The Red Plague Affair

Chapter Twenty-Six A Gift of Any Sort

Saffron Hill hunched colourlessly under morning drizzle. Emma felt just as dreary, her outlines blurred by a slight glamour – no more than a smearing, a delicate insinuation against the gaze, so that her cloth did not tell against her. Beside her, Mikal was utterly still, studying the end of the street where it devolved into Field Lane, and a more wretched bit of dirt would be difficult to find even in Londinium.

The weight in Emma’s left hand was a thin, broken chain of cheap silvery metal. Caught in its links was a thread of dark hair, stubbornly coarse. The tiny brass charm attached very near the break held the impress of a double-faced Indus godling, one of the many who made the subcontinent such a patchwork of competing interests and principalities.

Ripe for exploitation, they are, and Britannia’s servants experts of divide and rule. We have done as much since Golden Bess’s day. And before. We learned well from the Pax Latium, for all we were slow to apply such lessons.

What instinct had moved her to quietly pocket the broken necklace she had found tangled in Llewellyn Gwynnfud’s spacious purple-hung bed on a summer’s morning long ago? Their affair had died a fiery death over a certain French “actress”; while Emma was merely unwilling to share, she was outright indisposed to being lied to. The tart had been knifed by her “manager” – Emma had borne the accusation of a hand in that manner nobly, considering she was completely innocent – and had been almost, almost willing to forgive.

She was no Seer, and the revelation of the necklace’s owner – and the source of the coarse dark hair caught in its strands – had been quite surprising. She supposed Llew was catholic in his buggery, in every sense, and so had quietly left his house and returned to her own with the cheap chain burning in her skirt pocket.

And she had never received him again, or sought his company since. Until Bedlam, and the affair that had brought Clare to her notice, and to… yes.

To her regard.

Any idiot with ætheric talent knew how to practise a sympathy. And dear old Kim would not be on guard. She had never mentioned that little incident to another living soul. Kim may well have thought Lord Sellwyth had retained the scrap as a memento Llew may not have even known that his dalliance had been discovered or that a piece of evidence had found its way into her hands.

She held it tightly, her gloved fist bound as well with a silken handkerchief Mikal had knotted with exceeding care. It would not do to lose this sympathetic link. She would be forced to resort to other, bloodier, and far more draining methods to find her quarry.

Grey-faced children dressed in ragged colourless oddments slunk in every bit of shade they could find, and the æther here was thick with misery. In Whitchapel there was anger aplenty, but this corner of Londinium had burned through all such fuel long ago and was left with only cinder-glazed hopelessness. It was a wonderful place to hide, if one was a sorcerer; but the ætheric weight would rather tell on the nerves after a while.

If he had any nerves left, that was.

The chain and charm hummed with live sorcery as she caught the rhythm, her throat filling with a strange murmur, heavily accented in odd places. It was a song of spice and incense, the dust of the Indus rising through the cadences, and the brief thought that perhaps Mikal would find it familiar threatened to distract her.

She waited. Patience was necessary, though the consciousness of precious time draining away frayed her nerves most disagreeably. Clare had not looked well this morning, pale and rather moist, but who would look hale when faced with this? As well as that distasteful art professor.

The man had looked very much like the worst sort of disreputable, with a cast to his mouth that was utterly familiar, especially since Emma had gone recently into Whitchapel and peered behind the dark curtain smothering her pre-Collegia memories. She rather disliked those recollections, and endeavoured to put them as far from her as possible.

The trouble was, sometimes they would not stay tamely in their enclosure.

Another twitch, the sympathetic sorcery testing her grasp. Like called to like, and of course he would have defences, some overt, others subtle and more dangerous. Yet he was not on his home ground, and could not risk a heavy expenditure of ætheric force lest it twist in unexpected ways – and, most likely, eat him alive.

Such was not a pleasant end.

Another twitch, more definite, and she pointed with her free hand, a corkscrew-twisted charter symbol spitting and spilling from her right third finger. Mikal had her arm; he guided her across the sludge of the street, old cobbles and bricks slipping and sliding under a thick greasing of muck. It was not Scab, of course, but it was fœtid enough.

She had a vague impression of warped wood and crumbling brick; the consciousness of being all but blind as she followed the inner tugging struck her, hard. Losing breath, the humming tune failing, she shunted aside the force of the triggered defence and inhaled smoothly, the song becoming a hiss-rasp of scales against dry-oiled stone. Mikal’s voice, very low – he would be speaking to soothe her if he suspected she struggled with a defensive ætheric hedge.

It was not necessary, but vaguely pleasant nonetheless.

She came back to herself with a rush rather like the humours rising to the head after one sprang too quickly from a sickbed, and her left hand jerked forward and held steady until the connection broke with a subliminal snap. Before her rose a crooked door made glue and sawdust, and the narrow, barely lit hall was full of refuse. Somewhere a baby cried angrily, and there was a stealthy noise in the walls – rats, or the poor packed into these rooms like maggots in cheese. Either was likely.

Mikal had drawn a knife. Its curve lay along the outer edge of his forearm, and his eyes were alight with a fierce joy she rarely saw. Her eyebrow lifted a fraction, and he shook his head slightly. He could hear no heartbeat, no breathing behind the door.

Which meant little.

She stepped aside, very carefully, testing the rotting floor before committing her weight. It was her turn to settle herself and nod, fractionally; Mikal uncoiled. The door shattered, a witchlight sparking into being and flaring to distract and disrupt any possible attack, he swept through with her skirts hard on his heels and gave the small hole one swift, thorough glance before turning unerringly toward the makeshift cot mouldering in the corner.

The room was hardly bigger than a closet, its only claim to light or ventilation a small opening near the ceiling. It was barred, but the bars had been worked loose, their softened bases still tingling with ætheric force, torn free of damp-eaten wood. A scrap of black material caught on one fluttered, and Mikal’s fingers darted out, catching and tearing it free as Emma braced herself for more traps.

Which were not present.

The room was echo-empty, and a whiff of brimstone and salt drifting across her nose told her someone had been busily cleaning ætheric traces away. “Oh, bother,” she whispered, in lieu of something less polite. No reason not to act the lady now.

There was a large damp stain on the floor, and despite the chill a lazy bluebottle had found it and was busily investigating. The cot held scraps of white and green, and she cocked her head, openly staring.

A tussie-mussie of jonquil and almond blossoms, a flowerseller’s small silvery dust-powder charm keeping them damp and fresh, lay twined with a red ribbon. Underneath, a folio of new, stiff leather lay, still fuming of the solutions used to tan it.

“Blood,” Mikal said, grimly. But softly. “Prima?”

“Not enough to consign dear Kim to the afterworld, I fear.” She stared at the flowers and the folio. “And it is unlike him to leave me a gift of any sort.”

Her eyes half-lidded. The almond blossom was a sign of promise, and the jonquil’s pale creaminess spoke of a demand for the return of a certain affection. The red ribbon – blood, perhaps? But Kim Finchwilliam Rudyard would not leave her such tokens.

The other Prime? Perhaps. Probing delicately, she caught no hint or taste of trap. Mikal ghosted forward, waiting for her gesture, and when she sighed and spread her free hand he gingerly touched the nosegay with a fingertip.

Still no trap.

He tucked the flowers under his arm and brought the folio to her; she held it in her free hand while he unknotted the handkerchief and wrapped the broken necklace back into a small efficient parcel, which she slid into a skirt pocket. The folio was so new it creaked, bearing no impress of personality as a well-used item would, and she opened it with a certain trepidation.

Inside, crackling yellow paper, covered in a spidery hand. Her lips thinned as she brought the witchglobe close, uncaring that the sensitised, freshly cleansed æther would hold the impress of even so minor a Work as a simple light for a long while.

And with it, her own presence, like a shout in the night.

Drawings. She riffled through the papers, and her suspicion was verified.

“Well, Clare will be very happy,” she murmured. “But I am unsettled, Shield.”

“Yes.” He held the flowers, gazing at them curiously. Did he understand the message? This was a carefully set stage, and the nosegay had been planned just as the rest of it.

But not, Emma thought, by Rudyard. There was another player at the board. A Sorcerer Prime. One in the service of Britannia? But if so, why would he smooth her way?

I do not like this at all.

Clare blinked, focused through the lenses, adjusting a small brass knob. “Still wriggling. Nasty little buggers.”

“Once they are in the blood, they are remarkably resistant.” Vance was hunched over his own spæctroscope, his fingers delicate as he fiddled with the resolutia marix. “Even a severe temperature change does not alter their rate of progression. Fascinating.”

“Quite.” Clare restrained the urge to tap his fingertips on the scarred wooden table with frustration. “The clorace-mine?”

“No effect, except to cause the iron in the blood to crystallise. Which I really must investigate further, when this is finished. The applications could be—I say!”

“What?”

“Nothing. They’re still alive, even as the acidity rises. It does lower their rate of division, but…”

“… not enough,” Clare finished. He coughed, wetly, turning his head aside so he did not foul the sample. Traces of steam rose from his cheeks, and he blinked them aside, irritably. It was chill in the workroom, Miss Bannon kindly leaving a charm to keep the temperature fairly steady in order for experimentation to have one less variable.

Valentinelli dozed on a stool near the door. He looked far more sallow than usual, but his scarred cheeks held splotches of bright crimson. His breathing had turned into a whistle, but his dark gaze darted occasionally from under his eyelids, sharp as a knife and more often than not settling on Vance’s broad back.

The criminal mentath had taken his jacket off despite the chill, and his shirt was adhered to his skin by a fine sheen of sweat. He selected another culture and another substance from the racks to his right, deftly sliding the fresh marrowe-jelly full of the original plague organisms into the spæctroscope’s receiver. He uncapped the clorafinete powder, measured out a spoonful, mixed it with fresh marrowe-jelly in a small glass bowl, and selected a dropper from the small rectangular serviette full of sterilising steam. Two shakes, the dropper cooling rapidly, and the clorafinete mixture was introduced to the original plague. He twisted another knob slightly, and put a bloodshot eye to the viewpiece.

“Blast this all to hell,” he muttered.

Clare quite agreed. There was no time, and yet this numbing systematic process was the one that held the greatest chance of working. He himself was no further than wachamile, working from the other end of the elemental pharma-alphabet.

Footsteps on the stairs. The door was flung open and Miss Bannon appeared, high natural colour in her cheeks, her curls disarranged. “Morris’s notes!” she exclaimed, holding a creaking-new leather folio aloft rather in the manner of a Maenad brandishing the ivy-wrapt heart of a transgressor.

Such fanciful notions, Clare. But his faculties were in rebellion.

“How on earth did you—” Vance halted abruptly as a charter symbol flashed golden between Miss Bannon’s fingers, hissing warningly. The Doctor, already halfway across the workroom, approached the sorceress no further. “Ah. I, erm. Well.”

Clare rubbed at his eyes, carefully. He moves very quickly.

“Will these help, Clare? I confess I cannot make much of them.” It was odd, she seemed almost joyous. “But you can. There is another message from the Crown, too. I have not opened it either, but we shall be rather in bad odour if I do not make some variety of explanation soon. The streets are full of coughing, and people collapsing in the road – even respectable people. Why is it so fast?”

“I do not know.” A thought occurred to him. “Did you happen to see any of the victims with an indenture collar? I ask because your servants have not so much as a cough, yet, and—”

There was a soft thud. Valentinelli had hit the stone floor, and Miss Bannon dropped the folio. In that moment, Clare saw truly what she must have looked like as a young girl, and chided himself for thinking he had ever glimpsed the wonder of it before.

She knelt next to Ludovico, tucking her skirts back, and the assassin cried out weakly in Calabrian. The scarlet flags on his cheeks had intensified, and the shadow under his jaw was a swelling – not yellow, as the new plague, but deadly black, as the old.

Clare’s beastly conscience pinched. He knew the risk, I explained it – there are quite deadly vapours here. How did he contract it, though? Did the plague-pit infect him somehow? But it would have infected Morris too.

The sorceress’s house shivered once. Running feet in its recesses told him the servants heard their mistress’s call.

Clare’s knees creaked as he bent to pick up the folio. A wave of dizziness passed through him; his faculties noted it, allowed it to recede. He was thinking through syrup. “I will not ask how you acquired these, Miss Bannon. Do make Ludovico comfortable. We shall send word should we require more supplies.”

“Very well.” She was pale as milk, and he noticed her skin did not steam, even in this chill. “I did see some indentureds among the collapsed, Clare. I… perhaps mine are simply hardy.”

“Or perhaps you have some natural immunity, Miss Bannon. We cannot be certain.” And should we take a sample of your blood for analysis, who knows what might occur? He opened the folio, hoping his words did not sound too ponderous. His tongue was oddly thick, and the sweat greasing him was most unpleasant. It smelled of treacle, or something similarly sick-sweet, and they had not managed to discern the mechanism responsible for that, either. “Do you feel faint at all?”

“I am quite well, thank you. Sorcerers do not suffer some things, perhaps this is one.” Her gloved fingers hesitated over Ludo’s scar-pocked cheek. For once, she did not draw fastidiously away when he moved. “Clare…”

“He is quite durable, and he has not Morris’s plague.” The false comfort was not worthy of her, but Clare did not have the heart to tell her she was perhaps witnessing the last of Valentinelli’s eventful walk upon the weary earth.

There was a commotion as the footmen arrived, and such was the devotion of the sorceress’s servants that they did not cavil at carrying another very-ill man about, nor did they make avert signs to save themselves from ill fortune or humour. Of course, an indentured servant could not complain… and even cadaverous Finch was in proper health, with not so much as a sniffle.

It was quite provoking. He brought his attention back to the folio, and noted Vance’s hopeful drawing-near.

Miss Bannon noticed too. A few sharp, instantly forgotten syllables left the sorceress’s throat, and Vance hopped back in a most ungainly fashion as the air between himself and Clare hardened, diamond-sparkling for a moment, a concave shield of ice. It slid to the floor, shivering into fragments, and Horace grunted as he hefted Valentinelli’s dead weight.

“Mum?” the footman asked, in a whisper.

“Take him to his chamber. Ready an ice bath, I shall be along in a moment.” The sorceress rose slowly, Marcus the other footman backing slowly up the stairs with his beefy arms under Valentinelli’s shoulders. Strange, how small and thin the Neapolitan looked now. “Doctor, must I warn you further?”

“No, madam.” Icily polite, the criminal mentath stepped back to his spæctroscope. “I am dependent upon solving this riddle as much as your Campanian suitor; or rather more, for I have contracted Morris’s damnable plague. It may save you the trouble of dealing with me in what is no doubt your accustomed fashion.”

“You have precious little idea of my accustomed—” the sorceress began, rather hotly.

Will the two of you cease? “Miss Bannon. Pray leave us to solve this riddle. We shall do all we can. If there is a solution to be found, rest assured you have contributed everything within your considerable powers towards such an end.”

She studied him closely and he straightened under her gaze, hoping she could not see the red splotches on his cheeks or the small tremors running through his bones. He did not have much time before he suffered a crueller fate than Valentinelli’s.

“Very well.” She smoothed her skirts, a woman’s nervousness, perhaps. Never mind that she was, in his experience, the female least likely to need such a soothing habit. “Thank you, Archibald.”

“Emma.” Clare’s throat was full. Feeling, the enemy of Logic, was mounting. Inside his narrow chest, the heart she had mended with sorcery such a short time ago settled into a high, fast gallop.

The mentath watched the sorceress leave, took a deep breath, and returned his attention to the folio, ignoring Vance’s bright deadly gaze.