Lilith Saintcrow - The Red Plague Affair

To the west, a colossal lifting smudge was the perpetual cinderfall of the Black Wark. Daylight was the best time to enter that region of Londinium, but Emma was still secretly grateful she did not have to.

Twenty-seven Faithgill was a large slumping building, the district here sparsely populated due to the titanic stink from the Leather Market and the slaughteryards. Nearer the Wark, the clockhorse pens, where equine flesh was married to tireless metal in service to industry, gave out its own stench of coppery blood, terror, and the smokegloss of Alterative sorcery. The warehouses here would be full of spare bits for mechanisterum, to be hauled into Southwark and given function before being shipped out, gleaming proudly, down the Themis to the sea.

No few of the vast boxlike structures would be stuffed with meat laid under slowly unravelling sealcharm, dripping ice and great fans wedded to cool charms to keep the interior of such buildings frigid. Catmeat and poor viands, true, but Emma always wondered how many of Londinium’s finest ate this un-veal, unknowing. It was a good thing her own Cook was a canny marketer… and happy in her employ.

Mikal’s face was a thundercloud, but she dared not acknowledge it. Instead, she gazed upon the rotting two-storey edifice, its brick crumbling and its timbers slumping dispiritedly. It looked to have been built in the time of Henry the Wifekiller, a vessel of Britannia who had paradoxically hated women almost as much as Kim Rudyard. Henry had also hated the Church, and had garnered the support of sorcery’s children – even the females – by expelling the worst of the Inquisition from the Isle’s shores along with the scarlet and black plague of Popish filth.

“I rather hope he is at home,” she remarked, merely to break the tension. The sky was a mass of yellow cloud, Londinium’s coal-breath holding the city under a lens. Perhaps after Tideturn it would rain. “Though it seems unlikely.”

Both Shields gave her astonished glances. She shook her head, her curls bouncing against her ears and her peridot earrings swinging, a reassuring weight. “Never mind. Mikal, if you please. Eli, with me.”

Her caution was almost useless. The inside of the warehouse consisted of two rooms – Morris’s living quarters were tucked behind a sagging partition, spare as a monk’s. A pallet, a small empty table that might have served as a desk or bedside table, and a single easy-chair in some hideous moth-eaten black fabric, and that was all. No wardrobe, no washbasin.

No means of storing food.

The workroom bore evidence of being lived in, but it was also full of disorder. Smashed glass smeared with various crusted substances lay everywhere, corroded brass fittings broken in piles on the floor, and scorching over everything as if a cleansing fire had been attempted. Emma wrinkled her nose at the stench. How had anyone breathed in here? More glass crunched like silver bones underfoot, and she did not bother to tell the Shields to move cautiously.

Later, she wondered if she should have. But she was too occupied with the new attention Eli was paying Mikal, and the deepening ill temper Mikal was barely – but thoroughly – keeping in check.

It was, indeed, a dreadful afternoon.

Miss Bannon’s childlike face was unwontedly serious as she cut into her chop. “It is a puzzle, and one I should be glad of your help in solving.”

“A physicker gone astray. Hmm.” Clare applied himself to his own plate with a will. Miss Bannon’s table was always superlative, and the graceful silver epergne had the air of an old friend. Even the carved gryphon legs holding the aforesaid table level, shifting occasionally as currents of sorcery or tension passed through the room, had become familiar. “Faithgill Street? Bermondsey?”

“Yes. Number twenty-seven. Very hard by the Leather Market.” She was a little pale, and her tone had lost some of its usual crispness. Another might not have remarked upon it, but Clare’s faculties had seized upon the tiny details as a distraction from the weary retreading of ground connected to Dr Vance.

And besides, he could flatter himself that after this much time he… did he? Yes. He could say he was well-acquainted with Miss Bannon.

He could even say he knew her. As much as a man could ever be said to know a woman whose trade was the illogic of sorcery.

“Very hard by the Black Wark.” He paused again, as if thinking. The idea of that quarter of Londinium – the falling ash, every angle fractionally but critically off, and the thing that crouched inside its confines – tried to wring a small shudder from him. He controlled the movement, thinking of the equations he had arrived at to explain the range of degrees by which everything in the Wark had subtly shifted , and by consigning everything inside those ranges to a definition of “variable” soothed his nervousness most admirably.

“Yes.” A tiny line had begun between her dark eyebrows. “Though during daylight, the Wark is… not very dangerous.”

The last time we ventured into that place, we barely escaped with our lives. And when I had a moment to reflect later, I arrived at the conclusion that you were the one most at risk. But he contented himself with a noncommittal, “I see,” and another pause, as if he needed further deliberation.

He sat, as usual, at Miss Bannon’s right hand. Valentinelli beside him was applying himself to his plate with fierce, mannerly abandon. On Miss Bannon’s left, Mikal ate slowly, rather in the manner of a cat who does not quite need the sustenance but likes the taste. Eli, dark and silent, had a high flush to his cheeks. Some manner of embarrassment between the sorceress and the men set to guarding her from physical danger, perhaps? The younger Shield merely toyed with his food, and Clare turned his attention in another direction.

“A genius of Biology. Hrm. Well. It seems he wished to stay hidden. That quarter of the city is rather notorious in that respect. And… the house was quite sound, you say?”

“Quite reasonably so, except for a great deal of broken glass in what I took to be his workroom. Shattered alembics and other curious pieces. Metal wiring, some brass pieces I took the liberty of sketching…” Miss Bannon lay her fork and knife down, with delicate precision. She took a sip from her water goblet, though a glass of mannerly hock stood by her plate; she held to the Continental custom of champagne as a dessert instead of to accompany the roast. “There are also some pieces in the workroom I have made available for you. Since I rather rudely assumed you would be disposed to shed some light on the matter.”

“Quite disposed.” The smile that stretched his lips was not unfamiliar now. “And you anticipated my likely request for such a space.”

Across the table, Eli laid his own cutlery down. He had hardly touched his meat, and that was unlike him. The man liked his roast, and indeed ate such a goodly portion Clare was surprised he was not round as a partridge by now.

Of course, the daily sparring practice with Mikal was enough to keep anyone trim. Clare only occasionally partook of that , and the Shields treated him with a consideration he might consider insulting if he had not seen them in action against others of their ilk.

To see the Shields fight in deadly earnest was… distressing.

“Anticipation. A woman’s sorcery.” She toasted him with the water goblet, and he was surprised by the answering smile rising across her features. For someone with such a decided air, her face was oddly young, and yet Clare only sometimes saw flashes of the girl she must have been. “Mr Finch will show you to the workroom whenever it suits you.”