With Fate Conspire

  Irrith had been right when she said Dead Rick didn’t recognize the faerie. He didn’t have to, though, to know this was Abd ar-Rashid, the genie who was Scholarch of the Galenic Academy. He murmured a quiet request to the ink-stained sprite at his side, and soon the door was closed once more, with Abd ar-Rashid and Niklas von das Ticken inside.

  The genie’s dark eyes glinted like two chips of the Onyx Hall’s stone as he took in Dead Rick’s presence and appearance. Still in that quiet, authoritative tone, he asked, “What is happening here?”

  Feidelm had finally released Dead Rick. He remained slumped at her feet as she stood and answered. “The Goodemeades brought Miss Baker here to see the boy in my care. Then this one came in, and she attacked him.”

  The mortal girl scrambled upright and pointed at Dead Rick, her hand shaking. “He’s the one who stole Owen, he is.”

  Abd ar-Rashid turned his gaze back to Dead Rick. “Is this true?”

  The skriker was too exhausted to lie, even if he thought it would have fooled anyone. “Yes. It’s true.”

  The genie gestured to the box on the table. “And what is this?”

  That gave Dead Rick the energy he needed. He was up before he knew it, bracing himself between the genie and the box as if he would last two seconds in another fight. “It’s my fucking property, is what it is, and anybody so much as tries to touch it, they’ll bleed.”

  Niklas made a low, amused noise, and cocked a pistol that seemed to have come from nowhere.

  Where was Irrith? Dead Rick wasn’t doing a very good job of winning friends here. But he had a card to play, one he thought they’d like. “Before your dwarf there goes shooting me, you should know—I can tell you where the ghost of Galen St. Clair is.”

  “Nadrett has him,” one of the glamoured fae said.

  “Not no more, ’e don’t.” Presuming Aspell had gotten away with the plate. He was a tricky snake, maybe tricky enough to escape Nadrett. “Keep that girl from tearing my throat out—give me some ’elp on a little matter of my own—and I’ll tell you ’ow to find your dead Prince.”

  “Dead Rick.” It was the other glamoured faerie. She spoke his name gently, and came forward with slow, careful steps; then the glamour fell from her, revealing the same kind face on a brownie half the height. The mortal girl made a stifled noise and retreated sharply. The faerie said, “You don’t remember any of us, do you?”

  He knew enough to guess who she was. Within two tries, anyway. Even in the Goblin Market, he’d heard of the Goodemeades, the brownie sisters that had dwelt in Islington since the earliest days of the Onyx Hall. Whether she was Rosamund or Gertrude, she would try to help him—if he let her. The pity and sorrow in her eyes threatened to choke him. They had him pinned with his back to the table, surrounding him in an arc with no way to escape, and if it weren’t for the crate behind him he would have tried to bolt for safety … but that would mean leaving his memories behind.

  Then the door opened, and Irrith stood framed in the gap. “He doesn’t remember anything,” she said softly, with a grimace of apology to the skriker. “Niklas, don’t shoot him; I don’t want to see what he’d do to you if you tried.”

  Dead Rick’s shoulders knotted until they ached. That easily, his secret was betrayed. I never should ’ave come here. It’s that bloody sprite’s fault. Now his vulnerability was in the open, for all to see. If anybody took so much as one step toward the box he guarded, Dead Rick would rip their throat out.

  But Abd ar-Rashid asked him again, “Is this true?” And there was no way out but to answer.

  “Yes,” he snarled, hands cramping with the need to use them. To fight his way free. “Is that what you wants to ’ear? I don’t know none of you. I been Nadrett’s dog for seven fucking years because of that, and the only reason I came ’ere is because I ’oped somebody could put my memories back where they belong. You do that, I tells you where your dead Prince went.”

  Everybody’s eyes went past him, to the box. Dead Rick’s lips skinned back in a snarl, and Abd ar-Rashid held up his hands in a calming gesture. “Peace, my friend. No one will harm you. What you’ve said explains a great deal, and we will do what we can to help.”

  A furious noise burst from the mortal girl. “After what he did to us?”

  “He didn’t have a choice—” Irrith began.

  “Peace,” Abd ar-Rashid repeated, quieting them both. “Miss Baker. There is a man in this place—a mortal man, like you—whose duty is to oversee such matters, the affairs between humans and fae. It will be for him to decide what the answer for that crime should be. Until then, we will do what we can to address the matter of memories.”

  They were going to give him over to Hodge? Well, he could bargain with the Prince, and run if bargaining failed. After he got his self out of the glass and back into his head.

  Sounds behind Dead Rick made him whirl, nerves coming alive once more. The crouched figure that had begun to emerge from behind a bookcase flinched back again, but not before Dead Rick saw him. The half-witted mortal. With the box of his memories so close, it gave him an inspiration.

  “Your boy there,” he said to the mortal girl. Miss Baker; Hannah, Cyma had said. Still just empty syllables, without meaning. “I might know what ’appened to ’im.”

  “You happened to him,” she said bitterly.

  He shook his head. “After me. My mas—the bastard who was my master. ’E’s got some trick with cameras. Used it to steal my memories, and a ghost; might be ’e used it on your boy, too. Took away some part of ’im, and stuck it in glass.”

  “Cameras!” She laughed in disbelief, but Feidelm and Abd ar-Rashid came alive with curiosity. “What—are you saying a photograph took Owen’s soul?”

  And there it was, laid out in a few simple words. Dead Rick’s mouth sagged open. “That’s exactly what ’e’s doing.”

  His memories: he’d thought of them more than once as his self, torn away, so he no longer had any notion of himself. This boy’s mind, mangled as if half gone. The ghost of Galen St. Clair. That was the technique Chrennois had been developing for Nadrett, refining it over the last seven years.

  Abd ar-Rashid said, “There have been inquiries of late—”

  Cyma, and probably Aspell, too. “Satyr’s bile,” Dead Rick said. The genie nodded. “I’ve been trying to find out what ’e’s up to for a while now. You ’elp me, I tells you what I know.”

  Irrith let out her breath in a frustrated sigh. “Dead Rick, stop bargaining. We’re already going to help you.”

  Her protestation made him twitch. He couldn’t stop the words bursting out: “Why should you?”

  The Goodemeades made identical noises of affront, but Irrith just grinned. “Why? Because I know something you don’t: who you used to be. And I’ll bet you every piece of bread I’ve got that as soon as you get your memories back, you’ll help us in return. Not as trade, but because you want to. Because that’s the kind of fellow you are. Or were, and will be again.”

  He couldn’t help looking around to see what the others thought of her declaration. The Goodemeades were nodding, but the one that hit him like a blow to the gut was the mortal girl. She was biting her lip as if fighting something inside. As if she didn’t want to agree with Irrith, but a part of her did anyway.

  If he wanted to be any use, he couldn’t wait until his memories were restored. He might have wasted too much time already.

  He opened his mouth, and felt the oath he’d sworn to Aspell binding his tongue tight. Dead Rick growled in frustration, then stopped when he realized how carelessly that oath had been worded. “I can’t tell you where to go,” he said, enunciating clearly, so they would understand what he meant. “But if some of you was to follow me … you might see something interesting.” If they were fast enough, they might even get Nadrett himself.

  Abd ar-Rashid clapped his hands once, a sharp sound, calling everyone to attention. “Go, and we will follow.”

  * * *

  They left
in a rush, shuffling the box somewhere safe, gathering a small war party to accompany the skriker. When they were gone, Eliza fumbled a chair out blindly and sank into it, knees limp as rags.

  Dead Rick. There and gone. She’d spent seven years dreaming of the revenge she’d have when she got her hands on him, and now she’d let him go.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, dear?”

  Eliza abandoned her chair and skittered backward when she realized the question came from Gertrude Goodemeade. Who was now a good two feet shorter than she’d been before, and so was Rosamund. “Ye’re faeries, ye are!”

  They had the grace to look apologetic. “With the story you told,” Rosamund said, “we didn’t think you’d take kindly to finding out halfway through that we were brownies.”

  Outraged, she turned to Mrs. Chase. “And you—”

  “I’m as human as you are,” the old woman said serenely. “And a friend to these sisters since I was a child. My house is built atop theirs, you see.”

  None of it was what she’d expected. Eliza couldn’t muster the will to fight when Gertrude took her by the arm and led her back to the chair. “Just rest awhile, my dear; you’ve had a great many shocks today.”

  They were the only ones left in the library—the four of them and Owen, who had crept into a corner once more. “I was going to kill him,” Eliza said numbly, staring at the carpeted floor. “Seven years, I planned it. And now—”

  Gertrude reached out as if to clasp her hands, but stopped before Eliza could pull back. “I can imagine,” she murmured. “To keep searching for your boy, after all that time—you must have been very angry, and very determined, too. But if you want a target…”

  “Then you should look to Nadrett,” her sister finished, in a colder tone than Eliza had yet heard from either of them.

  The name had gone by, briefly, in Dead Rick’s rage. Eliza hadn’t been able to follow any of it, dead princes and photography and all the rest. But she was willing to consider including someone else in her anger. “Who is he?”

  For all the delicacy with which the Goodemeades phrased their answer, Eliza could read between the lines. Whitechapel had men like that, leaders of gangs who profited off the suffering of others. And they had ways of keeping their followers in line—if nothing so exotic as this.

  Stolen memories. It was as if she’d been fumbling around a darkened room, and then someone lit a lamp, showing her in full what she’d only felt the outlines of before now. The blank unfamiliarity in Dead Rick’s eyes, when they took Owen away—if the Goodemeades were right, if they were telling the truth, then nothing that day had been his choice.

  Mrs. Chase had fetched tea, and now was coaxing Owen from his corner. Eliza could barely look at him; the sight bid fair to break her heart. More things she didn’t understand. “How could a camera do that to a person?”

  Rosamund gestured around. “This place we’re in is the library of the Galenic Academy. It’s a school of sorts—”

  “More like the Royal Society,” Gertrude broke in, naming Britain’s foremost scientific institution.

  Her sister gave her a mild glare for the interruption, then went on. “We have our own sorts of scholars and scientists, just as you do. One of the things they’ve been working on is photography. Light doesn’t behave the same down here, you see, and neither do some other things, so the cameras used in your world don’t work. Nadrett, it seems, has managed to bend it to another use.”

  “But why do ye need cameras in the first place?”

  “Why do you need them?” Rosamund asked. “Capturing an image like that, all at once, exactly as it looks in life, and then being able to share it with others … we can do a great many things with glamours and illusions, and our memories don’t fade the same way yours do, but why shouldn’t we want photographs as well?”

  “Because ye’re faeries,” Eliza said stupidly. Her anger couldn’t stay hot, not forever; it was fading down to a sullen glow once more, and leaving her exhausted in its wake. Her thoughts kept chasing around in a little circle, everything coming back to the same inescapable point. Dozens of faeries, living beneath London. “And what the devil do ye need with bombs?”

  “Bombs?” They both looked entirely innocent, but Eliza no longer trusted it. Mrs. Chase looked confused; that part, she did trust.

  “The Fenians. Dynamiting the railway, and other things in London. Don’t pretend ye had nothing to do with it; I saw Dead Rick, and other faeries, too. Why do ye care so much about Ireland?” A sudden, wild thought struck her. “Is that why ye were trying to recruit me, at the meeting? To help them?”

  “Gracious, no!” They seemed utterly dumbfounded that she might suggest it. Rosamund said, “We would never get involved with a thing like that. Some fae want Ireland free, and some want to stop the railway, and a few—like Nadrett—just want to profit, but we are trying to prepare for the future.”

  In something of a confused muddle, Gertrude correcting Rosamund, Rosamund correcting Gertrude, and Mrs. Chase guiding Eliza past their arguments when she could, they told her why the Underground was a threat to this place, the Onyx Hall. It echoed the stories Dead Rick had told, years ago, about a faerie Queen ruling over a dying realm; but he had never told her that realm was here. “We’ve tried all manner of things to stop it,” Gertrude said. “When the overland railways came in, we encouraged the City men who wanted to keep them out; that’s why they all stopped at Paddington, King’s Cross, places a bit farther out. We were afraid so much iron, moving in and out like that, would be a problem even if it was aboveground. Then we tried to prevent plans for an underground railway, and when that failed, we tried to stop the Inner Circle.”

  Mrs. Chase added, “Do you recall all those delays on finishing it? Sir Edward Watkin of the Metropolitan Railway and Mr. Forbes of the Metropolitan District Railway, all the arguments between them—that was also faerie interference. Though admittedly, those two loathed each other from the start.”

  Eliza had no idea what the woman was talking about; the affairs of railway directors were hardly the kind of thing she concerned herself with. All she knew was what she’d seen, when they crossed Cannon Street on their way to Cloak Lane. They didn’t have much time left at all. “So what are ye about, then? If not trying to save this place?”

  “We’d do that if we could,” Gertrude said. “But our thought is, maybe your people need to know faeries are here. That’s what we’ve been doing with the London Fairy Society.”

  “Originally it started as a way to get more bread,” Rosamund added. “You know about bread? There isn’t enough anymore, with so few people believing in faeries. So we set out to make new friends, like Lady Wilde. But then we began to think—”

  “Have thought, for a long time,” Gertrude interjected.

  “—that perhaps we’d be better off coming out of hiding.”

  Eliza blinked. Gertrude’s words a moment ago had taken a little while to seep through to her understanding, and she still wasn’t sure she had them right. “Ye … ye’ll announce yerselves?” She just barely held back the Jesus, Mary, and Joseph that wanted to follow. “And ye think that will make anything better? For the love of—just ask the Irish how it is, living among people who don’t want ye here!”

  Quietly, Rosamund said, “And how is it, living among people who don’t even know you’re here? We’re already being killed and driven from our homes. At least if we announce ourselves, some people can be convinced to help.”

  And some would be convinced to try harder to eradicate them. Still, Eliza couldn’t help but feel a touch of sympathy. There had been folk in Ireland who felt the same way, during the Hunger; they refused to leave their homes, too, no matter how bad times became. Many of them had died of it. But she understood the impulse.

  Her thoughts were no longer running in a tight circle; they were rambling, drifting from one thing to another, exhaustion slowing their pace. Owen had drawn near when she wasn’t looking, crouching on the floor with his
hands wrapped around his knees. Did he remember something of her? Or was it just that she was human, in this faerie place? She had to find a way to help him.

  Hesitantly, she slipped from her chair and reached out one hand. Owen did not look up from the floor, but he let her brush the hair gently from his eyes. It had grown shaggy; that much change, at least, seemed capable of happening down here. But his face—so young …

  She’d seen her own face enough times in the Kitterings’ mirrors. Hardened by work and grief, it belonged to a woman older than twenty-one. What would Owen think, when he had his wits back? What would they be to each other now, after everything that had passed while they were apart?

  Eliza had no answers. But she didn’t need them, not yet. First, help Owen; everything else could follow after.

  Aldersgate, Onyx Hall: August 6, 1884

  Fast as the Academy fae were, Nadrett was faster.

  By the time Dead Rick led them to the Aldersgate fragment, the chambers had been emptied out. Not completely; the corpses of Chrennois and the naga still lay sprawled across the floor. The shelving and tables remained, too. But the cameras, the bottles of chemicals, and all the photographic plates: those were gone.

  Niklas von das Ticken cursed in German and kicked a shard of bottle across the room. It nearly hit a faerie kneeling beside the naga’s body. It was the same monkeylike fellow Dead Rick had seen when he came to the Academy before; Irrith had introduced him as Kutuhal. His expression as he looked down at his dead kinsman was bleak. If ’e asks, I’m telling ’im Aspell did it.

  His former ally was long gone, too, though he’d left behind a bloodstain in the street above. Stains were about all they had to study: Yvoir, the Academy’s expert on photography, had come down once they knew it was safe, and was investigating the shattered fragments of the bottles Dead Rick had thrown. The sour smell of satyr’s bile mixed with other unpleasant odors, under the stench of blood. The French faerie kept murmuring to himself, too quietly for even Dead Rick’s ears to make out, and pointing a finger back and forth as if putting pieces together in his mind. The skriker hoped he was getting something useful out of this that he could apply to undoing whatever Chrennois’s process was.