He mumbled something indistinct, and probably sacrilegious. Then, more clearly, he said, “I’ll be up and about soon enough—if these doctors don’t kill me. Never trust a doctor. Did you find the girls? The ones from West Ham?”
She swallowed. Those disappearances that Whelan had told her about in May. She’d clean forgotten about them, with everything that happened in between.
Instinct made her look up at Dead Rick, but he just shrugged. Whelan followed her gaze. “Who’s that?” He blinked, as if he could not quite focus on the skriker. For once, he didn’t reek of spirits; it must be illness that blurred his eyes.
Eliza bit her lip, wondering how to answer. With the truth; he deserves it. “It’s a faerie, Mr. Whelan,” she said, addressing him with far more courtesy than she’d used in the past. “I found them, just like I said I would. And I found Owen. That’s why I’ve come, because Owen needs your help.”
“A fairy?” He reached out blindly. Dead Rick hesitated, until Eliza gestured impatiently; then he took Whelan’s hand, his thin lips pressed together until they nearly disappeared.
Eliza said, “Yes, Mr. Whelan, a fairy. Just like you used to see, back in Ireland.”
His laugh was a dry, hacking thing, indistinguishable from a cough. “Never saw one,” he whispered, when he could speak. “Only ever knew what my father said. The rest, I made up.”
Her heart sank into her gut. She’d always thought the fairy doctor half a fraud; but it was another thing entirely to hear him confess himself one complete. “All the changelings you said you’d driven out—”
“Stories, lass. Stories.” He turned to look at her, still gripping Dead Rick’s hand. “Did they work?”
“I never tried them,” she lied. What was she supposed to do—tell this broken and dying old man he’d done her no good at all? But no, he’d done some; she was sure her farce with the furniture had confused the new Louisa Kittering. Just not enough to make the changeling admit what she was. “What Owen needs is something else. He’s half gone, Mr. Whelan—like they tried to make him a changeling, but it went wrong. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t seem to understand much; he doesn’t even recognize his name. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who remembers it. Like it’s been taken from him somehow.”
Whelan’s breath rasped in and out for a few moments, and his eyes drifted shut; she was afraid he’d fallen asleep, or worse. Then he spoke. “To prevent a child from being taken changeling, you baptize him.”
“Owen was baptized. It didn’t save him.”
He mustered enough energy to be impatient with her. “If he’s lost his name, you give him a new one. Baptism, lass. To wash their stain from him.”
Dead Rick grimaced when she turned to him. “It turns a faerie human; it ought to do some good for ’im.”
“But what about his memories? Will he get those back?”
The skriker shook his head, free hand twisting up to show he didn’t know. Whelan mumbled, “At least he’ll be human.”
It wasn’t everything, but it was more than nothing. Especially if it kept Owen from wasting away after he left the faeries’ realm. “Thank you,” Eliza said, and strengthened her voice. “You should get some rest, now.”
Whelan nodded, already drifting off. His hand slipped from Dead Rick’s and fell to the mattress. For a moment Eliza thought Whelan had died, but the skriker shook his head again. When they were a few steps from the bed, she asked him quietly, “How long?”
“Tomorrow,” Dead Rick said. “At the latest.”
She didn’t dare wait that long; too many people had seen her, and might tell Special Branch where she’d gone. Eliza hadn’t decided yet what to do about her impulsive confession to Quinn, back in the workhouse, and he wasn’t the only man working for them. Still, Whelan had awoken pity in her heart. She hated to leave him here, forgotten and alone.
Dead Rick stepped into the path of a passing nurse. The woman opened her mouth to snap at him, but closed it when he lifted his hand, a silver crown winking between his fingers. “The Irishman there. This is for ’is care. You give ’im a good supper, and some whiskey if ’e wants it; you treat ’im well, understand?” His voice hardened. “If you don’t, I’ll know.”
She bobbed a curtsy, and snatched the coin from his hand. “Treat ’im like a prince, I will, sir.”
Eliza stood, openmouthed, as the nurse hurried on down the ward. When Dead Rick saw it, he shrugged uncomfortably. “Irrith says I used to be a decent cove. I figures, if that’s true, maybe I should act like one.”
A decent cove who didn’t mind the occasional threat—but that was more like the faerie she’d known, seven years ago. “The money’s faerie silver,” he added roughly, before she could say anything. “It’ll turn to a leaf tomorrow.”
She closed her mouth and followed him to the stairs.
The Prince’s Court, Onyx Halclass="underline" August 15, 1884
“Still no sign of him,” Bonecruncher said, wiping blood from his face and dabbing his nose, which seeped red. A souvenir of his venture into the increasingly chaotic Goblin Market. “I can tell you one thing, though: it isn’t some cunning plan of his. Unless Aspell really thinks he’ll gain something by letting his entire gang fall apart for lack of leadership.”
The barguest didn’t sound like he believed it, and neither did Hodge. They knew Aspell had been shot, with iron. Had he crawled off somewhere to die? Dead Rick had said it didn’t look like a lethal wound, but the death might have been too far off for him to sense.
Hodge didn’t care much what happened to the old traitor, just the photograph he’d been carrying. Admittedly, the Prince had bigger problems than a cove who was already dead. The impending end of the Onyx Hall, for example. Common sense said he should let Galen St. Clair go.
But one thing stopped him: Lune. He knew the stories; she’d loved her first Prince, Sir Michael Deven, hundreds of years ago. His successors had been friends and partners, nothing more. Still, she cared about them, all those names carved into the memorial in the ruins of the night garden. Just as she cared for her subjects, and her realm—but if Hodge couldn’t save those, he could at least save one bloody ghost.
And there was the faintest outside chance that it might do some larger good. Nadrett, after all, had taken that photograph for a reason. If only they could figure out what it was.
A question from Bonecruncher interrupted his thoughts. “Guess who else is missing from the Market?”
Quite a lot of fae; there wasn’t much Market left to hold them, not with the Inner Circle so close to completion. But Bonecruncher wouldn’t have said anything if he just meant the general exodus. Stomach sinking, Hodge asked, “Who?”
“Nadrett. And about half his lieutenants, too.”
Hodge stared, not sure whether to be overjoyed or appalled. His heart settled on the latter; instinct—not to mention his entire reign as Prince—told him that anything Nadrett did couldn’t be good. Including going away. “Where’s ’e gone?”
Bonecruncher shook his head, then dabbed again at his face. “Got my nose broken for asking. But it isn’t like Aspell, vanishing without a trace. Nadrett’s people, the top ones, know what’s going on. They just aren’t telling.”
His pulse quickened. Maybe it ain’t just humbug. Hodge believed there was something going on, deep within Nadrett’s lair—but surely if it were a passage to Faerie, they would know by now. People were fleeing, the palace emptying at a steady rate; if they could flee beyond this world, rumor would have spread like wildfire. Could be Nadrett just didn’t have it finished, but something about that didn’t fit together in Hodge’s mind.