Free The Ripper Affair (Bannon and Clare) by Lilith Saintcrow Page B

twinge of fading… what, for Victrix? Because she feared eccentricity was pressing in upon her too soon, her mental faculties becoming brittle? Perhaps because if she had not, she would have had to solve the questions gathering about her Shield?
    Mikal followed her, taking care not to crowd too closely. The first floor came quickly, and she all but staggered when the disturbance in the æther pulsed sharply. All other considerations fled. “There,” she managed, through numb lips, and pointed with a rigid arm. “
Right
there.”
    Mikal leapt up the last two stairs, caught her other arm. “Prima?”
    “I am well enough. It is simply… I have never…”
I have not ever seen this before. I have never even
heard
of such a disturbance.
A Prime’s memory was excellent, her education the best the Collegia could provide, and there was precious little sorcery she had not witnessed or read of. “What
is
this? It is still echoing. And she was discovered last
month
!”
    “Miss Bannon?” Clare sounded nervous, for once. “There is a rather definite drop in physical temperature here. Remarkable. And…” He bent rapidly, and plucked something from the floor. “How very odd. Look.”
    It was a small pebble, no doubt carried in from outside, on a shoe or in a cuff. He turned it in his long capablefingers, then flicked it into the corner where the disturbance was greatest.
    She stepped forward as well, Mikal moving with her. The Shield’s grasp was a welcome anchor as she felt the chill difference in temperature, sharp as a falling knifeblade.
    The stone hung, turning, in midair. A simple piece of cracked gravel, rough and clotted with dirt that unravelled in fine twisting threads. Now she could see the canvas-covered floor quivering through a curtain of disturbed, snarling æther. A stained piece of wooden wall, heavily scarred with use, was bleached as its physical matrices warped.
    “Mr Clare,” she heard herself say, as if from a great distance, “it would be very well if you were to retreat from that spot. Quickly.”
    “Prima?” Mikal’s single word, shaded with a different question.
    Her free arm, rigidly pointing at the floating pebble, trembled. “Take Clare halfway down the stairs.” Mikal hesitated, and her temper almost snapped. “
Now
, Shield.”
    He turned loose of her with less alacrity than she would have liked, but he obeyed. At least Clare knew better than to question at this juncture. For a moment it was as if Time itself had turned back and it was one of the many investigations or intrigues between their inauspicious first meeting and the crushing denouement of the Plague affair. The only thing missing was Ludovico’s silent sneer as he hustled Clare to safety or took up a guard post down thehall, which he might have done if he could have moved more quickly than Mikal.
    Do not think upon that, Emma
.
    Instead, she
focused
, tucking the irritating veil aside as her jewellery flamed with heat, its ætheric charge responding to the spreading disturbance. The pebble still hung in midair, and she wondered if any of those who sheltered here noticed the spot, or if they simply felt the chill and avoided even glancing at something inimical. Even a lowly charter with barely the ability to trace a symbol in quivering air could have sensed the disturbance, and probably found other accommodations forthwith.
    If there were any to be had; shelter of any kind was expensive in Whitchapel.
    She extended a few thread-delicate tendrils of awareness to discern the true shape of the tangle. It throbbed, an abscess under the surface of the visible, a monstrous root driven deep through the real and almost-real. Emma risked another light touch, as a woman would pass her hand down a pinned dress-fold to discern if it would hang true. Intuition plucked at the knot, finding its shape and the likely directions it would bulge upon being observed.
    She could have patiently unpicked it, inch by careful inch. It would have been