A Star Shall Fall

Hands made clumsy with panic tore at the box tied to her waist. Then the lid was open, and the will-o’-the-wisp sprang out, erupting from the water into the air above, marking the target for those who waited to attack.

* * *

The sky was too dangerous for large forces on any night other than All Hallows’ Eve. But birds attracted no notice, especially against the dark background of the clouds. Their sharp eyes picked out the flare of light on the river below, and they screamed a warning through the air.

A lone horseman came galloping through the sky, downriver from Westminster Bridge. The tatterfoal stretched his legs to their fullest, angling downward to seek out the barge, and his rider Sir Cerenel dropped the reins to ready the weapon he held.

Not all of the jotun ice had gone into the spear for the Dragon. Leaning sideways out of the saddle, the elf-knight hurled a shard into the river below.

It struck the water and sank halfway in. No farther: by then the river had frozen around it, ice crystalling outward in all directions, even down to the soft mud of the bed, trapping the barge just short of the mouth of the Fleet.

And forming a bridge from one bank to the other, a road for the rescuers to ride.

* * *

Galen had positioned himself in the timber yard off Dorset Street, scant yards from the open bank of the Fleet. Sir Peregrin let him do it because the Captain believed they would catch the barge much farther upriver. But Galen thought, when he saw the ice race across the surface of the Thames, that some dismal part of himself had always believed it would come to this, the last, desperate chance to save Lune.

He heard the clatter of hooves and feet approaching down Temple Street, the company that had waited in the King’s Bench Walk, but he could not wait for them, not even half a moment. Spurring the brag he rode, Galen charged out onto the ice.

The surface was treacherous beyond belief, crazed from the unnatural speed of its freezing, but slick all the same. His mount screamed and went down twenty feet from the barge, sending Galen flying across the ice, out of control. But it also saved the Prince; when a goblin leapt over the gunwale, sword in hand, the attacker’s feet went out from under him, too.

A bullet chipped the ice near Galen’s head. Someone on the barge was more clever. The Prince half-crawled, half-slid into the shelter of the vessel’s wooden side, and snatched up the sword the goblin had dropped. The creature tried to run at him, but by then the rest of Galen’s company was there; Sir Adenant rode him down.

Behind them came Segraine’s company, marked by the flaming eyes of Bonecruncher. And Irrith, corpse-pale as if she might collapse, but lifting her pistol to fire at a Sanist.

Galen gritted his teeth and rose, clawing his way over the barge’s edge. Gunfire still cracked around him, but they couldn’t afford to lose a second, lest Andrews decide he’d come close enough to his goal. The Prince came aboard to find himself facing a blank-eyed waterman. A blade flashing out from behind the man told him a fae was using the mortal as cover. But the strike was made half-blind, and Galen dodged it easily, shoving the waterman backward. There—the cabin—

Cool light radiated upward as someone dragged free the canvas that served in place of a roof. Heart in his mouth, Galen looked upward.

Clouds still covered most of the sky, but ragged patches had appeared here and there, and one of them revealed the moon.

Only the raw scratch of his throat told him he was screaming. Galen threw himself forward, using the sword as much like a bludgeon as a blade, not caring who he drove through or how. More fae swarmed onto the barge with him, but the Sanists stood ready, and the confines of the deck limited the opposing numbers to something like equality. Then the thrumpin in front of him went down with a howl, and Galen saw Irrith, crouched low with a knife at hamstring height. “Come on!” she shouted, and snatched without success at the handle of the cabin door.

She got out of the way just in time to avoid Galen’s rush. He hit the door with the shoulder bruised last fall, and felt the jolt all the way across his body, but the cabin was a flimsy thing. The latch snapped, dropping Galen through into the room beyond.

He knew what he would see even before he regained his feet. Valentin Aspell, leaping in front of Galen with a hiss. Dr. Andrews, looking like Death itself in the cold faerie light.

And Lune, chained by rowan to the table on which she lay, naked and vulnerable to the knife.

The faerie lights dimmed without warning. Aspell flinched involuntarily, one hand flying to shield his face, as three small, dark spheres struck him and fell to the boards. In that moment Galen leapt; he’d lost his sword somewhere, but he still had his weight, and it was enough to send Aspell crashing backward in the cramped space, into Dr. Andrews.