Arm of the Sphinx (Books of Babel Book 2)

by Josiah Bancroft

  “A faithful friend!” Marya broke in with a punctuating scoff. “She’s cut from the same cloth as the Red Hand, if you’ll recall. For all you know, she’s another assassin.”

  “Then she’s made a terrible botch of it.” Since the moment of quiet reflection was ruined, Senlin stowed the painting again. He turned to face the apparition in his bed. “What do you want?”

  “Oh, that hurts, Tom. I just want to help you. I’m the little voice in your heart that keeps you on the right.”

  “You’re my conscience, are you? I must be a terrible person.”

  Marya gave him a tart smile. “I’m only looking out for you. I’m tired of seeing you squander your advantage.”

  “What advantage? We’re nearer to starving than not. We’ve grown so accustomed to tucking our tail and running away, we’re in danger of making an art form of it.”

  “Yet, you have in your possession a thing that, time and again, has shown itself to be of great value to powerful men. It doesn’t matter that you don’t understand why it’s valuable, Tom. What matters is that it is a boon! How long until you recognize that? How long until you take control and stop with the wait-and-sees and the wish-I-mays?”

  “Oh, shut up!” he barked.

  The knock at his cabin door was tentative but familiar: three swift taps. He sat up in bed, smoothing the quilts about his lap. When he looked around again, the specter of Marya had vanished.

  He called for Edith to enter. The first mate wore what passed for pajamas on the ship: a shapeless tunic cinched at the waist with a rope. The outfit made her look like an altogether different person, not least of all because it hid her engine arm. Senlin fancied he could see her old country-self peeking through.

  “So, I guess she’s back?” Edith said.

  “I think we need a new knock,” he said. “Maybe something like, hard, soft, hard.” He rapped the pattern out upon his bedside table. “How does that sound?”

  “Fine, but what is it for?”

  “Well, it’s just our way of saying all those awkward things we’d rather not say out loud. Things like, ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just shouting at ghosts.’”

  “Oh, I see. Could it also say, ‘I’m sorry I ruined lunch by storming out like a spoiled brat?’” She delivered the pattern on the table: hard, soft, hard.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “That is exactly the sort of thing it would say.”

  “Between the two of us, I think this knock will get a lot of use.”

  He pulled on a robe, a ridiculously colorful silk thing that had been Captain Lee’s.

  “No, you really don’t have to get up,” Edith said, trying vainly to wave him back to bed.

  He ignored her protests and cinched the belt around his waist. “How’s your lip?” he asked, pointing to the corner of his own mouth.

  She touched the dark crack in her lower lip. “Fine, fine. How’s your head?”

  “Better, actually.”

  “I’m just hunting about for a blanket and a pillow. The blanket is for the draft; the pillow’s for Iren’s snoring.”

  “Of course. I have more than enough. Let’s see.” He dug through the tall wardrobe, gathering a bale of bedclothes. He helped her hook it all under her able arm. It took a little tucking and retucking of blanket corners before the mass would stay.

  “You do realize that Lee didn’t wear that robe? It was for his… guests,” she said.

  “It fits surprisingly well. He must’ve preferred tall women,” Senlin said, plucking at the pattern of tropical birds.

  “That he did.”

  The pause grew into a silence, yet she made no move to leave. He felt certain that she wanted to say something more and only needed a gentle prod to come out with it. He wanted to ask the question she had dodged many times before, so he tapped the rhythm upon the table: hard, soft, hard.

  “Wearing it out already? All right. Let’s have it,” she said, hiking her chin at him, playfully daring him to speak his mind.

  “Why won’t you talk about what happened to you? Why won’t you tell me about the Sphinx?”

  She was smiling still, but sadly. “That’s a big knock, Tom. But you’ve been patient. You’ve been very patient. I’ve avoided talking about it because you’d look at me differently if you knew. And I don’t want to feel any less like myself than I already do.”

  “Well, that’s not fair. I let you mediate between me and my ghost, knowing full well you’d look at me differently. But I did it anyway because you are my friend, and I needed your help.” He squared his shoulders inside the flamboyant robe. “Trust me, Mister Winters, whatever you tell me, I will think no less of you.”

  She was struggling to keep the bedding in hand, and so allowed Senlin to take it and set it upon the table. Though her gaze had been elusive at first, it now became direct and probing. “Before the Sphinx saved my life, he made me sign a contract. I knew I was dying. All I had to do to stop it was sign my name. How strange is that? To be resurrected by a pen? It was only later when the fever broke that I thought about what I had signed.”

  “What did you agree to?”

  “To be a Wakeman. To watch over the Tower,” she said and stroked the elbow of her lifeless arm. “You have to understand: most of what I know about the Wakemen, I learned from Billy Lee, and there was a lot he didn’t know. I think there are a couple hundred of us spread throughout the ringdoms. We’re not too hard to spot.”

  “Like the Red Hand. He stood out in a crowd. He was a Wakeman, wasn’t he? And that’s why you couldn’t kill him, not on purpose. The two of you serve the same master.”

  Edith nodded repeatedly, mechanically, as if she had to shake the word out of her head. “Yes,” she said at last. “But I’m nothing like him.” She laughed but her expression was almost frightened.

  “No, of course you aren’t. But if the Red Hand was a Wakeman, why was he working for the Commissioner?”

  “The Sphinx contracted him out. I’m sure the Commissioner paid a lot of money to have the Red Hand on his staff. And he isn’t the only one. Armies, agencies, port guards: everyone wants a Wakeman on his roll. We have our uses.”

  “Assassination, for one,” he said. She gave him a pained look, and he rushed to reassure her. “You know I don’t hold you responsible for anything that thug did. But I need to know: did the Sphinx order the Red Hand to kill me? Does he want me dead?

  “I don’t know, but I doubt it. It’s more likely that Commissioner Pound ordered the Red Hand to do it. You did rob him, after all.”

  “But I don’t understand: what is the purpose of the Wakemen? How can you be expected to keep the peace while conducting assassinations and public executions?”

  “The Sphinx isn’t really concerned with peace— or war, for that matter. He’s interested in maintaining the Tower. Wars have come and gone. The Tower endures.”

  “So, it’s about the distribution of power? The Sphinx places the Wakemen where he sees an unbalance of might?”

  “I think so, but it’s only a guess. He hasn’t given me my orders yet. I had to get my strength back and grow into my arm before I’d be of any use to him. That’s what I was doing on Lee’s ship.”

  “What will the Sphinx do with you?”

  “I don’t know. And honestly, I’m afraid to find out. My plan was to avoid him for as long as I could. I always knew I’d have to go back for more fuel eventually, but I’d told myself it might be years. He could order me to do anything.”

  “Give me an example of anything.”

  “He— he could assign me to the Baths to replace the Red Hand.”

  “Would you go?”

  “Would I climb aboard the Ararat and chase after my old crew? Of course not. But I don’t know what the consequences of refusing would be. He could take his arm back, I suppose. Though I think it might kill me if he did. He didn’t just strap the arm on. It’s bolted to my bones,” she said, and paled at the thought.

  “Perhaps you could learn to live with
out his batteries. Look at Marat—”

  “Are you really suggesting I follow his example? You want me to break my word? You want me to live as an invalid and a coward? Pride and honor aside, the Sphinx does not give up his toys easily, Tom. Short of surrounding myself with guns and slaves and living in a cage in a spider-infested hole, there’s nowhere to hide.”

  “You could go home.”

  “To what? Assuming the arm of the Sphinx doesn’t reach that far, which I wouldn’t lay a wager to, have you forgotten what drove me to the Tower in the first place? The weasel used a little hay fever as an excuse to exclude me from my own affairs. What would my husband do with a one-armed wife? I’d be shut up in the attic so fast… No, I go home whole, or I don’t go home at all.”

  Senlin’s internal casting about for an answer was reflected in his shifting stance. He looked like a man trying to learn to waltz from figures in a book. Every plot that came to mind for how she might escape her contract or the Sphinx’s reach seemed, even to him, impossible. After a few fits and starts, his agitation turned to resolution. “Then I suppose we have no choice.”

  “I have no choice. You do. You have to keep the crew, especially Adam, as far away from the Sphinx as possible.”

  “Why Adam in particular?”

  “Because I don’t want to pick up where Billy Lee left off. He was the Sphinx’s headhunter. Lee scouted everywhere he went for maimed and desperate souls, souls like me. He was such a cruel opportunist, and still he was not half as bad as the Sphinx. The Sphinx has a predator’s eye for injuries and insecurities. He can be very persuasive. I’m afraid he’d put a tin eye in Adam’s head the minute we turned around.”

  “Did the Sphinx pay Lee to supply him with… recruits?”

  “Handsomely.”

  “That means the Sphinx has use for money. Which is good for us, because I suspect we have something that’s worth a lot of money. I used to think that Pound was on a foxhunt, that he was just chasing us for sport, and the painting and the theft were only an excuse for the outing. But after seeing those forgeries in the Zoo and Marat’s response when he thought I’d stolen one, I’m beginning to think our painting is worth quite a lot.”

  Edith gave him a sidelong look, obviously mistrustful of the direction of his logic.

  He went on. “Perhaps we’ve been going about this the wrong way. We’ve been on the defensive so long we’ve grown accustomed to thinking of ourselves as powerless, without resource. But what if we’re not? What if I proposed a trade with the Sphinx? He repairs our ship and he gives me a letter of introduction that will get us past the port guards of Pelphia. I’m sure that wouldn’t be any trouble for a man who has a finger in every ringdom.”

  “But what have you to trade?”

  “I have Ogier’s painting, which he can sell to the Commissioner or Marat or whomever. I don’t care. And we have information about Marat’s and his band of babblers. You said the Sphinx is concerned with maintain the status quo. Don’t you think the Sphinx would like to know about the revolutionaries hiding out in the old park?”

  “That is an awful idea, Tom. Did you not listen to anything I said?”

  “You’re right! What am I thinking? First I must bargain for your freedom, for you to be released from your contract.” He brightened, looking as proud as rooster in his colorful robe, though he did not see his confidence reflected in her expression. “Why not face our bullies, Edith? Let’s have no more of these wait-and-sees and wish-I-mays. Let’s get on with it.”

  “You have no idea what you’re stirring up,” Edith said. “You should leave me at the nearest port and take the crew as far away as you can.”

  “Absolutely not. The crew stands behind me, Mister Winters, and I stand with you. We are going to see the Sphinx.”

  Part III

  The Bottomless Library

  Chapter One

  “It is common knowledge the Sphinx does not exist. This fact, however, has not diminished his fame.”

  - The Myth of the Sphinx: A Historical Analysis by Saavedra

  No aeronaut worth his wind believed the Sphinx was real.

  The Sphinx was a bugaboo that airman blamed for inconvenient gusts, or stubborn fog, or morning frost on the privy seat. He was a shibboleth of the superstitious and the illiterate. When a scullery maid dropped a plate, only to have it bounce but not burst upon the floor, she might exclaim, “Oh, thank the Sphinx!” When the carriage door snagged the footman’s coattail, he might utter a curse and say, “There’s the Sphinx, at it again.”

  Many enlightened citizens of the Tower believed the Sphinx was almost certainly a historical entity, though they disagreed on whether he had been a person or the brand of a now defunct guild. Whichever it was, his blaze was everywhere— on the beer-me-go-rounds of the Basement, on the mechanical hippos of the Baths, on the belfry full of lightning in the heart of New Babel. His name graced plaques and plinths in every ringdom, and yet somehow his ubiquity had made him easier to overlook.

  Some educated men and women believed the Sphinx was a poetic flourish, like Old Man Winter or Mother Moon. The Sphinx was the Tower personified, and all the creations attributed to him— the brass-limbed half-skins, the autowagons, and sure-footed mechanical insects that crawled about the masonry making repairs— were not the fruits of an unseen genius, but were, in truth, products of the great houses of Babel: the Pells and Algezians, the Japhethites and the Thanes.

  Being a relative newcomer, Senlin was unfamiliar with the associations the Sphinx conjured in the native mind. So, while it seemed not very remarkable to him that they should go knock on the man’s front door, it came as something of a surprise to his crew when he announced that they were going to visit the mythical Sphinx. He might as well have proposed that they sail to the edge of the flat Earth and fish for falling stars.

  Hitherto, the crew of the Stone Cloud had not argued with the Captain’s orders, bizarre and reckless though they sometimes seemed. When he’d asked them to dress up as wounded damsels, lie prone upon the ship’s deck, and wait to be boarded, they had done so without complaint. When he’d asked them to slip onto a hostile ship under the cover of a cyclone of seagulls, which were all furiously expectorating and eliminating half-digested fish, they had raised a hurrah and leapt to. They had grown accustomed to the creativity of his leadership, yet his present plan of action seemed a novel test.

  It wasn’t that Iren, Adam and Voleta disbelieved Mister Winters’ recent past included some traumatic interlude during which an engine was added to her person. The evidence for that was plain enough. But must it really have been the Sphinx that did it? Could this not be an airman’s yarn: a pleasant exaggeration to cover an unpleasant reality? Even she admitted to being feverish during the ordeal. Perhaps she had imagined it. Perhaps her reluctance to discuss the matter was an indication of her own uncertainty on the subject.

  “It is a necessary detour,” the Captain assured them during the morning assembly on the main deck. Their little cove of quiet air still held them to the Tower’s bosom, though the sun now threw their shadow upon the sandstone where it stood out like a wine stain on a shirtfront.

  “Mister Winters’ arm needs refueling, and the Sphinx is the only one who has the fuel. It will be a brief layover, but hopefully it will give us time to finish the essential repairs that Adam and Iren so valiantly began.” Senlin glanced about, trying his best to smile at their work, though in the stark light of morning the ship looked as lovely and lasting as a bird’s nest. “In fact, I doubt it will be necessary for us to disembark.” It was a point Edith had insisted upon, and Senlin couldn’t see any reason to argue with his mate. She was quite vocal about her concern for the crew’s safety, especially Adam. “I think it best that we all stay aboard the ship as long as we’re in the Sphinx’s dock.”

  Voleta tried to stop the dumb chuckle before it started, but she couldn’t pinch it off in time. She wasn’t laughing because she found the Captain’s speech amusing. She was laughing b
ecause Squit had chosen that inconvenient moment to discover that Voleta’s navel was the same size as her furry nose, a discovery that tickled unbearably.

  Mister Winters, who had been standing quietly beside the disemboweled console, her engine cinched to her breast in a black cotton sling, rolled her eyes around to Voleta, still struggling to stifle her laughter. “Captain, may I say a few words?”

  “By all means.” Senlin cordially waved his first mate forward.

  Earlier that morning, Voleta had watched Iren dress Edith in their cabin below deck. The first mate had not asked for Iren’s help, but neither had she refused it. The solemnity with which Iren guided Edith’s engine through the sleeve of her blouse, and pulled the laces of her bodice, and tugged her bootstraps until her heels were snuggly seated had made Voleta uncomfortable for reasons she could not enumerate. It was such an intimate and vulnerable act. She had wanted to run from the room.

  In that moment, Voleta had wondered whether Mister Winters would lose some of her bearing with the loss of her arm. But now, as the first mate leaned into her and fixed her with a leaden gaze, Voleta knew the answer.

  “I blame myself,” Mister Winters said, though her expression suggested otherwise. “For months, I have overlooked your disregard for any order that did not amuse you. I let you run wild about the ship and through the harbors. I let your impertinence and rashness pass without rebuke. I am sorry. Forgive me. I will make amends.”

  Her parting words were delivered with such grim conviction it might have been enough to reform even an inveterate criminal. Unfortunately, Voleta struggled, even in the gust of Mister Winters’ breath, to keep a straight face amid Squit’s investigations.

  “I can imagine what you’re thinking,” Edith continued at a deliberate clip. “You came to the assistance of the Captain and I. You couldn’t have done that if you’d followed orders. And that’s true. But if you want to take credit for that, then you must also take responsibility for taunting the port official in Pelphia, and for the cannons they fired at us. And don’t forget our barring from the Windsock, which your thievery ensured. And you must take credit for failing to spot the Ararat until it was on top of us, a mistake which nearly brought down the ship.”