Rook's Rose, page 21
“Very good, sir.” Sevring hurried to the window. No dust puffed from the drapes as they moved, and that irritated Rexton a bit more. He would have liked to discipline a chambermaid, for all it did not do to blur the line between pleasure and dependent.
Such things led to gossip, and were anyway beneath a gentleman such as himself.
In short order the tray was whisked away, the butler given the message in a murmur, the master of the house shaved and dressed with swift efficiency by his faithful valet. Everything was done with a minimum of fuss, and yet Felix’s dissatisfaction grew.
“Not that coat, for gods’ sake,” he almost snarled. “Something a little less Gaulish; I’ve to visit bankers today.”
“Yes, sir.” The offending article was whisked away, and really Sevring’s behaviour was faultless. Which was all the more aggravating.
“The fellow has rather not earned the sum promised for an early end to the matter,” Felix continued. “Will he be indelicate about it, do you think?”
“Shouldn’t be, sir; very bad for his Reputation if word gets out. I wouldn’t worry just yet.”
Which was comforting, but Lord Rexton still could not rid himself of a nagging doubt. The decision crystallized just as he settled upon the shoe-stool, his valet kneeling in the usual fashion to tie and button his master’s boots.
“It’s all rather provoking,” Felix said. “Tell me, Sevring, who can we use to gather up a certain package and deliver it to Cheshill?”
Sevring did not pause, but his quiet turned thoughtful. He took great care with anything like laces, buttons, or knots, knowing his master’s preference for a certain tidiness in those areas. “There’s Munningham, sir, and Bingley. But they’re both rather rough sometimes. Gentle handling is a bit extry, like.”
“My good man, speak in proper Ænglish instead of cant.” If he was already borrowing, Rexton mused, he might as well take a little extra. Once he achieved his goal there would be no shortage of funds. He had intended to reward himself after achieving the Chair, but the way things stood now . . .
“Yes, sir. Beg your pardon, sir.” Sevring’s dark head was bent, and the pomade in his hair was just upon the edge of flash. That qualified as a fault, but only a very small one since he was, after all, a mere valet. “There’s a man who might be available, a Mr Frankmartin. All items delivered on time and in original condition, guaranteed.”
“No doubt he’s expensive.”
“Yes, sir.” Sevring might have added well worth it, but he understood such a comment would not be looked upon kindly by his master this particular morning.
Blast the man, he was an altogether reasonably perfect catspaw.
I do rather deserve something nice, Felix thought, and a wonderful sensation of ease and anticipation pushed aside his irritation. Just thinking about the girl with Alice’s eyes was enough to brighten his entire day.
“We shall visit him after the bankers are dealt with, then. Not too tight, Sevring.”
The valet loosened his master’s bootlaces a trifle. “Yes, sir.” When he rose, his expression was bland as ever.
It didn’t matter. Suddenly, Lord Rexton was in a much better mood.
Wrong Dog, Hoi Polloi
BY THE TIME NOON arrived, the hidden sun at its apex and the sky over New Rome a pale dome with thickening grey currents presaging yet another smoker, Avery Black had already killed a man.
It wasn’t difficult to find his prey; the bastard was like clockwork, hopping down from a hansom and strolling along as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Just north of South Dock’s midmorn heave and bustle, Laskar Alley was a single pulsing capillary. A nameless, malodorous lane plunged off its narrow, crowded tunnel with several publicks crowded cheek-by-jowl along its length, their painted signs so faded as to be mere hieroglyphs in a language long forgotten.
A surprising amount of money changed hands here, for the dogs, cocks, and boxers in this slice of New Rome were held to be fierce indeed and the pits in most of the damp, weeping-walled pub basements held fights twice or thrice weekly.
Avery followed the bobbing of the gentleman’s hat, occasionally glimpsing a bit of pomaded salt-and-pepper between brim and collar. Harry Eilsley, Lord Gover, did not stick out as a sore thumb despite his title, for many gamblers both flash and respectable visited this part of town on fight days. Some brought a footman or a valet with pretensions of combat experience along for protection, but the bullyboys of this territory were alert for any breach of rough decorum or—more importantly—interruption of profit. The Limelhos Licks kept peace in these parts; even the pickpockets knew how far to press their luck and nimble fingers.
The frails and she-wolves here wore their hair high and their skirts showing a bit of stocking above wooden clogs, since the mud was thick and reeked of the Thamis as well as salt and rotten fish. It was also rumored every one of them kept a knife in her bodice, and a sailor who bore a wrath-mark upon his cheek after abusing one of the sisterhood had little luck finding female companionship between Stepney and the Butcher Row, Sallaman and Sudocks.
Even City Inspectors and Parliament Censors left Limelhos publicks largely to their own devices, so long as the Licks kept a reasonable amount of something impersonating quietude. Gover turned aside, passing through a low, wide doorway innocent of any barrier from well before dawn to well after midnight, decorated with garish daubs of blue and yellow paint. The Arlequin was a favourite of his, and with the Priory elections so near a largish bribe was probably burning a hole in the good Lordship’s bag.
The Rook sauntered a decent interval in His Lordship’s wake. Outside the Acre he would ne’er be recognised, for he wore a sailor’s jacket and the tam-hat popular with dock rats, his hands were daubed with tar that would be hell to remove, and he had not shaved that morn. A horsetail impersonating a maritimer’s queue was tied to his noggin, and the roll in his gait would have convinced even an old salt that he was looking at another of his kind, a citron-sucking navvy.
This was the easiest of his tasks today. He stepped over the Arlequin’s threshold into a crowd of damp wool, shouted curses, banging flagons, a sour exhalation of gin and ale, and the reek of blood and pain. The trick of moving through this kind of crowd was to catch its rhythm, just as upon a crowded ballroom floor. But there was no shining blue-skirted girleen in his arms, light as a leaf and somber as a judge.
There she went again, tiptoeing through his head as she did almost every hour. I believe we may be rather effective in tandem.
It all sounded like a sliverpence-dreadful, printed on cheap paper and full of melodrama fit to make a group of schoolboys breathless. The Rosa Munda and a Rook. A Hellion and a lady—oh, she was Quality, little Beth, his Gemma.
There was no use in hoping. Better to keep his attention on the here and now. He couldn’t wear a hood for this, but his vision and hearing shifted as if he had pulled a length of cloth about his head. Every colour sharp, even the filthiest corner aglow with its own light, the tawdry decorations on ale-slattern skirts and lucky gewgaws on many a sailor’s jacket shining like real metal, the curses and shouts and clatter a reel of good music, the stench in his nostrils possessed of complex depth like fine wine.
An ancient wrestling stadium had been swallowed by New Rome’s buildings, and its stone-step seats had been worn by many a pair of feet or buttocks. Its middle was taken up by three rings; howls, growls, and snapping teeth filled each one.
The betting was intense, business brisk, the crowd in clots. Gamble-boys darted from one knot to the next, wooden tickets clattering on strings around their necks. The bookmakers shouted, announcing odds and lines; the clamour grew more intense in waves, owners and trainers exhorting their fighters from the smallpits and the bettors encouraging, exulting, or shouting abuse at failure.
Avery slipped past a pair of vociferously arguing young rakes with shining beaver hats, skirted a knot of gamble-boys totting up at the top of their lungs, elbowed past a trio of sailors heaping abuse on the trainer of a brindle with a pronounced underbite, a placid stare, and scars along both sides bespeaking a certain amount of victories, and did not let his lip curl.
It was, he rather thought, a shame to treat good dogs in this fashion. Some Gaulish twat of a philosopher said dumb creatures felt no pain, but any creature possessing the sense to cower or whimper when you kicked it felt something. Common sense would tell a man as much, but ’twas far from common. Cruelty was everywhere, and Avery was glad his girleen was nowhere near this patch of New Rome right now.
At least Gover wasn’t at the bulls today. That was just as loud, and somehow worse.
The quality of His Lordship’s cloth, not to mention his regular attendance in such places, gained him a place near to the wooden partition of the largest ring, where one battle had just finished. A few ragamuffins darted in to clear gobbets of fur and flesh, a bent corkscrew of a man with a stove-in hat and a decided hunch to his back pushed a broom over bloody sand, and two gamble-boys hovered near Gover while the barkers began extolling a new pair of combatants.
The crowd surged forward. True to form, Eilsley had arrived in time for a highly anticipated bout. When he was flush he didn’t care to bet upon smaller games, leaving them for days when his pockets were parsimonious.
Letting the press shove him along, the Rook slid on peels and cast-down tickets, his seaman’s boots scraping the crust. By midafternoon the rubbish would be shin-deep.
A breath of orange-water reached his nose, and a hint of Makassar as well. The wooden half-walls in Lucky’s basement were flimsier than these rounds, but of course, they didn’t have to handle this type of crowd. The surge ended with him almost mashed against the back of Eilsley’s expensive coat, and everyone was too busy shouting last-moment bets to notice a quiet spectator.
The barking had finished, the last bets were placed, the gates went up. The crowd turned into a delirium of screaming. If a divinity was present, it was one of madness and bloodshed. Howls and snapping rose, and blood spattered.
It was almost child’s play. The knife was the easy part—sharp enough to bone shad, thin enough for a fishmonger’s fine work, just long enough to pierce a coat, a jacket, a weskit, a shirt, and skin, biting deep into kidneys. Twice, thrice, four times, finishing with a vicious twist as Lord Gover stiffened, his mouth opening in a scream, but all around him other men were howling as well.
The difficulty was slipping free of the press, leaving the body upright against the chest-high partition. A single sailor reeling away from the sight of bloody sand wasn’t worth comment; any man who had a sour head from diving into gin instead of the ocean’s embrace might well be sickened by the spectacle.
The fight was still going, other bets swirling like one of the famed typhoons of the Pacifica. Avery Black vanished into the crowd.
It took almost ten full minutes before anyone realized the glassy-eyed, staring lordship wasn’t simply entranced by the murderous brawl of otherwise fine beasts abused into mistrust and violence. The blood soaking down Eilsley’s trousers wasn’t visible outside his coat, and by the time a gamble-boy let out a piercing, terrified shriek of warning, Lord Gover—the High Knight of the Priory, member of the Seven—was well past any saving.
He had bet upon the wrong dog, too.
A GHOST OF TAR still lingered on the Rook’s hands, but that could not be helped. And in any case, his current gloves were of good kid, and spotless to boot.
Westmistrex had been the Paltry-Senatus before the great fire in the reign of Charlix the Wigged. Its gutted, discoloured bulk was rebuilt in brownish stone after the next conflagration—popularly called the Exchequer’s Burning—and now was home to Parliament itself, both the Great and Small Senatus. All of which meant it was draughty, ill-lit, full of strange passageways, and crowded at almost every hour.
The Passage of the Lords at noon, when the brightly robed Great Senate was seated to begin official business after morning haruspicy, was always attended by a great throng of onlookers, influence-seekers, radicals with placards, and various other types; the Commons Walk was much earlier, and much less interesting for the hoi polloi.
The commoners’ own drab representatives held less than half the fascination brightly coloured aristocracy did. It was enough to make a Hellion question his own profession. Why fight to grant freedom unto mere sheep?
Morton would scoff at the question. You made your choice, my lad. Don’t bemoan theirs. And in any case, very few of Avery’s kind joined the war for purely philosophical reasons.
Personal battles were always more vicious, and far more motivating. He moved with the crowd, just another witness to the business of Empire, listening to the singsong calls of petty merchants, the cries of placard-bearers, the jeers and expostulations of the idle. The din rivaled that of Vulkan’s forge, much louder than a Laskar Alley hole despite its roof being the clouded, lowering sky instead of a publick’s bulk.
The Passage began. Nobles both threadbare and well-cushioned, all dressed in ceremonial robes though the former’s were arranged not to show signs of wear and the latter’s almost violent in their clashing shades, trooped in order of precedence from a line of carriages. Inside the Great Vestry the outer drapes would be shed and most would attend session in the sober suits underneath, for they were after all gentlemen and aristocrats. A certain show was traditional, but in-chamber preening considered rather a mark of low taste.
Amid the flock a certain glossy stovepipe hat bobbed, and under it a relatively portly fellow with a very florid nose bespeaking love of good sherry.
Fredericus de Haviland was neither Teuton nor Gaul, despite his name. He would not properly be Earl Naslund until his ancient father shuffled off to Elysium, but attended the Great Senate by dispensation since said father was in no condition to do so yet still clung to a simulacrum of existence at the country estate. He was moderately popular with the rabble for his noblesse oblige, solid figure, considerable fortune, and assumed support for Full Franchise—never mind that the last was a merely a comfortable posture, since it would never pass a real vote.
A client wishing for a noble patron could traditionally accost any lord at home during certain days of the week, but was also accorded the right to do so upon the steps of the Senatus. A holdover from First Empire, the custom made for a press upon the wide, pigeon-spotted granite stairs, lictors brandishing ivy-wrapt rods and shouting to force a path, peers in their bright plumage avoiding eye contact or deigning to slow for a word exchanged with a lucky, importuning soul.
One could not be completely oblivious, after all.
Nobody glanced at a reasonably well-dressed man, perhaps a banker or barrister even if his coat was a little bulkier than his fellows’, moving with some speed despite the throng. It was a raw morning, after all, fog thickening in corners as the sun crested its daily hill and trembled precisely at the apex; everyone was so concerned with their own affairs, not to mention keeping their balance amid the press of human bodies, that they had little time to notice a neighbour’s behaviour.
The Rook reached his goal just in time.
A great swelling tumult of temple bells began, lifting from each corner of New Rome to mark midday. Whisper during the tolls, the proverb ran, and even gods keep the secret.
The muffled twang of a small contraption strapped to Avery’s wrist was lost in the hubbub of shouted question, pleas for patronage, lictors crying Alë, Alë, errant rhetoric or legal students at the fringes of the crowd uttering blue words at top volume as they could not in any other situation, preachers and ravers lifting their voices in reprimand or censure, and more.
Easy to reload; the Rook’s fingers blurred through motions he had practiced just that morning. The grim satisfaction of using another assassin’s weapon for this was pushed aside for later savoring.
The second steel quarrel buried itself in de Haviland’s throat. His attending lictors did not notice, too busy dealing with a knot of petitioning bakers who wished for someone, anyone to deal with a certain taxation problem, and indeed nobody in the crowd noticed the next Earl Naslund clutching at his freshly incarnadine neckwrap.
By the time the carillon finished—every temple had a slightly different timepiece, so exact noon was a matter more of preference than absolute scientific judgment despite the Meridian—the Priory’s Grand Almoner, another of the Seven who would elect the next Chair, was already well upon his way to the afterlife, choking upon his own blood. One quarrel was buried deep in his chest, the other in his jugular, and the startled lictors laid about with their fasces in quite barbaric fashion.
The resultant brawl lasted half an hour, was only quelled by a contingent of Chillwater Equestris hurriedly dispatched from a nearby blockhouse, and claimed three more lives among the commoners since the peers were hustled posthaste into the great stone building.
By then, the Rook was long gone—for, after all, that day’s work was far from finished.
Lowest Marks
“THIS IS INSUPPORTABLE.” Breakbridge had been thundering most sternly in this vein for at least a quarter-hour. “Another brawl? This is a school, not a boxing ring!”
Gemma’s head did not ache yet, but her neck did and it was only a matter of time before the rest of her followed suit. Naturally the good Director had to make some sort of show to keep his restive charges from further bad behaviour, but it seemed rather out of bounds for him to be shouting so in front of a lady.
“Just so, just so.” Mr Roycebury added his enthusiastic agreement. He was an angular man, even with the protrusion of a hard little gut under his waistcoat—not that one could often see it, since he affected a scholar’s robes while at Imanuel. He hung up his frock coat and changed into the swallowing black cloth gravely before his class each morning, in a silence so absolute one could hear a pin drop at the other end of the hall. School gossip said he now performed the operation openly because he had once, years ago, been locked inside the small, disused closet used until that day as a dressing room; it was whispered that despite old Breaks being ‘a soft touch,’ the assumed perpetrators of that particular prank had been sent to a far less cushiony school after a week’s worth of daily birchings.
