The Ripper Affair

Chapter Three Stillness Descending

Moans and cries, an acrid reek, blood crusting or fresh, the throat-coating nastiness of scorched stone. There was no ventilation, and the crush of the crowd had only worsened.

“Move back!” Clare coughed violently, a painful retch bringing up a dry thick gobbet of something he spat to the side with little ado. “He cannot breathe, give him space!” The Bocannon was a cicatrice of frost upon his chest; his shirt and jacket were in tatters. His bare knees grated against shards of smoking wood, and somewhere a woman screamed, high-pitched repeating cries piercing Clare’s aching skull. “And for God’s sake clear the doors!”

“Bastarde,” the wreck of a body in his arms muttered. “Cold.”

“All will be well,” Clare lied numbly. “Ludo—”

Whistles sounded, shrill and useless. Help had arrived outside, perhaps, but the shouts and curses amid the struggling mass at the door sought to bring a deduction to surface amid the porridge his brain had become.

Ludovico… The struggle to think clearly stung his eyes, or was it the thick smoke? Blood, hot and slippery over his hands, and the foul stench of a battlefield. He knew what it meant, knew he should gaze dispassionately at the shredded flesh and shattered bone he clasped, so heavy.

So, so heavy.

Deadweight.

Do not think such things. “All will be well,” he repeated. “Help is coming.”

Half the assassin’s face was a scorched ruin. Well, he had never been pretty, even on the best of days.

Why had he thrown himself upon the dynamitard?

He thought to do his duty. As always. Quite remarkable sense of honour, for an assassin.

The body in his arms stiffened. Ludo’s dark eyes dimmed, blood bubbling at the corners of his shredded mouth. There were spots of soot on his pitted cheeks, and dewdrops.

Do not be an idiot. There is no dew. His eyes were burning, blurring. It had to be the smoke.

The crowd screamed and surged for the doors again. Ludo’s lips moved, but Clare could not hear through the din. Trampling and thrashing, the courtroom had become a seething creature with its own panicked mind. The pressure against the inward-opening doors would preclude those outside from offering aid.

Nevertheless, a great stillness descended. Clare stared down, into the face he knew as well as his own, horribly battered now. A shudder heaved through the floor–no, the body he held? Or was it his own frame, stiffening against the onrush of irrational emotion?

The Bocannon gleamed, clearly visible now that Clare’s shirt and jacket were in tatters. Ludo’s gaze fastened on that spark, and his lips moved again. The pendant gave a last flare of fiery ice, and Clare’s nerves were alight all through his skin.

His whole, unbroken skin. He had survived, fantastically, unbelievably, suffering only rent clothing and the stinging of smoke. “Ludo—”

“Stregaaaaa…” the Neapolitan sighed, and Clare bent forward over him, unheeding the illogicality of his own broken sobs.

No. No, no no—

No protest would avail; no exercise of deduction would halt this. The mentath closed his eyes.

He did not wish to see.

There was a sound. Low and vicious as a blade cleaving wet air. The noise of the crowd was pulled away, a curtain swept aside by an invisible hand. The Bocannon gave out a high tinkling rill of notes, and a breath of sweeter scent cut through the reek.

Clare could not look. He crouched over the body, even heavier now that its occupant had fled. The quiet was immense, crushing, the blackness between stars, and when they found him he was no longer weeping.