The Hod King

by Josiah Bancroft

  The Boskop asked if there were a more secluded place where they might discuss “a matter of some delicacy.” Ever-obliging, Mr. Stull escorted the Boskop to a corner of the grand lobby that was empty except for a silk-leafed plant in an urn. The Boskop eyed the plant as if it were a snake, then asked if there weren’t somewhere “perhaps a bit more out of the way.” With a whisper of a sigh, Mr. Stull took the guest to the kitchen, which was, admittedly, quite crowded with cooks and porters and scullery maids, but the clamor of crockery, the chatter of knives, and the incessant barking of an ill-tempered chef afforded them a deafening sort of privacy that Mr. Stull hoped would satisfy his irksome guest.

  But it did not. The Boskop looked over both shoulders before half shouting into Mr. Stull’s ear that he was not trying to be difficult, but wasn’t there somewhere still a little more remote?

  Though not quick to feel abused, Mr. Stull had arrived at the terminus of his patience. He was about to invite the guest to sit on a fork when he saw the glint of the Coterie’s insignia on the Boskop’s lapel. He would’ve been less surprised if the Boskop had sprouted a third eye.

  His patience refreshed a little, Mr. Stull ushered the guest into the storeroom where jowly hams hung from the ceiling and cakes of cheese soured the air. He shut the door, plunging them into an intimate darkness that he quickly dispelled by the lighting of a match. Stull braced himself for the worst—a bloody body in one of his tubs or some fire-eaten drapes.

  Looking very grave, the Boskop said, “I have been invited to a party.”

  “I’m sorry?” Mr. Stull said.

  “It’s all right. These things happen.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Stull said and briefly considered strangling the man. “What can I do for you, sir?”

  The Boskop presented a folded scrap of paper. “My measurements. I need a suit.”

  “I see. Perhaps you should visit a tailor, sir.”

  “No, I’m afraid that’s impossible. I also need a mask. Something bland and unremarkable. The same goes for the suit. I don’t wish to stand out.”

  “Yes, of course,” Mr. Stull said, pausing to light another match. “I understand completely.”

  “No, wait. On second thought, find me a plain suit and a grotesque mask. I want it to be ridiculous. Laughable. Here’s a ten-mina note. If more is needed, I’ll compensate you of course, and here’s another mina for your absolute discretion in this matter. I’ll need the items wrapped and delivered directly to the Coterie Club before the evening.”

  Relieved that there were no bodies to dispose of nor drapes to replace, Mr. Stull pocketed the money and said, “Your parcel will be there in an hour, sir.”

  “Oh, and I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s something of a mess in my room. I had a bit of an accident with my borrowed papers.” The Boskop presented another mina note. “If you would salvage as much as possible, I’d be very appreciative.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Stull said through a smiling dam of teeth.

  When Senlin returned to the Coterie Club, he received a very different welcome from the doormen. They bowed when he approached and waved him up the stairs at once. The club was still more or less full. Most of the members were giddy with drink and still reveling in the afternoon fights. After a fruitless search for the duke, Senlin approached a man seated at the bar whose head was as bare and beaming as a thumbnail. Senlin asked him how the Iron Bear fight had ended.

  To Senlin’s surprise, the man leapt from his sturdy stool to his less steady feet and shouted, “The Ritzy Pup was due! He was due! It was an unjust match. The Iron Bear is not a man! He’s not a hod! He’s a devil!” With that, the man slapped a curly, white wig onto his head and stumbled toward the stairs.

  Senlin took his place at the bar. The duke’s bartender, Joachim, greeted him, his empty cheeks rising in a hollow smile. “Don’t mind the baron, sir. He’s just mad that his champion couldn’t win a fight with a curtain. Warm water for you?”

  “Yes,” Senlin said, looking down at the polished bar before him, marred by fingerprints, balled tissues, and torn betting sheets. Joachim cleaned away these ghosts of the baron’s grief, and soon Senlin could see himself staring back from the inky mahogany.

  When Joachim came back with a nearly steaming teacup of water, Senlin held a mina note on the bar. “I have a parcel coming, if you wouldn’t mind keeping an eye out for it.” Joachim took the bill with an acknowledging wink. Senlin found the exchange somewhat amusing. He’d been harassed and scrutinized for so long that this trend of silent agreement and acknowledgment felt almost magical. The joy of privilege resided in the unspoken.

  Senlin had just begun to pretend to savor his cup of bathwater when a familiar fin of jet-black hair rose over the horizon of the stairs. The general was so tall, he made the ceiling fans that tilled the air seem uncomfortably low. He unbuckled the long-nosed pistol at his hip and handed the belt, holster, and all to one of the half dozen guards who followed him in a pack.

  The genial atmosphere of the club did nothing to soften his severity. Eigengrau cast his gaze about the room as deliberately as the beam from a lighthouse. When his hooded gaze landed on Senlin, it stopped, as did Senlin’s heart.

  He was certain the general had checked his name against the ship’s passenger list and had now come to arrest him for the fraud that he was. Senlin turned back around on his stool, his thoughts veering toward escape. He would vault over the bar, grab one of the bottles of liquor, and wield it like a club until it broke, then slash with the jagged remnant. He’d fight his way down the guarded stairs, to the guarded lobby, out through the guarded doors. By that point, he would’ve likely accrued a few wounds, but he would fight on through the pain and across the plaza, to the port … And there, his imagination perished.

  There would be no escape, no rescue, no miraculous twist of fate this time. He would die here, and die alone.

  He had just raised a finger to order a glass of rum when he felt the general’s presence on the stool beside him. He listened to the settling creak of Eigengrau’s boots and the rustle of his cape as he threw it off his arm. Senlin tried to force himself to affect some casual moment of discovery, to turn and say, “Oh, hello! I didn’t see you there.” But his neck seemed to have fused with his spine. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the bartender produce a glass that was as tall as a vase. Joachim filled the immense flute with the vibrant peridot liqueur.

  “To monstrous lobsters,” Eigengrau said, lifting the glass to his hawkish nose. He inhaled deeply, then drank.

  Feeling he had no choice, Senlin turned to face the general. “I’m sorry?”

  “I was just thinking about your book. Trilobites and arthropods is quite a mouthful, though. I rather like monstrous lobsters.” Eigengrau’s voice was deep, his delivery ponderous. “Unusual reading for a Boskop accountant, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” Senlin wished he’d just told the general where the book had come from in the beginning, but he’d wondered if perhaps the Sphinx would want to inspect it. Perhaps she could discern a significance he could not. “I’ve always found the idea of ancient sea life compelling.”

  “Why?”

  “The mystery, I suppose. I can’t help but wonder what else lives down there in the dark.”

  “Well, I don’t go looking for mysteries. Enough mystery finds me as it is. Speaking of which, we’ve located your hod.”

  “You did?” Senlin said, his voice brightened with relief. “That was quick work!”

  “There aren’t many places for the hods to hide in the city, and they’re not the cleverest of beasts.”

  “You’ll need me to identify him, of course.”

  “No, no, that won’t be necessary. He already confessed and implicated his coconspirators.”

  “Conspirators? But, surely, he acted alone? There were only the four of us in the alley.”

  “Hods never act alone.”

  Senlin scowled at this, and before he had time to think better of it, he voice
d his disagreement to the man who’d just delivered his salvation: “I always thought of the hods as just unfortunate men and women.”

  “That’s like believing a jackal is just an uncombed lapdog, or a flood is an overdrawn bath. The hod’s misfortune is an expression of their nature. A hod is born a hod, even if he poses as a man for a time.” The general put the flute of the syrupy liqueur to his lips and drank. When he set the glass down again, it was half empty. “I didn’t know Boskops were such a tenderhearted tribe.”

  “We aren’t, but we are practical. It seems a waste of resources to squander so much human potential and talent on carrying sacks up a slope—work a crane could do or an airship.”

  “There are more and more like you every day. See, this is the trouble with society: It lulls the individual into believing that security, sanity, and order are natural states. You think that humanity is an ennobling force. I assure you, it is not. It’s not cruel to say the hods are dangerous, unfinished, incapable souls. It would be cruel to give them opportunity and responsibility and then expect them to succeed. We do the hods a great service by giving them a simple, practical occupation. You’ve seen firsthand what happens when their hands are idle.”

  “Call me overcautious, but I’ve seen firsthand what happens when a couple of Pelphians don’t take a hod seriously. Underestimating subordinates is how revolutions begin.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say—” Eigengrau’s protest was interrupted by the arrival of Senlin’s parcels. Joachim presented the three brown boxes, bound in white string.

  Before he excused himself, Senlin thanked the general for locating the real murderer and insisted on buying the general’s drink. In parting, Eigengrau said, “You know, sometimes I wonder if we wouldn’t all be better off if we just bricked up the Old Vein and let the hods rule the walls.”

  Senlin recognized Old Vein as polite society’s preferred appelation for the black trail. It was a phrase Tarrou had used, though that was before he was banished to it.

  Senlin took his parcels to one of the club’s water closets, which could scarcely be called a closet at all. The darkly paneled room held a vanity, a settee, a bar cart with a full decanter of port, and a large painting of a buxom nude on a tree swing.

  He locked the door and savored the moment away from the boastful nobles and the Sphinx’s spies. He poured a glass of port and drained it. The relief he felt at the murderer’s capture was tainted by the thought that innocent hods, those unnamed “conspirators,” may have been caught up in the general’s net. The Pelphian sense of justice prized swiftness and certainty over all else, even accuracy. The Baths had taught him that much.

  The first parcel held a black suit that seemed half tuxedo, half military uniform. The shirt was a vivid shade of orange and, combined with the suit, made him look a little like an oriole. The second package held a pair of shoes with a mirror polish that were as comfortable as bear traps.

  The final parcel contained the mask. Even though he’d asked Mr. Stull to find him something grotesque and laughable, he’d not expected something quite so repulsive. The mask, which covered only the top half of the face, was maned with purple fur and topped with curling orange horns. It had the snub muzzle of a pug and deeply set eyes that were lensed with yellow glass. It looked like something conjured from a child’s drawing. When he put the ghoulish thing on and smiled, he looked like an absolute lunatic.

  But at least he did not look like himself. He hoped it would be enough to fool the spying butterflies, hoped the duke would find it such an amusing gaff he’d let the foolish Boskop parade before his noble friends. And when at last he was reintroduced to Marya, Senlin hoped she would see the garish disguise and not the man beneath it.

  Something inside the mask poked his cheek, and he took it off to search for the culprit. A small paper tag fell out, and he caught it from the air. On one side of the tag was the price, twenty-five shekels; on the reverse side, in bold block letters, was the description: MASK OF THE SPHINX.

  Senlin laughed until he wasn’t sure what he was laughing at anymore.

  Chapter Ten

  Why do we call a dishonest person two-faced? Is it really so honest to wear the same face day in, day out, regardless of our mood, our condition, or the event? We are not clocks! Have a face for every occasion, I say! Be honest: Wear a mask.”

  —Oren Robinson of the Daily Reverie

  By the time he left the Colosseum, the Pelphian sun was glowing over the roof of its stable at the ringdom’s western edge. The curious acoustics of the domed ceiling and narrow city blocks made the clockworks rumble like an approaching train. The chatter became a clamor, and the clamor became a roar until the shopwindows rattled and the mannequins trembled, and no one could hear over the racket of the setting sun.

  The quiet came as suddenly as a door slammed upon a storm. The sun went out, the gaslight stars grew more pronounced, and the hieroglyphic constellations emerged.

  What Wilhelm had earlier called “a little soiree,” the invitation declared THE LIGHTING OF JULY. The festivities would take place in the Circuit of Court, which lay behind a hedge that cordoned off nearly a quarter of the plaza. Senlin’s daily track had taken him past the barrier, which appeared to be made of boxwoods. He had wondered how the hedge survived with only gaslight and alcoholic rain to sustain it. Now on nearer inspection, he discovered the hedge was made of green silk leaves and wire vines that were anchored to a stone wall.

  The entrance to the Circuit of Court stood open. Previously, he’d only seen the iron gates shut and locked. They bore the pattern of a great, convoluted spiral like the whorl of a fingerprint. He could hardly see the design now through the elevated crowd. Even the lowest lord and lady came to the court by sedan chair, carried on the shoulders of footmen. Some of the sedans were scarcely better than a dining room chair balanced upon a pair of broomsticks. The more opulent sedans were encased in rice paper and gold foil screens.

  The sedans bumped together like logs in a river, and Senlin felt as if he’d fallen into some sort of maelstrom. He tried to get closer to the gate but was drawn into a hopeless vortex of nobles, servants, poles, and chairs. A lord toppled from his throne into the crowd. An elbow punched through the paper window of a sedan, exposing the shocked face of the lady within. There were screams of pain and cries for mercy. Senlin looked down and saw a man with a bloody ear crawl past his leg. Something slapped his neck, and Senlin turned to see a footman menacing him with a slipper. Senlin snatched the shoe away and struck the footman on the nose, surprising them both. He looked about, hoping for some person of authority to materialize and call for order or peace. Instead, he saw that most of the footmen wielded slippers. They beat upon the hopelessly frozen throng, receiving as many blows as they gave.

  In the end, Senlin wasn’t sure if he had escaped the mob by his own power or if it had merely ejected him. Either way, he was relieved to discover he had reached the front of the line.

  A page in a gold tabard asked for Senlin’s invitation, then held the card up to a lamp and inspected its watermark. Satisfied, the page nodded to the sentries who stood with rifles crossed before the entrance.

  Senlin was about to pass through when the page caught him by the elbow and presented him with a six-inch glass tube with copper caps on either end.

  “Don’t forget your candle, sir,” the page said.

  “What is this for?” Senlin asked, thinking how the object didn’t resemble any candle he had ever seen, but the page had already begun attending to the next in line. Senlin slid the curious cylinder into his coat pocket and strode past the guards.

  Perhaps it was a side effect of his mask, which had a way of tunneling his vision and turning everything a uniform shade of yellow, but his first impression of the Circuit of Court was that it seemed a little desolate. The few attendees clumped together like scum on the surface of a pond. The orchestra, having been goaded by the maître d’ to Play something! Anything, for heaven’s sake! stumbled through the opening
passage of a popular waltz. The conductor quickly decapitated the effort with a swat of his baton, and the ensuing silence was enriched by the rattling crash of a platter dropped by a waiter. Senlin felt the particular mixture of glumness and regret that only people who’ve arrived early to a party know. After having fought so hard to get in, his impulse now was to leave.

  But he was quick to remind himself that he had not come to revel, and it didn’t matter what sort of party it was so long as Marya came. The hour was still early. He had to be patient.

  And the Circuit of Court was not without charm. Planters bloomed with fresh-cut flowers. Fountains bubbled over the schools of koi and goldfish that swam in their basins. The orchestra recovered and began to play a medley of romantic preludes. And because the attendees were still arriving, the servers outnumbered the guests. Senlin could hardly take six steps without being offered a sweet morsel or a full glass. No one seemed the least bit put off by his disguise. He was relieved to find that he was not the only one wearing a mask, though plain dominos were the more popular choice.

  The dance floor of the Circuit of Court was made of polished sandstone, and at the center of that yellow-grained expanse rose a pyramid, some twenty feet in height and plated in white marble. A glass-paned star capped a pole that jutted from the peak. The star housed a filament that held an orange spark. The front of the pyramid was distinguished by an entrance, the lintel of which bore the gilded inscription THE UNFINISHED BIRTH. It was a phrase that Senlin would discover over the course of the evening no one could explain, except to say that the words and the structure seemed to reference something that predated the Tower itself. An iron track encircled the pyramid, and a caravan of mechanical beasts bobbed upon it at a leisurely pace. The beasts of the carousel, which were bronze cast and obviously very old, were all missing one piece or another: The camel lacked a head, the vulture had clipped wings, and the long-snouted hound had a bobbed tail and only three paws. The animals bore the remnants of ancient paint, much of which had flaked away, eroded by generations of riders. Even at that early hour, all the saddles were occupied.