Marie Brennan - With Fate Conspire

“Right then,” Dead Rick said, a bit too loudly; that last crossing of the breach had made him awkward. “And any time you want to come on below—inside, I mean—Ash and Thorn, ’owever I’m supposed to say it—you just let me know. We’ll always ’ave a place for you.”

The New Palace, London: October 31, 1884

They could not call it the Onyx Hall anymore. The name had suited the old palace, with its halls and chambers of gleaming black stone, but the new one showed too much variety to be captured with so simple a description. Some rooms were like rustic cottages, black-tarred timbers between whitewashed walls; others were bare stone, or papered with William Morris designs. As before, some of it echoed what lay above—or outside, or whatever the term should be—while some was pure faerie invention.

They gathered in a place clearly born from the memory of the Great Exhibition, thirty years before: a green, tree-studded space not unlike Hyde Park, dominated by an edifice of silver and glass, a recollection of the Crystal Palace even more wondrous than the original. Sunlight shone down through the panes, warming and brightening the grass-carpeted area inside. The Galenic Academy was already making noises about claiming the place as their own, a Presentation Hall grander than the one they had lost.

Outside, it was nearly night. In a few hours London’s remaining goblins would go outside, to see what ghosts needed sweeping away this All Hallows’ Eve. Ch’ien Mu, after examining the Ephemeral Engine, had concluded that it was gathering stray wisps of aether from the mortals of London, probably through their dreams; what effect that would have on the population of ghosts, no one knew. It didn’t really matter. Right now, all Dead Rick wanted was the tradition, the sense that he was upholding his duties as a skriker, after being misused by Nadrett for so long.

Before then, a gathering of faerie London. The Goodemeades had been emphatic that it wasn’t a formal, organized event; there had been talk of organizing some sort of Parliament, or at least a council, to govern the fae now that no royal authority held sway, but no decision had been reached as yet. This was simply a gathering, and a chance for everyone to hear of the changes taking place outside.

As Dead Rick had predicted, many foreigners were there: Abd ar-Rashid, and Ch’ien Mu, and that monkey fellow Kutuhal; Feidelm and Yvoir and the von das Tickens; Po from the Goblin Market, with Lacca at his side, and a faun Dead Rick now remembered as Il Veloce. Others from his memories, and strangers he did not know. Mortals, too; not just Eliza and Hodge and various Academy fellows, but that girl Louisa Kittering, dressed in a japonnais gown that suggested she had used her faerie-granted freedom to run off and join the aesthetic set. She had come in with Cyma and an elderly woman Mrs. Chase had introduced as Lady Jane Wilde, but now was deep in conversation with a fellow who looked like the lady’s son.

Irrith appeared at his elbow. As Dead Rick lagged a sleeve for her to tug on, she pinched a bit of the hair on his forearm instead. “Ow!” he said, and glared at her. “I’m right ’ere, you know. You could just say ’ello.”

“Actually, what I came to say is, Gertrude’s gone mad.”

He looked across the gleaming expanse of the room to where Gertrude stood, in animated argument with her own sister. “I think they was always a bit cracked.”

“ Extra mad, then,” Irrith said. “Come on; you have to help me convince her—”

What precisely he was supposed to convince Gertrude of, Dead Rick didn’t know, but he followed before Irrith could decide to drag him by some sensitive bit of anatomy. As he drew near, Gertrude caught sight of him and brightened. “You can tell her! Didn’t you take Miss Eliza to a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research? And wasn’t it perfectly unobjectionable?”

“He didn’t ‘take’ me, and it wasn’t a meeting.” Eliza rejoined him, having freed herself from a pair of revolutionary-minded fae, Eidhnin and Scéinach, who wanted only to talk of Irish nationalism. “I sat down with Mr. Myers and the Sidgwicks and a few others, with Dead Rick there, and we talked about ghosts. It went well enough, I suppose.”

“And did they know you were a faerie?” Rosamund asked Dead Rick, hands braced on her hips.

Suspecting where this was going, he said, “They did, but—”

“You see?” Gertrude demanded, before he could say anything more. “So it’s perfectly safe for us to attend a meeting.”

She was a damned sight braver than Dead Rick, if she was willing to stake herself—and apparently her sister—out as targets for those insatiably curious bastards. If anyone could talk the Goodemeades to death, it would be the Society for Psychical Research. Myers’s presentation to them had ignited even more curiosity than the man predicted; their reports and editorials in various newspapers were currently doing battle with sensational stories from a few constables and a pub keeper in Billingsgate who swore his cellar had once been invaded by faeries. Before Dead Rick could think of what to tell Gertrude, though, his nose caught a new scent on the air.

A little girl, no more than ten years of age, with the lollipop in her hand hovering forgotten, tangled in the ribbons of her bonnet. A pretty little thing, her hair in careful ringlets; she was obviously born to a pampered life, and wandered the grass with her eyes so wide, it seemed only the upward tilt of her head kept them from falling out.

The reactions were comical. Everywhere people fell silent, fae and mortal alike, drawing back warily if the girl wandered so much as a single step in their direction.

Irrith whispered, “Ash and Thorn. Where did she come from?”

It was clear that nobody there knew her. Which meant nobody there had brought her in. Dead Rick licked his lips and said in a whisper, “My guess would be Hyde Park, or else Sydenham.” Where they’d moved the original Crystal Palace, after the Great Exhibition ended. Or it could be somewhere else entirely; they were still sorting out what rules governed entry into this place.

But now they had evidence that people—at least one small, beribboned, female person—could enter unannounced.

The girl’s gaze swung toward where Dead Rick stood, with Irrith and Eliza and the Goodemeades. Before it reached them, instinct made him shift shape; however disreputable a dog he might make, it was better than his appearance as a man. Unfortunately, this proved to be a miscalculation.

“Doggie!”

He rolled his eyes upward, hoping for rescue, but found the Goodemeades urging him toward the girl, Eliza failing to smother a smile, and Irrith grinning ear to ear. Then the girl was upon him. Dead Rick bolted, for all the good it did him; that, of course, made this a chase, and chasing was even more exciting.

It was ridiculous, undignified… and fun . He could have escaped by fleeing into the rest of the palace—leaving behind the unrepentant laughter of his so-called friends—but Dead Rick found he did not want to. So long as he stayed clear of sticky hands that would undoubtedly try to pull his tail, it was pleasant to run across the soft grass. Not to hunt—not out of fear—just to run, and to trip up his friends, Eliza cursing him cheerfully in Irish, and Dead Rick grinning a canine grin, his tongue lolling out as he went.

Let others plan for the future. At this moment, beneath the bright, glittering expanse of enchantment and glass, Dead Rick was content.

Burlington House, Piccadilly: September 2, 1899

“…and to those who say, we have charted all the configurations there may be; there are no more to uncover, and it remains now only to refine the applications of those already known—to those people, I say, nonsense . We stand upon the brink of a new century, and I feel—I know —that it will not be the end of discovery, an age wherein the best to which we can aspire is to perfect the knowledge already within our grasp. There are new mountains we have not climbed, and the vistas that we shall see from their peaks can scarcely be imagined, even by those with the rare gift to part the veil of time and catch glimpses of what is to come. I exhort all curious minds, whatever their origin, not to rest complacently upon the laurels of those who have gone before, but to seek out those new discoveries, and to share them with others, that all may partake of the knowledge that is our most precious wealth.”