A Star Shall Fall

He laid his own hand over hers in reply, before they moved apart once more, Delphia tucking her arm back into the shelter of her cloak. For all that Galen appreciated the semisolitude that being outside gave them, he was beginning to grow chilled; they could not stay out here much longer.

Delphia might have been thinking the same thing, for she said, “I will be glad when we are wed, and can spend time in company with one another—or even go missing for a few hours—without raising suspicion.” Then she blushed and said, “I—that is not to suggest that my only reason is—”

Galen drew her arm out again, bringing them both to a halt in the grass and turning Delphia to face him. Before Mrs. Northwood could catch up to them, he placed a kiss on the hand of his soon-to-be bride, and said, “I understand. And I feel the same. Be patient but a little while longer, Miss Northwood, and you shall have what you desire.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON

12 March 1759

The laboratory was empty when Irrith came in. Abd ar-Rashid was in Wapping, talking to the Dutch Jew who had made their bowl, arranging for lenses and mirrors. Wrain and Lady Feidelm were also above, examining the Monument to the Great Fire, seeing if they could somehow shield the chamber in its base from aethereal contamination.

Galen was at home with his family, for tomorrow he would be married.

Irrith had expected to find Savennis or Dr. Andrews, though. Without them, the abandoned laboratory seemed forlorn. Paper lay scattered everywhere, with notes scribbled in half a dozen different languages and hands. Shelves meant for books were all but bare, their former occupants tottering in piles on the tables and floor. Cold ashes filled the hearth, with no Podder to see to them.

Irrith trailed her fingers over a microscope, a pendulum, some chemical apparatus whose purpose she’d never learned. She picked up a sheet whose top read Extraction of Sophic Mercury

in large letters; the rest of it was blank. It flutttered from her hand to the floor.

This wasn’t what she’d imagined. In the long ages of her life, she’d seen every kind of struggle from a knife in the back to armies at war, but never one fought so much in the mind. It might yet come down to armies, of course; that was what Peregrin’s spear-knights were for. But Galen and his scholars were trying to defeat the Dragon with nothing more than ideas: a kind of war she’d never seen before.

In a moment of rare carelessness, she’d left the door open behind her. How long Irrith hadn’t been alone, she couldn’t say, but she turned to find Lune standing in the opening.

Irrith jumped, of course, and her hand went into her pocket, gripping the pistol she always carried these days. There was a hawthorn box in her other pocket, its friendly wood shielding her against the three iron balls within. If the clouds failed suddenly and the Dragon came roaring down, she would be prepared.

But it was Lune, not the Dragon. Once her nerves had calmed, Irrith remembered to curtsy. “Your Majesty.” Then she peered out the door, into the empty corridor beyond. “You’re… alone?”

Lune smiled, with rueful amusement, and closed the door behind her. “I am. After so many years, even I forget there was a time I walked this realm alone, without ladies and footmen and all the other pomp that attends a Queen. I wanted to speak to Dr. Andrews privately—but it seems he’s not here.”

“I think he went home.”

“Good.” Lune picked up a mortar and pestle, studied its contents, set it down again. “Galen said he was having difficulty persuading him to do so.”

“He’s dying,” Irrith said bluntly. “And he thinks being here can save him, at least for a while. But I think it’s sending him a little mad.”

The silver eyes darkened. “Gertrude is very apprehensive of that danger. But Galen argued, and I agreed, that Dr. Andrews’s condition made it worth the risk; we needed his mind, and he would not have long to run mad.”

Needed. Lune spoke as if the matter were done. “Are we ready, then? I know about the Monument plan, but have they found their mercury?”

“They found it long ago,” Lune murmured, and her lips tightened. On most fae, it would have been nothing, but on her it was a like a banner, advertising her distress. “But there is… a problem.”

They had a source for the sophic mercury? This was the first Irrith had heard of it—though admittedly, she hardly understood the scholars’ debates. She knew they wanted to draw it out of some water-dwelling faeries, but there was, as Lune said, some problem. Irrith furrowed her brow, trying to remember.

Then she succeeded, and wished she hadn’t. “They’re afraid it would kill the river fae.”

Lune’s lips tightened again. For a moment she was like a statue, frozen and mute; then she inhaled and answered with a simple truth. “Not the river fae. Me.”