The Ripper Affair (Bannon and Clare) (8 page)

T
he return to Mayefair proved long and tense, the streets clogged with shouting, heaving traffic. It was also cramped, for Mikal cradled the sorceress’s small form and ignored Clare entirely, studying her wan, slack face as if it held a secret and feeling for her throat- or wrist-pulse at intervals.

Clare did not feel it quite proper to venture forth again that day, even though Miss Bannon was in no condition to attend dinner and would consequently care little about his absence. He was to visit another Yard, and he had an inkling of which, yet he could not leave while the sorceress, pale and so unconscious she represented quite a deadweight, was abed. Mikal carried her upstairs, and Madame Noyon fluttered about fussing at the lady’s maids to help tend their mistress.

Clare himself went straight for the smoking room and its heavy walnut sideboard. His hand shook slightly as he poured himself a
very
healthy measure of brandy, and he downed it with quite unseemly haste. It left a burning in its wake, and he had to suppress a rumbling of the rudest sort from his scorched throat.

So much illogic could unsettle even the finest mind, he told himself, and his, while acceptable indeed, was not of
that
calibre. He could have Finch send out to an apothecary’s for coja, and yet the thought of its deadly stinging did not soothe as much as it could.

No, the brandy was far better. He eyed the sideboard. This being Miss Bannon’s house, there was no stinting in quantity
or
quality. Should he be so unfortunate as to feel a lack, no doubt any of the other liquids in crystal decanters would do, even the
vitae
. He had never drunk to excess–the consequent blunting of a mentath’s faculties was unacceptable–but he could at this moment bloody well see the attraction.

A rather awful day, all told.
The sounds Miss Bannon had made–terrifying, wrenching cries, loaded with horrifying, illogical force. No doubt there would be a great deal of speculation over the burst of sorcery, and her carriage may have been remarked.

Dreadful indeed. The sound of earth hitting a coffin lid again, rattling through his skull vehemently, over a spatter of blood. Even
he
knew that for a sorceress to spill that most precious of vital fluids in such a place was dangerous.

“Eh,
mentale.
Drinking to death now?”

Clare whirled. The room was empty, its heavy dark wainscoting and fancifully painted ceiling–cavorting satyrs and nymphs, perhaps Miss Bannon’s comment on a man’s ideas–just the same as they always had been. The billiard table, where sometimes the clack of heavy striking reverberated as he cogitated upon a particular matter and Miss Bannon sipped her rum, was just the same, covered with its loose canvas because he had not availed himself of its geometric soothing for quite some time.

His sensitive nostrils flared. A breath of dirt, the smoke of a snuffed candle. And the strong oiled-metal smell of a man who lived by violence, his wits sharp and his pockmarked cheeks sallow.

Impossible
. The silver globe-lights were not flickering. It was his eyelids, falling and rising with extraordinary rapidity as his faculties sought to discern the evidence of the real from heated phantasy.
Simply impossible
.

There was no Neapolitan lounging near the door, where he was wont to pause before edging in to select a cigar from the silver-chased humidor–long, slender, floral in taste, and utterly strange in his blunt, dirty fingers.

“Merely the strain,” Clare muttered, the words falling into dead, heavy air. He had never noticed before how close it was in this particular room without a woman’s light laughing questions, a muttered reply in Calabrian when a man forgot himself and the tone of his youth wore
through his careful mask. Or the clack of the heavy billiard-spheres providing their own music, smoke hanging in the air before being whisked toward the fireplace with a charm-crackle. “A dreadful day. A dreadful
week
. A touch more brandy, and some rest. For my nerves.”

As if a mentath was prey to such a thing as shattered nerves. It was ridiculous to even
suggest
.

And yet.

He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, turned back to the sideboard and poured another generous measure. No, not rest. Rest would not do him any good at all. Only work would cure this uneasiness, the feeling that the earth itself would cease obeying its laws of proper quiescence or motion and begin behaving as irrationally as sorcery itself.

“Experiments.” He gazed at the hand holding the tumbler of brandy, amber liquid trembling. Familiar as his own breath, that fleshly appendage, and the possibilities began to swirl inside his skull.

He did not realise, as he swilled the brandy and poured himself another, that he had left the crushed papers detailing Marta Tebrem’s injuries, and statements given by witnesses, in Miss Bannon’s carriage, where Harthell would find them and hand them to Finch without comment, to be placed upon Miss Bannon’s study desk. It was a shocking sign of absent-mindedness in so normally precise a man.

Indeed, had Clare even an inkling of unremembering such a thing as said papers, he might have thought his condition warranted no little concern. As it was, he simply
poured and swallowed until the decanter was empty, and left the smoking room and its shrouded table with a hurried, slightly rolling gait.

He did not feel inebriated in the least.

W
aking after such an atrociously uncomfortable event could not possibly put one in a cheerful mood. Especially when said waking was triggered by an amazing, thumping bang from the depths of her house, and Mikal’s muttered curse as he flung her bedroom door open.

Without
knocking.

“He will kill himself, Prima.” The Shield’s eyes were alight and his dark hair disarranged, as if he had run his hands back through it. “Or one of the servants. Or he may even bring the house down around our ears.”

Emma sighed, turning over and burying her face in the pillow. Even though the room was dark, her head ached abominably, and any hint of light scored her irritated eyes. “Unlikely,” she muttered, “on all three accounts. Go
away
.”

He reached her bedside, touched her shoulder with two
careful fingers. “I hesitated to wake you. But he will harm someone, perhaps even himself.”

The last thing I remember…
She shuddered as the recollection rose. Yet unconsciousness had blunted its sharp edges, and training had drained the venom. At least, enough for her to consider the vision calmly.

She had experienced Tebrem’s death, stroke for stroke.

She had also, more to the point, disrupted whatever that death had been meant to achieve or cement. A spreading, deepening stain, with all the febrile tension of Whitchapel’s poverty and violence–even in that semi-respectable building–to feed it. Now began the difficult but less dangerous work of deducing what she could of the murderer’s method and intention–then descending upon said murderer with the force of law, and the more considerable force of Emma’s irritation.

Speaking of deduction, she finally emerged from the haze of restorative slumber as another thump rattled the house. It was not a sorcerous sound, for the defences on her abode rippled only in response to her attention. “What on earth is he doing?”

“He is locked in the workroom, and since Tideturn all manner of noises have issued forth. The door is solid, and in any case…”

“Yes.” She blinked, yawned daintily, pushing the pillow and his fingers away with a measure of regret. An attempt to force the workroom door would trigger certain protections and a Prime’s will might strike before she was fully conscious. “Very well. Send up Severine and the maids. I shall sally
forth and find out what he is about. But only
after
I’ve a bath and perhaps some
chocolat
–I feel dreadful.”

“No doubt. Dare I ask what that was?” He all but glared at her, as if she were an errant child.

She decided she did not wish to have such a conversation with Mikal just at the moment, and so feigned to misunderstand his meaning. “I gather he was chasing a set of mad political dynamitards; no doubt they opened up a fascinating and explosive line of enquiry for his active little brain. You are dismissed, Shield.”

For a long moment he stayed precisely where he was, waiting. When it became clear she would not speak further, he sank back on his heels. “Prima?”

“If you are not promising to bring me
chocolat
as quickly as possible,
or
informing me of a sudden disaster levelling the whole of Londinium, I do not think I am disposed to hear you.” A stretch informed her of her body’s protest over yesterday’s–at least, she hoped it was yesterday and that she had not been abed for more than a Tideturn or two–events, and she took stock. Stiffness in the lower back, her arms ached, and her head throbbed as if she had been at the rum a bit too much.

“Then I shall not speak.” His face closed in on itself; he spun on one heel, stalking for the door. A bright tang of lemon-yellow irritation was clearly visible to Sight.

Emma exhaled sharply, returning her focus fully to the physical world.

When we do have a conversation, Shield, it will be on my terms
,
and mine alone.

She finished her stretch, tasted morning in her mouth, and allowed herself a grimace. Her eyes were sandy and her hair was a bird’s nest, like a witch’s tangled mane. All in all, though, she felt surprisingly hale.

That was odd, wasn’t it? She had grown accustomed to a feeling of well-being, since she had awakened from the Red with none of the scarring or other ill effects that disease normally entailed. It was similar to the Philosopher Stone’s heavy warm weight, but without the crushing burden of… guilt? Her accursed conscience had weighed on her more and more, the longer she bore the Stone plucked from Llewellyn Gwynfudd’s… body?

Perhaps it had not been ejected from his corpse. Had it been clasped in his hand as he performed the movements to aid him in remembering the cantos of his brilliant, earthshaking, and utterly insane act of sorcery?

Her return to the site of his demise had gathered no proof: only hole-eaten, anonymous bones, gryphon as well as human, drained even of the ætheric traces of their living. The shock of such a Major Work unravelling had bleached the environs into a sorcerous null-point; truth be told, she had not wished to find a distinguishing mark that proved some of the bones were
his
. She had seen his corpus shred as his interrupted Work tore him apart; it was enough.

She had privately thought, for a very long while, that his talk of a second Stone had been merely a ploy to cause her some hesitation. In the end, she had always been disposable to him.

Emma settled back among the pillows as another rattling
thud from downstairs rocked the house.
Oh, for God’s sake
. A moment’s worth of attention informed her that the stone walls of Clare’s workroom were as solid as ever, and the door–reinforced with sorcery and iron, just to be certain–was likewise. There was precious little he could
do
to himself, with that single Stone safely wedded to his lean, no-longer-aging body. And just at the moment, she was… a trifle peeved.

Did she wish to think upon such a thing now?

Well, at least she had a few precious moments of solitude to pause in reflection.

Clare could not fail to grasp the immensity of her gift. He might have some trouble with the illogical nature of near-immortality, of course–and there was another possibility, that the shredding of Llew’s physical substance as his wonderful, completely mad Work had unravelled had not been too much for even a wyrm’s-heart Stone to soothe.

Concentrate upon Clare, and let Llew rest. He is, after all, dead.
How would she appease the mentath?

She did a great deal of smoothing-over when it came to Archibald Clare. He had
some
manners, but a mentath was not an easy companion. She did not grudge him the time and attention, but she very much grudged cavalier treatment.

It was, after all, the reason she had quitted Victrix’s service. Not openly, of course. But in the secret chambers of a Prime sorceress’s heart, a measure had been taken… and a queen found wanting.

Clare was not quite found wanting. He was a most
logical, yet fragile, being, and seeing his limitations went far toward the forgiveness of certain of his regrettable tendencies. Still, it irked her. How could it not?

To be a woman was to be a creature most put-upon and taken for granted, and even those among the opposite sex who meant one well had their moments of treating one otherwise.

Yes, she had to admit, she was outright piqued.

And… Ludo.

She shut her eyes again. A precious few minutes of consciousness without the scrutiny of servants or Shield, and all she could think of was… what was Ludovico, quite, to her?

What had he been?

Simply a tool, an instrument to be played with fine attention and no little respect.

Oh, Emma, lying to yourself is still bad form. That much, at least, has not changed
.

She had grown…
accustomed
… to the Neapolitan, much as she had grown accustomed to Clare. To Mikal, and Severine, and Isobel and Cook and Harthell. They were under her aegis, they were her responsibility, and if she cared for them as hothouse plants, had not such care acquired her certain rights as well as responsibilities? Watering, pruning, adjusting the climate-globes and their charmed tinkles…

They are not plants, Emma
. A Prime’s arrogance was a weakness, and one to be reined firmly lest it blind her to real dangers.

Like yesterday. A bad bit of business, wouldn’t you say?

She exhaled sharply, turned her attention to a more productive avenue. Had Victrix seen and felt what
she
had? It flew in the face of much of what was accepted about sorcery, but Sympathy was an ancient art. What could have made a drab in Whitchapel–because Emma Bannon knew a frail when she saw one, thank you very much–possess enough resonance to cause a reaction in the ruling spirit of the Isle, the Empress of Indus, the queen of an empire grander than even the Pax Latium?

Viewing the location of the second body’s discovery should be done, but not until she had taken certain precautions.

She stretched again, tapped her lips with a finger, and sighed. For the moment, enough to accept that a resonance indubitably
had
existed. The murders were not unconnected events, and they had some aim in mind.

Why had Britannia bothered to move Victrix to Emma’s door? Why had Victrix come
alone
? Cold reflection would perhaps have assured the Queen that Emma Bannon was, perhaps, not likely to bruit the news of a ruling spirit’s weakness about high and low. Even if Victrix disliked her methods and person, Britannia was wise enough not to doubt Emma’s loyalty to Crown and Empire, no matter that the first rested on a wanting head and the second had not needed a certain sorceress’s efforts to continue widening its sway.

Why had Victrix come to her?

That is the wrong question, Emma. The correct question
is: what is she hoping to gain? From the lowest sinks of the Eastron End to the Crown itself,
that
is the great secret that moves the world. Finding a man–or a woman–who does not obey its dictates is the rarity.

And
that
was precisely why Clare could continue to treat her abominably if it so pleased him, and why she had allowed both Ludovico’s informality and his pride. It was why she allowed Severine’s nervousness and Mikal’s secrets and silences. It was why she had paid for Gilburn’s Altered leg and retained Finch’s services, why she had taken in Isobel and the half-crippled stable-boy, not to mention Cook. Those who did not play the great game of living solely for their own profit were rare and wondrous, and it pleased her to have a collection of them.

Since she was, most definitely,
not
one of their number. Yet it was through her grace and under her protection they could thrive. If one had to bloody and muck oneself in the service of Empire, or even in the business of living in such an imperfect world as this one, sheltering such castaways could take some of the sting from the wound.

“I have grown philosophical,” Emma Bannon murmured, with a wry smile, for she heard Severine Noyon’s step on the stairs, and further heard the housekeeper fussing at Catherine to
step lively, the mistress waits!

She arranged her expression into one most suited to a lady’s rising, and allowed herself one more luxurious stretch before pushing the covers away and sliding one small foot free of their encumbrance.

It was at that moment a curious thought struck her. She supposed, had she been Clare, it would have already done so.

This first murder was rather sloppily performed–it was a trial. There have been other trials, no doubt; perhaps the second was as well? Impossible to know without viewing the scene. What is it Clare says–experiment requires small steps? Britannia waited for a repeat of the event before moving Victrix to my door.

She was still abed, staring across her bedroom at the lovely blue wallpaper, when the housekeeper and lady’s maids bustled in to begin their tending.

For the logical extension of her ruminations was chilling indeed.

There is likely to be another death, and very soon.