[Closed] The Periodic Conspirators (Tom)

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - In Stainthorpe Hall

The Sixteenth of Ophus 2719, One Minute past the Eighteenth Hour

T

he clock on the wall strikes seventeen. It is early, cutting the measure of the hour short. A liminal space now, neither time nor its absence. The gears turn on, the pendulum swings, marking not minutes but cycles, marking duration. Four-hundred and twenty cycles will pass, then the hours will resume.

Four-hundred and twenty cycles. The last of the preparations can be made before that silent oscillation has passed. Papers all along the desk, papers in stacks and in bundles. Committee minutes, reports on diplomatic timetables. Reports contradicting the previous reports. Letters complaining about both. The usual business. The matters of the Change are in their final state, what comes after is formality. The ritual votes will be cast and the last minute attempts to seed advantage will be made, for when the Symvoul comes around again. Another cycle, the period of its pendulum measured in days, its hands turning on weeks, on months, on years.

The rituals of the Change will be performed, the transition of authority made manifest by their completion. Anaxas will reach the nadir of its waning, Mugroba the beginning of its rising. It is all laid out in the towers of paper on desks like his own. The secular spells of government have been written, waiting only to be cast. The spells must be secured, and securing takes time. Three-hundred and eighty one cycles. More than enough duration for that. More than enough to close out this part of the day and begin another.

Sufficient cycles to change from one mask to another.

Into green leather boxes the domestic papers go, stacks on stacks laid in archival sepuchures. Foreign policy into blue boxes. Mugrobi matters placed in special compartments all tied up with saffron-colored tape and sealed with lilac wax. His own seal. Certified and cataloged. Official assurances that what is bound up is proper and correct. Assurances that it is sound.

It is sound. It cannot be otherwise, or else he has failed. In this at least, he can dispense with that nagging doubt. More than enough of that in other matters.

Internal governmental matters now, red tape and red boxes, all arranged according to immemorial custom and practice. The usual matters: minutes of committee meetings, legislative proposals, position papers. One of these carries the names of Glazebrooke and Wiggins. A brief smile at old and familiar names. Gods and ghosts, but he wants to go home. Home to the Chancery, to the office behind the indigo door, to a life without conspirators and monstrosities. To Glazebrooke and Wiggins, to Thurlowe and Caseby. Seven days ago he returned and thought his heart would break at the sight of them, at colleagues as dear to him as any tie of blood. No. Dearer still are the ties of ink.

Sentiment for a place and for colleagues. Pining for purpose and for surety, for the trust of his fellows. All gone now, blown away on winter winds. He is not ready to mourn them, not yet. There is too much to do, too many matters before him. Sentiment is a luxury he does lack. One he cannot quite understand. Alien feelings, one of so many of the past year. This one at least is an exquisite discomfort, a pain he can use to shape his focus.

Tonight will require all his faculties, all the focus he can muster. Tonight, the coaja. The meeting of the conspirators. His initiation to their ranks. He will let the scorpion ride on his back, he will risk the sting. Perhaps the turtle shell will be enough, or else they shall both drown in the river. That at least he can assure.

The other papers will assure that. Gods and ghosts he hopes it will assure that, or else he will carry wickedness upon his back to no good end.

All the boxes secured, and he slides them into the office safe. A vast thing, enamel-black and heavier than any he has used before. A benefit of being the Incumbent’s creature. A monolith and a surety. The door clangs shut, the locks shoot home, a ringing sound, almost too much for his ears. Fingers on the dial, he resets the combination, turns it, clockwise, anticlockwise, and clockwise again. Again. And again. Random numbers. Meaningless and empty. He can hold the sequence for a week. By then it will need resetting.

If he survives the week. Conclusion? Uncertain.

Four-hundred cycles and all the work is done. The day is packed away and sealed. Committed to paper and to procedure. It is beyond him now, matters of record for all time.

The clock begins again its measure of the hour. Time, at last, resumes.

Twenty second is all he has to open the door, to pass into the Incumbent’s office, to see the man whose name he has learned at last. To look Tom in the eye and hint at more than he knows. Who in all the netherworlds is Tom? The name means nothing. It appears nowhere in any record he can find. Yet it is the name of the man as he has become. As he always has been?

No. That does not fit. Not if Bailey is to be believed. The lad is a thief. He is not a liar. Tom and the Weaver; they speak in hushed voices, muffled by cloth. All distorted and corrupted. Yet the tone, the cadence, is not that of old lovers. Or so the Thief as said. Best to take the lad’s word on that. He knows nothing of lovers, old or new. Sees no need.

Anatole and Tom. The names at last for ‘He’ and ‘I’. Useful. Leverage, and all still meaningless. There is limited context. It will need to be fleshed out. Fleshed out beyond a few names and some tenuous connection to the Rose and its King. That connection belongs to Tom, to ‘I’, of that at least he is sure. As sure as anything can be when reconstructed from fragmentary utterances and still-guarded memories.

Godsdammit Tom. What are you still hiding? The question consumes him and he has no answer. The Incumbent remains unwilling to reveal these last secrets. I do not care, he wants to say, to scream, if you murdered seven men with your bare hands or had ten-thousand scandalous affairs. You may have defrauded every bank from Thul Ka to Florne and it still would not matter.

Only the conspirators, only their names and their follies matter. Public evil must be revealed. A little private evil he can tolerate. A damn good thing too. He has enough upon his own head.

The crimson door to his office, heavy with all its locks swings open. He passes that last portal, passes into a space that is not his own.

The Incumbent, Tom, preparing himself for what will follow. For the coaja at the Pendulum Club, for the next act in the tragedy of the conspirators.

“Good evening sir. All matters of official consequence are filed and secured. The day, the official day,” he emphasized the word only slightly. “Is concluded.” The unofficial day begins now. A new dawn in the winter twilight. “I have my notes.” He pats the satchel he has slung over his left shoulder. “And I have the reconstructions of the previous meeting. All that is necessary, but it is not sufficient. These personages, the Judge, Trevisani, Prudhomme, and the rest, what else do I need to know of them? What more can you tell me?”

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Evening on the 16th of Ophus, 2719

H
e has been Incumbent Vauquelin much of the day, and he’ll need to be Anatole much of the evening.

Incumbent Vauquelin’s is an easy skin in some ways and a hard one in others. It requires he pull decades of schooling and qalqa he hasn’t got out of his erse, and he scrapes by on the skin of his teeth; mostly, he stalls. He asks questions that lead in circles. Sometimes he even throws himself on the stake, red-faced and demanding, parroting what he’s heard other Reformists spew.

He demands position papers, most often of all, as he was told to do that first day so long ago in Intas. He goes over them with the Shrike, shaky hands and thick, clumsy words; and the man with his dry papery field guides him – gentle – through the maze of ink, and he comes out on the other end. Understanding one thing or another better, often enough.

The Shrike is patient, almost as patient as Silk, and no less challenging.

He’s begun to think that paper is almost like silk. Sometimes he thinks of Silk with the shears, the lovely smooth fabric carefully weighted, sliding underneath her lacquered fingernails; he thinks of the Shrike’s fingertips inkstained and blunt-nailed, callused from the press of the pen, working at line after line in his neat hand.

Sometimes he gets them mixed up: he thinks of Shrikeweed with shears, spreading out the silk before him, weighing it down and cutting it.

He’s lost track of the time. The light that streams in through the foggy window panes is tinged gold and pink, making long shadows over the desk and glistening motes in the air. These winter evenings come too early. He’s bone tired as he begins to clear the desk; he feels all of himself dragged down by it, by the cold that seems to slow his blood.

And all the same his heart beats fast in his ears. He is between the Incumbent and Anatole; he must peel one off and put on the other. It leaves him raw and bloody every time, and for a few moments, he breathes, himself and alone, tasting coppery fear in his mouth and shutting his eyes.

The familiar creak of the board outside makes him open them. He doesn’t know how many seconds it is, but he knows, somehow, when the Shrike will appear.

The Shrike’s face is luminous pale in the lamplight on one side, the edges of his dark auburn hair caught coppery, his eyes no particular color. On the other, it’s tinged warmly from the dying light out the window; it’s full of shadows there, picking out the hollow underneath his eye.

He’s never been able to place the man’s age. At the Elephant – once – he thought he looked terribly young and terribly old all at once, red-eyed and worn by pain, his face full of unfamiliar motion. Now, he doesn’t know. At first, it was like a stranger’s, and he couldn’t read it; now, he knows it too well to read.

He stands from the desk, frowning slightly and breathing in. At the names, his lips press thin; at Trevisani, he glances over the Shrike curiously. How much do you know, now? he wants to ask. How much do you know I know?

“Little more,” he says quietly. It’s Anatole’s accent he uses with the Shrike now, more or less; there’s not much Rose left in it. Perhaps it’s his after all. “Prudhomme won’t be there, and neither will Trevisani; this should be mostly – inner circle Pendulum men. You’ll see Megiro at least, and I don’t know about any others.”

He takes a deep breath, holding the back of his chair for a moment. “You’re a Pendulum man, Mr. Shrikeweed,” he offers, raising an eyebrow. “You've been familiar with the locale longer than I have, if not – these locals.”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - In Stainthorpe Hall

The Sixteenth of Ophus 2719, Six Minutes past the Eighteenth Hour

A

Pendulum man, yes. What does that signify? The Pendulum he knows is not the same as of these men. A gap in his awareness. He should have seen them long ago, recognized them for what they were, or what they are becoming. He has not been attentive. He does not go to the Pendulum looking for conspiracies. Another mistake. There, he goes to sit in the old chair at the corner of the coffee room, the one with ancient leather worn softer than butter, and listen to the buzz of conversations. Not the words, the sounds only.

He should have been listening to the words.

He goes to win at billiards and to lose at cards, to speak with his few friends, to pretend at being a man in full. What conspiracies he has hatched there have been with Wainscoting and Penderghast, Hetherridge and Morley. Complaints mostly. About the law and the machinery of government, about the stupidity of clients and the baffling actions of politicos. A laugh over an unworkable policy, derision at clients who think they know the law. They never do. None of them have anything like the power or the influence to plot on so grand a scale as the great men who haunt the club. A different order all together, different in both degree and in kind.

“My circles in the Pendulum are rather different. If you were looking for legal counsel, perhaps the odd scrap of information from ‘unnamed government officials’ or ‘sources familiar with the matter’, those I could find you in abundance.” Even in the Pendulum there are hierarchies, circles of influence, stratifications. He is never comfortable among the great. He leaves them to the Grand Salon, the Convivium Bar, and the whole of the first floor. He can no longer afford to leave them alone. He has been invited to descend from the coffee room and the library, a descent that he would never wish.

He still does not wish it. Wishes most of all that it were unnecessary. He is past wishing now.

The Incumbent is a portrait of contained discomfort. A study in abstracted worry. A mirror in which he can see the patterns of expression that must be manifest upon himself as well. Only echoed. Each has their own private discomforts, their own contortions of mind that must be performed. When he speaks the names, the Incumbent marks each with ever-tightening lips. Gone pale and gone paler with the pressing. And at the name of the Red Madame? The most significant contortions.

He has said nothing to the Incumbent about what he has learned, though it is little enough. What need does he have to say? Bailey was caught, conversed with the Incumbent cheerily enough. The man knows that he knows something. The details are another matter. A setback, but not fatal.Still, he has his lines of approach however tenuous. A name here, a significant record there. It is not yet anything like enough to trace everything back to its origin, to turn a few threads into a net strong enough to ensnare all the Red Madame’s clients. And if ever he catches them? What then? He cannot go to the courts, not when the High Judge himself will be tangled in the net. The weight of his influence will warp the machinery of justice.

That alone is cause enough to want him removed.

It may still be possible. Powerful men breed powerful rivals. All he needs is one sound enough for his purposes. That is a name he lacks. Another thread to be followed up. Lawyers’ gossip. He’s had little enough time for it. After tonight, if after ever comes, he will make time for it.

Off the coat stand he removes first his scarf, drapes it about his neck. A heavy thing in striped wool, blue-black, ivory, and saffron-yellow. “Rather a more formal occasion than to what I am accustomed.” He gives a vague wave at his drab attire. “I go to the Pendulum to relax sir.” That seems an alien concept now. He can no longer find comfort there. “I have even been known to dispense with the neck-cloth and roll my sleeves up past the elbows to better negotiate the billiard table.” Can you imagine that sir, he wonders. It is true enough. He would rather that be the atmosphere tonight at this thrice-damned coaja. No, the grand men have to make themselves seem important, flaunt their status in the dinner-finery. Another unsoundness, another violation of protocol.

Too damned obvious that a meeting has been arranged. Then again, perhaps not. He has never noticed it. Has he? The wheels begin their turning, the greats of recollection mesh their teeth and drive the machine onward. No. Not here and not now. There is no time or such analysis now. A waste of energy. Tonight he will require all his reserves.

He begins draping the scarf about his neck in loose coils. Three looping turns, clockwise, anticlockwise, and clockwise again. “I will require some little time to make myself presentable to these august personages. And that gives us time sir, time to mull over what to do. I don’t suppose you’ve received so much as an agenda or summary of the salient points? Even by word of mouth?”

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Evening on the 16th of Ophus, 2719

U
nnamed government officials. Never has he known there to be so many, but he reckons it works like anything organized. Stranger and stranger, just how like to the king’s service the King’s service is. He’s another strange thought, looking at Shrikeweed. You never broke anybody’s legs, he thinks, on the job anyway, but I think I was like you, once.

He shades the gold phosphor lamp on the desk, then the one over by the bookshelf. Meanwhile the Shrike is putting on his scarf, one loop at a time. He glances over, watching those ink-stained fingers handle the heavy wool; he winds it back, then forth, then back again, the familiar pattern. He’s seen him do it with teacups now, with doorknobs, with cases.

He wonders if he knows he’s doing it; he wonders how it started, why he does it; he wonders, but he wouldn’t ask. He might’ve been a tallyboy once, but again, he’s not an animal. He remembers a man once – that haberdasher – Dougherty, a ballach, even if he’d had to be shaken up a few times to remind him of the rule. He used to knock five times before he went through a doorway, and he’d never go through the same one twice in a row.

He doesn’t think this is quite the same. Or maybe Mr. Shrikeweed’s a very different man.

As he takes his own coat off the rack, he pictures Shrikeweed at the billiards table, sleeves rolled up and neckcloth loose. Shrikeweed’s looking at him, and he raises his brows. Somehow, he thinks, I can picture you in the ring better than that.

Drifting smoke, fields. The soft clack of the balls. He knows those rooms in the House, too, though the whole godsdamn thing’s laoso for him now. Maybe the water level hasn’t got up to the second floor, but you can smell it up there anyway. Relax? You think, he wants to ask, thinking of the man looking across at him in the Elephant, you think half those men would give a damn how or how well the machine runs, as long as they got their cut at the end of the day? You’re not their breed, either.

He buttons his coat, tucks his hat under his arm, searches his pockets for his keys. He passes out into the office outside, wreathed now with long twilight shadows, Cardinal’s desk and the kofi nook, gleaming with brass, empty. His foot creaks on the familiar board, then Shrikeweed’s.

“At least one of the points,” he murmurs, shutting the office door behind him and locking it, “is you.” His hands are cold and stiff; he fumbles the key, curses, has to bend and pick it up off the chilly boards and try again. He tucks it into his pocket, then takes out his gloves, grimacing.

He starts out toward the hall, creaking the boards. “You have been – uh – noticed, Mr. Shrikeweed. There’s talk.” He pauses at the door, his voice hushed. “I don’t, I am afraid, know much more than that. If I’m one of them, I only just have my foot in the door; I don’t even know what they are, really, or a tenth of their goals.”

There are a few lights left on, but none in this room. There’s only what paltry light trickles through the blinds, limning Shrikeweed but hiding the expression of his face. The colors of his scarf are drained in this light: grey, white, black, grey.

He tries and fails to picture Shrikeweed in evening finery, all white silk scarf and low-cut waistcoat.

“Whatever else it is they’re doing, they’re taking the measure of us. Of both of us. If the agenda hasn’t reached me, that’s – rather the point, I’m afraid.” His lips press thin, and he looks at Shrikeweed for a long moment. “I reckon,” he says, a little smile jerking at his lip, “it’d be rather prudent for us to have our own agenda, in that case.”

This isn’t the opera, he wants to say. This isn’t happenstance. We’ve been invited; we’re in their House, and we’ve our eyes and ears, if nothing else. Or at least, you have yours and I have mine, but I think we're together in this at least.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - In Stainthorpe Hall

The Sixteenth of Ophus 2719, Nine Minutes past the Eighteenth Hour

A

deposition then. An interrogation. He cannot think of it as a mere interview, less still a friendly chat over dinner. Dinner. There will be food, of course, and drink. Both will be pressed upon him. Both will need consuming. Custom demands it. Custom is silent about how many much of either he is to take. Prudence demands little of either.

Idiot.

Prudence demands that he withdraw for this whole matter, forget all he has learned, and carry on, blind as a mole. To hell with prudence then. Prudence holds no sway here, cannot guide him. Process then, method and order. He will eat what is not suspicious, drink only to appease the customs of toasting and whatever private manners belong to this society. He may even propose a toast of his own. ‘A glass of wine with you sir’. Directed at some unassuming conspirator after an apposite remark. Perhaps even a dull one. The conspirators will think him dull, humorless. They will see the function and not the man. There is little enough of the latter to show.

The conspirators will want to know how he can be of use to them. And he can be so. And they to him. Their methods are crude, unrefined. Their goals seemingly unformed. Unformed or unknown. Lust for power alone does not explain it. Do they not have power enough? And there are easier ways to seize on such things. There are motives here he does not understand. Nothing seems to arise from their actions. Has the High Judge promulgated any new interpretations of statutes? Struck down standing precedent or made new law? Have the Seventen been indulging in more than their characteristic brutality? Nothing. Has the plot failed? What was its purpose? He must know, if he is to be any use at all.

“If they require my services then they require either information or execution. The Service prides itself in carrying out policy regardless of its folly. The Service knows how to anticipate.” He gives a wan sort of smile. “Well, once we have our data.” Is that what they need? Policy analysis of treason? Reports on the impact of their undermining of the state? They will not see it as undermining. They will think themselves patriots, men of virtue, men who will do the hard work needed to secure whatever glorious future they hold in their minds. How is he different? Perhaps in only one way: he knows he is not a man of virtue. He will risk the evil, ferry the scorpion across the river, knowing full well he will have to forfeit his name in the process. No. In two ways. He is no patriot either. He does not have the romance for such things. He is only interested in order, in ensuring that tomorrow is only a little different than today. In serving the good of the machine of civilization. The good can be served by wicked means but it must be seen to be so. He will accept his personal destruction, his damnation.

It will be necessary. What does one man matter?

“There will be questions, likely many.” He finishes with the scarf and reaches for his coat. Grey wool and well used. It has lasted him at least ten years. It might last fifty more. Perhaps he can gift it to his nephew. One more bequest to add to his will. “I will answer to the best of my ability and with accuracy.” His answers will be factual. The truth will be less certain. “And the questions they ask, and those they do not, will provide insight as well. This cannot, will not, be a one way street.”

Streets. There will not be enough of them tonight. Not under his feet. From home will have to take a damned cab, so as not to ruin his finery. At least the walk up to Smike’s End, to Lesser Larch Street will be according to custom. The cobbles and bricks under his feet, the feel of the city about him, the strange caress of the great field of Vienda. Or so it seems to him. A living thing all of its own. It’s bones the hills, the river its blood, its streets the labyrinth of nerves. He will feel it stir, feel the rise and fall of its breathing, feel it pressing about him. The only embrace that matters. Comfort. Solace. Home.

“As to our own agenda, yes, that would indeed be prudent. Moreover, it would be sound.” Another wan smile. “My own goals are simple enough. Feel them out, present myself as useful, call upon the notes and the minutes.” He pats the satchel and swings it over his shoulder. “I will avoid mention, direct mention, of the King in the Rose. It seems wise not to show all of our cards.”

He turns the notes, the minutes over and over in his mind. Plays out reconstructions of reconstructions. There are other gaps he has filled, however inexpertly. Matters for clarification. He will request and require that the conspirators clarify. For the unofficial record. “They are waiting on a man. So we think. I have my data. You have yours. I believe I can construct a little of the person they are expecting. The man who will want reports. I cannot be the man, of that I am certain. Still I may be use in handling some of the more technical matters. If there is another thing the Service has a reputation for requiring, it is reports.”

Reports on what? The progress of matters? Has the Dorehaven incident been successful? What are the metrics, the learnings? Has the next phase been contemplated? “Do you know the next stage of the plan? Even a few whispered utterances will be of use. Utterances and names, sir. I may be able to infer details as I walk home. It is a perfect walk for contemplation.”

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Evening on the 16th of Ophus, 2719

H
e nods slowly, taking a deep breath.

There’s risk in this, as there is in all things. Perhaps it’s the light; perhaps it’s the months that have passed. He can see little of the man in the Elephant in those colorless eyes now, in the dry, thoughtful expression on his face. It’s not a mask – leastways, not a mask of the kind he wears. It’s a different sort of thing Mr. Shrikeweed puts on and takes off; he doesn’t know if it’s a putting-on and taking-off at all, as such.

Is it for him, lately?

He doesn’t know if Shrikeweed is still that man. He trusts her judgement, all the same; he doesn’t think the Shrike’s one of them, or likely to be won over. It’s still a thin, strange line to walk. He’s useful to the Shrike’s machine now, whatever Bailey said, but he doesn’t know for how long. He still hasn’t brought up Ava, though he knows the plan they’ve agreed upon. He doesn’t think, at least, that Shrike suspects anything else.

He doesn’t know if the Shrike’s coat is grey, or if it’s just the twilight gloom. He nods again. “No street’s one way,” he murmurs, “in this.”

He nods again, more slowly. “Whispered utterances are aplenty; I don’t know which ones you’ll find useful, if any. There’s always talk of things hidden Uptown. Scandals, affairs, I don’t know. The plan – I don’t know.” He remembers Shrikeweed’s red-rimmed eyes; he shakes off the image. “It still seems senseless. They’re scrambling like they’ve lost ground, but to whom, I don’t know. Somebody’s got something on them, I know that, at least. I know Antonacchi’ll be there, though to discuss what, I’ve not a damned clue. I don’t know how open they’ll be about any of it, this time, with you there.”

At the mention of the King, he almost flinches.

He pauses at the door. His hand slips from the doorknob for the moment; he knows there’s no talking, once they’ve gone through. The halls of Stainthorpe are warped and strange, full of murmurs from up and downstairs, the walls deceptively thick and thin both. Secrets enough have spilled through gaps in the wood, have sunk through the floorboards to nest on the desks of whisperers.

Even this quiet office, with its kofi things and its unlit lamps, with the creaking board he’s come to know so well, isn’t safe. Not altogether. You make indulgences, when you know they could be watching you all the time; you make indulgences, because it’s a two way street, like any ley channel. There’s as much power in choosing what they hear and what they don’t, in little slips, as in closing up like a vault.

He thinks of her, his eyes wandering out the foggy window over the courtyard. Construction on Plamondon Hall’s long finished with, and he can’t for the life of him tell what the difference is. Except for some greasy newspaper that’s been trod into the dirt and covered in frost, a tatter that must’ve drifted down from one of the walkways. Some splinters.

There’s another wing; there’s always more wings. It’s the doing, he thinks, that’s the point. It’s all a drab mass, windows and old stone, columns and niches and shadows peering down from above. And that statue in the courtyard, its face half-worn off, the birds shitting on its shoes.

He shakes his head. “There’ll be questions for me,” he says. “Fewer, I think. You know the role I’m to play, Mr. Shrikeweed, and I’ll play it, and I’ll keep my eyes and ears open as I do. I can throw my weight around, if need be. If things turn – I don’t know. I’ll…”

He pauses, his lip twisting. He sucks at a tooth; his fist balls, then he flexes his fingers, his joints aching underneath his gloves.

“I’ll need to drink,” he says, raising both eyebrows. “I’ll need them to think I’m tipsy, or at least as drunk as I’ve ever been at these things. And it’ll be –” He swallows. “It’ll be hard for me to stop, once I’ve started. I wouldn’t be telling you this if it wasn’t important. I’ll be keeping an eye out for you, but you may need to keep one out for me, too.”

He finally meets Shrikeweed’s eye; it’s hard, but he manages it. He raises an eyebrow.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - In Stainthorpe Hall

The Sixteenth of Ophus 2719, Twelve Minutes past the Eighteenth Hour

I

t is a strange thing, to trust and yet not trust a man. Yet, here it is, and he cannot escape it. He trusts to the Incumbent’s, to Tom’s, fear, to his reticence and confusion. In that at least they are allies. It could be a trap, that cannot be discounted, but to what end? Were he some great magnate or pillar of the Service, a Perpetual Permanent Secretary, then it might make sense to entrap him, to either force him into conspiracy or else remove him as an obstacle. He is none of those things. Just a mechanism in the great machine, a man of little importance. One of the many who serve as the calculating minds of government. If the conspirators felt threatened by legislative reviews and position papers, policy analysis, and predictions as to the future track of government, then he might be a target. His anonymity is is armor.

You have been noticed, the Incumbent says. And it is so. Folly on his part. He should never have attend that opera, should have kept from sight. What was the invocation Bailey always mutters? ‘Protect me now from prying eyes’. It is a good invocation, and sound. He knows not ritual for such a thing, no magic to serve him. The hour is too late for that.

Too late. Always too late. Every step of this he has been behind, picking up the pieces of others plottings. It cannot go on like this. Reactions alone are not enough. They are all he has.


The Incumbent is still worn away like the faceless statue in the desultory courtyard. Tired and stretched all to thin. Another thing they share. Do you sleep, Incumbent? Or do you lie motionless in the dark, pretending at rest, drifting to and fro on the edge of dreams? He dares not fall into so deep a sleep. He is afraid of what his dreams will bring. Afraid. Afraid to his bones. There is no shame in such a thing, neither in sorrow or in grief. All these he has, to color his freezing rage.

“I cannot say which utterances and whispers will be useful to me. Or what names. There may be nothing in any of it.” He gives his habitual wan smile. “Or it may mean everything. But it is all we have sir. Scandals are useful to us. Affairs and disgraces.” It is a strange thing, one he has never considered, to spend so much time reading over society pages and lurid gossip in the lowest of newspapers. Yet he is moving at the margins of such things, at the edges of lives that rise and fall on meaningless gossip. Still, it is all data. Data he barely understands.

The Incumbent goes on, working though what he knows. What he knows he does not know. “Nothing seems to have come of their actions. Either they are waiting for something, or else they are rudderless.” Scrambling. A cautious indication toward the lack of rudder, the lack of a coherent plan. An indication of fear? “And there are too many ‘someones’, too many lacunae.” And now, at last, a name. Antonacchi. The other man of the hour. “Something on them, somebody. We need to find a thread to follow.” This does not seem like the Incumbent’s usual evasions. He too is ignorant, groping about in the dark. “I would have thought Trevisani, and she may still be part of this, but she seems too narrow a scope. Too common to ensnare so many. Greater scandals have been weathered, and all these men in her debt can serve to protect each other. You are right. Something else is afoot. Unless we are utter fools, I do not think this, whatever it is, touches us. Not yet. For the nonce we are clean.” They are already stained enough. “Well, cleaner at least.”

How much more will he, will they, be stained tonight? At least a little more. The others will have to draw them in, closer and closer still. They have what they need to ensnare the Incumbent. The Weaver would be enough. And yet their meetings are not that of lovers, either current or past. He believes the Thief on this point. Bailey is slippery and sly, but he tells no lies. No significant lies. He will trust his agent in this. He knows more of love. It is unclear how much more.

“Drink what you need, sir, but slow and easy. Water between glasses. I know you can be a thoughtful man. Be thoughtful with your drinks. I shall try the same. And I would ask of you a favor, I hope it is only a small one.” He swallows hard, what he will ask will not be easy. It may even break him. “My habit of turning my glass. Should you see me start, and that is inevitable, fix me with a hard look. Perhaps it will be enough to stop me. I do not wish to show these men my own rituals. I do not wish them to know how to see my apprehension.”

He adjusts his coat, his scarf, and takes his brimmed hat in hand. “We shall watch each other, sir. And we shall watch them all as well.”

He makes his way to the door, seizes the handle, turns it clockwise. Only clockwise. One unremarkable turn. Best to practice now. “Is there anything else, sir? Any little fragment you can tell me? Any tattered words you can recall? Else I shall have to make my way home with only my own thoughts to carry. I would much rather bear a lighter burden.”

[Tom Cooke]

Stainthorpe Hall • Uptown

Evening on the 16th of Ophus, 2719

S
ometimes it seems like affairs and disgraces are the whole damned qalqa, he wants to say, and he stops himself. He remembers Ava’s word of warning; he thinks of the shame he’s felt at how loose his tongue was in Intas, when he’d nothing to gain and less to lose. There’s less and less of him to go around – less qalqa, less memory, less man to lose – but it’s not his he must think of losing now.

He sees the sad tilt of Shrikeweed’s smile. He’s as used to it by now as he is the other, the slow, wicked curl of a thing that stretches his lips and sparks his colorless eyes when he’s a plan. He remembers that smile, too. He holds himself there in the gloom, remembering that wicked smile, even as he looks at the other, the wrung and worn-thin man in his grey coat that’s nearly as grey as his face.

Rudderless, the Shrike says, and he lets out a breath and nods, running his gloved fingers through his hair. It’s a mess; he’ll have to comb it and oil it before tonight, but it’s a cowlicked mess now. “I agree,” he says quietly. “It’s not –” The name almost sticks in the back of his throat. “Trevisani,” he says, swallowing dryly, “though I think she must be involved, somehow; I think… If it’s her, it’s not just her – trade. There’s something else between Trevisani and those men; there’s some bigger scandal than that.”

Cleaner, at least, the Shrike says. He doesn’t look down at his hands – his pale, freckled hands, his useless soft hands, covered now with gloves. He doesn’t need to, to know what kind of man they belong to.

Clean of what? You and me, he wants to say, Mr. Shrikeweed, you and me and Ms. Weaver, we’re all on a rope at the edge of a sinkhole. The last of us has his feet in the mud now, and there’ll be nobody to pull us out, soon enough; we’re all too far gone. He looks at the other man curiously, and thinks, One of us might just push the others under.

I know you can be a thoughtful man, Mr. Shrikeweed says, and he takes a deep breath.

You don’t know me in the least, he wants to say; you don’t know my face, or my habits, or even the first letter of my name. The thought sours, because he knows it’s not fair.

It’s different, what Shrikeweed’s asking him to do. It’s not like staying out of the water altogether; it’s more like treading, with his head just above the water. He never did know how to swim, not in life, and he’s never learned. But this, he thinks, maybe, just for a night, he can do. He knows at least the difference between drunk and sick, and it’s a line he’s walked often enough. Shrikeweed’s not asking him to keep himself dry, or even to keep himself at one toe in the water; he’s only asking him not to drown.

So he nods, slowly, and he looks up sharply when Shrikeweed makes his request. He doesn’t know what’s on his face for a moment; he blinks, and his lip twists.

Shrikeweed’s parchment-rustle field brushes past him for the door, and – despite himself – his eyes follow the ink-stained hands to the knob, casting longer and longer shadows in the twilight. He watches Shrikeweed turn the knob once, once, as if saying it wasn’t enough. When he lifts his eyes to his face, he can’t read it.

“I will –” He swallows hard himself, blinks, looks away. “I’ll do my best, Mr. Shrikeweed.” You know, he thinks. You know you do it, and you can’t help it.

He’s not sure why the realization hurts. Rituals, he thinks. He can already half taste the whisky on his breath. I know what I am, he thinks, and you know what you are, I suppose, after all.

Watch each other, and watch them all.

He shakes his head. “No,” he says, “I’m afraid not. I’ve told you what I know of it; I’m afraid we’re both – stuck with our own thoughts, in this.” Funny how there’s a burden on both of us, and it’s no lighter for it. “Walk with me as far as Dasiphora Street? I’ll take a cab on to Willow, but I need the cold to clear my head.”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - In Stainthorpe Hall

The Sixteenth of Ophus 2719, Nineteen Minutes past the Eighteenth Hour

H

e is letting his distaste draw spurious conclusions, tinting the facts with his moods and preconceptions. With his aesthetics. Tinting them all red. Not Trevisani, says the Incumbent, not in her capacity as the Red Madame. The Incumbent is correct, he has clearer eyes in this. She has been weighing on his thoughts too much, her gravity warping the shapes of everything else. In one meeting he had come to dislike her, clean through to his bones. The more he has learned the more justified is that feeling. He would see her ruined, crushed under the weight of law and the opprobrium of custom. And why does she seem a figure of such singular loathing?

An answer arises, all too uncomfortable. The two of them are in the same true business. Information. The Red Madame buys her’s with flesh and with scandal, he purchases his with papers and promises of leverage. Are his methods any less sordid? Before these last months, that answer would have been easy enough. Now, and on this day, the answer is no longer clear.

“A larger scandal.” Statement of fact. Uttered without pause or hesitation. This is the truth as the Incumbent see it. Another little clarity. There are no facts yet, nothing concrete, but it is at least a direction. A space into which to cast his thoughts. Cast them like weighted dice and aim for some unknown target score. It is difficult to beat the house in a game whose rules you do not know. Better to leave victory to the side and cast about for the rules. With every loss, a little more information. “And you do not know what that is.” Not a question, nor an accusation. A mere confirmation.

“When they approached you sir,” when they approached Anatole, “was it only after you were in too deep that they hung your scandal about your neck, to keep you in line?” And what will they hang about his own? “Or were there other considerations? Promises made? A rise in standing perhaps? Access to some rarefied circles? It would be best to understand their means of operation. If I can expect first the carrot or the stick.” Blackmail would be likely an element, all the more certain for the participation of the Red Madame, but blackmail can only go so far in binding a conspiracy together. Fellow feeling is a surer glue. More dangerous as well.

Tom, and he is damn sure it is Tom, whoever he is, has little enough fellow feeling with the conspirators. Have the others not noticed this? Do they not care to notice? A curious thing. The discomfort and even fear is plane on his face. Plane at least when one studies it for a bit. Perhaps that is it. Perhaps the conspirators do not care to look, care to study the shapes and motions of faces, the pitch and timbre of voices. How else can they learn what another is thinking behind their eyes?

Perhaps they do not need to count the rate of breathing, the speed and pattern of eye-movements and blinking, the changes in the tightness of the mouth. Perhaps they can observe all this without ever quite knowing it. He has no such facility. The measurements must be made. Without them he may as well be deaf and blind.

He takes the measure of the man now. Shoulders drawn in, eyes tracking slow and slow, breathing deep but not restful. It is the way of the Incumbent to take this aspect. This slow and somber stance, almost funerial, or as if all the bones in his body had been replaced by lead. It is all there to be read. And he reads it freely and only understands a sliver.

“Forgive me, sir, if this next question is over-blunt. I do not know a more subtle tack. These men, these conspirators, are much as you are. Men of your station of connections. Of your kind.” Or so the whole public life of Anatole Vauquelin would seem. But such men as Anatole Vauquelin do not spend long weeks living in the Dives or in Soot, laboring in abattoirs and passing themselves off as a mere wick. And he the Incumbent has done so. Has done so well, if Bailey’s sources are to be believed. ‘Tom’ is not some hasty identity put on for a whim. It is old and even comfortable. So comfortable that now the Incumbent wears it all the time, just below his surface mask.

“How is it that they did not know what your views were likely to be? Why choose you, sir, among so many others?” He leaves the question hanging. There are myriad answers. Few provided any comfort.

His hand is still on the handle of the door, unmoving. One turn is all he can allow. Gods and ghosts but he want to, needs to complete the ritual. He needs to discomfort more, a thorn in his side to keep him focused, a task unfinished to at length come back to. He looks to his hand, then to the Incumbent’s eyes fixed upon it. “And I too will try and watch myself. Small vices, sir. We all have them.”

There is little more to say, in this place and behind these doors. The evening is fading, cold descending from the freezing sky. Time is growing short. “I wish there was more that you knew, that we both knew. I do not like entering into a meeting of this nature, of any nature, without some idea of the agenda, without points and counterpoints.”

He opens the door, lets his hand fall to his side, and slips out into the corridor. Only a mild hum. Evening staff finishing out the day, shuffling papers back and forth among the offices. The proper activities of the hour. “Dasiphora Street?” A little out of his way, a little more to the west than he would like. Still, he too could use the air to clear his head. “Yes, I will walk with you. Indeed, I would be glad of it.”

[Tom Cooke]

Ro Hill • Uptown

Evening on the 16th of Ophus, 2719

N
o, he shakes his head, no, I do not.

His lip twists wryly when the Shrike says when they approached you; he’s already shaking his head, and he shakes it more, slowly, though the other man spills out into more questions. More conjectures. He draws in a deep breath, glance flicking to the window where the last of the sunlight’s shafting in through the panes, slithering in through the half-drawn blinds. He looks back at Shrikeweed, at the hand that’s on the handle of the door, that’s not turning it.

Men of your station, he says then, and men of your kind. He understands well enough. He inclines his head, though he knows damn well the question that follows will be even harder to answer.

It isn’t, perhaps, so hard that he can’t answer it at all. He thinks for a moment, sucking at a tooth. I wish I knew more, too, he wants to say; I wish we knew more isn’t quite the truth. There’s much he doesn’t want Mr. Shrikeweed to know, and it’s a damned fine line to walk.

He waves a hand. “Come, then,” he says quietly. “Let’s get out of here first. We’ll take a back way to Dasiphora, and it should be quiet enough a walk for talk.”

Small vices, he keeps thinking, small vices, as Shrikeweed takes himself out into the hall and he shuts the door behind the both of them. If those are the small vices, he thinks, I don’t want to know what the big ones look like. But he already does, and he thinks maybe the small vices are just tributaries. It’s hard crossing without getting swept to the river.

Stainthorpe’s not asleep, not yet. Their footsteps creak loud in the quiet as they start down the stairs, him with his hands shaking slightly on the railing, careful with his feet in the shadows. But the quiet’s full of sounds, too: other, more distant footsteps, from above and below; muffled voices; no laughter, but the occasional cough. Always the occasional cough. Folk working late.

Well, he supposes they’re working late, too.

In the courtyard, it’s just as quiet, though a few clerks cross from building to building or toward the street. It hasn’t snowed since the three, but there’s still frost and the occasional dirty pile of snow stacked up against a wall. The gutters drip, and the walk’s glistening wet in the last sunlight and the growing light of the lamps. They’re phosphor in Ro Hill, blue if not gold, though he knows in the Soots the lamplighters’ll be out by now.

Out front’s a thicket of cabs waiting for their men, and he and Mr. Shrikeweed move on past, down the winding path and the first streets outside the snarl of offices. There are cafes here and there, bay windows scattered with light, the brush of occasional bastly and harried caprises both.

He doesn’t speak even then, though he’s thinking. He has suspicions himself; he asks himself how many he can share, how many he should. He’s spoken of the balance with her before, of how much to speak when a man already knows you’re hiding something. He knows a little of it himself, though he’s never had to think this hard about it.

They take a detour, a back street lined with the back balconies of flats, tangles of ivy crawling up old brick. It’s cold enough their breath’s steaming in the air.

“The answer to all of your questions,” he says, “is – I don’t know.” He looks sidelong at Shrikeweed, face half-lit by a passing streetlamp. “They didn’t choose me, that I know of; I” – the lie twinges unpleasantly – “chose them, because my views did align with theirs, then. And because of the carrot, I think. I’d expect the carrot, Mr. Shrikeweed, before the stick.”

But always expect the hook, he thinks. His gloved hands are buried deep in his pockets; he looks down at his shoes, glinting polished against the stones.

“It’s itself a rarefied circle, Mr. Shrikeweed; I don’t know what these men are, but they’re something. That’s what they’ll dangle in front of you, I’m sure. Influence.” He doesn’t look at him, but he can feel the paper-dry caprise. Are you interested in influence? Not for vanity, he thinks, but – in your own way, he wonders.