The Ripper Affair

The sorceress shook her head, and her little fingers came up, loosened her veil. “It is of little account, Clare. I expected you would be angry. But you are alive to feel such anger, which is what I wished.”

“And Ludo?”

“Do you think he would have thanked me for such a gift?” Another shake, settling the veil firmly. Her features blurred behind its weave, yet Clare’s quick eye discerned the tremor that passed through her. Only one: a ripple as subtle and dangerous as the shifting of rocks heralding an ice-freighted avalanche. “No. Death was Ludovico’s only love, Clare; he would not have been happy to have her snatched away.”

Yours was the name he spoke when she came calling, Miss Bannon

.

There was no purpose in telling her so. If a sorceress could keep secrets, so could a mentath. Were he a lesser creature, he might feel a certain satisfaction in the act of doing so. As it was, well… “I deduce your torpor has been shaken, Miss Bannon.”

“Certainly my leisure has been disrupted. Would you care to accompany me? I am to view a body, it seems, for our liege.”

What was the sudden loosening in his chest? He decided not to enquire too closely. “Certainly. Do I have a moment to change my cloth? I am a trifle disarranged.”

“Yes.” She paused. “I rather require another glove, I should think.”

“I shall make haste, then.” And, to complete his cowardice, Clare escaped while he could.

Chapter Twelve

Corpses Rarely Are

Chanselmorgue’s spires pierced the waning daylight, thick ochre fog gathering about its walls as it was wont to do in the afternoons. It had been a Papist church long before, one of the many taken by force in the Wifekiller’s time and pressed into service in the most secular ways possible. There was rumour of scenes within its walls during that uncertain time that verged upon the blasphemous, but the Sisters of Chansel kept their archives locked. They still had a convent or two tucked in an inhospitable locale, moors and unhealthful swamps where children and young women of a certain regrettable condition were sent to meditate upon their sins–usually of resistance in some fashion to their disappointed elders. Or, truth be told, if there was an inconvenience in the matter of their drawing breath while an inheritance was in question.

A Chansel Sister was a formidable creature, if only for the chainmail she was suspected of wearing under her habit. Not to mention their particular set of charter symbols. Of all Papist orders, only they and the Templis openly and regularly admitted sorcery’s children. Oh, some of them made it clear they would not turn away a sorcerer or above possessed of the requisite wealth and connections. The Domenici and the Jesuiri were remarkably accepting where filthy lucre or influence was involved, and the Franciscis and Clairias made it a practice to accept the sorriest wretches they could. For most of them, though, the workers of wonders and their defenders were quite beyond the pale.

Feared, respected, allowed to survive in most countries… but beyond.

Chanselmorgue was a four-spired hulk now, with sheds sprouting from its backside in the manner of the huge bustle fashionable some few years ago, like a ridiculous growth. One could still remark the tau, with a writhing corpse nailed to it, worked in the stone over the front doors, and also see the chisel marks where blasphemers had taken advantage of the Wifekiller’s feud with the Papacy to wrench bits of coloured glass and other shiny objects from the facing.

Apparently Emma was expected–perhaps Victrix had been certain of tempting her into action, or had she thought Emma would crumble in the face of a personal visit? Did Victrix have that high an opinion of her own persuasiveness, or of her erstwhile sorceress’s pride?

Do I care? Whatever she thought, I did not agree to more than “If possible”. I wonder if she noted as much.

In any case, it took very little time for a narrow-eyed barrowmancer and a hunched, scuttling morguelrat to guide them to the shed containing the body in question, as well as five others.

As soon as she stepped inside the enclosure–waiting for Mikal’s nod, and followed by a pale Clare holding a handkerchief under his long, sensitive nose–she had no difficulty discerning which one was Nickol.

The barrowmancer–a milk-cheeked young man with greasy dark hair and long fingers, the traditional red stripe on his trousers and his slouched hat pulled low–nodded as she halted, her eyes no doubt widening.

“Aye,” he said, a broad nasal Cocklea accent reverberating around the shed’s flimsy walls. “Enough to put a sour in ye belly, ennit? Doctor co’nae feel it, but he the skullblind. Wasn’t til I saw ’er that anyone realised muckie’d been æther’d aboot.”