Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

A slight tightening of Cerenel’s lips, maddeningly unreadable. “I had heard that Lord Antony died. Please allow me to offer the compliments of my condolence for your loss.”

His condolence; not theirs. So Nicneven had not been replaced by some soft-hearted human changeling. Oddly, Lune found it reassuring. She made the expected reply to his words, and indicated subtly to Jack that he should do the same; the physician exchanged empty courtesies with the knight, while Lune tried to glean any further clues from Cerenel’s manner. He dressed as a Scot again, but that might not mean much.

Or it might mean a great deal. Why was he, of all fae, Nicneven’s ambassador?

Cerenel at least did not keep her wondering long. “Madam,” he said, “my lord—I have been sent hither to bear you a message from my Queen.”

The phrase stung, even though she expected it. Nicneven is his Queen now. “We are pleased to receive it,” Lune said, and waited.

“She bid me say this: that although there has been much strife between your two realms, she will lay that aside and offer you peace, in simple exchange for the person of Ifarren Vidar.”

Not a demand. An offer. Trade. Jack was alive with curiosity; he knew Vidar’s name, but not all the tortuous details of that war. The man’s thirst for knowledge never ended, but now was not the time to sate it. Lune said to Cerenel, “You understand the cynical response this occasions, I trust. Nicneven’s hatred preceded Vidar’s arrival at her court. Why should she relinquish it now?”

A faint smile ghosted across Cerenel’s lips. “If I may speak plainly, madam—this very matter is why I begged her Majesty to send me as her emissary. I understand your suspicion. But the Gyre-Carling is a creature of passions, not politics. Her hatred was born the day the mortal Queen of Scots died, manipulated onto the scaffold in part by the machinations of this court. But Charles Stuart is dead as well, and her revenge complete; what cares she any longer for such matters? Her hatred now is reserved for another.”

“Ifarren Vidar.”

“He betrayed her, and she does not forgive that lightly. At his urging, she surrendered the Sword of Nuada to the Irish, believing they would help her destroy this place. And in the taking and retaking of the Onyx Hall, she lost warriors—fae she cared for, as any Queen must.”

The bitterness Lune might have expected in that last touch was not there. She found, to her surprise, that she sincerely wanted to lay aside this embassy, and speak to Cerenel in his own right. Perhaps they could mend the breach she had created. But Nicneven could not be laid aside, and so Lune answered his point. “I have no doubt of her hatred for Ifarren Vidar. But the substance of the Gyre-Carling’s words to me have not changed, have they? She may couch it in terms of offered peace, but that is simply the other face of the original coin. If I do not give her the traitor, then it is war between us once more, and the threatened destruction of the Onyx Hall.”

Reluctantly, Cerenel nodded.

“Then my answer is unchanged,” Lune said. “I have sentenced Vidar to eternal imprisonment, and there he shall stay.”

She could sense Jack’s uncertainty; no doubt Cerenel could, as well. Her new Prince did not yet understand these matters, for all he learned as quickly as he could. This was a poor time for him to come among them, as it would have been for any man. Cerenel’s reaction was the one that surprised her: disappointment, and worry. Even fear? He came because he wanted this to succeed, and trusted no other with it. And now he has failed.

“Madam,” Cerenel said, going unexpectedly to one knee, “I do not wish to bear you these words, but my Queen’s instructions were clear. I am to tell you that the Gyre-Carling will have him, by one means or another.”

The threat had never been so deeply concealed, after all. “Has she more soldiers, then?” Lune asked, with contemptuous bravado. “What other treasures has she sold to the Irish, for their aid? It does not matter. The Onyx Hall rose to fight them once before, and it can do so again. Let her waste their lives, if she will.”

“Not soldiers, madam.” Cerenel’s fingers whitened against the carpet, and desperation laced his voice. “She has another ally—one you cannot fight. Even now she comes. Give over Vidar, and your realm will be left unharmed. Remain obstinate, and all will suffer, from you down to your humblest subject.”

She could not begin to imagine what he meant, but neither would she ask. Cerenel could not be allowed to know it troubled her. Jack was already showing too much, gaze flicking between the kneeling ambassador and the Queen at his side, hands curling on the arms of his chair. But Lune felt the weight of the Onyx Hall upon her shoulders, the mantle of her sovereignty, and knew herself at the precipice. Whatever ally Nicneven had found, Lune could not acknowledge it as her superior, as a force that held power over her realm.

If only Nicneven had not threatened, she thought with grim resignation. If I could make this decision on some ground other than coercion.

But even then, no. She remembered Vidar’s words: It is what Invidiana would have done. She would not let the Gyre-Carling kill him, just to protect her own power.

Lune rose to her feet, towering over Cerenel; a belated instant later, Jack mirrored her, following the gesture she made behind her back. “We do not fear the Gyre-Carling or her minions,” Lune said, pronouncing it with razor clarity. “Return that message to her. Tell her Vidar shall stay imprisoned until it is our pleasure to release him. Tell her that if our presence here, our dealings with mortals, trouble her so greatly, then we invite her to retire from this world into the deep reaches of Faerie, where she need not concern herself with such matters. No threat from her shall shift us from our course.”

Bleak with disappointment, but fighting not to show it, Cerenel bowed his head, rose, and backed from the chamber, leaving Lune and Jack Ellin alone.

“What—” the Prince said, after a moment of staring silence.

“Another time,” Lune cut him off, sinking exhausted into her chair and rubbing her brow with one hand. There must be some way to end this threat, without sacrificing myself and the Onyx Hall to the Gyre-Carling of Fife. “There is more you should hear, but I have not the will for it now. Please.”

He hovered for a moment, obviously frustrated by all he wanted to ask, but finally he nodded. “As you wish.” Then he, too, left her, and Lune sagged wearily in her chair, listening to the shadowed silence of her home.

She thought at first she imagined it—the stir of a curl against her cheek. Then it came again, for longer this time, bringing with it a chilling whisper of age and death.

Wind, in the unmoving air of the Onyx Hall.

The City still burns.

The wind has fallen to deathly calm, but in its absence the flames do not simply wink out. Yet at Temple Bar, and Holborn Bridge, and all about the fringes of London, men bend their backs with renewed will, determined to overmaster at last the beast that has driven them so far.

Gunpowder still shatters the air with its detonations, clearing space the sparks, robbed of their ally the wind, cannot leap. Though at Cripplegate the battle yet rages in strength—led by the Lord Mayor, eager to redeem his earlier ignominy—much of the leveled ground now lies smoking, such that when daybreak comes men will walk across its embers, and see what they have lost.