The Hod King

by Josiah Bancroft

  “May I make a suggestion, Captain?” he asked, grooming her lapels with a brush.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “If things really are so dire, perhaps it’s worth bringing Wakeman Haste back into the fold. I’m sure that I can rebuff an entire boarding party of armed men on my own,” he said, nervously patting the butt of the pistol he wore strapped at his hip. “But it wouldn’t hurt to have a few more hands supporting the cause.” Edith had picked the two-barreled cartridge pistol for him because it was easy to fire and simple to reload. “Presuming, of course, that you still trust her.”

  “I do,” she said, straightening her collar by the reflection of the ship’s porthole. “And you make a fair point. I’ll certainly consider it.”

  “I could make the two of you dinner—a proper sit-down dinner, not one of your crumb-sowing sessions. I could make a flan.”

  Edith laughed and said, “Let’s see how the day goes. Oh, and did you forget to bring the Sphinx’s morning dispatch?”

  “No, I didn’t forget. None came.”

  “Oh,” Edith said, scowling briefly before rallying a smile for Byron’s benefit. “Well, we have our orders. Nothing’s changed. I’m sure he just has other things on his mind.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s it,” the stag said stalwartly enough, but then she saw the fine thimbles of his fingertips tremble. She hadn’t known that they could.

  “I’m sure he’s all right, Byron. He’ll outlive us by a thousand years.”

  He’d been ducking her a moment before, but now he met her gaze. His large black eyes glistened with emotion. “It’s not just that. It’s that and everything else! Reddleman frightens me, but I’ll need him if we’re boarded. I’m worried about Voleta and Iren and all the scrutiny they’re under. I’m worried about you, out there unscrewing your arm and toeing the Old Vein.” He finished the litany with a shudder that ran to the tips of his antlers. “You know there was a point, and not so long ago, when I wanted to see the world. At least a few of the nice bits. The mountains. A forest, maybe. But now I just want to be back home and … Well, it doesn’t matter what I want. That’s the thing about life, isn’t it? You don’t get to say when you’ve had enough.”

  Edith thought of Adam disappearing into the fog with the men who threw lightning, and of the red sea boiling in the head of the Tower, and of Senlin stumbling blindly down the black trail with a can on his head. She swallowed and said, “No, we don’t.”

  “Well, we’ve had enough moping for one morning at least,” he said, with a steady-handed and final swat of his coat brush. “Please come back as quick as you can, Captain. Bring a friend. I’ll make the flan, just in case.”

  It was with some relief that Edith discovered the State of Art was not the center of attention that morning. Rather, it was the Ararat that had drawn a crowd. Even across the two piers and many berths that separated her from the Pelphian warship, Edith had no trouble spotting General Eigengrau, who stood well above the heads of other officials, and Georgine, whose golden engine scattered the morning light.

  Edith wasn’t sure whether it was curiosity or some vague premonition that drew her to the edge of the gathering, though she knew her approach was not without risk. One of the Ararat’s airmen might see through her changed wardrobe, see past her new arm and the camouflage of her command, and recognize her as one of the fugitives he’d spent months pursuing.

  But the fact that she hadn’t been recognized so far made her a little fearless and, she would grudgingly admit, perhaps a little foolish, too.

  The noblemen at the mob’s periphery were doing their best to appear unimpressed by the spectacle that had summoned them, the nature of which was still unclear to her. They pinched snuff, dashed handkerchiefs at nagging flies, and traded quips with other bystanders. Some smelled of their morning showers; others reeked of their evening’s pleasures.

  A man in a fez with a spud for a nose said, “A shekel says he won’t be able to keep his chin up.”

  A dandy in a rumpled suit smoking a long ivory pipe replied, “I want to see snot all over his face. I really do. I want to see the man weep.”

  “He’s too committed to the role for that,” a third lord said, polishing the lenses of his spectacles. “He is a consummate actor. A man only gets one exit.”

  “Ah, he’ll beg for mercy! My carbuncle has more character than that washed-up toll collector. I have a mina here says he sucks his thumb,” the man in the fez declared.

  “Preposterous!” The bespectacled lord’s voice rumbled with a dramatic timbre. “Mark my words, he will take a bow. He’ll recite a few appropriate lines from the airman’s oath, then salute his men as he delivers his body to the wind!”

  “Excuse me, what are you all talking about?” Edith asked. “What’s happening here?”

  “The execution of Commissioner Emmanuel Pound,” the pipe-smoking dandy said.

  “Commissioner no longer,” the fez corrected. “It’s Mister Pound, now. King Leonid hasn’t announced his replacement yet, but my money is on one of the dukes. I wouldn’t be surprised if it weren’t Wilhelm Pell that took the station next!”

  “If they can ever peel him off his wife,” the dandy said.

  “Was there a trial?” Edith asked.

  The noble in a fez snorted so enthusiastically he wetted his upper lip. “Trial! There was no need. The man confessed yesterday evening to having been derelict in his duty. He let the Crown be robbed, let his Wakeman and dozens of airmen perish, and failed in every effort to catch the perpetrators. We gave him our best warship, and he couldn’t catch a pirate in a scow that was crewed by a bunch of trollops!”

  “How embarrassing,” Edith said dryly.

  The bespectacled lord, who seemed the only one to have any sympathy for Pound, said, “And did you hear about his daughter? She plunged from a rooftop last night and died.”

  “A shame-inspired suicide, I imagine.” The dandy drew on his pipe, appearing suddenly wistful. “Even though she was a little chicken-breasted, she had such a pretty face.”

  Edith hardly heard the idiotic remark. She was too busy craning about to get a glimpse of Pound. She asked if anyone else could see him, only to learn that he had not yet arrived. He was, according to the man in the fez, being collected by Port Master Cullins and his guard. Hardly a moment later, the group in question emerged from the city gates. The port master led the eight-man squad, each of whom held a ceremonial rifle cocked on his shoulder. The condemned man’s hands were bound in iron shackles that jangled more loudly as the observers fell silent.

  Edith and the other men made room, backing against the roped stanchions that guarded the pier’s edge. She caught a glimpse of Pound, slouched between the ranks of guards. He was unshaven and wearing a nightshirt that had been hastily tucked into his uniform trousers. His hair stood out in wisps of ashy gray. His eyes were red and raw. There was no hint of the vanity or condescension for which he had been so well known. He no longer had his gas mask, wealth, or uniform to shroud his humanity. If he had passed Edith on the street at that moment, she would not have known him.

  The languid-eyed Eigengrau awaited Pound at the foot of a plank. The board extended a short distance from the pier, its purpose apparent to all. The general had his chin down, showing he took no pleasure in this duty. The armed regiment that had accompanied Pound peeled away. The general signaled for the shackles to be removed, and once they were, Pound began kneading his hands as if he didn’t know what to do with them. Edith thought he looked like a man who had missed his train—worried, distracted, searching.

  Eigengrau spoke over Pound’s head to the crowd of lords, officers, and onlookers. His cape lifted in the wind, flashing its crimson lining. “It is never a pleasure to deliver a man to this recompense, nor to act as the arbiter of his failures. But our excellence is evidence of our righteousness, and where our excellence wanes, so does our virtue. Think of the hod, who debased himself with indolence and indulgence, and then cursed the To
wer for accommodating his depravity. Think of the drunk who blames the bottle. Think of the debtor who blames his purse. We cannot raise a man up by lowering ourselves, no more than we can save a sunken ship by draining away the sea. There is no greater insult to a man, nor the institutions he has served, than the gross affront of mercy.” His voice, which had grown more booming, now shrank a little. “And yet, I do not relish my role as the king’s right hand in matters such as these. It is a solemn duty for which I am—”

  Pound interrupted the general by stepping forward, a move that inspired the drawing of many swords. Eigengrau held up his hand, deferring the violence.

  “My daughter is dead, Andreas,” Pound said, and reached up to pat the general on his proud chest. “My daughter is dead.”

  Edith felt a flicker of sympathy for the man who’d spent months terrorizing them. It was a strange, unwanted feeling.

  Emmanuel Pound did not glance at the Ararat or the airmen who watched him from her deck. He dug his hands into his pockets as if he’d felt a chill, then strode onto the plank and out into the open air.

  Georgine found Edith when the crowd dispersed. The two Wakemen walked the length of the train station together. The tiled tunnel echoed with the chug of the warming engine. They arrived in the city while the locomotive was still gathering steam for its short trip. Pound’s hurried execution had put them both in a contemplative mood. Haste offered to go with Edith to the palace to collect the Sphinx’s painting, and Edith was glad for the company. As they walked the hysterical streets of the city, doing their best to ignore the café frenzies and balcony melodramas, Edith felt her gaze drawn again and again to the ridiculous constellations and the smarmy sun. She would rather spend the rest of her life under an overcast sky than endure one more day beneath that counterfeit.

  When they arrived on the steps of the palace, Haste said, “Leonid always keeps you waiting, but I’ve learned how to make the most of it. Here, I’ll show you.” As soon as the doorman invited them in, Haste began directing the king’s staff. “We’ll need a pitcher of gin punch, two cigars, and two of whatever His Majesty had for breakfast. And we’re not sitting on these ottomans, either. You have a hundred rooms. Find us one with some proper furniture.”

  The butler and his footmen seemed unperturbed by Haste’s manner, and all of her wishes were granted in short order. Soon, Edith found herself sitting in a plush chair before a freshly built fire with a cut crystal goblet full of rosy punch in her hand. She had refused the cigar, which Haste didn’t mind as it left her with a spare, but when the breakfast cart arrived with chafing dishes full of sausages, scrambled eggs, porridge, and bread pudding, Edith served herself a small mountain of food and ate with the plate balanced on her lap.

  “I learned long ago, if they’re going to make you wait, best make them pay for it,” Georgine said in answer to Edith’s enthusiastic review of her breakfast.

  Edith hardly spoke another word until she’d cleaned her plate. Then she wiped her mouth on a napkin and said with a satisfied sigh, “I suppose I’ve kept you waiting, too. You’ve been asking for a tour of the ship.”

  “Oh, and my patience accrues interest,” Haste said, smiling through the smoke of her cigar. “Just you wait till the bill comes due!”

  “Do you remember Byron?” Edith asked. Haste crossed her legs, slouching down into her chair. She puffed happily at her cigar for a moment before announcing that she did not. “He’s the Sphinx’s footman. I think you’d remember him if you’d met him.”

  “Wait,” Haste said, squinting at the memory. “He’s the one with the buck’s head and the clockwork body.”

  “That’s him. He’s offered to make us dinner this evening, if you’d care to be our guest.”

  “That sounds delightful.”

  “I would’ve been surprised if you’d entirely forgotten him.”

  Haste shrugged, the skin of her neck wrinkling against her perfect shoulders. “All my memories of the Sphinx are vague. Just snatches of ether-drenched dreams, really. As soon as the Sphinx had finished tinkering with me, I was out the door. He does not like hangers-on.”

  Edith would’ve liked to have pursued the conversation further, but at that moment King Leonid appeared in a starched chef’s hat and a white apron. They stood and bowed, greeting the regent, who seemed in a great hurry. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, Captain Winters, Wakeman Haste, but I am running late for the recommissioning of our Royal Bakery. I’m making the toast.” He cocked his head and chuckled. “I’m toasting the men who toast our bread! That’s pretty good. I might use that.” He absentmindedly patted his pockets for something, a pencil perhaps.

  “Very good, Your Majesty,” Edith said. “And if you’ll just return the Sphinx’s painting, we can be on our way.”

  “Ah!” King Leonid said with a shake of his finger. “The Brick Layer’s Granddaughter. My brother has all but located it. The treasurer and his pages worked half the night, and they expect to have it any moment now. They think the trouble is that it was mislabeled under T for The instead of B for—”

  “Your Majesty, I completely understand,” Edith said, interrupting the regent in a manner he was obviously not accustomed to. Her morning with Haste had convinced her that perhaps politeness was not the best tactic here. “I’ll trouble you once more tomorrow morning, and then not again. I trust you understand: I have a long list of ringdoms to visit, and I won’t be able to delay my commitments any longer. The other ringdoms are eager for us to visit.”

  “Of course,” the king said, his former enthusiasm muted by his surprise at this ultimatum. “And I assure you, Captain Winters, no one will sleep until I have the Sphinx’s painting safely in my hands so that I may place it in yours.”

  “Bravo, Edith!” Haste said, applauding on the steps of the palace. Her hands clanged together like pans. “Bravo! Now that’s how you handle a king: like a tenant who’s late with the rent.”

  Edith waved at her to quit making a fuss. “No, I just recalled what my father used to say: ‘Asking nicely once is polite. Asking nicely twice is just begging.’”

  “Wise man! My father used to say things like ‘If it hasn’t exploded so far, it probably never will!’” She laughed hard enough to attract the attention of a lady cruising past on a sedan chair. The lady gave Haste a withering look, and Georgine thumbed her nose at her. “Anyway, now we have the whole day to play with. It doesn’t all have to be inspections and daring rescues. We could take in some amusement. You know, pose as Pelphians for an afternoon. There’s usually a raunchy singalong at the Gog and Fardel after lunch. You’ll never guess how many words rhyme with bum.”

  “Actually, I’d like to have a look at the Colosseum,” Edith said. She smiled at a young girl in ballet slippers who’d stopped to stare at her. The girl’s governess soon pulled her away by the arm.

  Haste chewed on her cigar. It had gone out some minutes ago, and she’d made no effort to relight it. “Really? The Colosseum? I don’t understand the appeal. The fights are sad, and the beer is stale. Why do you want to go there?”

  Edith couldn’t very well say that she wanted to search the Colosseum because it seemed her last, best hope for finding a friend. She could not confess that the thought of finding Tom bound up somewhere inside a blood-sport arena was a happier prospect than believing he’d been banished to the black trail in a blinder. Since she could not admit the truth, she said something that was at least true: “It seems like the hods have had a hard go of it here. They’re hung from the sun and shot in the square and have buckets clamped on their heads. I don’t care about the fights. I just want to know how the hods are being treated. Are they all surviving on scraps and sleeping on rags, or are they looked after?”

  Haste crossed her golden arms and smirked around the wet stump of her cigar. She said, “You’re turning out to be quite the humanitarian.”

  The fact that at the moment Edith felt more concern for one man than an entire caste was a source of shame. She smiled
to cover her guilt and said, “Afterward, we can go sing songs about bums, if you like.”

  Georgine’s expression brightened. “Good, because they don’t sing themselves.”

  The closer they drew to the Colosseum, the stranger it looked to Edith. Other than its expansive size and noble shape, there wasn’t much left of the former university’s glory. The high bricked windows and barred portico had made shabby a structure that would otherwise have been majestic. The guards at the entrance made no effort to stop a gang of boys who were vandalizing the base of one massive pillar with penknives. Edith and Georgine reached the base of the wide steps at the same moment that a semiconscious drunk was forcibly removed from the arena. Two guards dragged the man out by his armpits and gave him the old heave-ho from the top of the stairs. If Edith had been any slower stepping aside, she would’ve been thrown to the cobblestones with him.

  “Technically, women aren’t allowed in the Colosseum,” Haste said as she saluted her way past the doormen. “They make an exception for me, though.”

  “And why is that?” Edith asked.

  “Because I insist.”

  The lobby of the Colosseum would’ve been large enough to raise a barn inside, Edith thought. It echoed with birdsong and the cheers that trumpeted from the arena. There was enough rubbish and beer slop on the floor to make a sort of marsh. It was a detestable place, and Edith wondered if the Sphinx’s dreaded blind spot wasn’t the result of chaos rather than conspiracy.

  “Can I borrow a button?” Haste asked, pointing at the brass row on the cuff of her greatcoat. When Edith looked a bit confounded by the request, Haste added, “I just want to show you something. You’ll get it back.” Edith snapped a button from its thread, already anticipating what Byron would say when he discovered the loss, and handed it to Haste. “A while ago now, the local boys invented a game called Bump and Basket.” At the center of the lobby, Haste looked up at the pillar capitals where doves and magpies sat on tangled nests. “There are a few rules, but never mind them. This is the fun bit. Watch.” Haste flicked the button high into the air. A flash of black and white shot down from one of the pillars, intercepting the glittering disk at its peak. The magpie caught the button in its beak and carried it back to its nest while Edith watched in amazement.