In Ashes Lie

by Marie Brennan

  The tip of the London Sword threatened to waver as the knight pulled his rapier free and let Leslic’s corpse drop. Lune had no more notion of how to fence than she did of how to conduct a Catholic Mass: she had seen it done, but had no capacity for it herself. Perhaps it’s time I learned.

  No goodwill warmed Cerenel’s eyes when he looked up. The oath bound him, but it could not command his heart. I should not have forced him, Lune thought. I have made of him an enemy, too—though one who must fight on my behalf.

  She wanted to apologize for the necessity that had trapped him in Scotland these long years. She wanted to release him from his oath. But the latter would free him to turn on her; she could not afford such mercy. And the former, on its own, would be a mockery.

  “You should go, madam,” he said with cold formality. “Vidar’s forces are moving to control the entrances; soon you will not be able to leave.”

  Only those he knows of. Lune prayed she was right, that three remained a secret known only to a few. Regardless, she should hurry.

  Stepping past Cerenel, she put her fingers to Hipley’s neck, but knew the answer before she did. “One more favor I will ask of you,” she said to the oathbound knight. She didn’t want to command him, but he was the only tool available to her now. “See to it that this man receives proper burial. Do not let Vidar’s people have him.”

  “As you command, your Grace.” He bit the words off.

  She would not force his loyalty any further. Lune waited until he was gone with Hipley’s body, then slipped back into the secret passage, the London Sword at her side.

  THE ANGEL INN, ISLINGTON : January 31, 1649

  The group that gathered in front of the hearth was a small one, and dismal. Lady Ware waited upstairs, unaware that her husband sat in a faerie house below. The necessary tales had been told; now Lune sat, exhausted and blank, realizing the enormity of the disaster.

  Charles dead. Herself dethroned. The two should not be connected; that bond was severed back in Elizabeth’s day. But the execution of the King cut far deeper than any faerie pact, into the heart of England itself. She could only guess at the consequences.

  Guess, and try to find a way forward. But her mind refused to stir.

  “There will be others,” Rosamund predicted, after a painfully long silence. “Loyal to you, that is, not—” She paused, blinking away tears for Ben Hipley, then went on. “Lady Amadea, for one. They’ll know to come here, as you did.”

  “All the worse,” Antony said. His voice was harsh from weariness and suppressed grief. “Everyone knows this is a place of safety. It will not be long before Vidar thinks to look here.”

  “We can turn him away—”

  Lune shook her head, finding the energy to speak once more. “No, Rosamund. Your pretense of innocence will not be enough, not this time. Even if Vidar believes you outside of court politics, he knows my people will come to you. The only safety is for him to find no one here.”

  Silence again. Even the crackling of the fire seemed subdued. Gertrude twisted her hands in her apron and said, “We can hide you—but that isn’t what you mean, is it?”

  Lune stared into the flames. The London Sword lay across her knees, a heavy reminder. It must not fall into Vidar’s hands.

  She’d been thinking in immediate terms since she fled Westminster. Evade pursuit; escape Vidar’s trap; protect the London Sword. But the immediate moment was past, and she could no longer avoid the truth.

  “Whatever courtiers escape,” she said, “whoever is still loyal—they will not be enough. As we are...we cannot retake the Onyx Hall.”

  Retake. Cold acknowledgment: she had lost the palace.

  Gertrude’s breath caught. In her peripheral vision, Lune saw Rosamund touch her sister’s hand. There was nothing they could say. In one disastrous day, she had lost a war on two fronts; she had failed in every way as a Queen. She could protect no one, not Charles, not her subjects—not even her Prince.

  Against her will, she lifted her gaze to meet Antony’s.

  The strain showed on him, not just of this night, but of the years that brought them to it. What mortal wars and Army arrest could not manage, the faerie invasion had accomplished in a single night: it had driven Antony from his home. And it had very nearly killed him.

  Once, Lune would have staked her life on his loyalty. But now...

  If he leaves, I will not stop him.

  He took a deep breath, and she saw him force weariness aside, taking up the duty that lay before him. “Then we must find you allies.”

  MONDAY SEPTEMBER 3, 1666

  The Battle for the Stone

  “All things of beauty, shatter’ d lost and gone,

  Little of London whole but London-Stone.”

  —John Crouch

  Londinenses lacrymae:

  London’s Second Tears mingled

  with her Ashes

  All through the night, London’s riverside has lain under the glow of a false dawn. Drifting smoke obscures the stars, and hides for a time the sun’s true approach to the horizon. But the day at last blooms gloriously bright, the firmament arching perfect blue over the Hell below.

  At Queenhithe, men scurry like ants, frantically clearing the market square that sits at the harbor’s northern edge. Their defense at Three Cranes failed in the night, but now they have a second hope. Here, they need not tear down houses to make space; here, they may be able to check the Fire’s progress.

  The Dragon watches their efforts and laughs.

  It has children now, a hundred thousand sons and daughters, salamanders that race up the walls as they burn. They crawl under the roof tiles of houses, seeking out the tinder-dry timbers beneath, and latch onto the pitched gables. They burrow into cellars, creating nurseries of coal in which their siblings are born. The men of London fight not one beast, but many, all driven by the same corporate purpose. They are legion.

  Now the Fire gathers its children for the assault.

  Blazing flakes dance on the unceasing wind. Most die, but not all. And twenty houses distant, down the length of Thames Street as yet unburned, another building sends up a finger of smoke.

  The men weep in despair as the Queenhithe gap is bridged, and the Dragon roars in triumph.

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

  Wrapped in her cloak, with red flannel petticoats bulking out her skirt like a London goodwife’s in winter, Lune gathered her lieutenants for their commands.

  “In one sense only,” she said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering, “this Fire may prove a blessing. Even Nicneven’s people cannot walk through the inferno.” Sun and Moon, I hope they cannot. “If it continues to spread—as we must assume it will—then the entrances it overtakes will not need to be guarded.”

  Sir Peregrin’s elegant features had lost much of their handsome cast to haggard wear, but the knight had strength at his core; he bore up under the Cailleach’s assault better than Lune expected. He was still alert enough to foresee a problem. “When it reaches those points—what then? Will it break through to us below?”

  That very fear had paralyzed Lune in the night, before the Fire itself delivered the answer. “Cloak Lane is gone already,” she said. Along with the Cutlers’ Hall, the Post Office, and everything else in its vicinity. The downfall of churches was another disguised blessing for the fae, but not one she rejoiced over. “You see, Sir Peregrin, that we are still here.”

  Her advisers breathed more easily. Lune herself was not so easy; would the entrance still function when the buildings that had comprised it were replaced? The men above were slowing the Dragon’s progress, but she feared the Onyx Hall would lose more doors before the Fire was quenched.

  “We must keep every entrance under watch,” she reiterated, trying not to dwell on the last time she gave such an order. If she could not trust her guard now, then she truly was doomed. “From below. My previous orders stand.” There was little bread to steal regardless, but desperation
flooded the palace. If she did not find some means of protecting her people, they would soon flee, church bells, iron, and Fire be damned.

  The captain bowed and left at a run. “Amadea,” Lune said, and her chamberlain jerked upright. Where Peregrin withstood the cold and terror, the gentle lady did not. She had passed beyond merely haggard, now resembling an ambulant corpse. “Gather everyone together. I leave it to you as to where; some place large enough to hold everyone. But not the greater presence chamber.” They would offer some resistance if Nicneven’s people did penetrate the Hall, but Lune refused to go that far. If it comes to such a pass, I will give the Gyre-Carling what she desires, no matter the consequences for myself, or even the Onyx Hall. I will not throw all my subjects’ lives away.

  “To what end, madam?” Amadea asked, an indistinct mumble from lips that quivered with fear. Lune blinked in surprise. She had thought it obvious—but not, clearly, to the Lady Chamberlain. Not in her state.

  “For warmth,” Lune said gently. “It should help some. We do ourselves no favors, scattering about the palace as we do.” Letting them dwell on thoughts of dying, alone.

  A silent tear rolled down the lady’s cheek. “It will not save us.”

  No, it will not. But Lune could hardly admit the truth: that it was a tactical delay, something to keep her people’s minds off death while she searched in desperation for a way to stop the Cailleach and the Dragon both.

  Gentleness was not what Amadea needed. Lune glared until she had the Lady Chamberlain’s attention; then she bit off her command, not blinking. “We did not ask for your opinion, and the giving of it wastes our time—which should be better employed in carrying out our next plans. Gather them. We shall see to the defeat of our enemy.”

  It got the lady on her feet and out the door, which was enough; that Amadea had forgotten to curtsy was an insolence Lune believed unintended. Amadea’s shoes scraped along the floor in leaving, as if she could barely muster the will to lift them. I would rather she obey then spend her strength in courtesies.

  She disposed of her remaining advisers, giving more commands of little use. They were distractions, nothing more—not just for them, but for herself.

  Lune did not want to face the possibility of flight.

  The Onyx Hall was her blood and bone, the second skin her spirit wore. She’d fled it once, and the bitter memory would gall her until the end of her days.

  I will not run a second time.

  Lune extended her senses into the palace, not flinching from the crippling cold. Frost rimed the stones, and the arching ribs of the ceilings grew teeth of ice. The floor ached under her feet. There must be some way to protect the palace, to close it off such that even the Cailleach’s breath could not penetrate, and they could wait out Nicneven’s patience. This was a seige—one where the resource to be hoarded was not food or clean water, but warmth.

  There was warmth in plenty above. Too much. The inescapable heat of the Fire, grinding its way down Cannon Street—

  A spike of transcendent agony pierced her soul.

  When her vision cleared, she was running, staggering into the icy walls like a drunkard, feet tangling in her layered petticoats. She fell and bruised her hands, but was up again before the pain registered, weeping, gasping, desperate to reach her target in time.

  I am a fool.

  Down the length of the great presence chamber, forcing her throne aside with a strength she did not know she had, hurling herself into the alcove behind it, and then her hand struck the rough surface of the London Stone.

  All the fury of the Fire roared into her body. She smelled scorching flesh, but the seared skin of her palm was a tiny cry against the scream of the Onyx Hall.

  The Dragon could burn the entrances and it wouldn’t matter, because they were secondary things, insignificant to the Hall itself. But this, the London Stone, standing amidst flames in Cannon Street above—this was the axis, the palace’s heart, the key to all that lay below.

  Stone could not burn. But it could crack and crumble, and it could convey heat from one world into the other. That was its purpose: as above, so below.

  Locking her teeth tight against her scream, Lune held on.

  ALDERSGATE, LONDON: eleven o’clock in the morning

  Half-blind with exhaustion and heat, Jack lurched around a cart that had stopped in the middle of St. Martin’s Lane to be loaded with a frightened tradesman’s worldly possessions. Damned fool. The Fire is not yet here. But perhaps the man was simply more prudent than most. The snarl of London’s streets had stopped practically all movement dead; it might take the cart half the day to move the short distance to Aldersgate, the rest of the day to pass through. By then, who knew where the Fire would be?

  Moving into the middle of the street, he tripped over an obstruction, keeping his feet only because there was no space to fall. Jack swore and looked down to discover that someone had torn up the kennel at the center of the lane, exposing the elm wood of the water pipe beneath. Exposing—and cutting into.

  “God’s rot! Lack-brained whoreson cullies—the Fire is nowhere near you! ” Jack bellowed, to no one in particular. Whatever panicked knave had cut open the pipe, no doubt to douse his own shop in protection, the ass had probably long since fled. No wonder there was so little water coming to the conduits farther down in the City. Jack had no doubt this same crime had been repeated elsewhere. Between that and the drought that had withered the City’s wells, they had scarcely any water at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  If only we did not have the wind...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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