The Ripper Affair

Chapter Thirty-Eight You Will Give Me The World

A chanting, low and sonorous, a faint brushing against her skin as ætheric force crawled over her. She lay perfectly still, returning to consciousness much as a trickle might fill a teacup.

She was not in her bed.

How odd. I cannot move. Sorcerous and physical constraints, certainly, and a Prime’s displeasure at being held so would no doubt begin to fray her temper before long. The said fraying would loosen her control in short order, and she would quickly become a frantic struggling thing, robbed of much of her mental acuity.

Unless she resisted.

Do as Clare does. Observe. Deduce. Analyse. I am only temporarily helpless.

It did not help quite as much as she might have wished. She slowly raised her eyelids, training twisting its sharp hold deeper into her physical frame as her pulse struggled to quicken and her breathing sought to become shallow sips. None of that now. Look about you.

Her eyelids were not paralysed, though she could not turn her head. At first there was only an umber glow, but as she blinked, testing the confines of the restraints for any weakness in a purely reflexive unphysical movement, shapes became visible.

There was movement, and the chanting came to a natural end, dying away.

A slight hiss. The movement became a gleam on a knife blade, and Emma studied the tableau before her.

A black-clad back, one shoulder hitched high with a heavy hump upon it, claw-like gloved fingers. He stood before a large, squared chunk of obsidian, the lighting from wicks floating in cuplike oil-lamps instead of proper witch- or gaslight.

The wall she could see was of rough stone, the masonry old enough to be the work of the Pax Latium. The sounds were odd–what reached her through the distortion of shimmering sorcerous restraints echoed as if they were underground. Of course, Londinium’s first burning and rebuilding had been courtesy of the Latiums. Even Britannia had not resisted them completely, or forever.

The shape before the obsidian stone–it looked much like an altar, she realised–turned with a queer lurching motion.

At first she feared the sorcerous restraints were affecting her vision, or the foul substance he had used upon the rag had lingering aftereffects. But no. Everything else was in its proper, if shabby and worn, dimensions.

She watched his painful movements. Above the black altar–light fell into the stone and died, no reflection marred its surface–was a shifting, smoky substance hanging, moving in time to a slow beat very much like a sleeping pulse. She studied it more closely, and caught flashes.

Coal-bright eyes, extra-jointed fingers. Dead-pale flesh peeking through shabby coat and worn, knitted gloves. Neatly coiled atop the obsidian was the whip, the sharp barbs at the end of its long fluid flow pulsing as well with sickly blue-white flashes. The knife, slightly curved by much whetting, stood, quivering upright, balanced on its point. Occasionally, the smokelike suggestion reached down to stroke the rough, leather-wrapped handle, and a bloody flush would slide down the gleaming blade.

Ah. I see. It was a marvellous thing, to bring a spirit from nothing in this manner. All it took was the will to do so, and enough ætheric and emotional force. The trouble was, most such spirits tended to be malformed things, working only in a very limited way, as a golem or a Huntington’s Chaser or even a necros vocalis.

Sorcery’s children were cautioned to never let such a spirit grow too strong, for the trembling border between slave to a sorcerer’s will and sentience could be breached after enough time and force had become the creature’s ally.

And then… well. Better to create a new slave than have one grow too powerful and turn against its Maker.

Yes, she decided. Quite interesting. It was most certainly a Promethean. Difficult to create, a thousand things could go awry during the process. Also, it approached sentience very quickly. Why had she not thought of this possibility?

Because a sorcerer would have to be mad to attempt such a thing. It had to be fed, frequently. When those of Disciplines blacker than the Diabolic, malformed but drawing breath just the same, had achieved the status of gods among some benighted primitive clans, the accepted food for such constructs was the most tender and innocent of all, plucked from grieving mothers’ breasts. Without such regular nourishment, the spirit would turn on its creator and roam free, gathering strength from casual, wanton murder. The æther around it would tangle and grow clotted, and it would eventually collapse under the weight of that curdling. Some whispered that the sorcerer queen of Karthago had created such a spirit to wage her desperate war against the Pax Latium, and that the blight surrounding that fabled lost city was a result of her death before she could bring it to a second, monstrous birth.

For there was one thing that set a Promethean apart from other created spirits. It could, if certain conditions were met, merge with its creator, and become something… other. Emma strained her well-trained memory, for once ignoring her own pulse as it quickened. She had, of course, under careful Collegia tutelage, studied several pages of books those of Disciplines other than the Black could not open. Her own Discipline, deeply of the Black, twitched slightly inside her as it recognised something akin to it.

That is why, when I disturbed its feeding-site, it became attuned to me. How very interesting.

“She’s awake.” There was a harsh, grating laugh, and the hunched figure straightened, stretching. Creaks and crackling, bulging and rippling, and parchment-pale hair fell to his shoulders. A terrible raddled face slowly came forward into a circle of smoking lamplight, and she recognised him afresh. “And so prettily, too.”

She knew him. How could she not? The questions that had nagged at her for so long now had an opportunity to be answered.

Broad shoulders, one hitched much higher than the other. The black-clad chest bulged obscenely on one side, the cloth cut away to show a latticework of Alteration: arched ribs of scrolled, delicate iron and the dull reddish glow of a stone, curved on one side and flat on the other.

She recognised that as well.

For before she had wrenched it free of her flesh and married it to Archibald Clare’s, she had borne one just like it. A Philosopher’s Stone, made from a wyrm’s heart. Wyrms were held outside of Time’s river by their very nature, and a youngling’s heart was powerful proof against most ills.

So he had possessed two after all.

Llewellyn Gwynnfud, Lord Sellwyth, returned from the dead, creaked as he bent over her.

Now she could see the thin, fleshy filaments spinning out from the ruins of shattered ribs, the wet gleam of organs rebuilding themselves under a carapace of Alterative sorcery. His gloved fingers reached down, most of them broken stubs coming to small points as they regrew, and he reached through the blurring of sorcerous restraints to touch Emma’s hair. It was an oddly gentle caress.

Had he ever bothered to remain so tender, he might have had Emma’s loyalty, instead of a young queen who would eventually insult her past bearing.

She sought to speak. Nothing came out–of course, she was gagged and silenced. A trickle of saliva slid from the corner of her cruelly bound mouth, pooling under her cheek. She could feel splintered wood underneath her, a hard surface holding her up from the floor. From the wet sound he made when he moved, she supposed she should be grateful.

“And she recognises me,” he croaked. No wonder he had gone about muffled up to solicit the Coachman’s initial victims. “You should see your expression, darling one.”

Her brain began to race, furiously. The beginning of the Plague affair; she had felt another Prime in Victrix’s receiving room. She had assumed–oh, how Clare would chide her for that!–it was one of Victrix’s creatures, as she herself had been. The sense afterwards she had of being watched, the unseen hand that had aided her in unravelling the whole affair… of course, he would have wanted her safe and whole for his own plans. How he must have laughed. Perhaps he knew she did not possess the other Stone at this moment. Did he guess? What could he know?

The most likely solution was that he had bargained somewhat with Thin Meg. Or found some means to exert some pressure upon that unlovely creature.

What could such a Prime, who had been torn apart by his own sorcery after his erstwhile lover had literally stabbed him from behind, not accomplish, if he possessed the will to rebuild his shattered body?

The pain must have been incredible. She had found only bleached bones scattered about the tower in Wales where he had sought to bring one of the Timeless to the surface. Had some of them been his, twitching towards each other as he gathered strength?

What must he have felt?

“I have followed your career with much interest.” His teeth had regrown, straight and pearly. His lips were scarred, but the scars would no doubt recede, given enough time. As his body regrew he would no doubt shed the Alterations. Had he performed them himself? The Transubstantive exercises would surely yield to his patience, if not his skill or Discipline. “You broke my heart, you know.”

Oh, I doubt that. You were dallying with that French tart and later with Rudyard, while you amused yourself with me. Had you been honest, we might have made an agreement. And had you not accused me of a hand in said tart’s death, I may have forgiven you. She calmed her pulse, drew in what air she could slowly and deeply. Thankfully the sorcerous restraints kept her nose clear; he did not wish her to suffocate.

Yet, she reminded herself.

“Do you wonder why I have not simply killed you outright?” His chin bobbed as he nodded, fat snakes of his matted hair brushing his shoulders with avid little whispers. “You have been well guarded for a very long time. That thing you keep as a Shield, oh, my dear. Quite resourceful, and quite dangerous.” He smiled fully, a tear in his cheek widening before sealing itself with a wet sound. “But that is not the reason. I have plans for you, my love. Wonderful plans. I am going to give you a gift.” The smile widened. “And then,” Llewellyn Gwynnfud continued, “you will give me the world.”