by Alexis Hall
Needless to say, this did not inspire the Augur Extraordinary to lower her weapon. “I’m taking the sorceress.”
“You know what?” Second Augur Lawson spread his hands in an expansive gesture of apathy. “Fine. You can have her. She’s more trouble than she’s worth.”
Ms. Haas shot Lawson a familiar smile. “And there I was thinking you didn’t like me.”
She then permitted herself, with an uncharacteristic lack of protest but a characteristic air of superiority, to be led from the building by the Augur Extraordinary. Mr. Donne, for his part, apologised several times, thus somewhat undercutting his effort to portray himself as the untouchable representative of his order, and thanked me rather abashedly for the small part I had played in preserving his life during the evening’s events. Then, with a rather regretful look in my direction, he quit the hall. This left me alone amongst the glittering wreckage with the Second Augur.
“If I were you,” he said, “I’d go home and forget this ever happened. And maybe in future try to avoid standing between two angry wizards.”
“Thank you for the advice, but I hope I shall never sit idle in times of trouble.”
Sentiments such as those I had just expressed seldom drew approval in Khelathra-Ven and, on this occasion, earned me a hard stare from the Second Augur. “In my experience, people who sit idle live much longer lives.”
“I was raised to believe that longevity has little value without purpose. And surely,” I added, rather more boldly than our acquaintance warranted, “a public servant cannot be so cynical?”
“Have you met the public?”
“Well”—I blinked—“not all of them. But, then, I rather think that would be impossible.”
The Second Augur narrowed his eyes. “Is that what passes for a joke in Ey?”
“Oh no. The only joke we’re allowed to tell in Ey is: How many unbelievers does it take to replace a gas lamp? None. They’re too busy wasting their time on frivolities.”
There was a long silence.
“We are also permitted,” I continued, not entirely certain what had come over me: “Your mother is so impious her immortal soul is in serious peril.”
At this, Second Augur Lawson laughed, a reaction from which I derived considerable satisfaction, for it was not one I was accustomed to engendering. “You’re a surprising fellow, Mr. . . .”
“Wyndham, sir. John Wyndham.”
“Well then, John Wyndham.” He was still smiling faintly. “I should wish you a good night and a safe journey home.”
“I thank you for your concern, but I fear I must detain you a moment longer.”
“Must you, now?” I could not quite read his tone and hoped that I had not inadvertently made myself a suspect.
“I would like to know what has become of my housemate.”
After a slight pause, the Second Augur said rather warily, “You’re living with Shaharazad Haas?”
“Yes. For some weeks now.”
“Oh, dear me. She is going to eat you alive.”
“In my experience, she dines rather modestly.”
I was dismayed to observe that the Second Augur’s manner towards me had altered perceptively. “I’m serious, Mr. Wyndham. Chaos follows her around like orphans after a pie seller.”
“You seem to have pies rather on your mind, sir.”
“I’m hungry, but I’m trying to help you here.”
“What would help me,” I insisted, “is knowing how I might facilitate my companion’s release from custody.”
This made him laugh again, although in a far less pleasant way than he had the first time. “There’s nothing you can do and there’s nothing you have to do. Shaharazad Haas never cleans up her own mess.” He did not say “mess.”
“Even so, I cannot countenance abandoning my friend in her hour of need.”
“She’s not your friend and she’s not in an hour of need. She’s in an hour of deciding to mess with the Myrmidons.” Once more, he did not say “mess.”
I thought it quite impossibly presumptuous that the Second Augur would believe he knew more about my relationship with Ms. Haas than I did myself. It was true she never did her own laundry or tidied away her own teacups, and that she left me to scrub suspicious bloodstains out of the floor of the kitchen, had once vomited in my hat, on a separate occasion prevailed upon me to move her hand from her waist to her forehead because she lacked the energy to lift it herself, and, on this very evening, had thrown a chandelier at my head, but I remained convinced that she was, deep down, a good and honourable person.
As I was opening my mouth to defend her, the Second Augur interrupted. “Look. Just go home. You’ll probably find she’s already there. She’s far too good at taking care of herself.”
Not wanting to seem obstreperous or ungrateful, and persuaded that I would be better able to aid Ms. Haas with the resources available to me at 221b Martyrs Walk, I followed the Second Augur’s advice. And, to my very mild chagrin, found that he had been entirely correct.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
An Interlude
Ms. Haas was stretched out on the chaise longue, still clad in her tattered and bloodstained silks. The air was filled with the now-familiar scent of Valentino’s Good Rough Shag.
“Ah. Wyndham.” She attempted to prop herself on her elbows and seemed to immediately regret it. “What kept you?”
“I was endeavouring to see if there were any means by which I could secure your release.”
“How very silly of you. Surely you recalled Mr. Donne’s assertion that the entire matter fell beneath the auspices of the Ossuary Bank? I may have hinted to the Myrmidons that the necromancers would, even as we spoke, be conjuring a phalanx of vengeful phantoms to destroy me and anything that stood in their way. After that, they were quite keen to let me go.”
“But was that true?”
“Not in the prosaic sense.” Reaching down, she scrabbled amongst the discarded syringes on the floor for one of her many phials of intoxicants but, in this case, the search proved fruitless. “Still, they’ll probably have a go at killing me sooner or later. Most people do.”
I was pleased that my companion appeared to have been neither incarcerated nor assassinated but, having some medical experience from both my work at the hospital and my time in the Company of Strangers, I noted also that she still had a bullet lodged in her shoulder, alongside sundry other flesh wounds.
“If you will forgive my bluntness,” I said, “you should let somebody look at your injuries.”
She managed an imperious sneer. “I’m perfectly well, Captain. I require only a good night’s sleep and enough opium to kill a small child.”
“You require a number of sutures and the removal of a lead slug that is currently embedded somewhere in the vicinity of your left clavicle.”
“I shall make a bargain with you. Bring me a glass of laudanum and you may poke me with whatever needles you wish.”
I was not entirely aware that I had been attempting to strike a bargain, but I was also fast coming to the realisation that Ms. Haas would only be willing to accept my assistance if I allowed her to pretend she was doing me a favour. Repairing to my bedroom, I retrieved what medical supplies I still possessed from my time in the company and prepared for Ms. Haas the narcotic she requested, combining the drug with its solvent in a rather less dangerous ratio than was my companion’s common practice.
On my return to the sitting room, I found that the lady had managed to manoeuvre herself into an upright position and she took the glass of laudanum from me with neither thanks nor complaint, which I took as a net victory. Practical necessity taking precedence over regular propriety, I peeled away those areas of Ms. Haas’s clothing that were obscuring her injuries. The process was doubtless rather painful for her, but she seemed at least to derive some pleasure from my evident discomfort at the i
ntimacy. Employing a long disused pair of forceps I was able, with some effort, to locate and retrieve the bullet. For want of a more conventional or appropriate receptacle, I dropped it into a half-empty teacup, where, I seem to recall, it remained for the best part of a week.
At the clink of lead on china, Ms. Haas opened heavy-lidded eyes. “Deftly done, Captain. I shall bear you in mind the next time I get myself shot.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “you could instead endeavour not to be.”
“Given what you know of me, Mr. Wyndham, do you think that is at all probable?”
I did not. As fresh blood was now welling from Ms. Haas’s shoulder, a circumstance that caused me rather more distress than it caused her, I cleaned the area as best I could and began to stitch the wound closed. In my childhood, my father had strongly encouraged me to develop those skills he deemed appropriate and, while I have found little use for most of them, I have always found sewing to be of eminent practical value. It is a skill the acquisition of which I would recommend to anybody, for it stood me in good stead as a student, as a soldier, and throughout my adventures with Ms. Haas, around whom things tended to need fixing with disturbing regularity.
Whether as a consequence of the day’s exertions or the laudanum or whatever she had managed to take before I arrived home, Ms. Haas remained unusually quiet throughout the whole process. As I was tending the gash on her ribs, however, she patted me absentmindedly on the head and observed in the dreamlike tones of one who has consumed far too many sedatives, “You know, you’re a terribly convenient young man to have around.”
“Thank you.” Although I was aware that she was not, perhaps, speaking as she would have done were she entirely in command of her faculties, I could not help but feel gratified, for I have ever aspired to be of service to others.
I was loath to take advantage of my companion’s disorientated state, but there had been a number of questions troubling me since the start of the evening and I suspected that if I did not ask them now I would not have another opportunity. “If I might,” I went on, “why did you destroy Mr. Donne’s servant?”
“Former lover.” She flopped back against the cushions and stared at the ceiling. “We hadn’t been close in a decade, but it was the principle of the thing.”
“Meaning no disrespect,” I replied, “I had not thought you to be strongly motivated by principle.”
“Aha.” She gave a hoarse laugh and wagged one finger in what I believe she thought was my face but which was actually a space some inches to the left of it. “That is where I have you fooled. I am, in fact, a woman of deep, abiding principles. And the most personal and most sacred of them is this: nobody touches my things.”
I was not, in candour, convinced that this constituted a “principle” in the generally accepted sense. “Is that also why you sent me to interfere in Miss Viola’s personal life?”
Her hands twitched in what appeared to be the most expressive gesture she could currently manage. “Well, there was some chance that I might have discovered a promising suspect amongst Miss Beck’s associates. But I confess it was always slim.”
“Was that reason enough to risk the happiness of two blameless young women?”
“Firstly, Eirene has never been blameless. Secondly, even a remote possibility of finding useful information is always worth pursuing. And, finally”—here the corners of her lips turned up rather cynically—“I was very, very curious to see the woman who would tame Eirene Viola.”
With the last of Ms. Haas’s injuries dressed, I began to clean and store my apparatus. “Well, I personally found her very charming and thought they made a most handsome and affectionate couple. I am sure they shall be very happy together.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Indeed I do,” I exclaimed. “It seems plain that they love each other very much.”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt that they love each other. And that is exactly why they will make each other miserable.”
“That seems a perverse line of reasoning.”
“Come now, Mr. Wyndham. The only people in this world who can hurt us more than those we love are those who love us in return.”
I felt moved to protest at this but, reflecting on the circumstances of my childhood, I found myself unable to. Thankfully I was spared the need to formulate a response of any kind because my companion had closed her eyes and lapsed, with typical abruptness, into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Docks at Shattered Point
Following that night’s misadventures, Ms. Haas retired to her chambers, whence she did not emerge for several days. When she at last reappeared, bursting into my bedroom still in the tattered remnants of the outfit she had been wearing during our previous excursion, I was perturbed to note that her eyelashes were caked in blood and her forearms adorned with myriad injuries that appeared to be tiny bite marks.
“Come, Wyndham,” she said. “To Ven.”
I was not, at this stage, so accustomed to my companion’s violent changes in mood as I would later become and was, therefore, unprepared both emotionally and logistically for this unexpected call to action. The hour was already uncomfortably late and, having completed my logs of the day’s dispensations at the hospital, I had undressed to my shirtsleeves and was making ready to retire. “Is now really the best time?”
“Now is always the best time.”
“It is after midnight and you appear to be injured.”
She glanced at her arms with mild curiosity. “My, my, they were voracious this time, weren’t they?”
“They?” I blinked. “And also . . . this time?”
“Really, Captain. If you are going to insist that I explain myself every time an otherworldly being assaults my psyche and attempts to devour me, our conversations are liable to become both repetitious and disruptive.”
“It has been my experience that one’s comrades being devoured is generally rather more disruptive.”
Sighing, she scraped the blood from her eyes with the edge of a fingernail. “Do be sensible. If an entity attempts to destroy me and fails, it will impact your plans only minimally. If it succeeds, I will be quite incapable of describing its nature to you afterwards.”
“You could always warn me in advance, and thus engage my assistance against whatever forces assail you.”
“I told you that I was not entirely lying when I said that the Ossuary Bank would pursue redress against me for my insult to Mr. Donne. That you, despite this knowledge, left me to spend two days being assaulted by their invisible enforcers and I, despite your absence, was able to overcome the attack suggests that our current arrangement is perfectly serviceable. You can be of most assistance by protecting me from tedious distractions and minding your own affairs. Tasks that you have, hitherto, accomplished admirably.”
I conceded the point.
“Now then, if you’ve finished trying to coddle me”—Ms. Haas strode across the room and flung open my wardrobe—“I suggest that you change. You are about to become very, very wet indeed.”
From my companion’s promise of incipient saturation, it was clear that she had decided—for whatever reason—that now was the most opportune moment for us to interview Mr. Enoch Reef, the Vennish information broker with whom Miss Viola had worked some years previously. Not wishing to delay our endeavour (for I had been conscious for much of the past week that Miss Viola’s time could easily be running out), I hastily donned a set of striped waterproof undergarments over which I fastened my most expendable doublet and breeches. For her part, Ms. Haas had selected a deep blue bathing dress of a type that had been modish some six years before and an oiled greatcoat that sported no fewer than six bullet holes and a long rent down one side that, by my judgement, had been made by one of the serrated weapons commonly used by the sky-pirates of the Blackcrest Mountains. A bandolier holding several harpoons, and a harp
oon gun barely concealed beneath the greatcoat, completed the ensemble.
Satisfied with her attire, and with my own, she hailed us a hansom and, within the hour, we were standing upon the docks at Shattered Point. For those amongst my readership who have not journeyed to Khelathra-Ven I should explain that the sunken city of Ven is accessible from various locales via public submersible and that the docks at Shattered Point are the most frequented and most convenient of these points of ingress. I should perhaps further explain that, although the city of Ven is wholly underwater, the strange magics of its eternal overlords, in combination with the industrial ingenuity of Khelathran entrepreneurs, allow some districts to retain a breathable environment into which surface dwellers can safely venture. It was in just such a district that I had lived during my years at university. It was not to such a district that we were currently journeying. This meant that we would require the services of a reputable wormerer and a disreputable pilot.
The wormerer Ms. Haas located stood at the end of a rickety jetty halfway along the dock. His wares writhed in a barrel beside him, their strange keening song barely perceptible at the edge of hearing.
Ms. Haas prodded the barrel with the tip of her harpoon gun and then peered into the murky waters. Apparently, whatever she witnessed within was satisfying to her.
“Two, please,” she said.
The wormerer had the webbed digits and needle-like teeth common amongst the inhabitants of certain parts of Ven. Both features were displayed to advantage as he held up four fingers and grinned. “Four rials.”
“You, sir, are having a laugh.”
“Folks as buy cheap worms tend to get their brains ate.”
“What a coincidence. The same thing happens to people who mistake me for a tourist.”