Deven straightened and fished a clean handkerchief out of his cuff, offering it to Gertrude. She took it gratefully and repaid him with a watery, wavering smile.
Lune sat quietly, absorbing this information, trying to fit it alongside the things she had seen during her years in the Onyx Court. Fewer years than she had thought. Even the palace itself was new, by fae standards. “You were fond of Suspiria.”
“Aye,” Rosamund said, unapologetic. “She was warmer then, and kinder. But all kindness left her that day. You have never known the woman we helped.”
Nor the woman Francis had loved.
Deven came forward and placed his hands along the edge of the table, aligning them with studious care. “So how do we break the pact?”
Now Rosamund gave a helpless shrug. “We only just learned of its existence, Master Deven. And I imagine the list of people who know its terms is short, indeed. If Francis knew, he died before he could say.”
“Which leaves only two that must know,” Lune said. “Invidiana and Elizabeth.”
“Assuming we are right to begin with,” Deven still had his eyes on his carefully placed hands. “That the pact was formed with her.”
“Assuming you are right,” Lune countered, a little sharply. “You are the one who suggested it last night.”
The minuscule slump in his shoulders said he remembered all too well, and regretted it — but his silence told her he had no better explanation to offer in its place.
A muscle rose into relief along his jaw, then subsided. “I do not suppose you could trick your Queen into revealing the terms of the pact?”
The sound Lune made was nothing like a laugh. “You are asking me to trick the most suspicious and politically astute woman I have ever met.”
“Elizabeth is the same,” he flared, straightening in one fluid motion. “Or do you think my Queen a greater fool than yours?”
Lune met his gaze levelly. “I think your Queen less likely to have one of her courtiers murder you for an afternoon’s entertainment.”
She watched the contentious pride drain out of his face, one drop at a time. At first he did not believe her; then, as her stare did not waver, he did. And when she saw him understand, an ache gripped her throat, so sudden it brought tears to her eyes. What had life been like, when she lived under a different sovereign? She wished she could remember.
Lune rose to her feet and turned away before he could see her expression break. Behind her back, she heard Deven murmur, “Very well. I will see what I may learn. ’Twill not be easy—” He gave the quiet, rueful laugh she remembered, and had not heard in some time. “Well. Walsingham taught me how to ferret out information that others wish to keep hidden. I never expected to use it against a faerie queen, is all.”
“Let us know what you learn,” Rosamund said, and Gertrude echoed her after blowing her nose one last time. They went on, but Lune could no longer bear to be trapped in the claustrophobic hidden room with the three of them.
“I should return,” she said, to no one in particular. “I have been here too long already.” She went up the stairs before remembering the floor was closed above her, but it opened when her head neared its planks, two feminine farewells pursuing her as she went. Lune paused only long enough to restore the glamour she had dropped, and began her journey back to the confines of the Onyx Hall.
MEMORY: November 12, 1547
The twisting web of streets, the leaning masses of houses and shops, alehouses and livery halls — it all obscured an underlying simplicity.
In the west, Ludgate Hill. Once home to a temple of Diana, now it was crowned with the Gothic splendor of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
In the east, Tower Hill, the White Mount. The structure atop it had once been a royal palace; now it more often served as a prison.
In the north, the medieval wall, curving like the arc of a bow, pierced by the seven principal gates of the city.
In the south, the string of the bow: the straight course of the Thames, a broad thoroughfare of water.
An east–west axis, stretching from hilltop to hilltop, with temporal power on one end, spiritual power on the other. A north–south axis, barrier in the north, access in the south, with the Walbrook, the wall-brook, bisecting the city and connecting the two poles.
The buried waters of the Walbrook ran hard by the London Stone, which lay very near to the center of the city. Near enough to suffice.
A shadow moved through the cloudless autumn sky.
Two figures stirred within the solid earth and stone of the hills. Unseen, their colossal bodies standing where there was no space for them, they reached out and took hold of the power of the earth, which was theirs to command.
Two more stood at the London Stone, blind to the activity of the city around them. A man and a woman, a mortal and a fae.
They waited, as the light around them began to dim.
Slowly, one person at a time, the bustle of the city’s streets began to falter and halt. Faces turned upward; some people fled indoors. And the world grew ever darker, as the shadow of the moon moved across the face of the sun, until only a ring of fire blazed around its edge.
“Now,” the woman whispered.
The giants Gog and Magog, standing within the hills of Ludgate and the Tower, called upon the earth to obey. The Roman well that lay at the foundations of the White Tower shivered, its stones trembling; an ancient pit used in the rites of Diana opened up once more below the cathedral; and at the bottom of each, something began to grow.
Standing at the London Stone, Suspiria and Francis Merriman reached out and linked hands, mortal and fae, to carry out a working the likes of which the land had never dreamed.
The shadowed light of the sun fell upon the city and cast stranger shadows, a penumbral reflection of London, like and yet unlike. It sprang forth from the buildings, the streets, the gardens, the wells, and sank downward into the ground.
In the earth beneath London, the shadows took shape. Streets became corridors; buildings, great chambers. They transformed as they went, twisting, flowing, settling into new configurations, defying the orderly relations of natural geometry. And then, when all was in place, stone sprang forth, black and white marble, crystal, onyx, paving the floors, sheathing the walls, supporting the ceilings in round half-barrels and great vaulting arches.
Together they made this, Suspiria and Francis, drawing on the fae strength of the giants; the mortal symbolism of the wall; the wisdom of Father Thames, who alone of all beings understood the thing that was London, having witnessed its growth from its earliest days. In the sun’s shadowed light, they formed a space that bridged a gap, creating a haven for fae among mortals, from which church bells could not drive them forth.
Their hands came to rest atop the London Stone. The light brightened once more; the moon continued along its course, and normalcy returned to the world.
They smiled at one another, exhausted, but exultant.
“It is done.”
PALACE OF PLACENTIA, GREENWICH: April 28–30, 1590
Even the sprawling reaches of Hampton Court and Whitehall did not have room to house every courtier, merchant, and visiting dignitary that came seeking audience with the Queen and her nobles, especially not with their servants and train. Deven had asked for and received a leave of absence, with the result that when the court removed to Greenwich, he had no lodging assigned to him. He might have troubled Lord Huns-don for one, especially as courtiers retired for the summer to their own residences, but it was simpler to take rooms at a nearby inn. From this staging point, closer to court than his London house but not in its midst, he tried to plan a course of action.