A Star Shall Fall

“We’ll get the front door open, then send him back to bed,” Irrith said. “If anyone does come upon us while we’re searching, it’ll be easier to hide without a naked sleeping mortal wandering around.”

The puck pouted, but he was being well rewarded for his help; he made no more protest. “This way, ladies and gents,” he said, and gestured toward a nearby arch.

Even with charms, Irrith felt terribly exposed in the great open courtyard of Montagu House. Windows lined the house’s front and the two wings, which any sleepless servant could glance out of, and she kept thinking she saw movement in the shadows of the front colonnade. Greymalkin, the last of their party, regarded her with pitying contempt. “Missing the trees, Berkshire?”

She was, but not for a whole loaf of bread would she have admitted it. “Just keep watching,” Irrith hissed, and stood nervously as the porter unlocked the front door.

Once they were inside the darkened house, it was better. She sent Eddie to escort the porter back to bed and then keep watch, while she and the others followed the directions Galen had given, up the staircase on the left and into the collection rooms of the British Museum above.

“Ash and Thorn,” Dead Rick muttered when Irrith threw the curtains open. She flinched, thinking of the Sanist newspaper that had taken that name. He was a skriker; had he been the dog who attacked her at Tyburn? But he seemed to mean the words only as an oath. “What is all of this for?”

Curiosity, Irrith thought. It was like her cabinet, ten times over—no, a hundred times. The walls were lined with cases the height of a giant. Their top shelves were enclosed in glass, held shut by prominent locks; their drawers, when Greymalkin slid one out, proved to be covered over with wires, their openings too small even for her slender fingers. And all of it, shelves and drawers and opened crates on the floor, was crammed with objects of a thousand kinds. In the moonlight from the windows, she saw coins and masks, dried plants and dead butterflies, an astrolabe and a polished round crystal the size of her fist.

She wanted nothing more than to spend the whole night looking through it all—well, not the dead plants and insects. Those served no purpose she could see. But the things made by men… those could occupy her for days.

Especially since there was more than one room. “Let’s move on,” Irrith said reluctantly. “The stand must be somewhere else.”

The antiquities, unfortunately, were scattered through many rooms. The fae went through them quickly, passing statue after statue, baskets, drums—and even the goblins, accustomed to moving in darkness, seemed skittish. Irrith kept thinking she heard voices, just beyond the edge of understanding. Or things, moving in the shadows. Some of these objects came from far-off lands, and she wondered what they’d brought with them.

“Damn it,” she muttered, almost for reassurance. The stand had to be here somewhere. Up in the attics, perhaps? Galen hadn’t been able to tell them where the unsorted items were. The new museum had been given so many collections from other folk, they were still struggling to put it all in some kind of order.

“Hsst!” Angrisla stood at the far side of the room. “What’s through here?”

“Manuscripts,” Irrith said; the mara was already gone, vanished through the door. The room beyond was pitch-black, but that hardly bothered a nightmare. After a moment, her hideous face appeared in the doorway. “Bronze, about your height?”

Irrith’s heart leapt. “Three legs?”

Angrisla nodded, and they all hurried to see.

It stood in a corner of the manuscript room, with—Irrith snorted—a Chinese vase sitting on it. “Doesn’t look like much,” Greymalkin said.

She was right. Ktistes had shown so much reverence when speaking of this, Irrith had expected… she didn’t know what, but something much grander than what they found. The stand was nothing more than a plain bronze tripod, with only a little decoration down its legs, and a shallow bowl at the top.

Dead Rick sniffed it, as if his nose could somehow find its value. “What do the Greeks want it for, anyway? If it’s so useful, why would the Queen give it up?”

“For something we can’t do ourselves,” Irrith said. “Ktistes said some old Greek woman used to sit in that bowl and give prophecies. But it won’t work for us.” She moved the Chinese vase onto the floor and beckoned for the others to help. “Come on; I can’t carry this on my own.”

Angrisla took the bowl, and Dead Rick ended up with the tripod itself. Irrith left the vase precisely where the stand had been and closed the drapes and doors behind them. The theft would be obvious, but no sense leaving more signs than they had to.