The Iron Wyrm Affair: Bannon and Clare: Book 1

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Is irrelevant at the moment. The Prussian things were delayed due to weather; they are to arrive in Dover tomorrow morning.” Miss Bannon was pale again. “You and your companions shall intercept this shipment and do whatever possible to delay and disrupt the part of the conspiracy that hinges on them.”

  “And you will be occupied with?” Though he already knew, he found he wished to hear her say it. She was, he reflected, a most unusual woman, and it was rather nice to converse with someone who did not require intellectual coddling.

  Someone who could think.

  “It is high time Lord Grayson answered some questions.” Level and chill, her gaze focused on the graceful silver epergne. The table’s gryphon legs writhed, uneasily, but the snow-white tablecloth was flat and straight. The cadaverous Mr Finch, without asking, brought a decanter and a small glass to Miss Bannon’s place; without looking, she accepted the glass and tossed its contents far down her throat with only a small ladylike grimace afterward. “Thank you, Mr Finch. Excuse me, gentlemen, but I require some bolstering. This is an unpleasant business.”

  “I agree.” Clare found himself reaching for his wine glass. I rather envy her the rum. But it would dull his faculties, even as it afforded him some relief. A fraction of coja might help, but he could not take that at table. Later, then. “There is something that troubles me, Miss Bannon.”

  A slight lift of an eyebrow. “And what is that?”

  “This is no ordinary conspiracy. What could these persons wish to accomplish with an army, even one so formidable as this? And where has the money to fund such a venture arrived from? This is most remarkable. I am very curious.”

  The rum seemed to make no impression on her. “There are things it is best for you not to know, Mr Clare. I am sorry.”

  “Ah. Well.” He sipped at his wine. “I work best when I am informed, Miss Bannon. It is very unlikely that whoever wishes to unseat Britannia’s current incarnation has merely one army or plan at their disposal. Even if that army is one sorcery will not touch.”

  The table rattled slightly. Even Sigmund looked up, his chewing halted for a moment.

  Miss Bannon’s childlike face turned even more set. Twin sparks of crimson flashed in her pupils for a few moments, then vanished. “We are not dealing with merely one conspiracy, Mr Clare. We are dealing with an unholy alliance of competing interests, none of whom are being exactly honest with each other. There is at least one party who wishes the destruction of Britannia Herself, one who possibly only wishes the damage of Her current incarnation to make said incarnation amenable to coercion, and a third who wishes to sow as much confusion and chaos as possible in order to impair the Empire in any way they may.” Her long jet earrings swung even though she was motionless, and the large black gem on a silver choker about her slim throat flashed with a single white-hot charter symbol for a moment. Her curls stirred, on a slow cool breeze that came from nowhere and ruffled along Clare’s own face. “I will allow none of this, and I will conclude this matter to my satisfaction and in the manner I deem best.”

  The silence was immense. Every gaze in the room had fastened on her. Ludovico Valentinelli seemed thoughtful, his pocked face open and interested. The Bavarian was still unchewing, his eyes wide like a frightened child’s. The new Shield had turned cheesy-pale and laid his fork down. Mikal, on the other hand, simply watched her, and his expression was as unguarded as Clare had ever seen it.

  I wonder if she knows what he feels. I wonder if he does.

  Clare leaned back in his chair. He tented his fingers under his long sensitive nose and studied Miss Bannon’s immobility. Finally he had marshalled his thoughts sufficiently to speak. Be very careful here, Archie old man.

  “Miss Bannon. According to what I have seen so far, the Queen trusts you implicitly. This trust is well placed. You are neither stupid nor irresponsible, and you are, I daresay, one of the finest of Britannia’s subjects. Despite the fact that you have suspected me and told me virtually nothing of the contours of this conspiracy, I find that I trust you implicitly as well. I am” – he untangled his fingers, lifted his wineglass – “your servant, madam. I shall do my very best to discharge the duty laid upon me, by God and Her Majesty. Now, do you view the situation as dire enough for us to pass over the sweets, or shall we partake, as this may be the last dinner some of us are fortunate enough to consume?”

  Miss Bannon’s mouth compressed itself into a thin line, and for a moment he was certain he had said exactly the wrong thing. People were so bloody difficult, after all, and she was a woman – they were noted for irrationality, never mind that this sorceress was one of the least irrational creatures he had ever known the pleasure of meeting.

  But her mouth relaxed, and a smile like sunrise played over her face. “I believe the situation is dire enough on my account but not so dire on yours, so you and your companions will have to do justice to the sweets for me. I wish to see Lord Grayson as close to Tideturn as possible. Thank you, gentlemen.”

  She rose, still smiling, and the men leapt to their feet as one. She swept from the dining room, and the Shields hurried in her wake.

  The Neapolitan breathed a curse. “Last time la strega look like that …” He lowered himself back into his chair as Mr Finch reappeared with two footmen bearing the sweets. The butler did not seem at all distressed or surprised to find his mistress had quit the table.

  “What happened, the last time Miss Bannon looked like that?” Clare enquired.

  Valentinelli allowed the scarred footman to clear his place. “Oh, nothing. Just Ludovico almost hanged, and il sorcieri laughing in the dark. La strega, the bitch, she save Ludo’s life.” A single shrug. “Some day I forgive her. But not today.”

  “Ah.” Clare filed this away. Valentinelli’s drawer in his mental bureau was almost as interesting as Miss Bannon’s, by now.

  But not quite. He could still feel her gloved fingers on his hand, trembling. And three separate interlocking interests making this conspiracy an even more troubling – and fascinating – puzzle.

  Sig looked mournful. “We finish dinner, ja?”

  “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 reasona
bleness 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 they 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 r
obbing 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.