Compared to that, the world of this small house was gloriously solid and bright. “But I cannot stay here forever; I must come below again, and soon.”
Lune hesitated. He wished she would show her true face; masked by humanity, she was harder for him to read. “Antony…do you wish to?”
“What?” He put down the pheasant bone he had just torn half-clean. “Wish to stay here, or to come below?”
“To be free of us.”
She spoke the words with an abruptness that could only be born of inner turmoil forcibly chained. Staring, Antony fumbled for a napkin and wiped his fingers clean, then rose from his chair. “Lune…”
He got no further than her name; he was not sure what to say. She lifted her chin and went on. “I do not know if it’s possible. But we could try. Your bond to my world has almost killed you, more than once, and I know it has almost cost you your marriage. I never meant for this to bring you pain, but it has. I would spare you more, if I can.”
To be free of Faerie…he could not think what to feel about that. I have been with them two-thirds of my life. The realm beneath his feet was as much a part of his world as the one he stood in now.
But perhaps he was not so much of her world. “You have no more use for me, then.”
“No!” Lune reined herself in, but that unguarded cry rang in his ears. “If anything, we are of no use to you.”
The conversation was stumbling further and further from reason. “No use? How can you say that?”
She laughed bitterly. “What have we done for you, for your world, that you can say has bettered it? I do not mean the distant past. Since the start of these struggles, we have been leaves in a flood, deluding ourselves that we control where the torrent will carry us.
“When England was a Queen and her court, we—the fae—had some chance of steering a course. But England is grown too big for us; its concerns are grown too many. It is a hydra with a thousand heads. Parliament is the heart of this land now, speaking in contradictory voices, and I cannot control it by any honorable means.”
The words stung like wasps. Antony had never heard Lune like this, scourging herself with her failures. He could not say she was wrong in the substance of it—but what provoked her to such self-recrimination?
Me. I have done it. He saw it in the way her gaze fixed on him. Her world had nearly destroyed him, and the guilt of that tore deeply into her.
No other fae he knew would care so much, with the possible exception of the Goodemeades. It was the love of a friend, such as her kind were scarcely capable of, at least for his kind.
And it blinded her. “You may be right,” he said quietly, and did something he had not done for years; he took her by the arms, fingers curling into the cambric that draped her shoulders. “The whole of England is too much for us alone. We cannot control it, any more than Charles could, or John Pym, or even Oliver Cromwell. But we can help, as any of her loyal people do, for love of their home. There are smaller moments, and there is London; you should not give up on those. Certainly I will not.”
Was it accident or conscious choice that altered her eyes? When she looked up at him, they shone silver—Lune’s eyes in a mortal’s face. And her voice, saying, “You wish to stay?”
“I do,” Antony confirmed. Even if the enchantment of his bond released him, he would not abandon her. “And together we will do what we can, however small or great.”
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: October 25, 1659
Hasty work had converted Sir Mellehan’s former chamber over to an armory, while its previous occupant enjoyed the hospitality of the dungeon. Racks held the shining brass of the muskets and pistols Wayland Smith forged for Lune and Antony’s army—locked away for the time being, except for those few Sir Peregrin permitted to trusted hands.
“We can provide you with means to carry these back to Berkshire,” Lune said to the sprite who stood near the door.
She heard Irrith’s weight shift. “That won’t be necessary, madam. He’s Wayland Smith. He makes things; he doesn’t keep them.”
Lune suppressed a smile at the awkward manner of Irrith’s address. The wild faerie was learning courtesy, but did not yet use it well.
Keeping the firearms made her uneasy, but she recognized that sending them back to Wayland would not solve anything. Over time, the fae adopted any mortal thing that interested them; sooner or later, someone would have picked up a gun. And she might need them again.
She took her hand from a musket stock and faced Irrith. “You may tell your King that I am looking into the fulfillment of my promise. The Army has dissolved Parliament—”
“Again?” said Irrith in disgust. She was learning mortal history, too, and found it inexplicable.
“Again. But I think it shall not last for long. Without the Rump, the Army has nothing to legitimate itself save the sword; we shall have new war or a new Parliament before long. Either way, they have greater concerns than the maintenance of your Horse, but there are other means of achieving it. The people are tired of having Puritan morality imposed on them from without.”
The Horse had gone back to its hillside; Lune wondered if Irrith would follow suit. The sprite asked endless questions about the mortals of London, but passing fancies were common among fae. She might not return.
Concealing her disappointment at that thought, Lune said, “And please also convey to your King what I have said regarding Vidar. I will reward handsomely anyone who brings word of him to me.”
The delicate face broke into a fierce smile. “I should not like to be your enemy, madam. I’ll carry your message, and search for Vidar myself.”
THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, LONDON: December 5, 1659
Throwing roof tiles and chunks of filthy ice had seemed like a good idea at the time. London’s apprentices had presented a petition to the City’s Common Council; they wanted a new Parliamentary election, or at least the return of the Rump ejected in October. When Dendy showed up to post a proclamation from the Army’s so-called Committee of Safety, outlawing petitions, it didn’t take much encouragement from the handful of disguised pucks and goblins among them to provoke the apprentices into standing up for their demands. And the sergeant-at-arms, ducking the missiles, had withdrawn with his men.
But now a regiment had come, with horsemen to back them up. It didn’t stop the apprentices; a knot of them descended upon one unfortunate soldier not wise enough to keep up with his fellows, and disarmed him by force. Antony could not get through the crowd to them as they kicked the man to the ground outside the Royal Exchange.
And what could he do, if he did? Tell them he was an alderman of London? The Court of Aldermen was not in high esteem at the moment, though Antony had been working since his restoration to better that. He might join the soldier on the ground.
The regiment’s commander was going to carry out the duty Dendy had failed at, come the forces of Hell itself. Ignoring insults from the crowd and the football some of the apprentices were kicking about, disregarding—or perhaps oblivious to—the fate of his soldier, Hewson was reading out the proclamation in a determined bellow.
And then someone threw a stone.
Antony didn’t see where the first one came from. He saw some of those following, though, as other apprentices took up the idea and began to pelt the soldiers with anything that came to hand. The shopkeepers of the Exchange had long since cleared away, but there was rubbish aplenty, and some of the apprentices had strong arms.