Every word of what Edith had said was true, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. She might also have added that she was fed up with the Sphinx controlling what everyone knew. If she was going to be an effective enforcer of the Sphinx’s will, there were certain things she needed to know, even if he didn’t agree.
Haste hesitated a moment longer, deliberating amid the happy chaos of the jail. Then she patted her infallible abdomen and said, “Oof! Well, now I wish I hadn’t eaten all those sweets. I hope your stomach is as staunch as your arm, Edie.”
Passing from the pearly streets of Pelphia into the sewers was a little like waking from a pleasant dream to a dark room and soaked bedsheets. Water stood on the chiseled floor and sweated from the walls. Here and there, sturdy timber doors interrupted the monotony of bricks. Edith was surprised to discover that each tunnel intersection, of which there were many, was marked with a street sign that corresponded with the street above. At first, she supposed the signs had been installed for the benefit of the municipal workers. Then they encountered a well-dressed man with a cane in one hand and a candle in the other, hurrying through the sewers with his hat still on his head.
“Many of the lords and ladies use the underground to escape awkward moments or unwanted encounters,” Haste explained. “Half of the manors have basements with access to the sewers.”
“I’m surprised anyone would want to try to hide a scandal here. I assumed everyone would want the scrutiny.” Edith held up the heavy lantern Georgine had given her to drive off the gloom.
“Well, just because we’re all a bunch of spotlight-seeking hedonists doesn’t mean we don’t have our secrets, too,” Haste said.
“Does this system connect with the Circuit of Court?”
“No, that’s separate, thank goodness. Those Deputy-Wakemen have always driven me mad. They’re so sincere.”
“Why do you say that?” Edith said, squinting as she considered her own impressions of Deputy-Wakeman Luis Osmore. She’d rather liked the man.
“Every time I’ve brought them a willing cadet who’s interested in joining the order, they’ve found some reason to reject him. They’re just fanatical.”
“Passing the torch to the next generation is never easy, I suppose.”
After a few moments of turning through the tunnels, they came to what seemed a formal outpost. Two sentries with rifles and sabers guarded an iron-banded door set back from the passageway. As Georgine shook the hands of the guards, Edith caught a trace of stale, putrid air. Discreetly, she shielded her nose with the side of her hand as one of the sentinels unlocked and opened the door.
She nearly gagged when the warm gust of effluvium and decay struck her. She sucked in a breath, held it, and marched through with as much composure as she could muster.
As soon as the guard closed the door behind them, Edith ran to the nearest corner, braced herself against the wall, and retched onto the floor.
“Don’t feel bad,” Georgine said, taking several paces deeper into the tunnel to allow her a moment to recover. “I did the same thing the first time I came down here. And the second. Unfortunately, the stink sticks to you. No one ever has to ask if you’ve recently visited the Old Vein.”
Edith wiped her mouth on her coat sleeve and bent her lapel over her nose. It was too warm to be wearing wool, and yet she had no desire to take her jacket off. At least it provided some buffer between her skin and the noisome air.
“The guardhouse isn’t far. Come on. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can get back,” Haste said.
The passage to the gatehouse seemed a worse version of the sewers. The brickwork was cruder, the stones misaligned like kernels in an ear of wild corn. She felt the weight of the Tower press upon her in a way it did not in the ringdom. She could feel the Tower’s thick pulse here, roiling like molten rock under the earth’s crust. She wanted fresh air, wanted the open sky, wanted to shut her eyes and picture furrows in freshly tilled soil. She wanted anything but this wormhole, this oily dark, and this infernal stench.
They did not speak as they walked. She had no desire to open her mouth. When the tunnel expanded and the gatehouse appeared before them, cheered by the presence of torchlight, she felt a little rush of relief.
The gatehouse’s guards were all admirably stalwart considering their difficult assignment. They generally struck Edith as being either too young to have made a name for themselves or too old to have had time to redeem whatever reputation they’d earned. The gatehouse completely plugged the end of the tunnel, with enough room on one side for a slender barrack building, and opposite it, a mess hall. Both had lit windows and a fresh coat of paint. The gatehouse, meanwhile, was much sturdier in appearance. The beams of the portcullis were as thick as a railway sleeper.
None of the guards seemed particularly surprised to see Haste. The sergeant in command, a jowly man in a strangling collar, who she called Horace, greeted her warmly.
“It’s been a quiet couple of days,” he reported. “The usual traffic, a few sob stories, but nothing remarkable. I’m looking forward to some liberty this weekend. I don’t think I’ve pulled my socks off in a fortnight.”
“I’ll warn your wife,” Haste said, and the sergeant laughed. “Are there any hods in the holding cell?”
“Not at the moment. Like I said—quiet. And you know Eigengrau cleaned us out a few days ago for his recompense.” The sergeant accented the word as if it were exotic. “Anyway, we’ve spent the morning playing cards. Beaumont there owes me a week’s pay.” He showed a top shelf of yellow teeth.
“I’m glad you’re staying entertained,” Haste said.
She introduced Edith then, who shook the sergeant’s hand, offering the sort of forthright gaze that she knew most military men appreciated. She fielded a few comments about her arm and a question about her glorious warship, which they were all eager to see. Edith did her best to ingratiate herself to the sergeant in preparation of the one question she’d come to ask.
When she finished laughing at one of the sergeant’s unremarkable jokes, she asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve had any interesting characters come through lately, have you?”
“Interesting characters? You mean like you?” Sergeant Horace said, a smile lifting the empty bags of his cheeks.
“Just anyone who stood out,” she said.
“No, not really. I mean, a hod’s a hod. Duke Pell did come down a few days ago to drop off a couple of brawlers from the Colosseum who were giving him trouble. You know how it is when a big title like that comes through. You have to click your heels and hide your cards and pretend like you came out of your mother saluting. Heaven save us from our superiors, eh?”
Edith felt the hairs prickle at the nape of her neck at the mention of Duke Pell. “What did the hods look like, the ones the duke dragged down with him?”
“I didn’t really study them. I mean, there was a big one with a beard. And a thinner one who had a blinder on.”
“What’s a blinder?” Edith asked.
“It’s like a bucket they weld onto your head,” Sergeant Horace said, drawing a ring around his head with his finger. “They put blinders on the really nasty ones, you know. To keep them docile, or at least to keep them from spitting and biting. Anyway, Pell must’ve really had it in for him because he didn’t remove the blinder before we put him through. We shut the gate, we drove the hordes back, and I think then we played a round of Beggar-My-Neighbor. I can’t really remember anything else in particular. I mean, a hod’s a hod.”
“So you’ve said.” Edith’s smile tightened. “Could I have a look through the gate? I’ve never seen the black trail before.”
“Oh, that’s what the hods call it. They’re so dramatic. Still, if you want to see the Old Vein, the portcullis is down. It’s perfectly safe at the moment. But I wouldn’t get too close. They do like to spit.”
Edith approached the grille of the portcullis. She raised her lantern to give a little more definition to the dim tunnel beyond. She cou
ld see only as much of the black trail as the aperture of the gatehouse showed, but that was enough to make out the shuffling traffic of bodies and the familiar blue light of gloamine. She watched the passing strangers attentively for a moment before recognizing what a foolish urge it was. If Senlin had been cast onto the black trail, she would never find him by looking through a peephole.
She watched an elderly woman with a spine as curved as a crozier stumble near the mouth of the gatehouse. Instinctively, Edith reached out to catch her. But there were many feet and two gates between them. As Edith watched, the old woman pulled a battered almanac from her pack. She opened it and, using a fragment of coal, began scratching at the text. She seemed short of breath. She panted as she rubbed. Her scribbling slowed, and her chin sagged to her chest. She seemed to have fallen asleep, though Edith wasn’t sure.
“That’s the hods for you,” the sergeant said, standing behind her shoulder.
“What do you mean?” Edith asked.
“Oh, you know—sitting around, hoping for a handout. Meanwhile, the rest of us slave for our supper. Honestly, once you get past the smell, I imagine the life of a hod isn’t all that bad.”
Back aboard the State of Art, Edith arrived on the bridge with her hair still wet from a scalding bath. Since her return, Byron had not stopped complaining about how awful she smelled. He’d already threatened to stuff all of the offending articles of clothing into the ship’s furnace with an extra shovel of coal for good measure. Edith agreed that it could all go, if need be, except for her tricorne.
“Soak it in lemon juice if you have to,” she said. “But don’t you dare burn my hat.”
Seated in her captain’s chair, Edith listened to Reddleman’s report of the day, which the former Red Hand delivered with chirpy brevity. There had been some commotion aboard the Ararat around midmorning when a squad of port guards approached the barrel-shaped warship to arrest Commissioner Pound. Reddleman described a brief standoff between the crew of the Ararat, some of whom still felt quite loyal to the commissioner, and a tall man in a cape with hair done up in a shark fin. Edith said that had to have been General Eigengrau. Eventually, Commissioner Pound had elected to go with the general, though without the insult of shackles.
Edith recounted her own discoveries of the day, from the moment she’d met with the empty-handed king to the moment that Georgine Haste had escorted her back through the underground street, out to the fresh-aired port.
At the end of her account, Edith asked the stag what he made of the day’s events. Byron balked. “I’ve never claimed to be a strategist! I do tea cakes, not tactics, Captain.”
Edith knew that wasn’t at all true but thought the stag was probably deflecting because he was unsure. She turned in her chair and leveled Reddleman with a gaze. The pilot sat tugging on his lower lip and staring at a cloud of birds writhing against the evening sky. On the magnovisor, the flock looked like a single entity, an undulating life-form. “All right, Reddleman,” she said. “I want you to be frank with me. All that talk about the universe and planets and stars … You made it sound like you think you were there.”
“No, no, sir, I wasn’t there. No, I wasn’t anywhere for a very long time, and I’ll not be anywhere again very soon. But I have the memory of being there, of seeing it all transpire. Honestly, I believe we all have that memory. We just have to know how and where to reach for it.”
“I really don’t care to,” Edith said. “All I want to know is, if you’re able to remember the ancient past, are you also able to see the future? Do you know what’s going to happen to us?”
“No, sir. No, that’s not how time works. The present, you have to understand, is like the mouth of a river. Behind us, everything is a singular current; that’s the past. But ahead of us, the river breaks into a nearly infinite delta. I can’t see the future because we haven’t chosen which estuary to paddle down.”
Edith scowled at the explanation, which she could envision but not quite understand. “All right—so no prophecies. What do you think is going to happen?”
Reddleman folded his thin arms and flapped his hands against them. He was wearing a dark green jacket, part of the pilot’s uniform. Reddleman was forever finding excuses to take it off and walk around in his undershirt, and Byron was constantly pestering him to put his clothes back on and comport himself like an officer of the Sphinx. “I think they’re going to try to board us.”
“For an inspection?” Edith asked.
Reddleman shook his head. “To take the ship. That’s what I would do.”
“That’s what I would do, too.” Edith rocked back and rubbed her face.
“It’s not a good sign that they aren’t turning over the painting,” Reddleman said.
“No, it’s not,” she agreed. She thought of Voleta and Iren and how exposed they were. Her first impulse was to recall them. But then, if she did, if the port guard saw them falling back, it might goad them into attacking, assuming that was their intention. And while it seemed a strong possibility that Duke Pell had caught Senlin, put a blinder on his head, and thrown him onto the black trail, there was still a chance that he was locked up in the Colosseum. She was determined to have a look before shoving off. “Byron, I want you to get word to Iren that she needs to start looking for a point of exit. Sooner rather than later, but not so suddenly as to seem like a retreat.”
“Tomorrow night they’re going to see the Mermaid—Marya—perform at the Vivant.”
“Good. That seems like a natural finale. Tell them we’ll expect them the morning after.” Edith stood and crossed the riveted floor to the arms locker. “In the meantime, everyone wears a sidearm.” She didn’t relish the idea of arming Reddleman, but then, he didn’t really need a weapon to be deadly, and she didn’t have enough of a crew to be picky.
Byron clasped his hands behind his back nervously. “Captain, you do realize I’ve never fired a gun before?”
Edith twisted the key in the door of the arm’s cabinet, revealing the racks of sabers, pistols, and rifles stowed within. “Not to worry,” she said. “The only thing simpler than firing a gun is getting shot by one.”
Chapter Eleven
The mob does two things well: nothing and revolution.
—I Sip a Cup of Wind by Jumet
Edith had never much cared for presents. That fact might’ve been owed to her father’s dislike of gifts, though he was not heartless about it. He did not neglect her birthday, and she always had what she needed. But her father had preferred to give her rewards for good work, usually in the form of small sums of money, which she could spend as she liked, rather than presents. Edith was well aware that many of her peers were showered with gifts, often by fathers who seemed both besotted with their daughters and insecure in the mutuality of these affections. And the girls who were not spoiled to their satisfaction were unsubtle in their campaigns for more and grander things.
Then Mr. Franklin Winters had come along and demonstrated early on in their misbegotten courtship that he was a gift-giver. It was a flaw that Edith had tolerated. But she didn’t care for his gifts, which were usually some bauble or article of clothing that didn’t suit her taste or activity, and she absolutely loathed the expectations that always came along with them. Franklin would give her a lacy handkerchief with her initials embroidered upon it or a box of ribbon candy, then say, “Now you have to be nice to me for the rest of the afternoon.”
To be sure, Edith appreciated very little about the Tower, but since she’d arrived, she’d been spared the burden of gifts and had been happier for it.
Yet, when she had returned to her room in the Sphinx’s home the prior week and discovered a parcel waiting on her bed, she had, perhaps for the first time in her life, been delighted by the appearance of a gift. The card that accompanied the present was half the pleasure. She recognized Senlin’s prim cursive at once. The note read:
Dear Edith,
Congratulations once again on your new command. I can think of no one mo
re deserving and capable than you. I know you will bear the weight of the station with selflessness and grace, and I only regret that I will not be there to share in your inaugural triumph.
Love,
Tom
P.S. I asked Byron to clean it for you, but it won’t hurt my feelings if you prefer a new one.
When she unwrapped the familiar black cocked hat and tried it on in the mirror, she felt a wave of serenity wash over her. She liked how it looked, liked how it fit over her unbrushed hair and how it made her feel.
The first time she wore the tricorne aboard the State of Art, Voleta and Iren had recognized it at once. Both agreed it suited her, and it wasn’t long before they seemed to forget she’d ever been without it. Though Edith never forgot who’d worn it first.
Byron presented her with the deodorized hat the next morning as she prepared to disembark. She sniffed it and, detecting nothing, put it lightly on. For a moment, she stood there as if she were balancing a book on her head, then relaxed and said, “How’d you do it?”
“If I revealed all my secrets, I’d be out of a job,” he said, with a swat of his hand. He helped her into a new greatcoat that was the earthy color of a forest shadow.
The Hod King Page 47
