The Iron Wyrm Affair

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Sig walloped him on the back hard enough to crack a rib or two. Clare coughed, choked, and almost spewed on the Queen’s dust-choked skirts. She did not notice, following Eli out of sight, and Mikal glanced down at Clare.

  “Well done, mentath. One of the Guards will find you a weapon. We make our stand before the Throne.”

  Oh. Clare fought down the retching. “Yes.” He coughed, violently, turned his head to the side and spat as Sig hauled him up and Clare found that yes, indeed, his legs would carry him. Shakily and uncertainly, but better than not. “Quite. God and Her Majesty, sir. Miss Bannon?”

  “Elsewhere.” Mikal turned on his heel and strode after the Queen. Sig clapped him on the back again, but more gently, thank God.

  “Archie, mein Herr.” The Bavarian shook his filthy, bald-shining head. “You are crazy, mein Freund. Du bist ein Bastard verrücht.”

  Clare coughed again, leaning on Sig’s broad shoulder. “Likewise, Siggy. Likewise.” If I must die, this is hardly bad company.

  At his throat, the Bocannon turned to a spot of crystalline ice, and the skin around it began to tingle.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  A Life’s Work

  The globe of protective sorcery shattered, sharp darts of ætheric energy slicing trembling air. Emma skidded to a stop as Llewellyn staggered, the chant faltering. She intended to reach for the hilt, wrench it free, and stab him again, and again, as many times as it took to make him cease.

  She did not have the chance.

  A long trailing scream behind her, a wet crunching. One more Shield had fallen. She snapped a glance over her shoulder – the two surviving Shields were fully occupied now keeping the gryphons from their throats. The lion-birds darted in, the smaller wild ones swooping down in tightening circles. There were too many of them; even a Shield of Mikal’s calibre would not keep that feathered tide back.

  Britannia’s steeds would not cease until this threat was contained and their furious hunger sated.

  But Emma’s immediate concern was the Sorcerer Prime collapsing to his knees before the tower. An altar – a plain slab of stone – glowed before him with hurtful dull-red ætheric charge, buckled and cracked. He struggled to hold the chant, but a gap of a single note opened and became an abyss, the complex interlocking parts shredding and peeling away.

  Her throat closed. A moment’s regret flashed through her – with Sight, she could see the towering cathedral of the spell, beautiful in its wholeness for a single instant before cracks of negation raced up its walls and exploded through its windows, twisting and warping the flawless work of a Prime at his best.

  A life’s work. How long had Llewellyn been planning this?

  Questions could wait. She reached for the knife again, but the Prime pitched violently backwards, his body lashed by stray sorcery escaping his control. It descended upon him, his flesh jerking, force a physical body was not meant to bear searching for an outlet and grinding the cohesion of muscle and blood away.

  It was not a pleasant death. It replicated the dragon-fuelled simulacrum in Bedlam, shredding him to a rag of shattered bone and blood-painted meat, his eyeballs popping and his hair smoking as the spell, cheated, took its revenge. The knife fell free, chiming on rock; she bent reflexively to retrieve it, her fingers clamping on its slippery hilt. Something else rolled loose too, and her free hand scooped it up with no direction on her part, tucking it into her skirt pocket.

  Oh, Llew.

  The tower dropped back into its accustomed shape with a subliminal thud. No longer a single claw of a massive reptilian limb, it was now merely a shattered pile of masonry and moss, leaning as if into a heavy wind.

  Shadows wheeled overhead as the gryphons dived, screaming triumphantly, and Emma turned away from the body on its carpet of boiling blood, her hand lifting to shield her face.

  The ground settled as well. Vortigern, the colourless dragon, the Third Wyrm and mighty forefather of all the Timeless children still awake in the world, sank into slumber again, the Isle on his back pulled tight like a green and grey counterpane, upon which mites scattered and pursued their little loves and vendettas.

  And Emma Bannon, Sorceress Prime, wept.

  The silence was as massive as the cacophony beforehand had been, and she lifted her head, wiping her cheeks.

  Most of the gryphons had settled into feeding at the fallen Shields and the three lion-bird corpses. The ripping and gurgling sounds were enough to unsettle even her stomach. No doubt even Clare’s excellent digestion would have difficulty with this.

  Clare. She swallowed, hard, invisible threads twitching faintly. Londinium was a fair ways away. She had ridden Khloros to bloody Wales, of all places.

  One of the gryphons mantled, hopping a little closer. It was edging away from the carrion and eyeing her sidelong, its gold-ringed pupil holding a small, perfect image of a very tired sorceress armed with a toothpick.

  Oh dear. Emma swallowed again, drily.

  The gryphon’s indigo-dyed tongue flicked as its beak opened. It was the remaining black from the carriage, its glossy feathers throwing back the morning sun with a blue-underlit vengeance.

  “Vortigern,” it whistled. “Vortigern still sleeps, sorceress.”

  That was the whole point of this exercise, was it not? And now I have other matters to attend to. The hilt, slippery with blood and her sweat, was pulsing-warm in her clenched fist. “Yes.”

  “We are hungry.” Its beak clacked.

  “You have the dead to feast upon,” she pointed out. “And Vortigern sleeps.”

  In other words, I have done you a favour. I am loyal to Britannia, as you are. Or, more plainly, Please don’t eat me.

  It actually laughed at her. Its claws flexed, and the reek of blood and split bowel tore at Emma’s nose. Blood could drive the beasts into a frenzy—

  The invisible threads tied to a pendant twitched again. For such a movement to reach her here meant Clare was in dire trouble indeed.

  “I am sorry,” she told the gryphon, and her grip on the knife shifted. The stone at her throat, frost-cold, became a spot of ice so fierce it burned, and she knew a charter symbol would be rising through its depths, shimmering and taking form in tangled lines of golden ætheric force.

  The beast laughed again, its haunches rising slightly as it prepared to spring. Its feathers ruffled, and its pupil was so dark, the gold of its iris so bright. “So am I, Sorceress. But we are hungry.”

  Force uncoiled inside her. She was exhausted, mental and emotional muscles strained from the opening of her Discipline. Her sorcerous Will was strong, yes, but the toll of ætheric force channelled through her physical body dragged her down. It would slow her, just at the moment she needed speed and strength most.

  I am not ready to die. She knew it did not matter. Death was here all the same, the payment demanded by Khloros. Death was inevitable.

  Her fingers tightened on the knife’s hilt. Inevitable as well was Emma Bannon’s refusal to die quietly.

  Even for Victrix.

  The gryphon sprang.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Who Dies Next?

  The inner courtyard of the Palace, choked with drifts of dust and quaking underfoot, opened around them. The front door had broken, and the brown-jacketed Prussian mercenaries with their white armbands poured through, firing as they advanced. Many of the Guard fell, buying time for Victrix to flee through the halls. All that remained was to cross the courtyard and gain the relative safety of the Throne Hall.

  Though how that great glass-roofed hall could shelter them was somewhat fuzzy to Clare. He suspected he was not thinking clearly.

  Clare limped along, Sigmund hauling him, the vast shadow of the arachnid mecha stagger-thrashing above. Stone crumbled, the centuries of building and replacement work smashed in a moment. Something was wrong – the arachnid reeled drunkenly, shattering glass from its capacitors falling like daggers.

  Victrix stumbled. Mikal and Eli all but carried her, one on eit
her side, and the Guard fanned out. Rifleshot popped on the stones around them – the Prussians had gained height and were firing from the windows. The door to the Throne Hall had never seemed so far away.

  They plunged into dust-swirling darkness just as a massive grinding thud smashed in the courtyard. A gigantic warm hand lifted Clare and flung him; he landed with a crunch and briefly lost consciousness. He surfaced in a soupy daze, carried between Sig and a bleeding, husky Guard with a bandaged head and a limp, who nevertheless moved with admirable speed. Breaking glass tinkled sweetly overhead, and the Bocannon at his chest was a fiery cicatrice.

  Shouts. Confusion. Mikal’s hoarse hissing battle cry. Queen Victrix screamed, a note of frustration and terror as mercenaries poured in through the side doors.

  Clare lifted his head. He blinked, dazed. There was another giant impact, and he realised he’d been half-conscious for too long. They were surrounded, Mikal and Eli flanking the Queen, whose young face was pale, one cheek terribly bruised and her dark hair falling in ragged strands.

  Miss Bannon looks much better dishevelled, he thought, and the illogical nature of the reflection shocked him far more than the queer swimming sensation all through his limbs.

  Sig had a pistol from somewhere. He was grim and pale, covered in dust and soot, and his mouth pulled down at both corners. A jab of regret stabbed Clare’s chest. He should not have drawn his friend into this.

  They were all about to die. Except possibly Victrix, whose face aged in a split second, Britannia resurfacing from wherever Her attention had been drawn, alert to the threat to Her vessel.

  More shattering glass. The ground quaked violently, almost throwing Clare from his feet.

  Then they descended.

  The glass fell in sheets. The ancient roof of the Throne Room bucked, snapped, and fell, the shards – some as long as a man’s body – miraculously avoiding the knot of Guards, Shields, and mentath-and-genius. The sound was immense, titanic, the grinding of ice floes, as if the earth itself had gone mad and sought to rid itself of humanity.

  The gryphon was massive, and black. Its eyes were holes of runnelling unholy red flame. Driven into the top of its sleek skull was a fiery red nail, a star of hurtful brilliance.

  Perched on its back was a battered, wan, half-clothed Miss Bannon. Her dress had been ripped to tatters and her hair was an outrageous mess stiff with dirt, sticks, feathers, and matted blood. Bruising ran over every inch of flesh he could see, and the other shadows were more gryphons, breaking through the roof as Miss Bannon slid from the beast’s back. The red flame winked out, and the deadwinged beast slumped to the strewn floor. It twisted, shrivelling, dust racing through its feathers and eating at its glossy hide.

  The dead gryphon collapsed. Miss Bannon bent, wrenching the nail from its head.

  It was a knife, and it dripped with crackling red as she turned. The Prussian mob drew back, the feathers in their hats nodding as her gaze raked them, slow and terrible.

  “Gryphons,” Britannia whispered, through the Queen’s mouth. The single word was horrifying, as cold and ageless as the Themis itself, a welter of power and command.

  Miss Bannon nodded, once. She did not sway, her back iron-rigid, but something was wrong. She held herself oddly, and her gaze was terrifyingly blank. Clare groped to think of just what was amiss.

  The sorceress looked… as if she had forgotten her very self.

  “Who dies next?” she murmered, very clearly, the words dropping into a sudden rustling silence as gryphons drifted down to land, their claws digging into stone and fallen timber, making slight scratching noises against steel. “Who?”

  The first Prussian screamed.

  After that, the gryphons feasted. But Clare gratefully closed his eyes, finally able to cease deducing. The inside of his skull felt scraped clean and queerly open. For once, he did not want to see.

  The sounds were bad enough.

  Chapter Forty

  The Need Was Dire

  Britannia’s vessel halted a fair distance away. “Emma?” Abruptly, Victrix sounded very young. Perhaps it was all the dust in the air. Or perhaps it was the ringing in Emma’s ears.

  She suspected she would pay for this episode very soon, and in bloody coin.

  The gryphons pressed forward. They had made short work of the brown-coated mercenaries, and in the courtyard was a vast wreck of metal and glass she had only indirectly glimpsed as she struggled to keep the brain-stabbed gryphon in the air. It seemed Clare and company had endured their own travails.

  “Your Majesty.” She swayed, and suddenly Mikal was at her side. His fingers closed around her arm, and she leaned into that support, too exhausted to be grateful. She felt nothing but a vast drowning weariness. “I murdered one of your steeds, Britannia. You may punish me as you see fit. However, before you do, I beg leave to report that the Earl of Sellwyth is dead and Vortigern still sleeps. Your steeds had most of the stopping of Lord Sellwyth. I did not serve them well.”

  The body of the black gryphon – the knife, driven with exactitude into the tiny space between the back of the skull and the top vertebrae – bubbled as it rotted swiftly, the stresses endured by its physical fabric as she forced it to fly for Londinium with its fellows in hot pursuit unravelling it.

  The gryphons would not be able to eat their brother, and that was the worst that could befall one of their number.

  They would not forgive her for this.

  “Lord Sellwyth.” The Queen’s face was bruised, but granite-hard. Britannia settled fully into Her vessel and regarded Emma with bright eyes, glowing dust over a river of ancient power. “He sought to awaken Vortigern.”

  I am not certain he was the only one who sought to do so. I do know he almost succeeded. “I caught him at Dinas Emrys. Which is, I believe, part of his family’s ancestral holdings.” She fought to stay conscious, heard the queer flatness of her tone. Eli appeared on her other side, looking sadly the worse for wear. “I beg your pardon for the method of my return, but the need was dire.”

  Where is Clare? She glanced at Mikal, who stared at Britannia, a muscle flicking in his jaw. I do not like that I cannot see him. And Ludovico, where is he? The knife in her right hand dangled; she could not make her fingers unlock from the hilt.

  A Word to steal the gryphon’s breath, another Word to snap iron bands about its wings, and she had driven the knife into its brain and uttered the third Word, the most terrible and scorching one of all, expending so much of her stored sorcerous force she almost lost consciousness, holding grimly on to one single thought. Londinium. Find the Queen.

  And the dead body had obeyed the Endor in her. It had flown.

  “So it was. We shall inform you of any punishment later.” The Queen nodded, slowly. “We do not think it will be too severe.”

  “Blasphemy!” one of the gryphons howled. They rustled, pressing close, and Mikal tensed next to Emma. She leaned into him even further, for her legs were failing her and even the dim, dust-choked light in the Hall was too scorch-bright for her sensitised eyes. “She robbed the dead!”

  I did so much more than that. The beasts will not forgive this, and their memory is long. “Mikal.” Her heart stuttered, her body finally rebelling against the demands she had placed upon it. “Mikal.”

  He bent his head slightly, his eyes never leaving the Queen. “Emma.”

  He would kill Britannia Herself, did he judge Her a threat to me. The realisation, quiet but thunderous, loosed the last shackle of her will.

  “I have been cruel to you.” The whisper was so faint, she doubted he heard her. “I should not have… Forgive me.”

  “There is no—” he began, but darkness swallowed Emma whole.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Amenable to Control

  “And this is the killer of that gigantic thing.” Victrix inclined her head. “We are grateful, Mr Valentinelli. You performed a great service to Britannia.”

  The Neapolitan swept a painful, creaky bow. Both his
eyes were swollen nearly shut, half his hair singed off, and his face was such a mass of cuts and welts it was difficult to see the pox scars. His clothes were in ribbons, and one of his boots was nothing more than a band of leather about his ankle and calf, the rest of it cut away and the stocking underneath filthy and draggled. “It is nothing, maestra. Valentinelli is at your service.”

  Clare’s neck ached. The tension would not leave him. “Cecil Throckmorton. He was mad, Your Majesty, but he was also used.”

  “Used by whom?” The Queen half turned, pacing away, and Clare forced his legs to work. He and Sigmund held each other like a pair of drunks.

  The smaller gryphons took wing, their shadows pouring over the glass- and rubble-strewn floor. The sound was immense, a vault filled with brushing feathers. The dust was settling.

  Clare suppressed a sigh. But this was important; he must make the Queen understand. “There were three parts to this conspiracy. Miss Bannon dealt with those who wished Britannia and the Isle erased from existence; she judged that the larger threat. One part of the conspiracy simply wished Britannia inconvenienced, however they could effect that – I would look to the Prussian ambassador, who will no doubt deny everything, since they were mercenaries and, by very dint of that, expendable. The third part of the conspiracy troubles me most, Your Majesty. It wished you, personally, Britannia’s current vessel, under control.”

  “Control.” Victrix paused for a moment. Her shoulders came up, and she stalked for the high-backed Throne, the Stone of Scorn underneath its front northern leg shimmering soft silver as she approached. The Throne itself, undamaged, gleamed with precious stones.

  It looked, Clare decided, dashed uncomfortable. But Victrix climbed the seven steps, turned sharply so her dust-laden skirts swirled, and sat. Sigmund might have gone up the steps as well, but Clare dug his heels in, and was strong enough to make him stop.