The Ripper Affair

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.”