Deven outlined for them in brief strokes what Elizabeth had said about the London Stone. “But I rode by it coming here,” he said, “and saw no sign of a sword.”
The fae all exchanged looks. “Have you ever seen it?” Gertrude asked, and Rosamund shook her head.
Lune followed their thoughts well enough. “But who knows every corner of the Onyx Hall? It might be there.” Taking pity on Deven’s confusion, she said, “The London Stone is half-buried, is it not? The lower end might extend into the palace below. But if it does, I know not where.”
“She might well keep it hidden,” Rosamund said.
Deven seemed less interested in this than he might have been. His face was drawn into surprisingly grim lines. “There’s another problem.”
Their speculation halted suddenly.
He looked straight at the Goodemeades. “You spun me a good tale the other day, of curses and lost loves. My Queen tells a different one. She met this Invidiana nearly five years before they were crowned, and says she was no kinder then than she is now, nor did she bear any other name. Have you any way to explain this?”
Lune was as startled as the brownies were. Had the sisters lied? No, she could not believe it. Even knowing they could and did lie with great skill, she did not believe they were feigning their confusion now. Was this some game of Deven’s? Or Elizabeth’s?
“We do not,” Gertrude whispered, shaking her head. “-I — that is—”
The unexpected hostility of Deven’s tone had distracted Lune, but now she thought about his words. Five years. Her grasp of mortal history was weak, but she thought she remembered this much. “Mary would have been on the throne then. Was that not when Suspiria lifted her curse?”
Rosamund’s brow was still furrowed. “I suppose so, near enough. But I do not see—”
Lune rose to her feet. Deven was watching her, with his eyes that kept reminding her of Francis — moreso since she learned what Francis had once been. “Not what Invidiana did — what Suspiria did. That is what he knew. That is what he was trying to say!”
“What?” Now everyone was staring at her.
She pressed one hand to the stiff front of her bodice, feeling sick. “He was dying, he could barely speak, but he tried to tell me — he could not get the words out—” Her fingers remembered the uncontrollable shaking of his body. Something hot splashed onto her hand. “The last thing he said. ‘She is still c—’”
Lune looked down at the Goodemeades’ pale faces. “She is still cursed.”
“But that’s impossible,” Rosamund breathed. “’Tisn’t a glamour we see now; she is as she appears. Young and beautiful. She must have lifted the curse.”
“Lifted?” Deven asked, from the other side of the table. “Or changed it somehow? Traded it for some other condition, escaped its terms?” He shrugged when Lune transferred her attention to him. “I know little of these things; you tell me if it is impossible.”
“But did it happen before she met Elizabeth?” Rosamund twisted in her seat. “Or after?”
“Before, I think — but not long before. Elizabeth believes their meeting was the first time she claimed the name Invidiana.”
Gertrude seized her sister’s hand. “Rose, think. ’Twas after that she began gathering a court, was it not? No, she was not as we know her now—”
“But that might have been a mask.” All the blood had drained from Rosamund’s face; she looked dizzy. “She could have pretended to be the same. Ash and Thorn — that was when Francis began to lose his name. Do you remember? She always called him Tiresias, after that. And he said things had changed between them.”
Lune said, “Then it was not Elizabeth’s doing.” Everything she had thought clear was fading away, leaving her grasping at mist. “But he said her pact…”
Into the ensuing silence, Deven said, “Perhaps this is a foolish question. But what certainty have we that she formed only one pact?”
No one seemed to be breathing. They had all leapt so quickly to the thought of Elizabeth and the mortal court — and they had not been wrong. There was a pact there. But was that what Francis had meant? Or did he know something they had never so much as suspected?
Lune whispered, “Where do we begin?”
“With the curse,” Deven said. “Everything seems to have spun out of whatever she did to escape it. Creating the Onyx Hall did not free her, you said. What did?”
“Something Francis saw,” Gertrude said. “At least, we think so.”
Lune lowered herself slowly back onto the bed. Briefly she prayed that the rats were doing their jobs, and no one was listening to this mad and treasonous conversation. “He said she misinterpreted it. But we cannot know what she did until we know what she was escaping. What crime did she commit, to be cursed in such fashion?”
“We never knew,” Rosamund replied, clenching her small hands in frustration. “Even once she knew, she would not tell us. Or even Francis, I think.”
“But where did she learn it herself?”
Gertrude answered Deven far more casually than her words deserved. “From Father Thames.”
His shoulders jerked. “From who?”
“The river,” the brownie replied.
“The river.” Coming from him, it was an expression of doubt, and he turned to Lune for a saner answer, as if she would be his ally in disbelief.
“The spirit of it,” she said; his jaw came just the slightest bit unhinged. Hers felt like doing the same. “She spoke to him? Truly?”
Rosamund shrugged. “She must have done. We were not in London when the curse was laid; ’twas long ago, when we lived in the North. Gertrude told her she must find someone who was here long ago. Who else could she turn to, save Old Father Thames himself?”
Who else, indeed. Lune felt dizzy. Father Thames spoke but rarely, and then to other creatures of the water. She did not know what could possibly induce him to speak to a fae of the land.
But she would have to find out, because they had no one else to question.
“I will try tonight, then,” she said, and the Goodemeades nodded as if they had expected nothing else. She met Deven’s gaze, briefly, and looked away. This was a faerie matter; he would want none of it.
“We should arrange to meet again,” he said into the silence. “Your pigeon was most helpful, Mistress Goodemeade, but I pray you pardon me if I find communicating in such a manner to be… disconcerting.” When the sisters smiled understandingly, he said, “There is a tavern along Fleet Street, outside the city’s western wall. The Checkers. Shall we find one another there, three days hence?”
Three days. Giving Lune extra time, in case she failed the first night. Did he have so little confidence in her?
The brownies agreed, and they all dispersed, the Goodemeades leaving first. Alone with Deven, Lune found herself without anything to say.
“Good luck,” he murmured at last. His hand twitched at his side, as if he might have laid it briefly on her shoulder.
That simple note of friendship struck an unexpected chord. “Thank you,” Lune whispered in response. Perhaps this alliance of theirs was leading him to forgive her — at least a little — for the harm she had done him before.
He stood a moment longer, looking at her, then followed the Goodemeades out the door.
Standing by herself in the center of the room, Lune took a slow, deep breath. Father Thames. She did not know how to reach him, let alone gain his aid… but she had three days to find out.