A Star Shall Fall (51 page)

As soon as they found it.

Segraine’s blade hissed from its scabbard and swung before Irrith could even leap back. The point came to rest just against the side of her neck. “Blood and Bone—Irrith! What in Mab’s name are you doing here?”

The sprite pushed the sword away with two careful fingers. “Rescuing the Queen.”

“Over my dead body—or your own, more like. You can barely stand.”

“But I
can
stand,” Irrith pointed out, and began loading her pistol. Elfshot only; the iron in her pocket, she was saving for the Dragon. “Unless you want to waste time dragging me back to the Hall, I’m here to stay.”

The lady knight ground her teeth. “Irrith, we can do this without you—”

“It’s my fault, all right? I’m the one who told Aspell what Andrews was doing, and if it weren’t for me—”

She never got a chance to say how things might have been different. Bonecruncher clapped one taloned hand over her mouth. “If it weren’t for you, we might have a chance of avoiding the constables,” the barguest hissed in her ear. “Leave or be quiet, but if you go on shouting like that, I’ll drown you in the Thames myself.”

Mute, Irrith met Segraine’s eyes. The knight clenched her teeth, but nodded. Bonecruncher dropped his hand, Irrith loaded her second pistol, and they waited for the barge to come.

In the black waters of the Thames, more shadows moved.

The fae of the river, nymphs and asrai and draca, found less and less joy in the city these past years. Their land-dwelling kindred could retreat from the filth of London into the Onyx Hall, but living in Queenhithe’s subterranean mirror was like living in a pond. Out here in the river, they had to contend with all the refuse of the mortals, and waters that grew fouler every year.

Tonight, however, they swam without complaint. They flooded out the Queenhithe entrance and formed a line across the river, sweeping upstream in search of the barge. There were other craft upon the Thames, of course. The larger ships, however, were confined downriver by the ancient stones of the London Bridge, and at this hour of the night, only a few small wherries plied the surface. Their search was—should have been—easy.

But they were not the only shadows in the water.

There was no warning. Just a claw, snaking out of nowhere to snatch an asrai and drag her down. Underwater, she could not scream; she vanished without a sound.

A draca was the next target, and he dodged not quite rapidly enough. Blood bloomed in the murk, and then he saw his enemy.

Blacktooth Meg cared little for the politics of the Onyx Hall. All she knew was rage. The poisoned Fleet, long choked with garbage and offal, corpses and shit, had turned the foul river hag even fouler, until all she wanted to do was rend and destroy. Valentin Aspell offered her a chance to do so. She merely had to venture out of her waters into the Thames, and prevent the fae there from swimming upstream.

Battle churned in the darkness below, invisible to those above. Even the water-dwelling fae could scarcely see their enemy before she closed with them. But one nymph broke free, driving herself upstream with frantic speed, desperate to carry out her sworn task.

She didn’t have to go far. Under cover of darkness and charms, the barge had come nearly to the mouth of the Fleet, and the boundary of the Onyx Hall.

Hands made clumsy with panic tore at the box tied to her waist. Then the lid was open, and the will-o’-the-wisp sprang out, erupting from the water into the air above, marking the target for those who waited to attack.

The sky was too dangerous for large forces on any night other than All Hallows’ Eve. But birds attracted no notice, especially against the dark background of the clouds. Their sharp eyes picked out the flare of light on the river below, and they screamed a warning through the air.

A lone horseman came galloping through the sky, downriver from Westminster Bridge. The tatterfoal stretched his legs to their fullest, angling downward to seek out the barge, and his rider Sir Cerenel dropped the reins to ready the weapon he held.

Not all of the jotun ice had gone into the spear for the Dragon. Leaning sideways out of the saddle, the elf-knight hurled a shard into the river below.

It struck the water and sank halfway in. No farther: by then the river had frozen around it, ice crystalling outward in all directions, even down to the soft mud of the bed, trapping the barge just short of the mouth of the Fleet.

And forming a bridge from one bank to the other, a road for the rescuers to ride.

Galen had positioned himself in the timber yard off Dorset Street, scant yards from the open bank of the Fleet. Sir Peregrin let him do it because the Captain believed they would catch the barge much farther upriver. But Galen thought, when he saw the ice race across the surface of the Thames, that some dismal part of himself had always believed it would come to this, the last, desperate chance to save Lune.

He heard the clatter of hooves and feet approaching down Temple Street, the company that had waited in the King’s Bench Walk, but he could not wait for them, not even half a moment. Spurring the brag he rode, Galen charged out onto the ice.

The surface was treacherous beyond belief, crazed from the unnatural speed of its freezing, but slick all the same. His mount screamed and went down twenty feet from the barge, sending Galen flying across the ice, out of control. But it also saved the Prince; when a goblin leapt over the gunwale, sword in hand, the attacker’s feet went out from under him, too.

A bullet chipped the ice near Galen’s head. Someone on the barge was more clever. The Prince half-crawled, half-slid into the shelter of the vessel’s wooden side, and snatched up the sword the goblin had dropped. The creature tried to run at him, but by then the rest of Galen’s company was there; Sir Adenant rode him down.

Behind them came Segraine’s company, marked by the flaming eyes of Bonecruncher. And Irrith, corpse-pale as if she might collapse, but lifting her pistol to fire at a Sanist.

Galen gritted his teeth and rose, clawing his way over the barge’s edge. Gunfire still cracked around him, but they couldn’t afford to lose a second, lest Andrews decide he’d come close enough to his goal. The Prince came aboard to find himself facing a blank-eyed waterman. A blade flashing out from behind the man told him a fae was using the mortal as cover. But the strike was made half-blind, and Galen dodged it easily, shoving the waterman backward.
There—the cabin—

Cool light radiated upward as someone dragged free the canvas that served in place of a roof. Heart in his mouth, Galen looked upward.

Clouds still covered most of the sky, but ragged patches had appeared here and there, and one of them revealed the moon.

Only the raw scratch of his throat told him he was screaming. Galen threw himself forward, using the sword as much like a bludgeon as a blade, not caring who he drove through or how. More fae swarmed onto the barge with him, but the Sanists stood ready, and the confines of the deck limited the opposing numbers to something like equality. Then the thrumpin in front of him went down with a howl, and Galen saw Irrith, crouched low with a knife at hamstring height. “Come on!” she shouted, and snatched without success at the handle of the cabin door.

She got out of the way just in time to avoid Galen’s rush. He hit the door with the shoulder bruised last fall, and felt the jolt all the way across his body, but the cabin was a flimsy thing. The latch snapped, dropping Galen through into the room beyond.

He knew what he would see even before he regained his feet. Valentin Aspell, leaping in front of Galen with a hiss. Dr. Andrews, looking like Death itself in the cold faerie light.

And Lune, chained by rowan to the table on which she lay, naked and vulnerable to the knife.

The faerie lights dimmed without warning. Aspell flinched involuntarily, one hand flying to shield his face, as three small, dark spheres struck him and fell to the boards. In that moment Galen leapt; he’d lost his sword somewhere, but he still had his weight, and it was enough to send Aspell crashing backward in the cramped space, into Dr. Andrews.

They went down in a heap, all three of them, and the knife clattered loose. Then someone else was there—Peregrin, dragging Aspell free and wrestling him to the boards, snarling curses in his ear.

No one had to do the same to Andrews. The mortal lay gasping, too weak to even cough. Galen crawled off him and stood, glaring down without pity. Only by a supreme effort of will did he keep from stamping on the hand that had held the knife.

But a whimper distracted him from vengeance. Lune twitched weakly against her bonds, until Irrith crawled forward and retrieved the three iron bullets she’d thrown at Aspell, stowing them once more in their hawthorn case. Galen shrugged out of his tattered coat and flung it over the Queen, giving her a measure of decency as he found and pulled free the pins that held her rowan chains.

The barge shifted beneath his feet. Someone had retrieved the jotun ice; the river was beginning to thaw once more. Galen helped Lune to her feet, supporting her out onto the open deck, and gave her reluctantly to Sir Cerenel, whose tatterfoal would carry her to immediate safety. They’d clearly fed her no bread, needing her faerie soul pure, and Galen suspected Andrews had done something more; the Queen’s knees were as weak as a newborn child’s. But she had the strength to press her lips to Galen’s cheek and murmur half-coherent thanks, before she was gone.

He turned back to see Irrith sprawled in the cabin doorway, hawthorn box dangling loosely from her fingers. The sprite turned dulled eyes up to him and said, “We did it.”

Galen was too weary to do more than nod. Looking past Irrith to the huddled form of Dr. Andrews, he thought,
Yes. We saved Lune.

But we’ve lost the philosopher’s stone.

Red Lion Square, Holborn: March 18, 1759

The weak rasp of Dr. Andrews’s breathing was the only sound in the room. Outside, the world went on, heedless of the comet in the sky above, and the acts it had inspired. The clouds still held, but imperfectly; the protection they had given these long months was failing at last.

The man in the bed would not live to see it end.

Galen said, “Why did you do it?”

He thought at first that Andrews was coughing. It turned out to be a laugh, bitter as gall. “Why. You stand there, watching me die, and you ask
why
.”

To save his own life, of course. “For that, you would murder an innocent woman. And not just her, but Savennis, Podder—”

“I tried everything, Mr. St. Clair.” Andrews lay limp beneath his sheets, unable even to lift his hands now. “If I could have done it some other way, I would have. But the sands of my hourglass had nearly run out. When the Lord Keeper came to me, offering his aid . . .” He had to pause for breath. “The others were tests of my method. I had to be sure it would work. Once I was—then yes. To save myself, and this city, and all of mankind, I would kill. Who would not?”

Galen thought of what Lune had said. That the Dragon would bring perfection through destruction. How many would such a creature truly save?

It didn’t matter. “I wouldn’t,” Galen said. “No moral man would.”

Andrews didn’t answer. After a few moments of waiting, Galen realized he would not speak again. The Prince stood and watched in silence as the wasted chest rose and fell, until it moved no more.

Then he went downstairs to tell Dr. Andrews’s faithful, unquestioning servants that their master was dead at last.

PART SEVEN

Calcinatio

Spring 1759

’Tis Saturn’s offspring who keeps a well in wch
drown Mars & then Saturn behold his face in’t wch
will seem fresh & young when ye souls of both are
blended together, for each need be amended by
th’other. Then a star shall fall into ye well.

—Isaac Newton,
unpublished alchemical notes

The sun has come and gone, growing from a spark to a sphere of undying flame. Now it recedes into the dark once more.

And still the Dragon waits.

Impatience rages as brightly as its light. The greater brilliance of the sun briefly severed the links between the Dragon and the Earth; the eyes were gone, and even its own straining efforts could not make out the distant speck of its target. It thought, then, that it had lost its chance. When contact returned, it almost leapt down, to gorge upon the first thing it found.

Almost.
Almost.
But the promise of power is enough to hold it in check.

Not for much longer, though. Its instinct to destroy is too intense. If it cannot have the city, and the shadow, and the ones who banished it to the cold black sky, it will take something else instead. Grow strong once more, stronger than it ever was, until it consumes everything.

Then it will have power, and all the world besides.

The Onyx Hall, London: March 28, 1759