[Closed] Non M'Impugnare Senza Valore

[Tom Cooke]

Nighttime Streets • Uptown

Late Evening on the 28th of Dentis, 2719

T
he sky is velvet black.

All the phosphor in Vienda has sucked the stars out of it. The snow that’s settled in the streets glows the white of ghosts in stories; it’s piled up on the fences, limns the bare twisting branches. More falls down through the dark, swirling through the ghoul-glow of the street lamps, settling on their shoulders, coats, hats. The wind picks up; it carries distant voices.

But Tom, half-drunk, swimming-headed, can only look up at the empty sky.

If there is a moon, She does not show Her face. Perhaps without Her there’s no time; perhaps this is a place without time. A breath between the finishing and the applause. Endless tension, endless silence.

They’ve left the Opera just moments ago; Tom can barely remember throwing his coat round his shoulders, pulling on his thick leather gloves, putting on his hat.

What he can remember is muffled applause. What he can remember is Shrikeweed’s hand on his elbow, firm – pulling him to his feet. Firm, if hesitant, for a moment, as if he might’ve considered letting him topple. To faint at the opera twice would’ve been comedy, but this isn’t a comedy, not anymore.

The cycle is broken; the Cycle was already broken. The wind stings his cheeks, bracing and biting. He is not fainting. He is alive, and more alert than he has been all night.

The streets here are quiet, except for the distant burble of the bars and two pairs of quiet footsteps through the dusting snow. Most folk Uptown are inside, on a night like this. It’s not seemly, leastways, to grab one’s coat and leave before the comedy’s done, to skitter off through the streets in search of strong drink and – what?

What are they looking for? Not the Pendulum, Tom knows that much; leastways, Tom thinks that’s not where he’s being taken.

It seems, Shrikeweed said, we need to swing in quite another direction, you and I.

He knows what Shrikeweed thinks of the Mugrobi devotion to truth. And perhaps the bureaucrat isn’t wrong; Tom thinks he’ll believe in truth – undistilled – the day he meets it. The rest is just a matter of taxonomy: maybe you call a well-worn, well-believed lie the truth, or maybe nothing counts.

He knows they’re both liars, at least, but liars who are flying from the warm safety of the opera and into the cold dark. They’re still wearing masks, Tom thinks; he can feel his own, numbed as it is by the cold, with snowflakes settling in his eyebrows and his living breath smoking white. He doesn’t recognize this new mask of Shrikeweed’s, but he thinks he’s seen echoes of it in Stainthorpe Hall, in the dark smiles, in the cup turned three times.

The streets are familiar, though the landscape is changed by the snow.

For all it aches in his joints, the cold has put some new life into Tom; he’s shucked Anatole like a snake’s skin, and suddenly he’s no longer so faint, suddenly he balances himself, walks beside Shrikeweed at a clip. He is not being dragged – he goes of his will.

“And in which direction are we swinging?” That harsh edge. A bitter-dark laugh.

His lips are twisted in a frown, though he can’t feel them.

He turns his head a little; he dares to look at the profile of the man beside him. Snow settling in his side-whiskers. Shadows deep. Hard to read anything in his expression. “Mr. Shrikeweed,” he rasps, breath aching, “if you’re not working for his ilk, then who’re you working for? What do you want?”

Not that you’d tell me, he thinks. But I want you to know I know, even if it gets me killed before I feel the warmth of another hearth. I want this ground between us level, before my sap's spilt on it.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - Night Streets. Later, The Elephant
Nineteen minutes past the twenty-sixth hour

T

here is only a muted shuffling in the anonymous dark.

On streets of brick and alleys of cobbles the sound of footfalls should ring out like bells in the cold night air. The snow has swallowed all the sound, leaving behind only their ghosts. It is still falling, still smothering. Yet there is the un-sound, the gaping nothing that comes unbidden to all snowy nights. It presses in like some palpable thing, a blanket made of ice and silence. Oppressive, obscuring.

For the latter, at least, he is thankful. The snow is covering up their passage, disguising their footprints as were formless depressions. Any two men might be walking through the night here. Nothing can be known of them. For the cold too he is thankful. Cold is better than pain at narrowing his thoughts, and speeding them down more profitable alleys.

Alleys. Narrow lanes. He goes by back ways, ways familiar to him of old. Even without the ghost-light of the phosphor lamps, without even eyes or ears, he could find his way though these streets. The rise and fall of the pavement, the feel of the pavers and cobbles, feel of the air on his skin, thinner in the wider lanes, close and thick in alleyways. The smells do him no good. The night smells of snow and ill omens.

The Incumbent follows first in his wake, confused and not a little agitated, then keeps pace. Perhaps these streets are growing familiar to him as well. They should, if the man ever walked them by night. Ahead of them, looming squat and unlovely, rises Stainthorpe Hall. Abaft that, the great peaked dome of the High Court. The lights have rendered them as mere silhouettes, things without depth or substance. Tonight is not a night for such places. It is not a night for official business.

The labyrinth of streets around the courts. Home ground. At the far end, toward Crosstown Court, the Chancery, ahead of them still, the courts themselves, the law offices and the Inns of Court. More places they are not going. This is a night for comforts. Gods knows he needs them. The Incumbent as well.

Gadwine Street, narrow, sloping. A canyon of dim lamps and half-darkened shops. “Nearly there sir. We swing in this direction.” Down the street, down the sloping hill, down further into the labyrinth. He looks at the Incumbent now. The man is worried. Panicked? He is demanding to know who Shrikeweed works for. An odd question. I work for you, he thinks. I work for the Civil Service, for their Magesties’ Government. The expression on the Incumbent’s face says all he needs to know. The man will not accept that. They are wrong answers. The man wants names, not titles and offices. And this is a night for names. Not here, not in the street. “We can speak more freely when we arrive. I promise.” Past Snodgrass and Co. Stationers, past Runcorn’s. He goes no further. There is no need. Bright warm lights pour out from windows panes like the hives of bees. Within a few late patrons can be seen sitting alone or in ones and twos in comfortable booths or in chairs of their own. Above the door, a wordless sign in the shape of the head of a great and melancholic elephant.

“You said you needed something stronger than what they were serving at the opera. I can think of nothing stronger, nothing more welcome, than the best coffee I know.” He climbs the stairs, his feet light upon them. The cold of the night, the promise of coffee, the safe familiarity of The Elephant, all these proper things, they set him to rights. Here at least he can don one of his most comfortable masks. The mask has no name, needs none. To name it would be to cheapen it. Let is be.

And now the jangling of bells at the opening of the door. A rush of warm and fragrant air. Coffee, spices, the mellow smell of pipe tobacco; Sebele allows nothing else. It is her prerogative. As it should be.

“Mr S?” Sebele, leaning on the counter, watching her private domain with a practiced eye looks up. Surprised? Very likely. He rarely comes at this hour. Rarer still does he bring a guest. “‘Fraid I’m all out of lobster and lettuce, but I can do you mushrooms and baked cheese with bread.”

He shrugs off his coat, hangs it on the monstrous great coat rack with languid ease, and smiles with what passes on his visage for warmth. “Magnificent, that will serve to start us. Coffee of course.” Sebele nods, an indulgent expression. She knows him well enough that there is no need for him to order. Still, the ritual of the order matters. The praxis matters. “Can I ask your indulgence and request the coffee from your own hand? We have had a trying night. My nerves are shattered.”

Sebele nods again and brings down two copper ibriks, they shine brighter than any jewelry worn by even the most elegant of ladies. “Alright Mr S.” She squints at him, a old and knowing expression. “You do look like last week’s catch, and I can’t say your friend here looks any better. Who have you brought to me anyway? I’ll not have any rough characters in my establishment.”

“I’ll vouch for him. His name’s his own for the nonce. I leave it to him to speak it.”

“If you say so Mr S.” Sebele rolls her eyes and flashes a grin.

A quiet booth by the window now, and the snow still gathering. Fog on the glass from the warmth of the coffeehouse. A wholesome fog. An obscuring fog. For a long while they sit in silence. Long enough for the coffee to arrive. He thanks Sebele, quirks an eyebrow at her. An old code. He needs to be left alone for a time. He pours his coffee, the steam rising from the delicate blue and white porcelain cup. Fingers clasped around it, he turns it. Clockwise, anticlockwise, and clockwise again. The Incumbent still carries the expression of a frightened man, a determined man. A man who needs names.

Shrikeweed needs names as well. Names and more, if he can get it. Unlikely. Not here. Not tonight. The cup turns in his hand again, the same old gesture. Do ut des he thinks again. I give so that you may give.

He takes one long, slow sip of the too-hot coffee. It burns as he swallows. He does not care. The heat, the flavor, it is what he needs.For a while he looks at the Incumbent, reading his face. The man will need a name. And so he gives. “Honoria Braithwaite-Kilcoyne.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Elephant • Uptown

Late Evening on the 28th of Dentis, 2719

T
hank you, madam.” He offers the nattle a thin, polite smile as she rattles out the ibrik and the porcelain. He manages to hold it together as she leaves them.

The strange feeling of having passed out of time has not let up. If anything, it’s gotten worse. Coffee, he thinks. Flooding coffee.

Coffee, mushrooms, baked cheese and – Tom’s head aches from how tight he’s gritting his teeth. He was drifting outside himself in the opera; now, he’s aware of every prickling hair on the back of his neck, every second that drips through Alioe’s fingers.

He’s aware of the man sitting across from him, mask no less easy to read for all it’s limned in the soft lights of the Elephant. He’s aware of the shadows sitting beside them in the frost-caked window: Shrikeweed’s ghost, a blur turning its cup; the dead Incumbent, narrow face full of shadows. He can feel the chill of the glass even here, even in the drifting steam.

They’ve sat in silence for some time, tucked into their comfortable window booth. Tom has had time to let it sink in. He is wreathed in the smells of kofi and more spices than he can name, of distant incense, of wallpaper fashionably tinged by the smoke of many cigars. They should be comforting, these smells like a kofi har’aq in the Fords on a winter night.

The nattle looks Mugrobi, but talks broad Estuan. Mr. S, she calls Shrikeweed. Tom’s spent this silence turning it over in his head, putting it together; if nothing else, the filling-in-the-blanks cages his frenzied thoughts.

The smell of the kofi is familiar; so’s the ibrik, etchings glinting coppery in the lamplight. Reminds him of the coffee at Stainthorpe, and that slip of a lass Shrikeweed imported to make it. Imported from where? Here, Tom reckons.

So he looks round, at the few clustered stragglers smoking their cigars, at the dark-mirror windows with their fog, with the vague shape of snow whirling down outside, hazy white streets. Another world. He looks round at the clean tables, the comfortable chairs; he looks at the great coatrack, where his and Shrikeweed’s coats hang from two ornate claws.

Mr. S and his frazzled friend with the expensive leather gloves. He’s not quite ready to volunteer a name, though he likes the lass, from what he’s seen of her. Seems a tsuter thing to lie in a kofi house, even if it’s the last formality you’ll ever enjoy.

Rough character, he thinks, smiling a bitter, private smile. Oes.

He looks at Shrikeweed, pouring a steaming stream of coffee comfortably into his porcelain demitasse. Comfortable. The civil servant looks up at him, and looks a long time.

His hackles have not fallen. His neck has not stopped prickling. The night is not over. The night is only getting stranger.

Shrikeweed breaks the silence first; Tom pauses, glancing at him, glancing askance at the shadows in the window. Then, his frown deepening, he reaches to pour himself a little coffee. There’s a dollop of dark brown foam in the bottom of his cup already, though it’s all boiled off in the ibrik.

“This is no kofi har’aq,” he grates. Steam whirls up, smelling of kofi and cardamom. “Neither of us have taken the water and sworn our honor to Hulali.” The old man’s hand shakes round the handle. He forces it steady, though it’s pale with the cold.

When he’s poured himself a cup, he draws it near him. He shuts his eyes, breathes in deep. There’s no steadying himself; there’s no certainty. Honoria Braithwaite-Kilcoyne. What a flooding response. He opens his eyes.

“I don’t know the name,” Tom says flatly, studying the face of the man across from him. “Was it a favor to Trevisani? Your posting in the Incumbent’s office. Ogden? Azmus? If this is it, Mr. Shrikeweed, I’d at least like to know the hand that’s dealing the blow.”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Elephant
Twenty seven minutes past the twenty-sixth hour

T

here is no comfort in that corpse-pale face. No melting of agitation, of suspicion, in the rising steam of the coffee. He should not have expected it, not here. This is not the Incumbent’s place, it is his. And he had hoped the man would at least uncoil a bit, now that whatever trouble that Megiro represents is behind them in the gathering night. Behind them only in the physical sense. There are shadows that follow the Incumbent, shadows he can name. They follow Shrikeweed too, nameless, formless, and all the more dangerous for that.

The nab thinks he is in danger? He knows what it is that pursues him, that frightens him. The man can keep an eye for knives in the dark. Shrikeweed shakes his head. A slight, barely perceptible motion, , another turn of the coffee cup. It fails to cheer him. He has only the haziest of ideas of what it is that he has stumbled into. He just had to kick the hornet’s nest, pull on the raveled thread. Another fine mess. A mess needs tidying, set to rights. Can it be done? Perhaps, but not by one man. Perhaps two might have a better chance.

He takes another sip of the coffee, letting its flavor, its spice, fill his nose and mouth; letting it pour dark and narrow avenues of his thought. The coffee is not enough to awaken all his thoughts. It will have to serve for now. Later, at home among his orchids he can practice all the proper rituals. The coca and hibiscus tea, the recitations. The reduction of the day down to ink and paper. The day is still unreal, half-formed. The ink will set that to rights. It will make a day of what has been merely a sequence of events.

The steam still rising and the Incumbent still waxen, even in the golden light. He is speaking now, of the rituals of coffee, rituals that belong across the border, rituals of another country. They are not the rituals here. Not in this place. He will swear no oaths, offer no pretense of honor. Shrikeweed is not an honorable man. Honor has no place in the world. Duty, obligation, reciprocity, the rule and spirit of the law, those are vital, needed. Honor is merely a cloak, a pretense that one’s actions, one’s self, matter.

He lets the Incumbent have his words, lets him set the stage. And still the man is pale, fragile. This is the man of Intas, the man whom he first met at Stainthorpe Hall. The unsound man. The man he had been dispatched to handle. And what a magnificent job he had done.

“The Perpetual Permanent Secretary for Legislative Affairs. A power in the Service, but no, she is not a household name.” And Megiro, so the Incumbent maintained, was much the same. A power who can move half-unseen, directing events as they see fit. And who does Braithwaite-Kilcoyne serve? It is not a question he has ever needed to ask. The answer is obvious. She serves their Majesties' Government, she serves the nation. And now? He is no longer sure, not after this night. A more careful tread is required.

“On the morning of the day I was assigned to you, The Perpetual Permanent Secretary called me to her office and gave me my orders.” Any why had she given it to hims? Because he would not think to distrust the Service? He has had few enough reasons to do so. Until now. “I was given my brief, and I was informed that the Incumbent, that you, were not sound.Service speak, you understand, for someone who either cannot be trusted or, as is usually the case, is seen to be resistant to the advice and counsel of the Service.” He takes a breath. There is no use in hiding matters, in not laying most of his cards upon the table. Most, but not all. A man must have some secrets. “I had thought that this was a reference to your affliction. I believe that was indeed the general thought. Yet I question that now. It seems that ‘He’ had been unsound. My assignment had been given rather too late.”

“As to those other names, I am familiar with them, of course, but I am not their creature. I played cards with Trevisani once. I cannot say I much enjoyed her. I can see the utility in one such as her, but her society is not to my taste.” He leaves off the mention of the Incumbent’s little bird. It is not opportune, it is worse than useless. A dagger he does not understand thrust at a man who needs no more threats this night. “Ogden? No, though I have assisted in arguments before his court. The same with Azmus. I am aware of their positions on certain matters, familiar with their legal reasoning.” Familiar with their cultivation of men whom they think are useful. Men of ambition, men whose star is in the ascendance. At least they are not useless men. The may be worse. They are blunt men, men who value power and authority. He is unsure if they value order. “If I am here to deliver a blow to you, then there has been a rather massive cock-up. Certainly I have not been informed. My brief is to provide useful counsel.” He looks at the still-waxen Incumbent, the shadows on his face deepening the orbits of his eyes, hollowing his cheeks. The shadows have made of him a skull, a dead thing. “If you will be counseled by me, then I will say this, whatever those men are about, whatever Matter, is their concern, it has not been mine. I will not ask you to trust me. It seems rather late in the day for such a thing. I would only ask that you consider my actions.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Elephant • Uptown

Late Evening on the 28th of Dentis, 2719

S
hrikeweed has let him have his words; he lets Shrikeweed have his. He sits and watches him, unblinking. His eyes do not flick down when he catches the motion of the bureaucrat’s hands – the turning of the cup, as always – not anymore; but there’s a little twitch in one cheek, shuddering through all the nerves and muscles on one side of his face. He is not in the mood to speculate. Even the tic seems an affront, a part of the mask he should’ve seen past a long time ago.

And then his brow furrows, as Shrikeweed goes on. He blinks at unsound, though his expression isn’t one of affront. He still hasn’t taken a sip of his kofi; his fingertips still linger on the rim of the cup, unpleasantly hot.

Consider his actions. Oes, boemo. That he can do.

His back is a line of tensed muscles, all on fire. He is struck by how tired he is, how godsdamned tired. He glances round again, this time with clearer eyes, though he doesn’t lose his stubborn mistrustful frown.

The bell jingles as a lone man leaves, tucking himself into his voluminous overcoat and forging out into the snowy night. He pauses just outside the door, on the first step; Tom can see the shape of him through the window, lighting a cigarette. Snow whirls down. The lass that brought the kofi is bringing a steaming pot out to another man, tired and strained, seated nearer the door; papers are spread out on his table, and he has to clear some of them out of the way to make room for the cup.

Tom is sucking at a tooth. “This is not the place you take a man to,” he admits quietly, turning back to Shrikeweed with a raised brow, “if you want to kill him.”

Unwinding. The fatigue, now, is almost painful. He takes the first sip of coffee. Every kofi house, Anaxi or Mugrobi, has its own unique menda; he recognizes the ratio of cardamom to anise, catches a twinge of what he now knows as – pepper?

It reminds him more of the spices in the Isles than how mainland émigrés do it. It’s a little hot, a surprising little spark of pain as he sets the cup back down. It steadies him, like the burn of Low Tide.

“Some would argue he was a sounder man than me,” he rasps, finally, sitting back. “The Judge and Megiro among them. If they knew just how little I’ve ‘recovered’, I doubt I’d’ve been involved in the Matter at all, and I’d’ve been whisked away – retired or worse – before you had the chance to lend me your counsel. I’ve gotten flack enough for my stance on Mugrobi aid. Our stance.”

The smell of something else, mingling with all the kofi. Something rich, something savory. Something sweet, too. Warm, crusty bread, he thinks. His stomach aches. When did he last eat, before the opera? When did he become the sort of man who thinks Vita is out to kill him, and forgets to eat anyway?

He frowns, centers himself back on the man across from him. “Megiro was looking at you like a shark ready to snap up an ingo. You’re invited to their little caoja in Ophus, now, whether you like it or not; we both are. Him and his ilk don’t take no for an answer. There was a reason I warned you off asking those questions.”

If the Shrike was meant to provide useful council to an unsound man, he’s done a damned good job of it. The funny spider’s-leg crawling at the back of his neck is still there. He knew he was being guided, though he didn’t know in what direction; the Service was – is still – a shadow to him, this Braithwaite-Kilcoyne a cut-out silhouette.

But he considers –

Shrikeweed’s eyes don’t dart away, as he speaks of Genevria Trevisani; there’s nothing in his voice as he speaks of the judges. At this point, Tom doesn’t think there’s any reason for him to keep up the charade.

He doesn’t doubt the civil servant is holding back something, but he isn’t a fool. He knows the Order of the Pendulum do not have the monopoly on ulterior motives in this fair city.

“Incumbent Vauquelin’s mask might be ill-fitting, but it’s the only thing I’ve had to wear. When the sharks are circling, you can’t let them smell your blood.” He lifts the cup of kofi to his lips again; he takes a sip, then looks narrowly at the man across from him. “The Matter’s much closer to Wraithwine than Gior, but I think you already know that, Mr. Shrikeweed.”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Elephant
Thirty one minutes past the twenty-sixth hour

'C

aoja’. Not a word he expects from the mouth of a man of substance, of status, and of means. He knows the word well enough. His runner uses it often enough. But then again Bailey is fond of speaking in the thickest Tek he can muster. He will ask the boy about the words, about the Incumbent’s curious speech. Can he imitate the voice? Likely not. He is no mimic. So much to build upon a single word. Another link in a chain whose end he cannot see. Who was the Incumbent? What were his origins that such a word sits so naturally within his mouth? Shrikeweed could not say with half that ease, and by all accounts, he was the lower in status. In Shrikeweed’s voice it would sound strange, alien, affected. Not so with the Incumbent. Even in his cultivated voice - too cultivated? - it sounds effortless. He has had little need to consider the man’s genealogy before tonight. It will need tracing, carefully. It could explain much. It could explain nothing.

At last, still stiff and half-mechanical, the Incumbent sips at his coffee. A thin breath escapes Shrikeweed’s lips. He had not known he’d been holding it. And now, something has changed. Not a softening, no, the Incumbent is still too much on guard. That is just as well. It is a good example to follow. He has been too lax in his own guard. It is a shift in wariness, directed, at least in part away from Shrikeweed. For the present. For now.

The Incumbent is not sound. The words have taken on a rather more sinister ring, undertones of malice, a bouquet of suspicion. The hints of betrayal and whispers in dark corridors. The wine of conspiracy. And he drank it like a fool. Took the offered cup without a thought. It was his duty, his obligation. It was a duty that made little sense. Why send a policy analyst to shepherd the Incumbent? There were a hundred better men for the task, likely more. Yet he has been the one chosen. It necessitates an answer. The man on the other side of the table can provide nothing. They are both in the dark.

And now, the merest spark, a feeble light in the dark.

“Megiro and his ilk are not pleased with our - with your - Mugrobi policy?” Now there is hope. There is sense. A smile, and no smirk, but a flash of genuine humor and relief. The Perpetual Permanent Secretary has made no such objections. She has nodded along at his periodic reports, even offered suggestions of her own. The policy is sound. It flows from the usual practice and position of the Service, from immemorial custom. “Then, sir, I think we may have at least some hope.” Hope, yes, hope that relies on a small betrayal. “You are right to think me something of a spy. I have been required to provide the Service with confidential memoranda regarding my posting. Regarding you.” His hands return to his cup. He turns it, clockwise, anti-clockwise, and clockwise again. And again. And again. The cup rattles upon its saucer, the coffee within sloshes too and fro, not knowing which direction in which to spill. “Before you grow too angry, I can say with some confidence that your, that our policy positions have been given the nod back in Chancery. I am a man of the Service, of the Chancery. I hazard I would know if these policies were met with official disapproval. I have seen none.” The coffee, in its consternation, spills over his hand. The burning finally fazes him. There are no extraneous thoughts to purge, no chaos in his mind. Without the pairing away, the pain is real. It is useless. “Damnit!” He claps a napkin to his hand, soaking up the coffee and applying pressure. The burning from the scalding drink continues. He will have to let it do so.

“My apologies. Carelessness.” It applies to so many things. A watchword for the times. “Yet, carrying on, I grow more convinced that is was ‘His’ policies that were considered unsound in the Service. That it was ‘Him’ I was sent to handle.” The reasoning is stretched, perhaps false, yet there is something to it. Something to which he will hold fast. What else can he do?

“This ‘caoja’ in Ophis,” the word sounds and ill-fitting and alien as he expected. A word alien to his throat, unforgettable on his tongue. “I shall be pleased to attend, of course. Such vaunted company. Yet, I find myself in the curious position of being the one who needs to be briefed.” Time to kick the hornet’s nest again and never mind the stings. He will take them, be glad of them. And this meeting, this ‘caoja’ will at least be properly memorialized. It will be set down in paper in ink. Every word spoken remembered as best he can. He is not such a fool as to take notes at such a meeting. The Black Protocols alone would forbid it. He will let them guide is actions. It is proper and correct. It is sound. There are few armours more effective than proper procedure.

He raises his coffee cup to the Incumbent, still smiling.“What’s one more conspiracy, sir, among friends?”

[Tom Cooke]

The Elephant • Uptown

Late Evening on the 28th of Dentis, 2719

N
ot pleased –

Tom shuts his eyes, breathes careful through his nose. He tries to focus on what he can smell, the kofi and the spices, and grounds himself against the burble-on of Shrikeweed’s voice. He can’t know if this – this misunderstanding – is itself subterfuge. He can’t piece together what can be seen, what cannot; what the civil servant has figured out, what he hasn’t. How all this must look.

For a moment, just a moment, he has the strange urge to turn the cup in his hands. Left, right, left – every time the same, isn’t it? No; he’s got it wrong. On the Shrike’s side of the table, it’d be right, left, right…

What fucking chroveshit. The buzzing fills his head like flies, like flies round a dead thing. He can’t think. He’s still thinking about the cup; he taps the rim with his fingertips, twitching. How far do you have to turn it, each time, to feel right? Is something in Vita more secure for it after all? Does it ripple through the Evers like the wings of a butterfly?

Official disapproval, Shrikeweed says. There’s nothing wry or joking about his tone. He seems hesitant, careful. He seems somehow cheered by what he’s been told.

Tom realizes he doesn’t know a damn thing. Wraithwine, he wanted to repeat, Wraithwine, Wraithwine. You must’ve known; you must know. I thought you – don’t make me say it – you’re trying to get me to say it with this, with all this blithe –

The civil servant bites off a curse, mid-plotting. Tom’s eyes snap open. Shrikeweed’s mopping at his hand, face a displeased twist.

It’s clarifying, if nothing else.

Tom looks down into his kofi cup, but he can’t stand to see the hazy flicker of a reflection. His gaze darts to one side; he sits there in the window, a phantom full of whirling snow. Two Incumbents, two Shrikeweeds, one Tom. He’s not sure about that last one; he’s not sure, not really, who’s sitting in his chair, in this strange mask of a body.

The word caoja drags his eyes back to Shrikeweed anyway. He blinks. I, him; caoja, now. He doesn’t subject the Tek to mockery, he doesn’t say it with the flourish of a sneering toffin. It’s sharp; he’s caught up what Tom has laid between them. Such vaunted company, he says, and there’s a hint of the tsuter there, oes.

A black eye. Flustered pigeons. A man who is uncomfortable at the opera. A man who has no use for the good and the great. A galdor, still. He feels something he can’t account for. It’s on the border between anger and guilt.

“No,” he says abruptly, glancing out over the Elephant.

He smells something like baking cheese. His jaw is set; a muscle flickers. He can’t think how to go on, so he takes a sip of too-hot coffee, and he doesn’t twitch as it scalds his tongue.

“That’s one option. I can see it as well as I can see anything. It makes your involvement in this laoso happenstance,” he says after a moment, when he’s mastered himself enough to set the cup down on the saucer without spilling. “Another – your Braithwaite-Kilcoyne knew something of what the late Incumbent was involved in.” He’s not thinking of his words; it’s too late for that. “Or someone above her. Someone who wanted somebody on the inside. Or, the Service is a tool of somebody who’s troubled that the Incumbent is no longer himself. Somebody, somebodies like –”

They could flood out of him, the names. He’s constricted.

Keep your enemies, they say, closer than your friends. He doesn’t know if Serro’s kov are friends, but they’re the closest he’s got to allies; he knows, at least, that Ava Weaver is. If Shrikeweed is a bystander, or if he is a puppet – worse – there’s no getting rid of him, not with the Service deadset, and holding him at arm’s length is only going to work so long.

They’ve spoken of what Braithwaite-Kilcoyne might want. They’ve spoken, haltingly, of what Megiro might want. What does Mr. Shrikeweed want? Order? That tells him very little specific.

The smell of baked cheese grows louder, mingled with other benny scents. Tom’s keeping an eye out for the chip. But he looks at the Shrike, then, across the table. “What do you think the Gioran Matter is?” he asks quietly, evenly, his voice deadly low.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Elephant
Thirty eight minutes past the twenty-sixth hour

T

hey are talking past each other. They have been for months. It crystalizes in the super-saturated fluid of suspicion. How had he not seen it before? The connection should have been made. A failure of reasoning. A failure of imagination. No, not quite. There were other lines to follow, other policies to craft. A lacunae in the schedule was little enough. Little enough, and yet he had carried on trying to pry it open, to make the gap large enough to pour himself inside, to make sense of the contents. Tonight, more senses has arrived, the threads twisting together.

He should go to the opera more often.

The Incumbent still looks waxen and only half alive.A man unsure of his company. What trust there was between them has grown as pale and thin and the Incumbent himself. A man adrift, trying Shrikeweed nearly smiles when the man taps his own coffee cup, a pale imitation of his own turnings. When did he start the turnings? Long go to be sure. The gesture is old, it is part of him now as surely as his voice, his side whiskers, and his thoughts. A private ritual, one of many he has erected over the years to bring order to chaos.

It is the season for chaos, the year for it. It flowers and grows, its vines reaching out and strangling. A weed growing in the carefully maintained garden of order. Order is unnatural, a made thing, and the more precious for it. And what else has that vine throttled? Can it throttle a man without him being aware until it is too late?

The cravat is tight at his throat. He reaches for it, pulls at its ends and folds. The knot loosens but does not untie. It is too complex for that, too much an affectation constructed for a night at the opera. It is the knot of a man of substance, a man of influence. A borrowed knot for a borrowed mask. It is not the knot of an ink-stained and anonymous civil servant. It is not the knot of a man who knows he does not matter. And yet he is no longer quite so anonymous. A Deputy Chief for Policy Analysis may go their whole career being a nothing to the wider world, a position without reference, a position of which most are unaware. A chief of staff and counselor to an Incumbent is another matter. A more public man.

Why send a policy analyst to fill such a role? Until tonight it had made little sense. Yet now there was at least a thread to follow, an argument that made some sense. A policy was created. It had been enacted and without apparent approval via official channels. It had been done the wrong way. Whatever the content of the policy its methods were unsound. And what was the policy? Unknown. And that was the logical reason for his assignment. Neither he nor Braithwaite-Kilcoyne had had any idea what this unsound policy was, and that could not be allowed to stand. And, it is clear to him now, he could never have been told what he was to look for. It would have clouded his judgement, biased him in dangerous ways. Proper analysis requires cultivated ignorance, the naive mind. It had been necessary to keep him in the dark.

Necessity does not breed equanimity.

“I believe, sir,” he turns his cup again, repeating the ritual. It brings no comfort. “That the interest of the Service is largely procedural. Whatever policy you, that is ‘He’, had helped formulate, it was done without official consultation. Few things irk the Service more than being kept from the loop. It could not be allowed to stand.” He looks at the Incumbent for some sign of recognition. The result is unclear. The motives of the Service area thing unto themselves, perhaps even alien. “Motives as to content well, that is rather murkier matter.” Murkier, yes, but essential.

And the Gioran Matter. Well, it has little enough to do with Gior, little enough to do with official channels. A conspiracy created - and executed? - wholly without consultation. It had been spotted, the shoddy coverup could be seen from a mile away. And yet the heart of the matter could not be seen. Not without the curious combination of poorly written schedules and a night at the opera.

“As to my views as to the Gioran Matter?” A long breath and labored. He has answers, and none of them pleasant. Wraithwine. Wraithwine. That implication was clear enough. “We might as well drop the pretense. Clearly it has something to do with what happened,” there is a catch in his voice, sorrow and rage in equal measure, “has something to so with the Dorehaven Incident.” Dorehaven. The bombing. Levesque. He can still see the old man’s benignant face, hear the reedy tones of his voice, the creaking of his joints. Did you lose anyone at Dorehaven, Incumbent? Or were you aware enough to instruct your friends and relations to stay away on that day? “Three main lines of reasoning occur to me. They are supported by the data to varying degrees. Still, you must understand that each of these is merely a possible interpretation of events. I lack significant data.” Data the Incumbent has. His eyes fix upon the man, hard cold. Or so they should be. Yet he can feel the slight welling of tears in his eyes. Tears for the death of his dear friend and mentor, tears for another birthing of chaos. “First, you and several others, including that Megiro creature, became away of the plot regarding the bombing. You tried to forestall it, or prevent it. The fact that you failed is significant. A cover-up of your incompetence followed. Reasonable, yes, yet it fails to fit all the facts.”

And now the cheese, mushrooms, and bread make their appearance. Fragrant and rich, just the thing on a cold night. The dish of soft cheese is bubbling as it is set down. The mushrooms are fragrant with garlic, thyme, and sherry. The bread is toasted to a beautiful golden brown. On any other night, it would have been perfect. It seems a strange repast over which to conspire. Over which to lay out horrors and half-formed theories.

Sebele cracks a smile. Is she aware of this conversation? Perhaps. He would not put it past her. She has ears almost as keen as his own. She has a better ear for rumor. She can hear opportunity in the wind. “Anything else, Mr S?”

He looks up, trying to smile as he should in this place. He fails. It is a rictus of agony, for suspicion. Sebele’s eyes grow wide for a moment. “It has been a long night. Perhaps a bottle of wine? An Ilacue if you still have it. But anything soft and thoughtful will serve.” She nods, departs with her usual purpose. She is ignoring the Incumbent. A deliberate slight? Unlikely. Perhaps she cannot believe that Shrikeweed has brought anyone here to the Elephant. To his own private sanctum.”

The coffee cup turns again, clockwise, anticlockwise, and clockwise again. Over and over. He does not stop, cannot stop. The aroma of the cheese and the fragrant mushrooms fill his nostrils. He wants nothing more than to dine on both. To forget this evening. There is no hope of that. Not good in it either. “My second line perhaps fits the events rather more closely. And it, sir, is deeply unsound.” An understatement if ever there was one. “The plot was discovered, and you and your unpleasant allies thought they could make use of it. There is an old saying sir, ‘Never let a crisis go to waste’. Certainly Dorehaven was a crisis, and certain policies, certain attitudes, have changed since then. They have hardened.” Certainly his own have done so. Can he pass a human man in the street without suspicion rising like bile in his throat? Has he not fought bare-knuckled in half-legal bouts in warehouses along the river, purging his sorrow and rage in the giving and receiving of pain? It helps. It is not enough. It will never be enough.

“The third, and rather darker line is this: That you and yours planned it. Why wait for an atrocity upon which to capitalize when you could make one of your own?” He nearly spits out the words. It is abominable, unthinkable. And yet he is thinking it. His stomach churns. What manner of man could plan such a thing? I could, he thinks to himself. It is a logical course of action. Logical if one’s goal was the turning of public opinion, the consolidation of authority. He could have planned such a thing. And if he had, well, it would have been covered up a good deal better. The plan was wrong in and of itself. It was horrific. Yet if it had been official policy, it would have been frightfully well carried out. It was not official policy.

His eyes bore into the Incumbent now, searching every feature of the man for confirmation or denial. For the love of all the gods, man, tell me I am wrong. Tell me that I am a fool. He is not a fool. Not any longer. “Monstrous.” He mutters it under his breath. Barely audible; an utterance for himself alone. “It that it, sir? Is that what you fear I already know? Is that what you think I am here to silence.” His eyes, so often colorless flash gold and green, flash in anger and hate. “What part of me do you think would endorse such chaos? Chaos, Anatole,” It is the first time he has used the Incumbent’s given name. It may well be his last. Let it be what it must, consequences be damned. “Cannot be allowed to grow, to spread. If this is what broke you sir, scattered your wits, then I can understand, even sympathize.” He takes in a long and painful breath, the tears still forming in his eyes. “But, I cannot condone it." He looks again at that pained and waxen face. That face of fear. Doe he understand now? Perhaps. It is another hope, one he will take. "And neither can you.” He can see that, in the Incumbent’s face. Or is that a desire of his own? A desire to see a man he half-likes not turn out to be some monster. A foolish desire. And yet. And yet. ‘He’ and ‘I’, ‘I’ and ‘He’ one man of two minds. One sound, the other unsound. The barest of hopes. “Gods dammit! If you had bothered to trust me I might have done something.” He draws in another breath. It is futile, meaningless. Just as any action he might have taken would have been. He is but one man, and one man does not matter. “I was sent too late. Far, far too late.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Elephant • Uptown

Late Evening on the 28th of Dentis, 2719

T
he word is between them, now, at least. It has come out of Shrikeweed’s mouth and curled in the air between them, looking about as if confused where it’s found itself; now it’s laying on the table between two kofi cups. Neither of the men are looking at it; they’re looking at each other, now.

But it’s there, lying low. He thinks he can see it looking over its shoulder, as if ashamed of itself, as if ashamed to be seen by any of the Elephant’s staff or patrons. Like it’s naked, and has nothing to clothe it – no well-spun pretense, not even sackcloth.

Or maybe that’s how Tom feels. Shrikeweed has loosened his collar; Tom feels stifled by his own. The phosphor catches the gold in the other man’s eyes. He feels pinned.

It used to mean something different. Dorhaven. City near Wraithwine, forest of fog. Mostly natt; he never had any folks there – he never had any folks, much – but Deirdre’s da had come from there, before the dens in Voedale had swallowed him up in smoke and bliss.

Deirdre had filled the dressing room at Greene’s with stories of a bochhood playing in the woods, of burbling creeks. Of times when the line wasn’t drawn so bold. She spoke of it like a heaven, but he supposes any place is, to a happy child. If you’ve enough, if you aren’t scared. It always colored what he thought of Dorhaven, that. And gold-eyed gollies talking about retired da’s properties, about vacations with dappled light and warm breezes.

Now, Dorhaven means death on everyone’s tongue. Death, or opportunity. He’s heard more of the latter, the circles he moves in. More twitching smiles.

Mr. Shrikeweed is not smiling. He’s not sure he’s surprised. He’s more surprised by the catch in his throat, as if it actually means something to him. Tom’s eyes flick over his face; they study it, carefully. Tom knows, knows very crisply, that Shrikeweed knows just which line of logic will be the correct one.

It’s as if he’s seeing the civil servant for the first time. This expression makes his features remarkable. He notices the long nose, the harrowed eyes, the slight cleft in the chin. They’re not strong features, not sharp, but animated like this, Tom remembers them. He sees a man, not a pair of side-whiskers and a wry quirked eyebrow.

It’s like he’s been taken by a raen; like he’s not even Shrikeweed anymore. There’s a glitter at the edges of his eyes, a red-rimmed rawness. Are these Mr. Shrikeweed’s tears, or someone else’s?

A laoso chill moves down Tom’s spine. The hairs on the backs of his neck prickle. He’s afraid again, suddenly. He doesn’t know what this man is capable of.

It’s hard not to break when the food comes out. The Mugrobi lass is back, and so are the smells – warm, sweet baked cheese, with that unmistakable edge of caramellization; the tang of thyme in the mushrooms – or maybe they never went anywhere, maybe they’ve been getting stronger and stronger, but he stopped smelling them.

If she trusts Shrikeweed’s peeling grin as far as she can throw both of them, she doesn’t comment. Wine, floods. Soft and thoughtful. But then, Shrikeweed doesn’t have a taste for whisky.

He thinks about the black eye, the hot kofi; he wonders. Maybe he hasn’t tried Low Tide yet.

She doesn’t look at Tom, at the Incumbent, as she leaves, as if she’s seen Dorhaven hiding its face among the golden-brown toast. But Shrikeweed is looking at him again, the lance of his attention not dulled by the interruption. He goes through the second line of logic.

Tom thinks he’ll stop there. Most galdori would. Why blame your own kind, when there’re natt to blame? If a human could’ve been involved, a human must’ve been. Maybe the opportunity was seized, maybe the line’s grown bolder, maybe he’ll admit those things. But it’s always a human as started it.

Shrikeweed is not a fool.

Monstrous, he says, and Tom concedes, gladly. It snakes out – Anatole, he bites off.

Tom flinches.

The breath shudders in and out of Shrikeweed. Tom can’t but believe him. Some use tears to pull at the heart; none of these are Shrikeweed’s tools.

“Done something?” he hisses. He’s gripping the edges of the table white-knuckled; he forces his hands to relax, one and then the other. “What do you think either of us’d’ve done? How do you know where the High Judge can reach? Who the hell would you have told, without ending up at the bottom of the flooding Arova? What could you have possibly done?”

Save your own, maybe. Mitigate some of the chaos. Tom swallows thickly. There’s an anger burning in his chest; it’s rising up in his throat. There’s something almost comical about the bubbling cheese.

He frowns, staring across. “My wits were scattered before Intas. This chroveshit was stuck to the boots when I put them on,” he snaps. “And if there’s a damn thing these hands could’ve done—”

He looks at them; he breaks off. “He – I, if you must – was moving up. Not there yet. Those men didn’t want my opinion, just my support. And to see if I was worthy of their confidence.” He clenches one, as if to – but it comes to rest very gently on the table; it does not rattle the silverware or the porcelain. “As it turns out, I was.”

It’s shaky. There are no scars on the knuckles, no callouses on the soles. He looks back up at Shrikeweed.

“If you’d been sent any earlier,” he says more evenly, “I don’t know what would’ve become of you.” Shrikeweed, fussing about in Vauquelin’s affairs. It’s not a thought Tom relishes. “Is it not so, Mr. Shrikeweed, we use the tools we have?”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Elephant
Forty-three minutes past the twenty-sixth hour

H

e does not eat, though hunger gnaws at his insides. Let it gnaw. Let it consume him, devour him from the inside out. A hollow man might feel nothing at all. That is one of his masks, perhaps his best known. The mask of a function, a profession, not a man. He is not hollow, least of all in this place.

Nor is the Incumbent, Anatole, the name still fits ill in his mouth, in his mind. Yet it is the man’s name, his name when he is at home, his name when he leaves the trappings of Stainthorpe Hall and Council chambers behind him. The name of a man, nothing more. Imperfect, fragile, groping in the dark for some semblance of purpose. A man like any other, subject to all that entails.The man’s fear, his reticence, that at least is clear.

Purpose. Did he think giving this conspiracy, this abomination ‘His’ support that it would do him some good? Make him rise in the esteem of men who seemed to delight in the perversion of their office, in the betrayal of the public trust? He almost laughs at that. Naive sentiment. As though such lofty personages ever gave a thought to public trust. Venal men, shallow men. And frightened men.

“Monstrous.” Still in a half-whisper, barely rising. The tone is as level as he can manage and sharp as a razor. If he could shape that sound, hone it, it would be deadly. To the man in front of him, to the Judge and his cronies, and most of all to himself.

“What could I have done?” Told Levesque to take his holiday at some other time, in some other place. Saved one man, one woman. Levesque’s sharp-eyed and affable wife perished with him. Perhaps together. Perhaps apart. He hoped the former. Let it be so. Let it be set down in that manner. Would it matter to save a single man, a single woman? To the world it would matter not in the slightest. It would matter to him. It was not enough. It would have been a start. No. That is the action of man alone. It is not the action of a Civil Servant. Process and procedure. Rely upon it. What else was there? Think, man, and leave your grief for later. Always later.

“I cannot say for certain, not without all the facts. Dangerous to speculate too far. I told you once that nothing exists without the documentation, no meeting exists without minutes, without memoranda.” He looks into the face of the Incumbent, it is tight in his anger. Likewise his hands. They grow bloodless, almost luminous, in their death-grip upon the table. “I would at least have set it down, made it real. There are protocols for such things, means of recording what should not be recorded. I learned them long ago.” From a dead man. “I would set it all down in paper and in ink. Names, dates, circumstances.” The Incumbent will not understand. Will laugh at a plan so seemingly toothless. Yet it had teeth. Teeth that would long outlast the one who set it down. “All men have enemies sir. Even the High Judge. Think of the advantage one of them could seize, were this plot to have become known? Ambition made to foil ambition. You said yourself that you were ‘moving up’. Do you think you are the only one to attach themselves to a conspiracy out of that desire? Plots and counter-plots. The Judge made use of venal men.” Another utterance left hanging in the air. Another utterance to be carried away on the fragrant steam of coffee and untouched food. His hands return to his cup, and he turns it. Clockwise, anti-clockwise, and clockwise again. Over and over. Not frantic, measured. A defined pattern, governed by the machine now cogitating in his head. “I, we, could have done the same.”

Simple enough. Treacherous for that. Nothing is simple, nothing clear.

Least of all the Incumbent.

‘He’ and ‘I’. Two men, so unalike. Two men in one. And is he sure of either? All this could be for nothing. The Incumbent feared him as a spy, perhaps an assassin. Perhaps the roles are reversed. Perhaps they have always been. If this is to be his last night as a man of the world, a living man and not a hungry ghost, the so be it. He has is notes, his memoranda. Incomplete, fragmentary, but enough. Someone else may follow after him, and then another still. A cord of memoranda stretching on into the future. A cord that might, in the fullness of time, prove to be the rope that hangs the Judge.

The man should hang for what he has done. Such a man is as much an enemy of the state as the mad revolutionaries. Perhaps he is worse. If he has done it. Evidence will be required. Witnesses. Half the lawyers in the city will find themselves engaged in the scandal of the age. It will carry on, their private and professional ambitions serving to grind it all to the fine powers of the facts. They will see themselves as heroes. Perhaps they will be. Perhaps not. It will not matter. Only the end will matter.

And is that not what the High Judge must have thought? That only the ends matter. But what ends? There was no great swell of public sentiment towards the mad revolutionaries. Not by anyone if substance or influence. There is another motive here, one to tease out carefully. If he lives beyond this night. He rather thinks he will. Reasoning without data. It will have to serve for now.

“You are right sir,” he says, the cup still turning, “it is likely such a course of action, any course of action, would be fatal to me. Yet I am but one man. And a man does indeed have many tools at his disposal.” He tries to smile his usual sly smile. Ever the disdainful bureaucrat. He finds he cannot. It is only a grimace. A hideous thing. “The paperwork would have lived on. Paperwork always does sir.”