With Fate Conspire (55 page)

Every last one of them was more empty than Owen had been.

And while one end of the machine was producing more of that strange, shimmering fabric, a man at the other end was setting into place something Dead Rick recognized all too well: a photographic plate.

“Mab’s bleeding ’eart,” Dead Rick whispered, almost voiceless with horror. “It’s their bloody souls.”

A bullet cracked into the floor not a foot away. Dead Rick spun, gun coming up instinctively, and he fired; he caught a brief glimpse of Gresh on the walkway above, before the goblin pulled back through a doorway. The skriker yelled, even as common sense told him Peregrin and the others wouldn’t hear; the illusion concealing this place wouldn’t let his voice past.
Better ’ope they follow,
he thought grimly, grabbing Eliza and dragging her toward cover beneath the walkway.
Else I
am
about to die.

They did—or at least the fae did; Dead Rick’s eye still refused to track the constables, though he could see their effects. One of the mortals around the machine staggered, blood bursting from his shoulder; he regained his footing and went about his work as if nothing had happened. “Don’t shoot ’em!” Dead Rick bellowed, wondering who had done it. “Get the bastards up above!”

But by then it was chaos. Nadrett’s men came out of concealment at various places around the floor, their protection broken by crucifixes and the devout faith of the mortals holding them. They wrestled with fellows they couldn’t see, and then someone tore Quinn’s coat off, exposing the sergeant to hostile eyes. Bullets rained down from above. “We’ve got to get up there,” Dead Rick snarled.

“In the first room,” Eliza said breathlessly, knife and water in white-knuckled grips. “The staircase—”

Had to lead up to the walkway. Dead Rick gauged the distance to that door, wondering what their chances were. Then his nose caught the acrid smoke of a fuse. He tackled Eliza to the ground an instant before the dynamite exploded.

Metal screamed in protest. It wasn’t any bomb, thrown from above; someone had jammed a stick into the machine itself.
Bonecruncher,
Dead Rick thought, through the ringing in his ears. He couldn’t hear the gears and rods grinding against one another, but through the haze he saw an entire section shudder to a halt.

It was as good a distraction as any. Dead Rick ran for the door, setting his teeth against the ghastly feel of the soul-fabric against his skin. Up the stairs—Blood and Bone; Eliza had followed him—where he shot the lock off the door at the top, and then he was back in the main room, this time at one end of the walkway.

Old Gadling stood nearest. Dead Rick transformed midleap, and the ease of it shocked him so much he bowled the thrumpin over and went sprawling himself. He’d eaten bread, of course—but even with that protection, he usually
felt
the iron, the mortal world frowning at his change.

Not here. Aside from the iron the constables had brought in, the prayers wielded as shields, he might have been on the most deserted moor in all of Yorkshire. As if nothing outside this building existed.

Nothing outside the
fabric
.

He rose to his paws in time to see Eliza wrestle Gadling over the walkway rail. The thrumpin fell with a surprised yell, and then Dead Rick moved on, past Gresh, past a faerie he didn’t recognize, toward the far wall, where Cerenel had lost his gun and was using a knife to drive Nithen up the other staircase. None of them mattered, except that they’d helped defend this atrocity; the only one who mattered was Nadrett. Dead Rick couldn’t carry water in this form, but his teeth would do well enough, if only he could find a target for them.
Where did that bastard go?

Eliza went through one of the doorways; he followed close on her heels. The rooms on the far side were smaller, and they had Nadrett’s scent on them, but the master was nowhere to be found. Just tools, and cameras, and bits of machine, and a scrawny faerie cowering under a table, pleading for mercy.

And a room full of cages, twins to the ones Nadrett kept in the Goblin Market. These, too, were filled with people, and Dead Rick recognized two of them.

They wore the same face, and the same expressions of terror. But only one of them might be able to tell Dead Rick what he wanted to know. He shifted to man form and snapped, “Cyma! Where the bleeding ’ell is Nadrett?”

“He went back to the—”

Her words dissolved in a wail of horrified dismay. Unthinking, he had called her by her faerie name, and unthinking, she had answered. Louisa—the real Louisa—clutched her double’s shoulder, but it was too late; the symmetry of their appearances shattered, leaving behind one mortal girl and one former changeling.

Cyma gasped for air, clinging to Louisa and the side of the cage. Eliza pressed her hands to her mouth, staring at them both, and the expression on her face made Dead Rick feel a brief stab of guilt.
I didn’t mean to do it.
But it was too late now.

“Find a key,” he said to Eliza, and she began searching while he crouched down to grip the bars of the cage. “Cyma—Blood and Bone, I’m sorry, but you’ve
got
to tell me. I ain’t letting Nadrett get away.
Where is ’e?
”

She swallowed back tears and turned her pale face up far enough for him to see. “He went back to the Onyx Hall. Dead Rick,
he’s going after Lune.
”

The skriker’s heart stopped. He couldn’t even think of a curse vile enough to suffice. Lune—if Nadrett did
anything
to her—

Eliza threw a key to someone he could not see and dragged Dead Rick to his feet, breaking his paralysis. “I know where we can hire a cab. Come on.”

The Prince’s Court, Onyx Hall: September 2, 1884

I can’t die. Not now. Sweet mother of—oh
Christ
it ’urts—don’t let me die—

The earthquake went on and on, inside and out. Hodge wasn’t even trying to stand; he’d flung himself flat when the first tremor hit, pressing his body against the black stone of the floor, throwing every atom of his strength into the Onyx Hall. He could hear Lune’s scream in his head, a constant shriek of agony, never needing to pause for breath; his own throat was mute, paralyzed by pain.

He had just enough presence of mind to choke back the prayer that tried to form. Hodge wasn’t a praying man, never had been, save in the most extreme desperation—which most certainly described this moment. But he’d felt the extra strain when Christ’s name went through his mind, and he knew, with the part of him that was still capable of analysis, that his own battlefield piety might be the thing that broke them both, and destroyed the Onyx Hall for good.

Cracking splintering shattering collapse.
The Academy,
Hodge thought, and knew Lune was thinking of it, too; they must not lose the Academy, which held all the knowledge they might use to craft their salvation. They could surrender any part of the Hall but that one—the Academy, and the rooms that held Hodge and Lune. Like a man caught in a trap, Hodge amputated his own leg, knowing that if he didn’t he would die where he lay. And the blood, the
life,
poured out of him so fast he feared he would die anyway.

Not him. The Hall. The two spirits within the London Stone, Francis and Suspiria. He could neither hear nor feel them, but if Aspell was right, they were still there. And if they died—if their spirits were torn completely apart—

This is the one fucking thing I can do for this place. I can ’old it together. And I
will
. No matter ’ow much it ’urts.

And so he held.

The pain ended at last—the worst of it—and tears streamed without shame down his face.
Still alive. I’m still alive, and so is the Hall—for now.

It was the smallest, most pathetic shred of victory. The iron chain had been linked together at last, the final pieces of rail laid down below Cannon Street. The Inner Circle Railway was complete.

It hadn’t destroyed them—not yet. But when the trains began to make their circuit, Hodge was a dead man. Him, and Lune, and the palace: they had not enough strength among them to survive it.

Those sons of bitches were early, too. The navvies weren’t supposed to lay the last bits of track until tomorrow; he’d thought Dead Rick and the others had just enough time to see what Nadrett was doing in West Ham. If that bastard actually had some way to make his own shelter, then this suffering could end at last.

Now he wasn’t even sure he would live to
see
tomorrow.

The stone beneath him had spiderwebbed into a thousand pieces. His hand trembled with palsy as he pressed it against the shattered fragments, trying to push himself up—not to his feet, that was out of the question, but at least as far as his knees. There was no strength in his arm. When he heard the door open, running footsteps approach him, Hodge almost wept with relief; then Dead Rick hauled him upright, and the panic in the skriker’s eyes killed that relief entirely.

“’E’s after Lune,” Dead Rick said, fingers gripping hard enough to bruise. “But I don’t know where she is. You ’as to tell us.”

Lune.
And Nadrett. How the hell had that bastard learned where she was? It didn’t matter. Alone and vulnerable, maybe shaking with weakness like Hodge, she would be easy prey.
I ’ave to warn ’er.
He pressed his hand against the floor, tried to reach out, but all he got was silence.

“I’ll bloody carry you if I ’ave to,” Dead Rick said, desperate.

Hodge’s voice came out a near-inaudible rasp. “You’ll ’ave to. Swore an oath; I can’t tell you where the Stone is. But lift me up, and I’ll show you where to go.”

The London Stone, Onyx Hall: September 2, 1884

Eliza followed Dead Rick’s lurching run, one hand pressed to her side as if she could push away the stitch of pain there. When they came into the Onyx Hall, there had been a terrifying moment of dislocation, as if something were trying to rip her insides clear out of her body; she and Dead Rick had fallen hard when they finally made it through, and the skriker had begun crawling before the floor settled, even though it seemed the ceiling could fall in on him at any moment.

The Goodemeades had spoken of destruction; so had Dead Rick. None of it had meant much to Eliza, until now. Until she felt their world tearing apart around her.

And now they were braving it in search of the Queen, the faerie woman who ruled over this dying place. No—in search of Nadrett, and revenge.

Hodge gestured Dead Rick to the left, then through an arch. In the distance, Eliza could hear cries of fear, the sounds of other people running. She cast a nervous glance at the walls around them, which seemed on the verge of collapse.
We only need a few minutes more.

A sudden tremor sent Dead Rick sprawling. Hodge grunted in pain as he hit the floor. Eliza caught herself against the wall, then went to help the Prince. His pointing hand stopped her. “Not far. She walled ’erself in. But if Nadrett’s there—”

Eliza didn’t wait for anything more. Gripping the knife and the water so tight her knuckles ached, she ran in the direction Hodge pointed.

The first room was hung with faded tapestries and cluttered with rubbish, echoes of a forgotten past. Eliza had no eyes for them: her gaze went straight to the right-hand wall, where broken black stone formed a jagged mouth. Weapons raised, Eliza hurled herself through to the room beyond.

The woman within sat in serene perfection, eyes closed, heedless of her surroundings. Her cloth-of-silver gown was old-fashioned, with the full crinoline and sloping shoulders of decades past; it shone in the dim light of the room.
She
shone, pale skinned and silver haired, like some poet’s vision of the moon, and a sword was thrust into the black stone at her feet.

So arresting a sight was she, it took Eliza a full second to notice the other faerie in the room—the creature that had been the source of all her pain.

She’d expected something more. Some grand demon, maybe not horned and clawed and dripping venom, but showing outward sign of his evil. Instead she saw a faerie much like any other: dressed like a man, in the tattered elegance she associated with the leaders of gangs in the slums of London.

Holding a gun to the woman’s head.

“Stop!” Dead Rick wrenched the vial from Eliza’s grip, when she would have hurled her water at the other faerie. “Stop,” he repeated in a whisper, and she felt the skriker tremble against her back.

Nadrett’s laugh held all the malice she’d imagined in her nightmares. “That’s right, dog. You know what this means, even if that mortal bitch don’t. I pulls the trigger, and this all comes tumbling down.”

Fear roughened Dead Rick’s voice, alongside the anger. “You’ll die with us.”

“Maybe so,” Nadrett said, seemingly unconcerned. “But you ready to kill everybody else, too? No, I don’t think so. You’ve got your memories back, don’t you? Which means you remember fighting for this place. Being a good little dog for the Queen. She wouldn’t want you to throw that away, now would she?” He gestured at Eliza. “Are you ready to kill
’er,
your little mortal pet?”

Dead Rick slid in front of Eliza, pushing her back with gentle, shaking hands. She retreated, thinking of that terrible dislocation as they came into the Onyx Hall. It would be like that again, if the Queen died. Only worse.

The skriker said, “What do you want?”

Nadrett’s lip curled. “Your guts on an iron platter would be a pleasant start. Or no, I’ve got a better idea—I want all of your memories gone again, all except this moment. So the only thing you remember is ’ow you failed, and fell back into being my crawling, whining
cur
.”

Eliza dug her fingers into the black stone of the wall at her back, gripping it as if that were the one thing keeping her from leaping at Nadrett. The malevolence of him turned her stomach. This was what had broken Owen; this was what Dead Rick had lived under for years, until the kindness and trust in him had been beaten almost to death.