[Closed] The Periodic Conspirators (Tom)

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - Evening Streets West of Stainthorpe Hall

The Sixteenth of Ophus 2719, Thirty-Six Minutes past the Eighteenth Hour to Eleven Minutes passed the Nineteenth Hour

D

imness has settled on the labyrinth of streets. Dimmer still for the failing winter light. The phosphor lamps do no good, not at this hour. Can a lamp swallow light? Or is its shining now a reminder of the night ahead? It will be a long night, with or without the lights. Away and away from the broader streets, from Processional Street and the mouths of the Kingsway. West now along Landsdown Lane, and westward still. Not a tack he would take to reach home, not under ordinary circumstances. He will have to backtrack once the Incumbent is bundled into his cab, rattling on towards Bellington. And then? North and east and north again, toward the Chancery, toward the Clockhouse and Smike’s End.

Smike’s End. Home.

Snatches of conversation flit by, like flakes in the frosty air. It is not snowing, not yet. There are flakes all the same. Cold shards of words. ‘He had an apartment in Smike’s End where I lived for many years, where he would visit me.’ The Weaver’s words. Words that told him more than perhaps she would care to think. Home streets, where, if he chose, he could snatch rumors from the empty air. Before there had been little need. Now, it seems he always goes out with a net to catch the latest curious news.

Do you know where I live, Incumbent? A question he has never bothered to ask. It seems significant now. Significant since meeting the Weaver. Do you know I live but a stone’s throw from where you kept your mistress? That we must have passed each other in the streets half a hundred times and never known it? Does it matter?

More snatches of conversation. This time the voice is Bailey’s. ‘I’ve heard old lovers talk sir, any number of times, but this tone’s all wrong. Not amourous. Not bitter. Kind sir, but not passionate. Avuncular’s nearer the mark.’ He turns that over and over, parsing, measuring, arriving nowhere. Was she ever your lover, sir? Or have we gotten this all wrong? It would not be the first time, and it will not be the last. ‘He’ and ‘I’, Anatole and Tom. Was she ‘his’ mistress and not ‘yours’? The though makes no sense. It makes all the sense in the world.

“Hmm?” The Incumbent has said something, drawing him from his thoughts, and back to the winter streets and the chill evening air. The words are chill enough on their own. “You chose them.” It seems unlike the man he knows to have done such a thing. To be drawn in, to be fooled, and then to not know how to escape, that fit all too well with the Incumbent, with Tom. “I cannot quite credit it, well, not to the man you are now. Still, you are much changed.” For the better. A dangerous thought, and yet he cannot shake it. “And what views did they extend to you? So many of them are Reformists. New Men.” Men more like himself than those of old family and older names. “Your own name is noble and antique. I can find any number of Vauquelins in the archives. Perhaps not always among the great, but always there. Or was it their sense of purpose? Their zeal and facility for productive action?” That, at least, he could admire, even as his own politics departed from theirs. “Certainly their star seems to be ascendant in the councils of the nation. And what Incumbent does not wish for powerful friends?”

Such friends are useful to his own ends. At least for a time. They wish to use him? All very well and good. He shall use them in return. Use them up and cast them aside, at least if he can manage it. Careful. It will be all too easy to fall into their circle, to forget their means and admire their practical application. Neither means nor ends are sound. He will have to watch himself. He will need others to watch him. At least he does not harbor the Reformists contempt for the lower orders. They are necessary, useful. To deny use is to squander opportunity. To disdain them is to invite revolution. That cannot be allowed.

“I am fond of carrots sir. And therein lies the danger. I do not think myself wholly immune to their blandishments. Influence is useful sir. Influence, not notoriety.” That would be poison. Anathema. “I prefer to remain a cog in the great machine. Useful and anonymous. I will try and hold to that sir. I fear it may be all I have.”

Streets pass them by, one after the other. Narrow lanes and little byways. Uncrowded at this time of day. These are streets he knows, of which he is fond. In these narrow places the city is itself. Little shops and half-hidden courts, markets with little wide fame. Markets where the best of produce, of books, and of wine can be had. Places where debates are held in arcades and unremarkable squares. Even Crosstown, for all its fame, is much fallen off. The pulse and power of the city centered now on Ro Hill and its fine houses and royal ministries. He has little influence in such places, or among the councils of the royal retainers and their social lives.

Perhaps tonight all that will begin to change. It does not suit him. He is a man of the Clockhouse, of Crosstown and Smike’s End. The Palace and its ilk should not concern him. The diarchs are not of his kind. There is something in them and their court that, even after centuries, still seems alien to the city he knows. The city he loves.

Dasiphora Street and the crowd all about them. Evening ladies and gentlemen about their business. Early diners off to the theater and the opera. Off to dinner parties where they know the food will be execrable. Uncountable parties. His own will be one. The Pendulum offers decent enough food. He is not sure he can stomach it. “Thick with people here tonight.” Thick with cabs in equal measure. He holds up a hand, fingers crooked in a summoning gesture. He may despise carriages and cabs; that does not mean he does not know the proper signs to draw them close. A clattering of wheels and one, a hackney cab, moa-drawn, swift and light, draws close. “That at least should get you home in time to dress for dinner.” Dinner dress. Another abomination of the New Men. He may be of their ilk, but he is not of their kind. Shrikeweed and Ganisborough, his mother’s name, are old among the Clockhouse set. Lineages as old as Vauquelin, if less noble. Custom runs deep with them. Custom does not demand uniformity of dress at dinner. An abomination. Well, it is but one of many. “ Gods I loathe these truly formal occasions with attire so controlled.” He gives the Incumbent his usual sly smile. “Still, the time and place demand it. And who are we to cross such demands?”

[Tom Cooke]

En Route to the Pendulum Club • Uptown

Evening on the 16th of Ophus, 2719

N
oble and antique,” he repeats, lips twisting. They’re dry already in the cold air; the tip of his nose and his fingers are numb. They could’ve taken one of the broader lanes, better-lit and warmer, Processional where it meets Kingsway and where even now they’ll be selling mulled wine streetside. There’s none of that for him tonight.

Wine, he thinks sourly. It’s been an age since he’s had aught to drink. He’s avoided even such things as that, because he knows even the slightest touch of it is like the first clattering pebble of a landslide.

He knows he should leave it there. He looks over, where the light from the street that’s coming up is drifting round and catching his profile, long nose and weak chin like a bird’s, colorless eyes too shadowed now under a passing awning to see. A face he’s learned to set trust aside with, because there’s no trusting or not trusting this man; he doesn’t know if you can call it trust, what’s between them, but it isn’t by any common definition.

And yet. “Been looking for Vauquelins in the archives, have you, sir?” His grin’s a bitter twist. “I wouldn’t know.” And you know it, he thinks, you damn well know it, Shrikeweed. You know none of it lines up, so why are you trying to make it?

Habit, he thinks, then: necessity. And it’s out of necessity for himself that he ensure it doesn’t line up. In the qalqa of the Pendulum, he supposes they’re together; in that qalqa, they’re enemies.

“Antiquity, maybe; nobility, I can’t be sure. At least, the way his – the way my old writings would have it, Mr. Shrikeweed, they were secular academics. I must’ve seen myself as one of them, anyway, one of these new men.” He doesn’t like talking about it much. He tries not to think of it; he busies his eyes with the passing facades, the windows of booksellers dull grey in the gloaming, thickets of nameless books.

The mother, the father. Both dead, and good riddance; the wife and the bochi he might have to worry about, but he doesn’t have to worry about any of the Vauquelins’ ilk. Cousins send letters sometimes, and Diana handles those. Apparently Anatole wasn’t much good at keeping up with his folks, anyway.

He looks askance at the Shrike once, at the sidewhiskers nestled into the striped loops of his scarf. He doesn’t say anything, but he inclines his head, taking in a deep lungful of cold air.

“They want a cog, if I had to guess,” he says when at last the thoroughfare’s in sight, a spill of lights around silhouettes of ladies in high-collared coats and gloves, chattering over shopfronts. “That’s the trouble with it. They want a man who’s happy with the influence, and happy too to stay in the background and let them play their game.” His voice is faintly raspy. “What they don’t want is an angry man.”

He doesn’t have to say it: and you, he thinks, are a very angry man. I have seen it, and you’d best make sure none of them ever do.

It’s chatter after that, on the bright street. There’s something funny about the sight of the Shrike hailing a cab; he doesn’t know what. “I should make it in time,” he says cheerfully enough, “if my collar doesn’t choke me.” Old agreement, that, well-worn and easy. It’s you and me on the same side tonight, he knows they’re saying: he looks over and catches his eye as the coach rolls up, and he’s a narrow fox’s smile on his face to match Shrikeweed’s sly one.

“In fact, I reckon it’s our job to meet those demands. I’ll see you there, Mr. Shrikeweed.” He touches the brim of his hat, and then he goes.

His head’s a stew in the cab; he looks out the window, though he sees little more than the lights whisking themselves by.

Face after face – gollies and natt and tsat at work and leisure – face after face after face. He’s not sure what’s caught him, but he tries at first to put names to them, to weave something from their red-cheeked, red-nosed laughter and their clothes roughspun or Uptown fine, from snatches of conversations never more than a word or two.

He imagines the woman sweeping out front the cafe has two bochi at home; he gives her the name Beth at first, then Grace. He wonders who wove the tartan shawl draped over her shoulders, just beginning to fray, and imagines the gnarled hands of her mother. A golly lass with bright coppery hair is laughing, a steaming cup of wine cradled in her hands. The gentleman walking beside her – who’s just told a joke, he thinks, and a ribald one, if her blush is anything to go by – is dressed smart, but not wealthy; he imagines him the son of Brayde farmers come to the capital after his schooling, for…

He can’t anymore, after a while. He shuts his eyes and doesn’t look out the window. He’s been thinking of it with a knotted ache, wound up tight. He’s been wanting to be them, all of them, anyone but him.

And he knows well enough whom he must be tonight.

He’s late, in the end. His feet are made of lead. His hand shakes when he gives himself a fresh shave, though he narrowly avoids cutting his jaw.

He looks in the mirror and sees a mask, when he gets his coat: all of him a mask. The starched collar, the low waistcoat, the neat black dinner jacket like a uniform. He can smell pressed cloth and hair oil and cologne; he tells himself it’s someone else’s, and he holds onto it with two hands he doesn’t have anymore. It’s Morris who brings him his coat, calling him sir, and he offers his customary chilly smile back.

He’s late, in the end; it’s a private coach he takes to the Pendulum Club, and he has no doubt Mr. Shrikeweed is already there, punctual as he is. The dome looms dark against the sky, the windows like yellow eyes, and no stars in the cloudy, velvet-dark sky. The streetlamps catch on the bare shivering branches. He shivers, too, when he climbs out of the carriage and starts up the steps.

He is escorted into the foyer, where his coat is taken; he doesn’t breathe down the long hall, and then, when the door opens, it’s like the breaking of a spell, and he fits the last of the mask to his face.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - Evening Streets, Later, Smike's End

The Sixteenth of Ophus 2719, Twenty-three Minutes past the Nineteenth Hour to Seven Minutes past the Twentieth Hour

T

here is little need to consult the archives for the Vauquelin name. It has been hovering around and about politics and in learned circles for ages. It rises and falls with due season, but it never quite goes away. Like a coat style that refuses to go out of fashion. A classic, rather than a fad. Perhaps that is the difference he sees. So many of the New Men are faddish. Men of the moment who fortune favors for a little while, whose star burns a little too bright. The Incumbent is not such a fleeting thing. Neither is the Judge.

Such men may find allies in those who fear their own ephemerality. Who wake in the night and wonder if their prominence is like the life of a mayfly.

“There are no Incumbents in my family, sir. No country estates or lists of honors. Look for us in the historical records and you are most likely to find a signature on some legal document, attesting to the authenticity of this or that will or trust. The single anecdote of what passes for notoriety was that one Amelia Shrikeweed, a four-times great aunt of mine, was clerk to one principal litigators in the early stages of Boythorne and Boythorne.” Family lore was that she had discovered old Josiah Boythorne’s last and most clear will among the papers of a copyist who had drunk himself to death. It made authentication difficult, and the will was suppressed from evidence. The case had ground on for two-hundred years, before being dropped with the Boythorne estate was eaten up in costs. His father now has will, keeps it in a special archival box in his private office, along with Amelia’s journals. On certain family feast days, when the departed were honored, his father had always read solemnly from the journals and from the will. Amealia is as close as they have to a famous ancestor. “Do you know the case, sir?”

He does not expect that the Incumbent, either Anatole or Tom, will. In the right circles it is famed. He no longer moves in those circles. A pang, and not the first this month. Gods and ghosts. Thinking of Boythorne he is nearly drug back, of not to the Courts then at least to the Chancery. Nostalgia is a vice, a luxury. He cannot afford either. He has new vices to cultivate. There is only so much space for such things.

“Perhaps he, that is you sir, were looking to cement your place, to guarantee the prominence of your name.” He no longer cares to maintain the pretense. There are two men here, two men who share a face and body. Two men who share a connection to the Weaver. Two men who share nothing else. How that can be, he is not sure. He is not even sure what questions to ask. There is little to nothing on one Thomas Cooke. The name does appear in census rolls. It appears many times. The country is full of Thomas Cookes. Are any of them you sir? Or did you choose that name because it is all too common?

A cog the Incumbent says. It is a role he knows well. A role he longs to resume. But not for the conspirators. Whatever machine they are building it is an engine of chaos. “They should be pleased then, to accept into their company the Deputy Chief for Policy Analysis. Or, at least what parts of him I can still conjure up. I know that mask well sir. I have worn it close to my skin of years. It will not be a matter of great effort to become that man again.” A joy even, for a time. The mechanics, the operations, the means will be a delight. The ends will wither his soul and render him sick beyond measure. More luxuries to be discarded. Or at least to be put away.

They do not want an angry man. No, he thinks, they do not. Ambitious, perhaps. Can he set aside his anger, his rage? In the confines of his gloves he flexes his fingers, forms fists and lets them go. How many nights in the ring will be needed? How much pain can he endure? How much pain will he inflict. “You’ve seen the rage, sir, because it was necessary. Because the enormity of matters overwhelmed me. I can expect such blows now. Endure the pain. I can feint as needed. And that rage does not belong to the man who goes to the Pendulum tonight. I will put him away when I return to my lodgings. I suggest much the same for you. Let it be ‘him’ who comes to dinner. His will be the face they expect. It is best not to disappoint our hosts.”

A coach now, and a fine one. One that suits a man of the Incumbent’s station. All dark glossy paint and shining brass. The Incumbent mounts at last, moves his hat in a civil manner. The gesture is returned. It is proper that it be so. “We will do what is necessary sir. I have tried to do so all my life. I see no reason to deviate from the course.” The carriage begins to move off, west and south, toward Bellington and lower Ro Hill. “Good evening to you sir. And safe travels.”

For a while he waits in the gathering gloom, watching the carriage go. Then he too turns, and makes his way home.

Curlew Street and Pethering Lane, then back to Crosstown and skirting along the northern edge. The hill begins to rise, a little past the Chancery. He fixes the place in his sight, holds its image in his mind. This is who I am, he thinks. I am Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed, Deputy Chief for Policy Analysis. My function is to serve, to advise, and not to possess opinions upon policy. I have no opinions. Opinions are another luxury he can live without.

Lesser Larch Street and the evening growing darker. The little courtyard filled with dry and broken leaves. The frost has joined them. The lingering snow decorates the upper slopes. There are lights coming from the tea house, sounds and smells. A pleasant evening beyond that painted door. No pleasant evenings for him.

Seventeen steps and he is before his outer door. He has no time to reach his keys; the Thief is there, opening the door. “Evening Mr Shrike. I’ve already arranged for a cab. Nothing fancy, mind, but it will be here in an hour or so. Put in word at the stand down on Gascoyne and Partridge.”

“Thank you Bailey.” He regards the Thief, his untamable hair, his patchy, incipient scruff on the angles of his jaw, the dexterous and spidery fingers. “And, please, for all our sakes, do not go out tonight. Stay in. Go to the tea house if you must, but go no further.”

“Mr Shrike, sir?”

“Everything sits ill with me tonight. I would rather not have to worry about one more thing.”

Bailey nods. “Alright, I’ll not be going abroad. Damned chilly tonight in any event.” He slinks back and folds himself into his alcove, lights a small lamp, and leans back in the flickering shadows. “Good luck tonight Mr Shrike. Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as all that. Just dinner at your club, after all.”

“Just dinner. Yes. Yes indeed. What could be easier?”

[Runcible Spoon]

Vienda - The Pendulum CLub
The Sixteenth of Ophus 2719, Evening

Intermezzo

A

lfred Noyes is a discreet man. He moves with care and grace, soundless, polite. He says little, sees less. He is well compensated for it. He does ask questions of course. The old admonition to ‘ask no questions’ is absurd. It cannot be followed. It cannot be countenanced. And so Alfred asks questions. He asks them with great frequency. They are the important questions. ‘Can I get you another brandy sir?’, ‘will you be staying the night, sir?’, and, most of all, ‘do you have an invitation, sir?’

That last question he has been asked a great deal tonight. The senior members, all men he has served for years, have their invitations. There is barely a need to ask. Alfred Noyes is a surer guardian of privacy than any slip of paper or good word. Another thing upon which to set his pride.

He has served the members, served the Pendulum for twenty years. Gods willing he will last another twenty. His rise has been slow and steady, from underfootman through door porter, and at last to the lofty post of Steward of the Second Floor. A rise he engineered with care, with decorum, and a keen sense for the politics of the Pendulum. And it is politics tonight that will be discussed in Private Suite, of that he is sure. External politics. National politics. Nothing that concerns him.

Of course, to be a discreet man, one has to know about all the things he must not say. How else can he maintain his reputation?

* * *

Charles Algernon Stanhope, (Member, Pendulum Club), swirls the old Gioran whiskey in his glass and watches the room through the slow circling liquid. Sepia toned and distorted, he counts the members he knows as they enter the sitting room in the Private Suite. A club within a club, a sanctum sanctorum. He accounts it a privilege to be here. Well, it should have been a privilege. Privilege had been dangled before him; dangled and then snatched away. It has been, not exactly replaced - tempered might be the correct word - with compulsion, with obligation.

So what if he enjoyed the company of a well groomed human lass? Or two or three. It was not as though he would be seen in public with them, would acknowledge them or any by-blow as more than either a trinket or an accident. He requires a bit of fun, as do all men, nothing too sordid. A good deal less sordid that half the men in this room, if rumor was to be believed. And Charles Algernon Stanhope has never discounted a rumor. There is far too much money to be made in following the fads and whims, the rumors and the gossip of the City.

He drains his glass in one long, too-quick gulp, more to ready himself for the night to come than to enjoy the taste. He is a rich man, he can afford to waste good whiskey. Dammit all, but it’s practically a requirement. Performative profligacy and all that. And tonight is a night for performance.

“Noyes!” He waggles his glass and searches the room for steward with a languorous eye, “more whiskey.”

The man is already at his side. He has materialized from nowhere. Damned unsettling habit. Damned useful in getting his whiskey refilled. He will have this glass, slower perhaps, and wait.

The waiting is a penance all its own. What else is there to plan? What else is there for them to do? Dorehave went off with a real bang. He laughs to himself at the joke. A messy business to be sure, but a necessary one. Necessary to the security of his reputation. Necessary to the security of his purse. Necessary to the security of the Realm.

It is all one in the same. Their interests are the nation’s interests, after all.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Pendulum Club

Eleven Minutes Past the Twenty-Second hourThe Sixteenth of Ophus 2719

T

he coat smells of cedar and disuse. He rarely wears it, rarely has call. He does not often move in circles that pay so much attention to the faddish uniformity of eveningwear. The suit is a costume, not a set of clothes; another uniform to dress the outside and ablate away all hints of eccentricity and particularity. It is another mask. Why should he object to this one, alone of all the others? There is an answer. He mislikes it. It leaves an acrid tang in his mouth.

Playacting at being a gentleman sets him on edge. He is not a gentleman, not in any proper sense. There are no estates to his name, no family properties. He lives by his effort and his wits. He pays rent. He does not collect it. A man of the city, a Clockhouse boy down to his marrow, lives by connections and by skill. This, he holds the coat out one last time, is the mark of a man of means, a man whose life extends beyond the city. He cannot be that man. Tonight he will wear the simulacrum. It is required. Nothing else will do. And so he slides it on, one arm at a time, like some unwholesome flayed skin.

He looks at his face in the mirror above the washing basin. Dark circles under the eyes, more lines upon the furrowed brow and around the eyes. The rest is neat and trimmed; sidewhiskers at an unobjectionable length, the rest of the face close shaved, hair combed and brushed. The colorless eyes flit about, first at the reflection, and then down to his hands. As clean as ever they can be. The ink stains run too deep to simply wash away. A clerk’s tattoo. A smile crosses his lips. Underneath all this black cloth he remains the man he must be tonight.

Under his breath he mutters his private mantra. “I am Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed, Deputy Chief for Policy Analysis. My function is to serve, to advise, and not to possess opinions upon policy.” The stains upon his fingers confirm it. They at least will provide comfort, provide focus. He will remember who he must be.

There is no choice.

“Mr Shrike, sir.” Bailey has materialized from the shadows, flushed and cold from the street. There is no need for him to finish his message. It is well understood.

“Tell the driver I will be only a moment more. I have one last thing to do.” Bailey nods, and disappears as silent as his arrival.

Alone now, he crosses to the small wooden box that rests next to the brandy decanter and the snifters. The tiny key appears in his hand; a twisting of bronze, the sound of the mechanism, and the box opens. Held in the hexagonal interior is a flask, fine and delicate, it’s sides awash in wine-dark liquid. Tincture of hygeth. Hands steady he measures the dose into the snifter. Three times three drops, enough to make a small pool in the snifter. A clink and the decanter is unstoppered. An ounce of brandy meets the tincture, the amber-brown of the drink swallowed up on the red of the tincture. He swirls the snifter. Clockwise, anticlockwise, and clockwise again. Gods willing, this will be the last time he makes the gesture tonight. He is not sure he believes in the gods.

A single draught, and he drinks the whole bitter decoction down. The first effects are already upon him. The numbing of his mouth, the drying of his tongue, and then the beginnings of the speeding of his thoughts, the bright clarity he will require. It will last for a few hours. Perhaps it will be long enough to make it through dinner.

Hand as still as the surface of the River on a windless day, he closes the box, locks it, and makes for the door. He turns, takes in the place, the books are arranged just so, the orchids in their pots subtly scenting the air, the hexagonal table and the two chairs before the unlit fire. It is nothing much, only the trappings of a man who lives in his office, who lives to work. Still, it is a sanctuary, just as sure as his old office behind the indigo door.

He turns at last, and goes out into the cold.

Uncomfortable, he rattles down the hill of Smike’s End, south and east and south again. Across the narrow valley the runs between the river and Crosstown, and at last up the first slopes of Clockhouse Hill. At every jolting of the cab he repeats his mantra: “I am Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed, Deputy Chief for Policy Analysis. My function is to serve, to advise, and not to possess opinions upon policy.” By the time the cab stops at the side door of the Pendulum Club, perhaps he even believes it.

The light and heat of the club is welcome. His rattled body and rattled nerves need the soothing. The bathhouse on Montjoy Street would have been a better place this evening. The heat might calm his mind and soothe his body. There are fresh bruises upon his ribs, last night required a bout in the ring. He had lost. It was inevitable. He had needed the surety, and needed the purging of at least some moiety of his anger. Equanimity escapes him. Discomfort will have to serve in its place.

He doffs his overcoat and passes it to the silent attendant. He has never learned the man’s name. Perhaps he has none. Everyone has always called him Coatrack.

“Evening Mr Shrikeweed, sir. Something afoot? Only it's not one of your usual nights. Messrs Taphlowe and Wainscotting are not afoot. Leastways not that I’ve seen.”

He gives Coatrack a polite smile. “No, I am here for a dinner, and perhaps drinks afterward.”

Coatrack nods, a sage motion. The man likely knows all the inner workings of the Club. Not that he would ever say so. Discretion is valued in the attendants. It is bought with not inconsiderable remuneration. “Enjoy your dinner sir. Will you be staying here this evening? I can have a room prepared.”

He shakes his head, “No, not tonight. I will walk home after all is said and done.” A walk to feel the streets under his feet, to feel the city. A walk to clear his head. Coatrack looks alarmed. “It’s a cold night sir.”

“It will do me good. Clears the head, especially after dinner.”

Coatrack shakes his head. An admonishing gesture, but not unkind. A gesture such as a wiser uncle might give a wayward youth. “Just as you say Mr Shrikeweed.”

Seven minutes. He verifies it with his watch. Just so. Seven minutes to make his way from the ground floor up to the second, to pass through the gallery of the pendulum hall, to note the rotation of the world and the swing of the pendulum itself. No matter the outcome of the night, the pendulum will still swing, the world will still turn, and none of the men here tonight will matter. Not in the measure of the world. It is cold comfort.

He is fond of the cold.

At the door to the Private Suite meets little resistance, only Noyes with a half-hearted challenge. “Not your usual place Mr Shrikeweed. Do you have an invitation, sir?” He says a few words, the Incumbent’s name. The name he wears on official business. His name. Noyes nods, still stands firm. He returns the nod and provides a small card with his name upon it. It is enough. Noyes ushers him in.

The Private Sitting Room at the Pendulum Club. Tonight it is a comfortable, elegant nest of vipers. Men he knows by name, men he knows by sight. Some he is surprised to see. Others seem all too likely. Moncrief and Nealing-Roach are surprises, Stanhope is an inevitability. Stanhope, he has long considered, is a man of no principles beyond what pads his bank accounts and gets him invited to all the most exclusive parties. It can hardly be more exclusive than this place.

It is another inevitability that it is Stanhope who first accosts him.

“I had no idea,” says the languorous man with his affected Ro Hill lisp, “you were one of us, Shrikeweed.” The emphasis is unmistakable, an accusation. What is a man of paper and ink, a mere civil servant doing among this august company in the inner club? He has his answer. He has recited it enough tonight. One more recitation of the matra in the quiet of his hygeth-augmented mind is not necessary.

“I am here, Mr Stanhope, in a purely advisory capacity. Matters are coming to a head. Or so I am led to understand, and my particular policy expertise has been deemed useful.” It is a joy to look daggers at the man through his colorless eyes. “Policy will have to be drafted, redrafted, reviewed. It will have to be made sound.” His own intimation is less obvious but no less pointed. The plans and policies already enacted are not sound. It is a pleasure to know the facts are on his side. He can leave the truth to the interpretation of others.

“And your interest in all of this?” He assumes the man is one of the financiers. Stanhope has the money, the connections, the business. Commodities traders can make fortunes in the blink of an eye. They can also lose them just as quickly.

• Item - Financial report, preliminary only, on known debts of Mr Stanhope. Trading records to be secured. Simple enough. Those at least are public data.

Stanhope elevates his head and adopts a lofty expression. It fails to convey anything like lofty. Stanhope is a short man and lacks the nose for such things. “The good of the nation, of course. The same as all of us. I would have thought even you would be aware of that.”

He ignores the insult. Useless to rise to such an occasion.“I am new to this matter, and though I have been briefed and reviewed the minutes and current policy plans, I would appreciate your insight.” Another cold smile. Stanhope is a bastard. Stanhope has a high opinion of his importance. Above all, Stanhope enjoys his drink too much. The man’s glass is empty. “A glass wine with you sir. We are all friends here, after all.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum Club's Private Suite • Uptown

Evening on the 16th of Ophus, 2719

I
can say nothing about it. Please, Mr. Moncrief,” he says, his clipped Bastian accent gone slightly slurred with the drink.

He knows it is an act. He knows enough about drunks – he is one, after all – to know an act when he sees one. Oh, Ernesto Antonacchi is a drunk; an old man, and his nose is swollen and veined familiarly, his eyes threaded at the edges with red. But he’s a good drunk, and a good actor, too. He knows enough about both to know when he sees them.

“Where the hatcher is Julian, anyway?” Antonacchi laughs, running a pudgy hand through his wispy white hair. “It’s not like him to be late. All I know is that he will be very displeased if this does not come off.”

“Not unusual, of late.” Moncrief laughs his familiar nasally laugh. “Or so I hear.”

“So we all hear, I suppose.”

Mr. Moncrief looks at him, curious, then at Antonacchi. “All the pressure, I suppose.”

“I remember when he was nothing but a starry-eyed lawyer.” Antonacchi laughs. “How the time passes.”

His hand twitches around the snifter, tightening and loosening. He rolls his shoulders under the stiff fabric of his dinner jacket, resisting the urge to tug at his collar. He is not enough Anatole, even by now; the smell of hair oil and cigars threatened to choke him. He needs something – he needs more – he knows what he needs, and he cannot afford it.

“Anatole, Edmund mentioned you were – you know.” Moncrief takes a sip of brandy himself, then swirls it round in the glass; he finds his eyes focusing on it a moment too long, as if it’s been put under an eyeglass. “Rather looking up, in some ways.”

Gold phosphor lamps ring the walls of the Private Suite, bright enough to see by, but dim enough to limn the edges of wispy, greying red hair, to glint on bald scalps, to leave the corners of the room in lush and velvety shadow. It illuminates the drifting smoke. It catches on the lip of Mr. Moncrief’s glass, gleams down through the expensive brandy. He jerks his eyes up from the glass just in time, to the other man’s face, a little above eye-level. The light catches one of those strange gold irises, like fire glimpsed through amber. He’s aware of the fields mingling at the edges of his, polite and oppressive perceptive caprise, like a smell that just won’t go away.

“Did he?” He smiles with pursed lips.

Moncrief smiles, a little curl; Antonacchi smiles, too, but he’s looking at Anatole in the eye, like they’re in on a joke Moncrief is out of. The last time he’s seen Edmund Valère was at the Pendulum in Vortas, and he can’t recall letting anything slip. All the same, things travel fast: from the lips of Descoteaux, Maurus, Marlaine, faces and names he doesn’t know. There are many eager faces, many ambitious names. He hates them all.

“Well,” says Moncrief.

“Don’t be humble, Mr. Moncrief,” says Antonacchi, his Bastian syllables now sharper. “I’ve heard you got that position with Incumbent Moreau – a long time coming, I daresay. How long again have you…”

His vision slides out of focus again, like a lens that’s got to be readjusted. He glances over the sea of heads, feeling oddly pleading. He can’t imagine what Mr. Shrikeweed will look like, when he arrives; he half-expects the man to be replaced by another of these faces, swallowed up by the mass of them, made into an unrecognizable man.

Maybe Noyes will make him so, at the door. That one question – do you have an invitation, sir – he wonders sometimes if it molds them, if it smooths the edges on their clay.

The clay he’s made up of isn’t even his own; he’s never felt it more than tonight, save maybe in Roalis. The voice that escapes his lips is another man’s. Their hands, their fields, are on him, smoothing his edges, and he’s afraid that when he leaves even his soul will be smooth and strangely empty, the grey color of Anatole’s eyes.

He can’t think; he can barely breathe, so why should he be able to think? For all the knowing looks – knowing what, he doesn’t know – Mr. Antonacchi has said very little of relevance to any of it.

A familiar voice slides into his awareness, achingly familiar: “... though I have been briefed and reviewed the minutes and current policy plans, I would appreciate your insight.”

“Of course, Mr. Moncrief.” Antonacchi’s not so Bastian as to kiss Moncrief on the cheek, but he does give him a good firm clap on the back, something that’s almost a hug; Moncrief looks briefly alarmed, then smiles, bowing and thanking him effusively for a favor he didn’t hear. The other man starts to drift away.

“Mr. Stanhope,” he says, taking the opportunity, smiling pleasantly at Antonacchi and starting to move for them; “and – Mr. Antonacchi, you haven’t been introduced, have you?”

Stanhope, looking put-out and peering narrowly down his nose at the Shrike – up, rather; it’s a pitiful effect – turns his attention to him and the Bastian as they sidle over.

The Shrike looks out of place in this get-up, eveningwear and groomed sidewhiskers; there’s something relieving about that. He knows he doesn’t look out of place – this body, it seems to him sometimes, is made for a dinner jacket and a snifter; like magic, no matter how uncomfortable he may feel, it looks like a second skin. But the Shrike sounds out of place, too, in a way he finds comforting and alarming at once.

You’re walking a narrow line, he wants to warn. This isn’t how these men do their business; they’re interested in you now, in that analytical mind of yours, but the second they think that mind is bigger than what they want to use it for –

“Ernesto Antonacchi,” he says smoothly, finding a little more of his footing in Anatole’s mask, smiling that thin smile, “Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed. Mr. Stanhope, I believe we’re acquainted; Antonacchi,” he smiles blandly at Shrikeweed, “I have had the privilege of meeting this evening.”

“Mr. Shrikeweed, what a pleasure!” Antonacchi has a loud, bright sort of voice; he’s a warm, choleric presence, a spread of bastly perceptive mona, with just a hint of impatience in the way he holds his snifter. He bows elaborately to Shrikeweed in the Bastian fashion.

“Are you often in the Pendulum? I think I would recall your face,” he says, with a little furrow in his brow, which says, I would not recall your face if I had seen it a hundred times.

“Mr. Shrikeweed is a Pendulum man,” says Stanhope, “but is not often in present company, no.”

“Perhaps we might join the two of you?”

“Oh, we simply must. I do hope you’re staying for dinner, Mr. Shrikeweed? I have missed Pendulum fare,” Antonacchi says. “I am in the Rose, you see; jewel of the east though it is, one tires of fish. If you are not staying overnight – and I would highly recommend you do – you must at least try the food. I shall be spending a week in the capital, and I am looking forward to it immensely.” He pats his stomach and laughs again.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Pendulum Club

Twenty-Two Minutes Past the Twenty-Second hourThe Sixteenth of Ophus 2719

S

tanhope retains his lofty sneer. Well, it is his prerogative. A man of means can disdain of man of skill if it pleases him. It is a gesture that will be held in the inverse; an equilibrium of contempt. It appeals to him, to the man his is under these black clothes; to the man behind the indigo door back in Chancery. There is no place for it tonight. The somber black suit still weighs upon him, dragging him down into stoggy solemnity. It is a suit to discuss meaningless estate matters and the rise and fall of stock and shares. ‘How is the Sothan and South Seas Trading Company fairing just now?’ ‘It was fortunate that I purchased shares in the railways at so early a date.’ Such matters will be discussed, batted about like shuttlecocks, but they are not the game of the evening. Something else is being played. Best sort that out and soon.

The banter from the members is light and airy, irreverent and gossipy as the coffee girls at The Elephant. He’s shared a few barbs with them. It is a place he knows, and where he is known. Comments of the coffee, on new ibriks or irritating customers. Gods he hopes he does not count among that company. There is little point in dwelling upon it. He will leave it for another day. Instead, he will borrow from the coffee girls, from Daphne and Subira, the blithe banter that speeds along their work.

Gods but he wishes Wainscoting were here. Not as a conspirator, that would be enough to break his heart and harrow whatever it is that passes for his soul. The easy banter, the offhand remarks, the badanage and the light irreverence. It comes to him so easily, with such grace and naturalness. A man who can appear at home in any company. A man who then returns to his narrow townhouse down in Crosstown and sits alone in the quiet dark, or else plays his cello by the flickering of the oil lamps. If Wainscoting can put on his social face, then so can he. A short-term loan with no interest, a loan among friends.

The wine arrives in elegant glasses, deep and red and rich. Red like the hygeth. Color calls to color. He raises his glass to eye level, tries to give Stanhope a smile. “To your health sir. And to the success of our endeavours.” He drinks and tastes oak and old leather, blackberries and the tang of minerals. It rolls about upon his tongue, and he tries to place it.

“And to yours,” says Stanhope with something like resignation. Has the speculator accepted the reason for his being here? What does it matter? It is factual.

Stanhope’s sip is, as ever, long and laborious. A considering taste and a slow, deliberate swallow. “A Western Bastian vintage to be sure. I can tell by the minerality. The slopes of Carloult. There is no mistaking it.” The man smiles, proud of himself. What a pity it will be to disabuse him of his illusions.

“The hills on the west slopes of Tarquina. South East of Tessalon. Black Tears. Named either for the pendulous shape of the grapes, or from the weeping of juice when they approach their over-ripeness.” He gives a sly grin to Stanhope and takes his own long, languid drink. It is an excellent wine.

Stanhope huffs, irritated. “And I suppose you are going to tell me that you are an expert in Bastian wines? That this is one of your little hobbies? Is your palate so refined? I cannot countenance it.”

“A refined palate? Well, I can place a good wine as well as any in this room, but,” and here he leans toward Stanhope, a conspirator’s look in his eye, “I happened to get a glance at the bottle as it was being poured. I put my trust in paperwork. And you can’t say fairer than that.”

A sound escapes from Stanhope’s lips. Perhaps it is a laugh. Perhaps it is the sort of plummy guffah that men such as he think is correct. It is a fashionable laugh, and Stanhope is a fashionable man. He dislikes fashionable men.

“You’ve a good eye Shrikeweed. Can’t I say I even noticed the bottle.” His eyes narrow now, inspecting, searching. “Perhaps you will be useful.” Such high praise. Perhaps he should faint for good measure. “So many here are ambitious men. Hell, I am an ambitious man! Stands to reason. Perhaps an observant man really is useful.”

Stanhope may be a bastard, but Stanhope is no fool. And that, perhaps, is the affliction of all these men. Well, he can be a bastard just as well as any of them. Ink-stained and papery true, but with a stroke of a pen and a well-placed word he can set the hounds in inquiry upon them. Without a train of evidence the inquiry will not last. It will fizzle and die. So he will gather what evidence he can. He will smile, and jest, and drink his wine, and in due course he will find a way to crush them all.

Wishful thinking. But then again, they are all ambitious men.

The wine swirls in the glass, its aromas heavy, enough to nearly blot out the other scents of the room. It is a good wine. He will have to remember it. For some future occasion. The cost of a few bottles will be eye watering. The Pendulum keeps a good cellar, but it does not care over much about the price. Perhaps some endowment from a late lamented member covers the cost. It would be in character.

No sense in wasting good wine. He raises the glass again, waggles it civilly to Stanhope, and gives one, and only one, turn. “I will drink to utility.”

A shift in the sounds in the room, laughter and conversation swelling. It rises now from the general banter into something more convivial. A new presence. A new center of gravity. He does not know the old man with the drunkard’s nose and the effusive manner. This is a man in his element, a man for people and conversation. Slight accent, over-warm gestures and bearing. A man of significance, a man who brings the Incumbent, Tom, in tow. In the files of his mind he searches for a name to fit the man. The deportment speaks of Bastia, there are so few Bastian names to be accounted. Antonacchi? It is reasonable. In the space of a breath it is confirmed.

Stanhope is correct. He is an observant man.
Introductions now, proper formalities observed in the proper manner. “Mr Antonacchi,” he says with a civil movement of his head, “your reputation precedes you. I am gratified to put a face with a name. Though, now I consider it, were you not at the concert last Vortas? The chamber orchestra that played Parasini’s Concerto for Viola and Continuo? Superb bowing. I arrived late and so had to take a little narrow seat at the back next to a man who insisted on beating the time upon his knee.” An idle topic with serious purpose. The intimation that he is indeed a natural member of the company, for all that he moves in rather different circles. A man of paper to be sure, but not a man who lacks an ear for high culture. “The fellow was half a beat in anticipation. Very irritating.” Another sip of the wine, slow and deep; long enough to try and continue the light thread. “But I do recall a man of your shape and form a little way away from the center of the audience, listening with rapt attention.”

It may well have been Antonacchi that he had seen. Or another man of the same years and the same bearing. Fashionable men are fond of imitation.

Stanhope raises an eyebrow at the anecdote. Surprised Mr Stanhope? An excellent start. Best to keep the man unsure of who it is he is dealing with; what sort of man is content to be a civil servant but knows Bastian chamber music of the last century. It had been a most excellent concert. He had enjoyed it. A fleeting glance of the Pendulum as it should be.

“I do tend to hang around the edges of the club. The billiard room, the little unmanned bar on the third floor, the coffee room. I find them congenial. Still, Stanhope is correct that I am not a usual member of this company. For that, I must thank the Incumbent.” He gives the man, gives Tom, a colorless look. He is holding his own, at least for the present. “It is good to see you sir. I hope your journey here tonight was pleasant. I know it has been a long and trying day.” It will be longer and more trying, for the both of them. This is no mere social gathering. They both have work to do this night. “So many significant matters have fallen upon the Incumbent’s desk of late that I seem to have wormed my way into his confidences. Fortunate for me. It is good to have the acquaintance and trust of men of fellow feeling.”

Antonacchi blusters on. He is not a man who listens. Doing so would interrupt the flow of his fulsome conversation. A dangerous supposition. Perhaps he is a man who can listen between his words and show nothing of it upon his face. A man to watch.

“I am indeed staying for dinner. And for the conversation.” For the coaja. “I too rarely have the luxury of dining here. And I have a far smaller distance to travel.” The Rose. Here again it blooms in this matter. What is the significance? An entrepot for the opium? A safe location to plan, beyond the prying eyes of Vienda? What does he know of the Rose? He has never been so far east in all his life. That may have to change. Disagreeable. “The demands of work, you understand.” Does Antonacchi understand? What, precisely, is his function. “And what, sir, is your business in the Rose? Commerce I assume. Trade with Mugroba? Spices and coffee perhaps? Or are you in the official line?”

Does Antonacchi know of the Incumbent’s old connections in the east? Whatever they are. Best to keep that card close to his chest. The man may be all smiles and badanage, but that does not mean he is not deadly.

“Incumbent, Mr Antonacchi, a glass of wine with both of you? It is a fine one and Stanhope and I were discussing its merits. Then, when you are both warmed to it, you can regale us with tales of the romantical Rose, and the Incumbent and I can nod along, pretending our own lives are as full of interest instead of practicalities.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum Club's Private Suite • Uptown

Evening on the 16th of Ophus, 2719

O
h,” says Antonacchi, stroking his jaw. He looks over; the merry old man’s got a keen look in his eye for a moment at Shrikeweed, if only a moment. Then, pleasant surprise, like the Shrike’s just pulled a cloth out from under a candelabra. “Why, yes, I daresay I was. Though I think perhaps my shape and form have grown somewhat more orotund since then.” A beat, and then a broad, deep laugh, the kind of laugh a man can drown in; Anatole laughs with him, because you’re hopeless otherwise, and so does Stanhope. “Ah, I do love Parasini,” the old man adds.

The keenness hasn’t gone out of Antonacchi’s glittering dark eyes. He finds himself wondering if the man really was at the concert.

But: Shrikeweed goes on, and when he meets Anatole’s eye, he meets his. The smile still lingers on his lips; he’s good at this by now – good at this part, at least, the face – and there’s nothing heavy in his eyes. There’s nothing at all in Anatole’s eyes; they’re blank and bland. At least, he hopes so, even as he thinks, Would that neither of us had ever been brought into this fold.

He thinks he can picture Shrikeweed in those places. He wonders about the third-floor bar; it nags at something inside him, some old ache.

He feels it again, as he always does. It’s flooding surreal. Standing in another man’s skin, in another man’s suit, in another man’s world. Gold phosphor – when did he ever see gold phosphor in life? Gold phosphor, gold eyes, glinting glass all round.

He’s been to more than one or two of these dinners now; he knows the fare. His stomach, he realizes, is aching. He hasn’t eaten all day. He can smell something just drifting in; he can’t identify it, but he knows it’s familiar. He associates it now with this place, these men. Their voices burbling on in the background as he tucks into sumptuous roasts like the starving man he used to be. Spices from up the Arova, such as you can’t get in the Soots. He’s looking forward to dinner, to this dinner and its comforts, and that realization is no longer enough to turn his stomach, because he is hungry.

He feels it again, but it doesn’t drive him to sickness like it used to. He just stands in it, that alien feeling. He lets it guide him; he surrenders to the body, to the expressions its face settles into, to its hunger and its laughing voice. It’s a convincing mask.

At men of fellow feeling, he sees Stanhope’s eyes sharpen on the Shrike. He must’ve impressed him earlier; he’s continuing to, he suspects. Good.

“Naturally, naturally,” burbles Antonacchi, a red-faced smile, already beginning to find himself a seat in one of the leather-upholstered chairs. “Noyes! Noyes – where is that…”

“Sir?”

Antonacchi nearly jumps. “Ah, there you are.”

The kov’s got a habit of doing that, he thinks wryly – or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t notice the serving staff anymore. The thought might’ve disturbed him; it will, he has a feeling, later. In his dreams, if nowhere else.

“Quite trying indeed,” he finds himself saying, though he can’t remember when he started speaking. No, that’s not right; he can’t just surrender. He needs to stay sharp. This isn’t any party. “But it is always a pleasure to come in from the cold; the Pendulum is always a welcome sight. And please, do call me Anatole. This is hardly Stainthorpe Hall.”

Eventually, they’re all seated and the wine is poured. These glasses catch the light fetchingly, too. He’s always noticed the glasses; half his life he drank out of dusty glasses in dive bars, and he could’ve told even those apart. He thinks the shape of the thing that brings it to your lips changes the taste. It seems like it does, anyway, even if it’s the same thing inside.

“... Ah, excellent stuff, excellent,” burbles Antonacchi.

Or maybe he’s just trying to get his mind off the shit. It’s a rich dark wine; the smell’s already twisting up the hunger in his stomach. It wouldn’t take much, he thinks, to get him buzzed just right. It calls to him like blood. He wants very badly to be drunk, to be lifted out of himself and carried away.

“A customs man, Mr. Shrikeweed,” Stanhope is saying, but Antonacchi’s already waving his hand.

“Your life in the capital is, I daresay, a great deal more interesting than mine.” Antonacchi smiles. “The set in the old Rose is quite different – shall we say, more relaxed – than in the capital. Say, Anatole, have you ever been to the Rose?”

“I had some business there in Ophus,” he says, inclining his head, “but I’m not familiar with the, ah – set.” He doesn’t look at Shrikeweed. “I’m acquainted with Violetta Ballington.”

“Ah, Violetta. As sharp as they come, by Her stripes.” Antonacchi laughs, then waves a hand. “No, no, gentlemen, my life is hardly very interesting at all. Now, ask me about my days in Florne…” He laughs again, harder. “But that was a long time ago. Mr. Shrikeweed, tell me, have you often been to the Rose?”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Pendulum Club

Thirty - Seven Minutes Past the Twenty-Second hourThe Sixteenth of Ophus 2719

O

nly once has he addressed the Incumbent by the name ‘Anatole’. The night of the 28th of Dentis, thirty-eight minutes past the twenty-sixth hour. The night that had served to bring him here. It is burned into his memory, the transgression. The revelation. Dangerous to use the man’s given name. It recalls oto easily that night, too easily his own reactions. That cannot be allowed. Too many prying eyes here, too many variables.

Given names are rarely used in his circle. Then again, his circle is no expensive thing, Intimates perhaps, might use a given name, close family. Familiarity. Comfort. That had not been either the intent or the effect his use of the Incumbent’s given name - well what he then thought was the man’s name. No, it had been a sign of anger, even disdain. A broken utterance. It cannot happen again. It would be unsound.

The Incumbent is not sound.

Nothing is sound anymore.

A prickling of his skin, and now he realises just how close he keeps his field. Wrapped about, layers upon layers, all pressing down, all humming with a superabundance of force. His field is always close, his mona are familiar with such things, but this is closer still. It sings along his skin in waves and in tides. The other men must notice. The caprise of their own fields is evident. Fields that feel, in their own way, like the men around which the swirl. Stanhope’s is slow and thick, rich and unctuous. Like a suet pudding with too much fat and soaked in too much brandy. Antonacchi? The man is harder to gauge. A warm sensation along the leading edge, bastly and sanguine. And beneath that? There is something there, something that swims in the depths. It shape eludes him. Perhaps it is nothing at all.

And the Incumbent’s? Anatole’s? He mislikes that name, mislikes the man to whom it once belonged. Mislikes Him. The field is still all too slant, too confused. One field for two men. It cannot help but be confused. Two men that are one man. The fact cannot be denied. The truth of the matter escapes him. What do the two men represent? Where do they come from? What is the purpose? There must be answers, or else he is asking the wrong questions.

Antatole. It is strange to hear the name of the Incumbent’s lips. It is not often spoken. A word all out of place. The Incumbent’s face is impassive, a mask of sociability. He can get no read upon the man. Not in expression at least. Anatole. The Incumbent’s name. His name. It is understood. That is the mask the Incumbent must wear. His own will be different. Best to play the part, but not so well as to seem too comfortable. He is a man out of his element here. It is necessary that be seen.

It is sound.

“This may not be Stainthorpe Hall, the superior architecture alone speaks to that, but I will feel awkward, sir,” a truth, “at using your given name. Even in this place I am still your Chief of Staff and advisor. Perhaps we might be content with surnames?” And now he gives a slow smile, a smile he hopes shows a little light embarrassment. “And, to be frank, the idea of being called by my own given name is bewildering. I so seldom hear it and it always comes as a shock to me. I usually think that the address is to some other person.” He tries a laugh now, more calculated discomfort to mask what exists below the surface. “I confess, that even at home, almost no one calls me Basil.”

There is no one at home but Bailey.

Stanhope gives a snorting laugh. “You are a man of paper and ink, after all. Hardly a paragon of social grace.” He inclines he head to the half-insult. “And he is a man of paper.” Stanhope turns to Antonacchi and with an expression that looks something like a showman presenting a freak at a sideshow, indicates him. “Spotted the label on the wine out of the corner of his eye, took it all in and showed me up. A fine set of eyes, has our Mr Shrikeweed.”

Our Mr Shrikeweed. Well, that is progress.

Is this what you need, Incumbent? He searches the face of the man, trying, in vain, to gain some clue as to the next step in the action. He has no head for such occasions. This is nothing like a policy meeting, less still like a conversation over billiards. A conversation that can be had without a coat, with sleeves rolled up, and chalk-dust on his fingers. No, this is a place for these men to see and be seen. For them to parade about like peacocks and show just how relevant, just how dedicated, they are to their fellows, and to their endeavors. Obvious men make poor conspirators.

Prejudice. That is unsound. These men, or some set of them, are effective conspirators for all their flash ways and fine clothing. It is like a stage magician’s trick, misdirection. Something is indeed sound here, something far under the surface. He looks at Stanhope, and Antonacchi, and all the men drifting to and fro. How many are merely showpieces? Fluff to mislead the over-inquisitive. There is deep practice here. Disdain had clouded his judgement. Someone one among this cabal is dangerous in the extreme. Someone here as motives all their own.

He will keep his wits about him. He will cultivate the naive mind. No preconceptions, no agendas. Observe, calculate, extrapolate.

Data point the first. A customs man.

“Customs? Important work, keeping the public purse well funded by your efforts. Driving up the price of my coffee as well, no doubt.” He swirls the wine in his glass and fixes his eyes on Antonacchi. “Were you always in the public service? Or do you have past business in the import/export market? I know so little about how business is done in the Rose.” More than he will let on. The Sergeant, Valentin, has given enough information for him to speculate. To extrapolate. Customs. Import/export. A fine perch from which to oversee the importation of a potent form of opium. Is that Antonacchi’s line? The man that ensures the King’s Crop makes it unencumbered into the Anaxi bloodstream?

“I’m a Vienda man, through and through, and I have never had the opportunity to go so far east. It has been years since I have had anything like the opportunity to leave the capitol.” Fifteen years and the furthest he has gone is out to Mantid Common to attend a small convention of flower collectors. It had been a disappointment. It had required that he take an omnibus. A virtuous system in the abstract, a misery for any come of contemplation and thought. In the last year, the Painted Ladies has been the furthest he has gone, and the Ladies is as old as any part of the city. A different part of Vienda, but Vienda down to its bones. With any luck, he will never leave the city again. His luck has been fading all too much of late. “And I am afraid, Mr Antonacchi, that my life here in the capitol is rather more dull than you might wish. Until last year, when I entered Vaquelin’s service, I had been in the Office of Legislative Affairs, the policy analysis division. Long hours and short deadlines. Enough to wear a man more than a little ragged. My joining the Pendulum was something of a means of having a holiday without requiring a great deal of travel. One never knows when a political crisis will emerge and it becomes vital that vast numbers of highly detailed reports be written so that the politicos, and apologies sir,” He nods to the Incumbent, “may dutifully ignore them.”

One more than a few occasions, he had had the opportunity to put an end to the worst ideas the Council and the Assembly had devised. It is a wonder what tedious meetings, committees, and interdepartmental reviews can do. Even so, bad policy was still enacted, and the Service had to ensure it was carried out. To the letter. Scrupulous adherence to the law was another time-honored way the Service tried to ensure the sound running of the government. It was no longer enough. All the old tools were failing them. There were too many unsound policies. Too many unsound men.

And so the Incumbent had been to the Rose when the Parliament was not in session. An interesting development. One more thing to file away. One more lead on which to follow up. Well, there is no time like the present. “I am afraid,” he saws to the Incumbent, voice full of genuine curiosity, “I am not acquainted, even by reputation with Ms Ballington. Is she another customs official? A pillar of the local galdori community?”


Another name to add to his collection.