CH 2
From their vantage in the deep shadows of the near morning, the nine figures watching Max could see that he was properly soused as he climbed the cracked stones of his tenement wall. The figures mused simultaneously that he must have forgotten his key. They were interconnected by a bond of fecund logical telepathy such that the observations of one echoed through the vacuum of their soulless forms until a single deduction was shared by all. They were incorrect. Max continued past the open window to his apartment and on up to the roof of his building. Confused by their faulty inference, the nine decided to wait for him to return to his room before they would leave their places in the shadows.
Max had not forgotten his key. He had climbed the wall with dawn approaching as was his custom when his mind wouldn’t take a knee to his drinking. Everything was upside down since the army. He had been the best rider Wooltossing had ever seen. Every match, every one he’d played had somehow led to... this. How many times had he pinned another rider against the downdraft until the other man’s nerves failed and he abandoned his sheep? And what would Max do then? Why he’d do nothing less than the impossible! He’d tuck his girl Mabeline into a dart and turn her belly to the sun in a single, dipping pirouette that would put them right under that falling sheep and snatch it out of the sky and splash it in his team’s catching pond for another point. He’d nearly always prevailed while the other rider s**t himself, or worse, lost control and met the jagged stones of the playing field.
The sun rose and put daggers in Max’s bloodshot eyes, laying him onto his back in the pigeon droppings. How long had he played that game? How many tourneys had he won for the Cloudivers? How long had he worked in school to best every other boy at any magick they set in front of him? Hundreds died every year in the Wooltossing leagues across the continent, yet, even with all of the risks Max had played, he still survived.
And school, what was there but to succeed, to be better than the rest of the boys when he had no father to bring to the solstice ceremonies? Maximillan the Third had died they year after his birth, taken by a frost dragon’s barbed talon. Why had he been was so far south, crusading for the church in the damned arctic wastes... it was all so many years ago. With his father gone, all his mother would do was sit at the window and sing. Her voice was beautiful, but the family priest had explained that in the absence of a husband, a demon had taken hold of her heart and forced to appear gay so none would know that if was withering her immortal soul. After three days of song, the servants did as the priest ordered and locked his mother in the attic. When she sobbed to be let free, their priest, the vicar of the Heliotic church tending to their township, assured them that it was only the demon pleading for release.
With his mother and father gone, the church had divided most of the family’s belongings as per his mother’s last request - given to the priest in her last confession to Helios. Max’s uncle Roderick taught him all he could in the summers while he was home from school. This meant riding lessons, and the well kept secrets of sizing up both mounts and sheep. Roderick had also taught him the delicate art of drinking properly and bargaining with seamstresses over the price of their romantic favors. He absorbed all of the lesson and grew to behave as a knight should. Early on Max learned how to be a man. Wether in the classroom or in the air, Max was always the one to beat. His fondest memories were still those of his uncle and the sheep pens where the beasts were weighed to meet regulation standards. Those were his only times away from boarding school. The ‘rapting yards, staying up all night to watch the tourneys, betting coppers along with his uncle who would lose hundreds of crownes in a few innings only to win them back...
Sleep finally drove him into unconsciousness on the weathered roof of the tenement. Roosters
crowed on the next roof over, babies mewled from the floors below, and the shadows frowned, realizing that they had a long wait before they could confront him. They decided to head to the pub and wait the sunlight out.
***
Bill’s day had begun by administering A.T. tests to three animated corpses to determine if they met the required level of cognitive functioning to be registered and approved for the necessary annual cognition stamps. Of the three, two were so off that Bill tried to refuse testing them as it was obvious to anyone in the room that their brains had rotted away months ago.
“I’m sorry but it’s plain that those two, ‘Simon’ and ‘Rodger’ as you have them listed here, are in no condition to even take the test, they’ve barely got eyes left in their skulls.” Bill was fighting his first customer’s attitude while his hangover forced his breakfast from his throat to his stomach and back again every minute or so.
“You snotty little halfsie, I’ll talk to your manager if you won’t give me a fair shake.” The corrupted mage wagged a finger at Bill as he continued to berate him with the sort of slurs Bill might expect from an inbred Doanish herdsman. “I know how you cavebabies are, never letting a proper man get a fair shake! One little taste of authority makes yo so high and mighty... you forget that this bureaucracy wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t that the King is taxing the knickers off me and my fellow human beings - oh, hello sir!”
“May I be of assistance?” Bill’s manager, Dale, appeared behind him without Bill having heard him enter the chamber. Dale, like half of the staff in the ministry, was a ‘recovering’ ghoul. His long, thin frame and spatulate fingers were always flowing about like undersea grass. On many mornings the man’s breath bore the unmistakable taint of old coffins and their contents. This had been one of those mornings.
“Yes you can sir. I’ve been trying to get this... public servant of your’s to give me what I’m due.” The mage offered the slightest of bows to Dale.
“And that would be?” Dale turned to Bill with the question, his malodorous breath knocking the bile back up into Bill’s throat.
“Uh, *swallows* this man would like me to give his Animates an A.T. test. I’ve explained that those two, ah... ‘Roger’ and ‘Simon’ are simply not in a state to take it.” Bill gestured at the more putrid corpses against the back wall as the smell in the small chamber thickened.
“Hmmm, let me see the file.” Dale leaned in and grinned knowingly at Bill. He glanced up at the slowly drooling corpses weaving on their feet with a glimmer of what Bill thought might be lust. “Nope. Mr. Hart-less, I think you should let the test decide if those two are capable of registration. Remember, our job is to keep things running according to the letter of the law. This fellow deserves the same process due the next man.”
“Do your job and be professional about it... I know you tied one on last night but I wouldn’t be doing you any favors if I let you be derelict in your duties, now would I?” Dale whispered into Bill’s ear.
Bill turned back to the smug necromancer and removed all three pounds of the A-204T-1004 ‘Determination of Cognition’ form from under the counter and offered a pained smile to the gloating bigot across from him.
***
The door of Pillywizzet’s shop (Dr. Pillywizzet: Organologist and Mender of Musical Machina) opened with the tittering of the copper canary installed twenty years before Nigel had been born. Nigel had hated that mechanical bird for his first ten months in the shop, but the trilling it produced had become warming to him. Slowly, in his usual shuffling gait, Phil Pillywizzet made his way through the front door of his own shop and nodded to Nigel as he proceeded to the master’s chamber in the back of the store. Nigel let out a wiggling sigh as Phil lumbered past, thankful that the old man hadn’t commented, or worse yet, lectured him about his wretched condition. At 149 years of age, Pillywizzet was a master of enchantment and healing, his own alembics, diet and lifestyle had allowed him to outlive all of his competitors as well as his extended family, though he had never had any children of his own. Nigel did not welcome the thought of another speech about temperance from a man who looked like a skeleton wrapped in used tissue paper.
Aside from the headache, Nigel’s morning passed like every other in that it was completely ordinary. Two people in before ten. The fellow from the chip shop next door had also come in to hang out and talk to Nigel about his amorous conquests the night before, each tale as obtuse and unbelievable as every other morning. Jack, the chipper, only left as Mrs. Ginderwald came in, just as he did every other morning. Mrs. Molly Ginderwald, had come in, as she always did, to have the reed in her antique salpix calibrated. Nigel usually felt comforted by this repetition, but between his hangover and the news about Longbridge the night before, it was roughing his nerves.
It took another hour of tea and soft biscuits to slowly to bring Nigel around to feeling human again. He spent that time dinking at a lyre with a poorly installed crossbar that needed new glyphs in the tuning pins. He was glad he had cut himself off early or he would have been sitting sick at his post all day, most likely enduring the old man’s righteous rambling.
The copper canary sang an unexpected third time while Nigel was scribing a glyph into a tuning key, he was bent at his task for a moment to finish it before he looked up to address his customer.
“Nigel Haggarsmith... what the devil have you been up to?” The voice from across the counter was high pitched and familiar. Nigel looked up from his work to see Byron James standing in front of him grinning widely.
“Byron, you look... fabulous.” Nigel shook James’ hand and realized that Byron did, in fact, look fabulous.
He was sporting a cape that shimmered in the morning light, shifting through a muted palette of warm colors. When he threw the cape aside to grasp Nigel’s hand, the blazing copper medallions stitched over every inch of his skin tight, leather bodysuit threw little reddish spots of glare across the room. His hair was gone, and his front teeth were still quite large, but he looked brilliant in his crimson eyeshadow and deep violet lip gloss. He was a dandy of the first order, and he had a very expensive looking lute in his hand.
“It has been ages since we were in school together. My goodness, is this what you’re doing these days?” He placed the instrument on the counter and put his hands on his hips to look about the small display chamber. Nigel found it impossible to avoid the imposing sight of Byron’s package wrapped tightly in white leather. He felt simultaneously jealous and revolted by it. Again he was painfully confronted by the reason for his own mediocre station in the world of music.
“Yeah, this is it. This is what I’m at... apprentice to Pillywizzet... the man is a living legend you know.” Nigel tried to recover an inkling of his pride.
“No question... the man is a genius... but I don’t know if I’d quite say he’s ‘living’.” Byron laughed at his own joke. Nigel hated to laugh along with him, but he let himself anyway.
“Anyway, down to business.” James put a hand on the counter and managed to slink into a dangerous looking posture against it. “I need this beast restrung. Today, if possible. I’ll be back at ten tomorrow morning to pick it up. I’m opening for Tyro Billingsgate at a secret show and I can’t leave anything to chance. Well, it’s been lovely catching up but I’d best be off. I’ve got an appointment at the stylist’s in half an hour, bye byes.
And with that Nigel felt his hangover sink back into what was left of his heart.
***
The dark hole of the toilet groaned back at him with the sound of the sewer below as Bill tried his best not to be sick a fourth time. He was on his knees in front of the loo, practically praying as wave after wave of nausea wrenched at him. He was wiping his mouth best he could with a corn cob from the dispenser when he heard the door open and another man come in.
As Bill stepped over to the sink and put a copper in the box over the basin, Dale stepped out of one of the stalls and beamed at him. Bill tried to keep himself together as he rinsed his mouth and splashed his face in the ten seconds of water he’d bought. As he dried with his handkerchief he watched Dale pick his teeth in the mirror.
“You know, Bill, I’ve got a sure fire cure for the brown bottle flu.” Dale smacked his lips and leaned in to his reflection. “I’d be happy to make one up for you.”
“Oh thanks for that Dale, but I’m feeling better now. I appreciate the sentiment.” Bill turned to leave.
“No, I insist. You could use a sprucing up, follow me to the break room and I’ll mix one up for you.” Dale wagged a finger and smiled approvingly at his own plan.
“Great.” Bill followed Dale out of the latrine.
They walked through a series of identical grey corridors lit with glowing thimbles that gave off their usual grayish light to the break room with it’s slate tiled walls. Dale slipped into the ice chest and produced a leaden tankard. He poured a lumpy white fluid into a large mug and topped it off with a few drops of something from a vial he had been carrying in his pocket.
“Here you are, my patented cure-all.” Dale’s lips stretched thinly across the knobs of his teeth as he grinned.
Dale took the pint mug and felt another lurching spasm roll through his gut. Whatever it was it smelled sour and looked like curdled milk with a few red splashes on top.
“What... what is it?” Bill managed.
“Ox’s milk, slightly aged ox’s milk. Works better if it’s just turned.” Dale’s grin lost none of its vigor.
“And the little red bits, what are those?”
“Oh, ox’s blood. Helps it go down.” Dale nodded. “Come on then, while it’s still cool.”
Bill fought his desire to hurl the foul beverage at his boss, fought his need to vomit, thought about the security of a provincial job, closed his eyes and tipped the mug back. The salty lumps of the curd and slime made their way to the back of his throat where his body simply would not allow him to swallow.
“Come on... all of it.” Dale reached over and pushed the end of the mug higher. More ooze made its way into Bill’s throat. Facing asphyxiation, Bill’s tattered epiglottis lost its fight and allowed the goo into his stomach, where it landed horribly.
“There you are, you’ll be right as rain in a few minutes. Back to work.” Dale was cheery at having successfully tortured another one of his employees. His sadism was the primary component in his ability to climb the ladder at the Ministry. He relished every opportunity to throw it into use.
***
Tyro Billingsgate.
Nigel was was simply deflating as the day wore on into the afternoon. Last night he found out that one Solaria alumnus was dead while on a stellar career trajectory and another was eaten by his neighbors. Today yet another of his schoolmates, one younger than him even, was opening up for Billingsgate, the most famous rocker in Whitevale, or anywhere else for that matter. And where was he? Where was Nigel? Mending broken instruments, weaving little enchantments and runes to make the talentless sound better than they otherwise would. It was crap, all of it. The universe was obviously an outrageous and crude place. That or he hadn’t paid enough attention to Helios’ evangelists. No, that wasn’t it. Fortune had everything to do with fame, not the other way around. It was luck, that’s all.
He finished up with a couple more instruments and headed back into the shop to fetch another tuning trident and the strings Byron would need for his lute. While the urge to rig the instruments, sabotage his former classmate was there in him, Nigel would never break with his own morals. Setting up a fellow bard was somewhere between sacrilege and simply being a bitch about things. Tempting as it was to see that pretty, pretty tinsel-talented snot break a string or turn an earsplitting note, it would be bad form. And it would get back to the shop and Phil would be forced to fire him.
On his way through the back, Nigel noticed that Phil had dozed off, as always, with his feet on his workbench. He had an empty jigger of poppyflower tea resting on his strange, egg-like potbelly. Nigel wonder how the man could have that bulb of a stomach despite his otherwise utter lack of flesh. The opiate tea was Phil’s daily noon digestif‘, a remedy for the pain of his rasping joints, which Nigel thought must have been unendurable. He picked up the glass and returned it to the epigram of stained rings on the bench where it sat day after day.
“Tyro Billingsgate... I can’t believe it...” Nigel was caught muttering by his snoozing boss.
“Billingsgate?” The man shifted and sniffed heavily, clearing his throat as he sat up with the hurry of a glacier retreating. “Billingsgate is a damned idiot. I’m not kidding, the fool is worthless and bound for ruin, wasting his life like that. Oh sure it’s all tits and ass and wine and crownes, all night orgies and bloody fame, fame, fame...”
“Phil, really, maybe you should just pop on home for the evening, I’ve got a few more things to finish and then I can lock up.” Nigel helped his boss off his chair. Old and brittle as the man was, scared of death as he must have been, Nigel realized that Phil didn’t have a drop of bitterness in him. He was a pure creature, in a childish and wise sort of way.
“Fine, fine... but don’t you worry about that imbicille Billingsgate. No don’t you dare, he’s nothing to aspire to, believe me, he’s a damned fool... damned...” Pillywizzet mumbled incoherently, his eyes half lidded with poppy and age. “Take the keys... here, take the keys and lock up when you’re done.”
Nigel took the keys from his boss, and as he did every night, a faint electricity ran up the length of his arm as he held them. The magic of a time lock was no small thing. Holding an entire three floors of a building in a temporal stasis was high wizardry. It must have cost his boss thousands when he had it installed fifty years before. Such was the price of safeguarding the fruits of his genius. And being allowed inside that world of Pillywizzet’s genius was a gift that Nigel understood the value of. Nevertheless, as he helped the ancient Bard out the door, he felt uneasy at the prospect of someday being 149 years old and brittle as antique glass.
***
Max awoke with the first drops of a light rain hitting his face. The afternoon was heading into the evening and he realized he needed to be to work sooner than he would have liked. After a night off, he always felt worse going back to work. It was probably the debauchery that caused this effect, but it made little difference to him. He simply had to get up, climb back to his apartment and get into his overalls.
At the same time that Max was getting himself together the nine black cloaked figures were several pints into their own self abuse. The ale had little effect on them as what would have been guts or soul in them responded only to harsh spirit and the smell of ink.
***
Finally purged of his night’s indulgence and the putrid concoction that Dale had slapped together for him, Bill was alone in the supply room refilling his aspergis with salt for the next day. His in box was empty and he could finally head home and sleep. He longed for an end to the day, knowing that all of his torment could have been avoided had he just not gone out with Max again. That crazy bastard would drink himself to death. Bill was certain that, as much as he loved Max, he simply couldn’t afford to join him on any more outings. He realized that he was going to have to cut ties with his old friend or lose his job.
There were eight more sealed obsidian jars in Bill’s in box when he got back to his desk. There was a note scrawled on a piece of foolscrap under one of them that read, ‘Thanks for taking care of these, I’ll be out tomorrow after the Big Guy’s birthday party. - Dale.’.
“Oh that canes it...” Bill sat down carefully at his desk. He swallowed fifteen or twenty deep breaths to bring his heart rate back down into the low hundreds and then reset the salt ring on his desk with the aspergis and placed the first of the obsidian jars containing a spectral client in the center. He read the inscription on the wall of his stall out loud even though he knew it by heart, “Incendo Nox Avec Decorum Plentis” and rang the small bell next to it three times.
A shade flickered into existence above the now red hot glow of the sealing stone at the top of the jar. It squalled with anger at it’s incorporeal condition and the magical boundary containing it within the saline circle.
“This is William Heartles, your representative case worker. I’ve been assigned to you by the Ministry of Disembodied Persons, how may I may I be of service?”
It was another three hours before Bill made it home to his basement flat and laid down on his face that night.
***
The end of his shift was nearing with the first rays of light that pierced the parapets and flagstaffs of the city of Walphalen. The last few stalls were being mucked out by Trip and Bob, fresh bedding was set and Max had sent Fred to give the gates a quick polish to keep him busy. This was the few minutes Max got to have alone before he went back to his flat for the day. He spent the time kicking though the drain groove in the middle of the dock, nudging soggy pellets and bits of bone and hair looking for any small treasures he might trade away. He never found much, usually trinkets worth few crownes or a couple of pints. The falcons were let out to feed during the mandated lunch hour that the Rider’s Guild had bargained away from the merchants who owned Feudal Express. The birds usually ate carrion as hunting was poor at night. Most of the prey they preferred ran in the daylight. The upshot was that Max did find a few bits of loot stripped off the dead left along highways or in field far from the city.
He’d made his way back to the central drain when Trip and Bob came by to report.
“Beddings tidy, want us to lend Fred a hand with the gate?” Bob asked Max with the simple patience of a man hoping to be let go early. Trip said nothing. He was simple and prone to outbursts of oddly constructed obscenities. His competence with a mop and bucket more than made up for his handicap.
“No, just go collect Fred and head off once you’ve washed up.” Max was distracted by a twist of leather clogging the main downspout.
“Want me to clear that?” Bob asked.
“No.” Max noticed a beaded line of silver buttons wound along one edge of the rag. “No, I’ll handle it. You lot go on home. Good work this evening, you all worked right along, nice and quick.”
Max smiled at his stubby subordinates as they tottered off after their brother. Once they were out of sight he took the scrap in hand and wiped the buttons clean.
“Oh... s**t... uncle Rod... I suppose you always knew it would come to this...”
***
Bill had barely slept. Exhausted as he was, he had seethed all night with the thought of going back to work in the morning. He hadn’t been able to shake the image of Dale smiling while he tipped that mug of slop into his gullet. Getting off his palette and trying to stand made a tension in his chest tighten like a spring wound too tightly.
Seventeen blocks away, in apartment five at 321 Houghton St., Nigel was staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t had much real sleep either, and now the two of them were rolling out of bed to head back to another day, just like they always had, and likely always would. Both of them knew that Max was to blame for the surge in their discontent, and both of them figured that sensation of hopelessness would be ground away by repetition and boredom sometime in the next couple of weeks. Business as usual, that’s all it was, and they told themselves that they were lucky to have the secure mediocrity of steady pay and nice benefits.
It didn’t help.
***
The nine figures finished their pints and black puddings (each had eaten no fewer than six servings of the dark sausages) and headed to Max’s tenement. After climbing the stairs, the lead figure produced a short, ebony wand from the invisible pocket of his black cloak. The gloved hand unscrewed one end of the wand, exposing the dry nib of a pen. The pen proceeded to make a series of logical statements at the lock holding shut the door to Max’s dingy apartment. After a few minutes of patient but unheard exchange the lock finally conceded to the logic of the pen’s inscrutable arguments and opened with a loud click. All nine of the figures brushed into the room silently, closed the door behind them, and waited.
***
Six antique silver buttons adorned the ruined waistcoat where there should have been twelve. Each one was emblazoned with the falcon and crown of the Gladivus family crest. Somewhere, out along a highway or in a field, what was left of Max’s uncle, Sir Roderick, was feeding flies.
“Well uncle...” Max let himself shed a tear or two on his way home. “Better off unburied than left in the debtor’s stocks.” He furrowed his brow as he told himself that with the vast area the Express riders cover, Rod was more likely found anywhere but the stocks. Still, he worried with the thought.
He made his way back to his flat without stopping for a drink, climbed the stair and felt a metallic shiver run through his strong frame. Max closed his eyes for a moment to steal himself before he opened the door. The nine figures stood in a wedge in the middle of his apartment, silent, an unholy breeze rustling their black robes.
“Well, I suppose I expected you lot. Just not so soon.” Max closed the door and let out a withering sigh at the sight of the dark figures.
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