Lilith Saintcrow: The Red Plague Affair

Clare had tossed his jacket and shirt over the desk chair, his narrow chest with its sparse hair visibly sunken as his body, held to its task by his faculties and a mentath’s disciplined Will, struggled under the burden. Vance was hardly better, his larger frame scarecrow-wasted and his eyes glittering through the red film. He had stripped down to an undershirt of grey linen, and it did Clare much good to notice the criminal mentath was not quite so fastidious in his underdress as he was in his outer.

They both moved slowly. Past words now, they shuffled about the workroom, its chill that of a crypt. Bubbling alembics as the muscovide was distilled, and they need not culture the new plague, for their own secretions teemed with Morris’s deadly gift to mankind. A single glance, or the offer of a freshly sterilised glass dropper, was all they needed.

Outside the workroom, Londinium writhed. The fog, normally venom-yellow, turned grey and greasy with the smoke from the bonfires some of the bodies were tossed onto.

On the fourth day, Miss Bannon appeared. “Clare?” Her gaze was somewhat odd, and he shelved the observation with a mental shudder. He had limited resources, and could not spare them. Not with this matter before him.

Even a mentath’s determination would only stretch so far.

“Working.” He coughed. “Tomorrow. Come back.”

She stood in the door of the workroom, her small hands turned to fists, and after a long while, Clare noticed she had gone. The green pinpricks in her pupils seemed more the product of his fever than of her illogical sorcery. Her house was an island on a sea of chaos, and even the Crown had ceased sending missives.

Britannia, it seemed, was occupied with other matters.

None of the servants took ill, and meals arrived on silver trays and were sent away untouched. They were not quite of the usual quality, but Clare – when he expended any thought on the matter at all, which was briefly at best – realised that Londinium’s supplies must be thin indeed at the moment.

An island, yes. But at the island’s heart, two small grains of grit, their accretions of bloody phlegm and various odd bits of rubbish from their experiments carted away by pale, trembling servants who nonetheless did not cough and choke, nor grow fevered.

He supposed, when he thought on it – never for very long, there was too much else to be done – that both he and Vance would not live to see the fruits of their labour. There was no word of other mentaths succumbing to the disease, but of course, the broadsheets would not be interested in such things.

On the fifth day, Miss Bannon appeared as he had directed, standing in the door. She wore no jewellery, which was the first oddity; the second was her haggardness, her gaze burning in the peculiar way of sorcerers – as if she had forgotten her very self , or some vast impersonal thing was looking out through her skull. It was not the same terrible presence as Britannia peering forth from Her chosen vessel, for Britannia was recognisable in some essential way sorcery was not.

Clare spat at the bowl, accurately. A great deal of practice had refined such an operation – three coughs, deep and terrible, working the weight free of his chest, the roll of the tongue packing the bloody sludge into a compact mass, then the expectoration – just enough of an arc to land it in the bowl with a wet plop ! It exhausted him, and he leaned against the table, clutching a small glass vial.

Vance swayed. “Muscovide,” he croaked. “Who. Would have –” a series of coughs, and he spat as well – “thought?”

Quite . But Clare could not speak. His heart, labouring under the strain, thundered in his ears. He held the vial up, and Vance took it, shook it critically.

“Will it. Work?” The criminal mentath – at least he was, Clare thought hazily, a very fine lab assistant – reached for the spæctroscope. It took him two tries to curl his bloodstained fingers about the dial of the resolutia marix .

This was the last test, and Clare’s faculties blinked for a moment. He surfaced through a great quantity of clear, very warm water to find himself standing, head down, breathing thickly like a clockhorse suffering metallic rheum, staring as Vance eased a dropperful of the thin red substance from the vial into the scope’s dish, where a mass of plague was no doubt writhing and wriggling.

“Suction… tube,” Vance wheezed. “It must be… introduced… under the skin.”

Miss Bannon said something about a needle, and a Discipline.

“Perhaps.” Vance coughed again. “We shall… see.” His breathing failed for a moment, he swayed again, then leaned down to the spæctroscope’s viewpiece.

Clare found his head turning. He stared at Miss Bannon, in her severe black, with no jewels swinging at her ears or glittering at her fingers. You could not tell she was a sorceress except for those green pinpricks in her pupils, the smudges underneath dark as charcoal and her curls more unevenly dressed than he had ever seen them. Had Madame Noyon taken ill?

Her lips moved. Something about Ludovico. Was he dead, then?

A vast weightlessness settled on his chest. The relief was immense, and as his knees failed, Clare realised he was expiring.

It did not hurt. That was the first surprise.

The second was Miss Bannon’s wiry strength as she caught him, easing his fall, His field of vision swung to include Vance, who was staring down at him with a peculiar, saddened expression.

Had the cure not worked? But that was impossible , every other test had been—

Vance’s knees buckled. His fingers were at his trouser pocket, and Clare thought slowly that it was important , something about that was vitally important.

Miss Bannon did not move to catch Vance as he folded to the floor. Instead, she bent over Clare, and the sound of her ragged breathing was the last he heard before darkness took him. It was perhaps as well he did not hear what followed.

For Emma Bannon, finally, wept.

“Put him to bed.” Emma’s throat was afire, her eyes dry-burning. She had not slept in days, it seemed, and Mikal was just as haggard.

Ludovico still clung to life; the black boils had burst and he merely lay, weak but still breathing, bandages changed every few hours as the suppurating wounds healed. His dark eyes were those of a captive hawk, sullen and hot with weakness he raged against even as his strength gathered and his body fought off the ravages of whatever dreadful illness he had contracted. It was not the Red, that much was certain; his boils had been black , and Clare was in no condition to answer any questions.

Marcus hefted Clare’s shoulders. “Light as a feather, he is.”

Gilburn grunted, heaving the mentath’s lower half. “Not from this end, sir.”

It is Clare, do not … She could not even finish the thought. Instead, she stood in the fœtid workroom, staring at the heap of sodden cloth that had been Francis Vance. There was a slow-burning ember still clasped in the man’s vitals, but it was more than likely the foxfire of nerves and meat slowly leaching of fevered life.

In any case she did not care. “Put that outside. The pickers will take it.”

“Yesmum.” Finch’s face did not wrinkle with distaste, but it might have been a near thing. “Mum?”

Small flames danced under boiling alembics; the floor was a mess of slippery substances perhaps better left unexamined. Papers with odd notations were strewn about, some crumpled, others merely drifting to scatter on the sludge. The water-closet was likely to be a horror. She could charm it clean, and she would.