The Ripper Affair

“Mikal…” The words she had meant to say died unuttered, for in the distance there was a bell-clear cry cutting Londinium’s yellow fog.

“Murder!”

And Whitchapel… erupted.

The crowd was a beast of a thousand heads, and its mood scraped against every ache in Emma’s tired body. She leaned upon Mikal, letting the press wash about her, and listened.

Cut her throat… side to side, a sight, found in a yard… no doubt it’s him, it’s him! A leather apron… Leather Apron… foreigner… drinking our blood, they are…

If the bloodied apron outside the Yudic workingman’s club had been a ruse, it was a clever one. If it had been merely a bit of refuse, it was still serving the author of all this unpleasantness tolerably well.

Her left thigh throbbed, the healing sorcery Mikal had applied sinking its own barbs in. “This will not do,” she murmured. “Is the entire Eastron End mad now?”

“Another murder, they say.”

“I felt nothing.” She clutched at his shoulder, jostled and buffeted. The churchbells were speaking, Tideturn was soon; she could feel it like approaching thunder.

Half past one, of course not a single hansom in sight, and the crowd, spilling out into the streets as word leapt from doss to doss. “Mikal. I did not feel it.”

“I know.” He steadied her. “Prima… that thing—”

“It was a coachman. And it had a knife.” What manner of creature was it, though? I shall know soon enough.

“Yes.” He pushed aside the rags of his bloodied black velvet coat, irritably. Underneath, his skin was whole but flushed in vivid stripes. “A very sharp blade. I hardly felt it.”

“I shall wish to…” The world tried to spin away underneath her. She had expended far more sorcerous force than was wise, and lost quite a bit of blood. The Scab was probably growing over it now, green and lush, not scorched away as it had been under the coachman-thing’s feet. “I shall wish to examine the exact pattern of the cuts.”

“Yes.” He propped her against a wall. Peered into her face, uncertain gaslight flickers turning his eyes to shadowed holes. “You’re pale.”

“I am well enough.” She even managed to say it firmly.

Across the street, a flashboy tumbled out of a ginhouse, his right hand a mass of clicking, whirring metal. He was greeted by derisive laughter as a gaptooth drab with her skirts hiked around her knees shouted, “Leather Apron’s aboot tonight, watch yerself!”

The crowd gathered itself, and Emma shivered, suddenly very cold. Her breath was a cloud, and she stared into Mikal’s familiar-unfamiliar face. “There is about to be some unpleasantness,” she whispered.

“I understand. Here.” He ducked under her arm, his own arm circling her waist. Her stays dug most uncomfortably, but at least she was alive and drawing breath to feel them. “Close your eyes.”

She did, and Mikal coiled himself. He leapt, and below them the street boiled afresh. More screams, and the high tinkle of breaking glass.

The riot bloomed, a poisonous flower, but Mikal held her, slate and other tiles crunching under his feet as the rooftops of Londinium spun underneath them. This was a Shield’s sorcery, and very peculiar in its own way, managing to unseat the stomach of those without the talents and training of that ancient brotherhood.

Which explained why, when he finally set her on her feet in a Tosselside alley, the riot merely a rumble in the distance, she leaned over and heaved most indelicately.

Londinium turned grey around her, and she surfaced from an almost-swoon to find Mikal holding her upright again.

Her mouth was incredibly sour, and she repressed an urge to spit to clear it.

A lady does not do such things. “The unrest will spread. And likely foul any trace of where that thing went.”

“Yes. You are very pale, Prima. Perhaps we should—”

She discovered she did not wish to know what he would advance as the next advisable action. “The decent and sane thing to do would be to go home, bar my doors and wait for this affair to reach its conclusion without me. The Coachman was set upon my trail, just as a bloodhound.”

“I thought as much.” Did he sound resigned? “I rather think you will not retreat, though.”

Indecision, a new and hateful feeling. The temptation to retreat was well-nigh irresistible. Her left leg trembled, and she felt rather… well, not quite up to her usual temper.

In the end, though, there was quite simply no one else who could arrange this affair satisfactorily. It was not for Victrix, nor for Britannia, and not even for Clare so high and mighty, looking down upon her for daring to give him a gift sorcerers would use every means they could beg, borrow, or steal to acquire.

No, the reason she could not retreat just yet was far simpler.

The Coachman-thing had made her afraid.