The Iron Wyrm Affair: Bannon and Clare: Book 1

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Where would he be? Parlour or bedroom? “Mikal?”

  “They do not seek to be quiet,” her Shield murmured. He pointed to the side. “There.”

  Parlour, then. Which meant a number of uncomfortable things.

  “No servants to take one’s wrap, even,” she commented. “Dreadfully rude.”

  The parlour door’s porcelain handle clicked. A slice of ruddy light widened as the flimsy door – painted with overblown cherubs, in a style that had not been fashionable even when it was attempted ten years ago – swung silently open.

  Cheap theatrics, my dear. But she continued on, briskly, the two Shields trailing her. Her skirts rustled; there was no need for silence. She stepped over the threshold and on to a hideous but expensive carpet, patterned with blotchy things she supposed were an attempt at flowers.

  The furniture was chunky and graceless, but again, very expensive. Someone had the habit of antimacassars and doilies, hand-wrought from the look of them, just the sort of meaningless thrift she would expect from whatever lumpen thing Grayson could induce to marry him. All Grayson’s taste and judgement had gone into playing politics, and he was a keen and subtle opponent there.

  But now, all his keenness and subtlety was splashed in a sticky red stinking tide across the terrible carpet. The brassy odour of death filled the stifling parlour, and from the least objectionable leather chair by the fireplace, licked by the glow and the furious heat given forth by a merry blaze, Llewellyn Gwynnfud chuckled. His long pale hair was pulled back, and for a dead man, he looked remarkably pleased with himself.

  “Punctual to the last, dear Emma.” The erstwhile dead Prime lifted a small cut-crystal wine glass of red fluid, and Mikal’s sudden tension told her there were other Shields in this room. Hidden, of course, and she wondered if they knew of the fate of Llew’s last crop of Collegia-trained protectors.

  Grayson’s twisted, eviscerated body was flung over a brown horsehair sopha, the tangle of his guts steaming. Now, as she spared it a longer glance, she wondered if the Prime had killed his Shields himself.

  And if Mehitabel the Black had helped.

  “A simulacrum,” she replied. “And a fantastic one too, well beyond your power. Did you and your sleeping master truly expect the strike at Bedlam to kill me?”

  A swiftly smoothed flash of annoyance crossed his face. Long nose, fleshy lips, his blue eyes a trifle too close together … well, he was handsome, Emma allowed, but only until one knew him.

  Only until one saw the rot underneath.

  “I have no master, my dear. One or two of our partners expected you to meet your doom before now, but they don’t know you as I do.” He twirled the small glass, the viscous fluid in its crystalline bowl making a soft sliding sound under the roar of the fire.

  “Oh, you have a master. Not Mehitabel – she couldn’t craft a simulacrum that fine, being of the Black Line.” She tapped a finger to her lips, not missing Llewellyn’s eyelids lowering a fraction. It was as close to a flinch as he would allow himself, facing her on this carefully set stage. “But no worries, I will settle accounts with your master soon enough. I have decided to deal with you first.”

  That produced a snarl, a flash of white teeth. “I’m flattered.”

  “Not at all. You are, after all, the smaller problem.”

  Sparks crackled, the breathless tension heightening a fraction. The fire was large, yes – but it was not large enough to produce such heat. There was the matter of the fluid in the glass, and the shadows clustering on the walls, any of which might hide a Shield or two. Or half a dozen. The eviscerated body of the Lord Chancellor was worrisome too, and the rest of Grayson’s house ticking and groaning as nightfall settled and yellow fog began to press upon it in earnest was not quite as it should be. The sounds were too sharp, too weighty.

  In short, Llewellyn Gwynnfud had prepared this for a reason. Emma took a half-step to her left, away from the ruin of Grayson’s body. “The Chancellor did not expect this,” she observed, as Eli and Mikal moved with her – Mikal soundless and Eli’s boots creaking just a fraction.

  Llewellyn didn’t twitch. Instead, he lifted the cordial glass and stared into its swirl. “You found another Shield. Who did this one kill?”

  Indirectly reminding her of Crawford, to see if he could unsettle her. Of course. “Not nearly as many as you have, I would fancy. Your former Shields, all dead and gutsplit in an alley.” She indicated Grayson’s indecently splayed body with a sudden sharp movement, and was gratified to see Llewellyn flinch. “Just like him. You’re exhibiting a pattern, Lord Sellwyth.” Her hand dropped. “That’s right. Sellwyth. Dinas Emrys is part of your family’s holdings, isn’t it?” A long pause. “I’ve always wanted to visit it. Perhaps now’s the time.”

  For in the lore of the Age of Flame, the ancient citadel of Dinas Emrys was tangled with the Pax Draegonir. It was where simulacra of the wyrms would meet in conclave, in the presence of their sleeping progenitor, the Third Wyrm, the one from who all the wyrmlings now were descended.

  The first two Great Wyrms were either dead or sleeping so deeply they might as well be – or so sorcerers hoped. But Vortigern lay just under the surface of the Isle, and his might was such that even Britannia might not quell him.

  The other Prime had gone very still. He made a slight tsk tsk noise. “You are so quick, dear Emma. Listen for a few moments.”

  “You have my attention.” For now.

  “It’s one of your best features, my dear, that quality of wide-eyed listening you sometimes employ.” His tongue stole out, wetted his fleshy lips. “A tide is rising.” An eyebrow raise robbed the sentence of portentousness, but he was still, Emma thought, serious.

  Deadly serious.

  He continued, each word careful and soft. “How long will you spend chasing your hobbyhorse of duty, my dear? You are so talented, and lovely besides. I did not like our parting.”

  You dropped me like a hot stone the instant you thought that French tart would give you an advantage, and I was unwilling to share your bed with another woman. Then there was Crawford, and you did not bother to show your face afterwards. No doubt you were busy with high treason and murder. Emma merely tilted her head slightly. The stone at her throat was still ice cold, quiescent.

  “You are here. But you haven’t yet attacked me. Which means you need information you think you can force me to provide, or you’re intrigued. Most probably the former. But just in case you are intrigued, my dear, how do you like the idea of immortality?”

  Oh, Llewellyn. A silly lure, even for you. “Overrated. Primes have such long lives anyway, and any immortality has conditions. Try again, Gwynnfud.”

  “There is an immortality without conditions.”

  Ah. “A Philosopher’s Stone.” That’s what you were offered? Or you have been granted. If it’s the latter … “Am I meant to infer that you’ve been granted a Stone, in reward for services rendered, and that, instead of a simulacrum, is to blame for your wonderfully revived state? Oh, Llewellyn. Really. I abhor insults to my intellect.”

  “As soon as Britannia’s vessel is breached and our great friend awakened, darling. The wyrms do not throw away a useful advantage.”

  You would do well to remember that. The heat was mounting, uncomfortably. “A Stone can only be made from a wyrm’s heart. Slaying a wyrm brings a curse. Have you forgotten that?”

  “Vortis has many children.”

  Under the close stifling heat, she was cold all through. “And he will slaughter a wyrmchild for you. Llewellyn, for God’s sake, don’t be an idiot.”

  “Two, actually. Two Stones. One was to be Grayson’s. But since he’s met with an accident, one will be in my power to give.” Another quick wetting of his lips, and Emma’s heart gave a shattering leap. “You are the only companion to hold my interest long enough to make such a gift worthwhile. Think of it, Emma. You, and me. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”

  And you have convinced the Duchess of Kent that you will help he
r coerce her daughter. A pair fit for each other, indeed. “You are,” she informed him, “completely mad. I am Britannia’s servant. Or have you forgotten?”

  “You bow and scrape to that magical whore because you see no advantage elsewhere. Come now, do not play the high-and-mighty with me. I know you, Emma. Inside and out.”

  He was not precisely wrong. In fact, he was more correct than she cared to acknowledge, and the realisation was a slap of cold water.

  “Apparently not.” The water became ice, sheathing her. “You think I would betray Britannia for this pack of idiotic promises? I left you, Llewellyn, because you had grown boring.” She took a deep breath, and uttered the unforgivable. “A Shield is far less trouble, and far more … athletic, besides.”

  The colour drained from Lord Sellwyth’s cheeks. His eyes flamed, pale blue, and the cordial glass sang a thin note as his fingers tightened.

  Almost too easy. Every man has the same sticking point, and it nestles in their breeches.

  He gained his feet in a rush, flinging the glass aside. It hit the grate and shattered, the liquid inside blossoming into blue-white flame. Sorcery uncoiled, streaking for her, and Emma batted it aside with contemptuous ease. Part of the ceiling shattered, a flare of sorcerous flame breaking through four storeys and lifting into the fogbound Londinium night. Llewellyn’s mouth shaped a Word, torn air suddenly full of choking dust. She was quicker, a half-measure of chant spat between her lips, warm and salt-sweet; it sliced the springing spell in half and knocked the other Prime back into the chair he had just leapt from. The chair skidded back, its legs tearing the hideous carpet, and smashed into the heavy oak wainscoting.

  There were clashes of steel and sudden cries, but she ignored them. Llewellyn’s Shields, bursting from their cocoons of invisibility, were not her worry. In a Prime’s duel, her only concern was the other sorcerer. The Shields were left to make shift for themselves.

  And, she thought, as the gauntlets warmed against her hands and Llewellyn rose out of the chair with a sound like a thunderstorm breaking, it was just as well.

  For no Prime had ever duelled Lord Sellwyth and won.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I Find Myself Reluctant to Disappoint

  It was just as well he had taken the coja. If he had not, the ride would have been even more a nightmare. The knocking of the clocktrain’s pistons, steam and charm working together to an infernal rhythm, was enough to drive a mentath’s sensitive brain, recently bruised, into a state very near absolute madness. Still, the compartment was adequate, cushioned seats and a window he ensured was firmly shut – for he found he did not wish to see any of the flying cinders trains were famous for.

  The difficulty of finding lodgings when they arrived in cold, fogbound Dover was most provoking. Valentinelli was little help, presumably because he cared not a whit where he laid his intriguing head, but Clare required a measure of comfort. There was the question of anonymity, too, but in the end, a respectable hotel was found, a room secured, and Clare gazed out of the window at the pinpricks of yellow gaslight receding down the slope of the town before the Neapolitan, making a spitting noise, shoved him aside and yanked the pineapple-figured curtains closed. Sig, who had napped on the train, took one of the beds, stretched out atop the covers without removing his boots, and was snoring within moments.

  “Porco,” Valentinelli sneered, and took himself to a chair by the coal fire. Clare settled himself in the other chair, propping his feet on an uncomfortably hard hassock covered in the same pineapple fabric as the curtains. The coja still sparked, his faculties honed and extraneous clutter cleared away, every inch of his capability aching to be used.

  He tented his fingers below his nose, and shut out the sound of Sig’s noisy sleep. Valentinelli watched him, dark eyes half lidded and thoughtful. The lamp on a small table at Clare’s elbow gave a warm glow, and the fire was delightful.

  The entire jolting, unhappy experience of travel had almost managed to unseat the excellent dinner he’d finished. Miss Bannon’s pendant was cold against his chest, and he wondered how the sorceress fared.

  Clare closed his eyes.

  “Eh, mentale.” Valentinelli shifted in his chair. “Use the bed, no? I wake you, at time.”

  “I am quite comfortable, thank you. I wish to think.”

  “She got you too.” The Neapolitan’s chuckle was not cheery at all. “La strega, she get every one of us.”

  Clare’s irritation mounted. “Unless you have something truly useful to say, signor, could you please leave me in peace?”

  “Oh, useful.” Valentinelli’s tone turned dark. “We are very useful, mentale. She send us off to find a shipment of something. Bait again. Dangle mentale and Ludo, see what happens.”

  “We are not bait,” Clare immediately disagreed.

  “Oh no?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, I believe we are Miss Bannon’s last hope.”

  The Neapolitan was silent.

  “Consider this, my noble assassin. We are three men against enemies who wish nothing less than the destruction of Britannia’s Empire and quite possibly the murder of Her physical vessel. Given Miss Bannon’s attachment to Queen Victrix, what does it tell you that she has left the defence of Her Majesty to us? For that is what she has done by sending us here. She is pursuing an enemy more dangerous, in her opinion, than rebellion or even assassination. The fact that she has left this part of the prosecution of said conspiracy to us I find outright disturbing in its implications. Also, did you notice the second Shield? You must have, for he was at dinner. For Miss Bannon to engage another of Mikal’s type, when by all accounts she has resisted doing so quite strongly, makes me think this situation very dire indeed.” He tilted his head slightly, his eyes still closed. The comforting darkness behind his lids held geometric patterns, interlocking vortices of probability and deduction. “Also, she left us at table and quit her home most ostentatiously, drawing off whatever pursuit she could and waving herself before possible attackers like a handkerchief fluttered out of a window. She has given us every chance, sir, and furthermore gave her word not to treat me as bait. No, my noble assassin, we are men Miss Bannon is relying upon. And I do not think that lady relies easily.”

  Silence filled the room to bursting. The quiet had several components – the whisper of the lamp’s flame, the coal fire shifting and flaring briefly, a steady dripping outside the window. The fog here was not Londinium’s yellow soup, but it still pressed down on the town from white cliff to railway station, muffling the dosshouses and rollicking publics where Jack Tar drank to dry ground. It muffled the sound of clockhorse hooves and rumbling wheels outside the hotel, and it gave even the warm room a dry, bitter scent tinged with salt.

  Valentinelli breathed a soft curse in his native tongue.

  “Quite,” Clare commented, drily. “Now do be still, sir. I must cogitate. For I will be brutally frank: I do not see much hope of us fulfilling the task Miss Bannon has given us, yet I find myself most unwilling to disappoint her.”

  Not to mention that Londinium – and indeed, all Britannia – would be distinctly uncomfortable for a good long while if Queen Victrix was removed from the living and Britannia searching for another vessel, or if the Queen were unhappy under her mother’s control again. An unhappy vessel means an unhappy Isle, whether from bad weather, crop failure, or the creeping anomie that would thread through every part of the Empire.

  And, dash it all, this entire affair was simply an affront to the tidiness and public order any good subject of Britannia preferred.

  Clare settled himself deeper in the chair. His breathing deepened.

  There are more logic engines. I must be prepared.

  An onlooker would think he slept. But it was a mentath’s peculiar doubling he performed, half his faculties engaged upon the riddle of tangling the three parties wishing harm to Britannia in their own brisket; how best to bring this affair to a satisfactory conclusion. The other half, sharpened by coja and shut
ting out all distractions, embarked on a complicated set of mental exercises. The equations the logic engine had forced him to solve without preparation rested on a series of mental chalkboards, and he set himself to untangling them at leisure and learning the patterns behind their hot white glare.

  Motionless, sweat beading on his brow, Clare worked.

  He surfaced to the Neapolitan’s grip on his arm. “Wake, mentale.” the assassin whispered. “Ships coming in.”

  The lamp guttered, throwing shadows over the pineapple-embossed paper. The damn room was a shrine to tropical fruit, Clare thought sourly, and moved very gingerly, stretching his legs. The body sometimes protested after a long period of torpidity. After a few minutes of various stretches, watched by a curious and half-amused Valentinelli, he found his hat and was not surprised to see Sigmund yawning and scratching at his ribs, peering carefully out of the window.

  “Too quiet,” the Bavarian muttered. “I do not like this.”

  “Ludo doesn’t either.” For once, the assassin did not sound sour. “But it could be the tide. Or the fog.”

  Clare washed his face at the basin, and a quarter-hour afterwards found all three of them outside in the thick fog, making for the docks. After a brisk walk, there were no more complaints of it being too quiet.

  Ports, like Londinium itself, rarely slept, and the infusion of fresh seaswell into a harbour was a potent yeast. Even through the thick white-cotton vapour shouts and curses could be heard, the straining of hawsers and the heave-ho chants of hevvymancers. Saltwitches chanted too and wove their fingers in complicated rhythms, drawing the fog aside in braided strands and lighting the ships into port. Shipwitches would be standing at bows, easing the tons of wood and sail safely towards the docks; pilots cursed and spat, hawkers, merchants, and agents rubbed elbows. Bullyboys and Shanghai-men with fresh crops of charmed and coffled Jack Tars waited impatiently – they would be paid a shilling a head, in some cases, less for any with obvious deformities, and the tars would be trapped on a ship as crew for God knew how long. Those with even a small talent for sorcery were safe from the coffles; the tars were those born without. And there were many of them – for what else was a Jack Tar to do when the ship he had been chained aboard was in a foreign port? To sign on a trifle less unwillingly was his only option, either for the pay due at the end of the voyage or for the simple fact that the sea worked its way into a man’s blood.