No. Lune snarled it away. This was her oath, and her burden. She could no more abandon mortal London to the Fire than she could leave her court to the Hag. If Jack was brave enough to face a Dragon, she must give him all possible aid.
She forced herself to think. The church was under attack; the Bridge itself would not long be safe. The stones could not burn, but houses and shops had crowded its length for centuries, choking the roadway with timber and plaster. And where people traveled, so too could the Fire: down the Bridge to the crowded suburb of Southwark. Then they would lose all hope of controlling its spread.
Her fingernails had dug deeply enough into her palms to cut. Lune pried them free, wincing, and said, “Find Dame Segraine. Tell her to call out every water nymph, every asrai and draca in this court, and marshal them at the Queenhithe entrance. If a fae can swim, send him out to fight. We must keep the Dragon from crossing the river.”
CANNON STREET, LONDON: eleven o’clock in the morning
Nearly a quarter mile of the riverfront was alight now, by Jack’s best estimate, the cheap weather-boarded tenements that crowded about the wharves going up like dry tinder. The conflagration had roared through Stockfishmonger Row, Churchyard Alley, Red Cross Alley; men stood in lines, slinging full buckets up from the river, empty ones back down, but they might as well have pissed on the blaze, for all the good it did. The city’s few fire-carts could not even make it into those warrens, nor close enough to the river to fill their tanks. The Clerkenwell engine had fallen in.
He sagged back against a shop on Cannon Street, breathing mercifully clean air. The road was filled wall-to-wall with carts and men on foot; what belongings could be evacuated had been brought here. The livery companies were rescuing records and plate from their company halls, while the poorer folk of the Coldharbour tenements ran with what they could carry on their backs, unable to afford the rising price of a wherry or cart.
Not everyone out there was a dockside laborer, though. One finely dressed gentleman, holding a kerchief over his nose to filter out the drifting smoke, stopped at Jack’s side. “Where is the Lord Mayor?”
Jack wiped his streaming eyes and straightened, taking advantage of his height to crane over the shouting masses. “I think I see him—here, let me lead you.”
The fellow kept hard at Jack’s heels, forcing between two stopped carts whose drivers swore uselessly at each other. Sir Thomas Bludworth, when they came upon him, was a wretched sight; the Lord Mayor of London mopped at his face with the kerchief around his neck, staring and lost, trying ineffectually to direct the men around him.
“My lord,” the gentleman said, loudly enough to get Bludworth’s attention, “I have carried word to his Majesty at Whitehall of the troubles here, and he bids me tell you to spare no houses, but to pull them down before the fire in every direction.”
It was the only thing that might work. They had no hope of quenching the flames; but if they could create wide enough breaks, too wide to leap, then they might at least contain it. Bludworth blinked, seeming not to understand the words, nor to recognize the man before him. “Samuel Pepys,” the gentleman said, in the tone of one reminding a fellow he has always thought an idiot. “My Lord Mayor, the King commands—”
Bludworth jerked, as if coming awake. “Lord,” he cried, “what can I do? I am spent. People will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses, but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.”
Pepys bowed—hiding, Jack thought, an unsympathetic expression. He then stepped closer to the Lord Mayor, so he need not cry his next news to the world. “His Majesty has given orders to send in his Life Guards, or perhaps some of the Coldstream; the Duke of York also, and Lord Arlington. You are to notify them at once if you need more soldiers, for the keeping of the peace, and carrying out the demolitions.”
“Oh, no, no,” Bludworth said immediately, flapping his hands. “I need no more soldiers, no, we have the Trained Bands—but for myself, I must go and refresh myself; I have been up all night.” Still babbling, he slipped away, leaving Pepys staring.
“He has not been pulling houses down,” Jack said in his wake. “He fears to do so, without the permission of the men who own them—and there’s no chance of getting that in time. But I’ll help you spread the word.” It should have begun hours ago. Before a simple fire turned into a God-damned Dragon.
Once, he would have been delighted for the chance to see a dragon, to observe its characteristics and perhaps learn something of its nature. Not anymore. The creature was destruction; that was all he cared to know. That, and how to stop it.
Pepys did not see the Dragon, no more than any man fighting the Fire did. They spoke of it as if it had a will, as if it hungered and schemed and sought to overcome their defenses, but they did not realize the truth of those words. Nevertheless, the gentleman had enough wit to see that decisive action was necessary. He gripped Jack’s hand in thanks. “There is a contingent of the Life Guards in Cornhill; will you go to them?”
Nodding, Jack gathered in his breath and set off as quickly as he could down a side lane. He did not get a dozen paces off Cannon Street, though, before a wild-eyed man grabbed him by the sleeve, with the hand not waving a rusted sword. “Arm yourself, man!”
“Arm myself? For what?”
“They’ve fired St. Laurence Pountney!”
“They?” His sword-bearing friend had other friends, pounding up behind him, all equally ill armed. Jack, carrying only an eating-knife, began to think about losing himself once more in the Cannon masses.
One of the men said, “The papists, of course! Thousands of them! French papists are firing houses and churches—one of them threw a fire-ball into the steeple of St. Laurence!”
The last thing Jack felt like doing was laughing, but he made his best effort at light derision. “A good arm he must have, then; it’s one of the tallest steeples in town. I saw the church go, my friends; it was nothing more than a spark, that melted through the leading into the timber underneath.” A spark flung with intent. But not by anything human, nor anything their swords could touch.
“But the papists—”
“There are no papists. All you’ll find here are men throwing themselves, body and soul, into stopping the Fire.” Men, and fae; Christ, he was supposed to be waiting in Cannon Street for Irrith to find him, with word on the efforts of the river fae. He fought the urge to shake the clowns facing him. “If you want to be of use, put down those weapons, and go fetch a fire-hook from your parish church. The King has given orders; the houses are to be pulled down.”
They stared. Jack was no commander of men, but he had used his last ounce of patience, and the raw force left behind sufficed. “Go!”
They went.
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: noon
At Jack’s renewed touch, the worst of the Cailleach’s chill receded, leaving Lune drained and shaking. Sun and Moon. This, then, is the consequence of being connected to one’s realm; I suffer as it does. And worse than my subjects do.
“The King is at Queenhithe,” he said, once she had caught her breath, “with the Duke of York, to give heart to the people. They hope to stop the Fire at Three Cranes Wharf in the west, and St. Botolph’s Wharf in the east. There’s great fear that it will reach the Tower, and the munitions stored there.”
The mere thought chilled her as badly as the wind. No doubt the work of emptying the Tower had already begun, but how long would it take to clear the fortress of all its powder? Such an explosion could destroy the City.
Jack was white underneath the filth that marred his face, and he had long since stripped to his linen shirt against the heat of the Fire; now he shivered madly, despite the cloak that wrapped him. “The wind is checking the spread eastward, of course, but that’s not much blessing, for it also feeds the flames west. Our efforts slow the Fire’s progress, but don’t stop it. When we made a gap, we were driven back before we could clear the debris. We might as well have laid a path for the damned thing. If—”
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He hesitated, looking down at her, then completed the thought. “If we did not have to contend with the wind, we might stand a chance.”
She had all morning to think of that. A wind did not have a wellspring, not as a river did; the Cailleach was not crouched outside the eastern wall, puffing away at London. But Lune had tried another method of stopping her. “I sent a messenger, asking for a brief truce,” she said. “Nicneven’s quarrel is with me and my court, not the mortals of London.”
“And?”
Jack read the answer in her eyes, sparing her from having to say it. He gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and said, “She doesn’t care.”
Or at least her commander here did not. There was an encampment of Scottish fae somewhere outside the City, awaiting their chance to attack. Once the court was weakened enough, or fled, they would move in and claim what they had come for.
As if he could read her thoughts, Jack said, “Why not give it to her?”
Lune turned away, wrapping her own cloak more tightly. “No. I am not giving Nicneven Ifarren Vidar.”
Faint noises told her Jack started and stopped three replies before he spoke clearly. “So you’ve said, and I’m sure you have your reasons—and perhaps when we have a little leisure, you’ll see fit to share them with me. But Lune...what will that mean for London?”
The Fire still scorched her mind, spreading ever outward. The City had not seen a disaster this great in ages, and it showed no sign of ending. But the true problem was not Nicneven and the Cailleach Bheur, not for the people above; for them, the Cailleach’s breath was mere wind. The problem was the Dragon, the elemental, ravening force that devoured all in its path. That was what they must strike at.
But what power could stand against it, with half the riverside its domain?
The river.
“Come with me,” Lune said, and swept from the room without looking to see if Jack would follow.
The Onyx Hall seemed half-empty; some of her people had fled, even without protection. Others cowered in futile defense against the wind. Nianna staggered through a crossing ahead of Lune, tearing her hair out in clumps; they withered to gray in her hands, and the lady whimpered in horror. Lune seized her and snapped, “Go above. Do not worry about bread. Come below again when the bells drive you, but Sun and Moon, get yourself out of here.”
Nianna stared; Lune was not sure the lady even heard her. But she could not spare the time to make certain. She went on through her half-deserted palace, seeking out an entrance she never used.
Water lapped at the stone in a neat square, in a chamber otherwise unadorned. This was not a part of the Onyx Hall anyone dwelt in, and few of her subjects came here; its use was small for anyone not born of water. But it was the one place in her entire realm where the palace connected directly to the Thames, through the tiny harbor of Queenhithe.
Lune knelt at the water’s edge, and beckoned for Jack to do the same. “The King is very nearly above your head,” he told her, craning his neck.
“It is not the King I seek to contact. We need Father Thames.”
He blinked. When she did not tell him it was a jest, his jaw came loose. “You talk to the river?”
“On occasion.” Once. Ages ago. Father Thames little concerned himself with the politics of the Onyx Hall. Even those fae who were his children almost never heard his voice. One of the nymphs told Lune she thought the great river spirit slept, borne down by the weight of the city upon his shores.
If ever there was a time for him to wake, it had come.
Lune extended her left hand to Jack, who was still gaping. “He may answer us, if we call him together.” Or he may not. She had not the leisure for the sort of ritual she had engaged in before. But she was tied to London, and Jack with her; she hoped that would count for something. The river had answered to mortal and faerie voices before.
“I have no idea how to do this,” he warned her as he took her hand.
“Simply call him,” she said, reaching their joined fingers down into the water. “Bid him wake, and fight the Dragon who roars along his bank. Else it will cross to Southwark ere long, and consume more of London besides. A Great Fire has been born in our City; only a Great River may quench it.”
Her words were spoken as much to the water as to the Prince. His eyes had drifted shut, listening to the cadence; when she faltered, he continued on, in his own less than formal way. “We hope you do not mind the, er, theft of your waters—I’m sure you understand the need. But however many buckets we throw, they are not enough; we need you. Help your children against this threat.”
Lune’s left hand was chilled to the bone, but not from the Cailleach’s wind. Gripped hard by Jack, she was for the moment safe from that attack; what she felt instead was an immensity, stretching from the headwaters far west to the sea far east, washing to and fro in the tides of the moon. Old Father Thames was, ages before London was dreamt, and would be long after they were gone. Measured against him, even fae were young.
And that great, aged immensity slept, letting the years ebb away unmarked.
“Wake,” she whispered—or Jack did, or both of them, with one voice. “Wake, Old Father, to battle.”
RIVER THAMES, LONDON: one o’clock in the afternoon
From Southwark, the City seemed a wall of fire and smoke, choking clouds obscuring the forest of steeples, the parts as yet unburnt. Half the northern bank was consumed, and despite the frantic efforts of men, the blaze marched down the Bridge, a phalanx of flame no defenses could halt.
The Bridge had burned scarce thirty years before, its northern end consumed, the remainder saved only by a gap in the houses too wide for the sparks to cross. Now the Fire stood once more at that breach, straining to overleap it, to seek out and ravage the untouched expanses of Southwark. Smoke wreathed the severed heads of traitors and regicides that spiked the southern end, like fingers feeling for a hold.
With a shuddering crack, one towering, tottering building collapsed, half its substance tumbling into the roadway of the Bridge, a hellish tunnel no creature could traverse. The other half plummeted into the flood, hissing where it met the waters, smoking debris joining the clutter already floating there, the belongings hurled into the water by those unable to transport them more safely. The wreckage of London would be washing ashore downriver for days to come.
An asrai surfaced, having thrown herself frantically clear when the timbers came crashing down. The river to either side of the Bridge was choked with wherries and barges, carrying people and their goods to Westminster or across to Southwark, but all focus was on the City; no one attended to the lithe shapes slipping through the murk, lending their aid where they could. If droplets of water occasionally arced skyward, snuffing embers as they floated through the air, it was hardly worth noticing, when horror so great demanded the eye.
But these little children of the river could not stand against the beast that now gathered its strength in the raging inferno of the Bridge. The Dragon was all the Fire, from the leaping sparks of Three Cranes Wharf to the tongues licking stubbornly eastward against the wind, but its malevolence was here, preparing to conquer the defenses of London Bridge, and claim a second victim to the south.
Beneath its glare, amidst the turbulent waters of the races, another power gathered.
Had anyone been able to approach the northernmost arches, they would have seen a true wonder. A face formed in the flood’s high tide, shifting and gray. One pier hollowed out its mouth, thrusting down into the soft river mud; its eyes were two whirlpools, on either side of the span. Debris vanished beneath it, leaving the features focused and clear.
A voice too deep to hear said, “Come to me, my children.”
And the fae of the river responded. Leaping, wriggling, slipping like quicksilver through the wherries and the wreckage, they came from upstream and down, flocking like a ragged school of fish to the call of their Old Father. Around his face they swam, in and out of the piers of the Bridge, flic
king up against the wooden starlings that protected the stone, sending spray into the air.
It hissed angrily into steam as it met the Fire’s heat. No mere water could stop the Dragon. But the true battle, though invisible to the eye, was far more striking, and the children of the Thames felt it in their souls. They were their Father, as leaves are the tree that gives them forth, and in them was his strength. He hoarded it now, and sent it upward against their enemy.
Fire and water. Dry heat against cold wetness, alchemical and elemental opposites. The air shimmered and split where they met. The stones of the Bridge shifted in their ancient seats, expanding and contracting, losing stability under the strain—but they held. London Bridge was not so fragile a thing.
The Dragon roared, flames leaping into the sky. Silently, inexorably, Father Thames answered it. Their strength was matched, here in this place, and the river spoke forth its will, that the Fire could not deny. Here you will not pass.
Snarling, its fury balked, the Dragon retreated. Still the houses blazed, sending their ruins tumbling down, but the gap itself held, blocking the passage of the sparks. The rest of the Bridge, and Southwark that it defended, were safe.
Exhausted, his power spent, Father Thames sank back. The waters recoiled from the northern shore, leaving mud to be baked dry by the rage of the Fire. Men bailed them frantically upwards, filling barrels and tanks to be carried closer in, that the battle might continue.
The Fire could not pass the river—but north lay all the City, that Father Thames could not defend.