Lilith Saintcrow: The Red Plague Affair

“Because you will calculate that the dissemination of this marvellous remedy, no matter what profit I gain from it, is worth letting me go unhindered. Especially since it has reached the Continent, and no doubt the shores of the New World as well.” And d—n the man, but he sounded so very certain.

Just as Clare did, when he knew beyond a doubt what calculation should be attempted to bring the world to rights.

She tapped her fingers on her knee, exactly once. Her back had straightened, and she felt almost herself again, despite the heat of the day. It was uncomfortably close in the carriage, and her underarms were damp. Her corset, filthy as it was, scraped against her skin. It had no doubt worn her into a rash. “The satisfaction of knowing you will no longer be a bother may outweigh that philanthropic interest.”

“It will not, Miss Bannon. You are a creature of Justice, however odd your method of applying it.” He leaned back against the cushions. “I must say, you have a splendid carriage. I quite admire it.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Thank you.”

The silence that fell was not quite comfortable. Her breathing came a trifle short, but she could attribute that to her damnable corset.

Finally, she sighed. The weariness that had settled on her pressed deeper, into her very bones. At the moment, she very much missed the warmth of the Stone in her chest.

And yet she did not miss the crushing upon her conscience that bearing the Stone had brought her. How Llew would laugh, were he alive to guess such a weakness on her part.

“You shall cease being a nuisance to Mr Clare.” She eyed him closely. “Or I shall cut out your heart, sir, and feast upon it.” There is more than enough of your bodily fluids – and your clothing, sir – left at my house for me to practise a nasty sympathy or two upon.

“That,” Dr Francis Vance said, with a wide white smile on his haggard, Red-ravaged face, “is my promise to you, dear lady. Do take care of Clare, he is a giant among mentaths.”

With that, he reached for the carriage door and was gone even as the conveyance rolled. Emma caught Mikal’s arm.

“Let him go,” she said, and surprised herself.

For her pained, unamused laugh turned into a deep, wracking cough, and her forehead was clammy-damp.

Mikal had turned pale, even under his dark colouring. “Prima…”

She gestured for silence, and he subsided. Emma studied his face as the carriage rolled, Harthell gaining as much speed as he dared on the choked thoroughfares, moans and cries and coughs rising in a sea around them. The cup of the city brimmed over, and she found she could not say what she wished.

I am sorry, Mikal. For you shall very shortly be cast adrift, and I am selfish, for I cannot cling to this manner of life any more. No matter my responsibility to you, to them… to Her …

She coughed again, her fingers in their torn and stained gloves pressing over her mouth, and they came away dripping with red. “Oh, dear,” she murmured, and pitched aside, into Mikal’s arms.

The house rang with terror and footsteps. Clare tacked out into the hall, the weakness in his limbs quite shockingly intense despite his rather extraordinary feeling of well-being. He fumbled at his jacket buttons, finally inducing the little beasts to behave, and looked up to see Madame Noyon, her grey-streaked hair piled loosely atop her head and her face tearstained, hurry past with an armful of linen.

“I say,” he began, but the housekeeper vanished down the hall. I say!

One of the lady’s maids – Isobel, the scarred one – leaned against the wall by Valentinelli’s door, dumbly staring after Noyon with glittering eyes. Her cheeks were wet, and she had the look of a young woman who had just been rather viciously stabbed in the heart.

“I say,” Clare approached her. “Isobel, dear, what is it? What is the—”

“It’s Missus,” she whispered, through pale, perhaps-numb lips. Her indenture collar was oddly dark, the powdery metal’s radiance dimming. “She’s taken the ill, she has. We’re likely next, she wot was holding it back an’all!”

What? For a moment, his faculties refused to function, despite the tests he had administered to them that very morning, lying in his freshly made bed and quite comfortable at last. He stood very still, his head drooping forward and taking in the girl’s feet in their pert, sensible boots.

Bannon does have a weakness for sensible footwear, for herself and her servants alike. He shook his head, slowly. “Ah. Well. There is not a moment to lose, then. I must—”

“ GET OUT! ” It was a scream from the top of the stairs leading to Miss Bannon’s chambers. Mikal’s voice, and it shook the entire house in quite a different manner than Miss Bannon’s return or her anger.

Madame Noyon came hurrying down them, paper-pale and shaking afresh. She babbled in French, Horace and the blonde Eirean maid Bridget behind her chattering in proper but horribly disjointed Englene, and it took quite some time for him to gather a coherent picture of what had transpired.

The Shield had evicted them from his mistress’s chambers, quite rudely. While Clare rested himself, Miss Bannon had taken ill; she had passed through the swellings and the convulsions were upon her.

It is too late. The pain in his chest was not angina, it was… something else.

He did not have time to discern its source, or so he told himself.

Clare bolted for the workroom.

The stench was terrible. He reeled into the stone room, and it was a very good thing he had not been able to stomach much of any provender lately, for his cast-iron mentath’s digestion did not seem to have survived the illness quite as well as the rest of him.

It was dark, and his boots slipped in a crust of God alone knew what on the floor. How had they stood it down here?

He found his way by touch to the desk, slipping and sliding. His hip banged a table and something fell, shattering. Perhaps it was a fresh load of plague-freighted marrowe-jelly, but he cared little, if at all.

The drawer slid open, and his questing fingers found nothing but a small jewelled box. He swore aloud, a series of vile terms no gentleman should give voice to, and fumbled more deeply in the drawer, and still his sensitive fingertips found nothing but wood, dust, and the box of coja.

The vials he had hidden here, as well as in the pockets of his jacket… gone.

He turned, sharply, snatching up and hurling the tiny box across the room. The crack of its breaking was lost in the sound working free of his throat.

It could not be a sob. Mentaths were not prey to Feeling in such an intense fashion. Feeling was to be examined, thoroughly in some cases, then accounted for and set aside so one could function.

He swallowed something that tasted of iron. Staggered for the door, his legs a newborn colt’s. Retraced his route through the house, and found a hall crowded with servants. Ludovico was there too, leaning on Gilburn, haggard and swearing steadily, monotonously, in pure noble Italian. He was pale, his pitted cheeks so thinned his face had become a skeleton’s grin. La strega , he would murmur, then demone maledetta , and finally donna dolce , and other terms that would have been quite revealing, had Clare cared to apply deduction to them.

They clustered at the foot of the stairs, Miss Bannon’s collection of castaways, the servants making a soft noise every time the light of their indenture collars dimmed. Clare pushed through them, blindly.

No. Please… dear God, not Emma. I thought she was immune!