Who: Zipporah Bakst, Captain Petrotavich (NPC), Kathleen O’Wells (NPC). BONUS: Archie Curtis (NPC) What: A man is haunted, a witch is consulted, and a ghost is territorial. When: 6 December 1888 [Backdated] Where: Zipporah's flat Rating: PG-13
Stanislav Sergeyevich Petrotavich did not go to the witch as a last result. He was a serious man, and for him the last resort would be exactly that. Even now, he refused to believe things were so dire as to demand an - an end.
But it had been weeks since the ball - that awful, wretched ball - and they had been weeks of misery. He couldn't eat. He didn't dare drink. He felt plagued by sunshine and the smell of clean linen. He couldn't hold a civil conversation without feeling exhausted by the effort of seeming sane. He felt liable to lose his nerve at the least bang or shout - he who had piloted over hungry mountain and godless oceans without a shudder.
He barely slept and regretted bitterly when he did.
"It is the worst then," he told the witch. "The dreams. Nightmares. I can almost believe I'm still awake when they come. My body - "
He held out his hands. They were good hands: strong, capable, the bones of an aristocrat with the blood of a soldier. Now, he expected them to shake like the paws of an old woman. It would've been almost better if they did; instead, they were numb and cold. The hands of a corpse.
"I dream that I lie in bed and am barely able to move. Voices whisper at me. Near me. Sometimes I can make out what they say, sometimes I can only hear their anger. Sometimes they sing, I think. I do not know the song. Yesterday I nearly throttled a maid because she hummed when bringing tea," Slava said.
"I am not a violent man, but I would have - I fear I would have strangled her if someone else hadn't come into the room to interrupt." He looked up at the witch with tired, bleak eyes. “Every day I wonder if I am going mad. But the truly mad cannot feel their own madness, can they?”
He hoped it would be easier to admit in Russian; it wasn’t.
Zipporah wrapped her shawl around her closely as she looked over at him, resisting the urge to shudder.
He looked as a man condemned -- a man who’d very nearly resigned himself to an early death, despite his youth and clear vigor of frame, but was fighting it with a desperation she would have found frightening if Ach hadn’t been in the room with her, placid and unmoving.
Slava was no threat to her -- not yet, at least.
“You have been marked by a powerful and vengeful spirit,” she said, quietly, meeting his gaze with hers. “Tell me what you have done.” Her look was steady, and serious, and she couldn’t help but feel a pang of sorrow for the man. “Be honest,” she added, firmly.
She knew that he was from the Masquerade -- the captain from Byestro -- he’d stood next to Archie as they’d announced the race. She also had a powerful suspicion of the source of his misfortune -- a source she’d already crossed once, unintentionally. She’d see what the man told her, but she suspected there was little to be done, unless she wished to risk Biddie’s wrath.
There was a pull she had to try regardless -- to see whether she could have an exception made -- she was a Healer, it was her mandate, her calling, her God-given duty, and it galled to have to be checked by her fearsome rival when such suffering was so evident.
Even worn down as he was, Slava nonetheless hesitated to answer the witch. Loyalty and pride made him slow to answer; guilt, however, forced the issue.
"The men I work for," he began leadenly. "They are not - they are not like the English. They are Russian, old Russian. You understand the difference, I think. It is not in the years, but in the thinking. Many of them are not so much older than myself. But they inherited their minds from their fathers. They do not care what the old Tsar said about serfs or soldier sons, they only know that the new age has none of the glory promised to their grandfathers."
"Do not think them evil men," Slave continued. "Just hungry. Many of them sit on cold, worthless lands and starve their once fine houses. So when a chance comes - a chance for money, change from the cold - they run eagerly. They forget themselves. They hurt people."
His hard shoulders sank. "Or they do not ask if people may be hurt. Many of us, we suspected something dire would happen if we went for the krapiva’s money.” His tone turned bitter. “They are fools to offer so much. Or they are devils.”
"Awfully judgemental for a murderin' foreigner, ain't he?"
The voice was cool, sharp, and, judging from the lack of expression on the Russian captain's face, completely unheard by the man. A faint scent of roses and cinders wafted in echo.
Zipporah started a little, looking in the direction of the voice until she could see the vague shimmer of a ghostly outline. Her eyes narrowed, and she frowned, before turning her focus back to the captain, his mouth cutting a grim line across his grey face.
“I know the sort, yes,” she replied, a sharp edge to her voice.
Her father had been killed by such men. Hungry men. Bitter men, steeped in the false promises of a return to glory, and resentful of the success of others.
“And you,” she said, her tone firm and unrelenting, “what did you do? Were you directly responsible for hurting anyone in this pursuit? Or were you merely an accomplice?” She knew she was grasping at straws -- the set of his shoulders spoke volumes, and she was sure he was up to his elbows in this mess.
She could see the ghost shifting in her peripheral vision, and her eyes darted to it once more.
“I did not raise my hand against anyone,” Slava said firmly. It was true, and he’d clung to that fact closely over the past nights.
The resolve faltered slightly at his next words. “...but I suspected some. Much, lately. I did not ask many questions.”
“Liar, oh liar, what’s good for liar? Brimstone and fire.” The words started in sing-song and ended in a hiss. “He knew enough to have warned someone - if he’d wanted to. But you didn’t, did you, capt’n? You wanted to win.” A laugh like broken glass sprinkled the room. “What a victory, what a prize…”
The captain shivered. “Is there a window open? Close it, please.”
Zipporah frowned, and looked at the ghost more squarely. “It is not,” she said, a little flintily. “You, spirit,” she said, switching to English and jabbing her finger in its direction, “What is your aim with this man? I should tread careful, for you are still in existence on my forbearance.”
Forbearance, and a knowledge that interfering without talking to Biddie first would be… problematic.
Still.
“And he did not warn?” She continued, sharply. “That is his crime? Should he have marched to Scotland Yard, a foreigner on strange soils, with no friends beyond his own countrymen? Or ought he have told your mistress? After all, she is so very understanding and patient.”
Fog and shadow trembled, blurred, then - almost resentfully - resolved into the lines and curves of a woman with a firm chin and marigold hair. Hair, chin, and curves had the transparency of stopped smoke, but there was a terrible clarity to the lines of her nonetheless. A stale cold pooled around her.
The ghost swept her skirts in a theatrical cursty. "Beggin' your pardon. Didn't realize I was speaking to the sole queen of the castle."
"What is this? Who are you speaking to?" Slava asked, twisting in his seat. "Who is here?"
"Look at him spin. Like a little top." The ghost drifted closer and leaned towards the captain's ear. The stale cold deepened, while the ghost's voice turned sweet with music. A soft, pale lilting echo seemed to echo the tune.
"Now sailors are a sorry lot, what little care have they?
They steer their courses 'round the world astride the salty spray.
They take a girl in every port, little caring how it ends
But there'll be another story when --"
The singing cut off in another spin of skirts and the captain's bout of shivers. Shudders, now. The man's back was rigid and his neck was damp.
"His crime is cowardice," the ghost said. "He knew his company was willing to go to grim lengths to win and reckoned he could bear the risk. Called it the price of victory. Thought himself tall and brave, this one. It's easy to be brave when you're up there and everyone looks so little below. But now he's back on ground, forced to see - and he doesn't like what's staring back at him."
The ghost sank down to the floor in front of the man, arms around her knees like a child. She stared at the captain's pained face with frank, limpid curiosity.
“Ask him if he’s married.”
“You are being haunted,” Zipporah replied to Slava in Russian. “Punished for cowardice, for not warning. The price of your victory.” She held up her finger once more. “I am looking to see if there is anything that can be done.”
“You have not answered me, spirit,” she continued in English, with a sharp jab of her chin. “What is your aim? To drive him to the madness? To drive him to the death? He has suffered greatly already.” She frowned. “Tell me and I shall ask him your question. And you shall cease your torment of him while you are a guest in my house, or my hand shall be forced. For shame.”
The ghost looked up at Zipporah with a face of glass: smooth and transparent, bloodless and cool.
"He owes me a life," she said simply.
There was only one coin fit to repay that.
The ghost closed her eyes, exhaling an unnecessary breath as she faded--
--Slava drew in a quaking gasp of air, rubbing his face with numb hands--
--the temperature of the room plunged, becoming arctic, barbarous and voracious, the air gone dead--
--and Captain Petrotavich's hands lowered to show a face calmer than marble. The perfume of flowers and ash poured in, a cauterizing frostbite.
"He owes me," said the ghost, skeletal words in a living mouth.
“NO,” Zipporah roared, leaping to her feet, her hair crackling with electricity as Ach likewise stood smoothly from the corner and the wards of the house hummed to life, sparking the dust motes in the air that had been floating gently in the weak fall sunshine and flaring the gas light with the power of her fury as she gathered her strength to burn the spirit from him, consequences be damned.
The Russian captain's sturdy shoulders tensed in readiness for a fight, the spirit within incandescent with rage and borrowed power. He - she - raised a hand, fingers clawed --
(Simultaneously on the other side of town, ensconced within the plush parameters of her office, Biddie's fingers flexed against the cool expanse of map in front of her.)
--and Archie Curtis kicked down the door like a pro. It banged somewhat disappointingly in the wake of entry, but then he'd been careful to bust in not through. Zipporah was already going to be upset enough about the broken lock, no doubt.
Though to be fair, he reflected, taking the in scene, his would-be mentor was probably going to be upset about a lot more than the lock.
No sense in dilly-dallying then.
"Out," he barked, one gloved finger pointed at Petrotavich - or more correctly, at Petrotavich's occupant. "You'd no right to follow him here. You know that."
The rascal wasn't so easily cowed. "I've rights enough to take him."
Not yet, Archie thought. Aloud, he merely said, "Leave him, Kathy, and be damn quick about it. He's not yours to use so, none of them are. Leave him or I'll let you be tossed out."
"You're not -"
"No, but she's listening," Archie barrelled over the ghost's defiance. "Do you want this to be a long conversation? Do you think you'll enjoy explaining that?"
There was a tense, sullen silence in response. It was just long enough for Archie to consider some ways in which this could go so very much badly.
Then the Russian man's face turned painfully, heart-wrenchingly sad. Grief, true and unvarnished, made the possession more grim than the anger ever could.
"He owes," Kathleen O’Wells sobbed and, God help him, in that moment Archie agreed with her completely.
"Leave, Kathy. Please."
With a scouring wrench of energy, the cold vanished and Petrotavich crumbled to the floor like a marionette. Archie barely caught the man in time to prevent a concussion.
“So...good afternoon.” He tried to smile. It was a little tricky to make it look sincere with an armful of unconscious Russian. “Ach, old man, a little help? The bloke’s heavier than charity.”
Redirecting the powerful surge of energy that had been building inside her was a little like attempting valiantly to re-route a river with one’s hands. It took significant force of will -- enough so that she missed a few chunks of the rapid exchange between Archie and the spirit, and the sudden, swooping drop left her gasping, weak in the knees and teary eyed.
She’d managed not to take Archie’s head off, which she was infinitely grateful for despite her anger (and oh, she had to work to keep that from boiling over again), and Slava appeared to be breathing, and she took a great, wavering breath herself, and then another, gesturing with her chin to Ach to help Archie lower the Russian onto the floor, where he lay in an ungainly heap.
“I warned her,” she said, a little huskily, wiping her eyes roughly. “I warned her twice. She was in my home,” she added, before sitting, hard.
"Oh, that's - " Free of Petrotavich's weight, Archie stepped in and caught Zipporah's hand very gently and precisely in his own. His other hand, his left, extracted a handkerchief. He sank down on his heels to better press it against her cheek. "Please don't. She won't come back, you have my word on it."
What's more, there'd be Biddie's order to back it up. He'd bloody well make sure of that.
“I’m sorry,” he said, still down on his heels. “We - I honestly didn’t think any of them would come to you, not after that business with Kramarov.”
He fought the urge to glance at Petrotavich. Clearly, he’d underestimated the man’s desperation - or overestimated his nerve. The thought didn’t inspire much pity.
“I took care of Mr Eden,” Zipporah replied, not sure whether to be angry or exhausted, so settling on both. “He came to me with visions of his chest rotting and fires all round, grave ash filling his mouth, and I pulled the stain from his soul. It was terrible.” She looked over at him. “I assumed carelessness on her part instead of maliciousness in his case, which is very nearly worse, and now this…”
She tipped her head towards the Russian.
“I know he was… he was complacent,” she said, looking down at Archie, his fingers laced through hers surprisingly centering and warm. “I know terrible things have been done to her by his people, and he stood by. But I am a healer, called by God, and when such suffering is before me…” she shook her head, swinging back around into sadness.
“I would have gone to her and asked,” she said, a little stubbornly. “If the spirit had not forced the issue. I would have tried to make a case. An exception. And she would have turned me away, I know it, but I would have tried.”
She realized she’d slipped into Russian in her tiredness, and a small smile twisted her mouth. “I am sorry, for to have you running between us,” she said, in English now. “It is unworthy of you.”
Archie's Russian was just good enough to follow a conversation - provided nobody spoke too fast or turned philosophical - but nothing flattering.
"You overrate my honor." Impulsively he raised the hand still held in his and pressed his mouth briefly to the knuckles. Lips still dryly held to the skin, he shook his head. "Don't pursue this, Zipporah. Not this time, not with these circumstances. This is not a case fated for a kind conclusion."
With a little sigh, he released her hand and stood. The lightweight characteristic cheer was returning to his face: the happy man, the flimsy character.
"The race is soon. Afterward this will all be in the past and we can all think however badly we'd like of each other, without anybody actually falling to pieces over the matter," he said. "I am sorry to hear about Eden's troubles, though. My cousin - " He paused. There was no real point in keeping the "cousin" charade with Zipporah, he supposed.
"Biddie," he continued after a moment, "didn't expect Eden's sensitivity to be so, um, receptive. Rather chagrined about it, if you can believe it. She doesn't like hurting people."
It was, he admitted, a lame defence in light of Zipporah's experience with the woman. Ah, the women in his life…
Zipporah huffed a little, and rolled her eyes, but she bit her tongue.
After a pause, she looked over to Slava.
“So he is doomed, then?” She asked, quietly, a frown twisting her face. “It is…” she sighed, looking up at him. “I feel as if I am running around madly, putting out fires others have started, trying to make sense of the piles of ashes left behind for to keep it from happening again, or standing by to watch people burn because someone else claims they ought. And it is not just your Biddie,” she said, her expression grim. “She is not the only necromancer causing me a headache these days. She has a competitor, and much more is at stake than…”
She was about to say something unkind, something petty, and she sighed instead and got up to make tea, only wobbling a little as she stood, and glaring at him as he gestured her way as if to steady her.
“The spell at the end of October. I know it was not her doing,” she added over her shoulder, dismissively, “so do not fret over that, but it…” she clattered the kettle and mugs a little more loudly than she would otherwise. “The women, they were murdered right down the road, you know that? Butchered like animals in the streets, streets I walk every day, and I…” she shook her head, her eyes rebelliously filling with tears again despite herself, and she was angry about that too, and the tray made a loud, unpleasant sound as she set it down on the table.
“I will not fight her today, not this time,” she said, “but I am growing tired of sitting on my hands, Archie.”
"Doomed is a very Biblical perspective," Archie said. He picked up kettle and cup, pouring two mathematically precise measures of tea. His hands were rock steady. "Petrotavich was a soldier before he started playing pilot. And the people he chose to serve decided to play at war."
He added a neat dollop of jam sugar to one cup, two sugar cubes to the second, and settled the former in front of Zipporah. "The last time someone tried to play so with my family, I lost them. Uncle, aunt, cousins - good people erased in a single afternoon. Except for Luis. It took two weeks for Luis to go. He was seven. My godmother sees graves when she looks at Petrotavich's masters. Kathy's visit here unfortunately lends weight to the vision."
The teaspoon clinked very softly against the rim of the cup while Archie stirred in the sugar.
"The women in the papers, that is an ugly thing. An evil thing. I sincerely pity those the deaths. I'm even more sorry for how this violence burdens you." He set his cup down. "But it has nothing to do with Biddie. She's not in - " a vague suggestion of grimace flicked at his mouth " - competition with whomever is bleeding the streets."
At least not since confirming that whomever was slaughtering the women, was leaving the meat behind. But Archie didn't think now was the time or place to share that thought.
"Leave the Byestro matter alone, Zipporah," he said quietly. "I ask; my godmother won't."
Zipporah’s mouth twisted, and she took a sip of her tea. “I am saying I would rather have her at my side, as a sister, as a colleague, helping, than one more person I must struggle against,” Zipporah replied, her voice lowered in reaction to his gentling.
She shrugged her shoulder. “I said I would not fight her this time,” she added. “I shall…” she frowned, looking over at Slava. “I shall tell him there is nothing I will do.” It was a heavy weight, but kinder than false hope.
“Who was Kathy?” She asked, lower still, looking over at Archie, at his own ghosts floating around the room.
The idea of Biddie, his Biddie, as any sort of philanthropist was...well, it was like imaging a crown on a cat; you could arrange the pieces, but it wouldn't work and somebody would get bitten. Somebody would definitely be bitten. His godmother wasn't much of a people person - that way.
Admittedly, it was kind of philanthropic when she'd eaten his original uncle.
"Biddie's only a problem when someone spoils her appetite," Archie said lightly. "Otherwise, she's a pussycat. Truly." In a man-eating tiger sort of way, but still. "You have to admit none of our overlapping affairs have involved nuns or big-eyed children. You two hardly need to butt heads regarding criminals."
He spared no glance for the unmoving Petrotavich.
"Kathy was, is Kathleen O’Wells. She'd been employed at the workshop which burned down. One of our best telegraph girls. She was in the process of being trained up to navigation when the fire happened." He took a scalding gulp of tea, swallowing without flinching. "Apparently she died shortly after I, Mr. Allen, and Biddie quit the building. She wasn’t yet twenty.”
She never would be now, he supposed.
Zipporah frowned a little. “So much pain,” she murmured, “pain begetting pain begetting pain. It is a pity, all round, and I do not see how more would help.” She looked over to him, reaching over to cover his hand with her free one. “I am sorry. Biddie is not the only one who has lost much in this. Who has people to mourn.”
She snorted a bit at his assessment. “And Archie, I live in Whitechapel,” she said. “I am up to my nose in criminals. I go to synagogue with them. I deliver their babies. From what I do in that back room alone, I am one.” The last was said without much rancor, though she was still frustrated at the notion of being (politely) strong-armed to let the woman’s revenge play out despite the burden it had brought several times over to her doorstep.
The necromancer was a costly associate, demanding much while giving little in return, and she could see Archie’s deflection from a mile distant.
She would not be expecting Biddie’s help any time soon.
But he was there.
He’d…
“You kicked in my door,” she said, more amused than annoyed. She looked over to it -- Ach had done his best to shut it again, and while the latch didn’t quite seem to be working, at least it wasn’t swinging open.
In a rare act of prudence, Archie kept his mouth resolutely shut when Zipporah spoke of criminals and her own qualifications for the category. He'd has his own start in illegal action early - very early - in life. But that, of course, had been another life. Ironically it too had ended in a Spitalfields backroom.
To be fair, his wasn't the only life that ended there that day...
Archie glanced at the lovely hand resting upon his own mangled paw. Ah, what does Spitalfields matter now?
"I am quite sorry about the door," he said ruefully. "I'll fix - well, actually I've no idea how to refit a door. I can mend the latch, though, if you don't mind somebody else's magic mucking in your territory."
Despite his words, he didn't get up to start repairs. It was...nice. Sitting in this room with this woman touching his hand. Strange and nice. Strange but nice, to be specific.
Then again, the nicest things in Archie’s life were never without a little strangeness.
Petrotavich stirred with a sick, crumbling groan, and the moment broke.
“I should get him back to his hotel,” Archie said. His hands, however, didn’t move any more than the rest of him.
Except suddenly his mouth did, seemingly without permission asked, “Come with me. The night after tomorrow. We both need some distraction, don’t you think?”
Zipporah frowned a little. “I should tell him he will have no help from me. He shall return otherwise, or wonder, or hope.” She looked over at the captain, a stubborn set to her mouth. “If I am to turn my back, he has the right for to know.” She sighed. “I can always write him a letter,” she added, “but I ought to have the decency for to tell him to his face.”
She looked back over to Archie, tipping her head. “And you are right on that count. Come with you where?” She asked, her expression softening some, curious.
"I've no idea," Archie said honestly. "Somewhere a bit warmer or possibly a lot colder. Or maybe indoors outright. Somewhere with - color, I think."
He looked vaguely pleased at the last, as if hearing the idea rather than being one to say it. The look wasn't fazed by the body on the floor, not even when he ran his eye consideringly over the other captain again. There was something of the scalpel and scale in that glance.
Zipporah's sense of duty towards the Russian was admirable, nearly charming, but the iron-cold memory of burning walls and a gun muzzle aimed directly at his face was less endearing.
Archie stood and bowed over Zipporah's hand."Madam, your servant."
He straightened and opened his palm, allowing Zipporah to remove her hand rather than let go himself. His tone remained nothing but conventional. "Would you like me to wait outside and escort him? Or I can simply make myself scarce, if you like."
There was a temptation there -- a powerful one -- to let the captain stay in the relative protection of her home a few hours longer to gather his dignity and be able to clear his head, but that, too, was a temporary measure at best.
“You can wait outside,” Zipporah replied, standing, giving his hand a soft press of her fingers before leaning up to kiss him on the cheek. “And I should like that. Very much, I think.” She flicked her fingers at him. “Shoo,” she said, quietly. “You can come back for to fix the door later.”
"I'll gild it in gold," Archie promised. "Goodbye, Zipporah. And remember - somewhere with color."
He gave a friendly goodbye to Ach on his way out. For Petrotavich, he had nothing but a passing thought: let him burn.
(Archie paused on the stairs outside, just for a moment, and raised a gloved hand to his face. It fell back down without making contact. He left.)
Zipporah bent over Slava, reaching out to him -- he looked very nearly peaceful, in that moment before full consciousness, and she regretted having to bring him back to reality, but what was done was done.
“Come on, Captain,” she said, quietly in Russian, touching his shoulder, “let us get you in your chair.”