The Iron Wyrm Affair

“Fair enough. We are at the Bridge; no doubt our driver will be stopping soon. You are a gentleman, but pray do not precede me from the carriage. You are far more vulnerable than I.”

A sharp bite of irritation flashed through him. He shelved it with difficulty. “Very well.”

“Thank you.” Primly, she gathered herself, and as if in response, the hansom halted.

Queen’s Bridge – otherwise known as the Southwark or the Iron, to balance the Stone Bridge as one of Londinium’s arteries – loomed in twilight, fog shrouding both of its massive ends. Black iron gleamed wetly, the Themis rippling with gold under its arches as Tideturn spilled and eddied back to sea. It was perhaps the ugliest bridge in Londinium, and the charter symbols cast into its long span crawled with touches of vermilion. Some said the Bridges kept the Themis under control, binding the ancient, hungry demigod sleeping in the river’s depths.

Most illogical. Still, the cold iron was superstitiously comforting.

At the Bridge’s southern end, the Wark sent up columns of dense smoke underlit with crimson, the unsleeping foundries audible even at this distance. Cinders fell like Twelfthnight snow there, and the bridge thrummed unpleasantly underfoot.

“’Tis as far as I go, worships.” The driver was pale under his gin-touched cheeks. “The Black Wark’s unsteady tonight. Feel it in the Bridge, you can.”

Mikal had appeared at Miss Bannon’s elbow, yellow eyes taking a last gleam from the Themis. He murmured to the sorceress, who nodded once, sharply, her earrings swinging. “Give him a further half-crown, Shield. He’s done well. Mr Clare, come with me.”

“Thank you. Good man.” Clare dusted his hat. The Wark’s cinders would perhaps ruin it. “Off you go, then. Mind you,” he remarked to the sorceress, “I am still no closer to discovering why a hansom can be so bloody difficult to find.”

Mikal tossed a coin, the flick of his fingers invisible in the uncertain light. The cabbie, however, plucked the half-crown from the air, and the coin vanished. He tipped his hat at the sorceress and winked before lifting the reins.

“Conspiracy.” Miss Bannon watched as the hansom negotiated a tight turn, the clockhorse’s Altered hooves clipping the bridge’s surface. Stray sparks of sorcery winked out in its wake. The whip cracked, and their driver made good his escape.

“That could be so.” Clare’s dinner was not sitting so excellently at the moment. He put his shoulders back, seeking to ease the discomfort.

The middle of the Bridge was deserted. On either end, Londinium teemed; Queen Street’s terminus on to Upper Themis was crowded with warehouses and sloping tenements. Lights winked among them, gasflame and the pallid gleams of the occasional witchglobe. On the other end, Southwark’s bloody glow made a low, unhappy noise.

Miss Bannon did not relax until the hansom was out of sight, vanished on to Upper Themis Road. Even then, the tension in her only abated; it did not cease. “Safe enough,” she murmured. “Come, Mr Clare. Listen closely while we walk.”

He offered his arm. Stray cinders fluttered, a grey curtain.

“We are about to enter Southwark.” She did not lean on him, though she rested a gloved hand delicately and correctly in the crook of his elbow. Mikal stepped away, turning smartly, and trailed on Miss Bannon’s other side.

“Obviously.”

“Do not interrupt. Once we step off the Bridge, no matter how important, do not speak without express permission from me. The … lady we are visiting is eccentric, and much of the Black Wark is full of her ears. She is also exceedingly dangerous.”

“If she is dangerous enough to cause you this concern, Miss Bannon, rest assured I shall follow your instructions precisely. Who is she?”

“Her name is Mehitabel.” Miss Bannon’s jaw was set, and she looked pale. “Mehitabel the Black.”

“What a curious name. Tell me, Miss Bannon, should one fear her?”

Her childlike face with its aristocratic nose was solemn, and she gave him one very small, tight-mouthed smile. “You are sane, Mr Clare. That means yes.”

The heart of Southwark was the Black Wark, grey and red. Grey from the piled cinders the shuffling ashwalkers pushed along with their long flat brooms, the wagons loaded with the stuff taken to the soap factories grumbling along on traditional wooden wheels. Red from the glow of the foundries, red for the beating heart under the Wark’s crazyquilt of streets and jumbled alleys. The gaslamps here corroded swiftly from the cinderfall; yellow fog sent thin tendrils questing along the cobbles. The low red glow made the fog flinch, hugging corners and pooling in darker spots.

Between Blackfriar and Londinium Bridges, the Iron Bridge stood and the Themis was dark, great fingers combing its silk as the foundries drank and sent their products forth. Metalwork, mechanisterum used for Alteration, the huge warehouses for the making of clockhorses on the near side of High Borough, close to the Leather Market. Blackfriar, Londinium Bridge, Great Dover-Borough High-Wellengton and Great Surrey to the west and east, Greenwitch at the south; these were the confines of the Black Wark. Some said those streets had powerful enchantments buried underneath, wedded to rails of pure silver, keeping the Wark contained. Whispers told of workshops in the Wark where workers so Altered as to be merely metal skeletons grinned and leapt, or streets faced in dark metallic clockwork that changed when the fog grew thick and the cinderfall was particularly intense.

The Wark’s natives were Altered young. Immigrants, mostly Eirean, poured in to work at the foundries and warehouses, living twenty or more to a stinking room while gleaming delicate clockworks and massive metalwork were shipped out clean and sparkling on each tide.

If a gentleman went into the Wark, he hired Altered guides, native flashboys working in groups of a half- dozen or more who mostly took it as a point of rough pride to guard their employers. The Wark’s flashboys were feared even in the Eastron End’s worst slums, and rumour had it they were often contracted for shady work even a Thugee from darkest Indus would flinch at.

At the end of the Iron Bridge, Mikal stepped forward, and the veil of cinderfall parted.

“Passage a pence apiece!” a rough voice croaked. “Threepee for your worships!”

A bridgekeeper appeared in a circle of gaslamp glow, cinders shaking from the brim of his hat. Round and wrapped in odds and ends; metal gleamed as his Alterations came into view – a lobster claw instead of a left hand, soot-crusted metal gleaming in odd scraped-bare spots, and a glass eye lit with venomous yellow, like the fog. He moved oddly, lurching, and Clare’s interest sharpened.

He has been Altered even more thoroughly than that. Look, there. Wheels. He has wheels instead of feet. They were not quality Alterations, either. Rough edges and clicking cogs caked with grease and cinders, no smoothly gleaming surfaces.

Clare held his tongue with difficulty.

“Mikal.” The sorceress did not break stride, drawing him on.

“Ye’ll be wanting guides, worships, specially after Tideturn.” The bridgekeeper chuckled. “And wit a laddle too!”

Movement in the shadows. Clare stiffened, but Miss Bannon simply tilted her head. “I require no guide, Carthamus, and you should polish that eye of yours. Give your dogs the signal to withdraw, or you’ll lose a goodly portion of them to my temper.”

Mikal’s hand flicked. Three pennies chimed on the cobbled street, almost lost in a drift of cinders. The Shield stepped back, almost mincingly, and the bridgekeeper cursed.

“Watch your tongue,” Miss Bannon snapped, and her fingers clamped on Clare’s arm with surprising strength. “This way.”

“There are quite a few of them.” Mikal, hushed and low.

“Oh, I should think so. She’s expecting me.”

They plunged into the Wark, Clare’s senses quivering-alert, and he almost wished he had chosen to remain in Mayefair.