The Fallen Mason

The Clay Men are not known for their stealth. But this one barged his way out of the inky mists like a smuggler's steamer racing for the last open dock. A faster, more calculated lumbering than the gait of most of his ilk. He closed in upon the slower one from behind. He carried an axe behind him, his fist gripped the inverted weapon near the head, which was already smeared with fresh clay and grit. He gained speed as he flipped the weapon around and raised it over his head to strike.

Ash spun at the last second, closing in with his fist arcing upwards. The thunder of crashing rock echoed through Wolfstack Docks. Unblinking eyes beheld his attacker, writhing on the cobblestones with a pulverized jaw and a dented skull. He felt the sand in his veins escaping the wound in his shoulder. With the hand that bore the ruby ring of his allegiance he tugged the axe blade free from his earthen flesh.

Was Jack of Clay shrieking incoherent curses at him through half a face as he rose to his feet? He could not hear to tell. But the finger he raised to him told all. You. You are not supposed to fight back. You are not like the others. You are Unfinished.

"I may not be Finished..." Ash mouthed as he loomed over his foe, "...but you are."

The haft shattered to splinters as a steel wedge cracked through Jack's sternum.

He was quite mad, of course - the strain of the trial, transportation and whatever had happened since the crash was bound to make an impression. Amanda had been hoping for a less traumatic encounter, but the precaution of having Ash out of the doctor’s vision meant he could be restrained without damage. Going straight back to town meant avoiding the carnival, and actually brought them closer to the Royal Bethlehem... Hotel.

Not that this was a normal hotel, in the manner of the guesting houses and inns from before the fall. No, this was only called a hotel to save the sensibilities of society. Still, they did manage to keep those who had lost their grip on reality from serious harm.

Mostly.

But in the grand old tradition of similar facilities, it was quite the norm for “guests” to arrive without fanfare or even great notice. Those that recognized him would likely keep quiet about it, for then the question would be how did the gossip come to see to see him there? The rules of the game were to be observed.

Such traditions would also keep him out of the public eye for some of the time needed to let the rumor mill grind fine. If there should be additional time needed, there was still the swamp clinic to attend.

A few haughty glares (copied from her mentor) backed up with the unnerving calm of a Clay Man behind her ensured that she would be receiving reports of the doctor’s care, and some could even be true. Also traditional, in places such as this, was the belief that friends and family would only distress the guest. While Amanda had met many people whose families were excellent examples in which this was certainly true, it still caused her concern. Would that she could detail Ash to watch over her father, but the staff was adamant. While her father did not stay here often, it was often enough that she knew the rules.

Upon her return to the office, Ash bowed to her and left for wherever he stayed in the embassy. Her mentor was out, and from the notes on her desk, he was likely to be out the rest of the shift. She caught up on the office correspondence, which had the decency to not go up in flames as the Correspondence would. She completed her report of her activities over the past few days and began securing the paperwork in the file cabinets of Mr Bloodwing's making.

All of the files were kept under lock and key in Mr Bloodwing’s office, and because they were also under his personal seal, would stay as such. The key would not work if it was not in his hand, but for some of the files, Amanda had her own key. Pricking her finger with the end of the key was all that was needed to make it work. While securing her report on the trip out to the marshes, she ran across some familiar handwriting. Why would her father’s notes be in Mr Bloodwing’s desk?

The title was similar to the one he had published two years ago. Quickly scanning the document, she noted that it had a receipt number for Mr Pages’s archives, the date was over a year ago. So, this was not part of the papers that had been seized at Dr Mason’s arrest last month. The most obvious additions were in red ink, Mr Bloodwing’s proofreading commentary. Indeed, in places it was almost conversational, with notes such as “Notice how quickly the treatise devolves into ranting” in the margin by the first section of the thesis. Large sections of his were new to her, as the initial focus fit the title of Theory of Unaccountable Peckishness as Parasitic Infection, but it delved into new territory as it danced around the edges of the Correspondence.

Here, her supervisor’s notes became shorter, but written with a quick hand, as though he was sharing in the excitement of discovery with Dr Mason. Indeed, it seemed to be notes on an entirely different project, one involving creating a clay woman? Such had not been tried before, and certainly not with the Correspondence Stones. The heady rush of discovery almost caught her until she saw the note at the bottom: “AMA - After you're done snooping through my desk drawers please lock this in my safe.” It was signed with his initials.

Blushing, Amanda followed orders and closed up the office for the night.

The detour through Ladybones from the Embassy to her lodgings was not strange; it was nearly a daily stop, though her route to and from the district was seldom the same from day to day. There had also been many times when she picked up a newspaper from the little girl with blonde pigtails. Amanda hoped it was often enough that few would notice how the little newspaper girl occasionally gave her a newspaper from the bottom of the stack.
The less the eyes of the Embassy were on little Wren, the better Amanda felt about it. The only reason why she had involved her cousin (for that is how Father had taught her to think of the girl) in the first steps of The Great Game was to make sure Wren was cared for. Too many times her uncle had been “between engagements”, requiring Wren to seek odd jobs to keep them whole. Amanda and her father had been distressed to find out how very odd some of the jobs had been. Uncle Marcus would not take anything from the family, but Amanda could hide the largess behind the small courier jobs she was able to give Wren. Careful accounting made sure she did not overpay for the information, but the frequency was enough to keep Wren from the truly peculiar jobs.
She pretended to not notice Ash’s interest in her cousin and walked briskly to the townhouse that held Father’s surgery at the ground floor and their flats above. At the entrance, she paused, and turned to face Ash fully before speaking. “Please stay here and wait, I shan’t be long.” She suspected he might be deaf, but one does not accuse co-workers of being Unfinished. She merely took precautions. At his nod she dashed up the stairs, quickly changing to her expedition skirt and stout boots.
A brief stop at the back step to set out clean water and a small treat for the neighborhood cats, and she was out the door, locking it behind her. She glanced at the plaque for her father’s surgery, with the small sign indicating “The Doctor Is Away”. It was not a new sign, for he still had kept his old surgery in the swamps, and travelled there every so often. It was the first time the sign had been put up before he had been called to the other clinic.
Ash had been watching the street, and nodded to her as they started off for the carnival. As was his habit in town, he walked a few paces behind her. His easy gait did not indicate how quickly he could move, when needed. He did not betray any annoyance at her wandering track through the carnival, as she flitted to and fro. Though masters of the Great Game (and Masters) could still be following her, she thought she had lost the smaller fish that would likely be interested in her movements.
In the marshes, Ash paced her as they searched for signs of the crash or Dr Mason’s passage. They moved quietly, relying on lantern signals to communicate where they were too far apart for hand signals to be seen. Ash was the first to find tracking – a fluttering paper speared on a branch. The scribble was incomprehensible, even to those who studied the Correspondence, but the hints of a Scholar were there. Amanda signaled for a spiral search around the tree, making sure Ash had his compass with him. She found the second roughly thirty yards northwest of the first, and they continued in the same fashion.
The lodestone habit of the denizens of the Neath to go North at all costs made tracking marginally faster, and they found him sleeping in the cup of an abnormally large cantharellus subalbidus upon which something had recently nibbled. His nightmare moans caused her to motion for Ash to step out of the doctor’s line-of-sight as she touched his shoulder to wake him.

Once upon a time there was a little girl with blonde pigtails. She was dressed in the nicest second-hand rags, complete with a bluish-gray cap. She was leaning against the modestly sturdy table, stacked far over her head with old serial novels set in an older, alien London - a London where a ball of flame lingered in the sky to return with unerring regularity in a futile attempt to clear the mists from the streets. A London that little Wren, nor any of the younger folk born of the Neath would ever know, or possibly even believe.

"It's for the money...it's for the money..." she whispered to herself as bony fingers reached around her, pulling leather straps and buckles just a little too tightly for her liking.

"Are you ready, Wren?" He hissed in a ragged whisper.

She rolled her eyes behind her round smoked glasses and nodded quickly. She grunted as the gaunt man with the sunken chest stacked layer after layer of newspapers into the wooden crate strapped to her back. She felt the straps bite through the motheaten layers of cloth. She wanted to scream in protest, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction. She'd survived worse. Much worse.

He enjoyed this far too much, she thought.

The man handed her back the slender cane and tin cup. She bent forward a bit to keep her balance, but not far enough where she'd lean on the cane which would surely snap under the extra load.

"There you go, my dear. And please remember it's Unexpurgated. London. Gazette."

"Yes Sir." she feigned a smile without turning her face up to him.

The man shuffled his way forwards through the stalagmites of stacked books and wrapped a skeletal hand around the doorknob. As the lock clicked open and the hinges creaked, he bowed with a condescending smile. She tapped her way out of the bookstore and down the rotting steps, into the bustling walkway of Ladybones Road and the eternal night of Fallen London. He sighed, looking out at the rows of ghostly green candles dancing in the stores all down the lane. He then remembered how miserable his soulless life truly was, and shut the door to go about filling some more invoices. Wren bent forwards (but not quite as far as the gait of her benefactor) from the weight of her cargo that seemed rediculously bulky for one her size, and huffed her way down the street.

"GAZETTE! *gasp* GET YOUR GAZETTE! UNEXASCERBATED!"

A well-dressed banker chuckled as he dropped a fragment of jade into the her cup and took a copy from the stack, his glove brushed against her pigtails.

"Thank you Sir!'

Wren stopped short of a row of merchant stalls and slipped her cane under her arm. She crouched and wriggled the crate down to the cobblestones with a thump, and stood and stretched.

An old woman's familiar voice greeted her. "Good mornin' Wren!" The girl held her palm open and felt a small bag of candied mushrooms (fresh and hot!) plop into it a soft hand still warm from and smelling strongly of candied mushrooms patted her cheek affectionately. She heard rustling as another paper was pulled from the crate.

"Good morning, Mrs. Tucker!" she replied with a smile. The candy-ladies were notoriously cheap, buying only one newspaper in the morning and passing it in sections amongst themselves. But they did buy up her remaining stock at the end of the day for a fraction of the price as wrapping for the next day's snacks. It was always enough to pay for the next stack of papers, with a bit to spare. The real payment, of course, was being allowed to overhear the secrets they traded with each other all day. Well, that and the steady supply of sweet mushrooms, or course.

"GAZETTE! Yum.." She chewed a bit more and swallowed, and rubbed her greasy fingers on her coarse shirt. "GET YOUR GAZETTE! THE UNSUBSTANTIATED GAZETTE!"

She always got peals of laughter from that line, and an extra clinks of rostygold and glim in her cup. At least once a day someone, usually another child with hand caught in the tight grip of a tense parent, would ask her if she was really blind. She'd quickly respond "Yep, the sorrow-spiders got me!" Does she live at Watchmaker's Hill? "Nope! Only men I'm told!" A few times the candy-ladies would hiss at men and call "Constable!" when someone lingered by her a little too long, especially if they started asking her vague questions.

Wren wiped the sugar granules off her face with her sleeve from another helping of mushrooms and rejoined the chorus of merchants who milled about Ladybones to enjoy the spectacle of Neath Justice.

"GAZETTE! GET YOUR GAZETTE! THE UNEXPLAINABLE GAZETTE!"

Wren couldn't see the condemned carried up to the gallows, but she heard their crimes rattled off by the Constables. She heard the cowardly ones screaming as they were carried up before the jeering of the crowd. Then the inveitable clank of the lever and the distinct snap beneath the creaking of the hinges of the trapdoor, followed by the collective gasp and applause. Wren tapped an adult with the side of her cane as she shook her finger. She could hear the flies even before she wrinkled her nose from the stench. "No rats please! They stain the papers!"

"Oh lookie here!" said one of the heavier ladies as she spun the paper back to the front page. "They had an airship crash, they did! A whole quiver o' broadarrows stuck in the mud!" She half laughed, half wheezed. "And that Mason was on it too! The one who..."

Wren felt eyes on her for a moment. Then they nodded to each other with exaggerated whisperes and hasty gestures. As one, they shuddered in disgust.

"Are we talkin' bout the doctor, or the honey-thief here?"

"The doctor! Who'd a known?"

"Are you sure there's two of them? I thought That Mason it was just one bloke!"

"Don' be stupid, Lydia! Oi seen 'em both! Th' doc named Darren gots 'andlebars, roit? Th' other one e' always shaives! Oi saw Marcus 'im in 'Amlet two weeks ago, 'usban took me t' th' dinner theatre fer out anniversary!"

"How was he?"

"E's a HOOT 'e is! Oi nebber loffed so 'ard in me loif!"

"I went to Doc Mason for me...me dropsy once, charmin' bloke up in the years but aged like a fine neath wine y'know...?" She giggled like a schoolgirl, adding a snort for good measure. "Could barely make out a word 'e says tho cos 'e talk so Yankee-like...'use vin-eh-gerrrrr!'" She snorted again, and cleared her throat after an awkward silence. "Too bad about Doctor Mason. It's always the straight ones who's crooked, eh wot?"

Wren kept tight-lipped, wisely not divulging that Marcus had taken her in as his own child after the Fisher Kings abandoned her. Not only was Marcus a talented artist, she would have said, but he's a very accomplished engineer who builds wonderful things to help releive people of excess money! He was especially proud of the gaslamp heart he built for her (with the help of his little furry friends) than Uncle Darien sewed up inside her with a ring of pretty red scars. She'd be permanently dead by now after that fall from the Flit! She was forever glad she couldn't remember being run through on her own fishing pole. Her pupils clouded after the operation, and people mistook them for cataracts, but oh she could still see, up close at least.

"Little Miss, does it have the latest weather report?" Asked Miss Ama.

"Yes'm, same as always." Wren reached down in the bottom of her box and handed Ama the special newspaper. As before, Ama handed her a small silk bag with a few moonpearls...which were wrapped in a rather large denomination of an Echo note. She slipped the sachel under her coat, smiling with the knowledge that she made enough from that one transaction to take the rest of the week off.

The gossip around her hushed as the hulking Clay Man plodded several steps behind Miss Ama. As always. He had an odor of heady dampness around him, like something freshly dug up from a swamp. Something about him made her heart speed up. She could see his massive shadow over the rim of her glasses. He was staring down at her! Could he hear her heart clicking? Could he tell she wasn't completely blind?

The Clay Man silently turned and continued in Miss Ama's footsteps. She and the ladies breathed a collective sigh of relief.

A bell rang from the gallows. "This concludes the proceedings for the day!" shouted the Constable. "We shall reconvene dispensation of Justice at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning! God save the Traitor Empress!"

Wren said her goodbyes to the ladies as she stuffed her day's wages (and an extra bag of sugared mushrooms) under her coat and strapped the now mercifully light crate to her back. She sang to herself in time with the tapping of her cane.

"The Starveling Cat! The Starveling Cat! Look what it did! To your nice new hat!"

She rattled her cup as she wandered back up Ladybones, and earned a few more rosty in her cup as she took the last few blocks home. Abruptly she collided into a man warned who with a concerned tone told her not to continue that way, saying there's some "grownup business" up ahead.

"Thank you Sir. I'll take the shortcut."

She twisted her way through the alleys, a derelict moved his leg so she wouldn't step on it. She heard a squeaking voice near her feet.

"Oi Wren! Howsyou? Whogotsomesugar? Prettypretty?"

She laughed and tossed the bag to the ground. She felt several furry bodies race over her shoes.

"Oi! Shareit!" "Mine!" "Mmmm!" "Tankee Wren!" "Oi Wren! Wegotchanudda capindabrick!"

Wren felt the rough decaying brick of the corner of the building, and delicate fingers pulled back a piece to pull a brass cylinder of hydrogen from the gap behind it.

"Thank you so much, guys!" She reached down to her shoes to pet the rattus fabers that circled her ankles and snuggled against her hand.

"Ahhhh, loveydovey!"

She continued, and heard the grumbling in front of the bookshop as she stopped to listen.

"Oh look, it's his daughter again."

She adjusted her glasses, peering over the edge. In the gaslight she made out three figures, and a still figure splayed out on the doorstep.

"Sorry kid," said the other man. "He lost at Kinfe-and-Candle again."

Wren pouted as she stepped forward and peered closely at him. She sighed. "Oh Father, you fell for the honey-trap again, didn't you?" One of the men coughed nervously.

"Ten rosty for you both to carry him upstairs for me?"

"Sure thing, love!"

Mr Bloodwing plucked the file from her hands as the juniors cleared the antechamber, "Ah, there you are, my Amarantis, and is this is what caused all the fuss?" Amanda brightened briefly at his nickname for her as he scanned the file, then he grunted, "No subtlety here, and such poor craftsmanship... still, even if they make it easy for us, no need in being careless," and the file flashed to flames in his hand, the ashes disintegrating before they reached the opulent Turkish carpets.

He looked up at the entrance of the Clay Man, "Ah, good timing - Ash will be your assistant in your next expedition, sweetling. Walk with me..." Mr Bloodwing escorted her through the Embassy to the front entrance, Ash falling in behind them. Mr Bloowing's arm was casually draped across her shoulders in a carelessly possessive manner, while she took notes on the reports he whispered to her on the way. Such was his usual fashion for similar situations. In the halls, it was harder for someone to have a listening post, and their postures did not invite a third to join in.

"The report came in while you were at the constable's office. His ship has gone down in Bigby's Marshes. Your usual kit will do, as you will have Ash with you. South of the Carnival would be a good place to start, since your father will likely be headed North. We will not be able to bring him straight back into town, as we need to let the rumor mill do its work and drop some scandalous hints about the solicitors behind his arrest. The sooner you get him to that swamp shack of his, the sooner we can spread the word that he left on his own to start the charity clinic."

With the end of the briefing, they had reached the front entrance, Ash holding the door open for them. Suddenly Mr Bloodwing was confronted with the distraction-of-the-moment. This season's flavour was Mademoiselle Jennette, a dancer who was not quite able to manage the innocence needed for the ingenue roles she looked young enough to fill. He patted his assistant on the shoulder, "Run along sweetling, you have work to do."

The actress gave Amanda such a look of poisonous gloating before turning dewy-eyed sweet under Mr Bloodwing's gaze, Amanda had difficulty keeping her face impassive, though she wanted to laugh at the sorry chit. Mr Bloodwing murmured sweetly, "Ah, mon petit chou! Comment allez-vous? Have you considered my offer to lighten your load, ma chere? You know your career will be much easier to pursue without that extra baggage. N'est-ce pas?"

Amanda chuckled inwardly, with a tinge of guilt. Though that girl was a poisonous social climber, the "extra baggage" Mr Bloodwing was offering to take from her was Mademoiselle Jennette's soul. She shivered slightly, then straightened her spine and began a purposeful march to her lodgings. If the girl was not careful, it was none of Amanda's affair. C'est la vie du Neath.