The Scab had arrived behind Clare, its wet greenness creeping forward. Tiny tendrils, their sliding almost inaudible under the wet smacking sounds of enjoyment. The quite illogical idea that perhaps some feral, inhuman intelligence was guiding the nasty green sludge occurred to Clare, the poppy still blurring the edges of rationality.
Now, when he needed sharp clarity most, it had deserted him.
Fascinating that the drug would linger, even in the face of whatever miracle Miss Bannon had performed upon him.
A rasping, as of a scabrous tongue over chapped, scraped lips. The creature’s head made another quick, enquiring movement. The woman–the corpse–had worn, sprung-sided boots, and her stockings were soaked with foul matter. Her petticoats were mismatched, and torn to bits. Those white, white thighs, spattered, and the smell, dear God.
Had she suffered?
Does it matter at this particular moment? Stay still, Clare.
Valentinelli’s sneer, echoing through dim memory. Stay where Ludo put you, mentale, and watch.
His lungs cried for air, even though the soup around the creature became foul enough to see. Or perhaps it was the blackness crowding his vision as his flesh, even if functionally immortal, reminded him that it did still require respiration and all its attendant processes.
A wet sliding. The Scab darted forward, and the creature tumbled aside, fluidly. Steam rose, and Clare caught a glimpse of the thing under its clothes. Cracked hide runnelled with scars, terribly burnt as if acid had been flung upon it, and two glowing coals for eyes.
One pale hand came up, the knife blade a star in the dimness, and Clare stumbled back. He felt the slight whoosh as the sharp metal cleaved air an inch from his face, fell with a tooth-rattling jolt on a thick carpet of oozing green. A hiss, a whipcrack, Clare’s arm instinctively flung up to shield his eyes and suddenly a stinging, a patter of warm blood.
The thing fled, light unnatural footsteps tapping on cobbles, a grating sound, roof tiles shattering as they were dislodged and hit the ground.
Clare scrabbled for purchase, thick resilient slime dragging him as it retreated. It carried him a good ten feet before reluctantly releasing him, his jacket smoking against its caustic kiss and the wound along his forearm smarting as it sealed itself.
The gaslamp above the body burst afresh into feeble flame, and when he gained his feet, Archibald Clare bolted for its circle of glow, telling himself it was merely so he could examine the body in its uncertain light. Certainly not because he felt anything irrational, though his mouth tasted of copper and his sorcerously repaired heart laboured in his chest. It was merely the sudden activity, he told himself, not anything so illogical as fear.
And certainly not because as the Scab retreated, it made a low, thick noise, somewhat like a chuckle from a sharp-toothed mouth.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Error Of Provocation
Even if one could find a hansom when one required conveyance, there was always the chance of said hansom being as slow as a newlywed’s knitting.
Since Mikal was loath to leave her alone, even though with her safely inside a hansom he could watch over from the rooftop road, she did not even have the luxury of a few moments of solitude to collect her scattered thoughts.
It was ridiculous; a Shield was not the same as company, the ancient brotherhood had been trained to discretion and a certain abnegation. And yet… it was Mikal.
His hand was on her wrist, perhaps to anchor her. Yet she was attempting no sorcery at all. Perhaps it was the odd, trembling feeling in her legs, the clawed healing sorcery working its way into deep layers of muscle, that made his gaze so worried and disconcerting at the same moment.
She freed her wrist and took the opportunity, in the small, jolting carriage, to push aside sliced black velvet and examine the bright red marks upon his torso. Not claw-marks, which was interesting, and yet the creature had to have been inordinately quick to strike so many times with a single blade. Those long, spidery fingers could wield such a blade, she thought, with amazing delicacy. Very sharp, curved just enough, possibly a physical focus for the creature? Knife and whip.
For a moment, an idea teased at the back of her consciousness. She waited, but it was not yet fully formed, and it retreated into shadow. “How very intriguing,” she murmured, and settled back into the dingy seat-cushion. I suspect I shall never look upon coachmen in the same fashion again.
The hansom jolted, and the hunched, well-wrapped man holding the reins chirruped to the worn-down clockhorse. Emma’s vision blurred for a moment, and she breathed out, sharply, dispelling the weakness.
She had lost quite a bit of blood, but so had Mikal. A Shield was exceedingly hard to kill, and yet if the Coachman had stopped to actually fully eviscerate him instead of simply slashing to bleed him out she might be adding his name to the list of her failures.
Obviously she had been judged the larger threat. Or the creature–though she had forced it into exactly the proper proportion of physicality, she still was not entirely certain what it was–had not judged her enough of a threat to warrant more than incapacitating Mikal for a few crucial moments.
Either way, it had been set upon her by the Prime she faced.
She knew the Primes resident in Londinium, of course; this bore none of their particular stamps.
At least, as far as she could tell.
Not every Prime on the Isle was known to her, she allowed. Yet this was indubitably native work. A sorcerer would not risk the possibly calamitous side effects of performing so major a Work in a country not his own.
Even if a foreign sorcerer wished to attempt such a thing, he would have to find a space enclosed by charter stones, and any Major Work, if it did not shatter said stones and make a very public noise, would be bounded by the charter boundary. No, a foreigner would not do such a thing.
Unless, of course, he was insane. She could not rule out that possibility. Still, even the most lunatic of Primes would baulk at performing such a Work in a foreign land and accepting the double risk of side effects and failure. True, one could spin the irrationality of such a Major Work away and evade the confines of charter stones, but there was always the chance of the flow returning, filling the one who cast it to the brim with warping irrationality, with all that would entail. A Shield could handle some overflow, certainly, but still, the risk was enough to send a shudder down any Prime’s spine.
She was so sunk in her own reflections she almost missed Mikal’s fingers closing about her wrist again. Irritation rasped under her skin, she reined it, sharply. “I am well enough.”
“No doubt.” His reply was maddeningly equable. “I am merely reassuring myself.”
Of what? “I am not likely to expire at any moment. Unless it is with sheer pique.”
“Comforting.” He tilted his dark head, the gleam of his irises a peculiar comfort in the enclosed space. “There is unrest.”
On many fronts. “Where, precisely?”
“Behind us, and before.” He tipped his chin towards the hansom’s front, but a glance out the night-fogged window told her very little. The d—d thing was slower than cold pudding.
Just as she was about to knock for exit–she could, she thought, at least have the benefit of moving her limbs freely if she were to be baulked at every turn tonight–the hansom slowed, and she gathered they had reached their destination.
Mikal’s tension warned her, and as she alighted, she sensed the disturbance. A glaring note against the low brassy thunder of approaching Tideturn, and several of her nonphysical senses quivered under the lash of fresh tugging on already sensitised ætheric strings.