The Hod King

by Josiah Bancroft

  “And now to the bridge?” Haste asked.

  “Dinner first, then we’ll finish the tour.”

  Opening the door to her chambers, Edith discovered that Byron had been busy in her absence. He had made the bed, hung her clothes, cleared off the table, covered it with a cloth, set it with bone china, and lit a blazing candelabra. His efforts, while surely well intentioned, ruined her attempts to introduce a little humanity to the shrine that was her current bedroom. The stag’s careful staging somehow made all the curio cubbies, shadow boxes, and display cases seem more pompous, their treasures more insufferable. Her embarrassment pinched some color into her cheeks.

  Drawn by the historic baubles, Haste approached a cabinet. She tucked her silvering red hair behind her ears and leaned in. Her laughter was almost immediate. “A jade bedpan? You have a jade bedpan … on display? Or is this your backup bedpan, you know, for when the diamond one is dirty?”

  Seeing no reason to fan her embarrassment with excuses, Edith decided to embrace the absurdity. “Actually, that is one of my favorite pieces. It belonged to the State of Art’s original commander, Captain Pondersquat.”

  Haste straightened. “Pondersquat? Are you serious?”

  Edith snorted. “No, of course not.”

  Haste pointed to the four-post canopy bed, draped in white tulle, her face lighting with mischief. “And that? You actually sleep on that frilly thing?”

  “Yes, but only in full dress uniform.”

  Haste laughed as she turned to the bank of painted portraits of red-eyed old men with white whiskers and medaled breasts. Her smile dwindled as she stared.

  “What?” Edith asked, sensing the change in her humor.

  “It’s just strange to think how long all of this has been going on.”

  “How long what’s been going on?” Edith opened a pretty lidded pot on the table and peered in at the black currant jelly.

  Haste turned to face Edith. Her smile reappeared, but the moment of giddiness was obviously over. “All this passing of the torch, I suppose. The Sphinx has persisted for a long, long time.”

  “And he owes it all to clean living and my cooking!” Byron said from the doorway. He pushed a dining cart ahead of him. The silver dish covers rattled as the carpet swamped the old casters. The stag manhandled the cart a little farther before giving up the effort with a sigh of exhaustion. “Now, if you would just find your seats, dinner is ready to be served.”

  With the Wakemen seated and napkins dressing their laps, Byron presented the first course of morel soufflé with a chestnut gravy. The women’s conversation was momentarily diverted by a round of compliments for the dish, but Haste soon returned to the topic of the Sphinx.

  “It’s been the same for years,” she said, cutting into the soufflé with her salad fork. “I send up my monthly accounts, and a crate of thirty vials arrives in port with my name on it.”

  “No correspondence the other way? No directives or orders?” Edith asked.

  “Oh, well, there’s always a letter. Every crate comes with a single typed sheet that says more or less the same thing: Keep the peace. Be on the lookout for structural malfunctions. Stay neutral in politics. Enforce the rule of law.”

  “That sounds fairly instructive to me,” Byron said, setting down a boat of chestnut gravy.

  “Hardly! Keep whose peace? Enforce which laws? The ones the Pelphians wrote for the hods, or the ones they sometimes apply to themselves, usually on a sliding scale of wealth and influence?” Haste jabbed the air with her fork. “The only thing the Sphinx has ever showed any interest in is whether the candles of the Merry Loop are receiving regular attention. In the past fifteen years, he has never answered one of my questions, nor given a word of useful guidance.”

  “Perhaps that’s because the Sphinx trusts your judgment,” Byron said, scraping crumbs from the tablecloth into his palm. “Captain, you may recall, the Merry Loop is what the locals call the maintenance track that accesses the Tower’s main battery of fuses. They’re part of the system that includes the electrical dynamo housed in New Babel.”

  Haste nodded along with the explanation, then said, “You ever notice how the Sphinx likes to hide his chores with amusements? The beer-me-go-rounds inebriate the masses as they happily pump water from the well. The fires in the Parlor are stoked by amateur actors on holiday. The fuses are changed by joyriders in a mine cart.”

  “Yes, how wicked of him,” Byron said with a dry smile.

  “Well, it’s not without cost, is it?” Haste said, sloshing her wineglass side to side in a manner that appeared to make Byron a little nervous. “Livers are ruined; eyes are gouged. The maintenance takes its toll.”

  “But it’s not all so sinister,” Edith said, sopping up some gravy with a dinner roll. “Take the hods in the Colosseum. Those brawlers. They’re not really fighting, are they?” The point had been first suggested by Senlin in one of his daily dispatches to the Sphinx, but when Edith saw the hods practicing a grappling hold on the stage of their dorm, she’d suspected it was true. “They’re just miming the violence while the lords throw money at the charade.”

  Haste smiled. “It’s funny: That’s an open secret that no one seems to believe. But the brawlers figured out long ago that what the general population really wanted was a show, which they’ve learned to put on without killing one another.”

  “I admire that,” Edith said, swabbing gravy from her chin with a napkin.

  “I taught them a form or two,” Haste said, a little proudly. “I have to stay in shape somehow, and all Eigengrau’s men are too delicate. The brawlers were happy enough to have a new sparring partner.”

  “Really?” Edith said, letting her amusement draw the word out. “You showed them how to pantomime a fight?”

  “Oh, just a stance or two.” Haste doused her nearly finished soufflé in more gravy. Byron winced as if personally critiqued by the addition. “You do realize General Eigengrau is going to kill them, don’t you?” Haste’s abrupt change in tone changed the mood of the room. “He’s going to kill every last one of those hods.”

  It dawned upon Edith that Byron would relay everything Haste was saying directly to the Sphinx, and probably in short order. In the process of venting her irritation with an unjust ringdom and a distant employer, Georgine could talk her way out of the Sphinx’s good graces and so spoil any chance of escaping her tiresome post. And, Edith reflected, if it was fair and wise to give a crew time to talk without their captain present, was it not also reasonable that a couple of Wakemen have the opportunity to speak frankly about their frustrations beyond the Sphinx’s hearing?

  Edith held up a finger to pause the conversation and turned to address Byron, who had just finished serving the main course of duck, rice salad, and whipped peas. “Everything looks delicious, Byron. Thank you so much. Could you perhaps give us a little time to talk?”

  She thought the request might disappoint him, but the stag seemed almost relieved. Perhaps he was just pleased to see her enjoying a normal dinner with a guest, or perhaps he was grateful to be spared the burden of bearing witness to a difficult conversation. Either way, Byron refilled their glasses, gave a brisk bow, and shut the door behind him without a word of argument.

  Haste immediately resumed her point. “Once the general has had a chance to question them and twist their thumbs or rack their bones, he’s going to stand them up against the Wall of Recompense and shoot them dead.”

  “I’m not going to let that happen,” Edith said, sawing at the thick slab of duck breast on her plate. “Maybe they’re all conspirators; I think probably a number of them were just caught up in the plot. Either way, there’ll have to be a trial, several trials, probably.”

  “Trials! What a novel idea!” Haste said. “Come now, do you really think that you can sway Eigengrau one way or another? The man’s a lot of things, but open to critique is not one of them.”

  “Leonid cares what I think, even if Eigengrau doesn’t. I can convince the kin
g there are better ways to spend his goodwill than the wholesale slaughter of forty hods.”

  Georgine stopped shaking her head only to take a sip of wine. “I don’t see how it’s possible to support both sides in matters like this. You can’t half execute a man or save half his life.”

  “Do you really think my support of the hods is so insincere? You saw what I did. I wrenched off my arm and risked my neck to save a boy! I stopped Eigengrau from shooting a room full of hods!” Edith’s knife squealed upon her plate, and she shuddered in revulsion.

  “And yet you represent the Tower as well. Let’s be honest: The Tower is a system that depends upon the existence of the hods. The hods ferry most of the goods and hold most of the debts. And they impose the least upon the Tower’s many bounties. The hods are the blood of the Tower, yet they are treated like a cancer.” Haste assembled a bite on her fork, using her knife to build and shape the morsel before dousing it all in gravy.

  “Oh, do you want me to complain about the ringdoms, to complain about Leonid and the Pells? Do I like them? No, not especially. I think their shirts are overstuffed and their thoughts are undercooked. Though some of them are all right, obviously.”

  “As an exception, I thank you and still press the point: The nobles are uniformly awful. Really. They’re robbers and rapists and sadists and imbeciles. Leonid is—”

  “The king isn’t so bad,” Edith interjected, causing Haste to put down her utensils in frustrated protest. “Yes, he’s flawed and shortsighted and probably an imminent danger to me and this ship, but he’s not some salivating villain.” Haste began to protest, but Edith held up a hand to stop her. “I admit, he seems to employ a few. But if I refused to engage anyone who I found the least bit detestable, corrupt, or stupid, I’d never work with anyone. Nothing would get done. The inability to compromise isn’t a sign of moral rectitude”—she spoke the phrase with haughty emphasis—“it’s a sign of immaturity. You know who can’t be bargained with? Little children and madmen.”

  “How do you compromise with a man who thinks the worth of a soul can be calculated down to the penny? He hides behind the general, but make no mistake, Eigengrau enacts the king’s will.”

  “I’d like to see his will changed. And the way you change a man’s will is by parlay and negotiation.”

  “Or exclusion. Or execution. There are many ways to change a man’s mind. All I’m advocating for here is that we admit there are two sides to this contest.”

  “Luc Marat and the Sphinx, you mean?”

  “The hods and the Tower,” Haste corrected. “The one is a slave to the other. To me and you, the Tower is a home; to the hod, it is a prison. To us, it is a life; to them, it is a life sentence.”

  “I agree,” Edith said, sitting back and folding her arms. “And it’s deplorable.”

  “But how can you say that and still serve him? Still defend his interests? Still carry his vision of the Tower as some lofty ideal rather than the meat grinder it truly is?” Georgine said, holding out her arms and panting with unhappy laughter.

  Edith balled up her napkin and dropped it onto her plate. “Because unlike Marat, the Sphinx is not trying to bring the Tower down, nor is he trying to gin up a war. He’s putting out fires. He’s posting watchmen. Yes, the Tower is rotten. You don’t have to tell me that. It took my arm!” Edith raised and shook her bulky engine in evidence. “But I would rather see the hods brought in or let go and the Old Vein bricked up than see tens of thousands perish in some violent coup. Which is what Marat wants.” She tapped the words out on the table as she spoke them: “He wants to overthrow so that he can reign. He doesn’t care if he presides over the Tower or its rubble. He just wants to rule. I met the man. I heard his patter. He’s a silver-tongued scoundrel who would kill you, me, and everyone in this ringdom to get what he wants.”

  “Which is what, specifically?” Haste said, resting her arms on the table, the planks of which complained of the added weight.

  “All those blasted paintings!” Edith continued her list with passionate swings of her hand. “The secrets of the Tower! The Sphinx’s head on a stick! A throne made out of gold! A bed full of waifs!” She brought her fist down, making all their silverware leap and ring. “Who cares what he wants? It doesn’t matter to me, because no one matters to him. The worst I can say about the Sphinx is that he’s irrelevant and cursed by unintended consequences. He’s sat on his hands for far too long, and now you’re fed up waiting for him. Fair enough! Me too. I’ve joined an exhausted army! I have no illusions about what I’ve signed on for here. I’m not optimistic! I’ve seen things, Georgine. Hopeless things. We are sitting beneath a boiling sea! But you saw that drawing in the library today. You can guess what Marat means to do with it. He’ll fill that engine up with hods and send them forth to kill and be killed. Many, many people will die.”

  “Many people are already dying!” Haste said, her eyes shining with rage. “How can you be so naive? The Sphinx just wants to save this whole free-standing hell because it’s all that keeps him alive. If the Tower has a tyrant, he lives in the clouds!”

  Edith’s shoulders dropped. The tension drained from her face. “Oh my god. You’re one of them, aren’t you? Of course you are. Why didn’t I see it?” she asked, though she knew the answer. She had not seen the truth because she liked Georgine and because she wanted a friend, a confidante, especially one who understood the solitary nature of the station, who understood all that had been surrendered with the acceptance of the Sphinx’s gifts. Edith’s fantasy of facing the kings of the Tower with a companionable peer seemed so desperate and foolish now. “You knew about the tunnel and the hods squatting in the library?”

  “Yes, I did,” Haste said, swirling the wine in her glass. She seemed almost relieved to have finally arrived at the truth. “Marat calls them the Ingeniare. They’re six brilliant men and women who, despite their many talents, were ruined by the Tower. Marat found them, saw their potential, and gave them a purpose: To build an engine that could challenge the Sphinx.”

  The weight of her mistake settled in her stomach like a stone in a sling. She had given Georgine exactly what she wanted, what she had wanted from the very beginning: an invitation onto the State of Art. Edith risked a glance over Haste’s shoulder to where her sword belt and holstered pistol hung upon the wall, much too far away.

  Haste seemed to grow more relaxed. The argumentative edge had left her voice. She spoke breezily, as if recounting a recent dinner. “When Marat realized the Ingeniare needed access to a library, a good one, he thought of the once-famous Ostraka University that had been transformed into an arena. He sent some of his biggest men to the Pelphian trading station, and it wasn’t long before they were taken on as brawlers. They didn’t have much trouble opening the hole to the library. At first, the Ingeniare would send word of which book they needed, and one of our brawlers would descend into the library and retrieve it. I helped smuggle the books out. But it didn’t take Marat long to realize how inefficient the whole process was: The Ingeniare’s requests were more or less constant, and the men of the arena were not exactly librarians. It took them days and weeks to find some of the books.” Haste pulled a bent cigar from her pocket, tut-tutted its misshapen state, and lit it anyway. “Some valuable books were lost in the process of delivering them. Since we could not effectively bring the library to them, we brought the Ingeniare to the library. The tunnel came first. The Coattails, before they were even called that, dug it under my direction. They set up a newsstand against the wall and sold papers from the front while excavating out the back. I plied them with brandy and pocket change, and told them they were working for the Sphinx, and that one day, if they kept their mouths shut, they would be rewarded with an engine of their own.”

  Edith laid her hand over her steak knife as discreetly as she could, though the move was not lost on Georgine. The other Wakeman took up her own knife and began twisting it on its point upon the tablecloth.

  “And those Coattails hel
ped solve another problem: the Sphinx’s Peeping Toms. There was no way I could keep all of those butterflies out on my own, so I taught the boys to train the magpies to do the job for me. Then, with the Sphinx blinded, I smuggled the Ingeniare in through the gatehouse. Getting them to the arena was simple enough. Everyone is always so eager to overlook a hod.”

  “The hod we found down in the library this afternoon: When you shouted, ‘look out,’ you weren’t warning us. You were warning him so he could destroy the evidence.”

  “Oh, Banu! He was a genius, but also the unluckiest man I ever met. It broke my heart to see him suffer through that poison. He shouldn’t have taken it. I was there. I would’ve snapped his neck for him. But at least he didn’t suffer in vain. He died protecting his life’s work.”

  “It’s sort of ironic to call a death machine a life’s work, isn’t it?”

  Haste smiled vaguely as she twisted her cigar, crooked as a finger. “It took the Ingeniare fifteen months to complete the plans for the Hod King. They finished the main work just a few weeks ago. The rest of them are already at the work site.”

  “I’m guessing that’s not in the Silk Reef. Somewhere on the black trail, probably,” Edith said, probing since Haste seemed in a divulging mood.

  “It hardly matters now. It won’t be long until the Hod King has his coronation.”

  “Well,” Edith said, setting down the knife and scooting back from the table. Hoping to bring the evening to a peaceable end, she said, “So, thank you for coming to dinner. It’s been an … illuminating evening.”

  “He’s not a silver-tongued scoundrel, Edith,” Haste said, setting her knife down, too. “The Sphinx saved my life, but Marat gave it meaning. He’s a good man. He surrendered his legs because he’s willing to sacrifice—a sacrifice the Sphinx is not willing to make—for what he believes to be true.”