With Fate Conspire (61 page)

The way he attacked the meat pie said the journey had taken a good deal out of him, whatever he claimed. Myers said, “I will endeavor not to tax you too much. Indeed, I would not have written to you at all, except that I have a rather pressing matter which I believe must be laid before you, as Prince of the Stone.”

“’Old on,” Hodge said through a mouthful of crust and gravy. Myers paused while he washed it down with a swallow of stout. “I ain’t Prince no more.”

Given the man’s exhaustion and ill health, it wasn’t surprising. “Who is?”

Hodge sucked a bit of meat out of his teeth and said, “There ain’t one.” Another swig of beer, and a rueful smile. “What we did with the palace … I don’t know if it’s the machine, or all the people’s ideas we poured into that thing, but it don’t ’ave a Prince no more, nor a Queen neither. So ask what you want, and I’ll tell you what I think—but it’ll be just one man’s notion.”

The revelation unsettled Myers, less for the change in faerie society than for the loss of an authoritative voice to tell him yea or nay. This was the sort of question that ought to be answered by someone official—but it was also a question that could not be left until later, after the fae had decided how they would proceed.

He might as well ask Hodge. “Very well. I believe you are aware of the London Fairy Society, and the Goodemeades’ plan for it?” Hodge nodded. “They had, of course, assumed the city would be mostly deserted of fae, with the remaining few largely scattered, and that announcing their presence to the general populace would therefore create trouble only for themselves and their associates. Given your recent miracle, however…”

“It ain’t so simple,” Hodge finished. “More than you know, guv. You got any notion what’s ’appened, with the new palace?” Myers shook his head. Apprehension meant he was making but slow progress on his own pie, though Hodge managed to gulp down healthy bites during pauses. “Anchored it to the
idea
of London, didn’t they? Now it’s everywhere. Next to London. All around it. Inside it. Step to the left, and you’re there. So says Abd ar-Rashid, anyway, and ’e’s the sort of cove to trust on this.”

Myers’s appetite vanished entirely, though whether it was from fear or excitement, he couldn’t have said. “And with the dreams so many had that night…”

“Won’t be long before they starts puzzling it out,” Hodge said. “Ain’t ’ad nobody wander in yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Not to mention there’s ’alf a dozen constables as saw some bloody peculiar things in West Ham not long ago, and no telling ’ow long they’ll stay quiet.”

“In that case,” Myers said, “I hope it is not too presumptuous of me to suggest that the Goodemeades and the London Fairy Society should proceed with their plan? Suitably modified, of course, for the circumstances—but I had thought to present some introductory information to the Society for Psychical Research, who would take a very great interest in this matter. I—I cannot promise the results will be entirely positive—”

Hodge waved it away with gravy-stained fingers. “Ain’t going to be, and we knows it. More like bleeding chaos. But it was that or leave, so…” He shrugged. “Them as doesn’t like it can live quiet somewhere else, or push off to Faerie. Same as they would ’ave done anyway.”

It wasn’t quite that simple, of course; as soon as it became public knowledge there were faeries in London, curiosity seekers would be poking under every hedgerow and hill in England. Likely elsewhere, too. Myers imagined there would be no little resentment of London’s fae for that. But for better or for worse, that was the consequence of their decision, and refusing to face it would not improve anything.

“I will consult with the rest of the Society, then—the London Fairy Society,” he clarified. “And, of course, take suggestions as to how you, or rather they, wish to make their debut. But it should be done swiftly.”

Hodge nodded and drank down the last of his beer. “I’ll ’elp as much as I can.”

Myers dropped a shilling onto the table and rose, intending to begin work immediately—he had taken a room in a hotel nearby—but hesitated. “If I may ask one other question?”

The former Prince gestured for him to go on.

“During the meeting where the notion for the Ephemeral Engine was drafted, I believe I saw a young lady of my … acquaintance.” The word stuck in his throat. Myers had not gone home to Cambridge since that inexplicable day in Paddington Station, when Louisa Kittering vanished from not two feet away. Confused and shattered, he had clung to what sent him on that disastrous journey to London in the first place: the notebook, with its record of ideas he did not remember. That led him back to the Goodemeades, and to the meeting down below, and somewhere in between the two, his feelings for the young woman had vanished as completely as the young woman herself. And with as little explanation.

Into the pause, Hodge suggested, “Eliza O’Malley?”

“What?” Myers said, startled.
Ah, yes—the Irishwoman. Though I thought her English, when I saw her in Mrs. Chase’s house.
“No, Miss Louisa Kittering. She was sitting with a faerie woman—”

“I know the one you mean. And I’d wager it’s the faerie woman you actually need. I’m done ’ere,” Hodge said, rising from his seat like a old gaffer with aching joints. “I’ll show you where she is.”

Oakley Street, Chelsea: October 6, 1884

Had Cyma felt a whit less pity for Hodge, broken and scarred as he was by his long ordeal as Prince, she would have thrown her shoe at him for bringing Frederic Myers to see her.

She had successfully avoided him in the Academy, hurrying Louisa Kittering away before the man could escape his fellow scholars and come after the girl. But while Hodge had lost his authority, he hadn’t lost the habit of paying attention to what went on around him; he knew about her brief tenure as a changeling, and would not let her escape its consequences so easily. He ran her to ground in Chelsea, where she and Louisa had taken refuge with Lady Wilde, and then he left her and Myers alone.

She felt awkward in ways she never would have believed possible. Though her changeling face had gone, the memories stayed, of caring so intensely what he thought of her. Of
loving
him.

Only the memory of that love, though. Not the passion itself. Cyma’s heart was her own—and so was the choice to withhold it.

“I don’t understand,” Frederic Myers said, his sad eyes clouded with pain and confusion; and because she remembered caring for him, but did not crave his love anymore, Cyma told him the truth.

All
of it, from Nadrett onward. Haunting him as Annie Marshall, keeping his grief alive. Surrendering him to the Goblin Market master, to be used, broken, and discarded. Encountering him once more at the London Fairy Society, where she had gone to seek out someone who might be persuadable to a changeling trade; taking the place of Louisa Kittering, and only then finding that what had been mere faerie infatuation, a fascination with his imagination and his grief, bloomed without warning into an obsession.

Through it all, she could not help but absorb every detail of his reactions: the incredulity, surprise, anger, and hurt. It was a relief, to be able to enjoy that rise and fall, without having her own emotions shackled to his.

“You are a monster,” Frederic Myers whispered, when she brought the story to its close.

Cyma shrugged gracefully. “Undoubtedly I seem so to you. I am a faerie, sir; I am not human.” For all the sympathy she once thought she had for them—perhaps it would be better to say
interest in them
—in the wake of her changeling experiences, she was glad to be herself again.

“To the best of my knowledge,” he said with biting precision, “a faerie nature does not require one to be heartless. You have my forgiveness for those actions you took while under the fist of your former master—but what, pray tell, justifies your deeds since then? Charming me into an affection I did not naturally feel, and estranging me from my wife? The most infamous trull, ma’am, would shame to use your methods.”

She would not have them to use.
But Cyma did not want to deal with the fury that might result if she said it, so instead she told him, “I did not know how else to respond. The panic I felt at the thought of not having you made any method seem reasonable, so long as it produced results.”

Myers stared at her, then released his held breath in a sound that was half sob, half laugh. “You are not a monster. You are a child, stubbing her toe for the first time, and weeping that she cannot walk for the pain. Heaven preserve us against your innocence; it runs a bare second to your malice for cruelty.”

Something in his tone made uneasiness stir in the depths of Cyma’s mind. Myers turned to go, and she would have been happy to let him; but concern made her say, “One moment. My understanding is that you were to help the Goodemeades with their plans. Will you now refuse? Because of what I did to you?”

He halted, and his stooped shoulders had a beaten angle to them she remembered from their earliest encounters, when the grief over Annie Marshall was fresh upon him. But then Frederic Myers straightened. Without turning to face her, he said, “No. Though your people are fortunate indeed that I made the acquaintance of those sisters, before I learned of your perfidy. They alone persuade me that it is possible for faeries to be kind.”

Satisfied with that answer, Cyma let him go, and went back to the task of reestablishing her life.

The Underground, City of London: October 6, 1884

Eliza insisted on riding the train. Never mind that the new stretch of track opened with hardly any fanfare, compared to years past; it was commonplace now, the extension of the Underground, though most of its growth was to the west. To most Londoners, this addition meant little, except that gentlemen in their top hats were saved a minute’s walk from the slightly more distant Mansion House Station. Now they could alight at Cannon Street, or Eastcheap, or Mark Lane.

Dead Rick resisted coming with her—more, Eliza thought, out of superstitious dread than any real danger. Iron still had power to harm him, though the bread she tithed kept it at bay; he would never be happy in the cold body of a train carriage. In some ways, she couldn’t blame him: the noise and clammy foulness of the air meant the journey would never be pleasant, not until the railway companies made good on their promises of smokeless, steam-free engines.

They would, someday. She had seen glimpses of it, in that moment when the enchantment burst outward. Gleaming trains capable of terrifying speed, clean as the promises made twenty years ago, when the Underground first opened.

Faerie gold bought them a place in a first-class compartment at Blackfriars, and Dead Rick glared away anyone who tried to join them. Alone on the padded seats, with the gaslight flickering overhead, they passed from Blackfriars through the underbelly of London.

Hands cupped against the window, Eliza peered into the darkness. “So we aren’t going through the palace anymore?”

“You never was,” Dead Rick said. He didn’t look out, but closed his eyes and drew in a slow breath, as if tasting the air for something. “I mean, you sort of was. Two things in the same space, mostly not touching.”

“And now?”

He grimaced in a way she recognized; his mouth took on that twist every time he had to deal with the scholars’ theories. His thin lips had softened, though, from their hard set of before. “Sort of yes, sort of no, but in a different way. The palace is all over London now, not just in the ground. But ’ere, too. Blood and Bone, don’t ask me to explain it. You just ‘step sideways,’ is all.”

It was as good a phrase as any for what had proved to be their first challenge: getting
out
of the palace. The old entrances were gone, lost alongside every other physical landmark except the London Stone, and after some amount of fruitless effort Dead Rick had finally turned to her and said, “You’re the mortal;
you
puzzle it out.” She’d almost called on God, just to see what would happen. But she was nervous of disrupting the Ephemeral Engine’s work, and so in the end she took his hand and concentrated, thinking about the world she knew. They walked forward—but yes, sort of
sideways,
too—and then they were on Whitechapel Road, a stone’s throw from where the Darraghs lived. There was a possibility that going from faerie to mortal London would always require the assistance of a mortal, and a faerie for the reverse, but no one yet knew for sure.

Mansion House rattled off behind them; soon they were slowing into Cannon Street. Somewhere just above their heads, the London Stone sat in the wall of St. Swithin’s. Its reflection was the one thing that persisted below—that, and the Engine itself—but it wasn’t the heart of the palace anymore, not like it had been before. Dead Rick glared away another gentleman who otherwise could have joined them, and when he was gone, Eliza asked, “Who is staying?”

The skriker shrugged, putting his bare feet up on one of the leather-padded seats. “Not sure. A lot of them foreigners is still around, from the Academy and the Market; they ain’t bothered by the same things as us, iron and such, so they just cleared out while everything was crashing around our ears, and will come back now it’s safe.” He snorted. “It’ll be a cross between the East End and the Royal Society down there.”

Eliza pressed her lips together. “Just so long there’s order. Ye may not have a Queen anymore, but
somebody
needs to make sure ye don’t get another like Nadrett.” She gave Dead Rick a sidelong grin. “Or I’ll sick the constables on ye again.”

Eastcheap Station, close by the Monument to the Great Fire of London; once the fae had captured lost time and placed it in a room beneath that column, to help them combat the threats against their home. Such grand deeds they had done, and so few of them known to the people above. She still marveled at it.

“Want to ’ear something mad?” Dead Rick asked.

Eliza laughed. “Always.”

“Niklas thinks ’e can figure out a way to make this”—the skriker rapped the side of the carriage with his knuckles—“drive the Engine.”