The Iron Wyrm Affair

Chapter Twenty-Three Better Your Sausage Than Your Life

The mystery of Valentinelli’s disappearence was solved in spectacular fashion. At least, Clare decided that the body falling from the rafters was intimately connected to the Neapolitan’s vanishing, even as he leapt – in a display of agility surprising even himself – and hit Sigmund squarely, knocking the burly Bavarian and his chair over. A tangle of arms and legs, Sig’s wurst and cheese went flying, and the body thudded on to the carpet as the grate exploded with blue flame.

Clare freed himself with a violent, wrenching twist, losing his top hat, and made it up to one knee, his freshly loaded silver-chased pepperbox pistol out. Smoke billowed, and Sigmund had regained his breath, to judge by the volume of curses in German coming from his quarter. Already it was difficult to see, smoke stinging Clare’s eyes, and for a terrible moment he was swallowed by the memory of last night’s irrationality.

LOGIC! he bellowed inwardly, jerking to the side as something whooshed through the smoke near his head. Smoke, a body from the ceiling – multiple attackers; the Neapolitan may be injured but I think it unlikely. The smoke is to confuse us.

The motive was not simply murder, he decided. Which raised some interesting questions he had no time to consider, for there was a movement in the smoke. Too tall to be the Italian, and moving incautiously. Do something, Clare!

Sigmund was still cursing.

“Quiet, man!” Clare barked, and his free hand closed around one of Sig’s spanners, dropped next to the spilled chair. He scooped it up and flung it, calculation flashing just under the surface of his consciousness so quickly he was barely aware of the motion. His aim was true; there was a muffled scream of pain, and Clare dived to the side, fetching up against the Bavarian again. “Stay low,” he whispered fiercely, and his busy faculties cross-checked an internal dictionary. “Unten blieben!”

“Ja!” Sig whispered back, and they set off, crawling, away from the coal grate and its belching black smoke. “Verdammt sie! Meine Wurst!”

Better your sausage than your life, man! Clare kept the pistol pointed carefully away. “Crawl! Kriechen!”

“I remember my English, mein Herr!” Damn the man, he actually sounded offended. “My workshop! What do they do with my workshop?”

I only have three shots. Choose them carefully. “Weapons! Do you have any weapons?”

“I haf—” But whatever Sigmund had remained unsaid, for there was a scream and the sound of clattering metal. “No! Scheisse, not my Spinne! Bastard!”

Clare got a fistful of Sig’s jacket, hauling him back. The Bavarian went down in a heap, another dark shape loomed through the acrid smoke, and Clare’s hand jerked at the last moment, sending the shot wide.

“Idioti.” Valentinelli bent down. His shirt was singed, and there was a spatter of blood on one of his pocked cheeks. “Put that away! Come!”

“What is it?” Clare had a fair idea already, but it certainly never hurt to ask.

“Alterato.” His ruined face alight, the assassin held a knife with the blade reversed against his forearm. There was a dark stain on his left knee, whether grease or blood Clare did not wish to venture. “To capture, not kill. This way.”

Flashboys, perhaps. Come to kidnap me or Sig? We shall find out. “Good show. Sig old man—” A fierce whisper. “Sigmund!”

“Aha!” The Bavarian appeared, crawling with surprising nimbleness for such a bulky man; he had found his wurst. He stuffed the remainder of the sausage in his mouth and scrambled after Clare.

The Neapolitan was a wraith in the rapidly thinning smoke, bent almost double and moving with jerky efficiency. One sleeve of his pale shirt flapped slightly; he cast a look over his shoulder at Clare and vanished again, stepping sideways into the vapour. Clare coughed, spat to the side. Bulky metal shapes loomed. Sigmund cursed again, but very low. A scraping sound – Sig had found a weapon.

Good.

His ears strained, eyes burning from the acrid vapour, his left hand scraping on packed earth and scattered straw as he endeavoured to keep the pistol free in his right, Clare realised he had not been bored once since Miss Bannon’s appearance. Which was truly marvellous, and a relief for his busy faculties, but he could still wish things were not quite so bloody interesting.

And why had he thought of her? The crystalline pendant, snug under his shirt, was oddly cold. Was this a dire enough situation to warrant her attention? Probably not. He wished he had thought to find his hat before setting off at a crawl through Sigmund’s workshop—

There was a wet crunching noise, and a soft cry. The smoke, draining in whorls and eddies, had lost none of its terrible stench. He motioned Sigmund aside; a huge metal carapace afforded a slightly safer hiding space. Inside, there was a tangle of sharp poking ends, but Clare pressed back nevertheless, and Sig crowded in beside him.

“Mein Gott, what smell!” he whispered, and Clare was forced to agree.

“Sulphur and agatesbreath, I believe.” Coal doesn’t burn hot enough to ignite it; how did they? Must experiment later. He readied the pistol, torn metal jabbing his jacket. “Be still.”

More soft, stealthy scrapings. A clatter of metal; Sigmund twitched and breathed a rather filthy imprecation. The smoke became striations, behaving oddly, thick and greasy as it slid questing fingers over a broken clockhorse skeleton. The metal vibrated, resonating to a silent current of bloodlust, and Clare watched as a shape melted into view behind a screen of smoke.

He was Altered, but not a flashboy. Lanky, dark-haired, unshaven in ill-fitting grey worsted, he placed his shoes carefully and edged through the smoky fingers, moving with jerky, oily care. The Alteration wasn’t visible, but Clare noted the irregularity under the rough homespun workman’s shirt and his gorge rose. Limbs were all very well, but Alteration of the trunk of the body? Not only was it expensive and dangerous, it was simply wrong.

Sigmund, thankfully, had frozen. Whether he was immobilised by surprise or Teutonic rage was difficult to tell. Clare raised the pistol, the motion slow and dreamlike. The dry stone in his throat was unwelcome; it took effort to shelve the persistent nagging animal fear of being hunted. His mouth was dry, and his pulse pounded alarmingly. His ears heard each muffled beat, blurring together into a distracting roar.

The Altered stiffened, his head tipping back. Valentinelli’s face appeared over his shoulder as his knees slowly buckled; the Neapolitan grabbed a fistful of dark hair and dragged the head back further. A swift jerking motion, then he slit the Altered man’s throat. Arterial spray bloomed, smoke flinched away, and the assassin breathed a soft love word as the Altered slumped.

Valentinelli flicked the knife, bent down to wipe it on his victim’s clothing. Clare lowered his pistol, silver glinting. His head was full of rushing noise.

Why does this disturb me so?

The Neapolitan’s gaze was flat and blank. He looked, for all the world, like a man who was simply performing a mildly disagreeable but not very difficult task. “Bastarde,” he said, softly. “Not even worth pissing on. Come to take Ludo’s job away, eh? Not today. Is safer now,” he continued, not even bothering to glance at the two men hiding like children. “Come out, little polli. Ludo has made it well again.”

Acrid smoke thinned. Clare coughed, finding his eyes welling with hot water and his throat afire. “Sig?” he croaked. “Dreadfully sorry about your workshop.”

“Schweine.” The genius pushed past Clare, brushed himself off. He glared at the dead body, and as the smoke cleared, Clare found other lifeless forms scattered throughout the factory. “My beautiful wurst. And my Spinne. I hope she not damaged.” He fixed Clare with a beady glare. “So, this is the trouble you bring to Papa Baerbarth, my friend? I find you Prussian capacitors. I help you. They pay for this, the Schweinhunde.”

“Good show. I say, Valentinelli, very good.” Clare emerged from the metal carapace, blinking. “Er, who were they after, do you think?” It was vanishingly unlikely they were here for Sig, but thoroughness demanded he ask. And his nerves required a question answered, any question, to steady them.

“Simple.” The Neapolitan resheathed the knife. “If they after fat one there, I let them have him.”

Clare swallowed. The crystalline pendant had warmed again, no longer a chip of cold metal ice under his shirt. His throat was amazingly dry. He could use even some of Sig’s atrocious tea. “I see. Well, I thought as much. Sig, fetch your bag. We’re going capacitor-hunting. Where do we start?”

Sigmund took his hat from his round head, dusted it fastidiously, and jammed it back on while setting off for the still smoking grate. “Docks. Always start docks first. Tell me everything.”

The docks of Londinium seethed under a dome of sulphur-yellow fog. Here, the nerve endings of Empire sizzled with goods crated and bundled in every conceivable way, crawling with hevvymancers lifting loads or charming them into balance, sorcery spitting and crackling between the mountains of goods of every stripe, shipwitches wandering among them and laying carpets of charter charms. Tabac, indigo, flour, wine, carpets, chests, tea, coffee, cloth of every colour and description, spread and piled high over miles of timber. More hevvymancers charmed loads off the waiting ships, ship- and saltwitches humming in the rigging and calming restive breezes. The non-sorcerous carters, lifters, haulers, bullies, and half-clad ragged men looking to earn a few coins by shifting and hauling milled, choking the streets; warehouses stood tall and proud with Altered guards – some flashboys, others more serious and soberly modified – watching the crowded streets. No doubt many of them had a thriving trade in embezzlement to pay for their Alterations and the servicing of their metal, too.

They left the brougham and its driver at a nearby livery stable, the driver even more ecstatic that the day’s work was proving so easy. Pressing forward on foot, Clare and Sigmund were soon lost in the crowd. Valentinelli drifted in their wake, and such was the confusion and clangour of Threadtwist Dockside that none remarked the blood on his clothes. To be sure, in the yellow glare it could be any dark fluid fouling him. Still, Clare found it difficult to look at the man.

Sigmund, still bemoaning the loss of his breakfast, kept up a steady stream of banter the entire way. Clare confined himself to non-committal responses, sunk in profound contemplation. He’d told the Bavarian the absolute minimum required, and they were now en route to a place where the tracing of a specific shipment of Prussian capacitors could begin. Miss Bannon’s papers had included an invoice from a certain Lindorm Import Co., Threadtwist Dock, Londinium – an invoice that, when he had examined it after Miss Bannon’s morning departure, had borne surprising fruit: a scrawl under “Rec’d of” he had more than a passing familiarity with.

After all, he had seen it many a time at Yton on Cedric Grayson’s papers. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was involved indeed, and Clare could not wait to share the news with Miss Bannon. A dragon’s word – he shuddered at the thought of the beast, hurried on – might not be acceptable proof to take Cedric to account, but this certainly was. And she had possessed it for who knows how long, without knowing its import.

That was satisfying in and of itself.