The Iron Wyrm Affair

Grayson had turned pale and sweating. The three branches of sorcery were supposedly all equal, but whispers swirled about the Grey, and swirled even further about the Black. Nothing concrete, certainly … but something could be inferred even from rumour.

Another small, grudging nod from the Shield.

Clare had to restrain a sigh. “I am not one of the callow multitudes, Mr Mikal. Logic dictates that the service of Britannia’s incarnation must hold those the common man perceives to be dangerous. Miss Bannon may be exceeding dangerous, but she is not an ogress, and she does not represent a danger to me. I ask about her Discipline only to clarify a point or two to myself and to found my chain of deduction on solid—”

“She is of the Black.” Mikal propelled himself to his feet. “There. You know now, mentath. Tread carefully. She is my Prima. If you threaten her, I shall find ways to make you regret it.”

Threaten her? Clare lowered his pipe. “Who was Crawford?” The name was common, but something nagged at his memory. A recent scandal, perhaps?

The colour drained from Mikal’s face, leaving him ashen under the copper. His eyes lit, venomous yellow irises glowing. One hand twitched, a subtle movement.

Clare tensed. He was no match for the Shield, but the sorceress’s orders were for Clare to be unharmed.

At least, he assumed those were her orders. The threat of some dire consequence that would leave Clare physically unmarked was not to be taken lightly.

“Crawford.” The ghost of an accent tinted the word. “He was the first man I killed for her.” Mikal’s tongue darted out, wetted his thin lips. “He was not – and shall not be – the last.”

And with that, the Shield stalked across the room, swept the door open, and stepped into the hall. He would stand guard there, probably the better to keep his temper.

Dead, then. This requires thought. Clare puffed on his pipe. A slight smile played about his mouth. A very successful chain of deduction, far more data than he’d had before, and much was now clearer about Mikal the Shield.

What an extraordinarily diverting morning this was proving to be.

Chapter Nine The Abortionist

Tideturn had laid smoking gossamer fabric over the traces of the ætheric protection on last night’s luckily escaped assassin. Emma clasped her hands before her, lowering her head as she concentrated, invisible threads singing as she handled them so, so delicately. There was joy to be found in the complexity of such an operation, her touch deft and quick.

Like the scales on a butterfly’s wings, the imprint of a sorcerer’s work on the fabric of the visible world fluttered. Her memory swallowed the pattern whole, comparing it to the thick ætheric tangles laid over Llewellyn Gwynnfud last night.

There was no overlap. Well, it was hardly a surprise that more than one sorcerer was involved in this.

The climax of last night’s events bothered her, though. She should have been able to guess the irregularities in the charm and charter symbols would act so vigorously, and perhaps taken steps to keep Llewellyn alive for further questioning.

But you did not, Emma. Was it because the thought of him dead did not distress you at all? It is rather a relief, isn’t it? Come now, be honest.

Well, if she had to be absolutely honest, she would have preferred snuffing Llewellyn’s candle herself. Yet another unfeminine trait. Or was the desire to be thorough and tidy so unladylike? Llew had been a loose end.

He had almost certainly suspected what had happened in Crawford’s round room, and further suspected that Emma would be vulnerable. He was far too dangerous to possess knowledge of a weakness of that magnitude.

It is well that he is dead, and we have business with the living. She returned to herself, shaking her head slightly. The alley was piled with refuse, and if not for the air-clearing charm every Londinium sorcerer with any talent learned early and used religiously, it would be easily ripe enough to turn her stomach. The cobbles underfoot were coated with slick foulness, and she edged forward cautiously.

There. She caught sight of a gleam – a copper disc and a broken ribbon, tossed aside as soon as it was used. Oh, you idiot, whoever you are. Bless your stupidity, for you have given me an opening.

Here in the sunlight, without a single Shield, she would have to use all appropriate caution. She picked her way over the slimy stones, keeping her breathing even with an effort. Sarpesson Street was quieter at this hour, but traffic still rumbled past, whipcracks and clockwork sparks echoing oddly in the alley’s choked confines.

He came down there, triggered the protection, flung it away. Hard to see in the dark, and hoping the refuse would cover it. Then … where would he go?

She bent, her stays digging briefly even though she was only loosely corseted – there was fashion and there was idiocy, and while she was vain enough to love the former, she was not willing to indulge the latter. A stray shaft of weak sunlight pierced the alley’s roof, buildings sloping together alarmingly overhead, and even that was enough to jab at her sensitised eyes.

Blast and bother. She tweezed the ribbon carefully between gloved fingers and slowly straightened, holding the protection disc stiff-armed away from her body as it glowed dully. The charm had been well made, even though its physical matrix was flimsy and disposable. It was at the very least the work of a Master Sorcerer, and as she examined it more closely, Emma realised it was familiar.

She breathed a term a respectable lady would faint upon hearing, then cast a squinting glance over her shoulder as if someone might witness her lapse. No, the alley was deserted. So why the sudden sense of being observed, lifting the fine hairs on her nape and tingling down her spine under the drab brown velvet?

Proceed very carefully indeed, Emma. He is bound to guess you will show up at his door, unless you are dead.

And Konstantin Serafimovitch Gippius would not trust a rumour of Emma Bannon’s demise until he could see her mutilated body.

Perhaps not even then.

Even this early in the day, Whitchapel seethed with a crush of stinking humanity – ragpickers, pickpockets, loiterers, day labourers, streetmerchants, hevvymancers and drays, public houses doing a brisk trade in cups of gin and tankers of beer, washerwomen and ragged drabs, stray sparks and flicks of charm and sorcery crackling along the filthy street. Pawnbrokers’ coloured signs flashed with catchcharms, their infrequent windows glowing with lightfinger wards and their doors reinforced. Clockhorses strained and whinnied, shouts and cries echoed, and the entire squeezing, throbbing mass teemed not only with the living but the vaporous dead. Ragged children darted through the crowd; at the corner of Dray Street and Sephrin a cart carrying a load of barrels lay sideways, a man lying groaning, half crushed under one side and the onlookers jostling to get a better view as a gang of labourers – not a hevvymancer in sight – struggled to heave the cart away. Clockwork horses screamed, their gears grating and sorcerous energy spilling dangerously uncontrolled.

It would have taken mere moments to restore some order, but any disturbance of the æther here would warn her quarry.

The carter will be dead within a quarter-hour anyway, she told herself sternly as she threaded through the crowd, the cameo at her throat warming as thin filaments of glamour turned her into anything other than a respectable woman sliding into Whitchapel. The greater good of all demands I do not become distracted here.

Still, the screams and moans rang in her ears as she turned on Thrawl, slowing as a press of human flesh choked about her. A pickmancer’s nimble fingers brushed for her skirt pocket, but her sardonyx ring sparked and the touch was hurriedly drawn back. A raddled drab, her ruined face turned up to the morning light and runnelled with decaying powder, sang nonsense in a cracked unlovely alto, while a mob of flashboys whooped near the low sooty