But these were all questions and conjectures for another time and perhaps another mind. At the moment, he was enjoying the peace and quiet, the scent of linseed oil, and the glint of paint on the tip of his brush.
The Sphinx’s winged spies came to him through a hole in the hull that was as subtle as the nostril of a shark. The moths and butterflies emerged from the trumpeted mouth of the pipe into a wire cage that was mounted upon the wall. He retrieved them from the corral as his duties allowed and documented their arrival like a hotelier checks in his guests. He noted any damage and repaired them if necessary. He then previewed their recordings, created a duplicate if they seemed important enough to require one, and then released the original via the same vent they’d come through.
The back wall of the closet was covered in corkboard that was so full of the pinned wings it looked like an elaborate quilt. Some wings were blank; others were painted with various domestic camouflage: fabrics, wood grains, and china patterns. His work desk was littered with tools, brushes, paint pots, and mechanical parts. Dozens of cubby holes containing the stowed bodies of erased and copied spies filled the wall above his workspace.
Byron was putting the finishing touches on a marble pattern with the aid of a magnifying glass when the knock came on his door. He yelled for Voleta to go away and leave him alone, but was surprised to hear Edith’s voice reply, “It’s me, Byron.”
He opened the door a few inches, shoved his damp, black nose through the crack, and greeted the captain. He apologized for having mistaken her for Voleta and asked, “Shall I come to your quarters?”
“I’d like to come inside, if I may,” Edith replied, and then held up the brass thorax of the moth he’d delivered to her the night before. “I came to propose a trade.” He hesitated, and Edith added, “I’m not here as your captain. You can absolutely say no. I’m here as a friend to ask for your help.”
It was no small concession that he let her in. Not only was it forbidden, it was inconvenient, too. There wasn’t much room to stand and only one stool. But he liked how it felt to be asked for help.
So he offered her the stool and knelt on one knee, grateful that his legs never grew tired or sore. It was only after they were sitting so intimately that he thought how strange the room must appear to her. All the bodiless wings pinned to the wall, the scattering of mechanical legs and moth heads on the workbench. It must look a little macabre. He watched her take in the room and was pleased when she announced, “It’s snug. I like it. Must be a nice retreat.” He said that he thought so, of course, but it was nice to hear someone else say it. “I suppose you still haven’t heard from Tom,” she said, peering through the magnifying glass at the canvas of a wing. “Very pretty.”
“Thank you,” he said. Feeling self-conscious, he began clearing his work away. “I would’ve told you if I’d heard anything.”
“I know. So I thought we should probably come up with some sort of plan for what we’ll do when we get to Pelphia.”
Byron smiled and laughed. “I think the Sphinx has planned enough for all of us, hasn’t he? I think he was pretty clear.”
“No, what we’ll do, Byron. Me and you. About Tom.”
“I see,” Byron said, his quick stowing of painting supplies slowing to a crawl.
“The Sphinx doesn’t care about him. We both know that. Having a use for someone isn’t the same as caring. But I care, and I think that you might as well.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I know you’ve been intercepting Tom’s daily reports. Do you still have them?”
“I have copies,” Byron said a little proudly. “I made duplicates in case the moths were damaged or waylaid on their journey home.”
“Very sensible. I would like to listen to them if I could. And then afterward, I will play for you the message he sent me.”
Byron opened his mouth wide. He was going to say something clever, something unkind, which was what he usually did when he felt uncomfortable. But he stopped himself and said instead, “Captain … Edith, I can’t. I have my orders to consider here.”
“I understand.” Edith tapped the tail of Senlin’s messenger moth lightly on the worktable. “And I wouldn’t want to scandalize you, anyway.”
“Oh, do you really think I’m so nosy?”
“No, not at all. Not at all. I’m just saying it might make you blush, and I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.”
“What do you mean? Why would it make me blush? What did he say?”
Edith sucked in a breath through her teeth and rocked her head from side to side. Byron watched her for a moment before realizing she wouldn’t answer. He shook his antlers. “All right, all right! But only in the name of idle curiosity! We’re not going to tell anyone else or betray any of our obligations to the …” Edith had been smiling a moment before, but her expression changed so abruptly it halted Byron’s speech. “What is it?”
“I was doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Manipulating you. Going the roundabout way to get what I want.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t want to treat my friends like obstacles. I don’t want to do that. I’m not like him.”
“Like the Sphinx, you mean?”
When she opened her eyes, she was staring at him in a forthright way. “It’s been three days since we’ve heard from Tom, and I think that’s a bad sign. I’m worried. I know how quickly the worst can happen. One day you have a burn on your arm, the next day you have a fever, and the next day your arm is gone. We can’t waste time. I think you may have been right last night. You might be able to hear something I missed in his message. He hinted at things that I don’t know the context for. If he’s in trouble, I want to know how and where and what I can do to pull him out of it. So will you please listen to this and tell me what you hear? No strings attached.”
“Well,” Byron said, swinging from offense to forgiveness quickly enough. “Let’s hear what Senlin has to say for himself.”
When the recording finished playing, it was Edith who was blushing. Tucking dark strands of hair behind crimson-colored ears, she said, “Obviously, the things he said toward the end were just a few personal expressions of friendly affection, but—”
“I saw the kiss, Edith.”
“You what?”
Byron spoke as if he wished to get through the confession as quickly as possible. “One of the Sphinx’s butterflies recorded you and Thomas kissing in the doorway of your bedroom, and I saw it. I didn’t want to, but I did, and also, I put the butterfly in your room, so the invasion of your privacy is entirely my fault.” The stag looked down at his workspace and shuffled some of his things about needlessly, glancing at her as he did.
Edith felt a volcanic bubble of anger rise inside of her. But what might’ve turned into an eruption was cooled by the memory of her own recent apology and by a sense of relief that she would not have to explain nor hide the complexities of her feelings for Senlin. “I suppose I should’ve guessed there were no secrets in the Sphinx’s house.”
“It was the first time I was ever ashamed of my work. I am very sorry, Edith. I would not do it again,” Byron said. He stood and began selecting the cylindrical recordings from cubbies. “All right, we should probably start from the beginning. I hope your stool is comfortable. Senlin is many things, but succinct is not one of them.”
Once they’d listened through all of Senlin’s spoken reports, Byron asked if Edith would also like to see the visual records he had of Senlin’s movements through the ringdom.
“Did he know he was being watched?” she asked.
“He did figure it out,” Byron said, setting up a small projector and screen on his workbench. The projector was little more than a clamp for holding the butterflies steady while they beamed their light onto the white silk screen. The first recording he played for her was of Senlin checking in to the Bon Royal Hotel. She couldn’t help but smile at how he bickered pleasantly with the porter, insisting that he could manage h
is own luggage, and finally tipping the young man to allow him to carry his own bags. In another scene, she watched him brushing his coat through the window of his hotel room, then watched him pace and read a book, watched as he opened his balcony window to release a moth into the night. And there were scenes of him walking through the congested city streets. She was shocked by these glimpses of Pelphia. She couldn’t recall having ever seen so many well-dressed people in one place before. There was a frenzied spirit to the town. Senlin seemed to bob through the crowds of the central plaza like a cork in a storm gutter.
Byron changed records and identified the landmarks as they appeared: the Colosseum, the Vivant, the Circuit of Court, and the Gasper Theater. They watched from an inconvenient distance and through the static of rain as Senlin intervened in the alley where two men abused a short and malnourished hod. Splashes of whitewash haloed the scene. Edith was proud of how he fought, and then shocked when the hod took the opportunity of his defense to kill the two men before running off to leave Tom standing in the rain, baffled and alone.
“Remind me, what did Tom say that hod yelled just before he ran off?” Edith asked.
“‘Come the Hod King,’” Byron said. “And no, I don’t know what it means, but it has been cropping up more and more in the recording. There’s been a spate of graffiti, too.”
The next scene Byron played was of Senlin in his hotel room being surprised by the arrival of a tall man with a three-foot-long pistol and a woman who was obviously a Wakeman. She asked Byron who the tall man was, and he introduced her to General Eigengrau.
“And what do we think of him?”
“Eigengrau is a militant traditionalist, I would say. He’s certainly not an idiot, but I wouldn’t consider him the most forward-thinking man either. He’s one of those who seems to think the ringdoms exist outside the Tower. As if the one can be preserved while the other rots. That is to say, he’s generally in the majority.”
“And that’s Wakeman Georgine Haste, I presume. Can you tell me anything else about her?”
“I don’t know. I mean, she is a functioning Wakeman.”
“What do you mean functioning?”
“The Sphinx has not been making much of an effort to manage or oversee the Wakemen in recent years, in some cases decades. That’s led to some of the Wakemen being less than … reliable, shall we say? Actually, I don’t know why I’m being coy about it. Half of the Tower’s Wakemen are drunk, delinquent, or dead. They’re a dying breed. Before you, it had been a dozen years, I believe, since the Sphinx ordained his last Wakeman. What I mean by functioning is Haste is still doing the work. She’s keeping the peace. She’s not in the general’s pocket, though he seems to respect her. As far as Wakemen go, she’s one of the good ones.”
“Well, that’s something,” Edith said.
There was no record of Senlin’s evening in the Circuit of Court, nor the reunion with Marya that he alluded to in his private message to Edith. There was a long view of Senlin in the plaza the following day as he interrupted an execution being overseen by General Eigengrau. Edith watched as Senlin waved his arms, nearly throwing himself in front of the firing line. Then came the muzzle flash and the silent, almost serene collapse of the condemned.
“And the Sphinx wonders why there’s a revolution brewing,” Edith murmured, her expression warped by disgust.
“He really doesn’t,” Byron replied.
The last glimpse of Senlin was taken by a butterfly in flight. It followed Senlin as he climbed the steps of the Colosseum. The shadow of the interior turned him into a silhouette, and then he was gone.
“There’s nothing after this?”
“Nothing,” Byron said, switching off the glowing beam of the final recording.
“Are we of the opinion that the Hod King is Marat?”
“I mean, it stands to reason. The Sphinx is sure Marat intends to either rule the Tower or preside over its rubble. It doesn’t seem out of character for him to take on the title of king.”
Edith mulled this over, unhappy at the prospect of Senlin facing Marat without her. “Is it fair to suppose Tom is being held somewhere inside the Colosseum?”
“Not necessarily. He may’ve changed clothes and left when no one was looking. He must’ve done something of the sort when he went to meet Marya. He knew the Sphinx couldn’t see him inside the Colosseum and used it to his advantage. The clever fool.”
“He could be anywhere, then.” The revelation made her feel as if a belt had been tightened around her chest. Her breathing ached.
“Frankly, I was hoping that he had run off with Marya. But I don’t think that’s the case. None of the Mermaid’s appearances have been cancelled. She has a show at the Vivant in a few days.”
“So, here are the options as I see them.” Edith rested the elbow of her engine on the workbench. The hardwood creaked under the weight. She raised a thick, gunmetal finger. “One, he ran afoul of the law. If he was being investigated for the murder, they may have discovered he was in the ringdom illegally. He could be sitting in a prison cell somewhere.” She raised a second finger. “Two, he might’ve discovered exactly the sort of plot the Sphinx expected him to find and, in so doing, exposed himself to the hods. They may have either whisked him off to the Old Vein or killed him and stuffed him in an alley.” She didn’t linger on that grim specter, raising instead a final finger. “Three, the duke figured out who Senlin really was. The fact that he survived his reunion with Marya unscathed makes that seem unlikely, I think. If she was going to reveal him, or if he was going to accidentally out himself, that would’ve been the moment for it.”
“What are you going to do?” Byron asked nervously.
“Well, I’m going to find him.”
“But how are you going to do it? If people see you investigating the disappearance of a tourist from Boskopeia, how long before they start asking questions about his connection to the Sphinx? I don’t think that will do your cause any favors.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, imagine if you were the nobility of a ringdom, and we showed up in a ship like this demanding some fusty, forgotten masterpiece be returned, only to have it come out that we are involved with a man who has robbed other ringdoms of that very same painting. No one would trust us, and understandably not. You have to remember, this is just our first port of call. We have dozens of other ringdoms to visit and charm.”
“Then I’ll just have to be discreet.”
“Discretion was never your strong suit.”
“What do you mean? I can be subtle,” Edith said, sounding a little affronted.
“No offense, Captain, but you’re about as subtle as a firecracker in a soufflé.”
Chapter Six
I love a good scandal. There’s nothing more comforting than tut-tutting the public sins of another from the privacy of your own squalor.
—Oren Robinson of the Daily Reverie
The next morning, when Edith docked the State of Art in Port Virtue and disembarked along with her crew into a mob of fevered Pelphians, she was reminded of the first time she had ever mounted a horse.
She had been ten years old at the time and still timid around large animals. Her father held the gentle old draft horse beside a fence, the crossbars of which served as a ladder to help her up. The saddle seemed an impossibly high and precarious perch. No sooner was she in it than she hunched forward and pressed her cheek against the horse’s neck. Her father was quick to chide her, though not ungently. “Sit back, Edith. Come on, come on, you can do it. That’s it. The stirrups are here. Perfect. Now, shoulders back … back a little more. Right there. See how that feels? It feels different, doesn’t it? Your control, your balance, your security—all of it depends upon good posture and a firm grip.” Her father patted and stroked the docile beast. “And that’s true of more than just riding a horse.”
Of course, she had good reason to be on edge today: Port Virtue was full of armed guards and the same lead soldiers that had
once nearly blown the Stone Cloud from the sky. Her eye was drawn again and again to those grim turret guns peeking between the tops of potted palm trees. Their blunted shape reminded her of a nesting doll, though she’d never seen a doll that had cannons for arms. She was very conscious of the fact that she wasn’t carrying a sidearm of any kind and had only an empty warship to support her. She could only hope that her father was right about the broad value of a straight back and a firm grip, because she hadn’t much else to rely on at the moment.
Ever since Byron had called Georgine Haste “one of the good ones,” Edith had looked forward to meeting her. Even so, she was pleasantly surprised by how much she liked the gold-chested Wakeman. Haste was charmingly frank, and she shared Edith’s dislike of pageantry. When Haste advised Voleta to try to make an impression upon the court and King Leonid, Edith took it as a sign that the Wakeman’s allegiance did not lie with the ringdom, at least not solely. She was willing to help them navigate the culture. Perhaps she would turn out to be a friend, but at the very least she was a helpful guide.
The moment after Voleta and Iren were whisked away by their golden-haired host, King Leonid declared that they must parade around the pyramid, because it was a wonder of the Tower and something his honored guests absolutely must see. Edith agreed to the walk but declined the king’s invitation to join him on one of the mounts in the mechanical caravan. As the regent mounted a beakless eagle, Edith remarked upon the emblazoned words over the pyramid’s entrance, asking what “The Unfinished Birth” referred to.
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