The Red Plague Affair

Chapter Three Grief Is Unavoidable

Dark wainscoting, large graceful shelves crammed with books and periodicals, including an entire set of the new edition of the Encyclopaedie Britannicus – Miss Bannon’s servants were, as ever, extraordinarily thorough – and the heavy oak armoire full of linens charm-measured exactly to Clare’s frame. The rest of the room was comfortably shabby, rich red velvet rubbed down to the nub and the tables scattered with papers left precisely where he had placed them the last time he had availed himself of Miss Bannon’s hospitality.

The oddity was the chair set by his bedside, and the sorceress within it, her slightness cupped in heavy ebony arms and her curling dark hair slightly mussed as she leaned against the high hard back, sound asleep, dressed in silver and blue finery fit to attend a Court presentation. Her childlike face, without her waking character to lend authority to the soft features, was slack with utter exhaustion.

Of no more than middle height, and slight as well, it was always a surprise to see just how small she truly was. One tended to forget as the force of her presence filled a room to bursting.

The other oddity stood at his chamber door, a tall man with tidy dark hair, an olive-green velvet jacket and curious boots, his irises glowing yellow in the dimness. The smell of paper, clean sheets, a faint ghost of tabac smoke, and the persistent creeping breath of Londinium’s yellow fog alone would have told Clare he was in the room Miss Bannon kept for his visits.

Which had been rather less often than he liked, of late. The sorceress’s company could not be called restful, precisely, but all the same Clare found it rather relaxing to have at least one person with whom he could feel a certain… informality?

Was comfort the more precise term?

The Shield, Mikal, did not stir. His yellow gaze rested upon Clare with distressing penetration.

Lucid. But very weak. He tested his body’s responses, gingerly. They obeyed, grudging him as if he were an invalid. Fingers like sausages, toes swollen but movable, his chest sore as if a gigantic clawed hand had rummaged through the inside of his ribcage and left a jumbled mess behind.

Now for the important part. His eyes half-lidded, and he performed the curious mental doubling of a mentath. A set of mental chalkboards rose before his consciousness, and he began with the simplest exercises he had learned at Yton when his talent had truly begun to manifest itself. Mentath ability came to the fore during late childhood, scholarships were quite generous for any who showed considerable promise.

Said scholarships, however, were contingent upon that promise being fulfilled.

A quarter of an hour later, loose with relief but sweating from the mental effort, Clare let out a long, shaky sigh. His faculties were unharmed.

Miss Bannon, perhaps disturbed by the slight sound, shifted in the chair and fell back into slumber. Clare now had the opportunity to study her while she was deeply asleep, and it was so novel an experience he rather wished he had not been forced to forgo a portion of that time to making certain whatever had happened to him had not destroyed his capacities.

You are avoiding, Clare. It was angina pectoris. Rather severe, too.

Mikal’s eyes had half-closed as well. The Shield leaned against the door, and he was perhaps almost asleep. Did he think Clare a threat to the sorceress?

She did rather manage to accomplish a fair amount of vexation. Especially to Britannia’s enemies. And she did so with a disregard for her own safety likely to give the Shield, tasked with maintaining said safety, a bit of nervousness.

However, it was far more likely that Mikal was unwilling to let Miss Bannon out of his sight for… other reasons. Quite personal considerations, one could say.

The question of Mikal had occupied Clare most handsomely at one time or another. Since the affair that had brought the mentath into the sorceress’s circle – not that Miss Bannon had anything so social as a circle, it was rather the circle of her regard, which frankly interested Clare more – he had added tiny nuggets of information to the deductive chain Mikal represented.

Your heart, Clare. Do not become distracted.

He was clean, and in a bed which linens smelled of fresh laundering. The last event he remembered was the darkness of the sewers swallowing him whole. Slightly irritated, he shifted in the mattress’s familiar embrace. How had he arrived here, of all places?

The answer was stupidly simple. Valentinelli, of course. Where else would the Neapolitan bring him? The man was as fascinated by Miss Bannon as Mikal was.

Or as you are. You are seeking to distract yourself from a very important chain of deduction. Angina pectoris. A severe attack. You could have died.

Yet here he lay, clean and safe. At least, it would take a great deal of unpleasantness before this house became unsafe.

Miss Bannon no doubt performed some illogical miracle, and is sleeping at your bedside. In that dress, she was no doubt a-hunting in Society for a traitor, turncoat, criminal, or merely one who intrigued too openly against Queen Victrix. Yet here she sleeps, and you are… comforted? Troubled?

The problem, he reflected, was that Emotion was insidious, and an enemy of Logic.

Item one: he had lost Dr Vance. Again.

Item two: the more-than-mild chest pains during the hunt for the blasted art professor were unequivocally symptoms of a much larger quandary.

Item three: Miss Bannon, breathing softly as she slumped in an uncomfortable-looking chair. She took very little care with her person, and it was not quite right for Clare to put her to such worry. It was not worthy of the regard he held for her, as well.

He had no family; his parents were safe in churchyard beds, and his siblings had not survived childhood. But had he been one of those blessed with surviving kin, Clare supposed he would have felt for them much the same way he felt for Miss Bannon. A rather brotherly affection, tinged with a great deal of… what was it? Worry?

He might as well worry about a typhoon, or houricane. Miss Bannon was eminently capable… but she was also strangely fragile, being female, and Clare was not behaving as a gentleman by putting her to such bother.

You are being maudlin. Emotion is the enemy of Reason, and you are still distracting yourself. Had he not been a mentath, Clare might have been tempted to stifle a groan. As it was, he merely swallowed the offending noise and set himself to exercise his reason, since his faculties appeared undamaged.

“Clare.”

He almost started, but it was only Mikal, breathing the single word from his place at the door. The gleam of his irises was absent; the foreign man – for Clare had deduced he was, in fact, of the blood of the Indus, even if he had been born on Englene’s shores – had closed his eyes.

“Yes?” Clare whispered.

“You could have died.”

I am not an idiot, sir. “Yes.”

“My Prima greatly weakened herself to avert such an event.”

Obviously. “I am most grateful.”

Emma Bannon stirred again, and both Shield and mentath held their peace for a short while. When she subsided, sliding sideways to end propped against one side of the chair like a sleepy child during a Churchtide evening, Mikal let out another soft breath. His words took shape inside the exhale.

“She is… fond of you.”

Oh? “Only a little, I’m sure.” Clare shifted uncomfortably. Such swimming weakness wore on him; stillness was remarkably painful after a while. “Sir—”

“She is fond of very few.”

“That I can believe.”

Mikal arrived at the warning Clare had already inferred was his intention. “Do not cause her grief, mentath.”

I am a fleshly being in a dangerous world. Grief is unavoidable. His answering whisper was as stiff as his protesting back. “I shall do my best, sir.” Had he not just been reminded of his own perishability, in the most alarming way possible? And further reminded that he was not being quite correct in his treatment of his… friend?

Yes, Miss Bannon was a friend. It was rather like forming an acquaintance with a large, not-quite-tamed carnivore. Sorcery made for powerful irrationality, no matter how practical Emma Bannon was as a matter of course.

The Shield fell silent again, even the glimmers of his yellow irises quenched, and Clare lay in the dimness, studying one of Emma Bannon’s small soft slumber-loosened hands, until fresh unconsciousness claimed him.