With Fate Conspire (50 page)

Too many thoughts flooded through his mind at once, a swirling, incoherent mass of memory that even the clarity granted by faerie absinthe couldn’t settle immediately. Faces stared at him—familiar faces;
Blood and Bone, Irrith, I ’elped ’er rob the British Museum—
everything piled atop everything else, arranged more by connection than time, so that he looked at the Prince and remembered every man who had preceded him, Joseph Winslow, Geoffrey Franklin, Michael Deven, who was buried in the ruins of the night garden. Galen St. Clair, who haunted the Onyx Hall every year after his death, lending what help he could to his successors, until the breaking of the palace stranded him in the sewers.

Nadrett. The bastard who ripped apart Dead Rick’s mind until he got what he wanted, then tore the rest out just to see if he could make a puppet from what remained.

“I did know something,” Dead Rick ground out, fingers pressed against the wall, not sure whether he was about to fall down or launch himself off it. “Fucking
bastard
. You was right, milord. I’d found out something about Nadrett; that’s why ’e took my memories.”

Hodge’s eyes went wide. “What was it?”

Dead Rick shook his head, ignoring the way the room and everything in it danced at the motion. “I don’t know. Burn my body—burn my
mind;
that’s damn near what ’e did—’e broke it as soon as ’e ’ad it, to make sure nobody could get it back.”

Groaning, Irrith squeezed her eyes shut. They popped back open, though, when Dead Rick laughed—a laugh as ominous as the one Nadrett had uttered before.

“I don’t remember no more,” the skriker said, baring his teeth in a fierce snarl. “But I knows somebody who does.”

St. Anne’s Church, Whitechapel: August 22, 1884

It might have been better to leave the church and go somewhere with fewer eyes that could recognize Eliza and James O’Malley. But they had nowhere suitable to go, and Father Tooley was not eager to throw the recipient of tonight’s miracle out onto the streets; instead he hurried the five of them into the sacristy, where they might be cramped, but at least there was a bit of privacy, and the priest himself went to make sure no one else was stirring.

Tears kept ambushing Eliza when she least expected them. Crying after Owen began to speak again, that was understandable; but every time she thought she was done, a fresh spate would begin. It was all she could do to stand back and let the Darraghs at their son, Owen’s mother hugging him as if the meager strength of her arms could undo all the separation of before.

It couldn’t. He was still fourteen but not; he still seemed to remember almost nothing. But he spoke again, and looked at the world around him like he
saw
it, which was more than they had before. Eliza sniffed back the latest round of tears and told herself that was enough.

For distraction, she had her father. The success of the baptism did wonders of its own for Eliza’s feelings toward the man; he’d been a part of that miracle, and for that she was grateful to him. But not so grateful that she didn’t think to say, “It’s later, Da. And long past time to talk.”

His face settled into a grimmer shape. Keeping her voice low, so as not to distract the Darraghs a few feet away, she growled, “Isn’t it enough, all the trouble you were for us before? Drinking and gambling and falling in with the wrong sort—and now the sort you’ve fallen in with are the bloody Fenians. I’ve had Special Branch after me, because of you.”

Because of her own actions, too; but the boiling resentment in Eliza’s gut left no room for that kind of nuance. James O’Malley grabbed his daughter and pulled her farther from the Darraghs, as if another two feet would make any real difference. “Because of me? It’s Fergus Boyle who’s had the loose tongue—”

“Aye, I know that—”

“And telling lies to boot,” he finished. “Christ, Eliza, I’ve been in prison; I don’t have a bloody thing to do with those boys. Don’t you see what Boyle’s doing? He’s trying to protect
her.
”

And he jerked his thumb at Maggie Darragh.

He hadn’t bothered to keep as quiet as Eliza; he spoke loudly enough that Maggie’s head came up suddenly, the girl staring in their direction. She hadn’t caught his words, Eliza didn’t think—but Maggie’s eyes held a hunted look, like a stray dog that thought she heard trouble coming.

Maggie Darragh? Working with the
Fenians
? But she’d always said—

No.
She
hadn’t said;
Fergus
had. Maggie had never voiced a word on the subject, not that Eliza heard—not since that fellow came by a summer past, dropping hints in the pubs about the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Then the dynamite incidents started happening, and Eliza was so caught up in her own troubles that she’d hardly spared a thought for Maggie.

Their gazes locked, and the hunted look grew. Eliza said, “Maggie,” and that was all she got out before the young woman grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out the sacristy door.

“Not a
word,
where Ma can hear,” Maggie said in a harsh whisper, when they were out in the nave once more. “Say to me what you like, but I won’t be having her troubled with this, not when she’s just got Owen back.”

Eliza had not been short of curses and anger before, but it all seemed to have temporarily drained from her. “I—I don’t even know what to say.”

Maggie pulled her bonnet off, forgetting they were in church, and scraped a hand through her tangled hair. “’Tis Fergus who sent Special Branch after you; I never asked him to do it.”

“And did you ask him to stop?”

The silence answered her well enough.

Eliza sagged into a pew. “Christ, Maggie—why?”

“Why not?” the girl said bitterly. “I look at Ma and I see what this place did to her; I see what it has done to
me
. Twice the English bastards have pushed me into an alley and flipped my skirts up, because being Irish is the same as being a whore, is it not? And God help me, but I’ve thought of doing it, because at least that would keep us fed. With Owen gone…” She trailed off, looking hopeless in the light of the few candles still burning.

It made Eliza sick to her stomach. “But the ones who have died—they aren’t the ones who hurt you.”

“I don’t care, and that’s the truth of it,” Maggie said flatly. “I want them to know what it is like, seeing innocents die for crimes they never did.”

Hideous, blasphemous words—spoken in front of the altar, no less, with the Son of God watching from the crucifix above. In the workhouse, when Quinn accused her of helping the Fenians, Eliza had wondered if Maggie hated her enough to spread that lie. But Maggie’s hate wasn’t for Eliza: it was for the English, and all of London. Poison like that could not be drawn by her brother’s return.

There was no sound, but the hairs on the back of Eliza’s neck rose. Turning, she saw Owen standing in the shadows, watching them both.

Maggie drew in a sob-tangled breath at the sight of him. Her elder brother, now younger than she. “Oh, Owen,” she whispered, and went to wrap her arms around him once more. He stiffened, but let her do it; and Eliza, rising to her feet, wondered if he would embrace her back. A moment later, she had no more attention to spare for such questions, because the church entrance banged open and Dead Rick came darting through.

The sight of him knocked the breath from her. Not just to see a faerie there—in
church
!—making no effort to pretend he was human, though that would have been enough. But his
eyes
 …

The soft dog-brown was gone, drowned in an acid green that flooded iris and pupil alike. In those absinthine depths, time came off its hinge; past and present abandoned their God-given places and danced a mad waltz, whirling such vertigo into Eliza’s mind that she abruptly found herself on the floor, staring at the skriker’s knees. Those, at least, stayed put.

Until he dropped into a crouch and seized her shoulders. “Eliza. I need you to remember. The last time you saw me—before that bastard sent me to take Owen—what did I tell you?”

He called me Eliza.

Not Miss Baker, or Hannah, or any of the other false names she’d borne. He
remembered
. She saw it in his posture, heard it in his voice; everything about him, everything but those eyes, was an echo from seven years gone. Dead Rick was himself again.

The friend she’d lost had returned.

And then was torn away from her, as Owen charged at him with a howl. Dead Rick lurched under the boy’s weight as if drunk, not defending himself with the brutal skill she knew he had; terrified for him—for them both—Eliza leapt up and tried to force them apart. Tangled together, the three of them swung around, back toward the sacristy, from which her da and Mrs. Darragh had emerged.

It was chaos. Three other people had followed Dead Rick in: two mortal men, and a young woman who took one look at the altar and suddenly showed herself to be the sprite Eliza had seen before. That one blanched dead white and fled the church as if she was about to throw up, leaving the other two behind. They caught Maggie and her mother, while James O’Malley backed off, staring, and in the meanwhile words were pouring out of Eliza’s mouth. “He never meant to do it, Owen—the bastard who hurt you hurt him, too—”

He let go, and the sudden release sent Dead Rick and Eliza both staggering backward into the sacristy. Owen advanced and slammed the door behind himself. “Then why is he here?”

In the relative quiet, she realized Dead Rick was still talking, his voice managing to be hard and begging at the same time. He didn’t even seem to realize Owen was there. “Ash and Thorn, Eliza—you ’ave to remember. If you don’t remember, nobody does. Nadrett smashed it; I’ll never get it back. But it were a danger to ’im, and ’e’s the one what did this to your boy; if you tells me, maybe we can make ’im pay for that.”

She made the mistake of looking into Dead Rick’s eyes again; time swirled, and she almost lost her footing.
The last time I saw him.
Not the one burned into her memory by the pain of betrayal, or any of their encounters since then; the last time she saw
him,
the skriker she’d saved. For his sake, Eliza tried to remember. “You told me a story.”

He straightened, then caught himself with one hand against the wall; with that insanity in his eyes, no wonder he was unsteady. “A story?”

Piece by piece, it came to her. “About the Faerie-land. You said that all the tales we have of lands being drowned by the sea—Lyonesse and, oh, others I don’t remember—they’re all echoes of some place in Faerie, that
did
sink beneath the waves.”

Bewilderment showed on Dead Rick’s face; she was learning to watch his mouth and forehead, not his impossible eyes. “No, there—there ’as to ’ave been something else. Something about Nadrett.” A shiver rose from his toes to his head. He leaned harder against the wall.

She wanted to help him so badly, but— “You never mentioned Nadrett. Only Seithenyn.”

His sagging head came up so fast, she flinched back. What Dead Rick might have said, though, she never found out. The skriker took one step toward her and pitched over sideways as if the floor had gone vertical beneath his feet. Eliza cried out and managed to slow his fall, but not to catch his full weight; he hit the tile floor in a boneless heap.

Bewildered, she looked up at Owen. But he looked no less confused than she. “Nadrett. I—I’ve heard that name?…”

Before she could answer him, the door swung open, and on the other side was one of the men she’d seen a moment before. A dark-skinned heathen fellow—probably that genie from the Galenic Academy. He shook his head over Dead Rick’s limp body. “Were it not for the absinthe, I doubt he would have made it this far. Come, please—your friend, too, if you wish—we will take him to a safer place, and see if we have answers at last.”

Hare Street, Bethnal Green: August 22, 1884

How they made good their escape from the church with Dead Rick’s twitching carcass in tow, Eliza couldn’t say, except that it undoubtedly involved faerie magic. What they’d planned to be a surreptitious baptism under cover of night had become a good deal louder than that, and attracted attention to suit. But somehow Eliza found herself being led north by the other man who’d followed Dead Rick, a fellow who might have been anywhere between thirty and eighty years old. The heathen came with them, carrying the skriker, and Owen and that faerie woman followed, but the rest had been lost along the way.

She expected to go to the Onyx Hall, but instead they crossed under the railway arches to the north—half their party gasping in pain as they went—and halted outside a tobacconist’s not far from St. Anne’s, where the man unlocked a door leading to the flat above. Through her shivering, the faerie woman said, “We can’t take him below.” She indicated Owen with her pointed chin. Irrith, that was her name. “It wouldn’t be safe. And we can’t risk somebody selling word of this to the Goblin Market, anyway.”

This morning, it hadn’t been safe to keep Owen out of the Hall for long. Now …
can he ever go back?

Better for him if he couldn’t. Eliza had no intention of it herself, except as much as was necessary to get revenge on this bastard Nadrett. And that, she supposed, was why Owen had come.

The rooms on the first floor reeked of dust and stale air, as if almost no one ever came here. “Hodge’s flat,” Irrith said, as the man went around striking matches for the lamps, illuminating a mismatched assortment of shabby furniture. The other fellow laid Dead Rick on the couch, where he shuddered as if caught in a winter storm.

Hodge said, “Not that I’m ’ere too often. Miss—would you?”

Eliza found him holding out a stale biscuit. After one staring moment—she had gone stupid with exhaustion—she realized what he wanted.

The tithe.

“We’ve got to get something inside him,” Irrith said. “And me, if you don’t mind.”

Saying the words would cost Eliza nothing; even the bread was being handed to her. Even so … “Can’t you do it?” she asked Hodge.