In Ashes Lie

by Marie Brennan

  Leslic’s Ascendants were right. Fae had once been more, but those who dwelt in the cracks of the mortal world forgot it in their fascination with humans. For this one eternal moment, Lune was as she had been.

  Then, rising with newfound strength, she surfaced to find herself answered by the brief, bright heat of another. Not the Fire: a mortal flicker. A lively mind, an intellect driven by curiosity and compassion, the desire to gain knowledge and then turn it to useful ends. This is who he is. Sun to her Moon. Opposite, but not opposed. Alchemical complements, joined into a single, transcendent whole, burning with the fire of life instead of death.

  Thought vanished into ecstasy that went beyond mere flesh.

  They came to their senses once more to find the power transformed, obedient to their shaping wills. Still too strong, too much for safety; it would crush them if they held on. It had to go somewhere else.

  Together, they reached out into their second body. The Onyx Hall, frozen under the cold of the Cailleach Bheur. Most parts lay empty, but there—in the amphitheater, crouching together on the white sand, the withering remnants of their court.

  Gently, Lune whispered, and she and Jack breathed life into the fae.

  Heads rose from their exhausted droops. Eyes brightened. Shoulders straightened. Slowly, carefully, the Queen and the Prince filled their people with life-giving fire, armoring them against the Cailleach’s chill. A glow spread through the amphitheater, casting sharp-edged shadows from the stone seats. The sand baked as if warmed by the sun it had not seen for centuries. Still haggard, but with newfound strength, the fae of the Onyx Court rose to their feet, ready to fight for their home.

  For the Dragon’s power was all stolen. From the flames’ humble origins in Thomas Farynor’s bakery to the birth of the Dragon in the mighty conflagration of the wharves, the Fire was composed of stolen London, timber and plaster rendered into flame. Now that essence, safely transmuted, brought the faerie folk of the City alive—and ready to face their enemy above.

  The inferno that would scour the Onyx Hall to its farthest corners had vanished, but the Dragon was still there, draining power from the palace to feed its raging flames. The Hall was a fathomless well, from which it had drunk only the first drops. Already it was stronger.

  Lune had not been able to close the portal against it, for the Stone did not answer to faerie touch alone. But now Jack’s hand joined hers on the rough surface, and together they gathered the last of the fire, that they had kept for themselves.

  Not here, they said, and sealed the London Stone, leaving the Dragon to roar its frustration in the street above.

  Sensation returned to Lune’s flesh, and for the first time in who knew how long, it was all her own.

  The cool stillness in her heart was fading, that perfect sense of who she was. Not gone—but she had made her choice, ages past, to forgo what she had been, what she might still be if she left the mortal world behind, instead of dwelling in this place. She made that choice when she first came to London, and again when she became Queen; she made it every day she remained here, living an imitation of mortal life.

  It was not a choice Lune regretted. And the time had come to return.

  Her eyes blinked open, and she found herself staring at Jack’s ear.

  The Prince of the Stone startled and pulled back from the kiss. His free arm was still around her waist; the platform beneath the Stone was small enough that they could barely fit, otherwise. “I,” he said, and stopped as if he had no idea what he was going to say. “Er.”

  The memory of passion still warmed Lune’s body, the incandescent pleasure that had inundated them both. It was a strange thing, a catalyst to transmute the Dragon’s power from death to life, but now the purpose for which it had been created was done. Do I desire him still?

  No. What they had shared—the power they had tamed—did not constrain her heart. Lune no more loved the man before her now than she had yesterday. But she would carry the remembrance of that transforming fire for ages to come.

  As would he, she suspected. He was actually blushing. Jack disentangled his arm and stepped back, not meeting her eyes. Lune caught his sleeve with her own free hand and said, “You saved my life. You have nothing to apologize for.”

  Jack met her gaze sheepishly—a look that flashed to instant concern as she brought her other hand down.

  The skin of Lune’s palm and fingers was blistered and charred. Her hand had cramped into the position it held on the Stone, but she felt no pain; she felt nothing at all, as Jack took it in his own, cradling it with a physician’s delicacy. The flesh might have belonged to another.

  “Lune,” he whispered, but she cut him off.

  “Bind it if you must; it will make little difference. The scars will remain.” An ordinary burn might answer to treatment, but not one inflicted by the Dragon.

  He gave her a horrified look. Lune pulled her numb hand from his grasp and descended toward the door, where Irrith gaped at them both. The Cailleach had begun as a threat to the world below, and the Dragon to that above, but both now breached those bounds. What touched one world touched the other, and it would take mortals and fae to answer them both.

  “Come,” Lune said. “We have a City to defend.”

  At Leadenhall, they have their first victory.

  The day has been one of mounting losses. The statues of England’s sovereigns that lined the Royal Exchange have toppled to the ground; the pepper and spices stored below now cloy the smoke. The grocers and apothecaries along Bucklersbury have added their drugs to the choking air. Baynard’s Castle has caught, the City’s old fortress burning like a torch in the night sky, the western foot of a blazing arch stretching from Blackfriars to Threadneedle, and down again to Billingsgate.

  But at Leadenhall, the Fire is stopped. Someone with the appearance of an alderman throws coins in the street, promising them to any man who stays to fight. The western front is damaged, but the interior, holding the fabulous wealth of the East India Company, survives unscathed.

  The Dragon snarls, robbed of its prey.

  But now it has sampled the riches below. The power stolen from London’s shadow fuels its flames, and it craves more. The little openings it consumes are too strait and narrow to grant more than the most tantalizing taste, but it senses two others, both great and vulnerable. One lies to the west.

  It will ride the wind to that place, and make its conquest complete.

  PART THREE

  When the King Enjoys His Own Again

  1658-1660

  “I wonder indeed, how the major part of the Council

  of Officers can take themselves to be honest, who first

  Declared against

  A Single Person: Then routed the Parliament:

  Then set up a Mock-Parliament; Then pulled it

  down: Then made their General Protector for life;

  Then made him to beget a Protector: Then broke

  this Government: Then suffered the Parliament to

  sit again: Now have broke them again. What comes

  next? That which they will break again ere long.”

  —The Grand Concernments of England Ensured:

  To the Army, the Supream Authority of England

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The King is dead. There is no King.

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

  “What?”

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

  “I was not thinking of London.”

  A grin answered her. “Bollocks.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Is it true you love a mortal?”

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

  “Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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