A Star Shall Fall

“Not at all—not if I could have the world according to my preferences. The power I have now—had—pleased me very well. But others who might have taken the throne would have been equally flawed, and far less biddable.”

Irrith wanted to shove past Cerenel and strangle him. This is what I hate the most—forked tongues speaking treason and patriotism at the same time. All the twists, all the lies, until even the liar believes his own words. “Is that how you see your Queen? Unbiddable and flawed?”

“Yes.” The word was cold and uncompromising. “Your Grace… you have been flawed since the iron knife first entered your shoulder.”

Before the Dragon burnt her hand, before the first bit of the Onyx Hall began to crumble away. Before Irrith had ever met London’s Queen. Lune said, “And yet you served me, even though I was wounded, never to heal.”

A ripple in Aspell’s shoulders, a serpentine shrug. “At first it didn’t seem to matter. This place is an exception to many rules of faerie-kind; you could have been another. But then Lady Feidelm warned us of the comet’s return, and I foresaw a second destruction. To speak bluntly, madam—for I think I have nothing to lose by doing so—had you done as you should, you would have sought out and prepared a successor, to give the Onyx Hall a monarch who is whole. Your continuing refusal to do so, and your failure to dispose of either of the threats that imperils this realm, convinced me there was no other choice.”

“No other choice than regicide.” Irrith spat the word like the poison it was.

He lifted his head to regard her. As he said, he had nothing to lose by the discourtesy. “When it offers the one plausible chance to save the Hall—yes. With regret. Time forced my hand, you see. Dr. Andrews’s plan struck me as far more likely to succeed than my own, but he hovered at the edge of his own grave; if it were to be done, it had to be done then, without time to persuade her Majesty into cooperation.” He sighed. “I threw the dice, and failed.”

With a soul-deep chill, Irrith realised what lay beneath his calm. He has nothing to lose—not just because Lune may execute him, but because he believes this whole realm is now doomed.

And what did the Queen believe? Only Lune herself knew; the silver eyes gave nothing away. Irrith couldn’t decide which was worse: naked ambition, or this double-knotted rhetoric, laying a road that led sanely and inevitably to horrifying treason.

Aspell bowed his head once more, dismissing Irrith. “You asked, your Grace, why you should not execute me. That is the defence I offer. The preservation of the Onyx Hall requires your removal, and so I pursued it. I renounce nothing I have done, though I regret the clumsy and ineffective manner of its doing. I await your sentence.”

Irrith would have killed him, without hesitation. Yes, fae bred rarely, and yes, killing Aspell would likely obliterate his spirit forever—she didn’t care. He was a traitor, and if lopping his head off angered the Sanists, so be it; they could handle the rebellion once they’d disposed of the Dragon.

Unless it destroyed them all, in which case, no sense wasting effort on the Sanists now.

But Irrith wasn’t Lune, with her responsibilities and knowledge of politics and, perhaps, queerly human notions. If she still had them.

The Queen said, “You will face a formal trial, so that all my subjects may know that the Sanist conspiracy, in its extremity, resorted to attempted regicide. But the sentence will be mine to pronounce—and I will not kill you, Aspell.”

His shoulders trembled. This might not be mercy; there were fates less pleasant than death.

“Nor,” the Queen went on, “will I exile you, to foment trouble abroad. I think rather to return to an older way.

“Niklas von das Ticken has failed to make a functional Dragon-cage, but he assures me he can imprison an ordinary faerie, in a manner more secure—but less cruel—than the iron we used upon that beast. You, Valentin Aspell, will sleep for one hundred years, in such manner as to ensure that no one can free you before your sentence is done.”

Irrith realised the intention even as Lune said it. “By the time you wake,” the Queen said, “I expect we will have resolved this issue. Either the Onyx Hall will be whole once more, or I will no longer be its mistress. Either way, your concerns will be laid to rest.”

Aspell said nothing. What reply could he make? Thanking her would have been absurd; anything else would have been an invitation to greater harshness. For her own part, Irrith thought it as good as any other path out of this situation, and better than some. Lune had passed far harsher sentences before.