The Hod King

by Josiah Bancroft

  “Which is what?” Edith asked.

  “That we’re all prisoners here.” She snuffed her cigar out on her dirty plate, the ember squeaking in complaint as it died. “Hod, commoner, lord, lady—all of us. The bars of this prison have caged every aspect of our lives. They trap our speech, corral our habits, and divide our days from our dreams. It is an insidious jail. Some of us have windows with better views, some of us live longer lives, but we’re all inmates here. I think you know that. But you’re just another prisoner working for the warden, you and that other spy—”

  Edith leapt at the mention of another spy. “The other spy? Pinfield, you mean? You met him?”

  “So you knew that lanky fellow? Seemed nice enough, but not a very good infiltrator. I found his cigar box full of the moths. He didn’t think I knew, but of course I did. I know what a cigar smells like, and it doesn’t smell like clock oil.”

  “What did you do to him?”

  It was Haste’s turn to look surprised. “Wait, is that who you’ve been hunting for all this time? The jail, the gatehouse, the Colosseum … It wasn’t about the library or the Hod King. You were looking for him. Well, he must be very important to the Sphinx.”

  “He’s important to me,” Edith said, squaring her jaw.

  “Yes, I can see that. I am sorry, Edith. This place is not kind to lovers. I do understand.”

  But Edith would not be baited by Haste’s sympathy. “Where is he?”

  “I saw him palling around with Duke Wilhelm before he disappeared. If I had to guess, I’d say he irked the duke, and was either dropped off the end of a port or tossed onto the black trail. Honestly, I thought I would have to be the one to kill him, but he kept confusing me by intervening on behalf of the hods. Just like you. That’s what I can’t figure out: Why are you both so determined to undermine the Sphinx while insisting that you act at his behest?”

  “Because the Sphinx does not stand against the hod!” Edith shouted. “That’s the poison Marat has poured into your ear to convince you that he is the simple solution to a complex problem. I’m not being duplicitous; I’m trying to act with a conscience, you brainwashed fool!”

  Haste leaned back, but it did not seem a retreat. Her expression was one of absolute serenity. “I thought I could save you. I really did. I thought if I could just show you the prison you are living in, you would … But you do see it, don’t you? You see it perfectly. You see the bars. You know the jailers. You realize what must be done to escape. You’ve just decided to stay in your cell. Well, I can’t. I can’t do that. I did try to save you, though.”

  Haste flipped the dining table aside. And as the china hung suspended within a cascade of gravy, candle wax, and wine, she lunged at Edith’s throat with uncurled golden claws.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sometimes a wheel squeaks not because it is faulty but because it bears the most weight.

  —I Sip a Cup of Wind by Jumet

  After many hours of enjoyable distraction, Reddleman had finally forced himself to return to the third volume of the ship’s operations manual, setting aside the enthralling book on trilobites. He had delighted in the illustrations of those vanished creatures, most of which were accurately drawn, and had giggled at the author’s theorizing as to their behaviors, diets, and reproductive processes, most of which were wrong. If he concentrated, Reddleman could still remember what the trilobites had looked like in their original habitat, how they had swum through the water like shrimp, how they had battled on the ancient ocean floor with all manner of chitinous lances, and how they had coupled like two ships exchanging cannon fire at night.

  But the captain wanted the nagging alarm muffled, and he’d still not found the cause. So back to the manuals he went.

  The ship was incredibly complex. There were systems for scrubbing and storing fresh air, systems for sealing off decks, for venting excess heat and cold, and for directing the energy that the ship’s vast batteries produced. The primary power reserve was housed under the floor of the birth deck. The related circuitry, which veined the walls and ceilings, required a hundred pages to diagram and explain. Reddleman had learned how to open the main hatch remotely and that the ship had a fog horn. He had discovered that the reinforced bow could be used as a cleaver to split a wooden hull in two, and he had read how many gallons the septic tank could hold before the ship would either have to return to home port or drop a fertile shower upon the valley. And still he had not deduced which of the thousand switches turned off the pinging alarm, nor why it pinged in the first place. He was beginning to wonder if he ever would.

  And just when his eyes began to cross from reading about the appropriate solvents for cleaning the carpets, Reddleman began a new chapter in the manual and realized at once his search was at an end.

  He cackled at the discovery and stabbed at the page of the unhandsome tome with a softly glowing finger. He stood and roved away from his station, moving along the wall of controls, hunting up and down the banks of blinking green and amber eyes until he found it: a small throttle with a brass knob shaped like a bumblebee. The throttle’s cradle had three marked positions: SAFE, CHARGE, and BURN. Above it was a gauge that contained a spectral stripe that ranged from red to green. The needle quivered deep in the red. He shifted the control from CHARGE to BURN, then listened. He stood there with his head cocked for more than a minute, long enough to be sure that he had solved the mystery of the maddening alarm.

  Then he gave a celebratory whoop and, to reward himself, opened up the military jacket the stag insisted he wear. It strangled him terribly. He unbuttoned the shirt beneath it and scratched happily at the thin vest that stretched over his round belly. He was about to return to the manual to continue reading the new and fascinating section when something on one of the magnovisor frames caught his eye.

  The port had grown increasingly quiet over the course of the afternoon. Other than a couple of common barges bobbing in the inner slips, the only other moored vessel was the Ararat, and it was dark except for a few running lamps on the bulwark. The magnovisor’s image of the port had lost some of its detail with the arrival of night. Reddleman could see little more than charcoal shapes, pierced here and there by the light of the lampposts that lined the piers. At a glance, all seemed tranquil and still. He wasn’t sure what had drawn his attention.

  Then one of the lampposts at the foot of the city steps winked and went out.

  Reddleman squinted at the screen. The edges of the shadows fluttered with movement. He watched the pooled light of the next lamp to see what would emerge there, but then that light flickered and failed, too. The spreading darkness appeared to seethe with activity. When the next lamp failed, he realized the trail of shadows was not snaking idly about the port. No, it was drawing a straight line from the city gates to the gangplank of their ship.

  Someone was trying to conceal their approach.

  He crossed the bridge, trying to recall which frame showed the view out from the main hatch. Even after the last nearby port lamp blew out, the ambient light of the twilit sky was sufficient to show the silhouettes of the men gathering outside the ship. He could see the wagging tails of sheathed swords and the horns of rifle barrels. They were soldiers. Two score at least, probably more. They encircled the lip of the gangplank. A tall man in a short cape, who seemed to be the party’s leader, pointed at the ship’s steel hatch. Two of his men carried a small keg across the gulf and set it against the ship’s hull. The flash of a match flickered in the gloom.

  Realizing what they were about to do, Reddleman murmured, “No, no need for that.” He reached out and flicked one switch in a row of fifty.

  The lock on the main hatch clanged, and the door swung open. The light from inside the ship lit the faces of the startled boarding party inside the magnovisor’s frame. None of them seem to know what to do with the unexpected invitation, nor with the keg of powder they’d brought to blow the hatch in.

  Then their imposing commander stirred them from their stup
or. The bomb was withdrawn, and the soldiers began to file cautiously across the gulf of air and into the ship.

  Reddleman laughed and pulled off first his open jacket and then his dress blouse, stripping down to his thin vest. He scratched his belly happily, pulled off his boots, and walked with arms swinging and bare feet slapping over to the weapons locker. He shunned the flintlock carbines and cartridge pistols. Such barking, overbearing instruments! He dug past the curved sabers and pointed rapiers, which were elegant but gratuitous. He rooted his way down to the toolbox at the foot of the locker. There, he found what he was looking for: a bodkin needle.

  He held the leather-working tool up to his eye, admiring the dullish point and the rust-speckled shaft.

  “Ah, how humble is the key that unlocks the infinite mind!”

  Despite Wakeman Haste’s jabs at the Sphinx, Byron was generally pleased with how well Edith and her guest were getting on. Their good mood seemed to have sharpened their appetites—though perhaps a little too well. The women had dispatched his morel soufflé, which had taken him several hours to prepare, with all the relish of starved dogs.

  He would admit he’d been a little ambitious in his menu selections. Most of the meal had come out well enough, though the duck was undeniably oversalted, and the flan that he’d promised the captain had turned out to be a flop. The gooey lagoon had refused to set, and he’d had to abandon the effort in favor of a simpler egg custard with lavender-honey drizzle. In his opinion, drizzles, gravies, and icing were just savory apologies for incompetent dishes. He hated that he had to rely on such a culinary crutch, and he half hoped they’d be too full to eat dessert, thereby sparing him the embarrassment of having to serve it.

  While Edith and Georgine gulped their main courses, he went to retrieve the custard from a warm oven. He found the galley, which was perhaps his favorite room in the ship, had filled with smoke in his absence. The beaming steel surfaces and the hanging copper pots were all but obscured by a rank, gray cloud that fumed from the oven door. Dashing the smoke away with a towel, Byron turned on the hood vent and opened the oven to extract two smoldering ramekins. He dropped the cups into the sink and doused them with the tap. The ceramic dishes cracked from the shock.

  As he stared down at the blackened coals of his second failure of the night, he suffered a brief but furious urge to weep. But he composed himself with a little slapping of his cheeks and snatched a bottle of sweet port from the wine rack. He marched from the kitchen with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances. The captain and her guest would just have to drink their dessert.

  Before he returned to the captain’s quarters, he thought to stop by the Communications Closet on the lower deck just to see if any new messenger moths had arrived. He made the decision casually, as if this were not the umpteenth time he’d visited the closet that day. The fact that he’d heard nothing from the Sphinx in twenty-four hours could reasonably be chalked up to some unforeseen interference. The master’s communiqué might’ve run afoul of a bird or a bat or an errant gust of wind. Those were the most likely scenarios, and certainly more likely than the Sphinx’s batteries running out, leaving her stranded in some corner of the house.

  Before their departure Byron had asked how she expected to survive without him and who exactly would change her vials. The Sphinx had replied, “Do you really think I’m so frail? I have my ways!”

  It was a sentiment that he had found somewhat cheering, right up to the point that her messages stopped arriving.

  She was dead. He knew it. She had died on her levitator trying to coax the librarian into changing her batteries. The cat had wandered off, and now Byron’s master was dead, dead, dead.

  He quelled the rising panic with a sharp shake of his antlers. No. He was being dramatic. What had Edith said: “He’ll outlive us by a thousand years!” Surely she was right.

  Unlocking the thick door of his communications booth, Byron was delighted to see a fluttering messenger in the incoming cage. But his relief was short-lived as he recognized the wings as belonging to a spying butterfly rather than a messenger moth. He removed its wings, set up the screen, and activated its projector. A ghostly peephole of light flashed to life on the silken square.

  Byron had no trouble identifying the four men in the field of view. He’d seen their captured profiles many times before. King Leonid, his brother Crown Prince Pepin, the city manager—whose name was Garden or Garcon, or something like that—and General Eigengrau, who looked like a shark in a cape. They stood on one of the palace’s patios, drinking wine and arguing. The fronds of a palm tree framed the scene, hinting at the butterfly’s hiding spot.

  “Not this Hod King stuff again!” Crown Prince Pepin said, his angry bark tempered by the projector’s small voice box.

  “I’m afraid so,” Eigengrau said.

  “So they weren’t idle threats, then?” the king said. He was wearing a long morning coat, and his white hair seemed to be attempting to fly off with his head. “The letters, the graffiti, the parroted cheers …” His voice sounded thin and tired. “The Hod King is real.”

  “Meanwhile, the Sphinx’s warship rests upon our port like a fist!” Pepin’s girdle-sculpted chest caught the wine that missed his lips. He was in a near frenzy. “I think it’s pretty obvious now that we’re about to be caught in the middle of a war, brother. And it won’t matter whether the hods or the Sphinx emerge victorious: The battlefield is always destroyed!”

  “I believe the Sphinx is sincere in his offer of a renewed partnership and a new technology. If you want Captain Winters to move her warship, why don’t you just give her what she came for?” the king said, retying the cord of his robe about his emaciated waist.

  “We can’t return what we don’t have, Your Majesty,” the city manager said.

  “You’re certain the painting has been stolen? Not lost. Stolen?” the king asked.

  “Yes! For the last time, yes!” the prince barked. “We’ve scoured every inch of the vault. The painting is gone! And since I haven’t given it a second thought in decades, I haven’t any idea when it was removed. It might’ve been snatched last week, or it could’ve walked off years ago. I presume it was the hods but—”

  Eigengrau interrupted the prince. “I can handle the hods.”

  “Apparently not!” Prince Pepin said, his ruddy jowls quivering with anger. “For all you know, they could be building that bloody siege engine right under our feet!”

  “Or it could be nothing more than a dream scrawled on a board,” Eigengrau said, seeming to grow calmer the more the prince raged.

  The prince was not at all soothed by the general’s confidence. “We have to take the ship. We have to take it now while it’s vulnerable and within our reach. If the hods’ war engine is real, how can you possibly defend our ports against it? Eighty-six cannons, three-inch-steel- plated armor, and carrier space for a hundred and twenty men! Are you going to tell me, General, that we would not be better off with the State of Art leading our armada?” The prince picked up a wine bottle and filled his glass until it overflowed.

  “Your Majesty, I think it is a mistake to try to take that ship,” the city manager said, bracing himself for the prince’s attack, which came quickly enough.

  “Who asked you, Gardon? I’ve never met a man more eager to put a spade to his own grave. Have some courage, man!” Prince Pepin spat.

  Despite the verbal thrashing, the city manager persisted. “Your Majesty, I don’t think the Sphinx is our enemy, at least not yet. But he definitely will be if we do this.”

  Leonid reached up and groomed the fronds of a palm. The act belied the tension of the moment. He suddenly looked like an old man being kept from his gardening. “And what do you think, General? Do we attack our guests? Do we forsake our reputation as the hosts and hedonists of the Tower? Do we spoil an alliance that has endured for more than a century?”

  “We are in an untenable position, Your Majesty,” Eigengrau said, clasping his hands behin
d his back. “We can’t return the Sphinx’s painting, which means we will not benefit from the new technology he has promised. Our enemies, however, very likely will. I feel certain that I can hold back the hods, whatever they wish to throw at us, but I can’t fight a war on two fronts, especially not at such a disadvantage. What if the Sphinx gives the Algezians fleeter airships or longer guns?”

  “All right, all right,” Leonid said wearily, scowling at the decision even as he made it. “Take the ship. Tonight.” The words made Byron’s ears drop. The king quickly added, “Don’t kill the crew if you can avoid it.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, that’s probably not going to be possible,” Eigengrau said.

  “Not only is that impossible, brother,” the prince interjected hotly, “but if we bungle the attempt, if they rebuff us, then we’ll have to shoot her down. We can’t afford to wound that raptor and let her escape. If we can’t have her, then no one—”

  Byron did not hear the recording’s end. He was already out in the corridor, his heart in his throat. He had to warn the captain. He had to get to the—

  When the draft struck the whiskers at the end of his snout, the shiver seemed to drill straight down to his skull. He smelled the fresh air first and the nervous men second. When the soldier in black rounded the corner of the ship’s entryway with his pistol raised and his eyes wide as globes, Byron felt the familiar grip of his instinctual paralysis. Even as his limbs froze, even as his throat constricted and his neck hardened, he fought to resist the reflex. He could not afford this crippling panic—not now! He had to draw his weapon. He had to fire. He had to warn Edith!

  Then the soldier saw him, saw his rack, saw the brass scales of his knuckles and the black balls of his eyes. The soldier shrieked, “Monster!”