With Fate Conspire

by Marie Brennan

  The frog worked for Nadrett; by unorthodox, Aspell likely meant horrible. But Dead Rick needed better specifics than that. “Like what? And what kind of photography?”

  Aspell spread his delicate hands. “I’m afraid that sort of technical matter falls beyond my expertise. If you truly wish to know, however, I can make inquiries in the Academy.”

  No need; the methods didn’t really matter, and as for the kind, Dead Rick could guess easily enough that it had to do with ghosts. As if the voice of his ally were in his head, he thought, But what ’as that got to do with going to Faerie?

  He didn’t know, and his ally wasn’t around to ask. On impulse, Dead Rick said, “How much to find out who it is I been talking to?”

  Aspell controlled his expression, but Dead Rick heard the hitch in his breath that indicated a suppressed laugh. “When I have only just now gathered the first scraps of information? Once I know the answer to your question, I can quote you a price; until then, I do not know how much it is worth.”

  Dead Rick hunched his shoulders and glared, putting as much threat behind it as he could while tied to a chair. “You’d better be quiet about it.”

  “Yes, yes; you do not want Nadrett to find out. Your lack of faith in my discretion is really quite offensive. Well, I believe our business here is done…” Aspell smiled in a way that raised Dead Rick’s hackles. “Except for one simple matter.”

  The other faerie paused, clearly wanting to make Dead Rick nervous, and to force him to ask. On another day the skriker might have refused to cooperate, but right now, he just wanted out of that chair. “What?”

  “You broke into my chambers, Dead Rick. Quite aside from my feelings on that matter, Nadrett will expect to hear you were punished for it.” Aspell ran the tip of his tongue over his lips, considering. “You did not make it very far, I suppose. A simple beating should suffice.”

  It could have been worse. Dead Rick nodded, and at some unseen cue the door opened, revealing Greymalkin on the far side. She was a slender thing, but wiry, and her claws were wickedly sharp. Could ’ave been worse—could ’ave been Orlegg—but this won’t be good.

  “Take him outside first,” Aspell instructed the waiting faerie. “I don’t want blood on my carpet.”

  Cromwell Road, South Kensington: May 27, 1884

  In the aftermath of Lucy’s sacking, Ann Wick quit, and Eliza was promoted to the position of upper-housemaid, with her pay increased to a full five shillings a week. She spent most of the additional money on coffee: Mrs. Kittering could not find a lady’s maid who satisfied her, relying instead on Eliza’s clumsy hands, while the new under-housemaid, Mary Banning, was lazy and slow and drank Cook’s sherry when she thought no one would notice. Which meant that Eliza was worked so hard, she could scarcely drag herself out of bed in the mornings. Exhaustion rendered her nerves uncertain; one harsh word from Mrs. Fowler could make her angry enough to murder the housekeeper, or put her on the brink of tears.

  The thought of confronting the faerie—even with trickery—terrified her nearly into paralysis. Once taken, such a step could not be called back; the faerie would know that she knew, and what little safety Eliza had would be gone. Then there would be only two paths before her: get Louisa Kittering back, or flee. And it might be that neither one would save her from the faerie’s revenge.

  Failure wasn’t the most frightening thought, though. The prospect of success was far, far worse.

  Say it tells you what you want to know, Eliza thought, while changing the linens on Mrs. Kittering’s bed one afternoon. Say it confesses, Yes, we steal humans away, and tells you where to find them. Miss Kittering, and Owen, and even Eliza Carter of West Ham, whose sister told you she was so afraid of “them” before she vanished. Then what?

  For seven years she’d dreamt of rescuing Owen. With the moment possibly at hand, though, Eliza was learning how little of a hero she was.

  It had been easy to pretend, before. When it was a matter of spying on people, and skulking about, and lying. Now the time had come to act directly, though, and the fear gripping her heart made her wonder: Was it really true that she couldn’t act before? All these months since Charing Cross, when she’d had the courage to throw a bomb out the back of a train, but not to catch the creatures who put it there. The six long years before that, when she gave up on searching, telling herself she didn’t know what to do. Keeping herself safe, at every turn.

  And all the while, Owen paid the price of her cowardice.

  In the middle of opening the curtains in Louisa Kittering’s bedroom the next morning, Eliza’s nerve broke. She looked out onto Queensberry Place, and for an instant she could feel the cobblestones beneath her feet, pounding against her heels as she fled back to Whitechapel. Not to safety, but the relief of failure, of giving up and trying no more.

  Under her breath, she snarled, “No.”

  Eliza spun, putting the street at her back, and looked toward the bed. The changeling slept there, innocent and false, one hand dangling over the mattress’s edge. Vulnerable—but one cry would bring the other servants running. Instead Eliza took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and picked up a chair.

  She didn’t attempt to be quiet. Mary Banning would be dawdling over the grates in the morning room still, and Mrs. Fowler discussing the plans for dinner with Cook; Louisa’s bedroom was three floors up from where any other servants were likely to be. The only person Eliza was likely to wake was the changeling, and that was exactly what she wanted.

  It took less than a minute for the creature to stir and sit up in bed. Where a human might have yawned or rubbed blearily at her eyes, the faerie looked perfectly alert—and then perfectly confused. “What are you doing?”

  “Dancing your furniture,” Eliza said. Her breath came in short pants, and her arms were already tiring; Louisa’s chairs, like everything else in the house, were the pinnacle of conventional fashion, which meant heavy and well upholstered. “I’m sorry for waking you—please don’t tell Mrs. Fowler—should have done this yesterday. Has to be done every month, you see.”

  The changeling stared as she completed one last, lurching turn and set the chair down. Casting about for something lighter, Eliza decided on a small table, and shifted a potted plant off it into the washbasin.

  “Dancing … my furniture,” the faerie repeated, watching her maid begin a second bad waltz about the room.

  “Yes!” Whelan’s half-remembered story had involved the mother cooking something strange, but the changeling would never have reason to come down to the kitchen. Eliza had thought of several possibilities; this had been the most immediate to hand.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the faerie’s mouth open and close, and her head wag slightly in denial. Say it, Eliza thought, barely keeping the growl behind her teeth. Tell me how old you are, what strange things you’ve seen, but this the strangest of all. Admit what you are. Say it!

  “Are you drunk?”

  Eliza stumbled, lost her balance, nearly fell into the wall. “What?”

  The young woman’s mouth pressed tight. The way she drew her shoulders back was a perfect echo of Mrs. Kittering in a ferment of disdain. “Put that table down this instant, back where it belongs—and then get out. We do not tolerate drunken servants in this house.”

  “But—”

  She didn’t even know what would have followed that protest. It hardly mattered, though, for the girl smacked one hand against the bedclothes, cutting her off. “Did you not hear me? I said get out!”

  Hands cold and shaking, Eliza did as she was told. Table replaced, and the potted plant atop it; then she curtsied like some streetside entertainer’s clockwork automaton and slipped from the room, closing the door behind her. After one frozen instant of staring into the hallway mirror, she fled to the refuge of the servants’ staircase.

  She made it halfway up the narrow steps before sinking into a trembling heap. Saints preserve me …

  I failed.

  Because her effo
rt hadn’t been good enough? Or because she was wrong—and there was no faerie?

  The plain, white-painted boards of the wall swam in Eliza’s vision. What evidence had she, that the young woman in that bed was not Louisa Kittering?

  Changes in her behavior. An interest in unladylike things. And that brief flinch, weeks ago, when Eliza spoke of the Blessed Virgin.

  A flinch only. Shouldn’t there have been more, if the creature truly was a faerie? And the other things could be explained away; after all, Miss Kittering had always had unladylike interests. She might simply be kicking harder than ever against her mother’s control.

  The rest could be explained by Eliza’s own fears.

  And what of Owen…?

  Eliza slammed her fist down onto the step, hard enough to bruise. No. That was no trick of her imagination. Whatever Maggie Darragh thought, that faerie was real; Eliza had seen him often enough to know.

  But that was all. The girl in the bed might very well just be Louisa Kittering.

  She heard sounds a couple of floors below: a door opening, and footsteps upon the stairs. Eliza shoved herself up and hastily wiped her face with her apron, scrubbing away sweat and tears alike. Bolting upward would only trap her in the servants’ quarters, so she headed down instead, and almost ran into Mrs. Fowler on the landing.

  The housekeeper looked at her suspiciously. “I heard a noise. What are you doing up here?”

  Eliza dropped a curtsy, hoping it would hide the effects of crying. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fowler. My foot slipped on the stairs, and my heel came down dreadful hard. I didn’t mean to disturb anyone. I just finished in Miss Kittering’s room.”

  But Mrs. Fowler was too practiced at seeing through the lies of maids. “And that sent you up to the attics? You certainly weren’t coming from Miss Kittering’s room just now. You look a fright, girl; what has happened to your hair?”

  An exploring hand found sweaty tendrils escaping from beneath her cap, no doubt from her exertions with the furniture. “I—I’m sorry,” Eliza stammered, grasping for any plausible excuse. “I’m afraid I’m not feeling well—”

  The housekeeper took her roughly by the shoulder, pressing the back of her other hand to Eliza’s forehead. “You’re very clammy. Perhaps you’re falling ill. Well, we can’t have you coughing and sneezing around the family, can we? You’ll take over that new maid’s duties below stairs; she can do your work above.” Mrs. Fowler released her, and when Eliza did not immediately move, said, “What are you waiting for? There’s stains that need cleaning, and you’ve wasted enough time already. Get on with you!”

  A shove sent her stumbling toward the stairs. Eliza caught herself on the railing, and thought, Now is your chance. She could quit—blame Mrs. Fowler’s insistence upon her working while ill, as if she had any right to expect otherwise—and go. Run away before Louisa had a chance to tell anyone what she’d done.

  And do what? Without the changeling, she had nothing. No hope except to march up to Scotland Yard and ask the Special Irish Branch whether they arrested any faeries along with their Fenians.

  She had nowhere to go, not even Whitechapel. But she had a position here, unpleasant as it was; and if Louisa didn’t have her sacked, then at least Eliza could save a bit more money while she tried to think of a plan.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she mumbled to Mrs. Fowler, and made her way downstairs.

  * * *

  Whole minutes passed—whole hours, it felt like—before Louisa Kittering was able to move.

  She spent those minutes staring at the bedroom door, as if the maid would come leaping back through, reciting prayers and waving a solid iron cross to banish her. Not that it would do much good; that might overcome the protection of bread, if the human was devout enough, but not the armor that shielded her now. Still, no amount of safety was enough to erase the inevitable flinch, the instinctive fear.

  Especially if the maid knew what she was.

  An absurd thought. This was not some rural village, where people still believed in faeries; this was South Kensington, literally across the road from the Museum of Natural History, where humans kept the preserved corpses of exotic animals from around the world, and specimens to illustrate their own supposed descent from apes. And while the maid might be from a less scientifically minded part of England, it would be quite a leap for her to think of faeries—especially when the girl who once lived in this room swore she said nothing of it to anyone.

  Yet the maid—Hannah, that was what the girl had called her—must have had some reason for waltzing about the room with furniture. And Louisa had heard cautionary tales of fae, innocents less familiar with the mortal world than she, caught by such tricks, forced out of their changeling roles and back to whence they’d come.

  She was not surprised to find, as she swung her legs out from beneath the bedclothes, that her feet were trembling. So were her hands. That had been one of the oddities of her new life, discovering that cold bothered her as it never had before; but this was nerves more than chill. For all that her changeling state protected Louisa more than mere bread, she felt naked, exposed, vulnerable. This was no brief masquerade, a glamour thrown over her faerie face and discarded when it was no longer needed. She had taken over the life and name of the girl who was once Louisa Kittering, and until she managed to break free of that young woman’s ties, it meant subjecting herself to the constant scrutiny of those around her.

  She was only safe so long as they didn’t know what she was. The Goodemeades and their mad plan to come out of the shadows looked a good deal less appealing, now that she stood to lose very directly by it. Then everyone would know how to recognize the signs of faerie things. As long as they remained ignorant, though, she remained safe—and free.

  Gloriously free! Louisa could not help but grin at everything around her, from the pictures on the walls to the brass knobs of her bed, as if she’d never seen any of it before. The touch of her bare toes against the floor steadied her after that fright, and she bounded over to the window to peer out at the street below.

  A carriage rolled by, bearing on its doors some peer’s coat of arms; she could not make it out from up here, and likely wouldn’t have recognized it anyway. She’d thought to go along with Mrs. Kittering’s plans and marry that baron’s son, the one with the absurd name—or perhaps someone even more highly placed. Taking on a human life didn’t mean giving up all of her faerie charms, after all, and the glittering beauty of the haut ton did have its appeal. But wedding a peer would limit her freedom too much, unless she kept her husband continually enchanted; and besides, Louisa had never desired to be a faerie bride. She’d known such a creature once, a nymph who left her husband after he struck her three times, and didn’t see the point.

  No, she would not marry. There was no need for it anyway. Once she was settled into her new role, she would cut her ties with this family, and go wherever she liked. After Frederic Myers, perhaps. He had a wife in Cambridge, but surely it wouldn’t take much to change that, especially if Louisa Kittering suddenly discovered a mediumistic talent and began channeling the spirit of Annie Marshall. She even looked a bit like the dead woman, if she turned her head to the right angle; Myers had sneaked glances at the girl all through that London Fairy Society meeting, back in March. Now that the face was hers, she could make use of that.

  Silly fool, she chided herself. This was her escape from Nadrett, so that she no longer depended on his shelter and bread. She’d known from the moment she saw Myers at the meeting that spending time around him would be … unwise.

  But just because Nadrett thinks he might have another use for the man later on, doesn’t mean he will, whispered the part of her that had grown tired of caution and control. With your help, Myers could even take steps to protect himself. Wouldn’t that be better than leaving him in danger? She stood with one foot in each world now; why not make use of that? She could do anything Louisa Kittering could, and more.

  But a glance back at the door sobered her. Tha
t freedom was hers only so long as she was Louisa Kittering. One direct admission of her true nature, and the bond would be broken. Which was hardly a concern in the ordinary way of things—but what of the maid?

  There were other ways to force a changeling out. It all depended on how strong the maid’s nerve was.

  Louisa tried to recall what the girl whose place she’d taken had said about the maid. A prying sort—and Irish; yes, now she remembered. Irish, though hiding it, which might explain why her mind went to fae. Louisa shuddered. They had harsh ways of dealing with changelings in Ireland.

  Biting her lip in thought, she went to sit in front of the grate, staring at the coals glowing softly in their harmless iron nest. The Goblin Market answer would be to dispose of her. It wouldn’t even be hard; servants vanished all the time, with little or no explanation. Fetch a will-o’-the-wisp from the Onyx Hall and lure Hannah Whoever over the rail of a bridge, or into the path of an omnibus. Easy and sure.

  But she’d taken on this life precisely to get away from the Goblin Market—that, and to stay in London, when the Onyx Hall finished its collapse. It would be a poor escape if she brought all those habits of thought and behavior with her.

  So what, then?

  The door opened. But the woman who came in wasn’t Hannah; it was some other maid, and she stared wide-eyed at Louisa—who realized she was on her feet with her hands raised in defensive claws. She lowered them hastily, and assumed an expression that implied they’d never been raised at all, that she certainly hadn’t been on the verge of attacking the maid. It will take more than a new name to banish my Goblin Market habits, I suppose. “Yes? What is it?”

  The maid, a slump-shouldered woman with a nose made florid by drinking, gave an awkward curtsy. “I’m here to help you dress, miss.”