The Ripper Affair (Bannon and Clare) Read online

  Her dress made a sweet silken sliding as she shifted. “That would distress me most awfully, Archibald.”

  “And Valentinelli?”

  A long silence, broken only by a single syllable. “Yes.”

  It was, he decided, not quite an answer. Was he likely to receive more from her?

  This room was part of the suite he used while availing himself of Miss Bannon’s hospitality. Dark wood wainscoting and worn red velvet, the shelves of books and the two heavy wooden tables littered with papers and glassware for small experiments, both like and unlike the larger tables in the workroom she made available for him.

  It had taken him some time to enter that stone-walled rectangle again, though. After the affair with the Red, it had taken him a long while to look through a spæctroscope, too. Flesh remembering the nearness of its own mortality, despite Reason and Logic pointing out that at least he was still alive–the inward flinch when he heard a wracking cough, or the sick-sweet smell of some spun-sugar confections, were also troublesome.

  He wrenched his attention away from that line of thought. This bed was as familiar as an old pair of slippers. Wide and comfortable, and his weary, aching body sank into it with little trouble.

  Questions boiled up. He attempted to set them in some approximation of order, failed, tried again. When he had the most important one, he finally set it loose. “What did you do, Miss Bannon? What manner of miracle did you perform upon me?” Stated twice, so she could not possibly misunderstand.

  “Are you certain you wish to know?” It was the first time he had ever heard her sound… well, sad. Not merely downcast, but weary and heart-wrung. She was altogether too brisk and practical at any other moment to sound so… female?

  No, Archibald. The word you are seeking is human. Instead of sorceress.

  “I think I have some small right. I should have died, and I have not so much as a scratch upon me.”

  She did not demur. “And you have no doubt noticed you are far more vigorous than your age should permit. Even your hair is thicker than it was, though no less grey.” A slight sound–her curls moving, she had nodded. “I thought you would remark upon that. I am amazed you did not press for an explanation sooner.”

  He held his tongue with difficulty. Long acquaintance with her had accustomed him to the fact that such was the best policy, and that she was on the verge of solving the mystery for him. She very much disliked being compelled, or harried. The best way of inducing her to speak was simply to be attentive and patient, no matter how time or need pressed.

  “Do you remember when we met?” Her little fingers had crept upon his hand now, and the intimacy of the touch surprised him. They rested, those gentle fingertips, upon his palm, just below the wrist. “The affair with the mecha, and the dragon.”

  How on earth could I forget? He permitted himself a slight nod. His scorched hair moved against the pillow, crisp white linen charm-washed and smelling of freshness. His throat moved as he swallowed, dryly.

  Her words came slowly and with some difficulty. “There was… during that rather trying episode, a certain artefact came into my possession. I bore it for a while afterward, but when the plague… Archibald.” Her tone dropped to a whisper. “I could not bear to lose you. And the weight of the artefact… the method of its acquisition… it wore upon me. I sought to expiate a measure of my sins, such as they are, by ensuring your survival. You are proof against Time’s wearing now, and your faculties will suffer no diminishing. You are immune to disease, and to all but the most extraordinary violence.”

  He waited, but apparently she had finished.

  His most immediate objection was at once the most pressing and the most illogical. “You should have told me.”

  “I said I would.”

  “In twenty years’ time. Had I known, Miss Bannon, I would have taken better care with Ludovico’s slightly more tender person.”

  “No doubt.” Her hand retreated from his, stealing away. A thief in the night. “It is my doing, Clare. Perhaps I all but murdered him.”

  What must it cost her, to admit as much? The tide of Feeling still threatened to crack him in two. “You should have told me.” Querulous, a whining child.

  “I feared your reception of such news.”

  Rightly so, madam. “Can it be reversed?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Would you reverse it?”

  “No.” Quickly, definitively. “I am loath to lose you, Archibald.”

  “But Ludovico is expendable?” For a moment he could not believe he had said such a thing. It was brutish, ill mannered, illogical.

  “We are all expendable, sir. Have I not often remarked as much?” She stood, and it was the brisk Miss Bannon again. “No doubt you are quite angry.”

  I am a mentath. I do not anger. He closed his lips over the words. His body informed him that it had been held passive long enough, and it had a rather large desire to attend to some of its eliminatory needs. Anger is Feeling, it is illogical. It is beneath me. “Your Shield performed a miracle upon you as well, Miss Bannon. You lost nothing in that transaction.”

  She became so still even his sharp ears could not find the sound of her breathing.

  There was no crackle of live sorcery, no shuddering in the walls of her house as he had sometimes witnessed, her domicile responding to her mood as a dog responds to its master’s tension.

  Finally, she let the pent breath out. “Nothing but Ludovico.” Each word polished, precise. “And, I suspect, your regard. I shall leave you to your rest, sir.”

  Hot salt fluid dripped down Clare’s temples, soaked into the pillow and his scorched hair. He lay until she closed the door with a small deadly click; he slowly pushed back the covers and shuffled to the incongruously modern privy. There was a mirror above the sink-stand, but he did not glance into its watery clarity.

  He did not wish to see the wetness upon his cheeks.

  Chapter Six

  Too Winsome And Winning A Place

  She had never thought to be glad there were still Papists left in Londinium. As always, where there was Religion there was also a man whose palm was amenable to greasing. Consequently, even a wayward son of a Church such as Ludovico Valentinelli could be laid to rest in Rome-approved fashion. Emma paid for masses to be sung for his soul, too, though it was her private opinion that Heaven would bore him to a second death and Hell was entirely too winsome and winning a place to hold him for long, did he seek amusement elsewhere.

  Yellow fog wreathed the gates of Kinsalgreene, elbowing uneasily with the incense puffing in clouds from swinging censors. There was a choir of small urchins, and the rolypoly Papist in his black cloth, scarlet-crossed stole, and long supercilious nose looked askance at her as she stood, clearly not willing to leave as a woman traditionally did before the coffin–the most comfortable that could be obtained, for he would not rest in a beggar’s box–was lowered and covered.

  The Papist muttered something and glanced at Clare, who stood leaning upon Horace the footman’s proffered arm. Finch was there too, in his dusty black–appropriate despite himself, it seemed–and her housekeeper, Madame Noyon as well, dropping tears into a small, exquisitely wrought lace handkerchief. Even broad genial Cook, whom Ludo had tormented shamelessly, stood solemn and sedate. The footmen wore their best, indenture collars glowing softly, and the maids, both lady’s and common, scullery and all-work, sniffed and dabbed.

  Of course he had been at the maids too, but they seemed to have forgiven him.

  The hearse and attendants, not to mention the pallbearers, constituted quite a crowd. Pages, feathermen, coachmen, mutes, how he would have hated the attention.

  If she raised his shade through the lead sleeve and oak covering, he would sneer and spit.

  Or perhaps he would not. That was the trouble–how could one ever be sure what someone would do, could you restore them to a manner of breathing? Memory was an imperfect guide, and Ludo in all his changefulness could not be compassed.
br />   It was, she suspected, why she had kept him so close.

  Mikal was at her shoulder, and she denied herself the faint comfort of leaning against him. There was a toll exacted here, and she paid it as Madame Noyon and the maids retreated, as the coffin was lowered and the footmen clustered around Clare. She paid double when Clare did not so much as glance at her, staring at the coffin’s mellow polished gleam with his bright blue eyes narrowed and intent.

  You should have told me. Of course, even a machine of logic trapped in flesh would feel disturbed, or even outright betrayed, at such a secret. Sometimes she wondered if other mentaths were as thin-skinned as her own. They had alarmingly sharp faculties of Perception and Deduction, and were said to have no Feeling whatsoever. Indeed, it was supposed to discommode them quite roundly.

  Sometimes, though, she suspected that a lack of Feeling was not quite the condition Clare suffered.

  Her mourning-cloth was not quite appropriate, for what proper lady would feel the need to mark the passing of a man who was, strictly speaking, a hireling?

  Yet she chose to wear something close to a widow’s weeds for him, if only to silently tell Clare… what?

  Black henrietta cloth, an unfashionably small bustle, a crêpe band holding tiny diamonds to her throat, long silver and jet earrings thrumming with Tideturn’s stored charge, matched silver cuff-bracelets ice-burning under her sleeves and gloves. She had not worn these earrings for years, not since the last time she had been in grief..

  Thrent. Harry. Jourdain. Namal. Eli. Now another name to add to the list. Ludovico. A rosario, perhaps, like the one the Papist clutched as he mumbled his prayers, sealing the baptised body of one of his God’s children into eternity.

  There were other matters to worry over, chief among them the richly appointed carriage that had lurked behind the cortège and even now squatted, toadlike, outside Kinsalgreene’s high, flung-open iron gates, their spikes wreathed with anti-corruption charms and deterrents most–but certainly not all–grave-robbers would hesitate to cross. She had paid to have the Neapolitan well armoured against the theft of his shed mortal cloak. Time and rot she could do little against now, but she could make certain nothing else interfered with his resting.

  Whoever was in the carriage, well, she would deal with them after this ceremony.

  Clare’s paper-paleness. The thin bitter line of his mouth, drawn tight. Tiny tremors running through him, as well as the haphazard haircut–he had trimmed the burnt bits himself, shrugging aside Gilburn, who would have been more than happy to perform a valet’s duty.

  Ludovico’s duty.

  Though the bowl of the sky was a blind eye of cloud, the rain held itself in abeyance. It had been a cold, damp summer even for Londinium, and some whispered Britannia was unhappy.

  Had Emma not been so painfully aware of her surroundings, she might have made a restless movement.

  If she is unhappy, it is no concern of mine. Not now.

  The thump of the oaken cask settling sent a shudder through her, one she quelled even as Clare’s face crumpled and smoothed itself, soundlessly.

  Yes, I should have told you. I was afraid of the illogic unsettling your mind. I was afraid of…

  Such an admission could not be borne. A Prime did not fear.

  “Prima?” Barely a whisper, Mikal sounding not quite happy with her movement.

  She had taken a step forward.

  Hushed greenery and glowing marble mausoleums, their cargoes of quiet rotting hidden behind the gleaming façade and held safe in nets of ancient barrowcharm, to ensure they slept soundly.

  Her Discipline roused slightly within her, and even the weak sunlight stung her sensitive eyes. She was glad of the veil’s obscurity, and still miserably compelled forward.

  Wet earth full of mouldering, the open grave and the stone sleeve within it, nestling the coffin and its inner lining of charmed lead. A box within a box, within another, and inside them all a kernel that had once been… what, to her?

  More than an acquaintance, more than a hireling, not quite a friend, caught in some space for which there was no proper word.

  The first time she had ever engaged his services, he had played, catlike, as if she were a mouse under his paw. When the mouse turned out to be a lioness, the cat had merely blinked once, and afterwards still practised a cool disdain. There had been another woman involved, and sorcery, and plenty of blood. The sounds he made as he almost choked on the gallows, before she cut him down.

  Strega. Whispered, like a curse, afterwards. She had paid him double, though he had sought to refuse her. You should have let me die.

  Her own reply–That, sir, would not please me at all–greeted merely with a knife driven into the wall beside her head, and a muttered curse. Mikal had come very close to killing the Neapolitan, the first great test of his obedience to her will as her Shield… and the first moment she had begun to think that perhaps she might not have erred in accepting his service and sheltering him from the consequences of murdering his previous master.

  She blinked, rapidly, grateful again for the veil. Later, glowing marble would rise above the nested boxes, and the stonewrights would chip a farewell into its gleaming face. Building a house for a dead man required time, even if one could pay double or triple for the best.

  Her throat closed as she stared at the polished oak.

  I am of the Endor. Did I will it, he would rise even from this… but it would bring no comfort.

  The dead did not grant absolution. They merely answered simple questions of fact, and to ask them of Feeling was a waste. Once, one of her Discipline had brought a spirit fully to flesh to answer a king’s questioning, but such a feat was beyond Emma, Prime or no.

  Or is it? There was little comfort in finding, at last, an act of sorcery that she did not dare attempt. It had merely taken her entire life so far to discover it.

  Ludovico. Her back held iron-straight, Emma Bannon extended her hand. A sharp flicker of sorcery, the fabric of tangled æther that condensed into physical matter shivering, and her glove was sliced neatly open.

  The black glove–and the flesh underneath.

  “Madam!” The priest, scandalised. She ignored him. The barrowmancer, standing ready at the periphery, stepped back nervously.

  Ludo. I am sorry. Blood dripped, and her housekeeper, as the women obeyed custom and retreated, let out another sob. Emma did not move.

  Mikal hissed in a breath as a spatter of scarlet drummed on the polished lid. Its pattern trembled for a moment, the sensitised fabric of reality rippling. Here was not a place for one of sorcery’s children to shed blood.

  It mattered little. For this, nothing but blood would do. There was no vengeance to be had: Ludo’s killer had vaporised himself with the explosive as well. Were she to hunt down every last one of his accomplices, or even take her rage to Eire’s green shores, the scales still would not balance.

  After all, hers was the hidden thumb upon one side. A cheat so accustomed to thievery it becomes habit, a partial judge. A sorceress who chose one life over another.

  I am sorry, and I shall pay penance. She stared down at the bright scarlet spots. Mikal snatched her hand, and she let him. His fingers folded around hers, and she resisted only when he sought to draw her away from the graveside.

  “Fill it in,” she said, each word a dry stone in her throat. “For God’s sake, as you cherish your lives, fill it in.”

  There was a soft commotion. Clare had faltered, Horace and Gilburn caught him. There was a tingle up her arm as Mikal applied healing sorcery, a Shield’s capability. Part of a Shield’s function.

  That was worrisome, too. Your Shield worked a miracle… you lost nothing in the transaction…

  All this time, she had thought her survival stemmed from a different source; from the sorcery worked by the greatest Mender of his age while the city lay wracked under the lash of a plague let loose on the world by the very Crown Emma had sworn to serve. If her recovery had not been of Thomas Coldf
aith’s making…

  Troubles thick and fast, and she could do nothing but stand and watch the open mouth of the grave as the diggers bent their backs to the work, the lone barrowmancer in his long black gown and traditional red stripes still eyeing her nervously as he felt the disturbance spreading from her.

  A Prime was a storm-front of ætheric force, sorcerous Will that brooked precious little bridle exercised and fed until it became monstrous.

  A woman with a Prime’s will and corresponding ætheric talent, monstrous indeed. If she lost control of herself here, in this place of the dead, what could she set loose? If she opened the gates of her Discipline in this place, she could well shatter every stone and coffin. She could hold the door wide for a long while, and fuelled by this, what could it bring forth?

  A spatter of earth hit the lid with a hollow noise, each shovelful another barrier between her and… what?

  She could not name what he was to her, even now.

  Ludo, Ludovico, I am… sorry.

  It was not enough.

  Chapter Seven

  Not Well At All, At All

  The carriage ride to Mayefair was silent and extremely jolting. Clare, marginally restored by an application of salts and a mouthful of brandy from Cook’s surreptitious flask, held grimly to consciousness despite the roaring in his ears. Across from him, Miss Bannon sat, her childlike face composed and wan under the veil’s obscuring net, the sliced, bloody glove on her left hand wrinkling slightly as her fingers twitched.

  A fraction of coja would help, perhaps. He had not availed himself of its sweet burn since the plague incident, seeing no need to sharpen his faculties against that whetstone. And, truthfully, he had not felt the craving to do so. Was it a function of whatever illogical feat she had performed?

  A certain artefact, she said. Did he dare ask further questions?

  She might very well answer. In that case, was he a coward not to enquire?