The Iron Wyrm Affair Read online

  Now is not the time for that thought. “We are not visiting him for tea.” She followed his pressure on her arm. Surely it was not weakness to feel grateful. Entering Bedlam by herself would be… uncomfortable. “All the same, Mikal…” Be prepared, for I am exhausted. And more than that, Llewellyn would like nothing better than to injure us both.

  “Say no more.” He slanted her a deadly unamused glance, his mouth a thin straight line. Shortened his stride to match hers, while the mentath trailed in their wake. The corridor was stone-floored and reeked of pain and filth. At least it was swept, and the barred iron doors to either side merely vibrated uneasily. The place had quieted, at least physically, only faint echoes of faraway moans piercing the hush.

  Other senses were not nearly so easily lulled. She folded her free hand over Mikal’s, ignoring his second, slightly startled glance. The added contact helped shunt aside the screaming rush of whispered agony roaring through the hall, lifting strands of her hair on an unphysical breeze.

  “Something’s amiss.” She was barely aware of speaking. “Badly amiss.”

  Mikal slowed, tense and alert. Their footsteps echoed. “I suppose it would do no good to ask you to—”

  Retreat? In the service of the Queen? I hardly think so. “No good at all, my Shield.”

  “Miss Bannon?” Clare had caught up, and offered his arm on her other side. “May I be of assistance?”

  It was a curious gesture, but one she appreciated. She loosed her grip on Mikal’s hand and took Clare’s arm as well. After all, she was a lady now. No matter how often she had the urge to repeat blue words. “Thank you, Mr Clare. This place is… distressing, to any sorcerer.”

  The hallway swayed under her feet, but Mikal’s arm was steady, and so was Clare’s. The misery of this place was dark wine against her palate, stroking against her will with a cat’s-tongue rasp.

  “Fifth door.” Mikal’s tone suggested he was extraordinarily alert. His arm was tense, muscle standing out under her fingers, and he slowed. “Mentath. The key is on a hook, just there.”

  “Ah. Yes.” The mentath’s long face pinched together, a change from its usual bright interest. Faint distaste swirled from him, a powdery blue to Sight, and Emma’s prie-dieu sparked. It was taking more force than she liked to insulate herself from the dead crowding these halls, and the despair locked in the fabric of the building was troubling as well.

  If Llewellyn Gwynnfud, Lord Sellwyth, had any sanity remaining, this place might well rob him of it.

  The door was locked and barred, rivulets of golden charm and charter symbols sliding down its scarred iron surface. Clare peered through the observation slit, studiously avoiding touching it. He blinked, absorbing whatever vista the slit presented for a long moment. “Miss Bannon? Is it safe to unlock the door?”

  “The charm and charter won’t harm you, Mr Clare.” Her voice came from very far away, but it carried all its usual briskness. Thank Heaven for that. “Its only function is to contain.”

  “Very well, then.” He settled back on his heels and inserted the clumsy key into the lock. He even lifted the iron bar out of its brackets and set it aside, handling the bulk with startling ease for such a lean man. “I should warn you, it appears the patient is awake and expecting us.”

  “Well, good.” Asperity tinted her tone. “I would hate to have to disturb a gentleman’s slumber. Or question his corpse.”

  The air quivered as Clare gingerly folded his hand around the door handle; he pulled and it slid open with little trouble, well oiled. The charter symbols runnelled uneasily, but Mikal exhaled very softly and they calmed.

  Llewellyn was indeed awake.

  The stone cube was comfortless, and chill. A straw pallet was tossed in one corner, but it would do no good to a man trapped inside ætheric containment in the middle of the floor. Charm and charter wandered golden over the walls, and Emma blinked. Most odd. Most exceedingly odd – who closed him in here? Old work, very old.

  The sorcerer sat in the exact centre of the Circle, its blue lines shifting over stone flagstones. He was shockingly dirty, as if he had rubbed filth into his own garments – the remains of an opera suit, draggled with dirt and torn in interesting places. His face was streaked with grime, and it was difficult to ascertain his features for a moment. They smeared like ink on wet paper, but perhaps it was only her vision blurring with fatigue.

  Mikal’s arm tightened. She knew what he was thinking – Where are his Shields?

  She had seen no profit in informing him that the Shields had been found disembowelled. Which was, if one thought about it, the only way to cause enough damage to keep a Shield truly incapable of combat for long enough to kill him.

  “Good evening, Llewellyn.” I sound quite calm. Very well, that.

  For he needed precious little of an opening to rob her of her composure.

  His head lifted, strings of decaying blond hair twining with a life of their own, mixing with a grey Gwynnfud would have been infuriated with. With no charm to keep the colour its usual parchment pale, and none of the enhancements he favoured, he looked much less prepossessing than usual.

  His long fingers spasmed, twisting together, and a glimmer of charm appeared on them. She tensed, and so did the Circle, its blue lines cavorting in intricate knots. It ran over the floor in wet streaks, and something about it was not as it should be, either.

  “Emma.” The word echoed through shifting veils of sorcerous interference. He sounded sane, at least. Terribly, calmly sane. Which was perhaps the worst that could befall them.

  For while Emma Bannon was certain she could handle a sorcerer gripped in madness, a sane and mocking Llewellyn was another matter entirely.

  Her grip on Mikal’s arm loosened. If there was an event here, he had to be free to fight. Her chin lifted as she examined the Circle’s work, storing away the odd peculiarities of personality visible in the strands. A sorcerer’s memory was trained just as ruthlessly as her ability; in some cases, even more. And this was work she had not seen before. “Rather bad accommodations, I’m afraid. Are you well?”

  His laugh came from the bottom of a dark well. Veils of sorcery shifted, keeping a Prime’s force contained. His will, even broken or twisted, would fight any containment laid upon it; a Prime did not take a bridle well, if at all. Hence the hardening of the air, alive with ætheric force, blurring his outlines as if he sat behind a screen.

  “I’m locked in a cell in Bedlam, Emma. Obviously I am not well.” His dark eyes glimmered through the strings of hair. “And I have not even a change of linen. Barbarians.”

  Your household should have bribed someone to bring such things to you. Her wariness increased, if that were possible. “If you will waste my time, Lord Sellwyth, I shall go elsewhere.”

  It was a gamble, of course. It could prick his pride, and he might well refuse to say anything now. It could also trigger whatever unpleasantness was waiting around the corner, making the charm and charter react oddly. She was passing familiar with most native-Britannium sorcerers’ work; sorcery always carried the stamp of its channel. But this was… odd.

  And, as she had suspected, the thing Llewellyn feared most was the loss of his audience. “I would not want to waste your time, dear Bannon.” He made the words a sing-song, rolling his head on his shoulders. Strings of hair crawled against each other and the cloth of his coat with bloated little whispers as sorcery crackled. “Especially when you’ve brought a snake-charmer and a lapdog with you.”

  Fortunately, Clare had enough presence of mind to hold his peace. Mikal almost twitched, restlessly, and Llewellyn’s smile widened. “How long will it be before he strangles you, just like he did Crawford? And you, Emma. Queen and Country, how boring. Wouldn’t you like some real power?”

  How very unlike you to be so direct. Emma’s concentration narrowed. “Throckmorton, Llewellyn. Your charge. You undertook to guard him at Britannia’s request; he is dead, your Shields are dead, and you are… here. Whatever could have hap
pened?” Precise, drily astonished, for all the world like a professor mocking a slightly dim student. Llewellyn hated that tone, especially when it was delivered by a woman.

  His face contorted for a bare moment. The sorcerous interference intensified, streaks of shimmering painting the outside of a perfect, invisible globe as a Prime’s will reflexively sought to break its cage. “Mentath,” he whispered. “That’s a mentath; some fool’s let you get your hands on one. Stupid—”

  Get my hands on— But the physical structure of Bedlam tolled once, a giant bell shivering as a hammerstroke echoed through the lattices of probability, and something hit her from the side, driving her down.

  Chapter Six

  Reflexes and Temper

  It was a most interesting conversation, layers of inference and deduction ticking below the conscious surface of Clare’s faculties, and he wondered briefly just when the sorcerer trapped in the Circle had ceased to be Miss Bannon’s lover. Well, at least they had most certainly been intimate at one time, and sorcery’s children had far different standards than the common crowd, but still, quite interesting. And from the sound of it, Miss Bannon had broken the attachment, yet there was no lingering of regret in her.

  Clare’s wonderings were interrupted by an odd scent. Brimstone, perhaps? And a faint low scraping, like a match swept across a strikeplate. The space inside the circle rippled, oddly, becoming no more than a painted screen for a bare moment.

  He leapt, knocking Miss Bannon down. A moment of excruciating heat kissed the back of his coat. Then he was rolling, a confusion of shadows flickering as someone hurtled over him, deadly silent with flashing blades. Stink of wet, smoking wool, Miss Bannon struggling to her feet, the amber suddenly a glowing yellow star in the dimness as she snapped two words. Her hands flung themselves out, white birds, slim fingers fluttering. There was a crack, and a sudden showering smell of wet salt.

  “Mikal?” Bannon, breathless in the sudden quiet.

  “Here.” The single word was so grim Clare tensed.

  “The mentath—”

  “Well enough.” Clare finished shrugging out of his jacket. The wool was smoking, a dull, unpleasant fume. “Well. That was entertaining.”

  “Quick reflexes.” The other man bent down, offering his hand. “For one of your kind.”

  He means it as a compliment. “And your own reflexes?”

  The sorceress murmered. Thin threads of smoke traced up from her dress. The yellow-eyed man glanced at her. “Not quick enough, apparently. No—” He caught Clare’s shoulder. “Do not approach her just now.”

  The sorceress’s jaw worked, and for a moment Clare had the uneasy feeling of lightning about to strike – a raising of fine hairs on his arms and neck, his glands responding to some feral current.

  He decided she was indeed not to be approached. “That must have been heard. We shall have guards here in a moment, and explanations to be made.”

  For there was a large smoking hole in the wall, odd twisted writing scored around its edges. Bedlam had sorcerous protections, but this did not seem to be one of them responding to Miss Bannon. Of course, Clare admitted, he could not be certain. But Miss Bannon would have no doubt alerted him, would she not?

  The Shield’s next words placed all doubt aside.

  “A cunning trap, and well laid. We shall indeed be going.” Mikal’s lean face set itself, lines bracketing his mouth. “But my Prima has a temper, mentath. Wait just a moment.”

  The sorceress, indeed, was trembling. She stared at the hole in the wall to the next cell’s blackness, her lips now moving soundlessly. The writing scored around the edges of the hole burned with sullen foxfire.

  Clare cast a nervous glance at the steel-framed door. Grayson had indeed had worthless suppositions, but not as useless as Miss Bannon had supposed. One or two of them were quite reasonable, given the Chancellor’s knowledge of events. And the encircled sorcerer’s words had been most peculiar indeed.

  But this was something altogether different. And troubling. “Does Miss Bannon have enemies?”

  Mikal’s profile vaguely reminded Clare of a classical statue. The Shield leaned forward, weight on the balls of his feet and his long coat oddly pristine. His attention was focused on the woman, whose trembling had spread into the air around her. Rather like the heat haze above a fire, air almost solid and shimmering as something invisible stroked it.

  “She is Prime,” the Shield said, quietly, as if that should be explanation enough. “And she does not suffer fools gladly.”

  “Well, I could see that.” Clare stamped on his jacket once or twice more, to make certain it would not combust, and picked it up. Shook it out, shrugged into it. His hat had flown away; he found it in the ruins of the straw pallet. He glanced through the hole in the wall as he did so, but the uncertain light permitted no disclosing of its secrets. It was an oubliette; it might as well have been a painted-black circle. “Miss Bannon? Miss Bannon. If you please, we should be going now.”

  The yellow-eyed man inhaled sharply, but when Clare glanced up, he saw the sorceress had regained her composure. She clutched at her shoulder as if it had been re-injured, and red sparks revolved in her dilated pupils for a moment before winking out.

  “You’re quite right.” Curiously husky. “My thanks, Mr Clare. Mikal, let us be gone from here at once.”

  “The sorcerer—” Clare did not relish the thought of giving her the news, but it had to be said.

  For nothing remained of Llewellyn Gwynnfud but a rag of flesh and charred, twisting bone splinters, still trapped inside the circle of blue flame and heavy, rippling shifting.

  “Appears dead, of course.” She inhaled sharply and sagged, and the yellow-eyed man apparently judged her temper safe enough, for he stepped forward and took her arm again. As soon as he did, Bannon swayed further, the tension leaving her. “And good riddance. Though I suspect he did not think they would deal with him in quite this manner.”

  They? “Which manner would that be?” Clare enquired, as Mikal ushered the sorceress to the door and glanced out into the hall.

  “As bait.” Miss Bannon’s tone was passing grim. “Now they know I am at their heels, and in no uncertain fashion. Mikal?”

  He all but dragged her along. “I hear footsteps. Out the same way we entered, and step lightly.”

  Miss Bannon, however, swayed drunkenly, her chestnut hair slipping free of pins. “I… I cannot…”

  Her eyes rolled up, their whites glaring, and she went completely limp. The Shield did not pause, simply swept her up in his arms and cast a grim glance at Clare. “She has exhausted herself.”

  “Quite,” Clare agreed as he followed, out into the hall. Bedlam was alive with screams and moans, a ship rocking on a storm sea of lunacy. “How long has she been baying at foxes in this manner?”

  “Since before dawn yesterday; no sleep and very little food. Before that, a week’s worth of work.”

  Clare jammed his hat more firmly on to his head. “That does not surprise me. Where are we bound?”

  “For home.” And the man would say no more.

  Chapter Seven

  Breakfast in Mayefair

  Dawn rose over Londinium like thunder. Tideturn roiled through the streets, every witch and sorcerer, not to mention the charmers and sparkpickers, pausing to allow the flood to fill them. The Tide flowed up the river, spread through the streets with dawn’s struggling glow through a curtain of soot, and Emma half woke for long enough to turn over, lost in her own familiar bed. She struggled to rise through veils of half-sleep, but even though Tideturn replenished sorcerous energy, she had abused her other resources far too thoroughly, and sleep dragged her back down.

  When her eyes would finally open, she was greeted by her own room, dimly lit, the blue velvet curtains tightly drawn and the ormolu clock on the mantel ticking away to itself. A softly shimmering ball of witchlight hung caged in silver over her vanity, brightening as she pushed herself up on her elbows and yawned.


  Sensing her return to consciousness, the room quivered. She made a gesture, fingers fluttering, and the drapes slowly pulled back, the charm on them singing a low humming note of satisfaction. Filmy grey Londinium light spilled through the window. The house resonated, its mistress awake, and she heard footsteps in the hall.

  “Bonjour!” Severine trilled, sweeping the door open. Her plump face opened wide in a sunny smile, and her starched cap was shockingly white. “Chocolat et croissant pour ma fille.” Her skirts swept the royal-blue carpeting, and her eyes danced with good humour. The indenture collar rested against her throat, a soft foxfire gleam, the powdery surface of the metal lovingly polished.

  One could tell a great deal about a servant from the state of their collar. And an indenture provided a degree of status; it meant References and certain legal rights. Most sorcerers above Master level could and did engage only indentureds; it was a question of safety and loyalty.

  There were other, darker reasons for such a preference, but Emma preferred not to think upon them. Not in the morning, at least. She stretched, wincing as several muscles twinged. “Bonjour, Severine. Has your goddaughter had her baby yet?”

  “Not yet, not yet.” Fragrant steam rose from the silver tray balanced in her plump paws, and behind Severine trooped Catherine and Isobel, lady’s maids both scrubbed clean and cheerful. The scar tracing down Isobel’s face was responding very well to the new fleshstitching treatment, and Emma nodded as they both dropped a curtsy. “Monsieur le bouclier is in the salle with our guest. Such a breakfast they had, too! Cook shall have to send out for more ham.”

  “I leave that in Cook’s capable hands.” Emma yawned again and slid free of the bed. Everything on her ached, and her hair felt stiff with grime. “Isobel, my dear, draw me a bath. Catherine, something dowdy today, I am going through dresses at an alarming rate.”