The Iron Wyrm Affair

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Indeed.” Clare sat, slowly, and Mr Finch poured the sherry. “We finish dinner, dear Sig.”

  It might indeed be our last one, if what I suspect is true.

  Interlude

  The Cliffs Will Be No Bar

  The rain had stopped as Tideturn swirled through the streets; but with the coming of night the fog resurged. It boiled down to the surface of the streets, and as the brougham thundered along at a steady pace towards the station, its driver occasionally cracking the whip, Clare steepled his fingers again and did his best to tease out the implications bothering him so.

  This was difficult for a number of reasons, one of which was Sigmund, who could not or would not cease muttering about his new-found admiration for Miss Bannon. Valentinelli occasionally snorted, but otherwise held his tongue. The carriage roared along, clockwork hooves and the jolting a severe distraction – especially since Clare had taken his fraction of coja before setting out. The resultant sharpening of his faculties and dulling of his limitations would have been wonderfully soothing had he been alone.

  “Such grace!” Sig muttered. “Baerbarth will be hero, yes! And so will Clare. Good man, Clare.”

  Dear God, we are possibly about to die, and he cannot stop himself. Leave it be, Clare.

  Three players, then – or at least, three players that Miss Bannon was willing to admit to. A dragon, obviously. His reluctance to believe in such beasts had taken rather a shock lately. Gryphons were all very well, but the wyrms who could halt Time itself, the harbingers of disaster and great concentrators of irrationality, the beasts supposedly responsible for teaching Simon Magister, the great mage who had offered gold to Petrus for God’s powers, and been hailed by the surrounding crowds as a greater miracle-worker than a disciple of the Christos…

  … that was a different thing entirely. Although the logic engines created a field of order and reasonableness sorcery would not penetrate, a dragon’s irrationality was so vast it might not matter. The other conspirators might hope that it would – the question was, who exactly were those other conspirators? For Clare did not think even he could deduce a dragon’s motivations.

  Except Miss Bannon had already provided them. The destruction of Britannia? Was it even possible to destroy the ruling spirit of the Empire? She was ageless, changeless, accumulating knowledge and power with every vessel’s reign. What was the nature of the dragons’ quarrel with Her? He could not guess, and shelved the question for later.

  Cedric and a sorcerer – Lord Sellwyth. The Earl of Sellwyth, who I do not know nearly enough about. What would tempt Cedric? Power, obviously. And the sorcerer? Power as well. Ambition is a sorcerer’s blood, they say.

  “A Hexen, yes. But that can be overcome, eh, Clare? I will build her something. What do you think Hexen want from mechaniste? Not my Spinne, no. But—”

  “I rather think Miss Bannon is not the marrying type, old chap.” Why Prussian capacitors? he wondered, suddenly. They are of high quality, yes… but for the mecha I saw, not necessary to this degree. Davenports or Hopkins would work just as well, and could be transported with greater chance of secrecy. Why Prussians?

  Ludovico’s lip curled. He maintained his silence, however, and Clare was suddenly glad. He longed for a few moments’ worth of peace and quiet to follow this chain of logic. “Why Prussians?” he murmured, staring out of the window at the gaslit fog, dim shapes moving in its depths.

  Well, why not? Standardised to make the process of building the mecha easier – and there was another problem, Clare acknowledged. Who had built the damn things, including the smaller engines? Two or three mentaths were not capable of such a feat, and Miss Bannon’s investigations should have uncovered a factory or two busily churning out the massive things if they were made in Londinium’s environs – or even shipped to the city from elsewhere, a massive undertaking in and of itself.

  Not to mention the… parts… of unregistered mentaths. Harvested.

  Something is very wrong here.

  He cast back through memory as Sigmund began meandering on about Miss Bannon’s dark eyes again.

  Becker. The hevvymancer. Something in that conversation…

  “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.”

  “Aha,” he murmured, his fingers tightening against each other. The pleasure of a solution spilled through him, tingling in his nerves.

  The second group, of course, would be a domestic party wishing Victrix controlled in some way – she was Britannia incarnate, of course, but while she had been unmarried she had been led by a coterie headed by her mother. The Duchess of Kent was banished to Balgrave Square, of course, and had been since the marriage. The Prince Consort was rumoured to be pressing for a reconciliation between Victrix and her mother, but so far it had come to naught.

  The third party in Miss Bannon’s allusions? Why, ridiculously simple once he considered it logically. Of course, this line of logic depended on much supposition—

  “I shall build her lions!” Sigmund suddenly crowed. “What do you think, Clare? Lions to draw her carriages! Shining brass ones!”

  “Do be quiet a moment, Sig.” Rudely interrupted, Clare frowned. That was the problem with coja. If one was jolted free of the reverie, it was rather difficult to exclude all the endless noise about one and gather the traces again. “I rather think…”

  “What is it you rather think, mentale?” For once, the Neapolitan was not sneering. “I tell you what I am thinking. La strega send me with you, she expect bad trouble. Everything to now, pfft!” A magnificent gesture of disdain was curtailed by the lack of space inside the brougham. “No, this is where trouble begin. Ludo has sharpened his knives.”

  “You may very well need them,” Clare retorted. Would none of them grant him some time to think? “For I believe we may be facing not merely mecha, my dear Neapolitan prince, but perhaps, also, a deeper treachery.”

  And the white cliffs of Dover will be no bar to it.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Unforgivable

  The Chancellor would not be at his official Londinium residence, of course. His unofficial residence was near Cavendish Square, a bloated and graceless piece of masonry with gardens clutched about it like too-thin skirts at the cold legs of a drab. Stacked precipitously tall and throbbing with sorcerous defences, the place was almost as ugly as the Chancellor’s Whitehall offices.

  Mikal handed Emma down from the hansom, Eli wide-eyed, for once, behind her. It felt like a lifetime since she had last had a Shield with her in the carriage and another running the rooftop roads.

  She waited until the hansom had vanished into the fog before turning to look down the street, feeling Grayson’s house pulse like a sore tooth. Along with the showy defences were one or two very effective ones, and if what she suspected she might find inside was indeed there, it was a very cunning and subtle way to camouflage it.

  “Prima?” Mikal, carefully.

  Tideturn had come and gone. The fog had thickened, venomous yellow with its own dim glow. Emma wondered, sometimes, if the gaslamps fed the fog’s eerie foxfire on nights like this. The fog would suck on them like a piglets at a sow’s teats, and spread a dilute phosphorescence through its veins.

  “I expect this to be unpleasant.” The stone at her throat was ice cold, and the rings clasping her fingers were as well. They were curious things, these rings – carved of ebony, silver hammered delicately into them, four rings connected with a bridge of cold haematite across the top pads of her palms. The haematite was carved with a Word, and from it clasping fingers held the ebony loops.

  She did not like wearing the gauntlets, for the Word against the skin of her hands was a constant prickling discomfort. And th
ey did not allow her to wear gloves.

  Mikal made no reply. Eli shifted his weight, the leather of his boots creaking slightly. “How unpleasant?” he asked, in his light, even tenor.

  Childe had perhaps chosen him for his voice. It would be just like the other Prime.

  “We will find at least one dead man inside.” She wore no shawl, no mantle, and no hat, either. A well-bred woman would not be seen on the street in such a manner.

  Then it is as well I am not one, for all I am a lady. Well, mostly a lady.

  She was procrastinating.

  “Well.” Eli absorbed this. “One less to kill, then.”

  “Not necessarily,” she replied, and set her chin. They fell into step slightly behind her as she set off in the direction of the sparking pile of sorcery. “Not necessarily at all.”

  Fortunately, he did not ask what she meant. Emma was not sure she could have kept the sharp edge of her tongue folded away. She would not waste that on a Shield who was only seeking to lighten her mood. Perhaps Childe required banter of him.

  And no doubt the exact branch of her Discipline had been a shock to the man.

  An iron gate in the low wall surrounding the house was not locked, and Mikal gingerly pushed it open enough to slip through. Eli followed Emma, and gravel crunched underfoot as the circular drive trembled under the pressure of the fog. The gardens were indistinct shadows; the front door atop three worn steps was a monstrosity of steel-bound oak. It was there, before the steps, that Emma’s heart thumped twice and turned to cold lead inside her chest.

  For the left-hand door was open very slightly.

  He was expecting her.

  “Mikal?”

  “Yes.” He was in his accustomed place behind her right shoulder, and her flesh chilled.

  For he had broken Devon’s neck, keeping the head intact so she could question the man’s shade, but robbing the body below it of the shade’s control. As if he had anticipated she would wish to speak to the dead sorcerer, and provided the safest means to do so.

  Which was… interesting.

  “He is mine. You will confine yourself to the Shields.”

  “Yes, Prima.” As if he did not care.

  We shall have a long conversation later, Mikal. But for now… “Eli.”

  “Yes, Prima?”

  “Very carefully, open the left-hand door further. Very carefully.”

  There was little need for care, for the heavy oak and iron swung easily and silently. The darkness inside was absolute. The defences shimmering to Sight did not spark or tighten. Emma delicately tweezed them aside, tasting the unphysical traces of the personality behind them.

  There was no need; she would recognise his work anywhere. It seemed yet another lifetime ago she had been learning the subtle twists, his habit of disdain, the serpentine shifts of his considerable intellect.

  It had perhaps never occurred to him what he had been teaching her with every moment she spent in his presence. The lessons were many and varied. Dutifully, she applied one of them now.

  Do not spring a trap until you know exactly its manner and measure, dear Emma. Slightly sarcastic, with the bitter edge; she could almost hear him. But when you know, do it swiftly. So it knows it has been sprung.

  Chin high, she gathered her skirts and strode through the door.

  For a moment the darkness stretched, a rippling sheet of black, but the spell was so laughably simple she broke it without even needing Word or charm, simply a flexing of her will. Of course, there could have been a more fiendish and complex spell behind it – but she did not think so.

  And she was correct. The foyer was narrow but very high, the grand steps at its back managing to be the most utterly abhorrent piece of internal architecture she’d seen in easily six months. It was as if Grayson actively pursued the ugliest thing possible.

  Where would he be? Parlour or bedroom? “Mikal?”

  “They do not seek to be quiet,” her Shield murmured. He pointed to the side. “There.”

  Parlour, then. Which meant a number of uncomfortable things.

  “No servants to take one’s wrap, even,” she commented. “Dreadfully rude.”

  The parlour door’s porcelain handle clicked. A slice of ruddy light widened as the flimsy door – painted with overblown cherubs, in a style that had not been fashionable even when it was attempted ten years ago – swung silently open.

  Cheap theatrics, my dear. But she continued on, briskly, the two Shields trailing her. Her skirts rustled; there was no need for silence. She stepped over the threshold and on to a hideous but expensive carpet, patterned with blotchy things she supposed were an attempt at flowers.

  The furniture was chunky and graceless, but again, very expensive. Someone had the habit of antimacassars and doilies, hand-wrought from the look of them, just the sort of meaningless thrift she would expect from whatever lumpen thing Grayson could induce to marry him. All Grayson’s taste and judgement had gone into playing politics, and he was a keen and subtle opponent there.

  But now, all his keenness and subtlety was splashed in a sticky red stinking tide across the terrible carpet. The brassy odour of death filled the stifling parlour, and from the least objectionable leather chair by the fireplace, licked by the glow and the furious heat given forth by a merry blaze, Llewellyn Gwynnfud chuckled. His long pale hair was pulled back, and for a dead man, he looked remarkably pleased with himself.

  “Punctual to the last, dear Emma.” The erstwhile dead Prime lifted a small cut-crystal wine glass of red fluid, and Mikal’s sudden tension told her there were other Shields in this room. Hidden, of course, and she wondered if they knew of the fate of Llew’s last crop of Collegia-trained protectors.

  Grayson’s twisted, eviscerated body was flung over a brown horsehair sopha, the tangle of his guts steaming. Now, as she spared it a longer glance, she wondered if the Prime had killed his Shields himself.

  And if Mehitabel the Black had helped.

  “A simulacrum,” she replied. “And a fantastic one too, well beyond your power. Did you and your sleeping master truly expect the strike at Bedlam to kill me?”

  A swiftly smoothed flash of annoyance crossed his face. Long nose, fleshy lips, his blue eyes a trifle too close together… well, he was handsome, Emma allowed, but only until one knew him.

  Only until one saw the rot underneath.

  “I have no master, my dear. One or two of our partners expected you to meet your doom before now, but they don’t know you as I do.” He twirled the small glass, the viscous fluid in its crystalline bowl making a soft sliding sound under the roar of the fire.

  “Oh, you have a master. Not Mehitabel – she couldn’t craft a simulacrum that fine, being of the Black Line.” She tapped a finger to her lips, not missing Llewellyn’s eyelids lowering a fraction. It was as close to a flinch as he would allow himself, facing her on this carefully set stage. “But no worries, I will settle accounts with your master soon enough. I have decided to deal with you first.”

  That produced a snarl, a flash of white teeth. “I’m flattered.”

  “Not at all. You are, after all, the smaller problem.”

  Sparks crackled, the breathless tension heightening a fraction. The fire was large, yes – but it was not large enough to produce such heat. There was the matter of the fluid in the glass, and the shadows clustering on the walls, any of which might hide a Shield or two. Or half a dozen. The eviscerated body of the Lord Chancellor was worrisome too, and the rest of Grayson’s house ticking and groaning as nightfall settled and yellow fog began to press upon it in earnest was not quite as it should be. The sounds were too sharp, too weighty.

  In short, Llewellyn Gwynnfud had prepared this for a reason. Emma took a half-step to her left, away from the ruin of Grayson’s body. “The Chancellor did not expect this,” she observed, as Eli and Mikal moved with her – Mikal soundless and Eli’s boots creaking just a fraction.

  Llewellyn didn’t twitch. Instead, he lifted the cordial glass
and stared into its swirl. “You found another Shield. Who did this one kill?”

  Indirectly reminding her of Crawford, to see if he could unsettle her. Of course. “Not nearly as many as you have, I would fancy. Your former Shields, all dead and gutsplit in an alley.” She indicated Grayson’s indecently splayed body with a sudden sharp movement, and was gratified to see Llewellyn flinch. “Just like him. You’re exhibiting a pattern, Lord Sellwyth.” Her hand dropped. “That’s right. Sellwyth. Dinas Emrys is part of your family’s holdings, isn’t it?” A long pause. “I’ve always wanted to visit it. Perhaps now’s the time.”

  For in the lore of the Age of Flame, the ancient citadel of Dinas Emrys was tangled with the Pax Draegonir. It was where simulacra of the wyrms would meet in conclave, in the presence of their sleeping progenitor, the Third Wyrm, the one from who all the wyrmlings now were descended.

  The first two Great Wyrms were either dead or sleeping so deeply they might as well be – or so sorcerers hoped. But Vortigern lay just under the surface of the Isle, and his might was such that even Britannia might not quell him.

  The other Prime had gone very still. He made a slight tsk tsk noise. “You are so quick, dear Emma. Listen for a few moments.”

  “You have my attention.” For now.

  “It’s one of your best features, my dear, that quality of wide-eyed listening you sometimes employ.” His tongue stole out, wetted his fleshy lips. “A tide is rising.” An eyebrow raise robbed the sentence of portentousness, but he was still, Emma thought, serious.

  Deadly serious.

  He continued, each word careful and soft. “How long will you spend chasing your hobbyhorse of duty, my dear? You are so talented, and lovely besides. I did not like our parting.”

  You dropped me like a hot stone the instant you thought that French tart would give you an advantage, and I was unwilling to share your bed with another woman. Then there was Crawford, and you did not bother to show your face afterwards. No doubt you were busy with high treason and murder. Emma merely tilted her head slightly. The stone at her throat was still ice cold, quiescent.