Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

It was a question worth investigating, but not now. “Who is he?”

The prisoner jerked against his bonds. Behind him, Prigurd’s fingers twitched, and a low growl betrayed the giant’s leashed temper.

The man who stepped forward to answer her fit better in their mean surroundings than either Lune or Prigurd. He dressed as a common laborer—even though his education, if not his birth, entitled him to better—and knew places like the tavern above their heads well enough to secure this cellar for the interrogation, when Lune decided not to risk bringing the prisoner into the Onyx Hall. Were it not for the undisguised sprite perched on his shoulder, holding a quill and a horn of ink, he might have been any ordinary, forgettable man.

Which suited him perfectly for his role. A spymaster should not be memorable.

Mortals who had dealings with the Onyx Court and knew it were still few in number, despite efforts by both Lune and Antony. They had over a dozen now, which was an improvement, but the ever-present threat of the godly and the necessity of keeping the Onyx Hall secure made bringing in strangers a chancy proposition at best. Most were there because they had ties to some courtier—a lover, usually, or the artistic client of a faerie patron. Of them all, only Benjamin Hipley had risen to a position of influence, carrying out certain underhand tasks Antony could not or would not handle.

“Humphrey Taylor,” he said, reading from a scrap of paper the sprite handed down to him. “His parish is St. Botolph Aldersgate, outside the wall, where he’s been known to preach a Puritan sermon or twelve.”

She was not surprised in the least. Humphrey Taylor’s torn and scuffed clothes were severe in cloth, color, and cut, a statement against the vainglory of the royal court. Those would have identified him, if the zeal in his eyes had not.

Lune wished she could take the gag from his mouth and question him herself. But even if she could trick him into accepting faerie wine, thus stopping the godliness of his tongue, Lune did not want the man crawling about for the rest of his life, pining after the faerie world he’d lost.

No. A fellow such as this would not pine. He would commit suicide, accepting that damnation to escape this one; or he would find some way to martyr himself trying to obliterate her court.

Much like this first attempt.

“You say he was trying to burn the alder tree,” she said, circling her prisoner, just far enough away that her skirts would not brush him. Prigurd shifted, clearly not pleased to see his Queen approach the man so closely, but let her pass unhindered. “How did he learn of it? Did he know what it was he sought to destroy?”

Hipley gave the paper back to the sprite and shooed it off its shoulder perch. “He had at least some notion it was connected with the fae. How much beyond that, I can’t say for sure. But he learned of it through dreams.”

“Dreams?” Lune halted in her pacing. “From whom?”

Her mortal spymaster shrugged apologetically. “What’s in a man’s head cannot be tracked, more’s the pity. But I asked questions of his neighbors—no family in London—and learned that his dreams started after a visit from a Scottish Presbyterian this winter.”

“A real one?”

“If I could find the Scotsman,” Hipley replied, “I might be able to say. Taylor certainly thought he was real.”

Lune pinched the bridge of her nose, then made herself lower her hand. Whether the Presbyterian had been a disguised faerie or not, he linked this attack to Scotland—and the court of Nicneven, the Gyre-Carling of Fife.

It was no use to protest that Nicneven’s hatred of her was misdirected. Lune had no part in the intrigues that had killed the mortal Queen of Scots fifty years before, but that did not matter; Onyx Court interference had contributed to the execution of Mary Stuart. Most Scottish fae had forgotten it—such human things quickly passed from their minds—but Nicneven yet harbored a grudge.

Until now, though, the Gyre-Carling’s opposition had been a subtle thing. A sizable faction in Lune’s court, encouraged by Nicneven’s allies and agents, believed fae superior to mortals. Humans were playthings at best; at worst, they weakened the fae, diminished them from the great beings they once were, in the distant past no one could remember clearly. Cooperation with them—the harmony Lune advocated—could only be to the detriment of the fae.

The Onyx Hall was the instrument of that cooperation, the shelter that allowed their coexistence. It seemed that Nicneven, impatient with her progress, had decided to strike more directly.

Even with Taylor stopped, there might still be danger. Lune roused herself and addressed Hipley once more. “What has he said to his neighbors?”

He saw the real question. “They think him deranged. A fever of the brain, perhaps—though the man who shares his lodgings thinks it some cryptic protest against the corruption of the court. Some kind of metaphor. He asked if I was an agent of the privy council. I think he hoped for a reward.”

Then they were safe—for now. When the only mortals brought into the Onyx Hall were the pets and pawns of courtiers, discarded after they broke, concealment had been easier. But with the rising tide of Puritan faith, she would have to take more care. If anyone ever came to believe there were faeries beneath London—anyone hostile…

“Track the Scotsman,” she said. “Do you have his name? Find out who sent him, whether some power in Scotland, or another working through ruses.” The Cour du Lys in France bore her no love, after some tangled dealings in the past. And French connections to Scotland were still strong enough that they might find it a useful cover for their actions.

Taylor lurched to his feet without warning and lunged for the door to the tavern above. The sprite was there before the rest of them could react, tripping the prisoner and sending him headlong into the dirt floor. Prigurd wrestled the man back to his knees, and this time held him there with one heavy hand. Hipley moved to the stairs, to see if the noise had brought any undue attention; when all was quiet, he turned back to Lune. “What would you like done with him, madam?”

Humphrey Taylor knew one entrance to the Onyx Hall. With that information in his keeping, he could not be permitted to go back to his parish, nor to communicate with those pulling his strings. Even if they blurred his memory, it would be too risky, given the strength of his faith.

“He is Lord Antony’s to dispose of,” Lune reminded Hipley. Anything pertaining to mortals required the Prince’s consent. “You may tell him it is our recommendation that a manikin be left somewhere discoverable, so enchanted and fortified that it may be taken for his body and buried. The man himself…”

She looked down at Humphrey Taylor and his burning, hate-filled eyes. It would be easiest to kill him—easiest, but wrong. The Onyx Court did not behave thus anymore. What she would send him to, though, might amount to the same thing in the end.

“Put him on a ship for the colonies,” she said. “Let him make a new life for himself there, where he cannot threaten us.”

GUILDHALL, LONDON: April 14, 1640

Despite the headache and sour stomach that were mementos of the previous night’s celebration, a smile kept warming Antony’s face as he approached the soot-stained front of London’s Guildhall. Soame and other friends had dined with his family last night, and together they drank to the opening of Charles’s fourth Parliament. It had taken longer than Antony expected, but the House of Lords and House of Commons once again met in their chambers in Westminster Palace.

In fact, the Commons was sitting at that very moment, and Antony regretted his absence. When he and Lune agreed he should secure one of the four seats for London, he had not realized how much time it was likely to consume. A foolish oversight on his part; it would run him ragged, he feared, juggling his responsibilities in City government with those of Parliament, and trying to maintain his trade interests as well.