The Ripper Affair

Chapter Twenty-Four Thin Meg

Kendall, two streets over, turned out to be somewhat misleading. Perhaps the man hadn’t meant to be deceptive, but the fog was thickening and Emma’s thoughts were of a similarly impenetrable nature. She rather wished Clare was about, for he had the most wonderful way of clarifying matters. At least, he did when those matters did not involve his own tender sensibilities.

In any case, it was the rank narrow reeking of Blightallen, the Scab thick and resilient underfoot–sunlight didn’t reach past the sloping overhead tenements, leaning together to confer on business best kept low-voiced–that held their quarry. Or, more precisely, his stinking domicile, which was one low-ceilinged room, with a door that had been shivered to pieces.

There had been more than one murder in Whitchapel last night. The closet was thick with an ætheric tangle of violence. A small, blood-soaked bed, a strongbox that had been rifled–by murderer or by neighbours was an open question–and torn, faded wallpaper; one sad, frameless painting of a woman with dark eyes and a decided downturn to her mouth, dressed in the fashion of the Mad Georgeth’s early reign, powdered curls and a plaid beauty-mark high on her left cheek. The painting was varnished to the wall at least twice, which solved one mystery, while a round of questioning the foul-haired, slattern of a landlady solved another.

“I runs a respectable house, I does,” she repeated, tightening her dirty shawl about her consumptive-thin shoulders. Her skirts were patched, and two of her corset stays were missing; it could have produced unsightly bulges had she not been so wraithlike. “Owner’s a Westron End gent, high and mighty as yourself, Missy.”

“No doubt.” Emma pointed at the bed. “And where was his body removed to?”

“Body? Warnt no body, Miss. This morning there’s an uproar, our sorcerer gone and his bed all drenched. Nobody heard a thing but, says I, we’re Blightallen, of course nobody hears a sodding thing. Still, he’s a magicker, and who can tell? His idearn’a joke, p’raps.”

Not likely. Emma absorbed this. “Is he much of a prankster, this Kendall?”

“Dour as the Widow, Miss.” The slattern’s mouth pulled against itself, a tight compressed line. Emma nodded, and Mikal produced a shilling. He offered it, and the landlady reached… but his fingers twitched and it vanished.

“Are you certain nothing was heard?” Emma enquired, sweetly.

The woman drew herself up, wrapping the shawl even more tightly. She darted a glance back down the darkened hall, and Emma was suddenly aware of the confining space. There was no window, and with the door shut it must have been oppressive. There was no space for even a Minor Work, and the walls held little trace of ætheric defences. Of course, the reverberations were so complicated and snarled, there was little she could tell without adding to the problem.

To compound the oddness, there was not a single fly to be found on the mangled, shredded, blood-soaked bedding. With no window for them to find their way in, it was not quite out of the ordinary… but still.

“Nuffink.” But the landlady’s voice had dropped. “I ent had time to come up and change the sheets neither–none of the drabs’ll touch it even for forgiving their doss-money. None heard a thing, mum, and first I knows of it was that sot Will Emerich come down to kitchen rubbing his eyes and complaining on the splinters in the hall. I’d’ve said he was dead drunk only Black Poll Backstearn’s room is next door, and she don’t sleep well. She ent been on gin for a month, and it shows. Whatever happened, was silent as…” She made the avert gesture with her left hand, tiny eyes almost lost in their pouches of darkened flesh narrowing further. “An’ that puts us all fair off our mettle, mum. Silent it was, and Kendall gone.”

Emma nodded again, and Mikal handed over the shilling. The woman bit it with her rotting teeth to test its truth, then glanced back over her shoulder again. “And now you visit,” she continued, “lady high and mighty, go straight for his room. It’s bad business, it is. Bad business all way round.”

“You may tell anyone you like that I appeared as a bird of ill fortune, madam.” Emma lowered her veil. A snap of her fingers, more for effect than for actual utility, and her jewellery warmed as she drew on its stored force. The blood-soaked bedding leapt into thin blue witchflame, spitting and hissing like a cat as the landlady shrank back against the shivered door.

“As a matter of fact,” Emma added dryly, “I would take it as a kindness if you would tell everyone that a woman in mourning was here, and what she did.”

With that, she brushed through the door as a burning wind, speaking the minor Word that would confine the flames to the traces of blood–and not so incidentally, sensitise her to the remainder of that vital fluid, wherever it might have been shed or come to rest.

Several unphysical strings tugged at her attention, most of them probably attached to a trap.

She was beginning to have a healthy respect for the canny nature of her quarry.

Mikal’s hand was at her elbow to guide her in the sudden gloom of the rickety hallway, and Emma realised she was shaking.

The Chapelease Leper was now a peeling crumble, clotted with whitewash applied indifferently every so often. Around it, the busy thoroughfare of Whitchapel Road throbbed, the Scab sucking at cart wheels, verdant even under the lash of fogbound sunlight as it crawled up pale walls.

Some held that it was here the Scab had been birthed, but not too loudly.

You never knew what she might take offence at, or catch wind of.

It wasn’t the peeling or the scabrous clots on the walls that made all give the Chapelease as wide a berth as possible, and had made the road divide around it as a rock divides a river. It wasn’t even the way the gaslamps that had been erected near it were warped and blasted by some unimaginable fury–or simply by a slow steady exhalation of malice.

No, those who could avoided the place largely because of its washed-clean, gleaming stairs.

Those stairs were wide and sharp-edged, capacious and sturdy, but they were rarely seen. They were, instead, crowded with huddled bundles of rags with fever-bright eyes ranked upon them shoulder to shoulder, with only a narrow ribbon of scrubbed brightness leading to the rotting-cream doors.

These were Thin Meg’s brood, and none dared touch them or move them along until there was a soft thud, and a stick-light body was rolled down into the road to be collected. None pointed at, jeered at, or spoke to them. They sat in their rags and watched Whitchapel Road go by, and only in the dead of night could a sound be heard from them.

A thin sound, a low sound. A soft, hissing, draining mumble.

Emma walked briskly, her eyes stinging even under the veil’s protection. The din of traffic was incredible, and were it not for Mikal she might have been accosted, or worse. He drifted at her shoulder, between her and the gutter, and even the alley-side cutpurses retreated. Shouts and curses from coachmen and carters, the crack of a whip, children screaming as they ran past engaged upon some game or another–or intent on relieving pockets of their contents, for theirs were nimble and desperate fingers.

The drabs had mostly retired to sleep off their work and the gin they deadened its rigors with, but the public houses were open and brawling, flashboys crowding the doors and displaying their Alterations: shiny metal, oiled leather, bits of glass, sellsongs from the wheelbarrows jammed wherever they could elbow a niche and pay the “protection” fee levelled from whoever controlled that slice of paving or wooden-slat walk this week, footsteps, hoofbeats, conversation and cries. Crackles of ætheric disturbance, spat charms, lightfinger wards and oil-charms popping blue or yellow sparks as they reacted to the eddies and swirls of the crowd.

The noise drew away when she stepped over the invisible border between the rest of the world and Thin Meg’s domicile.

She had to hold her skirts close to pass through the hunched rag bundles as they leaned away from her. A spill of cold slid down her skin as she stepped up, and up again, Mikal behind her.

The Endor in her woke, and the starvelings’ bony hands appeared, fingers of bleached anemone blindly seeking for the disturbance in their cold, silent suffering.

A Prime could not pass unnoticed; there was simply too much ætheric force in them to do so. And any of the Black who braved these stairs would feel a certain… trepidation. Still, she lifted her chin and twitched her skirts away from the seeking fingers.

The crop of starvelings was dense at the top of the stairs, where those not yet whittled to apathy hunched, swaying slightly as a wheatfield rippled by a cool wind. The Chapelease doors–massive, oaken things not yet Scab-rotted perhaps because of the rancid renderings poured over them every Twelfthnight–hung ajar, quivering.

They never closed.

Mikal was suddenly before her, and he pushed the left-hand door wide, its hinges giving that same faint hissing noise. Emma quelled a shudder, took a very tight grasp on her temper, and continued on.

The sudden dimness was a balm, lit only by shuddering candleflames atop thick tallow columns, their smoke greasing the painted roof. If one looked up, cripplewing angels and spinning saints could be seen leering through the scrim of rippling soot.

Emma did not. Instead, she passed her gaze smoothly over the ranks of broken pews marching up the narrow interior, the alcoves on either side full of deeper shadows. Nothing amiss, though thick whitish gauze-mist peeped above the slumping wooden backs, moving cold-sluggish.

“And what is this,” a deep voice rasped and slipped between chipped and blackened columns, “come to my doorstep now? A little tiny witchling, already slight as a sparrow.” A thick, burping chuckle. “More meat on her companion, and a pretty leg he shows too.”

Emma’s pace did not falter. She continued down the central aisle, and the air grew heavier. Satin and rotting silk shifted, fabric rubbing against itself, and the massive bulk slithering in the well-hole where an altar had once stood resolved into a shape. Just what kind of shape it was difficult to say, for there were huge folds and bulges, bright blinking eyes and ivory teeth, yards and yards of cloth piled, buttoned, and stretched about peeping sickly white flesh.

“Marimat the Fallen.” Emma put her gloved palms together, halting, and bowed slightly. “I greet you.”

“Oh, she greets me.” Several long, chubby, oddly flexible fingers crawled over the blasted altar-wreckage, and there was a heaving. The many eyes blinked, flashing in their preferred dimness, and the sliding and scraping in the pews were those who had offered her more than just their physical weight in exchange for the starving peace she granted. “Did you come here to trade, wee witchling?” A thick, groaning laugh, cold as leftover black pudding.

Emma cocked her head. Mikal was tense and silent. The pews behind her would be full of gauzy movement by now, phosphorescent suggestions of cheek and hand and shoulder, supple smoky coils. “Careful,” she said, mildly enough. “Your starvelings appear restless.”

“Do they?” A long groaning noise, and the gauzy whispers retreated. More bits of her bulk bubbled up, winking with jewels, both paste and real. A hen’s-egg sapphire in tarnished silver–probably real–chimed as it boiled over the edge of the stone cup and rolled away.

Emma ignored it, and therefore Mikal did as well.

“I think,” the thing in the well continued, hauling and shifting even more bits of herself, “you are the restless one. Or is the word ‘troubled’? An ill wind brings you here.”

“That should delight you.” The next few moments were very delicate, so Emma gave herself a pause. “Ill wind and misfortune usually does.”

A great rolling, rippling shrug. “They seek me out, little witchling. I do not stir one foot to seek them.”

And you fatten on their despair, a little at a time. “Yet all Whitchapel feels your fingers, Thin Meg.” Very quietly. “Every dark corner, and every crevice between cobbles.”

Stillness filled Chapelease. The walls groaned a little as the creature’s attention constricted.

The eyes narrowed, their gleams intensifying. Finally, the creature shifted again, heaving still more of her bulk up toward the lip of the depression where the shattered altar had once stood tall and proud. More fingers splatted dully in dust and splinters, grinding against stone.

They were plump, and they looked soft, but those tiny appendages could find the smallest crack and slide in. Stone crumbled before their persistent fingering. It was ever thus with those of her ilk–they had all the time in the world to poke and prod, to cajole and wear away.

“State your business,” Thin Meg finally said, and now Emma could see her actual mouth, the V-shaped orifice peeling open to show serried rows of sharp white teeth. “With no riddles, witchling.”

How very interesting. “Something new has been added to Whitchapel.”

More stillness. Mikal’s arm lifted, and he gently, slowly, pushed Emma back a step. His other hand lingered at a knife hilt, and Emma’s pulse sought to speed itself, was repressed.

“Oh, aye, and not with my leave.” Thin Meg laughed, and this time the heavy, ugly sound was truly amused. Still cold, though, a razor’s edge cutting the gloom, sparking against creeping fingers made of fine-woven smoke as they inched closer, pressing against Emma’s skirts. “What do you know of it? One of your kind, little hands prodding and poking where they shouldn’t. Take care lest the lid snap on those fingers!”

“I suppose if the odd bit of information comes to your lovely ears…”

Meg found this funny as well. At least, she shook with jollity, bits of her heaving and slopping, flashing dead-white flesh and pinging creaks as the building itself shuddered. Material split, shredding; the tortured souls in the chapel’s shadows shrank back from Emma, Mikal, and the stew of flesh and tawdry finery bubbling before them.

Mikal’s shoulders were rigid under black velvet; Emma’s throat ached to cut the din with a sharp Word, but she did not.

Finally, the heaving ended. Meg’s bulk receded, the sucking and shifting quieting as she eased back.

“It suits me to send you a starveling, should I have news.” Her mouth was still plainly visible, that stark, sharp smile causing candleflames to shudder and gutter en masse. A breath of rank foulness now slid between the columns, disturbing the fluttering smoke-hangings, which had quieted as they pressed back against the door, half-seen faces writhing with dismay. “You shall pay me by stopping him.”

“Him.” Emma nodded. “The faceless one.”

“He has no need of a face,” the creature crooned. “He’s a sharp canny jack, that one.”

Mikal stamped sharply, and there was a wet splattering. Thin Meg hissed, a long indrawn sound of pain, and Emma found herself pushed back further, blinking and shaking her head.

Her Shield shook the green, sticky sludge from his boot, and the pale, wriggling tendril retreated into the cauldron. “Prima?” Soft, but the edge of leashed deadliness under the word made each flame straighten and dance.

“Can’t fault me for trying.” The creature bubble-hissed, chuckling thickly. “But sparrow-slight she is. Now you, you are a finer morsel.”

“Not for your dining, madam,” he returned, equably enough.

Emma found her tongue. “Very well.” She turned, despite the fact that her skin was alive with revulsion–imagine feeling one of Meg’s grasping little fingers curling around one’s ankle, nudging upward, and the lassitude that would follow…

Her footsteps tapped with their usual authority as she set off down the central aisle. “Thank you, Maharimat of the Third Host. We shall be on our way.”

“He knows your name, sparrow-witch.” There was no laughter now, and the foul breath of a fallen creature that had once sung of and to holiness in other spheres was darker than sewage. It was difficult not to gag, and Emma took her air in tiny sips as she made for the doors. “You have more enemies than you know.”

“Pray you do not find yourself among them, bonny Meg,” she returned over her shoulder, finding she had enough breath for a parting sting. “For I might decide to let him finish his work, and weaken you as well.”

The doors creaked open, and she might have tumbled into the ranks of starvelings if Mikal had not caught her again.

Their clutching, brushing fingers were feeble, easily pushed aside, but she did not halt until they were a good distance from both the Chapelease and the creeping, cringing, venomous green tendrils of Scab.