Mr. Stitch

by Chris Braak

  One of the men fired his revolver off into the air; the other two responded. Yet a fourth sounded right nearby, nearly startling Valentine from his perch. The one who’d fired looked just the same as the others-the same ragged blue shirt, the same green glimmer across his face.

  “Here!” The stranger shouted, “It’s going to start here. I’m going to stop it! Don’t you understand? I have to stop…to stop it!” His empty sockets turned towards Valentine, and the coroner could just make out the opaque, jade green sclera of his eyes. He leveled his revolver, and Valentine snapped the cane at his head, aiming right for that weird light on his face…

  He felt the walking stick connect, and felt his arm draw back simultaneously, felt himself hesitate a second too long and take a bullet in his chest, felt himself crack the man’s skull before the gun could go off, felt a dozen possible past and future moments fracture in a spiderweb of disrupted causality…

  And then the man was gone, and in his place was nothing but the absolute certainty that there had never been anyone there in the first place.

  “Aw, nuts.”

  The crowd was gone now, pressed to the far exits and finally squeezed outside. Valentine saw five men now with their guns, and two people-a man and a woman-lying across the chairs, bleeding from wounds in their chests. The green-glimmer men were casting about wildly, shouting incoherently about stopping…something.

  Of course they were mad. Or, really, he was mad, Valentine realized, as some of the identical-looking men were really causal doppelgangers-a peculiar effect caused by the daemonomania. Four men were weird hallucinations, and their bullets were harmless. One man was real, and definitely deadly. Which one? The young coroner knew he didn’t have the means to tell them apart: though he couldn’t recall precisely, he had a vague and uncomfortable feeling that none of the doppelgangers really were doppelgangers until he actually tried to test one. It had something to do with actualizing lines of causality, and Valentine had actually dozed through much of that lecture when he was being trained.

  “This moment is the end,” the men shouted-that, or some variation on it, each glimmering figures words colored by slight causal variations. “This is the last time. This is the edge of now. All past and future moments are echoes of this one!”

  Nothing for it, Valentine told himself, grimly. I’ll just have to take them all. He clutched the cane like a sabre and tensed, choosing as his first target the man kicking his way through the orchestra pit. He kept checking under things, as though he were looking for something. Now, or never.

  “Valentine!”

  The coroner looked around; he’d know Skinner’s voice anywhere. After a second, he saw her in Emilia’s box seat. She stood with her head cocked to the side. Pointing.

  Pointing at the doppelganger on the stage, the one that was stamping his feet and frothing. Oh, Valentine Vie-Gorgon thought. Please be right, Skinner.

  Like all young men of his economic class, Valentine Vie-Gorgon had an extensive and expensive education. It covered many topics, including the arts, science, literature, politics, and military strategy. It also included training in a number of “gentlemen sports”-a euphemism for the violent soldiering techniques that, as a member of Trowth’s elite high society, Valentine would never be called on to use. They included boxing, wrestling, and, of course, fencing.

  It was generally considered true among both habitual fencers and habitual brawlers that there was not any particular difference between hitting a man with a sabre and hitting a man with a long stick-the wound it delivered was different, but, mechanically, the process was essentially the same. All of this is to say that, when Valentine leapt at the daemonomaniac man-dropping low to avoid being shot, kicking his leg out behind him and off at angle in a technically perfect low-long-pass (called a vaeda socz by Sarpeki fencing masters), and thrusting firmly with Roger Gorgon-Crabtree’s cane right below the daemonomaniac’s sternum-he was not altogether mad in thinking that this would be an effective course of action.

  Nor was he altogether wrong; the blow was strong and well-placed, and good enough that the daemonomaniac lost his breath and staggered, firing wildly above Valentine’s head. However, in common with many men who have trained as fencers, but have had little opportunity to actually fight with a sword or stick, he was wrong in thinking that this strike alone would be enough to end the fight. It was Valentine’s peculiar luck-the same one thought to accompany drunks and idiots-that the daemonomaniac dropped his gun before leaping on Valentine, as the young man paused after his perfectly-executed lunge.

  “Ow, get off!” Valentine said, while the daemonomaniac grunted unintelligibly, and did his level best to get his fingers around the coroner’s throat. “Shit, get…” he lost his balance, and the two crashed heavily to the floor. Valentine tried to get a hold of him, to pin him, to do something, but the man fought with the strength and reckless abandon of a madman, and the light that glared from his face pulsed and grew brighter, seemingly in concert with the daemonomaniac’s desperation.

  A gravelly voice shouted, “Hold him! Hold him still!” It was barely audible over the pounding blood and adrenaline in Valentine’s ears. Another figure loomed into his vision and gripped the daemonomaniac by the neck. At once, the struggling man began to relax, his breath returning as his anger left, his voice resolving into strange, muttered inconsistencies. Valentine shoved him away.

  “Beckett?” He said, when he caught his breath. “What are you doing here?”

  The old man looked at him with one good eye, and one dark red pit where a second should be. He had a brass-furnished syringe in his hand. There was a tiny amount of milky-white veneine still remaining. “He’ll be out for a little while,” Beckett said of the daemonomaniac. “We need to get him somewhere copper-lined and secure, before the doppelgangers manifest again.”

  Valentine nodded. “He was saying something…something about ‘it starting here,’ like that…”

  “They always say that,” Beckett spat, disgustedly. “Daemonomaniacs think that they can get in touch with some kind of oracle mind so they can predict the future-it always makes them think that something terribly important is about to happen right now, and the only way they can stop it is by shooting people.”

  “It’s a hallucination?”

  “Probably. Who knows?” Beckett shrugged. “If you think about it, what’s ever happened that couldn’t have been prevented by shooting someone at the right time? How would you know anyway?” He gestured at the comatose man. “They always lose their minds before their predictions come true, anyway. Check his pockets.”

  Valentine began at once. “What am I looking for?”

  “Another of those pamphlets. That’s why I don’t want this one executed, yet. I want to know where he got it.”

  “Are you sure he’s got…oh wait. Here.” The coroner held up a weathered quarto with “The Causal Mind” printed neatly on the first page. “To attune oneself to the daemon that knows the precise location of all the universe’s atomies, and so to know their paths, and so to know the paths of all objects-”

  “Enough. We’ll take it to the Church. Or Stitch. Get a report on it. Last thing I need is for you to come under suspicion, too.”

  “I’m a coroner, Beckett.”

  Beckett snorted. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the new ministry is keeping a closer eye on us than anyone else. I can’t protect you if they want to take you in.”

  “I have-”

  “Your name won’t protect you either. Help me get this son of a bitch out of here.”

  Grunting, Valentine slung the man over his shoulders and, somewhat wobbly, managed to get to his feet. “So, what are you doing here?”

  The old coroner shrugged. “I go to the theater sometimes. Not every day a play comes out with my name on it.”

  Fourteen

  Quickly, with a practiced efficiency, Beckett and Valentine bound the madman, commandeered a Family coach, and brought the daemonomaniac to the corone
rs’ new holdings cells on the edge of Old Bank. The bars and walls were sheathed in greening copper, which metal’s alchemical properties served to gradually divest the man of the shimmering green light that poured from deep within his skull. Beckett decided to let the daemonomaniac sleep off his veneine dose in the interests of questioning him once the madness had fully abated. Moreover, the old coroner knew from experience that a dose that high would leave the subject with a terrible headache and painfully dry mouth afterwards-two features that might aid in his interrogation.

  Afterwards, the two coroners stood on Terrace Street which, ever since the Excelsior’s unfortunate reactivation had swallowed a substantial chunk of Old Bank, had a view of the whole of Trowth, all the way down to the bay. The city, with its vast intricacies of architecture, green bronze and copper statuary, crooked roads and canted buildings, was all tangled shadows in the last dregs of red spring light. Trowth seemed then to be a great stone wave, frozen in the act of rearing up, ready to crash with apocalyptic thunder onto the iron stillness of the Agon Bay. There was a mass to the city, a feeling of unstoppable inertia, as though some terrible machinery had been set in motion and, by virtue of its weight and power, would not stop until it had finally destroyed itself.

  “Well,” said Beckett, his ravaged face as impassive, as always.

  “Well. Daemonomaniacs. I didn’t think anyone still did that.”

  “There’s always a few,” Beckett replied. “The Brothers of the Mad Wind-you know, the ones that go out in the psychestorms, hoping for enlightenment?”

  “They’re daemonomaniacs?”

  “Technically. Any time someone uses flux to distort their own consciousness. The Brothers are mostly harmless, though. Real daemonomaniacs use etherized-flux…” the old coroner trailed off, staring at the city. The night air had cooled and sharpened; blue phlogiston streetlamps flickered on, waging a losing battle against Trowth’s deep shadows.

  After a moment, it became clear that Beckett had no intention of continuing. “Why don’t we…er…” he prodded, “Prosecute them, then? The Brothers?”

  Beckett shrugged. “No point. They’re all over. The second you go after one, the rest just disappear into their little bolt-holes. Usually into the Arcadium. I have someone keep an eye on them, instead. Sometimes, they lead us to real heretics.” He paused for a moment. “Not usually.”

  “No?”

  “There’s…” He shook his head. “The….there hasn’t been a serious daemonomaniac in Trowth in. Ten years. Thought they’d really. Died out.” He let out a low, ragged, sepulchral chuckle. “Of course they didn’t. It never goes away, does it? Once it’s out there once…as long as someone knows, it will never go away. Ideas are a poison worse than any plague.” His shoulders seemed to sag, then, as though the effort of holding himself upright had suddenly grown beyond his last reserves of strength.

  Valentine watched him for what felt like a long time, possessed of an inexplicable urge to reach out to the old man, put a hand on his shoulder. He contented himself with, “Are you all right?”

  “Have Karine check for…flux. Shipments that have gone missing, warehouses.”

  “Beckett.”

  “Warehouses that have been broken into.”

  “Beckett, Karine doesn’t-”

  “Someone knows. Fuck, they’re supposed to report it…” The old man had a hand to his head, as though he were overcome by a sudden wave of dizziness.

  “Beckett!” Valentine snapped. “Karine’s gone, remember?”

  “What?” Beckett grunted. “I know she’s gone. Just have…whoever. Whatever-his-name-is check into it.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just.” Beckett shook his head again. “Fine.” He turned, abruptly, and strode off into the night.

  For a moment, Valentine watched him go, wondering if he should follow. If the old man was losing his grip…Valentine shook his head. He couldn’t believe that; if there was anyone in the world that could keep it together, it was Elijah Beckett. And, even if something was wrong, how to talk about it without rousing the man’s pride and ire?

  Valentine Vie-Gorgon decided that he would look into the flux issue himself.

  Fifteen

  Beckett waited until the following afternoon to interrogate the daemonomaniac. He took Gorud down into the basements of Raithower House, far away from the weak but welcome sunlight of Armistice, where it was deep and dark enough to feel like the middle of the night.

  Though they were not used often, there were two old vaults beneath Raithower house that served as temporary holding cells. They could be accessed by a dark, narrow stair, and they were cramped and humid. In the winter they were deathly cold, in the summer they were broiling hot in the summer, and during Armistice they were possessed of a suffocating humidity. They were unpleasant places to be quartered. It was unusual for the Coroners, whose mandate was so extreme, to actually make arrests; the dangers of certain sciences being themselves often so tremendous that permitting a heretic to live long enough to transport him to a safe location represented an unacceptable level of risk to civic safety. However, the vaults were equipped with rough cots and heavy locks, and in the few instances when Beckett felt the need to interrogate a prisoner at his leisure, he was able to do so.

  The daemonomaniac was crouched in the corner of the vault, glaring with eerie green eyes that were not quite luminescent. His third, atemporal eye, had vanished. In his withdrawal, the man quivered and shook, and chewed on his twitching, spidery fingers.

  Beckett approached the bars of the cell, Gorud at his heels. The therian carried a small phlogiston lantern equipped with a red filter to keep its light dim. Daemonomaniacs often suffered unpredictable reactions-including painful and even deadly sublimations-under bright phlogiston light.

  The old man had left his hat and scarf and coat in his office. He stood, impassive and immobile, glaring at the madman, trying to intimidate him with his hideously ravaged face. The empty eye and skeletal shadows cast in the red glare of Gorud’s lamp were certainly horrific enough, but the daemonomaniac’s mind was damaged beyond caring. He did not even appear to notice the two coroners, but instead gnawed enthusiastically on his abraded, skittering fingers.

  “Name.” Beckett said.

  The man stared off into the distance, not looking at Beckett at all, instead keeping his eyes focused on some invisible item that was of incomprehensible fascination to him. He said nothing.

  “What’s your name?”

  Nothing but the wet sound of the daemonomaniac chewing. His fingers were red and raw beneath his teeth.

  “He doesn’t know,” Gorud said. “He has forgotten his name?”

  Beckett nodded. “The ‘daemon,’ the intelligence that they think they’re in touch with, is supposed to expand their minds. It’s a delusion, of course, but their minds don’t know that. They fill up with nonsense, crowd the rest out. If we’re lucky, there’s still something we can use.” He reached out and slammed his hand against the bars. “Hey. What’s your name?”

  The man looked up at them with a sudden start, and his eyes, briefly, snapped into focus. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead stretched his jaw wide, so wide that Beckett could hear the joint pop, and his eyes glazed over again. At once, he began to speak in a hoarse, raspy voice. “Huhk. Gurat. Torroketetetet-”

  “Glossolalia,” Beckett muttered. “Nonsense.”

  “-kaitor get…get…get out. Get out. It’s ours. It’s ours! OURS!” The daemonomaniac began to scream, the words dissolving into guttural croaking shouts as he leapt up from his corner and threw himself crashing against the bars. Gorud hopped back as the hinges and locks creaked, but Beckett remained still. The locks held. The man hammered impotently against the bars of his cell, shrieking and spitting like a mad animal.

  “They’re starting from here,” the daemonomaniac’s voice dropped to a frantic whisper. “Here. No! Don’t tell them that.”

  “Where did you get the
flux?” Beckett demanded.

  “They can’t know yet. They don’t know yet. Theyuk, arctorus keret gai phorthent.”

  Beckett asked again. “The flux. Who gave it to you?”

  “Gorret kora, kirakari ta net!”

  “Listen,” the coroner said. “You’re talking nonsense. You think you’re speaking Trowthi, but you’re not. The part of your brain that understands speech-”

  “Harep,” Gorud spoke up from the dark. “Kara dettu priata?”

  Very slowly, Beckett turned to face the therian, who was huddled behind his lamp, his eyes wide, his canine face impassive. The coroner said nothing, and for a long moment, neither did the daemonomaniac.

  “Exhu,” the daemonomaniac said, his voice soft, almost cogent now. “Garrakt for dett. They know.”

  “Shingoru dettu parak. Exhu diri otomen.” Gorud shook his head. “Exhu borak.”

  The man tried to speak again, but no words emerged. He worked his jaw, his eyes bulged, veins throbbed against his head. He threw himself against the iron bars, again and again, entirely silent except for the labored breathing through his flaring nostrils. Finally, he staggered back against the far wall, his body still wracked with pain, and shrieked. The foreign words exploded in a torrent from his throat.

  “Agatta! Exhu agatta! Exhu agatta!” He broke off into a piteous wail and wept and screamed as he arched his back. The atemporal eye began to glow behind his skull, illuminating its morbid contours, humming faintly in sympathy with the metal bars.

  “Damn it,” Beckett said. “He’s seizing.” He began fumbling with the keys at his belt, his numb fingers clumsy, his haste paradoxically slowing him down.

  The man’s screams grew louder. “Exhu agatta! Exhu agatta!” The light from his skull was enough to see by, and his back had contorted so sharply that it looked as though it meant to crack.