The Ripper Affair (Bannon and Clare) (19 page)

Had she suffered?

Does it matter at this particular moment? Stay still, Clare.

Valentinelli’s sneer, echoing through dim memory.
Stay where Ludo put you,
mentale,
and watch.

His lungs cried for air, even though the soup around the creature became foul enough to see. Or perhaps it was
the blackness crowding his vision as his flesh, even if functionally immortal, reminded him that it did still require respiration and all its attendant processes.

A wet sliding. The Scab darted forward, and the creature tumbled aside, fluidly. Steam rose, and Clare caught a glimpse of the thing
under
its clothes. Cracked hide runnelled with scars, terribly burnt as if acid had been flung upon it, and two glowing coals for eyes.

One pale hand came up, the knife blade a star in the dimness, and Clare stumbled back. He felt the slight
whoosh
as the sharp metal cleaved air an inch from his face, fell with a tooth-rattling jolt on a thick carpet of oozing green. A hiss, a whipcrack, Clare’s arm instinctively flung up to shield his eyes and suddenly a stinging, a patter of warm blood.

The thing fled, light unnatural footsteps tapping on cobbles, a grating sound, roof tiles shattering as they were dislodged and hit the ground.

Clare scrabbled for purchase, thick resilient slime dragging him as it retreated. It carried him a good ten feet before reluctantly releasing him, his jacket smoking against its caustic kiss and the wound along his forearm smarting as it sealed itself.

The gaslamp above the body burst afresh into feeble flame, and when he gained his feet, Archibald Clare bolted for its circle of glow, telling himself it was merely so he could examine the body in its uncertain light. Certainly not because he felt anything irrational, though his mouth tasted of copper and his sorcerously repaired heart laboured
in his chest. It was merely the sudden activity, he told himself, not anything so illogical as
fear
.

And certainly not because as the Scab retreated, it made a low, thick noise, somewhat like a chuckle from a sharp-toothed mouth.

E
ven if one could
find
a hansom when one required conveyance, there was always the chance of said hansom being as slow as a newlywed’s knitting.

Since Mikal was loath to leave her alone, even though with her safely inside a hansom he could watch over from the rooftop road, she did not even have the luxury of a few moments of solitude to collect her scattered thoughts.

It was ridiculous; a Shield was not the same as
company
, the ancient brotherhood had been trained to discretion and a certain abnegation. And yet… it was Mikal.

His hand was on her wrist, perhaps to anchor her. Yet she was attempting no sorcery at all. Perhaps it was the odd, trembling feeling in her legs, the clawed healing sorcery working its way into deep layers of muscle, that
made his gaze so worried and disconcerting at the same moment.

She freed her wrist and took the opportunity, in the small, jolting carriage, to push aside sliced black velvet and examine the bright red marks upon his torso. Not claw-marks, which was interesting, and yet the creature had to have been inordinately quick to strike so many times with a single blade. Those long, spidery fingers could wield such a blade, she thought, with amazing delicacy. Very sharp, curved just enough, possibly a physical focus for the creature? Knife and whip.

For a moment, an idea teased at the back of her consciousness. She waited, but it was not yet fully formed, and it retreated into shadow. “How very intriguing,” she murmured, and settled back into the dingy seat-cushion.
I suspect I shall never look upon coachmen in the same fashion again.

The hansom jolted, and the hunched, well-wrapped man holding the reins chirruped to the worn-down clockhorse. Emma’s vision blurred for a moment, and she breathed out, sharply, dispelling the weakness.

She had lost quite a bit of blood, but so had Mikal. A Shield was exceedingly hard to kill, and yet if the Coachman had stopped to actually fully eviscerate him instead of simply slashing to bleed him out she might be adding his name to the list of her failures.

Obviously she had been judged the larger threat. Or the creature–though she had forced it into exactly the proper proportion of physicality, she still was not entirely certain
what it
was
–had not judged her
enough
of a threat to warrant more than incapacitating Mikal for a few crucial moments.

Either way, it had been set upon her by the Prime she faced.

She knew the Primes resident in Londinium, of course; this bore none of their particular stamps.

At least, as far as she could tell.

Not
every
Prime on the Isle was known to her, she allowed. Yet this was indubitably native work. A sorcerer would not risk the possibly calamitous side effects of performing so major a Work in a country not his own.

Even if a foreign sorcerer wished to attempt such a thing, he would have to find a space enclosed by charter stones, and any Major Work, if it did not shatter said stones and make a very public noise, would be bounded by the charter boundary. No, a foreigner would not do such a thing.

Unless, of course, he was insane. She could not rule out that possibility. Still, even the most lunatic of Primes would baulk at performing such a Work in a foreign land and accepting the double risk of side effects and failure. True, one could spin the irrationality of such a Major Work away and evade the confines of charter stones, but there was always the chance of the flow returning, filling the one who cast it to the brim with warping irrationality, with all that would entail. A Shield could handle some overflow, certainly, but still, the risk was enough to send a shudder down any Prime’s spine.

She was so sunk in her own reflections she almost missed Mikal’s fingers closing about her wrist again. Irritation rasped under her skin, she reined it, sharply. “I am well enough.”

“No doubt.” His reply was maddeningly equable. “I am merely reassuring myself.”

Of what?
“I am not likely to expire at any moment. Unless it is with sheer pique.”

“Comforting.” He tilted his dark head, the gleam of his irises a peculiar comfort in the enclosed space. “There is unrest.”

On many fronts.
“Where, precisely?”

“Behind us, and before.” He tipped his chin towards the hansom’s front, but a glance out the night-fogged window told her very little. The d—d thing was slower than cold pudding.

Just as she was about to knock for exit–she could, she thought, at least have the benefit of moving her limbs freely if she were to be baulked at every turn tonight–the hansom slowed, and she gathered they had reached their destination.

Mikal’s tension warned her, and as she alighted, she sensed the disturbance. A glaring note against the low brassy thunder of approaching Tideturn, and several of her nonphysical senses quivered under the lash of fresh tugging on already sensitised ætheric strings.

Whitehell Street was alive with much more activity than it should have been, and Emma sighed, squaring her shoulders. It would be too much to hope for that Aberline
and Clare were about, ideally in Aberline’s office–perhaps Clare had even returned to Mayefair, though no doubt if he thought she would be relieved at the notion he might well stay away. Of course Aberline should have been at his own home at this hour, or, more likely, trawling Whitchapel in search of trouble.

Perhaps Aberline had even been caught in the riot she had left behind. While that was acceptable, she sighed at the thought of just whom Commissioner Waring might inflict upon her as a replacement. Furthermore, if Aberline was in Whitchapel, it was likely Clare was caught in the riot as well.

He is as safe as I can make him. Do pay attention, Emma.

The hansom-driver’s whipcrack as he guided his sorry nag away jolted her into stinging awareness. Tideturn was approaching; it would give her fresh strength to follow her course. For the moment, though—

“
Priiiiima
.” A long, slow exhalation, backed by a draining hiss.

Mikal, a knife laid along his forearm, was between her and the alley-mouth. Emma shook her fingers, a cascade of sparks dying as she realised there was little threat.

Her dark-adapted eyes discerned a skeletal shape, wrapped in tattered oddments. The head seemed too big for its scrawny neck, and the hair was scanty. It leaned against the alley wall, and its pupils were full of green phosphorescence.

Scab-eyes, full of an alien intelligence. Bare feet, horribly battered. The starveling had been driven far from
Chapelease, and it coughed weakly and croaked again. “
Priiima.
”

“I listen,” Emma said, cautiously setting a gloved hand on Mikal’s shoulder, easing him aside. He did not resist, though the stiffness in him told her it was a very near thing.

His nerves were on edge as well, it seemed.

“
It feasstsss on flessssssh.
” The starveling’s reedy little piping strengthened slightly. Impossible to tell if it had been female or male, or what its station in life had been. “
A new thing, under the ssssssun.
”

Questioning the starveling would only confuse it. So she waited, and it did indeed have more to say.

“
Where the beggar burned, where the dial ssspun, there you will find the road to your quarry.
” For an instant, the thing’s skeletal face stretched, becoming broader, the mouth becoming a V. Sharp white teeth flashed, as Thin Meg spoke through one of her hapless, consumed slaves. “
If you find him, he will kill you.
”

Interesting indeed. Mikal was almost quivering, leashed violence ready to explode. She kept her hand on his shoulder, fingers biting in. Emma nodded slightly. “I hear.” Brief and noncommittal.

“
You hear, but do not hear. You sssssee but do not sssssee. Find the dial again, sssssparrow-witch.
” A trill of burbling laughter, and the starveling’s body crumpled, twitching. Its eyes collapsed, thin green tendrils racing outwards from the corpseglow sheen they had been filled with, and the body settled into a twisting, jerking dance
as Scab consumed it. It would not last long, here outside Whitchapel.

Or perhaps some vestige of it would, and Thin Meg’s reach would eventually extend even this far.

That is a problem for another day.
She unclenched her fingers, and patted Mikal’s black-clad shoulder soothingly as the starveling’s bones crackled, foul steam rising. Flesh liquefied, the ragged material clinging to it unravelling under caustic sludge, and soon very little was left.

Emma, however, forced herself to watch. She did not look away until there was merely a verdant patch of Scab, gently sending up thin curls of black steam. There were lumps in it–whatever fragments of rotted teeth the starveling had possessed would be last to dissolve.

“Very interesting,” she said, finally. “What do you make of that, Shield?”

“A riddle?” A single shrug, lifting and dropping her hand. “Couched in a threat?”

“And wrapped in Scab.” A cool finger of dread touched her nape, she shook it away with an unphysical flinch. “Come, let us see what has the Yard roiling like an anthi—”

Wait.
The cool fingertip against her nape returned, and Emma spun, ætheric force gathered into a tight hurtful fist. She did not strike, though, for that end of Whitehell Road was deserted. Yellow Londinium fog was a blank canvas, and the streetlamps had begun to sputter, their carefully applied wick-charms fading as dawn approached.

Mikal stepped away, to give himself room in the event of
attack–and a chill throatless chuckle bounced up from the cobbles and the side-paving.

“Emma, Emma.” The voice was faintly familiar, for all the simple, elegant sorcery used to disguise its location and waft it to her ears. “You are a wonder.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but the brass thunder of Tideturn rose from the Themis, filling Londinium’s crooked streets and teeming warrens. It descended upon her, stinging as she fought the sudden helplessness, and she could only hope the other Prime would not recover from the flood before she did.

And that the other Prime’s Shields had not been given orders to strike at Mikal.

She surfaced in a rush, ætheric force filling her and staving off physical weariness for a short while longer. The world wheeled underneath her, and she found Mikal’s fingers bruising-hard about her arm again as he held her on her feet. She exhaled sharply, setting her feet on solid ground, and spoke a Word.

“
D’sk—zt!
”

Ripples spread, ætheric force disturbed in concentric rings about her. They broke and refracted, her attention sweeping vigorously through, rather as her gaze would slide down a page of text searching for a wrong penstroke or figure. Or a dress, searching for inadequate stitching, a badly pinned fold, a—

There you are
. Her heart leapt, sought to hammer behind her ribs, was ruthlessly repressed. Sorcerous force became
a clamp, a vice, but he slid aside. A knight’s move on a chessboard, but she batted the distracting thought aside. It was a clever feint, but her instincts were still sharp from years of hunting treachery at Victrix’s behest. A clatter and a ringing sound–his Shields would be Mikal’s to deal with now that she had full control of her senses again.

“Not so fast,” came the directionless whisper again. “I am merely visiting, dear one.”

She found her voice. “Do not be so familiar, sir.”

“Most harsh.”

There were more clatters, breaking sounds, and Mikal’s tone was passionless, crisp authority ringing in every syllable. “Come closer and die.”

“No need.” The voice shifted direction again. “I simply wish to speak to your mistress. Hear me, Prima. There is a new spirit rising.”

She marked the words in memory, set them aside. Hot water leaked from under her lashes, dawn’s strengthening scoring her tender eyes. The more force she expended now, the worse they would smart. It mattered little. “I take it you are the one unseaming frails in Whitchapel, sir.”

“Necessary.”

“Are you mad?” She allowed her voice to rise, as if she had become distracted by his gruesome calmness. She was close, so
close
, a few more moments and she would find him. He had to be physically nearby, possibly within sight of her.

Once she located the source of the sorcery distorting his voice, she could strike.

“Not mad. Merely ambitious. Help me, Emma.”

He is most familiar with me, this masked Prime.
“I find you rather presumptuous, sir.”

“Do you like bowing and scraping to that magical whore? Does it please you to be held in contempt for your power and pride? I know what moves you, Prima, and I offer you alliance. And more.”

She remembered the nosegay left on another sorcerer’s narrow bed, a bloodstain upon the floor, and the same trick used to distort a voice in a filthy Whitchapel yard.

This was most likely the same Prime who had mysteriously moved to aid her during the Red affair, and she had thought it quite likely he was another in Victrix’s service.