The Censor's Hand: Book One of the Thrice~Crossed Swords Trilogy

by A. M. Steiner

  The duchess smiled. “Of all my girls, you have always been my favourite, Miranda. We should speak again, soon.”

  The tapestry of her mother rustled one last time and the image of Her Grace’s office dissolved into verdant green and brown. The delicate hairs still smelled faintly of her. Miranda reached out to stroke them, glowing with pride. As her hand brushed its surface, she saw a few motes of magic slip between her fingers and drift into nothingness.

  Hunting the dark

  Daniel compared the hand mirrors like a desperate suitor, as if choosing the right one was the most important decision of his life.

  “Silver from the Western Isles or Anatole. Which is more fashionable?”

  The jeweller smoothed his moustache to hide his frustration. “The ladies are fond of both kinds, sir.”

  It was an absurd question, but the crease of worry in Daniel’s brow was no act.

  Where is Bolb? The master had entered the Verge’s temple almost an hour before. That was too long. Did I somehow miss him leaving? Does the temple have a hidden exit? He put down one of the mirrors he was feigning interest in, picked up a perfume jar and flipped it over in his hand.

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but you’ve looked at that three times already.”

  Daniel knew, and secretly admired the stall-keeper’s patience.

  “Tell you what, buy that mirror and the jar and I’ll throw in this comb for free. Walrus tusk and ebony. You won’t find better in the North.” The man ran a fingernail musically down the comb’s teeth. Daniel ignored him and kept the mirror angled at the temple’s entrance.

  A flash of iridescent light caught in the glass. Bolb had finally emerged from his prayers. Daniel hissed in relief and scattered an uncounted handful of gold onto the stall.

  “I’ll take this one – keep the change.”

  The jeweller clapped his hands in delight. “You forgot your comb,” he called after Dan’s disappearing back.

  Bolb had jangled his way into the bustle of the atrium and Daniel was determined not to lose track of him a second time. He moved expeditiously, keeping the master close, using the crowd for cover, disguising his movement and intentions, dropping to his knees to retrieve an imaginary coin or pull up a stocking whenever he thought the master might turn, and using the hand mirror to keep him in sight.

  Bolb traipsed mournfully through the market, oblivious to it all. Tears had smeared the greasepaint on his calf-like face and streaks of black kohl stained his puffy cheeks. Grief? Daniel wondered. Or fear?

  The hunt led towards the fastness of the southern wall where the natural rock of the isle rose a little higher than the stalls, stood jagged and exposed. Bolb slipped out of sight into a short passageway. Daniel ducked behind a row of plucked geese that swung from a poulter’s awning, counted to three and followed after him.

  The passageway was a blind alley lined with rough stone, yet Bolb had disappeared.

  Impossible. Daniel ran to the statue at the end of its short length. The comely maiden from some obscure legend proffered a verdigris-stained dish with both hands. A lever jutted incongruously from her thigh. Daniel suspected a secret passage and worked the pump. A slug of water plopped disappointingly into the rough-hewn water trough below. There must be something. He desperately searched the rocks for some telltale crevice or hole.

  It could only be seen from a certain angle. Perpendicular to the side of the trough and well hidden in the rocks was an iron hatch stamped with the Verge’s henge icon. The portal spoke of dark and forbidden places, but its lock was broken and it was a fraction ajar.

  Dan looked over his shoulder. The atrium was busy but nobody was watching him. He discarded the mirror, pulled at the door, made himself thin so as to let in as little light as possible, and squeezed through.

  It was some kind of drain or pipe. A metal stairway, suspended by chains of rod, descended into absolute darkness. The scent of sea spray blew from somewhere far below. He could hear the faint jangle of Bolb’s receding footsteps above the sound of dripping water. Daniel cursed inwardly. There was no time to fetch a lanthorn; he would have to chance the dark.

  He scampered along what he supposed was some kind of gantry, fingers looped around its crooked handrails. He used the light-stepping technique, sweeping his feet on the iron in smooth semicircles, like a skater on ice, his passage rapid and silent.

  Far ahead, and slightly below, bobbed a pinprick of light.

  Bolb.

  The roar of running water became louder, echoed all around. Within it, Daniel heard something else. A living, squeaking presence in the darkness. The flapping of leathery wings. Bats, Daniel reassured himself. It can only be bats.

  Bolb’s tiny light was closer now, a weak beam like the mirrored flame of a lighthouse radiating from the peak of his silhouette. Without warning, it stilled. Daniel heard the rattle of keys, the turn of a lock. For a brief moment, the master stood framed in a rectangle of light. Daniel crouched low and pressed himself against the rails, half closed his eyes to preserve his vision.

  Bolb had gone through a door; Daniel could now see the faint trace of light through its frame and keyhole. He stalked silently to its threshold and peered through the keyhole. All he could see was the silver and gold of Bolb’s back. He pressed his ear against the cold iron of the lock and strained to hear the muffled conversation that had begun inside.

  “What are you talking about? Give me that.”

  A man’s voice, old and rasping. Who are you? Daniel wondered, and shuffled tight against the door.

  “A summons from Corbin? We all received one.”

  Dan stole another look through the keyhole, grit his teeth in frustration.

  “What can we do?” Bolb sounded desperate, and a little angry.

  “Nothing,” the other man replied. “Corbin is a thorough man… business of an ordinary investigation.”

  “You’ve ruined me… a pointless risk.”

  Bolb’s voice raised to a porcine squeal. “How dare you! This insane enterprise was your idea.”

  Daniel clenched his fist in triumph. Lang was right! There was conspiracy at the heart of the Convergence. Now he was uncovering it. He would be a hero.

  Something leathery and squeaking brushed against his neck and tangled in his hair. Daniel thrashed it away and yelped. The men in the room fell silent.

  Daniel felt a shift in the air; the undeniable animal sensation of a hunter scented by his quarry and suddenly turned prey. He backed away from the door and stumbled with a clatter, froze, pressed himself low to the iron. His ankle burned in the darkness. He listened to the mocking echo of his fall and the hard beating of his heart.

  The mechanism of the lock turned.

  The door swung open and Bolb stood silhouetted, his bulk pyramidal and immovable. A malign radiance crackled in the air around him. A beam of crimson arrowed from his brow, swept the darkness.

  Daniel was bathed in light. He covered his face and prayed that it had not been seen. Bolb spread his arms and from each of his wide sleeves snaked a machine of crawling metal. Ruby lenses shone bright in their tubular heads. One wound itself around a railing and scented the air with its needle nose, the other dropped to the gantry floor with a heavy clang and edged forwards, sniffing at the ground.

  Daniel forced the panic back and tried to remember Brother Hernandez’s instruction for snakes. He edged backwards without making a sound, but the machines’ eyes sensed his movement and twitched in his direction. He grasped a rail, pulled himself up and ran for his life, pursued by the mad clatter of pin-prick legs.

  He realised immediately that he had set off in the wrong direction – the way back towards the atrium was behind him. He was sprinting into the unknown, running blindly through the deep workings of the Convergence and an unforeseen turning would send him tumbling over a rail into abyssal darkness.

  A not
ch on the railing ripped the skin from the webbing of his thumb but he was running too hard to care. His lungs burned and his legs burned but still the clattering metal drew closer. Dim bands of brown light appeared all around him; the gantry had entered an encirclement of iron pipes made visible by a faint light ahead. The rat-a-tat of metal on metal grew frantic.

  In the distance, above the hammering of his boots, he heard the sound of men working. He burst into a long room where men tended a knotted maze of pipes and tank work, ran past them with no thought other than putting some distance between himself and the hunting machines.

  The workers stared at him bemused as he barged between them. Was he the only one who could hear the furious tapping of pointed legs over the hiss and clank of the plumbing?

  He burst through doors, ascended stairs, kicked up clouds of coal dust as he raced through a gallery of furnaces where sweating stokers were laying fires. The ovens poured heat onto his skin and into his lungs. The acid of his lungs burnt his mouth.

  The running in him was over. Breathless, he skidded to a halt, grabbed a shovel from a coal pile and turned to face his hidden enemy. The fire-gates cast red stripes of light across the gallery. The only sound was the roar of hot air and flames.

  It dropped from the ceiling, a flash of silver death. Dan slapped the thing aside with the blade of the shovel, but it twisted in the air and its beak lightly grazed his forearm before it clattered undamaged to the floor. As the segments of its body rotated to upright, Daniel raised the shovel overhead and plunged its edge into the contraption with all of his might. Not even a scratch. He set his weight onto the blade and pinned the thing to the ground. His arm felt weak, stung like a burst blister, and he saw the surface of his scratched skin had erupted into a frothy stew.

  Poison. The metal worm wriggled against the shovel. At any moment, its twin could be upon him. Daniel looked to the nearest furnace, smashed his boot into the latch that held its fire-gate shut and howled in pain as it swung open. Released, the automaton lunged. He stepped back and batted it deep into the furnace with one deft scoop. There was a dull clang and a spray of embers as it hit the back wall. The flesh of his palms sizzled as he slammed the latch home. The metal beast, glowing dully with heat, thrashed inside its new prison. Biting his lip to mask the pain, Daniel fled again.

  He lost track of the myriad chambers through which he sped. There were breweries and smelteries, tanning pools and granaries. A pantry filled with rounds of cheese the size of cartwheels. A vivarium full of beasts terrestrial and aquatic. Never in his life had Daniel expected to see a mythic creature, but in that place, he saw narwhals and giant jumping rats, awaiting a journey to the cooking pot.

  He entered a hall, lined with colossal shelves and rotating columns ringed with brass stairs, that containing nothing but books. Floating trays collected them and deposited them in a tiny portal set high in a far wall. The feeling of that place was ominous and confusing and he left as quickly as he could. As he travelled further upwards, he saw more people. He slowed his pace and tried to appear casual, despite the dirt, sweat and wounds that covered his body.

  The pain eventually caught up with him but the machines did not. Soon the corridors and halls he passed became familiar. He made his way back into the crowded atrium, somehow surprised by how little attention he was paid. He crossed towards his chambers convinced that every window or crevice he passed concealed a watcher, human or mechanical.

  For the first time in his life, someone had wanted him dead, not in boast, jest or the wild fury of an altercation, but just killed, plain and simple. The realisation of it strained his pulse and made his body cold. He shivered, hugged his shoulders to hide his fear, as much from himself as any other. The reality of adventure was not what he had expected. Nothing like it at all. All at once, he felt a little older.

  Part Three

  Flames of rebellion

  “Bastards. Bastards. Bastards.” Sweat glossed the knotted muscles of Jon’s back. He mumbled into his unkempt beard as his pitchfork bit deep into the straw. He dug ferociously, flinging clumps across the loading-bay floor to drive away the fears that circled and pecked at his mind like vultures. Heedless, his thoughts returned to the corpses rotting in the cap room overhead. He imagined Norbury and Josephus at his door, come to take him away.

  When the work was done, he rested on the pitchfork, panting like a dog, and stared at the crude trapdoor he had uncovered, three planks of cheap pine laid over bare earth. He lay on the ground and put his mouth to a knothole.

  “Anyone there?” he called quietly and hoped for no reply.

  A voice echoed back, muffled by the timbers, but very close. Jon could feel breath on his face, caught the warm vinegar stench of another man’s sweat. He glared angrily into the darkness. The voice came again, louder this time.

  “I said open up. It’s hotter than a monkey’s armpit down here.”

  Jon lifted the planks and sullenly stacked them against a wall, exposing a pit as rough as an army latrine that gaped in the floor of his loading bay. The top of a ladder appeared at its maw and Barehill hoisted himself out, his clothes spattered with dirt and clay.

  “This is taking too long,” Jon said, dry-mouthed.

  “We’re working as fast as we can.” Barehill laid a patronising hand on Jon’s shoulder. “Be calm. Where’s your good lady?”

  “Anna’s taken the baby to temple. Gods know we need the help.”

  Barehill grunted. “Man is alone in this world, which is why we must help each other. Have you told her yet?”

  Jon nearly threw a punch, but a small band of men wielding picks and shovels were already clambering out of the tunnel behind their leader.

  “Evening Bertrand, Dyer, Will,” Jon said through gritted teeth. He had been leaving the digging crew flasks of water for days. They nodded their respects.

  “We’ll have it fixed up proper by nightfall, Mister Miller,” Will promised.

  “Men have been digging through the night since they heard about your battle with the censor,” Barehill said. “I’ve had more volunteers than I know what to do with.”

  The workmen grinned in unison and Jon’s stomach wrenched. The news of the crime was seeping through the city like pestilential water. Barehill pulled his pipe from his pocket, set to lighting it.

  “Beat a censor with a knife,” Dyer exclaimed. “Fucking lethal, you are.”

  “It seems you’ve become a bit of a hero,” Barehill said.

  “Too right.” Bert was flushed with excitement.

  Jon shook his head in dismay. He was being fitted up. Once enough men started to believe a story like that, it became true.

  “Laila was there, she saw…” At the mention of her name, she appeared from the tunnel shaft, as if a phantom summoned from a grave. She was dressed mannishly, in a shirt and breeches, caked with dust. Her neck was streaked with sweat, and it had pooled in her collarbone. She stood, arms crossed, faced him with a look he could not read.

  “Ask her,” he said.

  “I’ve never seen a big man move so fast.”

  The bitch. Jon flushed with anger. He wanted to smash her face in, though the thought of hitting a woman turned his gaze to the floor in shame.

  Dyer tried to catch his attention. “Mister Miller? You alright?”

  Barehill stared at him quizzically.

  “I have to go,” Jon said.

  Barehill looked concerned. “Where?”

  “My rent is due. If I don’t pay the Peacock this afternoon he’ll have my mill and your army will have to find its rations elsewhere.”

  “The gangs are wicked – tyrants by another name. Matthew’s time will come soon enough, and Wylde’s. All of the gangs and their collaborators.”

  “Good luck with that. I still have to pay.”

  Barehill blew a smoke ring and the loading bay filled with the smell of fresh to
bacco. “Do what you need to do. We’ll finish up here. I’ll place a tail on you, for your safety, and set a lookout for your wife.”

  ***

  Jon walked the twisting route to the Bell Jar pursued by bad thoughts. Anna still didn’t know about the bodies, that was the main thing, and he had enough money from Barehill to keep the Peacock off his back for the time being. But then what? He might have tried his luck with the censors, despite everything, but that was before he had seen how they operated. Now he suspected they might hang him, just to be on the safe side. Running away was out of the question. If Mother was well, it might have been possible, but Norbury and Josephus would be after them faster than a fox on a rabbit.

  He continued towards the Bell Jar. A few feral dogs and cats crossed his path. The dogs fled at the sight of him, which made sense – they didn’t fancy ending the evening roasting on a spit. The cats, being godlike and sacred, knew that they were safe, even if they didn’t understand why.

  He looked at the clouds, fixed his gaze on one that loomed ominously overhead like the tall-eared shadow of He-who-sits-upon-the-mountain.

  “What?” he shouted at the sky. “What am I supposed to do?”

  His voice echoed in a peculiar silence. The streets of Turbulence were so curiously empty that he felt he might be in some kind of nightmare. Even the gangs’ lookouts were gone from their usual positions. He reached Swan Alley.

  “Jon.” The whisperer was Bill, hiding in a doorway.

  “Dog’s breath! You’re supposed to be a tail, not an escort. Get away from me.”

  “Can you smell it?”

  Bill was right. Turbulence air was always full of dirty smells, but today there was an unmistakable foulness, the acrid scent of black smoke. Fires were bad news in Turbulence’s tightly packed streets; they could take two dozen houses before a break was made and the ruins left to burn themselves out. Jon picked out the tallest of the derelict buildings that surrounded them.

  “Hold onto this and wait.” He tossed his coin sack underarm into Bill’s midriff sending him skidding backwards. “That’s Barehill’s money. So you’d better not lose it.”