The Phenomenals: A Tangle of Traitors (2 page)

Constables Yet to Capture the Pilfering Picklock

‘Definitely time to move on,’ decided Vincent. When the local newspaper had gone so far as to bestow a name on you, it was a sure sign that you had outstayed your
welcome. And he knew he had been lucky tonight. Weed had been just a little too close for comfort. He turned to the driver.

‘Where are you off to?’

‘Eastwards,’ he replied vaguely.

‘The further the better,’ said Vincent.

Vincent sighed deeply. The further the better had turned out to be significantly further than he had thought. For six days and nights now they had been travelling. The
temperature had dropped considerably, the landscape was barren and the driver had proved to be a rather dull conversationalist who spent most of his time snoozing at the reins. So, when Vincent saw
a city in the distance, he poked the driver and halted the horse.

‘Where are we?’

‘On the border of Antithica province,’ replied the driver. ‘But I ain’t crossing it. That city yonder, that’s Degringolade – the City of Superstition they
call it. Won’t take you more’n a day or so, walkin’.’

Vincent looked again at the distant city. The sun was rising behind it and it sparkled with light, as if it had been sprinkled with glitter. He had heard of Antithica province but knew little
about it. As far as he was concerned, any place where he wasn’t known held new opportunities.

‘I want to go into Antithica,’ he said decisively.

The driver shrugged. ‘I ain’t stopping you. But I’m warning you, it’s like a foreign country; they do things different there. It’s all card-spreaders and charms and
who-knows-what.’

‘Thanks,’ said Vincent, and tossed a small paper packet to the driver, who opened it and smiled broadly at the pair of pearl earrings sitting in the fold. He looked up to thank
Vincent, but he was already striding off down the road.

Citrine Capodel went to the French windows and pulled back the flocculent blue and gold curtains that covered them. She opened the doors and stepped out on to the balcony. It
was still Prax but already dark and the cold was invigorating. She propped her elbows on the stone balustrade and gazed up at the early moon, catching its light on her hair.

‘I do believe it really does look smaller,’ she mused. ‘Another few days and it will be as far away as it ever gets.’

Normally she loved to stand out here, but this evening she felt more alone than usual. It was almost a year to the day that she had stood in this same spot and watched her father ride off
through the gate. She had waved at him but he had not seen her. Later she found his silver timepiece on the hall table and had taken it and counted the hours all night waiting for him to come back.
But he had not returned, and that was the last time she had seen him. Maybe the last time she ever would.

A gust of wind carried the sound of howling to her ears and Citrine grimaced; the Lurids were loud tonight. Father loved this time of year, especially the winter Festival of the Lurids. For as
long as she could remember, they had dressed up – she, Father and Edgar – and masked and gowned they had joined the procession down to the Tar Pit, where the Ritual of Appeasement, the
culmination of the five-day festival, took place. How the Lurids howled then!

Lowering her gaze to the frosty rooftops of Degringolade, Citrine’s eye was drawn to the gleaming Kronometer in Mercator Square. The Kronometer, the tallest building in the city, stood in
the centre of the marketplace, persistently measuring the passing of time. The procession started at its foot. This year the lunar apogee was at 5 Lux, so the procession would start even earlier to
reach the Tar Pit in time. Citrine set her mouth in a firm line. She had not thought to spend a second Ritual without her father.

Beyond the square, towards the sea, she could see the top of the lighthouse. This, the second tower of note in the city, stood on a rock in the centre of the broad Flumen River, just where its
muddy waters mingled with the Turbid Sea. Its intermittent beam guided ships in and out of the harbour.

Citrine shivered, suddenly aware of the biting cold of the night, and went back inside. She walked about the large room distractedly, picking up ornaments and jewellery and items of clothing
only to put them down again. She had known luxury all her life. The Capodels were immensely wealthy, but Citrine knew that possessions were no guarantee of satisfaction. She considered it no more
than a stroke of luck that she had been born into wealth; Cousin Edgar, on the other hand, seemed to think that he deserved it. Citrine could not be persuaded of that.

With a soft exhalation she sat at her dressing table and looked at herself in the triple mirror. She pulled a face and shook her wavy russet hair back from her face, revealing the glittering
brow pin over her right eye. She had taken to wearing the onyx pin these days, to banish negative thoughts. She wasn’t sure that it was working.

She opened the left-hand drawer of the table and took out a stiff envelope. Pulling on the black ribbon that held it together, she shook out some of its contents: newspaper articles, some
letters, sketches and depictions. She flattened out one particular newspaper cutting, dated a year ago and read it for the hundredth time. The headline made her stomach flip; it always did.

But nanyone had come forward. In fact, as far as Citrine knew, it was she who had been the last person to see her father, when she had waved at him. She had been over the events
of that fateful day many times. She was not an eavesdropper by nature, but when, after supper, she had heard the harsh exchange of words coming from the study she had instinctively stopped at the
door. Edgar and Hubert held very different ideas about how to run the Capodel Manufactory – that was not in dispute – but this row seemed different. It was obvious from the exchange
that Edgar had done something to upset Hubert.

Citrine had heard Hubert ask him, in utter dismay, ‘Are you stealing from me?’

And Edgar had answered, ‘If you keep things from me, how else am I supposed to find out about them?’

And then the row had continued along the usual lines; Edgar complaining that Hubert didn’t trust him and wouldn’t give him more responsibility at the Manufactory, and Hubert
reiterating that Edgar wasn’t ready.

And that was when Citrine had knocked and walked in. Of course they had stopped arguing then, but there was a look on Edgar’s face that she hadn’t seen before.

She had forgotten about the exchange because that was the night Hubert had not come home. When she did recall it some days later she had toyed with telling Chief Guardsman Fessup, but decided
against it. It proved nothing, and Edgar would doubtless have made life even more difficult for her if she caused trouble for him.

Decisively Citrine replaced everything in the envelope and put it away. Then she drew the black cloth that covered the mirrors and jumped up. From the drawer in her nightstand she took a green
velvet drawstring bag. Then she threw on her long grey cloak and hurried out of the room.

Shortly after, Citrine emerged from the house into a walled courtyard. Passing the stable block she noted an empty stall – ‘Good, that means Edgar is out’
– and rounded the back of the stables to a derelict lean-to. She lifted the door slightly as she opened it to stop it scraping the ground. Inside, a dark shape under a canvas cover almost
filled the space. Citrine pulled away the cover and looked with pride and excitement at her father’s Trikuklos. She ran her hand over the polished mudguards and patted the leather dust-hood.
It was an intriguing vehicle. Designed around a triangular metal frame, it had three large wheels with angled spokes for extra strength. It was powered by two broad pedalators attached to a covered
chain and steered by long handles with soft grips. The hood clipped to a glass weather-screen at the front and folded back like that of a perambulator.

Hubert Capodel had been one of the first people in Degringolade to own a Trikuklos, but now they were a common sight on the streets. Edgar still preferred horses, claiming they required less
effort.

Citrine climbed in and put on the gloves and goggles that lay on the front seat, then pedalated the vehicle out of the lean-to and across the courtyard to the wall. Behind a curtain of ivy there
was a small door, which, using a key hidden behind a loose brick, she opened and expertly manoeuvred the vehicle through the narrow space. As soon as the door closed the ivy fell back and her
secret exit was hidden again.

With a grin Citrine pedalated away at a frightening speed down Collis Hill. She loved the freedom the Trikuklos afforded her and relished the knowledge that Edgar had no idea how she defied him.
In the months since Hubert’s disappearance, he had slowly and insidiously restricted her liberty. He hired a stern governess, who accompanied her everywhere and taught her at home. And he
forbade her from going to the Manufactory. Edgar’s excuse for these draconian measures was that they were for her protection, in case the same thing happened to her as had happened to her
father, whatever that might be.

In Mercator Square Citrine steered slowly between the stalls until she reached a black kite wagon set back a little from the main thoroughfare. She put on the brake, climbed down and was about
to knock on the wagon door when it opened. A sun-wrinkled, aged lady stood there smiling broadly.

‘Citrine, how lovely to see you! I had a feeling you would come.’

‘Hello, Suma.’

Inside the wagon Citrine took a seat under the window, on a soft upholstered bench, and Suma sat on a spoon-back easy chair opposite. A small stove in the corner radiated welcome heat, a black
pipe carrying away the smoke through the roof. Citrine looked around, as she always did, taking in the familiar objects, noting new additions. On one shelf there was a row of five cachelot teeth,
each nearly six inches high and exquisitely engraved with scaly fish and octopuses and curling waves in black and brown ink. On another shelf there was a sculpture of a hand, and at the far end an
intriguing, if repulsive, leech barometer.

‘Cold, though not cold enough for snow, and the leeches tell me rain is coming,’ said Suma. ‘And how are you, my dear? A difficult week, this.’

‘I can’t believe it’s a year,’ said Citrine. ‘Edgar is . . . well, as bad as ever. I hardly see him these days – he’s always at the Manufactory or at
his club. I don’t care to see him, if I am honest. Is that a dreadful thing to say? I am not sure he thinks of Father at all. I thought it would be a good night to spread the
cards.’

‘Of course, but try to calm yourself or it will affect the outcome.’

Citrine loosened the string on the velvet bag and took out a rectangular box made from the blackest Gaboon ebony with inlaid mother-of-pearl stars sprinkled randomly across the lid. Inside it
lay a deck of cards in a baize-lined depression. She gave the deck to Suma and the old lady handled them with great care, though they showed all the signs of having been much used. She shuffled
them expertly with her gnarled yet nimble fingers. From the bottom of the bag Citrine retrieved four polished dice; one seven-sided, one nine-sided, one eleven-sided and the last thirteen-sided.
The facets of the first three were scored with varying numbers of parallel lines. She tossed them on to the table.

‘Lucky number three,’ she said, counting the visible score lines.

Suma nodded. ‘Now the fourth.’

Citrine rolled the fourth die, the facets of which were covered with pictures, and it landed with a large black bird uppermost.

‘Corvid spread,’ said Suma, and she cut the pack and took the top card. She did this eight times in all, then placed four of the cards face down in a vertical line and two
horizontally on either side, in the shape of a bird.

The cards were decorated with intricately drawn scenes – in the top corner of one a three-sided occupied gallows, on another a woman weeping at the feet of a fortune teller, and elsewhere
what appeared to be a sacrifice, human or animal it was not possible to tell.

At Suma’s nod, Citrine picked two cards from the left wing and one from the body. She set them in a straight line and turned them over. Her face fell instantly. On the first card a pair of
coal-black corvids fought over a gold coin; on the second, seven corvids perched on the arm of a gibbet; but the third card was the most distressing. It showed, in graphic and scarlet detail, three
hook-beaked corvids with oily black plumage pecking and pulling at the bloody entrails of a dead body.

‘The Thief, the Traitor and Death,’ ventured Citrine doubtfully. She looked at Suma, who smiled approvingly. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Remember what I said?’ said Suma. ‘The art of card-spreading cannot be taught. I can only guide you, and even then there is no guarantee that you will succeed.’