Midnight Never Come

Act Four

Sunlight caresses his face with warmth, and grass pricks through the linen of his shirt to tickle the skin inside. He smiles, eyes closed, and lets his thoughts drift on the breeze. Insects sing a gentle chorus, with birds supplying the melody. He can hear leaves rustling, and over the crest of the hill, her laughter, light and sweet as bells.

The damp soil yields softly beneath his bare feet as he runs through the wood. She is not far ahead — he can almost glimpse her through the shifting, dappled emerald of the shadows — but branches keep hindering him. A silly game. She must have asked the trees to help her. But they play too roughly, twigs snagging, even tearing his shirt, leaf edges turning sharp and scoring his face, while acorns and rocks batter the soles of his feet. He leaves a trail of footprints that fill with blood. He does not like this game anymore.

And then he teeters on the edge of a pit, almost falling in.

Below, so far below…

She might be sleeping. Her face is peaceful, almost smiling.

But then the rot comes, and her skin decays, turning mushroom-colored, wrinkling, swelling, bloating, sinking in at the hollows of her face, and he cries out but he cannot go to her — the serpent has him fast in its coils, and as he fights to free himself it rears back and strikes, sinking its fangs into his brow, six stabbing wounds that paralyze him, steal his voice, and she is lost to him.

The fae gathered around laugh, taking malicious pleasure in his blind struggles, but it loses all savor when he slumps into the vines they have bound around him. His dreams are so easy to play with, and the Queen never objects. Bored now by his silent shudders, they let the vines fall away as they depart.

He is left in the night garden, where the plants have never felt neither sun nor breeze. High above, cold lights twinkle, spelling out indecipherable messages. There might be a warning in them, if he could but read it.

What good would it do him? He had warnings before, and misunderstood them.

Water rushes along at his side. Like him it is buried, forgotten by the world above, disregarded by the world below, chained to serve at her pleasure.

It has no sympathy for him.

He weeps for his loss, there on the bank of the brook — weeps bloody tears that stain the water for only an instant before dissolving into nothingness.

He has lost the sunlit fields, lost the laughter, lost her. He shares her grave, here in these stone halls. It only remains for him to die.

But he knows the truth.

Even death cannot bring him to her again.

THE ANGEL INN, ISLINGTON: April 25, 1590

“We must get you back into the Onyx Hall,” Rosamund said to Lune.

Gertrude was in the corner, murmuring to a sleek gray mouse that nodded its understanding from within her cupped hands. Lune was watching her, not really thinking; her thoughts seemed to have collapsed in fatigue and shock after she committed herself to treason. It was a reckless decision, suicidal even; tomorrow morning she would regret having said it.

Or would she? Her gaze slid once more to Deven, like iron to a lodestone. His stony face showed no regrets. She had never expected him to become caught in this net, and could not see a way to free him. However lost he might be right now, he would not back away. Though this pact might benefit Elizabeth, it was also harming her; so Tiresias had said — no, Francis Merriman. The seer had fought so hard to reclaim that self. Having killed him, the least Lune could do was grant him his proper name.

Francis Merriman had believed this pact was wrong. The Goodemeades obviously agreed with him. And Deven’s master might well have been murdered at Invidiana’s command. She knew him too well to think he would let that pass.

Lune herself had nothing left to lose save her life, and even that hung in the balance. But was that sufficient reason to betray her Queen?

Faint memories stirred in the depths of her mind. The thought, so fleetingly felt, that once things had been different. That once the fae of England had lived warmer lives — occasionally scheming against one another, yes, occasionally cruel to mortals, but not always. Not this unrelenting life of fear, and the ever-present threat of downfall.

Even those who lived far from the Onyx Hall dwelt in its shadow.

The Onyx Hall. Rosamund’s words finally penetrated. Lune sat bolt upright and said, “Impossible. I would be executed the moment I set foot below.”

“Not necessarily,” Gertrude said. The mouse had vanished; now the brownie was prodding the fire, laying an additional log so that bright flames leapt upward and illuminated the room. “I’ve sent Cheepkin to see if anyone has found Francis’s body. So far as we know, that jewel doesn’t tell Invidiana when someone dies, so she may not yet know.”

Lune’s stomach twisted at the mere thought of being in the same room as the Queen when she learned of it. “She will know how he died, though. And she will wonder to whom he betrayed her.”

Rosamund’s nod was not quite complacent, but it didn’t show half the alarm Lune felt it should. “Which is why we shall give her another target to suspect. And do you some good in the bargain, I think, as you will be the one to tell her.” The brownie’s soft lips pursed in thought. “She will be angry regardless, and afraid; how much, she will wonder, did Francis manage to say before he died? But that cannot be helped; we cannot pretend he died by other means. What we must do is make certain she does not suspect you.”

“Who did you have in mind?” Gertrude asked her sister.

“Sir Derwood Corr. We can warn him to leave tonight, so he’ll be well clear of the palace before she tries to arrest him.”

Deven was looking at Lune, but she had no more idea than he what the Goodemeades meant. “Who is Sir Derwood Corr?”

“A new elf knight in the Onyx Guard. Also an agent of the Wild Hunt.”

Gertrude nodded her approval. “She fears them anyway; it cannot do much harm.”

They seemed to be serious. An agent of the Wild Hunt, infiltrating the Onyx Guard itself — and somehow the Goodemeades knew about it, and were eager to get the knight out of harm’s way. “Are you working with the Wild Hunt?”

“Not exactly,” Gertrude said, hedging. “That is, they would like us to be. We choose not to help them, at least most of the time; someone else brought Sir Derwood in. But we do keep an eye on their doings.”

Lune had no response to this extraordinary statement. Deven, slouched on his stool as much as his stiff doublet would allow, snorted. “The Principal Secretary said ’twas infamous to use women agents, but I vow he would have made an exception for you.”

They are not spies, Lune thought. They are spymasters. With the very birds and beasts of the field their informants.

“So,” Rosamund said briskly. “As soon as Cheepkin reports in, Lady Lune, we shall smuggle you back into the Onyx Hall. You can tell Invidiana that Sir Derwood is an ally of the Wild Hunt; she will discover that he has fled; she will assume Francis spoke to him, and not to you. With any luck, that will sweeten her mind toward you, at least a bit.”

Lune did not hold out much hope for that. Was she truly about to return to her rat’s life, hiding from Vidar and Dame Halgresta and everyone else who might think to curry favor by harming or eliminating her?

The low, smoldering fire that had lived in her gut since her imprisonment — no, since her inglorious return from the sea — had an answer for that.

Yes, she would. She would go back, and tear every bit of it down.

Then I am a traitor indeed. May all the power of Faerie help me.

“Very well,” she murmured.

Deven took a deep breath and sat up. “What may I do?”

“No time for that now,” Gertrude said. “We must return Lady Lune, before someone finds Francis. Might I ask a favor of you, Master Deven?”

He looked wary. “What is it?”

“Nothing dangerous, dearie; just a bit of dodging around Invidiana. Come with me, I’ll show you.” Gertrude took him by the hand and led him upstairs.

Lune watched them go, leaving her behind with Rosamund. “Is this safe?” she asked quietly. “I did not think of it before I came, but Invidiana has spies everywhere. She may learn of what we have said here.”

“I do not think so,” Rosamund said, and now she did sound complacent. “We’re beneath the rosebush, here — very truly sub rosa. Nothing that happens here will spread outside this room.”

For the first time, Lune looked upward, to the ceiling of the hidden chamber. Old, gnarled roots spread fingerlike across the ceiling, and tiny roses sprang improbably from their bark, like a constellation of bright yellow stars. The ancient emblem of secrecy gave her a touch of comfort. For the first time in ages, she had friends she could trust.

She should have come to the Goodemeades sooner. She should have asked them about Francis Merriman.

They lied too well, convincing everyone that they stayed out of such matters. But if they did not, they would never have survived for so long.

Lune realized there was something she had not said. The words came awkwardly; she spoke them so often, but so rarely with sincerity. “I thank you for your kindness,” she whispered, unable to face Rosamund. “I will be forever in your debt.”

The brownie came over and took her hands, smiling into her eyes. “Help us set this place right,” she said, “and the debt will be more than repaid.”

A lantern glowed by the door of the inn, and light still showed inside. Lying as it did along the Great North Road, the Angel was a major stopping point for travelers who did not gain the city before the gates closed at dusk, and so there was always someone awake, even at such a late hour.

Deven led his horse toward the road in something of a daze. The part of him that was accustomed to following orders had for some reason decided to obey the little brownie Gertrude, but his mind still reeled. Faeries at court. How many of them? He remembered the rooftop chase, and the stranger that had vanished. Perhaps he had not imagined the flapping of wings.

He mounted up, rode into the courtyard of the inn, and dismounted again, so that anyone inside would hear his arrival. Looping his reins over a post, he stepped through the door, startling a sleepy-eyed young man draped across a table. The fellow sat up with a jerk, dropping the damp rag he held.

“Sir,” he said, stumbling to his feet. “Needing a room, then?”

“No, indeed,” Deven said. “I have some ways to ride before I stop. But I am famished, and need something to keep me going. Do you have a loaf of bread left?”

“-Uh — we should—” The young man looked deeply confused. “You’re riding on, sir? At this hour of the night? The city gates are closed, you know.”

“I am not going into the city, and the message I bear cannot wait. Bread, please.”

The fellow sketched a bad bow and hastened through a door at the far end of the room. He emerged again a moment later with a round, crusty loaf in his hand. “This is all I could find, sir, and ’tis a day old.”

“That will do.” At least he hoped it would. Deven paid the young man and left before he would have to answer any more questions.

He rode away, circled around, came back to the rosebush. Gertrude had provided him with a bowl; now he set it down by the door of one of the inn’s outbuildings, with the loaf of bread inside, and feeling a great fool, he said, “Food for the Good People; take it and be content.”

The little woman popped up so abruptly he almost snatched out his blade and stabbed her. The night had not been good on his nerves. “Thank you, dearie,” Gertrude said with a cheerful curtsy. “Now if you could pick it up again? We have some of our own, of course, a nice little supply — we so often have to help out others — but if Invidiana finds we’ve been giving Lady Lune mortal bread… well, we aren’t giving it to her, are we? You are. So that’s all right and proper. Never said anything about mortals giving her bread or milk, and not as if she has any right to tell you what to do. Not that it would stop her, mind you.”

Bemused, Deven picked up the bowl and followed the still chattering brownie back to the rosebush, which opened up and let them pass below.

Lune was still in the hidden room, washing her feet in a basin of clear water. She glanced up as he entered, and the sight made his throat hurt; the motion was so familiar, though the body and face had changed. He thrust the bowl at her more roughly than he meant to, and tried to ignore the relieved pleasure on her face as she took the bread. “I shall have to think where to hide this,” she said. “You are clever, Gertrude, but Invidiana will still be angry if she learns.”

“Well, eat a bite of it now, my lady,” the brownie said, retrieving the bowl from Deven. “You could use a good night’s sleep here, but we can’t risk it; you need to go back as soon as possible. Has Cheepkin returned?”

“While you were out,” Rosamund said. “No one has found Francis yet. I’ve made sure Sir Derwood knows to leave.”

“Good, good. Then ’tis time you went back, Lady Lune. Are you ready?”

Deven, watching her, thought that she was not. Nonetheless, Lune nodded her agreement. Holding the small loaf in her hands as if it were a precious jewel, she pinched off a bite, put it in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. He watched in fascination, despite himself; he had never seen anyone eat bread with such attentive care.

Rosamund said to him, “It strengthens our magic against those things that would destroy it. Traveling through mortal places is dangerous without it.”

As he had seen, earlier that very night. No wonder Lune treated it as precious.

“Now,” Gertrude said briskly. “Master Deven, would you escort her back to London? ’Twould go faster riding, and unless Lady Lune makes herself look like a man, she should not be traveling alone.”

The comment about disguise brought him back to unpleasant matters with a jolt. Lune was toweling her feet dry with great concentration. He very much wanted to say no — but he made the mistake of looking at Gertrude and Rosamund. Their soft-cheeked faces smiled up at him in innocent appeal. His mouth said, “I would be glad to,” without consulting his mind, and thus he was committed.

Lune stood, dropped the towel on her stool, and walked past him. “Let us go, then.”

By the time he followed, she was gone from the main room upstairs. He found her outside, waiting with her back to him. Words stuck in his throat; he managed nothing more than a stiff, “My horse is this way.” His bay stopped lipping at the grass when Deven took hold of the reins. No footsteps sounded behind him, but when he turned, he found her just a pace away.

Except it wasn’t her. She wore a different face, a human one. Not, he was desperately relieved to see, the face of Anne Montrose.

“Who is that?” he said, and could not keep the bitterness out of it.

“Margaret Rolford,” Lune said, coolly.

Deven’s mouth twisted. “Once a waiting-gentlewoman to Lettice Knollys, as I understand it.”

Margaret Rolford’s eyes were probably brown in sunlight; at night, they looked black. “I congratulate you, Master Deven. You followed me farther than I realized.”

There was nothing he could say to that. Steeling himself, Deven put his hands around Margaret’s waist — thicker than Lune’s, and Anne’s — and lifted her into the saddle; then he swung himself up behind her.

He had not realized, when he agreed to Gertrude’s request, that it would mean riding the distance to London with his arms around the faerie woman.

Deven set his jaw, and touched his heels to the flanks of his gelding.

The tiny sliver of a moon had set even before he returned from Mortlake; they rode in complete darkness toward the few glimmering lights of London. Margaret Rolford’s body was not shaped like Anne Montrose’s — she had a sturdier frame, and was shorter — but still it triggered memories. A crisp, sun-washed autumn day, with just enough wind to lift a maiden’s unbound hair. Both of them released from their duties, and diverting themselves with other courtiers. The young ladies all rode tame little palfreys, but Anne wanted more, and so he put her up on the saddle of his bay and galloped as fast as he dared the length of a meadow, her slender body held safely against his.

Silence was unbearable. “Doctor Dee,” he said, without preamble. “He has nothing to do with it, then?”

She rode stiffly, her head turned away from him even though she sat sideways in the saddle. “He claims to speak with angels. I doubt he would speak with us.”

Us. She might look human when she chose to, but she was not. Us did not include him.

“But you have agents among — among mortals.”

“Of course.”

“Who? Gilbert Gifford?”

A considering pause. “It depends on which one you mean.”

“Which one?”

“The Gifford who went to seminary in France was exactly who he claimed to be. The Gifford that now rots in a French jail is someone else — a mortal, enchanted to think himself that man.” She sniffed in derision. “A poor imitation; he let himself be arrested so foolishly.”

Deven absorbed this, then said, “And the one who carried letters to the Queen of Scots?”

She paused again. Was she doubting her decision to array herself against her sovereign? Deven knew what Walsingham did with double agents who then crossed him in turn. Could he do that to Lune?

“Lord Ifarren Vidar,” she said at last. “When he was done, a mortal was put in his place, in case Gifford might be of use again.”

Not so long as he was imprisoned in France. Deven asked, “Henry Fagot?”

“I do not know who that is.”

How much of this could he trust? She had lied to him for over a year, lied with every particle of her being. He trusted the Goodemeades, but why? What reason had he to trust any faerie?

They were nearing the Barbican crossroads. “Where am I going?”

She roused, as if she had not noticed where they were. “We should go in by Cripplegate. I’ll use the entrance near to it.”

Entrance? Deven turned his horse east at the crossroads, taking them through the sleeping parish of St. Giles. At the gate, he bribed the guards to let them pass, and endured the sly expressions on their faces when they saw he rode with a lady. Whatever the faerie had done to the men at Aldersgate, he did not want to see it happen here.

Then they were back inside the city, the close-packed buildings looming dark and faceless, with only the occasional candle showing through a window. The hour was extremely late. Deven followed Wood Street until she said, “Left here,” and then a moment later, “Stop.”

He halted his gelding in the middle of Ketton. The narrow houses around them looked unexceptional. What entrance had she meant?

She slipped down before he could help her and made for a narrow, shadowed close. No doubt she would have left him without a word, but Deven said, “’Tis dangerous, is it not? What you go to do.”

She stopped just inside the close. When she turned about, Margaret Rolford was gone; the strange, inhuman face had returned.

“Yes,” Lune said.

They stared at one another. He should have let her go without saying anything. Now it was even more awkward.

The words leapt free before he could stop them.

“Did you enchant me? Lay some faerie charm upon me, to make me love you?”

Lune’s eyes glimmered, even in the near total darkness. “I did not have to.”

A moment later she was gone, and he could not even see how. Some door opened — but he could see no door in the wall — and then he was alone on Ketton Street, with only his tense muscles and the rapidly fading warmth along his chest to show there had ever been a woman at all.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: April 26, 1590

A faerie queen did not process to chapel in the mornings, as a mortal queen might, but other occasion was found for the ceremony that attended Elizabeth’s devotions. Invidiana left her bedchamber with an entourage of chosen ladies, acquired an escort of lords in her privy chamber, then passed through a long, columned gallery to the chamber of estate, where a feast was laid for her each day. It was an occasion for spectacle, a demonstration of her power, wealth, and importance; any fae aspiring to favor attended, in hopes of catching her eye.

Lune hovered behind a pillar, her pulse beating so loudly she thought everyone must hear it. This was the moment at which she trusted the Goodemeades, or she did not; she put her life in their hands, or she ran once more, and this time did not return.

A rustling told her that the fae in the gallery were withdrawing to the sides, out of the way of the procession that was about to enter. Hunting horns spoke a brief, imperious fanfare. She risked a glance around the pillar, and saw the Queen. Vidar was not with her, but Dame Halgresta was, and Lord Valentin Aspell, Lady Nianna, Lady Carline… did she want to do this so very publicly?

The moment was upon her. She must decide.

Lune dashed out into the center of the gallery and threw herself to the floor. She calculated it precisely; her outstretched hands fell far enough short of Invidiana’s skirts that the Queen did not risk tripping over her, but close enough that she could not be ignored. Once there, she lay very still, and felt three trickles of blood run down her sides where the silver blades of Invidiana’s knights pricked through her gown and into her skin.

“Your Grace,” Lune said to the floor, “I bring you a warning of treachery.”

No one had run her through — yet. She dared not breathe. One nod from Invidiana…

The cool, measured voice said, “Would this be your own treachery, false one?”

Obedient laughter greeted the question.

“The Wild Hunt,” Lune said, “has placed a traitor in your midst.”

The hated, growling voice of Dame Halgresta spoke from behind Invidiana. “Lies, your Majesty. Let me dispose of this vermin.”

“Lies hold a certain interest,” the Queen said. “Entertain me, worm. Who am I to believe a traitor?”

Lune swallowed. “Sir Derwood Corr.”

No voices responded to her accusation. She had the name right, did she not?

One of the blades piercing her back vanished, and then Lune cried out as the other two dug in deeper; someone grabbed her by the tattered remnants of her high collar and wrenched her to her feet. Standing, Lune found herself under the blazing regard of a handsome elf knight, black-haired, green-eyed, and transfigured with fury.

“Lying slut,” he spat, twisting his left hand in her battered collar. A sword still hovered in his right. “Do you think to rise from where you have been thrown by accusing me, a faithful knight in her Majesty’s service?”

Sun and Moon. He did not leave.

Lune dared not look at Invidiana. Even the slightest hint of hesitation… “A faithful knight?” she asked, heavy with derision. “How long have you served the Queen, Sir Derwood? An eyeblink, in the life of a fae. What tests have proved your loyalty to her? Has it been so very strenuous, parading about in your fine black armor, keeping a pleasant smile on your face?” She wished she dared spit, but trapped as she was, it could only go into his face. “Your service is words only. Your heart belongs with the Hunt.”

Corr snarled. “Easy enough for a worm to make a baseless accusation. My service may be new, but it is honest. Where is your proof of my guilt?”

“You received a message last night,” Lune said. “From outside the Onyx Hall.”

For the first time, she saw his confidence falter. “’Tis common enough.”

“Ah, but with whom did you communicate? And what answer did you send back?” She saw a crack, and hammered it. “They say the Hunt is in the north right now. If we send that way, will we find your messenger seeking them? What news does he bear?”

Riders of the Wild Hunt were deadly foes in combat, but they had not the subtlety and nerve to survive in the Onyx Court.

Lune’s collar ripped free as she flung herself backward. Not fast enough: the tip of Corr’s sword raked across the skin above her breast. One of his fellow guardsmen reached for his arm, meaning to stop him; Invidiana did not tolerate murders in front of her that she had not commanded herself. But Corr was too new, and did not understand that. Metal shrieked as his blade skidded uselessly off the other knight’s armor.

Curled up tight to protect herself from the feet suddenly thundering around her, Lune did not see exactly what happened to Corr. The press of bodies was too great regardless, with the fae of the Onyx Guard flocking to protect their Queen, and Sir Prigurd wading in with his giant’s fists, his normally placid face showing betrayed anger at the failure of his newest protégé.

Corr did his best to sell his life dearly, but in the end, his was the only body that fell.

You should have left, Lune thought, when she heard the rattle of his armor crashing to the floor. Your true loyalty was too strong. This is no place for faithful knights such as you.

She did not resist when she was hauled to her feet once more. The guardsman who held her said nothing; he just kept her upright as she lifted her face to Invidiana.

Lune did not see the Queen at first, just the muscled bulk of Dame Halgresta. Then, at an unspoken signal, the Captain of the Onyx Guard stepped aside, abandoning her protective pose, but keeping her wide-bladed sword in hand.

Invidiana’s cold black eyes took in the sorry remnants of Lune’s gown, the blood that now coated her breast. “Well, worm,” she said. “It seems you spoke true — this time.”

Lune could not curtsy, with the guardsman holding her. She settled for inclining her head. “I would not have inflicted my presence upon your Grace without great reason.” And that was true enough.

Around the two of them, the array of lords and ladies, guardsmen and attendants waited, every last one of them ready to smile or turn away in disdain, following their Queen’s lead in how Lune was to be treated now.

“Release her,” Invidiana said to the guardsman, and the hands on Lune’s shoulders vanished.

Lune immediately knelt.

“You are filthy,” Invidiana said in bored tones, as if the very sight of Lune tasted bad. “Truly like a worm. I do not tolerate filth in my court. Have your wounds dressed, and clean yourself before you show your face here again.”

“I will most humbly obey your Majesty’s command.”

The instant Lune rose to a crouch and backed the requisite three steps away, off to one side, the procession reassembled itself and swept onward down the gallery. Only a few goblins remained behind, to collect and dispose of the corpse of Sir Derwood Corr.

Lune permitted herself one glance down at his slack, blood-spattered face. No one would investigate the message he received last night; they would assume it came from the Hunt. But it seemed he had sent a reply, and not to the Goodemeades. What had he told the Hunt? That the Goodemeades were interfering?

She needed to warn them. And to apologize for having brought about Corr’s death. Lune did not mourn him, but they would.

The stinging cut across her breast, the smaller wounds along her back, gave her all the cause she needed. Some fae at court practiced healing arts, but no one would think it strange if she went to the Goodemeades.

Corr’s body, dragged by the heels, scraped along the floor and out of the gallery, leaving a smear of blood behind. Lune lifted her gaze from it and saw those fae still in the chamber staring at her and whispering amongst themselves.

Invidiana had given her leave to wash and be healed. It was a tiny sign of acceptance, but a sign nonetheless. She was no longer to be hunted.

Bearing her head high, Lune exited the gallery, with all the dignity and poise of the favored lady she no longer aspired to be.

LONDON AND ISLINGTON: April 26, 1590

In the morning, it all seemed so terribly unreal.

Colsey’s silently disapproving glances chastised Deven for his late return the previous night; the manservant affected to have been asleep when he came in, but Deven doubted it. He had gone to bed straightaway, and suffered uneasy dreams of everyone he knew removing masks and revealing themselves to be fae; now he awoke in brilliant sunlight, with nothing to show for his strange night except a feeling of insufficient sleep.

Had any of it happened?

Deven rose and dressed, then suffered Colsey to shave him, scraping away the stubble Ranwell had left behind. With his face now peeled — Colsey had attended to his task with perhaps a little too much care, as if to show up his upstart fellow — Deven wondered, blankly, what to do with himself.

Whereupon he saw the letter on the windowsill.

Staring at the folded paper as if it were a viper, he did not approach immediately. But the letter stayed where it was, and moreover stayed a letter; at last he drew near and, extending one cautious hand, picked it up.

The top read “Master Michael Deven” in a round, untutored secretary hand. Pressed into the sealing wax was a fragment of dried rose petal.

Deven held his breath and broke the seal with his thumb.

The paper trembled in his hand. Not a dream, then.

Deven exhaled slowly and refolded the paper. Brownies. He was receiving letters from brownies now.

Colsey leapt to his feet when his master came clattering downstairs. “My sword and cloak,” Deven said, and the servant fetched them with alacrity. But when Colsey would have donned his own cloak, Deven stopped him with an outstretched hand. “No. You may have another day of leisure, Colsey. Surely after so many days in the saddle, you could do with some time out of it, eh?”

The servant’s eyes narrowed. “You’re most gracious, master — but no thank you. I’m fit enough to ride some more.”

Deven let out an exasperated breath. “All right — I shall be more blunt. You’re staying here.”

“Why, sir?” Colsey’s jaw was set in a determined line. “You know you can trust my discretion.”

“Always. But ’tis not a matter of discretion. I simply must go alone.”

“You riding to see that necromancer again?”

“There’s no evidence of Dee practicing necromancy, and no, I am not going to Mortlake.” Deven gave his servant a quelling look. “And you are not to follow me, either.”

The disappointed expression on Colsey’s face made him glad he’d issued the warning.

Deven hit upon something that would stop him — he hoped. “I am about Walsingham’s business, Colsey. And though I trust you, there are others who would not. You will stay behind, lest you foul what I am attempting to do here.”

Though Colsey kept the rest of his grumbling objections behind his teeth, Deven imagined he could hear them pursuing him as he rode back out through Aldersgate, retracing the path of black feathers he had followed the night before. Knowing his destination, he rode faster, and came soon to the sturdy structure of the Angel.

He rode past it, tethered his horse, and made his way to the spot behind the inn.

The rosebush was there, looking innocuous in daylight. Feeling an utter fool — but who was there to hear him, if he were wrong? — he approached it, cleared his throat, bent to one of the roses, and muttered, “Michael Deven.”

Nothing happened for a few moments, and his feeling of foolishness deepened. But just when he would have walked away, the rosebush shivered, and then there was an opening, with a familiar figure emerging from it.

Familiar, but far too tall. Gertrude Goodemeade arranged her skirts and smiled up at him from a vantage point much closer to his collarbone than his navel. “I am sorry to keep you waiting, but we did not expect you so soon, and I had to put the glamour together.”

She still looked herself — just larger. Deven supposed a woman less than four feet tall might attract attention in broad daylight. “Aren’t you afraid someone will see us standing here, with the rosebush… open?”

Gertrude smiled cheerily. “No. We are not found so easily, Master Deven.” Bold as brass, she reached out and took his arm. “Shall we walk?”

The rosebush closed behind her as she towed him forward. Deven had thought they might go into the woods behind the Angel, but she led him in quite the opposite direction: to the front door.

Deven hung back. “What is in here?”

“Food and drink,” Gertrude said. “Since you do not trust our own.”

He had slept far later than his usual hour; now it was the noontime meal. Gertrude secured them a spot at the end of one of the long tables, and perhaps some faerie charm gave them privacy, for no one sat near them. “You can drink the mead here,” the disguised brownie said. “’Tis our mead anyway — the very same I gave you last night — but perhaps you will trust it when you see others drink it.”

A rumbling in Deven’s stomach notified him that he was hungry. He ordered sausage, fresh bread, and a mug of ale. Gertrude looked a trifle hurt.

“We have your best interests at heart, Master Deven,” she said quietly.

He met her gaze with moderate cynicism formed during his ride up to Islington. “Within reason. You also wish to make use of me.”

“To the betterment of her you serve. But we also wish you to be safe, my sister and I; else we should not have brought you in last night, but left you out where Dame Halgresta could find you.” Gertrude lowered her voice and leaned in closer. “That is one thing I wished to warn you of. They know Lady Lune had close dealings with you, and that you served Walsingham; they may yet come after you. Be careful.”

“How?” The word came out sharp with resentment. “It seems you can make yourselves look however you wish. Some faerie spy could replace Colsey, and how would I ever know?” The thought gave him a jolt.

Gertrude shook her head, curls bouncing free of the cap on her head. “’Tis very hard to feign being a familiar person; you would know. But ’tis also true that we can disguise ourselves. You have a defense, though.” She took a deep breath, then whispered, “The name of your God.”

She did not shrink upon uttering the word. Deven took a bite of his sausage, and thought of the bread he had given Lune last night.

“They’ll be protected against it, of course,” Gertrude said in normal tones. “Most of them, anyhow. But most will still flinch if you say that name, or call on your religion in any fashion. ’Tis the flinch that will warn you.”

“And then what?”

The brownie shrugged, a little sheepishly. “Whatever seems best. I would rather you run than fight — many of those she might send against you do not deserve to die — but only you can judge how best to keep yourself safe. And we do want you safe.”

“Who are ‘we,’ in this matter?”

“My sister and I, certainly. I have no right to speak for Lady Lune. But I believe in my heart that she, too, wishes you safe.”

Deven stuffed a hunk of bread into his mouth, so he would not have to reply.

Glancing around the inn, Gertrude seemed willing to change the subject. “Tell me, Master Deven: what do you think of this place?”

He chewed and swallowed while he considered the room. The day was sunny and warm; open shutters allowed a fresh breeze into the room, while tallow dips augmented the natural light. Dried lavender and other strewing herbs sweetened the rushes on the floor, and the benches and tables were well scrubbed. The ale in his leather jack was good — surprisingly tart — the bread fresh, the sausage free of unpleasant lumps. What reason had she for asking? “’Tis agreeable enough.”

“Have you spent any nights here?”

“Once or twice. The beds were refreshingly clear of unwanted company.”

“They should be,” Gertrude said with a sniff. “We beat them out any night they are not in use.”

“You beat…” Deven’s voice trailed off, and he set his bread down.

Her smile had a kind of pleased mischief in it. “Rosamund and I are brownies, Master Deven. Or had you forgot?”

He had not forgotten, but he had not yet connected their underground home to the inn — and he should have. As he looked around the room with new eyes, Gertrude went on. “We do a spot of cleaning every night — scrubbing, dusting, mending such as needs it — that has been our task since before there was an Angel, since a different inn stood on this site. Even last night, though I don’t mind saying we were a bit rushed to get our work done, after you left.”

Deven could not resist asking; he had always wondered. “Is it true you leave a house if the owner offers you clothes?” Gertrude nodded. “Why?”

“Mortal clothes are like mortal food,” the brownie said. “Or fae clothes and fae food, for that matter. They bring a touch of the other side with them. Wear them, eat them, and they start to change you. Your average brownie, he’ll be offended if you try that with him; we’re homebodies, and not often keen to change. But some fae crave that which is mortal. It draws them, like a moth to a candle flame.”

The solemnity in her voice was not lost on Deven. “Why did you summon me here, Mistress Goodemeade?”

“To eat and drink in the Angel.” She held up one hand when he would have said something in retort. “I am quite serious. I wished you to see this place, to see what Rosamund and I make of it.”

“Why?”

“To stop you, before you could grow to hate us.” Gertrude reached out hesitantly, and took his hands in her own. Her fingers were warm, and somehow both calloused and soft, as if the gentleness of her touch made up for the marks left by lifetimes of sweeping and scrubbing. “Last night you heard of politics and murder, saw Lady Lune as a fugitive, hiding from a heartless Queen and her minions. The Onyx Court hides a great deal of ugliness behind its beautiful face — but that is not all we are.

“Some of us find purpose and life in helping make human homes warm and welcoming. Others show themselves to poets and musicians, giving them a glimpse of something more, adding fire to their art.” She met his gaze earnestly, her dark honey eyes beseeching him to listen. “We are not all to be feared and fought.”

“Some fae,” Deven said in a low voice, so that others would not hear, “play tricks on mortals — even unto their deaths. And others, it seems, play at politics.”

“’Tis true. We have pucks aplenty — bogy beasts, portunes, will-o’-the-wisps. And our nobles have their games, as yours do. But the wickedness of some humans does not turn you against them all, does it?”

“You are not human.” Yet it was so easy to forget, with her hands gripping his across the table. “Should I judge you by the same standards?”

Somberness did not sit well on Gertrude; her face was meant for merriment. “We follow your lead,” she said. “There is a realm of Faerie, that lies farther out — over the horizon, through twilight’s edge. Some travel to it, mortal and fae alike, and some fae dwell there always. That realm rarely concerns itself with mortal doings. But here, in the shadows and cracks of your world… when your leaders took chariots into battle, ours soon went on wheels as well. When they abandoned chariots for horses, our elf knights took up the lance. We have no guns among us, but no doubt that will change someday. Even those who do not crave contact with mortals still mimic your ways, one way or another.”

“Even love?” He had not meant to say it.

A heartbreaking smile touched Gertrude’s face. “Especially love. Not often, but it does happen.”

Deven pulled his hands free, nearly upsetting his ale jack. “So you wish me to remember that ’tis your Queen I work against, and not the fae people as a whole.” Not Lune. “Is that it?”

“Aye.” Gertrude folded her hands, as if she had not noticed the vehemence with which he moved.

“As you wish, then. I will remember it.” Deven threw a few coins onto the table and stood.

Gertrude caught up with him at the door. “You should come below for a moment before you leave; I have something for you. Will you do that for me?”

He needed time away from fae things, but he couldn’t begrudge the request. “Very well.”

“Good.” She passed by him, out into the bright sunlight, and called back over her shoulder, “By the by? We also brew their ale.”

THE ANGEL INN, ISLINGTON: April 26, 1590

“Mistress Goodemeade.” Lune nodded her head formally to Rosamund. “At her Majesty’s command, I seek healing for these wounds I have suffered. Few if any in the Onyx Court hold any love for me, given my Queen’s recent displeasure; therefore I come here, to ask for aid.”

“Of course, my lady.” Rosamund offered an equally formal curtsy in response. “Please, come with me, and I will tend to you.”

They descended the staircase, and then descended again, and the rose-marked floorboards closed behind them.

“My lady!” Formality gave way to distress. “Cheepkin told us some of what passed, but not all. Sit, sit, and let me see to you.”

Lune had no energy to disobey, and no desire to. She let Rosamund press her onto the stool Deven had occupied the previous night — it seemed like ages ago. “I am so very sorry. Corr had not left—”

The brownie clicked her tongue unhappily. “We know. Oh, if he had only listened….”

Deft fingers untied those sleeve- and waist-points that had not already broken, then unlaced her bodice at the back. Lune winced as the material of her undergown pulled free where dried blood had glued it to her skin. She would need to obtain new clothing somehow, or else resort to glamours to cover up her tattered state. People would know she wore an illusion, but at least in the Onyx Hall she need not fear it being broken.

Naked to the waist, she closed her eyes while Rosamund dabbed at her cuts with a soft, wet cloth. “I fear I have put you in danger. With Corr there, I had to cast suspicion on him somehow, and I said he had received a message the previous night. If they trace it back to you—”

“Never you mind,” Rosamund said. “We would not be here, Gertrude and I, if we could not deal with little problems like that.”

“He also seems to have sent a message out, to the Hunt. At least, he panicked when I accused him of it. But I do not know what it said.”

The ministering cloth paused. A heartbeat later, it resumed its work. “Something touching on my sister and me, I expect. We shall see.”

Lune opened her eyes as Rosamund began daubing her wounds with a cool, soothing ointment. “Lord Valentin questioned me before I left. Where I had gotten mortal bread — I told him a simple lie — and how I had found out about Corr. They found Francis’s body while I was there. I led Aspell to believe the two were connected.”

“Then we must be sure they do not catch the messenger. Does this feel better?”

“Very much so. Thank you.” The fire seemed to have the knack of warming the room just enough; the cool, damp chill of an underground chamber was perfectly offset, so Lune did not shiver as Rosamund fetched bandages from a small chest. At least not from cold.

The brownie swathed her ribs and collarbone in clean white linen, with soft pads over the cuts themselves. “They should be well in three days,” Rosamund said, “and you may take the bandages off after one.”

Before Lune could say anything more to that, footsteps sounded above. She had not heard anyone speak through the rosebush, as she had when Dame Halgresta came the previous night. Gertrude, no doubt, but her entire body tensed.

The floor bent open, and the brownie’s feet appeared on the top stair, in stout slippers. But a pair of riding boots followed, belonging to someone much larger.

Lune snatched up the bodice of her gown just as Michael Deven came into view.

“Oh!” Gertrude exclaimed, as Deven flushed scarlet and spun about. The floor had already closed behind him; unable to escape, he kept his back resolutely turned. “My lady, I am so very sorry. I did not know you were here.”

Lune did not entirely believe her. Irritation warred with an unfamiliar feeling of embarrassment as Rosamund helped her into the stained remnant of her clothing. Fae were often careless of bodily propriety among themselves, particularly at festival time, but mortals were another matter. Especially that mortal.

“I just wanted to give Master Deven a token,” Gertrude said, opening a chest that sat along one wall. “So our birds can find him if he isn’t at home. They will carry messages for you, Master Deven, should you need to send to us. Lady Lune, I would give you one as well—”

“But it might be found on me,” Lune finished for her. The sleeves of her dress were not yet reattached, but at least she was covered now. “I quite understand.”

“Aye, exactly.” Gertrude carried something over to where Deven yet stood on the staircase; it looked like a dried rosebud, but seemed much less fragile. “Here you are.”

He moved enough to accept the token and examine it. “Roses again, I see.”

Gertrude clicked her tongue. “I would have planted something other than a rosebush, but my sister was so very fond of the notion. Now everything we do is roses, and everyone always thinks of her. I should have had a flower in my name.”

Rosamund answered her with mild asperity, and the two sisters bickered in friendly fashion while they helped Lune finish dressing. It lowered the tension in the room, as no doubt they intended, and after a few moments Deven risked a glance over his shoulder, saw Lune was decent again, and finally turned to face them all.

“I did not mean to burst in thus,” he said to her, with a stiff bow. “Forgive me.”

The rote apology hit Lune with far more force than it should have. His eyes were a lighter blue than the seer’s had been, and his hair brown instead of black — he had none of the fey look brought on by life in the Onyx Hall — but in her memory, a wavering, nearly inaudible voice echoed him, “Forgive me.”

“Rosamund,” she said, cutting into the amiable chatter of the two sisters. “Gertrude. Last night… I did not think to ask; too much else was happening. But before he died, Tiresias — Francis spoke a name. Begged forgiveness of her. A fae woman, I think. Suspiria.”

She expected the brownies would recognize the name. She did not expect it to have such an effect. Both sisters gasped, their faces suddenly stricken, and tears sprang into Gertrude’s eyes.

Startled, Lune said, “Who is she?”

Rosamund put one arm around her sister’s shoulders, comforting her, and said, “A fae woman, aye. Francis loved her dearly, and she him.”

Such romances often ended in tragedy, and more so under Invidiana’s rule. “What happened to her?”

The brownie met her gaze gravely. “She sits on a throne in the Onyx Hall.”

The notion was so incredible, Lune found herself thinking of the Hall of Figures, trying to recall any enthroned statues there. But Rosamund met her gaze, unblinking, and there was only one throne in all the buried palace, only one who sat upon it.

Invidiana.

The cold, merciless Queen of the faerie court, who could no more love a mortal — love anyone — than winter could engender a rose. Who kept Tiresias as the most tormented of her pets, bound by invisible chains he could only break in death. That Francis Merriman might once have loved her, Lune could almost believe; mortals often loved where it was not wise. But Rosamund said Invidiana loved him in return.

Gertrude said to her sister, through her sniffles, “I told you. He remembered her. Even when his mind was gone, when everything else was lost to him, he did not forget.”

Deven was staring at them all, clearly lost. Lune was not certain even she followed it. “If this is true — why did you not speak of it before? Surely this is something we needed to know!”

Rosamund sighed and helped Gertrude onto a stool. “You are right, my lady. But last night, we had no time; we had to get you back to the Onyx Hall, before someone could suspect you of Francis’s death. And you were distraught, Lady Lune. I did not wish to add to it.”

Lune thought of her confrontation with Invidiana that morning. “You mean, you did not wish me to face Invidiana, try to regain her goodwill, knowing the man who died at my feet had once loved her.”

The brownie nodded. “As you say. You are good at dissembling, Lady Lune — but could you have done that, without betraying yourself?”

Claiming a seat for herself, Lune said grimly, “I will have to, now. What have you not said?”

Deven leaned against the wall, arms folded over his chest and that shuttered look on his face; it was a mark of Rosamund’s own distress that she did not try to coax him into sitting down, but perched on the edge of one of the beds and sighed. “’Tis a long story; I pray you have patience.

“Gertrude and I once lived in the north, but we came here… oh, ages ago; I don’t remember when. Another inn stood on this spot then, not the Angel. The mortals had their wars, and then, when a new king took the throne, the first Henry Tudor, a woman arrived on our doorstep.

“She…” Rosamund searched for words. “We thought she was in a bad way when we saw her. Later, we saw how much worse it could be. Suspiria was cursed, you see, for some ancient offense. Cursed to suffer as if she were mortal. ’Twasn’t that she was old; fae can be old, if ’tis in their nature, and yet be very well. She aged. She sickened, grew weak — suffered all the infirmity that comes with mortality, in time.”

Deven made a small noise, and the brownie looked up at him. “I know what you must think, Master Deven. Oh, how terrible indeed, that one of our kind should suffer a fate every mortal faces. I do not expect you to have much sympathy for that. But imagine, if you can, how it would feel to suffer so, when ’tis a thing not natural to you.”

Whether he felt sympathy or not, he gave no sign.

Rosamund went on. “She told us she was condemned to suffer thus, until she atoned for her crime. Well, for ages she had thought her suffering was atonement, like the penance mortals do for their sins. But she had come to realize that she must do more — that her suffering would continue until she made up for what she had done wrong.”

“A moment,” Deven said, breaking in. “How elderly was she, if she had suffered ‘for ages’? There’s a limit to how old one can become. Or was she turning into a cricket, like Tithonus?”

Gertrude answered him, her voice still thick. “No, Master Deven. You are quite right: it cannot go on forever. She grew old, and when the span a mortal might be granted was spent, she… died, in a way. She shed her old, diseased body and came out young and beautiful once more, to enjoy a few years of that life before it all began again.”

Lune felt sick to her stomach. It was one thing to don the appearance of mortality, as a shield. To sicken and die like a mortal, though — to crawl out of rotting, degraded, liver-spotted flesh, and know to that she must come again—

“We helped her as best we could,” Rosamund said. “But her memory suffered like a mortal’s; she could not clearly recall what the cause was for which she had been cursed. She knew, though, that her offense had happened here, in the place that became London, and so she had returned here, to seek out those who might know what she should do.” The brownie laughed a little, more as if she remembered amusement than felt it. “We thought her mad when she told us what plan she had formed, to lift her curse.”

A hundred possibilities sprang to Lune’s mind, each madder than the last. More to stop her own invention than to prod Rosamund onward, she said, “What was it?”

The brownie shook her head, as if she still could not believe it. “She vowed to create a faerie palace, beneath all the city of London.”

Lune straightened. “Impossible. The Onyx Hall — she cannot have made it.”

“Oh?” Rosamund gave her a small smile. “Think, my lady. Where else in the world do you know of such a place? Where else is faerie magic so proof against the powers of iron and faith? Fae live in forests, glens, hollow hills — not cities. Why is there a palace beneath London?”

Rosamund was right, and yet the thought stunned her. Miles of corridor and gallery, hundreds or even thousands of chambers, the Hall of Figures, the night garden, the hidden entrances… the magnitude of the task dizzied her.

“She had help, of course,” Rosamund said, as if that somehow reduced it to a manageable scale. “Oh, tremendous help — but one person especially.”

Gertrude whispered, “Francis Merriman.”

Her sister nodded. “A young man Suspiria had come to know. She met him after her body had renewed itself, and she was desperate to keep him from ever seeing her old, to lift her curse before it came to that. But I think he knew anyhow. He had the gift of sight — visions of the future, or of present things kept secret.” Her expression trembled, holding back tears. “She often called him her Tiresias.”

Deven looked on, not comprehending. Of course: he did not understand how that name had been warped. It wasn’t just that Francis Merriman had been obliterated; the man had become one of a menagerie of human pets, a term of love become a term of control.

“So she lifted her curse,” Lune said. Gertrude was sniffling again, making the silence uncomfortable.

To her surprise, Rosamund shook her head. “Not then. She created the Hall, but when it was done, Suspiria still aged as she had before. She hid behind glamours, to keep Francis from knowing. And oh, it pained her — seeing him stay young, living as he did in the Onyx Hall with her, while she grew ever older. But he knew, and a good thing, too; ’twas him helped her lift the curse at last, one of his visions. Not long after that Catholic woman took the throne, it was.” The look of sorrow was back. “We were all so happy for her.”

Deven shifted his weight, and the tip of his scabbard scraped against the plastered wall. “Four or five years later — if my sums are right — you say she formed this pact.”

Rosamund sighed. “She did something. In one day, not only did she become the only faerie queen in all of England, she erased Suspiria from the world. After her curse was lifted, she had begun to gather a court around her; that, Lady Lune, is when Vidar came to the Onyx Hall. Before she was crowned. But he would no more recognize the name Suspiria than he would remember the court he once belonged to. To him, as to everyone else, there has only ever been Invidiana: the cruel mistress of the Onyx Hall.”

Attempting to dry her face with a mostly soaked handkerchief, Gertrude whispered, “But we remember her. And that is why we do not help the Wild Hunt. They would tear down the Onyx Hall, every stone of it, scatter its court to the four corners of England… and they would kill Invidiana. And though she is lost to us, we do not wish to see Suspiria die.”

Deven straightened and fished a clean handkerchief out of his cuff, offering it to Gertrude. She took it gratefully and repaid him with a watery, wavering smile.

Lune sat quietly, absorbing this information, trying to fit it alongside the things she had seen during her years in the Onyx Court. Fewer years than she had thought. Even the palace itself was new, by fae standards. “You were fond of Suspiria.”

“Aye,” Rosamund said, unapologetic. “She was warmer then, and kinder. But all kindness left her that day. You have never known the woman we helped.”

Nor the woman Francis had loved.

Deven came forward and placed his hands along the edge of the table, aligning them with studious care. “So how do we break the pact?”

Now Rosamund gave a helpless shrug. “We only just learned of its existence, Master Deven. And I imagine the list of people who know its terms is short, indeed. If Francis knew, he died before he could say.”

“Which leaves only two that must know,” Lune said. “Invidiana and Elizabeth.”

“Assuming we are right to begin with,” Deven still had his eyes on his carefully placed hands. “That the pact was formed with her.”

“Assuming you are right,” Lune countered, a little sharply. “You are the one who suggested it last night.”

The minuscule slump in his shoulders said he remembered all too well, and regretted it — but his silence told her he had no better explanation to offer in its place.

A muscle rose into relief along his jaw, then subsided. “I do not suppose you could trick your Queen into revealing the terms of the pact?”

The sound Lune made was nothing like a laugh. “You are asking me to trick the most suspicious and politically astute woman I have ever met.”

“Elizabeth is the same,” he flared, straightening in one fluid motion. “Or do you think my Queen a greater fool than yours?”

Lune met his gaze levelly. “I think your Queen less likely to have one of her courtiers murder you for an afternoon’s entertainment.”

She watched the contentious pride drain out of his face, one drop at a time. At first he did not believe her; then, as her stare did not waver, he did. And when she saw him understand, an ache gripped her throat, so sudden it brought tears to her eyes. What had life been like, when she lived under a different sovereign? She wished she could remember.

Lune rose to her feet and turned away before he could see her expression break. Behind her back, she heard Deven murmur, “Very well. I will see what I may learn. ’Twill not be easy—” He gave the quiet, rueful laugh she remembered, and had not heard in some time. “Well. Walsingham taught me how to ferret out information that others wish to keep hidden. I never expected to use it against a faerie queen, is all.”

“Let us know what you learn,” Rosamund said, and Gertrude echoed her after blowing her nose one last time. They went on, but Lune could no longer bear to be trapped in the claustrophobic hidden room with the three of them.

“I should return,” she said, to no one in particular. “I have been here too long already.” She went up the stairs before remembering the floor was closed above her, but it opened when her head neared its planks, two feminine farewells pursuing her as she went. Lune paused only long enough to restore the glamour she had dropped, and began her journey back to the confines of the Onyx Hall.

MEMORY: November 12, 1547

The twisting web of streets, the leaning masses of houses and shops, alehouses and livery halls — it all obscured an underlying simplicity.

In the west, Ludgate Hill. Once home to a temple of Diana, now it was crowned with the Gothic splendor of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

In the east, Tower Hill, the White Mount. The structure atop it had once been a royal palace; now it more often served as a prison.

In the north, the medieval wall, curving like the arc of a bow, pierced by the seven principal gates of the city.

In the south, the string of the bow: the straight course of the Thames, a broad thoroughfare of water.

An east–west axis, stretching from hilltop to hilltop, with temporal power on one end, spiritual power on the other. A north–south axis, barrier in the north, access in the south, with the Walbrook, the wall-brook, bisecting the city and connecting the two poles.

The buried waters of the Walbrook ran hard by the London Stone, which lay very near to the center of the city. Near enough to suffice.

A shadow moved through the cloudless autumn sky.

Two figures stirred within the solid earth and stone of the hills. Unseen, their colossal bodies standing where there was no space for them, they reached out and took hold of the power of the earth, which was theirs to command.

Two more stood at the London Stone, blind to the activity of the city around them. A man and a woman, a mortal and a fae.

They waited, as the light around them began to dim.

Slowly, one person at a time, the bustle of the city’s streets began to falter and halt. Faces turned upward; some people fled indoors. And the world grew ever darker, as the shadow of the moon moved across the face of the sun, until only a ring of fire blazed around its edge.

“Now,” the woman whispered.

The giants Gog and Magog, standing within the hills of Ludgate and the Tower, called upon the earth to obey. The Roman well that lay at the foundations of the White Tower shivered, its stones trembling; an ancient pit used in the rites of Diana opened up once more below the cathedral; and at the bottom of each, something began to grow.

Standing at the London Stone, Suspiria and Francis Merriman reached out and linked hands, mortal and fae, to carry out a working the likes of which the land had never dreamed.

The shadowed light of the sun fell upon the city and cast stranger shadows, a penumbral reflection of London, like and yet unlike. It sprang forth from the buildings, the streets, the gardens, the wells, and sank downward into the ground.

In the earth beneath London, the shadows took shape. Streets became corridors; buildings, great chambers. They transformed as they went, twisting, flowing, settling into new configurations, defying the orderly relations of natural geometry. And then, when all was in place, stone sprang forth, black and white marble, crystal, onyx, paving the floors, sheathing the walls, supporting the ceilings in round half-barrels and great vaulting arches.

Together they made this, Suspiria and Francis, drawing on the fae strength of the giants; the mortal symbolism of the wall; the wisdom of Father Thames, who alone of all beings understood the thing that was London, having witnessed its growth from its earliest days. In the sun’s shadowed light, they formed a space that bridged a gap, creating a haven for fae among mortals, from which church bells could not drive them forth.

Their hands came to rest atop the London Stone. The light brightened once more; the moon continued along its course, and normalcy returned to the world.

They smiled at one another, exhausted, but exultant.

“It is done.”

PALACE OF PLACENTIA, GREENWICH: April 28–30, 1590

Even the sprawling reaches of Hampton Court and Whitehall did not have room to house every courtier, merchant, and visiting dignitary that came seeking audience with the Queen and her nobles, especially not with their servants and train. Deven had asked for and received a leave of absence, with the result that when the court removed to Greenwich, he had no lodging assigned to him. He might have troubled Lord Huns-don for one, especially as courtiers retired for the summer to their own residences, but it was simpler to take rooms at a nearby inn. From this staging point, closer to court than his London house but not in its midst, he tried to plan a course of action.

Judicious questions to the right people netted him a fuller story of Elizabeth’s coronation, including those who had been involved. Deven could not rule out the possibility that the Queen was not, in fact, the other party to this rumored pact; it might have been another. Lord Burghley leapt to mind. Sir William Cecil, as he was back then, had been a trusted adviser since the earliest days of the reign, and nothing short of the death he had put off for seventy years would make him retire. Moreover, he had taught Walsingham much of what the man knew about how to build an intelligence service.

Burghley was a good candidate. He might do a great deal to ensure his Queen stayed on her throne. But the question remained of how to approach him — or indeed, anyone else — about the matter.

I most humbly beg your pardon. But did you by any chance form a pact with a faerie queen thirty-one years ago?

He could not ask that question of anyone.

Deven supposed he had at least one advantage. Lune’s bleak eyes had stayed with him, her resigned expression as she spoke so plainly of her Queen’s murderous entertainments. Whatever other obstacles he faced — however much Elizabeth might rage and occasionally threaten to chop off someone’s head — at least he did not fear for his life when in the presence of his sovereign.

How to do it? For all his fine words about ferreting out hidden information, Deven could not fathom how to begin. He was half-tempted to ask Lune to return to court as Anne Montrose, and let her handle the matter; if people imagined her to be mad, she lost nothing. Deven, on the other hand… he would be lucky if they simply thought him mad. Faeries were plausible; faeries beneath London, less so.

But the true danger would be if they believed him. It was a short step from faeries to devils, from lunacy to heresy. And even a gentleman could be executed for that.

If only he could have discovered this all before Walsingham died! Deven did not know how the Principal Secretary would have reacted, but at least then he could have shared it with someone. Walsingham, he was sure, would have believed, if shown the evidence. But Deven had been too slow; he had not completed the task his master set him until it was too late.

The thought came to him as he walked the bank of the Thames, the river wind blowing his hair back until it stood up in ruffling crests. He had done all of this because Walsingham asked it of him.

And therein lay the opening he needed.

He went to Lord Hunsdon for help. Beale could have done it, no doubt, using his influence as a secretary to the privy council, but Beale knew too much of what he was about, and would have asked too many questions. Hunsdon’s aid was more easily obtained, though he was manifestly curious about Deven’s purpose, and his recent absence from court.

A gift for Hunsdon; a gift for the Countess of Warwick; a gift for the Queen. Deven wondered about faerie gold, and whether the Goodemeades could not somehow fund the expense of this work. He was not at all certain he wanted to know.

His opportunity came on a crisp, bright Thursday, when the wind sent clouds scudding across the sun and the Queen rode out to hunt. She was accompanied, as always, by a selection of her ladies, several other courtiers, and servants to care for the hounds and hawks and other accoutrements that attended upon her Majesty; it seemed a great menagerie, when he thought about watching eyes, listening ears. But it was the best he could hope for.

“How stands the Queen’s mood?” he asked Lady Warwick, as he rode out with the others into the unreliable brilliance of the morning.

The countess no doubt thought his question had something to do with Anne. “As changeable as the weather,” she said, casting one eye skyward, at the racing clouds. “Whatever suit you wish to press, you might consider waiting.”

“I cannot,” Deven muttered. Even if their situation could wait — which he was not certain it could — his nerve could not withstand delay. “You and Lord Hunsdon have been most generous in arranging this private conference for me. If I do not take my opportunity today, who knows when it will come again?”

“Then I wish you good fortune, Master Deven.”

With those reassuring words, the hunt began. Deven did not devote more than a sliver of his attention to its activity, instead rehearsing in his mind the words he would say. At length the hunt dismounted for a rest, and servants began to erect a pavilion in which the Queen would dine with the Earl of Essex. He saw Lady Warwick approach her, bearing in her hands the small book Deven had obtained from his father, and present it to the Queen. A murmured conversation, and then Elizabeth turned a sharp eye on him, across the meadow in which they rested.

The long-fingered hand beckoned, jewels flashing in the light; he crossed to where she stood and knelt in the grass before her. “Your Grace.”

“Walk with me, Master Deven.”

The beginnings of a headache were pulsing in his temples, keeping time with his thunderous heartbeat. Deven rose and followed the Queen, one respectful pace behind her, as she wandered the edge of the meadow. There were too many people around, passing into and out of earshot, but he could hardly ask her to withdraw farther; it was favor enough that she was granting him this semi-private audience.

“Lady Warwick tells me you bear a message of some importance,” Elizabeth said.

“I do, your Majesty.” Deven swallowed, then launched into the words he had rehearsed all morning, and half the day before.

“Prior to his death, Sir Francis set me a task. Were I a cleverer or more talented man, I might have completed it in time to share my discoveries with him, but I am come to my conclusions too late; only in the last few days have I uncovered the information he wished me to find. And in his absence, I have no master to whom ’tis fitting to report such matters. But I swore an oath not to conceal any matters prejudicial to your Grace’s person, and with the loss of the Principal Secretary, my allegiance is, by that oath, to you alone.” He wet his lips and went on. “Though it be presumptuous of me, I believe this issue of sufficient import as to be worth your Grace’s time and attention, and your wisdom more than sufficient to judge how best to proceed.”

Walking a pace behind Elizabeth, he could only see the edge of her face, but beneath the cosmetics he thought he discerned a lively interest. Walsingham to an extent, and Burghley even more, made a practice of trying to keep intelligence from the Queen; they preferred to control the information that reached her, so as to encourage her decisions in directions they favored. But Elizabeth disliked being managed, and had a great fondness for surprising them with knowledge they did not expect her to have.

“Say on,” she replied, her tone now more on the pleasant side of neutral.

Another deep breath. “The task the Master Secretary set me was this. He believed he had discerned, within the workings of your Grace’s government, the hand of some unseen player. He wished me to discover who it is.”

She was too experienced a politician to show surprise. Elizabeth’s energetic stride did not falter, nor did she turn to look at him. But Deven noticed that their seemingly aimless wanderings now drifted, ever so slightly, toward a stand of birches that bordered the meadow. Away from those who might listen in.

“And you believe,” the Queen said, “that you have discovered some such player?”

“I have indeed, madam. And having done so, I thought it all the more crucial that I convey this information to you alone.”

They were far enough away; no one would overhear them. Elizabeth stopped and turned to face him, her back to the white trunks of the trees. Her aged face was set in unreadable lines. A cloud covered the sun, then blew away again, and Deven thought uneasily that perhaps he should have waited to find her in a fairer mood, after all.

“Say on,” she commanded him again.

Too late to back out. Deven said, “Her name is Invidiana.”

He should have knelt to deliver the information; it would have been respectful. But he had to stand, because he had to be looking her in the face as he said it. This was his one chance to see her reaction, the one time she might betray some hint that would tell him what he needed to know. And even then, he almost missed it. Elizabeth had played this game for decades; she was more talented an actor than most who made their living from it. Only the tiniest flicker of tension at the corners of her eyes showed when he spoke the name: there for an instant, and then gone.

But it was there, however briefly.

Now Deven dropped to his knees, his heart fluttering so wildly it made his hands shake. “Your Majesty,” he said, heedless of whether he might be cutting her off, desperate to get the words out before she could say anything, deny anything. “For days now I have thought myself a madman. I have met — people — spoken to them, heard stories that would be incredible were they played upon a stage. But I know them to be true. I have come to you today, risked speaking of this so openly, because events are in motion which could bring an upheaval as great as that threatened by Spain. Consider me a messenger, if you will.”

And with that he halted; he could think of nothing more to say. The light shifted around him, and the wind blew more strongly, as if a storm might be on its way.

From above him, Elizabeth’s measured, controlled voice. “She sent you to me?”

He swallowed. “No. I represent… others.”

Footsteps approached; a rustle of satin, as Elizabeth gestured whomever it was away. When they were alone again, she said, “Explain yourself.”

Those two words were very, very cold. Deven curled his gloved hands into fists. “I have come into contact with a group of… these people, who believe that a pact exists between their Queen and someone in your Majesty’s own court — perhaps you yourself. The man who told them of this pact was of our own kind, and had long dwelled among them, but he died in the course of confessing this information. He claimed the pact was detrimental to both sides. They wish it to be broken, and have asked me to discover its nature and terms.”

How he wished he could see her face! But Elizabeth had not told him to rise, nor did she interrupt his explanation. He had no choice but to continue. “Madam, I know not what to think. They say she is not their rightful Queen, that she deposed many others across England when she ascended to her throne. They say she is cold and cruel — that, at least, I most sincerely believe, for I do not think they could counterfeit such fear. They say their aid has helped maintain your Grace’s own safety and security, and perhaps this is true. But if so…” His heart was hammering so loudly, the entire camp must be able to hear it. “I do not know if this pact should be broken. Even if I knew its terms, that is not a decision for me to make. All I can do, in good conscience, is lay what I know at your feet, and beg your good wisdom and counsel.”

The long speech left his mouth bone dry. How many people were watching them discreetly, wondering what private suit drove him to his knees, with his face so pale? Did Elizabeth show anger, confusion, fear?

He might have just ended his career at court, in one disastrous afternoon.

Deven whispered, “If your Majesty is caught in some bargain from which you would escape, you have but to say so, and I will do everything I may to end it. But if these creatures are your enemies — if they threaten the security of your throne — then bid me stop them, and I will.”

The sunlight flickered, then shone down with renewed strength. His linen undershirt was soaked with sweat.

Elizabeth said in courteous, impassive tones, “We thank you, Master Deven, and will take this information under advisement. Speak of this to no other.”

“Yes, madam.”

“Luncheon is served, it seems. Go you and eat, and send Lord Essex to me.”

“I humbly take my leave.” Deven rose, not looking at her, backed away three steps, and bowed deeply. Then he fled, wishing it would not be an insult to quit the hunt early, before anyone asked him questions he could not answer.

MOOR FIELDS, LONDON: May 1, 1590

The celebrations began in the hours before dawn, and would fade away with the morning light. To dance out here — in the open, under the stars, yet just outside the city walls — was an act of mad defiance, a fleeting laugh at the masses of humanity from which they ordinarily hid, holding their revels underground, or in wilder places. It also required a tremendous outlay of effort.

The laundresses’ pegs and the archers’ marks that normally dotted the open places of Moor Fields had been cleared away. The grass, trodden into dusty brownness and hard-packed dirt, was briefly, verdantly green, growing in a thick carpet that cushioned the bare feet of the dancers. The dark, somber tones that predominated in the Onyx Hall had given way to riotous color: pink and red and spring green, yellow and blue and one doublet of violent purple. Flower petals, fresh leaves, feathers whose edges gleamed with iridescent light; the garb tonight was all of living things, growing things, in honor of the first of May.

And the fae of the Onyx Court danced. Musicians wove competing tapestries in the air, flutes and hautbois and tabors sending forth sound and light and illusions that ornamented the dance. Orpheus wandered the edges, serenading the many lovers. Blossoms sprang up where he walked. Great bonfires burned at the four corners of their field, serving more than one purpose; they provided heat, light, fire for the festival, and foundation points for the immense web of charms that concealed all this revelry from watching eyes.

When the sun rose, mortals would go forth for their own May Day celebrations. They would pick flowers in the woods, dance around maypoles, and enjoy the onset of benevolent weather. But a few had started early: here and there, a human strayed near enough to the fires to pierce the veils that concealed them, and become aware of the crowds that had overtaken Moor Fields. A young man lay with his head in Lady Carline’s lap, eating grapes from her fingers. Another scrambled on the ground in front of her, rump in the air, behaving for all the world like a dog in human form — but for once, those who laughed at him did so without the edge of cold malice their voices would ordinarily have borne. Maidens whirled about the dancing ground with faerie gentlemen who wove blossoms into their hair and whispered sweet nothings into their ears. Nor was everyone young: a stout peasant woman had wandered from her house on Bishopsgate Street to chase a dog not long after sundown on May Eve, and now stamped a merry measure with the best of them, her face red and shining with effort.

Amidst all this splendor, one figure was conspicuous by her absence: conspicuous, but not missed. The Wild Hunt could more easily strike at this open field than at the subterranean confines of the Onyx Hall, and so Invidiana stayed below.

They had more fun without her.

The Queen’s absence helped Lune breathe more easily. With wine flowing like water, everyone was merry, and many of them forgot to snub those who deserved snubbing. Nor did the snared mortals have any notion of politics. Shortly after midnight, a young man stumbled up to her, wine cup in hand, mouth languorous and searching for a kiss. He had brown hair and blue eyes, and Lune pushed him away, then regretted the violence of her action. But she did not need the reminder of Michael Deven, and the celebrations Elizabeth’s court would engage in today.

Even on a night such as this, politics did not entirely cease. Everyone knew Tiresias was dead; everyone knew the Queen had been little seen by anyone since his body was discovered. A few thought she mourned him. Remembering the Goodemeades’ tale, Lune felt cold. Invidiana mourned no one.

But his death created opportunity for those who needed it. Some who questioned Lune thought themselves subtle about it; others did not even try for subtlety. Certain mortals claimed the ability to foretell the future. Were any of them truly so gifted? Lune had lived among the mortal court; she might know something. They pestered her for information. Had she met Simon Forman? What of Doctor Dee? Did she perhaps know of any persuasive charlatans, who might be put forth as bait to trip up a political rival?

Lune joined the dancing to escape the questions, then abandoned dancing when it turned her mood fouler. There was no surcease for her here. But where would she go? Back down into the Onyx Hall? Its confines were unbearable to her now — and the Queen waited below. To the Angel Inn? She did not dare spend too much time there, and besides, the Goodemeades were here, along with every other fae from miles around. Lune knew the Goodemeades watched her, but she kept her distance.

A golden-haired elf lady she knew by sight but not name waylaid her. Was she familiar with John Dee? Where did he live? Was he old enough that it might not seem suspicious if he died in his sleep?

Lune fled her questioner, heading for one of the bonfires. Arriving at its edge, where the heat scorched her face with welcome force, she found there was one other person gazing into its depths.

From the far side of the bonfire, the hollow-cheeked, wasted face of Eurydice stared at her.

The mortal pet’s presence at the May Day celebrations was like a splash of cold water from the Thames. Her black, sunken eyes saw what few others did: the spirits of the dead, those restless souls who had not passed on to their punishment or reward. And this was not All Hallows’ Eve, not the time for such things.

But she did more than see. Few fae realized Eurydice was not just a curiosity to Invidiana; she was a tool. She not only saw ghosts: she could bind them to her will. Or rather, the Queen’s will.

Lune knew it all too well. Invidiana had formed plans that depended closely on Eurydice’s special skill, plans that Lune’s disastrous embassy had undone. The folk of the sea wanted for little, and so the things she had gone there to offer them went unremarked. What they had wanted were the spoils of their storms: the souls of those sailors who drowned.

To what use Invidiana would have put such a ghost army, Lune did not know. Had she been aware that her Queen planned to create one, she might have bargained harder; the folk of the sea had no way to bind ghosts to their service. But she thought it a harmless thing, and so she agreed that Eurydice would come among them for a time, provided the ghosts were not turned against the Onyx Court. As long as the ships never reached England’s shores, what did it matter?

Invidiana had seen it differently.

Eurydice’s mouth gaped open in a broken-toothed, hungry grin. And suddenly, despite the blazing bonfire just feet away, Lune felt cold.

Ghosts.

Those who died in the thrall of faerie magic often lingered on as ghosts.

Francis.

Somehow, she kept herself from running. Lune met Eurydice’s gaze, as if she had no reason to fear. That hungry grin was often on the woman’s face; it meant nothing. She had no assurance that Francis Merriman had lingered. After so long trapped in the Onyx Hall, his soul might well have fled with all speed to freedom and judgment.

Or not.

What did Invidiana know?

A chain of dancing fae went past, and someone caught Lune by the hand. She let herself be dragged away, following the line of bodies as they weaved in and out of the crowds of revelers, and did not extricate herself until she was at the far side of the field, safely distant from Eurydice’s ghost-haunted eyes.

She should run now, while she could.

No. Running would bring her no safety; Invidiana ruled all of England. And there might be nothing to run from. But she must assume the worst: that the Queen had Francis’s ghost, and knew from him what had transpired.

Why, then, would Lune still be alive?

Her mind answered that question with an image: a snake, lying with its jaws open and a mouse in its mouth, waiting. ’Tis safe, come in, come in. Why eat only one mouse when you might lure several? And that meant she could not follow her instinct, to run to the safety the Goodemeades offered. Invidiana could act on suspicion as well as proof, but would want to be sure she caught the true conspirators, and caught all of them. As long as she was not certain…

Lune stayed at the May Day celebrations, though it took all her will. And in the remaining hours of dancing, and drinking, and fielding the questions of those who sought a new human seer, she caught one moment of relative privacy, while Rosamund dipped her a mug of mead.

“He may be a ghost,” Lune whispered. It was all the warning she dared give.

PALACE OF PLACENTIA, GREENWICH: May 2, 1590

In the days following his audience with the Queen, Deven considered abandoning his lodgings and returning to where Ranwell waited at his house in London. What stopped him was the thought that there, he would be sitting atop a faerie palace.

So he was still at Greenwich, though not at court, when the messenger found him.

He threw Colsey into a frenzy, demanding without warning that his best green satin doublet be brushed off and made ready, that his face needed shaving again already, that his boots be cleaned of infinitesimal specks of mud. But one did not show up looking slovenly when invited to go riding with the Queen.

Somehow his manservant got him out the door with good speed. Deven traversed the short distance to the palace, then found himself waiting; something had intervened, and her Majesty was occupied. He paced in a courtyard, his stomach twisting. Had he eaten anything that day, it might have come back up.

Nearly an hour later, word came that Elizabeth was ready at last.

She was resplendent in black and white satin embroidered with seed pearls, her made-up face and hair white and red above it. They did not ride out alone, of course; Deven might be one of her Gentlemen Pensioners, and therefore a worthy bodyguard, but one man was not sufficient for either her dignity or well-being. But the others who came kept their distance, maintaining the illusion that this was a private outing, and not a matter of state.

Everyone at court, from the jealous Earl of Essex down to the lowliest gentlewoman, and probably even the servants, would wonder at the outing, and speculate over the favor Elizabeth was suddenly showing a minor courtier. For once, though, their gossip was the least of Deven’s concerns.

They rode in silence to begin with. Only when they were well away from the palace did Elizabeth say abruptly, “Have you met her?”

He had expected some preface to their discussion; her sudden question took him by surprise. “If you mean Invidiana, your Grace, I have not.”

“Consider yourself fortunate, Master Deven.” The line of her jaw was sagging with age, but steel yet underlay it. “What do you know of this pact?”

Deven chose his words with care. “Little to nothing, I fear. Only that on your Majesty’s coronation day, Invidiana claimed her own throne.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “It began well before that.”

The assertion startled him, but he held back his instinctive questions, letting the Queen tell it in her own time.

“She came to me,” Elizabeth said softly, “when I was in the Tower.” Her eyes were focused on something in the distance, and she controlled her horse with unconscious ease. Deven, watching her out of the corner of his eye, saw grimness in her expression. “My sister might have executed me. Then a stranger came, and offered me aid.”

The Queen fell silent. Deven wanted to speak, to tell her that anyone might have made the same choice. Years later, there was still doubt in her, uncertainty about her actions. But he dared not presume to offer her forgiveness.

Elizabeth pressed her lips together, then went on. “She arranged my release from the Tower, and a variety of events that helped secure my accession. I do not know how much of that was her doing. Not all, certainly — even now, she does not have that much control. But some of it was hers. And in exchange, when I was crowned, I aided her. My coronation was hers as well.” The Queen paused. “I did not know that it deposed others. But I would be false if I said that surprised me.”

She hesitated again. At last, Deven prodded her onward. “And since then, your Grace?”

“Since then… it has continued. She has helped remove threats to my person, my throne, my people.” Elizabeth’s hands, encased in gray doeskin, tightened on her reins. “And in exchange, she has received concessions from me. Political decisions that suit some purpose of hers. The assistance of — mortals, to manipulate something of importance to her.” Her stumble over the word was barely perceptible.

Deven ventured a reminder. “The man who spoke of this claimed, before he died, that it was causing harm to both sides.”

For the first time since they rode out, Elizabeth turned her head to face him. The strength of her gaze shook him. It was easy to forget, when one saw her laughing with her courtiers, or smiling coquettishly at some outrageous compliment, that she was her father’s daughter. But in that gaze lay all the fabled personality and will of Henry, eighth of that name, King of England. They had stores of rage within them, the Tudors did, and Elizabeth’s was closer to the surface than he had realized.

“I do not know,” Elizabeth said, “what this pact has cost her side. I do not care. She has often manipulated me, managed me, coerced me into positions I would not otherwise have occupied. Even that, I might have endured, if it meant the well-being of my people. But she went too far with our cousin Mary. I do not know how far back her interference extended, but I know this: were it not for that interference, I might never have been forced to sign that order of execution.”

Deven saw, in his mind’s eye, the chess pieces with which Walsingham had led him through the story of the Queen of Scots — and the white queen, standing on her own, caught halfway between the two sides.

“Then tell me the terms of your pact,” he said quietly, “and I will see it ended.”

She turned her gaze back to the landscape ahead, where the ground rose upward in a rocky slope. The men-at-arms were still all around, maintaining a respectful distance, and Deven was glad for them. He could not both navigate this conversation and keep watch for threats. How easy must it be, for fae to conceal themselves among the green?

“’Twas simple enough,” the Queen said. “Do you know the London Stone?”

“On Candlewick Street?”

“The same. ’Tis an ancient symbol of the city, and a stone of oaths; the rebel Jack Cade once struck it to declare himself master of London. At the moment I was crowned, she thrust a sword into that stone, to claim her own sovereignty.”

That was most promising; it gave him a physical target to attack. “Will it threaten your own position, if… ?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “My throne came to me by politics, and the blessing of a bishop, speaking in God’s name. What she has stolen is mine by right.”

She spoke with certainty, but he had heard her at court, declaring with swaggering confidence that Spain would not dare attempt another invasion, or that some lord or other would never defy her will. She could feign confidence she did not feel. It felt like a sharp rock had lodged in Deven’s throat when he swallowed. Would he help the fae depose Invidiana, only to find his own Queen overthrown?

Elizabeth was willing to risk it, to free herself from the snare that trapped her. His was not to question it.

“If you bring her low,” Elizabeth said in a hard, blazing voice, “then I will reward you well for it. She is a cold thing, and cruel in her pleasure. Princes must often be ruthless; this I knew, before I even ascended to my throne. But she has forced matters too far, more than once. There is no warmth in her, no love. And I despise her for it.”

Deven thought of the Goodemeades — of Rosamund’s story, and the conversation he had with Gertrude — and responded gently. “They tell me she was different once. Before her coronation. When she was still known as Suspiria.”

Elizabeth spat, not caring if the gesture was coarse. “I would not know. I never knew this Suspiria.”

They had ridden on several paces farther before Deven’s hands jerked convulsively on the reins. His gelding short-stepped, then recovered. “Not even when first you met? Not even in the Tower?”

He had drawn level with the Queen again, and she was studying him in wary confusion. “The name she gave me was Invidiana. And I have never known her to show any kindness or human warmth, not since the moment she appeared.”

“-But—” Deven realized belatedly that he was forgetting to use titles, polite address, anything befitting a gentleman speaking to his Queen. “By the story I was told, madam, she was known as Suspiria until the moment of her coronation, and that while she bore that name, she was not so cold and cruel.”

“Your friends are mistaken, or they have lied to you. Although…” Elizabeth’s dark eyes went distant, seeing once more into the past. “When I asked her name, she told me ’twas Invidiana. But the manner in which she said it…” The Queen focused on him once more. “It might have been the first time she claimed that name.”

Deven was silent, trying to work through the implications of this. His mind felt overfull, too many fragments of information jostling each other, too few of them fitting together.

“I will bear this news to those who work against her,” he said at last. If the Goodemeades had lied to him — trustworthy as they seemed, he had to consider it — then perhaps he could provoke some sign out of them. And if not…

If not, then nothing was quite what they had thought.

“You will keep us apprised of your work,” Elizabeth said. The familiarity that had overtaken her during the ride, while she spoke of things he was certain she had divulged to no other, was gone without a trace, and in its place was the Queen of England.

Deven bowed in his saddle. “I will, your Majesty, and with all speed.”

MEMORY: January 31, 1587

The chamber was dim and quiet, all those who normally attended within it having been banished to other tasks. Guards still stood outside the door — in times as parlous as these, dismissing them was out of the question — but the woman inside was as alone as she could ever be.

The cosmetics that normally armored her face were gone, exposing the ravages wrought by fifty-three years of fear and anger, care and concern, and the simple burden of life. Her beauty had been an ephemeral thing, gone as her youth faded; what remained was character, that would bow but never break, under even such pressure as she struggled with tonight.

Her eyes shut and her jaw clenched as the fire flickered and she heard a voice speak out from behind her. Unannounced, but not unexpected.

“You know that you must execute her.”

Elizabeth did not ask how her visitor had penetrated the defenses that ringed her chamber. How had it happened the first time? Asking would but waste breath. She gathered her composure, then turned to face the woman who stood on the far side of the room.

Frustrated rage welled within her at the sight. Elaborate gowns, brilliant jewels, and a mask of cosmetics could create the illusion of unchanging beauty, but it was an illusion, nothing more, and one that failed worse with every passing year. The creature that stood before her was truly ageless. Invidiana’s face and figure were as perfect now as they had been in the Tower, untouched by the scarring hand of time.

Elizabeth had many reasons to hate her, but this one was never far from her mind.

“Do not,” she said in frigid reply, “presume to instruct me on what I must do.”

Invidiana glittered, as always, in silver and black gems. “Would you rather be seen as weak? Her guilt cannot be denied—”

“She was lured into it!”

The faerie woman met her rage without flinching. “By your own secretary.”

“With aid.” Elizabeth spat the words. No one ever seemed to hear them, on the infrequent occasions that the two queens came face-to-face; she could shout all she wanted. “How much assistance did you provide? How much rope, that my cousin might hang herself? Or perhaps that was too inconvenient; perhaps ’twas simpler to falsify the letters directly. You have done it before, implicating her in her husband’s murder. Had matters gone your way, she would have been dead ere she ever left Scotland.”

The black eyes glimmered with cold amusement. “Or dead in the leaving, save that the nucklavee showed unexpected loyalty. I would the monster had drowned her; ’twould have saved much tedious effort on my part. And then your precious hands would be clean.”

Words hovered behind Elizabeth’s lips, all her customary oaths, swearing by God’s death and his body and countless other religious terms. How fitting it would be, to hurl them now: proof that although Protestant rites might lack the power of Catholic tradition, words of faith yet held some force.

But again, what purpose would it serve? Nothing she said now would save Mary. The Queen of Scots had been proven complicit in a scheme against Elizabeth and England; there was no concealing it. Invidiana had seen to that. Elizabeth’s councillors, her parliament, her people — all wished to see Mary gone. Even James of Scotland had bowed to circumstances. His last letter, sitting open on a table nearby, offered no more trouble than the weak protest that his subjects would think less of him if he made no reprisal for his mother’s execution.

“And what if I will not do it?” Elizabeth said. “’Tis plain you wish her gone for your own purposes. What if I refuse you? What if, this once, I refused to play a puppet’s part?”

Invidiana’s lips thinned in icy displeasure. “Would it please you more if I removed my hand from your affairs? Your end would surely then be swift.”

Elizabeth almost told her to do it and be damned. The threats to English sovereignty were manifold — they were at war with Spain, and Leicester had bungled the campaign in the Low Countries — but she refused to believe herself dependent upon the faerie queen for her survival. She was Queen of England, by God, and needed no shadowy puppeteer to pull her strings.

Yet she could not deny the strings existed. Some of the demands Invidiana made of her seemed innocuous; some were not. The faerie woman had required no devilish rites, no documents signed in blood, but she had imposed a real cost — if a subtle one. A certain ruthless cast to particular affairs, colder and harder than it would otherwise have been. The persistent reminder of her own mortality, more unbearable because of its contrast with the faerie’s eternal youth. And, in a blending of the personal and political, solitude.

Once, there had been many suitors for her hand. Leicester, Alençon, even the King of Sweden. None without complications of religion or faction, none without the threat of losing her independence as a ruling queen… but there might have been happiness with one of them. There might have been hope of marriage.

None of it had come to anything. And that, Elizabeth was certain, she could lay at the feet of her dark twin, the loveless, heartless, solitary faerie Queen.

She did not ordinarily resent the price she had been forced to pay, for security on her throne. What Elizabeth resented was the creature to whom she had been forced to pay it.

“You must execute her,” Invidiana said again. “However you have come to this pass, no other road lies before you.”

True, and inescapable. Elizabeth hated the elfin woman for it.

“Leave me be,” she snarled. Invidiana smiled — beautiful, and ever so faintly mocking — and faded back into the shadows, returning whence she had come.

Alone in her bedchamber, Elizabeth closed her eyes and prayed. On the morrow, she would sign the order, and execute her cousin and fellow Queen.

BEER HOUSE, SOUTHWARK: May 5, 1590

“The thing to remember,” Rosamund said, “is that she’s not all-knowing or all-powerful.”

The words hardly reassured Lune. All around them the alehouse was bustling, with voices clamoring in half a dozen languages; the river thronged with travelers, merchants, and sailors from all over Europe, and the Beer House on the south bank attracted its fair share. The noise served as cover, but also made her nervous. Who might come upon them, without her ever knowing?

Rosamund clicked her tongue in exasperation. “She cannot have eyes and ears everywhere, my lady. Even if she has somehow trapped his ghost….” The prospect shadowed her face. “I know we haven’t the rose here to protect us, but this will serve just as well. Her attention is bent where ’twill matter, and that is elsewhere.”

The brownie was probably right. The greatest threat they faced here was from uncouth men who targeted them with bawdy jests. Lune and the Goodemeades had made certain they were not followed, and with glamours covering their true appearances, there was nothing to draw Invidiana’s attention here.

They might as well meet; if Francis were in her clutches, Lune’s only hope lay in following this matter through.

Her nerves wound a notch tighter when she saw a familiar head weaving through the noontime crowd. Deven wore a plain woolen cap and clothing more befitting a respectable clerk than a gentleman; Gertrude, who came into view before him, might have been any goodwife of the city. The brownie squeezed herself in next to her sister, leaving Deven no choice but to take the remaining place beside Lune. Rosamund passed them both jacks of ale.

Deven cast a glance around, then said in a voice barely audible through the racket, “Have a care what you say. Walsingham often picked up information from the docks.”

Lune gave Rosamund a meaningful look.

He saw it, and an ironic smile touched his lips. For a moment the two of them were in accord; Gertrude, curse her, looked smug. “Escaping both sides at once takes more doing than this, I see. A moment.” He vanished into the crowd, leaving behind his untouched ale and a fading warmth along Lune’s side, where he’d pressed up against her.

He returned quickly, and gestured for them to follow. Soon they were upstairs, in a private room hardly big enough for the bed and table it held, but at least the noise faded. “Someone may try to listen at the door or through the wall,” Deven said, “but ’tis better.”

“I can help with that,” Gertrude said, straightening up from where she crouched in the corner. A glossy rat sat on its hindquarters in her hands, and listened with a bright, inquisitive manner as she explained what she wanted. Deven watched this entire conference with a bemused air, but said nothing.

When the rat was dispatched to protect them from eavesdroppers, Deven gestured for the women to take the available seats. Lune perched on the edge of the bed — trying not to think about the uses to which it was put, nor what the Beer House’s owner thought of the four of them — while the Goodemeades took the two stools.

Deven outlined for them in brief strokes what Elizabeth had said about the London Stone. “But I rode by it coming here,” he said, “and saw no sign of a sword.”

The fae all exchanged looks. “Have you ever seen it?” Gertrude asked, and Rosamund shook her head.

Lune followed their thoughts well enough. “But who knows every corner of the Onyx Hall? It might be there.” Taking pity on Deven’s confusion, she said, “The London Stone is half-buried, is it not? The lower end might extend into the palace below. But if it does, I know not where.”

“She might well keep it hidden,” Rosamund said.

Deven seemed less interested in this than he might have been. His face was drawn into surprisingly grim lines. “There’s another problem.”

Their speculation halted suddenly.

He looked straight at the Goodemeades. “You spun me a good tale the other day, of curses and lost loves. My Queen tells a different one. She met this Invidiana nearly five years before they were crowned, and says she was no kinder then than she is now, nor did she bear any other name. Have you any way to explain this?”

Lune was as startled as the brownies were. Had the sisters lied? No, she could not believe it. Even knowing they could and did lie with great skill, she did not believe they were feigning their confusion now. Was this some game of Deven’s? Or Elizabeth’s?

“We do not,” Gertrude whispered, shaking her head. “-I — that is—”

The unexpected hostility of Deven’s tone had distracted Lune, but now she thought about his words. Five years. Her grasp of mortal history was weak, but she thought she remembered this much. “Mary would have been on the throne then. Was that not when Suspiria lifted her curse?”

Rosamund’s brow was still furrowed. “I suppose so, near enough. But I do not see—”

Lune rose to her feet. Deven was watching her, with his eyes that kept reminding her of Francis — moreso since she learned what Francis had once been. “Not what Invidiana did — what Suspiria did. That is what he knew. That is what he was trying to say!”

“What?” Now everyone was staring at her.

She pressed one hand to the stiff front of her bodice, feeling sick. “He was dying, he could barely speak, but he tried to tell me — he could not get the words out—” Her fingers remembered the uncontrollable shaking of his body. Something hot splashed onto her hand. “The last thing he said. ‘She is still c—’”

Lune looked down at the Goodemeades’ pale faces. “She is still cursed.”

“But that’s impossible,” Rosamund breathed. “’Tisn’t a glamour we see now; she is as she appears. Young and beautiful. She must have lifted the curse.”

“Lifted?” Deven asked, from the other side of the table. “Or changed it somehow? Traded it for some other condition, escaped its terms?” He shrugged when Lune transferred her attention to him. “I know little of these things; you tell me if it is impossible.”

“But did it happen before she met Elizabeth?” Rosamund twisted in her seat. “Or after?”

“Before, I think — but not long before. Elizabeth believes their meeting was the first time she claimed the name Invidiana.”

Gertrude seized her sister’s hand. “Rose, think. ’Twas after that she began gathering a court, was it not? No, she was not as we know her now—”

“But that might have been a mask.” All the blood had drained from Rosamund’s face; she looked dizzy. “She could have pretended to be the same. Ash and Thorn — that was when Francis began to lose his name. Do you remember? She always called him Tiresias, after that. And he said things had changed between them.”

Lune said, “Then it was not Elizabeth’s doing.” Everything she had thought clear was fading away, leaving her grasping at mist. “But he said her pact…”

Into the ensuing silence, Deven said, “Perhaps this is a foolish question. But what certainty have we that she formed only one pact?”

No one seemed to be breathing. They had all leapt so quickly to the thought of Elizabeth and the mortal court — and they had not been wrong. There was a pact there. But was that what Francis had meant? Or did he know something they had never so much as suspected?

Lune whispered, “Where do we begin?”

“With the curse,” Deven said. “Everything seems to have spun out of whatever she did to escape it. Creating the Onyx Hall did not free her, you said. What did?”

“Something Francis saw,” Gertrude said. “At least, we think so.”

Lune lowered herself slowly back onto the bed. Briefly she prayed that the rats were doing their jobs, and no one was listening to this mad and treasonous conversation. “He said she misinterpreted it. But we cannot know what she did until we know what she was escaping. What crime did she commit, to be cursed in such fashion?”

“We never knew,” Rosamund replied, clenching her small hands in frustration. “Even once she knew, she would not tell us. Or even Francis, I think.”

“But where did she learn it herself?”

Gertrude answered Deven far more casually than her words deserved. “From Father Thames.”

His shoulders jerked. “From who?”

“The river,” the brownie replied.

“The river.” Coming from him, it was an expression of doubt, and he turned to Lune for a saner answer, as if she would be his ally in disbelief.

“The spirit of it,” she said; his jaw came just the slightest bit unhinged. Hers felt like doing the same. “She spoke to him? Truly?”

Rosamund shrugged. “She must have done. We were not in London when the curse was laid; ’twas long ago, when we lived in the North. Gertrude told her she must find someone who was here long ago. Who else could she turn to, save Old Father Thames himself?”

Who else, indeed. Lune felt dizzy. Father Thames spoke but rarely, and then to other creatures of the water. She did not know what could possibly induce him to speak to a fae of the land.

But she would have to find out, because they had no one else to question.

“I will try tonight, then,” she said, and the Goodemeades nodded as if they had expected nothing else. She met Deven’s gaze, briefly, and looked away. This was a faerie matter; he would want none of it.

“We should arrange to meet again,” he said into the silence. “Your pigeon was most helpful, Mistress Goodemeade, but I pray you pardon me if I find communicating in such a manner to be… disconcerting.” When the sisters smiled understandingly, he said, “There is a tavern along Fleet Street, outside the city’s western wall. The Checkers. Shall we find one another there, three days hence?”

Three days. Giving Lune extra time, in case she failed the first night. Did he have so little confidence in her?

The brownies agreed, and they all dispersed, the Goodemeades leaving first. Alone with Deven, Lune found herself without anything to say.

“Good luck,” he murmured at last. His hand twitched at his side, as if he might have laid it briefly on her shoulder.

That simple note of friendship struck an unexpected chord. “Thank you,” Lune whispered in response. Perhaps this alliance of theirs was leading him to forgive her — at least a little — for the harm she had done him before.

He stood a moment longer, looking at her, then followed the Goodemeades out the door.

Standing by herself in the center of the room, Lune took a slow, deep breath. Father Thames. She did not know how to reach him, let alone gain his aid… but she had three days to find out.

RIVER THAMES, LONDON: May 5, 1590

She had changed her appearance again, but Deven still recognized her. There were certain mannerisms — the way she walked, or held her head — that echoed his memories so powerfully it made him ache inside.

He followed the disguised Lune at a safe distance as she left the Beer House. Doing so required care; she was wary and alert, as if she might be observed or attacked. It was a tension that had not left her since he found her on Cloak Lane, wearing a bad illusion of Anne Montrose. The mere thought of living in such constant fear exhausted him. In comparison with life in her own court, masquerade as a human woman must have seemed a holiday for her.

Not that it excused a year of unending lies.

The crowds on London Bridge helped conceal him from her searching eyes. Disguised as he was, he blended in fairly well. So he followed her through the afternoon as she walked back and forth along the river’s bank: first to the Tower of London, with its water port of the Traitor’s Gate, then back westward to Billingsgate, the bridge, Queenhithe, Broken Wharf, pausing each time she passed a river stair, occasionally watching the watermen who rowed passengers from one bank to the other. Her feet at last took her to Blackfriars, on the far side of which the noisome waters of the Fleet poured out into the Thames. Deven, who had been wondering what manner of creature the spirit of the Thames would be, thought he would not want to meet anything that embodied the Fleet.

It seemed that Lune could not make up her mind where to make her attempt. Did it matter so much? Deven could imagine the Thames at its headwaters in the west might be a different being than the Thames where it passed London, but what might distinguish the Blackfriars Thames from the bridge Thames, he had no idea.

That was part of why he followed. Lune had not asked for aid, but his curiosity could not be suppressed. Though it was being sorely tested by all this walking; he had grown far too accustomed to riding.

Night fell, and still Lune delayed. Curfew had long since rung, and for the first time it occurred to him that his sober disguise might pose a problem; with neither horse, nor sword, nor finery, nor anything else save his word that might identify him as a gentleman, he had no excuse for why he might be on the street. The same was true of Lune, but remembering the befuddled guards at Aldersgate the night she fled the city, he was not concerned for her.

When the moon rose into the sky, she made her way back eastward, and Deven at last understood what she had been waiting for.

The tidal waters of the Thames, answering the call of the gibbous moon.

As the river’s level rose, he trailed her through the darkness, and mentally rewarded himself the groat he had wagered. Lune was heading for the bridge.

For it, and onto it. The Great Stone Gate on the Southwark end would be closed for the night, but the north end was open. Deven wondered what she was doing, then cursed himself for distraction; he had lost her among the houses, chapels, and shops built along the bridge’s length.

Only the scuff of a shoe alerted him. Peering cautiously over the edge in one of the few places it was accessible, he saw a dark shadow moving downward. The madwoman could have hired a wherry to take her there by water — well, perhaps not. Shooting the bridge, passing through the clogged, narrow races between the piers of the arches, was hazardous at the best of times; even the hardened nerves of a London waterman would be tested by a request to drop a passenger off along the way. But that might still have been better than climbing down the side of the bridge.

Lune reached safety below, on one of the wooden starlings that protected the stone piers from collision with debris or unlucky wherries. There was no way Deven could follow her without being heard or seen. He should give up, and he knew it, yet somehow his feet did not move homeward; instead they carried him to the other side of the bridge, one arch farther north, and then his hands were feeling the roughened stone as if this were not the worst impulse he’d had since the night he followed a faerie woman out of the city.

The first part was easy enough, where the pier sloped outward to a triangular point. The second, vertical part was the stuff of nightmares, clinging to crevices where the mortar had worn away, praying he did not fall to the starling below and alert Lune, praying he did not tumble into the Thames and ignominiously drown. But by then it was far too late to turn back.

And then he was safe, and tried not to think about how he would get off the starling again when this was done.

His cap had blown off in the river wind and was lost to the dark water. Shivering a little, though he was not cold, Deven crouched and peeked cautiously around the edge of the pier, looking across the intervening space to where Lune stood on the next platform over. No, not stood; knelt. The sound of the river had faded enough that her voice carried clearly to him.

“Father Thames,” she said, respectful and solemn. The glamour that had disguised her all day was gone, but the shadow beneath the arch protected her from prying eyes on the riverbank. Only Deven could see her, a silver figure with her head bowed. “As the moon calls to your waters, so I, a daughter of the moon, call to you. I humbly beseech the gift of your presence and counsel. Secrets lie within your waters, the wisdom of ancient times; I beg you to relate to me the tale of Suspiria, and the curse laid upon her. I ask this, not for myself, but for my people; the good of faerie kind may hang upon this tale. For their sake, I pray you hear my words.”

Deven hardly breathed, both from anticipation, and from fear of being overheard. The river licked the planks of the starlings, within arm’s reach of the top edges. Every flicker of motion caught his eye — what sign would be returned? A face? A voice?- — but it was never more than debris, floating through the narrow gaps of the races.

He waited, and Lune waited, and nothing came.

Then another sound laid itself over the quiet murmur of the water. Only when it recurred could he identify it: not speech, but choked-off breath, the ragged edge of fading control.

“Please,” Lune whispered. Formality had failed; now she spoke familiarly. “Please, I beg you, answer me.” The river made no reply. “Father Thames… do you wish her power to endure? Or do our acts mean nothing to you? She has warped her court. I can scarce remember where I was before I came here, but I know it was not this cold. I served her faithfully, beneath the sea, in Elizabeth’s court, anywhere she has bid me, and now I am hounded to the edge of my life. There is no safety for me now, except in her overthrow. Without your aid, I have nothing. I…”

The words trailed off into another ragged breath. Her shoulders slumped with weariness, abandoning the armor of purpose and drive that ordinarily held her together. Her hands clutched the edge of the starling, white-knuckled in the night.

He should not have followed her. Deven was watching something private, that she would not have shown if she knew he was there. And it stirred something uncomfortable within him, where resentment had lodged itself when first he saw her true face.

That was, after all, the crux of it. Her true face. The other was a lie. He knew it, and yet some part of him had still grieved, still resented her, as if she had somehow stolen Anne Montrose from him — as if Anne were a real person, kidnapped away by the faerie woman.

But Anne had never existed. There was only ever Lune, playing a part, as so many did when they came to court.

Yet the part she played was a part of her, too. There had been more truth than he realized to the words she said back then: she could be at ease in his presence, as she could not elsewhere. Perhaps the Lune who existed before the Onyx Court had been more like Anne.

Or perhaps not. He had no way of knowing. But one thing he did know: Lune was Anne. He had loved this faerie woman before he knew the truth, and now that he did…

His feelings had not vanished when her mask did.

It might be foolish of him — no doubt it was — but also true.

“You do not have nothing,” he murmured, mouthing the words soundlessly to himself. “You have your own strength. And the aid of the Goodemeades. And… you have me.”

Slack water had come, the turn of the tide; the river was never more quiet than now. Why, then, did he hear a sound, as if something disturbed its tranquility?

His first thought was that a boat approached; one hand went for his sword, remembered he did not have it, and groped instead for his knife. How would he explain their presence here? But no boat was near, and his fingers released the hilt, suddenly weak with shock.

The water between the two piers was swirling against all nature. The surface mounded, rose upward, then broke, and standing upon the Thames was an old man, broad-shouldered and tall, gray-bearded but hale, with centuries of wisdom graven upon his face.

“Rarely do I speak, in these times that so choke my waters with the passage of ordinary life,” the spirit of the river said. His voice was deep and slow, rising and falling in steady rhythm. The murky gray fabric of his robe shimmered with hints of silver in its folds. “But rarely do two call me forth together, mortal and fae. Thus do I come, for the children of both worlds.”

Deven froze. Lune’s head came up like a doe’s when it hears the hunter’s step. Could she see him, concealed behind the edge of the pier?

Father Thames was not looking at him, but still he felt shamed. He could not hide from the venerable spirit.

Stepping around the edge, onto the nearer half of the starling, Deven made his most respectful bow, as if he approached the Queen herself. “We are most grateful for your presence.” A back corner of his mind worried, What form of address does one use for a river god?

Lune rose slowly to her feet, staring at him. She seemed to speak out of reflex. “As he says, Old Father. You honor us by rising tonight.”

Deven moved far enough that they both stood before the spirit, on opposite sides of the arch. The fathomless eyes of Father Thames weighed them each in turn. “Daughter of the moon, you spoke the name of Suspiria.” Lune nodded, as if she did not trust her voice. “An old name. A forgotten name.”

“Forgotten not by all,” she whispered. “We seek knowledge of her — this mortal man and I. Can you tell us of her? What wrong did she commit, that she was cursed to suffer as if human?”

The spirit’s gaze fixed inexplicably on Deven, who tried not to shiver. “She came to me for this tale, begging every night for a year and a day until I took pity on her and spoke. Her mind was clouded by her suffering. She did not remember.

“’Twas long and long ago. A town stood upon my banks, little more than a village, save that the chieftain of the mortal people dwelt within its palisade, and thereby lent it dignity beyond its size. Within the hollow hills lived the faerie race, and there was often conflict between the two.

“And so a treaty was struck, a bargain to bring peace for both peoples. Faerie kind would walk in freedom beneath the sun, and mortals go in safety beneath the earth. But ’twas not enough simply to agree; the bargain must be sealed, some ritual enacted to bind both sides to honor its terms. The son of the chieftain had gone more than was wise among the faerie people, and seen many wonders there, but one stood high in his mind: the beauty of an elfin lady, who of all things seemed to him most fair.

“Thus was it proposed: that the treaty be sealed by marriage, joining a son of mortality to a daughter of faerie.”

The measured, flowing cadence of Father Thames’s words carried the rhythm of simpler times. Not the crowded, filthy bustle of London as it was now: the green banks of the Thames, a village standing upon them, a young man dreaming of love.

The river god’s eyes weighed Deven, seeing deep into his thoughts, and the admission he had not spoken aloud. Then the spirit continued on.

“But the lady refused her part.

“The dream that might have been was broken. The peace that would have been faded ere it took hold. Spurned, the man cursed her. If she held mortality in such disdain, then he condemned her to suffer its pangs, to feel age and sickness and debility, until she understood and atoned for her error.”

Lune whispered, “The Onyx Hall.”

At last Father Thames shifted his attention to her. “The time for treaties between the two peoples has passed. The beliefs of mortals are anathema now, and drive fae kind ever farther into the wilderness, where faith and iron do not yet reach. Only here, in this one place, do faeries live so closely with human kind.”

“But ’twas not enough, Old Father,” Deven said. “Was it? She created the Onyx Hall, and still was cursed. How did she escape it in the end?”

Water rippled around the hem of the spirit’s robe. “I know not,” he said simply. “That which occurs upon my waters, along my banks, from the dawn of time until now: all that lies within my ken. But that which is done beyond my sight is hidden to me.”

In Lune’s gaze, Deven read the thoughts that filled his own mind. They still did not have the answer they needed: what pact Suspiria had formed. But this tale mattered, if only because it helped them understand the being that had once stood where Invidiana did now.

“I will bear you safe to shore,” Father Thames said, and held out his broad hands.

Without thinking, Deven stepped forward to accept. Only when it was too late did he realize his feet had left the starling. But he did not fall: the surface of the water bore him like a slightly yielding carpet, against all the custom of nature.

Lune took Father Thames’s left hand, and then the river flowed beneath them. With gentle motion it carried them out from under the bridge, slantwise across the breadth of the water, until they came to the base of the Lyon Key stair, within sight of the Tower wall. When his feet were securely on the stone, Deven turned back.

Father Thames was gone.

Then he looked at the rippling surface, and understood. The river god was never gone.

“Thank you,” he murmured, and Lune echoed him, her own words no louder than his.

BRIDGE AND CASTLE BAYNARD WARD, LONDON: May 6, 1590

Lune realized, as if through a great fog, that she stood openly on the bank of the Thames, her elfin form undisguised, Michael Deven at her side.

Summoning a glamour took tremendous effort. She should not have let her guard down, out there on the starling; not only had Deven been listening — why had he followed her? — but allowing herself to relax her control had been a mistake. Weariness dragged at her like leaden chains, and she could not focus.

What face could she wear? Not Anne Montrose. Not Margaret Rolford. Her first attempt failed and slipped, without even being tested. She took a deep breath and tried again. The illusion she created was a poor one, unnaturally generic; it would seem strange, like a badly crafted doll, if anyone looked at her closely. But it was the best she could do.

She surfaced from her concentration to find Deven watching her with an odd expression.

“Have you somewhere safe to go?” he asked.

Lune forced herself to nod. “There’s a chamber in the Onyx Hall I have been permitted to claim as my own.”

He bit his lower lip, apparently unconscious of the gesture. “But will you be safe there?”

“As safe as I may be anywhere at court.” It sounded stiff even to her; she did not want to appear like she sought pity. “We should part. ’Tis not safe for you to be seen with me.”

They still stood a little below the surface of the wharf, not that it would protect them much. Deven gave her a frank appraisal. “And if you go there now, tired as you are, will I be any safer? Weariness can drive any man to error.” His mouth quirked wryly. “Or any woman. Or faerie.”

Lune did not want to hear of the risk. She had measured it herself, time and again, even before she fell out of favor. It was the way of the Onyx Court. One mistake, one wrong word… she was so very tired of that world.

“Come,” Deven said, and took her by the hand.

She followed him in a daze, too tired to ask questions. He led her through the streets, and it seemed like they walked forever before they arrived at a house. Lune knew she should protest — her absence might raise suspicion — but pathetic as it was, the thought of spending even one night outside the Onyx Hall was enough to make her weep with relief.

A single candle lit their way, kindled from one by the door; up the stairs they went, and then something made an appalling amount of noise as Deven dragged it from under the bed and out the chamber door. “Sleep here for tonight,” he said, before he left her. “I’ll keep near.”

That was not safe. But Lune was well past the point of arguing. She collapsed onto the bed, barely pausing to pull a blanket over herself, and slept.

When morning came, she found herself in a small, moderately appointed bedchamber. On the floor beside her was a large, empty box; the noise must have been Deven dragging a mattress free of the truckle bed.

Her glamour had faded while she slept. It had been too long since she ate from that loaf of bread. Lune closed her eyes and rebuilt it, far better this time, making herself into an auburn-haired young woman with work-roughened hands, then pinched off another bite from the lump she carried with her. She dared not leave it behind in the Onyx Hall.

In the neighboring chamber, the mattress lay on the floor; Deven she found downstairs. Pausing at the door, Lune looked around at the modest pewter plate on the sideboard, the cittern in one corner, with two of its strings broken. She had thought briefly last night that the place might belong to some former agent of Walsingham, and had been both right and wrong. “This is your house.”

He’d glanced up at her approach. “Yes.” After a pause, he added, “I know. I should not have brought you here. But I was tired, too, and did not know where else to go; it seemed unkind to put my father in danger. We shall not do it again.”

It was too late to undo. Lune came forward a few steps, smoothing the apron over her skirt. She looked like a maidservant for the house. “I’ll take my leave, then.”

“They know about me, do they not?” The room was dim, even though it was morning; Deven had kept the windows shuttered, and only a few lights burned. They accentuated the hollows in his face. He had not been sleeping well.

“Yes,” Lune said. Taking a deep breath, she added with sincerity, “I am sorry for it. I cannot play the part of a man, and Walsingham would not take a woman into his confidence. The only course open to me was to attach myself to someone in his employ.” That skirted too close to the wound between them. “They knew you were my contact in his service.”

He was dressed once again as a gentleman, though not completely; his servants were nowhere in evidence. The sleeves of his doublet lay across his knees, and the aglets of his points dangled loose from his shoulders. “Would I still be in danger, had it ended at that?”

“Yes.” He deserved honesty. “They would kill you, to make themselves safe.”

“Well.” Deven’s fingers brushed over the vines embroidered on one sleeve, then stilled. “My Queen has commanded me to break her pact with yours. Even if that is a separate thing from this other one we are chasing, we need each other’s aid. But I do not know how one might escape a curse.”

The door was behind Lune, a silent reminder that she should leave. Doing so would only slow their progress, though; the only true safety lay in completing their task. Hoping she was not making a terrible mistake, Lune sat.

“Nor I. A curse may only be ended on its own terms. But Suspiria tried that, and failed. I do not think anyone could absolve her of it. The man who laid it might have lifted it, but he is long dead. And Tiresias — Francis — believed it still bound her.”

“He had some vision, the Goodemeades said. Did he never speak of it to anyone else?”

Lune shook her head, more in bafflement than confident denial. “If ’twere part of the binding she laid on him — she has this jewel, that she can use to place commands on others, so they must obey or die. She might have bound him not to speak of that vision. But even if she did not… he died before he could tell me.”

“And he never mentioned it at other times.”

“How could I know?” Frustration welled up; Lune forced herself not to turn it on him. “You must understand. Dwell among fae for long enough, drink our wine, eat our food… it changes a man. And he had been there for years. He raved, he lived in dreams; nine-tenths of what he said was madness, and the other tenth too obscure to understand. He might have told a dozen people the content of his vision, and we would never know.”

“Did he never say anything else?” Deven leaned forward, elbows on knees, face earnest and alert. “Not of the vision specifically. Anything touching on Suspiria, or curses, or the Onyx Hall… he would not speak entirely at random. Even madmen follow a logic of their own.”

It might be true of ordinary madmen, but Tiresias? Under Deven’s patience gaze, Lune disciplined her mind. When else had he spoken to her of the past?

When he told her to find him.

“He remembered his name,” she murmured, recalling it. “Before I came to Elizabeth’s court. He bade me find Francis Merriman; not until later did I realize he had forgotten who he was.”

“Begin with that,” Deven said. They had not worked together like this, piecing together an image from fragments, in months. And this time she was on his side. “He wanted you to find him. When you did…”

“He died.” Deven had never known Francis; she could tell him what she could not tell the Goodemeades, who had loved the mad seer. “I forced him. He was afraid to speak, but I would not let him back away; I thought finding him would better my position in the Onyx Court.” Quite the opposite, and the memory left a bitter taste in her mouth. “I demanded he tell me what he knew. And so he died.”

She could not look away from his intent blue eyes. Speaking softly, Deven said, “Did you rack him? Put him to the question? Of course not. You kept him from fleeing at the last, perhaps, but unless there is something you have not told me, he chose to speak.”

She would not cry. Lune turned her head away, by sheer force of will, and studied the linen-fold paneling of the wall until she had her composure again.

Deven granted her that space, then spoke again. “Go back to when he bade you find him. What precisely did he say?”

What had he said? Lune tried to think back. She had been wondering how to regain Invidiana’s favor. Tiresias had been in her chamber. She had mortal bread….

“He spoke of Lyonesse,” she said. “The lost kingdom. Rather, he looked at my tapestry of Lyonesse, and spoke of errors made after it sank.” Or had he been speaking of other things? The Onyx Hall, perhaps? She could see him in her mind’s eye now, a slender, trembling ghost. “He did not want to dream. I know he thought of his visions as dreams… then he said something about time having stopped.”

This made both of them sit more sharply upright. “So it had, for Suspiria,” Deven said. Excitement hummed in his voice, held carefully in check.

But there had been something before that. If I should find this Francis Merriman, what then?

He had sounded so lucid, yet spoken so strangely. Lune echoed his words. “‘Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven….’”

Deven’s breath caught. “What?”

She had not expected such a reaction. “’Tis what he said, when I asked him what I should do. ‘Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven —’”

“—that time may cease, and midnight never come.”

“He did not use those words. But ’twas then he said time had stopped.” Deven’s expression baffled her. “What is it?”

He answered with half a laugh. “You never go to the theater, do you.”

“Not often,” she said, feeling obscurely defensive. “Why? What are those words?”

“They come from a play.” Deven rose and went to the cold fireplace, laying one hand on the mantel, chin tucked nearly to his chest. “The man who wrote them… he has served Burghley in the past, but he’s more a poet than a spy. Sir Francis’s cousin is a friend of his. I met him once, at dinner.” He turned back to face her. “Is the name Christopher Marlowe familiar to you?”

Lune’s brow furrowed. “I have heard it. But I do not know him.”

“Nor his work, ’twould seem. The lines are from his play Doctor Faustus.”

She shook her head; the title meant nothing to her.

Deven’s jaw tensed, and he said, “The story is of a man who makes a pact with the devil.”

Lune stared up at him, utterly still.

“Tell me,” Deven said. “Have your kind any dealings with Hell?”

She spoke through numb lips, as if someone else answered for her. “The Court of Thistle in Scotland tithes to them every seven years. A mortal, not one of their own. I do not know how they were bound into such obligation. But Invidiana — Suspiria — surely she… ”

“Would not have done so?” Deven’s voice was tight with something: anger, fear, perhaps both. “By what you said, your own people would have no way to restore her beauty without lifting her curse. And she is still cursed. Some other power must have aided her.”

Not a celestial power; an infernal one. What had she offered them in return? Any kindness she had once possessed, it seemed. And to fill that void, she craved power, dominion, control. She made of the Onyx Court a miniature Hell on earth; Tiresias had said often enough that it was so.

And he had told her what to do.

“Sun and Moon,” Lune breathed. “We must break her pact with Hell.”