Beckett laid a finger across his lips for silence, and gestured for Valentine to search the hall to the right, hopefully working his way into the interior courtyard. The two men drew their guns, held them low and ready as they crept through the dark. Once separated from Valentine, Beckett began to notice the hallucinatory sounds again-the faint whine of some eldritch engine, the distant echoes of choked-off screams, a murmuring…
No. The murmuring was real. Real men were talking to each other, in the structure that occupied most of the Abbey’s courtyard. Beckett thumbed back the hammer of his gun and tried to slip discreetly past the rusty-hinged doors.
The inside of the structure was not dissimilar to any kind of warehouse: a claustrophobic mountain of plain wooden boxes, towering on either side of a three or four narrow alleys. The place was lit by a few blue phlogiston lamps, hanging high overhead; they were the military-grade lamps, with thick metal shields around the sides to prevent volatile leaks. There was an empty space in the midst of the boxes, where three mean spoke to each other in hushed voices. Beckett took a deep breath to push his fear away, only to find there was no fear or worry-just a raw, empty space.
“Coroners,” Beckett said, as he approached, startling the three men. “No one moves, put your hands on your heads.” In his many years as a coroner, Elijah Beckett had said precisely these words in precisely this order a countless number of times. In those same years, only four times had the suspects to which he spoke ever complied with the orders.
These men were no exception; they recovered quickly from their surprise, split up, drew weapons, and fanned out in an attempt to surround him.
“Who are you?” Spat the man in the middle, not one of the two visitors, so probably the quartermaster who was arranging things. He was handsome enough, though Beckett thought he wore his sideburns too long. He had a new, nickel-plated revolver pointed at the coroner.
Where is Valentine? Beckett wondered, but the thought had no real traction. No thoughts had any traction, they just floated away from him, along with a whirling line of voices and footsteps and gunshots. Should I be afraid? These men mean to kill me. He thought. The hell with it, I’m not afraid of anything, anymore. Without the hesitation that plagues even the most experienced shootists, Beckett raised his gun towards the man directly to his left, and shot him in the face.
The sound of his gun, loud and bright like a thunderbolt in his hand, was lost to the soft sounds of gunfire in his mind, and echoed by a return volley of bullets that went mercifully wide, tearing chunks of wood from the empty boxes. The handsome quartermaster was screaming then, not at Beckett, but at the gunman to his right, Beckett couldn’t hear him, or couldn’t be bothered to hear him, just turned and fired. He hit the gunman high in the shoulder, sending the man whirling to the ground.
“…hit the munitions, you idiot!” The quartermaster was saying. He dropped his weapon. “Look, okay, look! Unarmed. I surrender, all right? I surrender, just stop fucking shooting.” Beckett stepped forward and struck the man across the face, using the full weight of his antique revolver. The man fell, and Beckett kicked him twice in the ribs, hard, before he could stand. “Shit. Shit,” he gasped. “I surrender, for fuck-” Beckett kicked him in the teeth, and he slumped into unconsciousness.
“What…what…are you…” the gunman moaned. “You’re supposed to arrest…”
Beckett whirled on him. “Who are you working for?” The man’s face was different, now, there was a deep dent in his skull and his were glazed. Dummies, Beckett thought, how did the dummies get here? How did they find their way from Kaarcag? It would reach out to him, Beckett knew, try and crush him with its stupidly strong hands.
“You’re supposed to…”
Here, Beckett told himself. You’re here, in Trowth. He’s a heretic. The old coroner stepped on the man’s wounded shoulder, digging the toe of his shoe into the bullet wound. The gunman screamed. “You were picking something up here. Where were you taking it? Who are you working for?”
“You can’t-”
Beckett pressed harder, and the man screamed again. “You don’t tell me, boy. You don’t tell me anything. I have a question, you answer it. That’s how this works. Understand?” Beckett leaned in again, coaxing a ragged gasp from the man’s throat. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” the man stammered. “Yes.”
“Who do you work for?”
The man shook his head, sweat streamed down his face, which now was wracked with pain. “I can’t. He’ll kill me.”
Without warning, Beckett turned and fired another bullet into the dead man behind him. The action was so sudden, the gunshot so sharp, that the gunman at his feet cried out, involuntarily. Beckett leaned down and glared, one eye hard as a polished stone, one just a bloody black pit into the recesses of his skull. “Idiot. What do you think I’m going to do to you?” He kicked the man in his wound again. “Who do you work for?”
The gunman coughed and choked and spat out, “John,” from behind his tears. “Anonymous John.”
“What are you doing?” Valentine whispered, softly. Beckett hadn’t seen him enter, barely registered the sound of his voice.
“Where were you taking the munition?”
“An address…in. Bluewater.” He nodded towards his dead companion. “He’s got it. Written.”
Beckett turned to Valentine. “Get it. I’ll be outside.” He threw one last, spiteful kick at the man’s face, and stomped out into the warming springtime air.
Nineteen
It was after the third performance of Theocles, at yet another high-spirited soiree at the home of the Raithower Vie-Gorgons, that the official news of the play’s demise was received. It was some time after midnight-considering that the performance was a several-hour affair in the first place, and was combined with six curtain calls and a substantial amount of paperwork required for the royal censor to fill out, this may in fact be regarded as an unusually quick response. In any case, some time after twelve, a messenger arrived from the royal palace at the Raithower home; he was admitted by the Vie-Gorgon major domo, and brought directly to Emilia Vie-Gorgon, who decided to make the announcement to her guests herself.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she began, her voice full of emotion that Skinner could not help but think was spurious. While she was no expert on the subject of Emilia Vie-Gorgon and her many modes of expression, Skinner was fairly certain that she’d never heard the young woman sound so moved about anything. “I have an…unfortunate. A terribly unfortunate announcement. It seems that His Royal Majesty…” here she pronounced the word “majesty” in such a way as to suggest that it was so thoroughly distasteful that she regretted requiring her tongue to say it at all, “…may the Word bless him,” pure sarcasm there, “…has found something objectionable in the content of our play.” How she managed to say this while sounding completely innocent of purposefully commissioning the most objectionable play imaginable was a mystery to Skinner. “He has, just today, announced that, in his position as head of the Church Royal, he has added Theocles to the Black List. Future performances are prohibited by law. Printing a copy of the play is prohibited by law. Owning a copy is prohibited by law.” Her voice took on a sly tone here. “I expect that all of you will want to destroy your copies as soon as possible.”