Marie Brennan - Deeds of Men

“What are you?” Antony asked. “She called you the Prince. That…Queen did.”

“Her mortal consort,” Deven answered him. “I am her love, and she is mine, but no man can inherit that bond. What I mean to pass on is my role in her court. Lune assists mankind where and as she can—particularly as it concerns politics—but she needs one of us to advise her how best to do that. And I will not be with her forever. I was educating Henry to follow me.”

“Henry!” It was a startled exclamation, all the more jarring because it seemed to come from the young man himself, ghost-pale in the dim light. “Since when did he care for such matters?”

Deven’s reply was soft with sorrow. “Since he came among us.”

Antony, it seemed, had no answer to that, for they waited in silence until a scratch came at the door.

Opening it, Deven found a figure outside, twig-like and scarcely larger than his hand, with bat-wings of mere gossamer. “He approaches?” Deven asked, and the creature nodded, before taking off into the air.

Antony rose with the ease of the young. Already they heard footsteps. Deven gestured for the young man to conceal himself to one side of the entrance into the Vault of Birds, then stepped back into his own hidden chamber, leaving the door cracked the merest sliver, and the light inside extinguished.

The footsteps passed him and then paused. And then came a voice that nearly stopped Deven’s heart.

“Well, young master! Not entirely dead after all, I see.”

A chilling rasp, not the sibilant elegance of Valentin Aspell. A voice Deven feared, and Antony did not—because he knew almost nothing of the fae, and did not know the creature he had accosted was not their target, but a fetch.

As Deven fought with himself, whether to stay hidden or to leap out in Antony’s defence, the fetch went on. “Did you learn—” But then more footsteps echoed down the passage, and the words cut off. A whisper, almost too quiet to hear: “ This way. ”

Clenching his hands, swallowing down the curses he wanted to spit, Deven stayed where he was. The newcomer approached his hiding spot. The instant he was past, Deven slipped out, and saw Valentin Aspell crossing the Vault of Birds, a minion in tow. Antony was nowhere in sight.

They could not have gone down the passage, not with Aspell there. With a silent prayer, Deven chose a direction at random, dodging into the forest of columns that filled the soaring chamber. If Antony Ware died of this—

He rounded a thick pillar and found himself face-to-face with the fetch.

“Why, my lord Prince,” Nithen said, and gave him an ironic bow. “I didn’t think you would be behind this game. Did you think a glamour would fool me long—me, when I call death a personal friend?”

Behind him stood a sheepish Antony. No fear in his eyes; he did not understand Nithen’s words. “The ruse was not intended for you,” Deven told the fetch.

“Ah—for the one behind me, I’m guessing.” Nithen’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Who’s your friend, then? I’d like to see his face.”

“You shall not.” Now Henry’s face protected Antony. Surely it would not be an omen of death, if the fetch took on the appearance of a young man already gone. Deven said, “Those words you spoke, before you fled. You know something of Henry Ware’s death.”

Nithen bowed again, fawning. “Not I , my lord. My hand to my heart—I bore no such omen to him.”

Now Antony was beginning to understand. He backed a step away. “I am not accusing you of murder,” Deven said, leaving open the possibility that he might accuse Nithen of other crimes. “But what of the days before Henry’s death? ’Did you learn’—what might he have learned?”

The fetch squirmed, not meeting his eyes. “Oh, a great many things, my lord—he was a curious young man, seeking knowledge here, in Westminster—”

“—and in Coldharbour? If you prefer, we can go before her Grace, and she will compel you to tell me what you know.” Deven folded his arms. “Or we can do it without troubling her.”

No courtier, mortal or fae, wanted that sort of attention from his sovereign. Nithen sighed. “He bade me follow a man one night. Went to a house in Coldharbour, the fellow did, and that’s all I know—save that young Ware wanted to know what he was about. Which I couldn’t tell him.”

Antony gave a minute shake of his head; it meant nothing to him, either. “Who was the man?” Deven asked.

The fetch shrugged. “Some mortal. Well-dressed, neither old nor young. I don’t attend much to who they are, unless death walks at their heels.”

A mortal. Nithen would know had it been any of the favourites at court, and Deven did not think he was lying. Some stranger—but not to Henry.

“Which house?” Antony asked.

Nithen snorted. “They don’t have signs down among the tenements, Master Wearing-Another’s-Face. Go west three alleys from where they found his corpse, face the end, last house on your left. There was a dead dog on the front step when I was there, but I expect someone’s eaten that by now.”

Coldharbour. They had missed confronting Aspell…but this would gain them more than any number of ghostly ambushes, for it could tell them what Henry had been doing above.

A single glance at Antony told Deven which course the young man favoured.

“Very well,” he said to Nithen. “If you tell anyone of this—”

Nithen gave him an ingratiating bow. “Say no more, milord. I shall be silent as the grave.” Grinning at his own jest, the fetch departed.

Antony twitched like a man desperate to be rid of an uncomfortable garment. “Get this enchantment off me, and show me the way back above.”

Whitehall Palace, Westminster: 1 March, 1624

“God’s blood!” Henry exploded, hurling his unlit pipe to the floor. “How can the King think of it? How can he listen to more promises from the Spanish? After that farce in Madrid last year, all the reports from the Prince and the duke about the duplicity of the Spanish—”

Deven answered him in a single word. “Peace.”

“The whole point of the Spanish match was to gain us help for war in the Palatinate!”

Perhaps more than a single word was needed, after all. “Peace with Spain . Whom James views in a friendly light, as he has always been wont to do.”

Henry opened his mouth to reply, but stopped himself. The young man was learning to chart the winds of these storms; what he still struggled with was remembering to do so before he gave his mouth free rein. Deven waited, patiently, not prompting him with any clues. How much had Henry learned?

“The Commons,” the young man said at last. “James had to call a Parliament if he were to have any coin at all for war, in the Palatinate or otherwise—but the Commons would rather see us fight Catholic Spain. A war of religion, against an old enemy.”

“Whereas James,” Deven finished for him, “wants only to restore the Elector Palatine to his dominion in the Germanies—mostly for the sake of his daughter. Were she not wed to the Elector, this would be a much smaller matter.”

“But Buckingham is on the side of the Commons, is he not? Against Spain.”

“Not quite.” Deven kept sparse quarters here in Whitehall Palace, liking his ability to claim a room, but not often bothering to occupy it. The furnishings, however, did include a chess board. He fought the urge to place a piece in front of Henry and ask him to list the players in the question of Charles’ marriage, and the Palatine war. “Buckingham sees, not states, but something else. The Habsburgs.”