Lilith Saintcrow - The Red Plague Affair

“Good heavens.” Miss Bannon took another mannerly sip of tea. “Is there anyone in this house you have not annoyed, Vance?”

It was, Clare rather thought, a declaration of war. Vance apparently chose not to register it as such. “Mr Clare, perhaps. And I’m sure there is a servant or two who has not seen me. What news, old chum?”

I grow weary of the familiarity of your address . But Clare set aside the irritation. It served no purpose. “Mr Morris fell victim to his own creation, so we are forced to a process of experimentation. Any of his papers or effects detailing his own experiments – Bannon, I don’t suppose we could lay hands on them?”

“I have a faint idea where they may be found.” Miss Bannon’s tone chilled slightly. “I hope the one likely to possess them has not left Englene’s shores, or I shall be vexed with travel as well. I require as much information as you can give me about the nature of this illness. Perhaps it may yet be Mended.”

“If so, I shall be glad of it.” Clare closed The Times and opened the Courier , a most disreputable rag notable for the poor quality of its paper, the hideous shape of its typography, and its absolute accuracy in detailing the grievances of the lower classes. “For I must confess, Bannon, I am not sanguine in the least.”

Saffron Hill hunched colourlessly under morning drizzle. Emma felt just as dreary, her outlines blurred by a slight glamour – no more than a smearing, a delicate insinuation against the gaze, so that her cloth did not tell against her. Beside her, Mikal was utterly still, studying the end of the street where it devolved into Field Lane, and a more wretched bit of dirt would be difficult to find even in Londinium.

The weight in Emma’s left hand was a thin, broken chain of cheap silvery metal. Caught in its links was a thread of dark hair, stubbornly coarse. The tiny brass charm attached very near the break held the impress of a double-faced Indus godling, one of the many who made the subcontinent such a patchwork of competing interests and principalities.

Ripe for exploitation, they are, and Britannia’s servants experts of divide and rule. We have done as much since Golden Bess’s day. And before. We learned well from the Pax Latium, for all we were slow to apply such lessons.

What instinct had moved her to quietly pocket the broken necklace she had found tangled in Llewellyn Gwynnfud’s spacious purple-hung bed on a summer’s morning long ago? Their affair had died a fiery death over a certain French “actress”; while Emma was merely unwilling to share, she was outright indisposed to being lied to. The tart had been knifed by her “manager” – Emma had borne the accusation of a hand in that manner nobly, considering she was completely innocent – and had been almost, almost willing to forgive.

She was no Seer, and the revelation of the necklace’s owner – and the source of the coarse dark hair caught in its strands – had been quite surprising. She supposed Llew was catholic in his buggery, in every sense, and so had quietly left his house and returned to her own with the cheap chain burning in her skirt pocket.

And she had never received him again, or sought his company since. Until Bedlam, and the affair that had brought Clare to her notice, and to… yes.

To her regard.

Any idiot with ætheric talent knew how to practise a sympathy. And dear old Kim would not be on guard. She had never mentioned that little incident to another living soul. Kim may well have thought Lord Sellwyth had retained the scrap as a memento Llew may not have even known that his dalliance had been discovered or that a piece of evidence had found its way into her hands.

She held it tightly, her gloved fist bound as well with a silken handkerchief Mikal had knotted with exceeding care. It would not do to lose this sympathetic link. She would be forced to resort to other, bloodier, and far more draining methods to find her quarry.

Grey-faced children dressed in ragged colourless oddments slunk in every bit of shade they could find, and the æther here was thick with misery. In Whitchapel there was anger aplenty, but this corner of Londinium had burned through all such fuel long ago and was left with only cinder-glazed hopelessness. It was a wonderful place to hide, if one was a sorcerer; but the ætheric weight would rather tell on the nerves after a while.

If he had any nerves left, that was.

The chain and charm hummed with live sorcery as she caught the rhythm, her throat filling with a strange murmur, heavily accented in odd places. It was a song of spice and incense, the dust of the Indus rising through the cadences, and the brief thought that perhaps Mikal would find it familiar threatened to distract her.

She waited. Patience was necessary, though the consciousness of precious time draining away frayed her nerves most disagreeably. Clare had not looked well this morning, pale and rather moist, but who would look hale when faced with this ? As well as that distasteful art professor.

The man had looked very much like the worst sort of disreputable, with a cast to his mouth that was utterly familiar, especially since Emma had gone recently into Whitchapel and peered behind the dark curtain smothering her pre-Collegia memories. She rather disliked those recollections, and endeavoured to put them as far from her as possible.

The trouble was, sometimes they would not stay tamely in their enclosure.

Another twitch, the sympathetic sorcery testing her grasp. Like called to like, and of course he would have defences, some overt, others subtle and more dangerous. Yet he was not on his home ground, and could not risk a heavy expenditure of ætheric force lest it twist in unexpected ways – and, most likely, eat him alive.

Such was not a pleasant end.

Another twitch, more definite, and she pointed with her free hand, a corkscrew-twisted charter symbol spitting and spilling from her right third finger. Mikal had her arm; he guided her across the sludge of the street, old cobbles and bricks slipping and sliding under a thick greasing of muck. It was not Scab, of course, but it was fœtid enough.

She had a vague impression of warped wood and crumbling brick; the consciousness of being all but blind as she followed the inner tugging struck her, hard. Losing breath, the humming tune failing, she shunted aside the force of the triggered defence and inhaled smoothly, the song becoming a hiss-rasp of scales against dry-oiled stone. Mikal’s voice, very low – he would be speaking to soothe her if he suspected she struggled with a defensive ætheric hedge.

It was not necessary, but vaguely pleasant nonetheless.

She came back to herself with a rush rather like the humours rising to the head after one sprang too quickly from a sickbed, and her left hand jerked forward and held steady until the connection broke with a subliminal snap . Before her rose a crooked door made glue and sawdust, and the narrow, barely lit hall was full of refuse. Somewhere a baby cried angrily, and there was a stealthy noise in the walls – rats, or the poor packed into these rooms like maggots in cheese. Either was likely.

Mikal had drawn a knife. Its curve lay along the outer edge of his forearm, and his eyes were alight with a fierce joy she rarely saw. Her eyebrow lifted a fraction, and he shook his head slightly. He could hear no heartbeat, no breathing behind the door.

Which meant little.

She stepped aside, very carefully, testing the rotting floor before committing her weight. It was her turn to settle herself and nod, fractionally; Mikal uncoiled. The door shattered, a witchlight sparking into being and flaring to distract and disrupt any possible attack, he swept through with her skirts hard on his heels and gave the small hole one swift, thorough glance before turning unerringly toward the makeshift cot mouldering in the corner.