Philip Pico’s face was a fox’s for a moment as he bent down over the mentath. The sharp black nose wrinkled, and his ears were perked, alert. “Come on, nodder.”
“You, sir, are a fox.” Clare’s flesh moved when he told it to. It was an odd feeling, thinking of himself inside an imperishable corporeal glove, his faculties simply observing the passage of time. There was a certain comfort in the notion.
“And you’re a babe in woods, sir, for all your bright-penny talk. Come along.”
Aberline glanced over his shoulder; it really was quite irritating that the man seemed so unmoved by whatever quantity of poppy he had smoked. Instead, he was merely haggard, drawn, the dark shadows under his eyes ever more pronounced. Soon they might swallow his gaze whole…
Wait. Clare searched through memory, grasping for whatever the inspector had said into the smoke-fog. He did something, something quite alarming. He spoke of… what?
The tantalising memory receded, and Clare’s head began to ache.
I suspect this was a very irrational event.
Chapter Thirty
Profit In Reminding
The coachman-thing darted forward. Violet light flashed as Emma brought the fan-shield up smartly, slashing it across the chest. Blightallen was alive with cries and running feet, yellow fog thickening and swirling in a most peculiar manner as the residents of this sorry street realised an extraordinary event was occurring in their midst.
She snapped the shield sideways again, her throat swelling with a rill of notes. Her rings were fading as their stored ætheric charge drained, and the end of the street was fast approaching. She could not give much more ground before she was forced to think of an alternate method for dealing with this creature. She had forced it into precisely the correct proportion of physicality, so it could be hurt, but confining it thus was taking far more of her resources than she liked, and it was only a matter of time before its creator noticed her refusal to politely die and perhaps took steps to free the thing from her strictures.
Where was Mikal? How badly was he wounded?
Tend to him later. Right now content yourself with not dying, for this thing wishes to kill.
It made no noise now, save whip-cracks and the stamping of its feet. The whip flickered, the fan-shield snapped closed as she trilled a descant, turning on itself to force the flying tip aside. The whip wrapped around a teetering wrought-iron lamppost, its cupola dark since the lighters rarely came to a street so thickly padded with Scab. Emma skipped forward, bringing the shield low and snapping it open again, its edge sharpening as her concentration firmed.
It fell back, and under its curved hat brim were two coals that had not been there before. The whip twitched, iron shrieking as the lamppost bent, and she knew she would not be able to bring the shield up in time. The notes curdled in her throat, breath failing her.
Oh dear.
It shrieked, the sound tearing both æther and air, as Mikal’s face rose over its shoulder, his eyes yellow lamps. A knifepoint, dripping, protruded from its narrow chest and the Shield wrenched the blade away, his other hand coming up to seek purchase in its muffler. If he could tear the thing’s head loose—
Emma spun, the whip’s sharp end tangling in her skirt as the fan-shield blurred, becoming a conduit to bleed away the force of the strike.
A vast noise filled Blightallen, Scab-steam flooding up to mix with cringing yellow fog.
She fell, hard, knees striking cobble and her teeth clicking together jarringly. Folded over as silence fell, the inhabitants of the street temporarily stunned into mouth-gaping wonder. What could they see through the fog? Anything?
Through the sudden quiet, the thing’s receding footsteps were light and unholy, and Mikal’s hands were at her shoulders.
“Prima? Emma?”
Hot blood against her fingers. Emma winced, drew in a sharp breath, and brought her fist up sharply.
It was barbed, so it tore even further on its way free of her thigh and her skirts. A small, betraying sound wrung itself from her as she finished wrenching it loose and found she had not lost the wax ball either. Oh, good. The traces of Keller’s shed blood would serve a useful purpose now, giving her a chance at triangulation rather than mere fumbling direction-seeking.
She looked up to find Mikal’s face inches from hers, striped with blood. He was filthy–no doubt he had rolled in the Scab–and there were splinters and brick dust liberally coating him. Her hair had come loose, falling in her face; he brushed away a curl and his fingertips found her cheekbone.
How comforting. A cough caught her unawares, then her voice decided it would perform its accustomed function. Scraped into a shadow of itself, it nevertheless was tolerably steady. “Are you hurt?”
His expression went through several small changes she could not decipher, before settling on relief. “Only slightly. My apologies. I was… briefly stunned.”
“Quite a stunning experience.” She caught her breath. Looked down again, found herself holding a sharp, barbed metal weight from the end of the coachman’s whip, torn free. Catching it in her own leg had not been the best of ideas, she had to admit, even if it had served its purpose. “But still, educational, and so entertaining.”
“If you say so, Prima. Can you stand?”
“I think—”
He took further stock of her. “You’re bleeding.”
“Yes. Mikal, I rather think I cannot stand without help.”
“You never do anything halfway, Prima. Lean on me.”
“Mikal…” The words she had meant to say died unuttered, for in the distance there was a bell-clear cry cutting Londinium’s yellow fog.
“Murder!”
And Whitchapel… erupted.
The crowd was a beast of a thousand heads, and its mood scraped against every ache in Emma’s tired body. She leaned upon Mikal, letting the press wash about her, and listened.
Cut her throat… side to side, a sight, found in a yard… no doubt it’s him, it’s him! A leather apron… Leather Apron… foreigner… drinking our blood, they are…
If the bloodied apron outside the Yudic workingman’s club had been a ruse, it was a clever one. If it had been merely a bit of refuse, it was still serving the author of all this unpleasantness tolerably well.
Her left thigh throbbed, the healing sorcery Mikal had applied sinking its own barbs in. “This will not do,” she murmured. “Is the entire Eastron End mad now?”
“Another murder, they say.”
“I felt nothing.” She clutched at his shoulder, jostled and buffeted. The churchbells were speaking, Tideturn was soon; she could feel it like approaching thunder.
Half past one, of course not a single hansom in sight, and the crowd, spilling out into the streets as word leapt from doss to doss. “Mikal. I did not feel it.”
“I know.” He steadied her. “Prima… that thing—”
“It was a coachman. And it had a knife.” What manner of creature was it, though? I shall know soon enough.
“Yes.” He pushed aside the rags of his bloodied black velvet coat, irritably. Underneath, his skin was whole but flushed in vivid stripes. “A very sharp blade. I hardly felt it.”
“I shall wish to…” The world tried to spin away underneath her. She had expended far more sorcerous force than was wise, and lost quite a bit of blood. The Scab was probably growing over it now, green and lush, not scorched away as it had been under the coachman-thing’s feet. “I shall wish to examine the exact pattern of the cuts.”