Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

An unfortunate few see more than that.

On the heights around the cathedral, where the ashes of the books still blow, little tongues of flame race along the ground.

They seek one another, blending together like droplets of water, merging into a greater whole. Salamanders crawl atop each other, the larger consuming the smaller, and growing ever more, until a coiling body takes shape, crusted with black cinders like scales, that crack to reveal the fiery flesh beneath.

It is legion, and too powerful to be slain so simply. Calling all its children from across the City, the Dragon lifts its head from the ashes, and scents its prey once more.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: one o’clock in the morning

Armored in the fine clothes he’d worn for his creation as Prince of the Stone, Jack Ellin went forth to do battle.

Only now, when the breath of the Cailleach Bheur had subsided at last, did he realize how much the Blue Hag’s touch had worn on him, too. Even if age and the slow decay of flesh were natural to his kind, no one liked to be reminded for days on end of how he would, in time, fall to dust. Free now of that ominous whisper, he felt a tiny surge of life infusing his weary limbs. Enough, he hoped, to see him through this confrontation with the Gyre-Carling.

And before that, a confrontation with Lune.

He found her still dressing in her wardrobe. Her ladies fussed around her, smoothing the fashionably wide neckline of her gown, kneeling to place silver shoes on her feet. Two miniature sprites hovered in the air, tucking the scorched ends of her hair out of sight, until her coiffure gleamed like polished metal under the faerie lights of the chamber. The melting frost on the walls steamed in the warmer air.

“Good, you are prepared,” Lune said when she saw him. Nianna dabbed color on her lips between phrases, trying and failing to conceal her vexation with the Queen’s insistence on speaking. “Nicneven should be at Aldgate soon.”

“What should I expect of her?”

She gave a tiny shrug, so as not to interfere with Carline sliding an earring into her lobe. “As much as a mouse might. You are beneath her notice. I would say to make her acknowledge you if you can, but tonight of all nights, we might be better served not to annoy her.”

If saving what remained of London meant lying down on the presence chamber floor and letting Nicneven walk over his face, he would do it. But Jack had something of far greater use in mind. “Allow me,” he said, claiming Lune’s rings from Amadea without waiting for the chamberlain to respond. “I would speak with her Majesty alone.”

Amadea raised her eyebrows at him again; he wondered if Antony had not claimed private audiences so much. Perhaps the old Prince had not minded public confrontations.

The ladies curtsied and took their leave. When the door closed, Jack came forward and began sliding the rings onto Lune’s fingers. She had the bones of a bird, and her skin was cool to the touch. “Do you intend to give her Vidar?” he asked.

“No.”

“Why?”

Her fingers curled around his. Jack met the silver gaze squarely, rings clutched in his free hand. Lune stared at him for a moment, then shook her head, curls dancing. “I have not the time to explain.”

“You have time for nothing else. This is the thread upon which your kingdom hangs, Lune. Your people cannot endure more of the Cailleach’s assault—and why should they? For the sake of a creature I know to be your enemy?”

The point edging her sleeve shivered briefly; then she pulled free of his grasp. “Not for his sake,” Lune said. “For the sake of the Onyx Hall.”

Now it was Jack’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “The same Onyx Hall that twice almost became a Dragon’s meal? This is how you protect it?”

Lune winced. “I never anticipated that. Had it been just the Cailleach…”

“Then London would not have burnt. But it has, and the Onyx Hall very nearly joined it. So tell me, Lune, just how you are protecting anything by protecting Ifarren Vidar.”

She bowed her head, half-ringed hand closing over the gloved one. “Because that is how faerie sovereignty works,” she said, weary and flat. “I cannot bend to Nicneven’s will and still be Queen. If she had threatened something other than my realm, perhaps. If she had threatened me. But the Onyx Hall is the lever she would use to move me. And if I succumb, then I acknowledge her power over it. I admit that she could destroy it, and give in to prevent that. Which means I surrender it to her.”

Lune lifted her gaze at last, and he saw to his great shock that tears rimmed the lids of her eyes. I did not think she could weep. “She would obliterate this place. But resistance, it seems, will bring about the same end.”

Some day, when the two of them sat at peace before a comfortable fire, Jack would question her more; Lune’s explanation opened up a wealth of ideas he had never considered before. But he wanted that comfortable fire to be inside the Onyx Hall, and that meant finding a way out of this trap.

“Let me do it,” he said, with sudden inspiration. “Let me give her Vidar. Then you acknowledge nothing—it is all my doing!” And if it cost him his title, so be it. He didn’t mind, so long as he could still come among the fae.

But Lune flinched again, as she had done when he suggested sending knives after Nicneven. “No! She would kill him.”

Jack spread his hands in bafflement. “He’s a condemned traitor, Lune! From what I gather, you were about to sentence him to death yourself, before you decided it was somehow more merciful to stick him in an iron box for all eternity. You would not kill him then; you will not kill him now. Why ?”

Lune turned her back on him—to conceal, Jack thought, the emotions she was too weary to hide behind her accustomed mask. The long, stiff line of her bodice kept her back straight; above it, her shoulders were rigid with unspoken tension. “You have heard of Invidiana?”

“Some, yes.”

“She did not hesitate to kill any she could not use. Any who threatened the security of her power. Killing Vidar…” Lune’s breath wavered when she released it. “He said it to me himself, during his trial. It is what she would have done.”

Jack’s lips parted, but no words came out. He blinked several times, trying to encompass what she said, trying to find some response that would not send her out of the room in a rage. Finally he bowed his head, tucking the forgotten rings into his pocket, lest he drop them. “Let me see if I understand. We have here a fellow who has been traitorous to every sovereign he ever served. He betrayed Invidiana to her enemies and sold Nicneven to the Irish; in fact, he will sell anyone to anybody if it might gain him power. He confessed his guilt during his trial. Your own people want him dead. And you can buy peace for your entire realm simply by letting Nicneven carry out the sentence you intended to deliver—had he not said the one thing that would convince you it was wrong. But because he said it, you will not do what you should.”

Lune stiffened even further. “Invidiana—”

“Is gone! Will you let her shadow dictate your choices?” Jack buried his hands in his hair, and realized too late he had just destroyed Lewan Erle’s careful arrangement. To Hell with elegance. “Are you Lune, or merely not Invidiana?”

She spun to face him, eyes wide. But what answer she would have given, Jack never learned, because at that moment Valentin Aspell bowed himself into the room. He could have strangled the Lord Keeper.