In Ashes Lie

VALE OF THE WHITE HORSE, BERKSHIRE: June 23, 1658

The night wind whipping across the crest of the hill was fierce enough to make even the tall Midsummer bonfire bow, twist, and then fight back. The earthworks, known to the locals as Uffington Castle even though no castle stood there, gave only a suggestion of shelter, but the fae dancing about the flames paid the wind little heed. Most of them had lived in Berkshire since before they could remember, and to them, the gusts were old friends.

For the few strangers, the wind was merely one more reminder that this place was not their home. Nine years since they were driven from London; as much as seven, for some of them, since they came here to the Vale, where at last they found a faerie court that would give them shelter. Others had followed later, falling once more into the orbit of their exiled star.

Tonight, however, that star had slipped their watch, and now stood a small distance away, atop a second hill. Less impressive than its earthwork-crowned sibling, the hill’s suspiciously flat crest was marked by a bare patch of chalk that gleamed in the waning moonlight. Legend said a dragon had been slain there, its blood poisoning the ground so that nothing would grow. It suited Lune’s melancholy mood.

They would have been dancing in Moor Fields that night, had they been in London, luring mortals out to join their revelry. Lune wondered if Vidar bothered, and what welcome those mortals might find if he did. Fae were not always kind. Those serving him, rarely so.

The wind wrapped her skirts around her legs and carried them off to one side, tugging constantly at her, so that she had to brace her feet apart or risk being knocked off balance. Behind her, the ground fell into a broad valley patchworked with forest and fields; before her lay the slope leading up to Uffington Castle, and the celebration she had no heart to join.

From below came a voice, casually breaking into the privacy she sought. “Poor wretch—he’s become a sorry sight nowadays.”

Blinking, Lune glanced down. A lithe sprite named Irrith climbed the side of Dragon Hill with the ease of one who has done it many times. The faerie nodded her head to the opposite slope, where lines were faintly visible in the long summer grass. The narrow trenches had been carved into the hillside, but their smooth curves were marred by greenery that stubbornly claimed a foothold in the chalk. The figure could not be made out well even from this, its best vantage point; it stretched itself out along the slope such that only the birds in the sky grasped its entirety. But Lune knew its shape. She had been there when the White Horse rose from the ground and descended to feed in the thick grass of the Manger below.

“Can you not clear the weeds yourself?” she asked, pushing her silver hair from her face with a futile gesture. The wind flung it back again the moment her hand left.

Irrith dropped casually onto the bare chalk at her feet. “Not our responsibility. There are families in this Vale whose task it is to scour the Horse—but with the Puritans watching over their shoulders, they fear to come up here.”

Music came from around the bonfire, high above them, dancing on the summer wind. Puritans did not much approve of Midsummer fires, either, but that did not stop the fae—nor some mortals in the region. Not everyone agreed with the godly reformers. Fewer and fewer, as the years passed under their austere rule: first as the Commonwealth of England, and when that failed, the Protectorate, ruled over by the great General Oliver Cromwell. The Kingdom of England was no more.

The King is dead. There is no King.

Irrith said, “You are looking the wrong way.”

“What?”

“London is that way.” The sprite pointed left, toward the eastern horizon.

“I was not thinking of London.”

A grin answered her. “Bollocks.”

Irrith wasn’t one of the ladies who followed Lune from the Onyx Hall nine years ago, when Ifarren Vidar drove her out. She wasn’t a lady at all, as her insolent manner demonstrated. The sprite meant nothing by her discourtesy; she was simply wild as the city fae were not. Tonight, for the Midsummer celebrations, she wore tunic and hose that had not been fashionable for centuries, and then only for men, and not woven from moss. Living moss, pricked here and there with tiny white flowers. In these parts, it counted as fine court clothing.

Lune still wore the bodice and skirts of the Onyx Court, impractical as they sometimes were. It was, she admitted, a matter of principle: if she dressed herself as the Berkshire fae did, she would lose one of the ties that bound her to her realm.

I still consider it my realm, despite these long years.

How could she not? She didn’t need Irrith’s reminder to tell her in which direction London lay; it called to her bones, a subtle, lodestone pull. She had crossed and recrossed England in the early days of her exile, visiting the courts of other faerie monarchs, and at any moment could have pointed without hesitation or error toward the very heart of the City. So long as that sense remained, she was bound to her land. So long as she was bound to her land, she was its Queen. That was the very essence of faerie sovereignty.

But sovereignty was not politics, and she had not seen her realm in nine long years—nine years, four months, and twenty-three days, to be precise. I count the time as if I were human.

Vidar occupied her palace, and although every faerie monarch of England owed Lune for her aid to them ages ago, none would give her the army she needed to retake it. They sheltered her briefly, then encouraged her onward, until at last she came to rest here, in the Vale of the White Horse, where she did not and would never belong.

Lune became aware of Irrith looking up at her. Rising, the sprite said, “May I ask you a question?”

Lune wanted to say no. She had retreated from the festivities for a reason. But she knew all too well how dependent she was on the goodwill of those who had taken her in, and so she said, “Of course.”

“Is it true you love a mortal?”

Love, not loved. Irrith understood that much, at least. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Startled, Lune turned to look at her. Irrith’s auburn hair, a careless tangle of loose strands and small braids, whipped back from her delicate features; she, unlike Lune, had the sense to face into the wind. In her eyes was honest confusion and perplexity. “He died ages ago, they tell me, and you’ll grieve for him until the end of time. I don’t understand why anyone would choose that.”

Not so many ages ago. But an infinity of time would not dull the edge.

Lune sighed and turned her head, so that her profile was to the wind. “Imagine you lived all your life in a tower, and saw no more of sun and breeze, forest and grass, than what you could glimpse through your window. And then you had a chance to escape that tower—to walk in the grass, feel the leaves with your hands, and drink in the sun with your skin. Would you say no?”

“If I were to be locked in the tower again,” Irrith said bluntly. “Imprisonment would be all the worse for having escaped it briefly.”

A sad smile touched Lune’s lips. “Ah—but the experience is worth having. The world seems more real to you thereafter, because the one you love lived in it. The colors are richer, the sounds more sweet, because you shared them with another.”

Irrith had the courtesy to consider it for a moment before declaring, “I still don’t understand.”

I did not expect you to. Perhaps it was the touch of mortality shading Lune’s vision, but she sometimes felt far older than the wild faerie at her side. “If you saw more of mortals, perhaps you would.”

She hadn’t meant to hint at the concerns that darkened her thoughts, but Irrith guessed them anyway; they were never far from her mind. “You will return, madam,” she said, gazing across to the White Horse as if London lay before them, and not far to the east, as she had pointed out. The Onyx Hall, and Michael Deven’s grave, which she had not seen these nine years. “And when you do, perhaps I will go with you.”

ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, LONDON: July 14, 1658

In the darkness, a horse whickered quietly and stamped one foot. The sound echoed off the thick stone pillars and into the vast heights above, far loftier than any stable.

Antony froze, breathing silently through his mouth. Only when he heard no one stirring did he ease forward again, feeling his way carefully across the littered floor, over the splinters of benches and choir stalls, around the pickets of sleeping Army horses, down the nave of the desecrated St. Paul’s.

The cathedral, relic of popery that it was, had seen ten hard years of abuse by the godly reformers who would eradicate every trace of Catholicism from their physical as well as spiritual world. Rain dripped through the broken roof in the south transept and elsewhere, and wind blew through the shattered windows, their painted glass smashed as idolatrous. Seamstresses slept in the portico outside, in flimsy chambers raised between the pillars of the classical face Inigo Jones built to beautify the western end of the aged and crumbling structure. Filth coated the floor from one end to the other.

But such neglect served Antony now. If caught, he would simply plead himself a beggar, seeking shelter from the rain that drummed on the lead-stripped roof. No one would question it. The soldiers quartered here might call him a vagrant and whip him back to whatever parish he named as his home, but no one would see in him the wealthy baronet of Lombard Street who had once served in Guildhall and Parliament.

That man was long gone. In his place stood a man who was, in truth, little more than a vagrant and beggar.

His hands shook as he knelt in the center of the nave. His hands, his knees, like he hadn’t eaten in a fortnight. Desperation gnawed at his gut, as if he were a sot deprived of wine, and his mind held only one thought. I cannot do this much longer. I cannot.

The same refrain, for years now. And somehow, he kept going.

Soundlessly, his trembling lips shaped the words, praying extemporaneously in the manner of the Independents. Almighty Lord, have pity on Your humbled son. Perhaps this is my punishment for my sins—but let me pass, I beg of You, lest I die.

Filthy, stained, cracked as they were, the stones folded soundlessly away, opening a pit in the floor of the cathedral. No light came from below, but Antony’s feet knew the path. He all but fell down the stair, letting the opening close behind him.

He collapsed on the bottom step, gasping, struggling to keep his harsh breathing quiet. The air was pleasantly cool, but it could have been life-saving warmth, penetrating his bones after too long in a winter storm. He pressed himself against the wall, weeping despite his will, and gave himself over to the embrace of the Onyx Hall.

How much longer can I endure?

Neither he nor Lune had realized, when she and her courtiers fled London, what the consequence would be. Queen and Prince, they were bound to the Hall. For both of them to leave it…whether that would have given Vidar a chance to claim the realm for his own, they never learned.

Lune could survive outside her palace, though she might lose her sovereignty in time. Antony could not.

The trembling grew worse, not better, as he huddled against the stone, and he wept silently, waiting for it to pass. Time spent in other faerie realms helped; he forced that as far as he could, driving himself to the limits of his endurance. The Onyx Hall was not safe for him. But in the end, it was this place he had bound himself to, when he became Prince of the Stone; this place, and no other. And humans so touched by Faerie died when they left it behind.

If he died, Vidar might win.

Therefore, he could not let himself die.

But God help him—he wanted to, sometimes. When the yearning grew too bad, and he thought about the dangers that waited below. This entrance was one of three Vidar did not seem to know about, and the safest for Antony; lying as it did beneath the cathedral, the place was uncomfortable to fae. St. Paul’s was also more accessible than the fortified Tower of London, and as for the third…

Vidar knew the London Stone was integral to the Onyx Hall, but not why. Very few fae understood the fundamental structure of the palace, and therefore the locations of its original entrances. Equally few knew the location of the Stone, the linchpin of the Hall. Its mortal half sat in Cannon Street above, but the faerie reflection was hidden, behind the very throne Vidar claimed for his own. And Antony would not do anything that might betray its concealment to the usurper.

So he crouched here, like a rat in its hole, fighting to keep silent, and prayed that no passing fae would hear him.

He fell asleep at last, still on the lowest step, and woke painfully stiff. Touching the wall, he sensed that he had slept the day through, and night had come again. It was safe for him to move—as safe as it ever got.

Rising was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and it grew harder every time. But Antony forced himself to his feet, limped upward through the blackness, and left the Onyx Hall behind.

WAYLAND’S SMITHY, BERKSHIRE: August 6, 1658

Sunset stained the gray trunks of the beeches with ruddy warmth, and elder and sweet cicely honeyed the air. Lune stood before the long, low mound that sheltered within the ring of trees, and watched as Teyrngar, the faerie hound Leslic had given her, sniffed along the margin of the woods in idle search of something to chase. He had proved faithful, if his giver had not, and Lune had in time learned not to see that traitor’s face every time she looked upon him.

She appreciated how freely she could walk in the open, here in the Vale. She stood in front of the gray sentinel stones capping the mound’s south end without any glamour masking her, and never any fear of being seen. It was a freedom unknown to her since an age so distant she could not recall it, and unimaginable in the city she called home.

But the quiet grated on her. Farmers lived in the Vale of the White Horse, and there was a village within easy reach, but she felt terribly isolated out here, with only the Berkshire fae and the remnants of her own small court for company. She had few dealings with mortals. Even a glamour only helped so much, when the laws against vagrancy meant any traveler was looked upon with suspicion. And so along with her freedom, she had ignorance: she was utterly dependent on others to keep her informed, as the world passed her by.

The still air was broken by hooves, beating a dull rhythm on the chalk-and-flint lane that passed near the mound and its concealing trees. If it was not who Lune expected, he would ride on by—or if he did not, she scarcely cared. The humans knew the tales of this place. But the figure who rode under the arms of the beeches was familiar, for all it had changed.

The sight of Antony Ware brought unexpected pain. Where once his association with faerie kind had slowed his aging, now it seemed to speed it. All but exiled from the Onyx Hall, he’d lost at least two stone, and most of the color from his hair and beard. The shoulders under his buff coat were raw bone, and after two hard days of riding, his hands shook on the reins.

She would not insult him by pointing out the obvious, though. Lune took the reins and steadied his mare while he dismounted—a real mare, not a transformed faerie. “Leave a silver coin,” she said, attempting humor, “and you’ll find her shod ere we are done.”

“Even I cannot be at two tasks at once.” The voice came from behind her, a deep, friendly growl. For such an enormous man, Wayland moved far too silently.

The King of the Vale did not look obviously fae; at first glance, he seemed nothing more than a brawny blacksmith, with muscles cording his arms and straining his plain leather tunic across his chest. But Lune offered him a respectful greeting, never forgetting she owed this royal cousin her present sanctuary.

Wayland acknowledged her with a nod and gripped Antony’s arm familiarly, then bent to scratch between Teyrngar’s ears. “We have food for you within,” he said to the exiled Prince, “safe for you to eat.” Which meant some puck had stolen it from a nearby farm. But the fae here, never hardened by the old ways of the Onyx Court, were willing enough to do some good in return; Lune trusted the farmer had woken to find his house swept bare of dirt, his cows fed and milked.

It was the old way of things, simple and familiar, even though Lune herself had not dwelt in the countryside for an age. Wayland plied his hammer for any mortal brave enough to come and pay his fee, and though they were fewer with every passing century, his name was yet remembered. Who remembers me?

Fortunately, she had reason enough to put aside such self-pitying thoughts. “Your advisers have gathered,” Wayland told them, unperturbed by any consideration that a king should not play messenger. Social distinctions were another thing that was simpler out here. “They wait on you.”

“We will be there presently.” She had one thing to ask Antony, though, before they went in. When Wayland had left them, Teyrngar frisking at his heels, she said, “What change?”

In all matters but this, she would not hesitate to speak in front of their advisers. But they had uncovered one planted spy and one suborned puck in the past, and would not risk this detail reaching Vidar. “He is still blind,” Antony said, tethering his mare where she could graze, and pulling the saddle from her back with a grunt. “He tears the palace apart in search of the London Stone, but he has not found it, and he does not know what will make it answer to him if he does. He thinks this mortal partnership of yours nothing more than a foolish fancy.”

Tiny points of tension unknotted in Lune’s back. The Onyx Hall owed its existence to both mortal and faerie hands, and no one had ever claimed its sovereignty without mortal aid. She did not believe it could be done alone. And so long as Vidar remained ignorant of that, she would not have to worry he would overcome his arrogance and pride to take a human consort.

So long as she held that advantage and the London Sword, she held Vidar in check.

But she wanted more; she wanted her realm back. “Let another tend your horse,” she said. “We have word from both Ireland and Scotland, that may at last be of use.”

Four upright slabs guarded the front end of the barrow mound, like turrets flanking the narrow, stone-lined passage that cut back into the soil. The cruciform chamber at its end was small; Lune had to crouch to enter it. Inside, the wall slid away with a quiet grinding she should have heard when Wayland came out—and how he ever fit through here, she could not guess. She straightened with relief into the space beyond.

Wayland’s realm could not have contrasted more starkly with hers had he tried. Warm torchlight illuminated the high, round ceiling of the cavern they stood in, and dried leaves of scarlet and gold carpeted the dirt floor. Fae congregated here, but not in attendance on their King, who stood conversing with a tatterfoal off to one side. Hobs clustered around several pots that hung suspended over open fires, and a trio of pucks played an elaborate game that might have once been related to mumblety-peg, tossing a complex pattern of knives into the dirt.

The fae of the Onyx Hall stood out like London grandees tossed among farmers, even those who had given up the stiffness of court finery. Sir Peregrin Thorne, once lieutenant, now captain of the remaining Onyx Guard, demonstrated a complex sword pass to his companion Dame Segraine, who spun a dagger across her fingers as she watched. Tom Toggin, who commanded her household in exile, put the finishing touches on some elaborate marzipan subtlety, tongue protruding from between his buck teeth. Others were scattered elsewhere in the mound, no doubt pursuing their own accustomed habits as well as they could.

Lune knew all of them, far more intimately than she had when they were merely a few among many. Dame Segraine, for example: when in London, the lady knight had often disguised herself as a man to learn from the great fencing masters in their schools. Sir Peregrin, with enough wine in him, told harrowing tales of the hag Black Annis in Leicestershire, under whose rule he had formerly lived. Tom created enormous sweets for Lune’s table, knowing she would not eat more than a fragment, so he could consume the remainder without feeling guilty.

They made their bows as she and Antony passed, still obedient to the manners of courtly life, and Peregrin fell in behind them. The Berkshire fae merely nodded, if they bothered to look up at all. Together, the exiled Queen and her Prince crossed the Great Hall and went out through one of the root-arched tunnels.

Their advisers waited in a smaller chamber, in chairs carved from beechwood, around an oaken table that might have seen William the Conqueror’s day. The floor beneath them was carpeted with wild strawberries, blossoming out of season. The little group rose and knelt when Lune and Antony entered, removing their caps, and sat when she gestured. Peregrin took up a position behind them, standing guard as well as attending. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “The journey was a long one for some of you. I hope you bring me good news.”

Her council here was a motley thing, including in its number fae who weren’t subjects of hers—one who was not even English. Lady Feidelm’s clothing was more outlandish here than even Antony’s buff coat, but she seemed at home in these caverns. Though technically still an ambassadress, her outrage at Eochu Airt’s betrayal left her with no compunctions about giving her own aid to the court in exile.

The sidhe looked less than hopeful when Lune nodded to her, though. “I fear there’s been little change. Few of the other kingdoms approve of Conchobar’s alliance with Nicneven, but they do not disapprove so strongly as to take action against him.”

The indecision was maddening. Lune said, “Vidar gained Conchobar’s aid on the promise that he would control England to Ireland’s benefit. Instead, Lord Protector Cromwell ground your people under the heel of his boot. How can they stand by him, after such a failure?”

Feidelm spread her white hands in a helpless gesture. “He has failed, yes—but if Conchobar abandons him, what good will that do? Vidar’s success is his only hope, for certainly you will not view him favorably, should you regain your throne.” And Vidar has not your scruples against interference, she left unsaid.

“We might have been able to do something on Ireland’s behalf, had we not been driven out,” Antony said. “It is more than Vidar’s bungling; it is the loss of the good we might have done.”

He rather overstated the case, in Lune’s opinion; she was not at all certain they could have turned the tide of Cromwell’s invasion, or even softened it. But such honesty had no place in politics. “And the Ard-Rí?”

Feidelm sighed. “Our High Kings, you understand, do not rule as a king does; they do not give commands, and the Dagda cannot bring Conchobar to heel. But he promises that no others will support Ulster against you.”

In more peaceful times, Lune had viewed that High King with benign amusement. He was a crude fellow, extraordinarily powerful, but much concerned with earthy pleasures. His septennial ascendency at Temair, however, did not offer much hope for action; the Dagda was far more comfortable as he was. But the promise was not without value. Reinforcements from Ireland would turn this affair into a protracted war, and Lune had yet to figure out how to win even a single battle.

What if the fault of that lies not with me? The question haunted her, waking and sleeping. The monarchy of England had been abolished, by Parliamentary decree. Lune had not needed messengers to bring word of it to her; she knew the moment it happened. That sense of dislocation she felt when Charles was killed, the trembling in the foundations of the realm, was briefly an earthquake.

And then silence.

Wayland felt it, too, and every other monarch in faerie England. They did not lose their thrones as she had, but of course none of them were invaded, either. Or was it because none of their crowns were ever linked to the mortal one? Lune was not certain it was possible to regain her throne, with the King of England exiled from his, the crown jewels destroyed, and mortal sovereignty lying cold in its grave.

So she did what she could to aid Antony against the military rule of the Protectorate, and kept searching for hope in her own fight. And if she could not pry the Ulstermen away from Vidar, she would direct her blows at Scotland.

Amadea had spent a full year in embassy to the scattered Scottish courts, to little apparent result, but the true bounty of her efforts came in the form of fae willing to pass information south. Admittedly, the Lady Chamberlain made a poor spymaster, but Valentin Aspell had drifted away into careful neutrality, following neither Lune nor Vidar, and the Goodemeades had other concerns.

And she was not entirely ineffective. “The word from Fife,” Amadea said when Lune turned to her, “is that Nicneven is daily more disaffected with Vidar.”

That was enough to make even Antony sit up, despite his exhaustion. “How so?”

Amadea extended her hands, as if weighing the various sides. “He gained Ulster aid by promising he would control the mortal government and its Irish policy. But Nicneven—”

“—hates such interference,” Lune finished for her. The Gyre-Carling had embraced it briefly in revenge for Mary Stuart, but with Charles’s death, her purpose was done. “Why her people are still in London at all is something we do not know. Nor, for that matter, why she would work with Conchobar at all, when their aims are so far separated.”

Light danced from the gems in Amadea’s rings as she shrugged. “That, I’ve been unable to learn. I believe Vidar misled her as to the reason for Conchobar’s involvement; the hints I gather are that Ulster promised to assist Nicneven in exchange for something else entirely.”

Feidelm’s chair scraped across the soil, and all eyes went to her. “Claíomh Solais,” the poetess whispered.

From farther down the table came a wry voice. “And what is that, when it’s in English?” Irrith asked. She sat in for Wayland, who had little patience for these intrigues, though Lune doubted Irrith’s patience was any greater.

“The Sword of Light,” Feidelm said, her eyes shining with reverence. “The sword of Nuada, who was Ard-Rí before, and will be again. One of the Four Treasures of Ériu.”

Lune swallowed an unexpected desire to laugh as the English around the table all exchanged baffled glances. Anything that merited renown as a treasure of Ireland could be real trouble. “What makes you name it?”

The poetess’s eyes focused again, and she straightened, edging her chair back toward the table. “It has been lost for ages, but rumor has come of it again, and recently. This might be why. If it was in Nicneven’s clutches…”

“With all the raids between Ireland and Scotland,” Antony said, “mortal and fae alike, it’s possible. Suppose Conchobar has the sword. What danger means that for us?”

Feidelm hesitated, fingers brushing the torc about her throat. “I cannot be certain. I may even be wrong about the sword. Properly, it is Nuada’s, and Conchobar could curry great favor by returning it to the Ard-Rí. Perhaps he may do so, when Nuada reigns again.”

“Nuada was on the throne two years ago,” Lune said. “Conchobar had his chance then—for we must assume that if the sword was his payment, he has received it by now.”

“Indeed.” The sidhe nodded thoughtfully, and a line of worry creased her fine brow. “Which makes me think he has some use for it, before he gives it over. But in my honest opinion, that use will not concern you; more likely he will turn it against his enemies in Connacht. With no insult intended, madam, Lord Antony—to Conchobar, you are not that important.”

If Ireland’s internal strife distracted him from England, so much the better. “You said Nicneven was disaffected,” Lune reminded Amadea. “Has she learned the truth of Vidar’s promise to Conchobar?”

“He has not been subtle about it,” Antony muttered blackly. Once they finished with the reports from abroad, he would tell her of Vidar’s latest attempts to manipulate the Puritans and Lord Protector Cromwell’s government. “I know Nicneven is in Fife, not London, but surely she has creatures who carry tales of his deeds.”

“She does,” Amadea confirmed. “But she had patience, because she believed Vidar when he told her he but delayed the Irish, while he worked to carry out her other purpose.”

Other purpose? There had to be one; it was the only explanation for the Scottish fae still in London, long after Charles’s death. But something in how Amadea said it made Lune’s heartbeat slow in dread. “Which is?”

Into the silence of the council chamber, Amadea said, “To destroy the Onyx Hall.”

The blood drained from Antony’s already pale face. Lune covered his hand with her own, and found his fingers cold as death. It would kill him. This long separation already came far too close. She feared what would happen if he died before they could retake the palace; he grew frailer with every passing month. And without him, Lune might find herself crippled.

“Why?” Peregrin whispered, horrified enough to speak out of turn. “That—but—it is as if we threatened to destroy Fife itself. She makes war, not just against her Majesty, but against—”

“The foundation of my sovereignty,” Lune said, through numb lips. The bond with London hummed in her bones. Nicneven’s venom against her and all her court suddenly became clear as fine glass. “Because she objects to the joining of mortal and fae, and my realm itself is the source of that problem. The roots of my sovereignty lie in the land—but she considers it twisted, does she not?” At the edge of her vision, she saw Amadea nod. “It is a mortal place, not a natural one. A place never meant for our kind. To be bound to such a land corrupts me, and through me, my subjects. If she wishes to end what we do, she must destroy its source.”

Now she understood the reports of destruction within the palace, chambers torn apart. Vidar was not merely searching for the London Stone; he was trying to break the enchantments of the Hall itself. Or at least creating the appearance of it. Lune had no doubt he would prefer to be the Onyx Hall’s master, rather than its destroyer—but if it ever became more beneficial to his own survival that he bring the palace down, he would do it.

And if he found the London Stone, that choice would be his.

Urgency flared beneath Lune’s breast. Living forever, it was easy for faerie-kind to take a patient view, and see nothing in the delay of years. This robbed her of such complacency. Delay, and she might not have a realm to retake.

The Onyx Court would die as surely as the Kingdom of England had.

Antony had removed his hand from beneath hers; now he said in an unemotional voice, “Then we must encourage Nicneven’s disaffection. It will risk her sending someone else to finish Vidar’s task, but if she withdraws her support, he will be vulnerable.”

Lune opened her mouth to ask Irrith a question, but swallowed it when she realized Wayland was there himself, standing just inside the doorway. He had entered with his usual, unnatural silence, and now he heard what she had been about to say. Wayland shook his head. “I understand your fears. And if the Scots withdraw from the Onyx Hall, you may have the war you desire. But until then, my answer is unchanged. My people are too few, and this is not their battle. I will not ask them to throw themselves into defeat.”

“I understand,” Lune said, and she did. But the desperation clawing its way up her throat made her add silently, Then help me find a way to prevent that defeat. Before it is too late.

HAM HOUSE, RICHMOND: September 3, 1658

Dressed in the rags he wore about the City, Antony might have encountered trouble as he rode along the south bank of the Thames, and so he had changed out his clothing for the sober respectability of a minor tradesman. With his hair and beard trimmed, and the fortification of a recent visit to the Onyx Hall burning in him, he looked and felt more like himself.

He was alert enough to ride warily, and to depart from the river path well in advance of his destination. Picking his way along smaller lanes, he came at the palatial manor of Ham House from the back, through the gardens that lay on the far side of the house from the water. After tying his horse in a thicket, he slipped down the broad avenues of the wilderness to the well-manicured lawn below the south terrace, and a gnarled old sweet chestnut that stood to one side.

Antony laid his hand on the bark and murmured, “I am here.”

The trunk had a protruding burl like a drunkard’s nose, and a gap below like a mustached mouth; when Antony took his hand away, the wood moved, and eyes blinked open in the bark. “Good evening,” the chestnut tree said with grave dignity.

Though not one of Lune’s subjects, the spirit of the tree had proven more than willing to help Antony. Ever since Kate struck up a friendship with the Lady of Ham House, in fact; he rather thought the spirit liked his wife. “Is all quiet?”

“Yes,” the tree said. “The harsh one has not been here in a long time.”

“Nor ever again.” Antony felt a surge of relief. “The harsh one, my friend, is dead. As of this afternoon.”

After pondering this, the tree said, “Good.”

“Are they expecting me?” At the chestnut’s affirmation, he touched a branch and said, “Thank you. I will see to it that my Queen rewards you for your aid.”

The old tree retired into sleep, nodding, and Antony climbed the stairs onto the south terrace. Silent approach was impossible; the gravel crunched beneath his feet, and so he was not surprised when the doors swung open, revealing a small, familiar figure.

He crossed the last distance at a half-run and caught her up in his arms. The house on Lombard Street had been a house, nothing more, and the Onyx Hall was simply the place he must go to survive. This was home, as much as he had one anymore: within the circle of Kate’s embrace.

She buried one hand in his cropped hair, the other holding him hard about the waist. Neither of them said anything; their kiss communicated all that was needed. She feared for him, hiding in London under a series of false identities, all the more so because she did not fully understand why he did it. Even now, he could not tell her the reason they had fled nine years ago, nor who it was that hunted him, nor why he continually went back. His political sympathies made him suspect, but no more than others who had kept their names and their homes.

Those were issues they had fought through before; she did not raise them again. Instead Kate smiled up at him and brushed a strand of hair from his eyes. She was about to say something when the door on the opposite wall creaked open, and a young man stepped through.

Antony’s heart ached without warning. He might have been looking at his own elder brother, stepped straight from decades past, so closely did his son resemble the man for whom he had been named. Has it been so long since I have seen him?

It had. Any of his children, in truth; the last he had seen of his daughter Alice was at her wedding, and Robin had gone to sea with the East India Company, helping to maintain the trade that was the family’s sole remaining source of support. And Henry…

Kate had tensed under Antony’s fingers. He gave her a reassuring touch before crossing to take his eldest son’s hand. “You are looking well,” he said.

“As are you, Father,” Henry said stiffly, and falsely. He was clean-shaven, and his hair neatly trimmed; his clothing was sober, as befit one of his ideals. Not Puritan, but a Commonwealthsman to the bone—never mind that the Commonwealth of England, like the Kingdom before it, had fallen victim to these years of instability.

Kate broke the silence before it could stretch long enough to be uncomfortable. “We had word you were coming, and so dinner awaits. I’ll have a servant bring water for you to wash up.”

Clean and surprisingly hungry, Antony presented himself to Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart and lady of the house, who reigned in solitary splendor with her husband gone. The first words out of her mouth were, “Is it true?”

He studied the woman with some curiosity. Though in her thirties, and with unattractive strawberry-blond hair, she was still remarkably pretty—a detail that had not gone unnoticed by those who marked her friendship with Oliver Cromwell. Despite his best efforts, Antony had never been able to puzzle out just how true that friendship was, at least on her part. How true could it be, when Elizabeth Murray worked in secret with her Royalist father to end the Lord Protector’s rule and restore the Stuarts to the throne?

Now was hardly the time to ask. “Yes, my lady,” he said, with as much kindness as he could muster. “Lord Protector Cromwell is dead.”

Henry made a satisfied noise. “Perhaps now we will have the freedom we once enjoyed, and no single person to rule England as King in all but name.”

His son was right about Cromwell, at least; in the streets of London, they called him King Noll, and celebrated his death. And the House of Lords might have been abolished, but earlier in the year the Lord Protector had created a new upper house to control his unruly Parliament. Only the bishops had not been replaced, after the dismantling of the episcopacy. Many of the Commonwealth’s ideals lay in tatters, thanks to Cromwell’s establishment of the Protectorate; naturally Henry would see his death as a chance to lift them up once more.

Antony knew better, but he also knew better than to broach the subject of politics with his son. And Kate and Lady Dysart helped, diverting the dinner conversation to less dangerous topics, so that for a little while they could pretend it was nothing more than a meal in convivial company. Despite her precarious position, the lady maintained a good home, and good food with it.

When they were finished, however, Kate lured Henry downstairs on a pretext, and Elizabeth guided Antony through the long gallery to the library, a cramped room that already held an occupant. John Ellin rose as they entered and greeted him with all the honesty Henry had eschewed. “You look like hell.”

Gripping the young man’s hand, Antony said, “No doubt I do. And no doubt you will prescribe a course of bleeding or some such, to improve my health.”

“Bleeding? Not a chance. An excess of the sanguine humor is hardly your problem.” Ellin’s long, wry face turned thoughtful. “Black bile, I imagine. In which case—”

“In which case, Mr. Ellin, you shall do nothing.” Kate entered the library and closed the door behind her. The space was cramped with four in it, but at least they were private. “You have not finished your training as a physician or a surgeon.”

He acknowledged her point with a bow. “A shortcoming I strive to mend as soon as possible.”

It would not take him long; though four years younger than Henry, Ellin was already well advanced in his study of both the intellectual and practical aspects of medicine. Antony suspected his involvement in the Royalist cause was of a piece with that training: John Ellin saw the body politic as grievously diseased, weakened by the upheavals it had wrought upon itself from the civil war onwards.

Another such upheaval faced them now, but it might offer the chance for healing. “Cromwell is dead,” Lady Dysart told Ellin, who merely nodded. The man’s health had been bad for months, so it came as no surprise. Though there was a good deal of irony, it being the anniversary of his great victories at Dunbar and Worcester. “Sir Antony—what word of his successor?”

In reply, Antony drew a crumpled letter from inside his doublet. “It would have been Fleetwood,” he said. “But this was the only proof of it, and on his deathbed Cromwell named his son Richard.”

Kate took it from his fingers, with a look that said she was carefully not asking him how he got it. Ellin grimaced and said, “We might have done better with Fleetwood. He’s a milksop.”

“And let the Army’s council of officers consolidate its hold over England?” Antony said sharply. “I will lie dead in a gutter before I let that happen.”

“But Richard is the Protector’s son. Their loyalty to Oliver—”

“Is not an inheritance to be passed on in a will,” Elizabeth said. Ellin fell silent, conceding her greater knowledge of the family. “Oliver was an inspiring man, passionate in his convictions, with the capacity to carry others into his visions, and moreover he was a hero to the soldiery. Richard is all but a stranger to them.”

Antony nodded and took the chair next to Ellin, hoping no one guessed that the weakness of his knees betrayed him into it. “At best he will have six of the Council of State on his side, perhaps seven—and very little of the Army. What’s more, it won’t be long before he has to call a Parliament.”

Startled, Kate said, “Why?”

“Why does any ruler call a Parliament?” Ellin asked ironically. “Because he needs money.”

Lady Dysart claimed the remaining chair; Kate moved to settle on a cushion, but Ellin rose and convinced her through an argument of gestures to have his seat. The young man leaned against the desk instead, slouching his length so as not to loom over them. By the time this dance was done, Antony had his strength back, and asked their hostess, “What do you think will be the reaction abroad?”

He did not have to specify what he meant, and in fact rarely did; even here, in this safe house, they spoke obliquely when they could. The responses from the European states would matter, but what she had knowledge of was a much smaller group: the Sealed Knot, the alliance of exiled English noblemen who worked to restore Charles Stuart, second of that name, to his throne.

Elizabeth’s mouth quirked. “When they hear? The same as it is now, but stronger. Mordaunt will want a rising, and Hyde will argue against.”

“Hyde is right,” Antony said. “The worst thing we could do right now is give the Army something to fight. The people are tired of military control, taxation to support a standing force, and soldiers at free quarter. The longer we go without a war, the more disaffected they will become.” He heard in his own words an echo of the debate over Nicneven, and tried not to shiver. I must live as if I might not drop dead at any moment.

Ellin raised one expressive eyebrow. “But Charles will not claim his throne by neglect alone. He needs soldiers to control London and other key points—which means he needs a port to land them in, and someone must acquire that for him. Not to mention ships to get the forces across.”

The ships would have to come from France or Spain, but Antony agreed with Hyde that for the King to be restored by an outside power would poison opinion against him. Which was a philosophical concern backed by a practical one: until Europe stopped fighting itself, from Portugal to Sweden and everywhere in between, no one would spare any time for a King who only ever reigned in exile.

“No rising has succeeded yet,” Kate said. “And before you tell me, Mr. Ellin, that only the last one ever succeeds—yes, your thoughts are that transparent—let me remind you that they have been miserable failures, every one. Even when Scotland gave young Charles its support, he ended up hiding from soldiers in a Staffordshire oak tree. I doubt he is in any hurry to try again.”

Ellin spread his hands in florid submission. “Then what do we propose to do?”

“Wait,” Antony said.

“I had hoped for rather more than that.”

“Wait for Parliament,” Antony clarified. “I do not know everyone who will be elected to it, but I expect Hesilrige, Vane, and others from my own days there. I have ways of setting them at each other’s throats, and Parliament against the Army.”

Ellin frowned. “To what end? Other than pure chaos, which I’m sure you will achieve magnificently.”

“Chaos is what we need, at least for a time. The Protectorate is not popular, and will be less so without Oliver Cromwell to hold it together. The Army is despised. The Commonwealthsmen are passionate, but they’ve lost the people; men are tired of godly reformers prying into every corner of their lives and outlawing their pleasures. And they cannot present a united front, because they do not agree half so much as they think they do, and scarce one in a hundred can see past the glowing radiance of their proposed community of saints to the practical considerations of how to govern a country. What we cannot let happen is the officers of the Army claiming the little power that yet remains out of their hands, and turning all of England into their servants. To that end, I will sow what chaos I must, so that when they reach their hands forth they find nothing in their grasp but smoke.”

Where the vitality for that impassioned speech came from, he didn’t know; it surprised even him. Judging by the expressions that faced him, he was not the only one. Once he had recovered his jaw, Ellin began to clap quietly.

Antony flushed and looked away. Kate laid one hand on his, and kept it there until he met her eyes, whereupon she smiled. Elizabeth spoke, perhaps to cover his embarrassment. “If you are right about the Parliament, I can think of others we might see elected, to work from within.”

“Not my husband,” Kate said, before Antony could identify the knot of emotions that formed in him at the thought. “He cannot be known so openly.”

“They would not have me regardless,” he said, taking his hand from hers. “All who were purged before the trial will still be disabled from sitting.”

Elizabeth waved their concerns away. “I was not thinking of Sir Antony. But I will do what I can to foster others.”

“And to keep Mordaunt on a leash,” Ellin added. “I don’t fancy bending knee to the Army.”

Antony watched soberly as they worked out the details. This was not something he ever had a gift for, this underhand work—not like Lune did. He had relied on Ben Hipley for precisely that reason. But it was the only tool left in his hand. If he was to restore either his King or his Queen, he must work from the shadows.

And pray for the day when he could live once more in the light.

WAYLAND’S SMITHY, BERKSHIRE: April 26, 1659

In all the long ages of her life, Lune had seen her designs thwarted, her achievements overthrown, her hopes trodden into the mud. Every time, she clawed her way back up again, rebuilding that which had broken, and she was determined to do so again.

She was determined, but she could not see how.

Those who kept by her in her exile were loyal, but they were not enough to overthrow Vidar. Lune had no great enchantments she could bring to bear against him, no army sufficient to crush him, and no means of dividing him from his allies, except to wait and hope that Nicneven’s growing fury accomplished that for her. They had seeded information about Vidar’s involvement with the execution of the Queen of Scots, and it seemed to be doing some good. But every day spent waiting put Antony’s life, and the security of her realm, in greater danger.

Antony distracted himself from it by throwing himself all the more fervently into the Royalist cause, as if determined to accomplish the restoration of that monarchy before he died. Lune wished him all the good fortune in the world, but she could no more see how to put Charles Stuart on his throne than herself on her own. They had this much in common, she and the mortal King: despite all the divisions among their enemies, neither of them could muster the force necessary to take back what was theirs by right.

The thought brought a bitter smile to her face as she paced the rustic chamber Wayland had given over to her use. The Almighty could anoint Charles as King, and the Onyx Hall could acknowledge Lune as Queen, but those rightful claims did them not the slightest bit of good, without the strength to enforce them.

She crumpled the letter in her hand—word from Antony, of the dissolution of Richard Cromwell’s disastrous Parliament—and flung it from her, pivoting with such violence that her heel sank into the soft dirt of the floor. She found Irrith standing a mere pace away and staggered, off balance with surprise and the uneven footing. These wild fae move too damned quietly.

Irrith at least had the decency to ignore her clumsiness. Clad in leather, a short bow in her hand, the sprite said hesitantly, “I—the moon is full tonight, and partially in eclipse. I thought you might like to hunt, and breathe fresh air.”

Hunting was not a pastime Lune often engaged in, but tonight of all nights she felt like killing something, if only for the brief illusion of victory. And if she could not be in London, at least she could walk free under the moon, and try to find some solace in its beauty.

Though there would be pain in that, too. It was under an eclipse that the Onyx Hall was created, by a mortal and a faerie.

“Lu—ah, your Majesty?”

Irrith’s hesitant query made Lune realize she was staring unblinkingly at the sprite. Lune startled, and gave voice to the thought that had seized her. “I have been as blind as Vidar.”

“What?”

“Nicneven thinks me tainted by my bond to a mortal city,” Lune said. For the first time in more months than she cared to remember, laughter bubbled up inside her, carrying with it the bright spark of hope. “Well, if I am, let me embrace it. Since faerie strength will not regain my throne for me, I shall see what mortals can do. Where is your King?”

Irrith’s face was a study in bafflement as she tried to keep up with Lune’s erratic speech. “In his forge—”

Lune was on her way out of the chamber even before the sprite answered. She could no more muster an army from the mortals than she could from Wayland’s court, and however much she hated Vidar, she would not try to unleash Puritan faith against him. But there were other possibilities.

No one guarded the smithy door. Lune swept through and found Wayland stripped to the waist, swinging his hammer in steady rhythm, hammering out a semicircular shape.

He cannot be entirely fae. The piece in his tongs was an iron horseshoe, and even standing so near turned Lune’s stomach. The wound in her shoulder throbbed in sympathy. From a safe distance she raised her voice. “I beg a moment of your time.”

The blacksmith King quenched the shoe in a wave of steam. “Yes?”

“You have told me you cannot supply warriors sufficient to even the balance,” Lune said, drawing as close as she dared. “Will you supply us with weapons instead?”

Wayland laid the iron aside and gave her a considering look. “I could.”

Lune quelled her surge of triumph by force of will, letting only a fierce smile through. The battle is not won yet. But for the first time, I think it may happen. “Then here is what I would ask of you.”

THE ANGEL INN, ISLINGTON: May 7, 1659

“To the Rump!”

Antony did not lift his jack of ale in response to Ellin’s pledge. The young man raised an eyebrow. “The Protectorate is staggering to a well-deserved death, the Commons kicked out six years ago is sitting again, and yet you do not drink. I know you think the quality of the ale here has declined, but you cannot even bring yourself to one sip?”

“Not for the Rump.” One of Prynne’s friends had come up with the contemptuous name for the reduced Commons left behind after the Purge, and now half of London used it.

Ellin sighed. “It’s better than the alternative. When the Army forced our not-so-beloved Lord Protector to dissolve Parliament, I thought it meant rule by the sword for sure.”

The same Army that had, on Cromwell’s orders, illegally dissolved the Rump six years before, ending the Commonwealth and beginning the Protectorate. It was just one more upheaval perpetrated by the same fanatical men who had held England at the point of a sword since before the King’s execution.

Antony thought he kept his face impassive, but Ellin suddenly paled and reached across the table. The common room of the Angel Inn was hot with candlelight, and busy with trade; sweat pricked Antony’s skin in the stifling air, but he felt cold. Ellin pushed back the cuff of his sleeve, feeling for his pulse. “Your heart is racing, and you’re feverish. Sir Antony—”

Antony pulled his hand back. “I do not need your physicking.”

“You need someone’s. I’m not fully trained; so be it. I can give you the best names in London.” Ellin’s mouth twisted. “I would send you to France, if I thought you would go. What ails you, I have no idea, but man—it is killing you.”

The anger in his gut had turned to sick desire. Too long away. Antony shoved back from the table. “I know my medicine, and will go to it now.”

The ironical face stared up at him, stripped of any humor. “Will you not let a friend help?”

Was John Ellin a friend? Lady Dysart had brought him into their conspiratorial circle two years ago. Long enough for Antony to know him as more than just another hotheaded young man enchanted by Royalist ideas; Ellin had passion, but also common sense. Antony trusted him more than any man since Ben Hipley had died—but that was not the same thing as a friend.

A wave of dizziness broke over him, and only experience kept him from staggering. “You do help. But this is something I must handle on my own.”

“And you’ll not let me help you to your horse—I know better than to offer.” Ellin stood and gripped his arm. “But have a care for yourself. I don’t fancy having your wife on me for letting you fall in a ditch somewhere.”

Antony managed a smile. “No ditches, I promise.”

The cool, dark air outside cleared his head enough for him to walk more or less steadily behind the inn. No ditches—but a hole in the ground.

Bare, skeletal stumps thrust up from the soil where once a thriving rosebush had stood, and the ground around them was torn. But the charms held, diverting attention from this spot, and so Antony knelt and laid his fingertips on one of the splintered branches. “The moon is in eclipse.”

The phrase was not his idea. But with the gift some fae had for mimicry, it wasn’t enough to give his name, and so some wit in Lune’s following had come up with a series of coded signals instead.

The mutilated remainder of the rosebush shivered and split, revealing cracked steps. Antony made his way down them carefully. The waning crescent of the moon had not yet risen, but enough light came from the coaching inn to guide him into the room below.

He was just as glad not to see his surroundings. Leaves and dirt had drifted in, and cobwebs stretched between the broken fragments of tables and benches. Scorchmarks blackened the walls. We used him, Rosamund had said, and it seemed Vidar knew it. The brownies’ well-practiced innocence had not been enough to save them when a force of redcaps and Scottish goblins broke in.

Kneeling again, he felt his fingers tremble. Soon he would have to risk the Onyx Hall again—but not yet. Not yet.

“Soon its light will return.”

The second half of the phrase, and the key to the second door. The scarred boards flexed aside, and light bloomed up from below.

Antony shuddered in relief as he descended into the welcoming glow. It was not the Onyx Hall, but the Goodemeades’ hidden sanctuary helped him stave off the tearing need for his faerie home.

Gertrude bustled up to take his cloak before he was even off the steps, and a chair waited for him near the fire. This heat warmed him, and took the tremors from his fingers. Nowhere else—not even in Berkshire—could he relax as he did here; everywhere else, he feared spies, be they mortal or fae. But though the branches of the rosebush had been shorn, its roots ran living and deep, arching over this concealed room. Tiny buds and blossoms gilded the ceiling. And under that ancient sign of secrecy, he knew himself to be safe. Even the redcaps had not found this chamber.

Nor had they found the Goodemeades, hidden here since Antony freed them from imprisonment beneath the Tower. Rosamund pressed a cup into his hand. Wine, not their mead; brewing was one thing they could not do down here. But Antony gulped it down thankfully.

It is killing you.

He put Ellin’s words from his mind.

Hands twisting about each other, Gertrude said, “Antony—”

“I know,” he snapped, forcing himself upright. “I push it too far, yes—but what else can I do? I cannot live my life in this hole, safe but useless; I cannot abandon my own world to live wholly in yours. What would you have me do?”

He opened his eyes and found the sisters staring at him open-mouthed. Never had he snapped at them like that, and guilt warred with his annoyance. Then Rosamund recovered. “I—we’ve a message from Lune.”

His temper died, leaving foolish shame in its wake. Antony grimaced an apology for his outburst and said, “What word?”

Firelight danced in Gertrude’s eyes. “She has an idea, that she thinks may better our chances against Vidar. If she’s right—she hopes to retake the Onyx Hall soon.”

“How soon?”

“Well…” Rosamund picked up the thread from her sister. She, too, fairly danced with excitement. “You told us that Mordaunt is in Brussels with the King, planning some rising?”

Antony grimaced. “A foolish plan. If the Royalists try to raise the country, they’ll fail. Bloodily.”

“Lune hoped they might not.”

Hope meant nothing; political reality dictated the outcome. Yet the way Rosamund said it implied something more. The brownie had brought up Mordaunt in the context of Lune’s own plans; why? “Did she think to time her effort with theirs?”

Judging by their expressions, yes. “It used to be,” Gertrude said, perching on a stool at his side, “that what went on in the faerie court had a real effect on the mortal one, and likewise the other way. It isn’t true anymore—but we’ve wondered, at times, whether some little connection does not persist.”

Lune had hinted at it before, but never explained herself. True, she had lost her throne on the day of the King’s execution, but ordinary causes sufficed to explain that, and the other points of similarity. Vidar had simply chosen to strike when he knew she would be distracted. Yet—

Yet ordinary causes and mystical ones did not exclude one another. It was possible, he supposed, that the unease of Lune’s rule had affected Charles’s, or his had weakened hers. Certainly Vidar had used the one to trouble the other. Antony could not judge whether some arcane force still bound the two; it was impossible to disentangle such an effect from the practical events surrounding it. But if that were so, then carrying out their own assault while young Charles’s loyalists raised the country in his name might better the chances of both.

The brownies left him in peace, letting him think it through. What could be lost by trying? A great deal, unfortunately. Failed violence strengthened the Army’s hand, and set back the Royalist cause. And whatever Lune had planned, it would involve risk to her own people; if fae died in the attempt, and bought nothing with their deaths, it would be all the harder for her to convince them to try again.

He could not judge the chances of Lune’s plan, not without speaking to her about it. But he could judge the chances of Mordaunt’s all too well.

Antony shook his head. “I understand what you hope for, but no. If there is a connection, it will only cripple the fae. The Council of State has too many ways to learn of Royalist plans; a rising will never catch them unprepared. Whatever plan Lune has, we must carry it out on our own.”

The sisters looked disappointed. And they were very good at it; Antony felt immediate remorse for crushing their hopes. But he’d spoken only the pure truth. “Unless you believe your ‘some little connection’ can hamstring the Puritan whole of the New Model Army, it cannot be done. If Lune’s idea is some great enchantment to that effect, though—then by all means, tell me.”

He knew the answer before Rosamund murmured a reluctant no. “We can tell you the details,” she said, “at least a few of them. But Lune’s asked for you in Berkshire. She needs your advice, and your aid in preparing her folk.”

Antony tried to marshal his strength at the thought of the ride, and failed. He would have to visit the Onyx Hall before he went.

Which meant he would have time for one other task. Antony had no direct way of stopping Mordaunt; Lady Dysart could write to the Sealed Knot, advising them against an armed revolt, but he had no illusions as to what that would accomplish. No, the only way to prevent a failed uprising would be to make certain Mordaunt knew it would fail.

Which meant ensuring that it would.

“Before I go,” Antony said to the Goodemeades, “there is one thing I must ask of you.”

Heavenly Father, forgive me for what I am about to do.

“There is a man named Sir Richard Willis,” he said slowly, “a member of the Sealed Knot—and a traitor. He is in communication with Thurloe on the Council of State. I will tell you what I know of Mordaunt’s plans; you, in turn, must make certain Willis knows it.”

The little hobs paled.

He clenched his jaw before going on, fighting down the sickness in his heart. “If the Council knows far enough in advance, they will prepare a response strong enough to forestall the rising. It is a lesser evil than letting it happen and fail.” Antony curled his fingers around the arms of the chair. Did he even believe his own next words? “We will restore the King to his throne. But not yet.”

Rosamund swallowed, then nodded, not quite hiding her own hesitation. “That’s yours to say. We will give the help you need.”

He was Prince of the Stone, even if the court of which he was Prince had lost its realm; it was his right to direct faerie involvement in mortal affairs. Lune trusted his judgment, and so the Goodemeades did, as well.

Antony just prayed they were not wrong to do so.

VALE OF THE WHITE HORSE, BERKSHIRE: July 31, 1659

The grassy embankments of Uffington Castle sheltered the massed ranks of the invasion force with room to spare. They were not many, even now, with exiled courtiers, Berkshire volunteers, and what mortals Antony and others had persuaded to the cause. But Vidar did not have so many either; at their largest, faerie armies did not number a tenth the size of those mortals fielded.

Lune hoped it would be enough. Raising her voice, so the wind would not carry it away before it reached Antony, she said, “You have trained them well.” The Prince was climbing the slope to her position on the embankment, with Wayland a step behind. “And you, cousin—you have worked day and night to equip our people. Name your boon, and it will be yours.”

His shoulders blotted out stars when he stood next to her. “You have influence with mortals,” the King of the Vale said.

Her stomach tightened in apprehension of what he might ask. “Yes.” “When you are in your realm again, use it on our behalf. Revive the duties the folk of this area once owed to us, before the Puritans grew in strength.”

Her gaze flicked downslope, to the barely visible figure in the grass. “We will,” Lune said, with a glad heart. He asks no more than I would do, regardless.

Antony did not comment. He was still trying to catch his breath after the steep climb. She swallowed the desire to dissuade him from coming; she would only fail, and anger him by trying. He had as much right to fight for their home as she did, and more need. Besides, he was their general.

There was a distinct irony in that, given his hatred for the officers of the New Model Army. But he knew more of fighting than Lune did—which was to say, he knew anything at all—and while he lacked tactical experience, he was good at coordinating the advice from their two squad commanders. A barguest named Bonecruncher, one of the exiles, would lead one group with Antony, and Irrith would lead the other with Lune.

Those two were down with their soldiers. I think of them as soldiers, now—not warriors. It was an odd thought for Lune, and a sign of the changes she and Antony had wrought. She only hoped they would be enough to surprise Vidar, and gain the upper hand.

Antony had his wind back now, and so she asked him, “What of the other uprisings?”

His voice was pitched to carry no farther than the three of them. “Called off, for now. The Council of State has fortified the relevant areas; there are seven regiments around London alone, not counting the militia. Most loyalists—I hope all—have gotten word not to rise.” His jaw hardened, muscle ridging his skin. “The Council has put out warrants against a dozen Royalist leaders, though.”

She would have put her hand on his arm, if he would not shrug it off. Antony had explained his reasoning, and it was sound. But the betrayal came no more easily to him for all that.

Their army would stand alone—and hope they did not meet with those regiments.

“The sun has set,” Wayland said in his quiet rumble.

How he could tell its last sliver was gone, Lune had no idea; heavy clouds veiled the sky, and there were no bell towers out here to ring the hour. The gray light was a bit dimmer, perhaps, and the wind carried a cooler dampness. This foul weather masked their march, but it made for a grim setting.

She nodded to Antony. “You should speak to them.”

He shook his head, a faint smile lightening his countenance, though only briefly. “I am no great orator. What they need to hear from me, they have heard.”

“Your modesty neatly shifts the task onto me,” she said wryly. “You, at least, once had schooling in rhetoric. But very well.”

It was easy enough to charm her voice to carry; finding appropriate words was harder. “Good people,” she said, looking out over the motley assemblage of their army. “When first you came here, you were strangers to one another. Some have lived in this Vale since before the dawn of memory; others call London their home. Some are faerie, some mortal—and that is as it should be, for the Onyx Court embraces both in brotherhood.

“Ifarren Vidar would see mortals dance to a faerie tune. Failing that, he would destroy one of the greatest works of both our kinds: the Onyx Hall, shadow of England’s mightiest jewel. He would prostitute himself to foreign powers, solely for his own gain.”

She walked a dangerous line there; many of the Berkshire folk were so provincial as to barely recognize themselves as English, and to such minds, the London fae were nearly as foreign as the Irish. Lune swept on, before they could consider it too closely. “But more than that, we tell you this: in nine years of trying, Vidar has not made himself King. He may claim the title all he likes, but the Onyx Hall does not recognize him as its master. We name him now for what he is: a pretender, a usurper to a throne that is not and never will be his. I once struck to remove a Queen who claimed power that was not hers; now I go again, to right a second wrong. I am the rightful Queen of the Onyx Court, and Lord Antony is its Prince. All who fight at our side shall find a welcome reward, when the realm is ours again.”

It was not a speech deserving of epic memory, but it did its job well enough. The gathered soldiers cheered, from the elf-knights in their gem-bright armor down to the twisted goblins and capricious pucks, and the sky answered with a rumble of thunder.

Turning to face Wayland, she found herself looking past him, and an idea sparked in her mind. Grand gestures had their place, on a night such as this. “One more favor, cousin, if I might beg it of you.”

He nodded.

“I should like to borrow your Horse.”

LONDON AND ENVIRONS: August 1, 1659

The faerie steeds carried them faster than any mortal could go, the ground whipping below at a pace that threatened to leave Antony’s stomach behind. Fortunately, he saw little of it; the thick clouds served as cover, hiding the faerie host that shot through the sky like a flight of arrows.

He rode pillion, his arms wrapped around Lune’s waist, for the White Horse would not answer to any mortal’s hand. Their mount unnerved him more than their speed, or their height in the sky. He had never been in Berkshire when the Horse left its hillside to feed, and while he knew the story, he had imagined—foolishly—that it would be an ordinary white horse.

But at Wayland’s call, the chalk lines had lifted free of the grass, and that was what they rode: an incomplete, elongated white figure, mottled with green, far larger than any natural horse, and far less substantial. How they even sat upon its back, his rational mind could not comprehend. His decades of association with the fae told him not to try. Antony gripped Lune, closed his eyes, and waited for their ride to end.

The cold dampness that chilled his skin like fog broke suddenly; the wind tried to tear his cloak from his neck. He opened his eyes to the sight of dark treetops rushing up far too fast, and choked back on a scream. They missed the branches by the barest hair and thudded to a halt in a field, sheltered from any eyes, with the rest of his company landing around him. Most of the horses they rode fell away, transforming back into ordinary straws. The remainder, and the black dogs that had run alongside them, took on their more or less human aspects.

A troop of horse, riding into London, would bring the Army and militia down on them like a hammer. From here, they would go their various ways by foot.

One of the mortals helped him down from the Horse’s lofty back. Lune shifted, as if to touch him before he went, but then he was on the ground and out of reach. “Give us until sunrise,” she said.

Antony nodded. He could not tithe bread to the fae and have it be of use, but the humans newly gathered to their cause could. For the first time in ages, they had enough to protect all their people.

He stood alone with the Queen, while their soldiers—such as they were—prepared to march. She spoke quietly, for his ears only, gazing down from the height of the Horse. “If there is one thing you have taught me,” Lune told him, “it is patience. Should this not go as we hope—”

“Retreat, and try again.” Sound advice—but Antony wanted to tear his skin off with impatience. The Onyx Hall called to him, awakening the craving he had fought these long years. Yet he dared not let himself believe they would succeed. If he did, and then they failed—

That will kill me. I cannot survive such a fall.

He was not sure Lune could, either. Physically, yes; but for all her talk of patience, she showed little of it herself. The Queen wore a man’s riding habit, with armor to keep her safe, and looked very warlike upon her strange steed. Anger burned silver in her eyes. She was not the kind to endanger herself recklessly—but was she the kind to retreat?

Antony hoped so. “Sun and Moon keep you,” he said, in lieu of the Christian benediction that had risen, unbidden, to his lips.

“And you,” Lune said. A faint smile told him she wanted to bless him in his own manner—but even if it did not hurt her, the Horse would not take it kindly.

The great beast pawed at the turf, and she somehow patted a neck that was not entirely there. “Back to the sky, my friend.”

It reared, which became a leap that carried it into the clouds. Lune’s company was gone by then, continued on, but the Horse would catch up before long.

Bonecruncher approached him, eyes flaming in the bleak gray light. With his horns and claws, he could easily have been mistaken for a devil, and Antony’s jaw tightened. “Why are you not masked? Do you want some passing farmer to see you and raise an alarm?”

Unconcerned, the barguest shrugged. “We was just checking where we are.”

“About half a mile from Tyburn, that way.” Antony pointed without looking.

Bonecruncher blinked. “How did you know?”

The goblin had lived in London longer than Antony had been alive, and yet was appallingly ignorant of everything outside the City walls. Antony shook his head. “Glamour yourself, and be on your way. We do not have much time.”

THE TOWER OF LONDON: August 1, 1659

Lune’s company arced north of the City and approached from the east, where the pestered suburbs had not yet spread quite as thickly and as far. Landing in an open field between the Tower and the dockyards farther downriver, they quickly constructed their glamours and readied themselves to move on.

Riding the White Horse had been an impulsive decision, one designed purely to impress and therefore hearten their following. Now, within sight of London, Lune slid down and placed her hand on the figure’s neck. “Irrith—will he return home on his own?”

The wild sprite considered it, then approached and pulled the enormous head down until she could whisper in his ear. The Horse whickered and stamped. Somehow, without any change the eye could catch, he shrank in upon himself, until he was no larger than an ordinary stallion. Irrith gave Lune an amused shrug. “I think he wants to stay. Perhaps he’s as curious as I am, what this realm of yours is like.”

“It is not a place for horses.”

“I guessed as much, by the way you ride.” Grinning, Irrith slapped the Horse’s neck and beckoned her company onward.

Lune sighed, and found the white circle of the Horse’s eye contemplating her inscrutably. They say a wish made while standing in his eye comes true. Whatever fortune we have tonight, I am glad I did not try.

They made for the nearby bank. An advance guard of river nymphs had gone ahead a few days before and secured enough skiffs for their group; once in, the boats floated steadily against the current, towed from below, in perfect silence up the Thames.

Ahead, London gleamed under a quarter moon. The pale light marked the upthrusting spires of the City’s many churches, and the truncated tower of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The close-packed houses lay in shadow below. The beloved silhouette struck Lune like a blow to the gut, driving all the breath from her body. I am home at last.

She felt it in her bones, as well as her heart. Love and longing, for the place that was not just her realm but her home. Lune could not imagine retreating again.

And that meant they had to succeed. Tearing her gaze away from the City, Lune attended to the task at hand.

This was, for their group, the most dangerous passage. Once inside a fortified place, it was easy to seem as if one belonged there; gaining entrance was the trick. The fae huddled under their cloaks, scarcely breathing, as their boats drew up to the Tower’s water gate. Men called it the Traitor’s Gate, for the prisoners brought through it; Lune tried not to think of the name as an omen.

In the front skiff, a willowy asrai helped a boggart into the water, and supported him while he scowled at the chain holding the gate shut. He muttered a curse, and water splashed as the asrai covered his mouth; with such a force as theirs floating under the very toes of the guards, they dared not risk any noise that might break the tenuous charms keeping them hidden.

But the jingle of the chain was sweet music, and the quiet slosh of the gates swinging open.

Sir John Barkstead, lieutenant of the Tower, served the late Protectorate assiduously in his command, and maintained a watch alert enough to spot any intruders, however quiet. Therefore Antony had arranged for the Rump Parliament to dismiss the man, replacing him with one much less dedicated. For all that London was on tenterhooks, expecting a Royalist rising, the guard inside the Tower was lax, and the fae slipped easily through the courtyard precinct, heading for the White Tower.

Now Lune took the lead, for she was the only one who knew the way. Antony’s men were coming into the City by circuitous routes, in twos and threes, and had less fear of attracting notice; her own force had to move quickly, lest their numbers break their concealment. And sunrise, Irrith breathed in her ear, was not far off.

They reached the old Norman keep at the heart of the fortress, and silent as ghosts slipped into the cellar. Its three rooms were crowded with stores—beer barrels here, gunpowder there—but no one had covered over the well that pocked the earthen floor. Water glimmered cold and clear in its depths.

Lune knelt at its edge, and set a dagger to her palm.

Three drops of blood fell into the water below. Each one sounded a deep note, like the tolling of an immense bronze bell, audible only to the ears that knew to listen for it. In Threadneedle Street, the well’s rope could lower a knowledgeable traveler into a small antechamber; here, the stones shuddered and changed their configuration. The water drained away, leaving a black, dank pit, that had been here since before the Norman conqueror built his Tower. Dripping stones offered uneasy footholds, spiraling down its sides.

Irrith, waiting at her side, offered a malapert grin. “You’ve been in my home for years; I’m eager to see yours.” And before Lune could say anything, the sprite was the first down the stairs.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: August 1, 1659

“Stay in stealth as long as you can,” Antony whispered to his men, scarcely more than breathing the words. “You will only get one chance at surprise. Make it count.”

Bonecruncher’s expression suggested he was only just restraining himself from snorting. They had been over this a dozen times and more. But they crouched now beneath the crumbling weight of St. Paul’s, and Antony found his nerves as hot as any green young man’s, facing his first battle.

It is my first battle. Old man that I am.

Old he might be, but just standing here gave him strength. “And remember,” he said, glaring down Bonecruncher’s impatience. “Wound them only, if you can.”

Cheerful words. Most of his supposed soldiers would be lucky to find their targets. He prayed surprise would be enough.

Now they moved with speed, slipping out of the chamber and through the Onyx Hall. Every Berkshire faerie or mortal was paired with a Londoner; Lune had drilled them on their paths, but it was easy for a stranger to become lost. Antony himself waited with Bonecruncher and a wispy, unarmed sprite named Dandelion.

A chill rippled down his bones, and he startled. “What?” Bonecruncher growled, glaring at him.

“Lune is here.” The words came without need of his mind. Had he always been able to feel her presence? Perhaps—but only now, with his body starved of the Onyx Hall’s touch, was he raw enough to notice it.

Bonecruncher took his revelation in stride. “Then let’s get moving.”

They were the last to leave, and went by the most secret route. Antony’s target was the treasury. Vidar would have claimed its contents for himself, of course, but the chamber was the most protected location for keeping the enchanted objects that belonged to the Crown; they were hoping he had left things of use there.

But they could not move entirely by hidden passages, not from where they began. They had to traverse some of the same chambers used by the palace inhabitants. Antony had planned a course that took them through the Hall of Figures, a long, sunken gallery filled with statuary; it was not often frequented. But as they reached the top of the steps leading to its floor, Antony saw movement ahead.

Bonecruncher reacted before Antony could think. Down on one knee, and up came the weapon Wayland Smith had forged for this attack. One clawed hand on the barrel, one on the stock, flaming eyes squinted close—

A deafening crack broke against the walls, and an elfin voice screamed.

God be praised—he hit him.

Even that thought was a delay he could not afford. Antony drew one of the pistols from his belt, and for the second time in its long history, the Onyx Hall rang with the sound of a gun.

He missed; pistols were less accurate than the firelock musket Bonecruncher carried. But the guns Wayland had forged were as much instruments of terror as weapons; fae had seen them in mortal hands—occasionally even been shot by them—but to bring them into a faerie war was unthinkable innovation.

At least for Vidar, who scorned humanity and its works as beneath him.

Two fae had been conversing beneath a statue of a man beset by snakes. One fled. The other collapsed to the floor. Bonecruncher stopped long enough to tap him into unconsciousness, with enthusiasm that made Antony wince—but fae rarely died of wounds that did not kill them outright, and the guns fired elfshot instead of ordinary lead.

They had not even finished crossing the Hall of Figures when Antony heard more gunfire in the distance. He prayed the fae were conserving their shots; muskets and pistols were slow to load, and he had forgone lessons of speed in favor of teaching them to aim.

“Keep moving, m’lord,” Bonecruncher growled. “Your war isn’t over yet.”

Some of Lune’s courtiers had switched their allegiance to Vidar, when he invaded. Others joined her exiled court in Berkshire. Most of the remainder had gone elsewhere, giving up on this war entirely.

Half a dozen languished in cells beneath the White Tower, from which Antony had been unable to free them.

Lune’s force—or rather Irrith’s—subdued the guards without resorting to the firearms they carried. The six fae in the cells stumbled out, weak and blinking; Vidar had kept them in darkness and deprived of food and water, such as would kill any human kept thus.

But those long, black years had refined their hatred. Angrisla bared all her teeth, and gladly claimed the knife someone offered her. “I will bring him to you screaming,” the mara promised.

“Stay with us,” Lune ordered her. “The time for revenge will come.”

The mara’s obedience to that order would be dubious at best, but Lune had no one to spare for watching her, nor the others. The Tower squad split, each group to their particular task. The White Horse was long gone, cantering off on its own inscrutable exploration, but that might be all to the good; its presence would baffle Vidar’s folk, spreading confusion they could use.

The sudden ring of blades announced the commencement of battle just outside the chamber Lune sought. Trusting Irrith and her companions to hold the door, Lune laid a hand upon a floor stone that would lead them into a lower passage, bypassing the royal apartments, which Vidar had claimed for himself.

When her fingers touched marble, her vision blurred. Instead of the floor, she saw—

“Antony!” The name tore free of her. He was leaving the Hall of Figures, and behind him—she could not discern details, but three figures were approaching at speed, and they were not friendly.

She reacted without thinking. Antony passed through the double doors at the end of the hall, and she flung them shut behind him.

The wind of the doors ruffled his hair, it came so close, and the bronze panels almost swung shut on Dandelion, who leapt clear with a squeak. Bonecruncher whirled and raised his spent musket. “What—”

Shouts from behind them, on the other side of the doors. “Move,” Antony snapped, and they went on at a run, ducking sideways into a little-used passage.

His first thought was that Vidar had closed the doors. But why would the usurper act to protect Antony’s group? By the pounding on the bronze, those on the other side were hostile, and trying to break through.

And who else would the Onyx Hall answer to but Lune?

Who else, indeed.

Antony halted Bonecruncher with one hand on the barguest’s shoulder. The other went to the carved corner post at his side.

He’d felt it before, almost as a man might hallucinate a missing limb, that the Onyx Hall was an extension of his body. Now he reached for the connection, and found it tenuous, almost gone: starved from lack of contact.

Like a man half-dead of thirst, he dove into the waiting pool, not letting himself wonder if he could swim. Antony immersed himself in the power of the faerie palace, and found himself—not seeing, for it was not a thing of the eyes. But he felt movement through the chambers and passages, and knew, if he concentrated, who stood in each chamber.

Or at least whether they fought for him, or against him.

Me. For or against me. I am not this place…

His sense of self threatened to dissolve into the vastness of the Hall. Bonecruncher’s claws, digging into his neck, grounded him in his flesh; the barguest had gone for the most tender place not protected by armor. “My lord—”

Claws in his neck, and Lune. He felt her like a cool silver beacon, matching and balancing him. Antony’s senses cleared. “Send to Pollikin,” he said, opening his eyes. “There are fae—Red Branch knights, I think—waiting for him near the amphitheater.”

Bonecruncher stared.

“Send it! ” Antony growled, and grabbed Dandelion. The sprite squeaked again, then fished in one of the cages at his belt. The moth he extracted fluttered on his fingertip as he whispered to it, then flew off with remarkable speed and purpose, to warn Pollikin of the ambush.

Irrith had assigned Sir Peregrin Thorne to be Lune’s guide. Lost in her awareness of the Onyx Hall, Lune could barely see where she was going. But it didn’t matter; she had found an unexpected weapon, and was using it to the fullest.

She could feel the fear from Vidar’s people, especially the Irish and Scots, to whom this place had never been home. Now it rose up to fight them. Working in concert, she and Antony blocked the paths of the defending knights while opening the way for their own, and a veritable storm of moths snowed through the passages, carrying commands to the different groups. Someone on Vidar’s side had set a salamander to hunt the moths, and half their messages were being crisped, but Lune and Antony both were almost to the great presence chamber, and they were winning.

Not without cost. The Red Branch knights were unsurpassed as warriors, and some of the invading force lay dead. The elfshot of the muskets and pistols had claimed few lives outright, but it tore flesh and cracked bone where it struck, and that was not always in the enemy. We should have trained them longer.

Her own group had grown to half a score, collecting other pairs that had split off and rejoined them. Now they were hurrying through the night garden, an incongruously bloody assembly among the quiet of the trees.

Up ahead, a narrow bridge arched gracefully over the dancing Walbrook—until a roar and a surging form shattered it into pieces.

Lune’s heart sank at the sight of the creature waiting for them. I hoped they would not have one… The fuath were water spirits, and not fond of leaving their homes. But Vidar or Nicneven had compelled this one south, and now it blocked their path, tainting the brook with its foulness.

Irrith stared at the twisted alloy of goat and human shape. “What is that?”

Lune could not answer her. All her attention was lashed to the presence chamber, the heart of the Onyx Hall. Antony was almost at its doors, and if he got there without her…

“I must go,” she murmured, barely hearing her own voice. “I cannot afford to delay—”

There were other paths across the Walbrook, but the fuath could move faster through the water than she could run. Irrith gripped the hilt of her sword more firmly and nodded to Angrisla. “We’ll cut a path through, as quickly as we can.”

Desperation clawed in Lune’s gut. That will take too long—

She felt more than heard the approaching hoofbeats. Tearing herself free of Sir Peregrin’s supporting arm, Lune threw her hand out and caught an insubstantial mane. With a wild twist of her body, she swung herself upward and over, and settled onto the back of the White Horse just as it gathered its hooves beneath and leaped.

The fuath roared and clawed upward, but the sudden rush of the Horse took it by surprise, and its claws caught nothing of the half-material body. Lune’s teeth jarred together hard enough to break when they landed; then they were out of reach, past the Walbrook and running for the far entrance with terrifying speed.

Fortunately, the passage on the far side was a lofty one, suitable for the giants of the Onyx Court, and the White Horse crossed from soil to marble without missing a stride. With a wrench almost as physical as the one that put her on the Horse’s back, Lune dragged her concentration inward, clearing her mind of all the rest of the palace. The presence chamber was just around the corner.

As was Antony. Lune slipped from the Horse’s back at the corner, and the beast charged on without her. Whether it had any sense of what was going on, she couldn’t say, but it took the doors of the presence chamber at a dead run and slammed them open with all the weight of a charging stallion backed by the hillside that was his bed. The panels came half off their hinges, leaving Lune and Antony a clear view into the chamber—and robbing them of any chance to prepare.

The invasion had taken Vidar by surprise. They knew that by how scattered his forces had been, dispersed around the Onyx Hall, and relatively easy targets for the fast-moving scouts of their two companies. But he was not stupid; he guessed who had come, and knew they would seek him out.

Fully half a dozen Red Branch knights waited in gleaming array across the presence chamber floor. That much Lune saw, before they scattered like leaves in the face of the White Horse’s charge. They were great charioteers, the stories said, but the Onyx Hall was no place for chariots, and they were not expecting cavalry.

Behind the knights, though, another figure stood his ground.

A fist like granite slammed into the side of the Horse’s head, and this attack struck home. The Horse’s scream sounded almost human. All its speed went abruptly sideways, the white lines of its body flying into one of the fluted black pillars that arcaded the chamber’s sides.

Kentigern Nellt’s answering growl shook the ceiling.

Lune had arrived at the doors with no allies save the White Horse. Antony had a bloodstained Bonecruncher and a Berkshire goblin. She bore the London Sword at her side, and had learned something of its use during her exile, but the four of them did not stand much chance against the giant.

She drew the blade anyway—and Antony stepped in front of her.

Antony moved to protect Lune without thinking, drawing his last remaining pistol and firing. The giant was coming for them, advancing like an earthquake across the floor; he thought his shot struck home, but Kentigern did not so much as stumble. The Red Branch knights were recovering. Four against seven, and those four outmatched; their allies would not reach them in time. They had overreached themselves, and now would pay the price. Even if they retreated, the battered doors would not hold Kentigern for more than a heartbeat.

The Onyx Hall had moved in their defense when they bade it.

How far does that go?

Antony spun, reaching for the hilt of the London Sword. He got Lune’s hand and the pommel, and forced the tip down. Throwing the full weight of his body behind the strike, he stabbed the blade downward, into the floor.

Whether it was intuition or the rapport they shared through the Onyx Hall did not matter. Lune joined his motion as smoothly as water, and when the Sword pierced the marble, they gave the command together.

With no more warning than that, the ceiling of the presence chamber gave way.

The collapse felt like it snapped Lune’s own spine. Her scream and Antony’s were lost in the deafening thunder, until the dust cut them off. Choking and blind with agony, she fought to control what they had unleashed. The rain of stone stopped just short of where the two of them knelt, still gripping the Sword, but it was long moments before she felt safe to pry her hand loose from the hilt and ease the shoulder wrenched by that downward strike.

The Sword stayed upright, wedged between cracked blocks of marble. Antony had released it, too, but he remained on his knees, gasping for breath.

In front of Lune, the dust was slowly settling. The main weight of rock had fallen, as they intended, on Kentigern Nellt; of the giant she could see nothing, just an unmoving mass of stone. But some of the fragments had caught the Red Branch knights, who lay broken and stunned along the edges of what had been the presence chamber.

Beyond them, she could just make out, through the dust, the silver shape of her throne.

It was empty.

She flung her senses outward, through the reaches of the Onyx Hall. Irrith and the others had defeated the fuath; Amadea’s group had secured the royal apartments; one by one, she identified the pieces of her army and her enemy’s, but nowhere in all those chambers and halls did she find the presence she sought.

The invasion had taken Vidar by surprise. Knowing they would seek him out, he had gathered what forces he could to this chamber…

…and then fled.

Bonecruncher was making sure the downed knights would stay down. Irrith entered just in time to catch Lune as she sagged. “Your Majesty!”

Extricating herself from the Onyx Hall hurt, and left in its wake a roaring abyss of exhaustion. Speaking took all Lune had. “Vidar—fled. Chase him. Secure others. Take c—” Her knees gave out completely, and Irrith shouted for help. “Take care of Antony.”

For while she had searched in vain for Vidar, the Prince of the Stone had slumped to the floor, where he lay as pale and drained as a corpse.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: August 1, 1659

“Her Majesty is not to be disturbed.”

Amadea’s calm declaration angered Irrith far more than the lady deserved. “What happened to her?”

The chamberlain adopted the discreet, infuriatingly polite expression that so many of the London court hid behind, instead of wearing their feelings plainly. “She is tired, nothing more.”

“I’ve seen tired. That? Was something more.” The Queen was pale by nature, but she had been white as snow when she collapsed. And that mortal of hers…Irrith was surprised he wasn’t dead already.

She clearly wasn’t getting past Amadea, who had placed herself at the door to the royal bedchamber like a silk-clad guard dog. Irrith took careful hold of her temper and said, “When she wakes, please let me know. Bonecruncher and I have things we must ask her about.”

All she got was a nod—not even a promise. These damned London fae, Irrith thought. Now that they’re home again, they would be glad for Wayland’s people to vanish.

Scowling, she went out into the corridor—and promptly got lost. The moment the battles were over, her mind had discarded its map of the Onyx Hall, as if it wouldn’t be needed anymore. The place was stifling to Irrith, capped with stone everywhere she turned, and she kept thinking about the mortals who walked not far above her head. She wanted to go up and see the City, but she had nothing to protect herself, and Lune had made it abundantly clear how dangerous it was to go around showing her true face.

Besides, she wasn’t sure how to get out.

Her wanderings took her at last into an area she recognized. Irrith had been here twice, first when they launched the invasion, then again when she and others helped Bonecruncher herd their prisoners into the cells beneath the Tower of London. A black-haired elf-knight glared wordlessly at her through the grate in his cell door, and she shivered. What Lune was going to do with these captives, she had no idea. Murdering them all seemed a bit excessive—but then, so was keeping them locked away for eternity.

That one giant might just grieve himself to death, in the cell he practically filled on his own. Which would save the Queen some trouble.

The dungeon was too gloomy. Irrith wandered with determination, forging on despite her complete loss of direction, passing goblins and pucks and courtiers, none of them her own people, none of them with particularly friendly faces. When Lune awoke, Irrith decided, she would hand over what she knew about the prisoners, then ask for a bite of bread to get her home. Once clear of the City, she wouldn’t need to worry about mortal charms against fae—and she belonged back in the Vale.

She turned a corner and found herself confronted with a pair of nearly identical brownies hauling a basket almost as big as they were. “Good day,” one of them gasped out, smiling through her breathlessness. “Would you be a dear and help us carry this? To the garden, I should think—”

“To start with,” the other one agreed. “We can unpack it there and have people take things where they’re needed. Come along; it isn’t that heavy, just too large for us—there’s a darling. You’re stronger than you look! Oh, you have it all, how wonderful. Follow us now; you look a bit lost. From Berkshire, are you?”

Bemused, and not entirely sure how she ended up bent beneath their basket like a snail, Irrith followed the two curly heads toward the garden, wondering who they were.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: August 3, 1659

Bolsters and pillows propped Lune up like an oversized doll, allowing her what semblance of dignity was possible when Gertrude was spoon-feeding her beef broth. She tried to ignore the childlike helplessness of her condition while she listened to Irrith’s report.

The Berkshire sprite had trailed in behind the Goodemeades like a duckling picked up by two mother hens, scant minutes after Lune awoke. Some intuition of the brownies’ must have sent them her way at the right moment, for she was ravenous, despite crippling weakness that made eating a herculean task.

Amadea wanted her duties to wait, and the sisters agreed with her. But Lune could not delay; already she had lain unconscious for two days, and only thanked fate that her enemies had not staged some counterattack while she was incapacitated.

She owed thanks to Irrith and Bonecruncher, who had brought things admirably under control. Some of the Irish and Scots had escaped, but the traitor courtiers were imprisoned, and they were the ones who worried Lune the most—aside from Vidar, who had slipped their grasp.

“There are two asking to see you,” Irrith finished. “An elf-knight and a giant, uh—”

“Sir Cerenel and Sir Prigurd,” Rosamund supplied, when Irrith floundered for names. “Sir Prigurd is begging your mercy.”

The beef broth churned uneasily in Lune’s stomach at the memory of his betrayal. Or perhaps not; the cause might be her own handling of Cerenel.

Prigurd would have to wait. She had to appear strong when she faced him. Cerenel, perhaps, should also wait—but that was expediency talking, not honor. She had already kept him too long.

Even Irrith argued against that one, but Lune insisted; in the end, they gave in because it was the quickest way to get her to rest. Then there was the question of who would be present for that audience. Lune wished it to be private, but she had to admit she did not trust what Cerenel’s response would be. And if he turned against her, she would be helpless.

Not the Goodemeades. Neither of them was a warrior, and she had endured too much of their silent disapproval over the oath she forced on the knight. She chose Irrith instead, who cared little about Onyx Court politics, and would be going back to Berkshire soon. “Keep behind the arras,” Lune said, “and as silent as you can. You are for security only, in case all should come to the worst.”

Irrith, to her credit, asked no questions. And when she was concealed, even Lune could not tell she was there. Soon Sir Peregrin Thorne escorted the prisoner knight into the chamber, bowed, and exited.

Leaving Lune in private with the one fae she had wronged most in all this war.

He was thinner than he had been—or perhaps it was just his manner that made him seem raw and hard. He stood like a hooded falcon, blindly obedient, but capable of murder if unleashed.

“Sir Cerenel,” Lune said, putting what strength she could into her voice. “In ancient Mab’s name, I release you from your oath.”

He jerked in surprise. She had framed a number of speeches to preface the declaration, during the long minutes while she waited for him to be brought, but in the end it was nothing more than fear. If he felt any charity toward her still, then he would wait and hear what she had to say, even once unbound. If he did not, then all the prologues in the world would not change that.

His eyes burned violet as his chin came up, as if her words had loosed the chains that held his fury in check. She saw his lips part, his balance shift, as if he almost spoke, almost moved. But it seemed he had no words, and did not know what he wanted to do. She took advantage of his hesitation to speak on.

“You served your penance to me when first I sent you to Fife. Returning you there was a decision of politics, not honor. You were the tool I had to hand, and therefore I used you. Speaking as Queen, I do not apologize; had you not gone, I might not have learned the Lord of Shadows’ identity, and suffered all the worse for my ignorance. But speaking as a private individual—I have wronged you, and forced your loyalty too far.”

Cerenel found a voice at last, strained and unmelodic. “Yes. You have.”

Lune concealed the pity she felt; he would only perceive it as an insult. “Your position in the Onyx Guard is restored to you, do you wish it. Moreover, I will grant you a boon of your choosing—reparation for the service you have done. You have but to name it.”

The knight stood motionless, head bowed, black locks falling forward in disarray. Finally, meeting her eye once more, he said, “I wish only to leave this place, and make my home elsewhere.”

Sorrow gripped her heart. Be honest—you hoped the handsome-ness of your apology would reconcile him to you, and make all well again.

But some hurts cannot be undone so easily.

“You are free to go,” Lune said. Despite herself, a waver marred the words. “Wait but a moment without: I will have someone bring your possessions, and enough bread to see you safely on your road.”

His body stiffened, as if he almost bowed and stopped himself. Silently, he turned and left the chamber.

Lune closed her eyes and let her head sag back against a pillow. Exhaustion had drained her to the bone once more, but she could not rest quite yet. “Irrith?”

The faintest of rustles told her the watching sprite had stepped out. “Yes?”

“Please give Sir Peregrin my command. And when you have done that…”

She was not a private individual. She was the Queen, and must do what was necessary.

“Tell the Goodemeades to have one of their birds follow Sir Cerenel. I must know where he goes.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: August 7, 1659

Irrith did not have to ask where to find Lune, when the Irish ambassador sent her in search. The Queen still rested for long hours each day, and spent most of her waking time handling the myriad of tasks involved in rebuilding her court, but when she couldn’t be found in her chambers or public rooms, she was invariably in one other place.

The guards let the sprite through into Lord Antony’s chamber. The furnishings had been ravaged during the occupation; the hobs of the court had swept out the detritus and brought in a new bed, but it was still one of the only furnishings in the room.

The bed, and the chair beside it, where Lune sat like an alabaster statue. “I beg your pardon,” Irrith said softly, regretting the interruption, “but Lady Feidelm sent me with word.”

One slender finger lifted, indicating she should continue.

“She has word from Temair. They found the sword—the Claíomh Solais—and King Conchobar is in a great deal of trouble for it.” Feidelm had used an earthier phrase, but the fine manners of this court were beginning to curb Irrith’s tongue.

Besides, vulgarity seemed out of place in this room. The Prince of the Stone lay unmoving beneath the coverlet, as he had for the last week. Breathing was the only motion Irrith had seen from him in all that time, and even that was barely discernible. He might as well have been dead.

Nearly everyone behaved as if he already was. The courtiers arrayed themselves into complicated factions, and several groups were grooming candidates for Lord Antony’s successor, mostly from the mortals who participated in the battle.

Lune spoke, and it took Irrith a moment to realize she was not responding to Feidelm’s news. “I do not know what to do for him.”

Irrith blinked. Conchobar—no, Antony. What response could she make to that? “Age happens. Mortals tire of life. Their flesh breaks down.”

“It is more than age.” Lune moved at last, leaning forward to straighten the pristine counterpane over the Prince’s body. “Neither of us had ever called on the Onyx Hall so intensely. It has drained him, as it drained me.”

But the Queen was an immortal faerie, and could survive what killed a human—especially an old one. She doesn’t want to admit that she must let him go. “Perhaps…” Irrith began hesitantly. How to make it clear—without being unforgivably rude? “Perhaps what he needs is to be among his own kind. Away from all of this.”

It would no doubt kill him, but that would be kinder than this living death. And Lune’s eyes widened, as if Irrith had lit a candle in the dark room of her thoughts.

“He is lost,” she whispered, hands hovering in the air. Then she stood in one swift motion, showing more vitality than Irrith had seen in her since the invasion. “Go find the Goodemeades. They will know where Antony’s wife is. Have someone bring her to London—we’ll move Antony to his house.” Lune dismissed those words with a sharp cut of her hand. “No, his house is gone. We will arrange for another. But find Lady Ware.”

ST. MARTIN’S LANE, LONDON: August 10, 1659

Jack Ellin reached for Sir Antony’s wrist, less out of need than a desire to be doing something. The unsmiling woman who lived in this house had forbidden him to feed the unconscious baronet any medications; she was sterner than Lady Ware.

He did not actually believe she lived here. Anne Montrose, as she called herself, didn’t show any of the comfortable familiarity that characterized a woman in her home. But Jack was familiar enough with conspiracy not to question it. The woman wanted Sir Antony to recover—despite her orders regarding his treatment—and that was enough to make her Jack’s friend for now.

Mistress Montrose stood sentinel in the corner, hands clasped across the hard front of her bodice. Her steady, gray-eyed gaze made Jack uncomfortable: another reason to attend to Sir Antony. He picked up a basin, wet a cloth, and used it to dribble more water into the man’s mouth. How long he had been in this coma was another thing no one would tell him, along with how the baronet came to be in this condition to begin with.

Footfalls on the staircase, the frantic steps of a woman who couldn’t clear her skirts enough to take them two at a time, as a man would. Jack rose from his chair just in time to get out of Lady Ware’s way.

She drank in the sight for long moments, while Jack held his peace. He’d endured enough letters from her over the last few weeks, demanding to know where her husband was, that he understood how much it meant for her merely to see him. Only when that need was filled did she begin to see, to take in the slack limbs, the gray-tinged skin, the dry, cracked lips.

Then, right on cue, came the anger.

She whirled on Jack first. “What has happened to him?”

He nodded at Mistress Montrose. I would lay odds Lady Ware did not even notice her. “This good woman brought him to me, as you see him now.”

After dealing with that uncommunicative presence for the last day, Jack took a certain pleasure in unleashing Antony’s wife on her. “What have you done to him?”

Katherine Ware needed no watching, except insofar as she might employ her claws; Jack kept his attention on the stranger. He therefore caught the brief tightening about her eyes. Guilt? I do believe so.

It went no further than that fleeting sign, though. Mistress Montrose answered, in a quiet, unremarkable tone that nonetheless checked the lady’s incipient harangue. “If you act quickly, you may yet be able to gain the answers you seek from your husband. I sent for you, Lady Ware, because Antony needs you. Indeed, you may be the only one who can help him.”

Which piqued Jack’s curiosity enough that he almost overlooked her unadorned use of Sir Antony’s Christian name. Physicking now; questions later. “I don’t know what ails him,” he admitted, coming forward a step. “He’s been weakening for as long as I have known him; now, his body seems stronger, and yet…”

“His mind is lost, I fear.” Mistress Montrose also left her post, holding up one delicate hand to forestall Katherine Ware’s frightened response. “I do not mean madness. I mean that he has gone far away, and what it needs is for someone to call him back. This is something no physician can do for him. You have been the foundation of his life, the means by which he keeps himself grounded in this world; you, I believe, have the capacity to bring him back to himself.”

Katherine looked unwillingly down at the motionless body on the bed, as if she could scarcely believe it belonged to a living man. “How?”

The other woman shook her head. “I do not know. Your instincts, not mine, must guide us now.”

Lady Ware’s hand descended slowly, then took Sir Antony’s limp fingers into her own. Her other hand clutched the air behind her until Jack realized she was reaching for the chair; he pushed it forward, and she sank down beside the bed. “Antony,” she whispered, hesitant but determined, “I am here.”

They withdrew from the room, granting the two some privacy. Jack looked in from time to time, bringing wine to wet Katherine’s throat when her voice began to flag. But he was not above discreet eavesdropping, and through the door he heard her speaking of anything that came to hand, from their children to politics. This world, Mistress Montrose had said. Another wife might have read to Sir Antony from the Bible, but they did not want him thinking of God and Heaven—not if the goal was to keep him here. It was not, perhaps, the best course of action for his soul, but Jack didn’t fault her tactics.

Except they produced no change. Sir Antony’s body lived, but his spirit might as well have departed it for another realm. Jack was there when Katherine looked up at their hostess and said, ragged and despairing, “I do not think he hears me.”

The gray eyes regarded her, and Jack was more sure than ever that they hid a wealth of thought and feeling. Who was this woman, to whom Antony was important enough to save—and yet Jack had never heard her name? He understood that the baronet had other allies, but he couldn’t fit this one into any position he knew, and that bothered him.

As did the words she spoke at last. “He must be called by a human voice. What distinguishes humanity from the soulless beasts of the field?”

“Love,” Kate whispered. “But I have said it a dozen times, and he does not hear.”

“Then don’t say it,” Jack said. A strange, unspoken communion of urgency breathed among the three of them, in this candlelit room, with the noise of the St. Martin’s Lane tenements distant and faint. We all want him back. We refuse to lose him in such fashion.

He knelt at the side of the bed, taking Antony’s other hand. Discarding the delicate touch of before, he gripped the unresisting fingers, hard enough to feel the bones beneath. A friend may love, as well. Capturing Kate’s gaze, he said, “Speak to him by means other than words.”

Understanding sparked. Bending over her husband, Kate took his face in her hands, cupping the line of his jaw, brushing his thinning hair back with one gentle thumb. The devotion in her eyes was uncomfortable to see; such things were meant for private display alone. Jack felt like an unwelcome spy. But he held fast to Antony’s hand, and stayed as Kate lowered her head and kissed her sleeping husband.

Time might have stopped. Or perhaps it was only Jack’s breathing, held tight in his chest, for fear of shattering something fragile. Kate pulled back at last, and whispered her husband’s name.

Antony’s eyes fluttered open.

His pupils were wide and drowning, his gaze unfocused. Then it sharpened, and Antony seemed to be looking past the two of them, to the figure that stood at the foot of his bed.

But when Jack turned to see, Mistress Montrose had vanished.

ST. MARTIN’S LANE, LONDON: August 11, 1659

Kate held her peace while Jack Ellin fed Antony beef broth, while he rose and walked a shaking circuit of the room, while he drifted into the embrace of true sleep, restorative as his previous stupor had not been.

But when he woke in the small hours before dawn, she still sat in the chair, and in the light of the one candle he saw the questions she had suppressed for so many years.

His wife, noticing he was awake, poured him a cup of wine and helped him drink. Red wine and beef broth—meat as soon as he could manage it—for Jack had told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to strengthen his blood. At least he was spared any foul-tasting potions.

When he was done, Kate set the cup aside and asked, very controlled, “Who is she?”

“A friend,” Antony said. What else can I call her, that will not open a Pandora’s box of trouble? Once he had been certain that God had placed the fae in the world to show humanity what they might be, without their immortal souls and the salvation of Christ. Capable of both great good and great evil, but lacking a guiding star by which to steer their choices. That certainty, like so many others, was long gone. And in its absence, he did not honestly know if he could explain his association, to Kate or anyone else, in a fashion that would render it into sense.

Kate’s expression hid in the shadows of her face, fragmented and unreadable. “How long have you…known her?”

The brief but telling hesitation wounded him. “She and I have served the same cause for years. Since before the wars.” A dangerous admission; the face Lune had showed here was young. But Antony was loathe to tangle himself in more lies.

“And what cause is that?”

Antony flinched. What could he tell her, to ease the pain she held behind those walls? “Kate…” He reached out and took her hands. “The Sealed Knot serves Charles abroad. They operate in secrecy, working underhand to achieve a restoration of stability for this land, and it is not for those who aid it to speak openly to others. The woman who was here…she is part of another group, one that has existed longer, and for a simpler purpose: the well-being of England. When Charles declared his personal rule, they worked for the calling of a new Parliament. When Parliament arrogated royal authority for itself, they struggled to restore the ancient balance. And now that the Army stands over England with a naked blade, they do as we do: they seek the sanity this land has lost.”

His fingers tightened on hers. “And I swear to you, in the name of the Lord God and His most holy Son, that she does not hold my heart—nor I hers. You are the only one for me, Kate, and I have ever been your faithful husband.”

Her chin hardened, a sure sign that she strove to keep her lips from trembling. “Faithful to me in body—perhaps even in heart. But this woman, this Mistress Montrose…you have given her a piece of yourself withheld from me. I have not even been permitted to know it was gone.”

He had known it for years: Kate hated secrets above all. By keeping this one, he had betrayed her trust.

All he could offer her now was his own truth, simple and insufficient as it was. “I am sorry.”

She stared at him, and then the hardened jaw gave way; Kate buried her face in his shoulder, tears soaking through his linen shirt to chill the skin below. Antony held her close, laid his lips on the kiss-curls at the back of her neck. Forgive me, Kate.

He would not say it. Forgiveness was not his to ask.

“I almost lost you,” she whispered.

His arms tightened around her shaking body. “I know. I—I fought so hard for my cause that I almost lost hold of my purpose, my reasons for fighting. I was so tired…it would have been easier to let go.”

She came up, then, and gripped him hard. “Do not say that. If it is rest you need, then you shall have it—if I must carry you out of England to find it.”

How long had it been since he laughed? Kate knew as well as he that such exile would be the end of him, not because of the Onyx Hall, but because he could not abandon London. But he believed with all his heart that she would throw him over one shoulder and drag him bodily onto a ship if she thought it necessary. His Kate was a fierce one.

“I love you,” he said, tucking an errant strand of her hair behind her ear.

“And I you,” she replied.

She did not need to say she forgave him. The message was there, unspoken. And with that, Antony could truly rest.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: August 13, 1659

From Lune’s elevation on the dais, the greater presence chamber was a sorry sight. The rubble of the ceiling lay in piles beneath the arcaded galleries along the sides, and raw earth showed above. The intricately laid patterns of the floor were cracked almost into gravel, and stained with Sir Kentigern’s blood.

Nor was the damage confined here. Bedchambers had been ransacked, and gardens despoiled. The obelisk in the night garden was shattered, the apple trees burnt—but some force in the Onyx Hall, still loyal to its former master, held firm; the soil had refused to yield up Michael Deven’s bones to desecrating hands. That one salvation, amidst all the destruction, reduced Lune to tears.

They came so close to destroying it.

Not just his grave, and not just the palace. With the help of her allies, she had saved the Onyx Hall—but what of the Onyx Court?

The battered, broken remnants of that stood before her as well. Looking out over them, Lune could not delude herself into thinking she had won some great victory. At best, she had regained the ground she held ten years ago: mistress of her realm, still threatened by enemies without. But along the way she had lost friends, power, and the Kingdom of England itself.

Vidar had escaped. Nicneven sat untouched in Fife. Conchobar was in check, facing the wrath of Temair, but that was small consolation for the wounds inflicted on this court. Her people were fragmented now, divided from one another, no longer the unbroken fabric she had once believed them to be.

But that had always been an illusion. Traitors lived all this time amongst them, and their betrayal had torn rents that would be years in the mending.

Their common purpose had united them long enough to retake the palace. But it did not make them whole.

What can?

“Stand,” Lune said, and her voice carried like a bell.

Her subjects rose. There, the surviving remnant of the loyal Onyx Guard, under Sir Peregrin Thorne’s command. Clustered around one of the fractured pillars, the Berkshire fae. A glowering clump of goblins, Bonecruncher’s followers—she would have to watch them carefully. They had tasted blood, and wanted more.

Lune curled her fingers around the arms of her throne and spoke. “We shall address three matters today.

“First: the succession of the Prince of the Stone.” Several fae shifted at her words; a few had the temerity to look eager. Lune wielded her contempt like a whip. “Those who have eagerly anticipated Lord Antony’s death shall be disappointed to hear that he yet lives. Let me make myself clear: those carrion crows who think to profit when he passes shall find no favor in this court. The Prince is no pawn to be manipulated by those seeking advantage. When the time comes for a successor, he and I will choose that man ourselves—or I alone, should he be gone. None other.”

Some looked abashed. Not all. They would continue to place humans in her path, hoping one would catch her eye. The prospect curdled her stomach. She was determined to take none of their candidates, when the time came.

How soon that would be depended on Antony.

“Second,” Lune said, when the last whispering echo had faded from the chamber. “We shall hear a plea from the traitor Prigurd Nellt.”

The doors were still warped and unusable. Prigurd simply appeared in the opening, flanked by Bonecruncher and an escort of tough goblins. She had to send them; the Onyx Guard, betrayed almost as badly as Lune herself, might have chosen to expiate their failure by murdering its architect.

The giant advanced slowly, hobbled by rowan-wood chains that gave him barely enough freedom to shuffle his feet. No strength could break those chains, not even his. They were one of the less pleasant objects Vidar had brought out from the treasury for his own use—things Lune had ignored for years, to her detriment.

When he fell to his knees, the graceless impact shook the floor.

Lune gazed pitilessly down upon his head. “You are a condemned traitor to your Queen. For years, you worked to undermine the Onyx Guard by bringing in disloyal knights at the behest of your exiled brother Kentigern. Your betrayal led to the deaths of our loyal subjects, both mortal and fae.” Of this, everyone was aware; but the litany of his sins stoked their anger, against the pitiful sight of his bowed shoulders. “Why should we grant you mercy?”

His voice was a broken rumble, audibly wracked with guilt. “Your Majesty—I helped you escape.”

Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “You claim so? Had we not slipped your grasp in King Street, we would have been prisoners from the execution onward. Later, by order of the traitor Ifarren Vidar, you were marching our person and that of Lord Antony to the cells beneath the Tower. Were it not for Benjamin Hipley’s intervention, you would have carried out that order. Wouldn’t you? ”

Prigurd’s shoulders jerked, and the chain binding his wrists rattled. He shrank even further into himself. “Y—Your Grace remembers the execution. I was there. I was protected. When Hipley started singing…it didn’t hurt me at all.”

It was so unexpected, Lune’s anger faltered. Was he telling the truth? She remembered the psalm washing over her, deflected by the tithe.

Which all of them had eaten, before going to Westminster. Not Essain and Mellehan, who did not accompany them—but Prigurd had.

She should have noticed the incongruity. Had she been thinking at all clearly that day, she would have. But with the death of the King ringing in her bones and Vidar upon her throne, such lesser considerations had fled her mind. And later, when she had more leisure, she had not given it a second thought.

Yet why should he have carried out such a ruse?

Irritation sparked, irrationally. She had granted him this audience believing she knew what path she would follow. Now, thanks to his revelation, she could not condemn him out of hand—however much she wanted to. Having chosen to hear him publicly, she had to ask him the question all her subjects, like her, wanted answered. “Why?”

Prigurd’s head rose just a hair, then dragged itself farther down. Had he tried to look her in the face, she would have ordered him to drop his gaze, and he knew it. He had lost the right to behave so familiarly. “I wanted to be loyal, your Majesty.”

If that was supposed to excite mercy, it failed; her rage recovered from its stumble. Rising from her throne, Lune spat, “Then why did you betray me to Vidar?”

“Because of Kentigern.” The anguished whisper, tearing from the giant’s great chest, still carried through the hall. “Majesty—he was my brother. He asked it of me, he—he told me we owed it to Halgresta—he was all the family I had left!”

She did not want to pity him. Prigurd was an idiot, a blind fool, too easily led by others; she should never have given him command of the Onyx Guard. But the mistake was of her own creation: she had always known him to be the only one of the three Nellt siblings moved by true duty and loyalty.

Which bound him from two directions. His sister dead, his brother exiled, Prigurd must have felt his failure keenly. And Kentigern—less cunning than Halgresta, but just as vicious, and utterly without principles—had used that to manipulate Prigurd into betraying his Queen on behalf of his kin.

An error Prigurd had tried, in his pathetic way, to remedy.

Lune gestured sharply at Bonecruncher. “During the retaking of the Hall—what did the traitor do?”

The barguest pointed one hooked claw at a fetch in his group. “He brought the giant in. Said he found him hiding in his chambers.”

“I didn’t fight,” Prigurd insisted.

“Silence!” Lune’s shoulders ached with tension. Kneeling humbly, awaiting judgment, Prigurd infuriated her, because now she had to decide what to do with him. A mortal could be imprisoned, to be let out when old, or left there until dead; Lune had no such luxury with her immortal subjects. Locking him back in the dungeon would only postpone the problem.

Unless, of course, the Onyx Guard murdered him in his cell. Which was entirely possible.

I must execute him myself, or send him away; he cannot stay here. And if she killed him, it would annihilate any chance of healing the breach in her court. No one could expect mercy from her then. If exiled, though, he would be a ready pawn for her enemies.

Once, this court had possessed a gem that could bind anyone, faerie or mortal, to a specified ban, bringing death to those who broke it. And for one sick, horrifying instant, Lune wished she still had it to hand.

She turned to hide her face from the watching fae, and seated herself once more upon the throne when she had mastered her wrenching repugnance. Must this be my fate? By ruling London, am I doomed to become like Invidiana?

It must not be. “Prigurd Nellt,” she said, coldly calm once more. “Do you abjure Ifarren Vidar, Nicneven of Fife, Conchobar of Ulster, and all their allies?”

The giant raised his gaze as far as the hem of her skirts and placed one massive fist over his heart. “Your Majesty—I will never again oppose you, the Prince, or the Onyx Court. I will take no action against you, and I will keep no secret that might threaten you. I will never again raise my hand against you or any of your subjects. This I swear, in ancient Mab’s name.”

Her heart beat painfully in her breast. An oath had not been her intent—not after Cerenel. She had some idea of how to frighten Prigurd sufficiently to keep him away from her opponents. And a vow so broad… his choice of terms was nothing short of asinine. It rendered him as useless to her as he was against her.

But bound in such manner, she could release him without fear.

Sun and Moon. Were my courtiers bound half so stringently, I need never again fear rebellion from within.

Another sickening thought. Parliament and the Army had tried that course, demanding varied and repeated oaths from members of the puppet Commons and other officials. The result had been to cheapen them into mere words. She would not risk the same here.

She had to reply. Lune gathered her wits and said, “We accept and recognize your vow. Despite it, however, your face is an unwelcome reminder of your treachery, and the price this court has paid for it. We therefore exile you from London and its environs, not to come within one day’s journey, on pain of imprisonment and further punishment. Go now, and let us not look upon you again.”

Prigurd’s breath caught. Slowly, awkwardly, he bowed until his face almost touched the floor. Then he stumbled to his feet and stood, broken-shouldered, while Bonecruncher unlocked his chains. No one spoke a word as he turned and made his way from the chamber, steps dragging, and out the shattered doors.

When he was gone, Lune said, “And now to our third matter.”

Every eye was upon her as she formed the words, enunciating them with razor-edged precision. “Bring me Ifarren Vidar.”

ST. MARTIN’S LANE, LONDON: August 14, 1659

“You should have waited for me,” Antony said.

“I could not.” Lune wore a different guise today, a younger version of the stern woman he had accompanied to the King’s execution. Whether she wished not to show the Montrose face again, or was thinking back to that terrible day, he could not guess. “I must return the court to order as quickly as I can, and that means addressing such matters.”

Impatience flared at the edges of his temper. That was good, in its way; he had the vigor to feel impatient. Owing, at least in part, to the vast meal he was currently gulping down. He had gone to church that morning, for the first time in far too long, and thanked God for the gift of his life—and the wife who had preserved it. “I am not so far away. You could have sent a messenger for me.”

The faerie woman shook her head. “No. You must stay above, and reestablish your roots in this world.”

There was a grotesque irony in her words: that, having wasted halfway to death because he was too long outside the Onyx Hall, he should nearly have killed himself by flinging his spirit so deeply into its embrace. In his waking moments, Antony could remember little of what he felt after pulling the ceiling down, but it returned to haunt him in dreams.

Compared to that, the world of this small house was gloriously solid and bright. “But I cannot stay here forever; I must come below again, and soon.”

Lune hesitated. He wished she would show her true face; masked by humanity, she was harder for him to read. “Antony…do you wish to?”

“What?” He put down the pheasant bone he had just torn half-clean. “Wish to stay here, or to come below?”

“To be free of us.”

She spoke the words with an abruptness that could only be born of inner turmoil forcibly chained. Staring, Antony fumbled for a napkin and wiped his fingers clean, then rose from his chair. “Lune…”

He got no further than her name; he was not sure what to say. She lifted her chin and went on. “I do not know if it’s possible. But we could try. Your bond to my world has almost killed you, more than once, and I know it has almost cost you your marriage. I never meant for this to bring you pain, but it has. I would spare you more, if I can.”

To be free of Faerie…he could not think what to feel about that. I have been with them two-thirds of my life. The realm beneath his feet was as much a part of his world as the one he stood in now.

But perhaps he was not so much of her world. “You have no more use for me, then.”

“No!” Lune reined herself in, but that unguarded cry rang in his ears. “If anything, we are of no use to you.”

The conversation was stumbling further and further from reason. “No use? How can you say that?”

She laughed bitterly. “What have we done for you, for your world, that you can say has bettered it? I do not mean the distant past. Since the start of these struggles, we have been leaves in a flood, deluding ourselves that we control where the torrent will carry us.

“When England was a Queen and her court, we—the fae—had some chance of steering a course. But England is grown too big for us; its concerns are grown too many. It is a hydra with a thousand heads. Parliament is the heart of this land now, speaking in contradictory voices, and I cannot control it by any honorable means.”

The words stung like wasps. Antony had never heard Lune like this, scourging herself with her failures. He could not say she was wrong in the substance of it—but what provoked her to such self-recrimination?

Me. I have done it. He saw it in the way her gaze fixed on him. Her world had nearly destroyed him, and the guilt of that tore deeply into her.

No other fae he knew would care so much, with the possible exception of the Goodemeades. It was the love of a friend, such as her kind were scarcely capable of, at least for his kind.

And it blinded her. “You may be right,” he said quietly, and did something he had not done for years; he took her by the arms, fingers curling into the cambric that draped her shoulders. “The whole of England is too much for us alone. We cannot control it, any more than Charles could, or John Pym, or even Oliver Cromwell. But we can help, as any of her loyal people do, for love of their home. There are smaller moments, and there is London; you should not give up on those. Certainly I will not.”

Was it accident or conscious choice that altered her eyes? When she looked up at him, they shone silver—Lune’s eyes in a mortal’s face. And her voice, saying, “You wish to stay?”

“I do,” Antony confirmed. Even if the enchantment of his bond released him, he would not abandon her. “And together we will do what we can, however small or great.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: October 25, 1659

Hasty work had converted Sir Mellehan’s former chamber over to an armory, while its previous occupant enjoyed the hospitality of the dungeon. Racks held the shining brass of the muskets and pistols Wayland Smith forged for Lune and Antony’s army—locked away for the time being, except for those few Sir Peregrin permitted to trusted hands.

“We can provide you with means to carry these back to Berkshire,” Lune said to the sprite who stood near the door.

She heard Irrith’s weight shift. “That won’t be necessary, madam. He’s Wayland Smith. He makes things; he doesn’t keep them.”

Lune suppressed a smile at the awkward manner of Irrith’s address. The wild faerie was learning courtesy, but did not yet use it well.

Keeping the firearms made her uneasy, but she recognized that sending them back to Wayland would not solve anything. Over time, the fae adopted any mortal thing that interested them; sooner or later, someone would have picked up a gun. And she might need them again.

She took her hand from a musket stock and faced Irrith. “You may tell your King that I am looking into the fulfillment of my promise. The Army has dissolved Parliament—”

“Again?” said Irrith in disgust. She was learning mortal history, too, and found it inexplicable.

“Again. But I think it shall not last for long. Without the Rump, the Army has nothing to legitimate itself save the sword; we shall have new war or a new Parliament before long. Either way, they have greater concerns than the maintenance of your Horse, but there are other means of achieving it. The people are tired of having Puritan morality imposed on them from without.”

The Horse had gone back to its hillside; Lune wondered if Irrith would follow suit. The sprite asked endless questions about the mortals of London, but passing fancies were common among fae. She might not return.

Concealing her disappointment at that thought, Lune said, “And please also convey to your King what I have said regarding Vidar. I will reward handsomely anyone who brings word of him to me.”

The delicate face broke into a fierce smile. “I should not like to be your enemy, madam. I’ll carry your message, and search for Vidar myself.”

THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, LONDON: December 5, 1659

Throwing roof tiles and chunks of filthy ice had seemed like a good idea at the time. London’s apprentices had presented a petition to the City’s Common Council; they wanted a new Parliamentary election, or at least the return of the Rump ejected in October. When Dendy showed up to post a proclamation from the Army’s so-called Committee of Safety, outlawing petitions, it didn’t take much encouragement from the handful of disguised pucks and goblins among them to provoke the apprentices into standing up for their demands. And the sergeant-at-arms, ducking the missiles, had withdrawn with his men.

But now a regiment had come, with horsemen to back them up. It didn’t stop the apprentices; a knot of them descended upon one unfortunate soldier not wise enough to keep up with his fellows, and disarmed him by force. Antony could not get through the crowd to them as they kicked the man to the ground outside the Royal Exchange.

And what could he do, if he did? Tell them he was an alderman of London? The Court of Aldermen was not in high esteem at the moment, though Antony had been working since his restoration to better that. He might join the soldier on the ground.

The regiment’s commander was going to carry out the duty Dendy had failed at, come the forces of Hell itself. Ignoring insults from the crowd and the football some of the apprentices were kicking about, disregarding—or perhaps oblivious to—the fate of his soldier, Hewson was reading out the proclamation in a determined bellow.

And then someone threw a stone.

Antony didn’t see where the first one came from. He saw some of those following, though, as other apprentices took up the idea and began to pelt the soldiers with anything that came to hand. The shopkeepers of the Exchange had long since cleared away, but there was rubbish aplenty, and some of the apprentices had strong arms.

This goes too far. He craned his neck and caught the eye of a starveling beggar child on the roof, crouching on the shadowed balcony of the clock tower; the puck gestured helplessly in response. Fae were much better at sowing chaos than stopping it. Christ. I’ve started a riot—just as Vidar used to.

Then the child shrieked a warning, his thin voice unintelligible over the clamor.

Antony cupped one hand to his ear, uselessly. The child was waving his arms wildly. What does he—

A shot shattered the air, deafening in the confines of the courtyard. Someone screamed. Antony ducked, instinctively sheltering behind the brawny apprentice in front of him.

God help us all. The soldiers were firing on the crowd.

The mass of bodies became a flood of rats, battling their way toward the arch that led to the street. Antony was buffeted from all sides, stumbling, keeping his feet only because to fall was to die, in this madness. Out onto Cornhill; he went with the current, which took him left, toward Gracechurch Street. All around him, apprentices split off into alleys and byways; he kept on straight, thinking vaguely to lose himself in the Leadenhall Market up ahead, and to hide among the patrons there—should the soldiers follow so far.

But it seemed no one was pursuing them. Antony staggered to a halt at the entrance to Leadenhall, air rasping in his lungs, and bent nearly double with coughing. One of the young men had followed his same path, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Careful, old man.”

Spasm ended, Antony forced himself upright. “I am perfectly—” He choked on the last word and nearly started coughing again. If a soldier had ridden by and poleaxed Henry in passing, Antony’s son could not have looked more stunned. “Father?”

The boy sounded disbelieving, as well he might. Antony was dressed to blend in with the apprentices; the Court of Aldermen would need to believe they were telling the truth when they promised the Army they had nothing to do with the riot. Henry’s face settled into sardonic lines. “I didn’t know you fought for the good old cause.”

Antony almost laughed. Good old cause? Henry was scarcely old enough to remember the days when that phrase had been coined, and he was hardly an Army man, to talk of fighting for it. “The Commonwealth? Not hardly—nor the Rump, neither. I’d fight for my seat in Parliament back, if I thought it might do any good. But since it will not, I side with your apprentice friends: our soldier-masters should at least arrange a new and free election.”

What possessed him to say it, he did not know. Even supposing he wanted to break their tradition of never discussing politics, the entrance to Leadenhall was hardly the place to do it. But Henry had caught him off guard.

Predictably, his son’s expression turned mutinous. “Of course you wish your old place. You and your friends would vote for the restoration of the monarchy before the opening prayers were done.”

Henry had no sense of discretion—but then neither did he, it seemed. They were far too public. Antony took his son by the arm and dragged him, protesting, around the corner of the market, into a narrow alley reeking of piss. After years of skulking about London, hiding from Vidar and Cromwell alike, he knew all the hidden byways.

“Do not speak so openly,” he growled at his eldest, voice echoing off the overhanging jetties of the houses. “Unless you wish me disbarred from the aldermen again, and perhaps imprisoned.”

“You’ve created that danger yourself,” Henry said, jerking free. “Why, Father? I once thought you too wise to have a romantic view of the past, yet you cling to it more with every passing year.”

“Romance?” This time, Antony did laugh. “Say rather ‘cold-eyed practicality.’ A body cannot live without its head.”

Henry scowled, at the words or the laughter, perhaps both. “It has lived so far. And what if that head be diseased? For the love of God—you remember that man of blood.”

More Army phrases from his son’s lips. Did Henry realize how much he parroted them? Antony doubted it. Henry was a Commonwealth man, to the bone. He hated the Army, but did not see how it was the only force propping up the Rump—and then only when it chose. “I remember a great deal more than King Charles. At least in those days, we knew the tools in our hands; we knew the ways in which King, Lords, and Commons could be made to balance one another. If at times we failed, at least the ground we fought on was familiar.”

How old had Henry been, when Charles fled London? Not even breeched. He did not remember a world in which that pattern held true. He had never known a King on the throne.

Nor did he wish to, by the contempt on his face. “So you would hold fast to what you know, for fear of anything different.”

“If the men peddling difference had any plan,” Antony said, answering contempt with contempt, “I might see it differently. But ask yourself: when was the last time you heard someone argue for a republic, and provide a notion of how to create it? I do not mean some Utopian dream of government; I mean a practical, practicable scheme for getting from here to there.”

Hotheaded Henry might be, but he had a brain. He opened his mouth, but when he found no answer inside, shut it again. The Commonwealthsmen kept believing that success lay simply in finding the right design for England’s government; they did not see the obstacles along the way. So long as that was true, they would only tear the realm down again and again, and never build anything stable in its place.

“Give us time,” Henry said at last.

Antony shook his head. “There is no more time. The hunt for that dream has let in a wolf worse than the one killed ten years ago. Do you know the Protectorate sold Englishmen into slavery in Barbados? Do you know how many men have been imprisoned without proper trials? I do not; God Himself might not be able to count them.”

“But the monarchy—”

“Is what the people want.”

“Then the people are fools,” Henry cried, full of young fury. “Blind, damnable fools, who do not see what they are asking for!”

The wall behind Antony was filthy with coal smoke, but his doublet was of no consequence; he leaned against the surface and crossed his arms. “Then you must make a choice,” he said flatly. “A republic is guided by the will of its people, is it not? And the people want the world they had before. They may be fools, but if you stand by your principles, then you must support a new election and accept its consequences. Your only alternative is oligarchy, under the false name of republic.”

His declaration carried a certain necessary cruelty. Henry called the people of England blind, but so was he, in his own way. And Antony could not let his son blunder onward, ignorant of the tangled, bloody truth. Change was coming. Henry must be prepared.

The question was whether, having laid his own sympathies out so plainly, he had lost his eldest son.

Henry was floundering for words. Antony decided to play one final card. “General Monck is moving in support of Parliament. If the Army does not comply, there’s a good chance he will bring his troops down from Scotland and ensure a Parliament free from their control. Paradoxical, yes, that military force should free us from military force—but he is possibly the only honest leader the Army has. This much, I think, we can agree on: that a free Parliament must be England’s next step.”

The step after it might be indeed restoration of the monarchy. Antony hoped so. It was to that end that he and Lune worked now, not controlling, simply helping the people where they could. The same people Henry railed against just a moment ago. But principles won out over ideals; Henry nodded, reluctantly. The right of the people to elect their representatives was his paramount concern.

“Then come,” Antony said, reaching for his son. “This alley stinks, and I am hungry. We shall have supper together.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: February 9, 1660

A shiver ran down Lune’s body. She broke off what she was saying midword and closed her eyes, reaching for the source of that reaction. Something in the Onyx Hall…

No. Not in; above.

“Lord Valentin,” she said, and heard him murmur in reply. “Send someone into London. Find out what is happening at the gates.”

“Which gates, madam?”

Another shiver, like bones grinding in their sockets. “All of them.”

She opened her eyes to find Sir Peregrin regarding her with a strange mixture of reverence and disturbance. A faerie monarch was tied to her realm, but not until the retaking of the Onyx Hall had her subjects realized how far that went here. They seemed to fear she would drop the ceiling on them, next.

She could not do it without the Prince of the Stone; though she could sense things when she tried, the Hall only answered to its master and mistress in concert. But there was no profit in explaining that.

“Carry on,” she told the captain, as if the interruption had never happened.

He blinked, regathering the scattered threads of his thoughts. “We have found no sign of Vidar in England, madam. Your cousin Kings and Queens would not give him refuge after Invidiana’s downfall; they are no more likely to do so now.”

“And Ireland?”

Peregrin shrugged helplessly. “He is not in Temair, nor in Connacht, Lady Feidelm tells us. Leinster and Munster claim they do not harbor him, and I see no reason to doubt them.”

“And Ulster,” Lune sighed, “is not likely to answer if we ask.”

“No, madam.”

She brooded over the fan she held, trying to weigh her enemy’s mind. Would he flee to Ireland? Conchobar was disappointed with Vidar’s failure to control the English government, but the traitor lord was still a closer ally to Ulster than Lune would ever be. Then again, Conchobar was busy with his own troubles over the Claíomh Solais.

Her heart told her Vidar was not in Ireland. No, he would crawl back to the same hole from which he had emerged to devil them before.

Fife.

To which Cerenel had returned, after Lune released him from his vow. His brother Cunobel was there, living in relative peace, separate from all the squabbles between Nicneven and herself. Lune wished them well, with sorrow. Cerenel is no resource I can call upon. Not anymore.

Which left her with no intelligence on Nicneven’s movements, and what Vidar might be planning.

Blind again. Have I won nothing for all my struggles?

Valentin Aspell returned, giving her some small relief from that question. “What of the treasury?” she asked him; as Lord Keeper, it was his province.

“There has never been a thorough inventory, madam,” he admitted. “What Vidar may have taken, we cannot tell; but we are finding a great deal we did not know we had.”

Vidar had once been Lord Keeper himself. He would know precisely what to take. “Anything that may hunt him?”

She watched Valentin’s face sharply as he formed an expression of regret. Aspell had been in the company of the late Sir Leslic, but more, she believed, out of a desire to protect his own political influence than because he had any alliance with Nicneven and Vidar. He had drifted away during the exile, rather than stay under Vidar’s rule. But he was greedy, and ambitious; Lune wondered, as he denied having found any such enchantment, whether he would tell her the truth.

I should have councillors I can trust.

But she could not afford to replace him. Lune listened to his account of the things he had found, then made arrangements with Sir Peregrin to hear pleas from other traitors who were tired of their cells. “But not until I may arrange a joint audience with Lord Antony,” she said, remembering at the last moment that the Prince wished to be a part of it.

The captain of the Onyx Guard nodded, and then her usher opened the door to the privy chamber where they sat. “Your Majesty, the mara Angrisla.”

“I sent her above,” Valentin said, and Lune gestured for the usher to show her in.

The nightmare’s narrow, slitted eyes were uncommonly wide as she knelt. “What have you discovered?” Lune asked.

“Your Grace—those soldiers are in the streets. The new ones, from Scotland.”

“General Monck’s regiments.” Largely English, as their general was, but everyone thought of them as the Scottish troops, as that was where they had marched from. The news of his advance south had been threat enough to put the Rump back into session just after Christmas, but after a mere six days in London, it seemed Monck’s men were already interfering. They are, after all, part of the Army. Did I expect otherwise?

Angrisla nodded at the name. “They say Parliament has ordered them to unhinge and destroy the gates.”

“What?” Lune startled in her chair. London had long since grown past its defenses; during the war, Parliamentary forces had dug a great ditch some distance out, in recognition of the wall’s uselessness. To destroy the gates, though, meant rendering the City incapable of even the slightest resistance.

Which must be why they had ordered it. People wanted a Parliament, but they were tired of the Rump. In the City especially, they were not well disposed toward England’s illegitimate masters, and had thrown up chains at the gates to announce their discord.

She was surprised that Monck would agree to cripple them thus; as a rule, he seemed honestly concerned with defending the liberties of the people, and not merely mouthing the words. But she was more concerned with its effect on the Onyx Hall—

Lune’s breath stopped. Could it be Vidar? It did not take a clever mind to know the City wall was part of the faerie palace, since the Hall did not extend beyond that boundary. And Monck had marched down from Scotland. Lune pressed her fingertips into her eyes, striving to sense any weakening in the enchantments.

“Madam?” Sir Peregrin asked quietly.

Lune sighed. Or perhaps Monck simply is obedient to the Parliament he restored. Not everything has a faerie cause. And I could easily drive myself mad, looking for one.

She lowered her hands and found everyone watching her. Whatever Angrisla had said in response to her startled cry, she had not heard a word of it. The Onyx Hall was not crumbling around her ears, though, and showed no sign of doing so anytime soon. They were opening the gates, nothing more. That would not destroy the palace.

Still, she would ask Antony about Monck’s decision. If there was some hidden influence there, she would like to know about it.

“Thank you,” she said to Angrisla, and made herself smile. “The news startled me, nothing more. Carry on, my lords; we have business to conclude.”

GUILDHALL, LONDON: February 11, 1660

So this is the man in whose hands England now rests.

George Monck did not look remarkable enough for the burden of fate that lay upon him. The general of the Army’s regiments in Scotland dressed as a soldier, and his fleshy face was stolid as he listened to Thomas Alleyn, the Lord Mayor of London, belabor the obvious. “Given the recent unsettlements of the City, you understand, the people are most uncertain as to your intent—the soldiers gathering in Finsbury Fields—”

Monck bore it with patience, but eventually held up one hand. “Lord Mayor, I assure you, my intentions are as they have always been: to protect the liberties of the people. I’ve sent a letter this morning to Parliament, requesting them to issue with all possible speed writs to fill the vacancies in the House. By this, I hope to dispel the impression that they intend their sitting to be perpetual.”

Had Antony’s heart been pounding less heavily, he might have snorted. Impression? No, it was a certainty: the Rump had no desire to give way, and let go of the power currently in their hands. It was the same disease that had gutted the Army, seducing the officers to aggrandize themselves, until their own soldiers abandoned them.

The general had to know that, or he would not be here. Monck had never been a political man, unlike his Army brethren Ireton and Cromwell; only the greatest distress at England’s situation had persuaded him to take action. Yet everyone seemed reluctant to condemn the Rump outright, as if speaking would make its faults real.

Hence the pounding of Antony’s heart. He felt as if he held a butterfly in the cage of his hands. If he could but persuade Monck…

He cleared his throat, and all eyes snapped to him. Betraying nothing of his inner tension, Antony said, “Promises to fill the vacant seats go only so far—especially when the Rump may pass whatever restrictions they like on who may elect, and who be elected. They have done it before, sir.”

Monck said mildly, “If those are the laws Parliament passes, then so be it.”

Frustration welled in Antony’s throat. Monck had gotten this far by moving one careful step at a time; were he less attentive to practicalities, he might have been checked in Scotland by his own disloyal officers. But the general put his own house in order before moving south, and had held to that pattern ever since, addressing concerns as they arose.

It was a strength, but also a weakness. When looking to the future, his vision stopped at next week. “Please allow me to remind you that they have set no date for their own dissolution, nor do they seem likely to do so. What else is that but a perpetual Parliament? We must have a succession of Parliaments, as is meant to be.”

“And so I have advised them,” Monck agreed.

“But what if they ignore it? They are not representative, sir; they are the remnant left after the greatest affront to privilege and liberty this realm has ever seen.” Antony looked not just to Monck now, but to the Lord Mayor and his fellow aldermen—some of them victims of similar interference in the government of London. “The only legitimate authority in this land is that elected twenty years ago: the full Parliament, such as has not perished in the interim.”

By the finer points of law, it had never gone away. Back in Pym’s day, they had maneuvered Charles into signing an Act that Parliament could not be dissolved save by its own will. From the original purge to Cromwell’s ejection of the Rump at the start of the Protectorate, through the myriad of upheavals since then, that longest of Parliaments had, in legal terms, never ended.

Monck folded his hands on the table before him. “You mean the readmission of the secluded members.”

“Forgive me, Sir Antony,” Alleyn broke in, “but it seems to me that you speak in your own self-interest—as you were one of those purged.”

“I speak in the interests of England,” Antony said, glaring at the Lord Mayor. “Unless you wish to argue that the Army had the rightful authority to force us out, then you must admit that seat is mine by law—for the laws barring me from it were passed after my seclusion. And if you wish to argue in the Army’s favor, then by all means, say so.”

Alleyn flushed and mumbled something unintelligible, but clearly negative. Enough men in the room had bristled at the mention of the Army that only a madman would have tried to argue Antony’s point.

Addressing Monck once more, Antony said, “Sir, I beg you. You are Parliament’s support—not the Rump, but the freely elected Commons of England. You have said so many times. Use your influence to return us to our places, and you shall have the succession of Parliaments you seek. But I tell you with certainty: the Rump will never vote for the end of their own power.”

He held the man’s gaze with every word he spoke, and prayed as he did so. Antony had come so very close to asking Lune for aid; a few well-crafted dreams would be enough to sway the man’s sympathies to their side. But Monck had resisted tearing down the gates and trespassing on the rights of the City; though he had finally given in on those matters, his patience with the Rump was already near its end. He must make his decision freely, not constrained by faerie magic. Nothing else would be honest.

And honesty, as much as monarchy, must be restored in England.

“I will consider what you have said, Sir Antony,” the general told him. With that, Antony had to be content. But he saw doubt in the man’s eyes.

It may take him some days yet—but we have him.

ST. STEPHEN’S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER: February 21, 1660

Applause and cheers greeted the line of men as one of Monck’s captains led the way through the lobby of the Commons. Whether those watching were petitioners with business for the House, or whether news had gotten out of Monck’s plan, Antony could not guess; he, with the others, had been gathered since well before dawn at the general’s chambers in Whitehall. But either way, the onlookers roared their approval as the secluded members marched through.

It had the feel of a triumphal procession. Prynne wore a baskethilted sword that looked as old as he, and waved vigorously at men he knew, until the sheathed blade tangled the legs of Sir William Waller behind him, and he had to attend to its management.

Dodging Waller’s stumble, Thomas Soame grinned at Antony and said, “The place seems smaller than I remember.”

“That’s because we scarce have room to breathe.” Up ahead, the soldiers had stopped at the bar to the House: a nice observation of propriety. The secluded members filed past them and found the chamber empty. “Do you think they know we are coming?”

“The Rumpers? I hope not. Bit of a surprise for them when they find out, and I confess feeling some glee at the thought.”

Hesilrige at least knew; he and his minions had an unpleasant surprise when they came to call on Monck that morning. But as current members began to trickle in and found their old companions in their seats, their reactions were more than sufficient to entertain Soame.

Antony left his friend to enjoy their discomfiture, and settled more agreeably into his seat. Monck might delude himself that they had come to establish England once more as a commonwealth; at the very least he struggled to avoid war. In that latter, Antony would be more than happy to oblige him. But the time had come for a return to the old constitution.

The House of Commons. The House of Lords. And the King upon his throne.

England would be a kingdom once more.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: April 19, 1660

Convincing all her ladies to leave her in peace took some effort. Some had been with Lune in exile, and some had not, but to a lady, they were all determined to behave as if no disruption had ever occurred—which meant they stuck to her like burrs, as if sheer intensity of service could make up for long deprivation. She had to speak quite sharply before the last of them understood that when she said she wished to be alone, she meant true solitude.

With that achieved at last, she sat in one of her antechambers, hands playing over the keyboard of her virginals. She had no skill at the instrument: no expression such as mortals could evoke, no faerie entrancement, not even physical expertise. But it was new to her, and the challenge was diverting.

Enough so that when the door opened, unheralded, letting Antony into the chamber, she offered him an easy smile. He held a folded sheet in one hand—no small scrap of paper, but fine vellum, sealed with wax. Lune could not see the impression from where she sat, but a ribbon dangled from the seal; it was something formal. “What is that?”

“A letter I fear will damage your good spirits,” he said, extending it to her. “From Nicneven.”

The vellum perched loosely on her slack hand as Lune stared at him, taken utterly by surprise. Not once since her accession had the Queen of Fife deigned to communicate directly. Why now? And why did Antony have it?

“As to the second,” he said when she asked him, “it is because I found Valentin Aspell pacing outside your door, trying to devise a means of presenting it to you that would not result in him running for his life. I offered to hazard myself instead. But for why she has written to you—we must read it to know.”

She did not want to know; she wanted to throw the letter in the fire unread. Instead Lune settled into a chair by the hearth and cracked the seal with her thumb.

The missive was addressed to Lune alone, but that was no surprise; Nicneven would hardly wish to acknowledge a mortal as her co-ruler. She turned so Antony could read it with her, from the chair he pulled to her side. The script inside was sharp and unadorned, and its message unmistakably clear.

“Heaven and earth,” Antony said. “He is not in Fife?”

For his betrayal of our trust and goodwill, we lay claim to the life of Ifarren Vidar. Should you or any of your court apprehend him, surrender him to us at once, or we shall once more make war upon your realm, and destroy it utterly.

A breathless laugh escaped Lune, born more of disbelief than amusement. “It would appear not. And for good reason.”

During the long years in Berkshire, they had tried to encourage Nicneven’s disaffection with Vidar. It seemed she no longer needed prompting. Vidar was not in Fife; he had squandered any goodwill there by his failure in London.

Then where was he?

Antony sat back in his chair and raised his eyebrows. “Well, that is a weight off your shoulders, I should imagine. Let the Gyre-Carling dispose of him.”

“She must find him first,” Lune murmured.

The Prince knew her too well; he gave her a curious look, leaning forward once more. “You do not seem pleased.”

Lune folded the letter carefully, along the original lines. The seal was too battered now to make out—presuming it was Nicneven’s at all. Did the Gyre-Carling often send letters? Or had she borrowed someone’s seal, in an attempt to follow civilized standards? “It is blackmail, Antony.”

“But it would buy the security you have sought all this time.”

“Would it?” The words came out sharp. “Nicneven despises this place. She will not cease just because I help her kill Vidar. But that is not the point, Antony: the point is the threat itself.”

He paused, then said, “You do not wish to be seen bowing to it. I understand. But no one knows of it save us two. Aspell did not read the letter. If Vidar were found quietly, and sent north—”

“You do not understand.” Lune rose from her chair in an angry burst, the letter crumpling in her hand. “She threatens my realm. Not myself, not my subjects; the Onyx Hall itself. The very foundation of my sovereignty. If I bow to that—” Even speaking the words made her bones shiver. It was the same instability she had felt when they cut the head from Charles in King Street, the tremor that preceded the earthquake.

“If I bow to that,” Lune repeated, almost too faintly for herself to hear, “then I will be Queen no more.”

Antony shifted behind her, uneasy. “How so?”

She shook her head. “I—Sun and Moon. I cannot explain it, but I feel it. Beyond question. I know I ceded the palace to Vidar when I fled, but that was not the same…” Her breath caught. Lune swallowed painfully. “It would be as if, in his trial, Charles had renounced the divine, in order to spare his life. Or no—that is not it at all—” Frustration closed off her throat. She had never been a philosopher, to seek out the reasons for faerie customs, much less to explain them to others. “I do not have the words. But if I allow Nicneven to use my realm to force me to my knees, I will lose that realm. Likely to her.”

Lune turned and found Antony now standing as well, confused and worried in equal measure. “We must find him first,” she said, her determination hardening with every word. “Find him first, and dispose of him quietly, so that he cannot threaten us again. And if Nicneven does not like it—then we shall answer her as befits a Queen.” And she flung the letter into the fire.

LONDON: May 29, 1660

The City had burst into bloom, the warm spring sun calling out all the colors and gaiety the long, cold winter had suppressed—a winter that had, in some senses, lasted for more than ten years. Everyone wore their brightest, and banners hung from every jetty and balcony along the processional route. The fountains in the streets ran with wine. The roar was deafening, but above it all, trumpets rang out in brazen triumph as the procession made its way up London Bridge.

At the heart of all the pageantry was a tall, smiling man, his black hair hanging in thick curls past his shoulders, receiving with benevolent goodwill all the accolades of the City his father had fled nearly twenty years before. Antony knew well that Charles Stuart, second of that name, had no particular illusions about the circumstances of his restoration, but he was willing to accept the fiction thus offered. Indeed, the King laughed that it must be his own fault that had kept him away, for everyone so clearly desired his return. These smiles and jests were the bandages that would hold England’s wounds closed—to heal in time, they hoped.

“God save the King!” echoed from every window, when not long before those same voices had sworn never to accept a single person at the head of their state, be he King or Lord Protector. But here came this merry man, thirty years old today, with splendid display the likes of which had not been seen since Puritan rule began, and it was excuse enough for rejoicing. The trouble could come later.

Tears prickled in Antony’s eyes. So little of it made sense! The struggle now ended was not the one they had begun so long ago. The issues that troubled men back then were all but forgotten now. Few concerned themselves anymore about the Anglican episcopacy, or ship money, or control of the militia; though the New Model Army was far more dangerous a weapon, Parliament had ceded it to the King without a quibble. Half the names that led the fight twenty years ago were dead now, or retired from the field of political battle. After so many wars and risings, the restoration of the monarchy was achieved not by arms, but by a few simple votes in the Commons.

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

All 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.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: eight o’clock in the morning

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.”

FLEET STREET, LONDON: ten o’clock in the morning

“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.

Irrith was very glad she could not see the hag’s face.

A voice like a thousand mutilated ravens screamed some unintelligible challenge at the Fire. I don’t think she needs the bribery of corpses, Irrith thought, backing another few steps away. This is her territory, and she does not like invaders.

What coiled up to meet the hag was not the entire Dragon. Irrith was not certain there was such a thing anymore; the beast had grown so huge under the wind’s encouraging hand that it could probably manifest itself in half a dozen places at once.

It was not the entire Dragon. But it was big enough.

Blacktooth Meg didn’t flinch back. She yowled in fury and threw her clawed hands skyward, burying them in the creature’s molten flesh. A stench bad enough to punch through to Irrith’s dulled senses struck her like a giant’s club, knocking her to the ground. The sprite writhed on the hard-baked dirt, until she felt Angrisla’s bony fingers wrap around her arm and haul her upright.

The river hag was lost from sight, buried in a twisting, tearing mass of flame. The stones of the bridge next to that battle were beginning to glow with the heat. The Dragon—that part of it—was pinned down.

But for how long?

The hag was no great spirit, not like Old Father Thames. Sparks glided by overhead, seeking the dry, close-packed houses of Fleet Street.

And from inside the raging battle, the sprite and the mara heard Blacktooth Meg scream.

“I don’t think it’s working,” Angrisla said, and Irrith swore in agreement.

ALDERSGATE, LONDON: four o’clock in the afternoon

The sudden crack of an explosion made the man next to Jack startle and look around in fear. The physician had him by the shoulder before he could run. “It isn’t foreigners,” he said, weary with having repeated it a thousand times. “The duke’s men are blowing up houses around Cripplegate, to stop the Fire’s spread.” Also by the Tower, though most if not all of the powder had been removed from the fortress. Jack hoped someone had the sense to clear breaks in the liberties west of the City, too—but he had no sense of that land, which lay outside the borders of the Onyx Hall.

That strange, extra sense was ravaged almost beyond capacity for life, though. Jack had been forced to ride halfway around the City to reach this spot; of all the entrances to the faerie palace, only the Crutched Friars and Tower doors stood unscathed. St. Paul’s was yet intact, but besieged on all sides by flames.

Everything else had fallen to the Dragon.

The western wall collapsed early—not physically, but in its magical fortification. Here, where the northward run of that defense bent eastward for a time, the line was breached, but not by much. The narrow gap of Aldersgate strangled the flames, letting only a slender arm through, and the wind lacked enough northward bent to carry the sparks over the height of the bricks. They battled the Fire for every inch it claimed.

Too many inches, though. The message was sent; now they waited for Nicneven to answer, losing more of London with each minute that passed. And Jack, well aware of the irony, prayed to God that Lune was right—about the Gyre-Carling being here, about her willingness to meet, about the killing of the Dragon, about everything. Otherwise they would lose all they hoped to save.

He could not sit below and wait; it would drive him mad. So he came out here again, joining the men who still fought, slowing the Fire with every means at their disposal.

Shouts rose at the corner across from Jack. An ember had wormed its way into the wood, unnoticed by the men busy fighting to extinguish another blaze, and now a whole wall was in flames. Staggering, weary past the telling of it, Jack grabbed the nearest fellow by the sleeve—some fine gentleman, whose rich clothes would not be fit for rags when this was done—and dragged him toward an unused fire-hook. Somehow the two of them got its heavy iron point up; then others joined them, helping maneuver the hook into a ring under the eaves of the burning house. “We have it!” Jack cried in a voice gone hoarse with smoke and overuse, and a dozen hands seized hold of the ropes set along the thirty feet of the pole. Together they all heaved, bellowing, until the timbers gave way, and the house front came crashing down.

Sparks erupted skyward, but others were there with buckets. Jack and the fine gentleman positioned themselves as close to the heat as they could, flinging water over the crackling wreckage, until the last of it sputtered out. A small victory: one more house destroyed, true, but it would not spread to others.

Chest heaving, Jack dropped the last bucket from his blistered hands. His companion gave him a soot-blackened smile, shoving the lank, sweaty mass of his dark hair back toward the ribbon it had escaped from.

There were other places to fight. Jack opened his mouth to suggest they join a group farther down the road, but left it hanging as a horseman trotted to a halt at their side.

He knew the man on that horse, who had been everywhere around the City since yesterday morning. The prominent nose of James Stuart, Duke of York, would have been recognizable through any amount of grime.

Jack could only blame desperate exhaustion for his failure to recognize that same nose on the fine gentleman at his side.

“We have the Fire under control here,” the duke said to his brother, ignoring Jack. “The men fighting in the liberties, though, could use encouragement.”

Charles Stuart nodded. “But reward those working here. By their efforts are these northern parishes saved.” Reaching into a bag slung across his body, the King of England pulled out a shining guinea and offered it to Jack.

Who merely gaped at it. The coin was so clean, winking brilliant gold in the afternoon light, that he could not comprehend it. Nor the hand that held it. The King and the duke had been in and around the City all day—that much Jack had heard—and yes, that they worked with their own hands alongside the citizens of London, but…

But the tall, long-nosed man before him, however fine his clothes had been, was so far a cry from the drinking, wenching, merry-making ruler of England that Jack’s tired mind simply could not put the two in the same body. And so he stared, until Charles said, “Take it. You have earned it, in defense of my City.”

Jack found the wit to shake his head. “Keep it, your Majesty, for some other man—one who needs it more.” The part of his mind that still possessed an ounce of sense reminded him that his house in Monkwell Street was gone, and so was the Royal College of Physicians, and the Barber-Surgeons’ Hall.

Yet I have the fae. Others are not so fortunate.

Charles smiled again. It was friendly and open; no wonder so many liked this man, for all his failings as a king. Replacing the coin, he offered Jack his hand instead. His strong grip infused Jack with strength—not by magic, but the simple charm of his confidence and goodwill. “Your name?”

“Jack Ellin. Doctor.”

“God send me more subjects so charitable as you, Dr. Ellin. Keep fighting; we will kill this beast yet.” A gentleman brought up another horse. Charles mounted, and was gone.

We will kill this beast yet. Jack prayed it might be so.

But the wind was growing stronger.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: eight o’clock in the evening

They had abandoned the defense of the wall. At the end of Basing-hall Street, just east of Cripplegate, the Fire had battered itself into exhaustion against the high bricks; westward, from the gate itself, the reinforcement held enough for the mortal defenders to wrestle the flames into a standstill, scant paces beyond the line.

Those along the wall’s farthest reach, though, from Newgate down to the river, now lay in exhausted stupor, tended by sad-faced hobs.

Any faerie with an ounce of vitality left in him, Lune had sent above, to form a ring around St. Paul’s. The Dragon was driving hard at the cathedral, and they must not let it break through. Like the Stone, it was a foundational piece of the Onyx Hall; if the Dragon conquered it, the palace would soon follow.

Lune kept back only her knights, who now stood in thin ranks on the white sand of the amphitheater. Their numbers had never fully recovered from the war and Prigurd’s betrayal; she could only hope they would be enough.

Jack stood at her side, kept upright only through grim force of will. There would be no speeches from him, and none from her, either; the Onyx Guard needed no convincing for this battle. “The Dragon wants the cathedral,” she said simply. “This means it has focused itself in one place, and this means we can fight it. Not fragments of its power, not the salamanders it has birthed: the Dragon itself. And we must kill it.”

She did not add, for the sake of London. The appalling truth was that London was lost. A remnant of it survived in the northeast, forming a crescent down to the Tower; the suburbs that lay outside its walls were mostly untouched, save for the liberties immediately to the west. But the City itself was gone. They had suffered terrible losses on Sunday and Monday, but today the Dragon, fueled by its stolen power, had devoured as much again. If there was anything yet to be saved, it was the Strand, Covent Garden, Westminster.

But London was more than just the City within the walls. They would not abandon their defense so long as one outlying village remained under threat.

Sir Peregrin cleared his throat. “Madam—you wish us to let it through into the Onyx Hall?”

“No,” Lune said. “You will battle it outside the cathedral.”

In the mortal City. Not hiding under glamours, pretending that what they did was something mundane; a fight such as this could not be concealed. But who was there to see? The cathedral mount was an island in a sea of fire. The humans were fled. Their church bells had fallen silent, brazen tongues now melted slag in a desolation of cinders. If London was not quite safe for her people, it was the closest it had come since mankind settled on the banks of the Thames.

The Captain of the Onyx Guard touched his hand to his heart. Lune knew his doubts, as clearly as if he had spoken them: his knights were brave, but few, and the Dragon a foe more terrible than any had faced.

She would be sending some of them—perhaps all—to their deaths.

But any who lacked the courage for this battle had already fled.

“Let me fight it.”

The voice came from the amphitheater’s entrance, rumbling in the hollow pit of Lune’s stomach. Broken and hoarse, but still familiar, and her throat closed up tight.

Prigurd Nellt was coarsely dressed, his hair grown long and shaggy beneath the helm he now removed. Deep lines seamed the hard skin of his face, marking the lonely years of his exile. But his shoulders were straight, and the hilt of his great two-handed sword rose above one of them, wrapped in well-worn leather.

Peregrin’s own sword hissed out of its sheath, and the tip flashed fire as he leveled it at the giant. “You have been banished. Why are you here?”

“To defend London.” Prigurd said it without flourish. He advanced carefully, Peregrin’s blade tracking his every step, and stopped well shy of Lune, kneeling on the sand. “Your Majesty. Lord—” He caught Antony’s name before it came out, blinking at Jack in confusion. “Er—Prince. Let me fight for you.”

Jack was staring in manifest curiosity, but Lune did not have time to explain. She frowned down at the exile. “You are no longer of our guard.”

The giant’s doubt spoke frankly as he eyed the knights. “I know. I—I haven’t forgotten. But I’ve had time to think, and to—regret. I don’t expect you will let me back, your Grace. That isn’t why I’m here. I just want to do something. So that when I think about this place, I can remember something other than how I betrayed you.”

The constriction in her throat grew tighter. Against shame, against the threat of punishment, he returned to them in this desperate hour. Not for reward: she believed him when he said that. But for honor, and duty, and loyalty. Because this was his home, even if she had driven him from it.

Peregrin’s body was practically humming with distrust. Lifting her fingers, Lune gestured for him to back away. “Madam—” he began.

“We need him,” Lune said. “His size, his strength. Would you face an enemy whose head you cannot reach? We will not turn away a sword arm, Peregrin—not when our realm is at stake.”

An intake of breath from Prigurd, that from a smaller creature might have passed unnoticed. His thick fingers dug into the sand.

From Lune’s side, unexpected support. “I wasn’t here when this—fellow’s crimes were committed,” Jack said. “In fact, I have no idea who he is. Which makes me, I think, as close to a neutral party as we’ll find in this room. I make no judgment regarding his past actions, but if he will fight for us, then he has my favor.”

Prigurd’s head came up in startlement. Purest joy flickered there, just for a moment, and it struck Lune like a blow.

He deserves this much of me.

“For this battle,” she said, “he shall have mine as well.” Fumbling, she unpinned the diamond brooch holding her cloak shut, and extended it toward the giant. The star buried in its depths winked in the light. “And when this is done, he shall have three days and nights’ safety here in the Onyx Hall, with no hand raised against him.” Could she grant more than that? It depended on his former brothers-in-arms—who, if they did not precisely forgive him, looked more than a little relieved to have the giant’s strength on their side. After the battle, they might view him with renewed charity.

Disbelieving, Prigurd rose, ate the ground between them with two strides, and took the brooch from her hand. His calloused skin rasped against hers—and then Jack and Lune gasped as one.

Sir Peregrin leapt forward, ready to defend them, but he had barely moved before a tiny sprite shrieked into the air above their heads, screaming what the Queen and Prince already knew. “The cathedral burns!”

ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, LONDON: eight o’clock in the evening

The Dragon found its foothold on the very scaffolding erected for the cathedral’s repair. Eight days before, the architect Dr. Christopher Wren had met with others to discuss its restoration: the mending of its broken roofs, the straightening of the leaning walls, the support of a pillar that had settled askew under the weight of the central tower.

Now a spark alit on the edge of a board laid to patch a hole in the leads, and burrowed its way inward.

The exhausted defenders in the hellish oven of the churchyard fell back, defeated. The Dragon dug its claws into the board, flames licking across the parched timber. Stone could not burn, but its fittings could, and with ravening hunger the Fire tore inward, seeking the power below.

In the cracked, chipped floor of the nave, the entrance opened up. Marching in grim, battle-ready file, the knights of the Onyx Guard and their erstwhile commander emerged, weapons in hand.

They arrayed themselves across the south transept, Sir Peregrin Thorne anchoring one end of their line, Dame Segraine the other. The tombs of London’s worthy forefathers and foremothers stood between them like shield brothers. The vaulting stone heights of the ceiling concealed the flames for now, but the blocks ground ominously against one another, shifted by the thundering heat. The wooden roof above was too high for anyone to douse the flames, even if water could be brought. All they could do was wait.

Wait, and prepare. Gripping the hilt of his sword in both hands, Prigurd Nellt drew in a slow breath, letting his great chest expand—and grew.

The days when a giant could walk the land in his true form had passed. To live in the Onyx Hall, or the home of any other faerie monarch, he drew himself inward, diminishing his bulk until he could live—if not comfortably. But here, hidden by walls of stone and flame, with the ceiling so high above, Prigurd could be as he once was.

The giant’s shoulders swelled upward and out. Head bowed, Prigurd grew, flexing arms as thick as an ox’s body, shifting legs the size of mighty trees. In his hands, the sword kept pace, until three men together could not have wielded it. Hewn from the stone of his rocky northern home, the blade held a touch of that cold chill, and the giant smiled to think of what it could do.

No Dragon would eat his home. Not this day, nor any other.

The wooden roof was well in flames, but the Fire had not the patience to wait. With a roar, its power struck downward, and the stone of the ceiling shattered as if blasted by gunpowder.

A blazing column punched through to the floor, smashing into ruin the recumbent monument of some long-dead knight. Upward curved the flames, a thick band coiling about itself, until the gathered fae could barely look at it, or breathe the searing air. The stone beneath calcined white, crumbling into powder that spun into a stinging whirlwind, the herald of the Dragon.

Eyes squeezed shut against the dust, Prigurd did not need to see. He knew which direction was forward, and the enemy, like him, was too large to miss.

Bellowing a war cry, Lune’s brooch a tiny star upon his shoulder, the giant hurled himself into battle.

The tip of his ancient sword carved a broad slash through the twisting mass of flames. It was not like striking flesh, nor like insubstantial fire; the Dragon’s body was semisolid, offering a modicum of resistance to his blade. Expecting more, Prigurd had thrown himself with too much force. He fell forward, one shoulder slamming into the body of the beast.

Skin crisped, and Prigurd roared, but the Dragon felt it as well; the vortex shuddered backward, colliding with the transept wall. The cathedral shook, and more stones fell from above. Several of the knights staggered, but they recovered their feet quickly enough when they saw they had an enemy to fight.

For Prigurd’s sword had carved free a writhing mass that fell to the floor below, where it quickly reshaped itself into a monstrous salamander, as tall as a cart-horse. Two of the knights charged it, driving it back from the main battle, and Dame Segraine cupped one hand to her mouth, shouting into the howling chaos of battle above. “Prigurd! Cut it small—we shall do the rest!”

Trapped beneath a suffocating wall of flame, Prigurd had no breath to reply. But he was a child of the earth, born of solid stone, and did not burn as softer flesh might. Setting his hands against the blaze, he shoved, and sent the Dragon spiraling backward, out of the transept and down the long reach of the nave. Its substance split around the thick pillars, regrouping on the other side, but by then Prigurd was there, swinging his sword in a two-handed grip that hacked away one lump after another.

He drove it down the nave, shouting in wordless joy. For the first time in forgotten ages, Prigurd was a giant again, and battling an enemy worthy of his strength. If tombs split under his blows or the Dragon’s, if columns cracked and stones exploded outward from the raging heat of this contest, he did not care. The house of Heaven’s divine Master was no concern of his, nor the decaying bodies of the mortal dead. This creature threatened his home. He would throw the beast out the western doors and drop the portico on its head. He would kick it down Ludgate Hill and drown it in the stinking waters of the Fleet. He would tear at it until nothing remained to be torn, and when that was done—

The arching ribs of the ceiling collapsed in the western end of the nave, raining burning shards of timber behind the stone. The sudden inrush of air breathed new life into the Dragon, which recoiled upon Prigurd with a dizzying blow. It knew where the entrance lay, though the floor had closed behind the Onyx Guard, and knew the giant drove it from its prize.

Whips of flame lashed Prigurd, pinioning his arms, stilling the cold blade that kept biting into the Dragon’s flesh. The Fire lifted its prey bodily and flung him the length of the nave, two hundred feet, until Prigurd’s slide was halted by the mighty pillars of the crossing. In a flash it reclaimed all the distance it had lost, and bent to strike at the vulnerable stone beneath.

But the rest of the Onyx Guard were there, harrying its sides like rats, ramming long pikes into the boiling heart of the flames. It flicked them aside like ninepins, then found Prigurd had recovered. The giant set his feet wide and seized the Dragon in a wrestler’s grip, dragging it backward into the quire, where the benches fell instantly to ash. With a wrenching twist the Fire smashed Prigurd into the south wall. The towering monument to old Elizabeth’s Lord Chancellor Sir Christopher Hatton cracked and fell, and crushed beneath it the simple tablets of Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Walsingham.

Peregrin shouted. By supreme effort, he and another knight had moved Prigurd’s sword close enough to grab. The giant took it in hand once more and stabbed it into the Dragon’s flank; with that as a lever, he forced the beast off him, and gained his footing once more. Working like a peasant hewing wood, he chopped again and again, raining blows down upon the beast, sending its salamanders in all directions, where the other knights chased them down.

Yet now he was in the wrong place: the Dragon stood between him and the entrance, not the other way around. Prigurd realized this too late, as the Fire eddied suddenly backward, into the crossing once more.

He leapt after it with a desperate bellow. If it had but an instant to draw in its power, it would break through. Not into the chapel below, the little chamber in which the parishioners of St. Faith met, but into the space that could be reached by no mundane path.

He could not let it happen. And so Prigurd, knowing little of what he did, knowing only that he must stop his enemy by whatever means he could, and trusting to blind hope that this would crush the beast for good, reached for a strength greater even than his own.

His sword struck, not at the Dragon, but at the four massive columns surrounding them.

Weakened by long neglect, off balance from the tremendous weight of the tower above them, they gave way like twigs. The pillars snapped, and all the height of St. Paul’s crashed down into the crossing.

The Dragon vanished beneath the onslaught. So, too, did Prigurd. And the stones of the floor, supported from beneath by the arches of the Jesus Chapel, pulverized into dust.

The burning wreckage fell through into the little church of St. Faith, and blazed into terrible light. For in that space—bounded by stone, sealed with care, and thought by its bookseller parishioners to be the safest place in all of London—rested the close-packed volumes of their printed wealth. From cheap broadside ballads to leather-bound editions of Virgil and the Church Fathers, it was the greatest library in all of England.

Gone, in an instant of annihilating flame.

Above, the knights of the Onyx Guard staggered to their feet, coughing and blind. Segraine wiped her streaming eyes and saw the infernal pit where Dragon, giant, and entrance had stood. Flames danced everywhere around them, more and more of the ceiling collapsing in, but those were small creatures, scarcely more than flickers of spirit, not the great beast that had been.

Peregrin stumbled to the edge of the pit and seized hold of something. “Help me!” he choked out. Going to his side, Segraine found he had an arm—shrunken and black, but still gripping the hilt of a sword. It gave her brief hope, and together they pulled… but what came out of the blaze was nothing living.

She would never have recognized it as Prigurd, were it not for the helm and sword. All the giant’s size had shriveled, leaving behind a decrepit, withered body that might have belonged to an ancient and long-dead human. She and Peregrin dragged it eastward into the relative safety of the quire, where a portion of the ceiling yet held, and there they collapsed, joined piecemeal by the knights of the Onyx Guard.

“We must take him to Lune,” Segraine said, coughing. If they stayed much longer, it would be all of them dead, and not just the giant.

Peregrin stared down at the corpse, his expression broken and lost. Before him lay his terrible enemy, the traitor of his brotherhood: gone, with a hero’s death. The fire that burned in the underground chapel was fire only, not the Dragon. And nothing was passing through that entrance—perhaps not ever again. Prigurd had destroyed St. Paul’s, but saved the Onyx Hall.

Finally the knight shook his head. If tears made tracks through the filth on his cheeks, no one could tell them from the sweat. “We must flee,” he said, “and we cannot carry him.”

As one, they all turned and looked past the roaring pit of St. Faith to the cathedral’s western end. The new portico there yet stood, but outside was all the burning City, with no clear path to safety.

Peregrin was right. They would be lucky to bring themselves out. Segraine folded the hands of Sir Prigurd Nellt over his chest, tucking the now-reduced sword beneath them. “We will remember you,” she whispered, and gave her former captain one final salute.

Then the knights of the Onyx Guard left the wreckage of St. Paul’s.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: eleven o’clock in the evening

Jack fought his way into awareness one inch at a time, his head throbbing as if it had been split by an axe. Lune’s hands were supporting him, though when his vision cleared, he saw that the faerie Queen looked no better than he did.

St. Paul’s. Now he remembered.

He would call it a miracle that the Onyx Hall survived, but he was not certain what, if anything, God had to do with faerie palaces and the preservation thereof. Perhaps the Almighty answered my prayers. He somehow doubted it.

Lune’s words drove all thoughts of God from his head. “The wind has dropped,” she said, her voice cracking on the last word. “Nicneven has come.”

The silence rang in his ears. No voice whispering of sickness and death, no wintry blast chilling the Onyx Hall to black ice. Blessed, blessed quiet, and a breath of warmth to carry it.

And the Gyre-Carling had come.

Jack reeled to his feet, went to wipe his face on his sleeve, and realized there was nothing to choose between the two. Lune managed a faint smile. “She is not inside yet,” the elfin woman said. “We have time to bathe and dress.” For once Jack didn’t dread the finery that was no doubt in store; he had no desire to meet Nicneven looking like the inside of an oven.

As for what happened when he did…

One thing he had decided, after the knights went above to do battle, before the cathedral’s collapse felled him like a tree.

We will give her Vidar if I have to dig the whoreson up myself.

Molten lead runs like blood down Ludgate Hill, streaming from the dying body of London’s great cathedral. In the north, the roof timbers of the venerable old Guildhall shine gold in the night, a second beacon for those watching from the fields to the north, or those across the river. The papier-mâché statues of the giants Gog and Magog have fallen at its feet. In the heart of the city, embers smolder, and here and there small blazes still dance, but three days of destruction have reduced it to a desolate plain, smoking like Hell itself, and spiked by the broken fingers of brick chimneys and stone walls, survivors of the holocaust.

Those who fled before it huddle under blankets if they are lucky, nothing but their shirts if they are not. Guards watch over them, keeping the King’s peace, trying—where they can—to capture those who would plunder others in their misfortune. Elsewhere the battles continue, for with the dropping of the wind hope comes for the first time that they may, at last, be able to extinguish the Fire.

Any man who has fought these three days breathes the same prayer, hoping it will rise with the smoke into the heavens, and to the ears of the Almighty Lord.

Let the wind keep down, and what is left be saved.