Finch’s posture did not change one whit. “Mr Clare said he did not quite trust the inspector’s motives regarding yourself, mum.”
“Did he now.” A thin thread of amusement bloomed, very much against her will. “Well, Mr Clare is wise to do so.” She halted, one foot on the first stair. “Finch… Geoffrey.”
He blinked, and the mild surprise on his thin face might have been amusing as well, except for the sudden flare of fear underneath it. Lime-green to Sight, bitter and acrid, it stung her far more sharply than she dared admit.
“I have not forgotten my promise,” she continued. “The inspector may go elsewhere to satisfy the grudges he bears both of us. Should you leave my service or retire, you shall be safely ensconced in a lovely warm foreign country with a comfortable independence before he receives a whisper of such an event.”
“I would not leave your service, mum.” Finch had drawn himself up. “Not willingly, God strike me down if I don’t mean it.”
Her smile was unguarded, and for once Emma was content to have it so. “Thank you, Finch.” She found her gloved hand had rested on his forearm, and her own shock at her familiarity was matched by Finch’s sudden thunderstruck expression. “I would be saddened to see you go.”
“Erm. Shall you be needing the carriage, mum?”
“No, thank you. I shall most likely return very late, possibly not before dawn. You may all go to bed early, I should think.”
“Yesmum.” And he glided away, suddenly very small and slight against the foyer’s restrained elegance. How Severine had clucked and fussed when Emma brought him home, how the housekeeper had expressed her disdain in every possible way until Emma had informed her tartly that she was the resident sorceress and Severine Noyon, treasured and valued as she was, did not have the final say in what or whom Emma pleased to employ.
If I bring home a dozen cutthroat syphilitic Dutch mercenaries, Madame Noyon, you will be gracious and greet them kindly, and have some little faith in your mistress.
Her smile faded, remembering how poor Severine had quailed, going cheese-pale, her plump hands waving helplessly. Emma had gentled her, of course–You must trust me as you did before, Madame. Have I ever led you astray?
Still, it was… unworthy. Frightening the soft and broken held no joy. Given the habits of Severine’s previous employer, it was no wonder the woman still cowered.
“Prima?” Mikal appeared, striding from the drawing room.
“I am closing the house.” She shook herself into full alertness, and set aside memory. “Finch shall warn the servants; I hope Clare will not bring his new friend home like a street-found cur.”
“If he does, the result will no doubt be satisfying.”
“Very. And yet, messy, and no end of inconvenience.” She breathed out, softly, and drew her mantle closer.
The scrap of cloth in her skirt pocket was an unwelcome weight, no matter that it was merely a small strip soaked with vitae and sealed in a ball of virgin wax cooled with a sketched charter symbol. Vitae, no matter how unwholesome for one of Emma’s Discipline, was still a most useful fluid, which could be imprinted with the sympathetic qualities of other fluids.
As in a sorcerer’s blood, shed in a Blightallen doss.
The Sympathy would be weak, but that weakness would insulate her from another overwhelming vision of murder. Or at least, so she hoped. She further hoped it would not sensitise her further to whatever damnable Work was occurring. Her careful, delicate probing of the æther over the last two days had crushed whatever lingering hope she had held of it being simply a mistake, or of the effects upon Victrix and herself being simply coincidental.
“You could merely stay here.” The Shield’s irises were lambent in the foyer’s dimness, and he was a solidly comforting shadow, at least. “Let her taste the fruits of her sowing.”
If those fruits did not echo so loudly inside my own body, I might consider it. “I could. However, Clare expects me to take a hand in this affair.”
He nodded. And, thankfully, did not take issue with the statement.
“Come.” I should do this quickly, before I find another reason to avoid doing it at all. “And Mikal?”
“Yes?”
“Tonight, strike to kill.”
A gleam of white teeth, shown in a smile. “Yes, Prima.”
The edge of Whitchapel was already showing thin traceries of virulent green, and the fog had thickened to a soup best strained through a kerchief. Emma found she could push her veil aside without her eyes stinging, but chose not to. She was merely a darker shadow hurrying along, Mikal in his black a blot beside her.
The fog lipped every surface, turning passers-by into shades risen from some underworld described in one of the Greater Texts, strangling the gaslamps’ tiny circles of illumination.
The alleys were muffled by Scab already, and there were choked sounds from some of them. A soft cry ahead resolved into a confused flurry of shadows, but when they reached the corner there was only a splash of bright smoking blood on the cobbles, Scab threading busily through its warm nutrition in delicate filigreed whorls.
Emma continued, stepping briskly along, the digging of her stays as well as the stricture of her point-toe boots both welcome reminders that she was not a child.
Mikal’s presence was noted, of course. There were gleams in the darkness: altered limbs, cautious eyes with no more humanity than a Nile crocodile’s, a jet of shivering gaslamp glow reflecting from a knife blade. She was not approached, though once Mikal touched her elbow, drifting a few steps away towards an alley-mouth as she stood, bolt upright and breathing calmly, her training sinking its claws deep in her rebellious vitals as her body recognised the heatless scent of danger.
The gleams retreated, but Mikal still stood, the set of his shoulders somehow expressing reluctance to move further, but equal unwillingness to back away. A silent language, one the knives of Whitchapel understood.
Finally he relaxed a trifle, and paced back to her side. She continued without a word.
Blightallen, where the vanished Kendall had met with such misfortune, was of a different character after nightfall. Her ankles ached with the step-glide that was necessary to keep her footing, for the Scab had thickened. The darkness was a living thing, almost impenetrable, and Emma could not decide whether to be grateful she could discern the shapes around her or nauseous at the filth underfoot. For one whom even candlelight could glare-blind during the deeper use of her ætheric talents, it was an unexpected… well, not a gift, but it certainly made visiting this hole easier.
For a certain value of “easy”, she supposed.
Her gloved hand dug for the wax ball; she drew it out securely caged in her fist. Mikal, his fingers quick and deft, knotted a hank of silk about her closed hand, and glanced at her face. Could he see in this reproduction of Stygia?
“Are you…”
Was he about to ask her if she was certain? Or ready? Emma shook her head, acutely aware of curls brushing her mantle’s shoulder, the fog making its own whisper-sound as it crept uneasily above the Scab. Occasionally it dipped its fingers down to almost touch the thick coating, then recoiled as the surface of Whitchapel’s greediest resident twitched.
She opened her mouth to speak the minor Word that would unleash the Sympathy.
It died unuttered, ætheric force tangling and snarling under the surface of the world as Mikal clapped his free hand over her mouth, his head coming up with a quick, fluid, somehow wrong movement.