The Red Plague Affair tb&ca-2

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “To turn a man against his own country requires some manner of frustration, and Morris does not seem frustrated. Rather, he seems to be following a very logical path to its inevitable conclusion. He has made somewhat of a discovery and is testing it in grand fashion. Really, it is a magnificent and elegant—” He took note of her expression, and halted. “Ah, well. Yes. Clearly he cannot be allowed to proceed. But I do not find much evidence for treachery. Merely misguided genius.”

  “Yes. I was warned of that.” When next I see dear old Kim, I shall not be polite at all. First his monkey, if it still lives, then him. “Mr Clare, can you find those canisters?”

  “The sorcerer… yes, he has given me some ideas. Unknowing, of course.”

  “And discern the exact nature of this threat, poison or otherwise?” Did Britannia, Emma wondered, know the shape and danger of this weapon? The ruling spirit was ancient and wise, but Victrix was headstrong, and Science was new. Or was this a pet project of some minister gone astray?

  I do not know nearly enough of the roots of this matter. She took a deep breath, seeking to still her quickening pulse and banish the prickle of sweat under her arms and against the curve of her lower back.

  “I believe I may.” He even sounded certain, thank goodness.

  “Very well, then. I shall leave that in your capable hands.”

  “And meanwhile?”

  Why do you ask, sir? “I shall be travelling. The man must be stopped.”

  “And brought to the Crown’s justice?”

  “Possibly.” She did not sound convinced, even to herself. “He may be too useful for justice, Mr Clare.” No matter how I long to watch him die as my Shield did.

  She was rather becoming entrenched in the habit of lying to herself, was she not? It was an awkward habit for a Prime.

  Awkward, and dangerous.

  “As we are?” Thoughtfully, as he slowly rose. “Or am I?”

  For a moment, she could not believe she had heard such a question. Her temper almost snapped. I am standing over a pile of corpses, Archibald. Now may not be the proper time to accuse me of plotting your murder. “If you are asking whether I would—”

  “No. I do not think you would. Forgive me, Emma.”

  Too late. It is said. The pain in her chest would not cease. And were you a danger to Britannia, I may well be led to regret. “Certainly. Take the carriage, and Ludovico. Find those blasted canisters. And do be careful. For whatever you may think, sir, I am most loath to lose you.”

  Perhaps Clare would have replied, but Emma’s attention turned inward, and threads of ætheric force boiled through her fingers. If she concentrated on the demands of the task before her, she could easily push away the jabbing beneath her ribs. It was perhaps merely her corset. A mentath’s judgement should not sting so – he was only a man, after all.

  Oh, Sorceress Prime, lying to yourself is very bad form indeed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Don’t Go that Way, Sir

  Valentinelli, examining his dirty fingernails, looked supremely unconcerned as Miss Bannon’s black carriage jolted into motion. In fact, he was humming an aria from Ribellio, of all things, and off-key as well.

  It was, Clare reflected, like sharing a cage with a wild animal. Familiarity had allowed him to overlook just how dangerous the Neapolitan could be.

  And Miss Bannon?

  It was a very good thing mentaths did not often wince. For if they did, Clare was certain he should be wincing now at his own idiocy.

  It was not the credence given to a controversial theory; there was no other way to account for the peculiarities the case presented. It was the flash of pain on Miss Bannon’s features, swiftly smoothed away, when Clare had wondered aloud.

  He had meant, of course, that Miss Bannon’s value far exceeded his own in the current situation. It was quite likely that the Crown depended on her loyalty far more thoroughly than Miss Bannon ever guessed. Empire was maintained by those like her – proud servants, all.

  Clare had often speculated upon the nature of the sorceress’s attachment to Britannia’s current incarnation, but had consigned it to the mental bureau-drawer of mysteries deserving close, thorough, and above all, unhurried contemplation at some later date. She did an excellent job of hiding her origins, did Miss Bannon, but he had the advantage of close acquaintance. The ghost of childhood want and deprivation hung about her, and her attachment to the Queen bespoke a battle against such a ghost within a person’s character more than an avowed duty to Empire.

  No doubt Emma would hotly dispute such a notion, or give it brisk short shrift. But Clare thought it very likely – oh, very likely indeed – that it was not Victrix the sorceress sought to insulate from harm. It was instead a young girl who had been saved from the spectre of a short brutal life in a rookery or worse, plucked from the gutter and set in the glitter-whirl of sorcery’s proud practitioners. Of course nothing less than serving the highest power in the land would do for such a child’s powerful wanting in a sorceress’s body, and of course she would see an echo of her own struggles in Victrix’s dangerous first years of reign.

  In any case, this morning Miss Bannon had apparently not taken his meaning correctly, and Clare consoled himself with the thought that she was an exceedingly logical woman, and would not take umbrage at his indelicacy. Would she?

  And yet, he had never quite seen her look… hurt, before.

  The morning crush of crowd and other conveyances had thickened during the few hours spent in Copperpot’s well-appointed flat. Rumblings, shouts, and curses filled the close-choking Londinium air. The wheels ground more slowly, and Clare’s busy faculties calculated the likely rate of the sickness spreading and the resultant chances of sufferers surviving the boils.

  Could the Shield have spread the disease? Perhaps. Physicker Darlington? No, there was no break in his skin… but still. Clare cursed inwardly. If the canisters dispensed a form of highly infectious illness, Eli may well have served the same purpose. Certainly very little of Morris’s behaviour made sense unless he planned the sickness to spread from sufferer to sufferer.

  Another jolt, and the carriage ceased its forward motion. There was a great deal of shouting and cursing – a blockage in the street, perhaps? Sunk in thought, Clare barely noticed when Valentinelli stiffened.

  The carriage door was wrenched open, and Clare’s short cry of surprise was drowned by Valentinelli’s much louder bark. A confusion of motion, and the Neapolitan was thrown back, an elegant half-hand strike to the man’s throat folding him up quite effectively. The attacker, stocky but long-legged in black, his top hat knocked askew, drove another fist into Valentinelli’s groin, a swift blow that made Clare inhale sharply in male sympathy.

  There was a click, and the door pulled closed. The man, with a speed that bespoke long practice, levelled the pistol at a cursing, writhing Valentinelli.

  Clare coughed, slightly. “Well. A pleasant surprise.”

  Francis Vance, Doctor of Art and mentath, had a wide, frank, disarming grin. His moustache was fair but his hair had darkened as he aged, and one of the odd qualities of the man was his ability to change appearance at a moment’s notice. He required no appurtenances to do so, merely his own plastic features. His eyes were variously hazel, gold, or green, depending on his mood, and at the moment they were quite merry. “Hullo, old chap.”

  “I kill you—” Valentinelli was not taking this turn of events calmly at all.

  Clare cleared his throat. “Ludovico, please, he merely wishes to talk. Or he would have shot you with that cunning little pistol. A Beaumont-Adams, is it not? Double-action. And you only have two shots.”

  “Very good.” Vance’s smile broadened a trifle. “Two are all I require; normally it would be merely one. Your Neapolitan here is most dangerous, though. I have a high idea of him.”

  So does Miss Bannon. “You are not the only one who does. To what do I owe this pleasure, sir? I have been a trifle too busy to return your letters.”
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  “If you could reply, I would be in Newgate by now. As it is…” Vance gauged Valentinelli with a sidelong look. The assassin had ceased sputtering and half lay, curled against the carriage’s wall, glaring balefully at the uninvited guest. “I do apologise, signor. I did not think you would offer me a chance to speak.”

  “You were correct,” Valentinelli snarled, and Vance’s eyebrows raised a fraction.

  “Indeed. You are most singular. Anyhow, Mr Clare, I have come to offer you my services.”

  “I would engage your services?” A queer sinking sensation had begun in Clare’s middle.

  “Oh yes.” Vance apparently judged the moment to be less fraught, as he tucked the pistol away. His entire posture bespoke tense readiness, though, as Valentinelli slowly uncurled. “You are pursuing a certain Morris, are you not?”

  Dear heavens. Clare’s stomach was certainly sinking. “And you are as well? No. You cannot be. For one thing—”

  “He came to my attention; I neither engaged nor funded him. His project is unprofitable, to say the least.” Vance’s smile faded. His changeable countenance became a statue of gravity. “For another, even I have some scruples, faint and fading as they are. This is dirty pool, old boy. Very dirty indeed.”

  “I see.” Clare’s mouth was dry. Of all the turns this case could take, this was perhaps the most surprising.

  And he had not foreseen it. Perhaps his faculties were dimming.

  “No, you do not. Yet. But, Mr Clare, might I suggest you tell your driver to direct us to Bermondsey? It seems a particularly profitable place to begin.”

  Londinium’s sky wept, a fine persistent drizzle tinted a venomous yellow as the sun began its slow afternoon descent. Between the buildings the fog rose in streamers, tamped down by the rain’s catlike licking, the Themis breathing its vapour into street-arteries. Valentinelli slumped next to Clare, staring balefully at the mentath who had struck him.

  Vance appeared at ease, having taken the entire seat for himself. “What do you know of Morris?”

  Clare suspected he had gathered his faculties as much as he would be allowed to. “A genius of Biology. No more than thirty-three, and quite a disciplined student, though he failed any and all requisite mentath testing and consequently paid for his schooling by neighbourhood subscription and—”

  “His childhood, Mr Clare.” As if Clare were at Yton again, and Vance a patient instructor.

  I rather do not like this fellow. “Londinium born and bred, south of the Themis in every respect until he was sent to school. I deduce his father died while he was young. His mother rather coddled him, and his schoolfellows did not like him.”

  “Consequently, he took refuge in his art. And in one other thing.” Vance nodded. His eyes had darkened to hazel, the gold flecks in them shrinking. He observed a catlike stillness, but Clare had no doubt the pistol, especially filed by a gunsmith to rob the trigger of any stutter, would make short work of any obstacle in his path.

  Clare’s faculties helpfully supplied the answer. “Ah. Religion.” A few more scraps of information came together inside Clare’s skull. “A Papist, quite possibly.”

  “Most certainly.” Vance looked pleased. “And today is Monday.”

  Of course it is. What does that have to do with—But the carriage slowed its forward motion, Harthell calling and clicking to the clockhorses in the peculiar tongue of coachmen, and from the sound of the traffic outside, Clare decided they had reached Ettingly Street in Bermondsey.

  There is a church of the Magdalen here. I wonder… “The Magdalen was Morris’s church?”

  “He visited regularly. Papists can be faithful, you know. Come, gentlemen.” Vance’s countenance had turned graver, and he now looked at least ten years older. “Let us discover if he was praying to a saint, or to Science.”

  Valentinelli’s flat dark gaze met Clare’s, and the mentath shook his head slightly. No, my canny Neapolitan. Do not kill him. Yet.

  And Valentinelli subsided, his capable fingers retreating from the knife in his sleeve.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Above Your Notice

  The stables were full of susurrus. Feathers rasped dry-oily against each other, and the clacking of sharp beaks snapping closed was like lacquered blocks of wood struck sharply together. The keepers, lean men in the traditional red bracers and high boots, were hard at work. They went in teams of two, one pushing the barrow, the other selecting chunks of red, dripping muscle and sawed-white bone, hefting it with an experienced grunt over the stall doors.

  Gryphons were, after all, carnivores.

  Emma stood very still, her hands knotted into fists. The smell – raw meat, the tawny flanks simmering with animal heat – scorched her throat, and the beasts craned their necks to see her, in the flat sideways way of birds. One hissed angrily, its feathered foreclaws flexing, and wood splintered.

  “Best wait outside, mum.” The head keeper, young for his post and with a livid scar across one wrist, shook his head. The beads tied into his hair made a clacking, just like the beasts’ beaks. “Fractious today. And, well. Sorcery.”

  “Stay, Prima.” Mikal, standing before her, did not precisely seem small, but he did look a very slender protection against the tide of feathers and gold-ringed eyes. “All is well.”

  No, all is not well. Gryphons do not forget.

  “Ssorceresss.” The sibilants were cold with menace. “Deathssspeaker.” A black gryphon, a little smaller than its fellows but apparently the one appointed to communicate for them in this matter, clacked his beak twice. How the creatures used human language without lips to frame the syllables was a mystery, and one neither Science nor sorcery could solve. A dissection could have perhaps shed some light on it, but a gryphon’s corpse was impossible to come by.

  Theirs was a savage tribe, and it consumed its own dead. To be left uneaten by its fellows was the worst fate that could befall them, and Emma Bannon had caused one of their own to suffer it.

  I had no choice. But gryphons did not understand such things. Or they would not, where a sorcerer was concerned. For of all the meats the beasts consumed, they liked sorcery-seasoned best.

  “Speak to me, winged one,” Mikal said, pleasantly enough. His back was tense under its olive velvet, though, and his feet were placed precisely, his weight balanced forward, his hands loose and easy. “My Prima is above your notice.”

  A ripple went through them, glossy, muscled flanks tensing. Emma set her jaw more firmly, and stared at Mikal’s back.

  Entering the stables was never pleasant. Even the smell of the creatures was dangerous, causing an odd lassitude that made anyone with ætheric talent prone to miscalculation. The effect on those without capacity, or on animals, was not so marked, but still enough to ensure wild gryphons did not often go hungry. They were Britannia’s allies, and drew her chariot; they were also crafty, and exceedingly vicious. A better symbol of Empire than the ruling spirit conveyed by such beasts would be difficult to find.

  The black gryphon moved forward. It had finished its meal, and an indigo tongue flicked, cleaning the sharp beak with a rasp. Traces of blood dappled its proud face, and the gold of its irises was a new-minted coin. The pupil of its nearer eye, black as ink, held a tiny, luminescent reflection. Over the reflection’s shoulder peered a white-faced sorceress, her hair smartly dressed and the amber at her throat glowing softly as she held herself in readiness.

  “Why are you here, Nagáth? We are hungry, and that issss prey.”

  “She is my Prima, and you will not taste her flesh. I require two of your brethren to fly swiftly at dusk, wingkin.”

  A sharper movement passed through the serried stalls and the overhead perches. If they decided to attack en masse, perhaps not even Mikal could hold them back. Emma had thought, when she had visited the Collegia that morning to consign Eli to the Undying Flame, to visit the barracks and select half a dozen Shields.

  And yet, she had not.

  Thrent. Jourdain. Harry. Namal.
All murdered by Crawford. A litany of her own failures, men who had risked their lives in her service and paid the last toll. Now she could add another to that list, could she not? Eli.

  Did Britannia feel this aching, when her faithful servants fell? Or had so many passed through her service that she no longer cared, and saw them as chess pieces – pawns could be lost, castles taken…

  … and even queens could be replaced.

  A dangerous thought.

  “We ssssshall not carry her.” This from another gryphon, tawny with dappled plumage, its gaze incandescent with hatred. Its foreclaws gripped the top of a stall door, and the two keepers before it stumbled back, one of them with a dripping haunch clutched in both hands like an upside-down tussie-mussie for a sweetheart.

  Mikal did not move, but a new tension invaded the air. “You shall carry whom I command you to carry. Y béo Dægscield.”

  The ancient words resonated, the stable a bell’s interior, shivering. The gryphons went utterly still.

  I am Shield.

  Their compact with Britannia was antique, true. But their compact with the brotherhood who guarded the workers of wonders was even older, brought from other shores with the wandering conjurers of the Broken City. Mordred the Black had given shelter to that brotherhood on the Isle’s shores during the Lost Times. Mordred claimed descent from Artur’s left-hand line; none knew the truth of that claim, none cared to dispute it, either. The Collegia itself, only recently tethered above Londinium, was a wonder of Mordred’s age, its black gatestones crawling with crimson charter charms the first things laid. There was said to be a mist-shrouded mountain the Collegia had torn itself from the side of, long ago. A craggy peak whispered to have held another school where thirteen students were admitted, but only twelve left, and the last – either the best or the worst, according to which set of legends one excavated from antique dust – was taken as a toll.

  “You are Sssshield.” Grudging, the black gryphon lowered its head.