He did not even have the energy to put this fool in his place. “Please take me to him.”
The quadroon led Quinx to a motorcar. The priest groaned inwardly. Those beastly things were never comfortable, and tended to break down as often as they ran. This one was an open-topped steamer, already stoked up from the sound of the boiler. It was pretty enough, he had to admit, with the deep blue lacquer on fenders, hood and body, and a pleasing amount of brightwork for trim.
“Here, sir, in the back. I gave you some cushions. No luggage being sent down?”
“Just myself.” Quinx carried a small satchel, but this trip had been so sudden that he’d brought no trunks or wardrobes. “Please, take me to Matroit.”
A few minutes later, they rumbled off to the accompaniment of an ear-piercing shriek of a release valve. Quinx looked up and back at Blind Justess now shadowed in the encroaching dusk. She was just a shape in the last light of day, a hawk hovering over the city looking for her next prey.
Lucan Matroit had the good sense to arrange a meal for Quinx at the Plenary Hall. The foolish steamer driver had managed not to kill them or anyone else on the way, and kept the thing running smoothly enough to avoid destroying Quinx’ appetite, so he tucked into the cold pickle and pudding as soon as possible after the basic pleasantries were dispensed with.
The matter at hand was so critical that they met alone, without the nigh ubiquitous secretaries, clerks, or servants. Quinx briefly regretted leaving Kurts aboard Blind Justess, but he’d wanted badly to keep Valdoux under observation. He also truly had foreseen several potentially critical uses for the airship and her equipage.
Lacking servants, the meal was sparse and strange, something that novices in the seminary might have prepared for themselves. Quinx had grown up on fresh cabbage, preserved peppers, and the occasional bit of goat meat, so even this was welcome. The cold pickle was a fairly ambitious tray of vegetables along with a few regrettable cheeses. The pudding was one of those curious northern dishes that had become popular in Highpassage the past few years, all chewy breading around plums and bits of organ meat.
Still, he ate, and listened to Lucan’s sadly incomplete story.
“… so I had Dr. Abutti shown out immediately,” the Secretary General was saying. “In the moment, I was somewhat concerned for his safety, but far more concerned with settling the audience.”
“Would they have done him a mischief?” Quinx asked around a mouthful of pungent eggplant.
“In the Plenary Hall?” Matroit shrugged. “Unlikely. But anything is possible. There have been three murders in this building since its dedication, and almost a dozen suicides. The Planetary Society itself is not ordinarily a risk to life and limb. Passions here tend to be more, ah, individualized.”
“Three murders?”
“Surely you recall the death of Drs. Messier and Ashbless? They fought a duel on the rooftop over a dispute concerning the orbits of the moons of Mars. We had only the twenty-eight inch reflector back then, and observations were inconclusive.”
“I take it both men lost.”
“Or won, as it may be. Choice of weapons went to Dr. Ashbless, who unaccountably decided on carboys of high molar sulfuric acid fed into spray pumps.”
“Never mind,” Quinx said. “I believe I’d prefer to finish my dinner. Please continue your tale.”
“Well, I quickly realized I should have detained Dr. Abutti rather than sending him out into the city. I sent two of our porters over to the New Garaden Institute, where they determined that Dr. Abutti had been taken away by Thalassojustity Marines.”
Oh Increate, grant me strength now. “That would not be the outcome I might have prayed for.”
“Nor I, sir.”
If the Thalassojustity held Abutti, anything was possible. Their concerns were largely orthogonal to those of the Lateran—the two institutions had coexisted in varying states of competition for the better part of two thousand years, after all—but this was not the Externalist crisis of L.5964, when the Thalassojustity’s interests had been directly compromised.
Presiding Judge Eraster Goins was in charge these days. The Consistitory Office had little information on him, none of it sufficiently damning to serve as any leverage. And under his leadership, the Thalassojustity had showed some remarkable innovations.
Quinx’ heart grew leaden at the thought of what innovations Goins could derive from Abutti’s madness. “I am a Thalassocrete of the highest degree,” he said, something very unusual for a Lateran priest, and in his case rarely spoken aloud. “I believe I shall have to pay my respects at the Thalassojustity Palace quite shortly.”
His body cried for sleep, but his soul cried panic. Despite what Ion had told him, Quinx was very much afraid of what might be proven.
And by whom.
The quadroon managed to navigate the steam car from the Plenary Hall to the outer entrance of the Thalassojustity Temple, once more without actually inflicting material harm on Quinx or anyone else. The hour was nearly nine o’clock when they chuffed to a shuddering halt outside the tall, studded gates.
Prior centuries had brought more than one angry mob here. Not to mention a few armies. Though most of the old walls were long gone, replaced with timber lots and gardens of roses and blackberries, the fortified gatehouse itself still blocked the only public road connecting Highpassage to the Thalassojustity’s territory. This was an international border, and by and large, casual tourists were neither welcomed nor wanted.
The Revered Bilious Quinx was neither casual, nor a tourist. And he was exhausted.
Staggering from the car over the protestations of the driver, he yanked on the bell pull beside the main gate. A pale, idiot face peered from a darkened window in the gatehouse proper.
“Public hours is closed!” the man shouted through the glass.
Quinx leaned close, gathered his fist inside his vestments, and punched out the glass. Cursing rose from within, as the priest leaned close and spoke in the low, calm voice that he’d used for delivering judgments these past forty years. “I am a thirty-second degree Thalassocrete on urgent business to the Presiding Judge. I do not have time for visiting hours, and I will have you swabbing decks in frozen Hyperborea if you do not open the gates now.”
Scrambling noises emitted from within, followed by the distinctive whir of a telelocutor. A few hushed words, then more scrambling, then the gates creaked open.
Resuming his seat in the back of the steamer, Quinx told the quadroon, “Drive on, boy.”
“Yes, sir!” The man’s voice quavered somewhere between horror and awe.
Their tyres crunched up the crushed coral drive that led to the Thalassojustity Temple. The New Buildings lurked beyond, thousand-year-old fortifications that served as an office complex. Two more recent, taller structures rose past them. Those contemporary buildings were simply referred to as “the towers.”
Know your friends; know your enemies better. The Thalassojustity had been both to the Lateran over the centuries.
Otherwise the grounds were as gardened as any cemetery of the wealthy. Cypress trees spread low in the moonlight, hares and deer cropped, barely attending to the wheezing of the steamer as it passed. The sea lay to Quinx’ left, its murmuring unheard over the racket of the steam car as the waters lapped at the bottom of a sharp decline down which a man might easily lose his footing. The crescent of Black’s Beach, at the foot of the stairs from the Temple, gleamed pale ahead of him.