Lilith Saintcrow - The Red Plague Affair

Emma came to a halt as the door swung shut behind her. Mikal stayed outside; her single scorching look had expressed her desire to face this alone.

“ You ,” Victrix repeated, and it was curious how certain Emma could be that it was the mortal Queen speaking, though the spirit of rule shone out through her eyes. “ How dare you bring this into Our presence! ”

For a few moments, Emma could hardly credit her ears. Then she realised the nature of the accusation, and her chin lifted. “You sent me to recover Morris, Your Majesty. I did. I even did my best to bring him to you before he expired – at Your express command. Had You seen fit to be more open with me about the nature of his filthy ‘ experiments ’, much of this could have been avoided.” There is my gauntlet, Majesty. Return it if you dare.

For a moment she could not believe she had addressed the Queen so. But the vision of Clare, his sunken cheeks afire and his body held to the task before him with sheer will, rose before her. And it was Victrix’s game – the game of empire, of weapons and conquest – that had birthed this monstrosity.

And not only Clare, but Londinium suffered under its lash as well.

“ Our Consort sickens .” Victrix almost howled the words, and the pall over the Palace rattled ominously with thunder. “ There must be a remedy! ”

She is only a woman, after all, and one with a heart. Something inside Emma’s chest cracked slightly. “I am engaged upon—”

It was, she would remember, the last few moments of the Bannon who had sworn service not just aloud, but in the secret chambers of her very self.

Angry colour suffused Victrix’s cheeks, less tender now than when they were crowned. “ Engaged? Engaged? Engage more thoroughly ! ” Everything in the room jumped slightly, and Alberich moaned.

Do I look as if I have been taking the waters at Bath? Heat mounted in Emma’s own cheeks, and the two women were perhaps just as scarlet-cheeked as the Consort now. “I cannot create sheer miracles—”

“ You are a filthy sorceress, what else are you good for? ” the Queen cried, in a paroxysm of rage. “ Creeping in corners, a shameless proudnecked hussy airing before her betters! ” She lifted a trembling, ring-jewelled hand, the gems scintillating with fury, and pointed. “ If he dies, if you have killed him, I will punish —”

Emma inhaled sharply. The ice was all through her, now. The crack in her chest whistled a cold, clear draught right down to her very core. “ I did not loose this madness upon the world, Victrix. Your own Crown did that, with no help from me. It is unwise – and unbecoming – for you to speak so.”

“ Get out! Do not return until you have found the remedy, and if my Consort dies I will have your head! ”

“You are,” she informed the screeching woman, “welcome to try to separate said head from my shoulders.” But it is a task you had best be prepared for the unpleasantness of, and the trouble and expense. I am not some cowering, simpering aristocrat.

What was she thinking ?

She did not make a courtesy, either. She turned on her heel, not trusting her voice should she speak further. There were Words crowding her throat and a suspicious looseness at the very lowest floor of her soul – the barred door of her Discipline, ready to open and swallow her whole.

If she loosed it in this fashion, a raging conduit for the power of the Endor, it would not be Thomas Coldfaith’s act of sacrifice.

No, it would be… otherwise. And the first place that freed sorcery would strike was the suck-sobbing woman crouched at the bedside of her husband, with the ruling spirit watching – coolly, calculating – through her madness.

Victrix beat her small plump hands on the counterpane, and Emma’s passage threw the door back, the wood splintering in a long vertical crack as her control slipped a fraction. The material of her dress scorched, a new layer of reek added to the sweetbriar-sickness, the choking atmosphere of the Red.

Mikal’s fingers closed about her arm, and such was Emma Bannon’s countenance that none dared question or halt them as the Shield, perhaps sensing the danger, ushered her from the room stinking of sweetness and smoke.

He did not believe in dæmons. Logic and rationality did not admit such creatures.

And yet, while he burned and twisted, sweat-slick fabric clasped in his wet palms, they were all about him. Black-faced, leering, their white teeth champing, they crowded around the bed and laughed, pointing at him.

Why is this … He could not frame the question. His faculties spun, logic mutating, his heart labouring uselessly inside his clogged chest.

Another crisis came, the convulsion tearing through him, his entire body a rod of iron, the star of his faculties a whirling firework inside his aching, too-small skull. He dimly heard himself ranting, shouting filthy words he would never have uttered had he been possessed of his sanity, and the cotton padding in his ears thump-thudded with his heartbeat.

Dying . When the wracking ended, he knew he was. The tide was running away, and once in his childhood there had been the sea along a pebbled beach and his own disbelieving laughter as he saw something so vast , and…

Miss Bannon’s voice. “Clare. Archibald .”

He was too weak to respond. The sea was all inside him now, its complexity turning to equations, shining strands of logic knitted together so closely they seemed a whole fabric, the vice in his skull and the pounding in his chest dual engines pulling in opposite directions.

“No. Close the door.” Miss Bannon, hoarse as if with weeping. “ Close the door, Mikal.”

“What are you—” The Shield, breathless. Another convulsion was coming, and Clare’s body was lax in its approaching grip. When its fingers tightened, something in his brain or blood would give way, and the relief would be immense.

Vance. Is he alive?

“Prima… no. No .”

A meaty, bone-crunching, wrenching sound. A word he could not quite hear, and Emma’s voice, raised sharply.

“It is mine to give, Shield! And if you will not obey, I will free you from my service instantly .” It was a tone he had never heard from her before – utterly chill, utterly level, simply factual instead of threatening.

It was dreadful to hear a woman’s sweet voice so. The convulsion edged closer, playing with him, stroking along his body with a feather-caress. The dæmons laughed and twisted.

She does not know, you did not tell her. She does not know .

“Archibald,” she whispered, the touch of her breath cold on his slicked cheek. “Dear God, Archibald, forgive me.”

There is nothing to —

Then the pain came, and clove him in half. A sudden weight in his chest, as if the angina had returned, and he was never sure afterward if the hellish scream that rose was torn from his own lips… or from Emma’s.

Archibald Clare fell into a star-drenched night, and the coolness of a summer sea.

Light. Against his eyelids. He blinked, the foulness crusting his eyes irritating as he sought to lift a hand. The appendage obeyed, and he gingerly scrubbed at his face. All manner of matter was dried upon his skin, and every inch of him crawled.

His hand fell back to his side. He took stock.

Weak, but lucid. Again. He blinked several times, and found his familiar bed at Miss Bannon’s closed about him. Safe and secure as a little nut in a shell, for a moment he simply savoured the act of breathing without obstruction. Such a little thing, and one did not value it properly until it was taken away.