March of the Third Autotomic Brigade #4
Something passes over Florian’s face, more subdued than a grin. “Well, he can get to the back of the line.”
The Marshal doesn’t expect to laugh at this, but he does—with bitterness, and a certain relief.
Mallory is, after all, just another boy with another grudge, another vengeful son of a dishonored family, a princeling angry that the Revival stole his monetary or cultural inheritance.
Yet more proof that Sorav should never have stayed his hand.
One always needs to eradicate the eggs with the brood-parent, else the problem will only repeat itself.
Sorav closes the folder. “Thank you, Dr. Whyck.”
“If you need anything more,” she says, “feel free to call someone else.”
“Nichola, wait a moment,” Sorav says as she makes for the door. “How is Aster?”
“Who?”
“Asteritha Vost. She should come home tonight. I need her to dress me for rehearsal.”
“Vost?” The Surgeon General hovers in the doorway, tapping the chin of her rubber mask. “Vost … with the lungs. I don’t have her. I haven’t seen her for years now.”
It only takes a second for Sorav to understand. He turns his eye to his successor, who wears a pleasant, expectant look. It’s the same he wore as a child, chasing creatures to pin, first in the Sanitarium gardens, then the Palas’s.
“Send me out,” he says. “I know where she is.”
“Do you?”
“Two birds with one stone, Eir Patron. I’ll take care of vant Passand before you’re back from rehearsal.”
“This one is personal, Florian.”
“Not just for you, Eir Patron.” Florian’s fists are balled under his chin, his eyes sharp, straining against his perfume. An animal, leashed, caged, begging to ply his art—Sorav’s chest tightens with a twinge of sorrow.
“Take an outfit of Tender Guard,” he says. “I want vant Passand alive, and with his tongue still in his mouth. Anything else is fair game.”
Florian’s grimace resolves into a smile.
“And for God’s sake, use something more practical than a sword. You always leave such a mess.”
Rain patters the windows of Borisch-Gorslung’s overcity headquarters, dousing gargoyles and legends, from the Old Bailey Worm to the Mammoth Stag, sawlike pincers open in a marble roar.
As Guy leans against the window, listening to the statuary dissolve in the rain, Tyro crouches in the corner with her mask on, preferring to cry into her respirator than into the tense din of Bertram’s office.
Undercity hirelings spread around the top floor, though the flow of escapees has halted after a half dozen trips, when the overloaded car snapped a cord and wedged itself somewhere in the midcity.
Exterminators collapse on meeting tables and couches, heavy with questions and bad news.
Neither Dawn nor Three is among them, so Guy takes it upon himself to report everything he knows, which is clearly much less than Bertram.
“Franz. Fucking little fucking Franz,” the man hisses.
He paces behind his desk, suit pressed, collar upturned like hackles.
He looks as if he has just been called in from a show rather than from bed.
“That shit. That little cunt. I want his thumb. I want it here—I want it in my hand, with or without the man attached. Get me Reames. Someone get me Reames.”
He addresses no one in particular, and everyone responds. The secretaries and copyboys mutter assent, the custodian wheels away his tools, security men dance off into the hall.
“Where’s your captain, Guylag?” he asks.
“A—” The word sticks in his throat, the same one that orbits those unseen, unproven deaths, when exterminators disappear down a shaft or are swept up by the Catoptric, bodies lost to disintegration or devourment. He can only whisper, as if that will make it any less true. “Absent.”
“Shit.” Bertram deflates, falling back into his chair. “I wanted to do this right. I didn’t want this to get ugly. But Franz fucked up the timing. Always the timing, isn’t it? I guess we’re going to have to break out the new equipment.”
When a figure appears in Bertram’s doorway, tall and broad, Guy’s heart stutters. It’s not Dawn, but it’s not quite a stranger. He has the same green gaze as Bertram, though a vastly different bearing. He is wide, handsome, and hirsute, black hair pulled back from a brow that could demolish a wall.
“Reames.” Bertram stands and embraces the man. “Thank God. Is the root still attached? What have we lost?”
“Not much. Three teratopods. Seven tranquilized. We’re bringing them up now.”
“And the smoke?”
“Just smoke. Sreckt 7B-899 for mice, hornets, and uninvited solicitors.”
Bertram breathes a sigh of relief. “Finally got Erik on the phone. Even he doesn’t know who Franz has hired to kill all of us.”
“From the equipment we’ve found, I’d say Metaldrip Defense.”
“Oh, God, Metaldrip? Fucking pedestrian. No taste at all.” Bertram clicks his tongue. “Uncle Mendel must be backing them. How many are there?”
“At least two hundred.”
“Carrying?”
“Conventional shit. Lead, mostly.”
“Good, good. Then this might turn out.”
“It might, with the bastards you have at your disposal. One of your hirelings is holding the bridge with nothing but phlogiston canisters. Pretty much single-handedly.”
“Dawn,” Guy interrupts hopefully.
“Didn’t catch his name.” Reames eyes him, then moves his gaze to Tyro. “Goddamn. Where do you get these boys, Bert?”
“Nowhere near the University,” he answers. “Guy, this is my nephew, Reames.”
A frown rustles his black beard. He is younger than Bertram, but not by much, more like a cousin than a nephew. “Is this the one that killed the brood-parent?” he asks. “I don’t know whether to murder him or kiss his feet.”
“Maybe shake his hand first,” Bertram says.
Reames extends a hairy arm, and Guy almost reaches for his hand, until a glint of mahogany catches his eye.
A prosthetic thumb—two of them. Symmetric, cleanly cut, the amputations are purposeful.
Not an industrial accident, but punishment for something, a mark of someone so far gone that not even hard labor can reform him.
Forcefully, Reames takes Guy’s hand, looking him up and down. “Who’s the boy?” he asks.
Guy glances to his sister. She still wears her helmet, too awed or terrified to correct him.
“Tyro,” he says.
“Send him down. We could use small hands. We’re barely squeezing out a drop an hour.”
“No—” Guy starts instinctively.
“I’ll do it,” Tyro says. “I’ll go.”
“The fuck you will, Ty,” Guy growls. He turns to his boss with a pleading look. “Eir Bertram—”
“Rickhardt will help you,” Bertram tells his nephew. “He’s got an artist’s touch. Put his hands to good use—then give everything you extract, all of it, to the man holding the bridge. Let him use it however he deems fit.”
Reames wrinkles his nose.
“I’m serious,” Bertram says. “Rickhardt, go with him. Bell, you too. Get that elevator working again. And Guylag.” He turns, gaze softening. “Dearest Guylag. Do you think you could get me a coffee?”
When Aster wakes, tangled in the sheets with Mallory, there is a shadow looming in the corner.
Her heart leaps up, and she follows it, nose wrinkling for the smoky scent of Tender Guard weaponry or the subtle perfumes of Crypsis.
She almost throws herself from bed, but the figure is only Elspeth, hair of the dog in one hand and hog hair in the other, standing before a new canvas.
Cheerfully, she chirps the time. Four in the evening.
Her first wedding rehearsal is in two hours, and the bruise on her forehead is just starting to turn green.
Aster falls back onto her elbows. Her head throbs as the events of the night reenter it, the blurred paint through her eyes, the gramophone’s wail through her ears, Mallory’s taste through her lips. She glances down at him, curled on his side and rolled tight in the sheets.
“Did you have a good time last night?” Elspeth asks. Her smile is coy, satisfied—mischief without malice.
“Almost as much as you,” Aster mutters. “How long have you been up?”
“Since the crack of noon, darling. Woke with the urge to work.”
Aster glances to the wall by the closet, where the wedding dress drapes over the easel. Mal’s portrait peeks from under the intricacies of his needlework, a handsome smile under a smear of honey-gold eye. It is the closest to completion any of her projects has ever been.
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for rehearsal?” Aster asks.
Elspeth flicks her brush. “Shouldn’t you be in the Sanitarium?”
Aster rubs her eyes. “You hungry, El?”
“Never. You?”
“Starving.” Aster rolls from bed and into the rain-charged air.
She stands, shaking out yesterday’s clothes while Elspeth continues painting.
She glances over the canvas and finds a stellate burst of pigment, unmistakably Mallory, but viewed from an eyeless angle, devoid of light or time.
It looks, Aster thinks, exactly how he smells.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathes.
“You think so? There’s hope for your taste, then.” The bump on El’s forehead glows with her chuckle. “Mal, get up. We’re hungry.”
He groans, wiping away sleep, pushing aside the sheets and underclothes. He throws on his tattered housecoat and makes for the closet, ignoring Elspeth as she repositions to paint him from a different angle.
“Breakfast?” he asks. “I suppose we ought to make ourselves scarce. Get Aster out of here before the Revenant notices his own cadaver is starting to stink.”
“Should we go to that rotten little hole on Vaughn Street?” Elspeth says. “Aster, you’ll love it. Wonderful band, terrible drinks.”
“And stairs down to the midcity,” Mallory adds. “Old errander route, just behind the water closet.”
“We should stop for coffee first,” says Elspeth.
“El, your rehearsal—”
“Of course, dear. It’ll be highly suspicious if I show up on time.”
The nonchalance of her tone both comforts and distresses Aster. “The Chancellor won’t like it.”