Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

Christ, Jack thought, staring in abject horror. It’s huge.

The Dragon of the Fire roared.

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

Word spread through the Onyx Hall, faster than the flames above. A Dragon has been born.

A Dragon. Such had not been seen in England for many a forgotten age.

It was a source of great excitement, almost enough to distract the fae from the Cailleach Bheur. These were not the deep reaches of Faerie, far removed from the mortal world; few creatures of such power still existed here, and those few that did mostly slept. When they thought of the Dragon, they saw only the grandeur of it, and did not think of London.

But Lune did, even before Irrith came to tell her that another church was in flames.

“I forget the name,” the sprite said, wiping soot from her face, left behind when the icy wind had dried all the sweat. “At the north end of the bridge. Jack—Lord John, that is—says it had a water tower.”

Even through the leaden weariness inflicted by the Cailleach, the exhaustion of decrepit age, Lune knew what she meant. The church of St. Magnus the Martyr, at the foot of London Bridge.

Where, thanks to the innovation of a clever Dutchman, water-wheels in the northernmost races churned the Thames upward, through leaden pipes that arched over the steeple of the church, from whence they fell with sufficient force to propel water through a goodly portion of the City’s riverside district. Thus were houses supplied—and the men fighting the Fire.

“It knows,” she whispered, and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. The Dragon knows how we oppose it, and fights back.

We. But the Onyx Court was already engaged in one battle, against the Cailleach Bheur—if battle it could be called, when her scouts could not find the Hag’s location, nor her advisers craft any means of blocking the deathly wind. How could they fight a second in the streets above? Fear gibbered at the edges of her vision, a hundred variants of death braiding into one terrifying whole. Death by fire, by ice, by the withering of age or the putrefaction of plague, creeping closer with every moment that passed—

No. Lune snarled it away. This was her oath, and her burden. She could no more abandon mortal London to the Fire than she could leave her court to the Hag. If Jack was brave enough to face a Dragon, she must give him all possible aid.

She forced herself to think. The church was under attack; the Bridge itself would not long be safe. The stones could not burn, but houses and shops had crowded its length for centuries, choking the roadway with timber and plaster. And where people traveled, so too could the Fire: down the Bridge to the crowded suburb of Southwark. Then they would lose all hope of controlling its spread.

Her fingernails had dug deeply enough into her palms to cut. Lune pried them free, wincing, and said, “Find Dame Segraine. Tell her to call out every water nymph, every asrai and draca in this court, and marshal them at the Queenhithe entrance. If a fae can swim, send him out to fight. We must keep the Dragon from crossing the river.”

CANNON STREET, LONDON: eleven o’clock in the morning

Nearly a quarter mile of the riverfront was alight now, by Jack’s best estimate, the cheap weather-boarded tenements that crowded about the wharves going up like dry tinder. The conflagration had roared through Stockfishmonger Row, Churchyard Alley, Red Cross Alley; men stood in lines, slinging full buckets up from the river, empty ones back down, but they might as well have pissed on the blaze, for all the good it did. The city’s few fire-carts could not even make it into those warrens, nor close enough to the river to fill their tanks. The Clerkenwell engine had fallen in.

He sagged back against a shop on Cannon Street, breathing mercifully clean air. The road was filled wall-to-wall with carts and men on foot; what belongings could be evacuated had been brought here. The livery companies were rescuing records and plate from their company halls, while the poorer folk of the Coldharbour tenements ran with what they could carry on their backs, unable to afford the rising price of a wherry or cart.

Not everyone out there was a dockside laborer, though. One finely dressed gentleman, holding a kerchief over his nose to filter out the drifting smoke, stopped at Jack’s side. “Where is the Lord Mayor?”

Jack wiped his streaming eyes and straightened, taking advantage of his height to crane over the shouting masses. “I think I see him—here, let me lead you.”

The fellow kept hard at Jack’s heels, forcing between two stopped carts whose drivers swore uselessly at each other. Sir Thomas Bludworth, when they came upon him, was a wretched sight; the Lord Mayor of London mopped at his face with the kerchief around his neck, staring and lost, trying ineffectually to direct the men around him.

“My lord,” the gentleman said, loudly enough to get Bludworth’s attention, “I have carried word to his Majesty at Whitehall of the troubles here, and he bids me tell you to spare no houses, but to pull them down before the fire in every direction.”

It was the only thing that might work. They had no hope of quenching the flames; but if they could create wide enough breaks, too wide to leap, then they might at least contain it. Bludworth blinked, seeming not to understand the words, nor to recognize the man before him. “Samuel Pepys,” the gentleman said, in the tone of one reminding a fellow he has always thought an idiot. “My Lord Mayor, the King commands—”

Bludworth jerked, as if coming awake. “Lord,” he cried, “what can I do? I am spent. People will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses, but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.”

Pepys bowed—hiding, Jack thought, an unsympathetic expression. He then stepped closer to the Lord Mayor, so he need not cry his next news to the world. “His Majesty has given orders to send in his Life Guards, or perhaps some of the Coldstream; the Duke of York also, and Lord Arlington. You are to notify them at once if you need more soldiers, for the keeping of the peace, and carrying out the demolitions.”

“Oh, no, no,” Bludworth said immediately, flapping his hands. “I need no more soldiers, no, we have the Trained Bands—but for myself, I must go and refresh myself; I have been up all night.” Still babbling, he slipped away, leaving Pepys staring.

“He has not been pulling houses down,” Jack said in his wake. “He fears to do so, without the permission of the men who own them—and there’s no chance of getting that in time. But I’ll help you spread the word.” It should have begun hours ago. Before a simple fire turned into a God-damned Dragon.

Once, he would have been delighted for the chance to see a dragon, to observe its characteristics and perhaps learn something of its nature. Not anymore. The creature was destruction; that was all he cared to know. That, and how to stop it.

Pepys did not see the Dragon, no more than any man fighting the Fire did. They spoke of it as if it had a will, as if it hungered and schemed and sought to overcome their defenses, but they did not realize the truth of those words. Nevertheless, the gentleman had enough wit to see that decisive action was necessary. He gripped Jack’s hand in thanks. “There is a contingent of the Life Guards in Cornhill; will you go to them?”

Nodding, Jack gathered in his breath and set off as quickly as he could down a side lane. He did not get a dozen paces off Cannon Street, though, before a wild-eyed man grabbed him by the sleeve, with the hand not waving a rusted sword. “Arm yourself, man!”