The Red Plague Affair

Chapter Thirty-Three A Close-Run Race

Tarshingale was easily found, and explanations given; the man’s gaze was quite disconcerting and he had given her short shrift until Clare’s name was mentioned and the vials and notations – which might as well have been in some tongue of the Indus for all she could make sense of them, though she had prudently retained a copy – shown. She left the man in his bespattered coat with instructions on how to gain admittance to the Palace; no doubt the cure would be administered to Alberich very soon.

If he was not already dead. She had not bothered to check the broadsheets. She told herself it did not matter now.

King’s Hospital, bursting at the seams with victims of the Red crammed four to a bed, was also full of moaning and screaming. It reminded her uncomfortably of the one time she had ever braved the halls of Bethlehem Hospital; the cries of Bedlam held an edge of misery this place lacked, though it was a very close-run race indeed. At least the very bricks of King’s were not warped as Bedlam’s were.

Harthell and Mikal had stayed with the carriage, both were armed with a brace of pistols as well, though the coachman would be of little use except to frighten away the jackals who would prey when the city’s forces of order were occupied with other matters.

Besides, she had taken care not to be alone with Mikal since Clare’s… cure.

The exhaustion was all through her. She had forgotten how weary flesh could become without the bolstering of a wyrm’s heart, the Philosopher’s Stone granting all manner of immunities.

Even a Prime’s strength had limits.

Still, her head came up as her fingers touched Mikal’s. Instead of stepping up into her carriage, she dropped his hand and turned swiftly, as if stung, twitching her skirts back and sweeping her hair from her face.

“Penny, madam?” the shambling man asked, querulous, and Mikal moved forward – and halted as her hand, clothed in the tattered rags of a black lace glove, caught his sleeve. “Penny for a poor man? Ha’pence? Farthing?”

The importunate sir was dressed in stinking oddments as well, and under his soft slouching hat the gleam of his changeable eyes was sunken. He had shaved his fair moustache and was far thinner than he had been the first time she had seen him. He halted, and the ghost of amusement on his filthy, crusted mouth was almost too much to be borne.

“Dr Vance.” She shook her head, once, sadly. “You rather hoped I would throw your corpse out.”

“No other way to leave your tender care, my dear.” He had a tin cup with a few thin farthings in it; he shook it and the coins rattled. “We have business, you and I.”

She should, she supposed, evince some surprise, but it was useless. “Indeed we have. Pray do enter the carriage, sir. We may at least speak privately there.”

He stretched out his legs. Harthell cracked the whip, and Mikal, settled watchfully next to Emma, was tense as a wound clockspring.

As badly as the resurrected criminal’s clothes were tattered, he did not smell. Which was either an oversight to his costume, a mark of his fastidiousness… or the sweetstink of Londinium roasting under the Red had deadened Emma’s nose.

“You introduced the cure under your skin in some manner while I was occupied with Clare.” She nodded, once, slowly. “You must have been very amused at my questions about that method of applying said cure.”

“I expected no less than brilliance from you, my dear, which you have amply demonstrated. I shall be on my way, soon, to sell the lovely cure I helped create at a high price before it becomes common. Profit does not linger.”

The missing canisters are in your hands. She was suddenly quite certain of that, though she could not tell if it was intuition or simple logic. But you had no choice but to work for a cure once you were trapped in my house. Interesting. “Nor does vengeance.”

“I rather suspected you would feel so, yes.” He tipped the slouching hat back with one soot-blackened fingertip. “You do not strike me as a forgiving woman.”

I have never been. Least of all to myself. “The thought of striking you dead at this very moment amuses me mightily. Why should I not?”

“Because you will calculate that the dissemination of this marvellous remedy, no matter what profit I gain from it, is worth letting me go unhindered. Especially since it has reached the Continent, and no doubt the shores of the New World as well.” And d—n the man, but he sounded so very certain.

Just as Clare did, when he knew beyond a doubt what calculation should be attempted to bring the world to rights.

She tapped her fingers on her knee, exactly once. Her back had straightened, and she felt almost herself again, despite the heat of the day. It was uncomfortably close in the carriage, and her underarms were damp. Her corset, filthy as it was, scraped against her skin. It had no doubt worn her into a rash. “The satisfaction of knowing you will no longer be a bother may outweigh that philanthropic interest.”

“It will not, Miss Bannon. You are a creature of Justice, however odd your method of applying it.” He leaned back against the cushions. “I must say, you have a splendid carriage. I quite admire it.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Thank you.”

The silence that fell was not quite comfortable. Her breathing came a trifle short, but she could attribute that to her damnable corset.

Finally, she sighed. The weariness that had settled on her pressed deeper, into her very bones. At the moment, she very much missed the warmth of the Stone in her chest.

And yet she did not miss the crushing upon her conscience that bearing the Stone had brought her. How Llew would laugh, were he alive to guess such a weakness on her part.

“You shall cease being a nuisance to Mr Clare.” She eyed him closely. “Or I shall cut out your heart, sir, and feast upon it.” There is more than enough of your bodily fluids – and your clothing, sir – left at my house for me to practise a nasty sympathy or two upon.

“That,” Dr Francis Vance said, with a wide white smile on his haggard, Red-ravaged face, “is my promise to you, dear lady. Do take care of Clare, he is a giant among mentaths.”

With that, he reached for the carriage door and was gone even as the conveyance rolled. Emma caught Mikal’s arm.

“Let him go,” she said, and surprised herself.

For her pained, unamused laugh turned into a deep, wracking cough, and her forehead was clammy-damp.

Mikal had turned pale, even under his dark colouring. “Prima…”

She gestured for silence, and he subsided. Emma studied his face as the carriage rolled, Harthell gaining as much speed as he dared on the choked thoroughfares, moans and cries and coughs rising in a sea around them. The cup of the city brimmed over, and she found she could not say what she wished.

I am sorry, Mikal. For you shall very shortly be cast adrift, and I am selfish, for I cannot cling to this manner of life any more. No matter my responsibility to you, to them… to Her…

She coughed again, her fingers in their torn and stained gloves pressing over her mouth, and they came away dripping with red. “Oh, dear,” she murmured, and pitched aside, into Mikal’s arms.