[CLOSED] This is Going to Be an Unbearable Day

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - In Chancery
The 6th of Intas - Morning

H

alf-past nine, and the bell ringing. Nothing to be done. The legislative review will have to wait. Documents scattered all across the desk and four or five volumes of various parts of the legal codes open, statutes and subsections marked with slips of lightly gummed and colored paper. It needs securing, and securing takes time. The bell is still ringing, time is a luxury he lacks. He takes stock of the space, papers, books, document cabinets, confidential safe, the heavy office door with its bright new locks. The brazen jangle still sounding in his too-sensitive ears. There will be another headache tonight. Too many of those of late, and not enough sleep. He should see his physician about that. His physician is a quack. No point in paying good money to be fobbed off with useless pills and an admonition to relax. Or worse. To be forced to drink some ghastly purgative and spend the night regretting that he’d ever been born.

The bell stops its incessant ringing. This is worse.

He lays the books open, tucks in working documents and drafts of drafts between relevant pages. Closes the books less gently than he likes , puts them in an uncomfortable stack into the safe. No time to reset the combination. The time for that has come and gone. He curses under his breath, nothing too vulgar. It is still early. He’ll work up to paint-peeling oaths by evening. The heavy metal door of the safe clangs shut. The mechanisms slide into place. A solid, satisfying sound. He spins the combination dial once, twice, three times. Clockwise, anti-clockwise, and clockwise again. Every time it ends on a prime number. He curses again, this time it is more vulgar, and spins the dial again,it stops on some meaningless multiple of three. Nothing significant about eighteen. He will have let it stay.

At the door he checks his reflection in the cloudy, flaking mirror. Shrikeweed looks back at him from behind the dust and flawed silvering. The reflection looks terrible, washed out. The red-brown hair needs a trim, the ends are beginning to curl rather more than is proper. He’ll make an appointment tomorrow. The barber, at least, is a consummate professional and knows how to keep silent. He runs his hand over his hair, pushing it into something almost presentable, snatches off his reading glasses, and smooths down the sidewhiskers. Then, with an arch of the brow and a quirk of the lip, he puts on his public face and slips out into the corridor.

The indigo door closes behind him. He slides the first key into the lock, turns it. The mechanism clicks. The second keyhole slides into view. He locks this with a second key. He turns the handle, once, twice, three times. Clockwise, anti-clockwise, and clockwise again. The door remains shut.

Seven minutes. It takes no more than seven minutes to get from his office to anywhere in the Chancery. He checks his watch, thirty four minutes past eight. He will be late. This is going to be an unbearable day.

Footfalls echoing in the high corridors, his own and others. They move about, still with morning faces. Some, on their way to offices. Off to hide among the paperwork and be forgotten for a time. Others to meetings, working sessions, or to carry news. He hunches his shoulders, compacting himself into as small a space as possible and rushes on.

“Mr Shrikeweed!” The voice, pinched, nasal, papery, and familiar, calling from an alcove. “Mr Shrikeweed, sir! Glad to have caught you so early. I was on my way to your office just now, thought I’d catch you before the day slipped away. It’s going to be a busy day sir, very busy. I have three meetings with the legislative staff before noon. Then a working session with some monetary beetle from the Treasury. Who schedules these things? I’ll never know. Seems they spring up like mushrooms, of their own accord. How I’m going to get it all done and explain it, clocks and hourglasses, explain it. . . ”

“Walk with me Wiggins.” The younger clerk stops his yammering and follows. “What’s all this about?”

“The financial score for the proposed privatization of tax collection.”

“Mannering-Phipps' pet project? We killed that last year. I killed it.”

“It’s back from the dead sir. Landed on my desk last night.”

“Then we’ll kill it again. I’m not going to have the bean-counters at Treasury thinking they can begin undermining the Service like this. Today its tax collection, but tomorrow, who knows. This has to be stopped”

“Treasury does claim it will save money.”

“Save money? When has Treasury ever cared about saving money? No, they just want to look their they’re saving money. Efficiencies” he spits the word out like it is poison. “Then they can pat themselves on the back, give massive off-the books kickbacks to tax farmers, and then take their over-larded backsides off for an early lunch.”

Skrikeweed rounds a corner and heads toward the main hall. Wiggins follows in his wake. More people flowing in, the volume of noise rising. A press of clerks at the foot of the stairs. Shrikeweed pushes through, barely slowing in his strides. Wiggins struggles against the press. He has not yet learned the trick to moving at speed through the Chancery. The press clears, and Wiggins shoots forward like a rejected melon seed.

“Sir? Where are we going?”

“I, Wiggins, have been summoned.”

Wiggins swallows, purses his lips. “The Perpetual Permanent Secretary?”

“Herself.” Another corridor, narrower, tiled in black and something that may once have been white. The ring of their steps is louder here. “I fear I’m for it Wiggins.”

“They can’t give you the sack!”

“They can, Wiggins. Either that or promote me. I’m not sure which is worse. ” Along another hall, past offices and meeting rooms. Worn furniture and slowly dying plants on either side. Mind racing, his fate just minutes before him, he does what comes naturally to calm his nerves. He goes back to work.

“Why is Mannering-Phipps Folly with us again?”

“Treasury seems to think they need our sign-off before they go make up whatever fiscal nonsense sounds prettily in the ears of the Exchequer.”

“Treasury and can make up their own numbers. That’s what they’re there for.” Shrikeweed turns the corner abruptly, making for another flight of stairs.

Wiggins pulls a notebook out of an inner pocket, riffles through the pages, and almost walks into the polished wood newel-post. “They seemed confused, sir. About the calculations.” Wiggins tries to regain himself, teeters for a moment, and then follows upward. “There was a minute.”

“A minute.” Shrikeweed now takes the stairs two at a time, rushing past elderly archivists, junior secretaries, and a minor flood of emanuenese.

“Yes sir, a minute.”

“Was it one of our minutes?”

“Yes sir. It seems Mr Levesque was convinced that there was a problem in the drafting of the language for the around the revenue projections. The numbers fail to add up, and beginning next year . . .”

“Calendar, not financial?”

“Calendar, yes.”

Shrikeweed grins.

“Mr. Shrikeweed sir?”

“Does Levesque like fruit?”

“Fruit, sir?” Bafflement makes its advance across Wiggins’ face.

“Yes, Wiggins, fruit. Pears, grapes, berries, and the like.”

“I suppose so, sir. I, that is, what? Fruit sir?”

“That minute may well have helped prevent this ghastly measure from ever seeing the light of day. Send Mr Levesque a fruit basket in thanks. Or a fine cheese. Anything, Wiggins. Just make sure he knows his efforts are appreciated.”

Wiggins takes out his notebook again, scribbles down a memo, and waits, poised. “Then what sir?”

He stops short, turns, and looks at Wiggins. He can feel the the predatory grin spreading over his face like a sunrise. “Then, Wiggins, you tell the idiots from Treasury that they will need our sign off, yes. They’ve forgotten that the calendar exists, again. Tell your monetary beetle this: we’ll fix their mistake, redraft their bill, and keep their incompetence among ourselves. But for the duration of this stupidity Treasury is paying you the full rate for a rush job on top of your usual salary.”

“Mine, sir?”

“Yes, Wiggins. Yours. You have the meeting. It’s your bailiwick.” Wiggins stands still for a moment, and Shrikeweed watches the clerk’s eyes move back and forth. Probably tallying his sudden windfall.

“Oh, right, thank you Mr Shrikeweed.”

“Then, when you’ve sorted that. Send it for interdepartmental review.”

“What departments sir?”

“Any and all that come to your mind. The more the merrier.”

A small smile begins to form on Wiggins face. The review will take weeks. More than enough time to undermine it. “I’ll set to it at once, sir!”

“Carry on, Wiggins.”

The younger clerk departs, gliding down the stairs with growing ease. Shrikeweed pauses a moment, checks his watch. Forty-one minutes past eight. No escaping it now. He is late.

The door to the Perpetual Permanent Secretary’s office, unassuming and dark green in color. He knocks, and tries to form his apology. Nothing suitable comes to mind. One does not keep the Perpetual Permanent Secretary waiting.

“Enter.” The voice is mellifluous. How can a single word be mellifluous? Yet it is. Shrikeweed reaches for the handle, turns it once, clockwise, then catches himself before he can complete the gesture. The door swings in, and he follows along with it.

Pale morning light streaming in from the wide windows. The colors in the room are muted, washed out. It does the space no justice. Carpets look faded and old, woodwork lacks depth. It is like the room is painted on the air. Even the Perpetual Permanent Secretary looks less that fully formed.

She nods, and gestures Shrikeweed towards a chair. “Please, do sit.” He sits. The chair is uncomfortable and wobbles slightly. Fantastic, every leg is a different length. A chair for interrogations. “You’ll have coffee.” It is not a question, not a nicety. It is an order. He will have coffee. He hates the Secretary’s coffee. It is weak, insipid, wan; rather like the morning light.

The Secretary rings a bell. It is a morning for bells. A moment passes in uncomfortable silence, and a servant enters by a discrete door. A silver pot and two coffee cups occur upon the Secretary’s desk. The silent servant pours coffee the color of an old puddle, and then vanishes from the room. Shrikeweed sits, motionless, waiting. The Secretary raises her cup, takes a sip, breathes in.

“Well Shrikeweed.” Her face is ageless, moodless, unfathomable.

“Madame Secretary.” He follows the tone, setting aside feeling and affect. Here he is function, not a man.

“Your name has been appearing rather more often in my memos than I am accustomed.”

He reaches back into his memory, replaying the last quarter of the year, and can find no memorable, catastrophic errors. A few failures, of course, and setbacks, but nothing to warrant this chair and this interrogation. “Madame Secretary, this is not a development I had foreseen. My work . . .”

“Has been exemplary. And that, Mr Shrikeweed, is precisely why your name keeps surfacing. There is a situation.” She pronounces that last word as though it is something rotten, diseased, unwholesome. “Are you at all acquainted with Incumbent Vauquelin?”

“I am, madame. Not well. We’ve perhaps dined together at the Pendulum once or twice. Certainly I know the man enough to make civil movements in his direction and inquire about meaningless pleasantries. I believe he is fond of opera.”

“Are you fond of opera, Mr Shrikeweed?” Still that same level tone, that same expressionless face. What was the purpose of that question? No bills before the Council have anything to do with opera. No regulation of ticket prices, no ordinance forbidding wicks from performing heroic roles. Nothing.

“I have been known to attend an opera from time to time.”

The Secretary nods.

“Mr Shrikeweed, we are concerned about the Incumbent. His fellows in the Council are worried about the Incumbent. The staff is worried about the Incumbent. There are rumors Mr Shrikeweed.”

“I am aware, Madame Secretary, that the Incumbent has been unwell. A nervous disorder was mentioned by some, a stroke by others. I do not pretend to know the precise cause of his malady, only that it has been the subject of remark and some speculation.”

“His health is, of course, a concern. The health of all members of the King’s Council is of concern. But no, Mr Shrikeweed, the concern raised to us by his colleagues and staff is that he is not sound.”

Shrikeweed draws in a sharp breath through his teeth. “I’m appalled.” There have been unsound Incumbents before. They are never easy to deal with. Most have been rendered moot but the Civil Service, their ‘eccentricities’ carefully fenced in by reams of paperwork and miles of red tape. It is nothing to celebrate.

“It is appalling, yes.” The Secretary raises her coffee cup to her lips, takes another long, slow sip. “Recommendations?”

“General assessment by the Service. Monitoring for a period of time. His attention to be directed in non-controversial directions. Assignment to the Committee for Agrarian Festivals.” He recalls the conversation from earlier, smiles. “Perhaps a lengthy fact-finding mission regarding corruption at the Royal Opera?

“Is there corruption at the Royal Opera Mr Shrikeweed?”

“Madame Secretary, if there is but one constant in the universe it is that corruption can always be found if one looks hard enough .”

“Excellent. Excellent Mr Shrikeweed. You post as assessor will commence immediately.”

“Madame Secretary,” he nearly rises in his chair. “The legislative review for the Joint Committee on Public Safety is still outstanding. I have a number of legal knots to untie, recommendations to make. Drafts that need redrafting.”

“Mr Shrikeweed. This is not a request. This is not a trivial matter. Today, Mr Shrikeweed, you are to create yourself as the Legislative Councilor to the Incumbent. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Madame Secretary.”

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Late Morning on the 6th of Intas, 2719

The page in front of him’s all speckled and smeared with ink, covered in reject loops and curls. The tip of the nib scrapes the paper as he pushes the A away from him, hooks round the E, pulls one line of the V back; he starts on the delicate loop and curve of the a, then the u, then his hand jerks and spatters a black streak of ink. It’s shaking, today, like always. Just curling the fingers round the grip and keeping them there’s a victory akin to hitting the center of a dartboard on your first try, and Tom knows, by now, to take joy in the little things. But that doesn’t make the tremor in his hand any better, and it doesn’t lighten by a stone the headache that’s weighing down his skull.

He sits back, the big, comfortable chair creaking underneath him. It makes him feel small, this monster of a thing – but then, everything makes him feel small, these days. The mant, heavy mahogany desk, with its smell of polish. The thick sprawl of the carpet, brought in from someplace in Mugroba, like nothing he’s ever seen before; he reckons it to be worth more than every ha’penny he made in his life.

The walls, even. The cabinets behind him, tall enough he’d have to have a stepladder to get to the highest one – as he is now, leastways. (There’s a little wooden one for that purpose nearby; he tries not to look at it too often, and he’s got too much pride to use it.) He wonders what it would’ve looked like to him when he was alive, when he was himself.

And the painting, hanging on the wall across from his desk. He looks at it now, feeling a funny desperation swell up in his heart. It’s of the bridge over the Arova, mirror-bright with the setting sun. Spotted with barges. Uptown, a gaggle of tall, stately buildings with their heads together, whispering secret-like; the Dives, draped in dark. He doesn’t see the cluster of shacks underneath the bridge, or the beggars, or the smog.

Still, even for its high ceilings, for its paintings in their gilded frames and all its wood paneling, it’s warm in here. Tom reckons he’s got to be thankful for that, too. These hands of his – Anatole’s thin, delicate scribe’s hands, uncalloused and unscarred – are still freezing with the cold, and the window’s all caked with the frosts of early Intas. It hasn’t raised its head above freezing in a week. He squints over at it now, over the glinting gold rim of his reading glasses.

Some days, you get a good view of the courtyard. Stainthorpe Hall is near enough to the Palace you can see it over the rooftops, its turrets and towers and rippling green flags. The courtyard below isn’t as remarkable, but sometimes, it’s just as amusing: Tom finds himself standing there, sometimes, watching the beetle-sized clerks scurry this way and that, the sun glinting off heads of coppery hair. Sometimes, somebody loses his papers, and they go fluttering off in the wind.

There’s a statue in the middle of the courtyard, and Tom’s gathered it’s Stainthorpe himself – some kind of architect – all swathed in robes like he lived during the War of the Book; you can’t tell much about him, though, ’cause the face has eroded to something that looks a bit like a gob of shepherd’s pie. Nobody ever looks at him, bustling by.

Today, though, each window-pane is a blur of blue-white, and he can’t see a damn thing outside.

So he looks back down at the paper, and he waits for it to come into focus through the lenses. A. E. jumps out at him first, the E a half-abandoned squiggle. Then, underneath it, A. E. V., then A. E. Vauq – the Q had been a pina mant too much to ask, today – then A. E. Vau, his most recent attempt.

He’s getting somewhere, he thinks, capping his pen and setting it down. He rubs a little more warmth into those skinny hands, then cradles the unfamiliar shape of his face in them, shutting his eyes for a space. He’s still not used to it, that galdor’s face. He’s not used to any of it.

It’s been around thirty minutes since the last meeting, and he reckons he’s got at least an hour ’til the next. He can’t remember if it’s been lunch already, but he thinks it hasn’t, ’cause he’s hungry. An hour, then, of peace and quiet. He sits up straight again, righting his glasses on his pointy little nose and sniffing.

So many flooding meetings. And for what? Tom thinks these toffin gollies don’t know just how many problems you can solve by breaking a kov’s kneecaps.

But he reckons it’s all well and good for them to bicker over land and taxes; that’s not what he’s here for, anyway. If the King wants him, the King’ll send for him, and he’ll do whatever Silas Hawke’d have him do. In the meantime, he knows he’s to smile and nod and say whatever chroveshit he thinks he’s got to, and get real clocking good at signing Incumbent Vauquelin’s name.

He’s uncapped his pen again; he’s tracing the shape of an A, his glance flicking between his journal and Anatole’s signature on some document or other he found in a drawer, when there comes a knock at the door. He fumbles again, and again, there’s an errant streak of ink and a laoso-sounding scratch.

“C’m’in!” calls Tom, rough but not unfriendly. He shuts his book with a hand that’s getting shakier by the hour, fumbles it off the top of the desk, shuffles it into a drawer. By the time the door opens and Cardinal pokes his little towhead in, he’s sitting up straight, official as you like, with a pen in one hand and nothing to write on.

Cardinal raises a fair eyebrow, but he doesn’t say a thing about it. Instead, he just clears his throat and says, in his feather-soft voice, “Mr. Shrikeweed is here to see you, sir,” and he clears his throat again, “from Legislative Affairs.”

Tom blinks, then remembers himself, even if he doesn't remember a Mr. Shrikeweed. He’s started to slouch again; he pulls his spine straight. “Send him in,” he tries. He doesn’t quite succeed. The rough broadness of his accent doesn’t fit neatly into the smooth curls of Uptown Vienda; he’s stuck somewhere in-between, pronouncing all his consonants right, but leaving his vowels in the lurch. It’s all cleaned up, but it ain’t Vienda.

With a nod, Cardinal shuts the door. Tom sits himself up even straighter, feeling everything in his back click into place, like it’s meant to be this way. He fits some kind of smile on his face; he doesn’t know what it looks like, but he reckons it’s good enough for government work.

Like this, he waits, and he even makes sure to knit his fingers over the tabletop.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - In Stainthorpe Hall
The 6th of Intas - Forenoon

H

e does not take a cab. Doesn’t trust the cabbies to know where they are going. Dosen’t like being jostled about. It is better to walk. Frost in the streets and twice as much on window panes. Frost on roofs and in the shadowy alleys. Still cold. Good, he likes the cold. Better thinking weather. He goes by the back ways, past Snodgrass and Co. Stationers, past Runcorn’s and The Elephant. He might lunch there, time permitting. Lobster and lettuce and a pot of coffee. Better coffee, to wash the taste of the Secretary’s thin brew out of his mouth. He could use something good and strong. Mugrobi-style, unsweetened. There is no time. Later. Always later.

At Thurlow street, where it bends sharply, just beyond the costermongers, he is nearly run down by a cab. He curses again. Considers taking down the number. Thinks better of it, it’s a blind corner.

He shoves gloved hands deeper into the pockets of his coat. He can still feel the keys to his office, solid and real. Talismans of his life, his real life. Legislative Councilor, what is he to do with that title? He works with papers and ink, in cramped offices at the end of equally cramped corridors. He does not stand in the offices of politicos and tell them how to run their business. He makes sure the business is sound afterward.

The Incumbent is not sound

Ambiguous words. Dangerous words. Dangerous for their ambiguity. Could mean anything, or nothing. He opens the files of his memory, roots around in the dust of thoughts, and pulls out the file on Incumbent Vauquelin. There is not much there, a name, a few indistinct images of the man, sitting in the Strangers’ Room at the Pendulum, or in the private dining room. Nothing to speak for the man’s character. That will make the assessment harder. Harder, but not impossible. Easy enough to ask around the Pendulum and get a fuller picture of the man. A fuller picture of his unsoundness.

Stainthorpe Hall. Rising grey and obscenely solid. There is too much architecture, to much weight. Like a fat man in too-tight trousers. It bursts at the seams with cornices and frieze-work, pediments and capitals. It has no style. It has too many styles. He goes around to a side door, rings the bell. An elderly bonnet pokes out, presumably it contains an elderly head. “Petitioners are to go through the main entrance. Good morning!” The door slams shut.

He sighs, rings the bell again. The bonnet appears again, somehow it looks angrier. Before the bonnet can speak, he shows his credentials. His ‘commission’. “Shrikeweed, B.A. I am here to see Vauquelin.”

The bonnet mutters something, probably obscene, and opens the door. Shrikeweed passes into Stainthorpe Hall. The passage here is characterless, a dull no color. The paint is peeling, the woodwork needs replacing. There is dust in every corner. “Down the corridor, left door. Then along again. Take a right, go up the stairs. The longer stairs.”

He follows the directions, ends up in a side hall off the main entrance. There is a cloak room. Small, dim, and smelling of cedar. Key pulled from the coat pocket, then coat, hat, scarf, and gloves handed over. The boy by the door takes them. He shakes a disapproving head. Not up to the latest fashions, probably. A quick few questions to the boy. Vauquelin’s office is up-stairs, forth floor, east wing.

He checks his watch. Thirteen past ten. He sets out. Through the main hall, up the stairs, up again, again, and again. East. he heads east. A brief search, and he finds the office. Knocks. For the second time today, a voice says ‘enter’ . He reaches for the handle, and this time forgets himself. He turns it, once, twice, three times. Clockwise, anti-clockwise, and clockwise again. He enters. Some tow-headed functionary takes his name, beetles off to an inner room, comes back.

Shrikeweed is conducted into the inner room. The Incumbent sits, stiff, upright, too formal. Nervous? Putting up a brave front? No matter. Let him do as he wishes in his own office. For now. Later, he will do as Shrikeweed pleases. Later, always later.

“Incumbent Vauquelin, a good morning to you. My name is Shrikeweed. B.A. Shrikeweed, Office of Legislative Affairs. I have been seconded to your office to assist you in certain aspects of your work. The Service understands you have been ill, wishes you a speedy recovery, and sends me by way of ensuring that you are not overtaxed during this no doubt trying period.” He reaches into the inner pocket of his suit coat, and pulls out a long letter. “My credentials and my authorization. I am, Incumbent, at your service.”

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Late Morning on the 6th of Intas, 2719

The door opens, and it admits another galdor.

Not the kind of galdor Tom hasn’t seen plenty of these past weeks – these past months – being honest. He’s got some benny side-whiskers, leastways. Still straight-backed, he lets his eyes wander over him. He’s well enough dressed, if a pina drab, like all the rest of these government gollies. Tom likes his cravat, even if he doesn’t much like the face above it. Not that there's much about it to like or dislike.

As he comes closer, a field laps against his porven, making his skin prickle; he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to these gollies and their fields, much less being one. It’s like having another set of nerves, and having somebody tickle at them with a feather. The mona are what Tom’s learned to recognize as of the quantitative conversation, but he can’t make out much else about it.

Then the kov’s introducing himself as B.A. Shrikeweed, saying something or other about the Service and his illness and being at his service, and he’s handing him a letter.

Tom takes the letter. Perching his spectacles back on his nose, he squints down through the lenses at the close-spaced lines of writing, eyes flicking right to left, down, down, like he’s even trying to read. He doesn’t make much sense of any of it, ’course. The hand that’s holding it’s still shaking, and the top of the paper wobbles in the air. His lips press into a thin, colorless line, twisting down just a little at one corner.

It’s funny to think, though. Used to be, he wouldn’t’ve been able to do much of anything with it. Now, he can read every word, or, at least, them that he can sound out; he doesn’t know what all of them mean, but you give him a couple of hours and a dictionary, and he’ll have it in hand. It was never that he didn’t like reading, or that he couldn’t remember the meanings of the words. It was just that everything up to a certain point was blurry, like he was reading through water – and sometimes, even if he held the page a foot and a half away from his face, even if the letters were fair clear, they’d come undone and smear and rearrange themselves, and he’d remember them all backwards.

Incumbent Vauquelin’s eyes aren’t any less blurry up close, but he’s got glasses for that, and the letters are still. Sometimes, Tom wonders what he could’ve done if he’d had glasses, back then. He doesn’t know. He likes it, now, in a begrudging sort of way. Small mercies.

Letters like this are the kind he still doesn’t know what to do with, and he’s got a sneaky suspicion it don’t matter too much anyway. Tom looks up from the letter, peers at B.A. Shrikeweed over the rims of his glasses. He sets the letter down in front of him on the desk, then takes off the glasses.

For a moment, he considers. It might be useful, this; he’s already struggling, and when the Symvoulio hits in Loshis, provided Tom makes it that long, he’ll be drowning. But being honest, he wants the little stopclocker gone. This is dangerous, a voice tells him; it prickles at the back of his neck. Last thing he needs is a pair of eyes looking over his shoulder at every turn.

If Legislative Affairs has sent him – he’s been seconded, in fact – he may not be so easy to get rid of. Godsdamn, Tom thinks. He taps his fingertips together. “Well–” he starts, but he’s forgot himself, and he’s not expecting the voice that rumbles up from his throat, so he catches on it. He blinks; a twitch shudders down one side of his face. He clears his throat again, good and deep.

“Well, Mr. Shrikeweed,” he starts again, and gestures roughly toward the chair opposite him across the desk. It’s a fair manna less comfortable than his. “You’ll have a seat, will you?”

If he’s right, sitting and having a little chat’s the last thing Mr. B.A. Shrikeweed wants to do. The quickest way to get rid of a kov like this is to make him think you want him to stay, make him sit tight ’til the urge to bolt for the door gets unbearable. Whatever it is Shrikeweed’s been sent to do, whatever weaselly little functionary or something-or-other’s sent him, it’s bound to be nothing more than empty formality. When push comes to shove, when the incumbent makes himself proper difficult, he’ll decide he’s best off leaving him to his own devices. And the incumbent, Tom thinks, can make himself fair difficult indeed.

Clearing his throat, Tom smiles pleasantly at B.A. Shrikeweed, whether he’s taken his offer to sit or not. “Will you have a drink?” he asks, glancing briefly at the clock. “It’s early yet, but I’ve a good Twemlaugh, and I can’t resist an opportunity to break it out.” It might be a trick of the light, or another tic, but there’s something almost cruel about the smile drawn in the lines around his eyes.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - In Stainthorpe Hall
The 6th of Intas - Forenoon

F

or this second time this morning, he takes a chair he does not want in an office that does not suit him. Too large, too grand a space. Too empty of the smells and sounds of paper. Devoid of urgency. The books, the cabinets, the desk, it all seems an affectation. It is a space in which to exist, to be seen, not to work. It does not impress. He takes the offered seat. The chair is better than the Secretary’s. It keeps all its legs upon the ground. A chair for interviews, not interrogations.

The Incumbent is not sound

No, he is not. His features are stiff, his voice thick, slow, unsure. Coarse is nearer the mark. There is a settled vagueness in the face. That may have always been there. In his recollections, the Incumbent is not a noted wit. Incumbents seldom are. Disarray in the features, in the carriage of head, in deportment, and, yes, now he turns his mind to it, to the Incumbent’ field. He is no physician, no expert on the more esoteric matters of health. Still, he can feel the disorder, the chaos. There are rumors of a stroke. It seems not unlikely.

The bottle makes it less unlikely still.

“I will abstain, Incumbent. It is too early,” he pauses for just breath, just one flutter of a moth’s wing too long, “for me.” He makes a note of the bottle. Expensive, the glass heavy and dark. It would be good on an occasion. An occasion where he is sitting at home, alone by a small fire, with the sun dying red on the horizon and a new book of verse. Here is neither the time nor the place for such a drink. Let the Incumbent pour his too-early potation. Shrikeweed will watch, will wait, and see just how much of that bottle is drained at unwholesome hours.

“Coffee, however”, he says, voice as flat as can be managed, “would be appreciated. It is a cold morning.” Cold, strange, and unlikely. He wants this to be over, to go back to his work. This is his work now. There is nowhere to go.

A notebook appears in his hands. A pen joins close behind. “I have taken the liberty, sir, of acquiring your schedule for the day. I should have liked to be better prepared, but I was given this assignment only this morning.” He flicks open the notebook, passess over his notes memorializing what has already transpired, and taps the fragments of a schedule he was able to acquire, “One meeting in an hour with the Deputy Whip, lunch, then conference committee and a working session with your advisors until the end of the day. We can dispense with the latter, for today. Until my office is properly set up and I have interviewed your staff, we can keep things reasonably flexible.”

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Late Morning on the 6th of Intas, 2719

It’s too early – for B.A. Shrikeweed. But he’ll have coffee, ’cause it’s morning, and it’s a cold one at that. Flicking another glance at the frost-crusted windowpane, he smiles pleasantly at Shrikeweed. “Of course,” he says.

Shrikeweed’s pulling out some kind of book, now, and there’s a pen in his hand, just like it’s been there the whole time. Where’d it come from? Tom wonders if the kov was born with a pen in his hand. He watches with mild interest as the golly flips it open and slides it forward on the desk; he blinks at Shrikeweed’s finger, tap tap tap on the writing. He gives it a cursory glance, not bothering to put his reading glasses on just yet. He hears something about a Deputy Whip, a conference, and an interview with his staff, and the only thing that appeals to him is lunch.

Well, he’s got something else to do, first. “A moment, Mr. Shrikeweed.”

Gingerly, he pushes himself up out of his chair, one shaky hand braced against the desk. He’s been sitting for an hour and some, so it’s not easy, and he’s aching in all the unusual places that’re becoming usual for him now. As he makes his way round, he traces the top of the desk with his fingertips for balance. He takes his time, picking out his path across Vauquelin’s spacious office and toward the door, and he takes a special sort of joy in it. When he opens up the door and sticks his head out to call for coffee, he makes sure to ask Cardinal how his day is, and he laughs pleasantly, whether the response is meant to be funny or not.

Not half soon enough, he’s making his way back toward the desk. He seats himself back in the cushioned chair across from B.A. Shrikeweed with relish, shifting a little on his erse to make sure he’s as comfortable as he can possibly be. He doesn’t look at the notebook yet; instead, despite the fact that the coffee hasn’t come yet, he takes a moment to bring out a snifter from the bottom cabinet of his desk. He has to be careful when he pours out his glass of brandy, ’cause he doesn’t think Shrikeweed’d like it much if he spilled Twemlaugh all over his notes, and he’s trying to be a pina manna more civil than that, at least.

Once he’s taken a sip, he settles his reading glasses back on his nose and peers down at Shrikeweed’s notebook. He traces the letters with his eyes; he sounds the words out in his head, and he knows what they mean, technically – he knows what "whip" ought to mean – but he’s got a sneaky suspicion he doesn’t know what they mean in this context.

Shrikeweed might think him a fool, but Tom doubts he knows just how little he’s picking up. He decides it’s probably best if Shrikeweed doesn’t learn. Where does that leave him? Is he just delaying the inevitable? He feels a prickle of anxiety. He glances up at the civil servant over his glasses, raising both his red eyebrows. The bland smile finds its way back to his face, second-nature now, if stiff and unwieldy.

Quantitative, he thinks ruefully, looking him up and down. In the world of fists and spilt sap, this man’s about as dangerous as a hingle. In life, Tom reckons he could’ve snapped him in half just like a twig.

Now’s not the time to mourn lost things.

Instead, his smile brightens. “Mr. Shrikeweed,” he starts, warm and friendly-like, “does Legislative Affairs think I can’t do my job? Or maybe you just like sitting in my office.”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - In Stainthorpe Hall
The 6th of Intas - Forenoon

H

e remains perched in the chair. Indifferent comfort. He can sit here for hours. He would prefer not to. The Incumbent pours brandy with his too-stiff, too soft, hands. No calluses from holding pens, writing a careful hand for years without end. No apparent cuts from the paper, no ink stains. The Incumbent’s hands are meant for langid gestures and graceful handling of delicate drinkware. The present stiffness is unbecoming. It is understandable.

Of course Legislative Affairs thinks he cannot do his job. But then it holds that opinion of all Incumbents. It is nothing personal. It is settled matter of natural law. A sure as gravity. As inevitable as corruption and the rising of the sun. No need to dwell on it. Take it as read, the basso continuo of government.

Incompetence. The service can deal with Incompetence. It can be drowned in paperwork. Distracted. Redirected. Incompetence can be made to check Incompetence. Get two politico arguing, and you can go back to running the government. Incompetence is no bother. It can be thwarted through any number of procedural tricks. Shrikeweed is good at those tricks. Soundness is another matter. A politico who cannot be controlled, guided, he corrects himself, is dangerous. Times are dangerous enough.

“Incumbent,” he says, pitching his voice low, smooth. “It is not the intention of Legislative Affairs, let alone mine, to impugn your abilities.” Though it is his intention to strongly imply such. “To serve in Their Magesties’ Government is an enormous task. A great and noble burden. And it is more than any one man, no matter his abilities, can hope to master. Complexities of law, of precedent, of tradition. The ebb and flow of public sentiment. The shifting sand of current events. There is much to take in, to process.”

The coffee arrives. Plain silver pot, cream pot, sugar bowl, a single cup and saucer. Fine porcelain, but florid. Like something his aunt would use to frighten houseguests. He pours a cup, adds nothing to it. Steam rising and the aroma clearing his head. He sips. It is better than the Secretary’s coffee. It is still too weak, too thin. He will have to change that. Calling out to the Elephant every morning will not work. The weather is still too cold. He imagines trying. Imagines Sebele laughing in his face, saying it is too far to walk for to deliver a single cup. The Elephant does not deliver. Sebele is a thaumaturge, her coffee a miracle. He will lunch at the Elephant. Alone. Let the Incumbent dine however he pleases. Perhaps he will drink himself into a stupor.

“My charge, sir, and thank you for the coffee,” he raises the cup and takes a long meditative drink, “is to take up some of these burdens. To provide a vehicle to process the law, the bureaucracy, the minutiae, and provide you, at the end of the day, with a cogent and accurate view, or indeed views, on matters within your remit. Then, with all the facts before you, you can make your most informed policy decisions .” So long as they are the right decisions.

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Late Morning on the 6th of Intas, 2719

He doesn’t know what he expected, but godsdamn, it’s usually easier than this. Shrikeweed’s voice is quiet and smooth; if he’s annoyed, he’s not showing any signs of it. He goes on about the great and noble burden of a man who sits on his erse and lets other kov do his job for him. Tom looks down at Shrikeweed’s hands across the desk, studies them for a moment, the ink under his fingernails, the callouses, then looks back up at his face. His lips press into a thin line.

When the nattle comes in with the coffee, silent except for the clink and clutter of the porcelain, he still doesn’t know what to say. The interruption’s welcome, and it gives him time to think.

Much to take in, much to process. The sentiment might be chroveshit, but he’s right about plenty. Tom doesn’t like that. He doesn’t think B.A. Shrikeweed could throw much of a punch, but he knows that’s not the only way a man can be dangerous. Somebody keeps the wheels greased. There are reasons, he was always told as a lad, why them that’re at the top are at the top. There are reasons why roaring masses of people are subdued with a word and a few hangings, reasons why flesh and blood gets fenced in with paper and ink. It’s nothing to do with magic, and most of it doesn't happen in the Palace or even in the parliamentary offices.

Tom watches him pour his coffee, sucking at a tooth. With all the little lumps of sugar in the little porcelain bowl, with the brimming creamer and its gaudy painted lilacs, he lets his cup alone. The sight’s familiar to Tom, and he doesn’t like that, either. He wonders, unbidden, if he’ll find it too light. Shit’s nothing like the kofi hama used to brew in the mornings – the thick kind that clings to the cup in rings of amber-brown foam. He hasn’t found good Mugrobi coffee in Vienda; he hasn’t found anything good in Vienda, much. There’s more than one reason why Tom’s opted for the liquor instead.

The door shuts behind the lass, and Tom shifts in his seat, propping his head up on a hand. His posture loosens a little; he’s starting to doubt he’ll annoy Shrikeweed out of his office anytime soon. So what, then? Does he keep going round in circles? How many pauses can he stretch out between them? How difficult can he be, before he has to say something of substance? And then what?

And if B.A. Shrikeweed takes his notebook and his pen and his side-whiskers out of his office? What’ll Tom do in an hour? Jump out the window? Tempting, but pointless.

He glances at the shut door behind Shrikeweed, then takes a generous sip of brandy. It’s cloying, but it does the job. “All right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But you’ve got a job to do, same as me, and I won’t waste your time.” He taps his fingertip on the rim of the snifter, then gestures at the notebook. “I don’t know who any of those people are. Hell, I’m sure I’ve passed the Deputy Whip in the hallway, said good day and all the requisite chroveshit, but I wouldn’t know him on sight. I’m completely flooding unprepared. I’ve no damned clue what I’m doing.

“Before I find myself in the Lady Alto,” he continues, looking Shrikeweed in the eye. “I have a job to do, and you have a job to do. I want to help make both of our jobs as easy as possible, and if you’ve the patience to work with me, I intend to work for you.”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda- In Stainthorpe Hall
The 6th of Intas - Forenoon

H

e is not expecting this. Neither the words nor the sentiment. The politicos like to hide their ignorance. Some celebrate it. Some wear it like a shield. Not this one. Not today. The game changes. What is the game now? He recalibrates his strategy. He turns the coffee cup in his hands. Once, twice, three times. Clockwise, anti-clockwise, and clockwise again. It anchors him, resets his thinking. Bland contempt is set aside. He washes it away in another sip. The coffee warms him, and he warms to the work, to the situation, and even slightly, to the man. It takes courage to admit ignorance. Politicos are spineless. Jellyfish have more backbone. Tell an Incumbent their policy is courageous and they collapse like an ill-made souffle. They go back to muttering platitudes. Not this one. Not today.

And the muttering is also not expected. Not this style, this tone. It is coarse, raw. It reminds him of the voices put on by actors playing cunning rogues. Those are affectations, pantomime voices. This is something else. The Incumbent utters it with feeling. It sounds natural in his throat. A stronger voice. Strange. Shrikeweed considers. He cannot place it. He comes to no conclusion. The tone, the words, are filed away. Just another oddity among so many.

The notebook is back in hand. He consults the page again, reads through the Incumbent’s schedule again. He has missed something, an evening meeting. There is little detail, no specific agenda is outlined. ‘The Gioran Matter’. Cryptic. Could be anything. He has all day to sort that out. The Deputy Whip, however, will need sorting. Now.

“Then, Incumbent,” Shrikeweed allows the ghost of a smile to appear, just for a moment, “let us begin our work.” Another notebook. Larger, more battered, appears in much the same way as the first. He flips through several pages, eyes dancing over the words. The writing is too small, too faint. The writing is not his own. He hates that he needs reading glasses now. Seven years ago, he remembers eyes sharper than tacks. No longer. Glasses perching on the end of his nose, he consults the notes again. “The Deputy Whip needs a headcount for blocking a discharge petition. Apparently some backbenchers want to force a vote on several new magistrates before the close of the Anaxi Symvoulio. I don’t have all the background here, but I recognize several of the names supporting the petition. Strong public support for anti-corruption measures. That in itself is suspect. No one is more likely to corrupt than those who rail against it. Still, there may be something to it. I am not sure.” He considers the names, copies them down into his own notebook. The can be investigated. The vote is not for six days. “I recommend evasion with the Deputy Whip. Amiable evasion. Bluster as you need.” Shrikeweed looks at the bottle of Twemlaugh. “Offer him a drink, let him get comfortable. Let him blather on, keep him talking, nod from time to time. Promise nothing, but let him think you are on his side. That should get him to go away and I can look into the matter further.” He does not ask for the Incumbent’s views. Too early. “I will have my recommendations for you by tomorrow.”

Then, he thinks, I can take the measure of you, the measure of the work. Shrikeweed is in the dark. He does not like the dark. Too many unknowns. There may a way out, a way to give shape the unknowns.The notebooks are lanterns. These meetings are candles. The Incumbent is the map. It will fall into place. Or it will all fall down around him. That too would illuminate the gloom.

“As to the conference committee, the notes I have are irritatingly vague. I assume this is not the first of these meetings.” Vague does not begin to describe it. Lacking is nearer the mark. Whoever staffed the Incumbent before was a disgrace. This will need to be rectified. Budget will have to be found. Can he appropriate Wiggins and Levesque? No, Levesque is going on extended holiday. Dorhaven, he thinks. Probably taking the air, or sitting in the warm waters of a mineral spa. Do they have mineral spas in Dorhaven? Levesque could use them. His joints give him grief these days. And Wiggins? Perhaps. No. Wiggins will have to stay at Legislative Affairs. Shrikeweed needs a liaison, a lifeline back home. A lifeline he can trust. Other staff will have to be found. He thinks of a few names. Jots them down. He cannot do this job alone.

The coffee is growing cold. He has heard of iced coffee, something they serve in Bastia. In summer. It seems an abomination to him. A ruin. An insult. He sets the cup aside. “I cannot promise you that I can sort out all your affairs in a day. I know I cannot. It would be madness to say otherwise. But I can help you Incumbent. Now, what you can tell be about this conference committee?”

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Late Morning on the 6th of Intas, 2719

There’s a pause, which Tom’s expected. The civil servant keeps turning his cup round; it’s distracting, and Tom tries not to look down at his hands. He refuses to look away from Shrikeweed and his bland face and its whiskers. He studies that face, and he tries to think what’s turning round behind the eyes, and he finds he can’t imagine. He doesn’t know how the mind of a man like B.A. Shrikeweed works. He doesn’t think he wants to know, being honest.

What he’s not expecting is the faint shadow of a smile that passes over his face, and the way he gets right down to business. No questions, no assumptions. It’s like he’s flipped a page in a book, and now the kov’s speaking a language he can at least marginally understand. For the first time in months, one of these pen-pushing government galdori is being useful to him.

Godsdamn, but this is dangerous. On the one hand, Tom needs help. But you’ve got to give to get, and this Shrikeweed’s going to need access to a hell of a lot of his business, and he doesn’t even know what most of his business is. Is the help worth the risk of working so closely with a man like this? Legislative Affairs has sent him, and he’s unlikely to leave, even if Tom wants him to; it’s going to have to be worth the risk.

Tom’s following what he’s saying, frowning. He doesn’t understand much of what the kov is saying about the discharge petition. He feels, for a moment, like the tension welling up in him has hit a frantic note. What the hell do new magistrates matter, with everything that happened earlier this week? With what he’s got to go to this evening? But steadily, some of the tension leaves him, and he’s nodding. Amiable evasion is something he can do. Blustering is even something he’s good at. And he thinks he’s fair capable of sharing a drink or three with a man and pretending to be on his side; it’s something he’s done plenty of, in this life and in the last.

Then he asks him about the conference committee, and Tom grimaces.

“I don’t, uh,” he starts. He thinks of playing the fool. It would be easy; he isn’t far, he thinks, from a fool. He massages his left temple with his fingertips, frowning down at the fine, soft writing on the page, glimpsed upside-down, illegible. Though he doesn’t know what a conference committee is, not exactly, he knows what he’s sat through and listened to. He knows they’re trying to compromise on something between the houses, and he doesn’t think today’s meeting is going to be the last.

He grunts. “Something about the lit-writ process being different for tsat, and how it’s complicated by figuring out what constitutes a tsat, after the ban and the repeal of the ban.” Frown gets deeper. “Some Ellorie Bellwether’s on the Assembly side of the committee, and she’s running rings around that red-faced towhead, Incumbent Ilvane. But he still won’t budge on the Council version of the bill, and Maurier keeps looking at me like he expects me to say something – like I said something the first time it went through, and he wants me to say it again, only I haven’t a flooding clue how I’m meant to feel about any of it.”

Grimacing, he takes a long drink of brandy, setting his snifter back down with nothing but a thin skin of liquid in the bottom.

“I think I could scrape through one more meeting,” he goes on, creaking in his chair to sit again with his head propped up. He gazes intently at Shrikeweed. “Beyond that, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Here, at least, not taking a side is just as much a choice as taking one. I don’t know what consequences either of those choices are going to have, and I don’t like not knowing.”

It feels unusual, this much frankness, after months of haphazard guessing. His eyes flick to the cup Shrikeweed’s left half-full on the desk near him, soft lamp-light glinting on the porcelain. It’s not the worst Tom’s ever had – there’s no ‘worst’ anything, for a man that’s acclimated to Low Tide, and local Harbor concoctions that might as well be rubbing alcohol – and he doesn’t know what this galdor’s used to, but he can’t’ve enjoyed it.

He indicates the cup with a slight twitch of his head. “Can something be done about the coffee?” His voice is still rough, and he hasn’t smiled once since he started talking in earnest, but he raises a wry brow at Shrikeweed. “I might be persuaded to lay off the liquor until the afternoon, at least, in the future.”