The Iron Wyrm Affair

failed. Fresh hot claret slid between her fingers.

If not for her corset stays, she might well have been a dead woman. They had turned the knife a fraction, slowing it, and the man attacking her had died of a burst of raw shrieking sorcerous power. Konstantin had not lied; he had given her all the information she could reasonably suppose he had. But those who had engaged the services of one of the actual rooftop assassins – Charles Knigsbury was at least one of his names, a flashboy who had procured the protection from the abortionist on his own account – had also thought to ensure said assassin would not open his lips to one Emma Bannon.

Or indeed, to anyone.

The sorcery she had used on the small, rat-faced flashboy still stinking of gunpowder and terror had triggered a larger explosion of hurtful magic; Knigsbury’s body had literally shredded itself to pieces, and a fine cloud of mist- boiled blood had coated the inside of his stinking Dorset Alley doss. The resultant ætheric confusion had allowed her to slip away, but moments later she had felt the passage of an invisible bird of prey, and deduced the flashboy was bait of a different sort.

Well, I did think to spring a trap or two today. An unsteady, hitching noise escaped her; she reached out blindly and braced herself against a soot-laden brick wall. It looked vaguely familiar, a corner she saw almost every day, albeit usually through a carriage window. The rain intensified, threading through her glamour with tiny cold trickles, and she was well on her way to looking like a drowned cat.

A drowned, bleeding cat. Her knees buckled.

Emma, this will not do. Stand up! The snap of command was not hers. For a moment she was in the girls’ dormer at the Collegia again, her hair shorn and her skin smarting from the scrubbing, an orphan among the bigger girls who knew what to do and where to go – and how to bully the newcomer. And Prima Grinaud, the high magistrix of the younger classes, wasp-waisted and severe in her black watered silk, snapping sharply whenever Emma cried. Stop that noise. Collegia sorceresses do not snivel.

And little Emma had learned. Unfortunately, all that learning now seemed likely to pour out on to a filthy Londinium street.

No, not filthy. There’s the hedge. I am nearly home. Instead of brick, her free hand scraped the laurel hedge, washed with rain and glowing green even through the assault of smoke. Was it smoke? It certainly clouded her vision, but she smelled nothing but the familiar wet stone and Londinium coal stink.

And the sharp-sweet copper tang of blood.

No, it wasn’t smoke. Her sensitive eyes were merely failing her. It had been so bright earlier, even through the lowering clouds; her head hurt, a spike of pain through her temples. The gate quivered, iron resonating with distress; for a moment she was unable to remember the peculiar ætheric half-twist that would calm the restive guardian work wedded to metal and stone.

Either that, or she was clutching the wrong gate. But no, she blinked hazily several times and looked up as another wave of sorcery slid past her, ruffling her hair and almost, almost catching the edge of her skirts. When they found the blood trail—

I am home. Numerals made of powdery silver metal danced, charter symbols racing over their surface in golden crackles: 34½, a sweeter set of digits she had never seen. The high-arched gate trembled until she calmed it and found the breath to hum a simple descant.

Or she tried to. It took her a long while of sipping in air suddenly treacle-thick.

Finally she managed it. The gate shuddered and unlatched, one half sliding inward; veils of ætheric energy parted just as the next wave of sorcerously fuelled seeking tore past, arrowing unerringly for her as she tipped herself forward. It nipped at her heels, the sympathetic ætheric string from her own blood yanking, seeking to drag her backwards into the street.

But she was safely inside her own gate, the defences on her sanctum snapping shut, and Emma Bannon went to her knees on the wet, pretty front walk, lilac hedges snapping and thrashing as the house recognised her and filled with distress. Rain pattered down; she went over sideways, her hand still clamped to the wound. Another hot gush of blood; she heard running feet and exclamations, and she struggled against the grey cotton cocoon closing around her.

Thank goodness this dress was already ugly, she thought.

And, I must live. I must.

I know too much to die now.

Chapter Twelve Our First Dinner

Normally, Clare supposed, a woman half-dead of the application of a knife to her lung – discovered covered in blood and water at her own front door, no less – would be put abed for weeks. Certainly she would not appear, pale as milk and with one half of her childlike, almost pretty face bruised, at her dinner table in fresh dark green silk with very close sleeves and divided skirts, brushed boots, the cameo still caught at her throat and a new pair of earrings – sapphires in heavy silver – dangling with each turn of her head. Her ringlets were rearranged as well, and though she did not wear a bonnet, he was fairly certain one lay in waiting, probably in Madame Noyon’s capable care.

It was no great trick to deduce that Miss Bannon’s day was far from over.

The Shield, his jaw set so hard it looked fit to crack his strong white teeth, hovered behind her thronelike chair at the head of a long mahogany table, its legs of massive carved gryphonshape shifting restlessly. Against the Prompeian red of the draperies and the bronze walls, Mikal’s olive velvet and yellow eyes were aesthetically displeasing but not altogether inappropriate. He was no longer grey, but boiling with tightly controlled fury.

At least, fury was the word Clare thought applicable. It could have been rage. Anger was altogether too pale a term for the vibrating, incandescent wrath leaking from his every pore.

Clare viewed his cream of asparagus soup with a discerning eye, tasted it, and discovered it was superlative. That was no surprise; Miss Bannon did not stint and Cook, like Madame Noyon, appeared to be French. The sideboard was massive but not overpowering; the large greenery in its Chinois-style pots was carefully charmed and rustled pleasingly. The folding screens were marvels of restraint, and he wished for the chance to examine them more closely. The epergne was also a marvel of restraint, its height managing to look graceful and lacy instead of massively overdone.

Of course, a sorcerer lived as flagrantly as he could, but Miss Bannon’s discriminations appeared to be more in the realm of actual taste and quality, instead of fad and wild freakishness. The silver was of fineness, though plain, the linens snow-white.

He cleared his throat. “I take it your day was successful, Miss Bannon?”

“Quite.” She was hoarse, and she flinched slightly as she reached for her water glass. As if her side pained her. “In fact, Mr Clare, I wish to put some questions to you.”

Oh, I’m certain you do. “I have some questions as well. Shall we interrogate each other over dinner? You are likely to have some entertainment planned for the evening.”

“If by entertainment you mean conspiracy-hunting and unpleasantness, as a matter of fact, yes.” The circles under her eyes matched the bruising on her face; she winced again as she set her glass down. “I do beg your pardon. I hope my state does not interfere with your digestion.”

“Madam, almost nothing interferes with my digestion. It is a great advantage to being a mentath.” He savoured a mouthful of soup. “Here is an observation. There is a group of mentaths. Some are killed for one reason. Others are killed for a separate – but connected – reason, and mutilated in some fashion. Smythe had just returned from Indus, as Grayson commented. It makes little sense to think he was involved, unless—”

“Smythe was not in Indus.” Miss Bannon’s gaze flashed. Did she look amused? Perhaps. “That is where Grayson was told he had gone. In reality, he was in Kent, at a country house owned by the Crown.”

“Ah.” Clare’s eyelids lowered. He savoured another spoonful. “You had various and sundry reasons for leaving