A Star Shall Fall (31 page)

He frowned. “Madam, they’ll be less effective—”

Another thing she didn’t need him to tell her. “I’m afraid it’s necessary, at least in the short term. The treaty I’ve arranged with the Greeks—presuming I can get their final agreement—requires some work above, and the fae who carry it out will need protection.”

“As you wish, madam.”

Lune almost dismissed him, but paused before saying the words. There were many causes that could explain the disappearance of the tithe; indeed, it was a pattern that fed on itself. Less bread coming into the Onyx Hall meant less available to her subjects, which caused them to hoard it, which caused its value to rise; some fae were in debt to a staggering degree. Which could, in turn, cause a few clever souls to think of waylaying her messengers.

That was one of the less sinister explanations. Others were not so innocent. “Valentin . . . give me your opinion. Could this be a Sanist plot?”

His sinuous body stiffened. “Sanists? What benefit could they gain from intercepting the tithe?”

“Aside from making me look like a poor Queen?”

Her dry answer seemed to miss him entirely, for he was frowning. “Or another possibility. Madam, I’ve had no luck in discovering any meeting of the leading cabal. It occurred to me they might be meeting above—but the great difficulty in that was explaining how they could afford to do so. I thought they kept mortals on hand to provide them with bread; my spies have been following that possibility. If they are the ones ambushing your messengers, though . . .”

Sun and Moon.
If they
were
meeting above, Aspell would never find them; the city had grown too big, with a thousand mortals for every faerie below. It would be simplicity itself for conspirators to blend in among them and vanish.

He bowed anyway and said, “I will pursue this possibility, madam.”

“I may have to keep funding your spies,” she said grimly. “One to accompany every delivery as it comes in. Catching the thieves may be our only hope of finding their masters.”

“An excellent idea, your Grace,” Valentin Aspell said. “Whether Sanists are involved or not, we must keep the tithe coming. I will put my people to the task at once.”

The Onyx Hall, London: August 15, 1758

Magrat was in the same position as always, hunched in her corner of the Crow’s Head, gin cup in hand. Her lipless mouth quirked when Irrith approached. “Let me guess. You’ve come to call in your favor.”

Irrith dropped onto the stool across from her. “Something small, like I promised. Just the recommendation of a few names. I need stealthy sorts, goblins or pucks, to help me break into a mortal place.”

“The house of that fellow the Prince has brought among us? I hear things about him, you know.”

Almost every conversation with Magrat went this way, the church grim trying to tempt her listener with vague promises of information for sale. Sometimes the information was real; sometimes it wasn’t. “Not him,” Irrith said. “But I won’t tell you where, so don’t bother asking. We’ll be stealing something for the Onyx Hall, and I need hands to help carry it. Who do you recommend?”

Disappointed by the failure of her bait, Magrat set her gin down and began to count possibilities off on her fingers. “Scadd. Greymalkin, or Beggabow. Your old friend Angrisla—”

“She’s here?” Irrith asked, surprised. “I thought she went north.”

“And you went to Berkshire. People come back, sometimes.” Magrat tilted her head sideways, thinking. “Dead Rick, if you want someone to listen or sniff for guards. Lacca. Charcoal Eddie, assuming you can put up with his sense of humor. Something for the Onyx Hall, you said—is this for the Queen?”

Irrith wasn’t a good enough liar to say
no
and be believed, and her hesitation was answer enough. “Careful,” Magrat warned her. “Some folk in this place are Sanists.”

The word still made Irrith twitch, despite what Aspell had said. “So?” she said, a little too loudly. “What’s going on with her and the Hall doesn’t change the fact that we’re in danger—
all
of us. If we don’t do something about that, there won’t be any palace
or
Queen to fight over anymore.”

“Watch what you say, little sprite.” The low, rumbling voice came from the next table over, where a thrumpin with a face to shame a demon sat. “You haven’t been here but a bare year—less—and you don’t know much. She may say it’s all to defend this place, but some of the things the Queen does are making it even weaker.”

“Like what?” Irrith demanded.

“Like that Calendar Room,” the thrumpin’s drinking companion said. “Why do you think she kept it secret? Because it’s feeding off the future of the Onyx Hall, every time someone goes inside, draining tomorrow away so we’ll have nothing left!”

They’d drawn a great deal of attention now, of all different kinds. A knocker with a thick Cornish accent laughed. “Aye, sure—and that’s why she told us all about it, I suppose? Fool. If it were destroying the Hall, we’d never have heard a whisper of its existence.”

“What about the earthquakes, then?” the thrumpin said, standing up. He wasn’t much taller than the knocker, but much thicker bodied, so he seemed to loom over the goblin. “Cannon, they said—like hell. Cannon don’t shake the whole of London. Mark me well, that was the Hall almost falling apart. And it killed Lord Hamilton, too!”

“He died
six years later
!” someone yelled.

In the corner, gin cup once more in her hands, Magrat was cackling to herself. “You’ve done it now, Berkshire. Want to make any wagers?”

“Wagers? On what?”

Irrith got her answer a moment later when the first tin cup flew. Who its original target was, she didn’t know, but it caught the thrumpin in the ear and he bellowed in rage. He tried to shove through the crowd, the knocker shoved him back, and then the skinny mine spirit went down—tripped by either a stool or someone’s foot, and no chance of telling which. Then the brawl was on, Sanists against loyalists, except the two sides seemed to fall apart early on, with various goblins and pucks gleefully provoking chaos wherever they could.

Rather than be a part of that chaos, Irrith dove under the table and watched the legs stagger by. Magrat poked her with a foot. “For this entertainment,” the church grim said, leaning down to speak under the table’s edge, “I’ll give you a bit more for free. Don’t take Lacca.”

“Why not?” Irrith asked, wincing as someone howled in pain.

“Because she’s over there chewing on that knocker’s arm,” Magrat said, grinning toothily. “Most Sanists don’t have anything personal against the Queen. She’s different.”

A sour taste filled Irrith’s mouth.
Too far. Aspell’s one thing; Lacca’s another.
“Thanks for the warning,” she said, and settled against the wall to wait for the brawl to end.

Memory: February 8, 1750

The hour being a little after midday, many people were awake and about their business in London when the earth beneath their feet suddenly bucked as if to throw them off.

The shock was felt in all the neighboring towns, and even so far as Gravesend, and caused much distress. But nowhere was any person so angered as in the subterranean chambers of the Queen of the Onyx Court.

“You told me this would be safe!” Lune raged.

Gertrude had tried and failed to make her Grace lie down. Lord Hamilton was more tractable; he at least sat in a chair, sipping occasionally from the medicinal mead the brownie had given him. Lune insisted on pacing, her skirts whipping into a small vortex every time she turned.

If Ktistes could have fit in her chamber, she would have had the centaur there; as it was, the von das Tickens stood alone against her anger. “It
vas
safe,” Niklas growled, unimpressed by the royal anger. “Nobody vas hurt. Even that horse-man says the charms are not damaged. Just a little shaking of the ground, is all.”

She glared silver murder at him. “You caused an earthquake. I should have heeded my instincts and my common sense, when you first suggested using
explosives
.”

“We don’t have much choice, Lune.” Hamilton had recovered enough to argue with her. The sudden jolt had dropped them both where they stood. Which they had expected—such an alteration to their realm could not help but affect them—it was the echo into the world above that came as an unpleasant surprise. The Onyx Hall both did and did not exist in the earth beneath the City, and apparently the blast had crossed that boundary. “We need a high-ceilinged chamber in which to construct the clock. Nothing suitable exists in the Hall, not that can be made secure. And unless we find some better way to hang the pendulum than off a moonbeam, we’ll need some way to draw the light down, of which the Monument is our best option. We’re lucky to have even
one
zenith telescope inside the City walls.”

Inside the walls.
That was a goodly portion of the problem. “The Sanists will find all the fodder they need in this,” Lune said. Her angry stride weakened, and she put one hand out for support, catching the black wall. “If I admit we’ve been blasting a new chamber, changing the fabric of the palace . . .”

“Then lie,” Gertrude suggested, cheerful as always.

The Queen nodded, anger giving way to thoughtful calculation. “We can’t hide it, that’s for certain. But another story . . .” Inspiration straightened her back once more. “We need Peregrin. A cannon blast could explain it—development of a weapon against the Dragon. That’s the best we can hope to make of it, I think.”

“Von moment,” Wilhas said delicately, as Gertrude went to the door. “There is a small complication.”

Lune’s expression chilled once more. “What?”

“Ve need to do it again,” Niklas said bluntly.

Hamilton groaned and reached for the mead again. “You didn’t blast far enough?”

The dwarves shook their heads, mirror images of each other in red and blond. “Not even halfvay,” Niklas said. “Ve need a bigger charge. Not yet—it vill take a little vile to prepare—but next month, I think.”

Lune said, without much hope, “Is there any way to prevent it from disturbing the Hall and the City again?” More shaking of heads. She finally sank into a chair, head rolling back. Her exhaustion was as much of the will as of the body. “Then I will definitely need to speak to Peregrin. When will you do it?”

“March eighth,” Wilhas said. “The new moon is good for these things. Ve just missed it this time, and that I think did not help.”

One month later, to the day. Lune rubbed at her eyes, then said, “Get it right the second time, gentlemen. A third earthquake in as many months, and Londoners will be convinced the end is at hand.”

Montagu House, Bloomsbury: August 18, 1758

The blank front wall of Montagu House was well lit by moonlight as five fae came strolling up Great Russell Street. Irrith would have preferred to wait for the new moon; faerie charms were always helped along by details like that. But they needed to steal their target in time for Lune to trade it to the Greeks in time for them to provide help creating clouds in time to hide from the comet, and no one felt comfortable wasting two perfectly good weeks just to make the thieves’ lives easier.

They paused at the corner of Bloomsbury Square. Five simple fellows out for a walk, never mind the late hour; Irrith hoped no constables would pass by, keeping the houses of the wealthy safe. She squinted down the street, then nodded to the sharp-faced fellow that was the disguise of Charcoal Eddie. “See those rooms above the gate? That’s where the porter lives. But don’t have him open the main gate; it’ll be much too noisy. Use the eastern door instead—”

“I remember,” the puck said, annoyed. “I flew over it this morning. Eastern door in the little courtyard. Give me three minutes.” Without bothering to make sure they were still alone, he hopped into the air, and flashed off down Great Russell Street in the form of a shabby-feathered raven.

“Do you know where to find the stand?” Angrisla murmured into her ear. Unlike Eddie, the mara was keeping very careful watch indeed over the square and the surrounding streets.

Irrith shook her head. “Lord Galen said they’ve brought everything into Montagu House for sorting, but things are still being moved around. It’s big, though. We shouldn’t have much trouble.” Assuming the Greeks were right, that it was even there to begin with. One piece of old bronze looked much like another, to Irrith; how could they be certain?

In the quiet street, the sound of a bolt being shot back echoed like a gun. Irrith jumped, and got a disgusted look from Dead Rick. “Come on,” she muttered, and under the cover of cloaking charms, they all went forward.

The warm weather meant the porter had been sleeping with his window open; it also meant he was standing in the courtyard stark naked, with his eyes shut and gentle snores issuing forth. Eddie was lounging against the stable wall, smirking. “Do we keep him with us?”

“We’ll get the front door open, then send him back to bed,” Irrith said. “If anyone does come upon us while we’re searching, it’ll be easier to hide without a naked sleeping mortal wandering around.”

The puck pouted, but he was being well rewarded for his help; he made no more protest. “This way, ladies and gents,” he said, and gestured toward a nearby arch.

Even with charms, Irrith felt terribly exposed in the great open courtyard of Montagu House. Windows lined the house’s front and the two wings, which any sleepless servant could glance out of, and she kept thinking she saw movement in the shadows of the front colonnade. Greymalkin, the last of their party, regarded her with pitying contempt. “Missing the trees, Berkshire?”

She was, but not for a whole loaf of bread would she have admitted it. “Just keep watching,” Irrith hissed, and stood nervously as the porter unlocked the front door.

Once they were inside the darkened house, it was better. She sent Eddie to escort the porter back to bed and then keep watch, while she and the others followed the directions Galen had given, up the staircase on the left and into the collection rooms of the British Museum above.

“Ash and Thorn,” Dead Rick muttered when Irrith threw the curtains open. She flinched, thinking of the Sanist newspaper that had taken that name. He was a skriker; had he been the dog who attacked her at Tyburn? But he seemed to mean the words only as an oath. “What is all of this
for
?”