by Stephen Hunt
‘On the contrary, there are very well-resourced hobbyists pursuing similar projects.’
A heresy? I had to stop myself laughing out loud; such was the self-importance of Falt’s ridiculous placement of himself at the centre of the universe. If Arius thought of breeding Kallihumans at all, it was with the worried frown of a mother finding a none too bright child climbing onto the family home’s roof with a pair of homemade wings strapped to their kid’s arms.
Lord Seltin fixed me with a gaze that looked sane, but then he went on to speak. ‘Did you ever consider the theory that the Goddess Inuno abandoned Hexator to stop a Kallihuman successfully being produced? That Arius examined our First Founder’s programme and feared the Wang dynasty’s chances of success on this world?’
I was disappointed in him; an educated man, too. Falt should know chaos theory trumps conspiracy theory every time. ‘The gods are unknowable by us in countless ways,’ I said, ‘but I have yet to divine any traces of jealousy in their actions, miracles, and visions. Not once during near a thousand years inside the Humanitum.’
‘You must have made a good priest, doctor.’
‘Not as good as all that or I wouldn’t be scrabbling around at the spore-spice auctions.’
Lord Seltin noticed Jenelle standing silently, listening carefully to our conversation. ‘Captain Cairo. I thought the Watch was joking when I received word you wanted to re-interview me.’
Jenelle raised a hand towards me. ‘Lady Blez wishes a fresh pair of eyes on our investigation. To that end, the good doctor here has now been deputised as a sheriff of the Watch.’
Falt laughed. ‘You owe the Commander General a new desk, then, Doctor Roxley. He must have taken so many bites out of his present one.’
In fact, I planned to stay out of the brute’s clutches for as long as possible. ‘What was your relationship with Uance Blez like, Lord Seltin?’
‘We were friends and our houses allies. Even though Uance didn’t believe in salvation through my work,’ Falt raised his hands to the vault. ‘But then, so few do. If that was a valid motive for assassinating Uance, his would be the first name on a very long list. Blez weakness at the auctions will be my family’s prosperity, I suppose. The same can be said for any of the houses, great and minor.’
‘Money isn’t important to you?’
‘My personal needs are modest. This great work is my only vice, but then it is also Hexator’s last chance. We have lost so much; our bloodlines scattered and lost during civilization’s slow retreat.’ He tapped a crimson thread linking two of the boards. ‘This was the project’s best chance. A union between the Blez and the Seltins. A chance lost forever when that damnable fever struck me infertile. If I had a daughter I could have married her to young Rendor Blez, advancing the project’s conclusion by centuries! So many chances lost.’
I persisted with my questioning for another half an hour, but I didn’t need my m-brain’s analysis to realise Lord Seltin’s preoccupations lay far from this world’s game of power and prestige. He regarded himself as the last monk of this dark age, keeping hope’s flame flickering as his descendants had done before him. Falt was the last of his line, just as I was. Which of us was the greater fool to be here, still struggling vainly on, I wondered?
I was about to call an end to our interview when Falt noticed Simenon surreptitiously inspecting a book on a table.
‘Your guide can read?’ asked Lord Seltin. Simenon jumped at being noticed.
‘Master Simenon taught himself his letters while on the streets,’ I explained.
‘How impressive. Do you possess an unusually good memory, young Master Simenon?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ he spluttered.
‘What’s your family?’
‘I am a Wrongman, sir. It’s said I was found in the capital after Kalamb was abandoned; it was thought my mother escaped here from that city.’
‘Your ancestors would have been Darras, then,’ said Lord Seltin, well-satisfied with his identification. ‘They bred for eidetic memory and you share their wild hair. Kalamb sheltered many families with Darras blood.’
‘A Darras,’ said Simenon, rolling the unfamiliar name around his mouth like a newfound sweet.
‘That book’s from my library, its contents more accessible than these data crystals,’ said Falt, indicating his vault. ‘I often start a novel only to grow too distracted by the great project to finish it. What are you reading at the moment, lad?’
‘I recently finished Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, my lord.’
‘Very good. And how about you, Captain Cairo, do you also read?’
‘Arrest reports and confessions from the holding cells,’ said Jenelle, ‘almost every single morning. They’re piling up, now the season’s started so early.’
‘Cairos always favoured the practical in most matters, including their bloodline. Excellent night vision, but I don’t suppose possessing a body immune to low gravity calcium-and-muscle-mass loss is much use to you now?’
‘If it is, I must have missed it, my lord,’ said Jenelle.
‘You may borrow that book, young Master Simenon,’ smiled Lord Seltin. ‘East of Eden by Master Steinbeck … it’s of similar vintage to your last title. Be so kind as to not tell me how the tale finishes, though. I still like a surprise or two at my age. After you’ve read the book, return it to me and you may select another from my pile.’
Simenon held the book tight and bowed deeply in gratitude, but I heard a groan from one of the house guards’ old warhorses – that their palace should be converted into a borrowing library for street urchins. Our interview over, the lord’s soldiers escorted the three of us out in a sullen silence which spoke of our siege against their house’s dignity.
‘Why do you think the Lord Seltin works inside that old vault,’ Simenon asked me, ‘when he can’t make use of its machine data?’
‘To remember all that he’s lost,’ I said, ‘as well as much that he hopes to regain.’
‘Lord Seltin only has sorrow to bite on,’ said Jenelle. ‘If I possessed half of what that man owns, I sure as hell wouldn’t lock myself away in a pit pining for what I can never have.’
Poor Lord Seltin, his genomics vault little more useful to him than a wishing well. Our beautiful children were already gods. How can that not be enough for Falt? I vowed to myself then that Hexator might see miracles enough to turn everyone on this fallen world back to the true faith.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Trabbs.
I had expected Jenelle Cairo to want to come with me to interview Lady Trabb. Nie Trabb, the aunt, rather than the young Martina Trabb who held the house’s official title. At the very least, I’d expected Jenelle’s company to ensure I didn’t upset the grand dame with my impertinent questioning. But the captain just laughed and said that she had already spoken with the woman for the Watch and I was welcome to see her on my own. Jenelle left me to my devices as she marched away to celebrate the joys of the season by cracking the skulls of a few inebriated rascals.
A game of mischief was afoot. Because I didn’t know who the sucker at the card table was, I could only presume it was me. Jenelle did spare one of her paddy-wagons and a couple of overstretched members of the brute squad to transport myself, Mozart and Simenon. We halted in front of the building where the interview was to be held. It wasn’t the official Trabb fortress-cum-palace to the west of the capital, but another property the family owned. What passed for an old merchant’s mansion in Frente. A two-storey building with narrow windows facing out onto the street, windows sealed by metal bars. Not so much a prison as a counting house for great wealth.
My two retainers were commanded to wait in the hallway while I was ushered inside a grand foyer by a white-masked retainer, through a gallery, and into a large drawing room. Three was a crowd, obviously, as far as the old lady’s bodyguards were concerned. The drawing room’s protected rear had wide high windows compensating for the building’s public face, windows giving
onto a courtyard garden. Of course, it was a rich person’s terrace, filled with the hardier remnants of Terran flowers and hedges kept alive against all odds against the local flora. This is a losing battle, I thought. Presently, the terrace garden sat trapped in a snowstorm of multi-coloured spores. I wouldn’t want to be employed as one of this grand house’s gardeners.
Lady Trabb the elder waited for me on a comfortably cushioned sofa at the opposite end of the room. There was a small round table in front of her where a silver tray held a teapot and a three-tier porcelain stand filled with oatcakes. I wouldn’t put it past the old bird to have that pot sloshing with actual imported tea leaves, rather than dried gills from the local mushroom fields.
Nie Trabb had the bitter look of a great beauty now faded with old age. It must have been a slow slide for her, the expensive edits of her noble-born DNA holding back the years’ decline. My m-brain flashed me a back-aged model of her face: how Nie would have looked at twenty. I almost gasped out loud. How many wars had the local warlords fought over this one? I wondered. How many ships launched in her name? Well, I knew the answer to that, here. None. No seas on Hexator. Most of its water table lay underground. But the noblewoman’s expensive cells had failed her at last, as all must. No more suitors for Nie Trabb; little flattery which she should or could believe.
Her mind, though, her mind was still an engine of perfection. I only had to note the slightly pointed ears hidden by coils of white hair to know that. Her ears were a byproduct of gene edits fashionable before m-brain augments grew as sophisticated as today’s biotechnological offerings. A linearly scaled-up triple-density cortex with an off the scale IQ. Her ancestors had really wanted their children to sprint to the front of the evolutionary arms race, and at least one of them had been rich enough to put the fix in. Nie Trabb, literally the sharpest dagger in the room. Well, any room that didn’t contain Sweet William of course.
‘Let’s get to the meat of it, then,’ said Lady Nie, wasting little time on small talk aside from offering me a tea. I liked her well already; certainly better than her drink, which was sadly the local mud-water.
‘Did you kill Lord Blez?’ I asked.
‘Of course not. But I should have loved to. I’d have enjoyed the thrill of seeing his brains splatter across the road. In my youth, I would have cut through the current sad sack of Four Families like a dose of the plague.’
‘Why?’
‘I would be doing our world a huge favour. The Blez? Hah. First the husband, then the wife. I would tremble with pleasure taking the secondhand rags Sanctimonious Alice hands out to the poor, rolling the garments up and choking her with them. What a fine sight that would make. Could I bribe you to arrange it for me, perhaps? She seems to have let you get very close to her.’
‘And what about Falt Seltin?’ I asked, not allowing myself to be distracted by her canny intuition.
‘A good old-fashioned hall burning. Barricade the doors and pour barrels of burning pitch over his walls. What better way to kill Falt than fry him inside his vault surrounded by his stupid failed DNA crystals. He loves the idea of perfected humanity far more than actual people, so losing his boards and spider’s web of bloodlines would upset him most.’
‘And the Derechor twins?’
‘I must say that having the best part of their own mine collapse on their thick skulls was satisfyingly fitting, accident or no.’
No, I thought, but this sour old woman did not have to hear that confirmed from my lips.
‘So, you truly didn’t do it?’
‘I truly did not, but a woman can dream.’
‘Why wouldn’t you have arranged Lord Blez’s assassination? Don’t you have as much to gain as anyone from disrupting the Blez operations at the coming auctions?’
‘You mean gain for my niece, don’t you? Our house’s fall is already engraved in the stars by fate. Do you want to know how to bring down the House of Trabb? Just gift my niece a new mirror every day, preferably waiting until after I’m dead so I can’t smash it. She will be so infatuated with what she finds in its surface you’ll be able to steal all our holdings away from us without so much as a squeak.’
‘So, who do you think did put a bullet in Lord Blez?’
‘Why ask this spring chicken? Perhaps you mistake me for a maiden compared to yourself, you ancient horror? Out of the mouths of babes and innocents…? Don’t they teach the Magistrates of Arius the classics any longer? Don’t look for the means, seek the motive. Follow the mice. Think about the money, ideology, coercion, and ego of those you suspect.’
That was solid advice indeed. ‘How large is your ego, Lady Nie?’
‘Enormous. But in the specifics of this matter, perhaps not quite as engaged as the Lord Seltin’s.’
‘How so?’
‘You didn’t know? Hah, I thought not. Falt was in love with Alice Blez long before she married Uance. Uance and Falt were fast friends, but they had quite a falling out when it came to our over-emoting maiden. Uance was the victor who pulled ahead in that race after some early triumphs by Lord Seltin. Poor Falt, he should have stuck with his useless breeding ledgers. Uance did the man a favour. Falt never had to suffer decades of the woman’s simpering and draining his house’s treasury with extravagant gestures of inane virtue signalling.’
Of course, Falt and Uance Blez had been in love with Alice. How could both Lords not be? You just had to meet Alice for that. But neither had proved worthy of the noblewoman; of that I was certain. More stock for the pot. It was already growing too thick to stir. ‘You don’t give generously to the local charities, then, my lady?’
‘Hah,’ laughed Nie Trabb. ‘Let them all die, and your gods can sort them out. Except the bloody gods can’t be bothered with Hexator, can they?’
This clever woman was adept at needling me, getting under my skin. ‘You act as Lady Martina Trabb’s guardian?’
‘For another year. That is how long we are safe. Yes, my brother, bless him, was killed in a duel with a minor noble over some trifling affair. Probably whose cock was longest. My sister-in-law managed to rot her already insignificant gift of brain matter away with King Tornado, the spore-spice of choice for princesses and suicides, pining away in grief over her dear dead Harliss Trabb. She preferred to pay for her spore-spice. Of course, if she had waited until today, the silly girl might have overdosed for free like the common whores tumbling around outside my windows.’
‘I am sorry your family should bear such losses,’ I said.
Nie shrugged. ‘On Hexator, change smells a lot like death. Look out the window at the falling spore blossom if you don’t believe me. If I was younger, I’d run outside, strip off, and sprint across the avenues and find myself a gang of handsome bucks to tup. What a shocking sight that would make. How old are you, doctor? Ten times my age? Twenty, a hundred?’
‘Something like that. How can you tell?’
‘You mean, how can I tell, given every ancient bugger from the Humanitum strolls around our streets looking no older than late middle-age? I suppose if your dark gods could fix life renewal technology to stabilise the visible aging process aged twenty, you’d all appear a lot younger.’ Lady Trabb jabbed at my face. ‘Who was it that said the eyes are the windows onto a soul? You walk quietly, a man grown tired from seeing too much, doctor. Your precious gods and your precious technology can fix almost everything apart from your eyes.’
I used my weary eyes to seek the truth of the matter from Nie Trabb. I was left with the uncomfortable feeling that she could lie to my face, laughing, and I still wouldn’t really know what she was capable of. Like gazing down a well filled with this world’s drowned babies.
‘Yes, Doctor,’ Nie smiled at me. ‘I could probably outwit that unholy toad you’ve got squatting in your mind. Does the augment make you feel closer to your gods? Decadently post-human. We’re still the original article here on Hexator.’
I shrugged. Only because you can’t afford the upgrade.
Lady Trabb roared
with laughter as I left; a most unladylike sound. ‘Spore-blossom Season is a time for change. Can you smell it coming on the winds?’
I sniffed the air before I left the old mansion with Mozart and Simenon. I smelt something, alright, but it was rot rather than renewal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
For a Muse of Fire.
I had taken the morning off to register my lines of credit with the market for the coming auction. Great profit, it seemed, demanded immense volumes of paperwork as a sacrifice at its altar. If so, I was in good standing now with whatever local hollow god of commerce commanded the economy. I was returning to the Sparrow’s Rest and the fair care of Mistress Miggs’ culinary concoctions when Mozart and myself ran into a panicked mob headed fast in the opposite direction. Given Spore-blossom Season’s blessings still fell, albeit ebbing in ever fainter swirls, I wondered what mischief might stir the inebriated citizenry to such fierce scurrying?
I had my answer around the corner. I thought this road looked familiar. Nie Trabb’s great merchant’s house sat at the end of the avenue, now obscured by great billows of black smoke joining it to the night. Given the dozens of dead soldiers and staff in front of the manse, I suspected the Muse of Fire had not been summoned here accidentally.
A pair of masked Watch officers pushed their way violently through the confusion of fleeing citizens.
‘You two!’ I bellowed. ‘Your job is to run towards trouble, not away from it.’ They ignored me in their haste to be away. I pulled out my round golden badge, flashing the circlet of the Four’s interlinked hands at this pair of disgraces. ‘A deputised sheriff, stand and hold!’
‘A special, are you? Well, today you can be the High Magistrate of Frente,’ growled the senior officer, ‘for there’s no business for an honest copper down that way.’