With Fate Conspire (36 page)

Sniffing away the tears, wishing she had a handkerchief, or at least could lift a hand to wipe her face, Eliza met Quinn’s eyes. “What my father’s done, I don’t know—but I’m no Fenian, and I’ve never done a thing to hurt the innocent, or to help anyone else do it, either. Do I want Ireland free? You may be sure of it. Christ knows the English haven’t been any good for us. But I was born here; London is my home. I’d never do anything to change that.”

Quinn held her gaze, eyes still creased with that unexpected line of sympathy. “Then why all the lies? What have you been doing, these nine months past?”

She knew it was weak of her, to give in to that sympathy—knew he was probably doing it on purpose, to soften her resolve. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from answering him more honestly than she had any man in seven years. “You’d never believe me. You’d think me mad.”

He didn’t offer her any easy reassurance, even though she might have taken it. Instead he considered the words, then gave a faint, rueful smile. “And then you’d lose what? You’re already locked up as mad, Miss O’Malley. If I don’t believe you, then all it means is staying where you are. But if you know something true, and can prove it to me—”

“I
cannot
prove it.” Her frustration felt like it would burst out of her skin. “Not from in here, and maybe not out there; but that’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

“Perhaps I could help.”

If he believed her.
He never will,
she thought, with the wounded instinct of constant failure.

But as he said—what would she lose by trying?

In the end, it was his voice that did it, the familiar Irish cast to his vowels. Castlecarra, Ballyglass. She didn’t know the place, but he was a country boy, and might have heard country stories.

Eliza took a deep breath, and told the truth.

Faeries at Charing Cross. Faeries in Newgate. Faeries that stole Owen Darragh away. Even the stories the traitor had told, about the fading Queen of a dying realm, though Eliza admitted they were probably empty. She held back nothing except Louisa Kittering, and that only because it would do her more harm than good; Quinn would never go after the daughter of such a rich family, and the accusation would make Eliza look mad after all. But the rest of it, she told, and Quinn listened to it all without speaking, almost without blinking.

He didn’t take notes. When Eliza was done, he sat very still, then glanced down at the notebook as if he’d forgotten it was there. After a moment of consideration, he closed it. “Sure that’s a fine queer story.”

“And you don’t believe a word of it.”

“I didn’t say that.” He tucked the notebook away. “I’ve learned something, Miss O’Malley, working for Scotland Yard; I’ve learned not to make up my mind without evidence. And that means not disbelieving you, either. As you say, you’ve no proof—but at least it makes sense of what you’ve done, which is more than I’ve had until now.”

“Let me out of here,” Eliza said, “and I’ll get you proof.” In the form of an unconscious Louisa Kittering, if she had to.

He put up a cautioning hand. “I cannot promise you that. But I’ll look into it, and see what I turn up. If there are faeries in London, I should be able to find them.”

Eliza wished his confidence went deeper.
I should,
he said, not
we should;
he wasn’t about to set his fellows in Scotland Yard to hunting. Well, she couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t laughed in her face, though, and that was something.

Quinn stood. “In the meantime, you behave yourself in here, Miss O’Malley,” he said, replacing his papers in the case. “Mind what they tell you, and you’ll have less trouble.”

Spoken like a man always on the strong side of the law, who’d never been subjected to the abuses of a place like this. Eliza gritted her teeth and looked away, rather than speak the words that might have undone all the good of a moment before. Quinn waited for her to say something, then sighed and went out, closing the door softly behind him.

A few minutes passed. Then the workhouse matron came back and unlocked her from the chair. Eliza cringed, thinking of the black cell and its ghost, but the woman took her back to where the rest of the inmates were rubbing their fingers raw, picking oakum. She fell to work gratefully, drinking in every bit of light as if it were water. If Quinn had arranged this, then she blessed him with her whole heart.

Riverside, Onyx Hall: July 24, 1884

Dead Rick’s hackles rose uneasily when he returned to the chamber where he spoke to the voice. It looked worse than ever, cracks mazing the stone until he feared it would fall to gravel at a touch. He stretched one hand out, then stopped, fingers a breath away from touching.
It’s the Queen, Irrith said. Trying to keep this place together. Blood and Bone—’ow long ’as she been doing this?
Fourteen years since she vanished; he’d asked. But the struggle must have begun long before that.

Back when he was a Queen’s man. “Don’t give up,” he whispered, as if she could hear him through the black stone. “Not yet.”

“Did you say something?”

The skriker jerked his hand back. It was his ally, of course, not Lune; but it made his skin jump all the same. “No, nothing.”

“What a pity,” the voice said, in cold tones. “I was hoping you might finally have word for me of where Chrennois is.”

Dead Rick sat down on the last intact bench, hoping it wouldn’t break beneath him. “’E ain’t ’ere, I’m telling you. Not in any bit of the palace. I’ve searched.”

In the course of their conversations, there had been moments of something like rapport: not friendship—nothing so warm as that—but accord, a feeling that they were working toward the same end, and could lay aside the wary suspicion of the Goblin Market. All that vanished as if it had never been, obliterated by the sudden malice of the voice’s response. “You could not possibly have searched the entire palace yourself. You must have had help from others.”

He had. Irrith’s first report had come while he lay at Nadrett’s feet, watching his master examine a string of mortal slaves; a beetle had crawled into his ear and whispered the sprite’s short message. The sheer audacity of it startled him almost as badly as the bug had. It brought no useful news, though; just the assurance that they were searching. Every message since then had been the same. And Dead Rick scoured every surviving inch of the Market, without luck. Either Chrennois had been taken by one of the smaller earthquakes that continued to rock the palace, or he was somewhere else entirely.

Dead Rick thought of the grief in Irrith’s eyes, and Nadrett’s boot on his neck. The sprite knew his memories were gone; she’d offered to do something about that. And she was brave enough—mad enough—to charge into the Goblin Market to save a flock of mortal children, and to tweak Valentin Aspell’s nose. If he told her about the glass, would she help him steal his memories back?

Maybe. The possibility was enough to make him brave. “I didn’t ’ave much choice,” Dead Rick told the voice, setting his shoulders as if for a fight. “This place may be ’alf gone, but I can’t search it all, not with Nadrett watching me so often. So sure, I got ’elp. If you don’t like it, then you can shove off.”

“Do not tempt me,” the voice said, each word cold and sharp as winter ice. “You are not indispensable, skriker, and if you ruin what I have spent all this time preparing, I will not hesitate to walk away from our arrangement. You may think you no longer need me, but believe me, you are wrong.”

His newfound courage faltered. Differences of accent aside, the voice momentarily sounded so much like Nadrett … seven years of brutal control made Dead Rick want to crawl, show throat, beg for mercy. Swallowing hard, he said, “You said you thought I could be subtle; well, this is the best I could do. Anything else would ’ave gotten me killed, or taken so long we’d all be out on the streets anyway. Besides, all they know is where ’e
ain’t
—and that’s no use to anybody.”

The voice made an impatient, irritated noise. “They must be wrong. The compounds would not survive long above. The mortal world behaves according to a set of strict natural laws; Faerie follows no laws at all, at least not consistently. Only in the spaces in between can something like this photography be carried out, where the laws are different, but discoverable and amenable to our use.”

It sounded like something an Academy scholar would say. Could Dead Rick have been wrong when he assumed his ally was a Goblin Market faerie? If so, he would stand no chance of guessing the voice’s identity—not when he didn’t even remember the Academy fae he
had
once known.

He wished he dared ask Irrith—it would simplify things so much, if he uncovered his ally’s secret—but the risk was too great, at least for now. “Someplace else, then,” Dead Rick said. “A faerie realm, but not this one.”

“Close enough by to be of use to Nadrett? The Goodemeades would never let him into Rose House, and there are no others within London.”

There had never needed to be, not when the palace was a city unto itself. Even in its fractured state—

Dead Rick’s eyes widened.
’E’d ’ave to be a bloody madman.
That didn’t mean it was impossible, though. Fae dared the bad patches of the Onyx Hall when they wanted to escape the notice of others; that was why he and the voice met here, where no one else was likely to go. A daring enough faerie could take it one step further. “Maybe ’e’s in another part of the palace.”

“Another—” The question cut off short, as his ally realized what he meant. Dead Rick caught the soft exhalation of breath, understanding and incredulity. When the voice resumed, it raced quickly through thoughts much like those in the skriker’s own mind. “One of the bad patches, perhaps, that no longer leads where it used to; except that those are known, and in the public view. There might be an exception, but the more likely answer is some isolated fragment still attached to an entrance.”

The places where the Onyx Hall connected to the City of London above. A great many of them had been lost, in the course of the palace’s decay. Dead Rick curled his lip in a bitter snarl. “I’m no bleeding use to you, then; I don’t remember where they was.”

“I do,” the voice murmured, lost in thought. “Both above and below, but I think it will be necessary to search from the City. If such a thing exists, it would be perfect for Nadrett’s purposes: he and Chrennois enter only from the mortal world, without anyone to see, but the enchantments on the faerie side give them a protected space in which to work. The question is where, and that, you will have to answer for me.”

Dead Rick startled. “Me? Why?”

“Because I have no means of tracking them. The only way for me to determine if their laboratory lies on the other side of an entrance would be to try walking through it, and I don’t fancy playing that particular game of chance. It would be a terrible disappointment if I buried myself in airless dirt or scattered my soul to the four winds, when I am so close to achieving my objectives.”

It almost sounded like humor. Dead Rick was glad the voice had regained a measure of good feeling, but not so glad he lost sight of his own difficulties. “I can’t go up there.”

“I’ll supply you with bread.”

“To ’ell with the bread! Well, I need that, too, I suppose, but Nadrett’s the real problem. I go missing again, ’e’ll ’ave my fucking ’ead off. And then ’e’ll make my ’ead tell ’im where I’ve been, and what I’ve been doing. You don’t want me spreading your secrets around, then send some other dog.”

The silence lasted so long, he wondered if the voice had gone to do just that. Dead Rick wasn’t being a coward; in this case, preserving his own hide went hand in hand with preserving his ally’s. But it seemed the other had simply been thinking the matter through, for when the reply came at last, it didn’t sound angry at all. “I will take care of Nadrett.”

Dead Rick frowned. “Take care of ’im? How?”

“I won’t kill him, if that’s what you’re hoping for,” the voice said dryly. “Not yet. But I think I can arrange a distraction, so that he’ll not realize you’ve gone missing. You will have to be quick—the quicker the better—but a couple of hours should be sufficient for you to visit all the lost entrances, and look for signs that anyone has been through them recently.”

He thought about asking what this distraction might be, then thought the better of it.
What I don’t know I can’t give away. Or be scared of.
“If they ’ave?”

“Do
not
go through.” Dead Rick heaved a sigh of relief. “Return to the palace, notify me—by a different signal; we’ve used the night garden too often—and I will tell you what to do next.”

If he moved fast enough, he could possibly even risk going back to the Academy, and telling Irrith what he had learned. But even as that thought took shape in Dead Rick’s head, the voice spoke again. “Before you go, I will have your oath that you will not tell anyone else the location of Chrennois’s laboratory.”

Dead Rick’s mouth fell open. “My
oath
?”

“Yes.” The word was cold once more. “Since it seems you cannot be trusted to hold your tongue otherwise.”

“Even Nadrett don’t make us swear oaths!”

A contemptuous sound answered him. “For very practical reasons, I assure you; he would make his minions swear six times a day if he could. Fortunately for me, I enjoy more freedom in the matter. You will swear, or we are done.”

Dead Rick could ask Irrith for bread, or go into the City without it. Surely other people remembered where the entrances had been. But did he dare throw this ally away?

He ground his teeth together, remembering the original form of their deal. “Tell me something first. More about myself.”

“After turning to outside help the way you have, you expect me to reward you?”

The coldness was back, and stronger. Dead Rick already crawled for Nadrett; he was damned if he’d do it for this bastard, too. Any more than he had to. “No, I expects you to
pay
me. Like we agreed.”

Silence made him wonder if the voice had gone away, if that demand was one push too many. But the words came at last, clipped and hard. “You came to the Onyx Hall not long after Lune became Queen. Ostensibly because cities breed disease, and therefore death, which is in your nature; but the truth is that you were lonely in Yorkshire, and liked the notion of companionship. To put it in crude terms, you wanted a pack.”