A Star Shall Fall

Disappointed by the failure of her bait, Magrat set her gin down and began to count possibilities off on her fingers. “Scadd. Greymalkin, or Beggabow. Your old friend Angrisla—”

“She’s here?” Irrith asked, surprised. “I thought she went north.”

“And you went to Berkshire. People come back, sometimes.” Magrat tilted her head sideways, thinking. “Dead Rick, if you want someone to listen or sniff for guards. Lacca. Charcoal Eddie, assuming you can put up with his sense of humor. Something for the Onyx Hall, you said—is this for the Queen?”

Irrith wasn’t a good enough liar to say no and be believed, and her hesitation was answer enough. “Careful,” Magrat warned her. “Some folk in this place are Sanists.”

The word still made Irrith twitch, despite what Aspell had said. “So?” she said, a little too loudly. “What’s going on with her and the Hall doesn’t change the fact that we’re in danger—all of us. If we don’t do something about that, there won’t be any palace or Queen to fight over anymore.”

“Watch what you say, little sprite.” The low, rumbling voice came from the next table over, where a thrumpin with a face to shame a demon sat. “You haven’t been here but a bare year—less—and you don’t know much. She may say it’s all to defend this place, but some of the things the Queen does are making it even weaker.”

“Like what?” Irrith demanded.

“Like that Calendar Room,” the thrumpin’s drinking companion said. “Why do you think she kept it secret? Because it’s feeding off the future of the Onyx Hall, every time someone goes inside, draining tomorrow away so we’ll have nothing left!”

They’d drawn a great deal of attention now, of all different kinds. A knocker with a thick Cornish accent laughed. “Aye, sure—and that’s why she told us all about it, I suppose? Fool. If it were destroying the Hall, we’d never have heard a whisper of its existence.”

“What about the earthquakes, then?” the thrumpin said, standing up. He wasn’t much taller than the knocker, but much thicker bodied, so he seemed to loom over the goblin. “Cannon, they said—like hell. Cannon don’t shake the whole of London. Mark me well, that was the Hall almost falling apart. And it killed Lord Hamilton, too!”

“He died six years later!” someone yelled.

In the corner, gin cup once more in her hands, Magrat was cackling to herself. “You’ve done it now, Berkshire. Want to make any wagers?”

“Wagers? On what?”

Irrith got her answer a moment later when the first tin cup flew. Who its original target was, she didn’t know, but it caught the thrumpin in the ear and he bellowed in rage. He tried to shove through the crowd, the knocker shoved him back, and then the skinny mine spirit went down—tripped by either a stool or someone’s foot, and no chance of telling which. Then the brawl was on, Sanists against loyalists, except the two sides seemed to fall apart early on, with various goblins and pucks gleefully provoking chaos wherever they could.

Rather than be a part of that chaos, Irrith dove under the table and watched the legs stagger by. Magrat poked her with a foot. “For this entertainment,” the church grim said, leaning down to speak under the table’s edge, “I’ll give you a bit more for free. Don’t take Lacca.”

“Why not?” Irrith asked, wincing as someone howled in pain.

“Because she’s over there chewing on that knocker’s arm,” Magrat said, grinning toothily. “Most Sanists don’t have anything personal against the Queen. She’s different.”

A sour taste filled Irrith’s mouth. Too far. Aspell’s one thing; Lacca’s another. “Thanks for the warning,” she said, and settled against the wall to wait for the brawl to end.

Memory: 8 February 1750

The hour being a little after midday, many people were awake and about their business in London when the earth beneath their feet suddenly bucked as if to throw them off.

The shock was felt in all the neighbouring towns, and even so far as Gravesend, and caused much distress. But nowhere was any person so angered as in the subterranean chambers of the Queen of the Onyx Court.

“You told me this would be safe!” Lune raged.

Gertrude had tried and failed to make her Grace lie down. Lord Hamilton was more tractable; he at least sat in a chair, sipping occasionally from the medicinal mead the brownie had given him. Lune insisted on pacing, her skirts whipping into a small vortex every time she turned.

If Ktistes could have fit in her chamber, she would have had the centaur there; as it was, the von das Tickens stood alone against her anger. “It vas safe,” Niklas growled, unimpressed by the royal anger. “Nobody vas hurt. Even that horse-man says the charms are not damaged. Just a little shaking of the ground, is all.”

She glared silver murder at him. “You caused an earthquake. I should have heeded my instincts and my common sense, when you first suggested using explosives.”