by William Ray
“And Thomas?”
Salka’s frown deepened a moment, then broke into wide grin and deep musical laughter, “He works down below, at his yards. His name is plastered on the side of the building; you can’t possibly miss it.”
“Wait, is Rain Thomas the Thomas from Thomas’s Canned Sausages?” Gus was shocked and felt like an idiot for not having made the connection. The product had been such a common everyday object for years, and the idea that they might be associated with an actual person of the same name had never crossed his mind.
The gob laughed again and nodded, carefully keeping the widow’s parasol between himself and the sun. Gus shook his head, trying to shake off the foolishness he felt. “Thanks. That’s all helpful. Do you know Doctor Phand?”
“I’d hoped for that honor once his tower was approved, but so far I’ve only interacted with his partner.” Salka’s expressions were tricky to read, but Gus had some experience in it from gambling with his sort in Rakhasin, and the well-dressed gob seemed legitimately friendly but tired.
“Any chance you’ve seen Saucier about lately? I’d heard he was out this way.” Salka responded with just a shake of his head, and Gus suspected his window for extracting useful information was drawing to a close. “I probably owe you a drink or something at least. Where can I find you later?”
With a chuckle, the gob fished a calling card out of his pocket and handed it to Gus. It read Salka’tok’tok’ton, Viridian Club, 6th and Blisan, Khanom, Aelfua. “I’m here most evenings. I haven’t seen him lately, but it’s one of Richard Saucier’s favorite haunts whenever he’s in town. You should come by.”
Saucier had met with someone who signed off as ‘D.M.’, and Gus supposed he might find them at the Viridian, but he could hardly ask the gob for the initials of everyone he might have met there. At least the false Alice Phand was distinctive, even if Gus didn’t know her real name yet. “You have any tall blondes?” Gus asked, looking over the card.
Either the gob spent so much time at the club he’d had cards printed with it as his address, or he was the owner. A gob owning a fancy club seemed unlikely, but then so did the idea that the owner would let one just hang around long enough for one to print cards with it as his address. A waiter or other employee wouldn’t usually have a need for calling cards.
The gob smiled in amusement, an expression so easy to read that Gus wondered if Salka had practiced at making more human expressions. “Not tonight, but we’ve got a new act I think you’ll enjoy. Come by—you can stand me that drink.”
Gus laughed and pocketed that card, “Yeah, I’ll bet.”
Salka tipped his hat and then strolled down the lane, leaving Gus to his thoughts. Miss Aliyah Gale had opposed the tower and was apparently a power of sorts here in Khanom, but if she had arranged the kidnapping to stop the tower, why didn’t she just chime in on the vote against the tower’s budget to stop it then? Why was she meeting with Phand apart from the other Councilors?
Thomas and Ulm both voted for the tower, but something changed their minds between the first vote and the second. Maybe the tower wasn’t the issue at all, but if not, then why was Saucier still missing? Could he have disappeared to take out some grudge against his partner?
And why go to the bother to kidnap Doctor Phand? Kidnappers wanted something a dead victim wouldn’t get them, and with no ransom demanded, it must be something Phand knew or could do for them while alive.
Tumbling through his thoughts, he looked up at the street signs. From what he remembered of the map, Miss Aliyah Gale’s office was closest, but if she was as major a player as the discussion at the Exposition office indicated, then whatever ruse he could work to get a moment of her time would probably only work once. Once she knew him as an inquiry agent, he wouldn’t be likely to get another chance to interview her.
He didn’t know enough yet to ask her all the right questions, and tipping his suspicions early could make things go sideways if she was involved. A common criminal could only go so far underground, but someone like Miss Aliyah Gale, who could buy up entire rail cars on a whim, could easily disappear off to Mazhar and live like the queen of the Tuls.
Looking along the lane, he decided it might be easiest to start downhill and work his way up. For the first time, he noticed the double streetlights along Queen’s—electrics going in to replace the old gas lamps. Men were hard at work bringing in the future, heedlessly building it atop the remains of the recent past. How much easier it would be if the past could simply vanish the way the Elves had.
~
Sara Calfaur, “A Response to Mr. Allison’s Letter on Keat’s Field”
To be sure, the rush of fortune hunters to Keat’s Field would challenge anyone. Even if Sheriff Sorley cannot maintain the peace in the face of such difficulty, it is ill-becoming of Mister Allison to question the wisdom of the people’s choice in selecting their champion.
Amid all the chaos and lawlessness surrounding it, that frontier village still stands, proud and prosperous. It would be a testament to the skill and suitability of any candidate holding the position of Sheriff under such trying circumstances, and the fact that he again questions Sheriff Sorley’s qualifications shows his true concern is not the security of Keat’s Field but rather his masculine insecurity here at home.
– Khanom Daily Converser, 13 Tal. 389
(Reprinted from the Gemmen Herald, 11 Tal. 389)
~
- CHAPTER 16 -
In search of a cab, Gus drifted down Queen’s and ended up walking alongside Palace Park. Across the street, he could see the curious one-sided trees again, which he now realized once would have grown pressed against the walls of the queen’s palace or at base of the mysterious Embassy Building.
Why the trees had not begun to fill out in the nearly four decades after those buildings vanished was another mystery in itself. Then again, he supposed with an entire civilization disappearing overnight, some residual strangeness was to be expected.
Ahead, a construction crew wrestled with a gigantic spool of wire. Following the wire as it extended into the distance, Gus wondered what they all connected to.
His understanding was that, somewhere, some great engine had to be running to generate the electricity. He suspected it was yet another of the many great engines adding to the bank of sooty clouds below the sparkling upper city. Those clouds of soot trapped below the plateau seemed likely to be more of that residual strangeness.
Gus crossed the street to avoid the construction and found himself outside the stern-faced façade of the First Bank of Khanom. He never understood why banks took such pleasure in pronouncing themselves ‘first’ in an area; it always seemed to indicate that they had bungled the job sufficiently to give rise to demand for a second bank. Lost in his musings on the city’s financial systems, Gus paid little attention to the people outside until he nearly bumped into one he actually recognized.
“Dolly Dench!” he proclaimed in surprise, shocked to see the unmistakable scarecrow frame of his disgraced acquaintance loitering in a public place. After being shunned even in impolite society, Gus had expected to find Dolly hiding out someplace a bit skulkier.
For his part, Dolly looked horrified at the sound of his name as he spun to face his accuser. Dolly stared a moment, not recognizing Gus at first, the wheels spinning behind his eyes as he tried to place him. At last they clicked in recognition, and Dolly gave a nervous smile, clearly uncertain if Gus was on his trail or someone else’s.
“Gus, old boy,” he ventured, “It’s been an age. I’ve been going by Adolphus here. Given the unpleasantness back west, I decided it best to use my full name for a spell.”
Dolly seemed even thinner than Gus had last seen him and looked a fair bit older than he should for only being in his middle-thirties, but Gus supposed that was only natural, given the stresses of his misanthropy.
Gus smiled like they were old friends and said, “What’re you doing here? I’d heard t
hey had you down for a stretch for doing a kinchin lay.”
That was a lie, of course. Gus knew the police had never been able to frame a trial to fit the exceedingly careful Dolly Dench, but their final attempt had ruined his reputation, which might have been Clarke’s entire purpose in leveling the charges. Only the worst sort would work with a crook that had done the kinchin lay, and Dolly was snooty enough to quickly piss off that sort of criminal element.
Dolly’s eyes narrowed, a scowl crossing his face as he lowered his voice and hissed out, “That was a false charge! Everyone knows I’m well above that sort of thing. Only the lowest of the low would ever—”
When Gus grinned with bemusement at the opening of his tirade, Dolly sighed and dropped it. Turning his eyes back towards his study of the bank, Dolly said, “I slipped the leash and made my way here. If word of that nonsense gets out around here, I’ll be ruined again, and my Ogrian is still terrible.”
‘Ogrian’ was the Garren word for Garren, and if Dolly was studying their language, then needing it was a possibility the man took very seriously. The thought of Dolly being chased out all the way to Garren was funny, but things weren’t that bad for him yet. With his long coat and continued focus on the bank, it was quickly apparent to Gus that Dolly wasn’t just here casing the place for later.
Watching people coming and going from the bank, Gus wasn’t certain who the man’s accomplices were, and unable to resist needling Dolly a little more, he asked, “So are you the stall?”
That offended scowl reappeared and Dolly replied, “Please. We just move slowly until the rush before lunch. We wait for a sloppy withdrawal, and it’s a simple weed.” Gus nodded, following Dolly’s gaze until he was able to pick out the crew’s stall loitering closer to the door.
As Gus watched, a man bustled out of the bank, conspicuously pausing at the door to adjust his hat, which immediately set the stall into motion towards a harried looking fellow who exited the bank shortly after, carrying the narrow folio that held his bank records and recent withdrawal.
“It’s been a pleasure, so if you’ll pardon me,” Dolly murmured, slipping away to close in on the mark just a few steps further away than his stall.
To untrained eyes, the scene would seem perfectly innocent, one man pausing by the door as two others headed in to do business with the bank. The mark would be forced to weave around the man adjusting his hat as Dolly and his stall came towards the bank from opposite directions.
Usually the newly arriving customers would probably step aside for the poor mark, and everyone would just continue on. Today, if all went to plan, the stall would bump into the mark and then pause to offer his apologies, perhaps dusting off the man’s coat as if somehow it had gotten dirty in the process.
Once that happened, Dolly would be the hook and reach in to quickly slip the cash out of the mark’s bank folio. The mark would be on his way, not noticing his lightened load until much later. Even if he got wise, he would never notice Dolly slip by, and the stall, the only one of the three who caught the mark’s attention, wouldn’t have the cash if the police searched him.
Today was the poor mark’s lucky day. As the stall drew close, Gus faked a cough as he called out, “Lam!”
Just as he suspected, Dolly’s cues hadn’t changed since he ran this routine in Gemmen, and with well-drilled nonchalance, the stall veered away, ducking past the mark without providing the crucial distraction the hook required for his weeding. The man adjusting his hat suddenly found its proper fit and made a show of heading down the street to go about his business. The mark, none the wiser, tucked his folio tightly beneath his arm and went on his way.
Dolly, of course, knew right away where that false call had come from and stomped indignantly back to Gus. “What in the hells was that for?”
Gus grinned impishly and replied, “I wasn’t done talking to you! I’m looking for someone—tall blonde woman from Khanom, a few inches taller than me, handsome enough but big, muscle not fat, with either money or maybe just connections to money. Might be with a club that wears a lot of green, but that might just be a misdirect. She’s part of a snatch job I need to track down.”
Hands on his hips, Dolly looked particularly ridiculous in the oversized coat he wore for weeding. “What makes you think you can come here, ruin my business, and then start asking for favors?”
“Well, there’s the classic approach, where I could tell the local police about you, but that’s probably not good for my reputation, eh Dolly? You know all about the dangers of reputation by now, I’m sure.” Gus gave the man a mild smile and let him work the true threat out for himself. After a beat, Gus added, “But we’re old friends, and what good is a friend you can’t call on for the occasional favor?”
After a moment of defiant glaring did not make Gus apologize and slink away, Dolly sighed. “Fine. Just this one thing though, then you’re gone. Blonde girl, maybe wears green. I’ll check, but that’s not much to go on. With all the nonsense up north lately, there’s plenty more blondes going around, you know.”
With a grin and a pat on the shoulder, Gus added, “This one is tall and has connections to someone with big money and big plans. I’m sure you’ll come up with something.” He gave Dolly a parting wink then turned towards the corner to flag down a cab.
Lately Emily had been doing more and more of the necessary rumormongering, leaving him to the physical legwork like trailing people around the city. It wasn’t exactly what he’d hired her for, but she seemed to know a lot of people and did it well. He was happy to see he wasn’t losing his own touch for it.
She’d have been proud of him he thought, for handling that without having to resort to bribes or helping Dolly with some sort of scam, but then he realized she probably would have something religious against blackmail. He couldn’t remember if Caerleon’s book had anything specific to say on that topic, but it seemed like the sort of thing the Trinity was usually against.
The first cab he flagged flatly refused as soon as he asked the driver to take him to Thomas’s office. For the second, Gus hopped inside before telling the man his destination. The driver asked for an outrageous fee, and when Gus objected, the man pointed out that it was down below, and he would have a hard time finding a decent fare for the trip back up.
Gus offered to hire him for the return trip, and the cabbie replied that there wasn’t enough money to convince him to wait around the yards. It did not bode well for the return, but Gus agreed to the exorbitantly priced one-way trip, and the cabbie called the horses into motion.
The upper city was surprisingly flat for a metropolis built atop a hill, and Gus idly wondered if its shape was naturally occurring, if the Elves had smoothed the thing over with magic or just stamped it down with an army of slaves. When the cab reached the edge of the nicer parts of town, there was a noticeable jolt as it crested the steep angle to begin their descent.
They did not get far before hitting the layer of smoke that separated the city. First came a light breeze blowing across the slope, and then they plunged into a bank of foul smelling and gritty smoke that stank of ash and industry. Gus began coughing as soon as they passed inside, and looking ahead, he saw the cabbie had pulled a kerchief over his mouth, apparently well prepared for just this sort of occasion.
On the train, they had sped through this layer of airborne filth in the blink of an eye while safely tucked inside the closed train windows, but the horses did not move as quickly. They vigorously shook their heads as they passed through the gray, then snorted and bobbed in equine relief when they finally emerged on the other side. Able to breathe more deeply again, Gus quickly discovered that although the thick layer of smoky fog had been passed, the air below it still stank.
The strange belt of fouled air left the city’s worst neighborhoods lining the gray bank, separated from its nicest districts by that intangible wall. The cloud extended overhead as the ground sloped away. Tenements, dive bars, and cheaper sorts of shops lined
the upper slope, places now crumbling from poverty rather than actual age, all cloaked in perpetual gloom by the sooty exhalations of the businesses just below them.
The buildings they passed next were still relatively young, but all bore stripes of sooty discoloration along their sides, which Gus took as evidence that there must be some sort of tide to the wind above so that it occasionally drove the gray lower to the ground. Looking around, he realized that on the slopes there was not a brick to be seen—all the buildings were wooden, cheaply painted, with businesses frequently identified by names that were painted directly on the storefront, some barely legible beneath the soot.
Everything on the slope was packed so tightly that Gus wondered how they hadn’t already all burned down. Khanom was much drier than Gemmen, as evidenced by the lack of lingering spring snow. Living in a tent city through Rakhasin’s dry season had long ago taught him the dangers of fire in a dry climate.
Even the white roads of the Elves were stained gray here, and unlike the pristine avenues above, they were as thickly littered with a city’s usual detritus as his own neighborhood in Gemmen. With the sun unable to grace them through the swirling ring of gray, the slopes were colder than the upper city, and ice clung to a few of the downspouts. A few people wandered up or down the hill on various errands, shabby coats pulled tight to ward off the chill.
Below the slope, Khanom was ringed by smokestacks sprouting from dozens of large factories. The ring of wind had to be something else the Elves had left behind; while some academics had spent their entire lives studying magical phenomena, humans had never mastered it. Some gob shamans claimed to be able to call rain, but that had always seemed like primitive flimflam.
Looking up at it swirling overhead, Gus wondered if the smoke ever escaped somehow, or if the cloud below the upper city would just grow thicker and thicker. Would it get closer to the ground as it grew or just spread out for miles around?