by Tim Pratt
“You’re saying you won’t tell me?” Pimm said.
“Of course not! I just want to make sure I’m not overheard, and that you keep it in confidence.” He leaned across the desk. “Oswald is an expert in many things, but magnetism is one of his longtime passions. There are many theories about the origin of the aurora borealis, but some hypothesize that it involves fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field. I’ve overheard some of the scholars from other departments wonder aloud, in a way that seems like a joke but isn’t, quite, whether or not Oswald has embarked on another of his great experiments—if he’s tried to manipulate the Earth’s magnetic field, for some reason, and in the process… Well. Broken the sky.”
“The Earth’s magnetic field. That’s important, is it? For compasses and things?”
“No one really knows how important the field is, Pimm, but…” Conqueror licked his lips. “Some think it is a sort of… suit of armor for the Earth, protecting us from the hellish radiations of the sun, and from even more dangerous bombardments from space. If the field were to fail… Dinosaurs were the dominant species on this planet, once. Not any more. We could become extinct ourselves.”
“Surely not even Oswald would risk such a disruption?”
“If he thought the outcome might be interesting?” Conqueror said. “Then I think he might.”
All of this was fascinating—and a bit terrifying—but it didn’t give Pimm any idea at all of how Oswald might be involved with Value. “Does he have any interest in, ah… automatons?”
“Oswald? You might say so. He caused a minor scandal when he suggested that, in the wake of the Constantine Affliction, mechanical women could be created to serve the needs that men could no longer trust living women to fulfill.” Conqueror shuddered. “Not long after, the first of the clockwork comfort houses opened. Someone must have heard his idea and seen the profit-making potential.”
Ah ha. “Who makes the automatons, though?” Pimm said. “I’ve never seen them, but I’ve heard they’re astonishingly lifelike.”
Conqueror puffed thoughtfully. “You know, I’ve no idea. I would assume it’s some mad tinkerer with a basement full of unmentionable items who seized the moment and sold his personal playthings to the brothel owners when the opportunity arose. But now that you mention it, there are dozens of the things, aren’t there, which suggests a larger manufacturing operation… I truly don’t know. You don’t think it’s Oswald, do you?”
Pimm shrugged. “Merely curious, that’s all.”
“He certainly has the technical expertise,” Conqueror mused.
“And if he suggested the very idea himself…. from what you’ve told me he has a tendency to invent profitable solutions to problems he identifies himself.”
“He hardly needs the money… but I suppose he might create such things if it amused him. Seems a bit crass. I can’t imagine the Queen would approve.”
“It would be quite a scandal,” Pimm said. “Especially given the business partners one would need to thrive in such an undertaking.”
“The sort of criminals one could identify without a magnetic personality adjudicator,” Conqueror observed. “Well, well, well. I begin to understand why you came here to see me today.”
“Whatever do you mean? I’m only here to visit an old friend. And I really should be going. But before I do—have you heard of a man named Adams? A scientist, working in private research?”
“I can’t say I have. What’s his field of study?”
“Ah. Human physiology, broadly, but more specifically… the persistence of personality after death, I suppose.”
“Spiritualism,” Conqueror said, dismissively. “Hardly a science. Wishful thinking and delusion, mainly.”
“I’ve no doubt you’re right,” Pimm replied. He bid his friend good day, and set off across the campus, pondering. So Oswald was the inventor of the clockwork concubines, and he’d gone into business with Value. Of course, the man wouldn’t want that connection to come out, and he would be averse to a scandal—but to the point of making Value fear for his life? Someone was overreacting there. Unless there was more to the relationship between the scientist and the crime lord. Something niggled at the back of Pimm’s brain. Something about the Constantine Affliction…
He stopped in the shade of a flowering tree, and stared at nothing. Oswald had studied germ theory. Oswald liked grand social experiments. Oswald had saved Prince Albert’s life and met the Queen in the process, and later, after Prince Albert was locked away as an adulterer, he’d become close to the Queen. The Queen could help him make more of his grand social experiments a reality. Oswald had invented clockwork automatons—unproven, but grant the premise—which had proven quite profitable for him, and were a direct response to the Constantine Affliction.
Why, only yesterday Pimm had suggested to Ellie that the Affliction might have been created intentionally as a tool of revolution or social disruption, though he’d later dismissed the idea as his own tendency to seek a culprit for every misfortune that afflicted the world—if there was a crime, it stood to reason there must be a criminal. Natural disasters and plagues were not crimes… but what if the Constantine Affliction wasn’t natural? What if that was the secret Value knew? Discovering Oswald’s connection to the brothels led inevitably to Value, after all, and that connection could be the true danger to Sir Bertram, far more than any scandal about his involvement with clockwork women. But why would Value know anything about a man-made plague? Oswald would hardly have confided something like that in such a man—“Value,” Pimm said, and closed his eyes. What was another word for Value?
Worth.
Pimm hurried toward the nearest street. He needed answers. But first, he needed a cab. And before that, a drink wouldn’t be amiss. He patted the flask in his pocket, promising himself he’d only take one sip, or perhaps two. Sobriety was all well and good, but it could only take one so far.
Captivations
The ride was awkward, of course. Crammed in the back of a closed carriage with Carrington and two of his clockwork women, everyone jammed together uncomfortably close. In those narrow confines, Carrington chose to rely on a pistol pointed discreetly at Winnie’s midsection to maintain order. Ellie was a bit offended to see that Winnie was apparently considered more of a threat, though based on their actions at the picnic, it was a reasonable assumption. They bumped along the cobbles for a bit in silence, but Ellie couldn’t bear it, so she began to speak. “Mr. Carrington, is it? How did you come to work for Mr. Oswald?”
He shifted the pistol in her direction. “Don’t speak, Miss Skye. I’m in no mood to be interviewed.”
Winnie snorted. “Why shouldn’t we talk? You won’t shoot us. Not here and now, anyway. You’re a secretary. You can’t make decisions on your own. And Oswald wants to see us alive.”
A muscle in Carrington’s jaw twitched. “Fine. Chatter away, ladies. But do not expect answers from me.”
“I keep notes, you know,” Ellie said. “I am a reporter. I have written down my observations, and my suspicions. If something happens to me, and those notes are found, questions will be asked—”
Carrington chuckled. “Considering what will happen in this city soon, the disappearance of a troublesome lady reporter will hardly be a matter of concern.”
“What do you mean?” Winnie demanded. “What’s going to happen?”
“Why ask me?” Carrington said. “I’m just a secretary. Speak again, and I’ll have the clockwork women press their hands over your mouths. Just take a moment to think about where those hands have been, and the last things they likely touched, before you decide whether to test me, hmm?”
Ellie shivered, but fell silent. She’d assumed Oswald’s interest in her was meant solely to prevent her from revealing his connection to the clockwork brothels and criminals like Abel Value. But what if there was some deeper motive? What if Oswald was involved in something more serious than dabbling in clockwork whores? That alone would be embarrassing, certa
inly, but it wasn’t illegal, and hardly seemed to justify a response that included kidnapping. Her reporter’s instincts were not so much tingling now as screaming. There was a story here. A significant one. She was in an astonishingly good position to write that story. Assuming she lived long enough.
Pimm knocked on the door and stepped into Whistler’s office. The policeman looked up from a heap of papers on his messy desk and frowned. His hair was disarrayed, and the dark shadows of exhaustion hollowed his eyes. “Pimm? How did you hear so quickly?”
A chill cut through the warmth of recently-imbibed brandy. “Hear what?”
Whistler sat back in his creaking chair and sighed a long exhalation. “Ah. I assumed… Our Mr. Worth, the lady-killer. He is no longer with us.”
Pimm stared. “Did he—escape?”
Whistler shook his head. “Escaped mortal judgment, maybe. Dead in his cell when we checked on him this morning. We never even had the chance to interrogate him properly.”
“Did he do himself in?” Pimm asked. Worth hadn’t seemed to suffer from much in the way of a guilty conscience, and he’d certainly wanted desperately to go on living the night before, but sitting in a dark cell had a way of altering one’s viewpoint. Pimm would have been disappointed at losing a potential witness against Value, if he hadn’t known the old villain planned to run in fear for his life.
“No,” Whistler said. “No sign of anything like that, he was just on the floor, cold. Could be a heart attack, I suppose.”
Picking up on Whistler’s doubtful tone, he said, “Or?”
“If I thought anyone had a reason,” Whistler said carefully, “and that anyone had access, I might suspect poison.”
“Not to impugn the honor of your jailers,” Pimm said, “but someone with a sufficiently large purse could potentially buy access, don’t you think?”
“Yes.” Whistler’s voice was as tired and grim as his expression. “You said Worth could give us evidence against Value. Do you think Value might have brought about the man’s death?”
Pimm hesitated. He didn’t, actually. Value had other worries, chiefly that Worth might reveal things about Value’s real master, Bertram Oswald. But Pimm did not even remotely have enough evidence to bring up Oswald’s name in the office of a London police inspector. “I suppose it’s possible,” Pimm said. This at least provided him with an opening to ask the question he’d actually come for. “What do we know about Abel Value, really?”
Whistler frowned. “I have his file here.” He opened an envelope and spilled out a scant few documents. “There’s precious little, really. He’s never been arrested, though we’ve questioned him enough times. He claims to be a respectable businessman, and we know he owns a few taverns and, of course, the clockwork brothels, which are all kept scrupulously legal, absolutely free of human prostitutes. But we also know he still employs living women, on the streets, through a complex network of employees—know it, I say, but we cannot prove it. We suspect he’s involved with smuggling, too, and various thefts, but he keeps himself above such activity personally, and we’ve yet to find a witness who’ll testify against him. I shouldn’t tell you this, but… Mr. Worth isn’t the first suspicious death we’ve seen. You know about Martinson, of course, which did look like a suicide, but might not have been. We’ve also had people recant their sworn statements suddenly, only to be seen later wearing fine fur coats or smoking an altogether better class of cigar than before. Value is an organized criminal. He’ll bribe when he can, and kill when he can’t. He’s not a bloodthirsty madman. He just sees people as either impediments or advantages in his business, and treats them as such, without regard for their humanity.”
“That fits with my own knowledge of the man,” Pimm said. “But where is he from? He must be in his late forties, at least. What did he do before becoming a criminal mastermind?”
Whistler shrugged. “No idea. We’d never heard of him before, oh, three years ago? He has made no public statements at all about his history, though his accent suggests he’s a longtime Londoner. He seemed to appear fully formed, like a dark Athena burst from the head of a particularly thuggish Zeus.”
“And he came on the scene just as the first cases of the Constantine Affliction were diagnosed,” Pimm mused.
“Hmm? I suppose that’s right, yes.”
“What do we know about the late Mr. Worth’s wife?”
Whistler frowned. “Do you mean can we reach her, to notify her about Mr. Worth’s death? She vanished, you know, she was one of the earliest transformations we heard about, her husband came in raving about how his wife had become a man and run away.”
“She was, in fact, the very first victim,” Pimm said. “At least, the first ever reported. But what do we know about her before she ran off, I mean?”
“Mabel Worth,” Whistler said. “She was notorious. Most of the criminal classes called her Madam Worth. She’d been a prostitute herself, in her youth, but when she got older she took up a management position. Ran a bawdy house of the very lowest repute in Southwark, while her husband oversaw a group of girls who worked out on the street. Nothing illegal about all that at the time, unsavory thought it might have been, but there were always rumors that the Worths would snatch young women visiting from the country off the street, dose them with laudanum, and press them into service. Madam Worth was by all accounts far more fearsome than her husband, known to thrash with a riding crop any customer who wasn’t quick enough to pay his bill. A nasty piece of work, always with an eye on the bottom line, ruthless and pragmatic. By contrast, her husband was a bit of a mess, often arrested for public drunkenness, or for beating on his women openly in the street. Madam Worth was certainly the more dangerous of the two.”
“And she turned into a man… and vanished… and, perhaps only weeks later, you first heard the name Abel Value? Mabel Worth vanishes, and Abel Value appears?”
Whistler stared at him, and, true to his name, let out a long, low whistle. “Pimm. That’s quite a leap to make, based on a chance similarity of names.”
“And a similarity of timing,” Pimm said. “And of business interest. And of general personality. Madam Worth was a formidable woman in a world dominated by formidable men, yes? The type of woman who might see her transformation into a man not as a tragedy, or a terrible judgment from God, or a jape by the Devil—but as an opportunity?”
“It’s a colorful theory,” Whistler said. “And there’s a certain pleasing symmetry to the idea. But Value had money, enough to set up and stock those clockwork brothels, and those aren’t cheap. Madam Worth did well enough, I suppose, but she couldn’t have made that kind of money.”
“Perhaps she had investors,” Pimm mused. “And her husband was living suspiciously well, wasn’t he, for an out-of-work pimp? That suggests someone was paying for his lifestyle too, doesn’t it?”
“Even if Madam Worth did become Abel Value, I’m not sure it changes anything. There’s no law against having your sex changed by a plague, or changing your name, either. Value’s crimes aren’t any different if he began life as Madam Worth. It might change his status in the eyes of his fellow criminals, I suppose, if they found out he’d begun life as a woman, but legally speaking…”
“Oh, I know,” Pimm said thoughtfully. “Though as I understand it, the rulings that have come down say that the sex you were at birth remains your sex, legally speaking, even after a transformation. I suppose that means, since women aren’t sentenced to work the treadmill at Newgate Prison, Value might be spared that indignity if he is indeed Mabel Worth.”
“Deucedly peculiar law, I’ve always thought,” Whistler said. “The Affliction isn’t even grounds for divorce—which means if a husband is transformed, two women can be married, or two men, if the wife changes. Though legally speaking I suppose they’re still ‘man’ and ‘wife.’ No wonder so many change their names, run away, and try to pass.”
“It’s all down to inheritance laws,” Pimm said, shrugging. “If an eldest daughter tr
ansformed into a man, she might inherit over her brothers, and a son transformed into a daughter might lose his inheritance. The rich have a certain amount of influence when it comes to making the laws, and they are loath to suffer change or disruption.”
“All I inherited from my father was a pocketwatch,” Whistler said. “But I suppose in a family like yours, it matters.”
“I pray every day for the health of my elder brother,” Pimm said, “so that it won’t matter. Do I look like a Marquess to you?”
“No,” Whistler said. “You have entirely too strong a chin.”
Pimm rose. “Thanks for the information, old man. You’ve helped me satisfy my curiosity, at any rate. I suppose I might drop by Abel Value’s office—at least, the last one I know about—and let him know of his husband’s unfortunate demise.”
“Assuming Worth is Value’s late husband,” Whistler said. “And assuming Value didn’t actually order the man’s murder himself.”
“The wonderful thing about being an independent operator,” Pimm said, “is that I can go merrily on my way fueled solely by assumptions, without your need for tedious minutiae like proof and evidence.”
“And here I thought the wonderful thing about being independent was your freedom to be very nearly drunk by midday,” Whistler said.
Pimm winced, and turned the wince into a smile. He’d tried to speak very clearly, slowly, and soberly—but overly-precise diction could reveal a drunkard just as well as slurring. “I don’t know how you do it,” Pimm said. “The kind of work you and I do, entirely sober? The mind rebels.”