Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

Lune scowled and spun away from Aspell, skirts whirling in a sapphire blur. She had been pacing the length of the privy chamber through his entire recitation, and showed no sign of stopping. “She can be insistent all she pleases; we will not give her Ifarren Vidar.”

Irrith wished she would. At least that damn box would be out of the Onyx Hall.

The sprite concealed a shudder. Living in the Vale, she had heard of the Onyx courtiers and their well-crafted intrigues, the poisonous traps they wove for one another. That was under the old Queen, of course, and in Lune’s time the stories were not so foul, but everyone agreed the fae of London had learned all the backstabbing, manipulative lessons of their mortal counterparts. In the Vale, if two fae hated one another, they had a duel and ended it. Here, they devised far more intricate ways of making their enemies suffer. Nothing she had seen, though, measured up to the terrible fate Lune meted out to Ifarren Vidar.

She had called it mercy, but it was nothing of the sort.

Aspell coughed delicately. “Madam—though the Gyre-Carling cannot mount a second attack, with her Irish allies lost, she will yet find other ways to trouble us. And in this court’s, ah, parlous state—”

That stopped Lune’s pacing. She glared at the Lord Keeper. “Speak plainly, Valentin; I have no patience for your hesitations.”

“Your Majesty has previously forbidden us to speak of such matters.”

“I have forbidden you to contrive about them. Speak, before I have that forked tongue of yours torn out.”

Irrith sidled backward, wishing she had some excuse to leave the room. The Queen’s temper had been uncertain ever since the death of her mortal favorite—and she had not even loved that one.

The Lord Keeper bowed deeply. “Without a Prince, madam, this court is vulnerable. I know Lord Antony was more than a symbol of your Grace’s principles; he was essential to the stability of your crown. With the Gyre-Carling threatening us once more, I must beg your Highness to consider the possibilities for his successor.”

Lune scowled and gestured sharply for wine. Irrith, unfortunately, was the nearest to it; she had to hurry forward with the cup. But Lune merely took it and drank, without so much as subjecting Irrith to a glare. “We shall take that under advisement, Lord Valentin. But our previous command still holds: this is a matter for us to decide. Anyone who attempts to interfere shall find our displeasure great indeed.”

MONKWELL STREET, LONDON: January 3, 1666

She showed up on the tenth day of Christmas, wearing the Montrose face, and startled Jack nearly out of his wits.

Christmas it might be, but disease waited neither for man nor for the Son of God; it still brazenly afflicted people, in total disrespect of the holy season. Jack worked every morning in his shop near Cripplegate, and went every afternoon to the houses of those who could not come to him. Though the plague was mostly held in abeyance by the winter cold, there were other complaints, in numbers more than sufficient to keep him busy.

He hadn’t been below for weeks, and perhaps some part of his mind had given up on curiosity, and dismissed the whole thing as a delusion.

Mistress Montrose looked so resolutely ordinary, just another gentlewoman come in to consult with a physician, that he would never have connected her with the faerie Queen of London had she not admitted it that day in Antony’s house. He even wondered briefly if it might be another; he knew well enough by now that the fae could adopt any faces they chose. But she offered him a grave nod when she entered, and he knew it was her.

Jack got rid of his patient as quickly as he could; the man had a cold, nothing more, which his fears had magnified into plague and spotted fever and the old sweating sickness, all at once. Then he offered the disguised Queen a bow. “I…didn’t expect to see you here.”

She smiled faintly at his restraint. “My apologies; I do not mean to discomfit you. We have not seen you in our halls, though, and I have a question I would put to you—before you grow too far from us, and convince yourself it was all a dream.”

Close to the mark; she was sharp, this elfin woman. He supposed she had unknown ages in which to practice. “Then please, come into the back. A poor enough place, compared with your home—”

Lune dismissed that with a wave of her gloved hand. “Hard as it may be to believe, Dr. Ellin, a hovel is as interesting to me, in its own way, as a palace. Both are reflections of humanity.”

And that, in turn, interested him. Jack showed her through into the back room, where a fire warmed the air, and offered her wine, which she accepted.

While he busied himself with such small tasks, Lune waited with the patient air of one who recognized nervous delay when she saw it. What question was pressing enough to send her into his home? Not until he was seated did she speak. “Tell me, Dr. Ellin—were you born in London?”

He blinked. “On Gracechurch Street. Is that what you came here to ask?”

She laughed quietly. He heard the faintest undercurrent of tension in it; was she nervous, too? Something had ruffled the faerie woman’s composure, beneath the mask of her mortal face. “No. But it’s a necessary prelude. As is this: how much do you know of Antony’s relation to my court?”

“Fragments,” Jack said honestly, and took a gulp of his wine while he considered. “I heard a few call him ‘the Prince.’ ” Though a man less like a faerie prince, he was hard-pressed to imagine. I suppose a Puritan would be less like.

“Prince of the Stone,” Lune said. “You will hear some call that the title of my mortal consort, but the…intimate relationship the word consort implies was no part of my dealings with Antony. I swore years ago to always rule the Onyx Court with a mortal at my side, and the Prince is the man who fills that role.”

Jack listened with a distracted ear; half his attention was taken up by the light this shed on Antony’s behavior, particularly with regards to Kate. Consort and yet not to a faerie Queen—no wonder he feared to confess it to his wife.

“If you wish it,” that selfsame faerie Queen said, “the title shall be yours.”

He blinked. Then blinked again. Then fought the urge to clean out his ear, as if its physical state could be blamed for what he’d just heard. “I beg your pardon?”

Lune met his gaze without flinching, though her hands were wrapped tight around the wine. “There has been no Prince since Antony’s death. Already some of my courtiers whisper that my vow was but a passing fancy, and that henceforth I will rule as our kind usually does—alone, or with a consort more fitting to my nature. Some would like it to be true. But I promised Antony before he died that I would do everything in my power to help London and its people, and I cannot do that without someone to speak for them.”

Words fled like startled cats when he reached for them; Jack became aware that he was gaping, and tried to stop. “So—” He trailed off, unsure where to begin. “You need a consort, and so you come to me.”

“I need a Prince, ” she said. “I do not offer it to you out of desperation; were you not suitable, I would search until I found another.”

“Suitable?” The word came out on an undignified laugh. “I’m no Prince. My unsavory habit of dabbling in surgery and other such matters even tarnishes my name as a gentleman. And I know nothing of your world.”

She smiled, with more than a touch of sadness. “Your predecessors learned. I have no doubt that you shall, too.”

Did she calculate that response for its effect on him, or speak it without thinking? Either way, its effect was undeniable. The strangeness of that world seemed so distant as he sat here, advising patients on their ills, but it haunted him again and again in dreams, and every morning he woke up with a head full of unanswered questions. Now Lune sat before him, offering the answers to them all—or at least the unfettered opportunity to ask them.