The Hod King

by Josiah Bancroft

  “I have spent the past twenty years handling the books of some of the most wealthy and influential businessmen in the Tower. I know who’s solvent, who’s good with money, who’s looking to expand into new markets. I have the contacts. I would be your business manager.”

  “And take a salary, I imagine?”

  “I’d prefer stock. A three percent stake.”

  Wil twirled a finger in Joachim’s direction, making the buttons on his sleeve ring. “Tell me, Cyril, have you ever tasted peridot? It’s a liqueur. Some people say it tastes like medicine. I think it tastes like candied springtime.” The bartender poured the brilliant green liqueur into two small flutes. The duke took up his glass. “Now, I know most Boskops don’t drink, but most don’t try to chop my wife into parcels either. So take that up, and here’s to you.”

  Senlin feigned reluctance but picked up his glass. “And to you.”

  Realizing that a show was in order, Senlin downed the sweet liqueur and made a face like a man attempting to suppress a sneeze. He coughed and lifted his hands over his head.

  The duke laughed and twirled his finger a second time. Joachim, who’d been hovering nearby, set a clamshell box on the bar. Inside, a pin glistened upon a velvet pillow. “Consider this a provisional loan,” the duke said, plucking the pin from the case. It was just like General Eigengrau’s pin and the one on the duke’s lapel: three white horizontal bars in a gold square. “It’s the club’s herald. We call ourselves the Coterie. You’ll have a much easier time getting past the doormen with that on.”

  Senlin took the pin, his expression of surprise genuine, though something in the duke’s smile made him suspect he had not yet begun to pay for this privilege. “I feel remiss,” Senlin said, affixing the pin to his coat. “I didn’t bring any jewelry for you.”

  “Ah, but you’ve given me an idea. And if my lady likes it, perhaps we’ll both be rich.”

  Senlin felt a sudden urge to grab the duke by the neck and choke him upon the bar. As if his murder might convince Marya that Senlin were the more deserving man. As if she would ever leave this life and return home with him and pretend that none of this had ever happened. Though how could they pretend? What would it be like to live such a charade? Would she pick at him with rueful laughter and bitter looks? Would he make her the widow of his daydreams? Would they become the old couple in the corner of the pub who never spoke, never smiled, never sang with the round?

  Senlin realized Wilhelm was staring at him and that he had not said anything for a long moment. “To you and your wife, Wil.”

  The duke grabbed Senlin by the back of the neck and shook him merrily. “You aren’t so bad, Cyril. You aren’t so bad at all. Don’t let anyone tease you about being a Boskop! Now bring your vase water and let’s find a spot at the rail. The brawlers are about to come out.”

  The club had filled up while they had been talking. Still, the duke had no trouble elbowing a little space on the wide stone rail. The general admission benches below were nearly full.

  Adolescent boys raked the clay as the bookmaker, a stout elder in suspenders with a tobacco-stained mustache, climbed the podium above the caged entrances to the ring. He cupped his hand to his mouth and began to bellow with impressive volume: “Third fight! Third fight! The Iron Bear and the Ritzy Pup!” Senlin had seen the Ritzy Pup fight several times—he was a young man with large red lips who never fared very well, but who was exceedingly good at getting tossed about. He hadn’t heard of the Iron Bear before. “Final odds, the Iron Bear by five to one. All bets are in. No more bets! No more bets!” The groomers raked their way out of the ring.

  “We haven’t seen the Iron Bear in a few weeks. He broke a toe last time, I think,” the duke said.

  “Who’s going to win?”

  “Odds say the Iron Bear.”

  “But don’t you know? Aren’t the fights fixed?”

  “No! What are you talking about? It’s not fixed! Where’s the fun in that?”

  Senlin frowned but said no more. Perhaps he didn’t understand the rules of the sport as well as he thought. Senlin noticed that the gentlemen at the rail beside him gripped betting sheets.

  “I’ll tell you what, Cyril: There’s a little soiree this evening. My wife will be there. If you’d like to come along, perhaps you could tell her all about your idea. I assume you have something else to wear?”

  Senlin knew it was a terrible idea to accept and yet did not hesitate to do so. “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “Have you met my wife?” Wil asked, and Senlin could manage little more than a shake of his head. “The papers don’t do her justice. As incredible as her performances are, she’s even more spectacular in person. You’ve never seen a more arresting vision of beauty. She is imperfect, but absolutely peerless.”

  Senlin wanted nothing so much as to scream.

  “I think I have an extra invitation around here somewhere. Just a moment.” The duke began to pat his pockets distractedly, and as he did, his hips pressed against the low railing, festooned with ropes of silk flowers. Senlin watched as his hand rose over the center of the duke’s back. He couldn’t stop what was happening. A moment before, he had thought himself in control, but now his heart thundered inside him like an apocalyptic beast charging upon myriad legs, crowned with gory horns, a mount too large and wild for the small jockey of his rational mind to steer. One good shove would send the duke over. One good shove would see him broken upon the bleachers like a skiff on a reef. The Tower did not care if a man was righteous or vile. The Tower ruined the just and the unjust with equal appetite. The Tower—

  A shriek of hinges sent a shudder up Senlin’s spine. His hand dropped from the duke’s back.

  Far below on the arena floor, the brawlers emerged from their tunnels to a gust of cheers. The young Ritzy Pup strutted out first, his lips curled back, his teeth as prominent as a baboon’s. He dragged his toe, striking up theatric sheets of dust, and thumped his chest triumphantly.

  The Iron Bear slunk, head downcast, out of his unlit cave. He rubbed his face as if he’d just been awakened by the arrival of spring. He was immense, nearly half again as large as his rival and twice his age. His shoulders and arms were rolled with muscles. He shook his great head as if to clear the fog of his slumber. Then the two points of his dark beard jabbed toward the crowd as he threw back his head and roared.

  Senlin recognized the voice at once. He had listened to that bark over wine and snails for many an evening at Café Risso in the Baths.

  John Tarrou ducked and caught the Ritzy Pup by his ankles, then shook him out like a sandy towel.

  Chapter Nine

  Don’t saw off your arm to feed a dog. You only have two arms, and the world is full of dogs.

  —Oren Robinson of the Daily Reverie

  Senlin gave the duke a rushed excuse about the liqueur not sitting right with him, though he promised he’d make a full recovery before the evening. Wil laughed and said something about the delicate constitution of Boskops before giving Senlin the invitation for the gala. Then Senlin fled the crowded clubhouse, shouldering through the noblemen ascending the stairs, past the guards brooding in the lobby, and out to the plaza. The haze had lifted, but the crowds were just as thick.

  Tarrou’s grim fate and abrupt reappearance were shocking, but Senlin couldn’t think clearly enough at the moment to empathize with his friend. No, what whipped him out the door was the realization that if he stayed one minute longer, he would kill the duke or die trying. The fact surprised him. He’d defied the Sphinx’s orders and Byron’s advice because he was certain that if he armed himself with a plan, sufficient research, and a healthy dose of introspection, he would be able to control himself, control the base impulses that ruled lesser men. But the moment the duke paid Marya a frank and discerning compliment, Senlin had lost all sense of reason.

  Wil’s words echoed in him still: “She is imperfect, but absolutely peerless.”

  He had lost her, had lost her one final time, not to th
e crowd, but to a man who appreciated her fully, baldly, boldly—a man who knew her blemishes and thought them beauty marks. It seemed the duke had already learned what it had taken Senlin too long to discover: Intimacy was not about maintaining the idealistic charade of courtship; it was about embracing and adoring the flaws, the very things that the headmaster of Isaugh had never been quite able to admit in himself. The Mermaid’s train song to the children rang again in his ears: “It’s perfectly all right not to be perfect. A chip or a crack can be precious, too.”

  Even when he was safely back in his suite, Senlin could not repress the nervous urge to pace. He crisscrossed the rug in a fury, rubbing his face as if he would shed it. He couldn’t hold on to a single sensible thought. Of course, she loved the duke! How could she not love him? Wilhelm was handsome, amiable, wealthy, and he had been present when she had needed him most, been present when Senlin was loafing in the Baths.

  Senlin snatched up the edition of the Reverie that recounted their wedding day and glared at the etching of Wil and Marya, arm in arm, on the prow of a rose-strewn yacht. The joyous couple waved to him from the past. He had been too late for a very long time.

  He tore the paper and hurled it across the room. Before the tatters had time to settle, he took up another edition and tore it to ragged shreds. He ripped into another paper, then another, blackening his hands with ink, filling the room with the noise of ripping paper, a sound that had once upon a time grated his nerves, but which now harmonized with the roar inside him. He shoved the stacks from his bureau and kicked the pages as they fell. He wanted to tear each sentence separately, tear them down to the word, the letter. He tore as if he could rend history with his hands.

  The last copy ruined, Senlin stood panting in a shin-deep marsh of newspaper. He felt relieved and spent and ashamed of himself.

  A jaunty knock upon his door made him catch his breath. Had someone complained about the noise? How long had he raved?

  He half-expected to find the concierge, Mr. Stull, behind the door, but it wasn’t someone he recognized. The smiling dandy wore a burgundy suit, a matching top hat, and a white daisy in his buttonhole. He held a clipboard with gloved hands.

  “Are you Mr. Pinfield?” The dandy’s voice was musical, his pronunciation exact.

  “Yes,” Senlin said, trying his best to block the devastation behind him.

  “Mr. Cyril Pinfield?”

  “Yes. What is this in regard to?”

  “I have a message for you, sir, from Mr. S. Finks.” The dandy pulled a cream-colored envelope from the clipboard and presented it to Senlin with a perfunctory bow. Senlin looked down at the envelope and back up just in time to see the dandy’s arm swinging at him.

  The slap caught him on the jaw hard enough to turn his head.

  Senlin was about to lunge at the man when his outrage was foiled by the presentation of the clipboard and a fountain pen. “Could you please sign here confirming that you received the letter, and also here, confirming you received the blow?” the dandy said.

  Stunned, Senlin took the board and pen. The inventory sheet bore the herald of the company: BIERMAN BROTHERS—ANNOUNCEMENTS & TELEGRAPHIC SLAPS. In smaller print beneath the letterhead was the company motto: DO NOT SHOOT THE MESSENGER. OUR MESSENGERS SHOOT BACK.

  Sensing Senlin’s puzzlement, the dandy pointed to the lines that required his signature. Under the paragraph entitled BLOWS, ETC., the description read, “One open-palm slap delivered enthusiastically to the cheek, temple, or ear.” Senlin was so confused, he nearly signed his real name. He returned the clipboard and was about to shut the door when the dandy cleared his throat and held out his hand.

  “You must be joking.”

  “Sir, I’m just doing my job. I have mouths to feed.”

  Grumbling, Senlin fished a few coins out of his pocket and slapped them into the man’s palm.

  Alone again, he opened the letter and read:

  Dear Mr. Pinfield,

  You seem to forget, my eyes are widely set.

  I know I was clear in my instruction that you not expose yourself unnecessarily. Going to plays, fighting in alleys, and becoming a person of interest in a murder investigation are all primary examples of unnecessary exposure.

  I know what you’re up to, young man. And I will tell you again: You are the wrong tool for that job. You are a hammer attempting to do the work of a wrench. If you continue to bang away, you’ll only make it harder for the young lady to do her job. Don’t be a fool.

  Warmest Regards,

  S. Finks

  Senlin felt suddenly aware of the high walls of his suite, the scribbling pattern of the wallpaper, the great volume of drapes, and the fringed skirt of his bed. There were so many places for the Sphinx’s spies to hide.

  “Right,” he said to the audience of an empty room.

  Senlin would be the first to admit he had been shirking his duty to the Sphinx. In his defense, the Sphinx’s suspicion that something sinister was transpiring in the Colosseum did not seem as pressing as Senlin’s certainty that Marya was present and within reach. Even so, he could hardly resent the Sphinx’s reminder that he had a job to do.

  Senlin didn’t think it wise to report that he had wheedled his way into the Coterie Club. Doing so might raise the question of whether he’d bumped into the duke. If he had discovered that the clubhouse was a secret torture chamber or contained a hidden munition factory or a ceremonial altar surrounded by men in black cowls, of course he would’ve confessed the intelligence at once. But the Coterie Club had turned out to be nothing more than a pretty bar with a nice view.

  To placate the Sphinx, Senlin filed a report on some information he’d at first considered too trivial to mention, though that was before he’d had a visit from the slap fairy.

  A day earlier, he’d overheard a gambler in the betting queue complain about the ousting of the Coattails: “Those little scamps were always good for a laugh. Too bad Eigengrau doesn’t have a sense of humor. Bring the Coattails back, I say!” His curiosity piqued, Senlin made some inquiries and learned that the Coattails were young boys who were allowed to sell papers, tobacco, and matches inside the Colosseum lobby. The inspiration for the nickname was just a poor pun on the word Coterie, but the boys embraced it and soon appeared wearing long, colorful tails sewn onto the back hems of their coats. Their coattails were so long, they often dragged upon the ground.

  When they weren’t selling their papers and tobacco, the Coattails found other ways to entertain themselves. They stuck matchheads into cigarettes, so they’d flare up when lit. They cut coattails out of newspaper and took turns trying to pin them onto unsuspecting victims. Their favorite game was something called Bump and Basket. First, one of the Coattails had to procure a “lure” by stealing a shiny button from the cuff or lapel of an inattentive costumer. A strip of colorful cloth was sewn to the button, and then the boy would toss his finished lure in the air. The goal was to attract the attention of one of the magpies that nested in the lobby or arena. If a magpie swooped down and hit the lure but dropped it, this was called a bump and was worth one point. If the magpie caught the lure and took it back to its nest in the high, inaccessible friezes of the lobby, this was called a basket, which was worth three points. Over the course of many months, the nests had filled with buttons, until the magpies sat like dragons upon glittering hoards.

  The Coattails were as much a fixture of the Colosseum as the beer vendors or betting counters. Even the men who went home missing a button did not wish to see the imps driven out.

  But then one morning one of the Coattails was found inside the dormitory where the brawlers ate and slept. The boy had gotten in despite the fact that the dormitory lay in a separate section of the Colosseum behind a series of barriers and a constant guard. Finding the boy inside the dorm was like discovering a child in a bank vault. General Eigengrau, who oversaw the Colosseum’s guard, interrogated the boy, who confessed that the Coattails were playing a new game, a game where they saw how far
they could explore beyond the public areas. Incredibly, the boy had managed to squeeze through a barred door, slip past the guards, and pick a lock. Eigengrau did not like the idea of his security being tested (and bested) by a bunch of paperboys, so he barred them all from the premises.

  Senlin noted that though the players had been banished, the birds had not lost their appetite for the game: No shiny thing was safe in the arena. The magpie hoards continued to grow.

  Out on the balcony, Senlin released the Sphinx’s spy over the city streets. Below, a brass band seemed to be terrorizing the diners of a café with an excessively merry polka. His eye fell upon the gallery opposite his room. Someone had tried to push a sofa onto it, but the piece of furniture had gotten stuck halfway out the door and at an angle. He recalled the masked woman who’d laughed at his moth from that balcony. He wondered why she had shown him her face just before becoming violently ill. If he had been in her place and on the brink of such an embarrassment, he would’ve kept the mask on.

  No sooner did the thought form in his head than he knew just what he would do.

  Mr. Stull made a point of never forming an opinion about any of his guests. Developing an opinion on them was as futile and juvenile as pointing out the shapes of passing clouds. The guests came, they cast a little shadow, and they flew on.

  And yet increasingly, Mr. Stull was finding it difficult not to develop an opinion about the Boskop, Mr. Pinfield, who for all his blandness, was proving to be an inventive nuisance. First, there were all the trips to the newspaper archives, which had tied up his porters for hours. Then there was the whitewash on his carpets, which would probably have to be cut out and replaced, and finally the summoning of the law, whose arrival had all but paralyzed his staff with gossip.

  So when Mr. Stull looked up from his lectern and the timetable he was drafting to see the Boskop standing before him, he nearly blurted out, Oh no, what have you done now?