Through his own coughing he heard other voices. They were not alone. As his streaming eyes cleared, though, he saw that no one could get past the Dragon’s lashing tail; he and Lune were the sole prey for its claws and teeth. Lucky us.
His back hit some fragment of wall, and Jack reached for a hold that could help him to his feet. But before he found anything, his body locked in new paralysis.
Above him, the seething face of the Dragon rose.
It was a horror beyond fire, beyond plague, beyond war. Those did not have eyes that transfixed a man, that blazed down upon him and hungered for the power his flesh bore. Jack could not breathe; his lungs convulsed, unable to draw air past the constriction in his throat.
Then came a scream unlike any he had heard. Lune—the elegant faerie Queen of the Onyx Court, the silver statue who played politics like chess but knew nothing of battle—had the staff in her hands once more, and she swung it full-armed at the Dragon, fury taking the place of skill. “I shall not lose two!”
The Dragon hissed when the staff struck its leg, not from its throat, but from the steaming flesh itself. The Cailleach’s winter chill blackened the surface and stiffened the joint. But it didn’t slow the beast’s other limbs; the undamaged claw slapped Lune down, sending her sprawling across the ground, before seizing her once more in an unbreakable grip.
The staff, knocked from her hands, skidded within Jack’s reach.
For one horrific instant, his arms would not move. They refused, knowing the pain that awaited them. But Lune screamed from above, and it turned out that loyalty trumped self-preservation.
Clenching his jaw so hard a tooth split, he grabbed the staff of the Cailleach Bheur.
I know how I will die.
Roaring, Jack thrust the end of the staff at the underbelly of the Dragon, at the place where the heart might be if this were an ordinary creature. The impact made no mark on his numb, insensate hands, but the force traveled through his arms and into his spine, staggering him back a step.
And this time the Dragon screamed.
A crack opened through the chest and belly of the Dragon, like stone contracting beneath a harder frost than the world had ever known. At the very root of that fissure burned a tiny sun, light and heat beyond the ability of the human eye to bear. The Dragon’s heart was there for the taking—but it would annihilate mortal flesh at a touch.
He had seen his death twice, and this was not it.
A shadow eclipsed that terrible light. Lune plunged her left hand into the fissure, sinking her arm in up to the shoulder, and when she pulled out again, the sun was in her hand.
The box!
Jack dove into the ashes. He felt but didn’t hear his body strike the ground; he couldn’t tell whether all the world had gone to clamor or silence, in the dreadful inaudible sound of the Dragon’s agonized bellow. The box, where is the box—Lune will have no hand left at all—
His fingers stubbed themselves against the iron, then found a corner and pulled.
More ashes flew to choke him as he lurched to his feet, snatching the lid open as he went. Above them, the black mass of the Dragon writhed. Wounded, but not dead. It could live without its heart. He ducked as a claw snatched blindly above his head, and ran for the Queen.
Lune blazed as if the sun had lent the moon all its glory. No time for transmutation now. Jack shoved the iron prison at her. Christ Almighty, I can see the bones of her hand. They spasmed just above the black opening, as if Lune could not make her fingers release. Her face was a rictus of agony.
Forgive me—
Jack drove the iron edge against her wrist.
Blackness swallowed the sun. So great was the light of the heart, Jack thought for a moment the light in the sky had gone out. But he didn’t need his eyes to feel the metal in his hands, and he slammed the lid shut.
Silence.
His ears popped with it. Squinting in the now dim light, Jack realized that nothing stirred up the dust about them. He could see the wall, and the unburnt houses nearby, and the fae regaining their feet some distance away, but where the black bulk of the Dragon had been, there was nothing. Just a swirl of ash, now settling once more to the ground.
The iron was warm in his hands. The shield on top, he saw, bore a tongue of flame.
Lune swayed. He almost dropped the box again, but caught himself in time to set it down with hasty care. Her hand still hovered in the air; where blistered flesh had been, now there was nothing more than a blackened claw, and a charred ring of leather that was all that remained of the cuff of her glove. Her eyes were wide and staring, as if she could not believe he stood before her.
Jack managed a smile, though when he spoke he discovered he must have been screaming a good deal, for his voice almost did not answer. “You needn’t have feared,” he said. “This is not how I die.”
Then they both sagged down into the ashes, and waited for the others to come help them home.
LONDON AND ISLINGTON: ten o’clock in the evening
She woke so soon only because she must, because she had yet to face the Gyre-Carling.
Lune, who scarcely needed sleep at all, could have remained in her bed for a month. She was still half-blind from the light of the Dragon’s heart, her eyes adjusting only slowly to the dimness of her home, and as for her hand...
I thought it ruined before. Perhaps I shall ask Nuada of Temair who made his silver hand.
But had Jack touched the heart, he would be dead. She had feared it too much to say; the thought of losing another Prince so soon after the last was more than she could bear. Jack would not tell her what death he saw in the black wooden staff. She had been so certain it was in battle with the Dragon.
Michael Deven. Antony Ware. Jack Ellin would follow them someday—but not yet.
Amadea helped her sit upright, supporting her left side where her hand no longer could. Once Lune was well propped with pillows, the Lady Chamberlain handed her a cup filled to the brim with the Goodemeades’ best brew. “We have taken a cup to the Prince as well,” Amadea told her. “For when he wakes.”
“Wake him now.” Lune’s voice was a rasping ghost of its normal quality. “He must be at my side when we face Nicneven.”
With help, she struggled into clothing, and pulled a new glove over her hand. It was difficult, the fingers now incapable of bending. Lune saw the delicate bones had fused together, before she concealed the black skeleton from her sight. The glove sat poorly, without skin and flesh to fill it out. But it would have to do.
Sun and Moon. We must return the Cailleach’s staff.
She had not asked how Cerenel got it. She was afraid to know. But for the use they had of it, she would pay almost any price; it had saved them all. Irrith brought a report as Lune dressed, with news of fires everywhere beaten down; some few still burned here and there, but the great danger was past. Tomorrow the King would address the people in Moor Fields, and commence the work of rebuilding his great City.
She scarce believed it could be done, despite all Jack’s bold words. To hear of the destruction was one thing, to feel its progress above her another; to walk the blowing ashes in person was yet another entirely. When the breeze cleared gaps in the dust, she had looked from Aldersgate down to the river, past the shattered ruin of St. Paul’s. And the wasteland to either side stretched farther than she could see.
Enough. Nicneven waits.
As did Jack Ellin. Lune met him outside her bedchamber. The man was haggard, but hale; she wondered how much mead his attendant had poured down his throat. Well, when it wore off, he could sleep for a year, if he wished. “Shall we?” he asked, and offered her his arm. Lune wrapped the paralyzed claw of her hand around it, and together they went above, into the ashes of London.
The Goodemeades had offered Rose House for the parley, perhaps in a clever scheme to soften Nicneven with hospitality while they awaited the outcome of the battle. Certainly the sisters did not seem hostages when Lune and Jack joined them—though it seeme
d, by Gertrude’s petulance, that she had not convinced the Gyre-Carling to accept any food. The two Queens sat in comfortable chairs, facing one another, both attended by guards, with Jack at Lune’s side, and Cerenel at Nicneven’s.
“First,” the Gyre-Carling said, bypassing all the ordinary courtesies of such a meeting. “You will return the staff of the Cailleach Bheur.”
Without the Dragon to fight, Lune had no need to carry it herself; the Onyx Guard had drawn straws, and Segraine had lost. The lady knight presented it with a bow, and either Nicneven was not bothered by its touch, or she was too proud to admit it, for she took the staff in her ungloved hand before passing it to one of her own attendants.
“We are grateful for the use of it,” Lune said, and the Gyre-Carling’s mouth twisted poisonously. “Moreover we must thank your knight Sir Cerenel, for without his aid, our battle with the Dragon would have gone much harder.”
Nicneven glared at Cerenel. What is here? The knight bowed to his Queen, then to Lune, and said, “For a past service I rendered to the Court of Fife, her Highness permitted me to claim a boon of her. I chose the staff of the Cailleach. She was most...gracious in granting my wish, but on the understanding that I would leave her service, and her realm, once it was returned.”
Lune heard the unspoken implication. He had been a hostage for its safe return, even as the Goodemeades were hostages for Vidar. For the first time, she wondered if contact with the Dragon could have broken even that ancient wood.
Then she noticed the all-too-innocent expressions on the Goodemeades’ faces. They had been scheming, it seemed—with Cerenel. Whose exile the sisters had never approved of, either when Lune forced it on him, or when he returned to it in bitter freedom.
Cerenel, who was no longer Nicneven’s knight.
“I believe,” Lune said, as if just now recalling it, “that we still owe you a boon, as well.”
Cerenel bowed again. “Your Majesty is likewise most gracious. I would be grateful for the hospitality of your court, as I find myself without a home.”
All the lingering ache briefly vanished from her hands and shoulder, and Lune smiled at him. Cerenel had a home, as he had told her years before: London. And now, after too many years away, he would at last return to it.
Nicneven had no such joy in her face. She glared again, not blinking as Cerenel offered his last bow, and waited until he was gone from her side before speaking again. “Now. The traitor. So I may be gone from this place.”
Lune was more than ready to see her go. Turning to Sir Peregrin, she said, “Bring us Ifarren Vidar.”
He came down the staircase with unsteady steps, bound again by the rowan-wood shackles, and haggard as a skeleton from his iron imprisonment. Vidar had come out of the box unconscious, which Lune was grateful for; it allowed her to face the Dragon without distraction. The Scottish and English fae who kept watch over him in his prison said he recovered his senses soon enough, though, and cursed them all with fine inventiveness. Now he merely waited, black and contemptuous.
“I want him to suffer,” Nicneven said without preamble.
Lune tried to remember the Scottish policy on torture—not that Nicneven would care what mortal kings and queens considered legal. “He is yours, as promised. What you do with him beyond that is not our concern, save to say that he is a confessed traitor, and worthy of death.”
Vidar let out an ugly laugh. “So your fine principles have fallen to expediency after all. Or was your heart too soft to keep me in that box?”
They had taken him out the Crutched Friars entrance and around the outside of the City; though he must have smelled the smoke, in the darkness he could not see the pall that still hung over London. Locked in iron, Vidar did not know the great changes that had befallen the world outside.
Lune faced him with tranquility. She did not have to convince Vidar of her principles; it was enough that she knew them, as did those around her. “The Prince and I merely remand you to the justice of the Gyre-Carling, as a gesture of our goodwill.”
That got a curled lip from Nicneven, who showed no particular evidence of goodwill. But she surprised Lune by saying, “You shall have your part. Vidar will die, but not by my hand.”
Lune blinked. “You wish us to execute him?”
“Not you.” Now the other Queen did smile, and it held all the hatred that had been thwarted in the Onyx Hall. “Let the mortals kill him.”
“What?” Vidar snarled.
For once, the Gyre-Carling’s wolfish look was not turned against Lune. “I have no love for such dealings—but it is a fitting end for you. Let those you despise be your executioners. The Onyx Court can arrange it, I’m sure. A stoning, perhaps; I imagine you have folk enough afraid of witches and uncanny things.”
Fury and fear were mingled in equal parts in Vidar’s expression. The Gyre-Carling could not have devised a crueler sentence for him had she tried. The passion of her hatred was fierce indeed.
It made Lune uneasy. While she could do what Nicneven asked, it smelled too much of revenge, instead of justice. Antony’s fine principles left a mark upon me, after all.
But it was, as Nicneven said, fitting. Vidar had always used mortals in pursuit of his own power, without regard for their well-being. And he went beyond the ordinary cruelty of Invidiana’s days during their own years of war: fostering riots, encouraging the Army’s madness, feeding all the worst impulses of England’s people. He was not the sole author of their suffering, but he played his part.
Perhaps she could consider it their justice, too.
But bringing mortals into the process meant bringing in the Prince of the Stone. Lune turned to Jack, and he shrugged. To him, Ifarren Vidar was a name accompanied by a curse, and now a bound prisoner rousing hatred that began long before his birth. Whatever opinion he had, it would be more impartial than hers.
“Mortal affairs are yours to decide, my lord,” Lune said, and enjoyed Nicneven’s expression of disgust. “The fae of this court accede to the Gyre-Carling’s request. Can a suitable way be found?”
Jack gave it a moment’s thought. Then a smile spread over his face—a strange one, equal parts amusement and pain. “Yes. I think it can.”
TYBURN, LONDON: October 27, 1666
A festival atmosphere prevailed around the gallows at Tyburn. It mattered little if four-fifths of the City lay in ruins not far away, and an area outside the walls as large as that remaining fifth; or if thirteen thousand houses were reduced to charcoal and ash, along with churches, livery company halls, and most of London’s centers of commerce. The author of it all was soon to hang.
“They don’t believe it,” Jack murmured to the woman at his side. “And yet, they do; they choose to believe it, because it’s what they wanted someone to tell them. Now they have someone to blame.”
“And to punish.” Mistress Montrose stood straight and solemn, hands clasped over her plain bodice. “Because no such disaster could be pure accident.”
And yet, accident it had been. The committee set up by the House of Commons knew it full well, despite the scores of accusations that had poured in. But if it was not the work of papist conspirators, then it must be an act of God: a second judgment for London’s sinful ways. They had not learned from plague, so now the Almighty tried fire.
The godly were happy to believe that. Others—the ones who enjoyed their sinful ways too much to give them up—insisted on a papist conspiracy. And Robert Hubert was its convenient author.
The man swore blind to the judges, again and again, that he had thrown a fire-ball through the window of Farynor’s bakery. Farynor supported this wholeheartedly, for certainly such a disaster could not be due to his negligence, the slovenly keeping of his kitchen. Never mind that Hubert confused details, sometimes contradicted himself; led among the ashes, he could point to where the bakery had been, and that was damning enough.
The judges believed him simple. They knew Hubert wasn’t guilty; they tried to get him to admit it. A strange
sort of questioning, when the prisoner’s jailers wished him to retract his confession—but they didn’t want to hang an innocent man. The people of London, though, wanted blood, and Hubert seemed determined to offer it to them. In the end, what could they do but accept his martyrdom?
By this disreputable means did Jack tender London his services.
They were leading Hubert onto the scaffold now. There was no trace of Vidar in his body or manner; the enchantments binding his mind might confuse his behavior at times, but there was nothing to show him for a faerie lord. And though Lune had promised Nicneven that the traitor would scream inside, fully aware of the fate he suffered, in truth they had done what they could to confuse his thoughts as well. Lune did not have it in her nature to torture him thus, enemy though he undoubtedly was.
For the Onyx Court, justice. For the Gyre-Carling, revenge. And for London, a sense of peace: with the guilty punished, they could turn their thoughts from accusing their neighbors to rebuilding the streets they shared.
Soon enough the clearing would begin. Charles had already laid down rules for the restoration of the City; streets were to be widened, all the houses built of brick, so that this calamity could not happen again. Half a dozen men had submitted plans for a comprehensive change, seeing an opportunity to sweep away the detritus of London’s ancient past and make it a city worthy to stand alongside the brightest gems of the Continent. Jack didn’t know if any of them would bear fruit; too much of London was bound up in its shape, the parishes and ward boundaries and the encircling wall.
But even if no such changes occurred, the City he had known was gone. The half-timbered houses, the overhanging jetties; the churches hundreds of years old. All would be made anew.
What that meant for the Onyx Hall, they would just have to wait and see.
The rope jerked tight. Hubert swung, kicking. Jack closed his ears to the roar of the crowd, and took hold of Lune’s hand. Disguised by her glamour, it felt like healthy flesh.
She still could not tighten her fingers on his, but she covered them with her other hand. “We will recover from this,” she said, and he nodded. A year of calamities had given him a difficult start in the Onyx Court, but he had no intention of leaving. They had far too much to do.