What is amiss?
Observe.
Sweat. Beads of sweat, a slick brow under the brim of a wool hat; far too flush even for a man caught in this press. High colour on scrape-shaven cheeks, but a pale upper lip told Clare the young man had possessed a moustache just this morning, and the line of his jaw was very familiar. His cloth was wrong as well–the coat was ill fitting, and too rough for the shoulders of a clerk unaccustomed to a drover’s work. Besides, there were traces on the sleeves, smears of familiar blue chalk, and the connection blazed into life.
Ah. So Spencewail does have a brother! The satisfaction of having his deduction proved correct was immense, but at the moment Clare could not luxuriate in it, for the man in the chalk-smeared coat undoubtedly had explosive sticks strapped to his torso.
The man ripped his coat open with blistered fingers, a single horn button describing an arc as it fell. A familiar brass dial attached to strips of leather gleamed against his sunken chest and the stained cloth of his workman’s shirt.
Spencewail, standing in the dock, had not yet realised what was afoot. He still glared at Clare, who had already begun to shift his weight. The blast would be quite vicious if they had solved the problem of sputtering in the catch-dial—
“Bastarde!” A familiar cry, Ludovico Valentinelli’s voice catching halfway, and the Neapolitan assassin appeared from the crowd, his pox-pocked face alight with fury, his lank hair still plastered down from his morning’s hurried ablutions.
Clare had enough time to think oh, dear before the Eirean rebel in the dock screamed something in his ancient Isle’s equally ancient tongue. The crowd, not realising what was afoot, was busy shouting its own discontent, for the judge had reached another pitch in his denunciation.
A simple twist of the Spencewail brother’s wrist, and not only would the nitrou-glycerine soaked into sawdust and pressed into sticks tear its bearer to shreds, but also everyone around him.
Including the mentath who had brought the accused to this pass.
Clare’s hand slapped the flimsy wooden barrier behind which a witness gave evidence, and his legs tensed. A single leap would bring him to Valentinelli’s aid.
It was a leap he did not have time to make. A great ruddy light bloomed as the Eirean student’s ink- and chalk-stained fingers found what they sought and twisted, and they had solved the problem of the stuttering fuse.
A soundless sound filled the courtroom, and a great painless blow hammered all along Archibald Clare’s body.
His last thought was that death had come while he still had his faculties intact, and that, strangely enough, it did not hurt.
Chapter Two
A Remedy For Concern
Morning at 34½ Brooke Street thrummed with orderly activity. The kitchen bubbled with preparations for luncheon, tea, and the evening’s dinner; footmen hurried to and fro in preparation to accompany a maid or two a-marketing; a bath had been drained; and the mistress of the house, in a morning dress of amber silk, stood in her conservatory, her fingers infinitely gentle as she parted a tinkling climate-globe of golden ætheric force over a struggling hellebore.
The experiment was not going well, and Emma Bannon probed delicately at the plant with several nonphysical senses, seeking to find the trouble. She hummed softly, finding the proper series of notes, and winced internally at the dissonance in the plant’s response.
A slight cough near the door informed her that her lean, yellow-eyed Shield was not finished with his own troubleseeking. He had already ruined breakfast by almost quarrelling with her.
Or, perhaps not quarrelling. Perhaps he really did believe her in need of coddling, or maybe he was truly anxious that his mistress was sinking too deeply into eccentricity. Primes were notorious for their oddities, which grew more pronounced over the course of a very long life. In some instances, the peculiarities turned deadly.
In any case, he chose exactly the wrong way to express said anxiety, phrased as a command. “Sooner or later you must face the world.”
If she were charitable, she would concede that it was not quite a command, and most probably intended as a statement of fact. Her skirts rustled–this morning dress, with relatively loose corseting and an unfashionably small bustle, had the advantage of being almost comfortable. “I will,” she replied, absently. “Not while she reigns, though. At the moment I am very busy with events occurring under my own roof.”
Mikal subsided, but not for long. “You are unhappy.”
Why on earth should that matter? She untangled an ætheric knot, her concentration firming and the pleasure of sinking herself into a task almost enough to soothe her irritation. “I am quite content, except my Shield continues yammering while I am engaged upon an experiment. You were trained to act more appropriately, Mikal.”
She sensed the flare of unphysical heat from him, denoting his own irritation and further sensed a tightness in his limbs. Did he perhaps wish to strike her?
It was a novel idea. It would certainly save them both from boredom.
If he wishes to, that is all very well. As long as he does not attempt it in fact.
Boredom, too, could drive a Prime to experiment too rashly with certain facets of the irrational arts. She was not yet at the point of seeing certain necessary precautions as mind-numbingly time-wasting, but she was perhaps very close.
“Now, what are you about?” she murmured to the hellebore. The plant was carrying on gamely, but traceries of virulent yellow and twisting black ran up its stems, down the central spine of each drooping leaf. Leprous green sorcery sought ineffectually to contain it, but the yellow would not be halted. Even loosening the invisible knots did not help.
Bloody hell. The ætheric tangle was growing worse, and strangling the life out of the hellebore’s tissues. I wonder why it does that. Hmm.
Unravelling the sorcerous threads required a light touch and considerable patience. The problem was a resonance; she caught herself worrying at her upper lip with her teeth. A lady’s face should not make such a display, Prima Grinaud would have said, and the thought of the wasp-waisted teacher and her whispering black, watered-silk skirts was enough to smooth Emma’s expression while she hummed a descant, seeking to find the vibration responsible.
Ah, there. Her humming shifted. A tiny thread of ætheric force spun down, the ring on her left index finger–a confection of marcasite and chrysoprase–glowing sullenly. Yellow veining retreated as the hellebore lifted its drooping leaves, the stems firming and the sudden rightness of a correct bit of sorcery sending a delightful thrill all the way down to Emma’s toes, encased in dainty button-up boots that also were unfashionable, but reasonably comfortable.
“Very satisfying.” She brushed her fingers quickly against her skirt, flicking away a tiny crackling of excess force. The climate-globe sealed itself, singing its soft muted bell-tone; the plant would survive. Not only that, it would downright thrive, and the manner of its cure gave her a fascinating new vista to experiment upon.
Clare would approve. Chartersymbols flashed along the globe’s shimmer, naming its confines and its function; a spatter of rain touched the conservatory’s windows.
Mikal, tall in his usual olive velvet jacket, the knives worn openly at his hips and his dark hair freshly trimmed, stood to one side of the door. Perhaps inevitably, he was boiling with carefully reined irritation: a lemon-yellow tinge to Sight. “You have not left the house in months, Prima.”