Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

Their faces were pitiful with concern; whoever else— whatever else—they were, Jack believed them true friends of Antony’s. But his oath was the only thing holding him together right now. “No. The words are for Lune alone; I’ll give them only to her.”

“Young man,” the rose-woman began, but her sister cut her off. “Rosamund, we haven’t the time. Lord Antony sent him; we must trust him. And the Queen will want to know, regardless.”

Catherine of Braganza? She was in Salisbury with the King. Let it pass. Rosamund fixed him with a piercing glare and said, “For Lord Antony’s sake, then—follow us, and do as we bid you, without question.”

He’d already sworn it, but there was no point in wasting time telling her that. Jack nodded, and they both sighed in relief. “I will make the horses,” Gertrude said, “and we shall go.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: September 15, 1665

He went along with everything. He didn’t ask why Rosamund and Gertrude were taller when they mounted up for the ride. He didn’t blink when they stopped at an alder tree along St. Martin’s Lane and the sisters’ horses seemed to vanish into thin air, straws falling to the ground where they had been.

He even managed to keep from screaming when the alder tree swallowed him whole.

A distant, perversely calm part of his mind suggested that his brain was too dazed for questions or even fear, but that when he had a moment to think, he would react very strongly indeed. It was probably true. For now, Jack just gaped at everything, like a clod of a farmer come into London for the first time.

Smooth black walls rose around him, lit by cool lights that seemed to float without support. Creatures stared at him as he passed—beings that made Rosamund and Gertrude look entirely normal by comparison. The very air felt different, secret and hushed, as if he walked in a shadow made solid.

Any doubt he might have had as to the nature of this place and its inhabitants fell into dust when he walked into a great, vaulted chamber and saw the woman on the throne.

She sat beneath a glittering canopy of estate that would have beggared Charles to buy, framed by the sweeping arch of silver that formed the throne’s back. Her own hair gleamed as brightly beneath the fanlike coronet that capped it, while the midnight silk of her gown provided a splash of jeweled color. The high bones of her face never belonged to anything human.

The elfin woman was speaking to a serpentine man, her tone quite sharp, but she cut off when the sisters hurtled past a startled and sticklike usher, their shoes tapping a rapid beat against the marble floor. “Gertrude? Rosamund?” she said, in clear, resonant tones. “Is something amiss?”

They dropped perfunctory curtsies, as if begrudging even that instant of delay. “Your Majesty,” Rosamund said, “this man bears you a message from Lord Antony.”

Immediately, every eye in the chamber was on Jack. He had followed at the sisters’ heels, but forgotten in his stupor to bow; he did so now, as clumsily as he had ever done, and felt the amusement of some of the watching courtiers. The resulting spark of anger steadied him, and when he straightened, he met the faerie Queen’s gaze without flinching. “Are you Lune?”

“I am,” she said, ignoring the gasps at his insolent address.

“Then Sir Antony bids me ask you this: if you will not save London, will you at least save him?”

Dead silence. No one so much as breathed, let alone laughed. Seeing Lune’s stricken face, Jack wondered for the first time at the content of Antony’s message. He’d taken it without thinking, assuming it all to be part of the man’s feverish rantings—but no. Clearly it had meaning.

A meaning that hurt this elfin Queen, struck deeply at her heart. He had not realized, coming here, that his first words to her would be so terribly cruel.

“Madam,” Gertrude whispered into that terrible hush, “’tis the plague.”

The Queen came to her feet in a movement so swift his eye missed it. “Take me to him.”

LOMBARD STREET, LONDON: September 15, 1665

The stench of putrefaction and death filled the house, a foul miasma that choked Lune’s breath. The doctor hung back, strangely reluctant, and nodded at the staircase. Covering her mouth, she hurried up the stairs, terrified of what she might find.

His skin was corpse-pale and beaded with sweat, and he did not so much as twitch when she threw the door open. Lune hesitated on the threshold, trembling in every limb. Mortality, in its most dreadful form: the slow rotting of the flesh, with agony as its excruciating handmaiden. Gangrenous black spots marked his throat, striped with red where he had torn at them with his nails. Plague had come to London before, many a time; she knew enough to recognize what she saw.

And to hope, for one awful moment, that he was dead already, and free of this suffering.

The physician was behind her. Lune forced herself forward, one unwilling step at a time. “Is he—”

The man knelt at Antony’s side. John Ellin; that was his name. Jack. The memory swam up through her horror. Ellin covered his hand with a kerchief and pressed his fingers into Antony’s neck. “His pulse is weak, but he lives.”

Her breath rushed out in a gasp. Ellin examined Antony with gentle care, then paused. Not looking at her, he said, “He told me you would save him.”

The gasp became almost a sob. It is the war, all over again. Had I acted more decisively, and sooner—

She could not have stopped the spread of this plague. The mortals believed it was God’s punishment, for the licentious behavior of the City and its King; whether that was true or not, she had no power to halt it. But I could have kept him below.

He would never have stayed there, not when London needed him. If he sheltered in the Onyx Hall, though, where the air was unfouled, where there was no filth to breed disease…or if she had done as he asked, aiding in the mortals’ plight, so he did not exhaust himself in a battle he could not win.

Ellin pivoted on his knee, his pale face desperate. “If you have some charm that can save him, use it. I don’t know how long he has.”

Lune forced away her anguished thoughts; there would be time enough for those, later. The reply hurt her throat. “I—disease is not something we know. I cannot make him well.”

She watched the light in his eyes die. “But he believed—”

“He hoped. ” Lune came forward, standing over Ellin’s shoulder, unable to look away from her dying Prince. “Had we any charm to dismiss the plague from a man’s body, I would have used it ere now. But we do not. The best I can give him…”

She trailed off, lost. Ellin shot upright and seized her by the shoulders. “What?”

The sheer affront of his conduct tore her attention away from Antony at last. “We might strengthen him,” she said. “A draught—something to aid him in the fight.” Whether it would do any good, she did not know.

“Then fetch it,” Ellin said. “At this point, nothing can hurt.”

LOMBARD STREET, LONDON: September 16, 1665

Cramps bent Antony’s legs up to his chest, setting off an agonizing fire through his hips and thighs. He cried out, driven from hazy, tormented unconsciousness into a waking state he had not thought he would see again.

Delicate hands touched his face, bathing his brow with blessedly cool water. He wept at the pain, and a voice soothed him, whispering reassurance it did not believe. I am dreaming, he thought. The fever has sent me mad.

If so, his madness was cruel. It should have brought him both Kate and Lune—though it was not safe for Kate to be here. He did not want her shut in with him.