The Ripper Affair

Chapter Thirty Profit In Reminding

The coachman-thing darted forward. Violet light flashed as Emma brought the fan-shield up smartly, slashing it across the chest. Blightallen was alive with cries and running feet, yellow fog thickening and swirling in a most peculiar manner as the residents of this sorry street realised an extraordinary event was occurring in their midst.

She snapped the shield sideways again, her throat swelling with a rill of notes. Her rings were fading as their stored ætheric charge drained, and the end of the street was fast approaching. She could not give much more ground before she was forced to think of an alternate method for dealing with this creature. She had forced it into precisely the correct proportion of physicality, so it could be hurt, but confining it thus was taking far more of her resources than she liked, and it was only a matter of time before its creator noticed her refusal to politely die and perhaps took steps to free the thing from her strictures.

Where was Mikal? How badly was he wounded?

Tend to him later. Right now content yourself with not dying, for this thing wishes to kill.

It made no noise now, save whip-cracks and the stamping of its feet. The whip flickered, the fan-shield snapped closed as she trilled a descant, turning on itself to force the flying tip aside. The whip wrapped around a teetering wrought-iron lamppost, its cupola dark since the lighters rarely came to a street so thickly padded with Scab. Emma skipped forward, bringing the shield low and snapping it open again, its edge sharpening as her concentration firmed.

It fell back, and under its curved hat brim were two coals that had not been there before. The whip twitched, iron shrieking as the lamppost bent, and she knew she would not be able to bring the shield up in time. The notes curdled in her throat, breath failing her.

Oh dear.

It shrieked, the sound tearing both æther and air, as Mikal’s face rose over its shoulder, his eyes yellow lamps. A knifepoint, dripping, protruded from its narrow chest and the Shield wrenched the blade away, his other hand coming up to seek purchase in its muffler. If he could tear the thing’s head loose—

Emma spun, the whip’s sharp end tangling in her skirt as the fan-shield blurred, becoming a conduit to bleed away the force of the strike.

A vast noise filled Blightallen, Scab-steam flooding up to mix with cringing yellow fog.

She fell, hard, knees striking cobble and her teeth clicking together jarringly. Folded over as silence fell, the inhabitants of the street temporarily stunned into mouth-gaping wonder. What could they see through the fog? Anything?

Through the sudden quiet, the thing’s receding footsteps were light and unholy, and Mikal’s hands were at her shoulders.

“Prima? Emma?”

Hot blood against her fingers. Emma winced, drew in a sharp breath, and brought her fist up sharply.

It was barbed, so it tore even further on its way free of her thigh and her skirts. A small, betraying sound wrung itself from her as she finished wrenching it loose and found she had not lost the wax ball either. Oh, good. The traces of Keller’s shed blood would serve a useful purpose now, giving her a chance at triangulation rather than mere fumbling direction-seeking.

She looked up to find Mikal’s face inches from hers, striped with blood. He was filthy–no doubt he had rolled in the Scab–and there were splinters and brick dust liberally coating him. Her hair had come loose, falling in her face; he brushed away a curl and his fingertips found her cheekbone.

How comforting. A cough caught her unawares, then her voice decided it would perform its accustomed function. Scraped into a shadow of itself, it nevertheless was tolerably steady. “Are you hurt?”

His expression went through several small changes she could not decipher, before settling on relief. “Only slightly. My apologies. I was… briefly stunned.”

“Quite a stunning experience.” She caught her breath. Looked down again, found herself holding a sharp, barbed metal weight from the end of the coachman’s whip, torn free. Catching it in her own leg had not been the best of ideas, she had to admit, even if it had served its purpose. “But still, educational, and so entertaining.”

“If you say so, Prima. Can you stand?”

“I think—”

He took further stock of her. “You’re bleeding.”

“Yes. Mikal, I rather think I cannot stand without help.”

“You never do anything halfway, Prima. Lean on me.”

“Mikal…” The words she had meant to say died unuttered, for in the distance there was a bell-clear cry cutting Londinium’s yellow fog.

“Murder!”

And Whitchapel… erupted.

The crowd was a beast of a thousand heads, and its mood scraped against every ache in Emma’s tired body. She leaned upon Mikal, letting the press wash about her, and listened.

Cut her throat… side to side, a sight, found in a yard… no doubt it’s him, it’s him! A leather apron… Leather Apron… foreigner… drinking our blood, they are…

If the bloodied apron outside the Yudic workingman’s club had been a ruse, it was a clever one. If it had been merely a bit of refuse, it was still serving the author of all this unpleasantness tolerably well.

Her left thigh throbbed, the healing sorcery Mikal had applied sinking its own barbs in. “This will not do,” she murmured. “Is the entire Eastron End mad now?”

“Another murder, they say.”

“I felt nothing.” She clutched at his shoulder, jostled and buffeted. The churchbells were speaking, Tideturn was soon; she could feel it like approaching thunder.

Half past one, of course not a single hansom in sight, and the crowd, spilling out into the streets as word leapt from doss to doss. “Mikal. I did not feel it.”

“I know.” He steadied her. “Prima… that thing—”

“It was a coachman. And it had a knife.” What manner of creature was it, though? I shall know soon enough.

“Yes.” He pushed aside the rags of his bloodied black velvet coat, irritably. Underneath, his skin was whole but flushed in vivid stripes. “A very sharp blade. I hardly felt it.”

“I shall wish to…” The world tried to spin away underneath her. She had expended far more sorcerous force than was wise, and lost quite a bit of blood. The Scab was probably growing over it now, green and lush, not scorched away as it had been under the coachman-thing’s feet. “I shall wish to examine the exact pattern of the cuts.”

“Yes.” He propped her against a wall. Peered into her face, uncertain gaslight flickers turning his eyes to shadowed holes. “You’re pale.”

“I am well enough.” She even managed to say it firmly.

Across the street, a flashboy tumbled out of a ginhouse, his right hand a mass of clicking, whirring metal. He was greeted by derisive laughter as a gaptooth drab with her skirts hiked around her knees shouted, “Leather Apron’s aboot tonight, watch yerself!”

The crowd gathered itself, and Emma shivered, suddenly very cold. Her breath was a cloud, and she stared into Mikal’s familiar-unfamiliar face. “There is about to be some unpleasantness,” she whispered.

“I understand. Here.” He ducked under her arm, his own arm circling her waist. Her stays dug most uncomfortably, but at least she was alive and drawing breath to feel them. “Close your eyes.”

She did, and Mikal coiled himself. He leapt, and below them the street boiled afresh. More screams, and the high tinkle of breaking glass.

The riot bloomed, a poisonous flower, but Mikal held her, slate and other tiles crunching under his feet as the rooftops of Londinium spun underneath them. This was a Shield’s sorcery, and very peculiar in its own way, managing to unseat the stomach of those without the talents and training of that ancient brotherhood.

Which explained why, when he finally set her on her feet in a Tosselside alley, the riot merely a rumble in the distance, she leaned over and heaved most indelicately.

Londinium turned grey around her, and she surfaced from an almost-swoon to find Mikal holding her upright again.

Her mouth was incredibly sour, and she repressed an urge to spit to clear it.

A lady does not do such things. “The unrest will spread. And likely foul any trace of where that thing went.”

“Yes. You are very pale, Prima. Perhaps we should—”

She discovered she did not wish to know what he would advance as the next advisable action. “The decent and sane thing to do would be to go home, bar my doors and wait for this affair to reach its conclusion without me. The Coachman was set upon my trail, just as a bloodhound.”

“I thought as much.” Did he sound resigned? “I rather think you will not retreat, though.”

Indecision, a new and hateful feeling. The temptation to retreat was well-nigh irresistible. Her left leg trembled, and she felt rather… well, not quite up to her usual temper.

In the end, though, there was quite simply no one else who could arrange this affair satisfactorily. It was not for Victrix, nor for Britannia, and not even for Clare so high and mighty, looking down upon her for daring to give him a gift sorcerers would use every means they could beg, borrow, or steal to acquire.

No, the reason she could not retreat just yet was far simpler.

The Coachman-thing had made her afraid.

For a Prime, that could not be borne.

“No,” she said, and took a deep breath, wishing her stays did not cut so and that her skirts were not draggled with blood and Scab-muck. “I shall not retreat. I require a hansom.”

“Where are we bound?”

“The Yard, Mikal. They will not venture into Whitchapel until the riot burns itself out, and there may be certain profit in reminding one or two of Aberline’s superiors of certain facts.”

Chief among them that I am acting for the Crown–but I am not particularly choosey about how I finish this bloody business.