A Star Shall Fall

Irrith shifted her feet when everyone’s attention fell on her. “How should I know? I saw this, advertising a satyr like some kind of Bartholomew Fair show, and thought at the very least that you should see it.” It seemed like a very small matter, after watching their efforts against the illusion of the Dragon—though the possible satyr, if he existed, might disagree.

Adenant and Segraine exchanged looks, and she said, “We should at least look into it.”

“I’ll go with you,” Irrith said, barely ahead of Hempry and the duergar.

“It doesn’t need an entire regiment,” Adenant said dryly. “Ask Peregrin, but I expect he’ll say two is enough.”

Hempry grumbled mutiny, only giving in when Segraine promised to include him in any rescue attempt. Once the others had dispersed, the lady knight said to Irrith, “Arrange a showing. I’ll tell the Captain, and the Queen.”

“And the Prince?” Irrith asked. “This is a mortal thing, after all.”

Segraine’s hesitation was barely visible, but not quite absent. “And the Prince,” she agreed.

Why the pause? Anything having to do with the mortals of London fell under the Prince’s authority; Lune would probably tell Peregrin and Segraine so. That was how it was done with the Princes Irrith had known. But this one was new, she remembered. Perhaps Segraine didn’t fully trust him yet.

She didn’t really want to ask. That was politics, and something she intended to stay far away from. Instead she flicked the advertisement in her hand and offered Segraine her most impudent grin. “Only one question, then.”

“And that is?”

Irrith’s grin got wider. “Which of us has to be the lady?”

CRANE COURT, LONDON

10 November 1757

Letters of introduction, unfortunately, were insufficient to bring a man into the hallowed chambers of the Royal Society. To come among that august body, Galen needed his father to bring him in person.

He had, with extreme reluctance, begun attending what small social events offered themselves in this season, when most people who could afford to—and who, therefore, presented suitable targets—had retired from London. He did not enjoy it, and Charles St. Clair growled at the lack of results; in consequence, neither was pleased.

But it achieved what Galen needed: together, he and his father went to Crane Court, a narrow lane off of Fleet Street, to the home of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge.

Whatever Galen expected of the place, he didn’t see it. The facade in front of him might have belonged to any one of a thousand townhouses in London, with a narrow front, three windows across, and a short staircase leading up to the door, all in simple Palladian style. But the fellowship that met within its walls counted among its past number some of the greatest minds in all of Britain: Robert Boyle; Robert Hooke; Sir Christopher Wren, the guiding genius that rebuilt London in the aftermath of the Great Fire. Edmond Halley, whose calculations had called the spirit of that Fire home to roost. Sir Isaac Newton himself.

Charles St. Clair said nothing to his son, either during the journey or once they arrived. He merely went up the stairs and rapped on the door with the head of his walking stick. A footman in livery welcomed them in and directed them up to the piano nobile, where a spacious room overlooking the garden would be the stage for tonight’s meeting. It held an assortment of cabriole-legged chairs, an abundance of candles with mirrors to reflect their light, and a small number of gentlemen, all respectably dressed in gray powdered wigs and cravats.

His father introduced him around with a brusqueness bordering on rudeness. Galen bowed, made pleasantries, and was somewhat relieved to be rescued by the beginning of the meeting. Perhaps after it was done, and he had more to converse upon, this would become less awkward.

The meeting, alas, no more displayed the marks of intellectual brilliance than the building did. Galen could forgive it the routine business with which it began: every society that wished to survive for more than a brief time must conduct itself in an orderly fashion. He soon found himself struggling, however, against the urge to yawn, as someone read an interminable extract from what was presumably even more interminable of a lecture on the lymphatic vessels of animals. Galen lost the thread of it a few minutes in, and returned to alertness only when he realised the group was ordering thanks to the doctor who had delivered the lecture.

He made a better effort to stay alert for the letter that followed, and was rewarded with a name he recognised: Dr. Halley. For a moment, he thought someone might mention the comet. But no; the topic was magnetism, and Halley’s work on charts of the same. Which might be of great use to navigators at sea, certainly—just not of use to Galen.