In Ashes Lie (50 page)

“You are awake,” she said: an inanity to fill a void that could not be filled.

Somehow, a smile found its way to his face, though he suspected it looked more like a rictus. “Jack found you.”

She nodded. “And he is here now, brewing some strange concoction for you. I have never seen the like.”

Antony began to laugh, as if the notion were surpassingly funny. God above—had he at last driven Jack into the arms of the chymical physicians, with their inexplicable remedies for bolstering the body’s vital spirit? Salts and mercury and Heaven knew what else. Lune smiled at first, but it faded to concern as he continued to laugh, long after he should have stopped. Once he subsided to wheezing, she said, “You must be feeling better, to show such humor.”

His breath caught in his throat, and he coughed, rackingly, on his own spit. When he could speak at last, he answered her bluntly. “I am dying.”

So he had told Jack, and the doctor denied it. Lune was not so practiced at a physician’s politic lies. Her eyes told the truth.

“Forgive me,” she whispered. Her hands sought out his own and clutched them tight. “I
would
save you, if only I could.”

Antony hissed, almost crushing her fingers. The swellings were excruciating, enough to drive a man mad; he wanted to run, scream, do anything to distract himself from the pain. Fling himself into a plague pit, perhaps, and wait for the dirt to blot out the sun. “You cannot. I understand that. And I—I forgive you.”

The words cost him. So many years he had stood at her side, always knowing that he would die, and she would go on. But it was bitter indeed when it came.
I will be forgotten, soon enough. A single name, in a litany that will stretch far beyond my time.

But he did not want his name remembered, if the cause to which he had dedicated his life fell into ruin. “Lune,” he whispered, half-strangled, but determined to get it out. “I am lost. Do not let London be lost with me.” What remained of it, after death’s scythe had swept across it these long months.

“I will not,” Lune promised. Anything, no doubt, to give him peace.

His hands were slick with sweat, although thirst parched his body dry. “The people are what matters. Yours and mine both.
They need you.
They need all who love this City, to preserve it against its fall.”

Her silver eyes wavered with shame. He did not hate her for her weakness, the terror that paralyzed her—but she hated it in herself. And abruptly, in a voice made strong by wild determination, Lune spoke. “In Mab’s name, I swear to you that I will do everything I can to preserve London and its people from disaster—and let fear hinder me no more.”

He inhaled sharply. Not the empty assurances she gave before: an oath. Still binding to fae, though mortals broke their sworn word with impunity.

This, then, would be his legacy to the Onyx Court: that he had shamed their Queen into making fast her commitment to the mortal world. Not just the one mortal at her side, but all the ones above.

His time among the fae was one of success and failure so closely interwoven that few strands could be picked out, but this, the last thread, shone gold among them all.

It did nothing to abate the agony of his swollen body, the delirious heat of his fever. It did not make Jack’s treatments hurt any less, as the physician lanced the pustules and fed him medicines that burned his throat. Nothing, in the end, could make the remaining span of his life any less of a torture—not even God. He almost asked Lune to end it for him; there would be no stain upon her inhuman soul, and one more could not blacken his by much.

But he had always fought before, and so he fought now, until the last of his strength gave out, and blackness took the pain away forever.

The silence had lasted for over an hour, and it told Jack everything. He waited in the deserted kitchen, mortar and pestle forgotten in his hands, and stared unseeing at the floor, while periodically his vision blurred with tears.

Guilt gnawed at his insides, inescapable and cruel. Not only had he failed here; how many others had he neglected, in trying to save Antony? What would be the death toll this week? Could he have preserved any of them, if he left this place and went to their aid?

A question not worth asking, for no force in the world could have pried him from this house.

But the footsteps on the stair confirmed what he already knew: that his use here had ended. He put down the mortar and pestle, scrubbed his face dry with one sleeve, and stood to face the door.

The faerie woman looked as haggard as he, as if every vital drop had been drained from her. She met his gaze without flinching and nodded once.

He clenched his teeth and looked down.
Not so ready for it, after all.
And how would he tell Kate?

Lune, it seemed, was thinking of matters even more immediate. “His parish was St. Nicholas, was it not?”

The reminder stung Jack. Antony had refused a priest at the end, with bitter words that horrified the physician and put Lune whimpering on the floor. But whatever the man’s anger at God, he must be buried. “The churchyard at St. Nicholas is full. As they are everywhere.”

Her eyes might have been steel instead of silver. “I will not see him flung into a plague pit outside the walls. Antony
will
rest in sanctified ground.”

Her concern for such matters surprised him. Jack sighed wearily. The wealthy could afford to buy such concessions, and despite his charity these past months, Antony no doubt still had enough. “I’ll see to it.”

“Thank you, Dr. Ellin.” Raggedly spoken, but gracious. Lune sounded far too serene. Was she even capable of grief? Something had torn at her during those long hours at the dying man’s side, but he did not think she wept.

He began cleaning away the scattered remnants of his ineffective medicines. “I did little enough.”

“You stayed with him,” Lune said. “Which is all anyone can do.”

It made his hands pause in their task. Another bedside, with Antony lying insensate. Another woman who aided him then. Jack had given his name to the sisters, but not to this woman, and yet she spoke as if she knew him—as if they’d met before.

“You were Mistress Montrose,” he said.

A slight intake of breath, audible in the perfect silence of the house. “You have a good eye.”

A host of other questions followed on the heels of that one, but he had not the heart to ask them. Antony had spoken of secrets; it seemed Jack had found them. He emptied the mortar into a bucket, wondering what he would do now.

Lune shifted her weight. “Dr. Ellin. You’ve seen a great deal that few others have. I know you have little enough reason to hear me—but I would propose an exchange between us.”

His fingers tightened on the stone bowl. Facing her was hard; her inhuman presence unsettled him too much, at a time when he had not much stability to spare. But her words put all his nerves on edge, and he could not stand with her at his back. “What could I give you, that you would desire?”

The sculpted lips tightened in a painful, ironic smile. “Not your soul, Dr. Ellin. Tell me: how large is a penny loaf of bread these days?”

“Nine and a half ounces.” What did that have to do with anything?

“Could you afford an extra one each day?”

On the money the City was paying him for his services, no. A bloody
apothecary
was paid more, because of the medicines they mixed; he should give up his place in the College of Physicians and hire himself out as a vendor of drugs instead. But Jack was already bankrupting himself fruitlessly in combating the plague; if this could gain him anything in return, he would do it without hesitation. “To what end?”

“Our greatest obstacle,” Lune said, “is a l—” A nearby bell rang, and she staggered. Jack was there before he could think the better of it, taking her arm and lowering her onto a stool. For all her height, she weighed less than a bird. She had fainted, he thought, but recovered an instant later, and let out a breathy laugh. “My point precisely. We lack protection, as you can see. If you are willing to tithe a loaf of bread to the fae each night, then we will help you.”

It sounded simple—which made Jack suspicious. “Did Antony do this?”

“He could not. He was...too close to us.”

A phrase with disturbing implications. “What help do you offer?”

Lune lifted her chin. “What do you need?”

The silver eyes chilled him, but Jack forced himself to think past their inhuman touch. “Assistants—ones who need not fear catching the plague. Money for medicines. A place to shelter the sick,
away
from the healthy, instead of shutting them up together so that all will die. Clean places to bury the dead. An end to the arguments between the Galenic physicians and the chymical physicians and the surgeons and the apothecaries, and all the quacks who prey upon the desperate driven out of town with a whip. Rain, to cleanse the air and end this heat that breeds distemper.” How much lay within her power, he had no idea—but she
had
asked.

The elfin woman nodded slowly, thinking. “I cannot give you all of that. But if you give us the bread we need... I dislike begging the tithe so baldly, but we have reached a pass where it is necessary. With bread, I can order my people into service.”

Jack thought of the disdainful looks he had received from her courtiers. His mouth quirked. “So long as you give me the least resentful ones as my nurses, Lady, we have an accord.”

Dame Segraine stepped ahead to open the bronze-bound door, which meant she did not see the involuntary shudder that rippled across Lune’s shoulders. Most of her subjects didn’t notice the tremors—not unless they came near this place, and few enough did that without explicit orders. She felt them, no matter where she was.

Despite being alone.

The gravedigger had laid Antony to rest in his parish churchyard. Late at night, in accordance with the plague orders, with no one there to mourn; but Lune and John Ellin watched from the shadows, concealed by a charm, and protected by some of the bread he gave to the court. The ground was clogged with bones and fragments of coffins, past burials broken open by the need to make space for more. It was hardly the dignified end Antony Ware deserved. But he had deserved far better than the death he had, too.

His absence left a hole in her life. Strange as it sounded, she missed their arguments; she missed having someone to confront her when she needed it, even in front of her own courtiers. His solidity had been a foundation she depended on.

And without him, there was likewise a hole in her power. Lune hoped no one guessed just how vulnerable she was, ruling on her own. At least she was still able to command obedience—however much her courtiers resented it.

The door creaked open, and moans ghosted through the gap. Lune went through quickly, and Segraine shut the portal behind them, closing them in with the scent of death.

She’d chosen this area carefully. The twists and turns of the Onyx Hall had no logic to them; some parts were open and airy, while others were confined warrens. This part was accessible from only three points, one of those leading above to Billingsgate. The other two could be closed off, creating a space Dr. Ellin could use as his pest-house.

The idea had seemed absurd at first. Bring mortals into the Onyx Hall? Well enough when they were trusted friends, or passing diversions brought in for brief glimpses, and few in number. Over a hundred lay on pallets throughout these chambers, and they stayed until they recovered or died. They were the poor, the forgotten, those whose families could not care for them. Ellin brought them below, sequestering them so they would not spread their infection to the healthy. With the chambers stripped of all furnishings save those needed for their care, and the doors guarded against their wanderings, there was little enough to tell the patients where they were. And if the otherworldly atmosphere of the place struck them as strange...well, high fevers could explain much.

How much of a difference did it make? Lune wondered if she deluded herself into thinking it too much, assuaging her own guilt through a show of action. Antony had bade her protect the people of London, and so she did what she could. Ellin, who was far more knowledgeable in these matters than she, said it did some good.

Fae moved through the space, carrying water, medicines, food brought from above. Hobs made up the greater part of their number, called to this service by their helpful natures, but there were others as well. Some of the goblins came out of a twisted interest in the suffering and putrefaction of flesh. Ellin hated them, but so long as they followed his orders, they were permitted to stay.

A despairing cry broke the quiet atmosphere. “God help me—please, I beg you, end my pain...” Several fae flinched, purely out of reflex. They were all protected. None of them, though, liked it when the mortals called out in their extremity. And the Onyx Hall’s stones trembled, but held.

Lune exhaled slowly. Isolated voices, crying out in delirium, could not destroy this place—but she tensed every time it happened.

She saw Ellin up ahead, wiping sweat from his face despite the cool air. Lune touched Segraine’s arm and pointed at an ugly little hob struggling along beneath a copper of water. “Aid him. I will not go far.”

Alone, she approached the doctor, who gave her a weary smile. “Did the Goodemeades send you?”

“No one ‘sends me’ anywhere,” Lune said with asperity. The shared misery of easing Antony through his final hours had created a peculiar bond between them, one that bypassed the deference of her rank. They had somehow transformed from strangers to close allies without any intervening stages, as if they had known each other for years. “I keep my own eye on you, Dr. Ellin.”

“They left here not an hour ago,” he said, dropping his sodden handkerchief on a tray carried by a passing puck. “To purchase more food, I think.”