The Red Plague Affair

Chapter Two A Duke to Chastise

Inside the stoic, well-bred walls of 34½ Brooke Street, Mayefair, Londinium, a quiet bustle of orderly activity was shattered.

“Strega!” a familiar voice bellowed, and Emma Bannon, Sorceress Prime, arrived at the bottom of the fan-shaped stairs in a silk-skirted rush. Mikal was there in his tails and snow-white shirt, easing a dead man’s lanky frame to the floor, and the smell hit her.

Dear God, what is this? Her half-unbuttoned dress whispered as she flicked her fingers, a cleansing charm rising with a Minor Word and scorching the air of her parquet-floored foyer. Her dark curls, almost-dressed in anticipation of Lady Winslet’s ball, tumbled about her face as she recognised the long, beaky-nosed corpse who, contrary to her expectations, drew in a rattling breath, clutching at his left shoulder and jerking his limbs in a decidedly odd fashion.

Next to him, pock-faced and hollow-eyed Ludovico Valentinelli was spattered with effluvium as well, but she had little time to wrinkle her nose.

Her other Shield, tall dark Eli, arrived at a run. He was further along in the dressing process than Mikal, since both of them were to attend her tonight. Still, his starched shirt was unbuttoned, and his jacket knocked askew.

Clare’s breath rattled. Angina. It is his heart, she realised, the spark of life in Archibald Clare’s body guttering like a candleflame in a draughty hall. “Fetch me crystali digitalia!” she barked, and Eli leapt to obey, taking the stairs three at a time. Her workroom would admit him, and he knew enough to take care with any experiments in progress – especially the æthericial commisterum. “Ludo, what on earth?” She did not expect him to answer.

“Strega—” The Neapolitan was almost beyond words, but Emma was already on her knees. She was barefoot, too – the ball would not start for some while yet, and she had intended to be only slightly late. Only fashionably so, as it were.

Later than her night’s quarry. It was always advisable to surprise one’s prey.

Mikal, his yellow irises bright in the foyer’s dimness, spared the Italian a single glance, bracing Clare’s shoulders.

A Major Word took shape on Emma’s lips, sliding free whole and bloody, red sparks of sorcery fountaining. The four plain silver rings on her left hand fluoresced as she pulled stored ætheric force from them, heavy garnet earrings swinging against her cheeks warming and sparking as well. She would, in all eventuality, need the force she was expending later tonight – but just at the moment, she did not care. Her right hand, a large bloody stone in its antique silver setting flashing on the second finger, clamped to Clare’s chest and her senses dilated. She located the source of the distress, feeling about inside his flesh with several nonphysical senses, and determination rose bitter-bright inside her.

Not your time yet, sir. Not while I am here to gainsay it.

The heart, determined muscle that it was, twitched under her ætheric pressure. She forced it into a rhythm that matched her own, exhaling sharply as her concentration narrowed. There was some damage, true, but all in all the organ had carried on gamely.

She was not surprised. He could be provokingly stubborn, her mentath. “The golden orb in the library,” she heard herself say, from very far away. “And three surdipped hawk feathers, Mikal. Bring.”

He did not protest at leaving her alone and distracted with Valentinelli, for once. Which was very good, because Clare’s tired heart began to resist the pressure of her will, and the sorceress was suddenly very occupied in keeping Archibald Clare’s blood moving at its required pace. At least her Discipline, Black though it was, gave her sufficient knowledge of the body’s processes to keep extinction from Clare’s doorstep in this instance.

I do hope his faculties have not been damaged. The flow of ætheric energy through her hands intensified, scorch-hot. The mentath, a logic-machine trapped in frail, weary flesh, coughed and convulsed again.

Strange, he looks old now. Perhaps it was merely that his colour was very bad. Then again, he was not a young man. He had been a vigorous thirty-three when she met him, but the years since had kept up their steady wearing away at him, drop by drop.

And Clare was congenitally unable to cease pursuing trouble of the most exotic sort. He was not engaged in a life that would permit much rest, and the wear and tear on his physicality was marked.

A chant rose to her lips, the language of Mending forced to her will – for her Discipline was not of the White branch, and Mending obeyed her only reluctantly. Still, she was Prime, and such a designation required a will that brooked very little bridle – and could force even the most reluctant branch of sorcery to its bidding.

A rolling sonorous roil, the entire house suddenly alive with rushing crackles, its population of indentured servants so used to the feel of tremendous sorcery running through its halls they hardly paused in their appointed duties.

Eli arrived, not breathless but with his dark hair disarranged. He measured out two tiny venom-purple crystals of the digitalia, dropped them into Clare’s fishworking mouth, and clamped the mentath’s jaw shut for a few seconds to make certain they would stay in. Then he settled back on his heels, watching the Sorceress Prime’s face, alight with crawling golden charter charms screening her flesh as she half sang, her evening dress pulled askew and white shoulders rising from a silver and blue froth of gauze and lace. The charter symbols, ancient runic patterns of Wheel and Plough, Stone and Blossom and others less willing to be named or pronounced, invaded Clare’s pasty skin as well, and finally Eli glanced up at the Neapolitan assassin. “Looks as if you’ve had rather a night of it.”

Ludovico shrugged. For once, he did not sneer, perhaps a mark of his agitation. Or perhaps his lips were sealed by the filth coating him, smeared on his face as if he had bathed in a foul-ditch. Under that mask, his colour was very bad indeed – not that his sallow, ratlike features would ever win regard for blooming beauty, indeed. At least the dirt masked the pox scars on his cheeks.

Mikal reappeared, yellow eyes alight as he shouldered his fellow Shield aside. In one hand he held an apricotsized globe of mellow gold; the three feathers, coated with a black tarry substance, shivered in his other. The sorceress, dark gaze full of a terrible blank presence, swayed slightly as she chanted. The charter symbols glowed crimson as they ran down her left side, clustering high under the ribs, crawling over the pale slope of one breast like a cupped hand.

A shudder ran through her swelling song, the mentath’s filth-caked bootheels drumming the parquet as his body thrashed, and Mikal leaned forward, offering the globe and the feathers.

Who knew what objects would be required for any act of sorcery? It was, by its very definition, an irrational art. Many sorcerers were magpies, since one could not tell what physical item – if any – would be required for a Work. Some Primes sniffed disdainfully and said the best sorcery was unanchored in the physical… but those of a practical bent understood that the ease of a Work moored in an object of reasonable permanence was in most cases a desirable thing.

Sorcery flashed, ætheric energy coalescing into the visible for a brief moment, and Ludovico Valentinelli crossed himself, breathing a foul wondering curse in his native tongue. His pox-pocked face, under its splattering of black matter, was flour-pale.

The globe and feathers were gone, their physical matrices picked apart to provide fuel for the impossible. The chant relaxed, swimming bloodwarm through air suddenly prickling and vibrating. Clare, his eyelids fluttering, was no longer ashen. A trace of healthy colour crept back into his lean, lax face.

Easily, softly, the brass syllables wound down from Emma Bannon’s lips. She leaned over the mentath, cradling him, and breathed in his face. His body jerked again and the sorceress relaxed slightly, uncurling her mental grip from the repaired clot of fibrous muscle in his chest. One final stanza, her nose wrinkling slightly as the acridity of some drug burned her sensitive palate, and the language of Mending fled her.

She sagged, and the almost-bruising grip on her shoulders was Mikal’s hands, fever-hot and hard with callouses. Emma blinked, shutterclicks of dim light stinging her suddenly sensitive eyes, storing away the taste of whatever substance had been running through Clare’s blood. Hmmm. No wonder he has looked rather ragged of late. It tastes dreadful, whatever it is.

Mikal’s face was tense and set.

“He will live.” It was a relief to hear her usual brisk tone. For a moment, she had almost been… had she?

Afraid. And that could not be borne, or shown.

“He will live,” she repeated, more firmly. “Now, let us be about clearing up this mess. I have a ball to attend and a duke to chastise.”

Lady Winslet’s dowry had restored the fortunes of her husband’s family, and though she was not taken into quite the highest echelons of Society, her taste and judgement were considered quite reasonable. She had redone a fashionable Portland Place address – one of Naish’s, of course – in a manner most befitting her husband’s title. Of late she had taken to inviting an astounding mix to her Salons, patronising certain promising members of the Royal Society, and had garnered much praise for her dinners. In a few generations, the Winslets would be very proud indeed to have invited such a petty bourgeois into their hallowed family tree.

If, that is, she managed to produce an heir. Barry St John Duplessis-Archton, Lord Winslet, was a dissipate scoundrel, but he had ceased gambling and now only drank to a religious degree that might preclude fathering said heir. He had a nephew who showed some signs of not being an empty-headed waste of a few fine suit jackets, but, all in all, Emma privately thought the Winslets’ chances rather dim.

And no breath of scandal attached itself to Lady Winslet; she did not seem the sort to have a groom provide the necessary materials to make a bastard either. Very sad; had she been just a trifle less extraordinary she would have more chances of success against the ravening beasts of Society and Expectation.

All of that was academic, however, for Emma had known the Duke of Cailesborough would be at the Winslet ball. One of his current mistresses was attending, and furthermore, Emma herself had carefully planted a breath of rumour that would interest him.

And he had taken the bait whole. Which led to her presence in this forgotten, cramped second-floor storeroom full of discarded bits of off-season furniture and rolled-up, unfashionable carpets. A single candle, stuck in a dusty candelabra probably dating from the time of the Mad King Georgeth, gave wavering illumination to the scene.

Eli straightened, exhaling sharply. He was not rumpled in the slightest, though there was a slight flush to his cheeks. Perhaps embarrassment, for the quality of Cailesborough’s struggle had been quite unexpected.

Said Cailesborough, on the floor, trussed hand and foot and gagged with commendable efficacy with his own sock, glared at Emma with the one blue eye that was not swelling closed.

For a man of the aristocracy, he had put up a rather remarkable tussle.

That was immaterial. “Now,” she said, softly, “what do we do with you?”

She had the dubious honour of addressing a Spaniard, moustachioed and of a small stature to inspire a touch of ridicule or pity, his right arm twisted behind him in an exceedingly brutal fashion by a silent and immaculate Mikal, who twisted his lean dark face and spat at her.

There was a creaking sound, and Mikal’s other hand clamped at the small Spaniard’s nape. “Prima?” The one word was freighted with terrible menace, and had Emma been feeling insulted instead of simply weary, she might have let her Shield do what he wished with the man. Mikal’s eyes burned in the dimness, a flame of their own.

Outside the locked door, a hall and the cigar room away, the music swelled. Her absence would not be remarked during the waltz, but perhaps the Duke’s would.

They will be missing him a very long time. A greater worry returned, sharp diamond teeth gnawing at the calm she needed to deal with this situation in its proper fashion. Is Clare well? Resting comfortably, I should hope.

She put the thought aside. He was as easy as she could make him, and she had other matters to attend to at this moment. Her regard for a mentath was one thing. Her service to Queen and Empire was quite another.

“On the one hand,” she continued, suppressing a slightly acid burp – for Lady Winslet’s cold supper tonight left a trifle to be desired – and clasping her hands prettily as she sank onto a small, handy-even-if-covered-with-a-dustcloth chair, “you are a diplomatic personage, sir, and Her Majesty’s government does believe in observing proper forms. It would be a trifle awkward if a member of the august consulate of that pigeon Isobelia disappeared.”

Don Ignacio de la Hoya went almost purple and cursed her in a whisper. He was emphatically not a Carlist, which was interesting indeed. The Spanish embassy had been rather a hotbed of anti-Isobelian sentiments for a long while, the round, benighted, silly Queen of the Spains had never had much of a chance against those who wished her a catspaw. Still, she was nominally in power, and Emma supposed the idea of royalty and majesty might have held a certain attraction for some of her subjects. Especially if they were as ill-favoured and ratlike as this specimen.

His throat had been almost crushed by Mikal’s iron fingers, and now, the sharp stink of fear poured from him in waves.

The dustcloth would perhaps taint this dress. She should not have sat, and she was taking far too long over this part of the matter. Still, Emma tilted her head slightly and regarded the man. Don Ignacio writhed in Mikal’s grip, and it would be merely a matter of time before he collected himself enough to raise a cry, bruised throat or no.

There was little chance of him being heard over the merriment and music, but why take the risk?

He stared at her, and the sudden spreading wetness at his crotch – it was a shame, his trousers were of fine cloth – sent a spike of useless revulsion through her. Champagne and terror were a bad mixture, and this man was no ambassador. He was a low-level consulate official, despite his Don; but, she supposed, even a petty bureaucrat could dream of treason.

“Did you truly think you could plan to murder a queen and go unnoticed?” She sounded amused even to herself. Reflective, and terribly calm. “Especially in such lackadaisical fashion? The weapons you brought for the planned insurrection will be most useful elsewhere, I suppose, so we may thank you for that. And that baggage…” She indicated the prostrate, struggling Duke with a tiny motion of her head, and Eli, well used by now to this manner of situation, sank a kick into Cailesborough’s middle. He had not yet gone to fat, the Duke, but he was still softer than Eli’s boot. “… well, he has some small value for us now. But you? I do not think you have much to offer.”

Don Ignacio de la Hoya began to babble in a throaty whisper, but he told Emma nothing she did not already know of the plot. He had very little else to give, and fear would only make him too stupid for proper use. His replacement in the consulate was likely to be just as idiotic, but vastly less troublesome.

His heart, she found herself thinking. What manner of substance was he using? The damage was much more than it should have been; thirty-five does not make a man old. Merely lucky, and somewhat better-fed than the rest.

She brought herself back to the present with an invisible effort. Mikal read the change in her expression, and the greenstick crack of a neck breaking was very loud in the hushed room. The candle on the table guttered, but the charm in its wax kept the flame alive.

On the floor, the Duke moaned, his eyes rolling. He was to be delivered to the Tower whole and reasonably undamaged. For a bare moment Emma Bannon, Sorceress Prime in service to Queen and Empire, contemplated crushing the life out of him by sorcery alone. It would be messy, true, but also satisfying, and Queen Victrix would never have to fear this caged beast’s resurgence. He had chosen ill in the manner of accomplices, but he was capable of learning from such a mistake.

The decision is not yours, sorceress, she told herself again. Cailesborough had been one of the few allowed near Alexandrina Victrix when she had been merely heir presumptive under the stifling-close control of the Duchess of Kent; of course he had not been a marriage prospect but he had no doubt been amenable to extending the Duchess’s sway over her soon-to-be-crowned daughter. The old King’s living until Victrix’s majority had cheated the Duchess of a regency, and no doubt Victrix had cheated Cailesborough of some prize of position or ambition. Still, the Queen appeared to wish him dealt with leniently.

If the Tower could be called lenient.

De la Hoya’s body hit a rolled up, unfashionable carpet with a thump, raising a small cloud of dust. Mikal glanced at her. “Prima?” Did he look concerned?

It had taken far more sorcerous force than she liked to lure them both to this room and to spring her trap. And the worry returned, sharper than ever. Clare was not a young man, and he seemed inclined, if not flatly determined, to do himself an injury.

“Bring the body, and the Duke.” Londinium’s fog was thick tonight, and it would cover all manner of actions. “The window is behind those dreadful curtains – and do make certain the Duke lands gently. Lady Winslet’s gardens need no damage.” She stood, a slight crackling as her finger flicked and a cleansing charm shook dust free of her skirts. The silver shoes with their high arches and spangled laces were lovely, but they pinched abominably, and her corset squeezed as well. I would much rather have been at home tonight. How boring I’ve grown.

“I’ll fetch the carriage.” Mikal paused, if she wished to tell him where they were bound. It was a Shield’s courtesy, and a welcome one.

“We shall take both unfortunates to the Tower.” Though the body will go no further than the moat. The Dweller should be pleased with that.

Eli bent and made a slight sound as he managed the Duke’s bulky, fear-stiffened form. Mikal simply stood for a moment, watching her closely. She took back the mask of her usual expression, straightened her shoulders and promised herself a dash of rum once she returned to her humble abode.

And still, the worry taunted her.

Something must be done about Clare.