Vienda - Smike's End
The Night of the Twenty-First of Loshis
The Night of the Twenty-First of Loshis
I
t always rains in Loshis. Like divine clockwork. The Lady of the Hours has a strange sense of what the world needs, and how it should be apportioned. Again, she has apportioned rain. Enough to drown any poor fool who might think to look up to the sky and gawp at the airships passing overhead. No point in gawping. They might as well be as tangible as the indifferent clouds.
Only once did he ever come close to dirigibles, and that was when Da had to make sure a client of his didn’t scarper before he paid his debts. Da’s fiddles had always been complicated. Phantom concords and equally phantom promises. He had moved money around in bewildering ways. Still, it made a decent enough income. It was very nearly legal. Even so, sometimes a pigeon had gotten it into their head to fly away and abandon their obligations. A wise man remembers his debts. A wiser man wields them like a weapon. Invaluable precepts, and meant to be followed. That day, he had gone to be Da’s eyes and ears. Not for the first time.
He’d been what, twelve? Thirteen? Six or seven years ago at any rate. He’s never quite known his precise age. Ma forgot to register him until he was toddling around and making a nuisance of himself by climbing any piece of furniture he could grab. His age was a stab in the reasonable dark, his birthday a guess. Mr Shrike fixed a date for him. A date that seemed true enough. Necessary for the proper paperwork. Writs and legal nonsense. It makes not a bit of difference.
That journey up the airship tower had been a lark. Da had always been good with larks. Hissing steam, the strange smell of the lifting gas. The incongruous squeaky voices of the ship handlers, lungs full of the stuff that filled the balloons. All of it had been marvelous and strange. The waiting had been a penance. Then there had been the man. A golly with the physique of an eggs and girded linen suit too tight for his bulk. A fine suit for summering on the coast. The suit had been fine once. It had gone shiny in places from too much use. A man living beyond his means. Never wise, that. The world had always been full of foolish men.
Da had never been a fool. He could make other men come to their own natural wisdom; to offload their monetary debts upon him - for a modest fee of course - and enter into a more tenuous debt to the man from Marlowe Street. Fine information had flowed out of those debts. Information had always been better than cold hard cash. He should have paid more attention to Da’s business. Too late now. Dead men are not known for their conversation.
Information. Hells, he might give his teeth for half of what Da’s had known, for even a fraction of the favors that were owed him. Da had owed enough favors of his own. Dangerous to be in debt that way. He cracks a smile. What’s one more danger against all the others?
At the base of the hill of Smike’s End, where it rises up from the river, the airship towers cluster. Not as thick as down on the Embankment, but thick enough. In the cold night rain he can make out the shapes above. Fat bloated things. Fat and bloated like the men who travel in them. Somewhere beyond the Norrwine Spire, just north of Cheltenham Street, he pauses to look again. To look up the hill, up at the ships overhead, to look about in the shadows for the tail he’s picked up.
The footfalls are quiet enough. Not stealthy in the common sense, rather more casual. Another body out on their own business in this dark and soaking night. Footfalls that try and mean nothing. Footfalls that have been following him since he came across the river at the base of the Clockhouse. He’s little enough money on him. He’s no plum target. This footpad’s not looking for a fine payday. They’re after something else.
Might as well learn what it is. It will be information, and information has value.
Up the hill now and through the winding streets he’s come to think of as home. Enough angles and alleys he can use. The footpad at his heels has little chance in these streets. Well, not unless they too call these home streets. Not evidence of that. Footpads are rare on Smike’s End. Rare, but not unknown. He’s familiar with most of the usual housebreakers and second story man in the End. Martin the Glazier, best glassman on this side of the river, or so he claims, has turned out to be an obscure cousin of his. Not all that surprising, but even family can stab you between the ribs. It pays to be cautious. That’s another one of the precepts.
At Loomshuttle Street and Grossmith Alley, where the shadows are particularly agreeable, he ducks into an alcove. The brick pressed up against his back is slick with rain and the gods know what foul slime. To the mona of this place, to the whirling magic of the dark he offers his words, his entreaties. The shadows know him. They too are kin. After a fashion. A hiss of words and the shadows lap about the borders of his body. They enfold about him, whispering their responses, they welcome him home. Like gossipy aunts, the mona wish to convey their news. What news shadows and bricks might have he can never quite discover. He does not know how to ask questions of the darkness. Their words he can hear. Their meaning escapes him. That’s always the case with daft old aunties.
He moves not at all. He barely breaths in the embrace of the shadows. He waits for the footpad to pass him by. The waiting is a penance.
In the rain-drowned streets, at last she passes him by. Small, compact, with a careful stride that should raise no alarm bells. He knows that stride, knows that form. Without her shoes, she’s what, five feet even on days when she is feeling tall? She is not feeling tall today. A thief should not stand out. She stands out only for the time of day and for the rain. She seems no threat. A shop girl on her way home perhaps, or a servant out on some errand. Nothing to note, nothing to raise the hackles of even the finest golly out for a rain-soaked stroll.
As she passes, he reaches out a shadowy hand, grasps her by the shoulder. “‘Ello Charlie.” She does not respond the the name, does not respond kindly to the gesture. Quick as can be and without even thinking the knife is in her hand. A vicious thing, something a fishmonger might use. Well, the fishmonger’s boy has been paying her mind of late, perhaps she had it of him. Cheeky bastard. Even in the dark of the streets, the knife flashes, darting toward him, a deadly, silver fish. It is a good strike. He’s taught her that. He can counter it. A flash and his own hand darts out, locks with her wrist, and he pushes the knife away. Another flash and the handle is in his hand. He twists it, she yelps, and lets it fall.
“‘Ello Charlie,” he says again, staring down at the face of his favorite sister. “Don’t tell me Ma sent you all this way just to gut me.” Ma’s got no cause. Ma would have sent someone else.
Charlie catches her breath, and lands an ineffectual blow about his arm. “Hells and death! I didn’t know it were you! Any slower and you’d be flayed open on these streets.” A wicked smile passes across her small, heart-shaped face. “Though it’s more than you deserve, brother of mine.”
“Scurrilous lies! I ain’t done nothing that’ll send my favorite sister after my life. No Confabulation would order it. Waste of time and skill.” Charlie nearly blushes. Easiest way to disarm her is to compliment her skill. She has plenty of those. “And this ain’t no place for any palaver, if that’s what you’re on about.” Charlie nods, rain cascading from the bell-shaped hat she wears. “Come on then, step into my parlour. It ain’t far.”
Ten minutes walk and they slip into Lesser Larch Street. Narrow, unremarkable. More a glorified alley than a proper street. Marlowe Street back home in the Ladies is wider and less dreary. Still, Lesser Larch Street is home. Into the neglected courtyard and up the seventeen steps he half drags Charlie out of the cold, damp night. A quick turning of keys and the vestibule, his vestibule, is before them. It is not a grand space, all brick walls and creaking wooden floors. Still, it is warm and dry and decently appointed, even if it is Mr Shrike’s entryway. “Bloody long way to come from the Ladies on a night like this, and to follow me so quiet like. What’s your game?”
“Never ignore an opportunity to hone your skills.” Another precept, and Charlie gives it with a smile. “And I ain’t scared of you.” It’s no insult, rather the opposite. Charlie does not trust easily. “Ma sent me to track you down. This place,” she gestures about the room, “well, it’s bloody hard to find.”
It is fitting, that the home of an anonymous official should be on some anonymous street. There is nothing much to say of Lesser Larch Street. It is narrow, paved with greyish brick, and flanked with old red brick buildings. Shops occupy the lower levels with dwelling places above. It is like any one of a hundred other streets in Smike’s End. It’s a wonder he had ever found the place. Anonymous officials with potentially valuable correspondence don’t crop up every day. Drafts of new regulations, plans for the next fiscal year, whatever that was when it’s at home. It had been rumored that Mr Shrike also kept more candid memoranda, the kind of thing that could ruin officials or scuttle a piece of proposed legislation. Valuable items, just the sort of thing in information traders down Marlowe Street would give their eye teeth for. Just the sort of information Da had wanted.
Then he’d been nicked, by that same official, and rather than be hanged for housebreaking, he’d been pressed into service. Leave it to Mr Shrike to leverage an opportunity. The man might make a fortune on Marlowe Street with all he knows. Better perhaps that he doesn’t. Mr Shrike’s dangerous enough without lighting out on his own.
“If you’ve been looking for this place, for me, then it ain’t no social call. What’s the chant Charlie?” Even in the warmth of the vestibule Charlie is shivering in her sodden clothes. Never a good idea to conduct family business with a miserable sister. “Look, it’s something out of the ordinary, I smoke that much, but it can wait a bit. World won’t end in five minutes.” And if it does, there’s precious all he can do about it. “Pull the curtain across that alcove, and put on some reasonably dry clothes. I’ll stand watch.” Against what? Some other half-drowned thief looking for a papery score? Mr Shrike suddenly coming home? At least two hours before the bureaucrat slips back. If he slips back home at all. Still, it seems the filial thing to do. “I got a flannel nightshirt that should swallow you up a treat, and those lumpy socks you tried to knit. Warm as toast.”
Charlie nods, and slips into the alcove. A rattle of latches and the creak of hinges. “Damnit! The bastard trunk bit me!”
“Aye, it’ll do that if you ain’t careful. And be careful you don’t fall in.”
“Bloody dangerous a trunk like this.” A rummaging sound as Charlie pushes aside clothes, what sounds to be his summer boots, and some grating of his personal strong box. “You know, you could hide more than one body in here.”
“What, like Great Auntie Ethel?”
“Great Auntie Ethel is still alive.” Charlie shudders. Some story there to be sure. Great Auntie Ethel is a force to be reckoned with. Years of careful avoidance never dull the memories of that cast-iron fire poker of a woman.
“Her husbands ain’t. Granted they were all bastards. Anyway, two of ‘em died in a boating accidents. No bodies to store.” There are rumors Great Auntie Ethel did away with her useless husbands. More likely they up and left on account of her temper and the stinking cabbage she insisted was the key to ‘keeping the pipes clear’. Good old Ethel.
A slide of the curtain and Charlie, now drowned in an oversized nightshirt, made her appearance. She looked even smaller in that voluminous garment, like a wind-up toy. With the slightest of irritated huffs, she dropped herself on the padded lid of the truck that served as his bed. “Well, beloved sister of mine, what’s the word.”
“Ma says to come home.”
He looks at her, searching her face. Huge dark eyes, owl-like, fix him. The set of her mouth is firm, unmoving. Charlie’s not spinning tales, not having him on. Ma had sent her after all. Hells and death. This bodes ill. Best to get the word as quick as he can. Best to wheedle out of it even faster. He’s spent too much time in the Ladies as it stands. Too much time for bloody Wilkes to either strong-arm him back into service or just enjoy a little bit of roughing up. Wilkes never could abide one of his ‘boys’ doing a bunk. Enough time that it’s half tempting to fall back into the cheery madness of the place, of his family. No. Not quite. He’s making his own way here. He’s made it out of the Ladies at last. The bigger scores are before him, the strange matter of the Incumbent and the Red Madame still lies unresolved. Dangerous work. Work that needs doing.
“Just like that? No buttering up, no pleas or cajoling?” That too speaks of dangerous work. Magnificent. Just what he needs.
“Shut your mouth before it runs off with you. We ain’t got time for games and palaver. Ma says come home.” Her voice drops, grows quiet. It’s not an order any more, not a command. It’s a plea alright, and pleas deserve a hearing. “so come home Bailey.”
From the huge Bastian vase that doubles as an umbrella stand, he draws out a bottle of Oman wine. The good stuff. Nutty and dark from the barrels and whatever alchemy the winemakers of Laus Oma perform. He’s heard they heat it in some manner, then let it age in the holds of trading ships. Well, whatever it is they do to it, it makes a sound wine.
He pulls out the cork, and passes the bottle over. No cups, not tonight. Tonight calls for swigs direct from the bottle. Just like old times. “What’s happened Charlie? What’s Ma need me more? She got a heist planned? A big con?” The moa races will start in earnest once the rains stop, and there’s always a packet to be made on those.
“Family business.” Her tone is dark as she reaches out for the bottle. The swing she takes is long and deep. A swing to calm the nerves, maybe even steel them. “It’s Lydia. Her bastard of a husband . . .”
“What’s the fucker done? If he’s laid a hand on Lydia, I’ll cut it off and feed it to him, one finger at a time.” Bill Dravis does not deserve even that consideration. A bloody-minded man with nothing to recommend him but a job that pays and prodigious strength. He might be accounted to be handsome, at least if you preferred musclebound oafs. Or thought you had no choice.
“She says he keeps his blows for the others in his trade. Stevedores can put up with a brutal beating and be hauling crates the next day.” She shakes her head and takes another long swing. “I don’t believe it. I’ve seen too many bruises for a woman what works in a printer’s shop. Ain’t no press that dangerous. Lydia don’t say nothing, but ain’t that. No, Bill’s up and vanished. Money’s cut in half, and little Violet’s without her Da.”
That might be Bill Dravis’ one redeeming quality. He dotes on that child. Violet’s what, less than two, but she’s got more toys than is sensible. Bill always carries her about, making her laugh and smile, tossing her in the air and telling her stories. Hells, the man’s got no qualms about changing the little mite’s nappies nor feeding her. Better than can be said for most men. Bill might be a bastard, but there’s no sense to be had in him abandoning Violet. More sense in him scarpering with the wee one.
“Ma says you find people now.” Well, true enough, he found Thomas Cooke, found the Weaver true enough. A bloody giant of a man can’t be too hard to find. “Ma wants you to find Bill. What you do with him after that, well, that’s your bailiwick.”
He nods, and takes the bottle from Charlie. A long swig of the wine passes his gullet. A fine thing this drink; a thoughtful vintage. “Ma’s giving me a free hand? She and the aunties don’t have no word to say?” Charlie shakes her head. Bloody hells but this is no good. The old ladies have their fingers in everything, they pull every string. If they’re giving a free hand to the likes of him, they’re worried. Terrified. “What’s the catch? What ain’t you telling me Charlie? There’s more dark than an absent husband. What’s the chant? The real chant?”
She reaches for the bottle again, he lets it pass into those small and dexterous fingers. Only Ma’s got faster hands than Charlie, and he has years and years of practice Charlie cannot hope to match. Not yet. “Rumors, that’s all.” Rumors are currency in the Ladies. Rumors are truer the news. “Bill might have fallen in with the Brothers, all slow and careful like. Dangerous associations.”
“And all contrary to our interests.”
“Just so.”
The Brothers have no place in Vienda. They’re neither wanted nor welcome. Still, they have their grimy hands in too many pots. Falling in with the Brothers’, well , that’s as close to treason as can be. Even the Res ain’t quite so bad. That was saying something. Ma and the rest of the old ladies have no time for the Res, no opinion of their half-cocked ideals. They seem daft fools to him. A word nearly flits him by, a word he’s from Mr Shrike. Wings still abroad, he catches it before it flies away. ‘Utopian’ that’s the word. Good place. No place. As sensible as the Res itself. Still, it’s better than those bastard Brothers.
“There’s one more thing.” Her head hangs low, and she cannot meet his eyes. “Da’s old debts. Both those he owns and those owed to him. You’ve got to take them over Bailey, sort them out. It’s all on B. Sneed of Marlowe Street. Easy enough for you to become that kov.” At last she looks up, worry all across her owlish face. “Don’t say you won’t come. Don’t say you won’t take up the name and the debts. Da would have wanted it.”
“Give me the night to think on it Charlie. Besides, it’s too late and too wet to go back to the Ladies tonight. I ain’t paying for a cab and the trams stopped hours ago. You can take my spot in the alcove. Get some rest, and I’ll get some thinking in. I’ll give Ma that much at least.”
Three hours an onward toward dawn. The light in the small high window rising, and he is still awake, still on watch. Charlie’s long past her shallow sleep and on into the deep dreams. Just so. And at last the outer door opens, and Mr Shrike enters. Pale, drained, hollow eyed. Mr Shrike as he so often is. He has never been sure if his principal even sleeps. Oh he has found him dead to the world any number of times, but it seems less like sleep and more like -- what was the word? -- catatonia, that was it. Only after being beaten half-senseless in the boxing ring had he ever seen Mr Shrike truly sleep. And even then, not for long.
The bureaucrat’s tired and colorless eyes scan the vestibule. At the sight of an unfamiliar form the pupils dilate. A query, not an accusation.
“Not like you to have a guest. Lady or gent it makes no matter.” Mr Shrike has no judgement, only questioning. This is just more data to him. More potential leverage. Leverage to be denied.
“My sister, Mr Shrike. Here on family business. Too wet and too late to send her back to the Ladies.” A nod, and even a quirk of a smile. Mr Shrike has a sister of his own. Mr Shrike understands family. That had surprised him once. Now he could not think otherwise. Even gollies have family. “Begging your pardon Mr Shrike, but it looks like I am needed back home.”
“For how long?” A direct question. No recrimination, no doubt. On any significant matter he has never lied to Mr Shrike. The bureaucrat takes that as read. He has never given the man cause to thing otherwise.
“Can’t say. Can’t say ‘cause I don’t know.” No sense is being cagey now. Trust matters. He’ll do what he can to keep Mr Shrike’s trust. It pays decently enough. It is safe. It is sound. “Debts that need sorting out. And another of my sisters has misplaced her husband.”
“Careless. Still, if anyone can find the rogue it is you.” Mr Shrike has long placed trust in him. There is no sense in violating that. There has to be a precept to that effect. Ma would know. “Find your man Bailey. Sort these debts and with all convenient speed. I still require your services, but a distracted agent is of no use to me.” Mr Shrike gives one of his cold and calculating smiles. If equations could grin they would look as Mr Shrike does now. “You have proven you use, time and time again, I see no reason to bar you from this business.” A clever man is Mr Shrike. He considers the needs of his agents, he purchases their loyalty with loyalty of his own. A rare thing in gollies. A rarity to be cultivated. “All I ask is you keep your eyes and ears open. We still have business in the Ladies, and I would see it through.”
“Right you are, Mr Shrike. I ain’t abandoning neither you nor your work. Only I’ve got work of my own it seems. Bloody inconvenient, but there’s no way around it.” The bottle of wine is long gone. Another swig would do him well. There is nothing left to swig. “And I’ll keep an eye out.”
Mr Shrike nods, a gesture of understanding. “And if I require your services?”
“A note either at the scrying office on Quillbrook Street, or else at the coffee shop on Hazlar Street will find me sure enough.” Best to check those places daily. No sense in getting on Mr Shrike’s bad side. He has seen his magic, felt it creep, cold and merciless into his skull. Like a winter wind. Like a labyrinth.
“From time to time, I will require your full attention. You are still in my service. Never forget that.” It is not a thing easily forgotten. It is not a thing he wishes forgotten. Mr Shirike knows it. He knows it just as well. As if to seal the bargain, Mr Shrike raises his hand to his right eye and forms a ring around it with thumb and forefinger. “Be seeing you, Bailey.”
In echo, he returns the gesture. “Be seeing you, Mr Shrike.”
Only once did he ever come close to dirigibles, and that was when Da had to make sure a client of his didn’t scarper before he paid his debts. Da’s fiddles had always been complicated. Phantom concords and equally phantom promises. He had moved money around in bewildering ways. Still, it made a decent enough income. It was very nearly legal. Even so, sometimes a pigeon had gotten it into their head to fly away and abandon their obligations. A wise man remembers his debts. A wiser man wields them like a weapon. Invaluable precepts, and meant to be followed. That day, he had gone to be Da’s eyes and ears. Not for the first time.
He’d been what, twelve? Thirteen? Six or seven years ago at any rate. He’s never quite known his precise age. Ma forgot to register him until he was toddling around and making a nuisance of himself by climbing any piece of furniture he could grab. His age was a stab in the reasonable dark, his birthday a guess. Mr Shrike fixed a date for him. A date that seemed true enough. Necessary for the proper paperwork. Writs and legal nonsense. It makes not a bit of difference.
That journey up the airship tower had been a lark. Da had always been good with larks. Hissing steam, the strange smell of the lifting gas. The incongruous squeaky voices of the ship handlers, lungs full of the stuff that filled the balloons. All of it had been marvelous and strange. The waiting had been a penance. Then there had been the man. A golly with the physique of an eggs and girded linen suit too tight for his bulk. A fine suit for summering on the coast. The suit had been fine once. It had gone shiny in places from too much use. A man living beyond his means. Never wise, that. The world had always been full of foolish men.
Da had never been a fool. He could make other men come to their own natural wisdom; to offload their monetary debts upon him - for a modest fee of course - and enter into a more tenuous debt to the man from Marlowe Street. Fine information had flowed out of those debts. Information had always been better than cold hard cash. He should have paid more attention to Da’s business. Too late now. Dead men are not known for their conversation.
Information. Hells, he might give his teeth for half of what Da’s had known, for even a fraction of the favors that were owed him. Da had owed enough favors of his own. Dangerous to be in debt that way. He cracks a smile. What’s one more danger against all the others?
At the base of the hill of Smike’s End, where it rises up from the river, the airship towers cluster. Not as thick as down on the Embankment, but thick enough. In the cold night rain he can make out the shapes above. Fat bloated things. Fat and bloated like the men who travel in them. Somewhere beyond the Norrwine Spire, just north of Cheltenham Street, he pauses to look again. To look up the hill, up at the ships overhead, to look about in the shadows for the tail he’s picked up.
The footfalls are quiet enough. Not stealthy in the common sense, rather more casual. Another body out on their own business in this dark and soaking night. Footfalls that try and mean nothing. Footfalls that have been following him since he came across the river at the base of the Clockhouse. He’s little enough money on him. He’s no plum target. This footpad’s not looking for a fine payday. They’re after something else.
Might as well learn what it is. It will be information, and information has value.
Up the hill now and through the winding streets he’s come to think of as home. Enough angles and alleys he can use. The footpad at his heels has little chance in these streets. Well, not unless they too call these home streets. Not evidence of that. Footpads are rare on Smike’s End. Rare, but not unknown. He’s familiar with most of the usual housebreakers and second story man in the End. Martin the Glazier, best glassman on this side of the river, or so he claims, has turned out to be an obscure cousin of his. Not all that surprising, but even family can stab you between the ribs. It pays to be cautious. That’s another one of the precepts.
At Loomshuttle Street and Grossmith Alley, where the shadows are particularly agreeable, he ducks into an alcove. The brick pressed up against his back is slick with rain and the gods know what foul slime. To the mona of this place, to the whirling magic of the dark he offers his words, his entreaties. The shadows know him. They too are kin. After a fashion. A hiss of words and the shadows lap about the borders of his body. They enfold about him, whispering their responses, they welcome him home. Like gossipy aunts, the mona wish to convey their news. What news shadows and bricks might have he can never quite discover. He does not know how to ask questions of the darkness. Their words he can hear. Their meaning escapes him. That’s always the case with daft old aunties.
He moves not at all. He barely breaths in the embrace of the shadows. He waits for the footpad to pass him by. The waiting is a penance.
In the rain-drowned streets, at last she passes him by. Small, compact, with a careful stride that should raise no alarm bells. He knows that stride, knows that form. Without her shoes, she’s what, five feet even on days when she is feeling tall? She is not feeling tall today. A thief should not stand out. She stands out only for the time of day and for the rain. She seems no threat. A shop girl on her way home perhaps, or a servant out on some errand. Nothing to note, nothing to raise the hackles of even the finest golly out for a rain-soaked stroll.
As she passes, he reaches out a shadowy hand, grasps her by the shoulder. “‘Ello Charlie.” She does not respond the the name, does not respond kindly to the gesture. Quick as can be and without even thinking the knife is in her hand. A vicious thing, something a fishmonger might use. Well, the fishmonger’s boy has been paying her mind of late, perhaps she had it of him. Cheeky bastard. Even in the dark of the streets, the knife flashes, darting toward him, a deadly, silver fish. It is a good strike. He’s taught her that. He can counter it. A flash and his own hand darts out, locks with her wrist, and he pushes the knife away. Another flash and the handle is in his hand. He twists it, she yelps, and lets it fall.
“‘Ello Charlie,” he says again, staring down at the face of his favorite sister. “Don’t tell me Ma sent you all this way just to gut me.” Ma’s got no cause. Ma would have sent someone else.
Charlie catches her breath, and lands an ineffectual blow about his arm. “Hells and death! I didn’t know it were you! Any slower and you’d be flayed open on these streets.” A wicked smile passes across her small, heart-shaped face. “Though it’s more than you deserve, brother of mine.”
“Scurrilous lies! I ain’t done nothing that’ll send my favorite sister after my life. No Confabulation would order it. Waste of time and skill.” Charlie nearly blushes. Easiest way to disarm her is to compliment her skill. She has plenty of those. “And this ain’t no place for any palaver, if that’s what you’re on about.” Charlie nods, rain cascading from the bell-shaped hat she wears. “Come on then, step into my parlour. It ain’t far.”
Ten minutes walk and they slip into Lesser Larch Street. Narrow, unremarkable. More a glorified alley than a proper street. Marlowe Street back home in the Ladies is wider and less dreary. Still, Lesser Larch Street is home. Into the neglected courtyard and up the seventeen steps he half drags Charlie out of the cold, damp night. A quick turning of keys and the vestibule, his vestibule, is before them. It is not a grand space, all brick walls and creaking wooden floors. Still, it is warm and dry and decently appointed, even if it is Mr Shrike’s entryway. “Bloody long way to come from the Ladies on a night like this, and to follow me so quiet like. What’s your game?”
“Never ignore an opportunity to hone your skills.” Another precept, and Charlie gives it with a smile. “And I ain’t scared of you.” It’s no insult, rather the opposite. Charlie does not trust easily. “Ma sent me to track you down. This place,” she gestures about the room, “well, it’s bloody hard to find.”
It is fitting, that the home of an anonymous official should be on some anonymous street. There is nothing much to say of Lesser Larch Street. It is narrow, paved with greyish brick, and flanked with old red brick buildings. Shops occupy the lower levels with dwelling places above. It is like any one of a hundred other streets in Smike’s End. It’s a wonder he had ever found the place. Anonymous officials with potentially valuable correspondence don’t crop up every day. Drafts of new regulations, plans for the next fiscal year, whatever that was when it’s at home. It had been rumored that Mr Shrike also kept more candid memoranda, the kind of thing that could ruin officials or scuttle a piece of proposed legislation. Valuable items, just the sort of thing in information traders down Marlowe Street would give their eye teeth for. Just the sort of information Da had wanted.
Then he’d been nicked, by that same official, and rather than be hanged for housebreaking, he’d been pressed into service. Leave it to Mr Shrike to leverage an opportunity. The man might make a fortune on Marlowe Street with all he knows. Better perhaps that he doesn’t. Mr Shrike’s dangerous enough without lighting out on his own.
“If you’ve been looking for this place, for me, then it ain’t no social call. What’s the chant Charlie?” Even in the warmth of the vestibule Charlie is shivering in her sodden clothes. Never a good idea to conduct family business with a miserable sister. “Look, it’s something out of the ordinary, I smoke that much, but it can wait a bit. World won’t end in five minutes.” And if it does, there’s precious all he can do about it. “Pull the curtain across that alcove, and put on some reasonably dry clothes. I’ll stand watch.” Against what? Some other half-drowned thief looking for a papery score? Mr Shrike suddenly coming home? At least two hours before the bureaucrat slips back. If he slips back home at all. Still, it seems the filial thing to do. “I got a flannel nightshirt that should swallow you up a treat, and those lumpy socks you tried to knit. Warm as toast.”
Charlie nods, and slips into the alcove. A rattle of latches and the creak of hinges. “Damnit! The bastard trunk bit me!”
“Aye, it’ll do that if you ain’t careful. And be careful you don’t fall in.”
“Bloody dangerous a trunk like this.” A rummaging sound as Charlie pushes aside clothes, what sounds to be his summer boots, and some grating of his personal strong box. “You know, you could hide more than one body in here.”
“What, like Great Auntie Ethel?”
“Great Auntie Ethel is still alive.” Charlie shudders. Some story there to be sure. Great Auntie Ethel is a force to be reckoned with. Years of careful avoidance never dull the memories of that cast-iron fire poker of a woman.
“Her husbands ain’t. Granted they were all bastards. Anyway, two of ‘em died in a boating accidents. No bodies to store.” There are rumors Great Auntie Ethel did away with her useless husbands. More likely they up and left on account of her temper and the stinking cabbage she insisted was the key to ‘keeping the pipes clear’. Good old Ethel.
A slide of the curtain and Charlie, now drowned in an oversized nightshirt, made her appearance. She looked even smaller in that voluminous garment, like a wind-up toy. With the slightest of irritated huffs, she dropped herself on the padded lid of the truck that served as his bed. “Well, beloved sister of mine, what’s the word.”
“Ma says to come home.”
He looks at her, searching her face. Huge dark eyes, owl-like, fix him. The set of her mouth is firm, unmoving. Charlie’s not spinning tales, not having him on. Ma had sent her after all. Hells and death. This bodes ill. Best to get the word as quick as he can. Best to wheedle out of it even faster. He’s spent too much time in the Ladies as it stands. Too much time for bloody Wilkes to either strong-arm him back into service or just enjoy a little bit of roughing up. Wilkes never could abide one of his ‘boys’ doing a bunk. Enough time that it’s half tempting to fall back into the cheery madness of the place, of his family. No. Not quite. He’s making his own way here. He’s made it out of the Ladies at last. The bigger scores are before him, the strange matter of the Incumbent and the Red Madame still lies unresolved. Dangerous work. Work that needs doing.
“Just like that? No buttering up, no pleas or cajoling?” That too speaks of dangerous work. Magnificent. Just what he needs.
“Shut your mouth before it runs off with you. We ain’t got time for games and palaver. Ma says come home.” Her voice drops, grows quiet. It’s not an order any more, not a command. It’s a plea alright, and pleas deserve a hearing. “so come home Bailey.”
From the huge Bastian vase that doubles as an umbrella stand, he draws out a bottle of Oman wine. The good stuff. Nutty and dark from the barrels and whatever alchemy the winemakers of Laus Oma perform. He’s heard they heat it in some manner, then let it age in the holds of trading ships. Well, whatever it is they do to it, it makes a sound wine.
He pulls out the cork, and passes the bottle over. No cups, not tonight. Tonight calls for swigs direct from the bottle. Just like old times. “What’s happened Charlie? What’s Ma need me more? She got a heist planned? A big con?” The moa races will start in earnest once the rains stop, and there’s always a packet to be made on those.
“Family business.” Her tone is dark as she reaches out for the bottle. The swing she takes is long and deep. A swing to calm the nerves, maybe even steel them. “It’s Lydia. Her bastard of a husband . . .”
“What’s the fucker done? If he’s laid a hand on Lydia, I’ll cut it off and feed it to him, one finger at a time.” Bill Dravis does not deserve even that consideration. A bloody-minded man with nothing to recommend him but a job that pays and prodigious strength. He might be accounted to be handsome, at least if you preferred musclebound oafs. Or thought you had no choice.
“She says he keeps his blows for the others in his trade. Stevedores can put up with a brutal beating and be hauling crates the next day.” She shakes her head and takes another long swing. “I don’t believe it. I’ve seen too many bruises for a woman what works in a printer’s shop. Ain’t no press that dangerous. Lydia don’t say nothing, but ain’t that. No, Bill’s up and vanished. Money’s cut in half, and little Violet’s without her Da.”
That might be Bill Dravis’ one redeeming quality. He dotes on that child. Violet’s what, less than two, but she’s got more toys than is sensible. Bill always carries her about, making her laugh and smile, tossing her in the air and telling her stories. Hells, the man’s got no qualms about changing the little mite’s nappies nor feeding her. Better than can be said for most men. Bill might be a bastard, but there’s no sense to be had in him abandoning Violet. More sense in him scarpering with the wee one.
“Ma says you find people now.” Well, true enough, he found Thomas Cooke, found the Weaver true enough. A bloody giant of a man can’t be too hard to find. “Ma wants you to find Bill. What you do with him after that, well, that’s your bailiwick.”
He nods, and takes the bottle from Charlie. A long swig of the wine passes his gullet. A fine thing this drink; a thoughtful vintage. “Ma’s giving me a free hand? She and the aunties don’t have no word to say?” Charlie shakes her head. Bloody hells but this is no good. The old ladies have their fingers in everything, they pull every string. If they’re giving a free hand to the likes of him, they’re worried. Terrified. “What’s the catch? What ain’t you telling me Charlie? There’s more dark than an absent husband. What’s the chant? The real chant?”
She reaches for the bottle again, he lets it pass into those small and dexterous fingers. Only Ma’s got faster hands than Charlie, and he has years and years of practice Charlie cannot hope to match. Not yet. “Rumors, that’s all.” Rumors are currency in the Ladies. Rumors are truer the news. “Bill might have fallen in with the Brothers, all slow and careful like. Dangerous associations.”
“And all contrary to our interests.”
“Just so.”
The Brothers have no place in Vienda. They’re neither wanted nor welcome. Still, they have their grimy hands in too many pots. Falling in with the Brothers’, well , that’s as close to treason as can be. Even the Res ain’t quite so bad. That was saying something. Ma and the rest of the old ladies have no time for the Res, no opinion of their half-cocked ideals. They seem daft fools to him. A word nearly flits him by, a word he’s from Mr Shrike. Wings still abroad, he catches it before it flies away. ‘Utopian’ that’s the word. Good place. No place. As sensible as the Res itself. Still, it’s better than those bastard Brothers.
“There’s one more thing.” Her head hangs low, and she cannot meet his eyes. “Da’s old debts. Both those he owns and those owed to him. You’ve got to take them over Bailey, sort them out. It’s all on B. Sneed of Marlowe Street. Easy enough for you to become that kov.” At last she looks up, worry all across her owlish face. “Don’t say you won’t come. Don’t say you won’t take up the name and the debts. Da would have wanted it.”
“Give me the night to think on it Charlie. Besides, it’s too late and too wet to go back to the Ladies tonight. I ain’t paying for a cab and the trams stopped hours ago. You can take my spot in the alcove. Get some rest, and I’ll get some thinking in. I’ll give Ma that much at least.”
* * *
Three hours an onward toward dawn. The light in the small high window rising, and he is still awake, still on watch. Charlie’s long past her shallow sleep and on into the deep dreams. Just so. And at last the outer door opens, and Mr Shrike enters. Pale, drained, hollow eyed. Mr Shrike as he so often is. He has never been sure if his principal even sleeps. Oh he has found him dead to the world any number of times, but it seems less like sleep and more like -- what was the word? -- catatonia, that was it. Only after being beaten half-senseless in the boxing ring had he ever seen Mr Shrike truly sleep. And even then, not for long.
The bureaucrat’s tired and colorless eyes scan the vestibule. At the sight of an unfamiliar form the pupils dilate. A query, not an accusation.
“Not like you to have a guest. Lady or gent it makes no matter.” Mr Shrike has no judgement, only questioning. This is just more data to him. More potential leverage. Leverage to be denied.
“My sister, Mr Shrike. Here on family business. Too wet and too late to send her back to the Ladies.” A nod, and even a quirk of a smile. Mr Shrike has a sister of his own. Mr Shrike understands family. That had surprised him once. Now he could not think otherwise. Even gollies have family. “Begging your pardon Mr Shrike, but it looks like I am needed back home.”
“For how long?” A direct question. No recrimination, no doubt. On any significant matter he has never lied to Mr Shrike. The bureaucrat takes that as read. He has never given the man cause to thing otherwise.
“Can’t say. Can’t say ‘cause I don’t know.” No sense is being cagey now. Trust matters. He’ll do what he can to keep Mr Shrike’s trust. It pays decently enough. It is safe. It is sound. “Debts that need sorting out. And another of my sisters has misplaced her husband.”
“Careless. Still, if anyone can find the rogue it is you.” Mr Shrike has long placed trust in him. There is no sense in violating that. There has to be a precept to that effect. Ma would know. “Find your man Bailey. Sort these debts and with all convenient speed. I still require your services, but a distracted agent is of no use to me.” Mr Shrike gives one of his cold and calculating smiles. If equations could grin they would look as Mr Shrike does now. “You have proven you use, time and time again, I see no reason to bar you from this business.” A clever man is Mr Shrike. He considers the needs of his agents, he purchases their loyalty with loyalty of his own. A rare thing in gollies. A rarity to be cultivated. “All I ask is you keep your eyes and ears open. We still have business in the Ladies, and I would see it through.”
“Right you are, Mr Shrike. I ain’t abandoning neither you nor your work. Only I’ve got work of my own it seems. Bloody inconvenient, but there’s no way around it.” The bottle of wine is long gone. Another swig would do him well. There is nothing left to swig. “And I’ll keep an eye out.”
Mr Shrike nods, a gesture of understanding. “And if I require your services?”
“A note either at the scrying office on Quillbrook Street, or else at the coffee shop on Hazlar Street will find me sure enough.” Best to check those places daily. No sense in getting on Mr Shrike’s bad side. He has seen his magic, felt it creep, cold and merciless into his skull. Like a winter wind. Like a labyrinth.
“From time to time, I will require your full attention. You are still in my service. Never forget that.” It is not a thing easily forgotten. It is not a thing he wishes forgotten. Mr Shirike knows it. He knows it just as well. As if to seal the bargain, Mr Shrike raises his hand to his right eye and forms a ring around it with thumb and forefinger. “Be seeing you, Bailey.”
In echo, he returns the gesture. “Be seeing you, Mr Shrike.”
Roll
Roll
