[Closed] Borders

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Morning on the 12th of Loshis, 2719

T
om doesn’t say anything, because he can’t. That, in and of itself, means something to him; it means more than he can say, even begrudgingly – it means more than he wants to say. He inclines his head, slow. And he doesn’t like it, peering across the desk at this –

Well, he thinks, taking another sip of coffee, the faintest of smiles creasing his eyes. I don’t half know what you are, really.

Because when B.A. Shrikeweed walked into his office – rather, the office of the man he’s pretending to be – a few months ago, he thought he’d sized him up within seconds, and that picture he’d painted hadn’t included a laoso bruise round the eye, or talk of fists in the ring, or getting told (rightfully) the value of taking a beating if it means you win the war. He sees something like iron in the set of the bureaucrat’s shoulders, something like iron but nothing so proud or inflexible, nothing so easy, and he thinks – he doesn’t know why – this is a man who doesn’t sleep well.

So be it; none of us do. Men who sleep well don’t tend to wake up.

He smiles proper as he lowers his cup, just for a moment, but it’s gone at another thrust of that loud voice next door. Gone, too, at Shrikeweed’s careful words, his tilted head. He’s stopped packing his shit, but he hasn’t stopped paying attention.

“Pirbright?” Tom hisses softly, frowning. “No.” But right away, he doesn’t look so sure. His eyes slide sideways again, narrowing. That old nerve right above his cheekbone jumps; it sends a twitch shivering across the left side of his face, and the eyelid flutters. He frowns deeper, crosses his arms, and shifts in his seat. He drums his fingertips silently on the leather arm of the chair.

Piss-angry, somebody is. The voice rises up again, holds its words aloft like a standard. Tom thought it was a kov, but now he’s not so sure, being honest. Sounds a bit like her. He’s only met her once or twice, but as he recalls, she’s got a deep voice for a chip, hard-edged with years of smoking. He can’t tell from here, but the more he listens, the more likely he reckons it is.

And underneath it, cutting like a knife, old Burbridge – a hiss; a hush-hush-hush; a frantic few words, just a rush of breath – except it’s dull and brittle, and it’s nothing to the barrage of indignation. Folds and breaks. Another loud, garbled phrase, impossible to make out through the wall, makes Tom lift an eyebrow and look at Shrikeweed.

If it is Pirbright – Tom doesn’t want to think about it, not this flooding early in the morning. But it’s not Pirbright he’s worried about; it’s who’s sent her. Tom’s thinking about Burbridge’s mouth, and he’s thinking about Eth Kevali da Fintaine and the visiting Huanes and all that messy vodundun.

He snorts once, loudly, at the question. Pirbright – ‘cause he’s fairly sure that’s who it is, at this point – raises her voice up again, and Tom hears a funny slamming noise, like a fist on a desk. “You know I’ll take any excuse to break out the brandy. And I’m sure they’ve got a whole godsdamn gallery full of listeners, by now,” he says into the lull that follows, shrugging his shoulders stiffly. “They’re putting on a hell of a play; why shouldn’t they?”

His hands’re a little shakier as he brings his cup back to his lips. The rim clatters a pina against his teeth, and he clicks them irritatedly. The little cup clatters, too, against the saucer, though by now it’s too low to spill. Tom still curses under his breath.

He had it for awhile, but he’s losing it now. It’s better, these days, but it’s the precision he loses: it’s an open hand or a shut hand, and none of the elegant in-betweens. He used to be graceful as a cat, and it stings too damned much to think about.

Ibrik’s not steaming anymore. Tom swallows his sip of lukewarm kofi, steadies himself again on the rich bitterness, and then looks Shrikeweed in his bruised eye. “If it’s Pirbright, it sounds to me, Mr. Shrikeweed, like Aldous has got himself in deep shit.” His voice is lower. Whatever smile Shrikeweed’s suggestion wrangled out of him, it’s gone now; the frown is carved as deep in his face as it ever was. “I don’t know much about it, but the old fool hasn’t been quiet with his feelings about the Huanes” – Tom can’t quite wrangle the foreign word, but then, most Anaxi can’t – “and he’s been spending a lot of time with that Fintaine. The man.”

An emissary from Gior that isn’t da Huane is unusual, these days, with the way the coins’re stamped, and everybody knows how the Fintaines feel about the Huanes. A male emissary is even more unusual; Tom’d never seen a Gioran man before Kevali. The Huanes’re Anaxi allies, in theory, but after all that sticky business between Brunnhold and Qrieth, everybody knows you keep your mouth shut about anything and everything Gioran. Unfortunately, Tom supposes, an old conservative with Fintaine allies thinks he’s above sense.

“Not that Burbridge can be touched,” he bites off, bitterly, staring at the wall as if by will he might pierce the bookshelves and see into the incumbent’s office. “Old money, old blood. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if retirement’s suggested, by Roalis.” Wouldn’t be surprised if they suggested it for me, he doesn’t say.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda- In Stainthorpe Hall
The 12th of Loshis, 6 minutes past the 9th hour

O

ld money. Old blood. Neither are of any use, and real virtue. A man of substance might come from one, the other, or both, but his worth would be in spite of his origins. He does not trust old money. He has seen too much of the empty-headed, ill-considered plan of such men. They think they run the world because they own the land. What is the use in land? Ten-thousand acres is not a substitute for sense. Such men may own the world, but it is the ink-stained parchment beetles who run it. And the parchment beetles have been failing just as sure as the old blood.

Chaos and dissolution seem as inevitable as the rising of the sun. Still, he will not be their midwife. And neither, it seems, will the Incumbent. From what he knows of the man, the man before his illness, before his change, he was a nonentity, a warmer of the backbenches. The seemingly frail man before him seems a man of better parts. He is still unsound. Of course he is. That is why Shrikeweed is here. But the unsoundness is not one of character.

A worthless man would not now be so eager to listen in on the ruckus in the next office, to gather what leverage he could. The Incumbent is, in is rather confused way, an asset. An asset worth cultivating. He has not expected this, isn’t sure he likes this, certainly does not trust this. Yet there is a strange comfort here, with the Incumbent. Professional comfort. It is not quite the comfortable mastery of Legislative Affairs, but it has its own charms.

One of which, he is finding, is that the Incumbent is not without curiosity. It is a welcome divergence from expectation. Perhaps it arises from the man’s own confusion. The Incumbent has admitted his own ignorance, but he is not a stupid man. Not in the slightest. Does that conform to what little he has gathered on the man? It does not. Not in the slightest. Can a man be improved by such a shock to the mind? A stroke, a brail, perhaps both? If so, he has never heard of it. One more curiosity among so many.

He presses himself and an empty tumbler against the wall. Less expertly than he likes. He is not now nine-years old and this is not the wall to his father’s study or his mother’s office. Yet the law and political secrets lie beyond,The arguments echo in the glass. Muffled, but not without audible content. Pirbright has a carrying voice. That is no asset in a civil servant. He should have a word with her. No. That would be a mistake. She is a political creature, and so, now, is he. Information first. The honor of the service later.

Voices now. Raised. In anger? It is possible. Pirbright, and it is Pirbright, is in a perpetually foul mood. He has never seen the woman look relaxed, at ease. Then again, it has been an age since he has seen either in himself. No matter.

“Pirbright.” he nods. “If not her, then someone doing a damn good imitation. Voice like a strangled Bastian horn.”. Ordinarily he likes the somber tones of that double-reed, but in Pirbright's throat the sound is butchered. He listens for a while, trying to work out the content of the argument. The words ‘Brunnhold’, ‘Qrieth’, ‘scandal’, and the phrases ‘gods-damn dangerous precedent’. ‘Intolerable situation’. Under his breath he repeats the words, over and over like some sort of dry and practical mantra. The words, their tone, the voices. He breathes in, then out, his ear still pressed to the glass, the glass to the wall. He scribes the words in his mind. Later, he will take them down in ink, make them real.

There are names too. Some he knows, others he recalls but dimly. Gioran names. Gior. The ‘Gioran matter’. Idiot! Fool! He recalls those meetings on the Incumbent’s schedule. He never made much of them. Just more meetings. He has been focused on the Symvoul changes. Too much paperwork on that, too many minutiae. Mugrobi has conquered Gior in the spaces of his thought, upon the maps of his memory. He has not been paying attention. That is not like him. He is taking on too much. At Legislative Affairs he had staff, trusted staff. Here he has no one. Trusts no one.

“Sir, forgive me. I have not been following the Gioran matter as closely as I should. An oversight on my part. And one I mean to correct.” He will not have his Incumbent blind-sighted by a creature like Pirbright. His Incumbent? When did that happen? He cannot recall a moment, rather it came on slowly, insidiously. But the man is his Incumbent. Such is the way of things. “Who staffed you during your Gioran meetings earlier in the year? I have been unable to locate accurate minutes, or any clear indication of who might have them.”

There will be minutes. Someone has taken them. Someone must have taken them. Gods he needs staff. One man does not matter. He cannot let himself become an exception. Dear gods, what is he becoming?

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Morning on the 12th of Loshis, 2719

A
nerve beneath Tom’s left eye gives a painful lurch. The muscles jump; a faint shudder goes through the eyelid. But otherwise, he’s watching Mr. Shrikeweed evenly, his pale eyes flat, the traces of a smile still written in the lines around them. He’s set his demitasse back down on its saucer with not so much as a click, despite the tremor in his hands. He’s returned those hands to his lap, now, and he smooths the cloth of his trousers, smooths them evenly, and crosses his legs.

Inside, something has crawled up from his belly and seized his throat, and no words can pass. The Gioran Matter, Shrikeweed’s said, with all the weight of capital letters; with all the weight of curling script.

Tom doesn’t know what the Gioran Matter is. Tom knows what the Gioran Matter is. That’s the problem, that not-knowing, that knowing. He knows nothing but what he shouldn’t say; he knows nothing of what he should.

Too long a pause. Got to say something. Time’s flooding wasting.

I’m afraid I don’t remember. No, no – that wasn’t then. That wasn’t far back enough to be then. Intas, Intas was Tom, and Mr. Shrikeweed knows it, even if he doesn’t know the name of what he knows.

Pirbright rants on; Tom can’t think about the real Gioran matter, or this particular Gioran matter, anymore. The Gioran Matter has nothing to do with Gior. Burbridge has been rendered strangely irrelevant, like a man cut out of paper. Pirbright, like a strangled Bastian horn. It’s an apt descriptor, funny enough Tom remembers snorting as he took the last sip of coffee, the last sip thick and bitter and powdery, a swirl of sediment in the white porcelain bottom.

He thinks of incaustomancy. What do you call it, if you read coffee? Tyat read the future in tea leaves; he remembers, though he doesn’t know, not really. Clairvoyance, he knows now, clairvoyance might well be a misnomer. There’s no seeing anything that’s not in another man’s mind, that’s not through another man’s eyes. Asking questions of the mona is the purview of quantitative conversation – he feels them around him, too, Shrikeweed’s, mingling with the fizz of his porven – but not even a quantitative conversationalist can ask questions about the future.

The Lady Alioe keeps things-that-haven’t-happened-yet behind her voluminous skirts. They’re not for men or tekaa or galdori to know. Clairvoyance is more about the secrets men witness now than things as’ve yet to unfold. Tyat tea reading is more about the kov across the table than it is about the leaves.

Tom looks up at the kov across the table. There’s nothing to be read in-between those auburn sidewhiskers, in eyes that’re the color of no color in particular. Figure out how much he knows, Tom thinks. That’s the thing. That’s the only thing, for now.

“Mmm,” he grunts, frowning. The dregs of the smile fade from his face, but not too quickly. “An oversight on my part, too, I’m afraid, Mr. Shrikeweed.”

He sits up a little in his creaking chair, glances significantly at the book he knows is his schedule. “Meetings in this place’re like birds; you could count how many in a day and just about tell your fortune, I think. Doesn’t make it conducive to remembering, especially with –”

A flicker of a smile; more a twist of the lip. He raises one eyebrow sharply, sardonically, and reaches for the schedule.

“Earlier in the year – you mean before rainy season? All that nonsense between Brunnhold and Qrieth happened late last year. Hell of a lot of Gioran matters in Intas and Bethas, and more since.” He taps the cover of the book. “Show me what you mean, Mr. Shrikeweed,” he says. “Can’t promise I can give you any names, if it was before your time, but there might be something there.”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - In Stainthorpe Hall
The 12th of Loshis, 12 minutes past the 9th hour

H

e does not know, cannot know, what the man is thinking, but he sees the shape of it on his face. It is not a comfortable shape. The twitching eye, the thinning of the lips. These are not the expressions of a man at his ease. This he knows. He has seen it any number of times in the face that looks back at him from the mirror. Now he sees it in the Incumbent. He can read some of the features, the mood in the set of the mouth, and tiredness in the furrowing of the brows. He might even hazard to guess at the shape of the thoughts going on behind those deepening folds.

He has done it before, though not with a man he knows still so slightly. There are no patterns to fall back on, no deep context, not familiar heuristics upon which to draw. Just raw data. So, use it. It will do no good for him to declare no analysis can be done. He just cannot be over sure of the results. Indicators, not conclusions. Maintain an open mind. Make only those assumptions that are necessary. So he watches. He measures. He considers.

Of one thing he is sure, the Gioran Matter, whatever it is, sits ill with the Incumbent. A galvanic reaction about the eye. Sudden, swift, and full of discomfort at the very mention of the matter. It is a tell, an important one, but Shrikeweed is not sure what game they are playing. He will have to bluff. The Incumbent is holding whatever cards he has too close to the vest.

Why? Why does a man, no, why does this man shrink from so seemingly small a matter? What is Gior or him, or he to Gior? Shrikeweed cannot say. That is significant. How? Unknown. A scandal? Evidence of personal corruption? Either is possible. Each may be likely. He puts nothing past Incumbents. And yet. This looks less like shame and more like fear. A curious thing. Worrisome. A frightened man is unpredictable. Unsound.

Yes, and now he understands more. In shapes and in shadows. Still unformed The unsoundness of the man goes beyond his confused mind, gaps in memory, or frail health. No. There is some else there. Something has been eating at the Incumbent. The Gioran Matter. He rolls the words around in his mind.

Singular, not plural. Is that meaningful? If he had made the schedules it would be. Be he has not. It might be nothing. It might be everything. It is vague. The vagueness matters. These are private schedules, not things to be distributed to the press or circulated more widely within the government. Some level of detail would be expected. With so much fallout from the Brunnhold and Qrieth affair, he would have expected a number of meetings, each on different aspects of the situation. Policy meetings. Damage control. Those did appear, and in more or less proper form. But there was the one, unnamed, matter.

And what was it about? Oh the Incumbent is being vague again. Charmingly vague. An oversight? It is possible, but the expressions are wrong. First fear, then agitation, now languid charm. An act? An evasion?

This is not the first instance of evasion. That first day, that cold, bitter, strange, day at the opening of the year, he had asked. He had been turned aside. It seemed a nothing. A nothing does not cause a man to twinge with discomfort. That had been a mistake. He will not make it again.

“The sixth of Intas, and evening meeting. I do not recall the location. That is my clearest memory of the Gioran Matter appearing in your schedule.” There were others, before and even after that date. But the sixth, well, that was when all of this started, did it not? That was the first day. And it has been his first mistake. Now, he will correct it.

The schedule book is soft and supple. Finest calf-skin dyed a blue so dark it is nearly black. It is a joy to hold. It is less of a joy to read. Half a dozen hands have written on these pages, one his his own narrow writing. Most of the others he cannot name. Fingers leafing through pages, eyes darting along, noting the nature of the writings, their positions, their idiosyncrasies. The Gioran Matter. The sixth of Intas. He has is now, in a hand he cannot name. At least three other instances of these words in this hand occur. He does not have time to count them all. There may be no need. There will be other documents in that hand. Find the writer, find the minutes. “Yes, here it is. And there are several other meetings of this nature, I note. I will compile a complete dossier on the Gioran Matter, now,” he gestures towards the wall to Burbridge’s office, “that the matter seems to be returning to us. Very inconvenient. However, it will be so much easier if you can provide me with a summary of your recollections. Or better, your notes. When I locate the minutes,” and he will locate them, of this he is certain, “I would prefer to have your views as the forefront of my mind. To better understand your positions.” He presents his blandest smile to the Incumbent. “And one other thing, sir, I will need a list of who else was in attendance at these meetings. Or shall I acquire that from Cardinal?”

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Morning on the 12th of Loshis, 2719

T
he sixth of Intas. It takes every grain of control Tom’s mustered over the last half-year, every dotted I and crossed T he’s taught himself of manners and of this strange new face, not to let on. He lets that raised eyebrow slide up a fraction of an inch; he lets a faintly confused, faintly bemused expression run across his face, a quirk of the lip, a question unvoiced. Curiosity, a little surprise. Nothing more.

It’s true, that much. He’s surprised, though not pleasantly. And he’s starting to think Shrikeweed knows more about the Gioran Matter than he’s letting on; he’s starting to feel like all that empty space between them might not be so empty, and he’s feeling the weight of it.

Tom was never much of a hand at Rooks, Before; leastways, he never had much of a Rooks face. A few hands and enough whisky, and he’d rather start swinging fists.

If he gives himself away, it’s in the way he looks at Mr. Shrikeweed’s face — studies it, even as he’s taking up the schedule, opening up the benny dark calfskin cover, flipping through the pages.

His fingertips hiss against each leaf; there’s a quiet crackle as he turns them. It’s a sound Tom might’ve found comforting, someplace else. Up in his study, maybe, in the quiet. Different books, different company. Now, each noise the other galdor makes scrapes at his nerves worse than his porven. His eyes’re skimming the pages faster than Tom can keep track of, flicking over a dozen variations on cramped Estuan script.

And he’s talking. Tom licks his lips, creaking back in his chair again. Willing his hands still. He tries not to ball his shaky fist against the arm of the chair; he tries to sit, to breathe easy.

A complete dossier. Tom grunts, his eyes moving from Shrikeweed’s face down to the schedule. He stares fixedly at the pages; his eyelids flutter, twitch, in a little breeze from a turned page.

Like hell you will, Tom wants to snap. It’s getting harder and harder to wrangle his face smooth and blank. Who’re you working for? He wants to demand, exasperated. Why do you want to know? Who’s sent you here to begin with, to get this out of me? And why’ve you been sitting on it for so long, sitting and waiting to broach the subject?

Or do you really not know? Tom looks, slowly, back up at Shrikeweed. Shrikeweed is looking back at him, now. He has a bland smile on his face.

“I don’t know how much I can tell you,” says Tom, honestly, some of the humor fading from his own smile, “but I can tell you Mr. Cardinal won’t have those names.”

When I locate the minutes, he said, with the force of — from any other man, Tom might’ve called it a threat. Your positions, he says, as if how Tom feels about it matters in the slightest, as if the incumbent has any agency at all here. As if it’s just him that’s been caught in some naughty act, and not the high judge himself, and half the Seventen.

If he knows what’s the matter with the Matter, it’s a damned bold move. Too bold, just about, to be Shrikeweed. Dangerous.

What if he’d posed that question to the real incumbent? Tom shudders to imagine. But then, the real incumbent had his own staff. Either Shrikeweed has the protection of somebody powerful — either Shrikeweed has been placed here, at no small risk, by somebody fair powerful — or he’s as in the dark as Tom.

He reaches to take another sip of coffee; he hesitates, grimacing, when he realizes the cup is empty. And the coffee’s cold, besides. And a hundred sips of coffee will just delay the inevitable.

He makes a decision. “With respect, I don’t see you locating the minutes, either, Mr. Shrikeweed. I don’t recall any were taken. Nor notes.” His lip twitches; this smile is bitter-dark, wry. There’s a sinking in his stomach. He’s not smiling anymore, then.

He takes a deep breath, and, if Shrikeweed’ll let him, reaches for the schedule. Pushing the coffee aside gently, he slides the schedule toward him; he turns it round, skims the spidery writing with a shaky finger. His lip curls. He grunts. “Sloppy. You’re right about one thing; whoever staffed him — whoever staffed me before wasn’t worth a tally. You leave a trail of kenser shit, somebody’s going to follow it.”

Snapping the schedule shut, he looks up at Shrikeweed again. His voice is low. He glances over at the shelf of cabinets, where Pirbright continues to rail; he glances over at the shut door behind Shrikeweed. Then his eyes come back into focus on the other man’s.

Another thin, pleasant smile finds its way to his face. “Are you getting hungry, Mr. Shrikeweed?” He knits his fingers over the desk in front of him, and he leans forward slightly. “I could do with a fresh cup of coffee.”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda- In Stainthorpe Hall
The 12th of Loshis, 23 minutes past the 9th hour

F

or a moment he sits, unmoving, reading what he can in the uncomfortable face across the table. There is too much. There is not enough. Data without context, dancing without music. Apprehension, yes, suspicion, yes, and fear. Fear, that is the overriding emotion on the Incumbent’s face. He holds the look in his mind, rolls it around, notes its features and subtle changes. He can make a note of it. Recall it in future. He is not good at reading people, not naturally. It takes work, effort, and memory. This is a face he can file away, a face he can recall whenever some passing glance of the man across the table echoes this face. Cataloged, tagged, stamped and placed in the archives of his mind. They are growing more crowded. Crowded, and confused.

Confused. Yes, that is the other emotion at play in the lines and creases of the Incumbent’s face. The man is confused, uncertain, doubtful. Does he doubt Shrikeweed? Doubt his motives? Possible, even likely. He doubts his own. And yet. There is an accord between them, and agreement. How it came about, he cannot say, but it is there. Not trust. Trust is far too strong a word, far too dangerous. Cautious collaboration? A better way to describe it. They are both at sea here. Between the two of them, they might keep the boat from foundering. Or they will go down together.

That is not an option. He will not allow himself to be drowned. Not here, and not for something he cannot define. The Gioran Matter. It may drown the Incumbent, if he keeps to his fear and his suspicion, if lets it consume him, weigh him down. Shrikeweed has lines of escape. Back to Legislative Affairs, to the family firm even. He can build ramparts of paperwork and vanish into the papery gloom. Refuges. Refuges in which to weather whatever storm blows in from Gior.

The Gioran Matter. The name loses its meaning. It gains another. A ruse? It is possible. The situation with Gior has been tense, there would be committees, working groups, policy workshops. Who would notice one more meeting on a schedule? He nearly missed it. It had slipped his mind. That had been a mistake. He will not make it again.


The Incumbent tries to deflect the matter, tries to smile his way through it. The smile fails. It is a well-made effort. It is in vain. Shrikeweed is not mollified, he is not diverted. The Incumbent has already betrayed himself. A failure to be exploited, and opening to dart through. A means of gaining the politico’s confidence. Afterall, that is why he is here. That is his function. If he is here for some other purpose, some other design, he does not know it. The Service does not know it.

A risk of a false conclusion. Potentially fatal. The Incumbent is not sound. He recalls the Perpetual Permanent Secretary’s words. He thought he understood them. He is no longer sure. There is another cast to that now, another, darker harmony to the music. This Matter, this great discomfort, has it distorted the Incumbent? Stirred up his already troubled mind? How Incumbent unsound? Because he took these meetings? Because he is troubled by them? Because he has failed in some task? The pendulum is at equilibrium. He cannot see the direction of the swing. Can he go back, make inquiries? Another potential danger. We will have to be cautious, surgical. He needs people he can trust. He can count such on the fingers of his hands. Perhaps on one hand.

Thin unsteady fingers take the schedule, and now the Incumbent is looking over it, tense, worried. “Sir,” he says after a long silence, “if no minutes or notes were taken, then, officially the meetings have not happened. They have no formal existence.” He reaches for his coffee. His coffee has gone cold. “I must therefore conclude that the business of these meetings was intended to be kept from proper channels.” It is the logical conclusion. Yet it reveals nothing of the substance. There are always channels, even hidden ones. Confidential filings. Back channels. The Black Protocols. Something. Yet here there is nothing. It sets his teeth on edge, makes the blackening around his eye burn anew. Meetings about Gior that are not about Gior. Meetings that have happened and yet do not exist. It is like an enigma tale, and he is missing too many pieces of the puzzle.

And now, a piece he has seen before, a piece he still does not understand. ‘Him’. Not for the first time the Incumbent speaks of himself in the third person, as though he is a different person that he was once. From the first it seemed like a necessary dissociation, a way of dealing with his illness. Now, he is unsure of what it means.He tests it, to see in what direction the pendulum is swinging.

“If he was so worried about leaving trails of shit about the Hall, then he - you - should have been more careful with the meetings. Lacunae in the records are more suspicious than reams of dull paperwork. False minutes could have been made, should the matter truly be of such a sensitive nature.” He takes a drink of the cold, congealing coffee. He holds the cup in his hands, pressing on it, as though willing the heat of his hands to resurrect the brew. The cup turns in his hands, clockwise, anticlockwise, and then clockwise again. “This, sir, is what I would have done, had you had my services then.”

He is no stranger to confidential matters, to proceedings filed under seal, encrypted, or given meaningless polish and spin. But still, there were always records, proper records. They would have to be referred to, reviewed, checked, noted. The business of government is paperwork. Life is paperwork. “And I am at your service sir. That is my function.” He takes the schedule back from the Incumbent, looks at that fine leather cover, and shakes his head. He does not notice it, but it too moved clockwise, anticlockwise, and clockwise again. “However, I cannot be of use if we keep secrets, professional secrets, from each other.”


Pages go by in the stillness of the office, schedules, meetings, working groups and conference committees. At each he mutters the name, the date, the principles. Committing them to memory. Most he already knows. For most, he has read the minutes. The minutes exist. But not for the Gioran Matter. Not officially at any rate. Sensitive matters, perhaps uncomfortable matters. Such things cause strong emotions. They must be purged, set down, rendered harmless. Simone, somewhere, will have made a contemporaneous memo, will have filed it away for future reference. For future protection. Gods know he’s written enough himself. After nearly every meeting, and every night when he returns to his rooms in Lesser Larch Street. It takes hours, unfolding the events of the day, setting them down in a pattern that pretends to make sense. He cannot sleep without capturing the day in ink. He will not sleep tonight. The sun will rise again before he can even pretend to have made sense of today.

“Another coffee. Yes. I think we could both do with one.”

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Morning on the 12th of Loshis, 2719

Y
ou must therefore conclude! Tom’s smile goes pinched; his lips press thin. Dispense with this, he wants to snap. Of course they have no formal existence; you and I both know this. Why are you drawing it out? Who’re you working for, you toft, with your minutes and your schedules and your Mugrobi coffee and your thrown fists? How much do you know, and what is it you’re trying to squirrel out of me by playing like you don’t know what this meeting was about?

Like you ain’t probably working for the same kov as arranged it, like a word from you to any one of them won’t end with my head on a platter?

He watches Shrikeweed’s bruised face now, unflinching, as he goes on. With his fingertips perched on the cover of the schedule, he is utterly still. Slowly, he raises his other hand to massage his temple, resting his elbow on the desk.

Surprise flits across his face. He keeps watching, through narrowed eyes, as Mr. Shrikeweed takes another sip of his coffee. He cradles the cup in his hands, and – Tom doesn’t look down, but he sees it at the edge of his vision, and the motion is familiar, now.

Left, then right, then back. From where Tom sits, at any rate; across the desk, it’s right, then left, then right. Like you’d open up a safe, Tom thinks. Or like you’d close one – or maybe both. He thinks briefly of all the locks on Mr. Shrikeweed’s office door, but shakes it out of his mind. There’s no time or space to think about that.

It’s a strange thing to be seen, even in this smallest of ways, after months of hiding behind another man’s face. It’s a strange thing to be caught – to be taken seriously.

But Tom has a feeling Mr. Shrikeweed takes everything seriously.

And he takes the schedule back, after he’s made his point. Tom lets it go, watching it slide across the desk and open back up. “It’s a pity,” he parries, raising an eyebrow, “he didn’t have your services, then.”

Honesty for honesty.

Ink-stained fingertips flick carefully back through the pages. His eyes flick over them. His lips move, half-shaping dates, times. Some of them are familiar to Tom; some are not.

Coffee. The headache is already thumping through the back of his skull, rhythmic like the swing of a pendulum. He presses his fingertips to his left eyelid, and he watches the colors dance in the dark behind it. He needs something stronger than coffee.

“More coffee,” he grunts, sitting up in his chair, “yes. By the way, the offer of brandy still stands. Or Gioran whisky, if you’re a man who cares for irony.” A mirthless little snort.

He’s starting to realize something about Incumbent Vauquelin – he’s starting to realize something about all of them. He thinks of d’Arthe, of the High Judge, of Megiro and his clocked-up eye. Everything they talked on in Intas, whatever’s to happen in Dorhaven, it’s a single swung fist, sloppy and careless.

Careless – why? Because they can be, thinks Tom. Because he’s the clocking High Judge, and he’s got chairs of the university in his pocket, and there’s nobody can touch him, so why should he bother to cover his tracks?

He peers across at Shrikeweed. “The matter is, as you say, of a sensitive nature. And it’s nothing to do with Gior, I’m afraid. That much I can tell you, if you haven’t already guessed.”

The commotion next door has all but quieted; the occasional voice can be heard, but Pirbright no longer sounds her strangled horn. He tries to think through the headache.

“Mr. Shrikeweed, this isn’t a matter you want to look into. You don’t want those names,” he says quietly. “It’s sloppy work, this half-ersed attempt at secrecy; I agree with you. Your suspicions can’t’ve been the only ones raised by this. And if this were about me, I’d already be taking steps – we’d already be taking steps to fix this.” He frowns. “But it’s not my secret, and we’ll both be the better off for putting it behind us.”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - In Stainthorpe Hall
The 12th of Loshis, 29 minutes past the 9th hour

S

uspicions. The whole damn thing is suspicious. The whole thing reeks. And you, he thinks, you reek of fear. The Gioran Matter. Nothing to do with Gior and everything to do with incompetence, with botched secrecy. Is it botched? He has not been able to arrive at an answer. He has only been at the Matter this morning. He has not left the room. How much could he deduce? Give it time, he will find the answers.The answers are sitting across from him, folded in on themselves. What do you fear Incumbent? Who do you fear? And who, he adds, should I fear?

The Incumbent will not say. There if a gulf there, a separation. Shrikeweed stares across it. The other side is shadowed, unformed. He will learn nothing else here. Not today.

“If you desire, if you so order, I will drop the Matter.” A lie. He is becoming practiced in lying. He will not drop the Matter, cannot drop the Matter. He will carry on, alone. It might be sorted out. The paperwork must be completed. The paperwork does not exist. Can he rectify that? Create minutes where there are none? Instantiate the non-existent? And what is the danger in this? What is the secret? Questions piling up like unfinished drafts. They will rise and totter and fall. He will be crushed under the weight of it all. He will need answers. If need-be he will make answers. The data is there, scattered like crumbs throughout the Hall, perhaps elsewhere. They can be gathered, reasoned over. He has done it before. No. Never like this. Before there were patterns, lines of cause and effect. Here he has neither. Instead he has a frightened man. A man who is not himself.

Not himself. Is that what this is about? Unlikely. The Incumbent’s state is known. That is another lie. The shape of the Incumbent’s infirmity is known, but the specifics? The man who is not himself, who knows he is not himself? That is something different. Stranger. No illness he knows of, now failure of magic he has ever heard described, can explain this. A man does not become divorced from himself, not like this. Another narrow and twisting alley to explore. Alone. The Incumbent will not - cannot? - help. “It is indeed a shame he did not have my services. But you have them now. My remit is to assist you, to help you through these trying months. To extricate you from trouble.” To keep you to a sound course. How can he do that if he does not know what came before?

For a while he watches the man, watches the pain in his face. The pain that mirrors his own. Sympathy. A strange kind. Pain for pain and trial for trial. Shrikeweed finds the man, the man the Incumbent has become, strangely congenial. Thoughtful, reasonable, even cautious. Cautious men may make mistakes, gods know he has made enough, but rarely are they careless. The Gioran Matter is careless, that at least he knows. The Gioran Matter belongs to the man that came before. That is not the man across the desk. The man has become someone else. And he is growing to like that man. It is not expected, perhaps it is unwise. Nevertheless, it is there.

The Incumbent will have his services. His full services, even if the man does not know. Perhaps it is better that way. One more border, one more separation between them.

The sounds in the next office are dying down. Whatever leverage they could acquire from that row is lost to them. It is replaced. Transmuted. There is no leverage now. Merely doubt and suspicion. The Incumbent says it is not his secret. That too seems a lie. It belongs to him, and to nameless others. And now, in a strange way, it belongs to Shrikeweed as well.

“Irony, that I would drink, but not whisky. I never developed a taste for it.” Slow, deliberate motions, and he rises, crosses to the liquor cabinet and draws out snifters,and the Gioran whisky. There is also a bottle of Mugrobi arak Fine and old, twenty years at least. He pulls that out too. It seems fitting. A transition. “Shall I pour sir? We can dispense with Gior for the day I think. Mugroba is a much more pressing matter. A more congenial matter, don’t you find?”

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Morning on the 12th of Loshis, 2719

S
hrikeweed drops the Matter. For now, Tom thinks; for the foreseeable future, he hopes, though he isn’t sure he’s willing to believe that. Shrikeweed is watching him, as carefully as he’s watching Shrikeweed, and he can’t say how he feels.

Tom says nothing more about it. He does not even nod, for how tenuous it feels, this agreement to let the wound fester in the quiet dark. He feels as if the slightest twitch will bring attention back to it; he feels as if, in being spoken aloud, the agreement will lose its meaning.

Maybe it has already lost its meaning. Maybe, once torn, the bandage just won’t lay right. Maybe he doesn’t want it to; that’s the problem.

It is a damned shame, he thinks again, that Vauquelin didn’t have Shrikeweed’s services, and it’s a damned shame Tom can’t trust him enough to make use of them now. With him sitting across the desk and tackling each strangeness as it comes with blunt practicality, drawing the line between him and you without batting an eye. It’s a damned shame.

That swollen bloom of purple and black round his eye, singed sickly yellow at the edges – he’s almost got used to it, for all it’s been there the whole morning. He’s almost forgotten it’s not every day Mr. Shrikeweed comes in with his eye swollen half shut from some kov’s fist; it no longer seems so out of place on the bureaucrat’s face, and the thought disturbs him.

The ring, he said. Tom wonders if this is a man who goes looking for fights. He knows the type rather well. He would’ve never thought it, back in Intas, but he has come to believe much stranger things. He hopes Shrikeweed skips this game of Rooks.

One way or another, he knows it’s not going to end well.

When he stands and crosses to the liquor cabinet, Tom raises both eyebrows, more than a little incredulous.

The snifters glint in the low phosphor light; he can see the shape of the lamp on the desk reflected in each bulb. “To each his own. I’m told he never had much of a taste for it.” No use insulting the other man, he reckons, by waffling back now. “There’s something about Gioran – the apah.”

Mugroba. Tom nods, watching Shrikeweed pull out another bottle; he doesn’t see it properly until it’s sitting on the desk with the Gioran. He smiles faintly, glancing back up.

“If you would, Mr. Shrikeweed. I can’t say I’ve ever tried arak; I’m curious. Might as well drink to the passing of the torch,” he offers, “before the house burns down.”

He’s heard of the spirit, at least; hama told him once of the kind the tyat’d distill in Manatse, strong as white whisky. He’s not sure this is quite the same substance, but he wonders if it’s meant to be diluted. He catches a whiff of something like aniseed, as the bottle’s opened. For all his talk of putting away cheap whisky like water, he’s always been fond of botanicals.

He straightens in his seat, crossing his legs and leaning on the arm of his chair. “You’ve a fondness for coffee and Mugrobi spirits, and Mugrobi bureaucracy – much as I reckon that goes without saying,” he adds, smile gone crooked and wry. “What can we expect, as the Symvoulio turns? I can’t say I’m looking forward to dealing with the Bull Elephants in their own territory.”

If I make it that long, he doesn’t say. If I ain’t some other kov by then.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda- In Stainthorpe Hall
The 12th of Loshis, 37 minutes past the 9th hour

H

e has never tried the arak. The arak is in his cabinet, open, partly drunk. ‘I’ has never tried arak. ‘He’ has had it more than once. Another discontinuity. Another lacunae. The nature of these still eludes him. That alone is worth following, even to the bitter end. And the Gioran Matter? That too he will follow, but the shape if it is still just beyond his vision. Something is afoot. Something that frightens the Incumbent. Something that frightens ‘I’.

What changes happened between the two men, between the third and first person? It cannot be trivial. It must be vital. There is no use in prying more. Not here. Not today. Other lines of inquiry will have to be pursued. A sigh. The truth still sits upon the other side of the table. This would all be so much easier if the Incumbent would speak; if the Incumbent would trust him. Trust is earned. He will try and earn it.

He uncorks the arak. The aroma, aniseed and the memory of summer heat rises, fills the air with the scent not of Vienda, but of Thul Ka. The scent of change. The snifters poured, is that the right glass for arak? No. Not in the slightest. What is the right glass? He cannot say. He will ask Sebele, there is a chance she may know. Or they can be confused together. An underappreciated state, an shared ignorance. A shared chance from knowledge.

He looks at the Incumbent now, wishes he could share confusion with this man. He cannot. The confusion is all one-sided. Shrikeweed can offer the man few secrets of his own. There is little enough to give. What secrets does he have? That he indulges in boxing? That might be something. Little enough. It is not the sport of gentlemen, but then Shrikeweed is no gentleman. He earns his crust by his labors. Owns nothing but portable property. Lives on credit and his good name. It is enough.

You like the pain, he says to himself. That is something few know. Fewer would understand. He himself does not understand it, yet it is there. Pain focuses his thoughts, pares away useless lines of reasoning. And there is something else there, a satisfaction for which he has no name.

To drop the Gioran Matter will cause him pain. The pain is of the wrong kind. Mental, not physical. He will gain nothing but sleepless nights from that. It will cloud his thoughts, make him less of an asset. An error. Fatal. His purpose is to be useful. He desires to be useful. How can the Incumbent not see that? Why does he hide his past? The past is ‘Him’ not ‘I’. Yet the fear carried over. A man arises from his past, is shaped and governed by it.

It is not enough. It explains nothing. Leave it be Shrikeweed. It can do you know good to dwell on it here. Other matters are pressing. Stick to those. Stick to the rising scent of aniseed and the business with Mugroba. Be of use. Perhaps, in time, the Incumbent will slip as he grows comfortable. Perhaps not. Yet is is worth a try.

He places the snifters upon the table. Raises his own. “To the Change. And may it not crush us.” It is a weak toast, but not without feeling. It names the business of the hour. The business that should be his work.

“With respect to the Change, sir, I cannot say with certainty what to expect. Still, the Mugrobi will consider themselves to have the advantage. They will be overconfident in what concessions they can wring from us. That will be their mistake. And our opening.”

He takes a sip of the arak, bitter, and spiced, and floral. A strange taste. A taste that changes and evolves upon the tongue. Appropriate.

“I admire the Mugrobi, after a fashion. Their coffee cannot be equalled. Their cuisine is a delight. Their politics interests me.” A country governed as though it is a city and its hinterlands. That appeals to him, seems natural and correct. What is Anaxas is not Vienda and its tributaries? Brunnhold thinks too much of itself. Believes it plays more a role in the politics of the nation than is seemly. What do the magisters and the Chairs know of proper administration, of the complexities of governance? Little enough. It would be far better if the University were to close in upon itself, retire from the world, and leave Vienda to its proper place. “I find myself congenial to the nature of their politics, to some of their factions, horrified by others. Such is the nature of politics. Sir. But I cannot understand their devotion to extreme candor. Lies sir, lies are what keep us civilized, keep us on the even keel. The little lies. We hide them of course, dress them up in the names of ‘politeness’ and ‘manners’ but they are lies sir. It is foolish to think otherwise. And neither of us is a fool.”

He raises his glass again, a gesture he hopes will cement the truse. The truce is a lie, a necessary one. He will carry on. The Gioran Matter will not be dropped. It is required, if only the Incumbent could see that. Whatever scandal is bound up in these meetings that did not happen, Shrikeweed will ferret it out. And what then? Unknown. It would be a danger to set plans so far in advance of the data. He will need time. The Change buys him that. For now.

“And the Mugrobi do lie sir.” He turns the snifter in his hands. Clockwise, anticlockwise, and clockwise again. “Never doubt that. And the first lie is the one they tell themselves. The lie that they are always truthful. And that gives us leverage.” He smiles, a genuine expression. “All the leverage in the world.”