The Red Plague Affair

Chapter Twenty An Unseemly Display

The Queen was still Receiving, despite the lateness of the hour. She sat, enthroned, the Stone of Scorn glowing slightly under the northern leg of the jewel-crusted chair, the ruling spirit’s attention weighting the shadows in the corners of the Throne Hall. The great glass roof had been repaired, and the stone floor, polished by a few hundred years’ worth of hungry feet seeking influence in the sovereign’s atmosphere in one way or another, was worn smooth. The roof was a great blind eye, watching everything below with impersonal exactness.

Emma could have perhaps chosen not to hit the Reck Doors at the end of the Hall quite so hard with ætheric force, their charm-greased hinges whisper-silent as they swung inwards, the stuffed-leather pads set to stop their motion popping a trifle too loudly to be mannerly.

She further could have chosen not to drag the errant Dr Morris the length of the Throne Hall, his heels scraping the stone and her passage accompanied by crackling sparks of stray sorcery, the simple Work used to ease his deadweight along fraying at the edges as her temper did. Mikal stalked behind her, wisely keeping his mouth shut, pale and haggard from the effort of controlling two gryphons to the Channel and back. Still, his irises flamed with yellow light, and his appearance was sufficiently disconcerting to have overridden all question or challenge so far.

Her own appearance was likely not decorous enough to inspire confidence. Windblown, salt-crust tears slicking her chapped cheeks, and with every piece of jewellery flaming with leprous green glow, she was the very picture of an angry sorceress.

Which probably explained the cowering among the Court, and the screams.

Her fingers, cramping and cold, slick with seawater, rain, and sweat, vined into Morris’s hair and the cloth of his coat equally. Melting ice ran in crystal droplets from her hair, from his skin. Mikal was dry, and his dark hair disarranged; his head came up as some feral current not emanating from his Prima passed close by.

Britannia’s attention strengthened. “Leave Us,” she whispered, Victrix’s lips shaping the hollow coldness of the words, and there was a general move to obey. Emma strode up the centre of the Hall as the Court emptied. Only the Consort remained, his dark eyes round as a child’s, his fine whiskers looking pasted on, as if he were a-mumming.

A brush against her consciousness was another sorcerer, a Prime, no doubt, but she was past caring who witnessed this. Her arm came forward, and Morris’s form tumbled like a rag doll’s, fetching up against the steps at the Throne’s feet with a sickening looseness.

“He killed my Shield,” she informed Britannia, and her voice, while not the power-laden darkness of the ruling spirit’s, was still enough to cause every shadow to deepen and shiver. “Justice, Britannia. After You have no use for him, he is mine.”

Victrix’s ring-laden hand, curved protectively over her belly, tensed, but the ruling spirit rose behind her features, settling fully into its vessel. “And you, Prima, are disposed to order Us about?” Sharply, each sibilant edge a knife, just as the gryphons spoke.

Did Victrix ever guess how like her chariot-beasts she sounded, when the spirit of the Isle filled her to the brim?

No more than I know what I sound like, when my Discipline speaks. Emma shook the thought away. “It is no order, my Queen. It is a simple statement of fact.” And you would be wise to understand as much. Something in her recoiled from the thought… but not quickly.

And not far. The sense of another sorcerer, very close and watching, was undeniable but the room appeared empty. Perhaps in the gallery overhead. It mattered little. For right now, Emma Bannon cared only for the woman on the throne and the gasping man on the steps between them.

“Arrogant witchling.” But Britannia’s smile stretched wide and white, a predatory V. “We are amused. This is Morris, then.”

“In the flesh.” But Emma did not lower her gaze and she did not pay a courtesy. Do you understand what you commissioned from him?

Did you not think to warn me of the poison, this illness?

Of course not. It was ridiculous. Warn a tool of its breaking, or a sword of its meeting another blade? Who would do so?

And yet even a tool could turn in its master’s hand, when used improperly.

I have been so used. But I was willing, was I not? And who am I to question Her?

“We see.” Victrix’s free hand, resting on the throne’s arm, tapped its fingers precisely once, each ring spitting a spark of painful brilliance. Emma’s jewellery did not answer – but only because she willed it not to.

I do not challenge Britannia. I serve.

And Eli had paid the price, just as her other Shields had. The warmth of the stone inside Emma’s chest, her surety against death, turned traitorous. It was a claw against her vitals, and each of its nails was tipped with a bright hot point of loathing.

Morris coughed, weakly. Both the Queen and the sorceress ignored him. His hollow cheeks were reddened, deadly flowers blooming under the skin. Emma held her sovereign’s gaze, Victrix’s eyes fields of darkness from lid to lid, strange dry stars glittering in their depths. They formed no constellation a man could name, those stars, and perhaps there was a Great Text that held their secrets… but it was not one Emma had ever been privileged to read.

“And this unseemly display, sorceress?” Victrix’s tone now held no pity – or, despite her earlier words, amusement.

A hot flush went through Emma, followed by an icy chill. So you did intend to use him in secret after this. Dear God. “You wished him returned to you. Here he is.” And that is all I will say before witnesses.

Morris choked. Blood bubbled in his thin lips, and for the first time he spoke. Or perhaps it was only now that the terrible windrush of fury was no longer filling her ears that she could hear his mumbles.

“Nomine Patris.” Bright blood sprayed, and the smell of sick-sweet caramel rose, adding its tang to the sweat, salt and stench of fear. “Patris… et Filii… Spiritus Sancti…”

He’s a Papist. Inquisition filth. Revulsion filled Emma’s throat. She turned her head aside and spat, uncaring of the breach of protocol, and Alberich the Queen’s Consort inhaled sharply as he hurried down the steps, as if to render aid to the genius.

He was perhaps a decent man, the foreign princeling. But it did no good. Morris shuddered, his heels drumming the floor as his body convulsed, broken on a hoop of its own muscle-bound making, and a fine mist of blood and fouler matter sprayed.

Emma Bannon watched him die. When the last rattle and sob of breath had fled the corpse, she returned her gaze to her sovereign’s face…

… and found Victrix unmoved. Perhaps she had known the manner of research Morris was engaged upon, and at least some of its dangers. Did she guess Morris had died of the same poisonous filth he had been called upon to produce for the purpose of serving Britannia’s enemies with terrible, torturous death? Or did she think Emma had somehow crushed him with a toxic sorcery and brought him here to die?

The uncertain young Victrix, new to the rigours of rule and desperate for any bulwark against those who would make her a puppet, was no more.

Now she was truly a Queen.

Britannia was stone-still upon her Throne, and when Emma turned on her heel and stalked away, her footsteps loud in the echoing silence, her fists clenched in her black-mourning skirts, that Queen – Emma Bannon’s chosen ruler – uttered no word.

Perhaps she understood her servant’s fury. And whoever was witnessing this scene, what tale would they carry, and to whom?

The Consort, however, said enough for all three. “Sorceress!” he hissed. “You shall not dare approach again! You are finished! Finished!”

Emma halted only once. She stared at Mikal’s drawn face, and his hand twitched. She shook her head, slightly, and her Shield subsided. She did not turn, but her own voice rang hard and clear as an æthrin-scry crystal.

“No, Your Majesty the Consort. When another death is required, or another black deed is to be performed, I am Her Majesty Alexandrina Victrix’s servant. As always.” She set her jaw, for what threatened to come hard on the heels of those three sentences was couched in terms she could not make less stark.

And the next time you insult me, petty little princeling, I shall call you to account for it as if I were a man, and this the age of duels.

She strode from the Throne Room, her face set and white, and her Shield followed.