The Spell of Vesperia, Chapter III

See? I wasn’t lying about writing another chapter. This was a tough one to write. Sorry for the delay.

~

“I’ve got people over there,” she said, waving her hand at the purpling sunset. “Way over by the ocean. They’re good people, I guess, but I just had to get away, you know?”

~

The clock ticked unceasingly in the largest room of the Harlock-Glockner household, which served as a dining room, kitchen, and parlour. The circular table had been pushed out from the corner into the centre of it and upon it, five places were set. Not coincidentally, five bodies were seated in chairs before the places.

A plaid shirt and pair of trousers three sizes too large, boots so small they’d pinch Dot’s own feet, and a blue toque with a bobble on it – no one had a wig, or at least no one who’d fess up to it – should have been beneath Erasmus’ dignity, Dot thought. But if Erasmus thought so, or if he had a concept of ‘dignity’, he wasn’t saying and the specs of light in his sockets gave away nothing.

Ah, darkened spectacles, that was what she needed. But the chances of finding any pairs of any such things north of Englin were low to the point of laughable.

Said her father, in between chewing and swallowing forkfuls of his meat pie – the sort of meat being difficult to discern under the sheer amount of salt and spice – with the grim determination of a soldier on the march, “Blindfold it. Simplest way.”

“I don’t much fancy leading him by the hand all the way down to the city,” said Dot. Her pie was picked at and smushed about until it could only be grandfathered in to that category of pastry. “Or should I just put him on the back of a donkey and lead him that way?”

This did not amuse Evert Glockner and the way his fingers warped the cheap metal of his fork gave testimony to that.

“There’s that wide-brimmed hat I’ve got,” offered Agny Harlock, a taller, lankier, fairer, wearier version of her daughter. “You know, like those police on the frontier wear. That should shade its eyes enough that people won’t seem ‘em until they look, won’t it?” Like her husband, she was systematic in her eating, although she had opted to fully sublimate the crust into the filling.

Dot constructed a perfect pyramid the likes of which would meet the approval of any pharaoh should it have been made of stone, then sliced it down the ruthlessness of salvagers. “That’ll have to do, I guess. Though we’ll have to find better clothing for him. Gods’ grave, he looks like he’s wearing a tent.” Out of the corner of her eye, she spied Erasmus and Bill, both onto their second and both…

Bill Glockner muttered with all the rage at the unfairness of the universe he could muster.

~

The Harlock-Glockner family meals were always this happy. This is why they usually dined out at the beer hall.

~

Later – armed with the wide-brimmed hat, which was thankfully of too dark a material to be mistaken for the official model – Dot, Erasmus, and Bill crowded themselves in Bill’s cubby of a room. Dot had to stand on the bed and to her brother’s consternation, she did not remove her boots first. His chest was open, clothes strewn out for it, in preparation for Erasmus becoming a glorified dressing doll. The hat was placed upon his head for comparison’s sake.

“You haven’t told them yet,” said Bill, holding an ugly woollen sweater up to Erasmus’ torso for inspection. It failing to pass muster, he threw it behind him with a harrumph, an action to which his subject responded with tilt of his head. “About Kit.”

“Why would I?” asked Dot, in the manner of the superior elder sibling the world over. Her arms were crossed and her shoulder blades rested against the knotty planks that made up the wall, the effect being spoiled by the way she had to tilt her own head to prevent it from smacking the ceiling. “Think it would be kind to them? Any use? Oh, he saw her three years ago – which I might I remind you, wasn’t that long after we last saw her – does that tell them anything about where she is now and what she’s doing?”

Bill admitted that this did not. “But maybe with a little investigation…” Another sweater was tried, found wanting, and tossed into the incipient heap.

“Which is why we’re going. Both to find out where Erasmus came from and to find Kit’s trail. But I think you know why I didn’t say more than the first part. I mean, they’re fretting about me leaving enough as it is. I suppose I should keep my voice down.”

“Yep.” He continued his work with diligence. “What about you, Erasmus? Haven’t heard you speak much.”

The lights focused on Bill. “I have not much to contribute. My memories are unhelpful right now. They are damaged. By water? Heat? Pressure? I do not know. I wish I could tell you more marvellous things about Kit. She was kind to me. I recall that I had hair then, but they were not black curls like hers and yours.” As he spoke, more and more articles of clothing were held up to him, then thrown back in disgust.

Bill did not have a great deal of clothes, so it was not long at all before he only had one outfit left as an option – an off-white button shirt and a dark coat and slacks the exact same shade as the hat. The younger Glockner seemed to shake as he had his size double put them on to make sure of the fit, which was, of course, perfect.

He swore, with an even greater passion than his muttering at the dinner table. “It has to be my best, doesn’t it! The only thing that’ll work with that damned hat!” But there was nothing for it and in due course, the monstrous trousers and plaid shirt, along with the most whimsical toque, were returned to their owner, who seemed a touch disappointed to see them return.

~

In the morning, they set out – two hours after dawn had paid its call and just as Judge Holt was setting up court in the community of Arms of Gold. There was a matter of a burglary that the man had to sort out, along with an assault up in one of the camps; no murders or rapes or anything of that sort, gods be praised. Thus, in waiting for the correct authorities to call, the community distinguished itself from the Arms of Gold of a decade past, in which a suspected perpetrator would be strung up or elsewise abused, circuit judge or no. Evert and Agny made their gruff farewells to their daughter at the door; Bill followed Dot and Erasmus a mile down the road before he could finally be persuaded to clear off.

“Mind my clothes!” were his last words to them.

“I’ll send you up a new pair once we get to Englin, if I’ve got any money left!” In Dot’s wallet, tied with a multitude of clever knocks to her waist, there rested ten elderly dollars that she had earned with her own labours. Thus, she felt confident in her promise.

When they were left to the silence of the woods, Dot began to speak to Erasmus, in much the same manner as Kit before him. She told him all sorts of things, of the machines and of magic and how she knew a lot about the machines but not much at all about the magic and how she was going to learn it to figure him out yet…

Erasmus was so entranced – how much it was like the speeches of Kit in the times before! – that he forgot to tell her how his limbs were getting stiffer and his mind slower and how much harder it was becoming to keep with her pace.

By Dot’s reckoning, it would take a full day’s stroll to get to Poppertown, given that no one in Arms of Gold had charity that stretched far enough to lend them a steed. This Dot did not mind. She had made the journey before, even when she was much smaller than she was now, and the thought of a day’s walk filled her with not a whit of fear. It meant a change of pace, a chance to see something new, even if it weren’t quite as new as she’d like.

“I’ve only been to Englin once before,” she prattled on. “But I was too small to remember it. I was three I think, ha, and my family was just coming up from Abelia. They heard about gold, you see, but the gold was further north than they were willing to go, especially with me and Kit being as young as we were and Bill being just a baby. Think you come from the same part of the country as the gold?” Dot took in Erasmus’ impressively blank expression. “No, I shouldn’t think so. You said you travelled from the east. But where…?”

“I am sorry. I do not know.”

Her prattling continued anew and the sun made its course overhead, insofar as either of them could tell through the needles and branches and trunks that surrounded them.

As sunset arrived, Dot estimated that they were roughly an hour out from Poppertown. This was in accordance with both past experience and a particularly gnarled tree on the eastern side of the road, scratched and abused with the declarations of dozens of couples. Except, except, except…

That was with the whole family with her. And a cart that needed pulling. It was just her and Erasmus this time; shouldn’t they have gone a touch farther by this point?

She turned to Erasmus, no longer going on about whatever crossed her mind and plumbing him for answers he did not currently possess, and looked at him, really looked at him. She could not tell for certain, but his legs seemed to swing from his knees at a slower and jerkier gait than they had starting out in the morning and it was almost as if his knees were locking up for some moments with each pace…

“Erasmus?” she asked. “We can take a break, if you want.”

He shook his head, in the culturally accepted way of signifying ‘no.’ One pace, two paces, three paces, more.

“I wouldn’t mind. I could use the rest.” This was a lie and went ignored, even as its target ground ever to a halt.

He stood stock still in the middle of the dirt road. A faint sound of gears could be heard, along with a shudder in his hips, as he tried and failed to prod his limbs onwards to their destination. “I cannot, I cannot, I cannot…”

Erasmus slowly, but surely, buckled. First his toes bent over, then his knees, then his legs, his hips, his chest, then his skull, hitting the ground with a thump. His face was planted into the road, dirt shoved up into his eye sockets.

In the distance, birds and insects chirped. Dot breathed in, breathed out, then – hands shaking – slung her overloaded pack off of her back, turned Erasmus onto his own back, undid the buttons of the coat and shirt, and went to work. Around her, the sky reddened, then purpled, then blackened.

~

“You should know that we’re not exactly keen on you going,” said Agny, once night had well and truly fallen and all the meat pie had been placed into stomachs. The weak light of the lantern illuminated her, emphasised the lines of her face until she seemed a decade older than she was.

“I’ll send a letter, whenever I get to a new town.”

“That’s the only reason we’re letting you go.”

“I promise you, all right? But I’ve got to do this. You know I can’t stay here,” said Dot, said Kit.

Evert said nothing, but he never was a big talker.

The Spell of Vesperia, Chapter II

The sun rose over the dark sea and as she did every sunrise, she stood just where the tide met the earth and allowed its swells to wash over her feet. The cold of it shot through her like lightning and she wrapped herself in her overlarge sweater – made overlarge under the old maxim, ‘she’ll grow into it’ – and stared with eyes so open that it almost hurt.

The day would be followed by work, work, work, followed by what little time with the books she could eke out before the light faded again. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner would consist of bread and fish. Everyone would be tired throughout. But always, if she just woke a little earlier than everyone else, she could have this bit of time that was all hers, where she could see the world turn from dead to living.
Then, once the sun was well and thoroughly up, she set immediately from home. They’d be getting up and work, work, work would start anew.

When she came back this time, however, they were not awake.

~

No one from the provinces came to Belsworth Factory because they wanted to. Built in the northernmost reaches of the Vesperia Territory, clinging to the cliffs alongside the Termina Sea, it struck the ‘provincials’ as these: cold, dark, remote, and desolate. They did not come for fortune, for there was none to be had. They did not come for glory or adventure – those types were weeded out before they could venture any further west than Rochilda.

They came because they had nowhere else to go, neither friends nor kin to object to their leaving, a professional attitude, and a special talent for killing things. All of this described Trillium Annsdottir. And yet, when the fall of her boots brought her close enough to Belsworth Factory’s stoutly built gate that she could touch it, she could feel her bones go cold.

A poet once said that “the northern lights have seen queer sights” and Trillium could well believe that they saw them while keeping watch over Belsworth Factory.
The marshal, Shipwright, gently shoved her to the side and back before craning her neck and shouting, “Hello, up there!”

Not that the two guards needed to have their attention drawn to seven souls below, having had their bayonets trained on them since the moment they could first hear them blundering out from the forest’s path. “Who’s this, then? State your name and business.”

Shipwright tutted under her breath and, much more loudly, said, “Marshal Elodie Shipwright, bringing in a gaggle of recruits from various and sundry points southeast. We request entrance and an immediate audience with Factor Dale Elshern, or whoever has replaced him in the position if he has departed from it.”

One of the guards – a lad of about a quarter of a century with a face that was a mess of freckles and scars – leaned over and squinted at Shipwright through the shadow cast by his cap. He hmmed. “Well, it’s you all right. I guess we ought to let you in, then. Come on, Tolly, let’s get to it...” After some sounds of scrambling and the grind of metal, the gate was pulled open. The insides weren’t any more promising than the outsides, although admittedly par with what Trillium had grown up with. Chances were she’d be fed better anyway.

They marched two abreast through the gate, as per Shipwright’s prior instructions – as for her, she took the lead, taking them directly to the small central building. Some men and women watched their procession with a sort of bored interest before returning to their tasks at hand, such as tending to the garden or washing or preparing something organic and foul over an open pit.

She exchanged glances with Clay, on her right, who seemed just as enthusiastic as she was. He was about to open his mouth to speak before he remembered himself and shut it again.

Shipwright knocked on the door before letting herself in. Five minutes passed before she returned to motion them all to follow.

~

They lay as if sleeping, though with eyes open with some unseen horror. They did not breathe, nor did their hearts beat. This was true of her mother and father, and of her four sibs.

She thought to herself, why did they not cry out? She would have heard them if they had. She would have come running, feet bleeding with the scratching of rocks, lungs bursting with their effort. It did not occur to her that perhaps that was the reason why they did not do so.

~

Trillium hadn’t known what the factor would be like – Shipwright had responded to every question about him with an infuriating shrug – but she was certain she never thought he’d be like Dale Elshern turned out to be.

He was a middle-aged man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, sad and regal. The closest he came to Trillium’s assorted imaginings was his manner of dress and grooming, which was practical and immaculate. A frontier post suggested someone who kept order with the manner of a martinet or a boisterous sort who didn’t much bother with discipline at all. Elshern was neither, reminding Trillium of nothing so much as her kindly, departed grandfather. Provided her grandfather was of a much higher social class and much better spoken, that is.

Elshern bowed his head towards the newcomers, pushing his spectacles back upon his nose as his head came back up. “I am gladdened that you have all arrived safely,” he said in a classical Spiran accent. “My name is Dale Elshern and I am the factor here. During the length of your stay, which will hopefully be the entire length of your contract, you will be expected to abide by the rules and regulations of the Ultima Thule Company and the special ones specific to Belsworth Factory. Copies of the latter will be made available to you, as will the former provided you have lost your previous copy during the course of your journey.”

Then he did something which astonished Trillium: he shook every one of the recruits by hand, firmly. “I cannot begin to describe my gratitude that you have chosen to carry out this treacherous undertaking. You have done a great service to Norland by this act and I wish the best of luck to you all. Nevertheless, I am honour bound to say this: if you have any hesitation or reluctance to carry out your duties here or desire to break with the previously agreed upon contract, please state so now so that I might release you from it.”

To a soul, the recruits refused to. They had come too far and they were too much like Trillium.

~

Not long later – they had arrived late, the sun was setting down, and the grand tour had to wait for the morrow – the six of them sat in the mess hall, devouring their soup and bread with an unseemly haste. But who could blame them? It was the first time in two months, with some notable exceptions, where their meal did not consist of pemmican with an extra helping of pemmican. Fresh and cooked meat and vegetables! Cooked competently, no less, and not a slapdash job at the end of hours and hours of canoeing or hiking! They made themselves as pigs at the trough.

Conversation was created, when it was recalled the necessity of breathing. “We’re here,” said Jordan with a sort of tone that almost put everyone off their soup.

“Why’d you go and remind us of that, eh?” said Thins, scowling. Jordan shrugged and the others, as one, privately thought to themselves that Shipwright had been too much of an influence on the man.

Genton licked the soup off her lips. “It needs to be said, though. And it’s going to be sooner than later before we see... one of them.” But still, they kept eating, for all of them came from the sort of lives that dictated you ate a meal when you got it.

“Yeah, you’re right enough. I hope it’s a later sort of sooner, though.”

“Hear, hear,” said Clay. He was he only one in their little band that had ever seen them in person before. No one knew the circumstances of it, not even Trillium. Maybe Shipwright did. Sometimes, when he woke with nightmares, she would whisper some unknown something in his ear and he would settle down, enough to regain his wits.

“I heard they eat the ones they grab a hold of. While they’re still alive.” Thins shivered. Clay didn’t contradict him.

Greenmountain said nothing, but then, she never did.

~

They sent her to live with her grandfather afterwards, after the bodies had been cast into the sea and there was no more to be said to them. Like them, grandfather worked, worked, worked and expected her to do so as well, but he smiled at her and played the fiddle for her and told her how strong she was becoming.

But storms happen and they especially happen to fishers and that is when her grandfather was lamed. Oh, she worked all the harder for him then, but still he tried to do so himself and he tried enough to kill himself and so it goes.

There was nowhere else to go then, with no orphanage opening its doors to her or elderly spinsters or bachelors eager to adopt her in exchange for an extra set of hands. Westwards she went, with the one skill she had learned in a life of odd jobs that was wanted anywhere: she could hunt and she could do it well. Even when the fear came.

~

There was a howling from somewhere which was certainly not from any wolf or coyote and a scratching noise. Trillium was up and out of her bunk with a start, as was everyone else.

This included Shipwright, already fully dressed provided she was ever undressed at all. “Yes, that is what you think it is,” she said as a matter-of-factly. “Get yourselves decent; you’re not getting any slack just because it’s your first night here.”

Within the space of a minute, they were all ready – Trillium, Genton, Clay, Thins, Jordan and Greenmountain. They followed Shipwright out again, like so much lambs or chicks.

~

Trillium was told that those things were once human and she couldn’t disagree with them. That’s what made her stomach turn so fiercely. Nevertheless, as she stared down from the palisade at it, she found that she could not turn away, not even to vomit.

It was man-shaped, certainly, travelling on two legs, with two arms clawing, clawing at the gate. Its hair hung in lank, colourless clumps from its scalp; its eyes appeared like nothing more than two pinpoints of light in the dark. Tracks of its papery, corpse pale skin had been torn off – clawed off? – exposing the bone and jerky-like muscle beneath. She’d been told that things increased in size with every feeding, so that they would never again feel their stomach sated – this one was twice the size of a grown man of average height, with genitals shrunk and shrivelled between its legs.

It howled and moaned at them all, thrashing and wailing at the gate with such ferocity and speed. If one listened closely, they could pick out something resembling words from the moans and if they spoke the right language, they could understand what it was saying.

“It’s saying, ‘feed me, feed me, oh, just give me something to eat, please,’” said a native woman standing beside Trillium. She had not noticed her before, and she regarded the scene before her with an almost blasé expression. On the side of her head turned to Trillium, there was a hole where her ear had been, as if it had been chewed off. “’Mercy, please.’”

The choice came to all the recruits then to let their hearts break or harden.

Trillium remembered the bodies of the sunrise and all the hardships of the road – how Clay would wake in cold sweats and the way Shipwright would breathe the beer and wine whenever they passed through a settlement – and her heart decided what to do. She took aim at the wendigo’s head with her bayonet and fired.

The Spell of Vesperia: Chapter I

Thus begins Nanowrimo. 2000 words a chapter, a chapter a day, until it's finished. If you're enjoying it, please consider donating via Paypal to advance the noble cause of groceries.

~

He had travelled so far, could see an ocean to the west through the trees, little faltering, little flagging, but the body was not everlasting and now it had to stop. It did.

~

Dot Harlock didn’t know what the thing was. In such situations, one might take it as an affront or as a challenge and Dot would choose the latter every time.

Here is what it looked like: mostly like a young man, a couple of years older than her own eighteen-year old self. Soft features, skin a uniform brown. Now, if that were the end of it, there wouldn’t be any mystery to it, would there?
But his hair, had he ever any at all, was shorn right off, even the eyebrows, even across the entire expanse of his remaining skin. That skin did not cover the whole of his frame, but left gaping holes on his cheek, on his bicep, on his stomach, through which could be seen mechanisms of such sophistication that was nearly beyond Dot’s grasp. Shining from his otherwise empty eye sockets could be seen two pinpoints of white light that danced and darted with all the fear that the rest of his husk did not show. If he was feeling anything at all, that is.

He neither breathed nor moved, save for those two pinpoints, but there was a sort of thrumming noise from deep within his chest and a certain tension to the exposed gears that seemed to Dot as though they desperately wanted to move.

“And you just found him wandering down the mountain road?” she asked the two respectably burly individuals that sat bolt upright in the remaining chairs in the workshop.

Arla coughed in the manner of one clearing her throat. “Not wandering, per se. Wandering would’ve been less odd. No, y’see, Daffyd and I had gone up it to go meet Judge Holt coming in and the road was clear as you’d expect, but on the way back...”

“We found this creature sprawled across it,” finished Daffyd with a dramatic shiver. “His honour’s horse nearly stepped on it.”

“How much time passed between coming and going? Where’s Judge Holt now?” asked Dot, prodding the thing with a screwdriver. A small shock rushed through her and the screwdriver was withdrawn.

“Maybe about ten minutes, give or take. In the mayor’s house. What do you make of it, Dot?”

What did she make of it? Well, that was the heart of the matter, wasn’t it?

~

She soon hurried Arla and Daffyd off, promising them all the while to tell them the moment some new revelation occurred to her. It took her ten minutes for her to remember why this was a terrible move.

Arms of Gold, New Spira was more of a village than a town and as such, news and gossip travelled across it with a speed that could put shame to the fastest locomotive. Already at that morning hour, anyone who had ventured out of doors or had even opened a door for someone else had heard and put to memory all the reports from the crew and passengers of the daily ferry and, of course, from Judge Holt himself. With Judge Holt’s account of the incident on the road, they already knew of the creature’s existence and hazarded a guess as to where the creature was relocated. With Arla and Daffyd entering the fray, their guesses were confirmed.

And then came the endless knocking on Dot’s workshop door. She locked it tight, jammed a vacated chair underneath its knob, and tried to ignore it. She only wished she could cut the lantern light and pretend she wasn’t there, but no one in Arms of Gold was that stupid. The knocking continued, then stopped, then to be replaced with conversation, shouts for her attention, and what increasingly sounded like a beer hall discussion.

The creature became ever more agitated at the constant interruptions – or at least, the lights in his eye sockets brightened and dimmed and spun about with far more speed than they had been doing. Dot sat down again in the chair in front of him, meeting what passed for his gaze.

“What could you possibly be?” she said, nearly a whisper. She did have a notion now, but it was ridiculous.

Nevertheless, Dot opened her mouth again and began to speak – not at him, but to him.

~

Once the land was cold and covered in ice and he did not know it then but he did know it in a time when it was warm and it was filled with people and every day had a thousand and one marvels for him to take in but that time was so short, wasn’t it, even though for him it was all he had and it filled up his entire world, and it had been replaced with a long, black darkness that only had one marvel for him and it was this, “Why is this?”

The darkness ended, though, as he knew it had to, just like the time in the warm had to, and it was replaced with a woman with black curls and brown eyes and that was the most confusing thing of all, for it was happening again with the same woman and like the first time, his entire self was pain and numbness.

~

“So that’s who I am. Dot Schultz Harlock – okay, Dorothy, but no one call me Dorothy except my dad when he’s cross. She who mucks about with machines and such, even though she doesn’t know a damned thing about chemistry or other matters magical that could probably help with things. And I bet there’s a bit of ether running you, eh? Can’t just be the standard electrical current.”

The lights had stilled and remained bright. Dot could swear that he was making eye contact with her.

“I read stories about things like you when I was knee-high. Creatures that looked like humans and could think sort of like humans, but had circuitry and gears and ether under their skin. Golems or machina. Automata. But those were fairy stories. I think.”

Minutes passed. Not in complete silence – “Yoohoo, Dot! Open up, already!” and the robust sounds of carousing put a stop to that – but not a sound came from inside the house.

Dot sighed. “This is stupid.” She got up, fetched the Widow Olny’s clock down from the shelf and set to fixing it, just as she had pledged to do before the morning’s interruption. The creature’s eyes darted about once again. The door remained locked.

~

The woman with the black curls and brown eyes went away again although he could tell that she did not go far, oh no, he could hear her move and sigh and swear and could hear others, many others, not far at all from here talking about a creature and he wondered if the woman with black curls knew that there was a creature about and whether she was safe and were the others there to protect them from the creature, and he wanted to move and speak so badly and he couldn’t, his body was so useless and pained, and he didn’t know what else he could do but sit and see and smell and oh, how familiar and unfamiliar it was!

He strained to move his jaw but it would not shift. Nothing would shift. He had been told by many people to keep trying, though, so he tried.

~

“You are Kit,” the creature said.

Dot nearly dropped the clock on the floor in the process of putting it back onto the shelf. She turned about on her heels and practically dived across the table in her haste and placed her fingers gingerly on his throat and jaw. “What did you say?”

“You are Kit. Kit Harlock. You found me again. This is marvellous!”

Dot trembled in her excitement, just as the creature’s throat did with every syllable he spoke. “I’m Dot. Not Kit.” Was it just her imagination, or had his voice been tinnier than it ought to be? Like it was coming through a pipe? Of course, everyone’s voice came through a pipe when it came down to it.

“But you look the same as Kit and you are the same age as her, so therefore, you must be her.” He hesitated. “Isn’t that so?” How was the sound being made? She could see enough of him to know that he didn’t have lungs in the proper sense, so how was it being done?

“I have a sister named Kit. She’s or was three years older than me. We haven’t seen her in three years. How do you know her?” His jaw worked like a human’s should, though, and his lips and what she could see of his tongue. Even if there was something mechanical about the motion.

“She woke me up and took me out of the black. You’re not her? You’re her... sister?” He hesitated again and Dot thought she could hear a whirring noise from somewhere within him. Within his skull? “I’ve heard of such things. Girl children with the same makers. No, ‘parents’ is the right word, ‘not makers.’ No wonder I was confused. You look the same as her. You sound the same as her. You smell a bit different, though.”

Dot felt her heartbeats increase in frequency and mind boil over with what he told her. “Where did you meet Kit?”

“East. I’ve walked very far from there. I’ve walked ever since I met her.”

“For three years.”

“Yes, for three years.” He added, with the apparent hope that it would explain, “There was no money for riding on trains and it’s wrong to steal horses.”

“So you walked.”

“I’m good at walking.”

A mechanical man who walked across a country that spanned a continent who knew his sister. Who knew where she’d been. This was... well, marvellous, to use his word. He could speak. Could she get him to move his arms? His legs?

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Well? What is it then?”

“Erasmus March.”

~

The door opened. The crowd quieted – that is, they allowed the volume of their conversations to descend to over-loud stage whispers. Dot stepped out into the warm afternoon air. The sun shone directly into her face and she squinted to avoid it.

“Now, then,” she announced, as loudly as she could in order to make herself heard over the noise. “The creature’s a ‘he’, he’s got a name, he can speak, and I don’t really know what he is yet. I’m going to fix him up and we’re to do some travelling to find out. Any questions?”

The noise exploded. “That’s too bad,” said Dot. “Because I don’t know anything else. If you’re not my mom or dad or Bill, you can scamper off now. Cheers, bye, etc.” She went back inside her workshop and shut the door hard behind her. Not slammed, mind – that would be rude.

Half a minute later, she opened it again. “Oh, and if anyone has a spare wig about their place that’s just taking up room or at least a decent hat, I could put it to use. Thanks!” And again, the door shut.

~

Dot hadn’t the faintest fathoming what his skin was made of yet and therefore couldn’t make anymore for him, but there was one thing she could do about it. It involved needles and thread, of which she had plenty. She found a spindle with brown thread not far off from the shade of Erasmus’ skin, cut a length, boiled it and a needle in boiling water atop the stove – she didn’t know whether the skin was human enough to get infected and didn’t wish to find out – and threaded the needle’s eye.

“I have to warn you,” Dot said. “This is going to hurt.”

Erasmus nodded. “That’s what Kit said.” The needle pierced the skin of his cheek and he whimpered. “Kit is very honest.”

Audio: Strike chapter I

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Strike in the Shining City: Chapter V

In which our heroine sees much of her fair city.

Harkley had the good sense not to go back to my flat, I found. This qualified as ‘good’ not only as it decreased the chances of further incriminating his incarcerated host, but because it separated his body from my wifely wrath for at least a little while longer. But not as much as he likely hoped. You don’t become sort of buddies with a detective without learning a few tricks. Thus, the second place I stopped at was Frederick’s favoured drinking establishment, the Glorious ’49.

As could be expected of a pub that catered to teachers unwinding after a day or week of educating ruffians and future criminals, the Glorious ’49 was an immaculately kept, orderly place. No tracks of dirt, no sticky floors. The serving staff refrained from bothering the patrons, as it was understood that the pub was in spirit the extension of the staff rooms in all of the schools of the city. To interrupt them in their rantings and ravings would be considered to be sacrilege akin to using the chalice of Eila to spit in after gargling mouthwash.

The pub was in an uproar today. Quelle surprise. Packed to the brim, not only with what seemed to be the entire educational force of Lafontaine that wasn’t currently arrested and behind bars, but with a few fellow members of the watch who stuck out like bent nails. I could barely hear for all the shouting and singing – songs that were of the undiplomatic sort, being about the struggles of the workers and the lack of sexual prowess to be found amongst members of the ‘man’. Sergeant Mauser had joined in, which was good, because he had such a wonderful, hearty singing voice. Bad, because he was getting quite familiar with Arshada Dune, i.e., just the woman I needed to see.

I stole a chair from someone who had just stood up to go relieve themselves and shoved it right next to Dune. I then sat on it and said, “Mauser, that’s very nice and if you go away for five minutes, I’ll buy you another pint.” Normally, this would work all but immediately, but both Dune and Mauser were regular humans with the regular sort of urges. They gave me foul looks and kept singing. Very uncalled for. So I picked up their existing pints and took long, passionate swigs of each, at the same time.

“What the hell, Calvin?” spluttered Mauser, ruining the chorus. The singing ceased entirely, to be replaced by shouting. And staring. At me. How awkward.

This included quite a lot of stares from the watch in the vicinity. Now, was it common knowledge that my husband had been arrested or not? Impossible to say. If it was, would they be sympathetic or suspicious? Again, impossible to say, in those times. So I took a quick peek inside my wallet, took stock of its contents, and cried a little inside. I ordered a round for the table, at which were crowded twenty bodies. “Huzzah!” went the cheers and everyone got back to their business.

Except for Mauser and Dune, despite their efforts. This was because I had jammed both of my elbows in between the two. “Five minutes,” I said. “That’s all I ask. Please.”

To my relief, Dune groaned. “All right, but that’s all you get. Start talking.”

“Mauser?” I said. “Start singing.” It may have been the greatest rendition of ‘The Giant’s Fiddle’ ever to pass from earthly lips, but I wasn’t paying attention. I leaned in close and whispered into Dune’s ear. “I need to find Ilon Harkley.”

So much for the direct approach. The conversation nearly ended right there and then, Dune putting her back to me with unseemly haste. “Now hold up.” I jerked her back around. “Frederick’s been harbouring him in our flat. Frederick’s been arrested and guess what? Harkley’s not anywhere near the flat, so far as I can see. Now, as far as I’m concerned, seeing as he’s slept under my roof and ate my food, he damned well has a duty to tell me what the hell happened today and to help me get my husband out of prison. Capiche?”

“How do I even know Frederick’s been arrested?” she asked, not unreasonably.

But it still ticked me off. “Because I am very angry right now and very much inclined to make a scene, which would not be the case if he were out of the cells. For gods’ sake, if he isn’t here and he’s not at home, where the hell else would he be?”

Dune seemed to consider this. I doubt it was the reasonableness of my arguments which eventually swayed her, so much as the way my facial muscles and fists kept twitching. Entirely involuntary, I swear, but it did bring her around, without any tiring questions along the lines of, “How do I even know he’s not at your flat?”

“I can’t tell you where Harkley’s at,” she began. “That’s because I don’t know for sure. Go talk to the metalworkers. Last I saw him, he was being dragged along by one of their lot.” And that was all I got out of her, unless you count the second verse of ‘The Giant’s Fiddle.’

Drinks paid for, pint drained, I went on my merry way.

~

As it turned out, Mauser’s name turned out to be a bad omen.

Harkley was not with the metalworkers. Oh, he’d been with them all right – for half an hour max, until such a point in time arrived that he decided that he was placing them in too much risk by having them harbour him. I wished he’d thought of that before he decided to camp out on my chesterfield, but fair’s fair, no one knew he was in town then. Anyway, they gave me the name of an a surgeon whom he had apparently absconded with.

The surgeon lived clean on the other side of the city, in nicer outskirts than poor, pitiable Toynbee had to make do with. She let me in readily enough – Harkley had told her that I might come by, she said, and that she was to help me insofar as was reasonable. “I need to find him and speak with him,” I explained. “My husband’s been arrested and he needs to help me get him out.”

But she shook her head and smiled, a little apologetically, at me. “You shan’t find him here. I had a look at his arm and he wouldn’t stick around. He told me that he’d be heading to the South Wind Brewery.” The surgeon gave me the option of searching her house – oh yes, she was one of those happy few that claimed an entire house for her and her kin – but I gave her a pass for the time being. Off to the brewery I went.

And of course, the South Wind Brewery was back on the other side of the city, attached to my familiar tavern. Their product had improved substantially since it first caused Prime Minister Lark’s lip to curl in distaste, I’m pleased to report. Nevertheless, their secretary stopped me at the door.

“Please tell me Harkley is here,” I said. “Or at the very least, get me something to drink. It’s hot and I’ve done a lot of walking.” The secretary, either foolishly or wisely depending on your perspective, fetched me some water. This, I downed in some short seconds. “Well?” I asked, when I’d finished.

The secretary failed me as well. “Jane Calvin, right? He told us about you. But he’s already gone, you see. Left not twenty minutes ago.”

A pause. “Did he say where he was going to be?” I asked, more than a little exasperated.

“Not… exactly. Not as such. ‘Someplace to get out of the heat’, he said, and he seemed to think that you’d understand exactly what he meant by that, but do you? It all sounds a bit vague. I’m sorry.”

I grinned then – an action which, judging by the secretary’s face, must have spooked her some – and shook her hand too hard. It was so wonderfully obvious. Why hadn’t I checked it first off? “Many thanks, you’ve been a wonderful help,” I told her, sticking around for just one more glass of water before I tore off. Lark and Hammersmith, where we first met. Of course! How ‘sweet’.

~

Now the question of the hour was, once I made it over there, how would I uncover a manhole in the middle of a somewhat busy intersection without being incredibly obvious? More to the point, how did Harkley manage it? Did he? Simply standing around and thinking hard about it didn’t net me any helpful ideas, so I did the sensible thing and just asked some random youth who had shoved as much of his body as possible into a small patch of shade. “Did you see anyone go into that manhole over there?”

The youth shrugged, or rather, shrugged more. His entire frame was engaged in a permanent act of shrugging and slouching. “Rightly, I did. Caused a ruckus, but then they all went on and forgot about it. Spare some change so I could get a cheap bit of ice, miz?” An expensive day this was proving to be, but if I didn’t oblige him, it wouldn’t be long before no one of his age in that city would tell me anything out of sheer peevishness. A five penny piece was his and he sauntered off slowly, still slouching.

I did what the youth said. It was either that or wait until ten after ten. I won’t claim that it wasn’t nerve-wracking dodging the carts and horses and whatnot while I heaved the cover off, but I did manage it and hurried down the ladder as quick as could be. Someone replaced that cover before I was even halfway down, without a word shouted down about what the hell I was doing there.

The chamber was still circular and still had the four locked doors and still was lit with a sourceless blue light. It no longer smelt of nothing, though. It smelt of roast chicken.

Harkley had set up a sort of picnic about five feet away from the foot of the ladder. There was the aforementioned roast chicken, of course, which made me salivate to an animalistic degree, but there was also fresh baked bread and cheese and cherries from the Joleda Valley and two big bottles of South Wind brand beer. All laid out nicely on the grey stone, all served in an environment in which it was not too damned hot to eat anything warm. With napkins.

I sat crosslegged in front of him, the food between us. One of my hands took a bottle, the other took a chicken leg. Liquid and meat both took their turns in my mouth, sometimes jostled to the wayside by speech. “I’m a bit cross with you,” I said.
“Frederick was an accident,” he responded. “Had I my druthers, the man would be with you right now.”

“Then what happened, exactly, that got him arrested? What did ‘he’ do?”

He got my meaning sure enough and he was quick to shoot it down. “I didn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to do, if that’s what you’re wondering. He saw that some of your lot were zeroing in on me and he decided to be a distraction. If I hadn’t taken advantage of it, what good would that have done? Frederick would still be in the clink, I’d be right there alongside him, and he’d be looking around for something to beat me with.”

My silence indicated to him that I might have found that set of circumstances preferable to the one we had all found ourselves in.

“Then what exactly should we do about it?” he demanded. “I can’t let myself be caught yet; there’s still work to be done!”

Silence, silence, chew, swallow, silence, sip, silence, and so on.

“Oh, be reasonable.”

Burp, silence.

“Have it your way, then,” he growled. “I’m assuming you at least have the seeds of a plan, because I’m not doing all the work for you.”

That, I did. Conjugal visits, remembers? So we sat, drinking, eating, and planning, preparing for the coming day. Many interesting diagrams were drawn. Many arguments were had. Many fingers were pointed.

At ten past ten, we packed up and emerged into the dark, warm air.

Strike in the Shining City: Chapter IV

In which our heroine experiences a marital difficulty.

When I was little, my father used to take my sisters and I to the neighbourhood shrine.

It was a sprawling old building – the type that should’ve been an attraction for all of us and all the kids we played with. So many hiding places! So many spots with strange sorts of echoes to take turns shouting in! So many golden doodads of great religious significance to get our grubby fingerprints all over! But we’d have to be dragged there, to a body, and would tear out as soon as the service was done.

~

Have you ever had this feeling? A loved one dies. You’ve gone to their wake, paid your respects. Then you go to where they lived to help sort it out and you see all of their things, exactly how they left it. Like they’ve just popped out for a bit because they forgot to get the milk for tea. It never fools you. And that’s what the shrine was like.

All of us children felt it and that’s why we stayed away, refusing to show either the proper respect or proper disrespect for the gods. Our parents despaired, but we noticed they didn’t try punishing us that hard. Like they felt it too, but didn’t want to acknowledge it.

I mention this because it’s the exact feeling I got when Toynbee opened up the trapdoor and led us down the ladder.

~

She didn’t protest my request for information. She didn’t even speak – just took several deep and shuddering breaths before pushing herself to her feet, swaying in a non-existent breeze. But she did look at me like I’d struck her, flinching when I raised my hand to brush a stray hair from my cheek.

“Please,” said Toynbee after many long moments. “Please, please don’t make me go down there.”

“We see you’re uncomfortable with the notion, but it’s either that or you can stay up here with Constable Calvin while I have a look myself,” said Horace. My shouting muscles warmed up abruptly. Yes, detective friend. Let’s make sure that the member of our pair with a point of comparison for what’s down that trapdoor stays up in the sunlight!

But Toynbee spared his ears. “You can’t go down alone,” she said with a flatness that startled me. From her workbench, she picked up a weird device – like a lamp on a stick and held the same way as a torch. Then she kneeled by the trapdoor’s hinge and, with gentle fingers, turned what I had assumed was just a knob by increments, right, left, right. Hearing a click, she grabbed the knob with her entire hand and hauled it and the trapdoor upwards.

She pressed a button on the device, causing the glass portion of it to illuminate, and began her descent with a weird, mechanical motion.

“Shall I follow first, or shall you?” asked Horace with nonplused eyes. I sighed and followed Toynbee.

The ladder, of course, was just the same as in the chamber – flawlessly welded iron.
The walls of the tunnel were just the same as the chamber’s, all white-grey stone, perfectly cut and fit together like the richest of Spiran nobles into their coats.
The smell was just the same, the source-less blue light was just the same, the amber light from Toynbee’s torch gadget notwithstanding. She stood close to the ladder, clutching the gadget like a security blanket.

The walls were built of the same sort of grey stone as that room underneath Lark and Hammersmith and had the same sort of non-smell.

The metal doors were nearly the same. Oh, they looked exactly similar to the ones in the chamber, except for one crucial difference: there was a lot more of them than four. They lined the tunnel past where I could see. I counted twelve. Of course, being who I was, I tried the knobs of the first four and might’ve saved myself the energy for all the good it did me. That act created the closest thing resembling a smile I ever saw coming from Toynbee, but it should be noted that this isn’t saying much.

With a thump, Horace landed on the floor behind me. “I guess you must believe me now, don’t you,” I told him without turning around.

Came the dry response, “Did I ever actually say that I doubted you?”

“No, but you weren’t respectful enough of my observations. So Toynbee, you said these lead to the brothel...?”

“Yes,” said Toynbee. “Everywhere.”

“Define ‘everywhere,’” said Horace.

And here Toynbee began to walk, looping her arm around mine as she passed me, pointing her torch straight ahead. I went along with her without resistance, compelled more by curiousity than by a desire to comfort her. “Places here, places elsewhere. Places that used to be.” She shook her head violently. “And ‘things.’”

We passed the twelfth door – I could hear Horace striding with us, close enough to interfere if something happened to the two of us, close enough to run away if he had to – and straight ahead was a room. Here Toynbee stopped us. Another passage lay on the opposite end, but to my right and left were more locked doors. And there was a ladder, rising up the heavens or who knows what. Another apartment or house? A business? (Not the brothel; we didn’t walk nearly far enough for that.) I’d have to find out. My hand lifted, itching to grab onto the rungs.

But then it hit me. The ‘feeling’ – the one I had in the shrine, so long ago. The unfamiliar familiarity of it made me sick and my hand dropped down. Onto my sword hilt, as it turned out, and I only realised when Toynbee jerked away from me like I had the pox.

And I could hear, like a tremor in my bones, a rasping. Just on the edge of human hearing. It was enough to make me lose my nerve and I ran. Gods help me, I was to first to run.

~

Later, after we were all back in the sitting room, Toynbee looked me in the eyes and made a slashing motion across her heart. I thought then that Horace must have seen it, but nowadays, I’m not so sure.

~

Still later, but not by much, us two were left alone in the room while our witness went to the lavatory. Rivers may rise, civilisations may crumble, but the people still have to relieve themselves. The good detective and I didn’t spend the time idly.

“What do we do?” he asked.

“Do you think she’s the murderer?” I asked.

Horace was swift and decisive in his answer. “No. I think she’s unwell. I think she can tell us what happened to Madam Clyde. But while theoretically, she could muster up the strength to land the blows that killed her... Look at her. Look at her arms. Do you think it’s all that likely?” I wasn’t all that certain and I told him so. You never know what someone’s capable of doing when they’re sufficiently enraged, impassioned, etc.

And I told him so. “And we can’t very well leave her here. Best case scenario, she’d hurt her own self! By accident!”

“And what do we do with her? Throw her in the jail with the smugglers, thieves, vandals, and confirmed killers? Jane, you’re smarter than that.”

Leaving her alone in that place had to be the worst idea ever conceived of, I thought. Right conclusion, wrong reasons. I had a talent for such things, in those bygone days. But at least I had the good sense to be grateful for him not bringing up my flight. If not the good sense to thank him for it.

But he was the detective, I was the constable. I may have counted him as a sort of friend, but I could only argue with him so far. Worse yet, I couldn’t come up with any alternatives. So he waited for Toynbee to re-emerge, finished his questioning, gave her his information and told her to ask for him should she remember or need anything else.

And then we left. I think I smelled something acidic when we were still in the yard, but that could be my memory playing tricks on me.

~

The watch house was in a tizzy and the captain was in her cups when we returned. Flask, rather.

Captain Charla Loper, famed in story and song. I’ll try not to let her future actions sour my depiction of her too much, but I think this was my impression of her at the time: she was a charming soul, fun to drink with, wonderful boss and utterly unsuited for her job. Everyone knew that in her youth, she set out to be a lawyer like her wealthy parents wanted – she fell into the captaincy position because militia work was the Thing To Do with that set, but no one else wanted the top spot. And when Lark ordered us here, so she came too.

“That bastard Harkley’s in town,” she said. Before I could feign astonishment, she added, “Spoke at a union meeting, gave us the slip after we got word. Oh, and your husband’s been arrested.”

Horace prodded me in the back with his finger, reminding me to stop hanging my mouth open like an idiot. “What for?” I asked. Demanded. Squeaked.

“Disturbing the peace, that sort of thing. Go talk with him yourself.” Another constable, sweating and puffing, burst into the watch house stole away Loper’s attentions.

To the jail I went. Horace could protect himself for the rest of the day.

~

Frederick was crammed in the cell with six other men – violent revolutionaries, every one. He seemed mostly intact, except for the knee, where the fabric of his trousers ripped revealing a dirty and bloody mess. I whistled. We met at the bars, hands touching, faces warmed with each others’ breath. “Now tell me,” I asked, my voice a whisper. “What’s the worst that you did today?”

“I punched Constable Erdric in the nose. I think we had her over for dinner once.”

“And the knee?”

“An unfortunate run-in with the street.”

“You need it cleaned.”

“I know.”

A gap in our conversation, filled with quiet, non-incriminating background chatter.

He spoke, smoothing my fingers with his own. “You’re going to get me out of here, aren’t you?”

My first impulse was to refuse him. I didn’t voice this, but he was a smart man and probably knew it already. I had a duty to both my job, the city and the prime minister. That meant something to me in those days. Tossing them away so blithely felt akin to setting myself on fire after cladding myself in oily rags.

But... we were married. He followed me right into this damnable city, even after a flurry of letters and telegrams telling me how much he detested the idea. If my colleagues did their job – and I had no reason to believe that they wouldn’t, not in a great big blow-up such as this with at least two cities breathing down their necks and the reporters circling – they’d find out that his connection with Harkley went just a bit deeper than him being an enthusiastic audience member. Mine too, come to think of it.

I dipped my chin to my chest, following it up with a proper nod. “You’re bloody right, I am. I’m going to regret this and afterwards, you’re going to cook me a nice dinner and fetch me a pint and a pipe. Are we clear?”

“Crystal.”

The officer on duty was Floria Appleby. We were friends since the Gullenburgh days, she and I, and it was out of deference to that that she kept well back while I chitchatted with Frederick. I marched up to her with intent. “Floria,” said I. “You’ve got a choice here.”

Eyebrow raised, she asked, “And what’s that, then? If you want a conjugal visit...”

Well. Honestly, violence was the first plan, but why not take a better one when it presents itself? My muscles relaxed, relieved over not having to punch anyone myself today. “I really don’t know how long he’s going to be in here, do I?” Very annoying, isn’t it? Just over a silly, stupid assembly! Yes, I know he technically resisted arrest, but do you see how Erdric acts when she’s making an arrest? I know, shame! He’ll probably get off anyway, so where’s the harm? No point in making your life miserable too. And so on. The details of the conversation aren’t important in the slightest.

“No promises – don’t want the sarge catching wind of this, you understand – but I’ll see what I can do.” Floria winked, in a way she probably thought was suggestive. “Come talk to me tomorrow, why don’t you?” I tell you, being a loyal and trusted member of the Princess Aggies had its perks. Too bad I was rushing behind the metaphorical bushes to piss it away.

But there was little else to do at the jail, save calling Frederick a poor little bunny and patting him on his dear head, so I left.

Now to go find that bastard Harkley.

Strike in the Shining City: Chapter III

In which our heroine does her job.

I always rose at dawn, no matter how late I lay back.

This was my routine: disentangle myself from my husband’s limbs and the sheets, splash myself with cold water, dress, and sit at the kitchen desk to write my missive to Prime Minister Lark. (Word had it that government-threatening scandal had been uncovered back east and she might not be the PM much longer, but oh yes, surely this was an exaggeration.) This done, I’d look it over, rewrite as needed before stuffing it in an envelope, and only then enjoyed a cup of tea and hunk of buttered bread.

The routine that day differed in two respects. One, the amount of disentangling I had to do from my husband – even the marijuana wasn’t enough to convince me to let him keep a houseguest and so he had to resort to more mercenary methods. Two, said houseguest woke up before I did.

I assumed he still slept on the chesterfield. He waited until I sat at the desk before he said, “You’re going to help me, you know.”

I looked down at the paper, fresh except for the respectful greeting to Lark. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You’ll change your mind.”

With the tip of the fountain pen applied to paper, the meat of the letter could begin. No, I really didn’t think so.

~

Later in the morning, about a half hour before I headed off to keep the streets of Lafontaine safe once again, my husband dressed for work, i.e., he slicked his hair back in addition to wearing the same sort of outfit he usually did. The odd thing was, it was Friday. One of his two days off. Harkley busily shimmied into one of Frederick’s outfits at the same time and it fit pretty well, except for the legs being too short.

“Union meeting,” said Frederick by way of explanation. He gave his bowtie a final tug. “I’ll do the shopping after.”

I tapped my fingers on the kitchen table and glared. “Since when do teachers have a union?”

“Since today.” He smiled. “We’re meeting up with the metalworks people. I’m sure they’ll have plenty of advice for us.”

My tapping stopped, out of surprise, and Frederick had the good sense not to say anything more. The metalworkers were currently on strike. Harkley was gussying himself up to go meet with them, the teachers, and likely others. Ilon Harkley. First cause of Elgin’s general strike and others. Who slept under my roof and who’d do so for many nights to come.

I had the good sense not to ask anything more. The less I knew, the less I’d tell. Or let slip. It meant the same thing in the end.

~

But the day wore on, as it usually does, and it found me striding alongside my comrade in the dry, windy heat.

Detective Walden Horace was the type of person who aged beyond his years out of spite. I knew for a damned fact that at the time this story is set, he numbered no more than thirty-five years. And yet there he was, hair as white as a snowdrift and a number of wrinkles to testify to his world-weariness. And his voice! Like gravel! And I knew he was a detective and all, and I appreciate the irony of me writing this, but did he have to be so cynical about everything?

Aside from that, he was an all right guy. Even if he did have a tendency to make unwelcome observations to people who weren’t suspects or witnesses.

“Witnesses say that you were chasing someone last night,” he said mildly, opening the last button on his shirt that professionalism would allow and folding the collar of his coat further back.

But there were ways of dealing with him. First, an understatement of the truth. “Bah, just some vagrant. He got away.” Second, a distraction. “But you’ll never believe what I found afterwards.” I told him of the chamber underneath Lark and Hammersmith. He never quite believed me about the intersection’s evening ritual, dismissing it as coincidence on the one time I dragged him out to see, but how could this fail to grab his attention?

“That’s interesting.” Oh, I could’ve punched him.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Don’t you want to see it?”

“It might’ve slipped your mind, but we’re in the middle of an investigation right now. It’ll have to wait,” he said. Then, in a quieter tone, “You haven’t told anyone else about this, have you?”

“Just my husband.” He swore and I gave him a light smack on the skull. And then we arrived at the apartment building.

The thing about a new, shiny, clean city is that it doesn’t keep that way without upkeep when it’s got a fair number of factories and one hell of a wind. Yes, sure, presumably, there having been a huge number of residences to lay claim to should’ve meant a great savings for the common folk, but that’s without taking into account property taxes. Which were high, no matter how you took care of your place. Which often wasn’t very well, if the property taxes (or the rent, if you were forced to it) bled you dry and you’d pay anything, anything to live in this wonderful city that feels more like home than home ever did.

This building filled up near the end of the time where residences were free to give away and you could tell why. Far from the city centre and the pillared, polished city hall. Near the train tracks, but far away from the station. The smell of stockyards, which was far worse than the factory smoke could ever be.
A tree, thin, scraggly and young, had snapped at the trunk, layed at rest through a park bench. The unmaintained yard was filled with wildflowers, which was the only charming thing about the place, aside from the building would have if it was given a good scrub down.

I took my place ahead of Horace – detectives are in shorter supply than constables – right hand on my sword hilt, left raised in a fist at the door with the looked-for number. I knocked. Shave and a haircut, two bits. “City Watch! Open up, if you please!” Then I counted to ten.

Several little crashes sounded on the other side of the door, like furniture, books, and other household stuff knocked over by an unbalanced body. On number seven, that body opened the door.

It was a ‘she’ – a shaking, unkempt, nervous wreck of a woman who smelt strongly of bad whiskey and with wide grey eyes that wouldn’t break contact with mine. She wore goggles. The same kind as Harkley’s and my old employer’s. A real chemist, then.

“Ms. Hero Toynbee, I presume?” I asked, not harshly, out of fear that she’d bolt like a rabbit. The woman nodded, jerkily, and choked out a noise that might have been a ‘yes’. “My name is Constable Calvin and I’m here with my colleague, Detective Horace. He’d like to ask you some questions.”

A near thing she didn’t bolt then. Her shaking became like a train’s vibrations, she pressed her upper teeth against her lower lip repeatedly, and her eyes kept flicking back and forth between Horace and I. She gulped once, loudly. Turning her back on us, she waved her bony hand in the air for us to follow her.

Debris, both salvageable and not, littered the hall. Nothing that could rot, thank gods, but other old things. Like a Montvert newspaper from five years ago. Dead flowers in a pot, the soil still moist. A mysterious box with a brass horn and a needle attached to an arm. Later in life, I’d realise that it was a prototypical phonograph. While Horace and I waded through with minimum damage, Toynbee kept walking into things, sending them tumbling.

Her sitting room wasn’t much better. Three chairs – she had us all sit in them, now keeping her eyes resolutely away from Horace and I – were crammed around a small table in one half of the room. A workbench took up the other half, covered with gadgets and doodads and who knows what. But no elixirs of any sort. She had the goggles, but not the hood... Oh, and there was the trapdoor in between the two. Odd place to get into the basement. But then, plenty of buildings in Lafontaine had their eccentricities. A window opening up into a hallway. A flight of stairs that stopped a foot short of the next floor. That sort of thing. Not all, not even most or half, but plenty.

“Ms. Toynbee,” said Horace, leaning forward with his hands in his lap, reminding me very much of my father when I did something to make him cross. I gave him a sharp look – was frightening the piss out of her really the right approach to use? – but if he noticed, he didn’t give indication of it. “Witnesses saw you enter Madam Clyde’s establishment last Friday, on the night of Clyde’s murder. They did not see you leave. We would like to know why and how.”

She reached for a whiskey bottle and an empty glass from a side table and attempted to pour the contents of one into the other, only to find the one was empty. She placed them back on the table, scrambling to keep the glass from falling when she placed it too close to the edge.

“If you’re looking for a murderer,” she said, trembling and small, with a slight accent that could’ve been Ursalian. “You’ll not find it here.”

“That may be so. What did you see that night, Ms. Toynbee, and how did you leave?”

“I knew this place was wrong. Felt all wrong, sounded too wrong.” Toynbee tried the bottle again, this time holding it right to her lips. It met with the same success as last time and she didn’t bother to replace it again. It just tumbled onto the floor with nary a crack.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I held up a finger to shush Horace.

Now, the fingernail chewing. This is an unkind observation, especially with Toynbee the way she was, but seeing people carry on that habit in front of me always made me want to smash their digits. I bit the corner of my lip to keep from saying anything.

She continued, “No place should’ve felt so nice. Not if I hadn’t even stepped outside of the train station. And I was headed somewhere, see, somewhere important...” Where? She shook her head. “Can’t even remember now. It’s all so fuzzy. Like I dreamed it all. Could’ve been born here, fully grown, two years ago on the platform. If I remember before at all, I remember... not being like this.”

Neither of us asked her what she meant by ‘like this’. “And there’s the tunnels.”

I’m sure my heart skipped. “Tunnels?” I asked.

The way her mouth looked when our gazes locked again could’ve been a smile, could’ve been the start of a snarl. “All underneath us. Not like sewers. There’s no smell, no smell at all. Just tunnels and rooms and locked doors.” I tried not to look too keen. But she dashed my hopes straightaways. “There’s no way to open those. Not that I found.”

“And there’s other things,” she said.

“What other things?” Horace asked.

But she stared away again, hugging herself, rocking back and forth. “I went to the brothel because I can’t find it anymore, not since coming to this city, and I was so lonely, but the tunnels, they go everywhere, even under the brothel, but I walked the streets instead, but somehow they must’ve followed me, and I didn’t kill the madam, but it means the same thing in the end, doesn’t it, and...” She broke down into a dry sobbing, her head at an angle.

Her eyes were now on that peculiar area between the chairs and the workbench.
I felt my mouth open and sound come out. “Ms. Toynbee. What’s under that trapdoor?”

~

Elsewhere in the city, a ginger-haired scoundrel addressed a crowd from behind a podium in a crowded hall. His fist punched the air. Cameras flashed. And the hall kept filling up to a point where even the most unflappable fire marshal would sweat.

Ilon Harkley made his Lafontaine debut.

Strike in the Shining City: Chapter I

Audio version available here.

In which the most inexplicable of all cities is introduced and a Prime Minister makes time for a citizen.

Lafontaine, like all of the great cities, wasn’t built in a day. It was built in a night.

On March 31st, it was just a waystation by the great railway, smack in the middle of the great prairie. An inn, a telegraph post, a road leading north to where the tribes and homesteaders were. On April 1st, everything changed. Buildings, hundreds of them, sprung up overnight – flats, houses, stores, factories, even a fine pillared place to be the government seat. All empty. All new.

Here’s the strangest thing: no one found it creepy or off-putting. Sure, those who stayed at the inn woke up more than a mite confused, but this new city gave such a big welcoming, warm feeling that anything darker than that didn’t cross their minds. “Come,” it seemed to say. “Stay a bit. Stake out your place. Tell others and fill me up – there’s plenty of room for all.”

So they sent off their telegrams and got on with the business of settling down. When more trains came, as they’re inclined to do when they’ve got the rails, a whole lot of their passengers – and crew! – thought it just wasn’t worth it to go the other half across the country. This city was nice. Why not stay there? On and on it went, with a full hundred thousand staking their way in – by that point, you had cities east and west in a fret. And more to the point, the federal government.

I lived in the capital when the news hit and I’ll tell you, Gullenburgh went nuts. Not so much a panic, nor a celebration, but plenty of clogging up the streets, whispering to each other whatever scrap of information or rumour they heard. The dailies put out special editions, made entirely up of speculation, which were only a shred more accurate than what was threading its way through the people’s ears by word of mouth.

Oh, and there was Parliament. Prime Minister Lark declared that no one was going home until this was all sorted out and what measures should be taken. She put out invitations for someone, anyone from this nouveaux city to come and let them all know what happened, firsthand – but they were all declined, politely as could be managed through the medium of telegram.

A militia was called up – the Princess Aggies, as the unit was commonly called – packed onto a train, and sent west to look into the matter. Attached was the Prime Minister’s own car, occupied by herself, her secretary, reporters from each of Gullenburgh’s three dailies, and no one else. She wouldn’t even take a bodyguard, or perhaps the Princess Aggies were meant to take on that role.

No other MPs. She’d purposefully made sure she didn’t even need to have a member of the Opposition alongside, for after a few days filled up with sweaty, irritable politicians, even the airy House of Parliament seemed rank. They agreed to give her every power to go to the new city and deal with it in however way she saw fit.

It took just three days to get there, but that was enough. The settlers, organised by those who set themselves up as a makeshift municipal authority, built a grandstand and had gifts and honeyed words ready for the Prime Minister the moment she arrived. The foremost of both was the proposition to name the city ‘Larksville’ in her honour – an honour which she gracefully declined. “Perhaps you can revisit the proposal in some decades’ time when I am both dead and buried,” she said, with the famous sparkle in her eye. But for now, the thought of it was too gauche, even for her.

So they named it ‘Lafontaine’, in honour of the great reformer. As someone both dead and buried, she was deemed a very good namesake indeed. Lark stayed for a week, talked a lot, drank a lot, organised even more. Then, after practically forging every one of the nuts and bolts of the actual governance of the city, left for the east once again. Not even Lafontaine’s pull could keep her from the House of Commons for ever or long.

~

You might wonder what happened with the militia, given that there weren’t great mobs for them to take down after all. They didn’t go with the Prime Minister. Instead, at her request, the Princess Aggies stayed behind and became the seed of the municipal police force. Thus, between Lark and a sizable percentage of the militia, you’ve got the first people to visit Lafontaine and not have any burning desire to stay there.

You might also wonder, rightfully, how I can say this with any certainty. There could well have been people prior to the naming who didn’t really care for the city, granted, but if there hadn’t, it definitely started with the Princess Aggies. And I can say that for certain because I was a soldier in the unit – Jane Calvin, militia volunteer in my days off, chemist’s assistant in my days on, and raring to head back to Gullenburgh.

It wasn’t my erstwhile employment that I missed. My employer – a chemist by the name of Erdin whom I don’t care whether I offend here – was a skinflint, stringing me along for years with promises that he’d train me up to be a full-fledged chemist myself. If anything, Lafontaine offered a guilt-free way of detaching myself from that blackguard without offending my stupid sense of loyalty. I never imagined myself being a constable, but one never imagines a lot of things that life coughs up.

No, my objections formed on two grounds: one, I love Gullenburgh, dirty and old as it is. But here’s the thing, it’s the hub of the country. If a decision’s made, affecting the whole of it, you hear it there first. If you don’t like that decision, you can find whoever made it in a pub – or a soda shop, if the poor soul’s an abstainer – and give them an earful. And frankly, I like the oldness of it. I’ve been across the ocean in my vagabond youth, hoofed it all over the Estelian continent, and so many of the cities over here on Deralea seem so new and gleaming in comparison. My heart finds it suspicious, like those cities are unfinished. I don’t get that feeling so much in Gullenburgh, even with its mere three centuries.

Two, my husband. He had a proper job, he loved Gullenburgh as much as I did, and I thought it unfair to drag him over the hills and plains without so much as a ‘by your leave’. Further, I’d only had him a year by then and wasn’t sick of him yet.

But that mattered little. Why? Because Stonild Lark, before she left Lafontaine, took me out for a drink. Or rather, drinks – Lark had an infamous reputation in the capital for how much she enjoyed the sauce. Don’t wonder how pubs and taverns and breweries set up shop so quickly. Farmers and settlers from every direction within a reasonable distance were happy to charge the inflated prices for the initial stores, enterprising souls bought up those stores to sell them for even more highly inflated prices, and breweries followed suit to drive the prices back down. As the week wore on, their first batches were released into the wild, nearly undrinkable but not quite.

We made our pleasantries, rushed through our first pints, and ordered our second. Lark, ever magnanimous even though I wasn’t a loyal Grey voter, shelled out for all of them.

“You don’t like it here,” she started, after we’d taken our first sips. “But I need you to stay here. I’ll convince you to do so, but first, you must tell me why you don’t wish me to do so.”

I recounted all that I told you and she listened, every word. “Lafontaine? It’s the very definition of new and gleaming. It’s unsettling, the whole place. Everyone I’ve talked to outside the militia doesn’t get that. Yes, I know, it’s wonderful living where there’s no rats or vermin scampering about, but isn’t it weird?”

“My line about not being dead and buried was complete hogwash,” she said. “You seem smart; you must realise that.” Truthfully, I hadn’t, but my pride didn’t let me admit it to someone who was effectively my liege, whether there was a queen ruling in far off Spira or no. She placed her stein on the table and peered at the pale liquid inside with distaste – a sight that would’ve astonished everyone in Gullenburgh. “I won’t have my name attached to a place like this, not while I don’t know what it’s about.”

“A city that appears overnight can disappear overnight,” I said.

“One of many possibilities, yes. And its mere existence... Ms. Calvin, do you have any idea what effect this will have on the tribal treaties for this area?” My brain scrambled for the words, coming up empty, but time spent up. Lark twitched her nose. “Neither I. And there’s the fact that we’re so close to the Abelian border, the effect on grain shipments – what farmer with a lick of sense would send her crop to Gullenburgh with Lafontaine so close? So many damnable considerations.”

She continued. “But you must stay. All of you. What they’ve set up to keep order is laughable. There’ve been murders already, mostly the result of scuffles over bloody real estate, that have had only token investigations. Robberies, certainly – there’s no proper infrastructure set up yet to bring supplies in and you’ve drank the unhappy results of inflation. And to be perfectly frank, I need eyes and ears that aren’t here because they’ve decided that this is a veritable promised land. Hence the need for the Princess Aggies. You came here for duty, not infatuation, and you’ll stay for duty.”

“And...” Here came the coup de grace. “For a far better wage than you’ve been earning under that chemist and a fat bonus. Even adjusting for inflation.”

Naturally, I went through the motions of asking for the exact sum and for her to name all the other benefits I’d receive – healthcare, housing and moving compensation, regularly scheduled raises, etc. – topping it off with a spirited bout of haggling, even as she sighed over me bleeding the public coffers dry. “I’ll think it over and give you an answer in the morning,” I said, but we both knew that she had my number.

All she demanded in exchange for giving me a career was a weekly written report, along with telegrams in case of emergencies. Ah, poor Frederick, you didn’t have a chance! I knew he’d come, but I knew there’d be sore conversations afterwards. And the money was too good for me to care overmuch.

We parted on good terms, the Prime Minister and I, to the point where I could have had the audacity to claim her friendship after that evening. I knew I wasn’t unique amongst the Aggies – “I’ll be and have been having the same chat with your fellows, you know,” she told me flat out – but that mattered little.

I slept heavily that night, as I always do, but woke up with the dawn. I breakfasted, jogged around the makeshift ‘barracks’ the citizenry whipped up for us, washed as best I could, dressed. I went to the telegraph office to break the bad news to my husband. Then I proceeded to the newly-minted hotel at which Prime Minister Lark was sleeping and gave her my decision personally. Her clothes were the same as last night, only more rumpled, and black circles rimmed her eyes, but she grinned as though I were presenting her with a full and sealed bottle of finest brandy.

That is how I became Constable Calvin of the Lafontaine Watch. And in the years to come, I damned well earned my wage.