Mr. Stitch

by Chris Braak

  Valentine looked at the daunting array of material and sighed. Hundreds of confiscated books, along with probably ten times that many executions, and the stupid bastards kept writing them. How many centuries of history does it take for men to finally give up on something?

  “Well,” he said aloud, as he ran his finger lightly along the volumes. “Of course they’re crazy. That’s why they’re heretics.” He found a fat black volume, brought to the Black Library during the 17thcentury, and drew it out. It was in an old-fashioned Sarpejk dialect that Valentine found he could read tolerably well, and he sat down to muddle through it.

  It was only an hour or two before he gave up, and turned back to the shelves, looking for something else. He found a pamphlet from only half a century ago and breezed through it, looking for key words or phrases, jotting down notes when he was of a mind. He continued this process-picking a book at random and skimming it, trying to just get some idea of what ectoplasmatic texts were supposed to look like, for the better part of the day.

  Valentine had been chewing one particularly tough text in Old Middle Thranc-lost in a tangle of increasingly-obscure descriptors that he couldn’t determine were bad metaphor, a secret code, anagogic theology, or just a peculiarity of 15thcentury Thranc grammar-when the adjunct rushed back into the room, face ruddy and panicked.

  “Mr. Vie-Gorgon. Inspector. Sir,” he said, gasping for breath. “They sent…your driver sent…sent me.” He gasped again. “They need you. In Red Lanes. There’s been…an incident.”

  Nine

  “So, I’ve been reading this stuff,” Valentine was saying, but Beckett wasn’t really listening. “Some of it, you know, not too much, because then, well, it’s just complicated isn’t it?”

  They were in the dining room of the Hotel Jaise, which offered a bill of fare that would have been fantastically intimidating to anyone except for Valentine, who immediately began to proceed through all five courses of dinner. Beckett picked at some kind of complicated fish plate-some intricate arrangement of smoked fishes and pickled fruits, slathered with a tangy, reddish-brown sauce whose origins the old coroner couldn’t place. Rich, the way they made all the sauces in Sar-Sarpek these days, but spicier. Probably another Corsay transplant.

  Beckett forced his attention back to Valentine, whose explanation was only interrupted for the length of time it took him to shovel some delicious new morsel into his mouth, at a speed that must have made actually tasting the food impossible, and was no doubt a great insult to the chef. “…mmmfgh. Anyway, look, the old books, the ones in the Abbey library? They’re a mess. Every last one of them. I mean, I didn’t read every one of them. But all the ones I looked at, and I think it’s a safe bet that no one really knows what they’re talking about. They can’t…” he swallowed a spoonful of fruit concoction. “…mggh. Can’t make up their mind, I mean, whether they’re trying to talk in a secret code and just allude to what they mean, or if they’re giving instructions, or what. I mean, we know that ectoplasmatics is a science, right, but none of the ectoplasmatists seem to know it. Like the science is just an accidental…” he had some more fruit. “This is really good, by the way. Tart, a little sweet, but smooth. Sorry. Right, the science is just an accident of the religious stuff. They’re doing science, but they think they’re praying, you know what I mean?”

  Gorud was watching Valentine intently, but Beckett had no idea whether or not the therian understood him. How smart were they? The coroner knew that he tended to think of them like children. Or else, to think of them as they appeared: unusually intelligent monkeys. But being smarter than a monkey wasn’t the same thing as being as smart as a person. Therians could speak all different languages, Beckett recalled, but they couldn’t read. Is it possible to be intelligent but illiterate?

  The therian was looking at him, suddenly, while Valentine droned on. Gorud had bright orange eyes, a fiery gold color in the lamplight, with a black sclera. He blinked rarely, just stared at him with those close-set eyes and heavy brows, from atop his elongated muzzle. He sometimes puffed out his cheeks. The ruff of fur around his face quivered as though stirred by a gentle breeze and, unaccountably uncomfortable, Beckett turned away from him.

  Someone had let birds into the dining room-a pair of small white snowbirds that flittered around the ceiling beams, chasing each other around. They were fighting, or mating, Beckett wasn’t sure how to tell. The birds were very white.

  “Beckett?”

  Valentine was speaking to him. “What?” Beckett muttered. “What is it?”

  “I was asking if…are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right.” He looked down at his fish. “I’m just not especially hungry. Had a big lunch.”

  “Yes. Okay, right. Well, have you seen something like this before? The pamphlets are typewritten, right, so they must be new. The pamphlets must be new, I mean, but maybe there were earlier forms…?”

  “Well,” Beckett snapped at him. “Did you see any in the library?”

  “Ah. No.”

  Beckett shrugged, and picked at his fish again. It kept shifting away from the fork in tiny increments, as though it were ever-so-slightly trying to avoid it. He couldn’t blame it. If he were chopped up on a plate, he probably wouldn’t want to be eaten either.

  “…and there’s a city made out of brass, on the other side of a stormy ocean, and there are things that live in that city-”

  “What?” Beckett’s attention snapped back to Valentine. “There’s what?”

  “Uhm.” Valentine looked over to Gorud, who did not respond. “I said there were diagrams. In the pamphlet.” He was gesturing to a stack of rumpled papers-notes that Beckett had not seen him pull out. “I made a sketch, see? It’s something to do with the lungs and the four humors, but, you know, like I said, I didn’t want to read it too closely…”

  Beckett nodded again, and was then possessed of a sudden urge to look beneath the table. He gently drew the table cloth up, to look down at his feet, and saw that he was standing in water. He looked up and around, and saw that the entire width of the floor was covered in six inches of black, swirling brine. The other diners swirled their feet in it. The waiters splashed through it as they brought people their meals.

  “I…” Beckett began, but hesitated. Isn’t there supposed to be water on the floor? That’s where they get the fish from. He could, indeed, see small, slim-bodied animals wriggling through the water, yellow lights glittering off of their backs. Not fish. Were they eels? The animals began wriggling towards his ankles now, and one turned upwards, opening a tiny mouth that was just a round aperture filled with tiny little barbs, whirling in a little circle.

  He stood up with such speed that he unconsciously caused his chair to be knocked to the floor, splashing black water over the other diners, who seemed little perturbed by it. “I don’t…”

  “Beckett?” Valentine was saying, from a very long way off, down a tunnel or a well, his voice an echo reaching out over an incomprehensible stony distance. “Beckett? Are you all right?”

  The old coroner shook his head to clear it. “Yes. I’m fine. It’s…hot in here. I need some air.”

  “I’ll go with you-” Valentine said at once, but Beckett interrupted him.

  “No. No, I need…I need you to do something else for me.”

  “All right.”

  “Go back to Raithower House get Karine…”

  “Karine doesn’t work there anymore.”

  “The secretary. Whoever’s handling the reports now. Get him to look for break-ins in…” munitions depots. Where were the munitions depots? “Arkady Green.” They’d moved the vaults there while Old Bank was being rebuilt. “Reports from the gendarmes.”

  “You think the weapon was stolen…?”

  “It,” Beckett fumbled with his coat, carefully trying not to attract the attention of the leeches, which would dart toward him if he moved too suddenly. “It could be. Or someone could have made it. So we check. If no one stole it, t
hen we’ll know.”

  “I will, but it can wait until morning, Beckett, at least let me get you a cab…”

  “No.” Beckett snapped, putting his coat on, numb fingers struggling only slightly with the buttons. “Now. The longer we wait, the harder it gets.” He splashed out of the dining room and into the cold, cold night air.

  The stagnant water in the Hotel gave way to a small stream that ran along the gutters of Red Lanes-once gutters that held blood and offal from the district’s butcher shops and slaughterhouses, emptied of their carnal waste as the city grew and the abattoirs were pushed farther and farther away. They held briny water now, fluid and untouched by the cold, when any but the most sidereal waters would have frozen solid.

  The Second Winter of the year before, the city waterworks had had to run their heat emitters in shifts. Phlogiston was rationed, and without the flow of that miracle fuel, everyone was required to cut back. Second Winter had dropped on the city like a landslide, then, and during one of the off-shifts, certain pipes in New Bank had burst. Water had poured out of them and down the streets and sprayed across walls and gargoyles and downspouts and statues, and frozen almost at once. A few hours after the incident, a whole quarter of the city was covered in glittering white ice, like a fairy kingdom in a wonder-story. Enterprising children had made use of old shutters as sleds, and spent an afternoon sliding down the steep hill of Demogorgon Street, skidding to a halt, all apple-cheeked cheer and breathless laughter, just where New Bank gave way to Chapel Height.

  Wet water didn’t last long in the city in Second Winter, but there was Beckett, following the tiny river down dark streets, frigid air clutching at his lungs as he drew deep breaths, jogging slightly, then running, then…

  Then he was at the waterfront, at Bridge Street, where a delicate Crabtree-Daior bulwark served as a railing for young lovers to lean against, should they ever be out strolling and of a mind to observe the flow of the River Stark. The briny stream rushed through the gaps in the stone barrier, and splashed soundlessly into the body of the river. On the far bank, the city loomed; jumbled stone architecture giving way to a red desert hill, where far atop a the block, walled city of Kaarcag stood, a monument to heresy, casting its black shadow through time and space.

  The Stark was deep and swift, and it never froze, not even in the depths of winter. Tiny little islands of white ice bobbed in its currents, drawn from eddied pools upriver, carried without circumstance to the sea. The Stark was cold, always cold, even at the height of Summer. A man could still die from hypothermia in the Summer; he’d die in minutes if he leapt into the water now, if he looked out at its hypnotic whorls and by some trick of the senses, became convinced that its horrific cold was a kind of warmth…a soothing stillness of the will…

  “Inspector Beckett.”

  The coroner turned away from his contemplation of the Stark, noting with some surprise how close he was standing to the railing-his hips were practically pressed against it, he could feel the cold stone pulling the warmth from his body, right through his heavy coat. Loping down the street in his peculiarly-canine, four-legged gait was Gorud, wrapped in heavy wool, eyes fixed and unblinking.

  “Inspector Beckett,” the therian said again, as he approached. “Mr. Valentine had some worries of you, and sent that I should inquire.”

  “I’m fine, Gorud. I just needed some air.”

  The therian sat on his heels, beneath a blue-glowing streetlamp, eyes shining eerily in the dark, and did not say anything.

  “I’m fine,” Beckett repeated, slipping his hand into his pocket and feeling for the grip of his revolver.

  Gorud yawned, then, displaying those huge canine teeth. He got to his feet and crept closer. His gloves and shoes were a soft whisper against the cobblestone. “You see the Water, sometimes?”

  “What?”

  The therian made an incomprehensible gesture with its long hand. “When you use the venom, you see the Water? Like the ocean. It smells like salt.”

  Cross the Water. The first stage of veneine overdose. “Yes. Sometimes. Do you…how do you know about that?”

  Gorud bobbed his head and puffed out his cheeks again. “The venom comes from Corsay. My people drink it, sometimes, for…” he gestured with his hands, groping for the word.

  “A ceremony?”

  “Like a ceremony, but not like that. We drink it. If a thukeri drinks too much, he sees the Water.”

  The old coroner relaxed the grip on his weapon. He shuddered with sudden relief whose source he could not quite ascertain. “Yes. The water. Sometimes…sometimes I’ve been past the water. The City of Brass. Do…your people…know that?”

  Gorud said nothing at first, just scratched at the end of his nose. “Humankeri, you. Where do you think the world is from?”

  If he was startled by the sudden change of topic, Beckett did not show it. “The Church Royal says that the world is a Word, the voice of the Speaker. He Spoke, and here we are.”

  The therian shuffled forward, its gruff voice low and conspiratorial. “And. Was there another Word? A different Word than this one, you know?”

  Beckett shrugged. “Some people thought so. Harcourt Wolfram did. He was a scientist. He thought there was a whole stack of Words, right on top of each other, and he thought he could find a way to move between them.” He saw a face, frozen in a terrifying rictus, head lolling about on a neck like it was broken, a shimmering panoply of real and unreal limbs. “He might have been right. But if there are other Words…we don’t do well there.”

  Gorud nodded. “We think something like this. But not a Word. There is a Dreamer, yes, and this is his dream. One day he will wake, and all of this will vanish.” He made a popping sound with his lips. “Poof. But this is not the first dream. The Dreamer once woke before, and all that dream went away. But it didn’t go, it just isn’t. Somewhere, He still dreams it. He dreams of a Brass City and an Ocean. That is the place the dreamsnakes come from. That is where their venom takes you.”

  “Takes me? It’s not a real place. It’s a hallucination.”

  The therian spread his hands. “I do not know, ‘hallucination.’ It is not a real place the way this is a real place. But it is a real place. Some things still live there.”

  They were quiet for a while then, as icy wind whipped around them. The water that Beckett saw had trickled to a stop, and the veneine warmth began to boil off his body and into the empty night air. The beginnings of a headache lurked around, just outside his field of perception. His knees and elbows throbbed, his right hand was sore. “Hmf.” Beckett said, eventually. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You use too much,” Gorud said. “The Water is dangerous. The City is worse.”

  Beckett didn’t tell the creature about what was beyond the Brass City, about the black basalt towers on the moon. About the things that he thought might live there. “It doesn’t matter. I need it.”

  Gorud nodded. “It…tastes bad. To be without it. Hurts.”

  “It hurts all the time,” Beckett spat, as his headache began to ring in his ears again. “It feels like there’s broken glass in my joints, like someone’s been driving nails into my head. I can’t even get up without the stuff. I can barely move.” He pulled down his scarf and showed the therian his ruined, half-transparent face. “Do you know what this is? It’s called the fades. You get it from working in factories that use flux. Usually children get it. It kills them before they turn fifteen. Sometimes, it doesn’t show up until you’re an adult. But it kills you just the same. Two years, ten years, no one gets away from it. And it just rots your body away.”

  “You worked in a factory?”

  “For two years, after my father died. A long time ago. Before they knew what caused it, made them start ventilating the factories better.” Beckett snorted. “The first factory regulations were put in place the year after I quit to join the marines.”

  Gorud said nothing for a moment, then, “Still, it’s too much.”

  “No. I n
eed it. I can’t work without it.”

  “You think the world will fall apart if you stop working? Will He wake up?”

  The old coroner rubbed at the number corner of his mouth. “Huh. No. Probably not.”

  “So. Why?”

  Beckett shrugged. “What else can I do? It’s this, or lie in bed until I die.” He sniffed and looked around. “It’s cold. We should go. You drink djang?”

  “Haha,” Gorud said. It was not a laugh, exactly, but a sound meant to indicate that he was laughing. “Where do you think you got djang from? Thukeri have invented djang.”

  “Well, come on then,” the coroner said gruffly. “I’m thirsty.”

  Ten

  Emilia Vie-Gorgon was nothing if not generous, and with the nearly bottomless wealth of the Raithower Vie-Gorgons at her disposal, she could afford to be. When Skinner had returned to her boarding-house, late that night, she found that most of her belongings had already been packed up and burly-sounding men with heavy, competent footsteps were in the process of moving them out. Mrs. Crewell, astonishment plain in her voice, had been waiting for her with a handful of letters, details of the arrangement between the former coroner and the Vie-Gorgon heiress.

  “It says there’s a house in Lanternbridge,” Mrs. Crewell was saying, as men tromped past with trunks of clothes, “leased under William Vie-Gorgon’s name that’s mean to be for you and your assistant. There’s a cook there, and a maid that should come in once a day, and you’re to be given an allowance of…my goodness.” She quoted a figure substantially higher than Skinner had ever made with the Coroners, but must have still been paltry compared to the funds that the Raithower Vie-Gorgons regularly had access to. “If you don’t mind my asking, Miss Skinner, what…what is this all about?”