In Ashes Lie (41 page)

It was the greatest of all ironies. Old Charles had rightly disputed Bradshaw at his trial, when the lawyer tried to call him “elected King”; a sovereign was not chosen by the people, as if he were a member of Parliament. Yet this celebration today was a triumph for those who held that sovereign power arose from below, rather than being bestowed from above; though the people of England had not chosen their King, they had chosen to
have
a King. All the divine right in the world had not brought young Charles home, until his people willed it.

Henry might be right. Charles the Second was a dissolute man, given to wenching and drinking, and he might be a bad king. Riding with his fellow aldermen in the bright May sun, Antony could not guess what the future would bring.

But for today at least, he refused to worry about the future. Today, the King enjoyed his own again, and England was at peace.

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 4, 1666

The Battle for St. Paul’s

A
ll through the night the Dragon has prepared, nurturing the power stolen from below, and as dawn breaks it begins its attack.

The fall of the Bow Bells heralds the onslaught. The inferno roars up the southern streets from Soper Lane to Old Change, crushing the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in its maw. The great bells, emblem of London’s soul, toll their last against the hard ground. East and west, all down the broad lane, Cheapside burns.

The precious works of the goldsmiths have been stolen away to safety, but other treasures cannot be moved. The Dragon strikes fast at the Standard, disabling the water conduit, further crippling the City’s defense. The Mermaid Tavern of story and song crumbles into cinders and ash.

In the narrow lanes to the north, where the houses stand so close together their jettied upper floors almost touch, the people flee like rats. Some drag beds, makeshift litters for those who cannot move themselves. Upon one, a mother clutches her infant daughter to her breast, baptized not two days ago at the church that now burns so fierce.

Had the defenses been ready, Cheapside might have stayed the beast; the broadest street in the City offers a natural place to stand. But those who have fought for two days straight now falter in their weariness, and what might have been a bulwark instead becomes a highway.

Riding the wind, the Dragon flies westward, into the Newgate Shambles, and beyond.

Jack winced as Lune pulled a deerskin glove over the ruin of her left hand. He knew a bad burn could render flesh insensate, but all his medical instincts screamed at him to prevent the damage she would do by continuing to use the injured limb.
It will putrefy and fall off...

But fae were proof against such infections, and Lune had work to do. As did he.

“The wall,” she said, flexing her fingers to settle the glove. “Soon the Dragon will reach it—at Aldersgate first, I expect. We can make a defense there.”

They spoke in her council chamber, surrounded by half a dozen others with knowledge of warfare, from the barguest Bonecruncher to the noble Captain of the Onyx Guard. To a man—
to a faerie, rather
—they stood straight and proud, unbowed for the first time since the Cailleach’s cold wind began to blow. The Dragon had drawn power from the Onyx Hall, but the fire Jack and Lune had transmuted gave new strength to the fae. And, it seemed to Jack, united them in a common purpose: they were more than ready to fight.

Yet dispatching them to the City wall could hardly accomplish much. “We haven’t enough people to cover the entire wall,” Jack said, “and even if you defend the gates—what can you do that the human defenders cannot? They’re bringing in sailors and dockhands, with gunpowder to blow up houses and make firebreaks.” Samuel Pepys might have suggested it with the protection of the Naval Office in mind, eastward in Seething Lane, but it would be useful elsewhere, too.

Lune smiled faintly. That strange fire still burned in her, too, though she was no longer the eldritch creature he had kissed.
And I still cannot believe I did that.

“We will not be at the wall,” she said, either oblivious to or ignoring his flush. “Not outside. As above, so below: we can strengthen it from here.”

Several of their lieutenants looked puzzled, but Jack followed her meaning. The wall was one of the physical anchors of the Onyx Hall—though not, thank God and whatever powers the faeries honored, one that afforded access into the palace. Because this place reflected the land above in twisted fashion, its edges were not those of the City; Jack’s head hurt, trying to trace the path the wall followed through the chambers and galleries.

Judging by the orders Lune gave, she traced it without having to think. It would be a strange defense indeed, fae stringing themselves in a tortuous line through the palace, but she seemed to believe it would hold. Or was that merely the confidence one played when one’s subjects needed to hear it?

He didn’t think so. There was a serenity in her now, despite the paired dangers that threatened them; it had been there ever since the kiss. She seemed to float an inch above the ground, though he had looked and found her shoes firmly planted.

Jack himself did not feel so serene. Not with the words currently burning a hole in his throat, waiting for the right moment to be spoken.

There
is
no right moment.
There were wrong moments, though, and included in their number any moment in which they were not private. The court’s advisers knew Nicneven wanted Vidar, but no more. Lune would not thank him for revealing the rest publicly. And while he didn’t need Lune’s thanks, he
did
need her to listen.

So he waited while Lune gave her orders, and when she turned to instruct the nightmare Angrisla about a final group on the surface, he spoke in an undertone to Amadea. “Please see to it that we are not disturbed. I have a matter I must address with the Queen.”

The Lady Chamberlain raised her eyebrows, but curtsied in acceptance. She left on Angrisla’s heels, and the instant the door swung closed, Jack began. “I’m still new to my title, so forgive me if I misunderstand. But I’m here to speak for the good of London’s mortals, am I not?”

“You are,” Lune agreed.

“As I thought. Then on their behalf, I say this:
you must negotiate.
”

Lune’s gloved hand curled into a claw, and she held it against her breast as if the shattered nerves pained her. Were she a mortal woman, he would be a monster for demanding anything of her; she deserved quiet rest, and relief from the burdens she bore. But she was a faerie woman, and moreover a Queen. She would find no rest while her realm was in danger.

Jack spoke with deliberate bluntness. “Half the City is burnt already. With the strength the Dragon stole from this place, it bids fair to burn the other half by day’s end. The men above slow it in any way they can, but the wind is driving the flames onward like a fleet of fire-ships, and carrying them over every break we create. If there’s to be anything left standing next week, then the Cailleach
must
be stopped. And that means you must reach some terms with Nicneven.”

Her lips thinned into a pale line. Lune had been here, trapped in the freezing chambers of the Onyx Hall, while he fought the Fire above; he suspected she didn’t understand the extent of the destruction there. Oh, she could trace it, through her bond with the palace—but she had not
seen
it. It was easy to forget what one had not seen.

Lune clenched her jaw, then said, “You would have me give in to her?”

“Did I say that? Negotiation is not agreement. Send for the ambassador,” Jack said. “Tell him—oh, whatever you have to, even if it’s a lie. Pretend you’re willing to consider the Gyre-Carling’s demands. Even if it buys us nothing more than a temporary reprieve, that may be enough to save the City.”

“I have
asked
for a reprieve, and been spurned.”

“That was a reprieve for London,” Jack reminded her. “I’m talking about a truce. Promise them something, but on the condition that the Cailleach ceases her assault while they send word to Nicneven in Fife. That will give us—how fast can fae travel? Surely at least a week. Enough time to—”

He broke off, because Lune’s eyes had gone very wide. “What?”

She stood silent for a moment, then said, “Not a week.”

“What?”

“To send to Nicneven. Because she is not in Fife.”

Jack blinked. “Why not?”

“The Cailleach.” Lune spoke with more vitality now, no longer sheltering her hand. “She would not answer to anyone less than a Queen. If the Hag is not attacking us from Scotland—and I do not believe she is—then Nicneven must be near, to bid her begin and end her assault.”

“Then she would be with the Scots outside the City, I presume,” Jack said. “What do you intend—a knife between her ribs?”

Lune shuddered, recoiling from him. “No! Sun and Moon—that would prove Vidar right indeed, that I have become Invidiana’s echo. No, but if I sent word, demanded to speak to her face to face...”

Invidiana.
He’d heard that name before, regarding the days before Lune’s rule. If Jack was to be of any use in the negotiations—if he was to have any chance of persuading Lune to end this conflict for good—he would have to learn more about that, and fast. “Will Nicneven come?”

“I believe she will,” Lune said. “And if I am right, it will gain us some time.”

“To fight the Dragon.”

Her answering smile was fierce. “To kill it.”

“I don’t think it’s working!” Irrith screamed at Angrisla, and the mara snarled in reply.

The tower of St. Paul’s stood veiled in smoke, a rare island of sanity in the midst of chaos. The squat, rectangular shape betrayed no bright flicker, and surely it would do so if the cathedral had caught. Which meant the troop the Queen had dispatched to protect its grounds was succeeding.

The ones who
weren’t
succeeding were underground, in the Onyx Hall. The Fire had climbed Ludgate Hill, moving up from Blackfriars and Carter Lane to claim the high ground, until the whole rise seemed like a volcano, belching thick black clouds. From that height it flung out sparks, riding the wind toward the wall.

Which was not stopping them.

For a time it had worked. Irrith had watched, holding her breath, as the incandescent flakes snuffed themselves against an invisible barrier. Angrisla, barely bothering to disguise her hideous face, kept up a continuous stream of curses and speculation, identifying for Irrith all the buildings and streets she could not name on her own. And it seemed that the stout brick courses of the City wall, bolstered by the fae, would hold the beast back.

But Ludgate itself, which had long formed a stark profile against the glare behind, abruptly vanished into the flames. The debtors usually imprisoned within its walls were scattered—released by their jailers or broken free on their own, Irrith didn’t know—and the proud statues of old Lud and the Tudor Queen Elizabeth were lost somewhere inside the blaze. The Dragon had passed the gate, and was coming toward them fast.

Angrisla spat a foul oath and ran for the Fleet Bridge—not away from the Fire, but toward it.
These London folk are mad,
Irrith thought in disbelief.
She
would never run to save the village near Wayland’s Smithy; the mortals could just rebuild, and breed more of themselves to replace the ones they’d lost.

Fae, however, were harder to come by.
I must be mad, too,
Irrith admitted, and ran after Angrisla.

The mara at least had not charged straight into the flames. She halted on the Fleet Bridge, leaning out between the iron pikes that lined its stone edge. Irrith cringed back from joining her, though whether because of the iron or the sheer filth of the river, the sprite could not say. If the searing air hadn’t roasted all sense of smell from her, she would have gagged on the water’s stench.

Angrisla was shouting down into that fouled water. Irrith couldn’t hear her clearly over the whirlwind roar of the advancing Fire, and she was not even certain the goblin woman was speaking English.

Except for the last bit, where Angrisla screamed, “Do it, bitch, and I’ll feed you a corpse a day for a year!”

Which was almost enough to make Irrith shy off the bridge entirely. She made the mistake of looking down, though, and what she saw there transfixed her to the stone.

Something moved in the choking sludge of the Fleet. Flowing sluggishly between the wharves and crumbling embankments, its surface clogged with debris and snowed under with ash, the thing was hardly a river at all—and Irrith had never seen a river spirit like the one that rose from it now.

Angrisla ran off the bridge as if for her life, hauling Irrith with her as she went. “Blacktooth Meg,” she said when they scudded to a halt on solid ground once more, and gave a feral grin. “The hag of the Fleet. Not so powerful as the Cailleach Bheur, but more than you or me.”

“Were you asking her for help or threatening her?” Irrith asked, unable to look away from the monstrosity before her.

The mara shrugged. “Both?”

The oil-slick skin might not have been skin at all, but an accumulation of the river’s filth. The shoulders were huge, but uneven, studded and twisted with lumps of either muscle or trash. Patches of stringy hair sprang from the scalp, debris caught in their strands, and the clawed hands that rose from the water’s surface could have crushed Irrith’s face, in concert or alone.