The anger in his gut had turned to sick desire. Too long away. Antony shoved back from the table. “I know my medicine, and will go to it now.”
The ironical face stared up at him, stripped of any humor. “Will you not let a friend help?”
Was John Ellin a friend? Lady Dysart had brought him into their conspiratorial circle two years ago. Long enough for Antony to know him as more than just another hotheaded young man enchanted by Royalist ideas; Ellin had passion, but also common sense. Antony trusted him more than any man since Ben Hipley had died—but that was not the same thing as a friend.
A wave of dizziness broke over him, and only experience kept him from staggering. “You do help. But this is something I must handle on my own.”
“And you’ll not let me help you to your horse—I know better than to offer.” Ellin stood and gripped his arm. “But have a care for yourself. I don’t fancy having your wife on me for letting you fall in a ditch somewhere.”
Antony managed a smile. “No ditches, I promise.”
The cool, dark air outside cleared his head enough for him to walk more or less steadily behind the inn. No ditches—but a hole in the ground.
Bare, skeletal stumps thrust up from the soil where once a thriving rosebush had stood, and the ground around them was torn. But the charms held, diverting attention from this spot, and so Antony knelt and laid his fingertips on one of the splintered branches. “The moon is in eclipse.”
The phrase was not his idea. But with the gift some fae had for mimicry, it wasn’t enough to give his name, and so some wit in Lune’s following had come up with a series of coded signals instead.
The mutilated remainder of the rosebush shivered and split, revealing cracked steps. Antony made his way down them carefully. The waning crescent of the moon had not yet risen, but enough light came from the coaching inn to guide him into the room below.
He was just as glad not to see his surroundings. Leaves and dirt had drifted in, and cobwebs stretched between the broken fragments of tables and benches. Scorchmarks blackened the walls. We used him, Rosamund had said, and it seemed Vidar knew it. The brownies’ well-practiced innocence had not been enough to save them when a force of redcaps and Scottish goblins broke in.
Kneeling again, he felt his fingers tremble. Soon he would have to risk the Onyx Hall again—but not yet. Not yet.
“Soon its light will return.”
The second half of the phrase, and the key to the second door. The scarred boards flexed aside, and light bloomed up from below.
Antony shuddered in relief as he descended into the welcoming glow. It was not the Onyx Hall, but the Goodemeades’ hidden sanctuary helped him stave off the tearing need for his faerie home.
Gertrude bustled up to take his cloak before he was even off the steps, and a chair waited for him near the fire. This heat warmed him, and took the tremors from his fingers. Nowhere else—not even in Berkshire—could he relax as he did here; everywhere else, he feared spies, be they mortal or fae. But though the branches of the rosebush had been shorn, its roots ran living and deep, arching over this concealed room. Tiny buds and blossoms gilded the ceiling. And under that ancient sign of secrecy, he knew himself to be safe. Even the redcaps had not found this chamber.
Nor had they found the Goodemeades, hidden here since Antony freed them from imprisonment beneath the Tower. Rosamund pressed a cup into his hand. Wine, not their mead; brewing was one thing they could not do down here. But Antony gulped it down thankfully.
It is killing you.
He put Ellin’s words from his mind.
Hands twisting about each other, Gertrude said, “Antony—”
“I know,” he snapped, forcing himself upright. “I push it too far, yes—but what else can I do? I cannot live my life in this hole, safe but useless; I cannot abandon my own world to live wholly in yours. What would you have me do?”
He opened his eyes and found the sisters staring at him open-mouthed. Never had he snapped at them like that, and guilt warred with his annoyance. Then Rosamund recovered. “I—we’ve a message from Lune.”
His temper died, leaving foolish shame in its wake. Antony grimaced an apology for his outburst and said, “What word?”
Firelight danced in Gertrude’s eyes. “She has an idea, that she thinks may better our chances against Vidar. If she’s right—she hopes to retake the Onyx Hall soon.”
“How soon?”
“Well…” Rosamund picked up the thread from her sister. She, too, fairly danced with excitement. “You told us that Mordaunt is in Brussels with the King, planning some rising?”
Antony grimaced. “A foolish plan. If the Royalists try to raise the country, they’ll fail. Bloodily.”
“Lune hoped they might not.”
Hope meant nothing; political reality dictated the outcome. Yet the way Rosamund said it implied something more. The brownie had brought up Mordaunt in the context of Lune’s own plans; why? “Did she think to time her effort with theirs?”
Judging by their expressions, yes. “It used to be,” Gertrude said, perching on a stool at his side, “that what went on in the faerie court had a real effect on the mortal one, and likewise the other way. It isn’t true anymore—but we’ve wondered, at times, whether some little connection does not persist.”
Lune had hinted at it before, but never explained herself. True, she had lost her throne on the day of the King’s execution, but ordinary causes sufficed to explain that, and the other points of similarity. Vidar had simply chosen to strike when he knew she would be distracted. Yet—
Yet ordinary causes and mystical ones did not exclude one another. It was possible, he supposed, that the unease of Lune’s rule had affected Charles’s, or his had weakened hers. Certainly Vidar had used the one to trouble the other. Antony could not judge whether some arcane force still bound the two; it was impossible to disentangle such an effect from the practical events surrounding it. But if that were so, then carrying out their own assault while young Charles’s loyalists raised the country in his name might better the chances of both.
The brownies left him in peace, letting him think it through. What could be lost by trying? A great deal, unfortunately. Failed violence strengthened the Army’s hand, and set back the Royalist cause. And whatever Lune had planned, it would involve risk to her own people; if fae died in the attempt, and bought nothing with their deaths, it would be all the harder for her to convince them to try again.
He could not judge the chances of Lune’s plan, not without speaking to her about it. But he could judge the chances of Mordaunt’s all too well.
Antony shook his head. “I understand what you hope for, but no. If there is a connection, it will only cripple the fae. The Council of State has too many ways to learn of Royalist plans; a rising will never catch them unprepared. Whatever plan Lune has, we must carry it out on our own.”
The sisters looked disappointed. And they were very good at it; Antony felt immediate remorse for crushing their hopes. But he’d spoken only the pure truth. “Unless you believe your ‘some little connection’ can hamstring the Puritan whole of the New Model Army, it cannot be done. If Lune’s idea is some great enchantment to that effect, though—then by all means, tell me.”
He knew the answer before Rosamund murmured a reluctant no. “We can tell you the details,” she said, “at least a few of them. But Lune’s asked for you in Berkshire. She needs your advice, and your aid in preparing her folk.”
Antony tried to marshal his strength at the thought of the ride, and failed. He would have to visit the Onyx Hall before he went.