Rosamund gestured around. “This place we’re in is the library of the Galenic Academy. It’s a school of sorts—”
“More like the Royal Society,” Gertrude broke in, naming Britain’s foremost scientific institution.
Her sister gave her a mild glare for the interruption, then went on. “We have our own sorts of scholars and scientists, just as you do. One of the things they’ve been working on is photography. Light doesn’t behave the same down here, you see, and neither do some other things, so the cameras used in your world don’t work. Nadrett, it seems, has managed to bend it to another use.”
“But why do ye need cameras in the first place?”
“Why do you need them?” Rosamund asked. “Capturing an image like that, all at once, exactly as it looks in life, and then being able to share it with others… we can do a great many things with glamours and illusions, and our memories don’t fade the same way yours do, but why shouldn’t we want photographs as well?”
“Because ye’re faeries,” Eliza said stupidly. Her anger couldn’t stay hot, not forever; it was fading down to a sullen glow once more, and leaving her exhausted in its wake. Her thoughts kept chasing around in a little circle, everything coming back to the same inescapable point. Dozens of faeries, living beneath London. “And what the devil do ye need with bombs?”
“Bombs?” They both looked entirely innocent, but Eliza no longer trusted it. Mrs. Chase looked confused; that part, she did trust.
“The Fenians. Dynamiting the railway, and other things in London. Don’t pretend ye had nothing to do with it; I saw Dead Rick, and other faeries, too. Why do ye care so much about Ireland?” A sudden, wild thought struck her. “Is that why ye were trying to recruit me, at the meeting? To help them?”
“Gracious, no!” They seemed utterly dumbfounded that she might suggest it. Rosamund said, “We would never get involved with a thing like that. Some fae want Ireland free, and some want to stop the railway, and a few—like Nadrett—just want to profit, but we are trying to prepare for the future.”
In something of a confused muddle, Gertrude correcting Rosamund, Rosamund correcting Gertrude, and Mrs. Chase guiding Eliza past their arguments when she could, they told her why the Underground was a threat to this place, the Onyx Hall. It echoed the stories Dead Rick had told, years ago, about a faerie Queen ruling over a dying realm; but he had never told her that realm was here. “We’ve tried all manner of things to stop it,” Gertrude said. “When the overland railways came in, we encouraged the City men who wanted to keep them out; that’s why they all stopped at Paddington, King’s Cross, places a bit farther out. We were afraid so much iron, moving in and out like that, would be a problem even if it was aboveground. Then we tried to prevent plans for an underground railway, and when that failed, we tried to stop the Inner Circle.”
Mrs. Chase added, “Do you recall all those delays on finishing it? Sir Edward Watkin of the Metropolitan Railway and Mr. Forbes of the Metropolitan District Railway, all the arguments between them—that was also faerie interference. Though admittedly, those two loathed each other from the start.”
Eliza had no idea what the woman was talking about; the affairs of railway directors were hardly the kind of thing she concerned herself with. All she knew was what she’d seen, when they crossed Cannon Street on their way to Cloak Lane. They didn’t have much time left at all. “So what are ye about, then? If not trying to save this place?”
“We’d do that if we could,” Gertrude said. “But our thought is, maybe your people need to know faeries are here. That’s what we’ve been doing with the London Fairy Society.”
“Originally it started as a way to get more bread,” Rosamund added. “You know about bread? There isn’t enough anymore, with so few people believing in faeries. So we set out to make new friends, like Lady Wilde. But then we began to think—”
“Have thought, for a long time,” Gertrude interjected.
“—that perhaps we’d be better off coming out of hiding.”
Eliza blinked. Gertrude’s words a moment ago had taken a little while to seep through to her understanding, and she still wasn’t sure she had them right. “Ye… ye’ll announce yerselves?” She just barely held back the Jesus, Mary, and Joseph that wanted to follow. “And ye think that will make anything better? For the love of—just ask the Irish how it is, living among people who don’t want ye here!”
Quietly, Rosamund said, “And how is it, living among people who don’t even know you’re here? We’re already being killed and driven from our homes. At least if we announce ourselves, some people can be convinced to help.”
And some would be convinced to try harder to eradicate them. Still, Eliza couldn’t help but feel a touch of sympathy. There had been folk in Ireland who felt the same way, during the Hunger; they refused to leave their homes, too, no matter how bad times became. Many of them had died of it. But she understood the impulse.
Her thoughts were no longer running in a tight circle; they were rambling, drifting from one thing to another, exhaustion slowing their pace. Owen had drawn near when she wasn’t looking, crouching on the floor with his hands wrapped around his knees. Did he remember something of her? Or was it just that she was human, in this faerie place? She had to find a way to help him.
Hesitantly, she slipped from her chair and reached out one hand. Owen did not look up from the floor, but he let her brush the hair gently from his eyes. It had grown shaggy; that much change, at least, seemed capable of happening down here. But his face—so young…
She’d seen her own face enough times in the Kitterings’ mirrors. Hardened by work and grief, it belonged to a woman older than twenty-one. What would Owen think, when he had his wits back? What would they be to each other now, after everything that had passed while they were apart?
Eliza had no answers. But she didn’t need them, not yet. First, help Owen; everything else could follow after.
Aldersgate, Onyx Halclass="underline" August 6, 1884
Fast as the Academy fae were, Nadrett was faster.
By the time Dead Rick led them to the Aldersgate fragment, the chambers had been emptied out. Not completely; the corpses of Chrennois and the naga still lay sprawled across the floor. The shelving and tables remained, too. But the cameras, the bottles of chemicals, and all the photographic plates: those were gone.
Niklas von das Ticken cursed in German and kicked a shard of bottle across the room. It nearly hit a faerie kneeling beside the naga’s body. It was the same monkeylike fellow Dead Rick had seen when he came to the Academy before; Irrith had introduced him as Kutuhal. His expression as he looked down at his dead kinsman was bleak. If ’e asks, I’m telling ’im Aspell did it.
His former ally was long gone, too, though he’d left behind a bloodstain in the street above. Stains were about all they had to study: Yvoir, the Academy’s expert on photography, had come down once they knew it was safe, and was investigating the shattered fragments of the bottles Dead Rick had thrown. The sour smell of satyr’s bile mixed with other unpleasant odors, under the stench of blood. The French faerie kept murmuring to himself, too quietly for even Dead Rick’s ears to make out, and pointing a finger back and forth as if putting pieces together in his mind. The skriker hoped he was getting something useful out of this that he could apply to undoing whatever Chrennois’s process was.