Lilith Saintcrow - The Red Plague Affair

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.

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.

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.