A Star Shall Fall

She presented her case to the Lord Treasurer, who surprised her by being a stolid, methodical dobie named Hairy How. Most of the officers of Lune’s court were elfin types, but she supposed that when it came to careful bookkeeping, a hob was ideal. This one seemed more sensible than your common dobie—too sensible, in fact. Convincing him was none too easy. But the magic key word of Dragon, combined with a believable explanation for how her use of bread could benefit the court, finally talked him around, and he commanded the clerk to give her a week’s worth.

Irrith would have liked more; she owed more than seven pieces to various fae already. Segraine might be willing to let the debt go for a century, but others would not. Unfortunately, this was obviously as much as she would get today. She watched, bemused, as the clerk counted out the seven pieces with excessive care, then counted them a second time before making his tally and wrapping them in a handkerchief. When Irrith tried to pick it up, he swatted her hand. “All disbursements from the royal treasury must be recorded,” he said, getting out a pot of ink and a moth-eaten griffin feather for a quill. “It’s the law.”

“Law!” The clerk, by his glare, didn’t appreciate her scornful laughter. “That’s a mortal thing.”

“And a faerie one, too, Dame Irrith. By order of the Queen and Lord Alan.”

One of the old Princes. Irrith waited, not attempting to hide her impatience, as the clerk made a note in his ledger, then wrote out a receipt, which he handed to her.

The slip read, Seven (7) pieces from the Treasury, as follows: three (3) rye, two (2) barley, one (1) brown wheat, one (1) white wheat. Disbursed to Dame Irrith by Rodge, Clerk of the Treasury, on 4 October 1757.

Irrith threw it away in disgust. “You might as well be a mortal clerk, with your dates and numbers.” A small clock sat on the desk in front of him: probably the work of the von das Tickens, and the reason why the clerk could date the receipt. The Onyx Hall wasn’t detached from human time as the deeper realms of Faerie were; it would render interactions with the mortal world too difficult. But in the unchanging darkness of those stone halls, most fae lost count of the date. And few of them cared.

Rodge apparently saved his lack of care for the fae he dealt with. He didn’t even look up as Irrith took the bread and departed.

She stowed six pieces with Ktistes; the centaur was always near his pavilion, and few would risk stealing from him. But the safest place in the world was her stomach, where it could do its inexplicable work, shielding her from threats. Irrith ate the white bread, grimacing at its chalky taste, and went into the streets above.

Darkness greeted her, but this time it wasn’t the strange murk of last fall; just ordinary nighttime. The sky was overcast enough that she couldn’t guess the hour, though. Irrith had chosen the Billingsgate door, which put her in a less-than-savory part of the City; after a moment’s consideration, she cloaked herself in a charm that would encourage strangers to look past her. Cutpurses and other criminals were as fascinating as any other part of mortal society, but not one she wanted to experience right now.

Voices from the direction of the fish market told her it must not be long until dawn. Soon boats would crowd the little harbor, unloading the day’s catch; then the fishwives would go to work, with their powerful arms and vivid profanity, hawking their wares to the cooks and cooks’ servants, laboring housewives, and finally the poor on the edge of starvation, who would buy what no one else wanted, after it had begun to smell.

She drifted, silent and invisible as a ghost, in the direction of the wharves, for they showed more life than the predawn streets. The river was little more than a black sloshing sound, wavelets receding from the mudflats of its banks, their tops gilded by the occasional bit of torchlight. Here, in the darkness, it was easy to forget about all the changes that entranced her; Irrith could half-convince herself she’d stepped out into the London she first saw a hundred years ago. Many things stayed the same.

Indeed, that was what made the changes so entrancing.

The sun gradually emerged as a flat gray disk on the eastern horizon, barely penetrating the clouds. It allowed Irrith to see the buildings around her, the eighteenth century replacing that fleeting illusion of the seventeenth. Brick and stone, not the timber and plaster of the past, which had burnt in the Fire. But some places were familiar, beneath their new clothes; rich men still gossiped in the Exchange, the Bow Bells still rang out over Cheapside, and a cathedral still crowned the City’s western half.

How was she supposed to turn all this inside out?