by Tim Clare
Hagar tightened her hand into a fist. No.
She glanced back at the harka sailor, who was loitering beside the wooden veranda of a coffee bar. A vesperi pedlar was going table to table with a clutch of bamboo cages stuffed with sweetwings; the tiny birds were dyed garish festival-day colours. The pedlar grabbed a bright green bird from its cage and offered it to the sailor. It struggled and trilled in her grip.
A sampan loaded with lobster pots was passing under the boardwalk. Hagar saw her chance. While the sailor was distracted she walked to the edge of the boardwalk and stepped off. She dropped fifteen feet and landed in the bow of the boat.
The sampan rocked. She dropped to a crouch and tossed the startled pilot a comte. He caught it overarm, checked the denomination, then slipped it into the pouch on his belt and nodded, before going back to working the boat’s single-oar.
They drifted away from the quayside, into the mazy boating lanes of the stilt city merchants’ district. The petition had not been submitted yet. It would be simple enough to find out the name of the flesh shambles’ legal representatives. Perhaps they could reach an accommodation. She would have to drop in on them.
Hagar picked her way across the steep roof of the vitrifacsimilist’s shop, her black hood fastened tight about her ears, her garrotte wire coiled inside the stiffened cuff of her leather duster. The tiles were dry and grippy beneath her boots. She remembered the icy roof of Colstrid’s lodge, and felt thankful for the balmy weather.
Her enquiries had given her an address – the Rue Infinie, right at the summit of the high town – and a name – Advocate Ashesh-Ro. To her right, the sun was low over the ocean, liquid and blood-lush.
She advanced in a slow, loping scramble, right hand clutching the scalloped ridge tiles. To her left, the roof terminated in a wide bronze gutter streaked with verdigris, guarding a drop to the tree-lined esplanade three storeys below. From across the street came pettish caws and the jangle of bell-harnesses. Trains of skroon would be lining up at the foot of Mitta’s Spire while handlers daubed their beaks with fluorescent paint, ready to drive the spirits back downhill into the sea.
Hagar thought of Räum alone in his stall and her heart ached. These past weeks, she had rewarded his lifetimes of service with neglect. Would she have time to visit him, before the end?
She stopped to rest, hooking three fingers through one of the ridge tiles’ cruciform holes and relaxing her legs. To her right, red light soaked the rooftops and parapets, spreading down towards the bay. Lotan Reef winked with rubies. Shadows flowed into sidestreets and alleys, branching and darkening. As the sun sank towards the sea, Fat Maw’s high town resembled a great cracking scab.
She hung back when she reached the rooftop’s gable end, so no one would see her from the alley below. On the wind she smelt barbecued wetpig, torch smoke. The jump onto the roof of the Advocate’s chambers was about four feet horizontally, perhaps five down. The roof had a gentle pitch and a large skylight in its southern face.
Four feet was not enough to be chancy, but the centuries had taught her that feats on the upper end of easy were where most people came undone: carelessness while fording a river on skroon, a moment’s distraction loading a cannon – straightforward tasks that encouraged complacency. Lord Cambridge’s valet Kizo had lived over three hundred years and survived at least twenty assassination attempts – two of which had been ordered by the Grand-Duc himself – and then snapped his neck falling downstairs on the way to morning temple. Valets were, after all, just as killable as regular mortals – the tiny sliver of the honours they inherited prevented ageing, but no more. Officials whispered that he had been pushed, but Hagar knew such gossip was dust tossed to conceal a more disturbing truth – Kizo had been killed by routine.
She slotted two of her grapnel’s flukes under the ten sinuous arms of the small stone decapus that capped the roof ridge, and ran the rope twice through her belt. Across the street, pale streamers fluttered from the silver minaret of Mitta’s Spire in ugly rinds. Strings of firecrackers belted the narrow turret beneath, helixing down to where the spire sank into the cobblestones. She thought of everything that lay buried under the square. Such a betrayal, yet Morgellon still chose to honour him.
She understood perfectly. There was no reasoning with love.
The bricks had turned a swooning, drunken crimson. The shunning would start just after sundown. She had to hurry.
Hagar braced a sole against the lip of the roof and jumped. Smoky wind whipped over her eyes. She threw her palms out and landed, monkey-deft, on Advocate Ashesh-Ro’s roof. She blinked away tears, staying crouched, feeling the slates’ warmth through her gloved palms, enjoying the kick of her heart.
She rose. Her climbing rope dipped back over the alley up to the roof she had leapt from. Tonight, every street was spiderwebbed with festival bunting. An extra black line would not excite comment. She secured it to the modest ball finial at the end of the Advocate’s roof with a half-hitch.
She walked to the skylight. It was stained glass, a stylised composite of blue and green teardrops edged with thin lead curlicues, depicting Okap the God Fish eating the sun. The window was shut. Hagar had long ceased to be impressed by decadence, but there was something both affected and affecting about installing such a delicate and expensive pane so far from where common eyes could see it. If the Advocate had wanted to flaunt her lucre she could have set it on the ground floor, facing the street.
Hagar knelt and peered through the cobalt-tinted panels beside Okap’s flowing whiskers, down into the office. Advocate Ashesh-Ro, Hagar had learned, had a reputation for long dinners, sexual profligacy and a matchless work ethic. Whether or not this reputation was deserved, only its final component mattered. If the butchers planned to submit their petition tomorrow morning, the Advocate would be working late to ensure the evidence was correctly catalogued and cross-referenced.
Through a greenblue wash, Hagar gazed down upon a pentagonal desk, with clockwork oil lamp, ink and blotting paper, and heavy lead legal seal. The lamp was lit – a harsh, diffuse glow wobbled within the mantle, like the sun through fog. The desk was surrounded by three low-backed captain’s chairs of dark, polished leather. Beside the chair nearest the lamp was a silver stand holding a glass ashtray. One of the desk drawers was open.
She heard a thud and shrank back. When she eased her head forward she saw a figure rounding the table in crushed silk legal vestments, dark half-cape and long woollen shunning hood.
Already dressed for the festival. Hagar had got here just in time. The hood obscured the figure’s face but he or she appeared of medium build for a vesperi, and limber – wings presumably folded under the cape. The figure dumped a stack of documents on the desk, pulled up a low-backed chair and began rifling through them hurriedly with felt-gloved fingers.
This, surely, was Advocate Ashesh-Ro. Hunting down a final affidavit before she headed out to celebrate. Professional to a fault.
Hagar felt a warm rush of fellow-feeling. She had dabbled in jurisprudence for half-a-dozen decades back at the Institute. It was like plunging a knife into a river. Law changed so quickly, rippling and flowing round the expediencies of the age. She preferred the sure and timeless edicts of the body, a book that remained the same each time you opened it.
Hagar had not, in her discreet enquiries, managed to discern what the Advocate looked like, but she half-remembered the virtue-name, Ashesh, from the great vesperi families of the Thelusian diaspora: those lean, grey-furred clannish bureaucrats with their severe northern features and wolfish ears. She saw something flash on one of the gloved fingers. Above the middle knuckle sat a chunky signet ring – probably bearing the embossed insignia of the Noble Southern College of Pandecti.
It was almost too easy.
Hagar shuffled back out of view and examined the skylight itself. The stained glass appeared much older than the window frame, perhaps an heirloom, brought over with the families of the Second Diaspora. A symbol of continuity, survival
. It could be raised via a brass screwjack. That meant a maximum gap of a few inches, and you could only turn the handle from the inside. There was no way to open it without kicking through the glass.
She kicked through the glass. The ornate panes gave like eggshell, lead struts twisting inwards. She dropped through the gap and landed on the pentagonal desk in a blue and green cascade.
The Advocate sprang to her feet, knocking her chair over.
Hagar flexed her fingers. ‘Fair tides, Advocate.’
Advocate Ashesh-Ro stood flattened against the bookcase that covered the rear wall. She lifted her head, and the light from the oil lamp filled the interior of her cowl.
She had ruddy skin, a sharply defined jaw and dark, defiant eyes. A human.
‘You’re not the Advocate.’
The figure – the young girl – was breathing heavily beneath her hood.
Hagar took a step forward. A sliver of glass caught in the tread of her boot; she felt it score a scar in the desk’s smooth finish.
‘Where is she?’ said Hagar.
The girl held Hagar’s gaze, trembling, glowering. She looked too young for a junior barrister, too young for a clerk even. Since when had the Advocate started hiring humans?
Plastered to the girl’s temples were twists of damp grey hair. She rolled her shoulders in what felt like a challenge.
‘Who are you?’ said Hagar.
The girl thinned her eyes and drew her lips into a tight, angry bud.
Hagar took another step, glass crunching under her heel. ‘Qui êtes-vous?’ Her toecap nudged the stack of papers. More documents were heaped on a row of cabinets, beside a ceramic tithing bowl – presumably for six-ways clients – and brazier. She glanced at the stranger’s gloves and hood. ‘Are you a thief?’ The term elicited a tiny but palpable flinch. ‘You realise Advocates operate as agents of the perpetuum? That makes breaking and entering legal chambers a felony.’ She began counting out offences on her fingers. ‘Lèse-majesté, embracery, larceny . . .’
Hagar noticed the girl’s attention straying and followed her gaze upwards to the smashed skylight. The rope hung slackly through a jagged hole fringed with twisted prongs of lead.
Hagar regarded the scratched desk. ‘True, this is probably tortious malfeasance.’ She knelt, sliding a hand down towards the misericord concealed in her boot. ‘But as a representative of Maison Jejunus I have a prerogative when it comes to protecting interests of State and Crown. Which is to say . . .’ She stood, gripping the thin blade by its tip. ‘Why are you here and who sent you?’
The girl nodded past her. ‘I hope you brought a second knife for him.’
Hagar turned to look. Behind her was a thick wooden door, treacle black, its upper panel a relief carving of vesperi soaring over a stormy ocean upon stylised wings. Above a discreet sliding latch, the door-knob was a polished oval of smoked blue glass. The door was ajar. A blow swept her legs out.
She twisted as she fell. A bluff! Impressive. Her palms thudded into the desk, skidding through glass splinters. She caught a flash of movement and rolled. The silver ashtray stand crashed into the spot where her skull had been. Hagar sprang to her feet. She punted the stack of documents into the air and danced back.
Through a shower of flapping papers she saw the girl, clutching the ashtray stand lengthways like a staff, glaring defiantly. This was no clerk.
Hagar snorted and widened her stance. Her palms stung. She had gone years without a proper fight. Her skin tingled, the old training kicking in. Good to test her skills. A warm-up before tomorrow.
She glanced around for her dropped misericord. The girl stepped forward and push-passed the ashtray stand at Hagar’s head. Hagar caught it easily, pivoting to absorb the impact. She switched to a one-handed grip and swung the stand in a wide, chopping motion, aiming for the girl’s skull. The girl dropped and the swing missed. She scrambled under the desk.
She was making for the door. Hagar let the ashtray stand drop and took two quick steps back, yielding to the muscle memory drilled into her by successive Canoness Umbra Primes at the Sciamachian Order, her knees relaxing so her torso dipped, then tensing with explosive force. Gravity shifted around her, her ankles whipping up over her while the glass-strewn hardwood floor glinted below like ice floe. Her right hand went to her opposite cuff; as the desk swung back into view, she spread her legs and landed in a wide stance, bending her knees and taking several quick steps backwards to distribute the momentum while pulling the garrotte from her sleeve.
Her shoulder blades kissed the door. She yanked the wire tight between her fists.
The girl was barely out from under the desk. She saw Hagar and stumbled back. Her hood slipped.
The clockwork lamp had fallen to the floor. The mantle had shattered and a puddle of leviathan oil burned with clear white flames. The girl’s underlit face was carved with hard black lines. Her tangled hair shone gunmetal grey. In the shifting flames she looked young, then old, then young again.
‘I don’t want to kill you,’ said Hagar. Her climbing rope ran from her belt to the skylight in a long black arc. ‘I’m on a mission of peace.’
The girl breathed out of the corner of her mouth. She seemed to be weighing her options. The burning oil gave off a rank, fishy stink.
‘You’re working for one of the cliques, correct?’ said Hagar. ‘Who was it? The saltpetres? The pilcrows? No matter. They told you to come here, ransack the Advocate’s offices – threaten her a bit, perhaps? Because of the flesh shambles’ petition?’
The girl’s arms lowered slightly, though she remained tensed, alert.
Hagar let the garrotte wire slacken, in a show of reciprocity. ‘We may have a common goal.’ She wondered how much to say. Negotiation was probably futile – the girl might not even be listening. Still, another corpse would be inconvenient. ‘I want nothing to complicate the Grand-Duc’s arrival.’
The muscles of the girl’s face twitched.
‘Who are you?’ she said. Her accent was not Avalonian.
‘Where are you from, child?’
The girl blinked. The look in her eyes was confusion or fear or both.
Hagar heard footsteps on the stairs. Whoever it was had almost reached the landing. Hagar sidestepped, moving an index finger to her lips. The girl’s gaze flicked from Hagar to the door. Hagar shook her head.
The smoked glass doorknob clicked, then began to twist.
‘Run!’ yelled the girl.
Hagar slapped the latch home. The doorknob rattled. The voice on the other side said: ‘Delphine?’
That name. Was that the one Arthur had mentioned? Hagar looked up just in time to see the girl draw a pistol – boxy, black, with two grips and a compact barrel. It did not look native. Hagar stared as the girl lined up a shot on her head.
‘Wait,’ said Hagar.
If the girl had meant to kill, she could have. Instead at the last moment she jinked the muzzle to the right and fired, blasting apart a fluted glass sculpture bracketed to the wall. The report was ear-splitting. Hagar staggered, clutching her temple. The girl tucked the gun inside her robes, jumped onto the desk and grabbed the rope.
Hagar ran at her. The girl hauled herself upwards with impressive speed. Hagar grabbed the end tied to her belt and shook it, but the girl clung on, gripping with her feet. The girl grasped a bent strut of lead, and, screaming with the effort, dragged herself up through the smashed skylight.
The doorknob turned back and forth. Someone rapped on the wood.
‘Hello? Delphine? Are you all right?’
Silk vestments billowed as the girl disappeared through the skylight. Hagar cursed. She tilted her head and lights streaked, leaving little tails. Everything was overly bright. Her mouth had gone dry. Someone was at the door and the girl was getting away – a girl who had seen Hagar’s face.
Hagar pressed her gloved palms together. Crushed glass ground against crushed glass. She closed her eyes and prayed.
Give us help from trouble
: for vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread down our enemies.
She breathed out, breathed in, and opened her eyes. One problem at a time. First, the petition.
Hagar snatched her dagger from the table. She ran to the documents stacked on the cabinets and slit the strings holding them together. She hurled them into the pool of burning oil in great loose drifts.
The door crashed as someone barged it.
She ran along the polished bookshelves, tugging down heavy, gold-leafed tomes in ones and twos and hurling them into the spreading blaze. The cost of collections like this ensured law remained in the hands of the wealthy, or those who were prepared to accrue considerable debts to the wealthy. They were not books so much as bricks in a wall.
Sweat was threading down her brow and temples. She vaulted onto the table and grasped the rope. The floor was lush with fire. Any relevant papers were ashes. Advocate Ashesh-Ro had bigger problems now than countersigning a few affidavits.
Hagar gripped her misericord between her teeth and began to climb. The office door boomed with repeated blows. The bitter stink of bubbling varnish joined the leviathan oil’s briny tang.
At the top, she used her knife to knock away slivers of glass. Heat beat against her calves. Her gloved fingers scrabbled for the ridge between the frame and the roof tiles.
She heard the latch bang loose from its housing and felt a great woof of air as the door opened.
Her cloak flapped in the sudden draft, the fire sucking thirstily. Sweat trickled down her neck and stung her eyes.
‘Hey!’
With a last grunting effort she hoisted herself through the shattered skylight and onto the rooftop.
The girl had climbed across the alley to the opposite roof. She sat straddling the roof ridge, aiming the gun at Hagar.
