In Ashes Lie (27 page)

He tried to master his rage. All was not lost. The King had come to support his people again, and left behind his brother the Duke of York to take command of their efforts. Under that generalship, a semblance of order was coming to the war.

The fire-post up ahead was one of the duke’s creations, and a beacon of sanity amidst the howling chaos of the gate. Jack forced his way over to it; the soldiers let him pass, recognizing him for one of the men assembled by the parish constables. Beyond, he collapsed without dignity against a wall, and soon someone pressed a pewter tankard into his hand. Looking up, Jack found himself at the feet of the Earl of Craven.

He scrambled upright again, or tried to; the earl pressed him down. “Take your rest, lad,” Craven advised him. “You need it.”

I’m twenty-six,
Jack wanted to say, but one did not argue with a peer, especially one to whom he
was
a lad. Instead, he stayed obediently where he was, and choked on his first sip of beer.
I know that taste.
It seemed the Angel Inn was supplying at least one fire-post. Strength spread through his tired body, from his gut outward; the Goodemeades knew what they were about.

From where he sat, the Fire did not look like much. A thick pall of smoke streamed eastward under the impetus of the wind, but beneath it, there was scarcely a glow. God, in His irony, had given them a perfectly clear day, the sun dwarfing all the Fire’s rage.

Jack was not fooled, and neither was any other man with enough wit to breathe. The riverside blaze had been bad enough, but it kept expanding northward. And with every yard it shifted in that direction, it gave itself a broader front: more territory for them to contest, and more edge on which the wind could find purchase. For every yard northward, the Fire would claim three to the west. God alone knew how much of London it would devour before it was done.

If only we did not have the wind...

How far dared he push Lune? He knew the gist of what Ifarren Vidar had done; the faerie lord was undoubtedly the Queen’s enemy. Yet she insisted on keeping him from the Gyre-Carling, even in the teeth of the Cailleach Bheur. She must have
some
reason for it.

That much, Jack understood. What he did not understand was what reason could be worth sacrificing London for.

He became aware of voices to his right, saying something about Lombard Street. Jack drained the last of the Goodemeades’ beer and pushed himself up.
Didn’t even need the wall to help me.
How long the strength from that draught would last, he didn’t know, but for now it would do. “My lord,” he said, approaching the earl and a pair of other men, “can I be of service?”

Craven studied him consideringly. “The Fire is moving up through St. Clement’s, Nicholas, and Abchurch Lanes,” he said at last. “One arm of it, at least.”

Toward Lombard, and the houses owned by wealthy merchants and bankers. Who would not appreciate their homes burning down, but would be equally angered to hear of their deliberate destruction. It would be easy to believe, after the fact, that the Fire might have been stopped short of that point, and their belongings saved. Jack raked one filthy hand through his hair and thought. With the wind as it was...“My lord,” he said, “I don’t think we could halt it there regardless. But there are two stone churches on the south side of Cornhill, that might serve as a bulwark; if we create a break there, we might have a chance.”

One of the others said, “That would permit the Fire too close to the Exchange.”

“Permit?” Craven said, with a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “When we have the power to command this blaze, then we may speak of permitting it things. For now...Dr. Ellin is right. Send word to the duke, but I think we must make our defense at Cornhill.”

Jack startled at the sound of his name. To Craven’s weary smile, he said, “I didn’t think you would remember me, my lord.”

“I remember all men who stand up in defense of London’s people,” the earl said. Which sounded noble, even if it were exaggeration. Craven had been one of the few peers who didn’t flee before the plague last year, instead staying to manage the efforts against it. If he’d earned Jack’s eternal gratitude and respect then, it was confirmed now, as the old man placed himself once more in the path of disaster.

Craven clapped him on the shoulder. “Do not overreach yourself,” he said, with a wry twist that said he also remembered how faint a mark such advice left on Jack. “We have hours more to fight before we can think of victory, and we need every man we can muster.”

Jack nodded, but Craven was scarcely out of sight before the physician took to his heels. If the Cornhill break were to be created in time, they would need every hand they could get.

Real heat would have burned Lune’s body to ash by now. She was aware of that much, even if she did not know how much time had passed. As it was, the power of the Fire struck, not at her physical flesh, but at her spirit, which struggled to contain it: to keep it from spilling over into the Onyx Hall. Caught between shattering cold and melting flame, the palace would be destroyed.

The bitter irony of it choked her, in the one tiny portion of her mind that could think of anything other than forcing back the heat. The Dragon was not Nicneven’s creature, but in its quest to devour the City, it would do the Gyre-Carling’s work.

Unless she stopped it. With her hand on the keystone of the Onyx Hall, Lune could keep the devastation above from passing below. But for how long? Could she hold until Cannon Street was reduced to cinders, with nothing left to burn? The creeping demise of age the Cailleach whispered in her heart was drowned out, transformed into a raging death, a swift immolation no less dreadful for its speed. She’d put herself in its path; now she could not back away, and and it might kill her.

No.
Lune’s joints ached from the strain, but she held. Dying would save no one; it was her life they needed. Her presence here, with her hand on the Stone, holding back the inferno. Whatever it cost her in pain and blood, she would pay it.
I would give my life for my realm. I can give this, too.

It was nothing more than nature, simple flame, the London Stone above standing like an altar in a cathedral of coals. The flames, Lune could hold back.

But even as the Fire’s edge moved onward, something shifted in its heart, and a terrible awareness fell upon Lune.

She choked on her own breath, quailing beneath that hellish gaze. Until now, the Dragon’s attention had flickered here and there, diverted by each fresh victim, each challenge mustered by the City’s defenders. It saw only what it devoured, and what yet lay in its path.

It had not looked below.

The cataclysmic power turned inward. Even as tongues of flame licked out, the inexorable progress slowed by men’s efforts but never halted, the Dragon itself cast a curious eye upon the London Stone. That unassuming limestone block held something different, something
more,
that the beast had not noticed when it took Cannon Street into its maw.

Lune’s rigid body jerked. She strove desperately to conceal herself somehow, and with her, the Onyx Hall. It could not be done. A probing tendril of awareness snaked down through the Stone, and found her in its path.

Curiosity became avarice, and all-consuming hunger.

Here
was a prize more glorious than the one Father Thames had barred, a mirror to the realm already under the Fire’s claws. Here was a place of power. If the pitch and oil of London’s wharves had given birth to the Dragon, the enchantments of the Onyx Hall could make of it a god, against which all the efforts of mere humans would be as nothing.

In a molten voice that boiled all the blood in Lune’s veins, the Fire snarled,
This will be mine.

Its claws flexed within her gut, and it began to pull.

Irrith hesitated outside the Fish Street arch for several minutes before forcing herself through. Familiarity did not make the Cailleach’s icy touch any easier to bear; she dreaded it more with every encounter. Perhaps some of the London fae helping Jack Ellin were there because they loved their City; all Irrith cared about was escape.

But that wasn’t true. She gave it the lie the moment she passed through the blackness of the arch, as she did every time she bore a message between the Queen and the Prince, every time she turned her thoughts and efforts to battling the Fire instead of fleeing back home to Berkshire. She dared not examine her reasons too closely, for fear they would dissolve into senseless panic, but they propelled her onward nonetheless.

Still, she gasped in horror as the Hag’s cold breath penetrated her flesh. All the vital spark of her immortal life dimmed, becoming something fragile and vulnerable. She thought of the disaster above: collapsing houses, choking smoke, stampeding mortals running like rats to save their tiny lives. A thousand and one ways to die. Fast or slow, in pain or in black unconsciousness, it didn’t matter; in the end, she would be snuffed out, as easily as a candle.

Irrith tasted blood. She had stifled her scream with a fist, and bit down so hard she broke the skin. Spitting, she made herself straighten from her instinctive crouch. The fae above—more than six of them, now; others had come to join the fight, or at least to escape the wind—needed instruction from the Queen. Angrisla was frighting people from their houses, when they would stay past the point of safety; Tom Toggin was shepherding children separated from their parents; they were all helping in their own ways. But it was like carrying water in a sieve: the few drops that shifted made scant difference against the whole.

The sprite put her head down and drove herself onward. Much of the Onyx Hall was still a maze to her, a labyrinth full of dark secrets, but she knew the major ways well enough to keep her path without having to look. Arriving in the council chamber, however, she found it echoing and empty, holding only the pierced arc of Amadea’s fan. Irrith stared dully at the makeshift map, trying not to imagine her own body pierced by a blade; there were roving bands of women in the streets above, some of them armed, seeking out anyone who wore strange dress or spoke English badly. Foreigners had been attacked all over. A few were in prison now. Others were dead.

Death came so easily, with so little warning.

Breath ragged in her chest, Irrith dug her broken nails into her scalp. “Stop it,” she whispered, teeth grating until her jaw ached. “Find the Queen.”

Not only could she not find Lune; she could not find
anyone.
The Onyx Hall might have been an unpopulated grave. Had they all fled, without telling her? Fury at that thought gave Irrith a little defense against the cold—so long as she did not think of dying here, alone. She tried the Queen’s bedchamber, without luck, and the night garden. All the flowers there had shivered into black, brittle stalks, and dead leaves carpeted the ground. It was the one place that had felt like home to Irrith, and she ran from it, weeping.

Her shoulder slammed into a wall, checking her flight. She was near the greater presence chamber now, and still no sight of anyone. But she heard a strangled cry.

Irrith’s heart leapt. Company, any company, would be a blessing, a minute consolation that all the world had not perished. Shivering, she ducked through the great doors.

The chamber was empty, and its black heights gave no solace. The crystal panes stretching between the arches of the ceiling gleamed opaque with ice. Frost coated the silver throne at the far end, and so it took a moment for Irrith to realize the great chair had been shifted askew.

She crossed the patterned floor on feet gone numb, now dreading what she might find. The sounds coming from behind the throne hurt just to hear. She had to look, though; she had to know.

Curling her fingers around the freezing metal, Irrith peeked into the space beyond.

Hope surged at the sight of Lune. Why the Queen was here, hidden behind her throne, standing on some kind of platform with one hand on a pitted block of limestone, Irrith couldn’t begin to guess, but at least she was
here.
Not everyone was gone.

Then she felt the heat flooding the alcove.

There was no comfort in it. Earlier that morning, Irrith had found herself caught between two horns of the Fire, trapped between a pair of burning houses, the hot air searing her lungs. This was worse. This destruction had
awareness.

Another broken groan escaped Lune, and her fingers whitened on the stone. Her silver hair hung lank about her face, all the curls blasted out, and her head sagged as if she could not keep it up. Something fell from behind that curtain, sizzling where it struck the wooden planks, leaving a scorch mark on their surface.

She was weeping tears of fire.

A new sound reached Irrith’s ears: a high-pitched moan, a wordless cry of terror. Only when Lune twitched did the sprite realize it came from her own throat. The Queen’s other hand jerked upward, searching blindly; she knew someone else was there. Irrith almost reached for her, then held herself back. The power suffusing Lune would destroy anyone who touched her.

“What can I do?” she whimpered, fighting not to flee.

The reply came out in a parched whisper, torn from the depths of Lune’s body.

“Find. Jack.”

His own coughing woke him. Ash coated Jack’s mouth and throat; he hacked, body convulsing, to expel it and draw clean air.

But clean air was nowhere to be found. More ash and smoke came in with every breath, and desiccating heat seared his lungs. The dirt beneath him was baked dry, cobbles like a griddle on which he roasted. Jack heaved himself upward, but made it only halfway before his elbows and knees gave out, dropping him once more. The effort advanced him a foot or two, though, and so he kept trying, lurching by this crippled means away from the danger that threatened him.