"Yes, indeed. You may think that genealogy has little importance in this modern age, but many Prodigals still carry traits of their ancestors in one form or another." Brown looked me over for a moment. "You, for example, I would guess are one of those rarities, a flyer. You have a strong affinity for the air, either moving through it or smelling and tasting it." Brown made several marks on the form. "I'd also guess that you're pretty solitary, even among your own."
"All that from just a name?" I asked, neither acknowledging nor refuting the description.
"From just the name," Brown assured me with a look of pride. "Of course, there are well over a hundred names and attributes to keep straight in your head. I know most of the higher demons, but it's Albert who has all of them memorized perfectly."
"Mr. Scott-Beck?"
"Yes. The man has the memory of a mastodon." Brown turned back to the form. "Family?" he asked just as I had again begun to draw in curious tastes of the air in the office.
"No," I replied.
"None?" Brown seemed unable to credit this. "Certainly you have parents?"
"Both dead."
"Oh. Was it the Inquisition?" Brown asked with an unnatural gentleness in his voice. I could imagine him practicing that tone at night while flipping through the evening paper.
"No," I replied, though it was half a lie. "My father was killed after a mine collapse." The explanation had been my mother's way of lifting the criminal nature out of my father's execution for sabotaging the Wellton mining company. "My mother drowned during the sewer floods twelve years ago."
"And you have no one else?" Brown pressed.
"May I ask why you need to know?" I didn't mean to sound irritated, but the elusive smell in the room and the memory of my mother's bloated dead body had twisted into a single presence. Repulsion and sorrow for a moment made me wish to just get up and leave the room. I held my breath against the smell in the air and the feeling passed.
"We need someone to contact in case you're summoned to court and we can't find you," Brown explained.
"I see." I frowned. "I can't think of anyone. You'd just have to leave a word at my residence."
"And where is that?" Brown skipped down several spaces on the form.
"For now, the Good Commons Boarding House, in Hells Beow." I watched Brown carefully as I gave my answer.
"Good Commons." He smiled just slightly at the corners of his mouth as he wrote the name. "Yes, I believe I know where that is." He didn't pause long enough to take a breath before asking, "So, do you already have a criminal record?"
"Yes."
"Then let's have a look, shall we?" He stood up and went to his shelves. I watched as he slowly paced past the first two shelves and then whipped one of the thick, black record books out.
"It would be under Sykes, would it?" Brown asked.
"Yes." Though I could see what he was obviously doing, I couldn't quite believe it. I glanced again at the shelves and shelves of record books that filled the room.
"Here it is." Brown sat back down behind his desk with the big book open. "Hmm, flying and resisting questioning." Brown looked curiously at the page and read on a little. "All that trouble just to keep your friend from getting a trespass fine." Brown looked up at me. "It took them quite a while to get his name out of you, didn't it?".
"You have a copy of my legal record?"
"Yes. Albert and the Brighton abbot are old school friends, so the abbot has been kind enough to let our firm keep copies of the records involving Prodigals." Brown flipped the page and then turned it back. "You don't have much of a record. It looks like you've managed to keep a step ahead of the law for the most part."
"For the most part, yes," I replied.
I knew in the back of my mind that there had to be records of my birth and education, even my arrests and time under the prayer engines, but I had imagined that all those things had been filed far away in some dark basement. I hated the idea that my life could be fingered through by a stranger at his leisure.
"You are quite the specimen, aren't you, Mr. Sykes?" Brown turned the book so I could see it. He taped his thick finger on a small tracing of a photograph. It took me a moment to recognize my own body stretched out on the table. I stared down at my own furious gaze without interest. My memories of that time were sharper than any smudgy drawing could ever be.
As quickly as I could, I read through the dozens of comments and tracings of my effects at the time of my arrest. I wanted to know what Brown or anyone else with access could know about me. The page was clotted with trivialities: my shoe size, fingernail lengths, a tracing of my business card, and a long string of initials where one officer or another had checked the record out. W.J. H. appeared a dozen or more times.
It only took a moment for me to realize where Harper had come across my business card. He would have known all of this about me before he even walked through my door. It shouldn't have surprised me.
Brown turned the book back to himself and read over it for a few more moments.
"His uncooperative nature and refusal to testify have put us in a position to assume guilt...Still no statement...Questioning with silver-water...Ah, and ophorium." Brown made a little clicking sound with his tongue. "Just to keep your friend from getting a fifty-coin fine? I'm not sure I would believe that myself. Were you holding out on something else?"
I stared at Brown flatly.
"I suppose if you wouldn't talk, then you won't just tell me now." Brown seemed amused. "You know, Mr. Sykes, if our firm is to represent you, it's in your best interest to tell us the full extent of anything you've done."
"I'll keep that in mind." I managed to get the words out civilly. The deep desire to slash Brown's face had seized me the moment he began reading from my record. Those months had been my ruin and he read over them as if they were prices on a menu. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself.
The scent and taste of acidic sickness, something between excrement and bile doused in heavy rose perfume, washed into my lungs. I coughed and Brown pushed the record book to the side of his desk.
"It's getting late," he said.
"Should I be going?" I started to stand but Brown held up his hand for me to stop.
"No, I'm sure Albert will want to speak with you." He smiled at me as if we were friends. "No, I was thinking that I ought to get a little something in me. I'll send Tim out for some supper. A little snack for you too." Brown stood and started for the door. "It'll be my treat. You just wait here. I won't be long." He stepped out and closed the door.
I waited a moment, then checked the door. Brown had locked me in.
Chapter Eleven
Blue glass
Just the fact that I had been locked in made me immediately want to escape. I walked to the window. It was painted shut, but the glass was thin enough to break through.
I stopped myself. Crashing through the second story window would be an act of desperate panic, a last resort. I wasn't sure that the situation merited that.
There were reasons other than murder that Lewis Brown would want to keep a Prodigal from roaming freely through the building. Brown could have just wanted to keep me from bumbling in on another interview. It was equally likely that he kept the door locked out of habit.