Herbie Brennan - Faerie Lord

His hands reached out to grip the stonework of the battlements. Where, he wondered, had his money gone? Oh, it was simplistic to say that with Beleth dead his major source of income disappeared as well. But where were his properties, his reserves, his massive lines of credit?

The plain fact was that maintaining a political presence was ruinously expensive. The bribes alone were crippling, and if one did not keep up appearances, no one took you seriously. So in a frighteningly short space of time, his reserves had shrunk, his properties sold off or repossessed, his lines of credit dried up. And with them went his so-called friends, although that was no surprise. He’d never been under illusions about any of them. Ultimately, he’d relied on no one but himself.

He still thought his last scheme had been a good one. Lighters… Nighters… men of means always wanted servants and always would: the cheaper the better, which was why demon service was so appealing. One payment and you had a slave for life. He could never understand why the arrangement had never really caught on with the Lighters – they were quick enough to abandon their religion in other areas when it suited them. But the new scheme was even better! How could anybody object to angels?

Where did it all go wrong?

He stepped closer to the edge and felt the wind pluck at him like giant fingers. He felt, as he had felt so often in the past, a little angry, a little resentful, greatly disappointed, but most of all confused and weary to the bone.

How had it all gone wrong?

Lord Hairstreak stepped from the battlements and launched himself towards the cliffs below. As he fell, the wind spread his cloak so that he looked for all the world like a giant bat.

The conclave took place in the Throne Room, an interesting choice since it meant Blue was prepared to accept that word of any decisions made would quickly leak through the Palace and from there, more quickly still, into a waiting world.

Madame Cardui looked from face to face. Of them all, Blue actually looked a little older, a young woman now, rather than a girl, calm enough by all appearances, but perhaps a little worn by her experiences. Beside her sat Henry. Except for the tan and a little weight loss, his appearance was much as it always had been, but his manner was different. He seemed far more at ease with himself, more confident, more – what was that Analogue expression? – laid back. He still didn’t say a great deal, but his eyes moved a lot and you had the impression they missed very little.

Comma seemed watchful too, but at the same time pleasantly relaxed. He’d carried out his duties with dignity and surrendered the throne without fuss when his sister returned. Among the others, Nymph looked as Nymph had always looked: serene, confident and beautiful. All traces of the temporal fever were gone and it was as if she’d never been ill a day in her life. Pyrgus actually looked younger, as if his disease had gone into reverse but then hadn’t stopped where it started. Madame Cardui gave him the barest ghost of a smile. All that was probably her imagination, of course, but really he sat there like a boy again… and like his father as a boy. Strange how the years went around, even without the aid of temporal fever.

Although normally not included in a meeting of this type, Danaus was present as well. He looked as he always looked: tall, overweight, overbearing, full of his own importance, trustworthy and competent. His work on the fever had earned him his place here now: he deserved to be told directly what it had all been about.

The one notable absentee, Madame Cardui noted with a wave of almost inexpressible sorrow, was Alan. His advice would be sorely missed. She wondered briefly who Blue would appoint as her new Gatekeeper. No obvious candidate sprang to mind.

The great doors of the Throne Room closed and eyes turned expectantly to Blue. It was Hairstreak, Madame Cardui thought – she was sure of that – but how or why she did not know.

‘It was my uncle,’ Blue said without preliminary, as if reading Madame Cardui’s thoughts.

Frowning, Danaus said, ‘He caused the temporal fever?’

Blue nodded. ‘He was the cause, yes.’

‘It was some sort of weapon, I assume, deeah?’ Madame Cardui asked. ‘Warfare by disease? He planned to use it to weaken your position?’

But Blue shook her head. ‘He didn’t plan any of it, not the fever, not warfare. No coup, or anything of that sort. The spread of the fever was a side effect of his actual plans.’

‘You really are annoying, Blue,’ Pyrgus said impatiently. ‘Why don’t you just tell us what happened without dragging it all out?’

Blue suppressed a smile and said imperiously, ‘Very well. You know how much money and influence our uncle lost when I became Queen of Hael…?’

Pyrgus said, ‘You’re talking about the slave trade? The way he used to make money off demon servants?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m talking about. He tried to recoup his fortunes by reviving the trade.’

This time it was Pyrgus who frowned. ‘But he couldn’t. You’d never let him use demons the way Beleth did.’

‘Not demons,’ Blue said. ‘Angels.’

There was absolute silence in the Throne Room for almost fifteen heartbeats; then Madame Cardui said, ‘You can’t be serious, deeah.’

‘Completely,’ Blue said soberly. ‘Hairstreak commissioned our old friend Brimstone to evoke and trap an angel – Brimstone was an extremely skilful diabolist, you’ll recall. I don’t know exactly how he did it, but he managed the commission. The idea was that once a successful method of evocation was in place and Brimstone demonstrated he could hold an angel captive. Hairstreak would start capturing angels on a commercial scale, then hire them out as servants – essentially slaves. Angels are extremely powerful, as you know – far more so than demons. The potential for such an enterprise…’ She shrugged. ‘Well, among the unscrupulous, it’s gigantic.’

‘A moment, Your Majesty,’ Danaus put in formally. ‘What has this to do with temporal fever?’

‘It was the direct cause, Chief Wizard Healer,’ Blue said. ‘As you know, Haven is a great deal further from the Faerie Realm than Hael. Brimstone’s brutal capture of even a single angel placed an enormous strain on the fabric of our reality. Very soon people began to experience this as time slippage – what we called temporal fever and thought of as a disease. But it wasn’t a disease, not really. It was the way our reality was being distorted.’

Danaus looked appalled. ‘Why on earth didn’t this Brimstone person release the angel when he discovered what was happening. Why didn’t Lord Hairstreak make him?’

‘They didn’t know,’ Blue said. ‘Neither of them. They thought temporal fever was a disease, just like the rest of us. I doubt any of us would have found out the truth if there hadn’t been – ’ she glanced briefly at Henry ’ – an intervention.’

‘What sort of intervention?’ Pyrgus asked curiously.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ Blue said firmly. ‘What matters is that the angel has been released, our reality is returning to normal and the effects – the temporal fever, as we called it – are dying out.’

For a moment, Pyrgus looked as though he might try to push her for more information, but when he spoke again he said only, ‘What do we do about Uncle Hairstreak and Brimstone?’

‘Nothing,’ Blue said.

Madame Cardui raised an eyebrow. ‘Nothing?’

‘Brimstone is insane,’ Blue said bluntly. ‘He will be no further trouble to us. My uncle… well, doubtless he will be trouble if he gets the chance, but as things stand at the moment, he has failed abysmally to improve his position and any move we make against him might well provoke some sympathy for him among the Faeries of the Night.’