A Star Shall Fall

They heard the man’s coughing before he entered the room. Galen was appalled. Andrews had finally agreed to spend less time in the Onyx Hall, for the sake of his mind; it seemed his body had paid the price. Or perhaps this decline would have happened anyway, his health finally abandoning the fight against the disease that was killing him. He should have been in bed, enduring his last days in what comfort could be managed, but it seemed his will was too strong to allow him that surrender.

Lune saw it, too. She swept past Galen and took Dr. Andrews by the arm, helping him into a chair. “Thank you,” the man whispered, his voice a ghost of what it had been before.

Then he saw Galen, and surprise sparked another bout of coughing. When it ended, Andrews rasped, “Mr. St. Clair—you were supposed to be at Sothings Park.”

“I came to see the mercury,” Galen said, his own voice as hushed as if he stood at someone’s deathbed.

Andrews shook his head. “I don’t have it yet.”

Lune and Galen exchanged looks of mutual confusion. “But your letter said—”

“Need you.” He pointed at Lune. “It won’t work with a nymph. We need the connection to the Onyx Hall. Just as the Dragon acquired an association with air by its transmission to the comet, so are you completed by your realm.”

“Dr. Andrews, no.” It hurt all the more because Galen had believed their problem finished at last. “If this mercury depends on a connection to the Onyx Hall, it cannot be used; the power of the Hall is exactly what the Dragon desires. You would give our enemy precisely the thing we fight to keep it from.”

Andrews’s breath rattled audibly in his chest, and he clutched his ever-present handkerchief as if it were the only thing anchoring his spirit to his body. “There is no other choice, Mr. St. Clair. If the Dragon’s power is as great as you say, then it must be matched by a source equally strong; only the Onyx Hall will suffice. Else sulphur will obliterate mercury and the work will be lost.”

Galen rose slowly to his feet. His entire body was trembling, and the dark, bare space of the drawing room seemed to be closing in on him, narrowing his world to himself and Dr. Andrews alone. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to; the salvation of London depended on it. “How—how would the extraction be done?”

The dying man finally met Galen’s eyes, and what he saw revealed there struck him dumb with horror.

Andrews whispered, “I’m sorry.”

The doors to the drawing room opened. In came six people Galen didn’t recognise: ordinary laboring men, or so they appeared to be, except he knew without question that they were fae under glamour.

Sanists.

“There is no drawing of blood,” Andrews said. “No extraction of the necessary element without harm to the patient. I tried, Mr. St. Clair, but they all died. If there was any other way, I swear to you, I would use it, but—”

“Dr. Andrews.” Lune spoke his name, but addressed all of them, with courage and dignity that would give the hardest assassin pause. “I understand your desperation, but you must listen to me. The philosopher’s stone is not your salvation. Not if it is created from the Dragon. It’s a creature of destruction; even if you take me, with all the power of the Onyx Hall behind me, I won’t be able to stop it.”

Andrews shivered. “But it’s perfection. It creates perfection.”

“And so it may do—by annihilating that which is not perfect.” Lune spread her arms, seeming to encompass the entire city within her embrace. “After London burnt, men submitted plans to the King, grand designs for transforming it into the jewel of Europe, sweeping away the old tangle of streets to create something better. They failed. But if London were to burn again—why, then, they would have another chance. Dr. Andrews, you cannot do this. It will destroy us all.”

For one timeless, breathless moment, Galen thought she had persuaded him. Andrews’s mouth wavered, uncertainty breaking through the desperation.

Then the doctor made his choice.

What he would have said to excuse it, Galen never learned. He charged forward, blindly, but one of the Sanists was there before he got two steps, grabbing him and wrestling him back. Another trapped Lune with brawny arms. “You shouldn’t have come, Mr. St. Clair,” Dr. Andrews gasped, in between coughs. “I meant to spare you this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

Galen screamed. It didn’t last more than a heartbeat before silence blanketed the room. A third Sanist came forward with rowan-wood shackles to bind Lune’s good and crippled hands together. Her silver eyes sought him out, and their touch pierced Galen to the bone.