Mr. Stitch (24 page)

Why can’t I remember his name?
“He…he was interfering. He was trying to help the suspects escape. I had…he was
interfering
.”

“You didn’t feel that eight gendarmes, and a contingent of Lobstermen, would be sufficient to prevent the suspects’ escape?”

“What is this about?” Beckett demanded. “What is this really about? I’ve never…no ministry has ever done this before. My fitness for work has never been questioned before.”
Why the hell can’t I remember his name?
“I obtained information, I used it to apprehend two men engaged in the sale of heretical instruments. That is my mandate, that’s my duty, and I performed it. What the fuck else do you want from me?”

The men froze. The indige froze to see their fallen comrade. The gendarmes, many of whom had never known a moment of fear in the lives—and if they had, joining the gendarmerie had been a means to permanently escape the need for that fear—fell upon the two fleeing men like rabid dogs, beat them, dragged them away from the wall, roughly shackled them. The indige family, or clan, or however they arranged themselves, had knelt around their fallen member and were all whispering softly to him in Indt.

“You,” Beckett snapped at the fallen indige. “You, get up.” The youth didn’t move.
The boy,
Beckett thought.
He can’t be more than fifteen.
Beckett kicked him in the ribs. “Get up!” The indige sat up, leaning against one of his fellows. “You lied to me. You told me they were gone. Why?”

The indige, sulking, seemed disinclined to speak. Beckett very nearly lost his temper and hit him again. One more person that was refusing to help, one more person that didn’t want to talk. Didn’t the boy see that it was keeping quiet that was causing the problem? That they could fix everything if people would just
cooperate
? “Why?” Beckett rasped again.

“He paid,” the indige replied at last, shrugging. “He paid.”

“Who did?” Though Beckett suspected he knew the answer. Yet another Trowthi selling out their family and their city for a few crowns. And if someone was selling themselves into treason, only one man was paying.

“Anonymous John.”

The Moral Officer was silent for a very long moment. Then he put his papers away and stood up. “We’re done here. I will contact you if I need any further information.” The man left, closing the door behind him. Beckett stayed in his chair, rubbing his eyes, craving a veneine injection. He wanted to yell, to scream his frustration at the Moral Rectitude Commission, at the stupid indige that didn’t know he was trying to help him, but most of all at the dangerous amoral bastard whose involvement in Trowth’s heretical and criminal operations Beckett was coming to suspect was nearly universal. The indige’s voice echoed in his head.

“Anonymous John.”

“
Will continue the operation from here. Take no further action.” Karine read aloud. “Events proceed apace.”

“That’s it?” Skinner asked. They were in a café near the Stark, surrounded by a bustling, working-class clientele. Since the events at Emilia Vie-Gorgon’s party, Skinner had become increasingly paranoid about being observed. No one could think it odd that she was out with her assistant, of course, and the noise of the café would effectively obscure their conversation from casual eavesdroppers. There could be knockers listening in, and if there was anyone in the city who could afford to retain the services of a knocker it was Emilia Vie-Gorgon. But there was nothing to be done on that score, so Skinner resolved to not be worried by it.

“That’s it,” said Karine. “It’s not even signed.”

“Well, of course it’s not signed,” Skinner replied irritably. “Who leads a secret cabal and then writes their name all over everything? No one.” She sighed. “What about the paper? Handwriting? Anything familiar?”

“It’s typed,” Karine said, “regular paper, I suppose. I don’t really know. Maybe Mr. Valentine? Isn’t his family in printing?”

“Let’s…let’s hold off on that,” Skinner said. She’d already involved Valentine more than she was comfortable with. Though, it’s not as if the irrepressible idiot wouldn’t tear off through the city, turning over paper mills left and right, trying to find the precise source of a note that Skinner had stolen from his cousin. He probably wouldn’t even ask why. Idiot. “We’ll wait. The less Valentine knows, the less he’s likely to give away. All right?”

“Yes, all right. Though I don’t see why—”

“Never mind why. I’m just not sure of him, yet.”

“Not sure of Mr. Valentine? But miss—”

“Karine. Leave it. We’ll talk to him about the letter later. I doubt he’d be able to help, anyway, they probably make paper like this ten thousand sheets at a time.” Skinner sipped at the last of her
djang
, made a face as she tasted the bitter dregs. “Anyway. I suppose it’s time I started looking for a new job.”

The trouble with being history’s most successful anonymous playwright was that it didn’t lead to a wealth of new opportunities. It was still quite illegal for Skinner to hold down legitimate work in the city, but the theater was hardly a legitimate enterprise. Under ordinary circumstances, she could have undoubtedly shown a piece like
Theocles
to a producer, and been assigned a substantial amount of work-for-hire material. Except, since the success of
Theocles
, no fewer than fifteen people had come forward claiming to be the author (and demanding the requisite royalties), some of them fairly well-established playwrights themselves. How could she, the real author, prove that
Theocles
was hers? Not without Emilia Vie-Gorgon’s help, and Skinner was loathe to rely any more on the heiress than was absolutely necessary.

“Come on, Karine, let’s walk home. We shouldn’t waste such lovely weather by spending the day indoors.”

The weather at the tail end of Armistice remained delightful, and would almost to the very second that Armistice ended. The change from pleasant early spring to the raw, damp weather of middle spring was a change that came with such reliability that no professional man had ever been hired to predict it, nor had any almanac bothered to record it. Like Trowth’s internecine familial wars and the monolithic ruins that served as the city’s bones, the weather of the city was so unfailingly regular that Skinner could have easily asserted how mild the temperature, how gentle the salty bay-breezes, how pleasant the humidity, without having so much as opened a window.

Karine and Skinner talked idly while they walked, and Skinner asked her assistant many questions about the young indige’s life, about her people, about her ambitions.

“Well, of course I will probably stay behind during the New Exodus,” Karine explained, as though this information ought to be of obvious consequence to Skinner. “Many of my people probably will. I’ve never seen the Capital Cities, so they’re really of little interest to me.”

“I don’t know what that is, the New Exodus. What is that?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought…I just thought everyone knew. The indige arrangement with the Trowth Empire was for a two-hundred and fifty year residence. The
ramos
—these are…I suppose you’d call them priests, or grammateurs…declared that Trowth would be a safe haven for us for no longer than two and a half centuries. In another decade, the ritual calendar and the royal calendar will come together in the Third Confluence and…well, I suppose it’s all rather complicated, isn’t it?” Karine’s demeanor, mild and simple as ever, seemed perversely at odds with such alien complexity.

Maybe,
Skinner admitted a little guiltily,
I only assumed she was simple
. “It is, but it’s fascinating. Your rammers, or priests or what have you, they made a prophecy?”

“Yes, after a fashion. The calendrical confluences are always supposed to be marked by great disasters or boons or something, and the ramos are predicting things all the time. It’s pretty unusual that we actually see anything interesting happen. The Third Confluence is supposed to be the End of Cities, so the ramos are insisting that we’ll engage in a Second Exodus and leave Trowth before then.”

“And you don’t think you will?”

“I think of lot of my people will stay. The plenary hetmen are all rich from the phlogiston trade, a lot of us grew up here. It’s hard to care about some prophecy made more than two centuries before you were born. Especially if there’s money—oh.”

“What?” Skinner asked. “What is it?”

“There’s someone…there are men at the house. They’re moving things into the street. They’re…hey!” She called out. “Hey, those are my things! Don’t touch those!”

Karine raced ahead, but Skinner outpaced her with her clairaudience. She tracked footsteps, the scraping sound of a leather-and-brass trunk on cobblestones. Karine shouting unintelligibly in Indt, while the men attempted to mollify her. Skinner approached slowly, hoping to maintain some dignity at least.

“What’s this, then?” She demanded, rattling her telerhythmia all around the square, snapping the two men across their broad chests, keeping track of them as she neared.

“Begging your pardon, miss,” said one man with a gravelly voice, who did not sound at all as though he were interested in her pardon. “We’ve been told by Miss Vie-Gorgon to clear out this house, as it’s no longer meant to be occupied.”

“There has been some mistake, obviously,” Skinner said this confidently, but she knew her own bluster when she heard it. It was what Valentine had warned her about: Emilia Vie-Gorgon had gotten what she wanted, and was now finished with Elizabeth Skinner and assistant. A sour feeling clutched at the knocker’s stomach, and she tightened her grip on her cane.

“There’s no mistake, miss,” said the man. “We’ll leave the things here, you can call a coach if you like.”

“You are not going to leave my belongings in the street,” Skinner said, her voice adamant. “And you are not going to throw me out of this house. If Miss Vie-Gorgon would like me gone, you may tell her that she can come here and see me out herself. In the meantime, my assistant and I will be quite happy to remain in our home.”

“Begging your pardon,” the man said again, again in a voice that did not at all seem to beg for pardon, “but Miss Vie-Gorgon said you might be insistent. Advised us that we might have to be a little rough.” The sound of a revolver, gently drawn from its leather holster, is a unique sound, and one with which Skinner was well acquainted. “Now, we’ve not really the heart to do something cruel ourselves, but you know how orders is.”

“
Shoh ahtt!
” Karine spat. “Miss, he’s got a gun.”

Skinner took a step closer to the man, still rattling all around her with the telerhythmia. This was a desperate ploy; most people did not realize how effectively a knocker could apprehend her surroundings, and Skinner hoped that her widespread knocking would mislead the man as to how closely he was the subject of her attention. “I doubt he’s going to use it, Karine. He knows the trouble he could get into for shooting at anyone, much less at me.”

“You ain’t a coroner no more, Miss, if you’ll pardon my saying so.” He grinned around a mouthful of crooked teeth in Skinner’s imagination. At least one of the imaginary teeth was gold.

Skinner took a step closer. “But I still have friends in the coroners. What was your name, again?” She hoped this was enough to at least wipe the grin from his face. She knew what was coming next; the only remaining concern was how quickly the second man would get to her.

“We haven’t time for this, Miss. I don’t want to, but I will hurt you if I have to.” The hammer on his revolver clicked—low and near his waist, he hadn’t brought it to bear, yet.

“I agree,” Skinner said, as she snapped her cane out. It was a dreadful risk, but one that she’d spent many hours practicing in school—the tip of her cane connected with the man’s hand, and he yelped, dropped the gun to the ground, and hopped away.
No time to let him catch his senses
, Skinner thought as she flicked the switch in the top of her walking-stick and drew out a slender, razor-sharp sword. She slashed viciously at his face, forcing him back towards the wall of the house.