Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

“You can destroy the Onyx Hall,” she admitted, mimicking Jack’s casual tone. “But not the Onyx Court. So long as these people call London their home, you cannot destroy us. Not without killing every last fae who chooses to dwell in this city, and every mortal who stands beside us. And that will start a war you cannot win.

“So this is your choice, Gyre-Carling. You can raise the Cailleach once more and hope the Dragon burns us out. If it does, you lose Ifarren Vidar, for he will be destroyed with the palace. In the aftermath, we will rebuild our home, and you will have nothing but the vindictive satisfaction of putting us to that work.

“Or you can stand aside and let us destroy this beast. When we are done, you shall have Ifarren Vidar—but in exchange, you will return to Fife, and make no further war against us.”

Nothing shivered within. Her realm was more than stone; it was her people. And they were outside Nicneven’s control; they could not— would not—be used to make Lune kneel.

Nicneven did not understand. Lune doubted she was capable of it. That fae should find mortals interesting, that was comprehensible. Faerie-kind had always been drawn to their endless passion and capacity for change. But to live so close beside them, and stand so proudly in defense of such a home…

The Gyre-Carling would never understand that choice. But neither could she win against it. No victory was possible, against those who would not admit defeat.

She stood frozen in the center of the floor, balked of her prey. She could still drive them out, destroy the Onyx Hall, and retire to Fife with her empty triumph. But it would cost her Ifarren Vidar.

Passions, not politics, Cerenel had said. Vidar’s treachery had hurt her far more deeply than the Onyx Hall ever could.

Through teeth clenched hard, the Gyre-Carling said, “How do I know you will give him to me?”

An oath was the easy answer. But Lune was tired of those, tired of cheapening Mab’s name by swearing to this and that. She cast about for another solution, and then Rosamund stepped forward. “Madam, if it would be acceptable to you, Gertrude and I will stand surety for your word.”

Hostages. Fear stirred in Lune’s heart, but Cerenel bowed to her, and to the Goodemeades. “And I will vouch for their safety, if the Gyre-Carling pleases.”

The Gyre-Carling did not please much at all, by the look on her face, but to say so would gain her nothing. “Go kill your Dragon,” she spat at last. “If you can.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: two o’clock in the morning

“Madam—it cannot be done.”

Jack paused, halfway through shrugging out of his stiff doublet, and stared at Sir Peregrin Thorne. The knight was weary, and covered head-to-toe with filth; he hadn’t spoken up during the pretty little show out in the presence chamber, when the fae of the Onyx Court defied Nicneven. Standing closer to him now, Jack saw the despair in his eyes. “If anyone could kill the Dragon, Prigurd would have done. I have never seen such strength. But it has devoured so much…” Matted hair swung as he shook his head, except where it had been scorched from one side. “It has grown too great. Not all your knights together could kill it now.”

His flat declaration produced an awkward pause. Good humor had been running high among Lune’s advisers, gathered for this urgent war council, but it faltered badly under Peregrin’s words. Jack finished taking off his doublet and laid it over the back of a chair, less confident than he had been.

“Guns?” Bonecruncher suggested, hopefully. The barguest liked the weapons rather too well. But Peregrin shook his head.

“If we had iron shot, perhaps,” Segraine said, lowering herself into a chair. No one grudged her the comfort—or Peregrin either, though he refused to take it. “It’s a mystical being, as we are. But by the time we arm ourselves thus, it will be too late.”

Lune laid her hands flat on the surface of the council table, aligning them with exaggerated care along the floral pattern outlined in bright commesso. “Iron,” she said.

Everyone except Jack shivered.

She lifted her head, and smiled without mirth. “Not iron shot. It seems Nicneven has done us a favor after all.”

By forcing her to give up Vidar. Jack said, “That iron box you locked him in.”

The Queen nodded.

“Will it hold the thing?” he asked doubtfully. “You’ve not seen the Dragon, Lune; it’s huge.”

“The box does not work that way. It is small; what it entraps is the spirit. But yes, it will hold the Dragon.”

You think it will. Jack would not voice the doubts she kept silent, though. Rolling back the cuffs of his sleeves, he said, “Then once we take Vidar out again, we need two things: a way to force the Dragon inside, and bait to draw it near.”

Bonecruncher snorted. “Just offer it what’s left of the City.”

Jack glared at the goblin. Fortunately, Lune answered before he could speak his mind. “The Dragon does not want the City. Rather, it does —but more than that, it craves the power we have here. The Onyx Hall. It has tried for us twice already.”

Her mind was on tactics. Jack saw, as she did not, the shudder that rippled through the room. They knew of the battle in the cathedral, and rumors had spread of Lune’s defense at the Stone; they saw her crippled hand, and understood what it betokened. Now she wished to bait the Dragon again?

But they had barred the Stone against their enemy, and Prigurd had closed the cathedral door himself. “We need some new lure,” the Queen said.

Jack hated to suggest it, but she would think of it regardless. “The Tower?”

He was both relieved and dismayed to see her shake her head. “They’ve blown up all the houses nearby; the Fire cannot approach. And while a beast of flames might be overlooked in a great inferno, we cannot battle it inside the Tower of London without drawing far too many eyes.”

Segraine’s head had sagged, until Jack thought her asleep; now she raised it and said, “It is flame no more. Black cinders, like char crusting meat—but beneath is molten flesh.”

“We saw it,” Peregrin said, though no one had forgotten. “Prowling in the vicinity of Newgate.”

Which only lent more weight to Lune’s point. Men might convince themselves they saw no shape in the flames, but a giant black beast was rather much to overlook. Jack pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and thought. We cannot bring it below. Two of the key points are barred to it, the third unusable—the Thames and the wall will not work—

But there was one more element of the Onyx Hall the Dragon might hunger after.

“We offer it ourselves,” Jack said quietly.

His hands were still blindfolding his eyes; hearing only dead silence, he lowered them and managed an off-balance grin. “I know. In a moment someone will find his tongue and remind me that a Queen is not to be used as bait. But if what the Dragon desires is a conduit to the Onyx Hall…well, at least these conduits can fight back.”

The faces surrounding him might have been a painter’s study in seventeen kinds of horror. Seventeen of horror, and one of calm understanding. Lune knew as well as he did that they were the tastiest morsels they could dangle before their enemy—and that it had to be both of them, together.

She let her advisers argue it for a moment; then she diverted them down a secondary path, leaving the idea to stew in their minds. By the time she came back to it, they would be more resigned to the notion. Or at least Jack assumed that was her plan. In the meantime—“We must get it outside London, I think,” she said. “Outside the wall. Who knows what will happen when we trap it, both above and below. But nowhere that has not burnt already.”