The Iron Wyrm Affair

by Lilith Saintcrow

  The resultant casualties had been thought-provoking, the scandal immense. Some said the scandal had contributed to Lovelace’s early death; others blamed the inefficiency of the engine – Babbage’s work, true, but perhaps not up to the standards one would have wanted. There was, in particular, one scathing little paper written by Somerville, vindicating her pupil at Babbage’s expense. Rare female mentaths were now required to be registered with the Crown as a result of the affair, and were wards of the Court until their marriages.

  He heard his own voice, strangely strong and clear. “A… transmitting logic engine. Transmitting, I presume, to receiving engines. The amplification could save the trouble of murdering whatever mentath would wire himself to such a thing.” And the unregistered mentaths were mutilated. He could not shake himself of the exceedingly unpleasant thought.

  “Tests were made, at the country house in Surrey. It performed spectacularly well, from what the assembled reported. The engine is useless without Masters’s core; I took the precaution of transporting the core to the Wark, where Mehitabel had agreed to hold it. Imagine my surprise when Masters and Smythe both turned up dead – they were not even supposed to be in Londinium. The engine has disappeared. Now it appears the core has disappeared as well.” She paused. “Her Majesty is worried.”

  As well she should be. Dear God. “I presume you share her concern,” he muttered, numbly.

  “Oh, I do. The Chancellor, your Yton friend, may be involved. Llewellyn might have been a part of the conspiracy – for all I know, he may have killed Throckmorton himself. And yet several things do not make sense. The work was theoretical; a logic engine is valuable, yes, but all signs point towards the conspirators having some defined use for it already.”

  “… It does. They do, rather.” He was, he thought, beginning to recover from the shock somewhat.

  “I suspect a military application.” Patiently, as if she expected some further reaction from him.

  Clare blinked. “I should think so.”

  “The question becomes, then, which military. You see the difficulty.” Her hands still worked at each other, at odds with her calm, logical tone. The fire opals in her rings glowed dully, foxfire gleams.

  “Britannia has many enemies. Any one of whom would not hesitate to use such an engine…” But for what precisely? “Even if there is not a military application yet, the consequences in manufacturing alone could be tremendous. And even in Alteration.” His dinner, had any of it been left, might have tried for an escape at the last thought. “The unregistered mentaths. Their bodies were somehow savaged?”

  “Certain pieces were missing, Alteration is not out of the question. I do not know enough yet.” Emma Bannon’s dark eyes glittered. “But now, Mr Clare, it is war. I will brook no treachery or threat to Britannia’s vessel.”

  “Admirable of you,” Clare muttered. “No wonder you locked me up in your house.” Keeping me safe, certainly. And any mentath is suspect. There is precious little I would not do to lay my hands on such an engine. The research possibilities… simply staggering.

  But it would not do to voice that particular thought.

  “You may become extraordinarily necessary, Mr Clare.” She finally stopped twisting at the ragged remains of her gloves. “If not, you are at the least useful. But in any event, you must be protected.”

  “I cannot quibble with that sentiment.”

  “Consequently, we are about to pay a visit.” She dropped her hands, but her gaze was still level and quite disconcerting. It took Clare a few moments to discover why, exactly, he perceived such discomfort.

  A woman should not look so… determined. “To gain some further variety of protection for my tender person?” He was only halfway flippant. Still, it gave him a chance to gather himself. The irrational feelings were highly uncomfortable, and he longed for some quiet to restore his nerves.

  “Precisely. While we walk, occupy those admirable faculties of yours with the question of how you will uncover the whereabouts of a core and a transmitting logic engine. My methods have produced little of value at great cost, and I am needed to solve another riddle.”

  He found he could walk again. The Park was deadly still, but Londinium growled in the distance like a wild beast, and the Palace was a faint smear of indistinct light behind the boiling-thick fog. If Miss Bannon took another four steps, she might well be lost to his sight entirely, so he hurried after her, his torn jacket flapping. “And what riddle would that be, Miss Bannon?”

  “The riddle of a dragon, sir. Come along.”

  Arrowing north and west from St Giles, Totthame lay under a dense blanket of boiling yellow. The shops were closed tight against the choking fog – except for some of the brokers, low-glowing brass-caged witchballs barely visible above their doors and a flashboy or two often lounging on the step to keep the metal from disappearing. Side doors leading to individual closets for the gentler sellers to haggle privately were closed and bolted at this hour, but furtive movements could be seen in the shadows about them.

  The swaybacked, dull-flanked clockhorse didn’t even swish its ragged tail as they disembarked. The cab driver, swathed to his nose in oddments, was no trouble either, hiding Alterations from his misspent youth as a flashboy. Clare decided him as a Sussex youngblood come to Londinium to make good and only now as a man wishing he’d stayed where he was born. So much was obvious from the style of his dress and the broad accent in which he grunted the bare minimum necessary to secure their custom and give his price. Mikal appeared out of nowhere again and paid the man before they were allowed to alight, and Miss Bannon, still sunk in the profound silence she had spent the entire ride in, set off for the far side of Totthame with a quick light stride.

  Mikal, silent as well, followed in her wake, glancing back at Clare as he hurried to keep up. The fog cringed away from her, curling in beseeching fingers. She was making directly for a broker’s door, and the flashboys lounging there – one slim dark youth with half his face covered in a sheath of shining metal, the other just as dark but stocky, with gleaming tentacles where his left hand should be – elbowed each other. The thin one sniggered, and opened his mouth to address her.

  Mikal’s stride lengthened, but whatever the flashboys saw on Miss Bannon’s face cut their ribaldry short. They hopped aside, the stocky one awkwardly, and the sorceress sailed past them, a slender yacht passing between battleships.

  “Wise of you,” Clare mumbled, and hopped up the biscuit-coloured stone step. The tentacle Alterations rasped drily against each other, scaled metal letting fall a single venomous-golden drop of oil, splattering on blue breeches. The stocky flashboy breathed a curse.

  Inside, an exhaled fug of sweet tabac smoke, dust, paper, and the breath of mouldering merchandise piled in mountains enclosed them. Carpenter’s tools beached themselves against the front of the shop; a pile of larger leather tack sat mouldering under hanging bridles and hacks. A cloud of handkerchiefs foamed over a long counter in front of the side door that would lead to the closets where the shy would seek to trade their wares.

  Miss Bannon turned in a complete circle, her hands become fists and the sapphires dangling from her ears flaming.

  “Twistneedle!” she called, and a mound of cloth moved near the back of the narrow shop. The shelves groaned with odds and ends – china, metal, clothing, a pair of duelling pistols in a long, dusty glass cabinet, a tangle of cheap paste jewellery and slightly less cheap snuffboxes threatening to swallow the gleaming barrels. Patterns formed with lightning speed, Clare’s brain seizing on the sudden sensory overload and categorising, deducing, sorting puzzle pieces with incredible rapidity.

  For the first time that long night, he was comforted.

  “Don’t shout, woman.” A thready, reedy, irritable voice. More puffs of tabac smoke rose from the rear of the store. “I’m an old man. I needs my rest.”

  “Do not anger me, then. Ludovico. I want him.”

  “Oh, so many do. So many do.” A wide, froggish f
ace over a striped muffler rose peevishly from what Clare had taken to be a soulless mound of piled clothing in bundles; a polished brass earring gleamed. The round little man pushed aside a froth of calico petticoats and grinned widely, showing rotten stump-teeth. The pipe in his soft, round brown hand fumed extravagantly, while rings gleamed on the thick fingers. One was even a real diamond, Clare noted. “What will you give, miss? I don’t hand out nothing for free, not even to those I fancy.”

  “Mikal.” Deadly quiet.

  The Shield glided forward, and the frog-man cowered, raising both plump hands. “None o’ that! He’s upstairs. Sleepin’, most like.”

  Clare placed the accent – this man had probably never ventured more than a half-mile from Totthame in his life. Deduction ticked along under the surface of every item piled inside the narrow cavern. He wondered why he had never visited a pawnbroker’s before – a single shop could keep him occupied for weeks. And with every deduction, Southwark retreated, more distant and dreamlike.

  A movement behind a clutch of hanging frock coats in different colours, a slight twitching. There’s a door behind there, Clare realised in a flash, but it was Mikal who moved, slapping aside the flung knife, its blade a blur in the smoke, burying itself in a pile of waistcoats tumbling off three narrow wooden shelves.

  Some of the waistcoats still had traces of blood marring the fabric. Not just a pawner’s, then. Clare’s skin chilled.

  A corpsepicker’s shop.

  “Ah.” Miss Bannon sounded amused. “There you are.”

  “Call off your snake-charmer, signora.” The frock coats twitched again. “I have the more knives, I use them, eh?”

  Naples, Clare thought. No more than twenty-six. And more afraid of the Shield than the sorceress.

  Interesting.

  “He gets in rather a temper when you fling knives at me, Signor Valentinelli.” Miss Bannon did not move; Mikal was now threading his way between two mounds of bundled, ticketed clothing. “I am not certain I should calm him.”

  The invisible voice let loose a torrent of abuse in gutter Italian, but Miss Bannon simply nodded and picked her way to the pile of waistcoats. Her mouth set itself firmly as she retrieved the flung knife, and Mikal halted before the hanging coats, tense and ready.

  The cursing ceased. “Is there money, then?”

  Miss Bannon straightened. “Haven’t I always paid well for your services, signor? Be a dear and put a kettle on, I could do with a cup after the night I’ve had.”

  A sleek dark head appeared, pushing through the frock coats with a slightly reptilian movement. The face was still coarsely handsome, but ravaged with pox scars and bad living, and the close-set dark eyes flicked over the entire pawnshop. “What is it? Knife, pistole, garrotte?”

  Neapolitan indeed. Clare placed the accent to his satisfaction. Miss Bannon was proving to have extraordinary acquaintances indeed.

  “Maybe none, maybe all and more.” Miss Bannon now sounded amused. “I bring you a chance to injure yourself in new and interesting ways. Do you really wish to discuss it here?”

  Valentinelli let out a hoarse sound approximating a laugh. “Come up then. But keep il serpente away. He make me nervous.”

  “Poor Ludo, nervous. Mikal, keep a close eye on him.” Miss Bannon held the knife away from her skirts, delicately, and shook a stray curl out of her face. “We would hate to have him faint.”

  The Neapolitan’s face screwed itself up into a mask of dislike and disappeared, with a creak of leather hinges. Mikal pushed the frock coats aside, and Miss Bannon motioned Clare forward.

  “Come, Mr Clare. Signor Valentinelli is to be your guardian angel.”

  Chapter Twenty

  More If I Die

  Ludovico’s room was just the same: a monk’s cell, narrow and dark, holding only a single cot and a small leather trunk, a guttering candle throwing dancing shadows over the peeling plaster. Mikal checked it with a glance and nodded them inside. She took the opportunity to hand him the flung knife; he made it disappear with no discernible flicker of expression.

  The Neapolitan promptly threw himself down on the cot, eyeing Emma speculatively. He was a quick little man, the efficiency of his movements lacking any sort of grace and bespeaking a great deal of comfort with physical violence. Sleek dark hair, those dark, close-set eyes in the scar-ravaged face – childhood smallpox had been vicious to him. Stretching his arms over his head and yawning, he settled his shoulders more comfortably. He looked like a hevvy, shirt and braces worn but stout, his trousers rough and his boots dusty.

  The opening move was hers. “Not even a cup of tea. Your hospitality suffers, signor.”

  “You are here after hours, signora.”

  “You keep no hours. Do not annoy me. This is the man you’ll be guarding.”

  Ludovico scratched along his ribs, tucking his other arm under his head. “Why? What’s he done?”

  “That is no concern of yours. You’re to keep his skin whole while I’m occupied with other things.” She paused as Mikal tensed slightly, the candleflame flinching and righting itself. “You may have to kill a sorcerer or two to do so.”

  The effect was immediate, and gratifying. Valentinelli sat straight up, eyes narrowing, and a dull-bladed stiletto appeared in his left hand. He spun it over his knuckles, and Emma did not miss Mikal’s own hand twitching slightly.

  It was a high compliment from her Shield.

  “Why you no have more of him to watch il bambino, eh?” He jabbed a finger at Mikal, still spinning the knife over his knuckles, catching the hilt as it rocketed past. The grime under his short-bitten fingernails, black half-moons, matched the crease in his neck.

  She forced herself not to swallow drily. “That is not your concern. Shall I go elsewhere, signor?”

  “At this time of night? And Valentinelli is the best. I protect from il Diavolo himself; you pay me. In gold.”

  “In guineas, yes.” The smile fixed to her face wasn’t pleasant, Emma suspected, but it covered a set grimace of almost distaste. “Since you are a gentleman.”

  He jabbed forked fingers at her and hissed. “Not even for gold do I let a woman mock me, strega.”

  She gathered her patience once more. “I am not mocking, assassino. For the last time, shall I seek elsewhere?”

  A supremely indifferent shrug. “I take the job. Twenty guinea, more if I die.”

  “Very well.” She did not miss the way he blinked at her readiness to take his first price. It was bad form not to haggle, but she had no patience for his tender feelings at this point. “Bring yourself to me, signor. You’ll be bound for this.”

  “Ai, you’re serious.” He heaved himself off the bed and paced towards her, graceless but silent. “What he do, you want him alive this bad?”

  “Again, none of your concern.” Emma held her ground, suddenly very aware of the space between her and the Neapolitan. Mikal’s eyes flamed in the dimness, matching the candle’s glow. “Mr Clare, please come here.”

  The mentath stared at Valentinelli in the uncertain light, his eyes half closed. His colour was much better, and he seemed to have recovered from the shock of the Wark quite nicely. “You,” he said, suddenly, “had a wife at one time, sir.”

  Valentinelli halted. Emma could have cursed the mentath roundly.

  “She die,” the Neapolitan said. “What, you a strego? Or you inquisitore?”

  “Neither.” Clare’s eyelids drooped a bit more. “Your accent is really wonderful. There’s something, though—”

  “Mr Clare.” Emma stepped forward and plucked the black-bladed stiletto from Ludo’s filthy fingers. “Do stop carrying on, and come here. You know what to do, Ludovico.”

  “If he is inquisitore—” His voice rose, losing for a moment the soft singing of Calabria and becoming more clipped, more educated, and generally more dangerous.

  “He is not one of the holy running dogs, do be reasonable! He’s simply a mentath. Give me your hand, Mr Clare.”

 
“I don’t know what you mean by simply a—” Damn the man, he sounded irritated. Emma grabbed his hand, the knife flickered, and he actually yelped at the bite of the blade. “What are you doing?”

  Ensuring your survival despite your thickheadedness. “You are an execrable nuisance, sir. Your hand, Valentinelli.”

  Mikal drifted closer. Ludovico glanced at the Shield, his jaw set and his grimy fingers working as if he felt a neck under them. A trickle of sweat traced down Emma’s spine, cool and distinct.

  “Mentath? Mentale? Ah.” He smelled of leather and male, a sharp underbite of grappa and sour sweat. “I forgive him, then.” His cupped palm was strangely clean, given the condition of his nails. But then, she had seen him in many different lights, and this was only one of them.

  Her breath caught, her pulse threatening to gallop before she invoked iron control. The man unsettled her.

  More precisely, he reminded her of certain childhood things. Things best left in the recesses of memory, uncalled and unmissed.

  “Most civil of you,” she murmured, and the knife bit again. A bleeding slash on the Neapolitan’s palm matched on the mentath’s, she pressed their hands together. Ludovico had done this before, but Clare resisted; she was forced to glare at him and make a sharp tsking noise.

  When their palms were clasped together, the copper tang of hot blood reaching her sensitive nose, she closed her eyes, her own fingers a white cage around theirs. “S–––!” she breathed.

  It was a Greater Word of Binding, and even more of Tideturn’s charge trickled free of her flesh, sliding into the two men and licking hungrily at the scant blood. She flicked her hands back, like a hedge conjuror flapping a handkerchief, and a brief gunpowder flash painted the peeling walls.

  She swayed, and Mikal was there, as usual, bracing her. His jaw was set; Emma wondered just what her own face was expressing.

  “There.” She found, to her relief, that she could still speak in a businesslike manner. “’Tis done. Present yourself at my door no later than Tideturn next, Valentinelli, and afterwards Mr Clare shall not stir one step without you.”