“I don’t think that I’m going to go anywhere with you, Emilia. And while I admit to being desperately curious as to what problem you could face that was so severe it would imbue you with the audacity to come to me asking for help, I find that I am equally moved to give your request the dispassionate rebuff it richly deserves. Good day.” Skinner slung her bag over her shoulder and pushed into the crowd on Market Street, slashing viciously at feet and ankles with her cane in order to force a path.
She almost dropped her groceries when she heard Emilia’s voice again, right beside her. The woman had a miraculous ability to move with a quietness that would put a cat, or a ghost, or the ghost of a cat, to shame.
“There is a substantial amount of money in it,” Emilia began, but Skinner interrupted.
“If you think I’ve sunk so low that I’d prostitute myself for you…” She took a deep breath. “I do not need your money. And if I did need your money, I would starve before I took it.”
“Oh, yes, I suspect you would,” Emilia said. “But would you see someone else starve, to salve your pride? Your new friends have been very welcoming, haven’t they?”
“What…how do you know…?”
“Just a peculiar coincidence, I’m sure,” Emilia said, lightly. “Many of the Akori Indige work for my father, did you know? They’ve a long tradition of work as trainmen and engineers. Something about a resistance to the burns caused by free phlogiston. A lot of indige see employ on Vie-Gorgon trains.”
“What are you saying, exactly?”
“Nothing. Why nothing at all! Except that it’s fortunate that you’ve found so many friends who are lucky enough to find paying work in such bad times as we’re now faced with.” Emilia paused, becoming, yet again, a purely unreadable void. “And, perhaps, wouldn’t you like to be able to give them a little more? Wouldn’t it be worth it to you to contribute more to their livelihoods than doing their grocery shopping for them? I understand the Crabtree-Ennering-Vies have been building spacious new houses down by the waterfront-houses without leaks or mildew. Imagine if…well. Let me just say that I am willing to offer you let’s say..” she lowered her voice. “A thousand crowns.”
“A thousand…?”
“Up front. And another thousand afterwards.”
Skinner hesitated, and hated herself for doing so, but…two thousand crowns… “What, precisely, would you expect me to do?”
“It’s hardly anything at all, really. Just a bit of an errand that I’m afraid my schedule won’t allow for. A cousin of mine is taking the train to Seagirt tomorrow, and, fool of a man that he is, he’s forgotten one of his suitcases. All I would need is for you to take the suitcase to platform eight, and leave it there for him to collect.”
“Aha. Really. And you’re going to pay me two thousand crowns for this. For something that you already pay your porters and valets and such for. What’s in the suitcase?”
“The contents are private, and the suitcase will be locked. I’d love to be able to tell you, of course, but the Vie-Gorgons in general, and my cousin in particular, greatly value their privacy.”
Skinner wanted to be able to tell Emilia to carry her own suitcase around and, perhaps more importantly, where she could stuff her two thousand crowns. But the truth was that Skinner had already begun thinking of ways that she could spend it-of how far a sum like that would go in the hands of the Akori matriarchs. They could provide for their family for years on a sum half that large.
“Why do you need me for this?”
Emilia was dead silent again, the vacuum that she left behind filled immediately with the melange of Market Street noise. “It seems that the Emperor has been growing increasingly…discomfited, these days. He’s instituted a number of security precautions on rail travel. He’s instructed the Coroners to search the baggage of any suspicious persons.”
“I see. And you think that the Coroners are unlikely to consider me suspicious? And since whatever you’ve got in that little satchel is something you’d prefer the Emperor didn’t see, you’d like me to carry it past the checkpoint for you.”
“In a word: yes.”
“In a word: no. I’m sorry Emilia…no, that’s a lie. I’m actually pleased to tell you that I’m not interested in helping you, no matter how many crowns you dangle in front of me.”
“I am sorry to hear that. Well, good day, Miss Skinner. And, do please offer my condolences to Pogo Akori.”
“For what?”
“Ah, did I not mention that? Yes, I suppose I must have forgotten. I am such a flighty creature sometimes, you see? My father’s been changing over to a new system of engineering on his major rail lines. I’m afraid a good portion of the Akori are going to be out of work by the end of the week.”
“You…you would do that?”
“I? Miss Skinner, I don’t have any power at all in this situation. You don’t think I have my father’s ear, do you? That I am directly involved in any of this?”
Skinner found her grip on her cane to be painfully tight, and her thumb hovering above the catch that would let her draw her slender sword from it. One quick slash and one quick thrust, and then the world would not have to suffer Emilia Vie-Gorgon. Emilia Vie-Gorgon and her poisonous treachery, her secretive ambitions, her callous, heartless manipulations…surely it would be worth it? Karine’s family unemployed-a temporary hardship, at best. They’d find work again, wouldn’t they? There was always work to be had for people willing to do it, and a few hungry nights were a small price to pay to put an end to Emilia Vie-Gorgon’s diabolical machinery…
Wasn’t it?
“I’ll consider it,” Skinner said, curtly, and took the narrow stairs down Baker’s Close.
That evening, after a warm, spicy stew and a frankly astonishing amount of hot punch, while the Akori chatted about the day’s events and told each other jokes, and demanded that Skinner play strings so they could sing along, a messenger arrived at the house in Bluewater.
He knocked crisply and briefly, but was gone by the time Karine had opened the door he was gone. “Miss Skinner,” Karine called. “Someone left this for you.” There was some muted, hasty discussion in Indt. “I don’t know what it is. It looks like a suitcase? And a train ticket?”
Thirty-Two
Leaving the suitcase was, in terms of practice, a fairly painless process. The coroners on duty-James Ennering, Gorud, two trolljrmen and three humans that Skinner didn’t know-offered her pleasant courtesies as she walked past the checkpoint unsearched. She handed in her ticket, went up to platform eight, set the suitcase down. Waited for a few moments, then left. All perfectly ordinary and simple activities that she had done many times before-speaking with people, carrying suitcases, offering tickets. Now, of course, these ordinary actions were wracked by paranoia; infusing every nerve-ending of her body with sheer terror and dousing her mind in quivering adrenaline, such that she was sure it must shine on her skin like a red beacon telling all passer-by that she was involved somehow, that she was guilty of clandestine activities, that she was suspicious. She found herself hoping, every time someone spoke to her, that they would notice her sweating, or her nervousness, and demand to search her bag. Every raised voice on the platform, every hurried footstep, became that of a dutiful coroner’s, double-checking the last of the parcels, about to expose Skinner and her complicity with the Vie-Gorgons. It would be a relief if James had questioned her more thoroughly, and if he only had, she’d have been pleased to give up and put down the suitcase-which had now become an abominable, impossible weight in her hand-so that she could go to prison and finally ease her troubled conscience.
None of these things happened. It was strange to hear the grand concourse devoid of its usual murmuring ambience, but travel was light today, as many were dissuaded by the sudden appearance of the Coroners. Of course, because the papers had all been seized, and publishing had all been suspended, it was impossible for Skinner to know precisely why such draconian restrictions had been imposed. All she could do was listen to the echoes of her footsteps as she approached platform eight, and wish that she were more suspicious.