“ ’Ave no fear, mum.” The youth gave her a toothy grin, and stretched his legs out most disagreeably in the carriage’s close confines.
Clare suppressed the urge to poke the lad in the ribs. Such uncharitable Feeling could not be tolerated. He told himself firmly not to mind its prodding. “You are not in a tavern, sir.”
“No, there’d be drink if I were.” A twist of a half-grin, and the attention he paid to paring his fingernails impinged on Clare’s consciousness like a silent thunderbolt.
A quite extraordinary further deduction occurred to Clare. He tested it thoroughly, and found it not wanting at all. A Sodom boy? In Miss Bannon’s employ? “Your taste in domestics, as usual, is most curious.”
“So I am told.” She tilted her head, slightly, perhaps listening to some sorcerous noise. “Now do be quiet, if you can. I am rather occupied.”
Nettled, he sank back into the seat and felt a most uncharacteristic desire to curse, roundly and loudly. This was the deadliness of Feeling: it swung one about like a weathervane, and made Reason so very difficult.
I was merely seeking to find the limits of this extraordinary thing you have inflicted on me, Emma. But he realised, as Harthell cracked his whip and Miss Bannon’s paleness took on another, more worrisome cast, that was not quite accurate.
He had, for a short while, lost his bloody mind. The longer this state of affairs endured, the more likely it was he would do so again. Unless he found some method of making rational the fact of his unwanted, unwholesome…
… and, likely to be very useful, immortality.
Chapter Twenty
Founded Upon Much Less
Emma freed her hand from Mikal’s and took in the grey light of predawn, the fog sallow and the Scab underfoot slippery enough that she had to take care with her balance.
“What the devil are you about here?”
It was a greeting from a direction she would not have preferred, but at least the hailer’s presence would solve a number of problems. She used her sweetest smile. “Mr Aberline. My, you’ve grown.”
Frederick had thickened since she last saw him, and acquired a very fine moustache and side-whiskers. At the moment he was scowling, and it did not improve his knife-beak of a nose or his slightly choleric cast. He had been a very promising lad, a watchmaker’s son who rose through the ranks of the Metropoleans by dint of ability and persistence.
It must be something extraordinary to set him a-glower, for normally he was rather… sedate. Many of his suspects had learned too late that his solicitor’s mien did not make him stupid or placid.
And many of his quarries, in his younger days, had learned that a broken head in the service of Justice did not trouble Aberline overmuch. He was rightly feared among the more intelligent flashboys in Londinium’s seamier quarters.
“Is it… Bannon? Yes. A pleasure.” But his mouth turned down, and she rather thought not. “How’s our lad Geoffrey?”
“Mr Finch is still in my employ, sir.” If that changes, he will be in another country before you get wind of it. “How is your wife?” I seem to recall she was perennially sickly.
“Which one? And, Miss Bannon, what is the occasion that honours us with your presence here?” His sharp gaze drifted over her shoulder, took in Pico and Clare just alighting from the carriage, and he looked even more unhappy–if that were possible. “Sightseeing on the Scab’s not for gentlefolk this morning.”
As if you think me an excitement-seeker. How very insulting. She had never given him reason to think his attempts to be offensive were even noticed, and she saw no need to alter her course now. “The gentle are no doubt still abed. We are left to our own devices in this affair.”
“I should have known,” he muttered. “He said someone else from the Crown would be along.”
Now that was interesting. “Who?”
“Oh, Gull. He’s become Her Majesty’s hangman now, like Conroy was her mother’s, God rest that poor woman’s soul.”
He jammed his bowler hat more firmly atop his dark, slicked-down hair, and she saw, even in the dimness, grey beginning at his temples. His boots splorched and slid through the Scab crusting the cobbles, and she did not have to glance about to know she was upon Hanbury Street.
The smell alone would have told her so, and she wondered if Peggy Razor still door-watched a dosshouse a few doors up; if Trout Jack still ran the child-thieves in this slice of Whitchapel; if the Scab still made fine delicate whorls up every wooden wall before sunlight scorched it away, leaving a filigree of caustic char…
Gull. Her well-trained memory returned a face to go with the name. Physicker to the Queen, and a singularly bloodless and dedicated man. Rumour had him as one who had always wished he were among sorcery’s children, but educated rumour simply said he liked a bit of secrecy, and so had joined a certain “Brotherhood of Stone”. They played at Ritual and Initiation, with a certain degree of ridiculousness, and, like any gentlemen’s club, membership was skewed toward the wealthy, or those who wished influence.
Nothing about said brotherhood interested Emma overmuch, but if there was gossip linking Gull and Victrix as her mother and Conroy had been linked, it was a trifle worrisome.
She set the consideration aside; Victrix’s troubles, except in this one small matter, were no longer hers. This affair was to be laid to rest quickly, so she could return to her studies and other concerns.
Chief among those concerns was Clare, who sniffed the soup passing for air in Whitchapel with bright interest. He glanced down, toyed with the Scab’s green organic sludge with one boot-toe, and nodded slightly. “Most interesting.”
Would you find it so, if you saw what it does to bodies? Or to rats, on particularly active nights? Emma turned back to Aberline. “I am gratified to find my coming was foretold,” she remarked, drily. “There is a body, sir.”
“Yes.” The inspector–because he was no doubt one of that august brotherhood now, being neither encased in a bobby’s blue cloth nor bearing the ubiquitous whistle–furrowed his brow mightily as he took in the mentath. “There is quite a crowd already—”
“Be a dear and clear them away, so we may examine the premises.” She put on her most winning smile again, and saw his flinch with a great deal of satisfaction. “My companion is a mentath, and quite useful. As you shall no doubt be. The Yard’s taking an active interest in this?” Not just at the Queen’s bidding, if you are here.
“Third’s a charm. This will be in the broadsheets and dreadfuls before long.” The man’s face was positively mournful. “I don’t suppose you could…”
“Mitigate somewhat?” Her sigh took her by surprise, and Mikal’s comforting warmth at her shoulder was the only thing on Hanbury Street that did not appear worrisome. “My days of mitigation are somewhat past, Inspector. But I shall do what I can.” Mostly to suit myself, for I do not wish to be bruited about in print.
“Well, good. Come along then.” He did not further insult her, which was a very good sign–or a very bad one. He halted, and she noted the breadth of his shoulders under his jacket. Inspector Aberline had not let the iron go cold, as the saying went. “I don’t suppose this is merely a social visit?”