A Star Shall Fall

by Marie Brennan

  Secrecy now was rather like closing the stable door after the horse had bolted, but she owed it to Lune anyway. “I came to buy, not sell,” Irrith said. “Tell me about the Sanists.”

  Magrat had no eyebrows, but the gray-tinged skin above her black eyes rose into furrows. “Sanists, is it? That’ll cost you.”

  It always cost her. But Irrith knew it didn’t have to cost as much as Magrat made out. “What do you want?”

  “Bread. Three pieces.”

  Irrith laughed in the goblin’s face. “For that, I could buy the name of the next Prince. This isn’t worth bread, Magrat, and I don’t have any to give anyway. It’s more valuable than oaths, these days.” An exaggeration, but not by much. “How about the memory of a kiss?”

  Magrat rolled her eyes in exaggerated disgust. Irrith added, “Not just any kiss. The last one given by a young man to his lady love, before he went off and got killed by the Jacobites.” It was all that remained of Tom Toggin’s bribe, and Irrith had been saving it for special use. The lady had feared, when her lover went off, that he was going to die, tinging the memory with a presentiment of grief.

  “Done,” the grim said without hesitation, and spat in her hand. Irrith did the same, and they shook. She hadn’t brought the captured memory with her, of course; too many fae here had wandering fingers. The handshake was enough to secure the deal. “It’s cheap information,” Magrat admitted. “Lots of people know about the Sanists. But I can tell you more than most. It’s funny you should ask me, really, when you’ve dealt with them yourself.”

  “I have?” It gave Irrith an unpleasant start. She’d wondered at the lubberkin’s whisper—had he somehow hit the mark?

  Magrat waggled her over-long fingers in the air. “Not under that name. They didn’t start calling themselves Sanists until after you’d left. And Carline doesn’t let herself be seen anywhere near those folk—not publicly.”

  A second start, more unpleasant than the first. Carline. Formerly one of the Queen’s ladies of the bedchamber, and the reason Irrith had left the Onyx Hall, intending never to return. “You’re talking about people who want to replace the Queen.”

  The church grim unbent one spindly leg to shove something across the floor toward Irrith. “See for yourself.”

  The thing turned out to be a torn, filthy sheet of paper. Irrith picked it up and found a title printed across the top in large block letters. The Ash and Thorn. Dated February 10, 1758.

  “A newspaper?” Irrith lowered it to stare at Magrat. “There’s a newspaper in the Onyx Hall?”

  “Two, actually. What good’s one newspaper, if it doesn’t have another to argue with? The Sun and Moon is the one loyalists read. This one publishes Sanists.”

  Irrith’s stare shifted outward, to swing around the Crow’s Head. She’d noticed other fae reading things that looked like newspapers, but she’d assumed they’d been brought down from above. No doubt some of them had—but not all. She couldn’t concentrate enough to read the one in her hand, so she dumbly echoed Magrat’s words. “Sanists. Published in a newspaper. You’re saying they make their treason public?”

  The grim waggled her hand. “Yes and no. Mostly they don’t talk about replacing her. They just mention what a shame it is, the Queen wounded and unhealing, and look how the Hall suffers, too, bits of it fraying away. And then, if they’re feeling bold, they wonder how it might be made well.”

  Irrith’s fingers clenched in the filthy paper. This wasn’t Carline’s old treason; that had been simple, damnable ambition, using things like the comet’s return as an excuse to gather support against Lune. This time—Blood and Bone.

  This time, they had a point.

  “Mens sana in corpore sano,” Magrat said. “That’s Latin, you know. ‘A sound mind in a sound body’—not that anyone in this black warren’s terribly sound, but nobody asked me before picking the name. What the Sanists want to know is, how can we make the palace strong when its Queen isn’t?”

  She didn’t have to say anything more. Irrith knew exactly what she meant. Lune had taken two wounds in the past: one from an iron knife, and one from the Dragon. Neither would ever heal properly. Which meant the faerie realm was ruled over by a Queen who wasn’t whole.

  The Queen was her realm. It was the basic principle of faerie sovereignty; the bond between the two was the foundation for authority. Carline had tried to find the London Stone because that was the focal point, the place where she could, perhaps, wrest authority away. Now, it seemed, she was trying something else: the force of popular opinion, and the weight of faerie tradition.

  What if the Sanists were right? What if what London needed, for its own sake, was a new Queen?

  Irrith glanced away, to keep Magrat from reading her expression. Not a good plan: the Crow’s Head was filled with other fae, some of them eavesdropping, some not, but all of them probably willing to sell rumors if offered a price. The galley-beggar sliding past her in the close quarters of the tavern had no ears to hear with, nor eyes to see—nor, for that matter, a head to put such things in—but that wouldn’t stop him. If he could drink the coffee in his hand, he could carry tales, too.

  “Welcome back to London,” Magrat said dryly. “A nest of vipers, all with their tails tied together, because nobody’s quite willing to give this place up. Except you, fifty years ago.”

  When she’d abandoned Turkish carpets and dirty rushes in favor of clean dirt and wild strawberries, politics and spying and insurrection for hunting beneath the summer moon. It would be easy enough to escape this snare again; all she had to do was put down her ale cup, walk out the nearest entrance, and return to the Vale.

  Easy enough to leave. Staying away was harder. All it had taken was Tom Toggin, and the recollection of the coming threat, to drag her back into the city. Because, as Magrat said, she wasn’t quite willing to give it up.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Irrith saw the church grim’s lipless mouth twitch. Suddenly suspicious, the sprite demanded, “Have you made another bet with Dead Rick? Maybe one about how I’ll go crawling back to the Vale before the season is out?”

  The grim’s smile was all teeth. “That’s what he thinks. I’d be obliged if you didn’t; I stand to win a pair of eyes off him.”

  Gambling, at least, was something Irrith understood. So was a challenge. She returned Magrat’s grin fiercely. “All right. I could see my way clear to obliging you . . . if you give me something in return.”

  “Iron blast your soul,” the goblin said, but the venom was only halfhearted. “I should’ve known better than to tell you that. All right, what do you want?”

  “More information. Not now; I’ll save the debt for later. And I’ll make it something small.”

  Magrat thought it over, then spat in her hand again. Wet palms joined, the church grim said, “I’m counting on your stubbornness. Don’t you disappoint me.”

  The Onyx Hall, London: February 12, 1758

  My own court should not be a distraction to me.

  Lune recognized the foolishness of that sentiment, even as she thought it. Political difficulties did not resolve themselves just because there was an external threat; some might, but others worsened. For every faerie who decided a wounded Queen was a problem for later, after the defeat of the Dragon, there was another who felt that now more than ever, they needed a sovereign who was whole.

  The best she could do was to keep one finger on that pulse, and try to anticipate where real trouble might break out. To that end, she met in private with her Lord Keeper, Valentin Aspell.

  “As you might expect, madam,” the lord said in his quiet, sibilant voice, “the reaction is mixed. Some take it as a hopeful sign: if you can achieve something as great as the Calendar Room, then surely you can mend the Onyx Hall.”

  He let a hint of reproach through. The major responsibility of the Lord Keeper, at least publicly, was the maintenance of enchanted items; the Calendar Room, while hardly something that would fit into the royal treasury, might have
fallen under his authority. Lune had shared the secret only with those few who needed to know, however, and Aspell had not been one of them.

  Hopeful signs were good. She knew better than to believe they comprised the majority, though. “What of the rest?”

  The Lord Keeper picked up a neatly bound stack of newspapers, grimacing as the cheap ink came off on his fingers. “Sanist reactions are as you would expect. The profound lack of logic and reasoning on display is nothing short of astounding; some have leapt to the conclusion that the Calendar Room operates by draining your life, madam, and that you are therefore mortal now.”

  Lune sighed. She knew better than to think the common subjects of her realm were all stupid; some goblins and pucks were very clever indeed, just as some of her courtiers were utter fools. But many of those common fae were uneducated, knowing nothing beyond what their own natures inclined them to, and that made them easy prey for rumors.

  Some of which, she knew, were spread deliberately.

  Aspell shook his head before she could ask. “I do agree with you, madam, that there is a leadership of some kind among the Sanists—a group actively seeking your replacement. But they are more careful than the fools who drink in the Crow’s Head. I doubt we’ll be able to find them until they make a clear move.”

  The fact that he was right made it no easier to swallow. And even if she broke up the Sanist leadership, the sentiments would remain; it might give her a brief respite, but nothing more.

  She lifted one hand to pinch her brow, then made herself lower it. While there was no great warmth between the two of them, she couldn’t fault Aspell’s effectiveness; he’d served her almost continually since her accession to the throne, and proved his use more times than she could count. Sooner or later he would find the right thread to pull, and unravel this knot.

  She just hoped it came sooner. It would be pleasant to have one less problem to deal with.

  “Keep watch over Carline,” Lune said at last. “If she isn’t involved, they may yet approach her. Inform me if you uncover any signs of trouble.”

  Ordinarily she put the Lord Keeper’s spies to a variety of uses, but they were useless in the matter of the comet, and the Sanists were by far her second greatest worry. Anything else could wait. Valentin Aspell bowed deeply and said, “Madam, I will do everything I can.”

  St. James, Westminster: February 14, 1758

  Miserably chill rain washed across Westminster in sporadic waves, but the interior of Gregory’s was warm, and laden with the competing scents of coffee, wig powder, perfume. The close of the Christmas holidays, the sitting of Parliament, and the prospect of approaching spring meant the quality were returning to London from their country estates, and marshaling themselves for the beginning of the Season.

  Of Galen’s companions, two had retired in such fashion, while one—like him—had stayed in London, for lack of money to make that country estate habitable. Today was the first renewed gathering of their usual club, which Mayhew had dubbed the Feckless Scions. It was more a joke than anything else. They were just a small group of friends meeting in a coffeehouse; nothing like so organized as White’s, or even the clubs of the whores or the Negroes. It was, however, the only one Galen belonged to. There was one for men associated with the fae, but it was an awkward thing; they were too mismatched of a lot, and as Prince, he felt very self-conscious in attending.

  Besides, those men would not have been able to help him with his current problem. Galen drained his coffee cup, clapped it onto the table, and said, “Friends, I need your assistance. I have to find a wife.”

  His declaration met with appalled looks. Jonathan Hurst, eldest of their coterie at twenty-five, said, “What for? By any decent standard, you’ve got at least five more years of free whoring ahead of you, before being shackled to a wife.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve sired a bastard,” Laurence Byrd said suspiciously.

  Peter Mayhew smacked him on the shoulder. “He said find a wife, idiot. If he had a bastard, logic says it would come with a woman attached.”

  “Not if the mother’s dead, or unsuitable! He might need another woman to raise the child for him.”

  “I don’t,” Galen said, before their speculations could saddle him with enough scandal to occupy society gossips for a week. “There’s no child—at least not that I know of. But my father is forcing my hand.”

  Noises of comprehension sounded around the table. All had met his father, and knew Charles St. Clair’s manner. “It had to happen sooner or later,” Byrd agreed, his countenance now sympathetically gloomy. “Well, there’s one silver lining: the sooner you’re married, the sooner you get out from under his thumb. You have that to look forward to, at least.”

  For what it was worth. Galen knew better than to believe his wedding and departure from Leicester Fields would mean freedom from his father. He knew men of thirty years’ age who still flinched when their sires spoke.

  None of his companions suffered quite so much under the patriarchal hand. Byrd’s and Mayhew’s fathers were both of a more amiable nature, and Hurst’s had died seven years ago—though that had the unfortunate effect of making him responsible for two headstrong younger brothers, both of them disinclined to respect him as the patriarch of their household.

  “My round,” Mayhew said, and got up to buy more coffee, threading his way through the room.

  Hurst tugged the folded cuffs of his coat straight with a precise motion and said, “All right. You’ve asked our aid, and we shall give it. What do you need?”

  “A wife,” Byrd reminded him.

  “And any female creature of marriageable age will do? Provided, one imagines, that she has two legs, two eyes, and all the other parts customary to such a creature—”

  Galen laughed. “I took your meaning, Hurst, and he did, too. He’s just being an ass. As to your question . . .” Laughter turned to a sigh. “The primary requirement, as you might imagine, is wealth.”

  Hurst nodded. “Your sisters.”

  Mayhew had just come back, and the bowls rattled against the table as the he set them down. He was the youngest of their group: eighteen, and precisely Daphne’s age. Galen knew full well that his friend harbored a not-so-secret tendre for his middle sister. He also knew, unfortunately, that the Mayhews were in even worse straits than the St. Clairs. Regardless of what wealth Galen acquired with his marriage, his father would never consent to let Daphne wed someone of such low status.

  “How large of a settlement do you need?” Byrd asked. If he noticed Mayhew’s discomfiture, he gave no sign, but simply took one of the cups.

  Choosing a number left a bad taste in Galen’s mouth, but he’d promised himself, while Edward shaved him that morning, that he would approach this in precisely the same way he did the threat of the Dragon: identify what needed to be done, evaluate potential methods of achieving it, and then pursue them one by one until he attained success. It was a wretched manner of seeking marriage, but it was also the only way he could bring himself to do it at all.

  “Five thousand,” he said at last. “More, if possible.” Which made it unlikely he’d snare the daughter of a gentleman. Those with good fortunes were seeking better prey than him.

  His companions nodded, and Hurst said, “Anything else?”

  Now it became a matter, not of necessity, but of desire. And that was far more treacherous territory. “The usual,” Galen said, trying to make light of it. “An agreeable nature, good habits of cleanliness, no insanity in the bloodline—”

  “No fondness for lapdogs,” Byrd suggested. “Can’t stand the damn things. I’ll never visit if you marry a woman with a dog.”

  But Hurst didn’t break his gaze from Galen. He, too, sought a wife, though less urgently; as head of his own household, it was now incumbent upon him to secure an heir. “You’re a romantic, St. Clair,” he said, over Byrd’s complaints about useless dogs. “Surely you must desire more in a wife than a moderate fortune and a clean bill of health.”
>
  Byrd ceased his tirade. Mayhew, too, was watching. They would not let it go, he knew; they understood him too well.

  A faerie queen, he thought, images of Lune filling his mind. Seated on her throne, or taking her ease in the garden, ethereal as the moon.

  He closed his eyes. “A serene manner,” he said, releasing the words one by one, as if laying treasures on the table. “Well-educated, not just in languages and music and dancing, but history and literature. And above all, a quick mind, curious and clever. Someone I can converse with, in more than mere flirtation.”

  Silence greeted his description. Galen made himself open his eyes once more, and found himself facing three very different expressions. Byrd, ever the cynic, recovered his tongue first. “You’ll have to keep such a wife on a leash; curiosity and marital stability rarely go hand in hand.” Mayhew smacked him again.

  “I’m quite serious,” Galen insisted, flushing. “Fortune is well and good, but that is my father’s requirement, not mine. And he isn’t the one who will be living with her until death do us part. I’m damned if I’ll take a wife I don’t respect.”

  It silenced Byrd, and put a thoughtful look on Hurst’s face. “It narrows your field, at least, and that is a virtue; you’ll be pursuing specific targets, which they often appreciate. Judith Chamberlain might do.”

  “Too old,” was Byrd’s immediate verdict. “He can’t take a wife half again as old as he is.”

  Which was an exaggeration, but Hurst let it pass. “Abigail Watts. Cecily Palmer. Northwood’s eldest—what’s her name—”

  “Philadelphia,” Mayhew supplied, after a moment’s pause.

  Byrd had objections to them all. “Abby Watts would never tolerate a mistress. The Palmer girl’s mad for another fellow; she’d be the one straying from you, St. Clair. And Philadelphia—phaw! Can you imagine a more unwieldy name?”

  “Well, damn it all, Byrd; you’ll shoot down every girl in England if we give you half a chance!”

  He met Mayhew’s accusation with a shrug. “As they merit, my friend.”