The Red Plague Affair

Chapter Eighteen How Well I Obey

The worst was landing on a steam ferry’s heaving deck, salt spray and screaming. Gryphon claws dug into wood, Emma bruised and bumped about like a pea in a shaken pod, her numb fingers plucking at the buckles. The charm for loosing them almost would not rise past her chapped lips, and she felt quite dishevelled, thank you very much.

The screaming quieted as she rose from a tangle of leather. The sky was a sheet of bruised iron, rain slashing down in knife-sharp curtains. Mikal was fully occupied in keeping the gryphons under control as they screeched and beat their wings, and the ship’s surface suddenly far too small for the chariot, the sailors, the winged beasts and those passengers unlucky enough to have paid only for deck-passage.

The captain hurried forward as Emma spat another charm, a hard bright jet of ætheric force opening like a parasol, shunting aside the restless rain. It was a simple act, but it saved so much explaining. Grizzled and bearded in his blue serge jacket and struggling-to-stay-aboard cap, the man opened his mouth to berate her, but shrank back as her status became evident and the gryphons almost bolted free of Mikal’s grip.

“Good day,” she shouted, over the incredible noise. “In Britannia’s name, sir, I require your help.”

She glanced behind him, just in time to see one of the deckside passengers edging for the railing. Tall, and wrapped in a long dark high-buttoned coat, the man lifted his hand to cough just as her attention came to rest on the furtive set of his shoulders, and intuition blurred under Emma Bannon’s skin.

She flung out a hand as the captain began spluttering, and the gryphons ceased their noise. A great stillness descended upon the heaving ship; Emma pushed herself through air gone thick as treacle, humming a simple descant that nevertheless strained at her control. She was spending ætheric force recklessly, but cared very little. Her rings warmed, and the uneasy wind plucked at her skirts as rivers of charter symbols slid up her arms, circling her throat.

The man, caught in the act of turning, had ruddy, clean-shaven cheeks and a stained collar. His eyes were wide and dark, rolling as a horse’s as he strained to reach the railing. In every particular, he matched the description of a certain John Morris, and Emma’s throat filled with wine-red fury. The descant took on an impossible, razor-edged depth, and Time snapped forward again. Only now, she was at his side, and laid her hand upon the man’s arm.

“Sir.” Very quietly, under the slap of rain and swelling of ocean-breath, the vibration of the steam engines a beast’s slumbering rumble underfoot. “What is your name?”

The captain shouted behind her, and Mikal answered with an exceedingly impolite oath. That quieted matters somewhat, and he had the gryphons well under control. They clacked their beaks angrily, but did not cry aloud.

Good. That was rather about to give me a headache. “Prima?” Mikal called, over the muted, returning noise of wind and waves.

Morris stared at her, glassy-eyed with terror. She would have to examine the passenger manifest and his papers, but she was reasonably certain it was he. The descant ended on a snapped note, cut off savagely, and she struck him across the face.

It was not ladylike to behave so. Just at the moment, however, it did not trouble her as much as it should. The weight of psychic force behind the blow knocked him to the deck like crumpled sodden cloth, and she inhaled sharply. Consider yourself lucky your neck has not snapped, sir. When Britannia is finished with your services, I will find you. But for now… She cast a glance over her shoulder, and every blessed soul on the deck was staring at her. I am causing a scene. Do I care? No. It is enough that I have not killed him outright. Does Britannia know how well I obey?

Most likely not. And most likely, she does not care.

For a moment the fury was crystalline, and she saw how easy it would be to shred this ship like a soap bubble, and consign every soul upon it to the Channel’s uneasy depths. Child’s play, for a Prime. And it would serve no bloody, God-be-d—ned purpose at all.

It would not bring Eli back from Death’s domain. Nor would it bring Harry, or Jourdain. Or any she mourned.

There is no remedy for what ails you, Emma. Save service, and protecting what still remains.

Would that she had realised it before this morning, and Timothy Copperpot. Would his shade haunt her as well?

It was necessary. Yet that was the entire trouble with embarking upon a course of lying to oneself, she discovered. It meant one could no longer be so certain what was necessary… and what was merely, simply, vengeful pride.

“Madam.” The captain stamped across the deck as the gryphons mantled nervously. They could not see her, or else they might strain more against her Shield’s control. “I, erm. Yes. Captain James Deighton, at your service, mum.” He touched his hatbrim with two calloused fingers, and she smelled tar, sweat and the iron note of charmlaced steam forced through metal throats to power the vessel. Some of the jacktars – no doubt those relieved she was not arriving to pursue them for any trespass, real or imagined – openly stared, no few of them conferring behind hands held to shield their mouths.

She gathered herself to deal with this fresh unpleasantness. Her throat was raw-scraped as if she had screamed, but it was merely the effort required to keep a civil tone that made it ache so. “Thank you. Miss Emma Bannon, sir, representative of Her Majesty. I require this passenger’s records. If he is indeed the man I seek, I shall require any luggage of his brought forth and stowed upon the chariot, and a few of your sailors to bind him and place him on said chariot as well. Then I shall leave you be.” She paused, then added judiciously, “You shall be compensated for the inconvenience, as well as the damage to the decking.”

This news brightened the captain’s outlook considerably, and smoothed the passage of events in a wondrous manner. In short order she had examined the passenger manifest and his papers to verify that it was indeed Mr John Morris, genius of Biology, who lay senseless and bound on the deck. He had not signed the manifest under his own name, of course, but the papers tucked into his folio proved his identity beyond a doubt.

Canny prey, yes. He had perhaps not thought he would be connected to the Alterator, or that Rudyard would be in the country to divulge Copperpot’s name.

For a moment something – oh, call it conscience, she told herself irritably, you might as well – inside Emma twinged afresh, but she set that aside and returned to smoothing Captain Deighton’s ruffled feathers. It was not a difficult task, and she turned down his offer of a cuppa as gracefully as possible.

In short order Morris’s trunk was secured – there was no other luggage, which was a problem she would solve after she had brought him to Britannia. The unconscious man, his breathing coming laboriously, was placed carefully on Mikal’s other side, strapped down like a prize pig meant for market, and Emma suffered the indignity of another jacktar, his bloodless face sweat-drenched even through the spray, buckling her into the straps again. Her bruised body ached, and the cold tingling in her fingers and toes told her she had expended perhaps a bit more force than was wise on this affair.

There was a lurch and a scrape, the gryphons screaming angrily as every sailor and passenger on the deck wisely flattened themselves, and Mikal managed them into the air again. If he was tired, his face gave no sign, and Emma’s fingers curled around his ankle once more. The slow bleed of ætheric force through her hand resumed, and she fervently hoped it would drain her past the point of losing consciousness.

She had the uncomfortable idea only such an event would grant her any relief from the way her stupid, bloody, useless, and utterly infernal conscience was contorting.