Lune clenched her jaw, then said, “You would have me give in to her?”
“Did I say that? Negotiation is not agreement. Send for the ambassador,” Jack said. “Tell him—oh, whatever you have to, even if it’s a lie. Pretend you’re willing to consider the Gyre-Carling’s demands. Even if it buys us nothing more than a temporary reprieve, that may be enough to save the City.”
“I have asked for a reprieve, and been spurned.”
“That was a reprieve for London,” Jack reminded her. “I’m talking about a truce. Promise them something, but on the condition that the Cailleach ceases her assault while they send word to Nicneven in Fife. That will give us—how fast can fae travel? Surely at least a week. Enough time to—”
He broke off, because Lune’s eyes had gone very wide. “What?”
She stood silent for a moment, then said, “Not a week.”
“What?”
“To send to Nicneven. Because she is not in Fife.”
Jack blinked. “Why not?”
“The Cailleach.” Lune spoke with more vitality now, no longer sheltering her hand. “She would not answer to anyone less than a Queen. If the Hag is not attacking us from Scotland—and I do not believe she is—then Nicneven must be near, to bid her begin and end her assault.”
“Then she would be with the Scots outside the City, I presume,” Jack said. “What do you intend—a knife between her ribs?”
Lune shuddered, recoiling from him. “No! Sun and Moon—that would prove Vidar right indeed, that I have become Invidiana’s echo. No, but if I sent word, demanded to speak to her face to face…”
Invidiana. He’d heard that name before, regarding the days before Lune’s rule. If Jack was to be of any use in the negotiations—if he was to have any chance of persuading Lune to end this conflict for good—he would have to learn more about that, and fast. “Will Nicneven come?”
“I believe she will,” Lune said. “And if I am right, it will gain us some time.”
“To fight the Dragon.”
Her answering smile was fierce. “To kill it.”
FLEET STREET, LONDON: ten o’clock in the morning
“I don’t think it’s working!” Irrith screamed at Angrisla, and the mara snarled in reply.
The tower of St. Paul’s stood veiled in smoke, a rare island of sanity in the midst of chaos. The squat, rectangular shape betrayed no bright flicker, and surely it would do so if the cathedral had caught. Which meant the troop the Queen had dispatched to protect its grounds was succeeding.
The ones who weren’t succeeding were underground, in the Onyx Hall. The Fire had climbed Ludgate Hill, moving up from Blackfriars and Carter Lane to claim the high ground, until the whole rise seemed like a volcano, belching thick black clouds. From that height it flung out sparks, riding the wind toward the wall.
Which was not stopping them.
For a time it had worked. Irrith had watched, holding her breath, as the incandescent flakes snuffed themselves against an invisible barrier. Angrisla, barely bothering to disguise her hideous face, kept up a continuous stream of curses and speculation, identifying for Irrith all the buildings and streets she could not name on her own. And it seemed that the stout brick courses of the City wall, bolstered by the fae, would hold the beast back.
But Ludgate itself, which had long formed a stark profile against the glare behind, abruptly vanished into the flames. The debtors usually imprisoned within its walls were scattered—released by their jailers or broken free on their own, Irrith didn’t know—and the proud statues of old Lud and the Tudor Queen Elizabeth were lost somewhere inside the blaze. The Dragon had passed the gate, and was coming toward them fast.
Angrisla spat a foul oath and ran for the Fleet Bridge—not away from the Fire, but toward it. These London folk are mad, Irrith thought in disbelief. She would never run to save the village near Wayland’s Smithy; the mortals could just rebuild, and breed more of themselves to replace the ones they’d lost.
Fae, however, were harder to come by. I must be mad, too, Irrith admitted, and ran after Angrisla.
The mara at least had not charged straight into the flames. She halted on the Fleet Bridge, leaning out between the iron pikes that lined its stone edge. Irrith cringed back from joining her, though whether because of the iron or the sheer filth of the river, the sprite could not say. If the searing air hadn’t roasted all sense of smell from her, she would have gagged on the water’s stench.
Angrisla was shouting down into that fouled water. Irrith couldn’t hear her clearly over the whirlwind roar of the advancing Fire, and she was not even certain the goblin woman was speaking English.
Except for the last bit, where Angrisla screamed, “Do it, bitch, and I’ll feed you a corpse a day for a year!”
Which was almost enough to make Irrith shy off the bridge entirely. She made the mistake of looking down, though, and what she saw there transfixed her to the stone.
Something moved in the choking sludge of the Fleet. Flowing sluggishly between the wharves and crumbling embankments, its surface clogged with debris and snowed under with ash, the thing was hardly a river at all—and Irrith had never seen a river spirit like the one that rose from it now.
Angrisla ran off the bridge as if for her life, hauling Irrith with her as she went. “Blacktooth Meg,” she said when they scudded to a halt on solid ground once more, and gave a feral grin. “The hag of the Fleet. Not so powerful as the Cailleach Bheur, but more than you or me.”
“Were you asking her for help or threatening her?” Irrith asked, unable to look away from the monstrosity before her.
The mara shrugged. “Both?”
The oil-slick skin might not have been skin at all, but an accumulation of the river’s filth. The shoulders were huge, but uneven, studded and twisted with lumps of either muscle or trash. Patches of stringy hair sprang from the scalp, debris caught in their strands, and the clawed hands that rose from the water’s surface could have crushed Irrith’s face, in concert or alone.
Irrith was very glad she could not see the hag’s face.
A voice like a thousand mutilated ravens screamed some unintelligible challenge at the Fire. I don’t think she needs the bribery of corpses, Irrith thought, backing another few steps away. This is her territory, and she does not like invaders.
What coiled up to meet the hag was not the entire Dragon. Irrith was not certain there was such a thing anymore; the beast had grown so huge under the wind’s encouraging hand that it could probably manifest itself in half a dozen places at once.
It was not the entire Dragon. But it was big enough.
Blacktooth Meg didn’t flinch back. She yowled in fury and threw her clawed hands skyward, burying them in the creature’s molten flesh. A stench bad enough to punch through to Irrith’s dulled senses struck her like a giant’s club, knocking her to the ground. The sprite writhed on the hard-baked dirt, until she felt Angrisla’s bony fingers wrap around her arm and haul her upright.
The river hag was lost from sight, buried in a twisting, tearing mass of flame. The stones of the bridge next to that battle were beginning to glow with the heat. The Dragon—that part of it—was pinned down.
But for how long?
The hag was no great spirit, not like Old Father Thames. Sparks glided by overhead, seeking the dry, close-packed houses of Fleet Street.
And from inside the raging battle, the sprite and the mara heard Blacktooth Meg scream.