With Fate Conspire

by Marie Brennan

  The boy, Dead Rick thought, but it wasn’t true. That was just the farthest back he ever really let himself think about. Before that …

  His breath came faster, his heart pounded harder, his knuckles ached from the tightness of his fists, but he made himself think back. Before the girl’s screams, before the boy’s trusting cooperation, even before Nadrett’s orders.

  The earliest thing was pain.

  Being thrown down onto a stone floor, puking-sick with pain that didn’t come from his body, and only white light when he blinked. “Somebody ’ad been flashing a light in my eyes,” Dead Rick said, hearing his voice flatten out with tension. “And somebody—Nadrett, I think—’e said, is that the lot, and whoever ’e asked must ’ave nodded or such, because ’e said, good. And then they dragged me out of the room, and somebody else chained me up, a chain around my neck like I was a dog even though I was a man, and then—” He stopped, unable to go further, and shook his head. There was nothing worth telling, no hint of whether he’d once known something useful. Something Nadrett would shred his mind to get.

  Cerenel stepped forward, and Dead Rick nearly jerked into violence; he’d forgotten the elf-knight was there. Cerenel’s hand floated just above the butt of his pistol, though he didn’t draw. Dead Rick realized his own body had drawn wire-tight; to anyone watching from the outside, it must look like he was on the verge of something dangerous. Like hurting the Prince. Drawing in a slow breath, trying to convince himself it was calming, Dead Rick unclenched his hands. His knuckles creaked at the release.

  Hodge was chewing on one fingernail, half-turned away as if trying to give Dead Rick some privacy. “Yvoir’s got to put you back together. If you knows something we can use, I want to know it, too.”

  Swallowing down the memory of sickness, Dead Rick shook his head. “If I ever did, it’s gone now. That would’ve been the first bit Nadrett smashed.”

  “We won’t know until you do, will we?” Hodge’s breath caught, his scent giving off a wash of unexpected pain, and he slumped abruptly down into a different chair. When he’d let the air out again, he said, “I’ll tell Yvoir to ’urry it up.”

  After a brief wait, Dead Rick figured out that had been a dismissal. Startled into lack of caution, he said, “That’s it? Ain’t you going to—” His common sense caught up, and he snapped his mouth shut.

  But Hodge understood him anyway. “Ain’t I going to punish you, for that business with the boy? Blood and Bone, Dead Rick—you just stood there and told me as ’ow Nadrett tortured you into being ’is dog. I suppose I could make you pay for what ’e did—but ain’t I got worse problems?”

  Dumbfounded, all Dead Rick could think to say was, “The girl—”

  “The girl’s got ’er own problems,” Hodge said with exhausted finality. “’Ere’s an idea—you two take care of yourselves, and save me the trouble.”

  Whitechapel, London: August 16, 1884

  The light showing through the canvas over the broken window was dim, no more than a single candle’s worth. But it was enough to tell Eliza that someone was at home, and so she raised her hand to the weathered panels and knocked.

  This time she heard footsteps: slow, dragging ones, the steps of a woman exhausted past the will to raise her feet. They might have belonged to an old woman, but when the door opened, Eliza saw it was Maggie Darragh. The narrow court in which they lived was dark as pitch, and with the candle behind Maggie her face was entirely in shadow, but she was too tall for Mrs. Darragh, and her shoulders slumped with weariness, not defeat. “What do you want?” she said dully.

  Eliza drew a careful breath. She’d been given a mirror to look in, before leaving the Onyx Hall; she knew the face she currently wore was not her own. Seeing Maggie fail to recognize her, though, both reassured and unnerved her.

  It made her task more difficult, too, which was regrettable, but necessary. She still hadn’t decided what to do about Sergeant Quinn, and after her suspicious release from the workhouse—not to mention the way she’d vanished after—she doubted the man thought well of her. The Darraghs’ room would be the first place he’d come, if he went looking. So if Eliza wanted to come here, she needed a disguise, and a better one than just a deep bonnet. She needed a faerie illusion—a glamour, as they called them.

  Now she needed to convince Maggie to let strangers into her lodgings.

  “Miss Darragh?” she said, and the shadow in the doorway nodded. “Father Tooley sent us. May we come in?”

  At the word us, Maggie squinted past her into the darkness of the court, where Eliza’s companions waited. “Sent ye? Why?”

  “For your mother’s sake,” Eliza answered. “We belong to a charitable society, and would like to help you if we can. I promise we won’t ask more than a few minutes of your time.” It happened occasionally, that well-meaning women from the better classes decided to help out the less fortunate. They didn’t come by at night, when few honest people were out and about, but she hoped Maggie wouldn’t think of that, not before she let them in.

  From behind Eliza, a friendly voice spoke up. “We’ve fresh biscuits to share.”

  Maggie hesitated as if fighting with her common sense, but the delightful smell that suddenly filled the court decided her. “Ma’s asleep, so be quiet.” She stood aside to let them in.

  With the weak light of the candle now falling on Maggie’s face, Eliza saw what shadows had previously hidden. The young woman’s eyes were red-rimmed as if she’d been straining them on too little sleep, and indeed, a half-finished pair of trousers were draped across a three-legged stool, next to the room’s one light. Other fabric scattered around showed that this was no bit of personal mending; Maggie had taken on piecework to earn a few more coins. Not enough coins, if her hollow cheeks were anything to go by. Heart cramping with sympathy, Eliza wondered if the biscuits would be the first thing Maggie had eaten that day.

  The small room seemed even smaller once six people were crowded into it. Mrs. Darragh lay on the bed, crumpled even smaller in sleep, with a moth-eaten wool coverlet pulled tighter over her shoulder. Maggie stood over her protectively, facing Eliza and the other three. With the door closed, they were alone as anyone could get in the back alleys of Whitechapel, where eavesdroppers were only a thin wall or floor away.

  The plump woman who looked exactly like Rosamund Goodemeade, only a little taller, unfolded the napkin in her basket, revealing the biscuits inside. Their smell was sweet heaven in the drab little room, and Maggie twitched as if she wanted desperately to seize them in both hands. Rosamund gave them over freely, but Maggie just stood clutching the basket. “What is it ye want?”

  Eliza wet her lips. After seven years, the moment had come; she was surprised to find it terrified her. Whatever speech she’d thought up, to explain everything in a quick and sensible way, had vanished from her mind, leaving a roaring blank. But she had to speak; Maggie’s suspicion was growing with every silent moment. The words burst out of her. “Maggie, ’tis me. Eliza. I’ve found Owen.”

  Maggie’s hands went white on the basket. She gripped it now as if she would swing it into someone’s face, should they gave her half a reason. “What the devil kind of joke—”

  “It isn’t a joke! The faeries had him, Maggie, as I always said, but I’ve found him, and I brought him here, but we had to disguise ourselves in case—” Eliza stopped herself. That didn’t matter; all that mattered was bringing Owen home. “Rosamund, show her—”

  Like a breath of wind whispering over the fine hairs of her arms and legs, the glamour she wore fell away. And Maggie, eyes wide and unblinking, hands still white on the basket’s handle, stood rigid for a full three seconds. Then her legs gave out, and she fell hard to her knees on the floor beside the bed.

  It woke Mrs. Darragh, who made a plaintive noise and rolled over. Her eyes opened; for a moment they swept over the room in unfocused confusion. When her gaze sharpened, she gave a wordless cry and sat bolt upright, one hand pressed to her heart as if it w
ould give out on the spot.

  Her own heart pounding like a navvy’s hammer, Eliza turned to see for herself. Owen stood swaying by Feidelm’s side, his face wrinkled with apprehension and uncertainty. Eliza didn’t know if her plea to Rosamund had been meant to include his glamour or not, but the brownie had taken it that way, dropping them both at once. The two faeries’ glamours still stood, but they were hardly needed; they could have been a pair of fire-breathing dragons and neither of the Darraghs would have paid an ounce of attention. They had Owen back at last.

  Mute, half-witted, snatched out of time. Mrs. Darragh did not seem to see; she stumbled free of the bedclothes, moving faster than she had in ages, to throw her arms around a boy who did not recognize her but had nowhere to retreat. The last seven years might never have happened; for her, it was still 1877, and Owen the age he should be.

  But Maggie saw.

  Some part of her understood, even if she couldn’t yet put the knowledge into words. Eliza read it in the desperate look Maggie directed at her. “How—” the young woman began, shaking her head; and Eliza answered her.

  She kept it to the simplest points. They had never told Maggie about their friend Dead Rick; that had been their secret, hers and Owen’s, not for a little sister to share. And the part about Nadrett would only confuse her now. What mattered was Owen’s condition—and the solution Dónall Whelan had given them.

  “We tried to take him to St. Anne’s first,” Eliza admitted. The boy had struggled free of Mrs. Darragh, not understanding why she was so desperately glad to see him; Rosamund diverted the woman from him, breaking the news of his situation as gently as she could. “I would have liked to bring him back more healed than this. But he panicked on the steps and wouldn’t go in. Will you go fetch Father Tooley here instead?”

  Maggie’s senses were apparently still reeling; she didn’t ask why Eliza’s companions couldn’t go. They could enter churches, so long as they had bread to protect them, but neither Rosamund nor Feidelm was eager to explain this matter to a priest. Maggie nodded, still sitting on the floor. And she stayed there until Eliza added, “Better if ’tis sooner.” Then the girl blinked and scrambled to her feet.

  Feidelm stepped over to murmur in her ear once Maggie was gone. “The mother … is she well?”

  Tears burned in Eliza’s eyes at the question. Mrs. Darragh was busily telling Rosamund about Owen’s apprenticeship to a bicycle maker, while her strayed lamb of a son investigated the biscuits Maggie had left behind. “No,” she whispered back. “Her wits left when Owen did. I pray having him back will do her some good, but…” But no priestly ritual could mend what had gone wrong with her.

  Whether one could help Owen remained to be seen.

  The church was only a few streets away, and Maggie had gone out the door like a woman determined to drag the priest back by his collar if necessary. She returned in almost no time at all with Father Tooley at her heels—looking, Eliza was glad to see, more curious and concerned than upset at being rousted.

  He stopped in the doorway as if he’d slammed into a pane of glass, staring at Owen.

  Maggie nudged him in before the neighbors could grow too curious, and shut the door behind him. “A mhic ó,” Father Tooley breathed, crossing himself. “’Tis true, then.”

  He listened as Eliza repeated her explanation, this time going into more detail on what Whelan and Dead Rick had said. She looked to the fae for confirmation, only to realize they’d slipped out while she was talking; how had they done that, without drawing attention? Faerie magic, perhaps. They’d done right, though. Rosamund and Feidelm had come with her because Owen needed looking after, and trusted them more than the family that were strangers to him now. The question of what to do with him, though, belonged to the mortals.

  To Father Tooley most of all. He folded his big hands into a neat package while she spoke, a sure sign that he was thinking hard; when she finished, he stood silent for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “’Tisn’t that simple, Eliza. Or perhaps I should say, ’tis simpler. Once a child’s been baptized, he cannot be baptized again. There’s no need for it; God’s grace is indelible. The Devil himself could not wipe it away.”

  For all her doubts about Whelan, it seemed some part of Eliza’s mind had seized upon his suggestion as the answer to their problems. Her bitter disappointment at Father Tooley’s words surprised her. “Your baptism didn’t do much to protect Owen, now did it? Could be you aren’t priest enough to do it right.”

  It was unfair, and he frowned at her. “Anyone can baptize, Eliza—even a Jew, so long as his words and intent are right. But I don’t know if ’tis true that baptism protects against such things. That … is not the sort of thing they teach in seminary.”

  “But look at him.” Helplessness made Eliza’s gesture violent, flinging her hand out to where Owen had curled up on the bed, with Mrs. Darragh stroking his hair. “They say the faerie tried to take his soul, Father. You’ll be telling me next that no one can do that, and maybe ’tis true, but the bastard took something. And if we don’t find some way to wash Owen clean, he can never come back to us, broken or whole. He’s eaten too much of their food. It would kill him, and that’s the truth of it.”

  “If you pray—”

  “You think I haven’t?”

  Father Tooley conceded the point, but still he frowned. “Some other rite, perhaps—an exorcism—”

  Maggie made a furious noise, like a dog defending her pup. A pup who had once been her older brother. Eliza said, “Can you tell me honestly that you think he’s a demon in him?”

  The priest looked at Owen for another long moment, then shook his head. “No.”

  While he grappled with that question, Eliza’s own mind had snatched up one of its own, from something Father Tooley said before. “You said anyone could baptize.”

  “Don’t you think of it for one moment,” he said, alarmed. “Ministering the sacrament to an infant who won’t live long enough for the priest to come—to a Protestant converting on his deathbed—that’s a worthy thing, Eliza. But to do it when a priest has refused, when you know the boy has already been baptized, would make a mockery of the sacrament. And sure that would be a grave sin.”

  “Then what should I do?” she demanded, forgetting to keep her voice low. “Let him waste away? Abandon him to the faeries? If you think—”

  She wanted to keep talking when he raised his hand, but his suddenly thoughtful expression silenced her. “I could,” he began, then stopped.

  “Could?” Maggie prompted him, fierce with hope.

  Father Tooley grimaced. “The bishop would have my ears for even considering it, he would,” he muttered. “But better to be sure than sorry, and if there’s a chance it might do him good … when I said anyone could baptize, it was true, but not the whole truth. If a heretic administers the sacrament, who’s to say they had the form and meaning of it right?”

  “So you baptize the person again,” Eliza said.

  He made a cautionary gesture. “Not again. A baptism done wrong doesn’t count in the first place. But if you don’t know for sure, there’s conditional baptism.” A hint of rueful humor crept into his voice. “’Tisn’t much different from the ordinary thing. Si non es baptizatus, that’s all I add—if you aren’t already baptized. If you are, then all you get is a bit of Latin and a bit of water on your head, and no harm to anyone.”

  Maggie turned swiftly, as if something could be hiding from her in the tiny room. “Water—I can go to the pump on Old Montague—”

  “No,” Eliza said. “Sure it would be better in the church. During Mass—”

  Father Tooley barked a laugh. “Oh, no. Think ye two are going to march him up the aisle, and me explaining to everyone what on earth we’re doing?”

  Then Eliza remembered Owen’s refusal to enter St. Anne’s. She described it to Father Tooley, and he folded his hands again, tilting his head as if arguing with himself. The debate ended with a decisive nod of his head. “This
is what ye’ll do. Next Friday—”

  “Next Friday!”

  He gave Eliza a quelling look. “’Tis the feast day of St. Symphorian, and the octave of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He’s a patron of children, and if Owen is too old to qualify for his help, we can still beseech the Virgin to intercede. Ye bring him to the church a few hours before dawn. The rite begins on the steps outside; if we can’t get him through the door, then I’ll do it all in the street. And pray God it does some good.”

  Owen shivered and curled tighter. He’d gone into that posture, Eliza thought, when they began speaking of God. The faerie stain, no doubt. They couldn’t keep him out here much longer; soon he would have to go back to the Onyx Hall.

  Silently, she offered up her own prayer. Blessed Virgin, Mother of God—for Mrs. Darragh’s sake, if no one else’s, help our Owen be well.

  Humming an old lullaby beneath her breath, Mrs. Darragh bent over her son and kissed his forehead. “Sleep, my boy,” she whispered. “Sleep.”

  The Galenic Academy, Onyx Hall: August 17, 1884

  Yvoir’s workshop stank of chemicals. Dead Rick made the mistake of trying to smell them apart, and sneezed four times in quick succession. The French faerie smiled at him. “Be glad you aren’t mortal. I’m fairly certain the compounds they use have killed a number of photographers.”

  “And yours are safer, are they?”

  He shrugged. “To mortals, perhaps not. But we are not so easily killed, are we? A moment, please.” Yvoir returned his attention to the bowl in front of him, and the strainer balanced on its rim. The latter held a stone-green blob that jiggled as the faerie lifted it and scraped viscous material away from its underside.

  Fascinated despite himself, Dead Rick asked, “What is that?”

  “Cockatrice egg.” Yvoir carelessly dumped the yolk into a bucket on the floor. “Almost any sort of egg should work, but I find the albumen of a cockatrice egg is more stable, if slower to develop the image.”