Mr. Stitch (22 page)

The sound of his gun, loud and bright like a thunderbolt in his hand, was lost to the soft sounds of gunfire in his mind, and echoed by a return volley of bullets that went mercifully wide, tearing chunks of wood from the empty boxes. The handsome quartermaster was screaming then, not at Beckett, but at the gunman to his right, Beckett couldn’t hear him, or couldn’t be bothered to hear him, just turned and fired. He hit the gunman high in the shoulder, sending the man whirling to the ground.

“…hit the munitions, you idiot!” The quartermaster was saying. He dropped his weapon. “Look, okay, look! Unarmed. I surrender, all right? I surrender, just stop fucking
shooting
.” Beckett stepped forward and struck the man across the face, using the full weight of his antique revolver. The man fell, and Beckett kicked him twice in the ribs, hard, before he could stand. “Shit. Shit,” he gasped. “I
surrender
, for fuck—” Beckett kicked him in the teeth, and he slumped into unconsciousness.

“What…what…are you…” the gunman moaned. “You’re supposed to arrest…”

Beckett whirled on him. “Who are you working for?” The man’s face was different, now, there was a deep dent in his skull and his were glazed.
Dummies
, Beckett thought,
how did the dummies get here? How did they find their way from Kaarcag?
It would reach out to him, Beckett knew, try and crush him with its stupidly strong hands.

“You’re supposed to…”

Here,
Beckett told himself.
You’re here, in Trowth. He’s a heretic.
The old coroner stepped on the man’s wounded shoulder, digging the toe of his shoe into the bullet wound. The gunman screamed. “You were picking something up here. Where were you taking it? Who are you working for?”

“You can’t—”

Beckett pressed harder, and the man screamed again. “You don’t tell me, boy. You don’t tell me anything. I have a question, you answer it. That’s how this works. Understand?” Beckett leaned in again, coaxing a ragged gasp from the man’s throat. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the man stammered. “Yes.”

“Who do you work for?”

The man shook his head, sweat streamed down his face, which now was wracked with pain. “I can’t. He’ll kill me.”

Without warning, Beckett turned and fired another bullet into the dead man behind him. The action was so sudden, the gunshot so sharp, that the gunman at his feet cried out, involuntarily. Beckett leaned down and glared, one eye hard as a polished stone, one just a bloody black pit into the recesses of his skull. “Idiot. What do you think
I’m
going to do to you?” He kicked the man in his wound again. “Who do you work for?”

The gunman coughed and choked and spat out, “John,” from behind his tears. “Anonymous John.”

“What are you doing?” Valentine whispered, softly. Beckett hadn’t seen him enter, barely registered the sound of his voice.

“Where were you taking the munition?”

“An address…in. Bluewater.” He nodded towards his dead companion. “He’s got it. Written.”

Beckett turned to Valentine. “Get it. I’ll be outside.” He threw one last, spiteful kick at the man’s face, and stomped out into the warming springtime air.

It was after the third performance of
Theocles
, at yet another high-spirited soiree at the home of the Raithower Vie-Gorgons, that the official news of the play’s demise was received. It was some time after midnight—considering that the performance was a several-hour affair in the first place, and was combined with six curtain calls and a substantial amount of paperwork required for the royal censor to fill out, this may in fact be regarded as an unusually quick response. In any case, some time after twelve, a messenger arrived from the royal palace at the Raithower home; he was admitted by the Vie-Gorgon major domo, and brought directly to Emilia Vie-Gorgon, who decided to make the announcement to her guests herself.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she began, her voice full of emotion that Skinner could not help but think was spurious. While she was no expert on the subject of Emilia Vie-Gorgon and her many modes of expression, Skinner was fairly certain that she’d never heard the young woman sound so moved about anything. “I have an…unfortunate. A terribly unfortunate announcement. It seems that His Royal Majesty…” here she pronounced the word “majesty” in such a way as to suggest that it was so thoroughly distasteful that she regretted requiring her tongue to say it at all, “…may the Word bless him,” pure sarcasm there, “…has found something objectionable in the content of our play.” How she managed to say this while sounding completely innocent of purposefully commissioning the most objectionable play imaginable was a mystery to Skinner. “He has, just today, announced that, in his position as head of the Church Royal, he has added
Theocles
to the Black List. Future performances are prohibited by law. Printing a copy of the play is prohibited by law. Owning a copy is prohibited by law.” Her voice took on a sly tone here. “I expect that all of you will want to destroy your copies as
soon as possible
.”

There were acid chuckles at this, followed by pronouncements of both consternation and indignation, that Skinner suspected were for show. Here in the safe, warm circle of Emilia Vie-Gorgon’s attention, critically lambasting the Emperor was acceptable, even expected. Just calling him a petty name or making lewd comments about his mother was likely to garner appreciative snorts of laughter, regardless of how seriously the joker took it. There were no spies for the emperor among Emilia’s circle of friends, that was for sure, unless they were Emilia’s own spies, placed to evaluate just how much her friends valued her.

But whatever the case, in the cold light of morning, when the assorted Committees of Loyalty and Compliance and Modest Behavior roamed the streets once more, even the most fervent comedian would quell his tongue, and say “Word bless the Emperor, and keep him,” and mumble such other obsequies as might satisfy the harsh and demanding eye of the Empire. The more she came to know them, the more Skinner found the Esteemed Families to be peopled entirely by cowards. Emilia, so far as Skinner knew, was the only one that had ever troubled to dare anything.

And Valentine
, Skinner thought, as he came muttering back from the punch bowl with a drink for her. Though the line, in this case, between the young gentleman’s daring and his simple lack of good sense was a crooked one. “Stupid,” Valentine was grumbling.

“You think the Emperor is stupid?” Skinner asked, sipping at her punch.

“No, my cousin. She knew this would get closed down. She’s baiting him. It’s like…she’s waving a red flag in front of a bull. Provoking.”

“I thought the Raithower Vie-Gorgons were largely unassailable, even by the Emperor.”

“Huh. Maybe. I wouldn’t bet on it, though. We…they, anyway, don’t have an army of marines and lobstermen to deploy against the dissidents. Sure, shutting down the trains for a few weeks would be a hassle, but it’s not like no one else
could
run them.” Valentine sucked his teeth, as he considered. “Maybe the Gorgon-Vies couldn’t, though. Maybe that’s what she’s banking on. The Emperor acting without thinking, responding with force, the way he always does, not realizing the wasp’s nest he’s about to step into.”

“Hm.” Skinner said, noncommittally. With Emilia’s announcement, she’d begun to grow a little worried. The play was done and done for, now, so what would be the point of continuing to employ the playwright? Emilia, Skinner had no doubt, had known precisely that
Theocles
would be shut down; this must all be part of her plan. Maybe more plays? Maybe the plan was to continue to secretly heckle the Emperor until…until what?

“Oh, there she goes with Nora, again.” Valentine said. “I wonder what she’s up to?”

“Where?”

“By the stairs. Uh. Three o’clock, about ten yards.”

Skinner let her clairaudience drift in the direction Valentine had indicated until it caught up with the two young women. “—it?” Emilia was saying.

“Yes. By
post
if you believe it. He must have sent it last week. How did he know?”

“I’ve given up trying to guess. He’s certainly clever.”

“More clever than we are,” Nora Feathersmith snorted.

Emilia cleared her throat.

“Fine, more clever than I am, anyway. I assume you’ll want to burn it?”

“Not at all,” Emilia said. “It’s hardly a crime to be
sent
evil letters. I save all my correspondence; if all is uncovered, I shall present it and, in a very convincing manner, explain that I have been the victim of a cruel trick.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little risky?”

The women had moved into a study, now, and one of them—Emilia, probably—was opening a desk drawer. “I don’t think so. The privilege of being unable to be responsible for anything is that we are equally unlikely to be held accountable for anything. We are, after all, only women. Surely we could not have devised such a devious plot on our own?”

“Hah. The next step, then?”

Emilia or Nora activated a baffler, then, and Skinner found her hearing clouded with incomprehensible echoes. Not for the first time in the last few years, she cursed the man that had invented it. “Valentine,” she said, letting her perception return to her body, and cutting off the young coroner in the middle of an impassioned speech about why playwrights ought not to be censored by anyone.

“—just that, what? What is it?”

“Emilia and Nora are about to come down those stairs,” Skinner told him. “I need you to distract them.”

“All right. For how long?”

“As long as possible,” she said. “I need you to occupy their full attention. There’s…something upstairs I need to check on.”

“Ah,” Valentine said, excited. “An escapade. An exploit. I shall attract attention at once.”

Valentine sauntered through the party, then—though she could not see him to be sure, there was something about the young coroner that suggested that sauntering was his natural mode of transportation—and, as Emilia and her friend descended into the salon, he began talking in a very loud voice about propriety and treason, and his suspicions that there was not one but were in fact
several
spies among the partygoers who were insufficiently loyal to the Emperor and, by extension, the Empire. He then challenged to a duel anyone who would dare threaten the Empire’s edicts, lewdly grabbed a hold of Emily Rowan-Czarnecki’s new silk bustle, delivered a good-natured headbutt to Corwin Daior-Crabtree when the man tried to grab hold of Valentine’s arm, and then kicked over the punch bowl.

Though Valentine had always enjoyed many critics, and after that evening added several more to the list, not a one of them could ever say that when Valentine Vie-Gorgon committed to something, he did not commit to it fully.

His antics left Skinner ample opportunity to slip upstairs. She had, by old habit, been keeping track of how far Emilia and Nora walked. Sixteen steps down the hall, then a right turn. The door was locked, so she knelt down and lightly rested her hand against the keyhole.

At the publicly-funded but very, very private schools where knockers were trained, the teenaged savants were kept under close guard, with strict headmasters and rigid schedules. No one was permitted out of bed or out of their rooms past seven o’clock, and all the doors were locked, with bafflingly complex mechanisms, to ensure the knockers remained there. At the same time, the masters of the schools considered it a useful skill for the effectively blind knockers to be able to navigate their way past the innumerable obstacles that they would undoubtedly face. As such, while punishments for violating curfew were severe, there was still the unspoken expectation that Skinner and her peers would try to escape and roam about the grounds—sometimes getting into trouble, more likely just reveling in the freedom that their abilities had finally bought. Using telerhythmia to pick locks was the first skill that a teenaged knocker ever learned.