Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: November 20, 1648

The greater presence chamber had never been Lune’s favorite part of the Onyx Hall, being too grand, too chill—too full of the memory of Invidiana. For formal state occasions, however, she could not avoid it. Anything less would be an insult to the dignitaries who gathered for this ceremony.

So she sat upon her silver throne, and a selection of her courtiers waited in bright array across the black-and-white pietre dura floor. Eochu Airt stood to one side, in the full splendor of what passed for court dress among the Irish, with gold torcs banding his neck and arms.

He made a poisonously polite nod to the empty seat next to hers on the dais. “I see your Prince could not be here today.”

Lune pressed her lips together. Antony’s reply to her messenger had been brusque to the point of rudeness: he was at Westminster, and could not leave. The General Council of the Army had presented a Remonstrance to the Commons, a listing of their grievances, like the one the Commons had once presented to the King. Lune did not know their demands; her messenger had not tarried, but come back with stinging ears to relay Antony’s words. He did say, though, that the Remonstrance had already been two hours in the reading, and showed no signs of ending soon.

Antony’s refusal vexed her, but perhaps it was just as well. “He sends his regrets, my lord, and wishes you all good speed.”

A snort answered that. “At Parliament, I see. Voting again to gut my land and hang it out to dry?”

Her ladies whispered behind their fans. Only their eyes showed, glinting like jewels in the masks they had adopted and elaborated from mortal fashion; even Lune could not read their expressions from that alone. “My lord ambassador, nothing happens in isolation. Lord Antony wishes the Army disbanded as much as you do. With the soldiers owed arrears of pay, however, and fearing reprisals for their wartime actions, setting them loose would threaten stability here.”

“And so he votes to send them to Ireland. Where England sends all of its refuse.”

Now it was not lips but teeth she was pressing together. “Had the mortals of your land not risen in rebellion—”

“Had they not done so, we would not now have a free Ireland!”

“You will not have it for long.” Try as she might to be angry with Eochu Airt, in truth, Lune felt sadness; the Irish, mortal and fae alike, were so blinded by success and the hope it brought that they did not see the hammer poised above them.

She tried to find the words to make at least this one sidhe see. “Had they settled with Charles during the war, they might have won something.” And brought the King to victory in the bargain. “But the Vatican’s ambassador encouraged them to overreach, and now, wanting the whole of their freedom, they will instead lose the whole. Their Catholic Confederation will survive only so long as England’s attention is divided. Once we have peace here, someone —Charles or Parliament—will crush them.”

“With the very Army your Prince voted to send. Just as he voted to save Strafford’s life.”

Against Lune’s wishes, in both cases. If she could have persuaded the Prince to vote against sending regiments across, it might have gone some way to healing that injury. But Antony—understandably, damn him—was more concerned with England’s well-being than Ireland’s. In the end the proposal had failed by a single vote… but not his.

“The hammer has not yet fallen upon you,” Lune said, doing what little she could to mollify the sidhe. “I will do everything in my power to stay it.”

Whatever response Eochu Airt might have made, he swallowed it when the great doors at the other end of the chamber swung open. Lune’s Lord Herald spoke in a voice that echoed from the high ceiling. “From the Court of Temair in Ireland, the ambassador of Nuada Ard-Rí, Lady Feidelm of the Far-Seeing Eye!”

An imposing sidhe woman appeared in the opening. Her green silk tunic, clasped at the shoulders with silver and gold, was stiff with red-gold embroidery; her cloak, thrown back, revealed strong white shoulders. The branch she held, however, was mere silver, compared to Eochu Airt’s gold. She knelt briefly, then rose and advanced until she came to the foot of the dais, where she knelt again.

“Lady Feidelm,” Lune said, “we welcome you to the Onyx Court, and tender our thanks to our royal cousin Nuada.”

The new ambassador’s voice was rich and finely trained. “His Majesty sends his greetings, and begs your kind pardon for calling away Lord Eochu Airt, whose services are needed in Emain Macha, serving King Conchobar of Ulster.”

Lune smiled pleasantly at the old ambassador, who stood mute and unreadable. “We shall sorely miss his presence at court, for he has been an unfailing advocate on Temair’s behalf, and an ornament to our days, with poetry and song.”

A lovely mask of courteous speech, laid over the simple truth that Eochu Airt had asked to go. He could not be quit of them soon enough. What remained to be seen was what Feidelm’s appointment signaled. If the lady were amenable, Lune hoped to negotiate for aid against Nicneven.

But that would have to wait. Lune beckoned to Lord Valentin, who came forward with a parchment already prepared. When the revocation of Eochu Airt’s diplomatic status was done, and Feidelm proclaimed in his place— then she would see the dance Temair followed now.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: November 21, 1648

The feasting and presentation of gifts ran through the night, with music and dancing and a contest of poetry between the old and new ambassadors. Eochu Airt begged leave to retire when it was done, though, and soon after Lune withdrew to walk with Feidelm in the garden.

The sidhe hailed from Connacht, and spoke as openly of King Ailill and Queen Medb as she did of the High Kings of Temair. The different perspective was useful to Lune, after years of Eochu Airt’s Ulster-bred sentiments. More useful still was the lack of hostility; Feidelm might not be an ally, but she clearly intended to form her own opinion of Lune, rather than adopting her predecessor’s. It was as close to a tabula rasa as Lune would get, and with Nicneven temporarily set back by the removal of Sir Leslic, Lune had the leisure to try and mend her relations with Temair.

“Lady Feidelm,” she said as they wandered the paths, “I know from the branch you bear that you are a poetess. Yet for you to be called ‘the Far-Seeing Eye’—are not such matters the province of your druids?”

“The imbas forosna is the province of poets,” the sidhe replied in her rich lilt, trailing her fingers over the flank of a marble stag that stood along the path. “For my skill at that, I am so named.”

“We have no seer at this court,” Lune said, and did not have to feign the regret in her voice. “And we live in most unpredictable times, when all the world seems upside-down. Might I prevail upon you to see on our behalf, and give some sense of what lies ahead?”

Feidelm pursed her sculpted lips. “Madam, visions do not come at a simple command. It needs something to call them, to bid the gates of time open.”

She had heard that the Irish hedged their divination about with barbaric rituals. “What do you need?”

The answer made Lune wonder if this were some malicious prank perpetrated on her as petty revenge for her soured relations with Temair. But Feidelm’s attendants did not seem at all surprised when their mistress called for a bull to be slaughtered. In the end Lune sent a pair of goblins to steal one from a garden above, with Sir Prigurd to carry it back down, and to leave payment for the missing beast. Then the Irish set to work, and soon presented the ambassadress with meat and broth and a stinking, bloody hide. There in the night garden, without any embarrassment, Feidelm stripped off her finery and wrapped herself in the hide, then lay down beneath a hazel tree.