The Conspirator and the Lich

“I have a question for thee, if thou wouldst indulge me.”

Guido eyes his companion as they descend into the oppressive gloom of the undercroft. The light of the lantern only illuminates the barest circle beneath Guido’s feet but that light still catches embers in the unnatural paleness of his companion’s hair, and on the smooth contours of his hairless chin. 

It is, in Guido’s humble opinion, a little late to be asking questions.

“What wouldst thou ask of me, friend?” he whispers anyway.

The chill of early November seeps into Guido’s knuckles as he places his foot down on the next step. He flexes his fingers, listening to the quiet crackle-pop of his joints. Above them, the house stirs, and the pair of them pause to glance up into the darkness as muffled feet pass overhead.

He should probably be nervous.

True, his stomach is a twist of knots and his heart is a stallion’s gallop in his chest but Guido has worn terror like an old coat in the past. He knows that feeling like he knows the sweet film of the ale served at the Duck and Drake. 

This feeling is more akin to the tingle of anticipation Guido has felt before bedding a particularly saucy wench down on Gropecunt Lane.

He could die today. He cannot forget that.

“How is it that thou and thy kinsmen are considered radicals?” Guido’s companion continues as they descend further. “Why hast thou had to engage in such a convoluted scheme? The…possession of thy sovereign is so very…obvious.”

Guido frowns, nose wrinkling as they pass beneath an area that lingers with the miasma of chamber pot waste. Ahead, the undercroft opens up into a wall of damp dark. He presses forward, encouraging the lantern to illuminate as wide an area as possible.

Cowardice.

The word circles Guido’s head and curdles his belly. Guido clenches his teeth, free hand curling into a heavy fist. In the darkness, he doesn’t have to close his eyes to see the swing of the men on the gallows. They are simply in front of him, legs twitching, skin unnaturally blue in the imagined greylight of Autumn. The stench of the recent dead still clings to his clothes from passing the skewered heads of the treacherous on the bridge.

Guido has worn that terror like an old coat in the past which is why he cannot forgive it now.

To his companion he says:

“It is difficult, is it not, to consider the consequences of going against the authority of thy land? Or, pray, is it different where thou art from?”

The barrels are still situated right where Guido left them and he feels a pinch of relief through the cloying effects of his anger. The lamplight skims the rounded wooden edges and the intricate etching of his companion’s family crest. There is a pregnant pause as the taller man steps into the light, long pale fingers tracing those lines.

“We do not deny the truth in favour of self preservation as a rule,” he says and he turns towards Guido, green eyes flashing. Guido shivers as a piece of that pale hair falls away from the unnatural pointed tip of his ears.

Sometimes he forgets that Vhaerun Zephyrus is as much a foreigner in King James’s Briton as it is possible to be.

Guido’s heart jumps in his chest like a cricket as a man lets out a rattling cough overhead. Dread makes his skin crawl. The last thing he or Vhaerun needs right now is to be exposed to a new outbreak of plague.

He focuses on his breathing, easing the tightness in his chest.

This is the worst part, the waiting. Guido should be used to it, to the way the air itself seems to slow with anticipation, like the entire world is holding its breath.

The light shuffle of Vhaerun’s feet reminds Guido of a musket shot going off prematurely. Then, like the entire Earth has decided to turn over, there is the thundering cacophony of a thousand chairs being scraped across the hard floor of the main consultation room above them. Guido shivers with the vibrations, exhilaration escalating.

Parliament is finally in session.

Guido’s eyes crash into Vhaerun’s and his own misplaced trepidation, excitement, and righteousness is reflected back at him. He holds his breath as Vhaerun moves, bending low with the lantern to light the fuse. It sparks a bright promise through the shadows and Guido’s nose fills with the stench of hot Spanish trenches.

They have five minutes.

Guido scrambles up, staggering around the side of the barrels, drunk on adrenaline, to catch sight of Vhaerun drawing with a piece of chalk in midair.

Guido gapes as the lines that Vhaerun draws out appear in flakey white over nothing but barely illuminated darkness, just as they might if drawn into the hard stone wall of the undercroft. Through the fuzz of tinnitus in his ears and the cold awareness of the fuse fizzing behind him, Guido’s mind resounds with the words of King James’s Daemonologie:

‘'fearefull aboundinge at this time in this countrie, of these detestable slaves of the Devill, the Witches or enchanters'

He has to remind himself, as aversion prickles his skin like ice water, that the words of that book have been written by a man who practises the very arts he condemns. Guido will not be led blind.

And he will not die here because he is afraid.

He jerks forward, hands outstretched to grab onto the sleeves of Vhaerun’s tunic as Vhaerun clicks his fingers. The portal ignites in a flash of the deepest royal blue and Guido lets out a yelp despite himself. A foul smell fills the air, the reek of rotting eggs. Guido has to fight to stave off the voice screaming at the back of his head that nothing good could smell this unholy.

“Oi!”

“Here!”

“Stop in the name of the king!”

Guido starts, his blood running cold. Those shouts are too close, too loud and for a second, all Guido can comprehend is the price of failure. The swinging feet of those dead men and the skulls: skewered, half decimated by carrion feeders, flash behind his eyes.

He gasps when Vhaerun’s fingers close over the upper arm of his doublet. The blue of the portal gives his companion’s hand a corpse sheen and the touch burns witch-at-the-stake hot through the November chill. 

Guido breathes.

As the king’s men come into sight, trampling down the stone steps with a dull ring of lamplight to illuminate how they are bedecked in stunning red and gold, Guido casts a look at the fuse and the fear in him is tempered with vindictive glee.

‘Thou art too late,’ he thinks and then Vhaerun is yanking him through that Godforsaken portal.

It’s like being dragged through spider silk. 

Guido flinches against the sensation. He squeezes his eyes shut, flexing his fingers to rid his skin of the tingle. He is hit with a flash of heat and when he opens his eyes again, he is suspended above a stinking sea.

Guido’s breaths stutter. 

His mind rolls horror-bright against the sight of a sickly yellow sky and oily green waters stretching for miles in every direction where there was once only the dark, enclosed space of the undercroft. His eyes are so wide, it feels like they may fall clean out of his head. The stench of burning Brimstone runs acid fingers up into his nostrils until all Guido wants to do is gag.

His soul quivers.

This must be Hell.

Has Guido been fooled? Have they all been fooled? Have they been tricked into accepting witchcraft and blasphemy through desperation to rid their land of a corrupted king?

Guido thinks of how Vhaerun and Robert greeted each other at the Duck and Drake, like old friends despite Vhaerun’s shockingly foreign visage. 

As though some invisible force is at work to drag him back to reality, Guido is yanked once again through spider silk. He and Vhaerun burst out of that wretched place in a flurry of blue particles and Guido stumbles over the wet grass, alarm crawling at his scalp. He retches, lifting up a shaking hand to cover his mouth beneath the wiry bristles of his beard. Then he heaves in great gulps of air through his fingers, absurdly grateful that the atmosphere is crisp and clear and free of sulphite.

Vhaerun stands pikeman straight beside him, green eyes fixed over the water, on the Palace of Westminster. Guido stares at him, unable to read his alien features, those slanted eyes, that clean shaven face. His pointed ears are red in the cold.

Guido lowers his shaking hand and opens his mouth to ask outright: What was that place? Art thee a witch?

But there is a flash of white, orange and green.

The entire world ruptures, erased in an instant like a canvas treated with alcohol. Guido squeezes his eyes shut and counts his breaths, in and out. 

He did the right thing.

He’s still sure. Even as a calamitous rumble follows that flash, large enough that the ground beneath Guido’s feet vibrates. It feels like the very Earth itself is cracking apart beneath him to drop him back into that Hell and all Guido can do, as his heart threatens to eject itself in volent self rebellion, is tell himself over and over that he did the right thing. 

When the first wave of heat hits them, blasting the hair away from Guido’s face, his eyes snap open. He gapes at the inferno barrelling across the great old city and it’s like nothing that Guido’s ever seen. Bright green, still, as well as the usual dancing orange, it cuts malicious pathways over the alleyways and wooden overhangs, jumping here and there like fiery imps to spread the flames faster despite the damp and the chill. Mournful, warbling cries choke up out of the city’s oesophagus. Shouts follow.

London is burning.

“It seems,” Vhaerun says, voice laced with an apathy that sets off a roiling maelstrom inside of Guido. “That the Zephyrus elven fire may hast been a few firm-set for this endeavour.”

Guido stares at Vhaerun, blood chilling to contrast the heat of his dying capital. He lurches forward, feet clumsy with shock, and before he can really register what is about to happen, he’s smacked Vhaerun across the face.

Vhaerun’s eyes go wide. His breath hitches, his pupils become nothing more than pin pricks in that same base green as the unholy fire ravaging the buildings behind them. Hard pain blooms along Guido’s palm.

Guido doesn’t wait for Vhaerun to find his composure. He arcs forward, muscles seizing, to pull Vhaerun’s tunic taut. His hand twists in the fabric so that he can drag him up by the neck.

He bares his teeth and Vhaerun’s expression is cold.

“What dost thou mean ‘a few firm-set’?” Guido hisses. “We just took out half of London!”

“Not mine intent, I warrant thou,” Vhaerun tells him, still horribly indifferent. The bottom drops out of Guido’s stomach.

So they were tricked.

“Is that so?” Guido spits. He growls, the sound resonant through the black hole tearing itself open in his condemned soul. “There were good, honest Catholic people i’ the quart that we just destroyed!”

He tilts himself back, angling them both so he can make Vhaerun look at the steadily spreading devastation - like he is a lord set to rubbing a hound’s nose into a soiled rug.

For a second, Guido doesn’t see Vhaerun’s pale colouring - not that white blond hair or the milky white skin highlighted by the nauseating green of London’s witchfire. Instead, he sees the dark, dust strewn hair and sunkissed skin of his Spanish enemy. Numbness washes out from his chest and his fingers twitch to snap that hairless neck.

“Vhaerun Zephyrus,” he says and his tone is the gravel shift of gunpowder being stuffed into the barrel of a musket. “Art thee a witch?”

Vhaerun squirms in his grasp, cocking his head to meet Guido’s gaze. His eyes are stormy.

“Doth that not sound like the question of a coward?” 

The accusation makes Guido blanch.

“I believed thy kind benign,” Guido confesses. His fingers tighten in Vhaerun’s tunic to make the fabric creak, the threads cutting into his cold skin.

“What was that sacrilegious place we passed through i’ that portal?”

Vhaerun has the good grace to wince. He opens his mouth but then he stills. Once again, his eyes widen, and if possible, he pales further - skin now ghost-white.

“Look,” he hisses.

He raises an arm, pointing back over the black water of the Thames.

The old saying is ‘fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’ 

Vhaerun’s body quivers in Guido’s grasp. His face is pulled taut in a way that it wasn’t before despite the real threat in Guido’s countenance.

Guido doesn’t want to be fooled again.

The old saying splays its fingers through Guido as he succumbs to curiosity and follows the line of Vhaerun’s gaze. But it drops away like that black water when he sees the silhouette standing, bold as brass through the flames. 

‘How thou hath fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!’

The figure is humanesque, blackened from head to foot by the inferno. It does not writhe like the souls of the damned, despite the damage it is taking, and though Guido cannot see any facial features through the green and orange flames, he knows that the daemon is staring at them over the water.

‘Thou hast been cast down to the earth, thou who once laid low the nations!’

Guido drops Vhaerun onto the grass. Terror reaches a cold hand up through his spine to grip at the back of his head. 

“We must away with it,” Guido mutters, breathless as Vhaerun pulls himself up rubbing at the thin red mark circling the back of his neck.

“We must away with it!” Guido repeats.

Below them, the cries of the burning escalate, spreading ever further. There are people running back and forth through the streets on this side of the river now, some of them shrieking out alarmed questions, some of them demanding desperate help as they sprint towards the bridge. Guido’s eyes remain fixed on the daemon. He shudders as it turns, shambling across the remains of Greater London like a black embodiment of the plague that brought the city to its knees in the summer.

Beside Guido, Vhaerun tilts his head. Guido’s heart stutters as he manages to rip his eyes from the monstrosity to regard his companion. He winces when he sees Vhaerun sporting a look of pronounced resignation.

Guido doesn’t know how to feel.

The fact is that London is burning because of Vhaerun’s elven fire. 

But the daemon atop the English throne has been exposed, just as Vhaerun assured he would be. 

So what are Vhaerun’s motives? Was the fire really a miscalculation as Vhaerun implied? Was that place in the portal a glimpse into a Hell that Vhaerun has access to through the witchcraft Guido has always been taught to fear?

Either way, it hardly matters now.

“We must adhere to the original resolve!” Guido bellows.

He does not wait for Vhaerun’s response. Instead, he pivots, sprinting down the hill towards the distraught crowds heading for the bridge.

The Houses of Parliament are no more. The initial stages of their plan have been set in motion. If Guido has any hope of confronting the daemon that has been successfully revealed, then he is going to have to trust Vhaerun whether or not his brand of ‘magick’ relates to ‘witchcraft’, whether or not continuing to associate with this enchanter will result in a condemnation to the waves of that stinking sea.

Guido Fawkes did not sign up to this venture with high hopes of making it out alive.

He will not be led blind. 

He will not allow himself to fear death.

*

The heat makes Guido’s skin crack long before the malodour of the burning streets hits him. Guido cringes into the heart of the city, at first pushing through streams of evacuating people high strung with terror, then navigating his way past collapsing buildings.

The smoke coalesces around him in an effluvium, so thick and black that he can barely see himself in relation to the streets or the fire around him. He throws one arm up over his face to try and encourage breathing through his nose as he’s forced to stop to hack loudly. 

It’s hard to ignore the ka-ka-bang of fired musket balls that he thinks he can hear skittering through the smog. The ground below him is stone, not hard packed, drought-cracked mud. The shouts that he can still hear are the pitiful cries of his English countrymen, not the snapped out orders of the Catholic crusaders or the hastily bitten out Spanish panic. 

This is London and he is no longer simply fighting against the turn of his religion.

Guido doesn’t know where the daemon is going but he can guess. He cuts a path down a few warrenous back alleys despite the threat of the second storey overhangs and the press of the hot walls feel like a cage boxing him in. His chest stings with the heave of the fire.

He emerges by the decimated Houses of Parliament. The building has been completely obliterated. Not a single brick is left, not even the foundations and the undercroft is but a memory wrought in ash. The grey blanket lays in a deathly snow powder over the cobblestones. It flurries through the air, clogging it with the truth of annihilation, and Guido has to reach into his breast pocket for his kerchief as he shifts around the epicentre of London’s destruction.

This is his doing.

Him and his fellow conspirators.

Him and Vhaerun Zephyrus.

But they were right, were they not? The creature shuffling through the streets of London is a testament to the fact that Guido and his fellow conspirators really did do the right thing regardless of the destruction caused, the life lost. Sometimes, a desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy after all.

A glint of metal like a divine light through the darkness of smoke and carnage catches Guido’s eye and he moves towards it, pausing to cough only twice before bending down low.

It’s a sword half buried in the rubble, a longsword probably held by one of the king’s guards. How it hasn’t completely disintegrated, or been warped, is beyond Guido.

A sign?

He pulls it out from underneath the debris and tests the weight of it. It is a good, solid weapon, only the finest for those with the duty of protecting a sovereign. Guido’s stomach clenches in disgust. If only they’d known what they were protecting, what they were giving their lives for.

His resolve hardens, solid as a cannonball as he moves on from this dead place. He follows his instincts, just as he always has when separated from his chain of command. The familiar terror of the unknown, of facing something alone, claws at him but Guido wears it like an old coat.

Guido finds the daemon tearing clothes off of the corpse of a man about Guido’s age. He watches, utterly appalled, as the thing’s black hands drag on first undergarments and then the doublet. Its scorched fingers don’t even fumble the buttons.

Guido lets out a steadying breath and squeezes the gritty hilt of the sword. The sound causes the creature to whip its head back and Guido cannot stop himself baulking at the sight of King James’s half constructed face over that mess of blackened flesh.

“Ah,” the daemon says in the king’s voice, rising. “Guy Fawkes.”

Guido can feel his legs quaking through his breeches, jelly-like and rebelling. He makes himself take a step closer and this throat bobs in his ruff as he responds with:

“Guido. My name is Guido.”

The creature tips its head, regarding Guido from its single solid eye.

“Doth thou think that changing thy name will hide thy past sins, Guido Fawkes?” It asks.

Guido’s eyes narrow. His chest tightens with the remembered cries of his enemies in the trenches.

“Doth thou?” he counters.

The daemon grins, revealing yellow teeth that look far too off-puttingly human.

“Touche,” It says, circling around Guido. “Yet I am not hiding.”

“Art thou not? Wearing the face of a sovereign is surely a denial of what thou truly are.”

“And what am I, Guido Fawkes?” the daemon asks, amused.

“A creature of Hell,” Guido says and the words taste like vinegar on his tongue. A prickle of the fear he felt over that stinking sea curls around his spine. “An agent of darkness sent to lead our beloved country astray.”

The thing in front of him smirks.

“A daemon,” the creature says, drawing out the word with pronounced delight. “Thou thinkest me a daemon. How quaint, how small town country Catholic. I shouldst yet be offended.”

“If thou art not a daemon, then what art thou? Clearly thou art not a man.”

“Oh but I am,” the creature purrs and its conviction shivers through Guido’s soul.  “A man selected by the supreme idol Himself. A man destined to hold the throne of the greatest Empire ever created i’ order to lead it into the glorious future.”

Guido can’t help himself. He takes a step back as the flames around him rise higher. Repugnance trickles through him like the toxins he’s breathed in since entering the inferno.

“No man could survive what thou hast walked away from,” he accuses.

“For the good of mine beloved England, I found a way to become more than a mere mortal,” the daemon responds, still skirting his way around the enclosed buildings with it’s back pressed up to the walls. “I am indeed a man - a creature created i’ His image. I am just one who cannot die.”

Guido stills against the backdrop of witchfire, stunned into a cold silence. The smoke runs between them, dark and foul, poking needle-fingers down Guido’s throat to make him gag.

“Thou…thou art…immortal?” he chokes out.

The king’s gaze through that singular eye is markedly unimpressed.

“Indeed, that is but what I said, is it not?” 

“That is unnatural,” Guido splutters and he cannot begin to fathom what the king must have done to himself to gain a boon such as immortality. The only thing he can hope, is that Vhaerun will have understood. That Vhaerun will be able to help him fight this monster.

There is no choice but to trust the one who may yet turn out to be his enemy.

“God almighty chose me to rule,” King James continues and Guido’s entire body quakes as a patch of skin and sinew knits itself back together over the empty socket on the king’s left side. “And I intend to see my plans through no matter how long they take.”

Guido considers the king’s words, what he’s done and the way he looked at them - blackened and unholy over the river. 

There was something in that lingering stare; something that Guido recognises like wearing an old coat.

“Thou art afraid,” he says and the words feel right on his tongue, coming from a core of truth as solid as the sword still gripped in Guido’s clammy hands. “Thou art afraid of dying, of judgement and the place that awaits thou.”

The king stops dead in his tracks beneath a burning overhang and the half of his face that’s visible twists from comfortable amusement into a scowl that oozes tar-black malintent. Guido’s heart drops down into his stomach. 

“I am not afraid,” the monster spits. “Thou art the one that is afraid, Guido Fawkes. Of seeing thy country thrive under the true Protestant faith, of what thou hast done to this magnificent city, of thy companion and his own black arts.”

Guido flinches and the snarl on the king’s face twists again into a sneer, malevolent and unhinged.

“Yes, I see it there, I see that niggling worm of fear in’st thou. Thou doth fear him, thou doth hate him. He uses the very arts condemned i’ both of our good books.”

“Vhaerun may be a progenitor of those black arts,” Guido says. “But I do not fear him, no more than I fear death. I am not a coward as thou.”

King James’s expression drops darker, like the necrotic flesh still prominent on his right side.

“Thou wilt regret those words Guido Fawkes in much the same way I can see thou doth regret the destruction of our beloved capital.”

Surprise arcs through him like lightning as King James vaults forward, hands outstretched and rigid like he expects to claw Guido’s eyes out. Guido draws back, feeling the press of uneven cobble through his shoes and ignores the commotion of distant musket fire in his ears. He holds his breath, angling his sword to halt his sovereign and the king’s foetid breath washes over his face through the ember-riddled smog.

King James growls at him like a wild animal and Guido pushes him off, staring at the man he once called Majesty. 

No words are exchanged now. There is nothing left to say. Instead, the king dips to the side, swiping up a shattered remnant of roof wood and twirling it in his hands like a rapier. Guido can see the influence of noble swordsmanship in his gait and pities the king who lacks real experience.

He adjusts his own stance to account for this style of swordplay. He is about to push forward when King James’s face pales. The expression of fury on his face falls away like water and he drops his improvised weapon with a clatter over the dark stones, staggering backwards.

Guido blinks and hope flares to life in his heart.

“What…what hast thou done?” King James chokes out, the skin on the recogniseable half of his face turning ashen.

Guido cannot help his answering grin.

“We hath destroyed the crown of St Edward,” he says and new, righteous vindication pops inside him like gunpowder as King James’s face becomes drawn. 

“How,” the king whispers. “How didst thou-

“Vhaerun knew what thou were,” Guido tells him and a laugh bubbles out of him like the overflow of ale foam. “Vhaerun has chosen to use his knowledge of the dark arts to help us defeat thee. Thou art immortal no more, Highness. Now thou truly art just a man.”

He watches as sanity crumbles within the king’s eye and braces himself for what he knows is coming. Sure enough, the king flies at him, screaming bloody murder, spittle flying from his mouth. He kicks out, scratches and presses into Guido with such monstrous force that Guido can barely keep him away even with his sword.

It’s only when the king brings his arms up, clasping his hands in the most primeval of clubs that Guido is able to duck beneath and push him down with the butt of his sword. He inhales a bite of smoke as he throws himself down to pin the king’s legs and arms, tilting his sword at the king’s exposed neck.

He hesitates.

Only because the flesh beneath his hands is covered in goosebumps - so deceivingly human…

The feel of rough hands bites through him like bullet wounds. Guido cries out, swinging round on a reflex and there are three men kitted in red and gold - king’s guard.

The first locks his arms around Guido’s shoulders from behind. The second gets in close to knock the sword out of his hand as he struggles. The third swipes his hat off of his head, pushing him onto his knees. 

“Highness, art thou…well?”

Guido tries to glance up to see how the false king is being helped to his feet but the hand on his head pushes down harder and the pressure makes Guido feel sick.

“Hands off of me, fools,” King James snaps, exertion lining his voice.

Guido leers as the king’s stolen shoes come into his line of sight over the stone.

“Thou art a traitor, Guido Fawkes,” the king hisses, squatting down in front of him and Guido fights to push his head up, ignoring the reprimand of the guard trying to contain him.

“Not to this country I am not,” Guido argues. “I may have lost the battle but I have won this war, Majesty. I am not afraid to die.”

Guido cannot see the king’s face anymore but he hears the expulsion of spit from the king’s mouth, how it lands on the stone.

“Take him away,” the king demands and the slight tremor in the king’s voice is music to Guido’s ears.

He is hauled to his feet with barked demands for compliance and as he is marched through the inferno, as he listens to the continued cries of London town, he thinks that his cause is just. Although the Protestant wretch still occupies the throne, the next sovereign mightl not be warped by such estranged ideals. Perhaps they will see the light and revert the country back to the one true faith. It is possible now.

Because of Catesby and his conspirators, because of Vhaerun, because of Guido, it is possible.

*

When Guido stands atop the gallows, the wind is blowing. His sweaty hair peels away from his face and the sick dread washing through him calms for just a moment.

Because there on the hill, across the black waters of the Thames, is a witch.

He is surrounded by a flurry of royal blue particles, silver hair flying free in the wind. He lifts a hand, delicate fingers spread and Guido smiles as the lever is pulled, as the wood beneath his feet drops.

‘I will see thee in Hell, my friend.’