The Red Plague Affair tb&ca-2

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “You have precious little idea of my accustomed—” the sorceress began, rather hotly.

  Will the two of you cease? “Miss Bannon. Pray leave us to solve this riddle. We shall do all we can. If there is a solution to be found, rest assured you have contributed everything within your considerable powers towards such an end.”

  She studied him closely and he straightened under her gaze, hoping she could not see the red splotches on his cheeks or the small tremors running through his bones. He did not have much time before he suffered a crueller fate than Valentinelli’s.

  “Very well.” She smoothed her skirts, a woman’s nervousness, perhaps. Never mind that she was, in his experience, the female least likely to need such a soothing habit. “Thank you, Archibald.”

  “Emma.” Clare’s throat was full. Feeling, the enemy of Logic, was mounting. Inside his narrow chest, the heart she had mended with sorcery such a short time ago settled into a high, fast gallop.

  The mentath watched the sorceress leave, took a deep breath, and returned his attention to the folio, ignoring Vance’s bright deadly gaze.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A Finer End

  She had never entered the room given over to Valentinelli’s use before, and saw no reason to now. Mikal hovered at her shoulder as she held the charming steady, her skirts pulled back from the threshold, and Horace and Marcus lowered the assassin into the ice bath. There was a choked cry and Ludovico’s wracked body twisted; Alice the blonde chambermaid and her brunette shadow Eunice worked their homely magic upon the monkish, narrow bed and its linens. Their collars were bright, and they cast darting glances at her; when the footmen heaved Valentinelli free of the slurry of ice and water she made a gesture, a drying charm sparked and fizzed, and he was heaved gracelessly into the waiting bed.

  “Mum.” Finch’s discreet cough. He peered around motionless Mikal. “Messenger from the Collegia. Awaiting your reply.”

  As soon as she loosed her hold, the assassin began to thrash. She gestured again, and Mikal moved forward, stepping into the room.

  An iron rack atop a bureau of dark wood, festooned with cooled and hardened wax, held half-burned candles, their wicks dead and spent. There was a small tau corpse upon it, made of pewter with sad paste gleams for eyes and side-wound.

  Does he pray?

  The same chest she had seen in his other small rooms stood, closed and secretive, at the foot of his bed. He had chosen this room very near Clare’s suite, despite its small size, and she had oft wondered what lay behind its door.

  Mikal settled at the bedside, yellow irises gleaming in the dimness. He would keep the assassin contained, and make certain he did not strike an onlooker in his delirium.

  The gaslamps hissed, and the servants looked to her for direction.

  Oh, Ludo. Not like this. You deserve a finer end. There was a dry rock in her throat. She turned her attention to Finch. “From the Collegia?”

  “Yes, mum.” He did not quite bow, but he did hunch, and she remembered the hungry, sore-ridden wreck he had been long ago, before she had taken him into her service. How Severine had turned up her nose at the distasteful sight, and what had Emma said?

  He has performed signal service already, Madame Noyon. Pray do not argue. That had been during the Glastonsauce affair: a newly crowned Queen in dire need of defence against a cabal of creaking ministers and competing interests, not the least of which was her mother’s determination to keep Victrix dependent and weak. The affair had taught Victrix to almost-trust the sharp-eyed young sorceress who had entered the game uninvited and turned it to the monarch’s advantage.

  She gathered her skirts. The jet earrings shivered, tapping her cheeks; she took stock of her remaining resources. There was plenty of ætheric force in her jewellery, and the visit to Rudyard’s bolt-hole had not drained her overmuch.

  The trouble was, there was nothing she could do. Except fend off Britannia’s ill-humour, and see what the Collegia was about.

  Mikal? He took Shield training, they had plenty of time to notice his… distressing talents. They did not. How shall I defend him against a Council of Adepts, one no doubt top-heavy with enemies? Who is likely to be there? What can I muster against them?

  And would she surrender her Shield to the Collegia, as the Law might require?

  Of course not. Her gaze found Mikal’s. He swayed slightly on his chair, a supple movement. I am Prime. I do not give up what is mine.

  No matter how often she asked herself the question, the answer was unvarying.

  Was it more than that? She had undertaken to keep Clare close instead of sending him to Victrix, and undertaken to keep the disagreeable Doctor as well. And there was the matter of a tussie-mussie left for her, and a bloodstain upon a filthy Saffron Hill floor. A promise, and a demand.

  From whom? Does it matter?

  Finch waited with no sign of impatience or irritation. It was a rare man who knew the value of patience, and who was not bothered by silence.

  He was such a man, and had behaved with admirable aplomb in the most dire of circumstances. The indenture collar was in no way sufficient reward, but it had been all Emma could offer him. The safety of her service, and the promise that whatever lay in his past would not pursue him past her doors.

  For Finch, it was enough.

  “Very well,” she said, as if the butler had pressed her. “Show the messenger into the study.”

  “Yes, mum.” He glided away, perhaps relieved.

  “Prima?” Mikal, the single word a question. Did he fear the Law? Perhaps not. It was, she admitted, far more likely he feared some manner of duplicity. A missive from the Collegia could bode no good.

  “All is well.” She was conscious, at once, of the lie. It stung her blocked throat, and Valentinelli moved uneasily, murmuring curses in his native tongue. His eyelids fluttered, and his hands leapt up, fighting a shadow-opponent.

  Today, his fingernails were clean. An odd sensation passed through her – a hot bolt of something very much like jealousy. She had never known him to scrape the filth of living away while in her occasional service. And yet, he and Clare were wonderfully suited to each other, and she did not have to worry overmuch for either of them when they were about chasing whatever prey the Crown set them at.

  Perhaps it is time for worry, Emma. Don’t you think so?

  The chambermaids fluttered a little. The two footmen were still watching her for directions. How few people it took to crowd a room.

  “Be about your duties,” she continued, in a far more normal manner. “Except you, Horace – stay with Mikal, and be ready should he require something for Ludo’s comfort. Thank you.” She turned and swept away, trying not to hear Valentinelli’s moaning.

  She was braced for any manner of unpleasantness when she opened the door to her study and sallied inside, breathing in the smell of leather, paper, old books and the richness of the applewood fire laid in the grate, a charm whisking the smoke up the flue but leaving the delicious scent.

  Anything, that is, except the youngling from the Hall of Mending, his hands wringing together much as Severine Noyon’s sometimes did, his charm-smoothed cheeks pale and his tongue twisting as he gabbled out his news.

  Thomas the Mender, Thomas Coldfaith, her Thomas…

  … was plagued. And he wished to see her, at once. The message was clear.

  He did not expect to live.

  Interregnum: Londinium, Plagued

  First a tickle,

  then a choke,

  then the red rose

  lays a bloke.

  The first few cases were ignored. A vast mass seething in rookeries in several districts – the Eastron End, hard by Southwark but not within the confines of the Black Wark, Whitchapel, Spitalfields – swallowed the tiny bits of poison whole, and the drops altered the composition of the ocean. They first complained of a cough, red roses blooming in their cheeks like consumption’s deadly flower – and within hours came the swelling. If the boils
burst, blood and sourpink pus exploding as eyelids fluttered over their red-sheened eyes, the sufferer might recover. But if the convulsions started before the boils burst, a winding-sheet was needed.

  At first it was called the Johnny-dances, for the convulsions. Then the Red Rose, for the flush in the cheeks, and the Hack, for the thick, chesty coughs. And the sweetbriar sickness, for the sugary smell of the sufferers’ sweat. But after a little while, it was simply known as the Red. You caught the Red, hung the Red, danced the Red.

  Ships sailed that eve with weakened, coughing sailors; those who were not buried at sea vanished in teeming ports that soon bloomed with deadly roses on hollow cheeks. The Red was a promiscuous mistress. She hopped the backs of gentlemen and hevvymancers alike, and they danced out their deaths in dosshouses and townhouses. Physickers shook their heads in puzzlement, and were often dead as their patients a day later.

  And sorcerers fell ill. Some diseases passed the ætheric brethren by, but the Red was not one. In their bodies the Red made illogical sorcery explode in strange ways – one sprouted pinkish fungal growths, screaming as they ruptured his skin, another’s body turned to a patchwork of red glass as ætheric force and blood twisted together in an oddly beautiful pattern. Usually so fortunate, the ætherically blessed found the Red invariably fatal.

  And some whispered it was only fitting.

  Where did it come from? None knew. Charms were no good against it, even those who could afford Mending died under the Red’s lash. Some said it was a judgement from on high, others that it was a consequence of Progress and the filthy conditions of the rookeries and slums of every large city, some few that it was an illness from the hot, newly conquered parts of the globe.

  Only the dead did not speculate. They mounted in piles, and Londinium for the first time in centuries heard the corpsepickers’ ancient cry during times of disaster: “Bring out your dead!” The stigma of corpsepicking vanished, for their habit of taking valuables from the dead lost its impetus once there was a glut of said rags and shinies in the shops that would take such traffic. Instead, they carted the creaking barrows full of twisted limbs, and their cheery singing, interspersed with deep chest-coughs, was the sound of nightmare angels.

  It was a corpsepicker’s duty to sing, while he carted. And on the Red danced, over the bodies of her victims. She bloomed like the reddest rose of the Tuyedor’s device. She grew rank and foul, and there was no cure.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A Footrace With Death

  Genius though he was, Morris had not been systematic. The notes were a hotchpotch, records of experiments interspersed with bits of weather observation and snatches of old prayers mixed with hand-drawn observations and elongated screaming faces, lists of foods that interfered with Morris’s most delicate digestion and constitution, and some most ugly bits of scurrilousness about Queen and Crown.

  Morris had not been turned against his country. No, the genius had merely hated his fellow man with a deep, abiding passion and quite democratic uniformity, and found a way to cleanse the world of sinners with almost-invisible contagion – very much the hand of his vengeful God. It was an elegant solution to such hatred, and the drawings of the earlier iterations of the canisters were most intriguing.

  But the delivery method did not give enough of a clue to the organism’s roots, as it were.

  Clare went slowly through the folio as Vance continued his testing. There was some small success with dicalchimide, but it quickly faded. The tiny little beings were incredibly resistant, and Clare had a momentary shudder when his faculties turned to the question of what they were likely doing inside his own veins.

  How much time do I have?

  His hand stole towards the secret drawer. Inside was a small silver-chased box, and a fraction of the powder inside would make his faculties sharper. Sharp enough to cut this knotted tangle into manageable pieces, as Aleksandr of Makedon once had in a temple, long ago?

  What a historical thought.

  Near the end, a single, creased scrap of paper drew his attention. The notations on it blurred, and he coughed, thickly. Squinted, cursing the veil drawn over his vision. His nose had dulled, too, for he could no longer smell the experimentation. The thickness of marrowe-jelly, the stagnant reek of disease, the miasma-choke of the autoclave steam-cleansing the eyedroppers. His fingers caressed the knob that would bring the drawer open and reveal the box.

  “Nothing with faramide, either.” Vance whistled tunelessly, but did not turn. “Do not take your coja, Clare. It will accelerate the illness.”

  What manner of deduction led you there, sir? But it was immaterial. Clare squinted a fraction more; his faculties seized upon the notations on the crumpled, torn farthing-paper. He could almost see Morris hunched at his table, scribbling, incoherent with excitement as whatever vengeful Muse or saint waited upon mad geniuses dropped the solution into his fevered, waiting brain.

  “Aha,” he breathed. “Ah.” The fit of coughing seized him, and when it was finished, he spat a globule of bright red. It splatted dully on the floor, but Clare was past caring. “Vance. Vance.”

  “Filistune is also useless. I am here.”

  “Here it is.” Clare forced his reluctant legs to straighten, pushing back the wooden chair with a scrape. “Here is the key. It is the alteration process. By God, man… by God…”

  He did not have to finish. Vance was suddenly there, and the other mentath’s sweat was as candy-sweet as his own. Vance took in the scrawled notations with a single glance and shut his eyes, the tear filming down his shaven cheeks tinged with crimson. His own faculties would be working through the ramifications and deductions, and when he opened his eyes again Clare found that their gazes met and meshed with no trouble at all.

  It was a moment of accord he could have shared with none other than a mentath.

  “Muscovide. And not marrowe-jelly.” Vance nodded.

  “We must have some method of separating—”

  “—and an acidic base. Yes. Yes.” Vance’s fists knotted, and he made a short sharp gesture. As if he felt a throat between his fingers, and he wished to squeeze.

  “It will take time to prepare, to break the chain of replication. But by God, man, we can halt this dreadful thing.”

  “Then we must not stand about.” A series of wracking coughs seized Vance’s body, and he curled around them, shaking away Clare’s movement to help with an impatient violence. When he could draw breath again, he straightened, and another of those piercing looks passed between them.

  “Indeed.” Clare suppressed the tickle in his own throat. With no further ado, he strode for the table and swept a working space clean with one of his trembling arms. We are in a footrace with Death. But perhaps we may gain a length or two.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  One Word

  It was a good thing she had not wasted her sorcerous force duelling with the absent Rudyard. She could not take her carriage, or even the smart new curricle, for Mikal was still at Ludovico’s bedside. Harthell the coachman paled at the thought of driving to the Collegia, though he was willing enough; no, she had told him, merely saddle the bay mare, properly, and be quick about it. None of the sidesaddle rubbish.

  It meant she could not wear full mourning, but she suspected Eli would understand. And why mourn, when there was death aplenty lurking in the streets? Her least favourite riding habit, in a shade of brown most dowdy and with newly unfashionable mutton sleeves, at least had divided skirts. She could always turn it over to Catherine and Isobel for reworking; Catherine’s needle could no doubt change it into something exquisite.

  None of her servants had so much as a cough. The likely reason, of course, was throbbing in Emma’s chest; a wyrm-heart Stone that granted life and immunity, extending out through the indenture collars. Such protection would not extend where it was most needed.

  Mentaths did not indenture.

  Wherever Llewellyn Gwynnfud, Earl Sellwyth, was, he was certainly sneering at her.


  What would Llew say of this? But she could guess. And it would be nothing she could give credit to if she wished to retain her self-regard.

  She gathered the reins, nodded to Harthell, and the bay clockhorse, shining and lovingly oiled, pranced restively. She was a fine creature, deep-chested and beautifully legged, her glossy hide seamlessly merging into russet metal and her hooves marvels of delicate filigreed power. Wilbur the spine-twisted stableboy darted forward to open the bailey gate, and the mare shot forward, hooves striking sparks from the cobbles. The gate clanged at her passage, rather like a mournful bell, and she was very glad Mikal had not come from Ludovico’s bedside.

  The witchlight before her spat silvery sparks, but she need not have bothered with the warning of a sorcerer’s haste. Those on the streets, handkerchiefs clamped to their mouths, scattered as she cantered past, and the few carriages out and about in the Westron End were easily avoided. Those who could afford to stayed inside, those forced out of doors hurried furtively… and three of the scuttling pedestrians collapsed as she rode past, their limbs jerking in a deadly dance.

  Morris, damn him, had wrought well.

  Riding thus absorbed a great deal of her attention, but what remained circled the same few problems as a tongue would probe a sore tooth. They vied for her attention equally – Victrix, the Duchess and her hangman, the faceless sorcerer who had so generously left Morris’s notes and quite possibly injured Rudyard severely in the bargain, Clare’s flushed cheeks and sweating, fevered brow, Ludovico’s restless tossing, Mikal’s hypnotic swaying at the assassin’s bedside.

  What am I to do? How may this be arranged satisfactorily?

  For the first time in a very long while, Emma Bannon had precious little idea. Everything now depended on Clare… and on other factors she had little say in. For a sorceress used to resolving matters thoroughly, quietly, and above all, to her own liking, it was a d—d uncomfortable state of affairs.