The 9th through the 10th of Intas, 2720
Mr Shrike’s reached out for the bandy at last, fingers around the rim. They flex and tighten, and then it happens, as it always does. The turns, three turns clockwise, three anti-clockwise, and three clockwise again. Slow tonight, almost languid. The thinking gesture, not the agitation. Mr Shrike is too tired for agitation.
“I don’t know,” he says at last, drawing himself up in his own chair. His own chair. An unexpected development. Welcome, but unexpected. He had never thought he’d take to sitting in a fine, if rather worn, chair sipping brandy with a golly. He would have dismissed it as an improbable fiction. “All I can say is he’s got a damn fine reputation, loves to tinker, and probably charges less that your Mr Ixbridge.”
Ixbridge was Mr Shrike’s usual horologist. Apparently a very good one at that, but inclined to a narrow focus on timepieces. This job requires a more open-minded kov. “Besides,” he said, raising his own glass of brandy, half consumed now, “he’s a Ladies’ man.”
“And you can’t say fairer than that.”
“Took the words right out of my mouth Mr Shrike.”
“Yes,” he says, turning his snifter again in the usual manner, “I thought I might.”
A stack of papers, all neatly bound up in vermillion tape. Mr Shrike’s preferred color, sits on the little hexagonal table between them. Large papers, folded neatly and ready to be placed in the leather courrier’s bag he now perpetually carries. Another finery he’s never expected. Patents, apparently, for some strange clockwork device. A thinking machine. He doubts machines can think. No, that’s not quite true. There is Mr Shrike, afterall, with his field like an infinity of clockwork and his cold, orthogonal construction of a personality. Bloody strange dealing with a man who always had to think about his emotions, had to reason his way to nearly anything other than curiosity, rage, or that dry official sarcasm. No, machines can think. Provided they are made of flesh and bone.
“I don’t know nothing about machines sir. Less still the fancy kind that Lonsdale drafted up here.” He gives his patron a sly look. “Is it quite legal that you have these here papers sir.”
“Oh yes. Filed in the patent office two years ago, languishing for want of funds. Public knowledge.” At last he raises the snifter, but fails to drink. Only more turnings. “Lonsdale's not an horologist, not a practical man. It’s all diagrams and suppositions. But the mechanics seem sound, the mathematics more so. And I don’t need Lonsdale’s machine. Just something simpler, something to handle the number arrays and their dimensions. Something to deal with all the angles”
He’s never quite understood how Mr Shrike uses his magic. Quantitative is all about measurements and numbers, that much he knows. Yet Mr Shrike uses it to aid his memory, to reconstruct meetings, hell, he’s even seen the man try and predict possible futures. And then he’s seen him collapse into a wreck of a man, laid low by headaches, fueled by coffee and that strange horrible tea he drinks. Looks like wine, smells like a chemist’s shop. Bitterer than any sharp ale he’s had.
“I’ll see what I can do. See if this Mr Fogg is as good as they say.”
“See that he is discreet.”
“He’s a Ladies’ man Mr Shrike.”
“And you can’t say fairer than that.”
Morning now, and the cold still clinging to the air. Remnants of frost in the streets and even up on the hill of Smike’s End the streets are slick and treacherous. So he keeps to the courts and arcades that were covered overnight, where the frost did not settle. A longer walk that he’d have liked, down and down to the riverside, to the bridges to the north. To the Dives. At the end of Blackthorn Bridge he jumps on to a passing tram, headed north, pays the fare with only a twinge of old guilt, and settles himself in for the slow slog through the Rookery, around Saddlery Hill, and at last to the Painted Ladies. To home.
At Hazlar street he ducks in for a coffee. Bastian pressure coffee, more to his taste than the dense, thick stuff the Mugrobi make. He’d grown up here, in these streets and long these allies, and yet he never minded this place, never even knew it was here. Another of Mr Shrike’s strange talents, his own sense of the city. The man could find a decent coffeehouse in the middle of a line of factories. He is half sure the presence of Mr Shrike causes coffeehouses to spring into existence. Only somehow, they had always been there.
Coffee consumed and his bones warmed, he goes out into the cold. Three streets over, past the costermonger’s on Bletchly, he locates the shop. Rouncewell and Fogg. A narrow establishment, green-painted window frames in that glossy, nautical paint that never quite seems to fade or to chip. Neat and orderly. That bodes well. A clockmaker's should be neat.
At the door he pauses, looks up at the chimes, counts them. No luck. Only a single brass bell. Seven would have served him better. He might have sway in such a place. Well, not him, but the family. Near enough to count. No such luck. A pity.
He pushes in the door, cold outside gives way to warmth within. The single bell rings bright and clear. The place is full of clocks, of cabinets and cases. Everything dusted, clean. Everything just so. A faint consistent ticking, the sounds of a thousand pendulums and escapements, of cogs and winding springs, fills all the space. It smells of clock oil and competence. All good signs.
He is dressed as respectable as he can manage, and he tries to look as though he’s always been so. Good, if worn clothes, second hand and well looked after, hair tamed as much as can ever be managed. Freshly scrubbed. To the counter now, and to the personage behind it he addressed his remarks. “Is Mr Fogg in? I’d like a consultation, if it can be managed.” He pats the courier bag slug about him. “I understand he a man who likes a challenge.”