The Ripper Affair

He did not move. Muscle under the flour-pale skin of his narrow back did not flicker, and for a moment something black lodged in her throat. Was he… despite the Stone’s gift, was he…?

“I hear his heartbeat,” Mikal murmured. “But not… the other’s.”

Ludovico. It was unquestionably the assassin she had blood-bound to Clare, the most intelligent and reliable of his ilk she had ever come across during her erstwhile service to the Crown. One of his hands was whole and uninjured, slack against the stone pavers lining the floor. His fingernails, of course, were filthy, and for some reason that detail caused a great calm to descend upon her.

Who did this?

For the moment, it did not matter. First things must be tidied, Clare must be made safe, and… Ludo. There were arrangements to be made for his eternal rest. She owed him as much, at least.

Then, she told Clare silently, I shall visit vengeance upon whoever did this.

Mikal’s hand had tensed, fingers digging painfully into her shoulder. Did he think she would buckle? Swoon, like some idiot woman? Or was he relieved at the fact that it was the assassin who lay dead, and not the mentath? Who knew?

“Turn loose of me,” she managed, and her tone was ice. The words echoed in the suddenly empty room, and the wreckage quivered. She rearranged the ætheric strings that had become tangle-frayed, and the air-cleansing charm crackled as she set it free. “Help Clare. And for God’s sake let us have some order here.”

Chapter Five

Quite Possibly Your Regard

There was a sense of motion, and jolting.

A carriage? For a moment the protective blankness his faculties were swathed in threatened to thin–or worse, shatter completely.

So he withdrew, and for a long while there was nothing, until he heard her voice again. Cultured and soft, and yet brisk as ever. “Yes, there… Carry him to his room. Mr Finch, there are arrangements to be made. Alice, please tell Madame Noyon I require her–I shall be wearing mourning. Horace, fetch wax and parlieu, I shall be sealing a room. Mikal–oh, yes, thank you. Quite.”

More motion, outside the cotton-muffling. Sadly, his flesh would not allow him to retreat much longer. Certain pressures were building, not the least the urge to avail himself of a commode or its equivalent. Even a stinking alley would do.

Memory rose–Valentinelli, his eyes a-glimmer in the dark of a filthy dockside lane, amused at Clare’s distaste for such quarters. When you are done pissing, mentale,

there is work to be done.

The choking sensation must have been leftover smoke. For a moment his brain shivered inside its hard bone casing and the edifice of Logic a mentath built to house the constant influx of perception and deduction threatened to crumble. If it failed him, he would be lost–his fine faculties a useless mix of porridge and ash, the irrelevance every mentath feared even more than the loss of mental acuity descending upon him.

Mentaths did not go mad, but they could retreat into phantasies of logic, building a rational inward castle that bore no relevance to the outside world at all. A comfortable room in some asylum would be the rotting end of such an event. He would no doubt have every manner of care–she would do no less–but still, it was a fate to be feared.

Softness about his frame, and familiar smells. Leather, dust scorched away by cleansing-charms; linen and paper, and a breath of Londinium’s acrid yellow fog. His body was demanding to be heard. He turned away, into the blackness. It was his friend, that mothering dark, and something in him shivered once more.

Impossible. It is impossible, irrational, miraculous—

On that road, however, lay something very close to madness.

“Archibald?” Quite unwontedly tender, now. Miss Bannon sounded weary, and breathless. “If you can hear me… I am attending to matters. You are quite safe. I…”

Tell me it is a dream. A nightmare.

But mentaths did not dream. There was no room for it in their capacious skulls. Or if they did, such a thing was not remembered. It seemed a small price to pay for a rational, orderly world that performed as expected.

You suspect the world is not rational at all, Clare. Therein lies your greatest fear.

A rustle of silk, a breath of spiced pear. She had worn this particular perfume for quite some time now, and it suited her well. The smoky indefinable odour of sorcery, adding complexity. Another scent, too–the mix of flesh and breath that was a living woman.

Living. As he was.

Everyone about me was injured fatally. Perhaps I am grievously hurt and I cannot tell? Shock?