Strangleroot Tarantella #3
“A classic. Haven’t seen that one since I was a boy.” When Guy attempts to reclaim his hand, he tightens his grip. His smile is white, and his ascot is Ostlerfell Blue. “That’s an old tragedy. From well before the world began. Is that your thumb name?”
Guy doesn’t answer. Bertram must know that to ask such a thing of a debtor is at best an intimacy, at worst an insult.
“I’m kidding,” Bertram says, releasing his grip. “A beautiful name, Guylag. Up top we put a lot of stock into that sort of thing. A few pretty syllables will earn a man much more than he deserves. And Gorslung is one of the prettiest.”
“Gorslung. As in those—”
“Yes, those. I’m not the most impressive one in the family, I’m afraid.
That would be my uncle Mendel. Who himself is a great-grandnephew of Chancellor Wilhelm.
A reign short-lived as the rest of them.
He tried to remove the head of the Crypsis secret police, and they returned the favor.
” He motions for Guy to sit. “I apologize. I’m boring you.
As much as you can bore a man who’s currently shitting himself. ”
Guy tries to erase whatever wrinkled face he’s wearing. “Sorry.”
“Quite all right. No doubt you’ve already guessed you’ve been fired.” Bertram opens a desk drawer. “Your creditor is solely Borisch & Sons, correct?”
“As … far as I know.”
“Good. Makes things easier.” He removes a stack of papers, and it takes a moment for Guy to recognize his contract, with all its amendments and violations and receipts and retractions.
“You’ve already got a novel’s worth of shit in here.
Theft, covert secondary employment, unauthorized pets in the barracks, et cetera.
Petty bullshit. Looks like you haven’t worked off much of your debt. How long have you been with Borisch?”
“Four years.”
“Do you enjoy your work?”
“I…” Guy hesitates. “Better than meatpacking.”
“Is that where you were before Borisch?”
“Yeah. The plants on Strangleroot.”
“So you didn’t serve in Ostlerfell.”
“Too young. By the time I hit fifteen I already had a contract.”
“Hm.” Bertram sifts through the papers. “Your captain reports: ‘Guy Moulène is a liability who has cost this company more than he’s made it. He has the dexterity of a slug and an intellect to match. His continued employment makes me question the concept of employment altogether. He and Dawn are the best I’ve had, by far. ’”
Despite everything, the edges of Guy’s mouth twitch.
“Your captain,” Bertram continues, “maintains you aren’t responsible for this disaster.
That you never even saw any bug. Bullshit, obviously.
” Bertram pushes the papers aside and replaces them with a stack of photographs.
Guy doesn’t see the pictures so much as feel them, the blurred panic, a fragmented exoskeleton coated in a mist of paint, operagoers rushing past the marquee.
“The photographs don’t help, do they? Everyone is having a hard time finding the words to describe this …
event. The Palas is looking to pluck some heads. And yours is the ripest, as they say.”
“I—” Guy wrings his hands between his knees. “I didn’t—”
“An overeager exterminator at the wrong call. A man who’s not allowed within a hundred paces of the Opera and yet—there he is, down in their cellars. Burning everything he can.”
“I…” A cold sweat gathers at his brow. The certainty of Strangleroot disappears, replaced by the certainty he’ll instead find himself in the Palas’s carnivorous tulip beds, on the gallows, or center stage in the final act of The Ripest Fruit on the Vine, dressed as the leading man and crucified to raucous applause.
“You’ve put your company in a very bad position, Moulène,” Bertram continues. “An indefensible position. But one in which—fortunately for both of us—Borisch & Sons can cheaply, and easily, be bought.”
Guy releases his breath. “And you…”
“Why do you think I’m sitting in the chair?” He smiles, and Guy wonders if he should genuflect, grovel, cry—do whatever one does for a conqueror with the corpse of his rival underfoot.
“Are you from Sreckt?” he asks.
Bertram’s laugh is warm, genuine. “Shit no. You think Boris would step aside for those bastards? I’m from Sanitation.”
“Oh.”
“Or, I was. Species Management. The Chancellery and I had some disagreements. Doesn’t matter.
I’m still a sanitary man at heart.” He leans back, chair squeaking.
“And no one else wants to touch this infestation with the end of a bayonet—not Sreckt, certainly not Boris. Turns out he’s got his own debts. ”
Guy’s heart pounds, vertiginous. “And you … why?”
“Why would I jump neck-deep into this mess?” Bertram asks.
“Excellent question. Would you like some water? You seem thirsty. Hold on, I’ve got a bottle straight from the springs at Sullen Head.
” Before Guy can answer, he fetches a pitcher from the icebox on the shelf.
“It’s this dragon of yours, Guylag. This latest play in the Catoptric arms race we find ourselves in.
” Bertram pours two glasses and hands one to Guy.
An attractive cologne drifts from his wrist. “This is my specialty. Every few years a novel monstrosity pops up from the river that even the experts can’t take care of. Then they call me.”
Guy takes the water and downs it. “Eir Gorslung—”
“Bertram, please.”
“Eir Bertram—I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Few people have. This one is only known to myself and a handful of colleagues. Understandably a pest of that size is best kept under wraps. You know how this city is. We’re a theatrical people.
We overreact.” He refills Guy’s glass. “At the moment we’re calling it a teratopod, though the contriver worm has also been floated.
You know, from that old ballet.” He seems relieved at Guy’s nod.
“You know it. You’ve discerning taste, Eir Moulène. I can trust a man with taste.”
Guy flushes at the gentleman’s honorific. “Eir Bertram … I didn’t mean to. I tried to kill it and it only—”
“Reproduced.” Bertram takes a cautious sip. “You tried phlogiston on it?”
“And BSPAF. Vitriol of Lun. Phytothrin. Everything I could. All at once.”
“Ah. No wonder the whole place went to shit.”
“Eir Bertram—it was—I don’t know what it did. It peeled apart, it—”
“You agitated it during its fissional molt.” He smiles, not unkindly.
“There’s no reason to feel so bad, Guylag.
You couldn’t know. You only did what you were supposed to.
You’re an exterminator. But the teratopod isn’t like other bugs.
It’s more like us. It does the same thing we do when faced with mortality. It creates.”
A shiver runs down Guy’s neck. “The Srecktman. It did something to him.”
“It stung him. Just like it did to you at Abrupt Ends.”
“It didn’t—”
“I spoke to your partner about it. Dawn is sure you were stung. You didn’t report it. No, no, I understand. It doesn’t matter. You survived. I’m intrigued to know how you treated it.”
“I … don’t know. Achewort tea and a good sleep, I guess.”
“That’s it?” Bertram shakes his head. “Well, not all stings envenomate. And venom doesn’t have the same effect on everything.
It’s not a corrosive toxin. It doesn’t digest material, in the sense of Whittleston termites.
It—reshapes it, for lack of a better word.
The teratopod doesn’t eat so much as sculpt.
No one really knows the details—at least no one at our current disposal.
Believe it or not, you’re about as foremost an expert as we can get right now.
You and Dawn, having dealt with it firsthand.
” The crystalware sings as he refills Guy’s glass.
“So. We’ve got a peculiar infestation on our hands, Eir Moulène.
An infestation that has caused quite a bit of damage already.
I don’t want that creature’s progeny growing to the size of their brood-parent.
From the look on your face, neither do you.
” He puts aside the decanter and rifles through his folders.
“You’re a Borischman. You don’t leave a job unfinished.
And so”—he slides over a paper—“finish it.”
Guy glances over the page, decorated with an unfamiliar wax heading. “This … isn’t my old contract.”
“No, it’s not. It’s a lot simpler. This only deals with the shit that matters.
Unlike many of my contemporaries, I have respect for the art form.
I believe the terms of a contract should actually be binding.
” He pops open his bronze ink pad. “I don’t want petty violations monopolizing my attention.
They annoy me. So I’ve taken out all the rules that Borisch hirelings regularly break. Turns out that’s most of the rules.”
“I … see.”
“The rest is the usual fare—terms subject to change without warning or negotiation, agree to any future amendments, et cetera, all the boring shit. You know.”
Guy leans forward, holding his stomach, trying to interpret his own gut instincts as a hedge witch might the entrails of a rat. His eyes scan the neat, tiny typeface, then settle on a number at the bottom. With that salary, it’ll only be a few years before it starts to spill into his own pocket.
“I’m not going to lie,” says Bertram. “The bug we’re going after is resilient and dangerous.
I need a flexible contract. The kind that can change under tough circumstances.
Just so you know what you’re getting into.
” He reclines in his chair. “You can say no, my friend. This is an offer, not a demand. If you see yourself happier somewhere else, I’ll find someone to buy your debts.
Strangleroot is full of opportunities this season. ”
Guy stares at the contract. The words blur, too small to read. “What about Tyro?”
“Tyro?” Bertram smiles. “As in Guylag’s squire?”
“My sister. My—the … unauthorized pet.”
“Oh. Well, shit. I’ll authorize her. Make her a real son of Borisch.”
Guy’s eyes wander to the ink pad. “I don’t want her pressing her thumb to anything.”
“Of course. Honestly—and I get that honesty is suspect coming from a man with a tie this blue—I’m happy to provide.
Generosity earns more trust than coercion.
Only a tyrant conquers with the sword, after all.
” A resigned look crosses the man’s face.
“I need trust right now. Borisch-Gorslung could not have asked for a rockier start.”
“Borisch-Gorslung,” Guy repeats.
“If that’s not a mouthful enough, I can read the whole contract for you. The rest of your team declined that offer, though.”
Guy glances across the desk to the other papers, imagining the grainy knot of Three’s thumbprint, the tented arch of Dawn’s, interrupted by the scar of a pact-rose thorn.
“Take your time,” Bertram says. “Don’t rush into anything.”
Guy tries to hesitate, to think it over, to consider the photographs of Conundrum, the memory of Bebber’s bizarre corpse. It’s pointless, with the gears of Strangleroot churning, with the numbers adding in his head. If I am damned anyway, goes Faustech’s famous aria, then I might as well sin.
He lifts his thumb, presses it to the cold ink, then, carefully, to the contract.
Florian leads Aster through the battle-torn jungle of ferns and wrought iron to the lorry.
He throws open the door and shoves her inside, and she finds herself next to another passenger, the man from the streetcar, with the broken spectacles.
He bears the marks of Florian’s interrogation, wrists bound, jaw clamped open, slit tongue dangling in dripping ribbons from his mouth.
“We need privacy,” Florian tells the stranger.
The man stares at him with swollen eyes.
“Now, please.” Wordlessly, the man drops onto the wrecked street. “Thank you. You’ve been a great help.”
As soon as his victim stumbles away from the lorry, Florian slams the door.
“What the fuck, Aster?” he growls. “Running off with a squatter—are you in heat?” He knocks the glass of the partition, and the men in the bed raise their visors. “There’s a creature in the house back there. Lead, two shots, back of the head. Then start a fire.”
“Don’t, Florian,” Aster says.
“Keep it clean. Be sure to get the whole property.”
“Don’t you dare. Elspeth will be furious.”
Florian hesitates.
“Mallory is—he’s her accessory this season.
” Aster bites her lip, unsure if she’s dissuaded Florian or only given him more fuel.
He considers her words, calculating the relative merits of plucking a weed or cultivating a rivalry.
He frowns, then knocks again on the partition.
The Tender Guardsmen resettle in their seats, and the lorry pulls away.
“What’s with the robe?” Florian asks, examining his nails. There is still some blood under them. “You join a cult?”
“It’s just a bathrobe.” Aster leans against the window as they rock across the rubble and turn onto Eighteenth. “And it wouldn’t be your business if I did.”
“It would be the Marshal’s.”
She watches the streets crawl by, the empty bars, the canals, the floristry bursting from windows, the occasional cloud of wandering fumigant.
As they pull onto Conundrum, rolling over the strip of jeweled cobblestones in the square, Aster searches for the damage.
The scar over the plaza is smooth and unopened, the warped statuary hunches in place.
Aside from the lines of Tender Guardsmen and the clusters of curious passersby, everything seems exactly as it had been.
“What happened last night, Florian?” she asks.
“You didn’t read the Arbuscle this morning?” He lifts his attention from his nails. “Someone tried to kill the Chancellor. At the playlet last night.”
“Tried?” Her stomach flutters to her throat. “They didn’t follow through?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She leans against the window. Instinct brings Mallory’s handkerchief to her face. She breathes in his scent, heart turning. “Well, that’s a shame, isn’t it?”