“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.”
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?