The Ripper Affair

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.