Hare Street, Bethnal Green: August 22, 1884
How they made good their escape from the church with Dead Rick’s twitching carcass in tow, Eliza couldn’t say, except that it undoubtedly involved faerie magic. What they’d planned to be a surreptitious baptism under cover of night had become a good deal louder than that, and attracted attention to suit. But somehow Eliza found herself being led north by the other man who’d followed Dead Rick, a fellow who might have been anywhere between thirty and eighty years old. The heathen came with them, carrying the skriker, and Owen and that faerie woman followed, but the rest had been lost along the way.
She expected to go to the Onyx Hall, but instead they crossed under the railway arches to the north—half their party gasping in pain as they went—and halted outside a tobacconist’s not far from St. Anne’s, where the man unlocked a door leading to the flat above. Through her shivering, the faerie woman said, “We can’t take him below.” She indicated Owen with her pointed chin. Irrith, that was her name. “It wouldn’t be safe. And we can’t risk somebody selling word of this to the Goblin Market, anyway.”
This morning, it hadn’t been safe to keep Owen out of the Hall for long. Now… can he ever go back?
Better for him if he couldn’t. Eliza had no intention of it herself, except as much as was necessary to get revenge on this bastard Nadrett. And that, she supposed, was why Owen had come.
The rooms on the first floor reeked of dust and stale air, as if almost no one ever came here. “Hodge’s flat,” Irrith said, as the man went around striking matches for the lamps, illuminating a mismatched assortment of shabby furniture. The other fellow laid Dead Rick on the couch, where he shuddered as if caught in a winter storm.
Hodge said, “Not that I’m ’ere too often. Miss—would you?”
Eliza found him holding out a stale biscuit. After one staring moment—she had gone stupid with exhaustion—she realized what he wanted.
The tithe.
“We’ve got to get something inside him,” Irrith said. “And me, if you don’t mind.”
Saying the words would cost Eliza nothing; even the bread was being handed to her. Even so… “Can’t you do it?” she asked Hodge.
He shook his head. “Drank faerie wine, as part of becoming Prince. Once you do that, you’re no good for the tithe; I doubt your friend ’ere could do it, either.”
So this was the Prince who was supposed to pass judgment on Dead Rick for what he’d done. She hadn’t seen much judging happen—but she was no longer certain she wanted it to. Not against the skriker, anyway. But Nadrett, yes. And Dead Rick had come to ask about Nadrett.
Stiffly, she reached out and took the bread. “A gift for the Daoine Sidhe,” Eliza said, laying the stale biscuit at Dead Rick’s side. “Take it and plague us no more.”
Irrith snatched up the food and tore a piece off, shoving it into her mouth like a starving woman. Chewing frantically, she broke off a second bite and slipped it between the skriker’s thin lips. “Go on, swallow it,” she murmured, shaking his shoulder as if that would do any good. Eliza edged her out of the way and lifted his head. Hodge gave her a hip flask, and she poured a dribble of its sweet-smelling contents into Dead Rick’s mouth, stroking his throat the way she’d done for her brothers and sisters when they were ill, until finally she thought the morsel had gone down.
He continued to twitch in her grasp. “Shouldn’t that help?” she asked, worried despite herself.
“Against all of this, yes,” Irrith said, gesturing around. Her own color had already improved visibly. “But it won’t do much against the absinthe he drank.”
Her worry grew. “I’ve never seen absinthe do this to a man. Not unless it was mixed with something bad.”
Irrith’s breath huffed out in a quiet laugh. “Our version is… special.”
Hodge’s own breath followed hard on her words, but his was a sudden hiss of pain. The man dropped into the nearest chair, his Arab companion moving swiftly to his side. Irrith said, “Are they—”
The panic in her voice was clear. Hodge waved it, and the Arab, away. “No new rails; I’ve done what I can to make sure those get put off as long as possible. But a bit of the woven stuff just went, near the Academy. We should do our business ’ere and get back; Lune can’t ’old without me for long.”
“This business ye have,” Eliza echoed. “It would be what, exactly?”
Hodge said, “Nadrett. You know who that is?” He waited for her nod before going on. “Then you know ’e’s a nasty piece of work. We’re trying to find out what ’e’s doing right now. Seemed a good bet that Dead Rick might ’ave learned something about ’im, seven years ago, and that’s why Nadrett took ’is memories. Looks like that was true, but if so, it’s gone. We gave ’im back everything in that box. ’E thought you might ’ave what ’e’d lost.”
Eliza hugged her arms around her body, feeling cold inside, despite the oppressive summer heat. “He said… Nadrett ‘smashed’ it?”
“The memories were on glass plates,” Irrith said quietly. “Photographs. Nadrett broke one whenever Dead Rick made him angry.”
The cold deepened to a sick fury. But Eliza couldn’t see how what she knew would help them. “He never told me anything about Nadrett. The last time I saw him, the only thing he said—the only thing that seemed important—was a story about a fellow named Seithenyn.”
By the looks on the others’ faces, it didn’t mean anything to Hodge or the Arab; the former was mortal, of course, and perhaps young Arab faeries learned different stories at their grannies’ knees. Irrith showed more confusion than anything else. “Seithenyn and Mererid… he told you about the Drowned Land? What has that got to do with anything?”
“It means Nadrett’s a fucking dead man.” It was a bone-dry whisper from the couch. Dead Rick’s eyes were still closed; Eliza was grateful to be spared another glimpse of that swirling, otherworldly green. He spoke like a medium in a trance, channeling information from some source outside himself. “Irrith—what ’appened to Seithenyn, after ’e killed Mererid and flooded the land?”
The sprite said, “He was cursed. By the waters of Faerie, because he killed Mererid, who was their daughter. If he hadn’t fled—” Her eyes, a shifting green almost as unnerving as the absinthe in Dead Rick’s, widened. “They would have drowned him. Ash and Thorn—you think Nadrett is Seithenyn?”
“Came ’ere,” Dead Rick said. “And made ’imself somebody else. No idea ’ow I found out… but there’s one way to know if I’m right.”
“Throw water on him?” Eliza asked.
She meant it to sound scornful; the idea was ridiculous. But the fierce, predatory smile on Dead Rick’s face told her it was no joke. “Show the waters where ’e went,” the skriker said. “Then let the curse do its work. Even if ’e runs, ’e won’t live; they’ll find ’im.”
Hodge let out a soft whistle. “Bloody well easier than trying to get at ’im by force. But first we ’ave to find ’im, and from what Bonecruncher tells me, ’e’s pushed off to Faerie already.”
A brief silence—and then Dead Rick sat bolt upright, mad eyes flying open once more. “Off to Faerie? Not bleeding likely. ’E’d die the second ’e set foot over there. Aspell was wrong!”
It seemed to mean something to everyone else there, save Eliza. Even Owen was frowning, as if trying to stitch his shredded mind back together. With the tone of a man making an argument he did not believe, but felt should be given due consideration, the Arab said, “He could still sell the right to use it, and then take his profits elsewhere. There are other lands than this, and not all are threatened by iron. Not yet, at least. Nor can he be bothered by things of your Heaven where men are not Christian.”