With Fate Conspire (58 page)

Eliza sucked in a sudden breath. The half sneer on Dead Rick’s face turned into wide-eyed thought, and then to a remarkably evil grin. As well it should;
he’d
stood up a moment ago and told everyone they were a pack of idiots. Of course it would please him to watch her do the same.

Months of hiding, of doing her best to make sure nobody took notice of her. Months of lying about who and what she was, the better to blend in. Hard habits to break, after all that time. But if she didn’t do it now, she would regret it forever.

Nobody heard her clear her throat. Should she wave her hand, or wait for a lull?
The devil with being polite.
Planting her shoes—her battered, secondhand shoes—firmly on the floor, Eliza stood and declared in a clear, carrying voice, “That’s the London ye see, is it? Well, ’tisn’t mine.”

The conversation staggered and trailed off. The genie turned an inquiring face upon her and said, “Please, Miss O’Malley, do share your thoughts.”

He might be a heathen, but Eliza couldn’t help but like him at that moment; she suspected he knew what she was about to say. There were enough of his kind—heathens, not genies—in the East End, especially around the docks. Where the city pushed much of its unwanted refuse.

“What is London?” she asked, and licked her lips, clenching her hands for strength. “’Tis thousands of servants scrubbing the floors of yer rich and mighty, so the missus’s skirt won’t get dusty. ’Tis boys sweeping mud out of the street for pennies, and scooping up dog turds to sell to the tanners. ’Tis cholera and measles and scarlet fever, poverty, starvation, drinking yourself half dead with gin, and being thrown in prison for debt. ’Tis paying fourpence to sleep on a bench with a rope holding you up, then going out to sell buns from a barrow while your fingers freeze with the cold.” She paused for breath, and found she was shaking so hard it came in a ragged gasp. “All yer power, all yer wealth, all those things that make this place important—they don’t come from nowhere. They’re just the top layer, the crust on the pie, and underneath is another city entirely. The Irish, and the Italians, and the lascars—even the Jews—all those people who are
not
English, and are not a part of the world ye see, but they are bloody well part of London, too.”

Quietly, Gertrude Goodemeade said, “Just as we are part of London, the hidden faerie folk. We, too, have been a part of making this city what it is today.”

Sir Cerenel offered Eliza what he probably thought was a sympathetic smile. With the anger trembling in her veins, she found it hard to accept as anything other than condescending. “Your point is well taken, Miss O’Malley. But we must ask ourselves: Are those layers what we want to choose? The new palace will reflect its foundation; surely we want to make that the best London has to offer.”

Of course a knight would say that. She spat at his feet in fury. “And power makes things best, does it? Money and fine clothes? Never mind the hard work, the folk who come here because they hope for a better life; ye would never want to reflect
that,
now would ye—devil knows what it might do.”

Behind Eliza’s shoulder, Dead Rick rose to his feet. “You want a strong foundation? I ain’t no architect, but I knows that a broad bottom works better than a narrow one. It don’t tip over so easy. And there’s a lot more poor than there is rich.”

“Who says we cannot include both?” Abd ar-Rashid asked. “Include
all
the visions of the city, high and low alike?”

In a tone that suggested his head was on the verge of exploding, the man who’d spoken of power said, “But we can’t include
everything
. It would be chaos!”

“Only if it is rendered in fragments,” the genie said, and looked significantly at Wrain.

Who turned to look at the machine he’d mentioned before, the calculating engine.

Lady Feidelm murmured, “Is this not the purpose for which it was built? To take certain values and bring them to bear upon one another, conducting the operations which will tell you the difference between them, or the average, or any such relationship?”

Multiple ideas of London, calculated into a whole. Eliza knew nothing of mathematics beyond bare addition and subtraction, and what the sidhe spoke of sounded only half like mathematics to begin with—but if they had some way to do it …

But Wrain sank with sudden exhaustion back onto his chair. “We can’t possibly calculate it all in time. Even rendering a single concept into symbolic notation would be a huge undertaking. A dozen or more? The Hall will be long gone before we can do it. If the Calendar Room had survived, then it would give us the time we need, but that last earthquake broke the chamber’s clock, and we cannot restore it.”

The only reason Eliza knew the French voice that answered was because she’d thanked him for returning Dead Rick’s memories. Yvoir said, “Then work from photographs, as Dead Rick said! As Nadrett did. But not souls, only thoughts, and a single lens only—we do not wish to remove the thoughts from anyone’s head, merely to copy them. Use the glass as a filter; what passes through, and what does not, can be translated for the calculating engine—”

“Which will carry out the necessary operations—”

“And print the result onto another photographic plate? Use that as the instruction, instead of the crystal cards, for the elemental threads—”

“Aetheric weft—”

“—the configuration Nadrett used—”

“There is one problem.”

The grim declaration came from Yvoir, as dead as his previous words had been animated. Eliza had been caught up in the excitement, herself; seeing the French faerie’s expression fall, she blurted out, “What?”

He directed his answer to Dead Rick instead of her, and shaped it as a question. “Did Nadrett send anyone far away, earlier this year? To Australia, perhaps, or the American frontier, or the far reaches of the Orient?”

The skriker stared at him. “’Ow’d you know that? Sent a fellow to Japan, ’e did. Rewdan, the same one as brought ’im those compounds.”

Yvoir nodded. “He must have done more than just acquire compounds. In studying the photographs from West Ham, I realized what Chrennois did to sensitize the plates. He exposed them during a lunar eclipse.”

An impressive curse from Irrith told Eliza what the problem was, before the sprite put it into words. “And we broke most of his unused plates when we stormed the factory.”

“When is the next eclipse?” Eliza asked.

In a place like this, no one had to reach for an almanac. Abd ar-Rashid said, “October fourth. And its totality will be over London.”

Nearly a month away. No one asked the final question.
Will this place survive that long?

Eliza startled again, as Dead Rick spun to face her, hands gripping her shoulders. “Eliza. You can give the Queen more time. Maybe enough.”

“What? How?”

“Ghosts,” he said, holding her gaze steadily. “Lord Galen ain’t enough. But there’s others, other Princes I mean, that don’t ’aunt the palace, but they used to be bound to it. Call ’em back. As many as you can get. With their strength, Lune can ’old, I
know
she can. Long enough for the others to do their bit, to get the photos and set it all in motion. Then we can take what we’ve got and shape it into something new, something that don’t care if there’s iron in the ground, because it ain’t
in
the ground no more. A new reflection of London. But we need time, and the ghosts can give us that.”

Ghosts. Seven years ago, he’d discovered her untutored gift, and trained her to use it.
Started
to train her; Nadrett had put a stop to that before she mastered it, enough to make her living.

The changeling who had taken and then lost Louisa’s place had said she knew a medium, a real one. Surely it would be better to seek that woman out—

And how long would it take to find her? To explain what this place was, and persuade her to help?

Eliza remembered the voice whispering through her head, from the black walls around the London Stone, and the phantom Queen who sat beneath it. Pouring every last drop of her strength into holding the palace together. How much longer could she endure?

“I don’t know if I can do it,” she whispered, for Dead Rick’s ears only.

He gave her a fierce smile. “I know you can.”

She heard what he really meant.
I know you have to.

Memory: May 29, 1870

While men in top hats applauded and congratulated one another on a job well done, Alexander Messina died.

Lune had known the shock would come, and she had known it would be bad. They’d discussed it, long before the navvies broke ground for the extension of the Metropolitan Railway to Blackfriars Station. Iron pipes were dangerous enough; iron rails carrying iron trains, stabbing in and out of the Onyx Court’s domain dozens of times a day would be a threat the likes of which they had not yet faced.

But they had survived the test train, run late at night to make certain the signals worked, and in the aftermath she allowed herself to believe they would have at least a brief period of grace. Time during which she and her Prince could find some way to adapt, as they had before.

When the inaugural train crossed the line of the wall, Alex’s heart stopped.

For a few horrifying moments, she thought her own would, too. The double shock of the train and the Prince’s death crushed her to the floor, driving all the breath from her; she could barely hear the frantic cries from Amadea and Nemette, begging their Queen to answer them. By the time her vision returned, she knew what she needed to say; the instant she regained her voice, she said it. “Get Hodge. Now.”

After centuries of joint rule, the death of Princes no longer caught her unprepared. She knew who would succeed each man when he passed on, and the men themselves knew it, too. Later they would mourn Alex as he deserved; later they would consider how long any mortal could survive the cataclysm that was the world’s first underground railway.

In this instant, all that mattered was replacing the Prince. She could not bear the weight of the palace alone. Not anymore.

He came at a run. Little more than a boy; she couldn’t remember how old he was, except to be shocked at the youth of his face. But Lune could not afford that reaction, and so she crushed it ruthlessly. Youth was necessary. Youth, and the strength it brought, and birth at the heart of London, which was why this cockney lad would be her next—perhaps final—Prince.

Benjamin Hodge knew perfectly well that the title carried a sentence of death. And still he came running, to lift her to her feet and help her stumble toward the London Stone, where she would bind him to what remained of the Onyx Hall, a marriage until death did them part. His death, or the Hall’s.

Not hers. She refused it. Lune would die when her realm did, but not before.

No ceremony, beyond the few steps that were absolutely necessary; the days of her court’s glory were gone. It was only the two of them: she with the London Sword, chiefest of her crown jewels, Hodge swearing the oaths and drinking the faerie wine and laying his hand upon the London Stone, the heart of her—their—realm. Lune wept when she kissed him, and she could not have said the cause. The pain still reverberating through her body, perhaps. Or grief for Alex. Or for Hodge, and what she was doing to him, in the name of preserving her people’s refuge for as long as she could.

He gripped her good hand hard enough to bruise, when they were done. “I’ll find a way,” he promised. He didn’t need to say more.
I’ll find a way to save the Hall.
They’d all promised it, and they’d all meant it.

“Go,” Lune whispered softly, knowing her smile of thanks looked more like a rictus. “I … need a moment alone.”

He did not question it. Later, he might—after he’d assimilated his new dignity as Prince—but for now, he obeyed her as any mortal in the Hall would. When he was gone, Lune drew in a long, shuddering breath, and looked at the London Stone.

It hung like a dagger from the ceiling of the chamber: the key to her entire realm. Though the Stone had moved from room to room, as the original was moved above, it remained at the center; wherever it lay
was
the center. Through the Stone, she had become Queen of the Onyx Court, and at times it felt like that block of battered limestone was her oldest and closest friend. It was eternal, after all, as her Princes were not.

She could not save Hodge—not without saving the Hall. If there was to be any chance of doing either, the Prince and those who supported him would need time.

Lune went into the outer room. After the Stone moved here, they had filled this chamber with rubbish, broken ends too useless for anyone to bother stealing. That, and the cathedral overhead, were the best defense they could muster for the Stone, short of a constant guard that would draw the very attention they sought to avoid. She rummaged through the debris, coating her cloth-of-silver skirts with dust, until she found a chair whose missing leg could be jammed back into place. This she carried into the inner room, and placed it beneath the Stone. When she settled herself carefully upon it, the chair held her weight.

With one swift move, she thrust the London Sword into the floor, to serve as her conduit and anchor point. Beneath her skirts, she kicked off her shoes, settling her bare feet against the black stone. Measuring out her breathing like the ticking of a slow clock, Lune closed her eyes, and sank her mind into the wounded body of the Hall.

Her realm. A part of her flesh, a part of her spirit, for nearly three hundred years. She had done all she could outside—in the chambers of the palace; in the world above—but there remained one final thing she could do for Hodge.

She could
hold
.

Soundlessly, the black stone of the wall grew shut, sealing the way to the outer room. Darkness closed in about the London Stone, and the Queen of the Onyx Court.

The London Stone, Onyx Hall: September 16, 1884

When Dead Rick took Eliza’s hands in his own, he found her fingers ice cold. The smile she attempted showed equal parts embarrassment and tension. Quietly enough that only he could hear, she whispered, “What if I can’t do it?”