The Iron Wyrm Affair: Bannon and Clare: Book 1

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Monseiur le bouclie.” Madame Noyon tapped the teapot with the lemon knife. “You are in very bad manners. Monsieur Clare is our guest, and madame left instructions. You sit, or pace, but do not loaf about table like vulture!”

  Clare watched as the Shield’s face congested, suffusing with a ghastly flush before the man turned on his booted heel and glided away towards the north end. The rain intensified, spattering glass and iron, the charter symbols sending up small wisps of fog as cold water touched them.

  Madame Noyon swallowed, audibly. Her fingers trembled slightly before she firmed her mouth and put on a bright expression. “Madame returns soon, monsieur. Eat, eat. You are thin like Mr Finch, you must eat.”

  Clare certainly intended to. His landlady’s teas were nowhere near as grand, and only a fool would let his digestion be troubled.

  Yet he pushed his chair back and rose. He approached the north end of the conservatory, his hands clasped behind his back and the slap of rain intensifying again. Rivulets slid their cold fingers over the glass.

  “Mr Mikal.” He hoped his tone was not overly familiar – or overly distant. Dealing with this messiness was so difficult. “I beg your pardon, sir. I do not intend to be a burden, and my intent in questioning about Miss Bannon is purely so I may assist her in whatever way necessary, to the best of my ability. I may be useless, and own no sorcery, but I am striving to become less useless, and I very much crave your assistance in that endeavour.”

  Mikal had come to a stop, his head down, staring at a thorn-spiked, venomous-looking plant in a low earthenware pot. His shoulders hunched, as if expecting a blow, but straightened just as swiftly.

  Clare retreated to the tea table. But halfway through his second scone, Mikal dropped into the chair across from him. Madame Noyon’s eyebrows nested in her hairline, but she poured for him too. The Shield’s face did not ease and his colour did not return. He was still grey as the rain.

  But he drank his tea, staring up over Clare’s head at an infinitely receding point, and Clare was hard pressed not to feel …

  … well, extremely pleased.

  Chapter Eleven

  Unpleasantness is Not Over

  I must reach home. The bright blood welling beneath her gloved hand clasped to her ribs splattered her skirt, and she was no doubt leaving a trail a mile wide. Ætheric strings quivered; the effort to mislead the parties searching for her consumed most of her waning strength. Why is there never a hansom?

  She could barely hail one as it was, bleeding so badly. Not to mention a respectable driver might not stop, even if her glamour held. Another fiery pang rolled through her as the æther twisted, a screaming rush of air almost touching her disarranged curls, and for a moment the effort of blurring what an onlooker would see almost 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 me mewed in your house with your Shield, then, not merely my safety.”

  The barest flash of surprise crossed her bruised face. It looked as if someone had struck her violently, and also tried to throttle her. The marks were fading, her skin rippling a little as the ancient symbols of charter surfaced and dove beneath the paleness. Healing sorcery.

  If he had not had such excellent digestion, the sight might have turned his stomach. Besides, it was ridiculous to let such a thing interfere with one’s repast.

  “I did,” she admitted. “Though you must admit you are safest here, and—”

  “Oh, tell him,” Mikal snarled. “You cannot trust me, so you wander out into Londinium and find yourself a knife to fall on.”

  Clare was hard put to restrain a flash of most unbecoming glee at the rich new vistas of deduction that remark opened.

  “If you will not let me eat my dinner in peace, Shield, you may wait in the hall.” But Miss Bannon did not sound sharp. Only weary.

  The Shield leaned over her shoulder. “What if you had died, Prima? What then?”

  “Then I would be spared this most unwelcome display at the table.” Miss Bannon gazed steadily at Clare. “My apologies, sir. My Shield forgets himself.”

  “I do not forget.” Mikal planted himself solidly, folding his arms. The high carved back of Miss Bannon’s chair did nothing to blunt the force of the ire coming from him. “Such is my curse.”

  “Should you truly wish a curse, Mikal, continue in this manner.” Miss Bannon sampled her soup. Finch appeared, his thin arms bearing a tray with decanters; he busied himself at the sideboard. The footmen came and went, serving with clockwork precision and muffled feet. One of them was missing his left smallest finger, quite an oddity. “Mr Clare. Tomlinson and Smythe were given different … pieces, as it were, of a puzzle. They seemed to be very near to a solution in their respective ways. Masters and Throckmorton were apparently given parts of those separate puzzle pieces, and—”

  You are telling me a carefully chosen tale, which probably bears only kissing relation to the truth. “I have the idea, thank you. What were they researching?” And why were the unregistered mentaths mutilated? You avoid that subject with much alacrity, Miss Bannon.

  “If I were at liberty to disclose that, Mr Clare …” She needed say no more.

  “Very well.” He turned his attention to the soup, momentarily, while deductions assumed a different shape inside his skull. “That rather materially changes things. You are aware of the nature of this puzzle; Lord Grayson is now too. Which means the Chancellor is suspected, or your orders are from another quarter, or—”

  “Or I am a part of the conspiracy, keeping you alive for my own nefarious reasons. Mr Finch? I require rum. Shocking at dinner, but my nerves rather demand it. Mikal, either sit down at the place laid for you, or go out into the hall. I will not have this behaviour at dinner.”

  “I prefer to wait upon you, my Prima.” It was a shock to see a grown man so mulishly defiant, like a child expecting a spanking.

  “Then you may wait in the hall.” The dishes rattled, the table shifted slightly, and the plants whispered under their charm domes. Clare applied himself more fully to his soup.

  The Shield pulled out the chair to Miss Bannon’s left – the right was reserved for Clare – and a servant hurried forward. Finch brought a carafe and a small crystal glass, poured something Clare’s sensitive nose verified was indeed rum, and Miss Bannon quaffed it smoothly, as if such an operation was habitual.

  Some colour came back into her face – natural colour, not the garishness of bruising. “Thank you, Finch. I shall relate to you the most interesting portions of my day, Mr Clare, since your digestion is so sound, and you shall analyse what I tell you.”

  “Very well.” Clare settled in his chair. The gryphon-carved table legs chose to still themselves, which was a decided improvement. What she told him now would be as close to the truth as she could risk.

  She wasted little time. “Last night a single one of our attackers escaped. I meant to trace his whereabouts after we visited Bedlam, but it was not possible. However, had I not waited for daylight, today’s events might have gone in a very different direction. In any case, I found our attacker had received a protection from a certain sorcerer I am familiar with. I visited said sorcerer’s domicile in Whitchapel and received the information that the man – a flashboy, if you are familiar with the term?”

  “A man of the lower classes. One who has been Altered. Specifically, a type of petty criminal who takes it as a point of pride.” Such men were dangerous. If the Alteration did not make them unstable, the crime they were steeped in would do so. Their tempers were notoriously nasty, and by all accounts extraordinarily short.

  And Miss Bannon had ventured alone into the sink of filth, danger and corruption that was Whitchapel. Most intriguing.

  “Precisely.” Miss Bannon gave a nod of approval, drained another small glass of rum, and the roast chicken was brought in. “I received the information that our flashboy had arrived, requested a protection, paid, and left.”

  “Exactly how much did he pay?”

  “Two gold sovereigns, a guinea, and fivepence. One rather gets the idea he was pressed for time, and that he had so much as a mark of faith from his employer.”

  “It being
Whitchapel,” Clare observed, “the fivepence was no gratuity.”

  “No, the sorcerer squeezed for every farthing the flashboy was willing to part with. In any case, I found the flashboy’s doss and persuaded him to give some information before he attacked me. I defended myself – I did not kill him – and in the process, a truly terrible amount of sorcery was triggered on him.” She eyed Clare speculatively, and her colour was indeed better. She set to the roast chicken with a will, and Clare copied her example. “It was old sorcery, the same practitioner as last night’s event in Bedlam. Our flashboy was no sorcerer, so it … the force tore him apart. It was intended to not only do so but also incapacitate any sorcerous visitor so his employer could discover any meddling in his business.”

  “His?”

  “I find it extraordinarily unlikely this is a woman, sir.”

  Clare was inclined to agree, but Mikal could apparently stand it no longer. The Shield stared at the chicken on his plate, the potato balls drenched in golden butter, the scattered parsley, as if it were a mass of writhing snakes. “Injured you? Stabbed you in the lung, and—”

  “Do not interrupt, Mikal.” A line had appeared between Miss Bannon’s arched eyebrows. “I am sure Mr Clare is aware of the extent of my injuries. So, mentath, your analysis, if you please.”

  Clare sampled a potato ball. Most excellent. “I have been reading the papers today. Your hospitality is wonderful, Miss Bannon. The Encyclopaedie was also useful, though I may need some other texts—”

  She waved a hand, her rings sparkling. Fire opals this time, two of them set in heavy bronze and surrounded by what appeared to be tiny uncut diamonds. “Merely inform Mr Finch of your requirements. Analysis, please.”

  “You will not like it.”

  “That does not detract from its validity.”

  “You are a very managing female, Miss Bannon.”