With Fate Conspire (52 page)

Hodge clenched his jaw. “Don’t let ’im die yet. We need ’im to say where ’e ’id the Prince’s ghost.”

“I have no intention of
letting
him die under any circumstances,” Gertrude snapped. A glare from Rosamund echoed her sister’s sharp words. Hodge flushed in shame. He hadn’t meant it that way—not
really
—though it had crossed his mind that it wouldn’t be any great shame if Aspell were to croak. Now he felt like a terrible person, and Mrs. Chase was staring at him as though he were a grandson of hers not yet too old for a good thrashing.

“Let’s shift him downstairs,” Gertrude said, with all the brisk, no-nonsense confidence of a nurse. Mrs. Chase hastened to apologize, explaining that she had not been sure whether the sisters would want Aspell in their home; Rosamund waved it away, and bid the parlor wall open.

To make up for his earlier mistake, Hodge stepped forward without prompting and lifted Aspell from the couch. The disgraced lord weighed very little, even for his slender build, and hung limply from the Prince’s arms. The only difficulty was making sure not to crack his head against the wall as Hodge navigated the narrow staircase.

Once within the tiny faerie realm of Rose House, Aspell breathed more easily. While Hodge settled him onto another couch there, the sisters hurried off to gather supplies, and Mrs. Chase closed the entrance behind them. Hodge stood aside, letting the women do their work—and grim, unpleasant work it was, leeching what poison they could from the faerie’s body, while Aspell sweated and whimpered under their touch.
Good job they can’t see inside my ’ead,
Hodge thought. Neither the brownies nor their mortal friend would approve of the satisfaction he got from seeing his father’s murderer in pain.

But he didn’t want the treacherous sod to kick the bucket. Not now, and not like this. Hodge waited, crossing his fingers, and was rewarded at last with a stirring that looked more like life. Aspell’s eyes opened a slit, their usually green irises darkened almost to black.

“Where’d you put the photo?”

The faerie’s mouth moved soundlessly, not quite forming words.

Another glare from Rosamund stopped Hodge before he took more than one stride forward. Gritting his teeth, the Prince said, “Galen St. Clair. You ’ad ’is ghost; Dead Rick told us so. Where’d you put ’im?”

Gertrude helped Aspell sit up a few inches, and poured a dribble of water between his pale lips. It seemed to give him energy: when he had swallowed it, the faerie sank back, glared black venom at Hodge, and said, “I
put
him nowhere. He was taken from me. By Nadrett.” He coughed, and a spasm of pain twisted his face. Once that had passed, he added, “Who has been my captor, as well. Until I escaped.”

Bloody convenient.
There was just one flaw in the notion that Aspell was lying: the iron poison pervading his body. The snake might have had a good reason for abandoning all his people in the disintegrating Goblin Market—though Hodge could not imagine what that might be—but not for letting himself come so close to the edge of death. Being Nadrett’s prisoner, however, explained it neatly.

Hodge thought about asking how Aspell had gotten away, but realized he didn’t care. Other things mattered far more. “Where?”

The shaking of Aspell’s head was almost imperceptible. “Don’t know.”

“You say you bloody well
escaped
from there; ’ow can you not know?”

“I leapt aboard a train,” the faerie growled. Both brownies hissed in sympathy. Even Hodge flinched; with no bread to protect him, and that poison in his veins, it must have been agony. “Somewhere east,” he added, in a whisper, as if that growl had taken most of his remaining vigor.

Thinking of Eliza and Dead Rick, even now searching the area for sign of Nadrett and a new faerie realm, Hodge asked, “Could it ’ave been West Ham?”

Aspell nodded, exhausted.

Well, it lent weight to Eliza’s notions, at least. If Owen failed to identify his former prison, might Aspell succeed? Before the Prince could even think about asking, Gertrude told him quietly, “You should let him rest.”

But Aspell’s eyes flew open again, life flooding once more into his face, and he stretched out one gray-tinged hand. “Wait. What I said before. I
must
speak to Lune.”

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Rosamund said firmly. “Not for a good long while.”

“And you ain’t getting anywhere near Lune,” Hodge added.

“Then carry a message for me!”

Panic tinged the words. He
must
be desperate, if he was willing to trust Hodge with a secret that not that long ago had been too valuable for anyone else’s ears. And—“What’s your price for it?”

Aspell spat out a curse entirely at odds with his usual elegance. “For you to pay me, or me to pay you? This is for the Onyx Court, you cretin. I bargained because it was the only way to gain access to Lune, and she is the only one who might listen to me.”

“She’s the one you betrayed!”

“And she knows why.
To save the Onyx Court
: not to destroy it.” Aspell sagged deeper into the embrace of the couch, his burst of vitality flagging. “You must promise to carry the message.”

All three women were looking at him, now, not Aspell. If Hodge refused—or agreed, and then didn’t follow through—he suspected there would be a second round of those looks from before, that made him want to crawl in shame. Through his teeth, Hodge said, “I promise.”

Gertrude had to give her patient more water before he could muster the strength to speak. When he did, his words were enigmatic. “Francis and Suspiria.”

Enigmatic to Hodge; the brownies sat bolt upright at the names. “Who are they?” Hodge asked.

Rosamund answered, to spare Aspell the need. “They made the Onyx Hall.”

“With help,” Gertrude reminded her.

Hodge knew the story, in its broad outlines; he’d been told it when he asked why repairing the palace was so hard. Mostly it was the abundance of iron, but also what had been lost in the interim: of the various powers that helped create the Hall, nearly all were now dead.

Including the mortal man and faerie woman who shaped it in the first place.

When Hodge said as much, Aspell whispered, “Dead, yes—but not gone. It took me far too long to understand what it was I felt. We are not used to dreaming, we fae; I could not make sense of it, not for many years. But I am certain of it now. The spirits of Suspiria and Francis Merriman dwell within the London Stone.”

The Prince stared. Then reached out, blindly, for a chair; finding one, he lowered himself carefully into it. “I would ’ave felt them there.”

Would he? He hadn’t known about Chrennois in Aldersgate; as Prince, he could send his mind throughout the Onyx Hall, but it hurt so much he almost never did. The London Stone, though … it was the very point of his connection. Surely he would have known if there was another spirit there. Something besides himself and Lune—

And the Onyx Hall itself.

He clamped one hand over his mouth, fingers digging into his cheeks, to keep the words from bursting out.
Bloody fucking ’ell.
The palace—which answered to the commands of Queen and Prince; sometimes, he’d heard, as if it had a mind of its own. Which protected the bones of the Princes laid to rest within its ground against all attempts to desecrate them. Which acknowledged Lune as Queen, and refused others, when they tried to usurp her crown; that was the foundation of faerie sovereignty, that one ruled by right of that bond, the realm accepting someone as master or mistress over it all.

Suspiria and Francis Merriman stood with their hands upon the London Stone, beneath the eclipsed light of the sun, and dreamed the Hall into being.

Three hundred years and more later, they were still there—because they
were
the Onyx Hall.

Hodge unclamped his fingers, knuckles aching as he moved them. He licked his lips, swallowed, and said, “You … might be right. And I don’t think Lune knows it, neither. But—what good does that do us?”

Aspell’s eyes glittered through the fringe of his lashes. “It means Lune isn’t the only one holding the palace together. Without her, it would not last long—but it would not collapse instantly, either. She would have a moment’s grace, in which to escape: from the Hall, from London entirely, and into Faerie.”

He’d once tried to
murder
Lune. But not out of malice, Hodge was forced to admit; like the Fenians with their dynamite, he’d thought it would serve a greater purpose, which was the preservation of the Onyx Hall. With that cause now lost beyond recall, it seemed Aspell was not without a degree of mercy.

The bastard had it backward. He was giving up right when victory for that cause could be within their reach. It all depended on what they found in West Ham.

Smiling ruefully, Hodge said, “You’ve known ’er for ’ow many centuries, and you don’t see the mistake there? Lune will never run.” He stood and grinned down at the pale, exhausted Aspell. “But maybe she don’t ’ave to. Not if we can make ’er a new ’ome.”

Paddington Station, Paddington: August 25, 1884

For once, it was not the abundant menace of iron that made Louisa Kittering’s breath come fast.

She’d flinched when she and Frederic first came beneath the vaulting girders that covered the vast interior of Paddington Station, with its rails and trains and gas lamps, but it was nothing more than instinctive sympathy for those she left behind: the fae of the Onyx Hall, who even now were entering the final days of their home. Then she’d been taken aback by the chaotic activity of the crowds within: men of the suburbs going to or from work, mothers shepherding noisy and disobedient children, porters pushing trolleys full of baggage, voices crying food or newspapers from stalls along the sides. But Frederic had found a porter to take their trunk, and he’d known how to find the right platform, so now all she had to do was wait.

Wait, and think of what she had done.

Leaving the Kitterings hardly mattered. But what would Frederic think, in the days and months and years to come, about leaving his wife? He did love the woman, Louisa knew; and while it was possible to make him forget that love, it wouldn’t be easy. Not when he hadn’t chosen this path freely. She even felt a twinge of guilt, because she actually
cared
what he thought of her … and in the privacy of her own mind, where she could be honest with herself, Louisa knew he would not approve of what she had done.

But the alternative was to leave him vulnerable to Nadrett. Or to send him away on his own, without her—

She could not do that, either.

No. They would go away together: to Dover, to Calais, and once they had booked passage, to America, where they would make a new life among the emigrants, faerie and mortal alike, and they would have nothing to fear at all.

She should have known better than to believe it.

Trouble came without any warning at all: one moment Louisa was awaiting her train, dreaming of the life it would carry her off to, and the next there was a gun barrel pressing intimately against her spine, just above her bustle.

The gun remained there when Nadrett stepped into view, flanked by two of his men. He looked enough like himself to be recognized, though of course it was a human version of himself. But Louisa thought, despairing, that she would have recognized that cruel smile no matter what face shaped it. “There you are, my love,” Nadrett said, with false cheer. “Going somewhere?”

At her side, Frederic was gazing patiently into the distance, taking no notice of the fae a few feet away. The ticket was in his hand; he didn’t even blink as Nadrett twitched it from between his fingers. “Dover, is it? Now, why would you be going to Dover … and ’ello, who’s this? Blimey, if it ain’t Mr. Myers!”

His theatrical surprise might as well have been a knife between her ribs. The words were very nearly the worst thing she could have said, but Louisa could not stop them from bursting out: “Don’t hurt him!”

Nadrett’s sharp eyebrows rose. “Don’t ’urt ’im?” he repeated, mocking her. “Mab’s tits—don’t tell me you’ve bloody fallen in love with ’im.”

She tried to salvage what she could. “Not
love,
no, of course not—what an idea!” Her laugh sounded brittle and too bright, even to her own ears. “Just a passing entertainment, sir; you know how such things are. I thought you were done with him.”

The Goblin Market boss looked speculatively at Frederic, who sighed and referred to his pocket-watch. “’E were a useful sort, I’ll grant ’im that. Kept ’im around in case I ’ad more questions. But you know, it’s all going splendidly. I think I don’t need ’im anymore.” Nadrett drew his gun.

“No!”
Louisa threw herself forward, seizing his arm. There was no risk she would make him fire; she knew Nadrett, knew he wanted her to beg. “Please. I’ll do anything—”

“I knows you will.” Nadrett’s free hand wrapped around her slender throat. Hissing into her face, he said, “You still belong to me, slut. So does ’e. So does
everybody
I touch.”

The train had pulled up to the platform, in a cloud of coal-scented steam. All around them, the crowds of Paddington Station passed by, oblivious. Had she vanished completely from their eyes? Or did they just see some man disciplining his wayward wife?

“That little shell ain’t enough to protect you,” Nadrett said. “It breaks too easy, you see. All I got to do is make you admit what you are.” His grip tightened. “’Ow ’ard do you think it would be for me to do that?”

She wasn’t sure she could speak, and he probably didn’t want her to. She just shook her head, a tiny, trembling motion.

Nadrett smiled and released her. “Right you are. But I’m not without mercy, am I, boys?” The other fae grinned and made noises of agreement. “I’ll let your cove ’ere live. For a price.”

Passengers were flooding off the train, parting around their little group as if it were nothing more than a rock in the stream, of no interest to the water flowing by. Porters farther down were unloading the trunks and smaller valises, making room for the new baggage. Her trunk would make it onto the train, and so might Frederic Myers—but she would not.