by Dan Abnett
One was a boy, the other a girl. In truth, their faces seemed identical, made by the same craftsman, but one was dressed in a tiny copy of a nobleman’s velvet suit, and the other in a lady’s courtly gown. The gentleman doll had painted, varnished black hair; the lady had a bun of what I was sure was genuine human hair.
They were sitting in miniature Orphaeonic Period chairs, nursery room seats, as if posing for a portrait. I could see the tiny, perfect shoes upon their feet.
The emporium door opened.
‘I am Lupan,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Welcome.’
‘I am Laurael Raeside,’ I replied, presenting my card. ‘I am expected.’
‘You are,’ he agreed, with a very civil smile. ‘Your employer’s enthusiasm for collection is well known. Blackwards is delighted to welcome one of his agents to its halls.’
‘My employer,’ I replied, ‘is informed that Blackwards is the best emporium of its kind on this world. I have made a particular journey to visit you at his express urgings.’
We continued in this manner for some moments, returning each solicitous remark with another of the same kind, gently complimenting the reputations of my employer and the emporium alike. Custom expected as much. Lupan, dressed in a grey suit with a high white collar, spoke in faultless Low Gothic. I, as an affectation, spoke in Enmabic, though I added a slight Gudrunite accent, and made small errors of vocabulary and verb formation. My ‘employer’, a famous industrialist tycoon of the Scarus Sector, knew nothing about me, of course, but we had selected him for the function because of his reputation as a collector, and because his credentials were easy to falsify. Building the character of Raeside, it had occurred to me that she would attempt to speak the local dialect, to ingratiate herself. I had seen agents and factors of her kind exhibit precisely that pretension in emporia throughout the city. In preparing the role, I also recognised that a high-scale factor would probably be older than my apparent flesh years, so I had subtly applied make-up to suggest I had benefited from expensive juvenat work, and played it as though there was a coquettish sixty- or seventy-year-old inhabiting my form.
He led me inside. He was a slight man, and prim. His mannerisms were deft and mildly fussy. Servitors, their faces porcelain, their elegant mechanisms whirring like the actions of long-case time pieces, brought us solian tea and nafar biscuits. He talked, of everything.
The emporium was a vast warren of rooms and halls, most lined with display cases or cabinets. There was a fustian gloom. Lupan arranged hovering glow-globes to illuminate particular objects for my attention, lifting some out from under glass lids to show me. He held them in gloved hands, or laid them out on rolled-out black baize cloths.
Larger items stood on plinths, or hung from the rafters. It was like a museum of antiquities poured into a small townhouse until it was brimming.
There were dolls, books, data-slates, glasses, bottles, silverware, velocipedes, jewellery, statuary, furniture, taxidermic specimens (including a large, if threadbare, carnodon), vintage weapons, antique tech, maps, pictures, mezzopicts and simulacratints, armillary spheres and herrat-weave rugs.
We spent four hours in the place, reviewing items. I saw no other staff, or customers. Occasionally I thought I heard, as though from a distance, a snatch of children’s voices, but I could not be sure. There were other noises: the sporadic chime and strike of clocks, the mutter of ancient memory systems, the tinkle of musical boxes and automatic player-claviers, the hum of antique power systems.
I made notes, on a data-slate, of items I found especially interesting, items which I believed my employer would be most taken with. I agreed to return to review them on the following day, saying I had to visit promissory brokers to arrange a money order.
‘Let me show you this,’ he insisted, before I left. A trio of small, beige items came out of a cabinet and were laid out on a cloth. They had been white once, but age had darkened them like bone. Their surfaces were worn, but I could still make out the trace of silver on the engine bells, and the red markings along the fuselage.
‘Toys?’ I said.
He nodded.
‘Playthings. Models made for a child’s amusement.’
‘They are of weapon rockets? Missiles?’
‘Rockets,’ he said. ‘For spaceflight. Don’t look so surprised, Mamzel Raeside. The first steps from Terra were said to have been taken using chemical rockets.’
‘I am aware of history, sir, even though the detail of the oldest eras is lost in the mists. But really? Vehicles this crude?’
He smiled again.
‘I do not think they ever flew,’ he said. ‘I think these are simplified models of possible machines. A primitive idea of flight. But I show them to you because of their age. Your employer is very fond of the oldest things.’
‘How old?’ I asked.
‘It can only be estimated,’ he said. ‘They pre-date the ages of Strife and Technology. I think they come from the Pre-System Age, from the first millennium of the Age of Terra.’
‘What? Thirty-eight or thirty-nine thousand years ago?’
‘Perhaps. Vessels like this first took our species into the unknown,’ he said. ‘They first took us Blackwards. The family name behind this business comes from that outward urge.’
‘I think my employer will appreciate these,’ I said. ‘What price do you ask?’
‘I will write it down,’ he said.
‘And the markings on the side of the rocket ships,’ I asked. ‘The letters in red? What does C.C.C.P. mean?’
‘No one knows that,’ he said. ‘No one remembers any more.’
I returned to the Maze Undue that evening. I made my way up Highgate Hill as the last of the day’s sunlight speared across the drab black tenements and high-habs along Borodin Way and the great canyon-like gulf of Orphaeus Slope.
I saw some of the sisters out on the parapets of the Scholam Orbus’s west wall, gathering in sheets that had been hung out to dry in the north wind. In their red habits and starched white wimples, they were tiny figures upon the crumbling grey edge of the wall, but Sister Bismillah saw me, and waved.
I always liked to see her when I could, to sit with her and drink a glass of tea and talk of old times, or just to call upon her to say hello. She had all but raised me.
I went up the dank street stairs, up the side of the rock, and onto the approach, a platform of ragged flagstones that had once been part of the outer yard of the building complex. Instead of turning right into the skirts of the Maze Undue, I turned left and climbed the flight of steps up to the scholam’s west wall.
The north wind was buffeting. Ahead, like a piece of night, the Mountains stood dreaming. The air smelled of starch and clean cotton. The sisters were team-folding the linen, and stacking it in baskets to be carried below.
‘Beta,’ said Sister Bismillah. She kissed my cheeks and clutched my hand between hers.
‘Have you been out on business?’ she asked.
‘Yes, sister,’ I replied.
‘The school is teaching you well?’
‘Always.’
‘I don’t see you so much these days,’ she said.
‘I will do better. I haven’t been into the school for a long time. How are the children?’
‘All are well, as well as they are ever well. Some new poor things have come to our care.’
The white, starched wings of her wimple bent away from her face like the hooked pinions of a gull. They contrasted sharply with the darkness of her skin.
‘You have new sisters too, I see,’ I said.
Sister Bismillah turned, and acknowledged one of her sorority that I had not seen before. The sister was tall and slender, almost haughty in her athletic bearing, and her skin was pale. Her face was angular and her eyes were green. She looked dramatic in her habit and headdress, but not, I felt, quite right. She would have been more suited to courtly finery than the ascetic privations of a convent.
I was used to playing parts. I noticed when someone
else seemed to be, and was getting a subtle detail wrong.
‘This is Sister Tharpe,’ said Sister Bismillah. ‘She has just come to us from the mission at Zusk.’
‘I hope you will be happy here,’ I said. ‘I was.’
‘If I can do my duty, I will be happy,’ said Sister Tharpe. It was no Zuskite accent, though a decent approximation. The flavours of her voice came from further away.
‘This is Beta,’ said Sister Bismillah. ‘As a babe, she was one of mine.’
Sister Tharpe nodded. She returned to her folding chores, but she watched me.
She was still watching me, ten minutes later, when I said goodbye to Bismillah and followed the zagging steps down into the Maze Undue.
CHAPTER 8
Which is of the Secretary
I had returned, and washed, and was awaiting dinner, when I was informed that the Secretary wanted to see me.
We were in the refectory, all of us except Byzanti, who had not yet returned from her function that day. Corlam and Roud were playing regicide on Mentor Murlees’s scuffed old board. Maphrodite, who was nimble, and quick to memorise physical actions, was helping Faria to learn the steps of a dance, a quadrille, that she would soon be obliged to perform as part of her current function. There was much laughter from the younger students watching this palaver.
Mentor Murlees came in, stood for a while to enjoy the amusement of the dancing, and then told me that the Secretary had asked for me. I went up at once. The Secretary did not debrief every day, or even every function, but some missions were considered important, and he expected a personal report.
I knocked, and he called me into his room. There was a large and welcoming fire burning in the iron grate of his fireplace, and his room was stacked, as ever, with books. They were his books, all notebooks, all filled with his own handwriting. They were of all shapes and sizes, for I believe he acquired them from many different stationers and binders. I do not know what made him write certain things in certain formats of book; I do not know how they were differentiated, or what sort of scheme he followed. The volumes were not even labelled. I do not know how he ever found any reference he went searching for.
There were no other books in his room, no published books, or books by other authors; no data-slates, no memory spools. His notebooks, all sizes and shapes and colours and ages, lined the shelves, the skirting boards, the library tables, the mantle, the side desk, the writing table and the plant stands. They were packed in boxes under the settle and the chaise, and stacked in teetering towers against the walls between the book cases, like the spires of a hive ravaged by clanwar.
‘Come in, Beta,’ he said, pointing me to an armchair. I had to move a pile of notebooks onto the floor to make a seat for myself. He was perched on the chaise, a stylus in his hand, and a notebook open on his lap.
He had eaten. There was a tray of dishes waiting to be taken away. He often ate early so he could press on with his work into the evening. A bottle of amasec sat on the small tray table beside him, along with a tiny porcelain thimble cup with a delicate handle. He liked a small amasec now and then. It was his only vice, I believe. He did not use any other intoxicants, not even lho-sticks, like Mam Mordaunt did. We never saw her smoke them, but we could smell them on her gown and hair.
‘How did you go today?’ he asked.
I explained it to him, and made a good account, though I left out the business with the warblind, and with Sister Bismillah, for he would have no interest in either. I talked about Blackwards, and made sure he understood that I fully appreciated the nature of the function. The Blackwards family’s age-old business in what they called collectibles had resulted in them acquiring many unusual artefacts, if only temporarily before they moved them to a buyer. The Ordos had believed for a long time that they were trafficking proscribed items. The purpose of the function was to determine if this traffic was deliberate or inadvertent, and to gauge the hazard levels of the items trafficked. I knew I would be visiting for several days as Laurael Raeside, examining their operation and stock under the pretence of assembling a portfolio for a mercurial and wealthy off-world collector.
The Secretary nodded along to my account, and took some notes. He asked a few questions, the most curious of which was, ‘Were you noticed today?’
I was puzzled. If we were detected or marked upon during a function, in any way, we were always sure to report it.
‘I was not, sir,’ I replied.
‘Not going to or coming from the function?’ he asked.
‘Not at all.’
He nodded.
‘Is there a reason you ask?’ I said.
He shook his head and cleared his throat. I heard the crackle at that moment. It was a particularly distinctive quality of his. The only one, in fact.
The Secretary was, I suppose, an unremarkable man. In his fifties, as I would guess, he was of average height and medium build, with ordinary hair, indifferent eyes, and a not-unusual face. He wore dark clothes, and his voice was plain and level. Nothing about him really stood out, apart from his inordinate collection of notebooks, of course.
And his cough.
I do not believe his cough was the consequence of any illness. It was more of a nervous affectation, or a habit. He simply cleared his throat from time to time. But when he did it, there was, behind the sound of the cough, another sound, a sound that lurked beneath like an echo or a shadow. It was a crackle. That is how I can best describe it: a crackle or prickle, like the fuzz of a vox signal, like static, like something very brittle crinkling.
It was curious. It was the first thing I ever marked about him. It would be the last, too.
The Secretary’s name was Ebon Nastrand. We only ever referred to him by his title.
He coughed again, accompanied by that crackle of vox static. It sounded as though he was trying to dislodge something gritty and fibrous from the chimney of his throat.
‘I have my reasons, Beta,’ he began. The door opened, and a young man walked in without knocking.
‘I am so sorry, Secretary,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise you had company.’
I started in genuine surprise. The young man, the intruder, was Judika Sowl.
‘Judika?’ I asked.
‘Beta.’ He smiled, but it was a nervous, awkward smile, the smile of someone caught in the middle of doing something illicit. He glanced at the Secretary, eyes hunting for a hint of what to do.
‘You came back,’ I said, marvelling. In truth, I was so taken by surprise, I didn’t really read the trace micro-expressions of awkwardness to begin with.
‘I did,’ he said, laughing a breezy laugh and lighting a smile, the smile I remembered so well.
‘No one ever comes back,’ I said. It was true. In my memory, and in the recollections of students who were seniors when I first matriculated, no student of the Maze Undue had ever returned after they had graduated.
Judika Sowl had been three years ahead of me, and had graduated and departed two winters previously. I had, I must confess, been rather captivated by him. He was immensely talented and rather beautiful. He was still tall and slender, though his loose black locks had been trimmed to a more sober, businesslike cut. He had also been kind to me, tolerating the gaucherie of what Maphrodite had named my ‘crush’. He’d never treated me like a junior, or mocked my moony fancy, which must have been very obvious.
‘Close the door there, Judika, and sit with us,’ the Secretary instructed. He turned to me.
‘It is unusual for a pupil to return,’ he admitted. ‘Judika only arrived tonight, and there hasn’t been a chance to present him to the students and welcome him home. I was going to bring him to the top room presently, but you get to preview the good news, Beta.’
My mind hovered over what circumstances might have sent him back to us. We were all destined to serve the Ordos. Had Judika been found wanting in some way? Had he been sent back to the Maze Undue for remedial training?
‘A matter has brought me back,’ J
udika began. He spoke carefully, as if deciding what he was going to say as he went along.
‘Work has brought him back,’ said the Secretary. He cleared his throat. There was a crackle of static.
‘You are in service with the Ordos, though?’ I asked.
‘Of course he is,’ laughed the Secretary.
‘Is it…’ I hesitated. ‘Is it as exciting and fulfilling as we always dreamed?’
‘It is very rewarding,’ he said firmly.
‘Where are you posted?’
‘I’m not allowed to say.’
‘Do you serve a famous inquisitor?’
‘I’m not allowed to say, Beta.’
I nodded. Of course he wasn’t.
‘Are you at least allowed to tell me what rank you hold?’ I asked.
Judika glanced at the Secretary.
‘Interrogator,’ said the Secretary. ‘Judika has already risen to the rank of interrogator. We are very proud of him. And not at all surprised.’
The Secretary looked over at Judika. The look, now I come to recollect it, was rather pointed, though I did not especially notice that at the time.
‘I was just telling Beta that issues of security are arising,’ he said.
‘Were you?’ replied Judika. He sat back on the old, cracked, red leather of the lounger, as if composing himself comfortably. He smoothed the tails of his coat over his crossed legs. ‘That’s probably wise.’
‘She has just begun a function,’ the Secretary went on, ‘involving the Blackwards and their famous emporium.’
‘Ah,’ said Judika, as if this explained everything.
The Secretary looked back at me.
‘You understood from the outset, Beta,’ he said, ‘that your present function was important. Some functions are practice, merely exercises to hone a student’s skills.’
‘This one is not,’ I said.
He nodded.
‘Not at all. What I omitted to tell you was that it comes with an element of danger attached.’
‘Jeopardy does not concern me,’ I said.
