Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

“The liberties to the west, then,” Jack said. “We find the Dragon, draw its attention, then run for Ludgate or Newgate as if the Devil himself were on our tails.” On the whole, I might prefer the Devil.

But that left unanswered the question of how to force it into the trap they hoped would hold it. Lune put it very plainly. “We need some piece of the one to be trapped. With Vidar, it was blood, but the Dragon has none. I think it must be flesh—such as it has. And for a being as powerful as this, I would not trust anything less than its heart to suffice.”

“Does it have a heart?” Irrith asked.

For some reason everyone looked to Jack, as if a mortal physician knew anything about the organs of elemental beasts. “It has something at its core,” he said, “that we may as well call the heart.” It sounded good, and he prayed it was true.

As for how to get at it…“How did George slay his dragon?” Amadea asked.

Jack’s breath huffed out in a voiceless laugh. “The princess he was rescuing threw him her girdle, which, placed around the neck of the beast, made it docile as a lamb. Then he led it about for a time before slaying it.”

“I do not think we will try that,” Lune said dryly. “We need some means to split its breast.”

Jack tapped his lip in thought. “It’s molten within, you say. Hot glass shatters if swiftly cooled. Might that not work here?”

“Do you have a boulder of ice to throw at it?” Bonecruncher growled.

“I can offer you something better.”

That voice came from near the door. When had that ambassador of Nicneven’s joined them? Cerenel made the briefest of bows, shoulders stiff under the disapproving stares around him. Yes—he used to be a knight of this court. Is that why he comes among us now?

“Your Grace, my lord,” the violet-eyed knight said, turning from Lune to Jack, “what you need is the staff of the Cailleach Bheur.”

After suffering under her touch for days, no one looked happy at the suggestion. The Cailleach was winter, though, and for once that might work to their purpose. “Her staff hardens the ground with frost,” Lune murmured, considering. “It would do very well indeed. But we do not have it.”

“I shall get it for you.”

He spoke with perfect confidence, enough to make Bonecruncher snort again. “Nicneven will just hand it over, will she?”

Jack would not have thought a slender elf-knight could glare down a barguest, but Cerenel managed. “I shall get it,” he repeated. “Her Majesty knows my word is good.”

For some reason that made Lune flinch. But the tight line of her jaw softened when Cerenel turned back to her; she even offered him a painful, grateful smile. “So it is. If you can bring us the staff of the Cailleach Bheur, then we shall face our enemy at last.”

NEWGATE, LONDON: six o’clock in the morning

Swirling ashes choked the dawn air, giving all the light a sullen red glow, as if cast by the fire. The rising sun was a flat disk through the haze, comfortable to the naked eye, though Lune had precious little attention to spare for it. She had to pick her way carefully across the smoking debris, the embers roasting the soles of her boots until she wondered how Jack could stand it. He kept close by her side, one hand always prepared to steady her elbow, though she had dressed herself once more in the clothes she’d worn in retaking the Onyx Hall.

Not the armor, though. It would do her no good against the Dragon, and make running much, much harder.

Running, they would likely have to do. She had never felt so physically vulnerable in her life. Not even when making her stand at the Stone—perhaps because she had thrown herself into that confrontation before she had time to think. Now, wandering the ruin of her City, she felt the Hall’s power breathing in her flesh. Hers, and Jack’s, and the two of them out here, offering themselves to the Dragon.

Not alone, at least. All around them, slipping like ghosts through the gray air, their companions spread out in search of their enemy. Prey sighted, they would give the cry, and then all would try to harry the beast toward the nearest gate. Fire still raged in the liberties and elsewhere, but on this side of the Fleet it was mostly burnt out. They hoped to make their stand on the near side of the river.

“What sort of sound does one make to call a Dragon?” Jack muttered at her side. “I hear tell there are different calls for cattle, and pigs, and sheep…”

Lune’s hands tightened around the staff. She often enjoyed his levity, but not now. Not with winter itself sending lances of cold through her bones.

The Cailleach’s staff was knotted black wood, cold and hard enough to be mistaken for iron. Nor was it much less unpleasant to Lune: all the effects of the wind were nothing compared to this. Jack could not carry it for her; one touch, and he had dropped it screaming. “I saw my death,” he whispered, eyes raw, and would not tell her what it was.

So Lune had to bear the staff, and with it, a thousand dreams of what her own death might be. One might expect nineteen of twenty to give the Dragon a prominent role, but in truth they were of all kinds, which was almost a comfort. Every time she imagined drowning or being stabbed through the heart, it distracted her from the very real death that might be just moments away.

For as right as Jack was to suggest the two of them as bait, Lune knew very well the risk they embraced. One or both of them might not survive this encounter.

Her own death was not the only one dancing before her eyes.

“Do you suppose that might kill it?”

Wrapped up in her dismal thoughts, Lune did not understand him at first. Concentrate. You cannot afford to be distracted. Following Jack’s nod, she glanced down at the staff. The Cailleach was powerful—perhaps even more so than the Dragon—but only the weapon was here, not the Hag herself. “I do not know.”

He shrugged, as if it did not especially matter. “If it does, splendid—we shall go and get drunk. If not, we still have this.” Jack patted the empty box cradled in his arms. He carried it as if the iron sides were as fragile as the shell of a blown egg, as if too much pressure from his hands might shatter their one real hope. Lune had spent bread with a prodigal hand, armoring herself and everyone else coming above until their coffers were all but bankrupt, but she remembered what happened the last time she touched iron.

So instead I have the weapon, which I scarcely know how to use.

The gloves on her hands did no good at all. The burned flesh on the left ached from the cold, and the unhealed wound in her shoulder throbbed in response. But the staff was hope, and so she clung to it.

Through the drifting ashes, she heard the whispers. “Do you see it?” “No.” “Perhaps it’s moved on…”

It could be anywhere. The Onyx Guard had glimpsed it near Newgate, but the Dragon might have gone across the City since then. It could be at the Stone. Or in the liberties, where the fire still raged. Or planning some assault against the Tower.

In this, the City she knew so well, Lune was lost. The streets had vanished beneath fallen timbers and tile; only occasionally did one stumble across a clear patch of cobbles, even that dusted with a layer of cinders and ash. But up ahead she saw the remnants of an arch across the street, and beyond it the corner where the wall turned north from its eastward path. They must be on Foster Lane—such as it was—and the blackened, smoldering wreck on the right was the Goldsmiths’ Hall, where generations of the Ware family had learned their craft, and generations more, members by patrimony, had exercised their influence on London life. Lune’s throat closed at the sight. I have tried to fulfill my promise—but without much success.