The Iron Wyrm Affair

by Lilith Saintcrow

  At least Mikal waited until they were alone.

  “Another Shield, my Prima?”

  She turned away from the shelf, the Principia Draconis in her arms. It was a leather-bound monstrosity; this edition lacked Wilson’s gloss, but she didn’t think it would matter much. Wilson had simply cleaned up some of the archaisms. “I think it wise, if the Duchess of Kent and her hangman are involved. And I wondered where our conspirators received their money.”

  “Can you trust a Shield from his service?”

  “Childe is loyal.” He has a great deal to lose under the sodomy laws if he dares to be anything less. “And Eli is capable, from what I recall. Top of his year-class at the Collegia, rather as you were. Did you not recently seek to have me take on the responsibility of more Shields?”

  He quieted, but the set of his chin was mulishly defiant. Emma sighed, hauling the book towards her usual table. The thing was as long as her own torso, and beastly heavy. Mikal let her take two steps before arriving to subtract the book from her arms. Surprised by its weight, he exhaled, shifted backwards and turned; she trailed behind, her skirts making a low, sweet sound.

  The glow she had felt just before Tideturn, waking in his arms and feeling the rough texture of his skin against her back, was all but gone.

  I am Prime, she reminded herself. It is his duty. And I shall not make the mistake of acting like a silly girl over this.

  And yet. “Mikal—”

  “Well enough. As long as he is capable.” The Principia thudded on to a small rosewood table, and she winced.

  “That is a Great Text, Shield. Pray do not injure it.”

  “Certainly. If you will take care not to injure yourself.”

  “I am taking on an additional Shield, Mikal. One who will be glad of my service instead of Childe’s, perhaps, and one who may have learned restraint and obedience.” She tucked her veil aside, unnecessarily; it was still securely fastened. “Perhaps he can show you the value of such.”

  “Perhaps.” He turned away. “Will he share your bed too, Prima?”

  Is that it? For a moment, the silence was full of a resonant un-noise, as if the books had taken a collective breath after witnessing a sharp slap. Heat crawled up Emma’s throat, stained her cheeks. Had he just called her a whore, too? From Huston, she had expected it.

  I am Prime. Your petty rules do not apply to me.

  But it did not salve the sting. Why should she care what a Shield thought?

  Because he is not merely a Shield, Emma. He is Mikal, and you are perhaps more grateful to him for saving your life and killing Crawford than you should be.

  She composed herself, took a deep breath, and sank into the chair. Her gloved hand passed over the Principia’s cover, and the two locks holding the book closed clicked. Green with age, they flew apart as if they had never intended to stay clasped. Sorcerous force rose, Emma’s left hand flashing forward to curl around a slippery, not-quite-tangible armoured eel, as the book tested her will. It subsided quickly – after all, like every book, the Great Texts wanted to be read.

  When she was certain the Principia knew who held the reins, she delicately lifted the heavy cover. Thick pages riffled.

  “Prima.” Mikal sounded oddly breathless. “I am—”

  About to apologise? That would imply I have taken insult, and from a Shield, no less. “I have no wish to hear you speak.” Her welling eyes fixed themselves on the Principia. Ink writhed, and the writing became clear. Serpentine illustrations flowed like water, bordering each page. She leaned closer, and breathed her query across the pages.

  “Vortisssss.” The name trailed into a hiss, and the Principia’s pages riffled more quickly. A hot breeze lifted, touching her hair, fingering the entire library. The curtains rippled, paper on the gigantic desk near the fireplace stirred, the bronze-caged witchballs sizzled and turned bloody. Above the fireplace, a heavy-framed oil painting of Childe’s father glowered, and the dark coat the man was encased in was suddenly alive with golden traceries of charter charm.

  The pages slowed, the Principia humming as it woke fully and sought within itself. Finally they stilled, and Emma leaned slightly back, blinking back hot saltwater. Her throat was full.

  The flush of anger and pain turned to ice. A cold metallic finger traced her spine. She had to swallow twice before she could clear her throat, not from hurt, but from another emotion entirely.

  Two pages. On the left side, a woodcut of a vast black wyrm, triple-winged and infinite horned, wrapped about a hill with a white tower. On the right, closely packed calligraphy, the ink still remembering the quill that had spread it. The words runnelled together before her will flexed, then cleared. At the top of the page, gold leaf trembled as it shaped a word.

  Vortis was merely a use-name. Emma’s entire body quivered, and her earrings swung, tapping her cheeks uneasily. The cameo at her throat warmed, and she dimly heard the door open, Mikal saying something. Her well-trained memory dilated, the book speaking to her in its ancient language, her lips moving as the world hushed around her, motes of golden dust hanging suspended and the witchballs pausing in their spluttering hisses.

  She was not one for prayer, except the fashionable sort uttered at conventional moments; besides, sorceresses were doubly damned by every church, Roman, Englican, or otherwise. But had she been the pious sort, Emma thought hazily, she might well start praying.

  Vortis cruca esth, Mehitabel had hissed.

  The Principia slammed shut, locks thudding closed. Emma blinked. Her cheeks were crusted with salt, and her stomach rumbled. How much time had she lost, gazing at the pages, intuition and intellect communing directly with the Text?

  Mikal’s hand closed around her shoulder. “You are at Childe’s, in Tithe Street. It is almost Tideturn.” Did he sound ashamed?

  Did she care?

  At the door stood another Shield. Dark-haired, a trifle shorter than Mikal but a little broader in the shoulder, a Bowie knife worn openly at his hip and his eyes closed. His features were even, regular, and as she shuddered, fully waking, his own eyes opened. He shifted forward incrementally, his mouth firmed. He looked just like a quick-fingered Liverpool bravo, though Childe, with his usual irritating attention to detail, had him in a flashy waistcoat over a fine white high-collared shirt. At least his cloth was good, even if the boots looked dreadfully impractical.

  For a moment she could not remember who or what she was. It flooded back, and she shuddered again. Mikal’s fingers tensed. She did not need the pain to steady herself, though the Duchess of Kent had suddenly become rather a small problem indeed.

  Vortis cruca esth.

  Or, if you did not speak the wyrm’s slow sonorous hiss…

  Vortigern will rise.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Throckmorton, I Presume

  As chance would have it, Sig’s acquaintance Becker had lodgings near Thrushneedle Dock, a mean hole reeking of cabbage and gin but cleaner than one would suppose. There was much cheerful swearing in heavy German, Sigmund slapped the young hevvymancer’s back, and glasses of beer were produced.

  Becker was lean, in a hevvymancer’s traditional red bracers and herringbone wool cap, heavy boots and a wide smile missing his front left canine. Perhaps he hated toothcharmers too, or could not afford one. Clare surmised that most of the young man’s money went to his ailing mother in a lumpen shawl, who shuffled between the single cot and the ancient stove, poking at a pot of boiling something and gazing at her only surviving son with weak, misty eyes. The woman spoke no English, but Becker had been born in Londinium, and a good thing it was too. Had he been born in Germany itself, his hevvymancing would be unreliable here, and both of them might starve.

  “Lindorm,” Becker said, finally, standing because he had pressed Clare to take the only chair. Valentinelli stood by the door, examining his fingernails; the room was far too small for four males and the old woman’s skirts. “Ja. Only open a fortnight and odd, taking deliveries.” His accent was a mi
xture of his mother tongue and pure dockside nasal, a song of the displaced. “We wondered. But they paid good bounty on Prussians, so they raked ’em in. No use sitting about when’s shill’n to be earned.”

  “What bounty did they pay?” Clare settled himself carefully. The chair was alarmingly fragile, not to mention fusty, and the floor sloped.

  “Two bob apiece, more for more. Heps over at Mockgale, he brought crates o’ them, got a pound apiece. That fair made it scruth. Every jack and hevvy scramblin t’ sell any bit o’metal an shine could be called Pruss.” Becker’s face twisted; he removed his cap and scratched along his hairline. “Made out fair m’self, I did. But legal-like.”

  Oh, certainly. And I am a monkey’s waistcoat. “I am quite sure you were entirely legal. So, Lindorm closed after a fortnight and a few days?”

  “Aye. ’Twixt one Turn and the next, pop! Gone like a skipper’s goodwill. Never quite right, that place. We smells the odd, we do, and there was mancy there. Big, not like a hevvy or a shipwitch. Lord magic, that was. High’n mighty.”

  “Most curious. Who is buying Prussian capacitors now?”

  “Naught. Some gents like to tear their own hair out waiting; some says they’re in France somewhere, others say held up in the Low, one or two wot might know says the Pruss factories holdin ’em. Frenchie glassers and Hopkins shinies selling hand over fist now, since Prussians ent to be had.”

  Clare’s eyelids dropped to half-mast; his thin fingers steepled under his proud long nose. Sigmund peered longingly toward the cauldron at the stove; Frau Becker muttered something and waved a wooden spoon as she advanced, menacing.

  Sigmund sighed, heavily.

  Clare absorbed the implications of young Becker’s tale. “Would you happen to know where Lindorm sent the capacitors they had?”

  “Oh, ’tis easy, guv.” Becker’s lean chest puffed, and he stuck his thumbs under his bracers. “Hired a crew of hevvy to charm a load of waggon, drays and all, four days’ wages for two day haulin’ to St Cat’s, in the Shadow. Big warehouse there, black as sin, ’twas.”

  “Did you take advantage of this easy work?”

  “Weren’t nuffink easy ’bout it, sir. Nags were restless, loads kept slippin’, heavy as churchman’s purse each crate and bell. Each hevvy earned that two pound, sir.”

  “I see. Well, what particulars can you tell me of the gentlemen engaging your services?”

  On this Becker was no fountain of knowledge; the work had simply been available, and he had taken it. By the time Clare had finished questioning and paid the man for his trouble – two guineas, part of the purse thoughtfully supplied by Miss Bannon that very morning against just such an eventuality – he was almost feeling cautiously cheerful. Becker gave one of the coins to his mother, who held it up and bit at it, though she was lacking teeth; the young man assured him that should he ever need a hevvy, Becker was sienen Mann, ja.

  Outside, the street was still as throbbing-active as ever, carts rumbling by, hevvymancers chanting a song of harsh consonants and sliding nasal vowels. A line of yellow glare fell against the wall opposite, broken only by the low doors of public houses vying for trade, rollicking even at this early hour. A heavy-bearded Jack, fresh from the sea by the roll in his drunken gait, stumbled to a stop and began heaving up a mess of gin and somewhat else, to the amusement of passers-by and the great delight of a pair of ragged, bony curs, who immediately began lapping at the offal.

  The Neapolitan, however, was not in the mood for sightseeing. He grabbed Clare’s elbow. “Eh, signor, you are not planning a visit to la Torre?”

  “If I must. Into the belly of Hell itself, Mr Valentinelli. Britannia is in need, and this is passing interesting.”

  “La strega said nothing about la Torre.”

  “If you feel yourself incapable, signor, by all means depart.” Clare jammed his hat more firmly on his head. “Sig! Old man, find us some repast and a decent place to smoke a pipe. I must think.”

  But Valentinelli gripped his arm even more firmly. “You insult me.”

  If I had, sir, you would already be attempting to kill me, blood oath or no. “By no means, signor. Do you know what the most incredible part of young Becker’s tale is?”

  The Neapolitan’s answering oath expressed that he cared not a whit, and Sigmund’s florid face was suddenly drawn and grey as he witnessed this. The worthy Bavarian’s hand was hidden in his coat pocket, probably preparatory to bringing forth his trusty clasp knife, and Clare decided he had best smooth the waters. People were so difficult.

  “The incredible part, sir, is that young Becker is still alive.” He met Valentinelli’s gaze squarely. “Which means the feared Shadow of the Tower of Londinium is the least of our worries, for our greatest is whoever may be watching a hevvymancer or two, to see if they speak. Or to pay them for reporting any enquiries made about a certain load of goods. Or – and this is the idea I find most unsettling, sir – their plan is so near fruition they care very little about any hound on their trail.”

  The assassin halted. His pocked face was still and set, but the rigidity of his jaw had eased, and so did his hand upon Clare’s arm.

  Clare nodded, once. “You see. Very good. Come, my noble Neapolitan. I do need to think, and I’d prefer to do it somewhere a touch more comfortable.” He paused. “And perhaps more defensible as well.”

  The Tower of Londinium was actually a collection of towers, held back from crashing down on the city by the grey arms of the Sorrowswall clutching at each rising spire. The White Tower rose above them all, sorcerously sheathed in glittering pale marble, bloody-hued charter symbols sliding in rivulets down its sides. Traitors met their end here, and those criminals judged too noble to be hanged at a common gaol. The fetid moat ran with murky oilsheen, and under its surface rippled… something. Rumour hotly disputed what beast it was, but all agreed it ate the bodies after the beheadings, and the heads sometimes after the showing.

  And, occasionally, it took live prey.

  But it wasn’t the Dweller in the Moat Londinium’s masses feared. It was the Shadow.

  Sometimes it wreathed the towers, slinking along the walls, slithering down to brush the surface of the moat’s oily water. It was not fog, or cloud – it was simply dark dank grey, and it prowled the neighbourhood of the Tower as a silent lumbering beast. Charm and charter did not hold it back – only a Master Sorcerer or above could make it seek elsewhere, by some means they kept hidden behind closed mouths.

  Sorcerers disliked the Tower’s environs too – the misery and death soaking it, perhaps. The quietest places in Londinium were under the Shadow’s heel. Still, there were those who sought it as a sanctuary – those who needed to be certain of the law’s reluctance to follow them.

  Or those whose Alterations had gone badly. It was against the Tower’s walls that the Morloks lived. During the day, one did not need to fear them overmuch.

  Fortunately, the Shadow’s grey bulk was clinging raggedly to the White Tower as the afternoon’s yellow glare wore on. The light through the fog had deepened, the northern quarter of the sky bruising with weather approaching. It might almost, Clare thought, be a relief if rain would sweep in. Except in rainy weather, one could not be so sure of the Shadow’s movements.

  The warehouse Becker had described on Lower Themis Street, the Sorrowswall visible even over its bulk, was indeed black. Clare studied the structure as Sigmund burped contentedly. Feeding the Bavarian to make up for his thwarted breakfast had also given the mentath an opportunity to collect himself and smoke his pipe, and Valentinelli had applied himself to a quantity of coarse fare at a run-down public house a good distance from Becker’s lodging. The dark, crowded interior had not been ideal, but at least Clare had gathered his wits and forced the spectre of agitation threatening his nerves away for a short while. The brougham driver would not approach the Tower this closely, and was left a few streets away, well satisfied with a tot of gin and a generously packed basket of dinner purchased at the pub with
more of Miss Bannon’s guineas.

  The warehouse’s stone walls had perhaps once been grey, but a patina of coal dust had packed itself on the rough surfaces. Normally the rain would streak such a building with runnels of acid-eaten paleness, but as Clare gazed, he caught a shimmer in the air around it.

  Sorcery.

  Valentinelli had either noticed it at the same moment he did, or waited for Clare’s expression to change. “Maleficia.” His pocked face wadded itself up theatrically. “We wait for la strega, ci?”

  “Miss Bannon has other difficulties.” Clare did not see any reason to tell the assassin of the conclusions he had reached concerning Miss Bannon’s likely availability to appear and deal with problems of a sorcerous nature. “Do you think we may enter that building? Is it possible?”

  Valentinelli squinted. “Ci.” He rubbed at his forearm, meditatively, and Clare deduced there was a knife hidden in his sleeve. “But not for long, eh? Is work of large, very big stregone. Very nasty.”

  “Oh, I thought as much.” Clare tapped at his left-hand breeches pocket, almost unaware of the motion. The tiny metal box of coja was safely stowed, and he felt soothed, even if the pendant under his throat was warming alarmingly. “Sig, this may be a bit dodgy. Are you sure you—”

  “I go home, mein Herr, perhaps they try again? And not so politely.” The Bavarian rolled his broad shoulders back in their sockets. “Is very interesting, this business of capacitors.”

  “Oh, very interesting indeed. Well, gentlemen, no time like the present.”

  Forcing a door was almost anticlimactic. Valentinelli sniffed, declared the shimmer in the air only dangerous to sorcerers, and stepped through. Two kicks and rotted wood shattered, he peered inside. “Eh. Come.”

  They plunged into a thick dimness, the dust and the smell of oiled metal mixing with an odd reek. The pendant was red-hot now; logic told Clare it would not burn him, and he kept his hand away from his chest with an effort. Sigmund choked back a series of mighty sneezes, managing to be almost as loud as if he had allowed them free rein. A close, clotted-dark hallway led along the outer wall for ten paces, then abruptly terminated, and the warehouse space bloomed, lit only by a few weak shafts of yellow Londinium glow stabbing down from high, papered holes in the roof.