Brass bones? Everything was making less sense to him, lately, and Beckett started to worry that it was the disease, eating away at his mind. Would this have made sense a year ago? Someone had found a chunk of brass in the shape of a shoulder-blade in a pile of offal in Red Lanes. The gendarmes, pleased to finally have a lap into which they could dump all of their weird crap, had gleefully passed it on to Beckett. Who…why would you even do that? He looked back at some of the other reports, accompanied by kirliotypes of men who’d starved themselves to death by vomiting ectoplasm, or whose hearts had given out trying to support extra limbs. Dead-ends, all of them. Well, he thought. I’d better check.
The officer from the Committee on Moral Responsibility was, as usual, taking tea in the sitting room. One of the privileges of being cousins to the Emperor-even eighth-cousins like the Gorgon-Ennering-Crabtrees-was the possibility of getting a job in which your primary responsibility was taking tea in places. He wore a dark blue suit, with bulls embroidered in a delicate green around his sleeves. Edmund? Edelred? Ed-something, Beckett thought. Whatever.
“Going out, Mr. Beckett?”
Beckett turned his gruesome, death’s head stare on the man, but said nothing.
“Ah. Hm. Inspector Beckett.”
The coroner said nothing still, and began the laborious process of shrugging into his winter coat. It was heavy, and his sore joints had begun to impede his mobility. Should have shot up before I left, he thought to himself. Too late, now. He had no desire to let Ed-whatever Gorgon-Ennering-Crabtree see him use the needles.
“Where are you going, Inspector?” The political officer asked again. He had a little notebook with him, presumably to help him keep track of Beckett’s moral failings. When the coroner failed to respond yet again, the officer raised his voice. “Mr…Inspector Beckett, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me apprised of your activities.” Beckett wrapped his red scarf around his face; it hid his mangled-looking nose, at least, even if it left his empty eye socket staring at hapless passers-by. “Mr. Beckett. Excuse me. Excuse me!”
As he turned to leave, Beckett found the hallway obstructed by the huge, misshapen form of Mr. Stitch. The reanimate, built over a century ago from spare, dead parts, watched impassively from the brass lenses in its eye sockets. It still wore its huge, heavy coat, but had removed the three-cornered hat that it usually wore.
“Beckett.” Stitch said, with its terrible, sepulchral voice. It took a deep breath from the billows that had replaced his lungs. “Where?” Stitch had been about its enigmatic business. Beckett thought it had been consulting with the Emperor’s doctors.
“A lead,” he said. “One of the Red Lanes cases.” He grimaced as he heard the political officer scratching something in his notebook.
“Valentine?”
“He’s…working on something else for me.” More scratching from Gorgon-Ennering-Vie and his notebook. Beckett gritted his teeth, resentful of having to have to explain himself, resentful of the political officer and his incessant inquiries, resentful of the whole situation.
“Take. Gorud.” Stitch rasped, then shambled off towards its office, the metal braces on its legs clanking. Mr. Stitch had a difference engine for a brain-an engine of miraculous complexity. It was capable of perfect memory, of limitless calculations, of astonishing insight. Mr. Stitch was almost never wrong, and its advice invariably turned out to be not just useful, but the best possible advice that anyone under a particular set of circumstances could give. Beckett hated it.
He hated this particular advice as well. Gorud was a therian, a kind of ape-man native to Corsay. Small numbers had been brought to Trowth; because of their linguistic dexterity, they were used often as translators or interpreters. Since the end of the war, the numbers of therians in the city had increased. They were generally a pleasant, good-natured people, though unused to the frigid temperatures of the imperial capital. Gorud wore a bulky coat that fitted him poorly, despite the fact that it had a hole cut out for his tail.
If Beckett didn’t like Gorud, it was certainly nothing personal, as the therian was as good-natured an example of a member of his species had could be desired. It was not even a particular specism on Beckett’s part, though he did tend to lean towards the human-centric. In fact, Beckett just didn’t like it when things changed. He spent all his time trying to get on top of things, trying to manhandle the elements of life and work in to place, to make everything just so-and then, invariably, he was saddled with something new. Just when he’d gotten everything figured out, gotten everything sorted, the therians came along, or the sharpsies went mad, or something equally frustrating and inconvenient happened.
“You,” Beckett told the therian, who sat on his heels on the couch. “Come with me.”
Gorud, sensitive to Beckett’s disdain, said nothing, and padded after the old coroner on four legs. They found the Coroners’ regular coachman, Harry, in the guardhouse outside, and set off for Red Lanes.
Beckett and the therian rode in relative silence, as the coach creaked and clattered along. Outside, Harry had been outfitted with his best winter gear, and a variety of small heating elements-small bands he could wrap around his hands, an emitter that sat next to him. It was a waste of energy that would have been unthinkable a year ago, but since the end of the war, fuel was cheap and plentiful.
Inside, Beckett watched the therian. Gorud had a strangely long, leathery face, that seemed largely impassive, except for a pair of quick, roving eyes. He sat on his heels, his arms wrapped around his knees, as usual. “Do you know Red Lanes?” Beckett asked him.
Gorud twitched and puffed out his cheeks. “Live there,” he said. “With some cousins.” Gorud had a warm tenor of a voice which always surprised Beckett with its clarity and timbre.
“Know any of the gendarmes?”
The therian looked up at him with an unreadable expression, and shifted in his seat. “One,” he said, finally. “Nasty thing, with a mark on his face, like this.” He drew a number five in the air with one long, agile finger. Therians were predisposed to illiteracy, Beckett knew, but at least they could recognize symbols. “He kept trying to move us from the eyrie, but we didn’t like it.”
“And?”
The therian yawned, abruptly, displaying a huge mouth and four canine teeth each as long as Beckett’s thumb. “Haven’t seen him in a while,” Gorud said, and made a popping sound with his lips.
“Hnf.” Beckett replied, and silence predominated for a while. As they clattered down the hill, Gorud abruptly perked up. “What?” Beckett asked him. “What-” A faint rumbling reached his ears growing in intensity, the sound of a massive wave rolling towards them. “What is that? Do you hear…?”
The rumbling turned into a ringing sound in his ears, and suddenly black water crashed through the windows of the coach, washing over him, tearing him from his seat and out, out into the dark riptide of salty ocean that choked him, strangled him, struggled down this throat and threw him hard against smooth rocks. Beckett’s head banged against metal; he felt a rib give way.
The water retreated then, leaving Beckett on a smooth brass beach that sloped steeply downward, and he fell, sliding along its length, still coughing up seawater; he saw the moon beneath him, green and leprous, luminous with its own baleful light, black cities crawling across its surface, as hands reached out from the hot, red-gold brass and clutched at him, hands that were made of tangles of fat, black, boneless leeches, that sought out bare skin with their tiny, puckered mouths. The hands gripped him, and something like a mouth appeared, a nest of teeth with no lips or throat, just independently shuddering dentition that stretched and jittered and longed to puncture…