“Will continue the operation from here. Take no further action.” Karine read aloud. “Events proceed apace.”
“That’s it?” Skinner asked. They were in a cafe near the Stark, surrounded by a bustling, working-class clientele. Since the events at Emilia Vie-Gorgon’s party, Skinner had become increasingly paranoid about being observed. No one could think it odd that she was out with her assistant, of course, and the noise of the cafe would effectively obscure their conversation from casual eavesdroppers. There could be knockers listening in, and if there was anyone in the city who could afford to retain the services of a knocker it was Emilia Vie-Gorgon. But there was nothing to be done on that score, so Skinner resolved to not be worried by it.
“That’s it,” said Karine. “It’s not even signed.”
“Well, of course it’s not signed,” Skinner replied irritably. “Who leads a secret cabal and then writes their name all over everything? No one.” She sighed. “What about the paper? Handwriting? Anything familiar?”
“It’s typed,” Karine said, “regular paper, I suppose. I don’t really know. Maybe Mr. Valentine? Isn’t his family in printing?”
“Let’s…let’s hold off on that,” Skinner said. She’d already involved Valentine more than she was comfortable with. Though, it’s not as if the irrepressible idiot wouldn’t tear off through the city, turning over paper mills left and right, trying to find the precise source of a note that Skinner had stolen from his cousin. He probably wouldn’t even ask why. Idiot. “We’ll wait. The less Valentine knows, the less he’s likely to give away. All right?”
“Yes, all right. Though I don’t see why-”
“Never mind why. I’m just not sure of him, yet.”
“Not sure of Mr. Valentine? But miss-”
“Karine. Leave it. We’ll talk to him about the letter later. I doubt he’d be able to help, anyway, they probably make paper like this ten thousand sheets at a time.” Skinner sipped at the last of her djang, made a face as she tasted the bitter dregs. “Anyway. I suppose it’s time I started looking for a new job.”
The trouble with being history’s most successful anonymous playwright was that it didn’t lead to a wealth of new opportunities. It was still quite illegal for Skinner to hold down legitimate work in the city, but the theater was hardly a legitimate enterprise. Under ordinary circumstances, she could have undoubtedly shown a piece like Theocles to a producer, and been assigned a substantial amount of work-for-hire material. Except, since the success of Theocles, no fewer than fifteen people had come forward claiming to be the author (and demanding the requisite royalties), some of them fairly well-established playwrights themselves. How could she, the real author, prove that Theocles was hers? Not without Emilia Vie-Gorgon’s help, and Skinner was loathe to rely any more on the heiress than was absolutely necessary.
“Come on, Karine, let’s walk home. We shouldn’t waste such lovely weather by spending the day indoors.”
The weather at the tail end of Armistice remained delightful, and would almost to the very second that Armistice ended. The change from pleasant early spring to the raw, damp weather of middle spring was a change that came with such reliability that no professional man had ever been hired to predict it, nor had any almanac bothered to record it. Like Trowth’s internecine familial wars and the monolithic ruins that served as the city’s bones, the weather of the city was so unfailingly regular that Skinner could have easily asserted how mild the temperature, how gentle the salty bay-breezes, how pleasant the humidity, without having so much as opened a window.
Karine and Skinner talked idly while they walked, and Skinner asked her assistant many questions about the young indige’s life, about her people, about her ambitions.
“Well, of course I will probably stay behind during the New Exodus,” Karine explained, as though this information ought to be of obvious consequence to Skinner. “Many of my people probably will. I’ve never seen the Capital Cities, so they’re really of little interest to me.”
“I don’t know what that is, the New Exodus. What is that?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought…I just thought everyone knew. The indige arrangement with the Trowth Empire was for a two-hundred and fifty year residence. The ramos-these are…I suppose you’d call them priests, or grammateurs…declared that Trowth would be a safe haven for us for no longer than two and a half centuries. In another decade, the ritual calendar and the royal calendar will come together in the Third Confluence and…well, I suppose it’s all rather complicated, isn’t it?” Karine’s demeanor, mild and simple as ever, seemed perversely at odds with such alien complexity.
Maybe, Skinner admitted a little guiltily, I only assumed she was simple. “It is, but it’s fascinating. Your rammers, or priests or what have you, they made a prophecy?”
“Yes, after a fashion. The calendrical confluences are always supposed to be marked by great disasters or boons or something, and the ramos are predicting things all the time. It’s pretty unusual that we actually see anything interesting happen. The Third Confluence is supposed to be the End of Cities, so the ramos are insisting that we’ll engage in a Second Exodus and leave Trowth before then.”
“And you don’t think you will?”
“I think of lot of my people will stay. The plenary hetmen are all rich from the phlogiston trade, a lot of us grew up here. It’s hard to care about some prophecy made more than two centuries before you were born. Especially if there’s money-oh.”
“What?” Skinner asked. “What is it?”
“There’s someone…there are men at the house. They’re moving things into the street. They’re…hey!” She called out. “Hey, those are my things! Don’t touch those!”
Karine raced ahead, but Skinner outpaced her with her clairaudience. She tracked footsteps, the scraping sound of a leather-and-brass trunk on cobblestones. Karine shouting unintelligibly in Indt, while the men attempted to mollify her. Skinner approached slowly, hoping to maintain some dignity at least.
“What’s this, then?” She demanded, rattling her telerhythmia all around the square, snapping the two men across their broad chests, keeping track of them as she neared.
“Begging your pardon, miss,” said one man with a gravelly voice, who did not sound at all as though he were interested in her pardon. “We’ve been told by Miss Vie-Gorgon to clear out this house, as it’s no longer meant to be occupied.”
“There has been some mistake, obviously,” Skinner said this confidently, but she knew her own bluster when she heard it. It was what Valentine had warned her about: Emilia Vie-Gorgon had gotten what she wanted, and was now finished with Elizabeth Skinner and assistant. A sour feeling clutched at the knocker’s stomach, and she tightened her grip on her cane.
“There’s no mistake, miss,” said the man. “We’ll leave the things here, you can call a coach if you like.”
“You are not going to leave my belongings in the street,” Skinner said, her voice adamant. “And you are not going to throw me out of this house. If Miss Vie-Gorgon would like me gone, you may tell her that she can come here and see me out herself. In the meantime, my assistant and I will be quite happy to remain in our home.”
“Begging your pardon,” the man said again, again in a voice that did not at all seem to beg for pardon, “but Miss Vie-Gorgon said you might be insistent. Advised us that we might have to be a little rough.” The sound of a revolver, gently drawn from its leather holster, is a unique sound, and one with which Skinner was well acquainted. “Now, we’ve not really the heart to do something cruel ourselves, but you know how orders is.”
“Shoh ahtt!” Karine spat. “Miss, he’s got a gun.”
Skinner took a step closer to the man, still rattling all around her with the telerhythmia. This was a desperate ploy; most people did not realize how effectively a knocker could apprehend her surroundings, and Skinner hoped that her widespread knocking would mislead the man as to how closely he was the subject of her attention. “I doubt he’s going to use it, Karine. He knows the trouble he could get into for shooting at anyone, much less at me.”
“You ain’t a coroner no more, Miss, if you’ll pardon my saying so.” He grinned around a mouthful of crooked teeth in Skinner’s imagination. At least one of the imaginary teeth was gold.
Skinner took a step closer. “But I still have friends in the coroners. What was your name, again?” She hoped this was enough to at least wipe the grin from his face. She knew what was coming next; the only remaining concern was how quickly the second man would get to her.
“We haven’t time for this, Miss. I don’t want to, but I will hurt you if I have to.” The hammer on his revolver clicked-low and near his waist, he hadn’t brought it to bear, yet.
“I agree,” Skinner said, as she snapped her cane out. It was a dreadful risk, but one that she’d spent many hours practicing in school-the tip of her cane connected with the man’s hand, and he yelped, dropped the gun to the ground, and hopped away. No time to let him catch his senses, Skinner thought as she flicked the switch in the top of her walking-stick and drew out a slender, razor-sharp sword. She slashed viciously at his face, forcing him back towards the wall of the house.
The second man’s footsteps cluttered like thunder towards her, and she quickly pivoted and swung her weapon towards him, eliciting another shout and the sound of a heavy body stumbling hard onto damp cobblestones. Karine was running too, but Skinner couldn’t devote the attention to keep track of her, as she switched back to the first man, and struggled to keep him at bay with her sword.
“Now,” said the man, “let’s not be hasty. I-”
He was interrupted by a gunshot, and the sound of a ricochet off of stone.
“Stop! Ito hak haht! Stop, right now!” Karine. She’d grabbed the loose revolver.
Oh, good girl, Skinner smiled to herself.
“You take these things inside. Right now!” Karine said, presumably waving the pistol around to emphasize her point. The men were silent, perhaps sullenly, though it was hard to know without seeing their faces. They began the noisy process of transporting Karine and Skinner’s belongings back inside.
“Wait.” Skinner said. There was no reason to put anything back in the house. It was Emilia’s house after all, she could, and would, eventually have them removed legitimately. They needed a new plan. “Wait. Don’t put them back inside. One of you call a coach.”
“Miss?” Karine asked.
“We are going to pay our respects to a few friends today, Karine. I suspect we shall have to abandon this house. Lovely as it was, it’s now served its purpose.”
Skinner had initially intended to bring a coach full of luggage and low-quality ne’er-do-wells directly to Emilia Vie-Gorgon’s doorstep; to sort out precisely what Emilia meant by all of this right there in public, and leave a steaming heap of scandal in the Raithower Vie-Gorgon’s portico. She, after all, had substantially less to lose than did Emilia by airing this dirty laundry. Her cooler instincts prevailed, however, and she resolved not to confront the young Miss Vie-Gorgon without taking certain precautions.
The long coach ride was silent-the sullenness had soured now to an outright hostility, held in check only by Karine’s deathgrip on the pistol. Emlia’s hired goons sulked, as the coach rolled down the neatly-cobbled Comstock Street.
Skinner called up to the driver. “I don’t know what the number is-”
“It’s all right, miss, I know it.”
It’s just temporary, Skinner insisted to herself. Just a place to keep our luggage while I sort this all out. I am certainly not relying on him. He is, after all, thoroughly unreliable.
Henry, long-standing and equally long-suffering butler to the Comstock Vie-Gorgons, was quite prepared to turn Skinner and Karine away at the door, regardless of how wildly Karine waved her newly-acquired revolver about. The two were saved from the local gendarmerie only by the precipitous arrival of Valentine himself, who barreled past his butler and skidded to a halt where Skinner leaned against the cab.
“Well! All right, this is a little peculiar,” Valentine announced. “Have you brought all your clothes with you?”
“Ahem. Yes,” Skinner admitted. “It seems that I’ve…had a bit of a falling out with your cousin. Karine and I…Karine mostly…are in need of a place to store our belongings. Only for a few days, until we make some kind of alternative arrangements. This is…a bit of an awkward situation.”
“Awkward, of course, yes. Listen, why don’t you have your men here bring everything into…Henry!” Valentine shouted over his shoulder. “Henry, have we got, can you make up the guest bedroom? We can put everything in there. We’ll make up the guest rooms, you’ll stay here, obviously. I say, you two,” he called to Emilia’s goons, “just start bringing that in, third floor, back of the hall.” The men glowered, but did not object. “You and Karine will stay here, of course.”
“Just the luggage. We couldn’t impose,” Skinner insisted.
“Well, you’ve got to stay somewhere, and it isn’t as though we haven’t got the room.” Indeed, the Vie-Gorgon townhouse on Comstock Street was notoriously spacious.
Henry interrupted this exchange. “Sir, I’m afraid we’ve only the one spare bedroom available, right now-”
“Oh, yes,” Valentine said, dismayed. He had quite forgotten the eight cousins visiting from the Low Provinces in the south.
“It’s all right, Valentine, we don’t need-”
“Of course, well,” Valentine snapped his fingers, immediately taken by the ingenuity of his new plan, “we’ll just make up my room-”
“Valentine-”
“Your room, sir!” Henry spluttered with outrage. “Can you imagine the scandal? It will be in the broadsheets in a day…”
“Well, obviously I won’t be in it, Henry, you might as well show me more consideration than that.”
“Valentine-” Skinner attempted to interject again, but the young man was on a tear, and would not be deterred.
“I’ll stay in the guest room at the coroner’s office…I’m hardly at the house anyway. Karine can have the small guest bedroom, Skinner will stay in my room. Now…oh, here,” he drew a five-crown note from his wallet and offered it up to Emilia’s two thugs as a gratuity. The men stared at it, flabbergasted, before Valentine ushered them back into the cab and sent them off. “Now, as I was saying. I’ve some few things to take care of this evening, but I’ll make sure I drop by to ensure that Henry is taking good care of you both, right? We’ll want to talk about my cousin, of course, and don’t think I’ve forgotten about our exploit from the night before. Now. Away!”
And with that, Valentine Vie-Gorgon was gone into the cooling evening. Karine, Skinner, and Henry the butler stood there, at the portico of the house on Comstock Street, and each one found him or herself entirely, unequivocally, and unmistakably at a loss for words. This lasted for several seconds and Valentine, had he stayed behind to time it, would have declared it a new record for puzzled silence precipitated by his eccentricity.
It was Henry who spoke first, conditioned as he was to life with Valentine. “I suppose. I suppose I shall get those rooms ready.”