A Star Shall Fall (6 page)

Jack lifted the box free and climbed up to join Lune next to the eyepiece. “Let us hope,” she said, “that Isaac Newton is as great a mind as you say.”

“He is,” Jack promised her, and opened the box.

A radiance like the heart of the sun blazed forth, into the waiting eyepiece. An ordinary telescope gathered up the faint light of space and brought it in small to the human eye; this one, adapted from the reflective design of Professor Newton, took the intense light of the Dragon’s spirit and sent it out into the void. That unbearable blaze struck the flawless craftsmanship of the mirrors and ricocheted outward, in an unerring line, straight to the bearded star Flamsteed had been observing these many months.

Jack could hear nothing past the silent roar of the Dragon. Lune might have been screaming; so might he. But then the light was gone, and the box crumbled to rust in his hands, blistered even beneath the leather of his gloves.

And Lune swung the London Sword, cutting the ropes that held the telescope in position. It fell to the ground, severing the last link between the Dragon and this place.

In the aftermath, the only sound was the steady wind off the Thames.

Lune whispered, “It worked.”

Jack looked upward. He thought he could discern something in the sky, that had not been visible before: the departing comet, glowing unnaturally bright. Then it faded, and was lost to his eye.

The Dragon of the Fire was gone.

The Onyx Hall, London: October 1, 1757

When she first came to the Onyx Hall, Irrith had found the subterranean palace an incomprehensible maze, through which she could follow only a few memorized paths.

In the century since, that opinion had not changed much.

But there was one chamber to which she could find her way blindfolded, for she’d fallen in love with it the first time she stepped through one of its arching entrances. There were many small gardens tucked into odd corners of the Onyx Hall; this, the night garden, was the grandest by far. Here the Walbrook, London’s long-forgotten stream, wound through grassy plots and shadowing trees. Here flowers bloomed, in changeless defiance of the seasons above, blossoms drawn from both the mortal world and the deeper reaches of Faerie. It wasn’t pure nature—with its fountains and charming pathways, the night garden was more like a poet’s notion of the countryside—but Irrith loved it nonetheless.

And so when she left her chamber after a fitful rest, it was to the night garden that her disconsolate steps took her.

She glanced up as she entered the green, breathing space, to see the faerie lights twinkling in artificial night above. Sometimes they shaped themselves into patterns that reflected the current mood of the court, but at present they drifted aimlessly, forming no identifiable shape.

Irrith sighed and walked on. Then she saw something ahead that lifted her spirit, and provoked her into a run.

A pavilion stood near one end of the night garden, surrounded by a wide swath of grass, and a figure moved within that should be—was—utterly out of place in the airless stone galleries of the Onyx Hall. Hooves clopped a startled tattoo against the polished boards of the pavilion floor as Irrith vaulted the ramp, and then a pair of arms caught her at the apex of her leap.

“Ktistes!” she cried in delight. “I thought you had gone!”

“That was my intent,” the centaur said, setting her down gently. “But her Majesty asked me to stay. It has been many a long year, Dame Irrith.”

“Fifty, I think. I lost count in the Vale.”

Ktistes laughed. “And you so often beneath the stars, but so rarely watching their dance.”

He gestured upward as he said it, not to the ceiling of the night garden, with its false constellations, but to the roof of his pavilion. The structure was new, by the standards of the Onyx Hall; Lune had it built following the Great Fire, for Ktistes’s use, when he came from Greece to help repair the damage done to the Onyx Hall. The centaur cared nothing for shelter—he was happy to sleep on the soft grass of the garden—but the roof was valuable to him. It had once been the ceiling of some chamber elsewhere in the Hall, and the chips of starlight set into its surface moved in perfect reflection of the hidden sky above.

Irrith dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “Years. Why should I count them?”

“Only for the sake of your friends, who regret your absence. But you thought I was returning to Greece, and so I forgive you. Come, sit with me in the grass.” Ktistes descended the short ramp into the garden.

Next to him, Irrith felt tiny. His sturdy horse body, a gray so dark it was almost black, was as tall as she; his olive-skinned human torso towered over her. But he folded his white-socked forelegs down onto the grass, and she sat a little distance away, and then it was not so bad.

Irrith said, “Amadea told me my chamber is gone. Not ‘given to someone more important than you’—
missing
. Ktistes, what’s happening here?”

One lock of his black hair, curled in an old style, fell forward as he bowed his head. “Ah. The Onyx Hall is fraying.”

“It’s
what
?”

“The wall,” Ktistes said. “That surrounds—or rather surrounded—the City of London, separating it from the towns beyond, that are now part of the city as a whole. The mortals have been tearing it down, because it impedes the flow of their carts and riders. A portion near Bishopsgate was removed not long after you left, and when she saw its effect, the Queen asked me to stay.”

Irrith felt obscurely as if she’d betrayed the Onyx Hall—as if her departure had introduced that crack. “Without the wall, the palace falls apart?”

The centaur made a gesture with his hands, that seemed to indicate it was complicated. “The wall is the boundary of the Onyx Hall. When the boundary fragments, the edges of the fabric begin to fray. But because the reflection is not direct, the fraying occurs in unexpected places—such as your old chamber.”

She had liked that chamber; its pillars were carved in the fashion of trees, with leaves of green agate. She wanted it
back
. “So mend it.”

“I am trying,” the centaur said, with a touch of grimness.

He had repaired the palace entrances, after they burnt in the Fire. No faerie of the Onyx Court had been able to do it, until Lune finally sent an ambassador to Greece to ask for help. Ktistes, grandson—grandfoal?—of the wise centaur Kheiron, had done what they could not.

He could do this. He
had
to.

Her disconsolate mood was back, and worse. Rather than think about the Onyx Hall, Irrith diverted her attention to a more personal wound. “I even lost my cabinet.”

Ktistes’ strong white teeth flashed in an unexpected smile. “Do you think me so poor an architect, to be caught unawares by the disappearance of your chamber? Or so poor a friend, to let your prized possessions vanish with it?”

“You saved them?” Irrith leapt to her feet in hope.

“Yes, I did, little sprite. I will have them brought to your new quarters—what, you thought I kept them here, to clutter up my pavilion with all your odds and ends?” Ktistes laughed. “I’ve never understood your fascination with them.”

“They’re
mortal
odds and ends,” Irrith said, dropping to the grass once more. She had little interest in the gems and fossils others kept in their cabinets of curiosities, but anything made by humans was intriguing. Leaving her collection behind when she went to Berkshire had been a terrible mistake. “Actual mortals are better, of course, but I can’t lock them in a drawer. On that topic—did you know this new Prince is in love with the Queen?”

The centaur stilled, his profile as somber as one of the statues from his homeland. He said carefully, “We do not speak of it.”

“But you know.”

“Everyone knows.” Ktistes didn’t have to tilt his head to meet Irrith’s gaze, even though she was standing. His dark eyes were liquid, more like a horse’s than a human’s. “But no one speaks of it. Lord Galen believes it a secret, known only to his heart.”

Irrith wrinkled her nose. Secret? Hardly, when Galen’s eyes followed Lune’s every movement. “That won’t end well.”

Ktistes nodded, though he managed to make the gesture equivocal. How
could
it end well? Fae rarely loved, and Lune had already given her heart, a very long time ago. Galen could pine after her all he pleased; it wouldn’t win him anything. And though that was a story as old as the fae themselves, it rarely led to anything good for the mortal.

It would, however, be interesting to watch. Love was something Irrith didn’t understand, any more than she understood mortality, but she found both fascinating: stories in cipher, of which she could translate only fragments. And there was no place in the world better suited to hearing those stories told than the Onyx Hall, where fae lived unseen among mortals.

Or at least below them. Restlessness seized Irrith, a desire to make use of the time she had. But she would need protection before she went above—and thanks to Tom’s bribe, she could afford to buy some. “Ktistes, who could I wheedle bread out of?”

The centaur shook his curled head. “I have no part in that trade, as you well know. It may be difficult, though; from what I hear, people demand more than they once did in exchange.”

Perhaps that was the reason for the black dog: some faerie badly in debt to others, and desperate enough to risk attacking the courier. Despite Ktistes’s discouraging words, Irrith bounced to her feet. “Then I’d best get started. I have fifty years’ absence to make up for, after all, and I’m eager to get on with it. Shall I bring back anything for you?”

“A nice bundle of hay,” Ktistes said gravely.

It was an old joke between them. Laughing, Irrith went in search of bread.

Leicester Fields, Westminster: October 1, 1757

The morning was far enough progressed that when Galen disembarked from his sedan chair, the sun had risen above the rooftops, spilling its excessively bright light into the open square of Leicester Fields. He winced and covered his eyes with one hand while he fumbled out coins for the chair-men, then stood for a moment as they picked up their burden and trotted off, hoping that fortitude might find him.

That proved to be an unwise choice. A disagreeable smell drifted from somewhere, and someone’s housekeeper was haranguing a delivery boy with language more suitable to a Billingsgate fishwife. Swallowing back the sick feeling in his throat, Galen hurried down the narrow steps into the area of his family’s townhouse, and through the door into the cellar.

Inside, someone made a startled noise, and there was a shadowy movement like a curtsy; when his vision cleared, he saw Jenny, with her arms full of linen. Galen tried to edge past her in the narrow corridor, but the maid curtsied again and said, “Beg pardon, sir—your father told us all to tell you. He wants to see you.”

And knew his son’s habits well enough to guess by what door Galen would come in. “Thank you, Jenny,” he said, and abandoned his plan of creeping up the servants’ staircase.

Edward was in his bedroom, laying aside newly polished pairs of shoes. When Galen entered, he rose, bowed, and said, “You look terrible.”

“I feel terrible.” Galen found his way to a chair by memory, and collapsed into it. “And that was
before
I heard Father wanted to see me.”

“Someone else broke that to you, I see.” Edward didn’t bother to hide his relief. The elder St. Clair deplored the casual manner of his son’s valet, but not enough to sack him; it was miracle enough that Edward had been in their household for more than a year, without wandering off in the usual manner of servants.

At least it seemed a miracle, to the outside observer. Galen knew why the fellow had become a footman in the St. Clair household, and why he stayed: Lune had sent him, after the passing of his previous master, the late Prince. Though not himself a faerie, Edward Thorne was the natural son of one of Lune’s knights by a mortal woman, and as such was a perfect go-between for the two worlds.

It also meant Edward, unlike Galen’s father, did not assume Galen had spent his night carousing in a Haymarket brothel. “Late night at court?” he asked, only a little too briskly, whisking the peruke from his master’s head.

Galen leaned forward in the chair to let Edward slide the tightly fitted coat from his shoulders. “I only wish it were,” he said. “No, for once Father’s assumptions will be something like right: I spent my night drinking, and haven’t slept.”

His eyes were closed, but he heard the brief silence as Edward paused, before laying his coat aside and fetching a fresh shirt. “You don’t sound as if you enjoyed yourself.”

“I didn’t.” The strength he took from Lune’s confidence had vanished like the morning dew after he left her presence. He’d sought inspiration in brandy, and not found it.

A cool glass pressed into his hand. Galen sniffed, eyes still closed. Water, carrying a dose of Dr. Taunton’s Fortifying Drops. He drank the mixture down, sighed, and addressed himself to the washbasin, which Edward had just filled. It had the salutary effect of waking him, though the chill splash made his headache worse.

“He had his electrical treatment last night,” Edward warned, helping Galen into another shirt. “But it doesn’t seem to have taken well. It’s been a devil of a morning already.”

To that, there seemed no suitable response other than a groan.

But delaying would not help anything except the progress of his hangover, and so a short while later, with fresh clothes and wig alike to give him a semblance of dignity, Galen descended the stairs to his father’s study, to beard the lion in his book-lined den.

Charles St. Clair had none of the appearance of a lion, being fat and gouty, with a somber black bagwig and a coat of brick red. He was in his most comfortable chair when Galen entered, with one shoeless foot propped up in front of him—a sure sign that his leg pained him. At the sound of the door, he did not look up from the ledger balanced on his other knee, but made Galen wait in silence for several long minutes, before finally clapping the ledger shut and fixing his son with a gimlet eye.