The Onyx Hall seemed half-empty; some of her people had fled, even without protection. Others cowered in futile defense against the wind. Nianna staggered through a crossing ahead of Lune, tearing her hair out in clumps; they withered to gray in her hands, and the lady whimpered in horror. Lune seized her and snapped, “Go above. Do not worry about bread. Come below again when the bells drive you, but Sun and Moon, get yourself out of here.”
Nianna stared; Lune was not sure the lady even heard her. But she could not spare the time to make certain. She went on through her half-deserted palace, seeking out an entrance she never used.
Water lapped at the stone in a neat square, in a chamber otherwise unadorned. This was not a part of the Onyx Hall anyone dwelt in, and few of her subjects came here; its use was small for anyone not born of water. But it was the one place in her entire realm where the palace connected directly to the Thames, through the tiny harbor of Queenhithe.
Lune knelt at the water’s edge, and beckoned for Jack to do the same. “The King is very nearly above your head,” he told her, craning his neck.
“It is not the King I seek to contact. We need Father Thames.”
He blinked. When she did not tell him it was a jest, his jaw came loose. “You talk to the river?”
“On occasion.” Once. Ages ago. Father Thames little concerned himself with the politics of the Onyx Hall. Even those fae who were his children almost never heard his voice. One of the nymphs told Lune she thought the great river spirit slept, borne down by the weight of the city upon his shores.
If ever there was a time for him to wake, it had come.
Lune extended her left hand to Jack, who was still gaping. “He may answer us, if we call him together.” Or he may not. She had not the leisure for the sort of ritual she had engaged in before. But she was tied to London, and Jack with her; she hoped that would count for something. The river had answered to mortal and faerie voices before.
“I have no idea how to do this,” he warned her as he took her hand.
“Simply call him,” she said, reaching their joined fingers down into the water. “Bid him wake, and fight the Dragon who roars along his bank. Else it will cross to Southwark ere long, and consume more of London besides. A Great Fire has been born in our City; only a Great River may quench it.”
Her words were spoken as much to the water as to the Prince. His eyes had drifted shut, listening to the cadence; when she faltered, he continued on, in his own less than formal way. “We hope you do not mind the, er, theft of your waters—I’m sure you understand the need. But however many buckets we throw, they are not enough; we need you. Help your children against this threat.”
Lune’s left hand was chilled to the bone, but not from the Cailleach’s wind. Gripped hard by Jack, she was for the moment safe from that attack; what she felt instead was an immensity, stretching from the headwaters far west to the sea far east, washing to and fro in the tides of the moon. Old Father Thames was, ages before London was dreamt, and would be long after they were gone. Measured against him, even fae were young.
And that great, aged immensity slept, letting the years ebb away unmarked.
“Wake,” she whispered—or Jack did, or both of them, with one voice. “Wake, Old Father, to battle.”
RIVER THAMES, LONDON: one o’clock in the afternoon
From Southwark, the City seemed a wall of fire and smoke, choking clouds obscuring the forest of steeples, the parts as yet unburnt. Half the northern bank was consumed, and despite the frantic efforts of men, the blaze marched down the Bridge, a phalanx of flame no defenses could halt.
The Bridge had burned scarce thirty years before, its northern end consumed, the remainder saved only by a gap in the houses too wide for the sparks to cross. Now the Fire stood once more at that breach, straining to overleap it, to seek out and ravage the untouched expanses of Southwark. Smoke wreathed the severed heads of traitors and regicides that spiked the southern end, like fingers feeling for a hold.
With a shuddering crack, one towering, tottering building collapsed, half its substance tumbling into the roadway of the Bridge, a hellish tunnel no creature could traverse. The other half plummeted into the flood, hissing where it met the waters, smoking debris joining the clutter already floating there, the belongings hurled into the water by those unable to transport them more safely. The wreckage of London would be washing ashore downriver for days to come.
An asrai surfaced, having thrown herself frantically clear when the timbers came crashing down. The river to either side of the Bridge was choked with wherries and barges, carrying people and their goods to Westminster or across to Southwark, but all focus was on the City; no one attended to the lithe shapes slipping through the murk, lending their aid where they could. If droplets of water occasionally arced skyward, snuffing embers as they floated through the air, it was hardly worth noticing, when horror so great demanded the eye.
But these little children of the river could not stand against the beast that now gathered its strength in the raging inferno of the Bridge. The Dragon was all the Fire, from the leaping sparks of Three Cranes Wharf to the tongues licking stubbornly eastward against the wind, but its malevolence was here, preparing to conquer the defenses of London Bridge, and claim a second victim to the south.
Beneath its glare, amidst the turbulent waters of the races, another power gathered.
Had anyone been able to approach the northernmost arches, they would have seen a true wonder. A face formed in the flood’s high tide, shifting and gray. One pier hollowed out its mouth, thrusting down into the soft river mud; its eyes were two whirlpools, on either side of the span. Debris vanished beneath it, leaving the features focused and clear.
A voice too deep to hear said, “Come to me, my children.”
And the fae of the river responded. Leaping, wriggling, slipping like quicksilver through the wherries and the wreckage, they came from upstream and down, flocking like a ragged school of fish to the call of their Old Father. Around his face they swam, in and out of the piers of the Bridge, flicking up against the wooden starlings that protected the stone, sending spray into the air.
It hissed angrily into steam as it met the Fire’s heat. No mere water could stop the Dragon. But the true battle, though invisible to the eye, was far more striking, and the children of the Thames felt it in their souls. They were their Father, as leaves are the tree that gives them forth, and in them was his strength. He hoarded it now, and sent it upward against their enemy.
Fire and water. Dry heat against cold wetness, alchemical and elemental opposites. The air shimmered and split where they met. The stones of the Bridge shifted in their ancient seats, expanding and contracting, losing stability under the strain—but they held. London Bridge was not so fragile a thing.
The Dragon roared, flames leaping into the sky. Silently, inexorably, Father Thames answered it. Their strength was matched, here in this place, and the river spoke forth its will, that the Fire could not deny. Here you will not pass.
Snarling, its fury balked, the Dragon retreated. Still the houses blazed, sending their ruins tumbling down, but the gap itself held, blocking the passage of the sparks. The rest of the Bridge, and Southwark that it defended, were safe.
Exhausted, his power spent, Father Thames sank back. The waters recoiled from the northern shore, leaving mud to be baked dry by the rage of the Fire. Men bailed them frantically upwards, filling barrels and tanks to be carried closer in, that the battle might continue.