Marie Brennan - Midnight Never Come

“Will you not try?” Lune whispered.

With her eyes fixed on him, she saw the change. Some thought came to him, awakening all the curiosity of his formidable mind. The expression that flickered at the edge of his mouth was not quite a smile, but it held some hope in it. “Yes,” Dee said. “We will try.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: May 8, 1590

Thirst was the greatest threat.

Deven tried to distract himself. The room, he came to realize, was Invidiana’s presence chamber. Larger by far than Elizabeth’s, it had an alien grandeur a mortal queen could only dream of, for in this place, fancies of architecture could truly take flight. The pillars and ribs that supported the arching ceiling were no more than a decoration born from some medieval fever dream; they were not needed for strength. The spaces between them were filled with filigree and panes of crystal, suspended like so many fragile swords of Damocles.

Beneath and among these structures wandered fae whom he presumed to be the favored courtiers of this Queen. They were a dizzying lot: some human-looking, others supernaturally fair, others bestial, and clad in finery that was to mortal courtiers’ garb as the chamber was to mortal space. They all watched him, but none came near him; clearly word had gone around that he was not to be touched. How much did they know of who he was, and why he was there?

Lacking an answer to that question, Deven decided to test his boundaries. He tried to speak to others; they shied away. He followed them around, eavesdropping on their conversations; they fell silent when he drew near, or forwent the benefit of being so near the Queen and left the chamber entirely. The fragments he overheard were meaningless to him anyway.

He spoke of God to them, and they flinched, while Invidiana looked on in malicious amusement.

She was less amused when he decided to push harder.

Deven took up a position in the center of the chamber, facing the throne, and crossed himself. Swallowing against the dryness of his mouth, he began to recite.

“Our father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.”

The chamber was half-empty before he finished; most of those who remained were bent over or sagged against the walls, looking sick. Only a few remained untouched; those, he surmised, had eaten of mortal food recently. But even they did not look happy.

Nor did Invidiana. She, for the first time, was angry.

He tried again, this time in a different vein, dredging up faded memories of prayers heard from prisoners and recusants. “Pater noster, qui es in caelis: sanctificetur Nomen Tuum…”

This time even he felt its force. The hall trembled around him; its splendor dimmed, as if he could see through the marble and onyx and crystal to plain rock and wood and dirt, and all the fae stood clad in rags.

Then something slammed into him from behind, knocking him to the floor and driving all breath from him. His Catholic prayer ended in a grunt. A voice spoke above him, one he knew too well, even though he had heard scarcely a dozen words from it. “Should I cut out his tongue?” Achilles asked.

“No.” If the Latin form had shaken Invidiana, she gave no sign. “We may yet need him to speak. But stop his mouth, so he may utter no more blasphemies.”

A wad of fabric was shoved into Deven’s mouth and bound into place. His thirst increased instantly as every remaining bit of moisture went into the cloth.

But his mind was hardly on that. Instead he was thinking of what he had seen, in that instant before Achilles took him down.

Invidiana’s throne sat beneath a canopy of estate, against the far wall. Under the force of his prayer, it seemed for a moment that it masked an opening, and that something lay in the recess behind it.

What use he could make of that knowledge, he did not know. But with his voice taken away, knowledge was his only remaining weapon.

MORTLAKE, SURREY: May 8, 1590

“You are mad,” Lune said.

“Perhaps.” Dee seemed undisturbed by the possibility; no doubt he had been accused of it often enough. “But children are ideal for scrying; children, and those who suffer some affliction of the mind. Kelley was an unstable man — well, perhaps that is no recommendation, if in truth he did naught but deceive me. Nonetheless. The best scryers are those whose minds are not too shackled by notions of possibility and impossibility.”

“You yourself, then.”

He shook his head. “I am too old, too settled in my ways. My son has shown no aptitude for it, and we have no time to find another.”

Lune took a slow breath, as if it would banish her feeling that all this had taken a wrong turn somewhere. “But if you question whether you have ever spoken with an angel before, what under the sun and moon makes you believe one will answer to a faerie ?”

They were in his most private workroom, with strict orders to his surprisingly large family that under no circumstances were they to be disturbed. Lune hoped it would be so; at Dee’s command, she had eaten no food of any kind since the previous day — which meant no mortal bread.

He knew quite well what that meant, for she had told him. At great length, when she began to understand what he had in mind. And that was before he voiced his decision to use her as his scryer.

The philosopher shook his head again. “You misunderstand the operation of this work. Though you will be a part of it, certainly, your role will be to perceive, and to tell me what you see and hear. The calling is mine to perform. I have been in fasting and prayer these three days, for I intended to try again with my son; I have purified myself, so that I might be fit for such action. The angel — if indeed one comes — will come at my call.”

Now she understood the fasting. But prayer? “I have not made such thorough preparations.”

The reminder dimmed his enthusiasm. “Indeed. And if this fails, then we will try again, three days from now. But you believe time to be of the essence.”

Invidiana had the patience of a spider; she would wait three years if it served her purpose. But the longer Deven remained in the Onyx Hall, the greater the likelihood that the Queen would kill him — or worse.

Worse could take many forms. Some of them were the mirror image of what Lune risked now. Baptism destroyed a fae spirit, rendering it no more than mortal henceforth. Dee had not suggested that rite, but who knew what effect this “angelic action” would have?

That frightened her more than anything. Fae could be slain; they warred directly with one another so rarely because children were even more rare. But death could happen. Nor did anyone know what if anything lay beyond it, though faerie philosophers debated the question even as their human counterparts did. The uncertainty frightened Lune less than the certainty of human transformation. ’Twas one thing to draw close to them, to bask in the warmth of their mortal light. To be one…

She had already made her choice. She could not unmake it now.

Lune said, “Then tell me what I must do.”

Dee took her by the hand and led her into a tiny chapel that adjoined his workroom. “Kneel with me,” he said, “and pray.”

Her exposed faerie nature felt terrifyingly vulnerable. With mortal bread shielding her, she could mouth words of piety like any human. But now?

He offered her a kindly smile. If her alien appearance disturbed him, he had long since ceased to show it. “You need not fear. Disregard the words you have heard others say — Catholic and Protestant alike. The Almighty hears the sentiment, not the form.”