Lilith Saintcrow - The Red Plague Affair

The room was hardly bigger than a closet, its only claim to light or ventilation a small opening near the ceiling. It was barred, but the bars had been worked loose, their softened bases still tingling with ætheric force, torn free of damp-eaten wood. A scrap of black material caught on one fluttered, and Mikal’s fingers darted out, catching and tearing it free as Emma braced herself for more traps.

Which were not present.

The room was echo-empty, and a whiff of brimstone and salt drifting across her nose told her someone had been busily cleaning ætheric traces away. “Oh, bother ,” she whispered, in lieu of something less polite. No reason not to act the lady now.

There was a large damp stain on the floor, and despite the chill a lazy bluebottle had found it and was busily investigating. The cot held scraps of white and green, and she cocked her head, openly staring.

A tussie-mussie of jonquil and almond blossoms, a flowerseller’s small silvery dust-powder charm keeping them damp and fresh, lay twined with a red ribbon. Underneath, a folio of new, stiff leather lay, still fuming of the solutions used to tan it.

“Blood,” Mikal said, grimly. But softly. “Prima?”

“Not enough to consign dear Kim to the afterworld, I fear.” She stared at the flowers and the folio. “And it is unlike him to leave me a gift of any sort.”

Her eyes half-lidded. The almond blossom was a sign of promise, and the jonquil’s pale creaminess spoke of a demand for the return of a certain affection. The red ribbon – blood, perhaps? But Kim Finchwilliam Rudyard would not leave her such tokens.

The other Prime? Perhaps. Probing delicately, she caught no hint or taste of trap. Mikal ghosted forward, waiting for her gesture, and when she sighed and spread her free hand he gingerly touched the nosegay with a fingertip.

Still no trap.

He tucked the flowers under his arm and brought the folio to her; she held it in her free hand while he unknotted the handkerchief and wrapped the broken necklace back into a small efficient parcel, which she slid into a skirt pocket. The folio was so new it creaked, bearing no impress of personality as a well-used item would, and she opened it with a certain trepidation.

Inside, crackling yellow paper, covered in a spidery hand. Her lips thinned as she brought the witchglobe close, uncaring that the sensitised, freshly cleansed æther would hold the impress of even so minor a Work as a simple light for a long while.

And with it, her own presence, like a shout in the night.

Drawings. She riffled through the papers, and her suspicion was verified.

“Well, Clare will be very happy,” she murmured. “But I am unsettled, Shield.”

“Yes.” He held the flowers, gazing at them curiously. Did he understand the message? This was a carefully set stage, and the nosegay had been planned just as the rest of it.

But not, Emma thought, by Rudyard. There was another player at the board. A Sorcerer Prime. One in the service of Britannia? But if so, why would he smooth her way?

I do not like this at all.

Clare blinked, focused through the lenses, adjusting a small brass knob. “Still wriggling. Nasty little buggers.”

“Once they are in the blood, they are remarkably resistant.” Vance was hunched over his own spæctroscope, his fingers delicate as he fiddled with the resolutia marix . “Even a severe temperature change does not alter their rate of progression. Fascinating.”

“Quite.” Clare restrained the urge to tap his fingertips on the scarred wooden table with frustration. “The clorace-mine?”

“No effect, except to cause the iron in the blood to crystallise. Which I really must investigate further, when this is finished. The applications could be—I say !”

“What?”

“Nothing. They’re still alive, even as the acidity rises. It does lower their rate of division, but…”

“… not enough,” Clare finished. He coughed, wetly, turning his head aside so he did not foul the sample. Traces of steam rose from his cheeks, and he blinked them aside, irritably. It was chill in the workroom, Miss Bannon kindly leaving a charm to keep the temperature fairly steady in order for experimentation to have one less variable.

Valentinelli dozed on a stool near the door. He looked far more sallow than usual, but his scarred cheeks held splotches of bright crimson. His breathing had turned into a whistle, but his dark gaze darted occasionally from under his eyelids, sharp as a knife and more often than not settling on Vance’s broad back.

The criminal mentath had taken his jacket off despite the chill, and his shirt was adhered to his skin by a fine sheen of sweat. He selected another culture and another substance from the racks to his right, deftly sliding the fresh marrowe-jelly full of the original plague organisms into the spæctroscope’s receiver. He uncapped the clorafinete powder, measured out a spoonful, mixed it with fresh marrowe-jelly in a small glass bowl, and selected a dropper from the small rectangular serviette full of sterilising steam. Two shakes, the dropper cooling rapidly, and the clorafinete mixture was introduced to the original plague. He twisted another knob slightly, and put a bloodshot eye to the viewpiece.

“Blast this all to hell,” he muttered.

Clare quite agreed. There was no time, and yet this numbing systematic process was the one that held the greatest chance of working. He himself was no further than wachamile, working from the other end of the elemental pharma-alphabet.

Footsteps on the stairs. The door was flung open and Miss Bannon appeared, high natural colour in her cheeks, her curls disarranged. “Morris’s notes!” she exclaimed, holding a creaking-new leather folio aloft rather in the manner of a Maenad brandishing the ivy-wrapt heart of a transgressor.

Such fanciful notions, Clare . But his faculties were in rebellion.

“How on earth did you—” Vance halted abruptly as a charter symbol flashed golden between Miss Bannon’s fingers, hissing warningly. The Doctor, already halfway across the workroom, approached the sorceress no further. “Ah. I, erm. Well.”

Clare rubbed at his eyes, carefully. He moves very quickly.

“Will these help, Clare? I confess I cannot make much of them.” It was odd, she seemed almost joyous. “But you can. There is another message from the Crown, too. I have not opened it either, but we shall be rather in bad odour if I do not make some variety of explanation soon. The streets are full of coughing, and people collapsing in the road – even respectable people. Why is it so fast ?”

“I do not know.” A thought occurred to him. “Did you happen to see any of the victims with an indenture collar? I ask because your servants have not so much as a cough, yet, and—”

There was a soft thud. Valentinelli had hit the stone floor, and Miss Bannon dropped the folio. In that moment, Clare saw truly what she must have looked like as a young girl, and chided himself for thinking he had ever glimpsed the wonder of it before.

She knelt next to Ludovico, tucking her skirts back, and the assassin cried out weakly in Calabrian. The scarlet flags on his cheeks had intensified, and the shadow under his jaw was a swelling – not yellow, as the new plague, but deadly black, as the old.

Clare’s beastly conscience pinched. He knew the risk, I explained it – there are quite deadly vapours here. How did he contract it, though? Did the plague-pit infect him somehow? But it would have infected Morris too.

The sorceress’s house shivered once. Running feet in its recesses told him the servants heard their mistress’s call.

Clare’s knees creaked as he bent to pick up the folio. A wave of dizziness passed through him; his faculties noted it, allowed it to recede. He was thinking through syrup. “I will not ask how you acquired these, Miss Bannon. Do make Ludovico comfortable. We shall send word should we require more supplies.”