where she’d gotten it. She tugged at his arm. “Dead Rick—come and see.”
With great effort, he braced his other hand against the stone—Stone? Weren’t it tiles, a moment ago?—and pushed himself to his feet.
The room kept shifting. It wasn’t just his imagination; every time his attention drifted, something changed, and if he tried to follow it his brain might melt. Dead Rick kept his eyes on Eliza, on her hand in his, and followed her through the gap in the wall to where the bulk of the Ephemeral Engine stood.
The gears still turned, the rods still rose and fell; on the far side of the weaving apparatus, something still shimmered. People circled the Engine, whispering quietly; the Goodemeades were hugging one another and sniffling. Irrith stood a few steps away, staring unblinking at the machine. “Shouldn’t—shouldn’t it be stopping now?”
Wilhas laughed, a sound of mixed astonishment and glee. Wrain licked his lips and said, “It—may never stop.”
“But if it keeps weaving—” Eliza said.
The palace was growing still. Dead Rick could feel it, if he concentrated. He imagined it expanding, farther and farther, until it covered not only London but England, Europe, the world…
Wrain said, “It has to keep going. I think. This place… doesn’t resist the world outside. Not like the old one did. It will break down; rooms will fade and go away. But the Engine will gather their substance back in and weave them anew. It hasn’t made a palace—well, it has—what I mean is, it is making a palace, and will go on doing so. For as long as it needs to. That’s how it will last.”
So it wouldn’t cover the world. Dead Rick suspected its boundaries would be those of London: the farther one got from areas that could truly be considered part of the city, the weaker the Engine’s power would be, and the faster it would fray. If the city grew more, though—
It would grow more. He’d seen it, through Francis Merriman’s eyes.
The thought brought Dead Rick around in a sudden whirl, to stare into the room he and Eliza had left behind.
Benjamin Hodge lay on the floor, curled fetal on his side. Eliza cried out and ran toward him; Dead Rick opened his mouth, but she saw the truth for herself soon enough. Hodge stirred as she touched his shoulder, and opened weary eyes.
“She’s gone,” Hodge said.
The room around him was empty. The ghosts had dissipated, Galen St. Clair and all the rest, Francis, Suspiria.
Lune.
Her chair remained, a battered thing beneath the London Stone, and a crack piercing the floor where Sword had been, with a pair of embroidered silver shoes between. These alone marked the Queen’s fourteen-year battle to preserve her realm, and the three hundred years of her reign.
Dead Rick knew a few things about death. The scholars of the Academy said faerie souls and faerie bodies were not separate things, that the latter was the former made solid. When most fae died, their souls were destroyed; there was no afterlife for them, whether Heaven or Hell, and their bodies soon crumbled to nothing.
Soon, but not immediately. Sometimes, though, when a faerie died, she vanished on the spot. And then, they said, it meant her spirit had moved on, going to somewhere beyond anyone’s ken.
Suspiria had gone into the London Stone, following the bond placed there when the Onyx Hall was created. Where Lune had gone, now that she was free of both body and Hall, Dead Rick could only guess—Faerie, perhaps—but wherever it was, he suspected Michael Deven was there with her. Lune’s love, and the first Prince of the Stone. They, and their predecessors, had moved on at last.
Dead Rick joined Eliza, and between them they got Hodge on his feet. The man was still old before his time, still exhausted; his years holding the palace together had taken things from him that could never be restored. But he was alive, and while the Onyx Hall was gone, something new had taken its place. Lune’s last Prince had served her, and her realm, very well.
The von das Tickens stayed to watch over the Engine, already conducting an argument in German that sounded more excited than angry. The rest of them, those dedicated few who had witnessed the rebirth, went out through a portal that shifted from wooden beams to brass arch to cleanly carved stone, to explore the new faerie realm of London.
The Angel, Islington: October 6, 1884
Benjamin Hodge did not look like a man who should be out of his sickbed. “I would have been happy to come to you below,” Frederic Myers said, as one of the coaching inn’s young maidservants set hot meat pies on the table before them.
Hodge waited until she was gone, then shook his head with a weary grin. “I spent fourteen years ’ardly daring to come up ’ere, for fear the place would fall apart as soon as I turned my back. And believe me, it ain’t good for one of us to stay down there so long. It’s a breath of fresh air, being outside.”
The way he attacked the meat pie said the journey had taken a good deal out of him, whatever he claimed. Myers said, “I will endeavor not to tax you too much. Indeed, I would not have written to you at all, except that I have a rather pressing matter which I believe must be laid before you, as Prince of the Stone.”
“’Old on,” Hodge said through a mouthful of crust and gravy. Myers paused while he washed it down with a swallow of stout. “I ain’t Prince no more.”
Given the man’s exhaustion and ill health, it wasn’t surprising. “Who is?”
Hodge sucked a bit of meat out of his teeth and said, “There ain’t one.” Another swig of beer, and a rueful smile. “What we did with the palace… I don’t know if it’s the machine, or all the people’s ideas we poured into that thing, but it don’t ’ave a Prince no more, nor a Queen neither. So ask what you want, and I’ll tell you what I think—but it’ll be just one man’s notion.”