A Star Shall Fall

by Marie Brennan

  Earth is everything. For while the beast sleeps, it dreams, and remembers the City where it was born.

  Red Lion Square, Holborn: January 13, 1758

  A light snow began falling as Galen disembarked from his chair outside Dr. Andrews’s house. He welcomed the sight; it had been a gray, dreary Christmas, and a bit of sugar frosting might make London more attractive—at least until the coal smoke turned it to black crusts.

  He paid the chair-men and hurried across to the door, shivering. The footman took a dreadfully long time to answer, and bowed deeply as he let Galen in. “My apologies, Mr. St. Clair. Dr. Andrews is in his laboratory at present. If you would be so kind as to wait in the parlor, he will be with you shortly.”

  Galen agreed, and was led upstairs to the back parlor. While he waited, he chafed his cold hands in front of the fire and surveyed the room. It had the kind of vague ordinariness that characterized the homes of many bachelors; Andrews put out sufficient effort to furnish his parlor with chairs, tables, and so on, but with no wife to make it fashionable, the result was utterly forgettable.

  “Ah, Mr. St. Clair.” Dr. Andrews entered behind him, still buttoning his waistcoat. “I was unaware of the hour, or I would have been more ready to receive you.”

  “Quite all right. Your footman said you were in your laboratory . . .” Galen’s voice trailed off as he noticed a smear on the back of Andrews’s hand.

  The doctor saw it and hastily fetched out a handkerchief with which to scrub it away. “Yes, in my basement. I have a room down there where I conduct dissections. My apologies; I don’t usually come upstairs with blood on my hands. Shall I have the maid brew coffee for us?”

  He rang a bell, and gestured Galen to a chair. “I never touch spirits myself, and only occasionally take wine,” the older gentleman confided, “but coffee has become my great vice.”

  Faced with that admission, Galen didn’t try to hide his own guilty smile. “Mine as well. Its effects are most wonderful: it clears the mind, steadies the hand, aids digestion—”

  “It’s fortified my own health wondrously,” Andrews said. “Indeed, just last week I advised a certain lady to adminster regular doses to her sickly child, to fend off infections.”

  “Very wise,” Galen said. “But I was under the impression you don’t practice medicine any longer?”

  Andrews made an indeterminate gesture that could have been meant to convey anything at all. “By and large, no. But I make exceptions for a few trusted families.”

  No doubt the most influential and respectable ones. Galen quite understood. “Your time is mostly taken up with your studies?”

  “And illness,” Andrews said bluntly, as the maid entered with the coffee tray. Judging by the speed of her return, the doctor had not been lying about his fondness for the drink; it must have been nearly prepared already when Galen arrived. She laid the tray on a pillar-and-claw table to one side, then curtsied out of the room again when Andrews waved her off. He poured the coffee himself. “You will have guessed, I am sure, that I suffer from consumption.”

  “My heartfelt sympathies,” Galen said. “I had an aunt taken by the same disease, and two of her children.”

  Andrews passed him a coffee bowl. “With so many diseases in the world, I sometimes wonder that any of us reach maturity. But it produces this happy coincidence in my life, that my time is occupied by two facets of the same issue.”

  “You study your own illness?”

  “What else should I do, with the time I have left? Particularly if I wish to increase the amount of that time.”

  “Then that is why you remain in London,” Galen said, understanding. Most consumptives who could afford it went to more healthful climates, where the air was warmer and drier, and might prolong their lives. The damp, chilly rains of London were not good for such men.

  But Andrews looked puzzled. “What has London to do with it?”

  Now uncertain, Galen said, “The Royal Society. I presumed there were men among its number who shared your interest, and that you wished to remain here to work more closely with them, without the delay of letters.”

  The doctor was drinking coffee as he responded; Galen could not tell whether a routine coughing fit struck him just then, or whether the answer caused Andrews to choke on some of his drink. Galen hovered at the edge of his chair, not certain what he should do, as the gentleman hastily put down his bowl and snatched out a handkerchief.

  “I would to God that were true,” Andrews said. “Come, Mr. St. Clair, you’ve seen what our meetings are like. Nice, orderly business, suitable for gentlemen, and occasionally someone from the Continent, or elsewhere in Britain, performs a bit of experimentation that actually does ‘improve our natural knowledge,’ as the name would have it. But the weekly activity is often tedious and trivial in the extreme.”

  Galen took refuge in the contemplation of his coffee. “I would not say so, Dr. Andrews.”

  “Of course not. You’re a polite young man. No, I go to Crane Court because I must leave my house occasionally or go mad, and it seems as good a destination as any. But I have a very convenient arrangement here, and no desire to disrupt it by going elsewhere. Besides,” the doctor added with blunt honesty, “I had rather die in England, not in some foreign city.”

  Shame left a sour taste in Galen’s mouth. He was cultivating this friendship in the hope of some benefit for the Onyx Court; he’d never thought to consider Andrews’s own problems. The fae could not, so far as he knew, cure diseases. Still, there might be some chance that they could aid the man. “I’m no physician myself, Dr. Andrews, but I’ll gladly lend you any assistance I may. It would be a grand thing indeed, if we learned more about consumption, that would allow us to save others from it.”

  The red tinge that rimmed all late consumptives’ eyes lent a strange cast to Andrews’s expression. “Not just that disease, Mr. St. Clair. England has already produced Sir Isaac Newton, who unlocked the mysteries of the mechanical universe. He touched but little, though, on the mysteries of living bodies. We need a second genius.”

  “And you intend to be that man?” Galen asked, before he could consider how rude the question was.

  Andrews’s mocking smile seemed to be directed at himself. “I’m unlikely to succeed. Newton was younger than I am now when he turned the world on its head with his Principia Mathematica. But I can think of no higher purpose than to dedicate what remains of my life to pursuing that star.”

  Indeed, the fire of that purpose burnt in his eyes. It sparked an idea within Galen—one far enough beyond the scope of his original plan that he hesitated to even consider it.

  If Andrews worked with the fae—directly, with full knowledge of what they were . . .

  That would be quite a risk. Galen would have to make very certain the man was trustworthy. It could be worth the gamble, though. Otherwise Galen himself would have to translate what he learned from Dr. Andrews to a faerie context, with much danger of error. He’d been doing that for two months now, with little result. Wouldn’t it be far more productive to bring the two together?

  Not today, of course. Still, that inspiration put Galen on his feet, hand over his heart. “Dr. Andrews, I owe you a debt for your patronage at the Royal Society. I repeat my offer of a moment before, foolish though it may be. The work you undertake, sir, could be the salvation of more people than you know. I will do everything in my power to aid you.”

  The Onyx Hall, London: January 17, 1758

  Ktistes, as royal surveyor and architect, had taken great care to explain to Irrith which parts of the Onyx Hall were fraying due to the piecemeal destruction of the wall, so that she might avoid them.

  She figured out for herself that one of the places on that list was nowhere near the wall.

  Most people wouldn’t have noticed. The Onyx Hall was a rabbit warren, tangled threads with even less rhyme or reason than the streets above; moreover, the warped reflection from above to below meant the bad patches weren’t at the edg
es of the palace, but rather snaked tortuously through its middle. But there was an inconsistency in the centaur’s list, and it wedged itself into a corner of Irrith’s mind like a bit of grit in her shoe, chafing her. And when she realized what was bothering her—why, then there was nothing to do but seek out the cause.

  Not Ktistes. He would only lie again. Irrith went to the source.

  The passage toward the supposed bad patch ran behind the bathing chambers, where salamanders curled beneath great copper boilers of water that could be tipped into the pools. The entrance to the passage was barred by two waist-height bronze pillars supporting a rowan-wood beam. It was no real barrier; rowan might not like the fae, but a simple branch could hardly stop anyone continuing on. The point was to warn the idle traveler that she should go no farther.

  Irrith was not an idle traveler. She was bored beyond the telling of it: the bribe Tom Toggin had given her to bring the delivery to London was all but spent, leaving her with no bread to go safely above, and little to amuse her down here. Investigation at least promised a bit of entertainment. She ducked under the beam, and continued down the passage.

  The blackness closed in around her, broken only by the faerie light she’d brought along, and carried doubt with it. Maybe this was a bad patch. Maybe she was about to find that out the hard way.

  Upon that thought, disorientation struck her, and Irrith staggered. When she straightened, she found herself staring at the rowan-wood barrier, and the ordinary corridor beyond.

  Ktistes had warned her of this. One of the first effects of the fraying was that fae might enter one part of the Onyx Hall and end up in another one entirely, though the centaur feared worse might happen in time. This, clearly, was what he meant.

  Or perhaps it was just meant to seem that way.

  Some of the pucks in the Vale adored this charm, disorienting a traveler so that he wandered into a stream or a bull’s enclosure. But there were ways around such tricks—if it was indeed a trick.

  Irrith squared her shoulders and began walking backward, searching for the floor with her toes, one careful step at a time.

  She felt the unease—the vertigo—but this time it was like rain, slipping off an oilcloth cloak. Irrith grinned in satisfaction. Caught you.

  Then the floor gave way beneath her and she fell.

  Her chin smacked against the lip of the hole and she tasted blood, but she managed to stop her fall, fingers straining along the edge of the black stone. Irrith waited until her head cleared, then dragged herself painfully upward until she could fling a leg onto the floor and roll to safety.

  She lay panting for a moment, then spat out the blood and peered over the edge. The bottom of the pit was well-padded with cushions. Definitely the Queen’s work. Most of the people who keep secrets in this place would fill it with spikes instead.

  The pit crossed the corridor from one side to the other, but it wasn’t so wide that an agile sprite couldn’t leap it. Irrith took the precaution of a silencing charm before she made her attempt, and tucked into a tidy somersault on the other side. Two obstacles cleared, and she was careful as she went onward, lest she run headlong into a third. But the remainder of the passage was clear, and then it turned a corner, into a short, pillared vault with old-fashioned round arches, the antechamber to a larger, well-lit room beyond. From that room came an angry voice.

  “Dieser verdammten Federantrieb brechen andauernd!”

  The words were abrupt and loud enough that Irrith almost jumped from her skin, before she heard them properly. Once she did, she blinked—for that was certainly not English.

  Nor was the second voice that answered him. “Aber natürlich! Ich sage dir doch, dass er soviel Zugkraft nicht aushalten werden.”

  The tone was bickering, and resigned; the words weren’t directed at her. Concealing herself behind a pillar, Irrith peeked into the chamber Ktistes and the Queen did not want her to find.

  Two fae grumbled over a pair of worktables strewn with unfamiliar oddments and tools. The tables would scarcely have been knee-height to a human, and even for Irrith they were low, but they perfectly suited the two, who were hob-size and thick with muscle. The implements they held were incongruously delicate in their blunt-knuckled hands, and both, she saw, had tied their long beards out of the way, the better to see the tiny things they peered at.

  What were they working on? Irrith risked a longer look. The faerie lights above the tables reflected off minute bits of metal, too small to identify at this distance. But she noticed something odd: a quiet, regular rattle, underlying the humming of the blond-bearded faerie.

  The chamber, she realized, was filled with clocks.

  One perched atop a bracket on the wall behind the strangers. Two pendulum clocks stood in opposite corners, and a very small piece teetered on the edge of a table, a breath away from falling. A pocket-watch on the floor below it seemed to have fallen already.

  Tom Toggin had brought clocks to the Vale. And Irrith had heard rumors, about the crazy German dwarves that came to England with the new German king, and now made clocks and watches for the Queen.

  But what were they doing, hidden away down here?

  She was still trying to figure that out when every clock in the room began to chime the hour. It wasn’t just the ones she could see; from the sound of it, the entire wall to both sides of the entrance, invisible from her concealment behind the pillar, was covered in clocks. And the two dwarves literally dropped the pieces they were working on in order to hurry to a door on the other side of the chamber.

  Its face held what looked like sundial, though what use one could be in the sunless realm of the Onyx Hall, Irrith didn’t know. Its blade spun without warning, making her twitch; then the red-bearded dwarf seized hold of it, and two things happened at once: first, the bronze-bound door creaked open, and second, a sound too deep to hear shook the very marrow of Irrith’s bones.

  A sound like the single tick of the Earth’s own clock.

  Her teeth ached with the force of it, and her skull rang like a drum. Irrith had heard many tremendous sounds in her life, up to and including the roar of the Dragon itself, but she’d never encountered anything like this—as if she’d just heard one of the numberless moments of her immortal life tick away.

  She was still standing there, jaw hanging slack, when the door finished opening and a puck stepped out and saw her.

  “Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing here?”

  The looks on the two dwarves’ faces would have been comical, if only she could have stayed to appreciate them. But instinct set in, as if she were running wild in the forests of Berkshire, and Irrith bolted.

  She didn’t get very far. Three strides took her to the far end of the pillared vault, and then she ran full-force into something that felt remarkably like an invisible wall.

  A voice came through the ensuing fog, but she couldn’t have said whether it spoke German or English. By the time she had her senses back, she was surrounded: the two dwarves and the puck stood over her, where she had collapsed on the floor. All three wore identical expressions of suspicion.

  The red dwarf demanded, “Vy vere you spying on us?”

  Resisting the urge to mock his thick German accent—she was, after all, caught in their trap—Irrith said, “I wasn’t spying.”

  “Vat do you call it ven you hide and vatch vat others are doing?”

  Could he have chosen a question with more Ws in it? Irrith stifled a laugh. Her face felt too bruised for laughing, anyway. “I call it curiosity.”

  The third faerie scowled. He, at least, was English: a lubberkin, though surprisingly warlike. “Curiosity. Right. You just happened to slip past the defenses because you were curious.”

  Did he expect those defenses would make her less curious? They just made it obvious there was something to find. The red-bearded dwarf was much more menacing. He cracked his knuckles and said, “Ve vill dispose of her.”

  “Now see here,” Irrith said hastily, climbing to
her feet and mustering as much dignity as she could manage, so soon after knocking herself silly. “I’m a lady knight of the Onyx Court.”

  “So?” the dwarf said, unimpressed.

  The lubberkin drew the blond one aside and bent to mutter in his ear. Irrith, losing a staring match with the other dwarf, could still overhear the whisper. “She might be a Sanist. Watch her; I’ll go inform the Queen.”

  A Sanist? Irrith didn’t ask. The puck searched her for weapons and found none, then said, “I’ll be back soon to deal with you. Don’t try anything foolish.” Then he walked out through the same pillars that had stopped Irrith before, leaving her with two German dwarves and a suspicion that maybe she should have asked Ktistes after all.

  “Interesting,” Lune said, one slender fingertip tapping against her cheek.

  She said nothing more, but Galen relaxed. Family affairs had kept him from coming below for several days after his encounter with Dr. Andrews, and in the interval he’d had more than enough time to question his notion of working directly with the man. If Lune agreed, though . . .

  “The decision is in your hands,” she said. “If you believe it would be useful to bring this man into the Onyx Court, that is within your prerogative as Prince.”

  Which he knew, full well. Lune had explained it when she chose him for the position. He had authority over all matters involving the interaction between mortals and fae, including the decision to bring them below. This was the first time, however, that Galen had attempted to exercise that prerogative.

  The prospect made him nervous in the extreme. There were ways to repair the mistake if someone chose poorly—but far better, of course, not to err in the first place. The watchful gaze of Lune’s Lord Keeper, Valentin Aspell, made him dreadfully aware of that. “I won’t do it yet,” Galen said, and made himself stop twisting his fingers. “I don’t know the man well enough—and it’s worth exploring his knowledge further, to be sure it’s worth the effort. But I’ll inform you before I reveal anything to him.”