The Ripper Affair

The workroom was a shambles. Clare was propped upright, trapped in sorcerous restraints she kept steady with threads of ætheric force trickling from the chalcedony pendant at her throat. The blood on the walls troubled her, and the wild-eyed man who had outright screamed at her troubled her even more. It was so unlike him, and doubly unlike what she knew of mentath temperament.

“Perhaps…” But Mikal shook his sleek, dark head as she glanced at him. Whatever idea he had, perhaps he had discovered a great many holes in it as soon as he gave it voice.

“Finch.” She twitched a slender ætheric thread, and the call bloomed subtly through the house. It took less than a half-minute for the familiar light step to be heard on the stairs outside the workroom–he must have suspected she would summon him.

When he stepped through the flung-open door, his cadaverous face betrayed no surprise or irritation at all. It was a distinct relief to find him as imperturbable as ever. His indenture collar flashed once before subsiding to a steady glow.

Her sigh was only partly theatrical. “I’ve a bit of a quandary, Mr Finch.”

“So it seems, mum.” There was a hint of a curve to his thin mouth, and Emma allowed herself a rueful smile in return.

“I need a minder for Mr Clare. Someone singularly… useful. And loyal, though I shall of course require a blood-binding.”

Finch absorbed this, his thin shoulders stooped. He did not immediately answer, which gave her cause for hope. Which was roundly justified when he finally nodded, slowly. Sharp as a knife when he first entered her service, he had lost none of that edge in the ensuing years. Age sometimes brought a man more fully into dangerousness, and he had experienced enough of treachery to know even its hidden faces.

He was no longer youthful-quick, but he was exceedingly subtle.

To prove it, he produced an impossible necessity once more. “I’ve a… cousin, mum. He might do.”

“A cousin?” Her eyebrows rose dangerously high. She could hardly help herself.

“Well, after a fashion. He’s, well—”

Was he blushing? She forged onward, twitching her skirts absently as she turned to regard the somnolent, propped-up figure of Clare. Who looked rather peaceful, d—n him, while she was required to solve this problem. “If you think he would suit, Finch, it is enough to set my mind at ease.”

“He’s… well, he’s a molly, mum. If you catch my meaning.”

It was a mark of her distraction that she did not take his meaning immediately. Perhaps Finch was right to blush, though he could hardly think her intolerant of such a thing, considering her acquaintance with, for example, the infamous Prime Dorian Childe, and others of his ilk. Society might very well frown upon the men of Sodom, but Emma had found no few of them bright and above all, useful.

If Finch recommended a certain man, it mattered not a whit what that man liked to sport with. Unless said sport could lead him to treachery, but Finch’s recommendation would mitigate that danger somewhat. “I see. Well, I care little what he buggers, as long as he does his duty. Do we understand each other?”

“Yesmum.” Finch bobbed his head, and she caught a slight movement–as if he would tug his forelock, as he used to before he studied a butler’s manners. “I shall go myself and fetch him.”

“You are a treasure, Finch. Be about your business, then.” Do hurry. There is much to be done. She did not add the last, it was unnecessary.

“Yesmum.” And he glided out the door.

“A molly?” Mikal sounded amused, at least. He could not fail to be familiar with the term.

She gathered herself, leashed her temper, and paused once more to determine what should be done and what was the most efficient way to accomplish it. “Perhaps he will feel affectionate toward Clare. Heaven knows our mentath seems to need it, and I rather think he would not receive my affection gratefully at the moment.”

“Then he is a fool, Prima.” The warmth of Mikal’s tone was somewhat indecent, but they were alone. Or close to alone, as Clare was unconscious. He would rest until Tideturn, and by then she hoped to have made some arrangement for his comfort.

And, incidentally, for her own.

“Perhaps. But he is our fool.” She sighed, set her shoulders, and brushed at her skirts, though there was no need to set them to rights. “I had rather hoped to view the second site today, but that is of little account. Come, help me get him to bed.”