The indecision was maddening. Lune said, “Vidar gained Conchobar’s aid on the promise that he would control England to Ireland’s benefit. Instead, Lord Protector Cromwell ground your people under the heel of his boot. How can they stand by him, after such a failure?”
Feidelm spread her white hands in a helpless gesture. “He has failed, yes—but if Conchobar abandons him, what good will that do? Vidar’s success is his only hope, for certainly you will not view him favorably, should you regain your throne.” And Vidar has not your scruples against interference, she left unsaid.
“We might have been able to do something on Ireland’s behalf, had we not been driven out,” Antony said. “It is more than Vidar’s bungling; it is the loss of the good we might have done.”
He rather overstated the case, in Lune’s opinion; she was not at all certain they could have turned the tide of Cromwell’s invasion, or even softened it. But such honesty had no place in politics. “And the Ard-Rí?”
Feidelm sighed. “Our High Kings, you understand, do not rule as a king does; they do not give commands, and the Dagda cannot bring Conchobar to heel. But he promises that no others will support Ulster against you.”
In more peaceful times, Lune had viewed that High King with benign amusement. He was a crude fellow, extraordinarily powerful, but much concerned with earthy pleasures. His septennial ascendency at Temair, however, did not offer much hope for action; the Dagda was far more comfortable as he was. But the promise was not without value. Reinforcements from Ireland would turn this affair into a protracted war, and Lune had yet to figure out how to win even a single battle.
What if the fault of that lies not with me? The question haunted her, waking and sleeping. The monarchy of England had been abolished, by Parliamentary decree. Lune had not needed messengers to bring word of it to her; she knew the moment it happened. That sense of dislocation she felt when Charles was killed, the trembling in the foundations of the realm, was briefly an earthquake.
And then silence.
Wayland felt it, too, and every other monarch in faerie England. They did not lose their thrones as she had, but of course none of them were invaded, either. Or was it because none of their crowns were ever linked to the mortal one? Lune was not certain it was possible to regain her throne, with the King of England exiled from his, the crown jewels destroyed, and mortal sovereignty lying cold in its grave.
So she did what she could to aid Antony against the military rule of the Protectorate, and kept searching for hope in her own fight. And if she could not pry the Ulstermen away from Vidar, she would direct her blows at Scotland.
Amadea had spent a full year in embassy to the scattered Scottish courts, to little apparent result, but the true bounty of her efforts came in the form of fae willing to pass information south. Admittedly, the Lady Chamberlain made a poor spymaster, but Valentin Aspell had drifted away into careful neutrality, following neither Lune nor Vidar, and the Goodemeades had other concerns.
And she was not entirely ineffective. “The word from Fife,” Amadea said when Lune turned to her, “is that Nicneven is daily more disaffected with Vidar.”
That was enough to make even Antony sit up, despite his exhaustion. “How so?”
Amadea extended her hands, as if weighing the various sides. “He gained Ulster aid by promising he would control the mortal government and its Irish policy. But Nicneven—”
“—hates such interference,” Lune finished for her. The Gyre-Carling had embraced it briefly in revenge for Mary Stuart, but with Charles’s death, her purpose was done. “Why her people are still in London at all is something we do not know. Nor, for that matter, why she would work with Conchobar at all, when their aims are so far separated.”
Light danced from the gems in Amadea’s rings as she shrugged. “That, I’ve been unable to learn. I believe Vidar misled her as to the reason for Conchobar’s involvement; the hints I gather are that Ulster promised to assist Nicneven in exchange for something else entirely.”
Feidelm’s chair scraped across the soil, and all eyes went to her. “Claíomh Solais,” the poetess whispered.
From farther down the table came a wry voice. “And what is that, when it’s in English?” Irrith asked. She sat in for Wayland, who had little patience for these intrigues, though Lune doubted Irrith’s patience was any greater.
“The Sword of Light,” Feidelm said, her eyes shining with reverence. “The sword of Nuada, who was Ard-Rí before, and will be again. One of the Four Treasures of Ériu.”
Lune swallowed an unexpected desire to laugh as the English around the table all exchanged baffled glances. Anything that merited renown as a treasure of Ireland could be real trouble. “What makes you name it?”
The poetess’s eyes focused again, and she straightened, edging her chair back toward the table. “It has been lost for ages, but rumor has come of it again, and recently. This might be why. If it was in Nicneven’s clutches…”
“With all the raids between Ireland and Scotland,” Antony said, “mortal and fae alike, it’s possible. Suppose Conchobar has the sword. What danger means that for us?”
Feidelm hesitated, fingers brushing the torc about her throat. “I cannot be certain. I may even be wrong about the sword. Properly, it is Nuada’s, and Conchobar could curry great favor by returning it to the Ard-Rí. Perhaps he may do so, when Nuada reigns again.”
“Nuada was on the throne two years ago,” Lune said. “Conchobar had his chance then—for we must assume that if the sword was his payment, he has received it by now.”
“Indeed.” The sidhe nodded thoughtfully, and a line of worry creased her fine brow. “Which makes me think he has some use for it, before he gives it over. But in my honest opinion, that use will not concern you; more likely he will turn it against his enemies in Connacht. With no insult intended, madam, Lord Antony—to Conchobar, you are not that important.”
If Ireland’s internal strife distracted him from England, so much the better. “You said Nicneven was disaffected,” Lune reminded Amadea. “Has she learned the truth of Vidar’s promise to Conchobar?”
“He has not been subtle about it,” Antony muttered blackly. Once they finished with the reports from abroad, he would tell her of Vidar’s latest attempts to manipulate the Puritans and Lord Protector Cromwell’s government. “I know Nicneven is in Fife, not London, but surely she has creatures who carry tales of his deeds.”
“She does,” Amadea confirmed. “But she had patience, because she believed Vidar when he told her he but delayed the Irish, while he worked to carry out her other purpose.”
Other purpose? There had to be one; it was the only explanation for the Scottish fae still in London, long after Charles’s death. But something in how Amadea said it made Lune’s heartbeat slow in dread. “Which is?”
Into the silence of the council chamber, Amadea said, “To destroy the Onyx Hall.”
The blood drained from Antony’s already pale face. Lune covered his hand with her own, and found his fingers cold as death. It would kill him. This long separation already came far too close. She feared what would happen if he died before they could retake the palace; he grew frailer with every passing month. And without him, Lune might find herself crippled.
“Why?” Peregrin whispered, horrified enough to speak out of turn. “That—but—it is as if we threatened to destroy Fife itself. She makes war, not just against her Majesty, but against—”
“The foundation of my sovereignty,” Lune said, through numb lips. The bond with London hummed in her bones. Nicneven’s venom against her and all her court suddenly became clear as fine glass. “Because she objects to the joining of mortal and fae, and my realm itself is the source of that problem. The roots of my sovereignty lie in the land—but she considers it twisted, does she not?” At the edge of her vision, she saw Amadea nod. “It is a mortal place, not a natural one. A place never meant for our kind. To be bound to such a land corrupts me, and through me, my subjects. If she wishes to end what we do, she must destroy its source.”