The Red Plague Affair

Chapter Ten Coldfaith

The great Collegia, the massive main heart of Londinium’s – and hence, of the Isle’s – sorcerous population, seemed to stand on empty air. Charm-tangled lattices of support and transferral cradling its tiered white-stone edifices were clearly visible to Sight, but to the ordinary it appeared that the Collegia and its parklike grounds merely… floated. It drifted in a slow, majestic pattern above Regent’s Parque, a nacreous glow in the dusk. Tideturn had come and gone, the golden flood of ætheric force sweeping up the Themis and filling every charmer, witch and sorcerer with a fresh charge to be used in service to their fellows – or in service to their selfish desires.

Emma normally almost-enjoyed visits to the Collegia’s grounds. Tonight, however, she cursed inwardly and monotonously as she moved along a path of white crushed shell, her stride so energetic even Mikal sounded short of breath.

“Prima.” Again, he attempted to engage her attention. “Emma. Listen to—”

“Cease your chatter.” Sharper than she had ever addressed him, and breathless besides. “I am in a very great hurry, as you can see.”

“The sorcerer. Half-Indus, correct? As you suspect I am. I would tell you—”

“No.” She halted, her skirts snapping as her forward motion was arrested. Turned on one heel, and faced him fully. A curl had come free, it fell in her face. That was almost as provoking as his continued attempts to speak. “I do not wish to know, Mikal.” How much plainer can I be? “Especially if such knowledge will force me to act in a… certain manner. Look about you, look where we are. Have you no sense?”

He stared at her, yellow irises alight in the gloaming. She studied him afresh, this Shield who had come to her service in the worst of ways.

“I have often wondered,” she continued, in a much more well-bred tone, “why you killed Miles Crawford.”

And there was another wonder: that she could say the name so calmly, robbing it of its power. Still, the memories rose – to be restrained, helpless, while another sorcerer prepared to tear one’s ætheric talent out by the roots, was a thing almost guaranteed to drive a Prime past the brink of sanity. A Prime’s will did not take a bridle lightly, if at all; it was that ill-defined quality of resolve that made a Prime, along with the ability to essay a split of focus and fuel into more than one Major Work at once.

To feel the bonds again, to hear her own despairing cries, to hear the sounds Crawford made as his throat was slowly crushed while water dripped and uncontained sorcerous force hummed its unformed song… it was enough to make one shudder, and it took all Emma’s considerable willpower to quell the unwelcome movement.

Here between the House of Mending’s white bulk and a low, sorcerously smoothed stone wall bordering a tidy herb garden, Mikal studied her for a long moment. Finally, his tongue crept out and wet his lower lip. “How long you have waited to ask me. I thought you knew.”

That is quite irrelevant. “Answer me, Shield.”

“He hurt you.” Soft, sharp words, as if he had taken a strike to the midsection. “Is that not reason enough?”

It is not a reason I may credit, though I might wish to. She tucked the errant curl behind her ear, smoothing her hair with quick habitual motions. It displeased her to be dishevelled. “Surely you can see that Rudyard’s dark hints would give me pause.”

A short nod. “Nevertheless.”

“What I wish not to know may still make me cautious, Mikal. Have I released you from my service? No. That should inform you of my continued trust in your capability.” It is not a lie, she reminded herself. He is capable, at least. “Now come along, and do not be foolish.”

She did not think it would soothe him, but it seemed to. He followed in her wake, and she turned the corner. The House of Mending’s front bloomed before her, its fluid lines pleasing even though the rivers of golden charter symbols held in its stone shivered uneasily at her presence.

For Emma Bannon’s Discipline was not of the White, of which Mending was an honoured branch. Her sensitive eyes watered and stung slightly, and it would only be worse inside.

Never mind that. Eli requires aid. She moved forward, her back prickling instead of steadily warm with the consciousness of a Shield’s presence. If Rudyard had meant to make Emma distracted and cautious, he had succeeded admirably.

The larger danger was, of course, that Rudyard would drop a quiet, envenomed word among her enemies… and Mikal’s. There was no shortage of those, to be sure. The suspicion that Mikal was perhaps heir to a bloodline that should not under any circumstances be trained in the discipline of Shield was dangerous, for the only remedy – since he had already been fully trained, through what oversight Emma could not guess at, since there were many tests to avert such an occurrence – was a quick, nasty murder with all the force of law and Law behind it.

Even a Prime’s absolute right over Shield and possessions could be… overcome… in cases of Law. Were she to halt and cogitate upon the problem, Emma would arrive at exactly where she had every other time she had considered this particular eventuality.

Even if Mikal was not what she suspected, she had enemies enough; singly they were trifles, but together their collective force could rob her of Mikal’s presence – and rob him of his very life.

I do not wish to set myself against every Prime in the Empire just yet, thank you, she might have said, were she possessed of breath and patience to spare. Which she was not, at the moment.

In any case, it was a calculated risk, bringing him onto the Collegia’s grounds now.

I do not care what he is, she told herself. I have trusted Mikal, and he has done nothing to change that. It is ridiculous to think that such an event as one of those could be trained as a Shield. It is simply not possible; the Shield tests are thorough and most thoroughly applied, as well.

Then why had she asked Eli to watch him?

The Menders took bleaching as a matter of pride, hanging their Hall with swathes of pallid material and affecting spotless white-charmed linen. Marlowe had called them whited bobbers for their bowing and scraping to the Inquisition, a thing that had not been forgotten even today. Another name was less polite, and had to do with the process of bleaching involving vast quantities of urine and nasty herbs, not to mention charms that reeked of more urine and sulphur.

To be so pure required a great deal of stink. The Black, of course, did not seek to hide such rot. Or at least, Emma did not.

If you had a conscience, Kim Rudyard had sneered, and she pushed the thought away. She blackened herself in Victrix’s service, for while Britannia’s current vessel had other sorcerers, including Primes, to work her will, she had none as thoroughly determined as Emma to do anything at all that might be required for that will to work. And if for that she was held in disdain, well, it would not kill her. It might even be useful.

Careful, Prime. Do not lie to yourself. Of course some insults sting. Else you would not keep such a list of those deserving repayment.

The Hall resonated as she stepped over the threshold, and the glare scoured her eyes. Hot water leaked down her cheeks, but she had not brought a veil.

She would not give them the satisfaction.

The entrance hall was hung with that rustling pale material, charter charms of Mending glowing golden on their rippling fluid lengths. The traditional white stone altar, carved with spirals and alive with golden light too close to sunshine for Emma’s comfort, shifted uneasily in its seating. On its other side, the young student on receiving duty let out a squeak as the pressure-front of a Prime rippled through the sensitised air.

“Good evening.” Emma came to a halt. “I require Mr Coldfaith, young one. Where is he?”

It was not quite polite, but there was no use in etiquette at this point. A fresh tear trickled down her cheek as she waited, her foot all but tapping under her skirts.

The student, a weedy young man with a prefect’s patch and a bad case of spots that almost masked the fume of talent he gave off, swallowed visibly. He would no doubt be a Master Sorcerer, or more, someday. If he survived the Collegia. “Erm. Yesmum. Well. Sir is… well, he’s…”

Emma grasped her temper in both mental hands and squeezed. A lady must not shout. She modulated her tone accordingly. “I am aware of the lateness of the hour, young one. If you are unable to point out Mr Coldfaith’s location I shall go door to door through this House to find him. It is quite urgent.”

“No need to frighten the poppet,” a deep bass rumbled from behind fluttering white. “Hullo, Em.”

“Thomas.” The tightness on her face was, she supposed, a smile. “I’ve something rather dire.”

“No doubt. C——x’y.” The Word rolled free, silent thunder shaking through every bone and particle of stone, and the light dimmed.

Emma blinked, shaking her head slightly. It wasn’t necessary for him to do such a thing, but it was, she supposed, a way of bringing home that he was Prime as well. And far more powerful than she. Though he would never stoop to duel, or unbend enough to act in any way unfitting the greatest Mender since Isabella de la Cortina – the Mad Hag of Castile herself might have been moderated by his influence.

No, Thomas Coldfaith was completely useless. And if it irked him to have no manner of pride in blood or matters of honour, none would ever know – except Emma herself.

Does he still feel the same? she wondered, not for the first time, as he moved past the fluttering material.

Mender he was, but no Mending would untwist his spine or remove the hump. One shoulder hitched on a muscled bulge higher than the other, his face almost a ruin except for two large liquid black eyes; he bore the stamp of Tinkerfolk in his colouring and dressed to it as well, in bright, oddly placed odds and ends. He was a scarlet jay among the Mender’s monochrome, and the gold glittering at his thick throat and twisted fingers was an unwelcome echo of Rudyard’s glimmering hoop.

Crow-black hair and those lovely eyes, skin scarred worse than Valentinelli’s pox markings and his left arm twisted as it dangled from his high-hitched shoulder, fine legs that would have been the envy of many a man in the Wifekiller’s time, when hose was the accepted means of clothing such appendages. His fingers were spidery, and his teeth picket-misshapen.

Such was the price Mending had demanded from its favoured Prime. Or perhaps the childhood accidents and beatings that twisted and so marked him had demanded it, and the Mending had rushed into him like water into a battered cup. The light still shines, even though the vessel be oddened, he had remarked once, and Emma, laughing, had kissed his bone-thick, fever-warm brow.

You and your light. What good has it done you? She had not missed the quick flash of hurt in his dark gaze then, but she had thought it of little account. Not until later, when she had seen him staring across the room at the last great Charmtide Ball of her school years, his face an open book in that moment – as Emma trod the measures of a dance in Llewellyn Gwynnfud’s arms, laughing and blithe.

She did not often regret, but sometimes… well. And after that ball, Kim Rudyard and Llew had engaged in a screaming row inside the boys’ half of Merlinhall.

Kim would be happy to know he has unsettled me. “Thank you.” She found herself straightening her gloves, and forced the motion to cease. “I hoped you would be here.”

“I am where you find me.” Flat and ironic, his unamused smile showing the yellowed, stumplike teeth. “Fetch some tea, Straughlin, there’s a lad. We’ll be in my library.” The Mender’s hands tensed, knobs of bone standing out at each knuckle. Then he shook them out, his slight grimace so habitual she winced inwardly as well.

They must still pain him. There was a hot rock in her throat. “Thank you, but I may not be here long enough to partake. Time is short, and—”

“For a Prime, you are very rushed,” he observed, mildly, as the student stammered out something affirmative and scurried away to fetch tea. “Bring your Shield. He looks like Folk, he does.”

He’s not. “He may be.” She left it at that. It was polite of him to acknowledge Mikal – so few would, now. Since he had done the unforgivable, and was suspected of murdering the Prime he had been sworn to. “There is an illness. As far as I can tell it is non-sorcerous. It struck very suddenly, and—”

“Still the same.” He had retained the irritating habit of interrupting her. “Nothing ever Mends in a hurry. Come.”

“I see.” Thomas settled himself in the chair made specially for his twisted spine. His library was tall and narrow as he was broad and twisted, huge leather-bound books on the rosy-tinted wooden shelves vibrating with contained secrets. Plenty were Greater Texts of the White Disciplines – Mending, Making, Naming – though strictly speaking Naming had no colour, it simply served to describe. Mending’s major branches were somewhat evenly represented: the Trismegistusians, Hypokratians, even the almost-Grey Hypatians and the somewhat-embarrassing Gnosticans, who saw illness as something to be celebrated and sometimes fostered instead of treated.

Some of the smaller texts were jewel-bright and precious, herbals and treatises on the body and its humours, a folio of anatomical drawings from the great Michael-Angelo’s corpse-studies, studies of various illnesses and illustrations of the body’s attempts to cheat Death of its prize.

No novels, like those stacked on Emma’s bedside stand. Nothing light or frivolous. A globe of malachite atop a straining, muscular bronze Atlas stood to attention on a desk with three precisely stacked piles of paper upon it; an inkwell and three pens in an ebonywood stand straight as rulers.

Thomas tapped his fingers once on the right arm of the chair, set lower than the left and curving further inward to support him. “Swellings, you say? At the armpit, the throat, and…”

“The inner hip. The physicker mentioned lancing them to see what they hold.” Emma kept her tone even. He was disposed to listen, but also indisposed to move quickly. “It was so sudden.”

“I see.” This time he drew the two words out. They were not a question; they served to mark his place in the conversation while he thought.

The itching irritation inside her skin mounted another notch. I have not the skill to Mend this. Tell me you do. Tell me you know what it is. “I rather fear for him.”

There. It was said. A shocked silence filled the library. Thank God there was no pale linen hanging from the vaulted white-stone ceiling; her impatience, tightly controlled, might have escaped her and shredded it. Or turned the strips to glass. Wouldn’t that be a sight.

“Ah.” Thomas’s eyelids lowered a fraction. “And so you come to me.”

Mikal, at the library’s door, was deathly silent. She could sense his attention, and a sudden weary consciousness of being a woman in a world of silly but powerful men swamped her. They had to make everything so difficult.

And while Thomas perhaps wished to revenge himself in some small way for her treatment of him, Eli was suffering. A Shield, her Shield… and she was all but helpless.

Dear God, how she hated such a feeling. Was that why she served Britannia so faithfully?

Did she even wish an answer to that question?

She stood, ignoring his sudden twitch as if he would rise as a gentleman should. Gathered her skirts with numb hands. “Yes. It was rather foolish of me; I thought you would have some idea of how to combat such an illness.”

“Combat? No. But Mend, perhaps. Emma—”

“I have had,” she informed him, stiffly, “rather a trying day. I am concerned for my Shield. It is my duty to care for him, even as he risks death in my service. Which you disagree with the very principle of, well and good, but not all of us can wall ourselves up in our books and our mighty pacifism.”

“Emma.” Weary in his own turn now, as if she were a tantrum-throwing child. He succeeded in rising, with a walrus-lunge. His very gracelessness, and the placid acceptance of his body’s failures, was yet another irritation. “I did not say I would not help.”

Then help, and cease being a hindrance. “No, but while you reach a decision on the matter, my time is more profitably spent gaining every inch of aid I can muster.” I will not see another Shield die.

If she thought of Crawford, she had to think of the four men who had vainly tried to protect her from him. And paid with their lives. Their twisted bodies, and the smell—

There was a flutter of movement as Mikal stepped aside, and a tremulous knock at the door. It opened to reveal the white-faced prefect, his spots glaring red. Why hadn’t someone taught him the charm to rid himself of such annoyances, dear God? It was child’s play for a Mender. There was a silver tea tray in his trembling hands, and from the look of it, someone had told him who she was.

Emma. You are being ridiculous. She took a deep breath. Her corset, familiar as it was, cut most abominably, but it reminded her to stand correctly. The library was full of a rushing noise, but perhaps it was only the blood soughing in her ears.

Movement. Thomas had crossed the space between them, in his peculiar lurching way. “My God.” A breath of wonder. “There is something you care for, after all.”

Did you ever think there was not? But saying that was out of the question. Instead, she examined his countenance.

It would not have been half so horrid if his eyes had not been so beautiful. The Mending in him shone out, pale ætheric force behind the coal-blackness of his irises and pupils, luminescent jet beads. Those eyes belonged on a Grecquean urn, or to one of the marvellous statues of the great Samaritan, Simon Magister, who had swayed a crowd from a deranged prophet’s ravings with beautiful sorcery. The language of Making even held a story of how one of the statues had fallen in love with an apprentice of the great Magister, and become flesh when he uttered her name…

… only to catch her dying beloved in her newly supple arms, for he had spent his entire life in those syllables to give her breath.

The story did not end, it merely halted, as if even a Great Language could not express what came next. Perhaps one of the Grey Disciplines had their own ending. Among the Black, the Magister was accorded high honour for several of his… other… researches.

Her teeth were clenched in a most unladylike fashion. “Of all people, Thomas, you should know how much I care.” And how little it matters when duty calls. Though she could not fault him for thinking her cold and faithless. She had merely been young, and Llewellyn… and once again, the memory of a much younger Kim Rudyard rose, grinning and capering like a wraith. He had merely been finishing his studies, since any drop of good Englene blood, no matter what the admixture, was entitled to at least an Examination at the Great Collegia, the beating heart of the Empire’s sorcery. No doubt in the Indus he was a sahib; just as among Menders, Coldfaith was a prince.

It did not seem to satisfy either of them. Her own dissatisfaction seemed a pittance compared to theirs; perhaps it was her sex that insulated her from such longings.

Oh, Emma, you are engaged upon untruths with yourself. Do not. “I am sorry for disturbing your rest. I shall be going now.” Very evenly, very softly, her lips shaped the words, and she watched familiar pain rise in his gaze again.

“Emma—”

But she quickened her pace, and swept through the door. The teapot chattered on the tray, and she paused only long enough to speak the charm that would rid the boy of his spots, spitting each syllable as if it pained her and feeling the small words of Mending, a Discipline not her own, bitter as ash on her recalcitrant tongue. They were only a few – it was a child’s charm – but when they passed, she found Mikal’s hand on her shoulder, and the bright glow of the Hall’s light stung her eyes so badly she was not ashamed of the tears.