by Felix Gilman
On his return, he found that Madam Defour had cajoled all her lodgers out into the garden, where, in the weak candlelight, she conducted a strained flirtation with Heady. The other lodgers sat around the table making desultory conversation. Arjun had no choice but to join them. He asked Haycock about his day.
“Fucking awful. I hike all the way up to Tyn Wald and I sit myself in some godsawful café all afternoon until the pervert running it wants to know whether sir will be ordering anything further and I’m out on my arse, my purchasing options being limited, which ain’t surprising given that I have waited all day to meet a man to purchase a copy of Arcana Caelestia, which perhaps I might sell, keep me in food and drink for long enough to eke out the whole horrible business a little longer, were it not that the bastard did not show up, all bastard day.”
“Arcana Caelestia?”
“You interested?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of it. I was wondering about the language. Arcana sounds like—”
“Not interested. What are you interested in? Heady says you just drift around like a fart listening to music all day.”
“As I’ve said, I’m here to represent my order to Ararat’s Estates, in hope of commerce between our—”
“Balls. You’re looking for something. You’re no kind of merchant-trader; I mean look at you. And from what I hear, you haven’t ‘represented your order’ to anyone but a lot of buskers and other street filth, who are, I can tell you, one rung down on Ararat’s great ladder from book-dealers, which I can say from experience is a rung that is sunk deep indeed in the shit. Heady believes your story ’cause he’s a creature whose senses are highly specialized to detect the tiniest quivering motions of power, which you’ve not got, so he can barely see you. But I see. It’s my business. Tell me and maybe I can find it for you.”
Arjun told him. He was relieved to get it out. He had not told anyone the truth about his mission; it was too private. But this was the first time he had been pressed, and why not?
Haycock then changed the subject, starting an argument with Norris and Clement about some sporting event; a team sponsored by the Countess had pulled off a surprise win against a team sponsored by the Agdon Worker’s Combine, up at the Urgos-Eye Stadium. Some game with balls, it seemed, and spikes; Arjun couldn’t follow the rules. Nor, it seemed, could old Norris, quite, though he tried; and whenever the poor enfeebled man tried to agree with Haycock, which he did with doglike eagerness to please, stuttering and tongue-tied, Haycock would take a sharp turn, vehemently denying whatever he had asserted with equal vehemence the second earlier, until Norris’s blotchy face dripped with tears and snot, and Clement was snorting with nasty laughter.
In the morning, Haycock accosted Arjun in the hallway and presented him with a list of books that might shed light on his problem. Anything and everything that had been written on the relation of the city to its gods: The Detective of Dreams; The Gutter and the Stars; Lodwick’s Extrapolations; Varady’s Speculations; Riddles and Their Riddlers; Those Whom We Cannot at Present Name but Are Possessed of Animal Heads. “What languages can you read?” Haycock asked. “Tuvar; really? Akashic, too? What a lot of hard work; aren’t we eager? Then there’s a lot more I can get you. Let me think.”
Arjun was sorry, but he had no money. He really didn’t, he told Haycock, he was sorry. He was sorry. He looked down at Haycock’s bald head. It was lined, like a thumb. The deep grooves seemed to pulse with irritation. Haycock stamped off, thinking.
H aycock stamped all the way up Cato Road, and into Foyle’s Ward, dragging his heavy weather-beaten case behind him, snarling and spitting at anyone who got in his way or slowed him down. It was the end of the month and he had an appointment with Professor Holbach. Holbach provided Haycock with a generous allowance for transport by carriage. As was his usual practice, Haycock had opted to pocket the money and walk, and by the time he’d crested the hill he was, as was his usual practice, in a foul mood.
He met Holbach in the garden of Holbach’s mansion; they sat by the fishpond. The mansion and the grounds bustled—thin, pale scholars; artists, fashionably disheveled; various young women. Clever and elegant people. Haycock stuck out like a bruise. The whole pile, and all Holbach’s other airs and graces, including expecting household visits from professionals like Haycock, who had other pressing commitments and had their own professional dignity to consider, was all paid for by the Countess for services rendered. That was what one or two clever ideas could do for a man. That was what a man could do for himself if only—if only!—he could get himself off the grinding wheel of business for a few short days so that he could think deep thoughts and plan big plans. Some men had good fortune and others never did; but Haycock swallowed his resentment and offered a smile that was close enough to pleasant that the fat professor had to pretend not to be offended. Haycock lit a cigarette and opened the case.
“So there’s a distinct nautical theme to this week’s haul, Professor. Nautical and riverine. Everything smells of moss and weed and coal-dust this month. There’s mildew on ’em, more than usual, but it scrapes right off.”
“Do you have the books I asked you to find? Do you have the Ferdomas or the Celyn?”
“Hold on, Professor. The river flows where it flows, you know? I’ve brought a lot of bloody heavy stuff up here, for your eyes only, out of the goodness of my aching thumping heart, so let’s have a look. Here!” He produced a thin folio volume, rough-edged, cheaply printed, and waved it under Holbach’s chin (which withdrew, like a turtle’s head, into Holbach’s coat’s folds of velvet and lace). “First printing of The Captain Unmoored: A Play in Three Acts, featuring the tragedy and et cetera of your friend what’s-his-name. The notorious misprinting, the one where the printer’s boy got drunk and inserted that dirty joke at the Countess’s expense. Not all were destroyed. I know a boy works at the censor’s office. Interested?”
“Gods, Haycock, get that thing away from me.”
Haycock tossed it back into the case with a grunt and a smirk. He’d only brought it to annoy Holbach—to start him off guilty and wrong-footed. He knew how the fat man moped over the girl’s death. “How about this, then? An account of the famous sinking of the Duchess Marina back in ’04, as told by a survivor, a serving maid. Last of the pleasure-cruises in these parts, that was. A slice of history. Not a lot of survivors; not many of ’em ever put pen to paper about it. Not much of a market for it. Black water and grinding hulls. Screams from the riverbanks, drunk men from the bars throwing ropes that won’t reach. Watching her poor old mother going down for the last time, bony old hand clutching sinking drift-wood. It’ll give you nightmares. Up your alley?”
“Haycock, did you manage to find anything that I actually asked for?”
“Old Pastor Crane from the Candlers died and left behind a nice collection. Here’s a rare one. A compendium of nautical diseases; illustrated plates by the famous Dr. Van Duers. Diseases of both sailors’ flesh and ships’ timbers. Take a look at that! You’d shoot yourself if something like that started growing on your face, you’d think.”
“Oh dear. Oh goodness. I don’t think so.”
“Well then, these illustrations may be more to your taste. From the library of a client who’ll go unnamed; Galliatin’s Erotica of the Sea-Kingdoms. Beautiful, isn’t it? Lovely fucking economy of line. Pretty little mermaids. Strapping young sailor-lads. Miracle it’s never been burned—the publisher was. Shame to let it go to someone who won’t appreciate its many virtues.”
“Hmm.”
“Or Dr. Montagu’s The River and Its Economy: An Historical Account. Found this one in a lot they were selling off at the Malvern.” Haycock flipped through pages and pages of statistics and ledgers, past technical illustrations of barges and cranes and mill wheels and steam saws, before coming to rest on a map of the river. “Dull, yes? But look at this: look where the river runs.”
“It appears to run through Agdon, rather than Barbary, and northwest through, ah, that’s odd,
is that Grafton?”
“Exactly. Not much like our river, is it? So what do we have, Professor: Dr. Montagu methodically going mad, counting every last penny of business up and down the river, and he’s not noticed where the river fucking is, or is this one of those books, from one of those places, that’s found its way here? Now that’s up your alley, Holbach, and you know it.”
“Yes, yes, all right. What do you want for it?”
“And then there’s this.” The little red book had no apparent title. “Also from Pastor Crane’s collection. Collected papers from the trial of one John Harrifon, barge-hand, strangler, hanged man. Did for a dozen little children before they caught him. Wrapped ’em in sacks, weighed ’em with bricks, threw ’em in the river, like a less ambitious artist might with cats.”
“This is disgusting, Haycock. You really do have the most depraved taste.”
“Is that right? Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you meet me in the garden, Professor.” Haycock jabbed his finger under Holbach’s nose. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you won’t have me in your fucking house. Don’t think your money’s so good you can treat me like dirt. I’ll throw your retainer right back in your face, Professor. Don’t forget I know things about you, Professor, Professor Loyal-Servant-of-the-bloody-Countess, Mr. Bloody Atlas.”
Holbach’s pink face went white. Haycock, who had risen to his feet, settled back into his chair. He spat into the pond and startled the fish. Holbach said, “My apologies. I continue to trust to your discretion, Mr. Haycock.”
Haycock grunted. They sat for a while in silence. Haycock lit a cigarette.
“Anyway, Professor, the point is the man, old John Harrifon, swore blind all the way to the hangman’s scaffold that he’d killed those little buggers as sacrifices for the river-god. Or one of the river-gods. And he had a lot to say about it. Mad stuff. Your sort of thing, right? God stuff.”
“I suppose so. I suppose I’ll take it.”
“I suppose you bloody well will.”
“Haycock, did you for some strange reason make a deliberate effort to seek out books of an aquatic nature? I’m sure I never asked you to do so. I’m sure I asked for the Ferdomas, and the Celyn.”
“I bring you what I find, Professor.”
“That’s interesting, of course. The city speaks to us in signs of all kinds, you know.”
“So you always say, Professor. Me, I’ve got a business to run. We can’t all be pet geniuses for the Countess.”
“Signs and portents. Potential shifting and reweighting. Certain energies subside and others rise to prominence. Certain threads thicken in the weave. A shifting toward water, perhaps? Perhaps, ah, perhaps in response to the raising of the Thunderer. Water reasserting itself. Reclaiming its primacy over air in the city’s life. Though perhaps I flatter myself. Perhaps I flatter myself to think the city notices my efforts. Hmm. I’m just thinking aloud, of course, Haycock. Your trawl is hardly a sufficient source of data from which to work. The calculations of this science are very complex. But still. But still.”
“Yeah, well. Let’s talk about what you owe me for the Harrifon, and the Montagu. And while we’re at it, Professor, there’s another bit of business. A young man of my acquaintance is looking for work. You’re always looking for translators, right? You name it, he speaks it. Chirps away all singsong like a little brown parrot. Funny little foreign bugger, but clever in his way. Gad, he’s from. Got that in your Atlas, Professor?”
“Hmm. Outside the city, you say? No, Haycock, no, we probably don’t. Bring him to me and I’ll see if I can use him. You’ll get your commission.”
Haycock took a grubby nub of pencil from behind his ear and prepared his bill. “So, what you said about water. Is that good or bad?”
“I expect it can be turned to advantage. Perhaps it means fluid times. Times of change and growth and rebirth. Hmm. I feel quite optimistic. I’ll tell you what, Haycock, tell me more about Galliatin’s Erotica, would you?”
I n the evening, Madam Defour took her guests for a promenade through the streets of Shutlow. She thought it would be nice, she said, to take the air. Her guests couldn’t really refuse, though the sky was cold and grey. Defour held up a pale green umbrella to ward off the autumnal drizzle. She stepped high, holding her skirts, along the line of flat stones that ran along the middle of Moore Street, lifting the fussy pedestrian out of the street’s wet filth. She gave her umbrella the occasional stagy twirl. Her guests trudged along behind, shoulders hunched against the rain.
Apart from Defour’s umbrella, they were a drab and monkish procession. The city’s autumn was weather for waxy black rain-cloaks or long grey coats. Arjun had picked his own coat from a musty pile in the basement of Klozny & Klozny’s on Many Street.
Klozny’s had been an adventure in itself; he was still turning over in his mind the strangeness of it. He’d wandered for what seemed like hours through the corridors, half-lit by shuttered candles, smelling of dust, old perfume, sweat, wax, spices, a thick grey soporific funk of heaped wool. His first time in a department store, of course: he’d startled at mannequins, he’d touched things he shouldn’t have touched, he’d gotten lost, he’d attracted stares. He spluttered in the dark stinking tobacco-shop on the second floor; in a bright cold hall on the third floor he nearly knocked over a glass table piled with ices and chocolates; somewhere in the basement he scuttled through an appalling room whose walls were oak-paneled and lined with plaques bearing a variety of mangy animal heads, trying to avoid eye-to-glassy-eye contact with either the living or the dead. In low corridors there were shelves and shelves of tiny lacquered sculptures of pretty little street-children, of noblewomen in ballgowns, and of stranger things that were presumably gods. He picked up a china noblewoman in a china ballgown: when he figured out what the numbers black-penciled on her base were he fumbled in shock and almost dropped her. Who had that kind of money? And of course Klozny & Klozny wasn’t even that smart, even Arjun could see that, there on dirty crowded Many Street, up on the outskirts of Mass How, on the hillside, so the floorboards subsided at sad angles—the smart folk, the truly rich folk, shopped elsewhere. Goods came to them, perhaps. Arjun wasn’t sure how it worked. But in K & K there was, wonderfully, eerily, music, piped through the corridors somehow, low repetitive strains of violins that always seemed to be going somewhere but never did. He never found the source, though he pressed further and further into the shadows, though he pressed his ears up against the walls and peered into the corners, though he even got down on his hands and knees to inspect the wainscoting, risking a trampling by crowds of middle-aged ladies. By that point the suspicious attentions of the store’s staff were quite pointed; they followed him flexing their knuckles, ready if necessary for violence in defense of Klozny’s tight profit margins. He finally found himself in the discount basement, and he purchased an old coat mostly because he felt he had no choice. He brought it back home oddly proud of his achievement. Madam Defour pronounced it rather shabby, and Heady, who professed to know about clothes, agreed: shoddy goods. But the coat was now a done deal, as Mr. Haycock might say.
It let in the rain, though.
All the rainy way down Moore Street, they kept their hands in their pockets and their heads hunched. Arjun hung near the back of the group, among Defour’s disfavored.
Clement and Ewan walked in front of him. Both were little men. Clement had brought a copy of the Era with him. Ewan held it, Clement stretched out the wings of his raincoat over it, and they read it together by the light of Clement’s cigarette, jabbing their fingers at things that annoyed them. They craned their heads together and whispered. Disgusting, Arjun heard, and makes you sick, and blasphemy and should be strung up and no way to show respect for the powers and bloody outsiders and shame. Shame shame shame. Or possibly Shay.
Clement turned his head back. With his glasses, in the dark, he looked like an owl. “What are you looking at? Mind your business.” Arjun shrugged and took a step back.
/> He walked by himself for a while as they crossed Nancy Street. Defour signaled with her umbrella and the line turned sharply left down Capric Street—sharply away from the whorehouse on the corner of Nancy, where the girls stood out under the gaslights and whistled after the lodgers’ retreating backs and Haycock whistled back.
The rain was not unpleasant. The city hissed and sighed and breathed deep with it.
Norris tapped him on the shoulder. Arjun turned. Norris was smiling, so Arjun attempted to smile in return.
Norris’s smile was a shy, silly thing. His thin neck and arms were scarred with ugly, fading tattoos, but his eyes were wide and weak, like a sick child’s. He was an old drunk, nothing more, Haycock had said, sneering, but Arjun thought there was some deeper deficiency in the man.
Defour had a way of talking to Norris; she humored him kindly. He was the only person she treated that way. Something in Norris invited pity. Arjun tried to mimic Defour’s manner.
“Haycock says you’re looking for something that ran away from you,” Norris said.
“He told you that, did he?”
“He says you’re mad.”
“There was a Voice that sang in a high room above my home. My home was made of its echoes. It left us alone, and without a purpose. I suppose I feel its loss very deeply, and that makes me strange. But this city seems full of equal strangeness.”
“He says everybody’s mad.”
“Well. Good. They probably are.”
Norris leaned up to Arjun’s ear again and whispered. “I went looking for something once.” Arjun stopped and turned to listen.
“It was ’47, ’48. I worked for Butcher Mose. Bad boy, see? Younger, then. Flush. Money rolled in for Mose’s men. Knew me in all the Wards. Legbreaker. Hit women. Fathers and children. Not like it was at first. I’m talking later, now, see?”
“Slow down. I’m listening. It’s all right.”
“At first. I get confused. Later it got hard. At first, ’42, ’43 maybe. I was a new boy. I went into a place, all the women knew me. Money to flash around. I was on the up. Broke out of gaol, once or twice. Daring, that’s what it was. Ran with Greeley the Barber. Went up to Goshen, stole from the temples and the nobs. Brought it back and threw it around.”
