Marie Brennan - A Star Shall Fall

Most of the Onyx Hall probably knew, without need for royal spies. “I was. Until he got married. He means to keep faith with his wife.”

“But he doesn’t love her.” Lune shifted, leaningback in her chair, still thoughtful. It wasn’t idle thought: she was more like an owl, searching out suitable prey. “I’ve watched them closely, because I hoped he might, but no. They feel nothing more than friendship for each other. In time it might grow to love… but not soon enough.”

Irrith regretted it even as she asked, “Soon enough for what?”

The Queen’s mouth settled into a line Irrith had seen before, determination in the face of impossibility. “To save him. He might not throw his life away if he felt it would hurt another. Unfortunately, he’s done his duty by his family—their wealth is restored—and he has no children yet. I am the only one he loves, and he knows too well that I do not love him back. I would regret his passing, but not deeply enough.”

Her silver regard settled on Irrith, who suddenly felt like the mouse the owl had been waiting for. “You could make that choice.”

To love him. It was a choice, on the part of the fae; that was why they adored stories of mortal passion. The notion that love could strike without warning and sweep away all reason was alien, baffling. Fondness could happen that way, even infatuation, but not love. That required a conscious decision to give over one’s heart.

She’d wondered, ever since she met this Queen who loved a mortal man, what it would be like.

But she also knew the price.

“Tell me this,” Irrith said, crossing her arms and tucking her elbows close against her body, as if to warm the chill inside. “What Dr. Andrews did to you, that ‘cleansing.’ Did it take away the grief you feel for Michael Deven?”

The first Prince of the Stone, dead these hundred years and more. Lune said, “No.”

So even alchemy could not end the mourning of a faerie who gave her heart. Irrith shook her head. “Then no. I won’t. Even if it did stop him, I’d have at most, what—fifty years more? Sixty, if his health is very good? Then an eternity of grief. And he would hate me for having made him choose between me and you.” If it was even a choice. Just because one person loved, didn’t mean the other would. Galen’s fruitless devotion proved that.

Something finally broke through the serenity Lune had maintained all this time, ever since her rescue from Dr. Andrews’s knife. “He’ll throw his life away,” she said, helplessly. “For no better reason than to save himself from watching me die.”

Much as Lune herself proposed to do. But it wasn’t a fair comparison; she at least had some hope of appeasing the Dragon, even if only for a while.

“Stop him,” Lune said. “Please, Irrith. I cannot.”

The only way to stop him would be to find a better answer. One that didn’t end in either a dead Queen or a dead Prince, much less both.

Irrith didn’t know if such an answer existed. But it wouldn’t do any good to say that, and so she answered, “I will.”

A few awkward conversations at Royal Society meetings and the dinners beforehand did not a true acquaintance make. Galen cared little for such niceties, though—not now. As soon as he discovered Henry Cavendish’s address, he went there straightaway, and made it clear to the servants that he would not be put off. “I must see Mr. Cavendish on a matter of most urgent business. He is the only man who can help me.” I only pray that he can.

Henry lodged with his father, Lord Charles, and so the footman was accustomed to far more important visitors; he was not easily impressed. But at Galen’s insistence, he did bear word to the young master that a very determined madman was at the door.

And whether by his determination or his target’s pity, Galen won through. Soon he was shown into a small parlor, where he tried not to wear a hole in the carpet with pacing before Henry Cavendish came in. The man was as shabby as ever; Galen only prayed it would be easier to get him to speak in this more private setting. “Mr. Cavendish,” he said as he made a perfunctory bow, “I apologise for the vehemence of my approach, but I have a very great problem, and little time in which to solve it. I must beg you to tell me everything you know about phlogiston.”

Cavendish was taken aback. Whatever business he’d believed brought Galen to his door, surely it hadn’t been this. It might have been surprise more than the stammer that made him hesitate in saying, “Phlogiston? Ah, yes—” His high-pitched voice went even higher, and the next words took forever to come out. “You said you could get a sample.”

Ages ago, at dinner in the Mitre Tavern. Just before he revealed the Onyx Court to Dr. Andrews. Galen cursed his choice: what might have been achieved had he trusted this young man, instead of the mad consumptive?

Possibly nothing. It might even have been worse. It was too late, regardless; the fae would never tolerate him bringing a second philosopher among them. Not now, with the end so near at hand. Cavendish would have to work blind. “I—yes. I have. That is, I think I have,” he cautioned, as his host came alive with curiosity. “I’m not certain. But what I have is extremely dangerous, Mr. Cavendish—very destructive—and I must find a way to render it safe again, before it can do more harm.”

“Let us go, then!” All hint of a stammer had vanished, along with Cavendish’s awkward shyness; he even tried to grab Galen by the arm.

Galen pulled back. “No. My apologies, Mr. Cavendish, but—” He floundered for an excuse. “Its destructive potential is too great. I mean no offence to you, but if anyone else learned how to isolate phlogiston, before I discover a means of securing it again, the consequences could be disastrous.”

An ordinary man would have been offended; Cavendish was already lost in his own thoughts, talking to himself. “So far as we understand it, phlogiston exists in all combustible materials. When they burn, the phlogiston is released into the air. If you burn a candle in a sealed jar, in time it goes out; this, I think, is because the air has absorbed all the phlogiston it can hold.”

“How does it get into those materials in the first place?”

Cavendish shook his head. “I don’t know.” He began to pace, chewing on one knuckle in what looked like a habitual gesture. “Perhaps trees produce it as they grow?… but that does you no good; you don’t want to make more . Not yet, at any rate.”

Galen twisted his fingers together. He’d forgotten gloves, and even his walking stick; he wished desperately for something to occupy his nervous hands. “Then to break it down instead. But no—it’s elemental; it can’t be broken into other substances. What about its opposite?”

“Opposite?”

“As in alchemy. Fire was opposed by water, cold and wet instead of hot and dry. What would that be, in modern terms? Not water itself, I know that much; it must be something else, more fundamental, perhaps some quality in water, that would be antithetical to phlogiston.”

But Cavendish was already waving for him to stop. “No, no. As you said—that’s alchemy. And it doesn’t work. Phlogiston has no ‘opposite,’ not that I’m aware of; for it to have an opposite, it would have to exist within a scheme like Aristotle’s, tidy and patterned. But the world is not so.”

Not this world. Galen’s throat seemed to be closing, making it hard to swallow, cutting off his air. Only in faerie science was there such patterning, and it had pointed to the answer: Lune. The moon queen; sophic mercury. But that would kill her, and then they would face the Dragon, perfected and unstoppable.