A Star Shall Fall (27 page)

Lune motioned for him to continue.

“How do you prevent interference?” He nodded over his shoulder, at the elegant sweep of Bedlam, belying the squalor within. “Your handmaiden mentioned enchantments, but surely it cannot be easy, keeping such a crowd as this from drawing the attention of the guards there, and the people who live in the houses alongside.”

Galen said, “The simplest part of it is an illusion, deceiving all those who look this way. Moor Fields appears to be deserted for the night. More difficult is persuading those who sometimes haunt this space to take themselves elsewhere until tomorrow.”

“And then there are the ones who blunder forward anyway,” Irrith added. “But those are mostly the mad, who can see through our illusions, and are welcome here regardless.”

Andrews shook his head, then froze, apparently fearing he’d offended the Queen. “Those illusions alone—the implications for optics are astounding.”

Irrith muttered to Galen, in an exaggerated whisper, “Don’t let him anywhere near the dwarves. They’ll be talking until half-past the end of the world.”

Galen hazarded a glance at the Queen. She was, as usual, neutrally pleasant, but he thought he discerned in the set of her eyes, the line of her swanlike throat, that she understood and shared his sudden thought.
That is
exactly
who we must put him with. The dwarves, and more.
There were scholars in the Onyx Hall, faeries who turned their thoughts to their own world. Not many, but Wrain would be ideal for this—or perhaps Lady Feidelm, the Irish faerie who warned them of the comet’s return. She’d been exiled from Connacht for being too loyal to London interests, and stripped of her prophetic gifts in the process, but she still had a remarkable mind. Bringing them all together with Dr. Andrews might be very useful indeed.

“You have the freedom of this field,” Lune said, in a clear tone of friendly dismissal. “Lord Galen will see to your needs.”

Andrews bowed, backed away, and then walked apart with the stiff and rapid strides of a man who wants to reach safety before his knees give out.

Galen followed, and so did Irrith. It was disconcerting to have the sprite there, so close. They hadn’t touched since that first night, had scarcely seen one another for ten minutes altogether. He wasn’t at all sure how to behave. Whores were a different matter; one didn’t encounter them at social events. At least not the class of prostitute Galen could afford, on his allowance from his father.

Someone had set out a cluster of India-back chairs, a bizarre note of middling domesticity amidst faerie extravagance. Andrews sank into one, then looked up wryly at the still-standing Galen. “If I don’t miss my guess, then among these folk, I ought not to sit without your leave; I should be deferring to you as I would to the Prince of Wales.”

“More like the King,” Irrith said. “If the King were the Queen—that is, if he had his throne because he married her. And if he weren’t some stupid German.”

“Dunce the Second,” Andrews said. He seemed bemused enough to take Irrith’s rambling and impolitic answer in stride. “Son of Dunce the First. Given the elegance of your Queen, I’m not surprised at your low opinion of him. I don’t suppose I might be tucked away into a safe corner where I could enjoy a good conversation with, say, one or two faeries of less intimidating mien? I confess that, in coming here, I expected more creatures the size of my thumb, and fewer who might credibly pass as some of the Greeks’ ancient goddesses.”

Galen had already anticipated that desire. “Since you mention the Greeks—there is one here, a fellow by the name of Ktistes, who has already expressed an interest in making your acquaintance. Though his own interests lie more in architecture and astronomy, he is quite a scholar in his own right.”

“Because of his grandsire, Kheiron,” Irrith added.

Andrews blinked once, very deliberately. Then again. Then he said, “Was not Chiron a centaur?”

“And still is,” the sprite answered him, with blithe innocence. “I
think
Ktistes said he’s still alive. But he retreated from this world after the Romans’ little empire fell apart.”

The older man buried his head in his hands, knocking his hat to the ground. “Good God.”

Galen yelped, but too late. The word rolled outward from where Andrews sat, dimming the faerie lights and withering the grass to its usual dusty brown. The music faltered, and from all around the fields, fae stopped what they were doing and turned to stare in their direction.

Andrews felt it. He sat up, and a moment later the understanding of what he’d done dawned upon him. “I—I’m sorry—”

I have to do something.
Galen held up his hands and called out as loudly as he could, “Carry on. It was an error, and it will not happen again. Please, continue dancing.”

The music picked up again, sounding thin at first in the suddenly quiet air, but slowly the noise grew as the fae returned to their diversions. Galen let out the breath he’d been holding, and turned back to see Irrith sitting on the grass, pale and wide-eyed. “I hope,” Galen said, trying to make the best of it, “that this demonstration will help you remember in the future why such words are not appreciated here.”

Chastened, Andrews nodded. Galen picked up his hat for him and knocked bits of grass off it before handing it back. “Come. I think it might be best if I brought you to Ktistes.” The centaur would be somewhere on the edge of the festivities, away from the venomous looks of the nearby fae, who had taken the brunt of that careless word.

Once Ktistes and the doctor were settled, Galen left them to their conversation, intending to go apologize to the Queen. Before he got that far, though, the sylph Lady Yfaen accosted him. “Lord Galen—I understand from Mrs. Vesey and her Grace that this Dr. Andrews of yours is a member of the Royal Society.”

“He is,” Galen said. “I’m very sorry for his mistake—”

She waved it away. “That isn’t what concerns me. Rather—” She bit her lip. “To put it very bluntly . . . how can we be certain he won’t tell them about us? Isn’t that what they do there? Learn about new things, and then tell others about them?”

To ask him that called into question his judgment as Prince. But Galen knew very well how green he was, in the eyes of the fae; he would do better to answer her concern than to object to her speaking of it. “That is what they do,” he agreed, “but do not fear Dr. Andrews. I’ve impressed upon him the need for secrecy—and indeed, I think his error here tonight has helped with that.

“More to the point, I know what he wants. He has no interest in running to anyone with his first, unformed thoughts; he prefers to keep matters secret until he can astound the world, as Isaac Newton did, with a singular work that will change their thinking forever. If he begins such a work, I will know about it, in plenty of time to convince him to keep silent.” His duty to the Onyx Court made him add, reluctantly, “Or to prevent him from speaking, if need be.”

Yfaen lowered into a small curtsy. “You know him far better than I, Lord Galen. If you trust his discretion, then I will trust you.”

She said it, but he wondered if she meant it. Yfaen, though friends with Mrs. Vesey, and therefore hardly an enemy, still had doubts. How much worst must it be among the Sanists, and those who scorned him as Prince?

He doubted the answer was one he wanted to hear. And there was no cure for it but to do his best, and pray that would be good enough.

The Onyx Hall, London: June 28, 1758

Irrith’s cabinet was her favorite solace, almost as good as going among mortals themselves, and far cheaper when it came to bread. She ran her hands over the shelves and little drawers, picking objects at random: an embroidered handkerchief, a toothbrush, a locket with a curl of hair inside. A child’s doll, with one arm missing. The polished buckle of a shoe, blood stiffening its hinge. Every one of them a fragment of a story, a life, reeking of passion or mortal ingenuity. She could spend hours studying them and never grow bored.

Unless she was interrupted. When a knock came at her door, she closed the panels of her cabinet, sighing, and went to see who it was.

She would have been less stunned if a poleax had been waiting outside to fall on her head. Valentin Aspell said, “Dame Irrith. If I might have a moment of your time?”

What in Mab’s name is the Lord Keeper doing here?
Her immediate, suspicious answer was,
nothing good.
Irrith had never liked Valentin Aspell. As far as she was concerned, he was an oily, untrustworthy snake. But he’d served the Queen for a long time, and might be here on her business. Grudgingly, Irrith opened the door wider and let him in.

He surveyed the room as he entered. It wasn’t as nice as the chamber Irrith had lost; this one was plain black stone, with only her scant furnishings for contrast. The cabinet was nice, though. It, too, was a mortal thing, built of lacquered wood, with brass fittings on its many drawers and doors, and Irrith had long ago fitted it with a detector lock. Fae had ways around charms, but few of them knew how to defeat the complicated mechanism—and if they tried, the lock would tell her.

Aspell said, “I am sorry for the loss of your previous chamber. It was one of the more unusual in the Onyx Hall, and the Queen had shown you great kindness in bestowing it.”

Now she
definitely
didn’t trust him. Irrith had never once seen Aspell use compliments or sympathy without intending to get something in return. But he was used to people who played the same game, dancing around the target before finally stabbing it. Not people like her. “Why are you here?”

It didn’t discomfit him as much as she’d hoped. “To ask you a question,” the Lord Keeper said. “May I sit?”

Irrith wanted to refuse, but that would be petty. She waved him to one of her two chairs—both of them old and uncomfortable, since she didn’t entertain guests often. He flicked his coat clear with a smooth gesture and coiled onto the more battered of the two. “Thank you. Dame Irrith, you absented yourself from the Onyx Hall for about fifty years, and that gives you a certain perspective that we who dwell here lack. You also know the Queen moderately well.”

“Not so well,” she said warily. “I’m not one of her ladies.”

“Well enough for my purposes. Tell me: do you find her as she once was?”

The question was both perplexing and worrying—the latter mostly because it was Aspell who asked it, and Irrith distrusted everything he said. “What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “I would prefer not to prompt you. Your uninfluenced opinion is what I need right now.”

Irrith bit her lip and perched on the edge of the other chair.
Had
Lune changed?

“Lots of people are different,” she said, after some consideration. “That’s one of the odd things about this place. Fae don’t often change, not in so short a time as fifty years, but the folk here do.” She gestured toward Aspell. “When I left, you were wearing one of those enormous long wigs with all the curls. Now it’s—I think they call that kind a Ramillies? Which, by the way, looks less ridiculous. Guns and cricket and backgammon . . .”

Despite his assertion that he wouldn’t prompt her, Aspell said, “I do not mean our activities or dress.”

“Ways of thinking, too,” Irrith said. She suspected what he was after, and didn’t want to say it. “This business of having a treasury—who ever heard of something like that in a faerie court? It’s so
orderly
. And—”

“Dame Irrith,” Aspell said, and it was enough.

She stared down, biting her lip, digging one bare toe into the ragged rush mat that might have covered this floor for the last two hundred years. “I suppose she’s tired.”

“Tired,” he repeated.

“With all that’s going on—trying to make arrangements with someone in Greece so we can hide ourselves with the clouds, and I know she’s still searching for a weapon against the Dragon; and then of course there’s all the usual affairs of the court, people scheming against one another and causing mischief above, and it’s a good thing we don’t always have to sleep, because when would she find the time?”

The Lord Keeper let out a slow sigh. “Dame Irrith . . . I do not ask out of malice. I am concerned for the Queen, and for the Onyx Court. If you think it simple weariness, then that is one matter; within a year, one way or another, the threat of the comet will be ended, and her Majesty can rest. But if you think it something more, then for the good of the Onyx Court, I beg you to tell me.”

All the suspicion that had been wafting through her mind since he asked that first question hardened into a leaden ball. “Why do you want to know?”

Aspell lifted one elegant hand. “I mean no trap, Dame Irrith. Yes, I have some spies in my keeping, but I haven’t come to lure you into indiscreet speech, which I can then clap you in prison for. Her Majesty knows that not all fae who speak of such things would call themselves Sanists, and not all who call themselves Sanists are treasonous. There can be loyalty in opposition. The ultimate concern of most on both sides is the preservation of our shared home, though they differ on how.”

She’d been on the verge of throwing him out. His mention of loyalty, though, loosened the knot around her heart.
I don’t mean any harm to Lune, or the Onyx Hall. But the situation . . . it does worry me.
She’d been carefully avoiding such thoughts ever since talking to Magrat in the Crow’s Head, for fear they would make her a Sanist.

And maybe she was. But that didn’t have to be treason.

“Maybe,” she said, the admission as grudging as any she’d ever made. “It might be affecting her. The palace. With the wall going away. They’re connected, after all, and she’s used that in the past—against the Dragon, for example. The damage might be sapping her strength.”

The Lord Keeper’s mouth had thinned into a frown when she began speaking; now the frown deepened. “Or she is
giving
her strength, in an effort to slow the damage. She might even be doing it unconsciously.”

That sounded like Lune. The question slipped out of Irrith’s mouth. “What happens when her strength runs out?”