The Ripper Affair

Whatever he had meant to say was lost in an angry roaring. Beneath it, drumbeats, and the clopping of hooves in unison. Yet it was not from that end of Whitchapel the flaming lucifer that set off a crowd’s tinder dropped.

It was from the other end, and as soon as Clare heard the sound, his heart sank.

Ever afterwards, none could discern from the conflicting reports who had given the City Streamstruth Regiment the order to fire upon the crowd. The volley was enough to cause a few moments’ worth of shocked silence.

There is a moment when a crowd ceases to be a mass of separate beings, when it becomes a single mind and turns upon its tormentor. Or simply, merely upon anything within reach. Once it becomes such an organism, it tramples, heaves, tosses, and smashes with no restraint.

Being caught in the jaws of that monster was not acceptable.

Mikal shoved Aberline to the side of the street, where an open dosshouse door showed a slice of yellow lamplight. “Go!” he cried, and pushed Clare for good measure. Pico hopped in their wake with youthful alacrity, and it was Mikal again, suddenly before them, who kicked at the door even as a burly just-awakened stout in braces and a thread-bare shirt sought to slam it against sudden danger.

A quick strike, Mikal’s hand blurring, and the dosshouse doorman folded; Pico shoved the door closed and sought a means to bar it.

Clare found himself gasping for breath. How annoying. Still, they were out of danger for the moment, and Mikal evidently had some manner of plan.

“Up,” the Shield said. “Find a staircase.”

“And then what?” Pico enquired, shoving a flimsy chair against the dosshouse door. The entry hall was dingy and smelled overwhelmingly of cabbage and unwashed flesh; on the ground the doorman stirred slightly. Pico thought a moment, then grabbed both the supine man’s wrists. Aberline helped him drag him for the door, and Clare’s protest died unspoken. The wood cracked and heaved; outside, the sound of the crowd was now a wild howling of pain.

“Then,” the Shield said, “we run. And you pray to whatever god you choose that we find my Prima.”

Clay tiles scratching underfoot; timber creaking uneasily when a man’s weight touched it. Mikal, impatient with their slow progress, nevertheless shepherded them carefully.

The geography of Londinium appeared much altered when seen from this vantage. Ground became tile and sloped roofs, streets long channels separating thin island-fingers. Crossing the channels was either nerve-wracking–a slide and a leap, Mikal’s hand flashing forwards to drag a man onto solid safety–or entirely irrational, a matter of clinging to the Shield and closing one’s eyes while he leapt in some sorcerous fashion. Each time he did so, hopping across thoroughfares as if it was child’s play, Clare’s most excellent digestion threatened to unseat itself.

At least now he knew how the man kept up with Miss Bannon’s carriage.

Clare peered at the sky as Pico slithered down the roof-slope behind him, boots scraping dry moss and accumulated soot. Even here, life clung to gullies and cracks; he saw hidden courts, walled off by the rapid building of slum-tenements, with the remains of old gardens gone to seed. Twisted trees no eye but the sky had viewed for years, and even grass and weeds clinging in rain-gutter sludge. Londinium’s roofs were a country of mountainous desert, concealing throbbing life and violent motion beneath its crust.

Whitchapel was ablaze, figuratively and actually. Two fires had started, one near the border of Soreditch and another, from what Clare could tell, sending up a black plume from the slaughteryard near Fainmaker’s Row. Yellowing fog swirled uneasily, and the virulent green of Scab held to mere fringes and dark alleys.

Cries and moans, the roaring of a maddened crowd, more sharp volleys of rifle fire. Had the Crown authorised such a deadly response? Was it the Old City, nervous at the proximity of the restless poor? Waring was merely a commissioner, he could not have taken the step without approval from the Lord Mayor or the Crown—

“Mind yourself,” Pico said, grabbing his sleeve. “Look. Crithen’s, just there.”

Clare peered down. Mikal landed atop the slope with a slight exhalation of effort, and Aberline retched once, quietly.

“Enough power to feel the effects,” the Shield said, soft and cold. “And should I need to, Inspector—”

“Cease your threats.” Aberline sounded pale. “I told you I would do my best.”

“Mr Mikal?” Clare’s voice bounced against the rooftop. “A moment, if you please?”

“What?”

“It is past dawn.”

Mikal was silent for a long moment. There was a flash of yellow as he checked the sky, and Pico moved along the edge of the roof.

Clare cleared his throat. “Do you have any idea why Londinium is still, well, subject to Night? Is this sorcery?”

“Perhaps.” The Shield halted, still with a hand to Aberline’s elbow. “A Work meant to replace a ruling spirit, or create a new one… perhaps this is an effect. My Prima would know. Are we close?”