Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

The baker’s house burns like a candle, a pillar of flame in the narrow, night-dark street. The people of Pudding Lane have awakened, roused from their beds by the muffled peal of the parish bell, signaling fire. The leather buckets have been fetched from the church, their contents flung in useless doses: water, ale, even urine or sand—anything that might quench the blaze.

But onward it burns, stubbornly fed by a strange wind blowing from the east. Sparks dance in the breeze, a graceful courante in the dark, until one adventures westward, to the Star Inn on Fish Street Hill. The galleried inn, backing onto the baker’s own property, keeps hay in its yard.

A single spark is enough.

Men shout in the street, their neighbors’ rest be damned. Anyone still sleeping ought to be woken. While those nearest take the precaution of hurrying their possessions out-of-doors, north or south to safety, the more charitable bellow for the fire-hooks, to pull the adjoining buildings down before they too can catch.

But the landlords who own those buildings are not here. Those who live on Pudding Lane are poorer sorts, renting from their betters. And so, fearing the consequences should he destroy such property, the Lord Mayor of London, hauled from his bed to answer this threat, dismisses it before going back home.

“Pish—a woman might piss it out.”

London has survived fires before.

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

The breath of the Cailleach Bheur howled through the stone galleries, the high-vaulting latticework of the chamber ceilings, leaving no corner in peace. Three days it had blown, above ground and below, the latest assault from the Gyre-Carling of Fife—and the worst. Spies could be driven out; warriors could be fought. The Cailleach was unstoppable.

And the fae of the Onyx Court were wild-eyed and hollow-cheeked beneath her touch. For the wind brought more than the Blue Hag’s icy chill: ghosting on its wings were voices, inaudible whispers of winter’s promise. Age. Mortality. Death.

Small wonder we are going mad.

Lune shivered inside her fur-lined cloak. Years of struggle against Nicneven—decades, since that first attempt to burn the alder tree—and all she had to show for it was war.

No. This was not war. Lune had fought wars, on her journey to this point. This was something different: not clean confrontation in battle, nor even the underhand knife-work of spying and betrayal. The Cailleach could kill them all, without ever exposing herself to attack. What Nicneven had done to gain such aid, Lune could not even guess; the Blue Hag was something older and more powerful than any of them. But after all her attempts and all her failures, the Unseely Queen of Fife had finally found something powerful enough to truly threaten the Onyx Court.

Such fears only played into the Cailleach’s power. Lune gritted her teeth and bent over the rough map she had constructed from the objects to hand. Lady Amadea’s fan served as a model for London, its sweeping edge representing the City wall, its outside sticks marking the line of the river in the south. On the left sat a silver tobacco box—St. Paul’s Cathedral—and on the right, a jet brooch, for the Tower of London. A long pin fixed the fan to the table below, in approximation of the London Stone.

She tapped her gloved finger on the fan’s top edge. “The Cailleach Bheur is the Hag of Winter; her power therefore comes from the north. But here we are protected; the wall guards us not just above, but also below. It blocks entry into our realm. And so she veers east.”

“Why not west?” Sir Peregrin Thorne asked. The Captain of the Onyx Guard did not have too much dignity to stuff his hands beneath his arms, warming his fingers and hiding their tremble. Lune had sent him above earlier in the night; the wind blew outside as well, but in the mortal realm it became nothing more than air. That brief respite was already failing him, though, and his haunted eyes flicked restlessly over the map. “West is death—also the Cailleach’s domain.”

“Because of this.” Lune’s finger moved southeast, to the jet brooch. “The Tower is our weak point. The entrance to our realm lies in the keep at the center, true—but you must consider the fortress as a whole. With the City wall joining its eastern defenses, that entrance may be said to lie on a border. And that renders it vulnerable.”

“You have closed that pit, yes?”

The question came from Irrith, and so Lune forgave its insolent lack of deference. The slender sprite had done her many a good service these past years, and had been rewarded for it with knighthood, but she was ill-practiced in her courtesies; the court of her Berkshire home was a far rougher one, with less ceremony, and Irrith had not been among Lune’s people long. Besides, she was more ignorant of mortality than any of them, and held up poorly under the insidious terrors of the wind.

Not that Lune herself fared much better. She suffered not just on her own behalf, but that of the faerie palace, which grew colder and more brittle with every passing hour. “Of course,” she said, struggling not to betray the frayed state of her own nerves. How do mortals live like this—knowing every moment brings death one step closer? “It is closed, and as sealed as I can make it—but that is not enough.”

“What about—” Irrith persisted, but the question ended in a yelp as the door to the council chamber slammed open. They could not keep doors closed anymore; everything blew open, sooner or later, scaring everyone out of their wits.

But this time the movement had a human cause. Jack Ellin hauled at the door’s edge, struggling futilely to close it, before swearing and giving up. Lune’s councillors flinched away from the tall man as he came up to the table; the presence of a mortal echoed the wind’s promises. Lune had to hold herself still as he reached out and laid one hand on her cheek.

The gesture was dispassionate, a physician’s touch. They had discovered this by accident, when a chance brush of his fingers lifted some of the darkness from Lune’s spirit. For Jack Ellin, as for any mortal, the promises of the Cailleach were inevitable nature. He bore without thinking a weight that threatened to crush Lune. And thanks to the bond that connected them, she could share that weight with him, and gain some measure of clarity for herself.

She allowed herself a grateful look but no smile as the Prince of the Stone dropped his hand, leaving her to stand on her own. It was a temporary reprieve, nothing more. But it gave her hope.

Then Jack said, in a deceptively light tone, “Madam—were you aware that your roof is on fire?”

Lune’s attention went upward before she could stop it, accompanied by the shameful thought that she might almost welcome the Onyx Hall bursting into flame, if only to end the unbearable cold. But the stone was frost-rimed and black.

“Pudding Lane,” Jack said, kindly ignoring her foolish impulse. “And now Fish Street Hill as well.”

Warmth. Light. She had to work to remind herself that he was speaking of destruction, not salvation. “Fires happen, Jack.” And she had an abundance of other matters to concern her.

“So you will let it burn?”

His expression said everything his voice left unspoken. The wry eyebrows had risen in surprise, and a cynical twist shaped his lips. He came here expecting us to help.