“I don’t think it’s working,” Angrisla said, and Irrith swore in agreement.
ALDERSGATE, LONDON: four o’clock in the afternoon
The sudden crack of an explosion made the man next to Jack startle and look around in fear. The physician had him by the shoulder before he could run. “It isn’t foreigners,” he said, weary with having repeated it a thousand times. “The duke’s men are blowing up houses around Cripplegate, to stop the Fire’s spread.” Also by the Tower, though most if not all of the powder had been removed from the fortress. Jack hoped someone had the sense to clear breaks in the liberties west of the City, too—but he had no sense of that land, which lay outside the borders of the Onyx Hall.
That strange, extra sense was ravaged almost beyond capacity for life, though. Jack had been forced to ride halfway around the City to reach this spot; of all the entrances to the faerie palace, only the Crutched Friars and Tower doors stood unscathed. St. Paul’s was yet intact, but besieged on all sides by flames.
Everything else had fallen to the Dragon.
The western wall collapsed early—not physically, but in its magical fortification. Here, where the northward run of that defense bent eastward for a time, the line was breached, but not by much. The narrow gap of Aldersgate strangled the flames, letting only a slender arm through, and the wind lacked enough northward bent to carry the sparks over the height of the bricks. They battled the Fire for every inch it claimed.
Too many inches, though. The message was sent; now they waited for Nicneven to answer, losing more of London with each minute that passed. And Jack, well aware of the irony, prayed to God that Lune was right—about the Gyre-Carling being here, about her willingness to meet, about the killing of the Dragon, about everything. Otherwise they would lose all they hoped to save.
He could not sit below and wait; it would drive him mad. So he came out here again, joining the men who still fought, slowing the Fire with every means at their disposal.
Shouts rose at the corner across from Jack. An ember had wormed its way into the wood, unnoticed by the men busy fighting to extinguish another blaze, and now a whole wall was in flames. Staggering, weary past the telling of it, Jack grabbed the nearest fellow by the sleeve—some fine gentleman, whose rich clothes would not be fit for rags when this was done—and dragged him toward an unused fire-hook. Somehow the two of them got its heavy iron point up; then others joined them, helping maneuver the hook into a ring under the eaves of the burning house. “We have it!” Jack cried in a voice gone hoarse with smoke and overuse, and a dozen hands seized hold of the ropes set along the thirty feet of the pole. Together they all heaved, bellowing, until the timbers gave way, and the house front came crashing down.
Sparks erupted skyward, but others were there with buckets. Jack and the fine gentleman positioned themselves as close to the heat as they could, flinging water over the crackling wreckage, until the last of it sputtered out. A small victory: one more house destroyed, true, but it would not spread to others.
Chest heaving, Jack dropped the last bucket from his blistered hands. His companion gave him a soot-blackened smile, shoving the lank, sweaty mass of his dark hair back toward the ribbon it had escaped from.
There were other places to fight. Jack opened his mouth to suggest they join a group farther down the road, but left it hanging as a horseman trotted to a halt at their side.
He knew the man on that horse, who had been everywhere around the City since yesterday morning. The prominent nose of James Stuart, Duke of York, would have been recognizable through any amount of grime.
Jack could only blame desperate exhaustion for his failure to recognize that same nose on the fine gentleman at his side.
“We have the Fire under control here,” the duke said to his brother, ignoring Jack. “The men fighting in the liberties, though, could use encouragement.”
Charles Stuart nodded. “But reward those working here. By their efforts are these northern parishes saved.” Reaching into a bag slung across his body, the King of England pulled out a shining guinea and offered it to Jack.
Who merely gaped at it. The coin was so clean, winking brilliant gold in the afternoon light, that he could not comprehend it. Nor the hand that held it. The King and the duke had been in and around the City all day—that much Jack had heard—and yes, that they worked with their own hands alongside the citizens of London, but…
But the tall, long-nosed man before him, however fine his clothes had been, was so far a cry from the drinking, wenching, merry-making ruler of England that Jack’s tired mind simply could not put the two in the same body. And so he stared, until Charles said, “Take it. You have earned it, in defense of my City.”
Jack found the wit to shake his head. “Keep it, your Majesty, for some other man—one who needs it more.” The part of his mind that still possessed an ounce of sense reminded him that his house in Monkwell Street was gone, and so was the Royal College of Physicians, and the Barber-Surgeons’ Hall.
Yet I have the fae. Others are not so fortunate.
Charles smiled again. It was friendly and open; no wonder so many liked this man, for all his failings as a king. Replacing the coin, he offered Jack his hand instead. His strong grip infused Jack with strength—not by magic, but the simple charm of his confidence and goodwill. “Your name?”
“Jack Ellin. Doctor.”
“God send me more subjects so charitable as you, Dr. Ellin. Keep fighting; we will kill this beast yet.” A gentleman brought up another horse. Charles mounted, and was gone.
We will kill this beast yet. Jack prayed it might be so.
But the wind was growing stronger.
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: eight o’clock in the evening
They had abandoned the defense of the wall. At the end of Basing-hall Street, just east of Cripplegate, the Fire had battered itself into exhaustion against the high bricks; westward, from the gate itself, the reinforcement held enough for the mortal defenders to wrestle the flames into a standstill, scant paces beyond the line.
Those along the wall’s farthest reach, though, from Newgate down to the river, now lay in exhausted stupor, tended by sad-faced hobs.
Any faerie with an ounce of vitality left in him, Lune had sent above, to form a ring around St. Paul’s. The Dragon was driving hard at the cathedral, and they must not let it break through. Like the Stone, it was a foundational piece of the Onyx Hall; if the Dragon conquered it, the palace would soon follow.
Lune kept back only her knights, who now stood in thin ranks on the white sand of the amphitheater. Their numbers had never fully recovered from the war and Prigurd’s betrayal; she could only hope they would be enough.
Jack stood at her side, kept upright only through grim force of will. There would be no speeches from him, and none from her, either; the Onyx Guard needed no convincing for this battle. “The Dragon wants the cathedral,” she said simply. “This means it has focused itself in one place, and this means we can fight it. Not fragments of its power, not the salamanders it has birthed: the Dragon itself. And we must kill it.”
She did not add, for the sake of London. The appalling truth was that London was lost. A remnant of it survived in the northeast, forming a crescent down to the Tower; the suburbs that lay outside its walls were mostly untouched, save for the liberties immediately to the west. But the City itself was gone. They had suffered terrible losses on Sunday and Monday, but today the Dragon, fueled by its stolen power, had devoured as much again. If there was anything yet to be saved, it was the Strand, Covent Garden, Westminster.