The Iron Wyrm Affair

Chapter Thirteen Britannia’s Worst

Emma spent most of that half-hour roaming her study as the swelling on her face retreated, running her fingers along leather-clad spines and attempting to clear her mind. The skull on her desk creaked each time she passed, bone-dust rising and settling along its grinning curves. Mikal, by now well acquainted with this ritual, stood by the door, his hands crossed in a Shield’s habitual pose.

Scraps covered with her handwriting scattered across the desk as well, different charm and charter symbols, experiments, notes and drawings arranged in a system no other person would be able to decipher. A globe of malachite on a brass Atlas’s straining shoulders spun lazily, a small scraping sound under the rustle of her skirts. The long black drapes moved slightly as well, and witchglobes in heavy bronze cages sputtered, almost sparking and giving out a low bloody light that precisely matched her feelings at the moment.

The little sounds only underscored Mikal’s silence. She finally halted next to the high-backed, severe leather chairs before the fireplace. Gripped the back of one, her fingers turning white. Her chest ached, so she squeezed harder. Healing sorcery could only do so much, and Mikal’s facility with it was not infinite, though certainly not inconsiderable either.

The map of the Empire over the fireplace, etched on brass and framed in Ceylon ebony, glowed with soft golden reflections, showing the passage of sunlight over the Empire’s dominions. The sun indeed never set; Britannia’s sway was wide.

But even she was not infinite, or invulnerable.

Emma stared, stiffening her knees, and for a moment she considered retreating behind her walls and doing no more. God knew she had paid enough, over and over, for every scrap she had received.

But that would be treachery of a different sort, wouldn’t it. To simply leave the Queen without a sorceress willing to do the worst.

And there was her regrettable pride, raising its head. There might be Primes more powerful than Emma Bannon, and a few more socially acceptable, and perhaps even one or two as loyal. Yet there was no Prime who would sink to the depths she would in service to the current holder of Britannia’s essence.

Who was, after all, merely a girl who had been thrust on to the throne, and fought with surprising skill and ferocity to free herself from those who would use her.

Is that why I find myself so inclined to settle in this harness? Emma half turned, uncramping her hand with an effort. The Shield’s gaze met hers.

What could she say? “Before I left … that was unjustified, Mikal. My temper is … uncertain.”

A single nod. Perhaps an acceptance of the apology, perhaps simply affirmation of his hearing it.

Proud to the end, her Shield. At least the past month had taught her that. And today’s events had been rather a slap of cold water. Since the Crawford … affair, she had been simply focused on her service to Britannia. As if working herself into a rag of bone and nervous ætheric force would somehow give her an answer.

There may not be another time to ask. “Mikal?”

“Prima.”

“Why did you do … what you did?” And what is the assurance that you will not violate your Shield oath again, if you judge me as you judged him? Or did you? I do not know enough to guess at the music that moves you.

Perhaps I should ask Mr Clare to deduce its measures. For a moment, she thought of explaining to a mentath how she had been trapped in chains and a Major Circle not of her devising, close to having her sorcery torn out of her by the roots, and what she had heard as Mikal’s fingers closed around Crawford’s throat. The crackling of little bones, the awful choking noises mixing with her own panicked, ineffectual cries.

To be so helpless was enough to drive a Prime to the edge of sanity. Or past. And Emma wondered if she had been quite sane since the experience.

Perhaps Mikal chose to misunderstand her question. “It was a choice between service to another Prime or death.” Calm, matter-of-fact, his expression set and unyielding. “You said it yourself, Prima. They would kill me if I were not in service to a sorcerer who could protect me, and you are the only one willing to do so.”

At least that you have found. What was the danger of continuing thus? She braced herself, and took the next logical step. “You may, if you choose, leave my service and stay in my house as a sanctuary. The Collegia will censure me, but at least you will still be alive.” And I will not have to wonder when you will find me lacking and squeeze the life out of me.

“No.”

Well, at least she had made him express a preference. “Very well. You may decide otherwise at any—”

“No.” His eyes flamed. She wondered, not for the first time, how much of what she suspected of his bloodline was true. “Do not ask again, Prima.”

Very well. I shall simply be on guard. As I have been. And look how satisfactorily that has proceeded. Still, he had not turned on her yet. “You will need to be fully armed tonight.”

The crimson light made him an ochre statue, except for the gleams of his eyes. “I am.”

“Already?” She sounded mocking, she supposed.

“I do not take it lightly when my Prima is stabbed in the lung.”

Your Prima. Did you feel so proprietary of your Prime, lo that scant month ago? “I returned, did I not?”

“Barely, Emma. Shall we continue this conversation, or would you like to bring me to my knees again and save time?”

I apologised, Mikal. “You say that as if you do not enjoy it.” Sharp, a prick for his temper, no less regrettable than her own.

He chose not to give battle, for once. “No more or less than you do, Prima. Shall I ask where we are bound tonight? Tideturn is close. No more than a quarter-hour.”

I am aware of that. She glanced at the softly ticking grandfather clock, its face showing the different hours of the day in jewelled simulacra of the Ages of Man. Sorcery bubbled in its depths, its wheels and cogs and springs measuring each second of eternity. Given proper care, the works would continue even when the thick oak casing, sheathed in chasing metal, turned to dust. The dealer had sworn it was from an alchemyst’s laboratory, hinting that so august a personage as von Tachel had owned it at one time. Exceedingly unlikely … but still, Emma liked it, and the jewelled simulacra were a reminder.

Especially the dirty labourer at noon, lifting his mug of foaming beer to blackened lips, and the drab pleading with the gentleman at eleven.

The massive dragon’s head carved above the face, its eyes glowing with soft sorcery, held its jaws in a constant, silent roar. Time, it said, is a gaping maw like mine. You have escaped the worst.

And she had, even before Miles Crawford had so neatly trapped her. But for an accident of fate, she could have ended as a drab herself, in the very slums she had been hunting through this afternoon.

“Southwark,” she heard herself say. “We are visiting Mehitabel.”

She had the satisfaction of seeing her Shield pale before she swept past him and through her study doors.