With Fate Conspire (31 page)

He didn’t get very far before running into someone. Quite literally: a mortal man came unexpectedly out of a side passage, nose buried in a book, and bounced off Dead Rick’s shoulder. “Terribly sorry,” he mumbled, and wandered onward without ever looking up.

Dead Rick paused, staring after him, then down the corridor he’d come from.
Which way?
He had no idea; Nadrett had never brought him here. Tossing a mental coin, he followed the mortal.

It proved to be the right choice, at least if he was looking for people. The passage opened into an enormous chamber, blazingly well lit; startled, Dead Rick realized that some of the illumination came from electric lights. Also gas lamps, faerie lights, and even some candles scattered here and there, as if someone had decided to try everything at once. After the dimness of the Goblin Market and the crumbling Onyx Hall, it made his eyes water.

When they cleared, he found himself confronted with … he didn’t even know what to call some of it. Machines of various sorts; a few were recognizable as clocks or engines, but others were completely unidentifiable. Chemicals in glass containers, doing things incomprehensible to him. And people of both faerie and mortal kinds, some of them English, some very obviously not; fae came from as far away as China to join the scholars here. They were hard at work all over the hall, tinkering and arguing and ignoring his presence completely.

Dead Rick hadn’t cloaked himself with any charms of silence or invisibility. They wouldn’t do much good, with so many fae around to pierce them, and he had no particular desire to surprise anyone; that led to violence, and he still ached from the beating Greymalkin had given him. But nobody seemed to care that he was standing in plain sight, watching them go about their work. All the bustle and clamor of the Goblin Market, and none of the suspicion.

Not immediately, at least. But if he went on standing there like an idiot, somebody would start to wonder. Dead Rick risked waving down a monkeylike faerie whose clothing marked him as being from India, like the naga he’d seen caged in the Market.
Wonder where that poor beast went?
Died in the earthquake, maybe. Or got sold to some collector of exotics. Or escaped, though he doubted it. Speaking loudly and slowly, with gestures to help, he said, “Irrith? Where? I’m looking for ’er—”

With a cool look and a flawless accent, the monkey said, “Dame Irrith? I believe she is over by the calculating engine. And if you need an interpreter from cockney to English, I can ask on your behalf.”

“Cheeky bugger,” Dead Rick muttered, embarrassed, and went in the direction the monkey pointed.

Of course Irrith couldn’t be in some quiet part of the Academy, where fewer people would see Dead Rick. He found her in the shadow of an enormous machine, a mass of gears and levers twice the height of a man. She was arguing with a red-bearded dwarf about defenses for something, until Dead Rick drew close; then the dwarf cut her off with a raised hand, scowling suspiciously at the skriker. His distrust was weirdly comforting; at least it was familiar.

That distrust was echoed in Irrith’s eyes when she turned and saw him. Unsurprising; their last meeting hadn’t exactly ended well. “What do you want?”

Uncomfortable, Dead Rick muttered, “Can we talk private somewhere?”

Her mouth pinched a little, but she said, “I suppose so. Niklas, can I have my gun back?”

“Not unless you vant it to blow up in your hand,” the red-bearded faerie said.

The name triggered Dead Rick’s memory—the part of it that hadn’t been stolen. This must be Niklas von das Ticken, one of the pair of German dwarves who served as Academy Masters. The less friendly of the two. No surprise the web-gun was his doing; he could only rarely be talked into making weapons, but those he produced were remarkable.

Irrith stuck her tongue out at Niklas, then sighed. “Fine, I suppose I’d rather keep my hand. Come on, Dead Rick; I think Feidelm’s out of the library. We should be private there.”

Feeling a bit like a puppy who didn’t know if he was going to be whipped or not, Dead Rick followed her. They wove a path down the chamber, dodging various people bent on unknown tasks, past a tall faerie in a turban watching two humans work on some kind of strange loom, and through an oaken doorway into a room filled with more books than Dead Rick had ever seen in a single place. He stopped, gaping at the shelves—and then whirled, but not fast enough, as Irrith kicked the door shut and aimed a pistol at his throat.

“Picked Rumdoring’s pocket as we went by,” she said, in response to his obvious surprise. “Did you think you could just stroll into the Academy, and we wouldn’t care? You work for
Nadrett
. What in Mab’s name are you doing here?”

She didn’t look like she would shoot him, but the skriker put his hands up anyway. “Are we safe?”

Irrith’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You aren’t, not with me pointing a gun at you. I certainly hope I am.”

“I mean, could anybody be listening to us?”

“Oh.” She paused, considering. “Back up.”

Finding his way with his bare toes, Dead Rick retreated the length of the library, toward the statues at the far end. As they passed each set of shelves, Irrith’s gaze flicked sideways, checking the aisles. He made no attempt to jump her in those moments of distraction, and when they reached the end of the room, she shrugged. “Nobody in here, I don’t think, and the whole Academy is charmed against eavesdropping. Why do you care?”

“Because I ain’t ’ere on Nadrett’s business.”

Her mouth tightened. “Whether that’s true or not, you still work for a slave-trader and thief. What happened to you, Dead Rick?”

He’d been an idiot, thinking she would want to help him. “It don’t matter,” he growled, toes digging into the carpet as if he had any chance to run. “I just came ’ere to ask a question, that’s all. Ain’t no danger to you; it might even be ’elpful. Will you put the bloody pistol down?”

The sprite bit her lower lip, teeth digging a sharp line, then spoke abruptly. “Answer this first. Do you know anything about Nadrett having the ghost of Galen St. Clair?”

His hands dropped like stones. “Blood and Bone—’ow the ’ell do you know about that?”

Irrith sighed, and finally relaxed her arm, pointing the barrel at the ceiling. “Valentin Aspell. He wants to sell the Prince some information about it, but Hodge doesn’t like his price.”

“Blood and Bone,” Dead Rick repeated, this time more quietly, but no less heartfelt. Had his ally sold that news to Aspell, or did it leak out by some other path? Old Gadling, maybe. Or it could be Nadrett, working through the other faerie to demand a ransom.

He hated this feeling, like he was playing some game, with rules he didn’t know and players he couldn’t see. Nadrett and the voice, Aspell and the Prince—even Irrith. Any chance he had of pretending not to be involved was long gone. She asked, “What do you know?”

Dead Rick opened his mouth to answer, then shook his head violently. “No. I can’t. I’m probably dead already, but the more people I go telling, the more likely that is.”

“You can trust me.”

The laugh burst out of him, harsh and unamused.

Irrith paused, then laid the gun down on a table at her side. “But you’ve forgotten that, haven’t you? You’ve forgotten
me
. Other people, too, I think; you didn’t recognize Abd ar-Rashid out there, did you? Or Niklas—well, he didn’t recognize you either, but that’s Niklas for you. Now here you are, looking like you’ve been run over by a dustman’s wagon, acting as if somebody might knife you in the back any second, and you’re working for
Nadrett
. What
happened
?”

The sympathy, the warmth—the guilelessness of her face, as if she wouldn’t know a lie if it bit her. Dead Rick shook his head, backing away again, but he’d run out of space; he ended up in a corner between the wall and a statue’s pedestal. “It don’t matter,” he whispered.

“It matters to your friends. Which is what I used to be. Don’t you remember
anything
?”

He stared at her: the large eyes, the stubbornly pointed chin, the auburn hair left to fall free of any arrangement. Desperately, he raked through his mind, grasping for anything—even a wisp, the slightest
hint
of a memory. Anything to tell him that he’d once known this sprite, that he could trust her. That maybe he wasn’t alone.

Nothing.

He didn’t realize he’d said it until her eyes filled with tears. Then she took his head in her hands, and for an instant he tottered on the knife edge of breaking, like a memory dropped onto stone.

With an anguished snarl, he tore himself free, escaping the corner. And found himself staring up at the statue into whose shadow he’d retreated a moment before.

The old-fashioned wig, its curls carefully rendered in marble, made the face beneath look different. Older. But he recognized it, from the sewers beneath London.

The Galenic Academy. Galen St. Clair. The ghost Nadrett had trapped.

“What I came to ask,” Dead Rick said, eyes fixed on that stone face. It was young, and the sculptor had put eternal optimism into the young man’s faint smile. “When I ’elped you out of the Market, I mentioned Nadrett doing something with photography. I saw ’is photographer—a French sprite, Chrennois. Used to be in the Academy, a while back. ’E’s the one as trapped the ghost. Burn my body if I know ’ow it works, but I’ve got to find Chrennois.”

Irrith wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and swallowed, visibly pushing her concern for him to the side.
But she
is
concerned. Ash and Thorn. So that’s what it’s like, to ’ave a friend.
“Will you punch me again if I ask whether this has to do with passages to Faerie?”

Dead Rick gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe, though damned if I can see ’ow.”

She nodded, as if that somehow made sense. “All right. Chrennois … I remember. Yvoir
hated
him. I’m not surprised he went to work for Nadrett; that bastard’s collected more than a few people from the Academy. The nasty ones. I’d assume he’s somewhere in the Goblin Market.”

“I’m looking, but my guess is ’e ain’t there. Nadrett’s keeping ’im somewhere else.”

“Well, he isn’t here, or in Hodge’s court. The night garden?” She frowned. “Or some back corner where no one would think to look. I can—”

She stopped, because the door to the library had opened. Dead Rick whirled again, sinking to a half crouch; his heart instantly began to beat three times as fast. But it was only a mortal, shuffling in with a lost look on his face. From behind him, Irrith spoke, her voice gentled by compassion. “I’m sorry—Feidelm isn’t here. I think she went to talk to Ch’ien Mu.”

The mortal was scarcely more than a boy, only hints of stubble upon his cheeks. The vacancy in his eyes made him look even younger, as if he were an imbecile. And his scent had changed, too; it was contaminated by a thorough faerie stain, losing the markers of his mortal home. But for all of that, Dead Rick recognized him, just as he had the statue.

That boy was the second thing he remembered, in all the world. Right after Nadrett’s face and voice, ordering Dead Rick to go into Whitechapel and steal him away.

The skriker was halfway across the room before he knew he’d moved. The boy cried out wordlessly and fled, running to cower between two of the tall bookcases that stood out from the walls. “Don’t scare him!” Irrith cried, and ran after them both. When she caught up, her steps slowed. “Dead Rick … what is it?”

He was still staring at the boy, who had collapsed into a ball in the deepest shadow he could find. “Where did you get ’im?”

“From the Goblin Market. Amadea bought him off someone there, a year or so ago, out of pity. Do you know him?”

I’m the one as stole ’im.
He couldn’t tell Irrith that; bad enough she knew he’d fallen into Nadrett’s grasp, without admitting what the master had forced him to do. “Saw ’im there,” Dead Rick said, which was true enough. “What ’appened to ’im?”

Irrith shook her head, pityingly. “We don’t know. Some kind of botched attempt at a changeling swap, Feidelm thinks. He’s lost more than just his name. Poor lad can’t speak anymore, though he understands us a bit. Latched on to Feidelm like a lost puppy.”

Another Academy Master, a sidhe from Connacht. Dead Rick swallowed. “He’s Irish. From Whitechapel. Probably likes the sound of ’er voice.” He bit his lip, then said, “Is there any way to set ’im right again?”

He didn’t know why he bothered asking. The optimism in the eyes of the statue that watched over them, maybe. But this wasn’t the Goblin Market; if there were such a way, someone would have done it already, out of kindness. He wasn’t surprised when Irrith shook her head again. “Not without knowing what exactly went wrong, and maybe not even then. I don’t suppose you know anything about that?”

Whatever had happened, it was probably Nadrett’s doing. There were more than a few broken mortals wandering around his chambers. But that didn’t tell Dead Rick much. “Sorry,” he muttered, and meant it.
They were both friends of yours,
the voice had told him. It would have been nice to do something for the boy, healing Nadrett’s damage.

“Come on,” Irrith said, drawing him away. “Let’s not scare him any more than we already have.” Any more than Dead Rick already had, though she didn’t say it. Maybe the boy always stared out with such fear; maybe he didn’t remember the skriker after all.

Once they were on the other side of the library, Irrith said, “Chrennois. You said he trapped Galen in a photograph?” He nodded. “Where’s the picture now?”

“With Chrennois, probably.”

“Not with Nadrett?”

“I doubt it,” Dead Rick said slowly, thinking. Nadrett had some photos around his chambers, mostly death portraits of mortals. He doubted his master would keep anything as valuable as the Prince’s ghost where it might so easily be stolen.

Irrith muttered a curse. “Well, more reason to find Chrennois. I’ll ask Yvoir if he has any ideas, but he’s out right now, and I don’t know when he’ll be back. How long can you stay?”

His expression answered that question. Irrith’s face settled into grim lines, that even he could tell were unusual for her. “I see. Let me ask a more useful question, then: What can I do to help you? Other than finding Chrennois.”