Now everyone could see it. The black sides were unadorned; its lid bore only a blank shield. But it was the one prison nothing could break free of, not even a faerie spirit—and she had in mind a way to ensure no one would ever let him out.
Vidar knew it, too. All the smugness was gone, and sick horror had descended in its place. But this was the fate he would have condemned Antony to; Lune remembered that, and used her fury as armor and goad alike. It is no mercy, but then again, he deserves none. She forced herself to reach out.
The touch of the iron was like the hottest fire and the coldest ice, and it called forth an excruciating answer from the half-healed wound in her shoulder. Lune was dimly aware of a scuffle, but had no attention to spare; clenching her teeth until she thought her jaw would break, she lifted the lid, and snatched her hand back the instant it was done.
The scuffle, it seemed, had been Vidar’s attempted escape. He now lay face-down on the floor three paces from his chair, with Angrisla on his back, twisting his hands in a tight grip. He might be sanguine about his death, but not this.
Lune was more than ready for the box to be gone. “Bring me the prisoner’s blood,” she said, and the mara grinned toothily. A demented light shone in her eyes as she faced down the iron aura, holding her position by will alone. Bonecruncher would not come near, but slid a knife along the polished floor to her. Angrisla carved a long slash down Vidar’s arm, then glared at the mortal until he fetched it and bore it to Lune.
She took the dagger and held it over the black interior of the box. “Thus do we carry out the traitor’s sentence,” she said, through her nausea and pain. Three taps of her finger sent three droplets flying from the tip, swallowed up by the impenetrable darkness.
Vidar howled. He writhed with abrupt strength, hurling Angrisla from his back, but then his body locked into a rictus; frozen, contorted upon the stone, he was a picture of perfect agony. Then he was insubstantial, then faint as a ghost; then he was gone, leaving blank marble and empty chains where his body had been.
A new light shone within the box, bloodred and murderous.
Lune slammed the lid shut. A spider now stared at her from the formerly blank shield. Shuddering at the sight, she gestured the mortal to retreat. He did so, with visible relief.
No one else looked relieved. But they would not have to endure much longer. “Lord Antony, if you would join me? Let us together place Vidar’s prison where it will disturb no one’s rest.”
A deep line cut between his brows as he approached; she thought he understood her meaning, but doubted whether it would work. I hope it does. I can think of no better way. He took up the box, and at Lune’s nod replaced it within its hawthorn case.
Her subjects breathed easier with the iron thus shielded, but when Lune reached out to the Onyx Hall, she still felt the taint inside the wood, like poison beneath a sugared coating. Or was that her imagination? Her hand tightened on Antony’s, and she heard his breath hiss between his teeth, as if he felt it, too. But the Hall answered when they called; the marble split open, as if it were sand falling away from beneath the box. Down it went; down, and down, deeper into the foundations of the Hall than she had ever gone, until at last it reached some indefinable boundary. The palace lay beneath London, but only in a mystical sense; one could not reach it with a shovel. Yet there was a point at which the Hall gave way to ordinary earth once more, the bedrock upon which London sat.
They left the iron box there, and sealed the stone above it.
Every single pair of eyes in the chamber was fixed on the floor, which had swallowed Vidar’s prison without a trace. Lune pried her hand free of Antony’s, and cast a sideways glance at him. He met it with a faint smile, knowing her concern. But his eyes were clear, and he showed no sign of weakness.
“It is finished,” Lune said. “Let Ifarren Vidar be forgotten.”
GUILDHALL, LONDON: August 12, 1665
The hoof beats of Antony’s horse echoed off the walls and overhanging jetties of Ketton Street. He might have been alone in the world, the street devoid of its usual hawkers and housewives. London might as well have been snatched away to a different realm, leaving its people behind; even the Onyx Hall seemed more populous these days than the city above it.
Antony sweated behind the kerchief wrapped over his nose and mouth, and wondered how much it protected him against the infected air. But leaving it off would certainly not help, and so he kept it on—just as he rode, instead of hiring a hackney coach, whose previous occupant might have borne the plague. His own coach gathered dust for lack of anyone to drive it. Antony’s household was reduced to Burnett and himself, and Burnett had enough to do, keeping his master fed and clothed. He was lucky to still have a horse, so many had been stolen.
A pile of rubbish half-blocked the turn onto the narrow lane between the church of St. Laurence Jewry and Blackwell Hall—the remnant of some shopkeeper’s effort to sweep the street before his house, in accordance with the plague orders. But no one had taken the refuse away, and the shopkeeper had clearly abandoned his effort weeks ago. Antony guided his horse past and emerged a moment later into the tiny courtyard of the Guildhall. On an ordinary day it would have been thronged with men engaged in government and trade; now it stood all but empty under the gaze of the statues adorning the Guildhall porch. Christ and the Virtues, their faces blank and stern. The only living figure in sight was a lone watchman, standing by the Triple Tun, whose door was marked with the familiar red cross and the legend Lord Have Mercy Upon Us.
Antony had long since given up shuddering at the sight. One could hardly find a street in London that did not hold at least one infected house.
The Guildhall itself stood forlorn, nearly as empty as the courtyard outside. Lord Mayor Lawrence had not called a meeting of the aldermen in weeks; half the council was fled. But Antony hoped that very desolation would aid him today. Men feared gathering in public places, where plague might spread. Here, though, their only company would be the spiders spinning their webs undisturbed.
He lit tallow dips in the Court of Aldermen, and brushed dust from his own seat. How many would come today? Sir William Turner for certain; he understood that his City needed him. Others had stayed as well. With the help of parish officials, they carried out the plague orders issued by Charles before he withdrew with his court, in the withering hope that it would somehow check the plague’s ever-rising tide. Nearly three thousand dead in the last week alone, and no sign of ebb.
Lune’s thoughts were elsewhere, waiting to see if Vidar’s cruel punishment would satisfy Nicneven and prevent war. But Antony had given up on blaming the fae for their inaction. In the dark of the night, when he lay in his bed alone, he did not believe any effort, faerie or otherwise, could make a difference.
And then the morning came, and he rose, and carried on nonetheless.
Footsteps outside the door. Antony straightened, but could not prevent a slump of disappointment when he saw Jack Ellin. “I hoped you were an alderman.”
“Then I am even sorrier to bring you this news.”