With Fate Conspire (43 page)

Abd ar-Rashid said, “There have been inquiries of late—”

Cyma, and probably Aspell, too. “Satyr’s bile,” Dead Rick said. The genie nodded. “I’ve been trying to find out what ’e’s up to for a while now. You ’elp me, I tells you what I know.”

Irrith let out her breath in a frustrated sigh. “Dead Rick,
stop bargaining
. We’re already going to help you.”

Her protestation made him twitch. He couldn’t stop the words bursting out: “Why should you?”

The Goodemeades made identical noises of affront, but Irrith just grinned. “Why? Because I know something you don’t: who you used to be. And I’ll bet you every piece of bread I’ve got that as soon as you get your memories back, you’ll help us in return. Not as trade, but because you
want
to. Because that’s the kind of fellow you are. Or were, and will be again.”

He couldn’t help looking around to see what the others thought of her declaration. The Goodemeades were nodding, but the one that hit him like a blow to the gut was the mortal girl. She was biting her lip as if fighting something inside. As if she didn’t want to agree with Irrith, but a part of her did anyway.

If he wanted to be any use, he couldn’t wait until his memories were restored. He might have wasted too much time already.

He opened his mouth, and felt the oath he’d sworn to Aspell binding his tongue tight. Dead Rick growled in frustration, then stopped when he realized how carelessly that oath had been worded. “I can’t tell you where to go,” he said, enunciating clearly, so they would understand what he meant. “But if some of you was to follow me … you might see something interesting.” If they were fast enough, they might even get Nadrett himself.

Abd ar-Rashid clapped his hands once, a sharp sound, calling everyone to attention. “Go, and we will follow.”

*   *   *

They left in a rush, shuffling the box somewhere safe, gathering a small war party to accompany the skriker. When they were gone, Eliza fumbled a chair out blindly and sank into it, knees limp as rags.

Dead Rick. There and gone. She’d spent seven years dreaming of the revenge she’d have when she got her hands on him, and now she’d let him go.

“Would you like a cup of tea, dear?”

Eliza abandoned her chair and skittered backward when she realized the question came from Gertrude Goodemeade. Who was now a good two feet shorter than she’d been before, and so was Rosamund. “Ye’re faeries, ye are!”

They had the grace to look apologetic. “With the story you told,” Rosamund said, “we didn’t think you’d take kindly to finding out halfway through that we were brownies.”

Outraged, she turned to Mrs. Chase. “And you—”

“I’m as human as you are,” the old woman said serenely. “And a friend to these sisters since I was a child. My house is built atop theirs, you see.”

None of it was what she’d expected. Eliza couldn’t muster the will to fight when Gertrude took her by the arm and led her back to the chair. “Just rest awhile, my dear; you’ve had a great many shocks today.”

They were the only ones left in the library—the four of them and Owen, who had crept into a corner once more. “I was going to kill him,” Eliza said numbly, staring at the carpeted floor. “Seven years, I planned it. And now—”

Gertrude reached out as if to clasp her hands, but stopped before Eliza could pull back. “I can imagine,” she murmured. “To keep searching for your boy, after all that time—you must have been very angry, and very determined, too. But if you want a target…”

“Then you should look to Nadrett,” her sister finished, in a colder tone than Eliza had yet heard from either of them.

The name had gone by, briefly, in Dead Rick’s rage. Eliza hadn’t been able to follow any of it, dead princes and photography and all the rest. But she was willing to consider including someone else in her anger. “Who is he?”

For all the delicacy with which the Goodemeades phrased their answer, Eliza could read between the lines. Whitechapel had men like that, leaders of gangs who profited off the suffering of others. And they had ways of keeping their followers in line—if nothing so exotic as this.

Stolen memories. It was as if she’d been fumbling around a darkened room, and then someone lit a lamp, showing her in full what she’d only felt the outlines of before now. The blank unfamiliarity in Dead Rick’s eyes, when they took Owen away—if the Goodemeades were right, if they were telling the truth, then nothing that day had been his choice.

Mrs. Chase had fetched tea, and now was coaxing Owen from his corner. Eliza could barely look at him; the sight bid fair to break her heart. More things she didn’t understand. “How could a camera do that to a person?”

Rosamund gestured around. “This place we’re in is the library of the Galenic Academy. It’s a school of sorts—”

“More like the Royal Society,” Gertrude broke in, naming Britain’s foremost scientific institution.

Her sister gave her a mild glare for the interruption, then went on. “We have our own sorts of scholars and scientists, just as you do. One of the things they’ve been working on is photography. Light doesn’t behave the same down here, you see, and neither do some other things, so the cameras used in your world don’t work. Nadrett, it seems, has managed to bend it to another use.”

“But why do ye need cameras in the first place?”

“Why do
you
need them?” Rosamund asked. “Capturing an image like that, all at once, exactly as it looks in life, and then being able to share it with others … we can do a great many things with glamours and illusions, and our memories don’t fade the same way yours do, but why shouldn’t we want photographs as well?”

“Because ye’re
faeries,
” Eliza said stupidly. Her anger couldn’t stay hot, not forever; it was fading down to a sullen glow once more, and leaving her exhausted in its wake. Her thoughts kept chasing around in a little circle, everything coming back to the same inescapable point. Dozens of faeries, living beneath London. “And what the devil do ye need with bombs?”

“Bombs?” They both looked entirely innocent, but Eliza no longer trusted it. Mrs. Chase looked confused; that part, she
did
trust.

“The Fenians. Dynamiting the railway, and other things in London. Don’t pretend ye had nothing to do with it; I
saw
Dead Rick, and other faeries, too. Why do ye care so much about Ireland?” A sudden, wild thought struck her. “Is that why ye were trying to recruit me, at the meeting? To help them?”

“Gracious, no!” They seemed utterly dumbfounded that she might suggest it. Rosamund said, “We would never get involved with a thing like that. Some fae want Ireland free, and some want to stop the railway, and a few—like Nadrett—just want to profit, but
we
are trying to prepare for the future.”

In something of a confused muddle, Gertrude correcting Rosamund, Rosamund correcting Gertrude, and Mrs. Chase guiding Eliza past their arguments when she could, they told her why the Underground was a threat to this place, the Onyx Hall. It echoed the stories Dead Rick had told, years ago, about a faerie Queen ruling over a dying realm; but he had never told her that realm was
here
. “We’ve tried all manner of things to stop it,” Gertrude said. “When the overland railways came in, we encouraged the City men who wanted to keep them out; that’s why they all stopped at Paddington, King’s Cross, places a bit farther out. We were afraid so much iron, moving in and out like that, would be a problem even if it was aboveground. Then we tried to prevent plans for an underground railway, and when that failed, we tried to stop the Inner Circle.”

Mrs. Chase added, “Do you recall all those delays on finishing it? Sir Edward Watkin of the Metropolitan Railway and Mr. Forbes of the Metropolitan District Railway, all the arguments between them—that was also faerie interference. Though admittedly, those two loathed each other from the start.”

Eliza had no idea what the woman was talking about; the affairs of railway directors were hardly the kind of thing she concerned herself with. All she knew was what she’d seen, when they crossed Cannon Street on their way to Cloak Lane. They didn’t have much time left at all. “So what are
ye
about, then? If not trying to save this place?”

“We’d do that if we could,” Gertrude said. “But our thought is, maybe your people need to
know
faeries are here. That’s what we’ve been doing with the London Fairy Society.”

“Originally it started as a way to get more bread,” Rosamund added. “You know about bread? There isn’t enough anymore, with so few people believing in faeries. So we set out to make new friends, like Lady Wilde. But then we began to think—”

“
Have
thought, for a long time,” Gertrude interjected.

“—that perhaps we’d be better off coming out of hiding.”

Eliza blinked. Gertrude’s words a moment ago had taken a little while to seep through to her understanding, and she still wasn’t sure she had them right. “Ye … ye’ll
announce
yerselves?” She just barely held back the
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
that wanted to follow. “And ye think that will make anything
better
? For the love of—just ask the Irish how it is, living among people who don’t want ye here!”

Quietly, Rosamund said, “And how is it, living among people who don’t even
know
you’re here? We’re already being killed and driven from our homes. At least if we announce ourselves,
some
people can be convinced to help.”

And some would be convinced to try harder to eradicate them. Still, Eliza couldn’t help but feel a touch of sympathy. There had been folk in Ireland who felt the same way, during the Hunger; they refused to leave their homes, too, no matter how bad times became. Many of them had died of it. But she understood the impulse.

Her thoughts were no longer running in a tight circle; they were rambling, drifting from one thing to another, exhaustion slowing their pace. Owen had drawn near when she wasn’t looking, crouching on the floor with his hands wrapped around his knees. Did he remember something of her? Or was it just that she was human, in this faerie place? She had to find a way to help him.

Hesitantly, she slipped from her chair and reached out one hand. Owen did not look up from the floor, but he let her brush the hair gently from his eyes. It had grown shaggy; that much change, at least, seemed capable of happening down here. But his face—so
young
 …

She’d seen her own face enough times in the Kitterings’ mirrors. Hardened by work and grief, it belonged to a woman older than twenty-one. What would Owen think, when he had his wits back? What would they be to each other now, after everything that had passed while they were apart?

Eliza had no answers. But she didn’t need them, not yet. First, help Owen; everything else could follow after.

Aldersgate, Onyx Hall: August 6, 1884

Fast as the Academy fae were, Nadrett was faster.

By the time Dead Rick led them to the Aldersgate fragment, the chambers had been emptied out. Not completely; the corpses of Chrennois and the naga still lay sprawled across the floor. The shelving and tables remained, too. But the cameras, the bottles of chemicals, and all the photographic plates: those were gone.

Niklas von das Ticken cursed in German and kicked a shard of bottle across the room. It nearly hit a faerie kneeling beside the naga’s body. It was the same monkeylike fellow Dead Rick had seen when he came to the Academy before; Irrith had introduced him as Kutuhal. His expression as he looked down at his dead kinsman was bleak.
If ’e asks, I’m telling ’im Aspell did it.

His former ally was long gone, too, though he’d left behind a bloodstain in the street above. Stains were about all they had to study: Yvoir, the Academy’s expert on photography, had come down once they knew it was safe, and was investigating the shattered fragments of the bottles Dead Rick had thrown. The sour smell of satyr’s bile mixed with other unpleasant odors, under the stench of blood. The French faerie kept murmuring to himself, too quietly for even Dead Rick’s ears to make out, and pointing a finger back and forth as if putting pieces together in his mind. The skriker hoped he was getting something useful out of this that he could apply to undoing whatever Chrennois’s process was.

“Can you follow them?” Irrith asked. She kept bouncing on the balls of her feet, as if chafing to do something. Probably to hunt Aspell, given her long-standing hatred—though she presumably wouldn’t say no to Nadrett, should he present himself.

Dead Rick shrugged. “Maybe—but they both know I’ve got a sharp nose. They’ll ’ave done something to cover their tracks. Don’t need no scent to tell me where Nadrett’s probably gone, though; ’e’s back in the Market by now.” Unless he had another bit of palace to hide in, but the skriker doubted it.

Irrith grimaced. Going after Nadrett there would mean war; it was why Hodge never did more than send his knights on occasional raids. Nadrett, like the other bosses, kept his fellows well armed. And even if the Prince’s men could beat them in a straight up and down fight, nothing in the Goblin Market ever went straight; within ten seconds it would be every faerie for himself, with bloodshed the Prince was too soft-hearted to risk. He certainly wouldn’t do it for something like this.

Aspell was a more interesting question. Would he go back to the Market, as well? There might be war there already, now that Nadrett had uncovered his treachery. If Dead Rick were Aspell, he wouldn’t risk it; he’d go to ground somewhere else, away from underlings that might take the chance to seize advantage for themselves.

He needed to find Aspell; he needed that photograph to help him bargain with Hodge. Irrith might help him out of the goodness of her heart, but he couldn’t count on any such sympathy from the Prince. Especially not if the Prince recognized Dead Rick as the dog who had attacked him in Blackfriars a few months ago.

Yvoir sighed and stood up from the pitted floor stone he’d been examining. “There is not much here I did not already know. I will look at the plates you brought; perhaps they will tell more.”