With Fate Conspire

by Marie Brennan

  By the standards of the Goblin Market, it was comfort. He had blankets and a few cushions, and what odds and ends amused him but weren’t worth much in the Market. Everything of real value was beneath a loose stone in the floor, toward the back of this space, where the rest of the collapse had blocked the passage completely.

  He inspected it, out of nagging fear. A small engagement ring, taken from a dying spinster, holding her unwavering hope that her fiancé would return from his journey to India. A mermaid’s tear, like a lustrous blue-green pearl. A carte de visite photograph of a woman. To that he added five pieces of bread: the debt Cyma had told him to keep.

  Five pieces. It was enough to see him well clear of London, and Nadrett’s influence. Then he could make his way across the countryside, skirting the churches and railways, until he found some other court to take him in.

  But it would mean leaving the one thing he truly desired—the one thing no hidden cache could buy for him, be it ten times this large.

  A voice whispered through the air around him, dry as dust. “How badly do you want it back?”

  Dead Rick shot to his feet and flattened his shoulders against the wall. His hackles rose, and a growl rumbled instinctively in his throat. But there was no one to direct it at.

  “Snarl all you like,” the voice said, amused. “And when you feel you’ve defended your territory enough, then consider my question, and answer it.”

  Enough? How could he defend his territory at all? Dead Rick’s ears were alive to the slightest sound; his nose caught every scent out of the air. No one had crawled over and between and under the stones to his refuge, not even one of the little winged sprites that sometimes flew messages for other fae. No one was hiding anywhere in the small space. He was completely alone—and yet somehow this voice was there with him.

  Fae had many strange talents; separating voice from body was hardly the most impressive. But how had the speaker found this place?

  “Get out of my fucking ’ome,” he spat, hands curling into useless fists. “I ain’t answering no questions from no faceless bastard. You want to talk to me, you do it somewhere else.”

  Unruffled, the voice agreed, “I could do that. But you would still know your sanctuary had been violated—and you would not get what you want. So once again, I put it to you: How badly do you want it back?”

  Beneath the anger, the instinct to chase off the intruder, fear stirred. Dead Rick said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  His eyes darted about as he spoke, as if they would be any use. The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, and there were no scents to help him. But an accent, yes—the refined tone of a gentleman. And the condescending chuckle of one. “You’re too honest a hound for that, Dead Rick. But if you will not answer a question, then perhaps you will respond to an offer. Very well: I can give your memory back to you.”

  “Liar,” Dead Rick snarled, coming off the wall as if there were something he could fight.

  “Why assume so? Because Nadrett keeps it locked away? This is the Goblin Market; such things change hands all the time, by fair means or foul. Or perhaps you are suspicious of charity. I assure you, I want something in return. And so we come again to the original question, which is how much your memory is worth to you.”

  Had the speaker been in the room, he would have known the answer to that. Every muscle in Dead Rick’s body was rigid with longing. Sweep aside the accumulated dust and rubbish of his time in the Goblin Market, and underneath lay a blank slate—no, that was too pleasant a comparison. Those newer memories were the scab over a wound, concealing the gaping, bloody void beneath. An unhealing wound, robbing him of everything: his past, his self—even his name, until Cyma had given it back to him.

  How much would he pay, to regain what Nadrett had taken from him?

  Wariness helped him regain control of his voice. “You’ve already got some price in mind, or you wouldn’t ’ave made the offer.”

  “Very observant. Yes, I have my price, and what’s more, I think you will find it congenial. I want you to turn on your master.”

  Nadrett. The hand on the leash, the voice calling him dog and making the word hurt. It took a lot to make a hound turn on his master, but Nadrett had passed that bar years ago. But—“If I could kill ’im, I would’ve done it already,” Dead Rick said.

  “How fortunate for you, then, that death was not what I had in mind. In fact, at present I would prefer him to remain alive; his demise would not profit me. Not yet, at least. But once I have what I want…” The voice laughed. “Then I will slip the chain from around your neck, and watch you tear out his throat.”

  The mere thought called the taste of blood into his mouth. To hunt Nadrett through the night garden, until the bastard’s legs and wind gave out and he fell to the ground, and then to leap upon him with teeth bared …

  Or just to shoot him, or knife him in the back. Dead Rick honestly didn’t care how Nadrett died. Just so long as he got his memories back.

  But, as the speaker had said, this was the Goblin Market. And nobody here could be trusted. “You expect me to risk my neck for you—when I don’t even know who you are?”

  Whatever face was on the other end of that voice, Dead Rick could imagine it smiling. “Not at present, no. We will enter into this alliance one careful step at a time, each watching the other for signs of betrayal. For now, what I ask is no particular risk. Merely information, that I want you to find for me.”

  Dead Rick spat onto the stone, wondering if the stranger could hear it. “No. I ain’t doing nothing for a cove I can’t see. ’Ow do I even know you can do what you say?”

  A sigh answered him. “Very well. As proof of my goodwill, let me give you something: a fragment of your past.”

  The skriker stopped breathing, hackles rising again—but not in anger or fear.

  “The first task Nadrett demanded of you,” the voice said, “was to steal a mortal from the world above. A young man—little more than a boy, really. Irish, and poor. He had a friend, a girl of the same age; from what I hear, she attempted to kill you when she realized what you were doing.”

  A pause. Dead Rick worked spit back into his dry mouth and said, “From what you hear. So you got the story; so what?”

  “The story doesn’t end there. Or rather, it doesn’t begin there. The boy you stole, and the girl who was his friend—they were both friends of yours.”

  Her screams were one of the first things he remembered, echoing in the empty void of his memory. Only half-coherent—only half-English—he’d never understood what she was saying, but the intent of the words was easy to make out. As was the betrayal on her face.

  The voice said, “Nadrett was testing his control over you, making certain you remembered nothing. You would never have harmed either of them if you knew. And it amused him to make you turn on those who trusted you.”

  The fury rising inside Dead Rick was a strange thing, with a hollow void at its core. He couldn’t be properly angry for the friends he’d betrayed; he didn’t remember who they were. No, it’s worse than that, he thought, with grim despair. I don’t remember what friends are. Who could he give that name to? Cyma? But the instinct was there, the impulse to loyalty, whatever beating it had taken in the last seven years, and it left him shaking with rage that had nowhere to go. Dead Rick almost howled, just to let something out.

  At the moment he reached that breaking point, the stranger spoke again, as if he had measured Dead Rick’s endurance to the last inch. “Nadrett has isolated you from everyone who knew you before, forbidding you to leave the Goblin Market without his orders, cowing those who might be able to say more. I am not bound by his restrictions. For every piece of information you bring to me, every task you undertake on my behalf, I will tell you a piece of your own past.”

  The unvoiced howl had lodged like a knot in his throat, painful to swallow down. Thickly, Dead Rick said, “You could make things up.”

  “I could. But I won’
t; in fact, I may give you ways to verify what I say. But that is beside the point; in the end, the point is to do harm to Nadrett. Will you assist me?”

  The thick nails on Dead Rick’s feet scraped against the stone, his toes curling down as if he were about to leap. But which way?

  It’s stupid. It’s fucking stupid. Agreeing to work with somebody you can’t even see—you know nobody in this place can be trusted—

  But yearning, and the desire for revenge, were stronger than common sense. And the stranger had called him by name.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Excellent.” Pleasure radiated from the word, but quickly gave way to cool instruction. “Tell me: What do you know about passages to Faerie?”

  Dead Rick snorted. “Ain’t you the one who came in ’ere pointing out I don’t ’ave no memories?”

  “You’ve had seven years to gain more. Do you know nothing?”

  The skriker slid down the wall until he was tucked into a comfortable crouch, scratching his torn ear. “Just the usual bosh. Everybody says ’e knows something, and pretty much everybody’s lying.”

  “Because most of the passages we knew are gone. The railways are not only a threat to the Onyx Hall; they’ve wrought a great deal of destruction in the countryside. You’ve seen the refugees here, of course. Their homes are the least of what’s been lost. These lines of iron mortals have laid across the land act like dikes and canals, shaping how the water flows. Making the usual roads impassable.”

  “You want me to find you some way to get to Faerie?” The first step was easy: leave England. Go someplace that hadn’t been so thoroughly carved up by iron, not yet. And then hope you could find a passage somewhere in the American frontier, or convince the rakshasas or whoever in India to let you through, and take your chances with whatever their part of Faerie looked like.

  “No,” the voice said. “I want you to find out what way Nadrett has.”

  The skriker’s heart thumped hard against his ribs. “The ’ell with you. ’E don’t ’ave nothing of the sort. Don’t you think we’d know, if ’e did?”

  “It depends. The longer Nadrett waits, the greater the desperation; the more fae will pay for the escape he offers. But I suspect he does not have it yet. A new passage to Faerie cannot be a simple thing, or cleverer minds than his would have worked it out by now; they have certainly tried. No, I believe Nadrett is working toward this end, and is close to succeeding.”

  No need to ask why the stranger wanted the information; it would be more valuable than bread, more powerful than the empty throne of the Onyx Court. But— “And ’ow exactly am I supposed to find this out for you?”

  “In stages. Have you ever heard of a fellow named Rewdan?” Dead Rick shook his head, then realized the voice must not have any way of seeing him, and repeated the denial out loud. “I want you to find him for me. Rumor has it that he went to Faerie—from some foreign land—and returned, on Nadrett’s orders. I’d like to know why.”

  Dead Rick licked his lips. He’d be better off keeping his mouth shut, but he had to ask. “Why send me? If you knows the Market, you knows there’s a bloke named Valentin Aspell. ’E buys and sells this kind of information every day.”

  “Which means he might very well turn around and sell the news of my asking to someone else. You, on the other hand, are desperate enough to help me, and stand to gain very little by betraying me.”

  That was true enough. Still— “Nadrett might find out, though. I ain’t that subtle.”

  “Then try harder.”

  The annoyed reply was a little victory, and Dead Rick wondered if the speaker noticed it; for the first time, he’d prodded the stranger into an answer that hadn’t been rehearsed. Those three words told me more about ’is real nature than everything ’e said before them. Whoever this cove was, he was accustomed to giving orders, and had little patience for fools. “I’ll do what I can,” Dead Rick promised. “When I ’as something, how will I tell you?”

  What followed after was almost as telling as the three words; the stranger regained his composure with speed. “Nadrett permits you the night garden; it won’t attract suspicion if you go there. Bury a bone near the old pavilion, and I will speak to you again back here soon after.”

  “No,” Dead Rick said instantly. In part because the choice of a signal felt like mockery, but mostly because of how the conversation began. “I told you to get out, and I meant it.”

  The impatience was back, and stronger. “Will you argue with everything I say? There is nowhere else in the Goblin Market that might be considered remotely safe; anyone in this warren would cheerfully sell news of your dealings for a scrap of mortal bread. If you leave the Market too regularly, it will draw Nadrett’s attention, and that would be equally detrimental to my plans. If you insist on defending your territory, then I will promise not to return until your signal—but I will not undertake pointless risks just because of your canine instincts.”

  Dead Rick gritted his teeth. The bastard had a point. However little the skriker liked it. “Not until my signal.”

  Venemously, the stranger said, “Just don’t take too long.”

  Then silence. Dead Rick waited, utterly still, every sense alive; but there was nothing.

  He let out his breath slowly, and realized his heart was beating at twice its normal pace. “Bloody shit-sack,” he muttered, and shifted to dog form before circling the whole space, sniffing every last corner. Nothing but cold stone and his own scent, so finally he sank into a wary posture on his pile of blankets, from which he could watch the entrance.

  He couldn’t trust a bit of it. But Dead Rick was just desperate enough to agree anyway. And whoever this stranger was, he knew it.

  Well, no point wasting time. Turning himself into a man once more, Dead Rick began the hunt for Rewdan.

  Cromwell Road, South Kensington: March 24, 1884

  The mere sight of No. 35 Cromwell Road was almost enough to make Eliza give up.

  She felt uncomfortable simply walking around South Kensington. This was the area where the Great Exhibitions of ’51 and ’62 had been held, before Eliza was born; afterward, some rich gents had decided to build grand museums in the area, and the people who lived around them were grand enough to match.

  But even by the standards of the area, the houses along that stretch of Cromwell Road were intimidating. Their fronts stretched five windows wide—twice as much as an ordinary house—and rose a full four stories, plus attics, all of it brilliantly white, even in London’s dirty fogs. The columned entrances looked like a row of maws, all waiting to devour her.

  If she’d had to go in one of those doors, her nerve might have broken entirely. But those were never for servants. Instead she went to the western end of the row, where No. 35 stood in detached glory, and found the staircase leading down to the area. Before she could question the wisdom of her plan, Eliza hurried down the steps and rapped on the basement door.

  It opened almost immediately, revealing a skinny girl of perhaps twelve. Her hands, red with hot water and harsh soap, marked her as the scullery maid. “If you please,” Eliza said, “I’m here to apply for a job.”

  The girl waved her in silently. Eliza stepped through into a narrow entryway, then followed the girl through a dimly lit basement larger than some people’s entire houses. All around her, Eliza could hear people working. How many staff must a house like this employ?

  Entering a room dominated by a heavy trestle table, the girl curtsied and spoke for the first time. “Mrs. Fowler, there’s someone here to speak to you.”

  A woman sat at one end of the table, counting through a stack of fine linen napkins. Like the table, she was heavily built, with a face like soft dough and eyes like bits of granite. Hoping her nervousness did not show, Eliza echoed the scullery maid’s curtsy and said, “Good afternoon, ma’am. My name is Elizabeth White, and I heard you had a position open for a housemaid.”

  Getting that information hadn’t been difficult,
not once she found where the Kittering family lived. Servants gossiped here as much as they did in Whitechapel; more, even, because there were so many of them. Eliza had thought it a stroke of unimaginable luck—at first. She soon discovered that open positions were a common thing in the Kittering household.

  Mrs. Fowler, the Kitterings’ housekeeper, said nothing at first, but kept counting napkins. Only when she had finished did she stand and say, “Follow me, Miss White.”

  The housekeeper led her elsewhere in the basement, to the room that apparently served her as bedroom and office both. It had its own little coal grate, and gas lamps Mrs. Fowler cranked up to a brighter state—luxury that made Eliza’s eyes pop. The room itself was comfortably furnished, with a modern brass bed stand and pictures on the walls. The chair she was gestured into, however, was hard and straight backed: no comfort there.

  Mrs. Fowler held out one hand, and after a blank moment Eliza realized what the woman wanted. Trying to appear confident, she gave the housekeeper a paper from her pocket.

  She carefully did not hold her breath as the woman read it over with a frown. Getting that paper, and the tidy dress she wore, had taken everything she had: every spare penny, and every favor she could call due from friends back in Whitechapel. Applying for a maid’s position in Mrs. DiGiuseppe’s household had been a simple enough matter; nobody who relied on a single maid-of-all-work could afford to be deeply fussy about the quality of servant she attracted.

  But that was the East End of London, well supplied with Italians and lascars and Jews, much less so with respectability. This was the West End, and it might as well have been another city entirely.

  A city of privilege, rank, and above all, wealth.

  From what she had learned, gossiping with other servants, the previous Mr. Kittering had made a small fortune in a railway speculation, and his son had, through clever investments, transformed it into a very large one. He then married the daughter of a man who imported exotic goods from Japan, and that had made their wealth secure. They were exactly the sort of upstarts that attracted gossip—both of the envious sort, from those who craved money, and of the disdainful sort, from those who insisted that no amount of it could replace good breeding.