The Ripper Affair

Chapter Twenty-Two Such Guile To Make Headway

The hansom rattled along, and Emma’s chin dipped as her attention turned inward.

Outside the carriage’s shell, Londinium seethed, and she felt the drag of the Scab along the wheels lessen. Passing out of Whitchapel might improve her mood, but she rather doubted it.

In any case, the hansom was merely a gesture to misdirect a pursuer, albeit an exceedingly lazy one. Still, it was a matter of habit not to approach some things too directly.

Also, it gave her a small increment of badly needed time to think.

The bodies bore the marks of the blackest of sorcery–not of Emma’s Discipline, thank the heavens, but the marks of ætheric force harnessed to an intent so foul even those of the Endor would fain avoid it. The only major Discipline deeper of the Black than Emma’s own was the Diabolic itself, but this held no smoky, addicting incense-ghost of that art.

Those of the Endor had once been murdered as soon as certain… disturbing signs… were noticed during their schooling. Those of the Diabolic still were. Not in civilised Englene, of course, but elsewhere. Especially where the Papists still held sway. Any of sorcery’s children unfortunate enough to have a Discipline darker than Diabolic most often became a malformed monstrosity, ending their short lives dead in the womb. At least, that was the current understanding. She could safely rule out such a hapless monstrosity, and likely rule out the Diabolic as well.

And yet. The bodies were merely instruments; it was the locations that showed deeper marks. The taproot of Our power, Britannia had said.

Which seemed to imply that the power of a ruling spirit was a force that renewed itself, as Tideturn’s flow filled sorcery’s Englene children twice a day. Or was it otherwise, and the draining Britannia was experiencing more… permanent? Was it a longed-for result, or merely a symptom?

I do not know nearly enough. Frustration boiled inside her; the rock in her throat refused to be dislodged. And there was the unwelcome chain of thoughts again, rising inside her skull’s few inches of private space.

Had Clare expected her to let him die of the plague? What had he expected her to do to ensure Ludovico’s survival? Did he think she would wrench the Stone from her mentath and return him to fragility?

For good or for ill, she had chosen Clare. At that moment he had been the one in direst need. Had he not been… would she have married her conscience-heavy burden with Ludovico’s flesh?

Another question I do not require an answer for at this moment. Or that I will not answer, even to myself.

The driver huphuped to his clockhorse, and she took stock of her surroundings. She had precious little time before she alighted and Mikal appeared again.

The bodies are torn; the womb is the locus. A root is driven down in the location; it is a matrix… A root, more likely. Into what? How does it echo with Britannia? Can it be Sympathy? How to target it so effectively, though… it makes little sense.

Of course, Clare would likely chide her for assuming it was so, and Britannia’s weakness simply incidental. What proof did she have otherwise?

Britannia’s word. Besides, the need would have to be pressing indeed for Victrix to come to Emma’s door alone, and lower herself by asking, instead of merely commanding, a sorceress’s aid.

It was small comfort that perhaps even Britannia thought Emma Bannon unlikely to simply obey.

Clare, now there was another worry to be had–that Pico would not be able to effectively restrain him from descending into another fit. It was all she could do, barring keeping watch on the mentath herself. Finch was reliable, and there was the blood-binding as well–which she had performed on an unconscious mentath, and not spoken of.

Clare would no doubt be quite put out by that, too. When he realised she had done so, or when he questioned Pico closely on the matter, or…

The driver chirruped, and the hansom jolted again, slowing. Her moments of precious peace were disappearing. Continuing on too scattered to even think properly, she told herself sternly, would only result in more deaths.

Will it? Unfortunates die every night in Londinium. If their deaths weaken Britannia… is that acceptable?

The woman she had been before the Red Plague exploded into the world would have retreated from such a thought, shelving it as absurd. Now she considered, quite calmly, something absolutely treasonous, as well as repugnant.

Clare assumed she would throw herself upon this mystery and seek a solution as a matter of course.

There was also the little matter of the most recent murder intruding upon her in a most rude fashion. She was sensitised to whatever Work was being performed now, due to her tampering with the site of Tebrem’s misfortune. Which could have unpleasant symptoms–yet the work she had done yesterday in her study should have insulated her from such effects.

Obviously, it had failed to do so properly.

The hansom halted. A bare few moments later, the door was released and Mikal’s hand was as steady as ever as she alighted. The driver, well satisfied with an easy fare, tipped his hat and was off with a clatter and a crack.

Londinium’s soup-thick fog, lit with morning sun to a nauseous glow, walled a busy street-corner, shapes moving in its depths. Mikal did not let go, and she was forced to look up at her Shield.

A Prime normally kept a half-dozen of the brotherhood in service, for physical defence and as a guard against an overflow of ætheric force. There were also other… uses… for them, quite obviously. She had not seen the need for more than Mikal in a very long while. And Eli—

Do not think upon that. The dead shall wait; we are concerned with the living at the moment.

Mikal waited. Of course he would betray no sign of impatience.

The fog was choking-close this morning. For all the sound of traffic, they might have been alone, just outside the north-eastron edge of the Scab’s furthest creep. Pedestrians hurried by, almost faceless, for Mikal had drawn her aside, the brick wall next to her scarred and pitted with age.

For a moment, his face was a stranger’s, too. Emma gave herself a severe mental shake. “Mikal.”

“Prima.”

“We are bound for Bucksrow.” I might as well tell you.

“Just inside Whitchapel again.” He nodded. “The site of the second murder?”

“Yes. I wished no witnesses.”

He nodded, but still paused, in case she wished to add anything further.

What did you do, Mikal, when I lay dying? Clare said you performed a wonder. I survived, and you have not mentioned a price for any feat you performed.

The question bubbled up inside her, was forced back, and she was suddenly aware of the weight of her mourning-cloth; the heaviness of her jewellery; her hair braided, piled and pinned by Isobel’s quick fingers; the constriction of her shoes; and her stays–she had never followed the fashion of extraordinarily tight corseting, but they were tight enough–compressing her.

Other pressures crowding upon her flesh, as well. Ludovico. Clare. Victrix. This faceless man with his shining knife. Mikal himself, and all those of her household. Her collection of drifting souls, each one an anchor.

Without those weights, would she rise from the surface of the earth?

And where would she float to? There was no escape. The only solution was to arrange her immediate surroundings as comfortably as possible, which meant dealing with this affair quickly, directly and ruthlessly.

She swallowed, her throat obeying with a dry click. “Come along then.” She reclaimed her hand, and his expression did not change.

It was not as comforting as she might have wished, but at least it freed her for other worries. Chief among them was what, precisely, she might endure on Bucksrow, at the site of the second murder.

“A cart driver found her.” Soft, thoughtfully. Strengthening cloud-filtered sunlight had scorched Bucksrow clean of its thin coating of Scab, but the cobbles and pavers held thin whorls and traceries of its green, burrowing into the cracks between to wait for darkness. “The Hospital is there.” She pointed at its distant, looming bulk, more sensed than seen through the fog. Her forehead furrowed in a most unladylike manner. “But there is little trace of disturbance. How very curious.”

Cracked and missing cobbles, crumbling paving, timbers blackened with age and paint peeling–where the Scab had not eaten it–from whatever it coated.

Mikal took in the surroundings. “She was certain this…” It was eminently clear who he meant, both by the stress on the she and the suggestion of a lip-curl.

“Was an act by our quarry, yes.” Emma drew her fur-lined mantle closer. Its surface glimmered with moisture, and it did nothing to stave off the cold that descended upon her. Autumn had arrived. Soon after, winter. A further chill coursed down her back. “I am quite certain this is the place.”

“Bloodstain.” He pointed, a swiftly elegant gesture, tendons standing out on the back of his hand. “Right before the stable doors.”

He did not mention that the Scab had been scorched away there too, and no thin traces of green remained even in the crevices.

Emma glanced at the street again. Something about the angle of the stain was not quite right. “Locked after dark, one presumes.” A steady, warm exhalation enfolded them both–the dryness of hide and mane, the sharp mechanical tang of oil for clockhorse gears. She extended a tendril of awareness, probed ever so gently. “I wonder…”

She stepped forward, directly onto the darkened paving stones. Her corpus had braced itself for an uncomfortable experience, and the complete lack of one demanded a response. Her training dug its clawed fingers in her vitals, and she shook the sensation away. “Hm. Mikal?”

“I am here, Prima.”

Of course you are. But it was the response she had wanted. She closed her eyes, tugging on invisible threads in the tangled snarl of the fleshly world.

There. A raw, aching space inside her throbbed in response and she leaned forward, barely conscious of Mikal’s fingers closing about her arm. He braced her, and she gave up outward consciousness, plunging in.

One string, a spider’s thread of wrong amid all the myriad twisted, tangled knots.

Salt against abraded flesh, copper terror flooding a mouth not her own, a rocking motion and the crack of a whip.

Her head snapped aside. Reflex let the blow slide away, her body stiffening only slightly. Impressions flashed through her, a tide of hot sourness and deep-driving pain, a warm gush down her front.

“Carriage,” she gasped.

Another rehearsal. It did not go as well as the preceding, I should think.

“Here now! What are you aboot?”

It was a florid, stocky man with a coachman’s cap, massive side-whiskers and shoulders giving him the appearance of a walrus. He had barrelled from the stable’s stinking depths, and as Emma thudded home into her own flesh she was aware of high shrills of equine fright and loud crunching bangs.

Mikal barely glanced at the man. He steadied her, and the faint smile on his lean face would have been chilling even had she not understood its meaning. No. She shook her head, fractionally, and his free hand fell away from a knife hilt.

“I say, what are you—?” The worthy took in the quality of her dress and Mikal’s coat, and the Shield’s knives. The noise from inside mounted another notch, and Emma dispelled a shudder. “Miss, are you quite well?”

A cough to clear her desert-dry throat, and she found her voice. “Yes. Quite. Thank you. The horses seem… upset.”

He tipped his cap back, scratched under its brim. “Been sparky ever since the bad doins, Miss. Did you come to see that’un? Blood was right there. I says to my mate, I says, What is this coming to? Even a frail shouldna be done a’ that.”

“Was there anything surpassing strange about… it?” Her head felt too large for her neck, but the words must have come out naturally, for he considered them, his work-hardened hands dropping to his sides. “Other than, oh—!” A helpless movement, she fell into playing the part of a too-gently-bred idiot with the usual effortlessness. Such a persona would make the man facing her much more at ease, and for a moment she wondered what the world would be if it did not require such guile to make headway in.

“Wellnow.” He stuck his thumbs in his braces and took up a widespread stance as the banging and clattering inside mitigated somewhat. “I told the leather bulls, I did. I locked up nice and proper, and came i’ the morn to find the nasty had been left here. Paid a pretty penny to get rid of any bad mancy, too. But the one who came out, he said there weren’t nothing more than a tangle there, took my coin and off he went.”

“Indeed,” she murmured. “Was he a fair hand with sorcery, then?” Since you obviously did not dare refuse payment.

He shrugged, made as if to spit aside, and visibly reconsidered in the face of her quality. “I’m no magicker. Fellow from two streets over, name of Kendall.” He visibly enjoyed telling the story of the body on the doorstep, though it became clear he had not been the one to find it, only coming across it while the first on the scene–a rather unfortunately-named chandler–had been running to fetch assistance.

She managed to elicit the sorcerer Kendall’s address and soothed the stablemaster as well as she was able with her head pounding badly enough to cloud her vision. He took her welling eyes as a sign that she was affected by the poor unfortunate’s fate, and waxed rhapsodic about the quantity of blood, and how the belly had been opened just as a fish’s. How the horses still shied coming out, and how his trade had been disrupted by the crowds come to see, of which she was presumably a late member. She appeared to hang on his every word and finally made a subtle gesture, whereupon Mikal stepped forward with a few pence for the man’s pains.

The stable had returned to its former quiet, but Emma could taste the high brassy tang of horse-fear.

She could also taste the sourness of her own, as well. Her stays cut most abominably, and her dress was soaked under her arms and at the small of her back.

Mikal turned as the stableman shuffled back into his dark domain, his broad back vanishing like a spirit’s. “Prima?”

“This Kendall. Two streets away. It might be profitable to visit him.”

“Indeed. You’re… pale.”

No doubt. Her mantle, drawn close, could not ease the shudders seeking to grip her. She denied them outright, her jewellery warming comfortingly. “I suspect I shall be much more so before this affair is over. I have a rather curious thought.”

“Which is?”

“First, that the body found here was thrown from a carriage. And second…”

“Second?” He visibly braced himself, for he knew she would put the more pleasant–or less dangerous–of two tasks first, if only to gather herself for the last.

“I believe it’s time to visit Thin Meg.”