The Ninth of Ophus, an Unknown Time past the 25th Hour
“I am sorry,” he raises an eyebrow as, without preamble, the Sergeant admits to his wife’s dissipation. “Your wife is an opium addict? And was made so by her father?” He cannot fathom it. It defies all paternal duty, it breaks all filial bonds. What should he have expected from a man who would abuse his daughter? Not this. Never this. The world is too full of fathers who delight in doing harm to their children. This, this goes well beyond that. Another monstrosity.
He should expect no less. Not from these men.
Can he keep his face impassive? His tone neutral? I am Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed, Deputy Chief for Policy Analysis. I have no opinions to give, no policies to press. I am a servant. I serve to counsel. Nothing more. In his head he recites the words over and over. A mantra against subjectivity. It half works. His expressions fade, his face is blank, his tone without inflection. It is a mask. It will serve. It will do.
“To what end? Does your wife possess some property under he own right? Property the Captain wishes to acquire? Dissipation and the unfitness of addiction. It would make for a reasonable case.” Reasonable, yes, and still it sits ill with him. “Did he wish to make her docile?” The Sergeant goes on. He enumerates other transgressions, other monstrosities. “Or did he wish to test the potency of his product? Observe the course of the addition, determine if it was sufficient to induce unusually strong addictions?” A captive specimen, one that can be manipulated with law and custom. One that can be observed at all hours. It is all rather neat.
The neatness begins to fall to pieces. The Sergeant has a hand in unraveling it. His expressions, his tone of voice, the cadence of his breathing, all tells. “And, even with this addiction, you still love your wife.” It is not a question. It is a statement of fact. He can measure such things well enough, reason his way into recognizing emotions he cannot feel. This is a man of strong attachments, of strong loathings.
And now there are names. Names he has not heard before. A Hoxian and an Anaxi. One living, the other dead. He does not know the names. They do not appear in his records. An oversight. It will be corrected. In a handful of days he will have them laid out before him. Their lives on paper ready to dissect. It will be only a starting point. Still, they are distinct names. The world cannot be full of Daixio Shuinis as it is full of Thomas Cookes.
His pen still scratches over the page, noting names and events, taking as many of the words down as he can. “May I ask, Sergeant, if you know where one might find the corpse of this Benjamin Tolsby? If that is so, it would perhaps be wise to remove it from your recollections.” He has spent too much time around Bailey. The Thief and his family have a rather more casual sense of execution that is considered proper. Still, they make their cases and carry out their own justice. A hard tradition, but a tradition nonetheless. A tradition of the City.
And you can’t say fairer than that.
“I would suggest, Sergeant, that you too should take some precautions. If you have evidence, I am more than willing to take it into my keeping. Or, if you would prefer, a private consulting attorney may be wiser. I can provide recommendations. I have friends before the bar.” Family too. He will not recommend them. It is too much like the corruption seeping into everything.
“As an offer of good faith, and since you have been so forthcoming, allow me to add just a little of what it is I know about these names.” He has dropped the mask. He is the other man. The man he is becoming. Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed, conspirator, counsel to an Incumbent, protege of a murdered man. “The names of Azmus, d’Arthe, and Ogden, among others, have crossed my desk. They are in some conspiracy together. Perhaps it is this. Perhaps they gather conspiracies about themselves to keep out the cold of irrelevance.” Already he is walking close to the line, to a breach of ethics and privacy of counsel. Of breaking the Incumbent’s trust. Still, the Sergeant has given, and so he must give. “I have other names. I would be much obliged if you would tell me if their mean anything to you.” On another sheet of paper he writes the names of Antonacchi, of Megiro, of Trevisani. He slides them over to the Sergeant. “There is some strange association here, and someone, or some group has a hold on them. All this I discovered quite by accident. Meetings that did not line up. Gaps in schedules.” The Incumbent’s altered self. “The last that I can say in confidence is this. If you wish to take your wife away, for both your sakes, for her convalescence, then may I suggest that you look to Dorehaven? I am led to understand that it is lovely in the spring.”