by George Mann
Valentine shrugged. “That is what the Council is saying. My sources say the Badge is now looking for a body, rather than a missing girl. And they’ve given up on finding Micol, it seems.”
“Perhaps they have him and just aren’t saying.”
“Perhaps.” Valentine went back to the bedpost, resting his hand on it. “And this is why I’m talking to you, Jacob Burn.”
“What? I’ve nothing to do with it, sir. Micol was a friend, but I never figured him for a murderer.”
“No, neither did I. And I’m very good at reading people. It’s how I got to this place. Knowing people.” He turned to Jacob. “I want to know why this happened. People are talking, saying things I can’t afford to have them say. That I can’t control my sworn people, that I harbored a serial killer, worse, that he did this at my bidding, that I’m hiding him from the Council even now. I can’t have that, Jacob.”
“Of course not, sir.”
“I need to know what happened, Jacob. I need to know why Micol did these things, and I need to know where he is now. The Council has its methods of finding these things out, but I need to know for myself. I want you to do that for me.”
“Me, sir? I’m hardly the sort who...”
“You’re a Councilor’s son. A son of one of the most influential families in Veridon. You graduated from the Academy. Hell, you were even a pilot of the Fleet.”
Jacob’s cheeks burned. “On a time, yes. But I am those things no more.”
“Not true, Jacob. Your father may have forsworn you, but you are still his son. You still bear his name. Better, you know these people. The Councilors, their families. There are places you can go that I cannot, questions you can ask that my people cannot ask. I see a great deal of potential in you, Jacob. Your name is a gift. It is why I stepped in for you, why you owe me that debt.” Valentine crossed to Jacob and planted his finger in the boy’s chest. It was cold and hard, like a metal sap. “Use these things. Find out what happened. You owe it to Micol. You owe it to me.”
Valentine turned and left the room. The two men who had been standing guard followed him down the hall, utterly silent. Cacher leaned in to the room, smiling crookedly, and tossed Jacob’s pistol on to the bed. He closed the door and left Jacob to his thoughts.
“I SHOULDN’T BE letting you in here,” the officer of the Badge said. He had taken off his iron mask and was shuffling nervously through the hallway.
“You’re not,” Jacob said. “I was never here, Officer Merkt.”
“Right, right. Just be quick.”
“Quick as I can. Wouldn’t want to miss anything.”
The events of the Manor Vellis were a public mystery, as was the family in residence. Little surprise Jacob had never heard of them. Days of conversation with his old schoolmate Pedric, who now worked in the Hall of Commerce Writs, turned up little information about the family trade. Their writ was for “Science,” with no licensing and only one patron. Stitch.
If the family was a mystery, the manor was a disaster area. The front door had been forced, replaced with cheap boarding by the Badge, and the foyer and sitting room looked like they’d been savaged by a work team of augers wearing spiked boots. The floor was torn in long gouges, and something had barreled through the sitting room, tearing furniture and wrecking plaster as it went.
“Cog hell, what a stink.” Jacob stepped carefully into the central hallway. Several glass containers lay shattered on the floor, mingling the smells of vinegar and spoilt meat. “Were they running a slaughterhouse in here? Hardly appropriate for the address.”
The back den was worse. There was no furniture here, nothing but several wide stains and a scattering of papers.
“Think they took all the furniture, officer?” Jacob asked. “Think that’s what caused all that gouging?” The badgeman was by the door, looking nervously down the street. The windows had been boarded up and a quarantine sigil burned into the wood. “No, I suppose not. Not unless they used a battlewagon for the job.”
Holding a kerchief over his face, Jacob toed the papers in the corners of the room. Correspondence, bills of lading, a newspaper. The stink drove Jacob back to the hallway before he found anything interesting. He looked for a less vile part of the house to investigate.
There was a kitchen at one end of the hall, and a stairwell at the other. The kitchen had been similarly brutalized, the drawers opened and dinnerware thrown around. The table had been overturned and shoved against the wall. Splinters of chairs littered the floor.
“Were you looking for something, Micol? Some hidden thing?” Jacob wondered aloud as he circled the room. There was mud on the tile floor, smeared footprints that seemed to lead from the servant’s entrance. “Or just feeling generally destructive.” This all seemed so out of character for the Micol Jacob knew. He had been the most civilized of criminals. This looked like the work of looters.
Jacob peered over the table. There was a wad of canvas there, pushed up under the chest of drawers. It was a satchel, dry mud along the opening, and inside was a bundle of tools. Shovel, pick, frictionlamp, compass. All covered in mud. He wrapped them back in the bag and took it with him.
He was in the hallway when he heard the shot. He rushed into the sitting room, pistol in hand, to find Merkt dead in the foyer. Shadows were moving by the front door.
He put two shots out the door, grazing the quarantine sigil and sending splinters onto the porch. Jacob threw the satchel over his shoulder and cinched it in place, then backed into the kitchen. Voices now, asking questions and giving orders, and footsteps in the house.
The servants’ door was barred, but Jacob put his boot through it and stumbled into the alleyway. Shouts, and a figure came into the alley, a rifle in hand. Jacob shot from the hip, no chance of hitting but enough to make the man dive for cover. It was a wide alley, the kind used for deliveries and secret entrances. Jacob ran around the corner, hopped a fence, and found his way to another street. He didn’t stop running.
The figure he had seen in the alley, that man had been wearing the colors of the Family Stitch. Personal guard, on the Family’s business.
“THEY BURNED THE place,” he said. “The house is gone.”
“What? When?” Jacob asked.
Valentine sighed, a sound like a storm winding up, and turned his attention to the shovel in his hands. “After you left, I suspect. They whistled the fire brigade, then burned the Manor Vellis to the stones.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jacob said. “How will they find anything about what Micol did if they burn all the evidence?”
“You were there. Other than this,” Valentine gestured with the shovel, “what did you see?”
“Nothing. I didn’t get upstairs, but the first floor was cleared out. Like it had been looted.” Jacob leaned against the bar. They were meeting in the Harsh Sentence, hours before the first patrons would show. “But the satchel, those tools... it wasn’t like they were hidden.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning whoever tore that place up, they weren’t looking for evidence.”
“You don’t think Micol did all that?”
“I don’t. He was hiding there, why would he risk someone overhearing the racket? And the neighbors didn’t hear anything until last night. Breaking glass, and wood. Probably after the raid. You said they were looking for Micol and the girl, and then the Council raided the Manor Vellis, and now they’re just looking for a body.” Jacob pointed to the tools on the table. “If they believe she’s dead, it’s because they found evidence of that in the manor.”
“Or they took Micol, and that’s what he’s saying. That he killed her,” Valentine nodded. “What are your contacts in the Council saying?”
“That they don’t know anything about this. That the raid was organized outside the usual chains of command. That the Family Stitch may be operating independently.”
Valentine set down the shovel. “So what does this tell me, Jacob? Your evidence.”
“
He might have taken something from the house and hidden it, to come back for later.”
“Or he might have killed the girl, and buried the body?” Again, Valentine sighed. “So we should be looking for mud, then?”
Jacob smiled. “Not just mud.” He picked up the shovel and scraped up some of the dried dirt, cupping it in his hand. “Does this look like river mud to you?”
They both looked down at the flaky muck. It was gray and powdery, almost like masonry. River mud was black.
“So where does it come from?”
“The cisterns, under the old city. I used to play there, as a child. It’s the only sort of wilderness the son of a Councilor can get.”
“Well then, Jacob Burn. Go to your wilderness, and bring me the body of Magdalene Stitch.”
THE CISTERNS OF Veridon were below the oldest parts of the city. Some of them were simply vaulted basements that had flooded, or rivers covered over with progressive layers of architecture until they were dammed up and hidden, products of accident or civic growth rather than intentionally designed reservoirs beneath the streets. Many of these quiet depths were connected, subject to lazy currents and strange tides that had nothing to do with the rivers Ebd or Dunje flowing to either side of the city.
Because they burrowed under the houses of the powerful, the cisterns were subjected to intense scrutiny. Entrances were blocked; channels were diverted or dammed. People found their way in, though, children and thieves; and hidden passages had a way of being discovered.
Jacob made it his business to discover these entrances in his youth. Though pathways changed, he had a reasonably good mental map of the various portals and drainage pipes that led down to the secret places of the city. Since leaving his family, Jacob had stayed away from the cisterns. This place brought memories of childhood games. Now that he was an actual criminal, his fantasies of aristocrat-rogues seemed so flimsy.
The entrance nearest to the Manor Vellis was guarded by the City Badge, strangely. Jacob ended up entering the cisterns several blocks over, figuring he’d backtrack and find the path Micol had taken to whatever it was that he had buried.
The streets closed over Jacob’s head like giant teeth. He wormed his way down under the city, brushing against stone and pipe, the air heavy with sediment and sludge. He was bigger than when he last ventured into the cisterns, and his shoulders and knees constantly banged into things. He went in darkness at first, and slow, until he was deep enough that he felt comfortable he could light up without being seen from the street. He wound the tiny frictionlamp and set it spinning, the element humming into a steady amber burn.
This room had been a natural river, once, part of the rocky delta between the arms of the Ebd and Dunje that fed into the massive Reine at the feet of Veridon. Its flow had been tamed, though, its banks cobbled and then bricked, until the current was nothing more than a slow roll. A stalk of pipes crept down one wall and into the water, probably feeding some courtyard fountain above.
Jacob quickly got turned around. Passages had flooded, rooms filled in, new walkways constructed or old ones collapsed. He spent an unknowable amount of time trying to find where Micol had entered the cisterns. He was resting in an idled pump station, his back against one of the pistons, when he heard the noisy passage of another party, getting closer. He stilled the lamp, set it by his hip, and loosened the pistol at his belt.
The darkness was complete for a minute, and then light began to creep in. Voices too, and heavy footsteps, getting closer and louder. Jacob squeezed between the pistons of the station and waited.
“Map’s wrong,” one of the men said as he entered the station.
“Couldn’t be. Retter said it came from the source.”
“Source could have lied. Could have given them a map that leads us to some damn monster. Or an ambush.”
“This is a pumping station, Hal. Not a monster.”
“But it’s not on the map, is it Carl?” Hal kicked metal and something cracked. “Maybe one of the other patrols found it already.”
“So we went too far. Doesn’t make the map wrong.”
There was a rustle of movement, and when Hal spoke again, his voice was quieter. “Don’t mean it ain’t an ambush, either.”
And then they were quiet, except for the distinct sound of pistols being drawn, and hammers being cocked. Jacob gripped his pistol and bit his tongue.
“Come on out,” one of them said. “We see ya. Come out, real slow.”
Four of them, Jacob thought, by their voices and feet. In a tight space. And even if Jacob could take them all, there would be shooting. Even a little wound was big trouble, lost in the cisterns. Jacob put his pistol back in the holster and stepped into the passageway, his hands up.
They weren’t looking at him. Four of them all right, weapons pointed and lights focused on a girl who, as Jacob watched, stepped out of a hidden door in the station.
Magdalene Stitch.
Surprised, Jacob stepped back into cover. His boot came down on his frictionlamp, forgotten on the floor, crushing the casing and dislodging the escapement. The mainspring and element uncoiled in a single sun-bright instant, the free spring sailing out into the passage and bouncing around like a comet. For half a breath, the metal station was noon white and burning.
The four Badgemen and the girl cried out and fell, arms over their faces. Since most of the light was behind him, and because he shut his eyes as soon as he heard the casing crack, Jacob was spared complete blindness. As he blinked and readjusted his eyes, the girl, blind, fumbled to the nearest Badge. She patted his face and then, before Jacob could even think about what she was doing, drew a thin blade and drove it into the man’s neck. It was a bad strike, but the knife glanced off his collarbone and deflected up, going through his jaw and tongue. He died, loudly. The other officers began firing.
Jacob dropped to a knee and took careful aim. Bullets were spitting all around him, sparks and bits of metal flying. He got two of them before the last figured out where Jacob was in the darkness and started putting bullets on target. Jacob hunkered down behind the piston, thumbing more shells into the cylinder of his revolver and waiting for the other guy to run out of shot. There was a meaty gurgling, and the shooting stopped.
Magdalene was standing over the guard, blood smeared across her chest. She backed up sightlessly as Jacob came out of cover and dropped into a guard position. She had a second knife, Jacob saw, palmed in her off hand.
“None of that, girl,” Jacob said. “There’ll be more soon.”
“Who are you?” she asked, her guard still in place.
“We’re going to have to sort that out later, Ms. Stitch.” There were shouts down the passage, echoing off the weird halls and shallow depths.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Jacob holstered his pistol and rummaged a lamp from the Badgemen. He saw that, through the door Magdalene had come, there was a little space with a bed and some supplies.
“You almost seem sad about that. Yes, he’s dead.” Jacob toed the Badge at her feet. “You stabbed him often enough.”
“Not this filth,” she said, hiding the knives in the loose folds of her coverall. “My brother.”
“Brother?” Jacob asked.
“Micolas Ronan Stitch, first son of the line and goddamned criminal.”
“Oh,” Jacob said, quietly. “Yes, my lady. I suppose he is.”
THEY CAME OUT in an unfamiliar street. At first, between leading a blind girl and being lost, Jacob expected to be caught by the wandering patrols of Badgemen. Twice they’d come within earshot of patrols, both times dowsing their light and hiding until the pursuit had wandered away. Eventually Magdalene regained her eyes and they were able to get away.
“I know you, don’t I?” she asked as they crept down the alley. It was evening, and the street lamps were just spinning up. She paused to look at him in their amber shine. “Jacob Burn?”
“Well, yes, I suppose you do. I’m surprised you remember.” Jacob sa
id, taking her arm and continuing down the street. There’d be time for pleasant remembrances once they were safely tucked away in some dark building, away from the patrols.
“It’s the eyes. Pilot’s eyes. And Micolas said he knew you.” She paused. “Did he send you, then? To get me?”
Jacob wrinkled his nose. He didn’t like being reminded of his days at the Academy, though the evidence was there for everyone to see. The implants left very few visible signs, other than the eyes.
“No. Never said a word to me about this whole affair.” Jacob tugged her along. “I’m going to have some questions about that, by the way.” He looked back at her, at her downcast face. “When we get somewhere more convenient.”
“Yes, I suppose you will.” Her voice was quiet. “It must all seem so strange.”
Jacob got his bearings and led them to a safe house near the docks. Valentine maintained the place for any of his boys needing a place to hide for a few days. It wasn’t supposed to be used without the boss’s word, but Jacob figured he was on official business. There was food inside, and warm wine.
“So. What’s this whole entanglement about?” Jacob asked. His voice was tired. He set food out on the table, and was working up the will to eat. “What did Micol do to get himself killed? If he is dead, of course.”
“If the Council got him, or father; he’s dead. Or near enough.” She shivered. “It’s family business. Surely you would understand that.”
“It’s not family business once it involves the Council. Not once it throws the criminal underground of Veridon into a mad dash for cover.”
“What is the Council but family, Jacob?”
“Part of the trouble with the Council. Look. Micol was my friend. He was honorable, intelligent, and trustworthy. I’d want no other man at my side, in a fight or at a fireside discussing philosophy. Now. Let’s not have his death wasted on family honor.”
“It was,” she said. “Even when it began, I knew it would end in him dead, and all for nothing.”