In Ashes Lie

by Marie Brennan

  “We hereby open the trial of Ifarren Vidar,” she said into the still air, “formerly a subject of this realm, having the title of Lord Keeper, which was stripped from him when he fled into foreign parts after our accession. His guilt will be judged by this assembly of nine, chosen out of the groups most affected by the late rebellions and invasions that have afflicted this realm. Let the—” Do not call him traitor; not yet. “Let the accused be brought in.”

  A path had been left for him, down which a pair of goblins marched him under guard. The rowan-wood shackles once binding Prigurd were on his ankles and feet, though simple chains would have been enough to hold his bony limbs. Vidar wore them with disdain, and did not acknowledge the presence of any others in the chamber. His black eyes fixed unblinkingly upon Lune.

  Now their positions were reversed; she sat upon the throne from which he had revealed his invasion of her realm. The throne that had been Invidiana’s.

  She had not dared destroy it; the great silver arc of its back concealed the London Stone, and she could not risk that secret being revealed. But Vidar’s regard made her unpleasantly aware of the throne’s history, and of the crown upon her head. He gave her a brief nod, a faint smile—as if approving her achievements. As if to say, You have won the game I once played.

  But it had never been a game to her. She was not like Vidar.

  The contact between them broke when he sat, sprawling elegantly in the chair provided. Lune spoke again, words prepared with care. “Ifarren Vidar. You stand accused of conspiring with two foreign powers for the overthrow of our authority; of abetting the efforts of the late Kentigern Nellt to subvert our royal guard; of giving information to our enemies so that they might send murderers and other attackers against our safety; of attempting violence against the Prince of the Stone, and the final destruction of this palace that shelters us now. You also stand accused of fomenting riots and conflict among the mortals above, to disrupt our realm below. How do you answer these charges?”

  Vidar’s bone-white skin was unmarked, and his black clothes were immaculate. Someone had given him water to wash in; perhaps Antony. It would be like the Prince, to insist on giving the accused his dignity, despite everything. If there was to be a trial, it must appear—must be—legitimate.

  Yet trials were not a thing fae did. Lune expected the mocking smile that spread across Vidar’s face. He might sneer at mortals, calling them pawns, but he would have paid at least enough attention to know the farce Charles had made of his own trial, denying the authority of the court that faced him. But unlike the Lord President then, Lune was prepared for it. Her prerogative was to dispose of traitors as she pleased; if it pleased her to delegate that authority to others, she had the right.

  “I am guilty,” Vidar said.

  What?

  He laughed outright at her dumbfounded expression. “What, should I dance for your pleasure? Plead my innocence, when not a faerie soul here would call me anything other than guilty?” His voice dripped venomous emphasis on faerie, dismissing the mortals as without consequence. “I could deride this trial of yours, but it hardly seems worth the effort. I am surprised you do not let the humans drip holy water on your head and wash your immortality from you, you love their world so much.”

  Lune fought her breath back under control before she answered him. Murmurs ran through the hall, and the jurors were shifting in their seats. Antony was as startled as she—but she could not look to him for help. It would only lend credence to Vidar’s words.

  “You are guilty, by your own admission,” Lune said, striving to sound neither surprised nor displeased. “Therefore there is no need for trial.”

  Vidar bared his teeth at her in a terrible smile. “Indeed. This is my favor to you, Lune. After all, you have thirsted for my blood since before you stole the throne you sit upon now. I am your enemy, and I threaten the security of your power. Does this sound familiar? Speak the words! Order my death. It is what Invidiana would have done.”

  Bile scalded her throat. Sun and Moon ...

  How many had Invidiana sent to their deaths, from this very seat? For a whim, for an evening’s entertainment—Lune was not like that. But amusement was only the secondary force driving the former Queen’s actions. Foremost, always, was the security of her own power.

  Invidiana did not always kill those who posed a threat. If they could be punished in other fashions—disgraced, exiled, forced into penance, and thereby used to serve some larger scheme—then they lived.

  Lune tried, and failed, to banish Cerenel’s voice from her memory, swearing the oath she forced upon him.

  But if a courtier had no further value to Invidiana, if the danger they presented outweighed their use...then she ground them beneath her heel, to keep all the rest in line.

  I am not like her.

  Or was she? How often had she dreamed of Vidar’s death, sought it with every power at her disposal? She hesitated to kill—except for him. Not because he threatened her immediate safety, as Kentigern had when they called down the stones to crush him, but simply because he could serve no purpose but to threaten her power.

  Silence reigned in the chamber. Few even seemed to be breathing. Vidar waited, smirking. Why would he do this? He gains nothing by admitting his guilt, save his own death!

  But his death was a foregone conclusion. By advancing to meet it, he achieved the one victory left to him: he hurt Lune, struck at the very heart of her confidence upon the throne.

  And if she executed him, every faerie who remembered Invidiana would recall his words forever.

  Yet he could not live. Casting desperately about for any escape from this trap, Lune felt a smile spread across her own face, rising out of the vindictive triumph growing in her soul. He thought to claim one final victory, but she would deny him.

  “Lord Valentin,” she called out, not looking away from Vidar, and heard a startled reply from the audience. “We have need of the item we recently entrusted to your safekeeping.”

  “The b—” The Lord Keeper’s answer cut off abruptly. “Your Majesty—”

  “We are waiting, Lord Valentin.”

  At the edge of her vision, she saw him bow and exit the chamber, dragging one of the remaining mortals with him. Murmurs ran through the hall, fae asking one another what the Queen referred to.

  “Silence,” Lune commanded, and received it. “We have delegated our authority to judge these crimes; we therefore ask the jury to render their verdicts.” How long would it take Valentin to return? Once out of her sight, he would run very fast. “Ifarren Vidar has confessed his guilt to all the crimes named. Do you acknowledge and confirm that guilt?”

  Mere pageantry, making a grander occasion out of the truncated trial, and giving Valentin time to return. Vidar waited with the patient smugness of an incipient martyr. One by one, the nine jurors stood and stated their recognition of his guilt. We shall leave it beyond all question.

  And when they were done, she said, “What sentence do you advise for such a traitor?”

  Fae were often reluctant to kill, but not now. Every group had chosen the individual most eager to have a part in punishing Nicneven’s chief lieutenant in the long struggles between London and Fife. One by one, the jurors stood and called for death, Antony last of all.

  The Prince would not like what she was about to do. But in the end, she was the Queen; she might listen to advice, but in the end the decision was hers, for the good of her realm. Antony was not here as Prince, and this faerie matter was not his to judge.

  Vidar thought it nothing more than a means of shedding the guilt for his death. His smirk grew ever wider. But when Aspell and his companion reentered at the back of the hall, and Lune dismissed the jurors from the dais, a hint of confusion began to creep into the traitor’s expression.

  The watching fae turned, and saw the box of hawthorn in the mortal’s hands.

  The chamber rang with a gasp of horror so loud it was nearly a shout, and everyone shied back, forgetting th
e solemnity of the occasion. It left a wide aisle down which Valentin passed, followed by the mortal bearer.

  While all eyes in the hall were upon them, Lune slipped a piece of bread free of her pocket and swallowed it. She carried some with her always now, for safety, and was glad of it.

  The two reached the dais. All others had shifted well back, save Lune, Vidar, and Angrisla, who held the traitor forcibly in his chair. At Lune’s gesture, the mortal placed the box at her feet, and then gladly joined Valentin in retreating.

  “Ifarren Vidar. For your crimes,” Lune said, “you merit death. But the murder of fae is abhorrent to us, and so we grant you this measure of mercy. We sentence you to imprisonment eternal—guarded not by lock and key, which may be broken, nor by watchmen, who may be bribed, but by the elemental forces that bind all fae.”

  She lifted the lid of the hawthorn box.

  The thing inside was small, no wider than the span of Lune’s hand. But it exuded a cold aura far beyond its size, that chilled her even through the protection of the bread. Iron had tasted of her flesh; its taint lingered in her blood, inside the defense of the mortal tithe. Lune had not expected that. Her intention had been to lift the box free herself, but she could not bring herself to hold it so closely. She had to gesture the mortal forward again, and have him set it atop the replaced hawthorn lid.

  Now everyone could see it. The black sides were unadorned; its lid bore only a blank shield. But it was the one prison nothing could break free of, not even a faerie spirit—and she had in mind a way to ensure no one would ever let him out.

  Vidar knew it, too. All the smugness was gone, and sick horror had descended in its place. But this was the fate he would have condemned Antony to; Lune remembered that, and used her fury as armor and goad alike. It is no mercy, but then again, he deserves none. She forced herself to reach out.

  The touch of the iron was like the hottest fire and the coldest ice, and it called forth an excruciating answer from the half-healed wound in her shoulder. Lune was dimly aware of a scuffle, but had no attention to spare; clenching her teeth until she thought her jaw would break, she lifted the lid, and snatched her hand back the instant it was done.

  The scuffle, it seemed, had been Vidar’s attempted escape. He now lay face-down on the floor three paces from his chair, with Angrisla on his back, twisting his hands in a tight grip. He might be sanguine about his death, but not this.

  Lune was more than ready for the box to be gone. “Bring me the prisoner’s blood,” she said, and the mara grinned toothily. A demented light shone in her eyes as she faced down the iron aura, holding her position by will alone. Bonecruncher would not come near, but slid a knife along the polished floor to her. Angrisla carved a long slash down Vidar’s arm, then glared at the mortal until he fetched it and bore it to Lune.

  She took the dagger and held it over the black interior of the box. “Thus do we carry out the traitor’s sentence,” she said, through her nausea and pain. Three taps of her finger sent three droplets flying from the tip, swallowed up by the impenetrable darkness.

  Vidar howled. He writhed with abrupt strength, hurling Angrisla from his back, but then his body locked into a rictus; frozen, contorted upon the stone, he was a picture of perfect agony. Then he was insubstantial, then faint as a ghost; then he was gone, leaving blank marble and empty chains where his body had been.

  A new light shone within the box, bloodred and murderous.

  Lune slammed the lid shut. A spider now stared at her from the formerly blank shield. Shuddering at the sight, she gestured the mortal to retreat. He did so, with visible relief.

  No one else looked relieved. But they would not have to endure much longer. “Lord Antony, if you would join me? Let us together place Vidar’s prison where it will disturb no one’s rest.”

  A deep line cut between his brows as he approached; she thought he understood her meaning, but doubted whether it would work. I hope it does. I can think of no better way. He took up the box, and at Lune’s nod replaced it within its hawthorn case.

  Her subjects breathed easier with the iron thus shielded, but when Lune reached out to the Onyx Hall, she still felt the taint inside the wood, like poison beneath a sugared coating. Or was that her imagination? Her hand tightened on Antony’s, and she heard his breath hiss between his teeth, as if he felt it, too. But the Hall answered when they called; the marble split open, as if it were sand falling away from beneath the box. Down it went; down, and down, deeper into the foundations of the Hall than she had ever gone, until at last it reached some indefinable boundary. The palace lay beneath London, but only in a mystical sense; one could not reach it with a shovel. Yet there was a point at which the Hall gave way to ordinary earth once more, the bedrock upon which London sat.

  They left the iron box there, and sealed the stone above it.

  Every single pair of eyes in the chamber was fixed on the floor, which had swallowed Vidar’s prison without a trace. Lune pried her hand free of Antony’s, and cast a sideways glance at him. He met it with a faint smile, knowing her concern. But his eyes were clear, and he showed no sign of weakness.

  “It is finished,” Lune said. “Let Ifarren Vidar be forgotten.”

  GUILDHALL, LONDON: August 12, 1665

  The hoof beats of Antony’s horse echoed off the walls and overhanging jetties of Ketton Street. He might have been alone in the world, the street devoid of its usual hawkers and housewives. London might as well have been snatched away to a different realm, leaving its people behind; even the Onyx Hall seemed more populous these days than the city above it.

  Antony sweated behind the kerchief wrapped over his nose and mouth, and wondered how much it protected him against the infected air. But leaving it off would certainly not help, and so he kept it on—just as he rode, instead of hiring a hackney coach, whose previous occupant might have borne the plague. His own coach gathered dust for lack of anyone to drive it. Antony’s household was reduced to Burnett and himself, and Burnett had enough to do, keeping his master fed and clothed. He was lucky to still have a horse, so many had been stolen.

  A pile of rubbish half-blocked the turn onto the narrow lane between the church of St. Laurence Jewry and Blackwell Hall—the remnant of some shopkeeper’s effort to sweep the street before his house, in accordance with the plague orders. But no one had taken the refuse away, and the shopkeeper had clearly abandoned his effort weeks ago. Antony guided his horse past and emerged a moment later into the tiny courtyard of the Guildhall. On an ordinary day it would have been thronged with men engaged in government and trade; now it stood all but empty under the gaze of the statues adorning the Guildhall porch. Christ and the Virtues, their faces blank and stern. The only living figure in sight was a lone watchman, standing by the Triple Tun, whose door was marked with the familiar red cross and the legend Lord Have Mercy Upon Us.

  Antony had long since given up shuddering at the sight. One could hardly find a street in London that did not hold at least one infected house.

  The Guildhall itself stood forlorn, nearly as empty as the courtyard outside. Lord Mayor Lawrence had not called a meeting of the aldermen in weeks; half the council was fled. But Antony hoped that very desolation would aid him today. Men feared gathering in public places, where plague might spread. Here, though, their only company would be the spiders spinning their webs undisturbed.

  He lit tallow dips in the Court of Aldermen, and brushed dust from his own seat. How many would come today? Sir William Turner for certain; he understood that his City needed him. Others had stayed as well. With the help of parish officials, they carried out the plague orders issued by Charles before he withdrew with his court, in the withering hope that it would somehow check the plague’s ever-rising tide. Nearly three thousand dead in the last week alone, and no sign of ebb.

  Lune’s thoughts were elsewhere, waiting to see if Vidar’s cruel punishment would satisfy Nicneven and prevent war. But Antony had given up on blaming the fae for their inaction. In the
dark of the night, when he lay in his bed alone, he did not believe any effort, faerie or otherwise, could make a difference.

  And then the morning came, and he rose, and carried on nonetheless.

  Footsteps outside the door. Antony straightened, but could not prevent a slump of disappointment when he saw Jack Ellin. “I hoped you were an alderman.”

  “Then I am even sorrier to bring you this news.”

  The bleak tone pierced Antony’s weariness, and he saw in the candlelight that Jack’s ironical face was pale and strained. “You—are not ill? ”

  His mind leapt to that conclusion without prodding; it was the obvious one, nowadays. With Jack, more than obvious: the man, in his lunacy, was offering his services as a physician in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, now among the worst afflicted. Over three hundred and fifty dead there last week, and those were only the ones reported as plague; they were scarcely half the full total. Antony’s mind tallied the numbers reflexively.

  The doctor shook his head. “Not I. But Burnett, yes.”

  It should have upset Antony. Perhaps somewhere, far beneath his exhaustion, it did. At the moment, it was a blow to insensate flesh. Impact, without meaning. “How—”

  “I called at your house this morning. He answered the door in a fever.” Jack’s jaw tensed, heralding his next words. “I examined him, and found the tokens.”

  Hard red spots on the body, like fleabites. Coupled with fever, an infallible sign of the plague.

  “Antony.” The name broke through his dazed blankness. Jack crossed the room with swift strides, but halted himself before he could take Antony’s arm. No doubt the doctor had worn gloves and all the rest of his usual costume when examining Burnett, but even standing this close could be dangerous, if Jack had breathed in the distempered vapors. How much longer could the man survive, going so often among the diseased?

  “Antony,” Jack said, softly. “You must send him to a pest-house.”

  He shook, roused himself. “Incarcerate him among the dying? I might as well shoot him myself.”