With Fate Conspire

  This had to heal him. It had to.

  Father Tooley changed his violet stole for a white one, shimmering in the darkness, and led their little group to the font. A hand slipped into Eliza’s, startling a little sound out of her, but it was only Mrs. Darragh. The old woman shivered, and Eliza gripped her fingers, taking comfort in the strength that answered hers. “Owen Darragh,” Father Tooley asked, “credis in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, creatorem cæli et terram?”

  James O’Malley might not be a religious man, but he never doubted the existence of God the Father Almighty. “Credo,” he answered for Owen, and Maggie with him.

  Eliza’s breath came faster and faster as they finished the profession of faith, as Father Tooley asked whether Owen wished to be baptized, and his godmother and godfather answered on his behalf that he did. And then the moment had come, and she stopped breathing entirely.

  Taking water from the font, Father Tooley lifted it above Owen’s head. “Si non es baptizatus,” he said, “ego te baptizo in nomine Patris—”

  Every hair on Eliza’s arms and neck stood straight up as the priest poured the holy water.

  “—et Filii—”

  A second dipper of water. Every candle in the church seemed to grow brighter.

  “—et Spiritus Sancti.”

  Owen drew in a deep, shuddering gasp, the third cup of holy water running over his closed eyes, streaming through his hair and down his cheeks. He straightened beneath Maggie’s and James’s hands, shoulders going back, and Eliza’s skin tried to shake itself right off her body as she felt something go by, banished from the church—and from Owen—by the ancient ritual, repeated in this precise form for hundreds of years.

  Holy Mary, Mother of God—please—

  Hand shaking, Father Tooley anointed Owen with chrism, reciting the prayer in a near whisper. When he finished, Maggie and James opened their mouths to answer, but another voice spoke before they could.

  “Amen,” Owen said.

  The Galenic Academy, Onyx Hall: August 22, 1884

  When Dead Rick saw what Yvoir had set up, he almost turned around and left.

  The French elf had mostly talked about how they were going to shine moonlight through the translucent plates of his memories, running them one by one past his eyes as if they were pattern cards in a Jacquard loom. He’d spent a great deal of time explaining the principles behind the creation of that moonlight—something about a particular balance of the four elements in what he called a selenic configuration; Dead Rick didn’t understand a word of it—and made one brief mention that the absinthe might have some lingering effects that would take a while to disperse.

  He hadn’t said a word about the chair.

  It was a thick, blocky thing—heavy, not like the modern, fashionable furniture that sometimes made its way into the Goblin Market, but rather like the oldest pieces, the ones that predated the Onyx Hall itself. No padding softened its seat or back, and along the edges …

  “Ash and Thorn,” Irrith said from behind him. “Yvoir, what in Mab’s name are you planning to do to him?”

  Yvoir blinked owlishly at them through the lenses over his eyes, which allowed the Academy engineers to better study the alchemical balance of the machines they built. “What?”

  Tension gripping his throat too tightly for him to speak, Dead Rick gestured at the chair—at the bands on its arms, its legs, even where his head would rest.

  “Oh.” Yvoir turned the lenses up, so that his eyes were no longer refracted into weird layers. “I mentioned there may be muscle spasms, yes? It is necessary to make certain you do not move from the path of the light; if we do not send the image directly into your eyes, you may lose a part of what we seek to return. Is it a problem?”

  Dead Rick’s jaw ached from being clenched so hard. The sight of the chair called up a nameless dread in him—no, not entirely nameless; he could identify a portion of it very well indeed. Once he was locked into position, he would be at the mercy of those around him, unable to move so much as a single hand to defend himself. Every Market-honed instinct he had screamed at him not to be an idiot, not to trust these people, no matter what they promised …

  Irrith had learned something of him in these last few days. She stepped around in front of him, lifted her hand, and when he did not flinch away, rested it on his arm. “I’ll be right here,” she promised. “The instant you say the word, I’ll let you out. Even if Yvoir isn’t done. If you want it to end, all you have to do is say so.”

  She was still asking him to trust her, and he was still petrified to do it. But you’ve done worse, ’aven’t you? Trusted Valentin Aspell, without even knowing who ’e was. ’Cause you was too desperate to pass up the chance.

  He’d been under Nadrett’s thumb at the time. Now he was free of his master. He could hold on to the memories, and wait until—

  Until what? Until he found someone else he did trust? Dead Rick looked around the room, at the alchemical diagrams on the walls and strange equipment littering the shelves. All the foreigners were here for a reason: because there was no other place like this in the world, where fae had found a means of describing the half-rational, half-symbolic rules that governed the realms existing in the cracks of the mortal world, and then translating those rules into mechanical devices. Once this place was gone, he could wander a century without finding anyone else with the necessary skills to help him.

  And then there was the possibility Hodge had raised. Maybe he’d known something that threatened Nadrett, and that was why the bastard had stolen his memories. If there was any fragment left that might hurt his former master …

  With stiff legs, Dead Rick strode over to the chair and dropped into the seat. “I ain’t going to back out. Do what you ’as to.”

  Irrith bit her lip, and gave him a startlingly grave nod. “Here,” Yvoir said, handing her a crystal vial. “Prepare this, and have him drink it.”

  The Green Faerie: absinthe from beyond this world. The moment Irrith withdrew the emerald that capped the vial’s slender neck, a powerful scent filled the air, like bitter anise carried on ephemeral wings. Irrith emptied it into a small cup; then she laid a slotted silver spoon across the top, with some kind of glittering crystal balanced in the center. Over this she poured a liquid that shone like moonlight. When it dripped into the absinthe below, the concoction swirled into a thousand different shades, dizzying to watch.

  Dead Rick meant to toss it off in one gulp, the better to get this over with, but it turned out not to be that simple. The first taste of the bitter liquid, blooming warm on his tongue, seemed to lift him partially from his body, so that he wasn’t sure if it was going down his throat or not. He was suddenly very aware of the motions involved in drinking: the angle of the arm, the tilting of the head, tongue and throat working in a specific fashion. Only his intellectual understanding of these things allowed him to continue; he had to trust that his body was responding as it should.

  Distantly, he heard Yvoir speaking. “—partial separation of the aetheric component from the rest of the elements; it will aid the reintegration of the memories into the spirit. And, of course, the lunar sympathy of the absinthe will play a role as well. Ah, my lord, you’re just in time. Irrith, if you would be so kind…”

  A peculiar sort of clarity settled over Dead Rick’s mind. Without looking, he knew that Hodge had entered the room, followed by Abd ar-Rashid and Wrain. He knew that Irrith was apprehensive as she reached for the manacles on the chair, and that he was mad beyond question to let these people chain him down.

  He also knew he had no other hope of regaining his memories. So he swallowed the keening whine that wanted to escape his throat, dug his nails into the worn ends of the chair’s arms, and let Irrith bind him into place.

  Two leather cuffs around his ankles. A band across his knees. Another across his chest, and his wrists bound to the chair; then, her face tight with reluctance, Irrith strapped his head to the back of the chair, and moved into position the side br
aces that would prevent him from twisting in place.

  Dead Rick’s heart beat an accelerating tattoo against his ribs. It was more than just his appalling vulnerability, but he couldn’t tell what the rest was—

  “Pardonnez-moi,” Yvoir murmured, and his delicate fingers slid thin wires under Dead Rick’s eyelids, to brace them open.

  Was it his fear or the absinthe that made everything so sharp, both close and yet impossibly far away? This must be what faerie wine tasted like to mortals, bitter and compelling, lifting him partway out of the world he knew, into sight of something more, whose existence he had never before suspected …

  Yvoir’s machine rolled into position in front of him, something like opera glasses lowering before his pinned eyes, the precious chain of his memories set to begin scrolling in front of the box that would create the necessary moonlight. Dead Rick felt Irrith’s hand slip into his and grip his fingers tight; without thinking, he gripped hers back, hard enough that he could feel the delicate bones grind together. The sprite didn’t make a sound.

  “Are you ready?” Yvoir asked, and Dead Rick answered with a wordless grunt. It was supposed to be a yes, and it seemed the French faerie interpreted it as such, for he began to turn a crank on the side of the box, and pure silver light filled Dead Rick’s vision.

  As if from the other side of the moon, he heard scattered words. “Un moment—” “Should I—” “Commençons—”

  And then the memories clacked into motion, the first plate of glass falling into the path of the light, and the shapes hidden therein shining straight into Dead Rick’s eyes.

  Memory: September 14, 1877

  He fought against the straps even before he knew what Nadrett and Chrennois had planned, because it didn’t take a bloody genius to guess it wouldn’t be anything good. But they’d drugged him before they chained him to the chair, and then they forced his eyes open with wires and pushed some kind of two-lensed camera right up into his face, and he didn’t even have time to snarl before white light flashed and a piece of himself was torn straight out of his head.

  Dead Rick’s scream echoed off the stone walls. The straps dug into his body, hard enough to bruise, and when the spasm faded he heard Nadrett say, “Did you get it?”

  Clattering wooden sounds, the gentle splash of liquid, and then an apologetic sound from the French faerie. “No. It is not precise; I can only take what is foremost in his mind. You must persuade him to think of what you want removed.”

  “Iron rot you,” Dead Rick snarled, through teeth that would not unclench. All he could see was the camera in front of his eyes, but he knew Nadrett was out there somewhere, and directed his curses at the bastard. “I ain’t going to give you nothing—”

  “That,” Nadrett said coldly, “is where you’re wrong.”

  Another flash, another scream, his muscles knotting into hard points of agony.

  “Your arrival in London, I think, sir,” Chrennois said. “Closer, but not quite.”

  He had to hold on to it. Whatever the cost, he couldn’t let Nadrett take what he knew—

  Dead Rick twisted his mind frantically away from that thought. ’Ave to think of something, anything other than what ’e wants—

  Drinking in the Crow’s Head. With a rending flash, that was gone. The first Prince of the Stone—gone. The Great Fire, which had burned London to the ground—gone. Desperate, Dead Rick threw everything he could think of between him and the camera, and piece by piece it dwindled, as his body thrashed and his throat went raw with screaming. The moors of Yorkshire, where he’d roamed for ages before coming to London. Centuries of All Hallows’ Eve rides, sweeping ghosts from the city’s streets. Irrith. Other Princes. Mortals he’d known—Owen and Eliza—he’d told her about—

  “Ah,” Chrennois said in satisfaction. “We have it at last.”

  “Let me see.”

  Dead Rick’s breath sobbed in his chest. Despairing, he reached into the bloody, shredded depths of his mind, knowing there had once been something there, something important, something that explained why he was here …

  Nothing but a gaping hole remained.

  “Excellent,” Nadrett hissed, and the sound of shattering glass filled Dead Rick’s ears.

  The skriker’s hands had cramped into fisted masses, useless so long as he was tied down. But as soon as they let him out, drugged or not, he would get his revenge. It didn’t fucking matter what he’d known about Nadrett and lost, if the bastard was dead.

  The sprite asked, “Do you want him killed?”

  The question chilled Dead Rick’s blood; Nadrett’s thoughtful laugh turned it to ice. “No. We know it works, now; let’s try something more. Let’s see what ’appens when ’e don’t ’ave any memories left.”

  A mindless, panicked howl burst out of Dead Rick then, long before the camera clicked once more into action. He fought like a rabid dog, until the straps cut into his skin and he thought he might tear his own arms off; he would have done it if he could, and counted it a worthy trade.

  But mere flesh and blood could not buy him escape. Nothing could. And soon the pain in his body faded into insignificance next to the agony in his mind. The light flashed again and again, each burst tearing him apart piece by piece until even the memory of the tearing was gone, leaving behind nothing but a gaping wound where someone used to be.

  * * *

  The howling went from memory to reality, a primal sound driving up from his gut to split the air. “C’est terminé, c’est tout!” Yvoir was shouting, and Irrith’s nimble hands were tearing at the buckles that held Dead Rick in place; he tried to fling himself from the chair before he was entirely free, wrenched his legs, snapped the last ankle cuff without waiting for anyone to undo it. Dead Rick fell to the floor, gasping, crawling away from the all-too-similar chair, staggering to his feet and forward until a wall stopped him, where he clung to the black stone, relying on it to hold him up.

  Too many thoughts flooded through his mind at once, a swirling, incoherent mass of memory that even the clarity granted by faerie absinthe couldn’t settle immediately. Faces stared at him—familiar faces; Blood and Bone, Irrith, I ’elped ’er rob the British Museum—everything piled atop everything else, arranged more by connection than time, so that he looked at the Prince and remembered every man who had preceded him, Joseph Winslow, Geoffrey Franklin, Michael Deven, who was buried in the ruins of the night garden. Galen St. Clair, who haunted the Onyx Hall every year after his death, lending what help he could to his successors, until the breaking of the palace stranded him in the sewers.

  Nadrett. The bastard who ripped apart Dead Rick’s mind until he got what he wanted, then tore the rest out just to see if he could make a puppet from what remained.

  “I did know something,” Dead Rick ground out, fingers pressed against the wall, not sure whether he was about to fall down or launch himself off it. “Fucking bastard. You was right, milord. I’d found out something about Nadrett; that’s why ’e took my memories.”

  Hodge’s eyes went wide. “What was it?”

  Dead Rick shook his head, ignoring the way the room and everything in it danced at the motion. “I don’t know. Burn my body—burn my mind; that’s damn near what ’e did—’e broke it as soon as ’e ’ad it, to make sure nobody could get it back.”

  Groaning, Irrith squeezed her eyes shut. They popped back open, though, when Dead Rick laughed—a laugh as ominous as the one Nadrett had uttered before.

  “I don’t remember no more,” the skriker said, baring his teeth in a fierce snarl. “But I knows somebody who does.”

  St. Anne’s Church, Whitechapel: August 22, 1884

  It might have been better to leave the church and go somewhere with fewer eyes that could recognize Eliza and James O’Malley. But they had nowhere suitable to go, and Father Tooley was not eager to throw the recipient of tonight’s miracle out onto the streets; instead he hurried the five of them into the sacristy, where they might be cramped, but at least there was a b
it of privacy, and the priest himself went to make sure no one else was stirring.

  Tears kept ambushing Eliza when she least expected them. Crying after Owen began to speak again, that was understandable; but every time she thought she was done, a fresh spate would begin. It was all she could do to stand back and let the Darraghs at their son, Owen’s mother hugging him as if the meager strength of her arms could undo all the separation of before.

  It couldn’t. He was still fourteen but not; he still seemed to remember almost nothing. But he spoke again, and looked at the world around him like he saw it, which was more than they had before. Eliza sniffed back the latest round of tears and told herself that was enough.

  For distraction, she had her father. The success of the baptism did wonders of its own for Eliza’s feelings toward the man; he’d been a part of that miracle, and for that she was grateful to him. But not so grateful that she didn’t think to say, “It’s later, Da. And long past time to talk.”

  His face settled into a grimmer shape. Keeping her voice low, so as not to distract the Darraghs a few feet away, she growled, “Isn’t it enough, all the trouble you were for us before? Drinking and gambling and falling in with the wrong sort—and now the sort you’ve fallen in with are the bloody Fenians. I’ve had Special Branch after me, because of you.”

  Because of her own actions, too; but the boiling resentment in Eliza’s gut left no room for that kind of nuance. James O’Malley grabbed his daughter and pulled her farther from the Darraghs, as if another two feet would make any real difference. “Because of me? It’s Fergus Boyle who’s had the loose tongue—”

  “Aye, I know that—”

  “And telling lies to boot,” he finished. “Christ, Eliza, I’ve been in prison; I don’t have a bloody thing to do with those boys. Don’t you see what Boyle’s doing? He’s trying to protect her.”