The Iron Wyrm Affair

If they noticed too much, well, Valentinelli was the best protection she could provide, next to her own self. Ludovico might have made a fine Shield, if he’d been moulded earlier. He would have needed a light touch, though, and that was something very few sorcerers possessed.

Whoever rose to the bait of a mentath and an assassin would be interesting indeed. There was an art to preparing a hook without losing either hook or bait, and she intended to do so today.

The bay clockhorses, every inch of them gleaming now, ran like foam on crashing surf. Emma found the threads she wanted, her hands clenched before relaxing, fingers contorting and easing as she made the Gesture, and the Word shaped itself on her tongue.

“Ex-k’Ae-t!” As usual, the Word was soundless, filling her, thunder in stormclouds. The curricle jolted, sparks fountaining from clockhorse hooves, and the sudden eerie quiet as wheels and hooves bit nothing but air enfolded them.

Her eyelids fluttered, daylight spearing into her skull, the impression of Mikal standing, reins now loosely held as the clockhorses settled into a jogtrot. Emma’s own contorted fingers held finer, invisible threads, snapping and curling, fresh ones sliding into existence as the old tore.

The carriage flew.

Up they climbed, lather and sparks dripping, fog closing over Park Crescent below them, its green sickly under the pall. Still rising over Regent’s proper, the only sound the curricle’s wheels spinning freely and one of the clockhorses snorting, tossing its fine head. From the withers and haunches to the hooves, cogwheels meshed and slid, the pistons in the legs working in a simulacra of a flesh horse’s bones, its skeleton sorcerously reinforced and the russet metal melding seamlessly into bay hide lovingly tended by half-lame spine-curled Wilbur, the stable boy, who stammered so badly he could not make himself understood. The scar on his forehead perhaps showed why, but he had a charmed touch with clockhorses. Yet another indenture she was glad to have performed – her one-time kindness reaping a reward out of all proportion. Harthell, her usual coachman, was another – but she had no time to think on her collection of castaways.

For there, drifting as lightly as a soap bubble, the great Collegia stood on empty air. The lattices of support and transferral cradling the massive tiered white-stone edifice were clearly visible to Sight, but to the ordinary it seemed that the Collegia simply … floated. It drifted in a slow, majestic pattern above the Park, confined there to keep the Londinium rabble from rioting at the idea that it could fall on their slums and tenements – or vent its waste onto their heads.

Though they merrily shovelled excrement over each other, a sorcerer’s dung was another thing entirely. None saw fit to tell them the waste was shunted into the Themis, just like their own.

The horses high-stepped up an invisible grade, turned as Mikal flicked the reins, and the Gates were open. Sharp black stone dully polished and sculpted with flowing fantastical animal shapes, running with bloody-hued charter symbols, the Gates had been the first thing built for the Collegia. They had stood open since the first stone had been laid by Mordred the Black, who had claimed descent from Arthur’s left-hand line. Whether that was true, who could say?

The Lost Times were lost for a reason. Much as the records of the Age of Flame and the Age of Bronze were only fragmentary, or the records of the time during Cramwelle’s Inquisition. Britannia, her physical vessel murdered and the shock of that murder reverberating through the Isle, had surfaced finally in a fresh vessel and halted Cramwelle’s violent hatred of his sorcerous betters.

As the historial Lord Bewell had remarked, a little ambition could make even a hedge-charmer dangerous.

The most difficult part of entering the Collegia was landing on the slick marble paving. Even the cracking sound of transferring force away into empty air was to be avoided. Difficult, delicate, dexterous work; clockhorse hooves touched down soft as feathers, the curricle’s wheels given a preparatory spin to match speed, and the gradually rising volume of hooves and wheels until every step rang on the cold white stone was a small triumph. The silver rings on Emma’s left hand were warm, her attention rushed back firmly into her body and she cautiously opened her eyes.

The heavy veil took some sting from the foggy sunlight, much brighter here above the thicker soup of ground- level fog. Still, she squinted most unbecomingly before she half lidded her eyes languidly as a lady should. The curricle raced up the long circular drive; the massive fountain in the middle of the round garden played a sonorous greeting as multicoloured streams of light and prismatic water laved its surfaces. A half-nude Leda reclined under Jove in the form of a swan, blinding white; she chucked the snake-necked creature under its chin and for a moment the wings moved as her limbs did, dreamily. The light and water caressing them both made it far more indecent than the worst of the gentlemen’s flash press.

It was, Emma reflected as Mikal steered the horses past the chill-white, massive Great Staircase, a very good metaphor for sorcerers in general.

The Library’s white dome was low compared to the jabbing snowy enamel spires of the rest of the Collegia, but it was still large enough to swallow the Leather Market whole and ask for seconds. Mikal pulled the horses to a stop and a Collegia indentured appeared to take charge of them; her Shield leapt down from the curricle and Emma gathered her skirts.

This should prove interesting.

The Library’s dome glowed, stone scraped thin enough to let sunshine through. In that drenching, directionless light, flapping shadows moved. They circled in small flocks, sometimes lighting on the tops of high shelves, other times fluttering toward the gigantic nautilus-curled circulation counter. A vast central well, five storeys of bookshelves rising around it and raying out in long spiralling stacks, was enough to make one dizzy. Balustrades of ivory and mother-of-pearl, the carpeting rich blue; the Library glowed with nacre, the smell of paper mixing with a faint breath of salt and sand. Thin cries could be heard as some of the books fluttered aloft, gaining altitude and swooping with gawky grace.

Mikal followed, perhaps more closely than was strictly necessary. But then, his life was forfeit here. A Shield could not be taken from a Prime’s service and put to death, no matter the crime he had committed. The law was very clear on that point – even if the Shield in question had done the unthinkable and murdered his own sorcerer.

No other sorcerer was willing to run the risk of taking him in. None of her fellow Primes – indeed, no sorcerer, and no other person – knew precisely what had happened in that small room in the bowels of Crawford’s palatial home, because she had steadfastly maintained her silence. As far as she could tell, so had Mikal. Yet the fact of his survival in her service, and Crawford’s demise, could not be ignored; it shouted to the heavens what had most likely occurred.

It is you, or the chopping block, he had said, his jaw iron-hard and his eyes glowing venomously. I prefer you. If you will not take my service, do me the courtesy of killing me yourself. I will let you.

And Emma had believed him. Her fingers still tingled with the feel of his chest underneath her touch, the rasp of subtle scaling—

Stop it. You are not here to daydream. She stalked for the circulation desk, shaking herself out of memory with a sharp disciplined mental effort. It would be easy to believe Mikal felt … what?

Nothing she could trust. It was best to remember that.

Behind the desk, a tangle-haired witch in no-nonsense grey wool glanced up, startled by her approach. Of course, any livre-witch would feel a Prime’s approach like a storm bearing down on a small sloop. Especially here at the Collegia, where sorcery vied for air as the most common medium.

This livrewitch was plump, her hazel eyes unfocused, and she swayed slightly as she gripped the desk’s edge until she adjusted to the disturbance Emma represented. “Title?” she chirped, in a colourless little voice. Her dishwater hair was a rat’s nest, matted locks hanging and others piled high with a collection of bones, small shiny bits of metal, and feathers. “Author? Catalogue number? Cover colour? Subject?”

“Principia Draconis.” Emma fought back a curling lip. Witches. Male and female both specialised young, and by the time they reached twenty their brains were capable of holding only their Discipline. Theirs were not the deep Disciplines of the Inexhaustible – fire, water, magnetism, creation, destruction – but the tiny niches. Swallows nesting in a cliffside, and never straying far from their tiny holes.

Do not pity the witches, a teacher had once intoned. They are not less