Authors: John Hornor Jacobs
‘The Plaza del Monstruo, is that right?’
‘Yes!’
‘I don’t know if my errand here in Passasuego will be complete by then, but I will try to make it,’ said I.
‘You haven’t heard of Neruda? He is the greatest philosopher of this age! Not afraid to spit in the eye of the Ruman legions and the corrupt old governor Cornelius!’
I nodded then, frowning. I didn’t care much for Cornelius myself, but it was surprising to hear his name on the tongue of this bilious torta vendor.
I left him there, drawing the covered jaunting-hearse after me.
Passasuego is divided into three loose districts. Because the town sits on a slope of the White Mountains, it obeys the rule that shit rolls downhill. In the higher neighbourhoods, or Rosa Distrito, you have the luxury markets, the counting houses, haberdashers and dressmakers, bathhouses and gymnasia, the Adolpho Theatre bracketed by two of the nicer hotels, the Pynchon and the Manteras, along with the homes of the wealthier tradesmen, slave mongers, and captains of industry – most of these buildings and domiciles in the Cantabrian style, full of airy arches, painted shuttered windows, with ochre-hued clay tiles on the roofs and pink stonework, the finest example of this being the Medieran Embassy.
Go downhill a piece, and there you’ll find the Centro Distrito, where the working class lives, crowded with smaller homes done in Cantabrian style but on a smaller scale. The neighbourhoods teem with bodegas and parks and miniature plazas so that at any moment, walking the streets there, you might find yourself in a shaded, tree-covered space, cool and quiet, dedicated to some Ruman-hating Medieran nobleman or hero. The neighbourhood schools ring with bells and the peals of children’s laughter, the markets are full of brightly woven fabrics and fragrant meats and spices. Vigiles walk the streets warily, always ready for a well-aimed piece of horse-dung flung by a
pilluelo
. There is an artisan’s district, where the College of Engineers keep a great behemoth of a building near the south wall and sculptors work to create elegant shapes from the pink marble, and stonemasons cut the travertine blocks for building and export, placing the stone on the rail-sledges that run with the White River down from the heights to where the land levels some and merchants continue porting them on the Great West Road overland to the Mammon River.
In the lowest section, commonly referred to as The Slough or, more affectionately, as Shitsville, lie the tenement houses and tanneries, the abattoirs, the foundries and smelts and slag-wagon fleets, the whores and sweetboys and dealers in stolen goods. The dross of society ends up here.
The Icehouse Hotel was, thank Ia, in the Centro Distrito near the North Gate. I stabled the jaunting-hearse – tipped the stable boy a few sesterius to keep an eye on it until I could return – and went to find Fisk and Winfried. I found them sitting in the corner of the bar.
Winfried sat staring at the wall – more pink travertine.
‘I absolutely despise that colour,’ she said.
‘Better get used to it. It’s everywhere.’
‘It’s like they
want
this town to look like a lady’s handkerchief or a baby’s toy.’
‘Not much they can do about it. It’s the colour of the stone around here.’ It was good to see her lively about something. She’d been very silent on the journey.
Fisk ordered a whiskey and after a moment, Winfried followed suit.
‘So, will you schedule some portraits for tomorrow?’ I asked her. She grimaced as she drank the whiskey.
The Icehouse got its name from the blocks of ice stored beneath it. Great hunks of the frozen stuff were cut from high mountain lakes and brought down on sledges and wagons drawn by teams of massive draft horses. I ordered a whiskey with an ice back, and I soothed the burn of the alcohol by dropping chunks of it into my glass and swirling it about.
‘No,’ she said, her eyes crinkling at the edges as she thought about it. ‘Right now I don’t think …’ She stopped, drank some more, glancing at Fisk. ‘I am not in a calm enough state to spend all day taking portraits.’
Fisk said, ‘Beleth. Ideas?’
I glanced at Winfried and then back to Fisk, curious. He must’ve spilled the information we received from Andrae.
‘One of us should visit the College of Engineers,’ I said. ‘I don’t think Beleth would be able to stay away, honestly. Even if it was for a bit of petty larceny or to recruit some junior engineer to his task. I imagine there are summonings that require more than just a single person.’
‘And,’ Fisk added, ‘Beleth thinks quite highly of himself. A man of his stature requires an assistant.’
‘What will you do?’ I said.
‘I’m going to spend a bit of money,’ he said. ‘Can’t just go barging into the Pynchon, or the Medieran Embassy, half-cocked. Doubtless Beleth will have more
daemon-
possessed watchers about.’
‘What about me?’ Winfried asked. ‘He doesn’t know who I am. And it’s doubtful the boy that killed—’ She stopped. Took a sip of whiskey. ‘That killed Wasler would have had time to report back to him.’
‘She’s right, Fisk,’ I said. ‘She could work as our agent, enter the Pynchon without tipping our hand.’
Fisk nodded, though his face was pained. To use her desire for revenge as bait rankled him, surely. He would not
want
to put her more at risk. But he would, anyway.
Because Beleth was near.
‘Your machine.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The Infernograph. We can use that as our ticket in.’
‘He is an engineer.’ She smiled. I could tell the whiskey had begun to affect her. She dug around in her coat and withdrew a wrinkled and stained card. It read:
Wasler & Winfried Lomax
In Pursuit of Anthropological Information Regarding
The Denizens of Occidentalia, including the Imperial Protectorate,
Dvergar, The Big Empty, and the Hardscrabble Territories
Are taking Portraits with their
INFERNOGRAPH
On the day(s) of ______ from the ______ hour To the ______ hour.
LOCATION: ________________
Subjects will receive a copy of the infernograph
Contact the Lomaxes to make an appointment
I looked at the card and handed it to Fisk. He scanned it, gave it back.
‘He won’t be able to stop himself,’ Fisk said. ‘He’ll come like a pig called sooie to a trough.’
‘We can get a suite, possibly, if you think your purse can afford it. You can listen in an adjoining room, if necessary, when he comes in …’
‘We nab him,’ I said.
‘I think it’s a workable plan,’ she said, smiling.
It did sound good, but one thing bothered me. ‘What if he’s not alone?’
‘There are two of you.’
‘But there’s no telling if they’ll be human or have devils at the reins,’ I said, tapping my temple. ‘And there’s only one of Winfried.’
Fisk sucked his teeth. ‘All this is just talk. Beleth might’ve already ducked out of town.’
‘We need to find him first, then,’ Winfried said. ‘And I am
still
the best person for that task, unless you have disguises prepared?’
‘She’s right, Fisk,’ I said, picking up a piece of ice, popping it in my mouth and crunching it. ‘We definitely can’t be barging in there without some sort of assurance he’s here.’
Fisk thought for a long while. Then looked at Winfried with narrowed eyes. ‘All right. Why don’t you check in at the Pynchon.’ He placed a handful of coins on the table and pushed them to her. ‘Don’t put out the calling card just yet. Let’s see if Beleth is bold enough to be toddling about with his face bare,’ he said. ‘Use some of that money to tip the servants and barkeeps. He’ll be going under the name Unchleigh.’
‘Unchleigh? That’s bizarre.’
‘It’s the name of one of his favourite devils.’
She frowned.
7 Kalends, Quintilius, 2638 ex Ruma Immortalis
Early the next morning, Winfried took a room at the Pynchon – with the understanding she’d send us a note if she discovered anything.
After she left, Fisk and I discussed our situation in the room.
‘I’ll make a visit to the College of Engineers,’ I said. ‘Cornelius’ sheaf of orders should be good for entry. I can talk to the head poohbah there.’
‘Poohbah?’
‘Don’t know what they call themselves. They’re pretty closed about what and who goes on in there.’
He flashed me his legatus eagle. ‘I’ll chat up the vigiles.’
I took the Ava Obergón through the Centro Distrito, passing through residential neighbourhoods and markets, gambel-shaded plazas and open, cool, paved thoroughfares. Looking to the east, out over the smoking, jumbled mess of Shitsville and the smelts, beyond the eastern wall where the White River continued its journey down the mountain, rill after white-frothed rill; the clouds hung low and dark in the sky, on the same level where I stood, and in the muted light of the half-obscured sun, everything stood out in sharp relief. Turning, I saw a shadow dart aside, into some alleyway or passage.
Followed.
I continued on. My legs are short. I would never be able to outpace whoever was following.
Turning west, heading up-mountain, I found myself on the Calle Llázaron, amidst the hubbub and bustle of tradesmen and shopkeepers and workers making their way to whatever employment filled their days, until I reached the Distrito Artisan and passed the travertine workshops, dusty and rimed in pink, the saddlers and wheelwrights and carpenters’ open workshops, the seamstresses and engravers and potters, until I came to the College of Engineers.
It was a tremendous building, built in the Ruman style, flat and unadorned with the exception of a motto above the great brass-doored entrance –
machinor collegium inferi
. Entering, with only one glance back to see if I could spot my tail, I found myself in a massive rotunda, with towering ceilings supported by awe-inspiring columns, covered with chiselled intaglios and skeins of warding. Sound echoed hollowly with each step on the polished marble floor, and looking down, I saw the faint tracery of blackened silver threading its way through the stone. I stood upon an absolutely massive
pellum
ward. It was reassuring, that. No
daemon-
possessed body could enter here. One less thing that I had to worry about.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ said a voice off to my left.
It was a very small stone desk near the base of one of the travertine columns. A man sat at the desk dressed in a simple white tunic, with shorn hair and a neat, pleasant manner.
I walked over. ‘Maybe. I need to speak to the person in charge,’ I said.
I have to hand it to the man. He didn’t smirk or look outraged. Engineers are little lords among us regular folk, and engineer or Ruman, they all hold themselves higher than a simple native Occidentalian as myself. My blood does me no favors.
‘Praefect Saepientia doesn’t see walk-in visitors, I’m afraid.’ He ruffled some paper and lifted a pen. ‘I have an opening in her schedule on the third hour, two days from now. Will that suit?’
‘I’m sorry, I need to see her today,’ I said. To preclude any officious nonsense and protestations of busyness, I opened the stamped orders that Cornelius had provided me and handed them over.
The receptionist looked at the seal, untied the missive, and began to read. ‘I Gaius Cornelius, Governor of …’ His eyes scanned forward in the document, reading quickly. ‘It seems—’ He checked the document. ‘Mr Dveng Ilys, I am to render unto you all possible aid and support – including resources both monetary and military – in the pursuit of your task. Can you prove you’re the aforementioned Dveng Ilys?’
‘I believe it describes me in one of the later clauses, Mister—’
‘Drassus,’ he said, negligently, flipping through the sheaf of orders. “A short, half-breed of a man – part native
dvergar
of the tinker stripe – brown of eye and hair, ill-kempt, yet possessed of a spirit of intelligence far beyond the normal intellect apparent in most of his indigenous race. Answers to the nickname Shoestring.” He frowned. ‘That is a bit unkind.’
‘Maybe to other dwarves, sir.’
‘And to you.’ He looked me up and down. ‘You
are
a bit unkempt, though I imagine you spend more nights under the stars than a roof.’
‘Keen of eye, sir.’
‘Well, it all seems to be in order here.’ He rang a bell and very quickly two women dressed in tunics and carrying carbine rifles trotted into the rotunda with a military air.
Drassus wrote a note, folded it, and handed it to one of the women. He said, ‘Please take Mr Ilys to Praefect Sapientia’s waiting room.’ He glanced at me. ‘Good day, Mr Ilys. I hope the Praefect can assist you in your task.’
The women escorted me quickly out of the atrium and through a maze of corridors, finally placing me in a drab room ringed in stone benches. One of them entered an inner door, presumably to deliver the note to the Praefect. I sat down, looking about. The walls were heavily warded, though luxuriously appointed with oversized
daemonlights
. There was an ornate carpet on the floor, and one of the curious steam-driven fans rotating on the ceiling. Two small slatted windows were cut into the travertine walls, giving a narrow view of the eastern view of Passaseugo. Once again I noticed the blackened silver of a
pellum
ward in a circle on the floor. The amount of silver in this building must have been staggering.
I waited for what must’ve been two hours before a burly woman entered the waiting room carrying a wicker basket and said, ‘Praefect Sapientia will see you now. Please place all of your weapons in this.’
I dumped my Hellfire revolvers in the basket, followed by a few knives.
‘You want my sling?’ I asked the woman.
She shrugged and led me into the office. It was a homey affair; more rugs, some ancestral statues, a shelf full of arcane looking books, a scarred and scorched worktable replete with urns and engraving tools, a banked torch, a swivel-mounted ground glass ocular, various knives and cutting utensils. Enamelled wooden frescoes adorned the walls.
‘What can I do for you Mr Ilys?’ she asked in a rich voice.
‘I need some information, ma’am.’
She looked at the woman standing near the door. ‘Drusilla, please shoot Mr Ilys the next time he refers to me as “ma’am”.’
‘Yes ma’am,’ she replied.
Sapientia rolled her eyes, then, turning back to me, smiled.
‘What sort of information?’
‘I’m looking for a man named Gaius Linneus Beleth. He’s wanted by the Governor—’
Her smile failed and she frowned.
‘You know him?’
‘Everyone knows Beleth.’
‘Sounds like there’s some history there.’
She looked at me closely, narrowing her eyes. ‘Much of the collegium’s current organization and prominence is due to Beleth’s influence. He was
princep
in the college until very recently, when the governor Cornelius became his patron.’
‘What are the perks to being the
princep
of the college?’
‘There’s a salary – though it’s not lavish. Research is rewarded by patents on processes so that if you can develop a new way to bind inferi into munitions, you will receive a portion of the monies made from that.’
‘Did Beleth work on munitions?’
‘Early in his career, as we all do. Binding Imps into Hellfire rounds, the larger arch-
daemons
into turbines.’ She pursed her lips.
‘You didn’t like him.’ I didn’t state it as a question.
‘No. He was a shoddy engineer. Talented, yes. But the mechanics of what we do – the actual working parts of gears and weight distribution, heat dissipation, stress tolerances, all of which is so very
important
, he found tiresome. He focused his energies on what he could control.’
‘People.’
‘Yes. A born politician. Which explains why a poor engineer could rise to
princeps
, I suppose.’
‘Why would he leave?’
‘Money? Influence? Prominence? Pick one.’
‘I have met the man.’
‘Then you know.’
I nodded.
For a while I sat thinking.
‘So, he wasn’t good with the physical side of things,’ I said. ‘What was he good at?’
‘Bindings. Investing
daemons
into physical objects. It’s a little understood aspect of summoning because of the mischievous and mercurial nature of
daemons
. In general, engineers want to use the inferi simply as a power source. But Beleth wanted more.’
‘More? Like what?’
‘He had a scheme to create soldiers.’
Maybe she saw the alarm on my face. She raised her hands in a soothing gesture. ‘We never let him get that far. He might have been
princep
but he answered to the collegium.’
That didn’t put me entirely at ease. I recalled the boy in Hot Springs, grinning in the dark.
Beleth sends his regards.
Sapientia noticed my shudder.
‘You are not telling me something, Mr Ilys,’ she said.
‘No, ma’am, I’m not.’
She placed her hands on her desk, palm-down. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
‘I was ordered to keep this hushed,’ I said. I glanced at the guard standing by the door. ‘But I can’t see any way around getting my job done without letting go some of Cornelius’ secrets.’
‘Do tell.’
‘Beleth, in addition to some murders and a case of arson, has turned traitor and gone into cahoots with the Medierans.’
Sapientia whistled. ‘I can see why Cornelius wanted this hushed up. That’s a major blow.’ Her face grew worried. ‘He’ll tell all of the collegium’s secrets!’
‘And Rume’s military strategy.’
‘They are the same thing, essentially,’ she said. ‘As you know, very little
pure
research goes on here and it’s mostly munitions production and process refinement.’
‘War footing, now that Mediera and Tchinee are sword rattling?’
‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘So,’ I said slowly, thinking about all she’d revealed. ‘Our intelligence tells us that he might be here in Passaseugo. I take it Beleth hasn’t contacted you?’
‘Not me,’ she said, tugging at her bottom lip. ‘Nor anyone else in the collegium that I know of. But there are many guilded engineers here and I don’t keep tabs on all of them.’
‘Anyone gone missing lately? Or left?’
‘No, but I’ll have to have my secretary check the roster for sure.’
‘Please do so. You can have them send any information to me at the Icehouse.’
‘I will also alert the members of this college of Beleth’s treachery and find out if he’s approached any of them.’
‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t. We don’t want this getting out.’
‘Mr Ilys, there is no organization more secretive than the College of Engineers. We are where secrets
begin
.’
I thought about that for a little while.
‘You know the names of any
daemons
Beleth might’ve summoned?’
She raised an eyebrow.
‘He’s been going by the names Unchleigh and Labadon, which turns out were also
daemons
. We’re thinking he likes to consider himself clever. If we can find some other names of
daemons
he’s bound—’
‘You might get a line on him. Yes, I understand.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I heard about him getting a contract to bind a
daemon
in a steamship—’
‘That would be the devil Labadon.’
‘Ah. Other than that, I have no information. But when I’m querying the collegium members about the other matters, I will investigate this, as well.’
‘All right,’ I said, standing up. Sapientia rose with me. ‘Thank you for your time, ma’am.’
‘A pleasure,’ she said, smiling. ‘And I won’t even have Drusilla here shoot you,’ she laughed.
We shook hands, Drusilla presented me with my weapons and I secured them about my body. Sapientia was kind enough to walk me to the rotunda atrium. We were standing on the massive
pellum
ward when a thought occurred to me.
‘Why doesn’t this ward dispel Hellfire Imps?’ I asked. ‘Shouldn’t my ammo be duds now?’
‘You are a perceptive man, Mr Ilys.’ She looked at me closely. ‘But mistaken. Each round is protected and whole so that its warding is inviolate even if within another ward.’ She thought for a moment. ‘These
pellum
wards are strictly for
daemons
who find corporeal vestments. More, I cannot say.’
I nodded. Engineers will discuss theory, but dig too far and they will begin speaking in generalities. I thanked her for her time.
‘Do please let me know what you find out. I will render any assistance I can,’ she said.
‘Well, we’re working on something,’ I replied. ‘Something that might draw him out.’
‘What might that be?’
I told her about the infernograph, and as I did, her expression brightened. ‘Extraordinary! That’s a device I’d like to examine!’
‘We can probably arrange that.’
‘It is something that would, most assuredly, be of interest to Beleth. I think the idea has merit.’
‘I was afraid you’d say that.’
‘Afraid?’
‘Most traps need bait.’
‘Ah, I understand your reticence.’ She took my hand in hers. It was warm and strong. ‘It has been a pleasure, Mr Ilys. Do stay in touch,’ she said, giving a rather impish smile and then turning to walk back into the interior of the building.
The sun was high in the sky when I stumbled into the bright air of the mountain side and Distrito Artisan. I realized I hadn’t eaten in hours so I stopped at a small open-air restaurant near the Plaza Cordova and had some coffee and some buttered corncakes and sausage. The name of the place reminded me of a girl, then, the girl that started all this. The White Rose of Cordova, Isabella, who died at the hands of stretchers. The food was good but a strange mood settled on me and I felt as though I was being watched. There was no one at the cafe except for a fresh-faced young matron in an expensive-looking dress with her nose in this week’s copy of
The Passasuego Gazetá.
The headline read ‘Talavera Silverload to See Arrival of Mechanized Drill.’ Engrossed in the story, she paid no apparent attention to me. I paid my bill and wandered back down the Calle Llázaron toward the northern side of Passasuego. There was no sign of the tail and since he or she already knew where I went, it was reasonable to assume they knew where I came from. Stopping in the Icehouse’s stables, I checked on Bess, and Fisk’s black, and waited for a while, tossing the stablehand a couple of coins to keep him quiet as I climbed into the hay-loft to settle down with a view of the open door.