With Fate Conspire (32 page)

“I’m fine,” he said. It sounded thin even to his own ears.

“Of course you are. I could shoot Nadrett, if you like; I’ve been wanting to for years.”

“Ash and Thorn, no!” He might never get his memories back. Those, too, were well hidden. “I’ve got to get back, is all.”

Irrith frowned, but nodded with reluctance. “And secretly, I assume. There’s a side way out of the Academy; ever since last year, one of the passages leads over to near the Hall of Figures. A small gift, from all the changes in this place. It’s useful for sneaking out.”

Outside the library, she led him left, avoiding most of the crowded hall. Dead Rick was both disappointed and grateful. He couldn’t afford to stay, to speak to the fae who had known him before—but he wanted to.
It was easier when I didn’t ’ave nothing to remind me,
he thought. But he wouldn’t have traded his current pain for that numb despair, not for any price.

At a bronze-bound door, Irrith stopped, and faced him with a most peculiar expression. It looked like sorrow, turned into a smile. “The first time we met,” she said, “was two hundred years ago, I think. Something like that, anyway. You were part of the Onyx Court before I was, and fought in a war, on the Queen’s side. You mostly spent your time in the Crow’s Head, drinking and playing dice, but I paid you once to help me steal something from the mortals, and after that we were friends. Once I decided to stay in London, you showed me all your favorite bits, and taught me to like coffee.” Her smile brightened into real amusement, for an instant. “Tried to teach me to like gin, too, but nobody can do the impossible.

“I know that’s not very much. If you could stay longer, I’d tell you more, but really—how do you boil two hundred years down into something you can say? So instead I’ll say this: If there’s anything I can do to help you remember, all you have to do is ask.”

Ask.
Not bribe, or pay, or bargain. She might as well have been speaking a foreign language, the words sounded so alien to his ears.

Dead Rick didn’t know how to answer it. He clung instead to the familiar. “If you ’ear anything about Chrennois—” How could she get word to him, without Nadrett finding out?

Irrith clapped him on the shoulder, with something more like a natural grin. “I’ll figure something out. Or somebody here will; we have a few sneaky sorts. If you get a message with the words ‘British Museum’ in it, that’s from me.”

He nodded. And then he turned his back on the Academy and left, before yearning could persuade him to stay.

Rose House, Islington: June 6, 1884

Any young lady who had recently suffered an outrage at the hands of a lunatic Irish maid might have been forgiven the desire to stay in bed. Indeed, that impulse was not so much forgivable as required; surely her nerves would demand the chance to recuperate, and in the meantime such bruising as she had suffered would have an opportunity to heal, before anyone saw her disfigured.

Louisa did not care a fig for her bruises, and the longer she stayed in bed, the more she would have to enchant Mrs. Kittering, who showed a most regrettable persistence in shaking off the persuasions laid upon her. Hearn, the Kitterings’ coachman, was more easily managed; as for the drunken maid Mary Banning, she did not even need enchantment. Sherry sufficed for her silence. With conveyance and escort thus arranged, Louisa set out for a spa west of the city, and went instead to Islington.

It was better for her health than any spa could have been. While the mead from which the Goodemeade sisters took their name might not be able to cure everything—a pistol ball to the head, for example, was beyond its powers—Louisa felt worlds better after downing a mug with unladylike enthusiasm. Mortals could keep their foul-smelling and fouler-tasting patent medicines; she would take faerie mead any day, and twice on Fridays.

Some of the effect, she admitted privately, might be credited to her surroundings. Brownies were very, very good at creating comfort, and the sisters had spent several hundred years perfecting it in their hidden home. Louisa was convinced the sisters had invented the notion of stuffing chairs hugely full of padding long before mortals ever thought of it. Rose House always smelled of good, clean things, herbs and flowers and fresh-baked bread, with never a hint of the coal-smoke stink of the world outside their door. And the hospitality, of course, was unmatched. But even had Rose House been a dirty hole furnished only with benches and rushlights, Louisa would have basked in its shelter. Some deep-seated part of her soul still could not quite believe that she was safe in the mortal world; spending so many days there without pause had set her skin to crawling with nervousness.

All of which the Goodemeades, with their splendid care for others’ well-being, seemed to sense. They held their questions back until Louisa had finished the mead and gave a satisfied sigh.

Then Rosamund pounced.

With the flat, disbelieving tone of one who knows the answer and does not expect to be surprised, she said, “What have you
done
?”

She had the decency to refrain from using a name. The sisters were far from stupid; undoubtedly they remembered a certain human girl who came to a few meetings of the London Fairy Society, and spoke to a certain faerie after the first one. They probably even knew that faerie had come to the meetings in hope of something particular, and it wasn’t just bread. Rosamund might not be able to see the face that lay behind the changeling’s mask, but that wasn’t necessary for her to guess what name that face had formerly borne.

But the woman who was now Louisa Kittering would not have been able to answer to that name, not without losing what she’d gone to such great lengths to gain. So, in gratitude for Rosamund’s discretion, she answered as meekly as she could. Not the question itself; that too was dangerous. Instead she addressed Rosamund’s actual concern. “It’s the only way I could see to stay. It isn’t enough to have a mortal who regularly tithes bread; that person could die, or go away, and besides, eating too much of their food is dangerous, even when it has been tithed. What kind of life would it be anyway, with no more shelter than what you can put in your mouth?”

Gertrude spoke with obvious sympathy. “You didn’t want to leave London.”

“That doesn’t justify—”

Rosamund snapped her mouth shut on the words that almost came out. Louisa hastened to add, “She begged me for it! The girl had a wild spirit; she felt trapped in her life, doomed to a future she didn’t want, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to go through all that running away would require. They would have tried to hunt her down—likely succeeded—and in a way, I suspect she was too soft-hearted to inflict that wound herself.”

“So instead you’ll do it for her.”

Louisa shrugged, seeing no point in denying it. “If I choose to vanish—” She said
if,
but meant
when
. The notion of protecting Myers from Nadrett, once in her mind, had not left; she might not even wait for her face to heal before seeking him out. Who knew but that Nadrett might snatch him, while she waited around for the bruises to fade? “I’m far better able to escape their hunt than she was. And I do not care if I cause someone heartache.”

“That’s the problem,” Rosamund said. “This is how it always goes with this kind of thing; the ones who suffer are the family. They don’t understand what’s happened, and you can’t explain it to them.”

Gertrude laid a hand on her arm. “Rose, two souls have been made happy by this—yes, perhaps other souls have been made
un
happy, but from the sound of it, that would have happened even if everyone stayed where they were. The girl is free, and—”

She paused, looking at their guest, who gave the name by which they must call her now. “Louisa.”

“Louisa is safe.” Gertrude fixed her with a sharp look. “The girl is safe, too, I hope. Does she have money?”

“Yes. It’s real, too.” Taken from the sale of her better jewels. The absence of which was covered for now, but eventually the deception would be found out. Louisa had half-considered blaming it on the mad Irish maid, but the notion pricked her conscience—and reminded her of why she’d come. It wasn’t to hear a lecture from the Goodemeades.

The brownie sisters had dwelt in London since time out of mind; indeed, since before Islington had been a true part of the city. Their distance from the Onyx Hall meant fae did not visit them as often as they used to—the journey to Islington was fraught with peril, for an unprotected faerie—but they still kept abreast of rumors and gossip, by what means Louisa could only guess. If they could not answer her question, they would find someone who could.

Rosamund was muttering darkly about the odds of a sheltered girl from the better classes surviving on her own in London. When she paused to draw breath, Louisa broke in. “She went freely, but I’ve come across a rumor of another who didn’t. Have you ever seen a boy who looks like this?” From her pocket she produced a battered, ill-quality photograph, showing a woman seated with three children. “Or heard of anyone called Owen?”

Both brownies frowned over the photograph, identical furrows appearing in their brows. “Welsh?” Rosamund asked.

“Irish, I think. At least, the maid who assaulted me was.”

Gertrude’s honey-brown eyes widened. “A
maid
did that to you? I assumed it was L—the girl’s father!”

“She was a strong maid,” Louisa said sourly, putting the photo away.
More like a woman boxer.
“She, er…”

While she paused to frame her next words, Rosamund came to her chair, and beckoned with one peremptory hand. Louisa bent obediently and let the brownie’s gentle fingers probe her bruises. When Rosamund let go, she said, “She suspected me for what I am, and tried to trick me into saying things I shouldn’t. When that failed … I’m not even certain she was trying to drive me out; she may not have had any particular purpose in mind, except to vent her spleen upon me. But she shouted a great deal about someone she called Owen, and how she wanted him back.”

Looking to her sister, Rosamund said, “The bombings?”

“Oh!” Louisa said, startled. “I hadn’t thought of that. It would make a good deal of sense. Do you know who’s helping them?”

Gertrude tapped one plump finger against her lip. “Eidhnin and Scéineach … Bonecruncher, though you didn’t hear that from us; Peregrin would kill him if it came out he’s been working with folk in the Goblin Market, even for a good cause … Nadrett supplies the dynamite, but only because he can profit from it. We suspect Valentin Aspell is behind it all, though there’s no proof.”

“Which almost
is
proof,” Rosamund said, returning to her chair. “No one else is half so sneaky.”

Louisa frowned. “Why should Aspell be so helpful? You can’t tell me he cares about the Fenian cause.”

Rosamund was shaking her head before Louisa even finished. “The Fenians are just a useful cover, a way to act in public without drawing attention. For Bonecruncher, anyway—the Irish fae see it differently, of course. Remember, some of those bombs have been on the underground railway. They can’t destroy the tunnels themselves, not with how alert the police are—but the hope is that it would stop, or at least slow down, the plans to finish the Inner Circle.”

The ring of iron that would destroy the Onyx Hall. Aspell had gone to prison for being a traitor, but he at least claimed he’d been trying to save the palace. Maybe there was some truth to it. “Did they carry off any of the Irish mortals? Bonecruncher wouldn’t, I suppose, but Aspell might.”

Rosamund spread her hands helplessly. “I’m sorry. It’s terrible to say this, but there are so many mortals caught in the Market nowadays, we don’t know who they all are.”

Which meant that if Louisa wanted to know, she’d have to go below once more. With a guilty start, she remembered that she’d promised Dead Rick she would come back, even try to help him get away from Nadrett. There was a dearth of young men in her new life that might be persuaded to change places with a faerie, though. Perhaps she could convince the Goodemeades to divert a few pieces of the London Fairy Society bread from Hodge to Dead Rick; that would be better than nothing.

Well, it wouldn’t kill her to walk into the Onyx Hall; it wouldn’t even endanger her safety as a changeling. She just couldn’t answer to anyone who guessed her old name. Dead Rick might not be the cleverest faerie there, but he would sort that out soon enough.

As for what she would do when—if—she found this Irish Owen …
Time enough to decide that once I’ve located him. The maid might just have been deranged, after all.

But Louisa didn’t think so. Not with those screams still ringing in her ears.

“Is there anything I can do for you two?” she asked the brownies, gathering the will to leave their comfortable home.

Rosamund laughed, and it was surprisingly bitter for someone ordinarily so cheerful. “Marry that Watkin fellow, who’s in charge of finishing the Inner Circle, and convince him to stop. Oh, and you only have a few months in which to do it.”

“If I could, I most certainly would,” Louisa said, the warmth draining out of her. It was all well and good to escape to safety, but the Goodemeades had a way of making her feel guilty for those left behind.

“Is there an address where we can write to you?” Gertrude asked. “It may be we’ll have something else you can do—and it would be nice to stay in touch, regardless.”

Louisa wrote the direction on a scrap of paper Rosamund furnished, hugged both brownies, and went back out into the streets of Islington. “Now,” she said to the passing traffic, not caring who stared at her, “I must decide: What do I owe to an Irishwoman who hit me in the face?”

Nothing. But her curiosity had been roused, and would not subside. Sighing, Louisa went to find the coachman.

The Goblin Market, Onyx Hall: June 6, 1884

Nadrett’s boot came down on the back of Dead Rick’s neck, forcing his face sideways, so that his throat was half-crushed against the cold stone. The skriker’s entire body trembled, torn between the need to breathe and the knowledge that fighting would only make his master press harder.