The Red Plague Affair

Chapter Fourteen Above Your Notice

The stables were full of susurrus. Feathers rasped dry-oily against each other, and the clacking of sharp beaks snapping closed was like lacquered blocks of wood struck sharply together. The keepers, lean men in the traditional red bracers and high boots, were hard at work. They went in teams of two, one pushing the barrow, the other selecting chunks of red, dripping muscle and sawed-white bone, hefting it with an experienced grunt over the stall doors.

Gryphons were, after all, carnivores.

Emma stood very still, her hands knotted into fists. The smell – raw meat, the tawny flanks simmering with animal heat – scorched her throat, and the beasts craned their necks to see her, in the flat sideways way of birds. One hissed angrily, its feathered foreclaws flexing, and wood splintered.

“Best wait outside, mum.” The head keeper, young for his post and with a livid scar across one wrist, shook his head. The beads tied into his hair made a clacking, just like the beasts’ beaks. “Fractious today. And, well. Sorcery.”

“Stay, Prima.” Mikal, standing before her, did not precisely seem small, but he did look a very slender protection against the tide of feathers and gold-ringed eyes. “All is well.”

No, all is not well. Gryphons do not forget.

“Ssorceresss.” The sibilants were cold with menace. “Deathssspeaker.” A black gryphon, a little smaller than its fellows but apparently the one appointed to communicate for them in this matter, clacked his beak twice. How the creatures used human language without lips to frame the syllables was a mystery, and one neither Science nor sorcery could solve. A dissection could have perhaps shed some light on it, but a gryphon’s corpse was impossible to come by.

Theirs was a savage tribe, and it consumed its own dead. To be left uneaten by its fellows was the worst fate that could befall them, and Emma Bannon had caused one of their own to suffer it.

I had no choice. But gryphons did not understand such things. Or they would not, where a sorcerer was concerned. For of all the meats the beasts consumed, they liked sorcery-seasoned best.

“Speak to me, winged one,” Mikal said, pleasantly enough. His back was tense under its olive velvet, though, and his feet were placed precisely, his weight balanced forward, his hands loose and easy. “My Prima is above your notice.”

A ripple went through them, glossy, muscled flanks tensing. Emma set her jaw more firmly, and stared at Mikal’s back.

Entering the stables was never pleasant. Even the smell of the creatures was dangerous, causing an odd lassitude that made anyone with ætheric talent prone to miscalculation. The effect on those without capacity, or on animals, was not so marked, but still enough to ensure wild gryphons did not often go hungry. They were Britannia’s allies, and drew her chariot; they were also crafty, and exceedingly vicious. A better symbol of Empire than the ruling spirit conveyed by such beasts would be difficult to find.

The black gryphon moved forward. It had finished its meal, and an indigo tongue flicked, cleaning the sharp beak with a rasp. Traces of blood dappled its proud face, and the gold of its irises was a new-minted coin. The pupil of its nearer eye, black as ink, held a tiny, luminescent reflection. Over the reflection’s shoulder peered a white-faced sorceress, her hair smartly dressed and the amber at her throat glowing softly as she held herself in readiness.

“Why are you here, Nagáth? We are hungry, and that issss prey.”

“She is my Prima, and you will not taste her flesh. I require two of your brethren to fly swiftly at dusk, wingkin.”

A sharper movement passed through the serried stalls and the overhead perches. If they decided to attack en masse, perhaps not even Mikal could hold them back. Emma had thought, when she had visited the Collegia that morning to consign Eli to the Undying Flame, to visit the barracks and select half a dozen Shields.

And yet, she had not.

Thrent. Jourdain. Harry. Namal. All murdered by Crawford. A litany of her own failures, men who had risked their lives in her service and paid the last toll. Now she could add another to that list, could she not? Eli.

Did Britannia feel this aching, when her faithful servants fell? Or had so many passed through her service that she no longer cared, and saw them as chess pieces – pawns could be lost, castles taken…

… and even queens could be replaced.

A dangerous thought.

“We ssssshall not carry her.” This from another gryphon, tawny with dappled plumage, its gaze incandescent with hatred. Its foreclaws gripped the top of a stall door, and the two keepers before it stumbled back, one of them with a dripping haunch clutched in both hands like an upside-down tussie-mussie for a sweetheart.

Mikal did not move, but a new tension invaded the air. “You shall carry whom I command you to carry. Y béo Dægscield.”

The ancient words resonated, the stable a bell’s interior, shivering. The gryphons went utterly still.

I am Shield.

Their compact with Britannia was antique, true. But their compact with the brotherhood who guarded the workers of wonders was even older, brought from other shores with the wandering conjurers of the Broken City. Mordred the Black had given shelter to that brotherhood on the Isle’s shores during the Lost Times. Mordred claimed descent from Artur’s left-hand line; none knew the truth of that claim, none cared to dispute it, either. The Collegia itself, only recently tethered above Londinium, was a wonder of Mordred’s age, its black gatestones crawling with crimson charter charms the first things laid. There was said to be a mist-shrouded mountain the Collegia had torn itself from the side of, long ago. A craggy peak whispered to have held another school where thirteen students were admitted, but only twelve left, and the last – either the best or the worst, according to which set of legends one excavated from antique dust – was taken as a toll.

“You are Sssshield.” Grudging, the black gryphon lowered its head.

Mikal’s tone softened, but only fractionally. “I would not ask, were the need not dire. Britannia requires, wingkin.”

They moved again, restlessly, as the ruling spirit’s name passed through them.

“And we ansssswer,” the chorus rose, as one.

So do I, gryphons. Emma’s throat ached, the dry stone lodged in its depths refusing to budge. So do I.