The Ripper Affair

“Stop!” Mikal hissed, and bent back with impossible grace, out of the path of Clare’s strike. His fingers clamped Clare’s wrist and he twisted, one foot flicking out to double the youth, who was hard on Clare’s heels. A chiming clatter–someone has a knife–then a keening scream rose behind Miss Bannon’s dressing-room door, turning the air frigid and shivering. Clare’s breath became a white cloud as he fell once more, twisting to lash out at the Shield’s legs with his own. It was an instinctive move, which somehow Mikal evaded as a final grating shock ran through the house, wood groaning and plaster cracking, the floor rippling in incomprehensible, impossible ways.

The Shield did not fall. Instead, he leapt backward, fishlike, his own bare feet thudding on the heaving boards. He flung himself at the dressing-room door, carried it down in a tide of exploding shards and splinters. He was gone into the darkness then, and the house settled against itself with an audible thump.

“Pax!” Mikal screamed, beyond the door. “Pax, Prima! Emma! Emmaaaaaa!”

Clare pushed himself up, staggered after him.

Miss Bannon’s dressing room was pale-carpeted, strewn with broken wood, and he thought, quite calmly, that she was going to be extremely put out by the mess.

The youth caught at his arm, but Clare evaded him easily enough. There was a very real danger of skewering his feet; when he reached Miss Bannon’s bedroom door he was gratified that he had not done so. “Emma?” he called tentatively, into the dimness. It smelled, powerfully, of a foreign, feminine country–perfume, and long hair, and silk. The rustle of dresses and the slightly oily healthiness of a dark-haired woman, the smoky overlay of sorcery, pear-spiced perfume, and a hint of rosewater from her morning ablutions. The impressions whirled through him and away, and he had stepped over the threshold before he knew it, blindly. “Emma, please, say something.”

“Clare?” She sounded very young, and breathless. “And… Mikal.” A huskiness–of course, that throat-scouring scream. Was it merely a nightmare?

Somehow, no matter how given the fairer sex was to vapours, he did not think so.

“Here.” The Shield sounded even more sober than usual. “What is it?”

“I am not dead.” Wondering, a half-disbelieving laugh. “I… Mikal. Clare.”

“Yes.” Mikal’s eyes were a yellow glimmer; Clare’s adapted to the darkness. He saw Miss Bannon’s bed, the dressing table and its beautifully clear oval mirror, the bulk of an armoire, other shapes he could not quite infer just yet. Mikal’s glare was a pair of yellow lamps in the dimness. “Come no closer, sir.”

“Mikal.” She sounded much more like herself now. “Do not be impolite. I am well enough. It was… simply a shock. Clare, have you been introduced to—”

“—the young man who was at my bedside? Quite an odd choice for a nanny, madam.”

“I suppose I am to let you lock yourself in the workroom and attempt to bring down my house with explosives?” Did she sound irritated? It was, he decided, a very good sign. “Yes, Mr Clare. That sounds ever so helpful. Kindly remove yourself from my bedroom, sir, I have little time to quarrel with you.”

“You do not need explosives to level your domicile, Miss Bannon. Which is why I am here.”

“The damage is temporary. Get out. No—” This was no doubt directed at Mikal, for there was a flicker of movement in the darkness near her bed. Light glinting from metal, and Clare’s skin chilled. “Mikal. Absolutely not.”

“Little thief,” the Shield said, softly. “Come closer, and lose a limb.”

“Just looking after me investment, squire,” came the cheeky reply–from right next to Clare, and he was hard-pressed to suppress a start. How very curious.

“Investment?” he enquired, blithely. “Did you think to replace Ludovico, Miss Bannon?”

“No.” Sharp and curt, material sliding, and a bloom of silvery light from the sconces near the door. A globe of malachite on her bedside table, next to a stack of novels–her taste in bed-reading was shockingly salacious, really–made a soft slithering sound as it turned in its stand, and a shiver ran through the house again. “I thought to ensure your safety, sir. A rather onerous duty, but one I have undertaken. Now leave me in peace, I must dress.”

She inhaled sharply, and Clare was confronted with the exotic sight of Miss Bannon shrugging herself into a wine-red dressing gown over her nightgown, lace and satin scratching against plain, high-necked white linen. Her small, well-formed feet were bare as his and Mikal’s, and her unbound hair was a river down her back. With her tumbled curls and the high colour in her cheeks, she looked every inch a child up too late on a holiday night. “Mikal, send Severine up and rouse Harthell, have the carriage prepared. We are bound for Whitchapel.” She strode for her dressing table, sliding past the Shield with a determined air.