The Ripper Affair

“You may sit where I place you, and cease being ridiculous. Mikal–yes, thank you.” She pressed a snifter of brandy into Clare’s willing hands, and the amber liquid suddenly seemed the best remedy in the world for his pounding head. “And–yes, very good.” She lifted her replenished glass of rum, and tapped it against his. “Come now, sir. Chin up, buckle down.”

“And devil take the hindmost.” The familiar refrain, usually uttered when an affair they were pursuing had reached a breaking point of urgency and strain, comforted him. “I am sorry, Emma. I was dashed brutal about Valen—”

“Let us not speak of that.” She eyed him for a long moment before straightening and glancing at Mikal. The Shield’s face was a bland, closed book; he did not even spare a moment’s worth of attention on Clare. “Now, stay there.” She turned, regarding the Queen with a level, dark-eyed gaze.

It was odd to see such a childlike face so set and pale, the tiny diamonds on the crêpe band about her slim throat ringing with sorcerous light. The Queen, round and stiff in her mourning–the Widow of Windsor’s sorrow was rather a mark, Clare thought, of a certain calcification of character–wore more jewels, and certainly more costly, but they did not seem as expressive as Miss Bannon’s oddly matched adornments.

He noted the tremor in Queen Victrix, the hectic colour of her cheeks and a fresh scratch on the outside edge of her laced boot. Gravel, meaning she had hurried into a carriage, most likely on a wide walkway. And there, behind the careful mask of a middle-aged matron’s face, was a flash of Feeling.

He peered more closely, disregarding the rudeness of staring, to verify the extraordinary evidence of his senses. Yes, he was certain he could identify that flash.

Fear.

“I shall investigate these occurrences,” Miss Bannon said, formally. “If possible, I shall remove the danger to Britannia. I shall require every scrap of information there is to date; running after every murder in Whitchapel will only muddy the issue.”

Whitchapel? Murder?

Clare’s faculties seized upon the extraordinary words with quite unseemly relief.

Victrix’s mouth compressed. “The first body was buried a-pottersfeld, the second is at Chanselmorgue. Her name was Nickol, I am told. More I cannot speak upon here.”

How very odd. It galls her to request Miss Bannon’s services. Miss Bannon has not stepped forth on the Crown’s business for… quite a long while now, really. He had become accustomed to such a state of affairs, he supposed; Accustomed was a set of blinders where Logic and Reason were concerned. Just as befogging as Assumption and Comfort, and just as dangerous.

The tastes of bile and brandy commingled were not pleasant, and his head still ached abominably. But the storm seemed to have passed for the moment, and Clare had a rich vista of distracting new deduction before him to embark upon.

It would serve quite handily to push the distressing news, distressing events, firmly away.

“Did you view the bodies yourself, Your Majesty?”

Miss Bannon… was that a flicker of a smile hiding behind her steely expression? Had he not been so thoroughly acquainted with her features, he most certainly would have missed it.

She was enjoying Victrix’s discomfiture, it seemed. Highly unusual. His estimation of the relationship between queen and the sorceress was incorrect. Perhaps said relationship had shifted by degrees, and he had missed it? For Miss Bannon did not speak upon the Queen much, if at all. Especially since the Red affair.

How very intriguing.

“We did, witchling.” Soft and cold. “And now you

shall. Do not fail Us.” The Queen rose on a whisper of black silk and colourless anger, and Clare scrambled to his feet. Neither woman acknowledged him. Victrix stalked through the drawing-room door, which opened itself silently to accommodate her passage. Miss Bannon’s fingers did not twitch, but Clare was suddenly very sure that she had invisibly caused the door to swing itself wide. Mikal slid through after the Queen’s black-skirted, sailing bulk.

The sound of the front door, shut with a thunderous snap, was a whip’s cracking over a clockhorse’s heaving back.

Miss Bannon turned to the mentath, and she wore a most peculiar smile. Tight and unamused, her dark eyes wide and sparkling, colour rising in her soft cheeks.

He downed the remainder of his brandy in one fell gulp, and grimaced. Medicinal it might have been, but it mixed afresh with the bile to remind him that he was not quite himself at the moment.

That is ridiculous. Who else would you be?

“Emma.” He wet his lips, swallowed harshly. “I am sorry. I should thank you for your pains, and apologise for my behaviour.”