a hopeful stutter
The savoury waft of pastry – molten-hot insides, rich flaky outsides – floats up from the basket.
I’m halfway up the steps when the magistrate appears, heading down, and all my calm cracks and scatters like a flock of pigeons. Of all the days. They say he’s only here once a week.
I keep my head down, bobbing awkwardly, deferential, eyes on my beautiful boots. Ancestors, don’t let him realize it’s me –
His hand shoots out and grips my arm.
A ghastly smile twists his face. We stand together on the step.
“Something smells … tasty,” he hisses, reaching towards the basket. I flinch. He picks up a pastry and bites through the crust. I keep my eyes averted but can feel him bending closer. He takes a deep breath. “Pretty little rat.”
His hard soles click down the stairs before I can answer. Click click click.
I breathe shakily.
He didn’t know me. Didn’t associate the tidy girl with a basket with the bedraggled makkie he had thrown off the boat. He thinks I drowned. He thinks the kraits drained me.
I make it past the pawing guards in a trance, passing under the Life Is Golden lie. My heart’s hammering, but they can’t see that. They don’t know my heart. They never will. It’s hidden. Right now, it’s murderous.
I stand in the corner of a stairwell, pretending I’m waiting for someone until I’m calm again.
I sell pastries in a fugue. When I’ve only three left, I find the door I need on the first floor. I came here five days ago. It was empty then, but it’s safest to have the excuse of the lunches, if I need it.
It’s a library now, on two floors, but I can see the old bones of it behind the books. Perhaps it wouldn’t be obvious if I didn’t know what it was before. The seats are gone, the balconies arranged with rows of reference books. Two staircases sweep to the ground floor, one on each side, down to where the old stalls were – now more shelves, books, journals and a few tables. Books line the rise to the old stage too, flanking a set of stairs they’ve installed. There are no windows anywhere – perhaps that’s why they’ve put a library here and not more offices.
It’s not empty today. A harried-looking clerk, hood pushed back, searches for something in an ill-lit corner, pulling out and replacing thick volumes. I wait until they leave before going down.
There’s a handle in what used to be one wing of the stage that opens the trap. It still works. I can crank the same shaft from inside or close it manually and throw the bolts. The trap itself is half obscured by the end of a long shelf, but there’s room. I lower it only as far as I need – just as the door at the end of the stalls section swings open again on two sets of voices.
“You’re sure it’s not there?”
“Someone could have it.”
I push the basket down and sneak to the next aisle over to place a few books in disarray on the floor.
“It’s probably been put back wrong. Let’s look around.”
They won’t see the open trap unless they come into one of the aisles it straddles, but it’s not worth the risk. I squeeze in past the edge of the shelf and thud the door up with a soft bang before they reach the stage.
They’ll have heard it and assumed they’re not alone, but they don’t call out. Library rules are the same the world over.
I don’t want to tinkle the coins in my apron pocket. I can smell the pastries. I’m suddenly terrified they smell too strong, so I wrap them in the cloth lining the basket.
“Some books fell down, look. And no one’s here. Must’ve been the ghost!”
“Oh, come off it!”
They don’t mention the trap. The seams blend beautifully into the rest of the floor. Crozoni woodwork. Smooth as one of Ruzi’s guitars.
They find what they came for. I hear their voices falling away.
I ease further into the trap and pat my pockets. A candle and matches, lock picks. I take off my fancy hair wrap and the apron with its front pocket full of coin from the pastry sales. Inside one of my boots is the small wrench I need to take out the stops on the window.
I don’t dare to light the candle. There’s nothing to do but think. I hate that.
By Goldie’s pocket timepiece and the deeper silence, it’s time. I eat one of the pastries before I ease out of the trap and up the stairs, exiting on the first floor to avoid the guards’ station on the ground floor. Four guards will be there, swilling schinn all night if the Reedstones’ intelligence is correct.
The room with the window I need is indeed locked, but it’s the main type of lock I’ve been practising. I’m quite pleased with the full seven minutes it takes me to coax it open – even if others might have cracked it in seconds.
Six empty desks greet me. The curtains aren’t drawn, and the window stops unscrew readily enough with my tool, though they’ve been painted over. The latch at the top isn’t painted, but it’s stubborn. I have to stand on a chair to get the right purchase.
The window itself is a beast. After fifteen panicked minutes of struggling with it, I finally prise it up a whole half inch. I prop it there with a book and find some lantern fuel to oil it. It’s soon clear I won’t raise it further without a lever.
There’s nothing obvious to hand, but I’ve a few hours before Kit’s expected, and I want to use them.
I aim to go a little off-plan.
It’s not a risk I should take. It’s not what I’ve agreed with Kit or the Reedstones. But what if the magistrate has some news or correspondence with someone – branders or bounty hunters – about Zako he’s keeping in his office? Some paper trail that explains whether they found him or not. What if he has Zako’s third letter?
The magistrate’s office is on the ground floor. Unfortunately, the only way to reach it is past the guards’ station. I can’t sneak like Kit does, like a ghost – though these shoes are much lighter than my old ones.
Fortunately, they’re making enough noise to wake the dead. Four voices. I could hear them from the other side of the building, and now I’m close enough to tell they’re drinking and playing cards. Four guards inside, doing nothing. Two out front, two out back and two more on the roof every night. Ten men. Even the branders’ station doesn’t keep such a heavy night guard. It seems prof ligate for Skøl, but then the Registry is the thing they care about most in the world. Plus Venor’s got his star entertainment for the high governor stashed in here.
I creep to the doorway of the guards’ station and feel for the gravel I pocketed from one of the potted ferns earlier. I need something small to distract them. The curtains behind their table are drawn to, though a narrow gap remains between the cloth and the windowpane. I throw one of the stones, but it flies wide, bouncing off to clink on the floor. They don’t even hear it through the din they’re making. I aim again. This time a slightly larger rock. It hits the glass with a sharp tap and their voices fall. I flash past while they’re murmuring about ghosts at the window. When one of their chairs scrapes back moments after, my heart almost stops. I race along the carpet, round the corner. A reedy squeal of hinges and a loud pouring of piss reveal the guard was only going to relieve himself.
It’s darker than night outside Venor’s office. I don’t dare light a candle, so I rely on touch. The lock’s the same type as the ones upstairs, but the sweat on my fingers slows me – I’m far too long opening it. At least his curtains are thick. I light my candle.
Tall bookshelves bracket the window, a child’s skull atop one. Subtle. Two maps framed in dark wood and a vintage portrait of Clarion Lovemore – two decades old if it’s a day; she has thick hair and a slim neck, accentuating her wide nostrils – adorn the wall facing his desk.
There’s a family portrait on the opposite wall, in the formal Skøl style – shadowy oils, grim upholstery and daft hats. The magistrate’s family. Missus Venor, a boy who must be the son at school in Skøland and tiny Devotion, a pale glow swamped in a dark dress. The magistrate must be at least a decade younger, but he still looks stern. They all do, even the baby.
Only having two children is unusual for such a wealthy couple. Perhaps she couldn’t stomach having more after she found out his ugly secret.
His desk is neatly arranged, but for a gift basket sitting haphazardly on a stack of neat papers. The bottom of the basket is littered with rinds from the same type of expensive tiny orange that Mister S bought recently. There’s a ribbon on the handle tied to a note – To Magistrate Venor, with gratitude for your patriotic service. It’s from someone I’ve never heard of – a Mister Hayle.
A square dish of thin white pottery sits at right angles to the stack of neat papers. It holds a ring I recognize. Gold with an amber stone. I touch it with the tips of my fingers.
Life Is Golden, I think stupidly, seeing Felicity’s face on that boat when she was looking at Venor, frightened. Worse thoughts crowd after it like rubbish-drunk flies. I think of that slow, fat fly colliding with my face. Disgusting. I feel like that, times a hundred. I take a deep breath and sweep the thoughts aside. Not now.
His chair is stiff leather – built for a bigger frame than mine. I turn my attention to the stack of papers under the basket with the orange peelings.
The son’s called Valour Venor too, poor thing. There’s a bill for his extortionate schooling – he’s only one year younger than me. I feel a rare mixture of jealousy and pity.
A few thick reports comprise most of the stack. Trends and Projections in Criminality Across the New Western Counties Under Two Scenarios and Labour Shortages in New Western County Shipway.
No sign of Zako’s letter. No correspondence about him.
I force my shaking hands to stack the items back neatly. There’s no personal correspondence at all, actually. No missives from his wife or son or daughter. They must go to the home address. To Lovemore.
I flip open Goldie’s timepiece. Kit will be on his way, and I still haven’t found a lever for the window. I take one of the iron pokers from Venor’s cold fireplace and creep back to the corner near the guards’ station. Four voices still, absorbed in an argument about the proper way to cook Skølcakes. They’re thinking about breakfast already.
It’s harder to find a target to distract them from this angle. There’s a wall, but it’s bare. I settle on the unlit fireplace, selecting three small pieces of gravel to throw together into the iron firebed. Throw-for-crow. The soft tinkling cuts through their conversation, and I fly past the door as they start up about bats in the chimney again.
Upstairs, raindrops bead and weep down the glass, merging and gathering each other as they go. I thought it might drizzle, but this is a downpour. Distant thunder, lightning. Kit’s climb will be wretched. I bet the guards on the roof will be sheltering under the cupola though.
*
My breath hitches. I only see him because he’s told me where to look. He levers himself and his empty, rubber-lined sack to the top of the nine-foot iron fence before dropping like a stone to the Registry grounds. Surely these exertions will cost his wound. I force the window open in preparation. It squeals through the first few inches before it gives. I can hear snatches of raised voices – Goldie and Lev arguing in the street. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but it’s growing increasingly hysterical. Rain wets the curtains, but they’ll dry by morning.
Kit crouches, another shadow in the black grass.
I can see all the way to the Centre from here, see the glow over Rundvaer Square and the distant lanterns I imagine as patrolling branders. I hope they’re wet and miserable. Kit crosses the grass, and I lose sight of him. Now he’ll be picking his way slowly up the stretches where the guttering is best. I can’t confirm without sticking my head out – too conspicuous.
I wait.
Finally his shape appears, clinging to the ledge like a bat. Then he’s inside, safe. I embrace him, just as a ferocious flash and clap of thunder burst overhead.
Kit smiles like the lightning – dazzling, over in half a second.
We push on.
It’s been six years since I’ve seen the undercroft in this building. Kit cracks the heavy-duty lock on the door leading down in a fraction of the time it took me to best the simple lock upstairs.
The Registry’s main ragleaf generator squats like a dragon of old in one corner, whirring and croaking and sending vague fumes into the damp. They’ve installed fire-quelling bulbs in lines along every wall. I recognize the Glassworks’ handiwork with a tinge of weird pride. We don’t dare flick the main elektric lights on – tiny windows in the tops of the walls mean the guards outside might see – but it’s clear as day the cells they detained us in after the Cull are gone.
Zako isn’t here. If they have him, he’ll be in the vault too.
Kit looks at the vault doors, barely a seam between them. “Showtime.”
The lock is a complex system of interlinked pins, springs and rotary elements – different mechanisms requiring individual attention.
I let him concentrate.
Something grates, and he swears softly. Then a ratcheting sound.
“Rollers are stiff,” he murmurs as a panel behind the keyhole cracks open like a clockwork window.
“Mor.” He turns to me. “Can you stand by the side over there?”
“Why?”
“This is the less fun part.” He’s pulling a long glove out of one pocket, unravelling a delicate chain that dangles all the way from the glove to the floor, a bewildering fashion choice. “They’ve a tamper-proof fail-safe. It’s attached to the main flow and its own back-up, so we can’t just cut the power.”
I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but we’re in a hurry and my mind’s elsewhere, so I stand aside.
He twists the handle behind the panel, and I see him grit his teeth. Then lightning – in miniature. Almost like he’s holding a white-and-purple stream of it, like one of the gods of old. An arc of pure elektricity that makes a noise like a huge, angry insect and a smell like burning disinfectant.
I hear thick glass cracking, exploding.
The vault doors are open an inch.
Kit’s on the floor, silent and still.
I reach his side before he gasps, “Bracing,” and sits up.
“Are you mad? What the hell?” Now I can smell something vinegary-sweet, something sending a spike of pure panic into the heart of me. I know that smell. It’s the liquid ether that was in the glass in his pocket – that we were saving if needed to knock out the guards – now blotting the floor and Kit’s clothes. Perhaps that’s what’s making him so woozy. That or the massive wave of power that just went through him.
“Reedstone special,” he explains breathlessly. “High-security…” Elektric locks. “Feels like a sledgehammer, every time.”
“Are you burnt?”
“Glove got most. I’ll be okay.” He braces his ribs as I help him to his feet. He tore his stitches climbing the building. I push at the cracked vault doors. They swing away from us, opening, scraping pre-existing grooves in the floor. I catch Kit’s arm.
“You don’t look good.”
“Rude. Should be elektric light inside – but hang the blanket first.” He props up the entryway for a second before sliding to sit on the floor just outside again.
I hang the thick black blanket he brought in his waterproof bag over the gap between the doors – to prevent the strong elektric light Glister said was inside the vault leaking out. The doors are broken now. If we close them the trick lock will trigger and they won’t reopen unless someone drills through a solid inch of iron.
I duck behind the blanket with my candle and find an array of small brass levers just inside. Nothing happens when I flick one up. I try another. “Found switches here … they’re not working.”
I duck back out to see Kit still on the floor. He leans forward, his eyes wide. “Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit,” he’s whispering.
I hear a distant sound of footsteps on the floor above us. Voices – too far away to make out words, and some low laughter.
“The vault shock – it’s tripped a fuse. The guards will come down here,” Kit explains.
There’s nowhere to hide.
“What?”
He can barely stand.
“Tell me how I do that. What does it look like?”
“It’ll be by the generator – more than one. Cylinders on levers with wires out the ends. You can push it down or up… It should be up.” He sounds hesitant.
He’s trying to regain his feet. I hear a key going into the fancy lock upstairs, the door moving.
I snuff my candle so they don’t see its light and creep to the generator. I couldn’t move faster if I tried – the terror’s like treacle.
Their voices are clear now. They’re arguing over who should come down and fix it. Seems they’re not supposed to patrol the undercroft at all.
I know I’m a coward. It means I’m too afraid to do brave things. It also means I’m too afraid to do stupid things likely to get me killed – like breaking into the Life Registry and trying to find a fuse in the dark before a guard arrives to shoot me in the head.
The generator’s still throwing out odd moans. So are the guards upstairs.
“Go on, Creddy. I did it last time – don’t be so lazy.”
A murmur of agreement from the other two and grumbles from Creddy as he starts down.
Without my candle, the generator is looming and indistinct – but I can remember where the row of fuses were, before I lost the light. It’s smaller than the generator I saw in the Reedstones’ mansion, but has the same fuses like levers on the channels out. I imagine them glistening in the murk as I feel along the row. Two are set to off. I flip one up. Nothing. I flip the other. Light floods down the stairs. I notice a brief, dim glow from the vault behind me – before Kit rights the switch I left on. He must have found his feet. A cheer rises from upstairs.
“Whaay! Creddy,” they chorus.
“I haven’t done anything,” Creddy calls, letting out a loose string of curses. He’s close. I can see his shadow at the bottom of the stairs. In fact, I can see his shins.
“Must’ve been the ghost, then – go down and check. Unless you’re scared.”
I stop breathing in case it stirs the shadows.
“Go down yourself,” Creddy grumbles and starts back up the stairs.
Then the door shuts, blocking out the light.
My legs almost give way, but I suck in a deep breath and join Kit in the vault.
Its distant lights flicker on.
It’s enormous. I was expecting capacity – but this is many times my imaginings. They’ve dug it out beyond the building, burrowed under the lawn.
A low groan sounds from somewhere nearby – human, not generator – and my heart sends out a hopeful stutter.