another busy evening
I follow the sound of the groan to our right. They’ve walled off a section. The door has a heavy bolt, padlocked. There’s a small window high up in the door, and a flap at the bottom, also bolted. Kit stands on tiptoe to peer in the window. He looks at me and shakes his head.
“Not Zak,” he says.
He’s already cracked the padlock. He draws the bolts back and swings the door out.
An elektric light dangles from the middle of the ceiling – it must have come on with the others. The Artist sits, bleary-eyed, but otherwise looking remarkably well – no obvious bruises – at the edge of a low pallet. The smell of chamber pot pervades, but it’s plush, for a cell. The bed clean, a jug of water. He’s condemned, but they don’t want him keeling over before it’s time to impress Clarion Lovemore.
He startles to full wakefulness when he sees us. “What’s going on?”
“Have you seen a boy?” I ask him. “Twelve years old, looks like me.”
He shakes his head, confused.
“Have you?” I have to hear him say it.
“N-No,” he says.
Zako’s not here.
“You’re going to get me killed,” the Artist says. Not very grateful, all things considered.
“You do know you’re to have your head cut off in front of the high governor any day now?” Kit reminds him. “Now point us to the repayer files.”
Blithe glowers.
At least he hasn’t wasted his few days as the Portcaye Life Registry guest of honour. He indicates the section of the vault files we need.
Kit clicks open one cabinet after another. “Getting close. Sutton, Symonds … Taler,” he says softly.
Ruzi Taler, Zako Taler.
Fear clutches my throat, but I don’t see any red stamp. It’s safe to read. The last substantive entry is Zako’s bill of sale to the Venors – six and a half years ago. His time’s been paid up front to the end of this year – not unusual. If they’ve killed him, it’s not been recorded.
He’s not dead, I tell myself. They haven’t caught him.
Kit opens more cabinets.
His Eminence Valour Venor and the whole Venor clan have files like everyone else. I don’t know what I expected – a gold cabinet just for him? But no – the Skøl like to look even-handed where Life Records are concerned.
Venor’s Record says he’s forty-seven. Ruzi’s age. He was born in County Calderok, the Scarlets’ home county. He moved when he was seventeen – the paperwork’s all here – to County Rundvaer, where his political career began.
The first entry in his Life Record, registering his birth, is on thick paper. Old-fashioned and coloured with the decades. The Life Registry insignia and motto’s at the top, details listed in the middle, and an official stamp and signature at the bottom.
Name and Surname. Sex. Date of Birth. Place of Birth (County and Sub-County). Father’s Name – Not provided. Mother’s Name – Serenity Venor. Father’s Profession – Not provided. Mother’s Profession – Mixed Labour.
The pages that follow record his marriage, his travels, his life paid.
It’s unusual for someone like Venor to have an unknown father, but that’s clearly not something he’s bothered to hide.
The Artist flips through the pages thoughtfully.
“You’re looking for a forgery?” he says.
“We are,” I tell him. “Does it all look in order to you?”
“Looks can be deceiving. The vradiance scope might reveal something,” he murmurs.
“That’s what we thought,” I tell him eagerly.
He shuts the Record and looks at me. “But what makes you think the magistrate’s had this forged?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you. But it’s a good reason. We’re certain of it.”
He blinks, seemingly bewildered and perhaps a little hurt.
“You can tell me,” he says, affably enough.
“Maybe when we’re out of here,” Kit offers over his shoulder. He’s breaking another lock. “Payday,” he says. “Might as well take some of this lot with us, no?”
The cabinet’s full of the watermarked, impossible-to-forge blank paper that Fidelity Hemman was killed over. Blithe fair salivates at the sight of it. “Gold dust,” he whispers, stroking an approving hand down the stack.
“How much is one worth?” I ask.
“How many years of life can you write on it?” He grins.
Kit packs his waterproof sack with Venor’s Life Record and a generous helping of the blank paper, cinching the bundle tight with a bit of rope.
It’s time to go. He has to be back over the fence before the grey of pre-dawn.
I pull the open vault door shut behind us. The heavy handle twists round like it’s ghost-possessed. We can hear deadbolts, four or more, sliding into place like clockwork. The trick lock.
“They won’t be able to get in,” Kit says. “Not without a drill anyway. It’ll buy you some time.”
He shoulders his bundle.
“Go on,” I urge. “Don’t wait for me to climb up all those stairs.”
Kit touches the hand I’m trying to shoo him off with and lowers his voice. “Don’t forget to put the stops back.”
“I won’t.”
“Leave that poker somewhere else. It’s not worth the risk going back to Venor’s office.”
“I know.”
He nods at Blithe, turns to look at me again, then takes off.
I face the Artist, who’s swamped in a hooded clerk’s robe. The perfect disguise, and we found a stack of them in the vault. I know it’s him, but the effect is still unnerving.
“You ready?”
He nods. He plans to hide in plain sight – well, in a water closet, until shortly after opening.
We’re counting on the guards assuming he’s just an ordinary clerk heading out on an early errand. He’ll be carrying nothing if they search him, concealing no paper, wearing no bruises, raising no suspicion.
I wish I could dash out under a clerk’s robe first thing too, but I have to wait for the change of the guard. The risk of someone spotting my hair or my skin or my eyes, even if I were to wear a robe, is too great.
We’re cutting it fine. In an hour at most, the early workers will begin to arrive. I fold the black blanket into a neat square.
“Will you be all right?” I ask the Artist.
“Worry about yourself, young lady.”
The sun’s up when I reach the office upstairs. The window’s almost shut. Kit must have pushed it down hanging off the outside.
I’ve a sudden vision of him in his black clothes, sprawled on the grass three flights below, neck broken, surrounded by fluttering white paper. Another crow, failed to fledge. I push my nose to the window and look down. The neat lawn is unmarred, glistening wetly – rain and dew – with no sign anyone’s tramped through it.
I close the glass flush, lock it and screw the stops back in before wiping paint flakes and drips of rain off the sill with my sleeve. I head back down with the wrench in my pocket and Venor’s iron poker cradled in the black blanket. I can leave both in my hiding space.
Round a bend in the stairwell, a man is watering a potted palm. I didn’t hear him, and now I’m facing him, trying to pretend I didn’t just nearly jump out of my skin. He doesn’t notice. Not a clerk, a cleaner, in plain clothes. I briefly consider stoving in his head with the poker, splattering the clean, white-painted wood and pristine white walls with blood and brains. It makes me feel powerful.
Instead, I greet him brightly.
“Morning,” he replies. “You new?”
“I am.”
“You won’t be so cheerful in a week,” he predicts. I keep moving.
I’m buzzing as I throw the bolt inside the trap. Blood hums in my ears. I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. What if I snored or cried out and some clerk heard me?
No – I need to think. When we have Venor’s secret, will it be enough to destroy him? Enough to earn Zako a pardon? Will they believe us?
I sit in the dark under the boards, stewing.
The library’s empty when I finally ease up out of the trap. So’s my basket. The foyer looks no different than it did yesterday. No panic. If they’ve realized they can’t get into the vault, they’re keeping it quiet.
They don’t know they’ve lost the bird their boss was fattening for the axe. Venor’s prisoner and Venor’s secret, both flown. His secret, I think, whatever it is. Soon we’ll know. I can taste it already.
I skim my eyes over the few clerks loitering. No sign of any higher-ups. No Venor.
I’m crossing the foyer when I spot Gracie coming downstairs. She sees me too, does a double take. I dash her a quick smile and pick up my pace rather than waiting. She wouldn’t make a scene, would she? I need to get outside before we find out.
The guards on the door give my empty basket and apron of coin a perfunctory scan. They’re warning some visitors off with a tale about processing going slow today, saying clerks have been called off attending to something for Clarion Lovemore. “You’re better off trying tomorrow,” they say. I bet that’s a line they’ve been told. I bet it’s the vault.
Gracie catches up with me as I’m turning off the bottom of the outdoor steps.
“What’s all this? You’ve got our big basket! Kit said he loaned it to friends. You weren’t to be selling pastries today…” But she looks worried – on my account – and she’s pitching her voice low.
“You got me.” I glance at her. “Don’t ask me anything, Gracie.”
We walk on together in silence. Kit’s at the far end of the road. I can see him hovering, like a young man at leisure, out taking the air. He’s not fooling me. Still, he looks remarkably well – not at all like someone who ripped his stitches climbing fifty feet up the side of a building the night before, only to be shocked with enough force to kill a draught kine.
He takes the empty basket off me, winks at Gracie. She just gives a tired sigh and walks on alone.
“You did it!” He holds out his elbow.
“We did it.” I slip my arm through it and take a deep breath. The air smells different. Fresher. “Did you take all that blank paper to the Reedstones?”
“Very nearly all of it.” He grins. “Kept some for our secret stash.”
“Where’s that, then?”
“And Venor’s Record?” I feel my free hand shaking. Nervous exhaustion.
“It’s stashed too. We can take it to GR Locks and look at it under the vradiance scope.”
The stash is a false compartment under one of the seats in the Scarlet Scarab – the shiny red carriage the Scarlets keep stabled in the alley behind the Lugger.
Kit takes my hand as we walk with our secret prize through the Skates to the Reedstones’ building.
Goldie Reedstone’s been expecting us. Her earrings are studs today. Huge blue gems to match her eyes. She leads us through to the kitchen, where Lev leans over the big wooden table, working on an elektrical diagram. He’s got a huge sheet of paper I immediately covet.
“Blithe tells us you have Venor’s Life Record,” Goldie says, pouring lukewarm fikka into thin ceramic cups. “That wasn’t part of your brief.”
“We have our reasons. Can we use your vradiance scope?” I’m tired. And all out of patience.
Seems Goldie is too. She drains her fikka. “Yes, of course. Lev? Let’s go.”
I leave my small cup on the table and follow them to the door to the dark space. Goldie knocks sharply.
“Just a moment!” Glister calls from the other side. “Don’t let the light in.”
“Come in!” Blithe calls eventually. He and Glister are hovering over a metal-and-glass contraption – two long vertical tubes with a pair of glass plates and several inches of air between them, knobs and dials crusting the sides like limpets.
Glister smiles at me. “Ah. You made it out of the maw! Well done.”
Goldie shuts the door behind us. There’s a sweep fixed to the bottom, to prevent any light leaking in from outside.
Blithe fiddles with the vradiance scope while we stand in silence.
He eventually holds out a hand for Venor’s file, which Kit passes over, opened to the first entry.
Blithe takes his time again, mounting it between the glass plates, before catching Goldie’s eye. “Ready,” he says.
Finally. Exhaustion and excitement play tug of war with my guts.
She nods and cuts the lights, plunging us into a darkness so thick I feel I might be floating away.
A sound like summer insects begins to build as a dim violet glow gathers around the lips of the metal tubes nearest the glass plates. It’s nothing like I imagined. Not bright like the purple Skivårnat lanterns. It’s a bluer violet too.
Blithe fiddles with a knob on the top of the scope until the light focuses to a triangular, violet-edged shape, dark at the centre. The beam illuminates nothing beyond its immediate target – a corner of Venor’s Life Record.
A hand finds mine, anchoring and assuring. I’d recognize Kit’s touch anywhere.
Blithe tilts the scope and uses a pair of dials near the base to move the glass plates with their pinched prize, crab-like, up and sideways, up and sideways. The triangle of weak violet-rimmed dark plays over the birth registration as he begins to scan from the bottom line.
Mother’s Profession – Mixed Labour.
Father’s Profession – Not provided.
Mother’s Name – Serenity Venor.
Father’s Name – Not provided.
Place of Birth – County Calderok, Sub-County
North-West 2.
Date of Birth – Fourmonth 14th, Golden Era 142.
Sex – Male
Surname –
A white glow shines out of the Record. My heart soars and swoops.
I’m not the only one in the room to gasp.
Here’s the lie.
The forged Venor appears as a dark line over a glowing white underlay the scope reveals.
He’s not Valour Venor. He’s Valour Gusting.
No one speaks for several heartbeats. All I can hear is the quiet scritch of Blithe moving the dials on the vradiance scope back and forth a few times. Gusting. Gusting.
“Well…” Blithe’s the one to break our silence. “Looks like there’s a stain on the magistrate’s name!”
Lev stares, stunned, at the surname that matches his own.
Goldie switches the light back on and pushes the door open. Blithe powers down the scope.
My eyes blink away stars and then find Kit’s.
I understand now. It falls into place so neatly. That’s what Zako heard.
Venor’s wife called him Gusting scum, not disgusting scum.
Venor, upright citizen, magistrate and future governor – he’s like Lev. A Sting Trust child, marked by his name. But he’s more than two decades older – grew up crushed under an even greater stigma. Born to a mother too irresponsible to afford his life. No father to own him. They would have said he was a feckless child, unemployable. Work-shy. Born bad. Born wrong. Useless. A drain on society. The kind of person he despises.
How he must hate himself, to come through all that and still become … Magistrate Venor. Choosing to wear his title and all its trappings like armour. Choosing a side that would purge him if it knew, then desperately purging the town of filth and all that nonsense. Obsessing over showing the high governor what model lives of Skøl rectitude we lead, out here in the New West.
“Let’s have a drink,” Goldie orders.
Blithe detaches Venor’s Record from the vradiance scope and passes it to Glister. We file to the long withdrawing room, but only Lev and Blithe plonk down on the soft green sofas.
I think of Felicity on that boat – her face when I told her Venor’s wife called him disgusting. Did she figure it out? Is that why he had her amber ring in his little trophy dish?
No one’s talking. Goldie opens the decanter but can’t find any glasses on her drinks stand.
Glister paces to the patio doors and opens them. He puts Venor’s file down on one of the little low marble tables.
“This is it, isn’t it?” I say. My voice is small in the tense room. No one answers. “We go to the high governor and her people with this – we expose Venor. Make him pay for what he’s done to all of us, to Zako.”
Silence. I look at Kit. Why doesn’t he say something?
I plough on. “If his name is exposed, his actions will have to stop. His backers will drop him! His supporters, they’ll hate him. The power he’s built – he’ll lose it! The power he holds over all of us, squashing all of us—”
“We can’t be hasty,” Goldie says. “Aside from feeding the Gusting stigma –” her eyes dart to Lev – “you got that Record illegally. Everyone will know you were in the vault. That you freed Blithe. That you know where he is.”
I bite my lip. “Why don’t we send it to the papers, anonymously?”
Glister sighs. “Because he’ll just say it’s a fake. Especially now Blithe’s out. Someone frees the Artist, best forger of our time, and suddenly a document incriminating Venor turns up? It’s too convenient.”
I’m so frustrated I could cry. “But he won’t be able to produce his real document.”
“He only has to say the ‘original’ was stolen from the vault in the break-in,” Blithe points out. “They’re right. We can’t do anything with this – not yet, at least.”
“I can’t believe this.” I hate it. The truth doesn’t matter to any of these people. But I hate it even more that they’re right; Venor can weather this. The futility of it chokes me.
“Perhaps we can make it work for us still,” Lev offers. “Keep it to ourselves and hold it over his head. We’d have power over him. He won’t want to call our bluff.”
Goldie’s pursed face relaxes a little. She fiddles with one of her earrings.
“Yes…” muses Glister. “Power over the governor of the whole New West.”
“You – you’d let him be anointed governor?” I whisper.
My eyes meet Kit’s. He shakes his head ever so slightly. The Reedstones will always be Skøl first, I realize. Brickheads playing power games while children’s lives hang in the balance. I should never have entertained the hope they’d be different.
“And would this power of ours be enough to make him pardon Zako Taler?” I ask slowly, dog with a bone.
“You’re thinking too small.” Lev chides me like a schoolchild.
“Too small?” I murmur, anger rising, buoyed up on all their hot air. “You wouldn’t have this card to play in the first place if it wasn’t for Zako.”
Kit walks closer to Glister. He surveys the room. A breeze through the glass patio doors stirs his shirt, and I notice a cockerel strutting past outside. It’s one of their fancy breeds, shiny-winged with fluffy tufts. “We need to think of a way to protect Zako,” he tells everyone, calm as ever. “You owe us.”
“Naturally,” Glister rumbles. “We will think on it.” He glances outside and steps away from the doors.
Silence. Is he dismissing us?
“I’m sure it’s not beyond your wit.” Kit’s face stays innocent, but something angry breaks through in his voice.
“We have other priorities,” Glister says. “You understand us.”
“Perfectly,” I tell him. My anger is coldly consuming now. These brickheads aren’t fit to lace Kit’s boots, and they’re trying to chuck us out of the back door like a pair of their hounds.
Kit and Glister both reach for Venor’s Life Record at the same time. Kit gets it first, but Glister snatches it out of his fingers. “I think it’s safest – for everyone – if we hang on to this.” He smiles like an affable uncle.
I can’t get out of here quick enough. Kit walks at my side, through the gleaming corridors, out of the front door – we leave it open, along the gravel drive. “So much for a revolution,” I say.
Kit looks drained. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not to be sorry. They should be sorry.”
“We can go to the papers like you said,” Kit says. “We can go now—”
“No!” I soften my tone. “The worst part is they’re right about that. It won’t work. I just need… I need sleep.”
I will make my own plans. I am done playing along with the Reedstones. Tonight I play for keeps.
I sleep like the dead until Ruzi wakes me after his shift.
I tell him about the Registry job. About the vradiance scope and Valour Gusting. About Felicity’s ring and the boat trip with Venor and Felicity. About Zako’s missing third letter.
He listens with a strangely blank expression. I wonder if that’s what I look like when I’m trying to squash my feelings.
“What if the branders found him? What if they just … disappeared him?” I whisper.
And then he starts crying, red-eyed and awful. I can count on one hand the times I’ve seen him cry. He hugs me – he never does that either.
“Sorry,” he splutters. Sorry because he’s crying on my shoulder or sorry about Zako perhaps being dead?
I squeeze his arms and draw away, wiping my cheeks.
Ruzi’s face is still crumpled, but he’s in control again. He takes a deep breath.
“Zak’s like you,” he says. “A fighter.”
“I wish I was half as brave as him,” I confide in a small voice.
“You’re brave, my girl. You’re the bravest. Just believe it.”
I tell him I’m off for a walk. That I need some time alone. I take what I need from my room. And from Sinton Square. I pick up a pretty woven basket from one of the sellers in Rundvaer Square and head to the Lugger for the rest.
I’ve planned another busy evening.