In Ashes Lie

by Marie Brennan

  Jack nodded, but Craven was scarcely out of sight before the physician took to his heels. If the Cornhill break were to be created in time, they would need every hand they could get.

  THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: noon

  Real heat would have burned Lune’s body to ash by now. She was aware of that much, even if she did not know how much time had passed. As it was, the power of the Fire struck, not at her physical flesh, but at her spirit, which struggled to contain it: to keep it from spilling over into the Onyx Hall. Caught between shattering cold and melting flame, the palace would be destroyed.

  The bitter irony of it choked her, in the one tiny portion of her mind that could think of anything other than forcing back the heat. The Dragon was not Nicneven’s creature, but in its quest to devour the City, it would do the Gyre-Carling’s work.

  Unless she stopped it. With her hand on the keystone of the Onyx Hall, Lune could keep the devastation above from passing below. But for how long? Could she hold until Cannon Street was reduced to cinders, with nothing left to burn? The creeping demise of age the Cailleach whispered in her heart was drowned out, transformed into a raging death, a swift immolation no less dreadful for its speed. She’d put herself in its path; now she could not back away, and and it might kill her.

  No. Lune’s joints ached from the strain, but she held. Dying would save no one; it was her life they needed. Her presence here, with her hand on the Stone, holding back the inferno. Whatever it cost her in pain and blood, she would pay it. I would give my life for my realm. I can give this, too.

  It was nothing more than nature, simple flame, the London Stone above standing like an altar in a cathedral of coals. The flames, Lune could hold back.

  But even as the Fire’s edge moved onward, something shifted in its heart, and a terrible awareness fell upon Lune.

  She choked on her own breath, quailing beneath that hellish gaze. Until now, the Dragon’s attention had flickered here and there, diverted by each fresh victim, each challenge mustered by the City’s defenders. It saw only what it devoured, and what yet lay in its path.

  It had not looked below.

  The cataclysmic power turned inward. Even as tongues of flame licked out, the inexorable progress slowed by men’s efforts but never halted, the Dragon itself cast a curious eye upon the London Stone. That unassuming limestone block held something different, something more, that the beast had not noticed when it took Cannon Street into its maw.

  Lune’s rigid body jerked. She strove desperately to conceal herself somehow, and with her, the Onyx Hall. It could not be done. A probing tendril of awareness snaked down through the Stone, and found her in its path.

  Curiosity became avarice, and all-consuming hunger.

  Here was a prize more glorious than the one Father Thames had barred, a mirror to the realm already under the Fire’s claws. Here was a place of power. If the pitch and oil of London’s wharves had given birth to the Dragon, the enchantments of the Onyx Hall could make of it a god, against which all the efforts of mere humans would be as nothing.

  In a molten voice that boiled all the blood in Lune’s veins, the Fire snarled, This will be mine.

  Its claws flexed within her gut, and it began to pull.

  THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: one o’clock in the afternoon

  Irrith hesitated outside the Fish Street arch for several minutes before forcing herself through. Familiarity did not make the Cailleach’s icy touch any easier to bear; she dreaded it more with every encounter. Perhaps some of the London fae helping Jack Ellin were there because they loved their City; all Irrith cared about was escape.

  But that wasn’t true. She gave it the lie the moment she passed through the blackness of the arch, as she did every time she bore a message between the Queen and the Prince, every time she turned her thoughts and efforts to battling the Fire instead of fleeing back home to Berkshire. She dared not examine her reasons too closely, for fear they would dissolve into senseless panic, but they propelled her onward nonetheless.

  Still, she gasped in horror as the Hag’s cold breath penetrated her flesh. All the vital spark of her immortal life dimmed, becoming something fragile and vulnerable. She thought of the disaster above: collapsing houses, choking smoke, stampeding mortals running like rats to save their tiny lives. A thousand and one ways to die. Fast or slow, in pain or in black unconsciousness, it didn’t matter; in the end, she would be snuffed out, as easily as a candle.

  Irrith tasted blood. She had stifled her scream with a fist, and bit down so hard she broke the skin. Spitting, she made herself straighten from her instinctive crouch. The fae above—more than six of them, now; others had come to join the fight, or at least to escape the wind—needed instruction from the Queen. Angrisla was frighting people from their houses, when they would stay past the point of safety; Tom Toggin was shepherding children separated from their parents; they were all helping in their own ways. But it was like carrying water in a sieve: the few drops that shifted made scant difference against the whole.

  The sprite put her head down and drove herself onward. Much of the Onyx Hall was still a maze to her, a labyrinth full of dark secrets, but she knew the major ways well enough to keep her path without having to look. Arriving in the council chamber, however, she found it echoing and empty, holding only the pierced arc of Amadea’s fan. Irrith stared dully at the makeshift map, trying not to imagine her own body pierced by a blade; there were roving bands of women in the streets above, some of them armed, seeking out anyone who wore strange dress or spoke English badly. Foreigners had been attacked all over. A few were in prison now. Others were dead.

  Death came so easily, with so little warning.

  Breath ragged in her chest, Irrith dug her broken nails into her scalp. “Stop it,” she whispered, teeth grating until her jaw ached. “Find the Queen.”

  Not only could she not find Lune; she could not find anyone. The Onyx Hall might have been an unpopulated grave. Had they all fled, without telling her? Fury at that thought gave Irrith a little defense against the cold—so long as she did not think of dying here, alone. She tried the Queen’s bedchamber, without luck, and the night garden. All the flowers there had shivered into black, brittle stalks, and dead leaves carpeted the ground. It was the one place that had felt like home to Irrith, and she ran from it, weeping.

  Her shoulder slammed into a wall, checking her flight. She was near the greater presence chamber now, and still no sight of anyone. But she heard a strangled cry.

  Irrith’s heart leapt. Company, any company, would be a blessing, a minute consolation that all the world had not perished. Shivering, she ducked through the great doors.

  The chamber was empty, and its black heights gave no solace. The crystal panes stretching between the arches of the ceiling gleamed opaque with ice. Frost coated the silver throne at the far end, and so it took a moment for Irrith to realize the great chair had been shifted askew.

  She crossed the patterned floor on feet gone numb, now dreading what she might find. The sounds coming from behind the throne hurt just to hear. She had to look, though; she had to know.

  Curling her fingers around the freezing metal, Irrith peeked into the space beyond.

  Hope surged at the sight of Lune. Why the Queen was here, hidden behind her throne, standing on some kind of platform with one hand on a pitted block of limestone, Irrith couldn’t begin to guess, but at least she was here. Not everyone was gone.

  Then she felt the heat flooding the alcove.

  There was no comfort in it. Earlier that morning, Irrith had found herself caught between two horns of the Fire, trapped between a pair of burning houses, the hot air searing her lungs. This was worse. This destruction had awareness.

  Another broken groan escaped Lune, and her fingers whitened on the stone. Her silver hair hung lank about her face, all the curls blasted out, and her head sagged as if she could not keep it up. Something fell from behind that curtain, sizzling where it struck the wooden planks, leaving a scorch ma
rk on their surface.

  She was weeping tears of fire.

  A new sound reached Irrith’s ears: a high-pitched moan, a wordless cry of terror. Only when Lune twitched did the sprite realize it came from her own throat. The Queen’s other hand jerked upward, searching blindly; she knew someone else was there. Irrith almost reached for her, then held herself back. The power suffusing Lune would destroy anyone who touched her.

  “What can I do?” she whimpered, fighting not to flee.

  The reply came out in a parched whisper, torn from the depths of Lune’s body.

  “Find. Jack.”

  LOMBARD STREET, LONDON: two o’clock in the afternoon

  His own coughing woke him. Ash coated Jack’s mouth and throat; he hacked, body convulsing, to expel it and draw clean air.

  But clean air was nowhere to be found. More ash and smoke came in with every breath, and desiccating heat seared his lungs. The dirt beneath him was baked dry, cobbles like a griddle on which he roasted. Jack heaved himself upward, but made it only halfway before his elbows and knees gave out, dropping him once more. The effort advanced him a foot or two, though, and so he kept trying, lurching by this crippled means away from the danger that threatened him.

  For he had woken in a narrow alley between two houses, both of them alight. When Jack made it to the dubious safety of the street, he found that much of Lombard was in flames, its defenders fled. The signs marking the houses of the wealthy burnt like witches on their pyres: the Golden Fleece, the Fox, the White Hart. Jack might have been in a painting of Judgment Day, showing the fate of worldly riches.

  A fate that would soon be his, if he didn’t move. Fear and the occasional gust of cooler air helped him gain his feet, and he staggered at a half-run toward the untouched part of the street. How had he come to be in that alley? His searching fingers found a lump on his head. Attacked? No—he had fallen, he remembered his knees giving out...

  Despite the fire all around, he found himself shivering. Plague-high fever gripped his body; he had just enough wit left to recognize that. His vision swam. Exhaustion from the heat—Craven was right, he overreached himself. To the point of collapse. He had to reach a fire-post—Cripplegate was nearest—take some rest, away from the battle. He hadn’t slept the previous night, and unconsciousness didn’t count.

  A flicker of movement. A slender body arrowed through the smoke, ghostlike and low. Jack recognized Lune’s hound by its red ears. A faerie hound, here in the City, and undisguised; and judging by its behavior, looking for him.

  The dog ran a swift circuit around the Prince. Turning to follow its path, Jack almost collapsed again. I’m delirious. Or dead, and the hound has come to take me to Hell. Then it was gone, leaving him sure it had never been there at all.

  “My lord!” The cry came from ahead. That, he did not imagine; a lithe figure darted his way, shouting his fae title for all the world to hear. Irrith made a strange-looking boy, but she could hardly run about as a girl, and God in Heaven, the hound was leading her.

  Can’t even think straight. Jack tried to clear his mind, and the effort distracted him from his feet. He would have measured his length on the cobbles if Irrith hadn’t caught him.

  “Where have you been ?” the sprite demanded, still shouting, as if she were not six inches from his ear. “I’ve been searching—”

  The fever wracked his whole body in a shudder. More than exhaustion. I cannot have the plague, can I? The thought terrified him. But surely he would have noticed the other signs—would he not? Some other illness, perhaps, though few came on so quickly...

  “Jack!” His name brought him back to his senses. Irrith gripped him by the jaw, forcing him to look at her. “You have to come. It may already be too late.”

  “Too late?” Barely even a whisper. How long had he lain there, while the Fire drew ever closer?

  “It’s the Queen,” Irrith said. “She needs you. Now.”

  THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: two o’clock in the afternoon

  The well in Threadneedle Street was mobbed, walled in by carts and constantly in use by the men fighting the fire; Jack and Irrith had to fight their way to Ketton Street instead, and the entrance there. The cold hit him like a hammer as he passed below, and for the first time he grasped some measure of its horror for the fae. The Cailleach’s merest touch reminded him how close he’d come to death, and it set off a paroxysm of shivering that nearly dropped him. “No time for that!” Irrith insisted, dragging him along bodily. Now they were once more within the Hag’s reach, she avoided touching his skin, but she was no less effective for that. “It’s already been too long—I couldn’t find you; if it weren’t for the Queen’s hound—”

  “Lune,” Jack managed, through his chattering teeth. “What?”

  “I don’t know. But she told me to get you.”

  The sprite pulled him into the great presence chamber. Jack guessed where they were going even before he saw the throne knocked from its place; Cannon Street had fallen to the Fire hours ago. And now that he turned his thoughts to the London Stone—

  “Up!” Irrith screamed at him. Ice seared his cheek with cold; he’d collapsed to the floor. Not a fever. Not from illness. It was Lune. They were bound to one another, through the Stone, and though she held back everything she could to protect his fragile mortality, it spilled over. Even as the Dragon forced itself downward, it also was draining her, draining the Onyx Hall itself, feeding on the power it found there, and her strength to battle it was fading fast.

  Irrith didn’t have to pull him up. Jack sought Lune as unerringly as the hound sought him—and what he found stopped him dead on the threshold.

  The very air crackled and spat sparks. Her hair floated in a radiant nimbus about her body, drifting on the heated currents, its silver burning gold. Flames danced along the hem of her skirts, up the panes of her sleeves. He could not approach within two steps; the inferno she contained drove him back.

  “Lune,” he whispered, and her head snapped up.

  The silver eyes were molten flame, windows to the fire within. Any mortal creature would have been annihilated by the power she held; even immortal flesh could not withstand it forever. “Jack,” she answered him, and her mouth might have been the entrance to a forge, with Hell’s coals inside.

  He almost prayed, and choked it down in time.

  “The power,” she said, her voice cracking and spitting. Each gust of air tried to drive him back, out of the alcove containing the Stone. He couldn’t even see her hand, buried in incandescent light surrounding the rock above. “The Dragon’s. In me. It must... be sent...elsewhere.”

  God Almighty, yes. Before it destroyed her. Jack didn’t let himself consider the possibility that he was already too late for that.

  But where? Not the City above; that was where it came from. He didn’t think they could force the power into the areas already consumed, and if they tried, it might just explode outward to the parts still untouched. And with the Tower so close—they hadn’t yet cleared all the gunpowder out. That would destroy the City.

  Nowhere that people lived. The Thames? The river’s spirit was already exhausted. Throwing the power there could well boil all the waters away, and once again it would make their situation worse, rather than better.

  He wished it were possible to fling the Fire’s heat all the way to the sea, where English ships still battled the Dutch, ignorant of the disaster at home. But even if he could, he would not; the Dutch didn’t deserve to be obliterated without warning, simply for the crime of contending with the English over shipping.

  Lune cried out, and the air blazed white. The tendons stood out in her neck as she clenched her jaw and fought it down. The very sight hurt Jack, his own fevered body aching in response.

  “Hurry,” Irrith breathed, from where she crouched by his feet.

  Think! Jack pressed his hands against his head, as if they could hold his mind together through the delirium that crippled it. Fire. Heat. Destruction. There was no safe
outlet for such a thing.

  But fire is more than that.

  The fever carried him onward. Fire. Promethean, illuminative. Generative. Fire was the spark of life, as well as the immolation of death. There is something there, I know it—

  If we could just transmute it.

  Jack had never been more than a brief dabbler in alchemy. And this was no place nor time for arcane experiments with prima materia and alembics; he needed something simpler. Some way to transform the fire in Lune to a safer form.

  He couldn’t even come near her. If he touched her, he might well go up in flames on the spot.

  But he had only the one idea, and doubted he had time to think of another. The tips of Lune’s hair were smoldering. It was either try his idea and die, or stand around a moment longer and die.

  “I hope this works,” Jack muttered, and leapt up onto the platform with Lune.

  Fire went out of Lune in a rush, draining away with terrifying speed to someone else, then reflecting back into her like the sudden inflow of the tide. As if lightning-struck, her body went rigid.

  Sun and Moon—

  Passion the likes of which Lune had not known for decades flared through her body, making her gasp. Pain receded, and in its wake came desire.

  Her skin ached with it, flooding all her senses. No lover had woken her so strongly, not since Michael Deven had died. Lune wept, remembering the treasured hands, lost to her forever. Her sense of self threatened to dissolve into the drowning wave of grief. So easy to let go, to release herself into oblivion...and that was what the Cailleach and the Dragon wanted her to do. To die. To end at last the long immortality of her existence, and let herself be destroyed.

  But no. Forced down into the core of her soul by the twin assaults, she found a cool stillness there, free from fire and the Hag’s wintry cold. This is who I am. Child of the moon, timeless and serene. She lost that serenity so easily now, caught up in politics, imitating humans so fervently in their intrigues. But she was more than that—more than just spying and plotting and passing the time in frivolous pursuits.