Thanks for reading, everyone! A bit late this week. I'm behind on a few work projects and am scrambling to catch up. The usual warnings apply, hope you enjoy!
“Ma’am,” said the construct, stopping in front of her cell and looking in between the bars. Aleph had the feeling that he was restraining the urge to click his heels together and come to attention.
“Prospero,” she replied feeling her shoulders relax slightly at the sight of him. “How is Aristarchus?”
“He’s well. It was touch and go for a while, we had Williams of the Black on hand to dose him with Panacea, otherwise, I fear it would have been more go than touch. The bullet was lodged in his kidney and made a real mess of things. I thank you for bringing him so quickly.”
“I’m glad to hear he’s alright, he’s one of the good ones.”
“He is.”
There was a long pause where Prospero shifted his weight from foot to foot, and the only sound was the faint click and whir of his sigils as they shifted and realigned. Finally, he spoke. “I find myself in a dilemma, ma’am.”
“I thought you might have,” Aleph replied, she knew this would be difficult for the construct.
“Do you know what has been happening here in the Armoury?”
“Only in very broad strokes, but I have a hunch you’re facing a sudden shortage of qualified leadership.”
“You intuition serves you well. This morning when you left for Vancouver we had a Duke, an Assistant Commissioner, a Commander, a Chief Inspector, and four regular Inspectors, all here on staff. Now we have an Assistant Commissioner, one Regimental Sergeant Major, that being myself,” he said touching his chest, “one Supernumerary Sergeant Major who has been jailed,” he said gesturing to her, “and a single Inspector who has armed and locked herself in her office. She refuses to come out, and honestly, I don’t blame the woman. None of the constables I’ve sent out into the city have returned.”
Prospero drew in a breath with the sound of bellows being inflated in his chest. “Assistant Commissioner Peters has given the rank and file no instructions other than to say that it was,” here he made a voice that sounded uncannily like Nigel Peters’ own, “‘business as usual.’ I find myself strongly disagreeing with the Assistant Commissioner’s assessment of the situation. Things are not business as usual.”
“What happened to everyone?”
“The Duke was found unconscious and is under guard in the infirmary, the others are simply missing, or were seen walking off through the Black Gate under their own volition.”
“Now, add to this a breakdown in communication networks of any kind within the city and I see a picture I don’t like.”
“When Miranda told me that our Supernumerary Sergeant Major was in the brig, I thought I’d come down for a frank discussion of current events with one of our few remaining members with any kind of leadership ability.”
She gave a nod. “The city is under attack, it’s the people that have been disappearing for the last year, they’ve been turned into Alchemical drones.”
“Drones? With whom in control?”
“Knox of the White, he as much admitted it. The Duke’s Own are the only defenders the city has.”
“Knox of the White?” Prospero sounded incredulous. “He’s a pariah, even among the Alchemists. It’s an open secret that he’ll be of the White until the sun burns out.”
“Unless he steps in and bravely saves a city from the forces of Necromancy,” she said with a significant expression.
“Surely not.”
“Think about it. The Alchemists have been looking for more power in Senak since The Dust War. They thought they had it for a while with Duke Penhold, but he became… unreliable. If Knox swooped in and saved the city, what would their reaction be?”
Prospero’s leather face grew suddenly still. “The Alchemists may be fractious, but they always protect their own,” he said quietly.
“We need to mobilize Duke’s Own now.”
Prospero nodded slowly in agreement. “I agree. Here we come to the problem though. I am a Watchworker, and you know very well how a good number of the biological members feel about taking orders from the likes of us.”
Aleph sighed and nodded, there was no point in arguing, no matter how much she wished it wasn’t so. Prospero might be able to command, but only two-thirds of the force would obey on a good day, and of those, many would resent taking orders from a construct. If fighting broke out…
“Then there’s yourself,” Prospero continued, “and forgive me for pointing it out, but you are unwilling to give orders.”
“Unable,” she put in.
“Unable, then. Between the two of us we have, an unconfirmed story that puts us at odds with the Alchemists, a number of crows, the other watchworkers, and strong language at our disposal.”
“I’ve never heard you curse.”
“I thought you might be able to cover that for the both of us, ma’am.”
“I can help,” Dimitri spoke up. “I can swear like a motherfuck.”
“And no biologicals of rank, except the Assistant Commissioner?” Aleph asked, shooting a quelling look at Dimitri.
“Inspector Viscounti has locked herself in her office, beyond that Corporals and Sergeants. Either way, there’s nothing to be done until the Assistant Commissioner gives the order.”
“Or until he’s no longer the ranking member of the Duke’s Own.”
Prospero eyed her silently.
“It’s a good thing the Assistant Commissioner just got a dose of Panacea,” Said Aleph, clasping and unclasping sigil-inscribed bracelet in her hands. “Without that, he might be just as vulnerable as the others who have been disappearing.” She closed the bracelet with what she hoped was a telling snap.
Prospero looked down at the bracelet and slowly nodded.
“Is there any chance the Assistant Commissioner might be available to talk with me? The slanderous things I’ve been saying really should be put to a stop.”
“Yes, I see your point. Very unprofessional of you, ma’am. Insubordination is bad,” he said sternly. “You should know better.”
“Insubordination is bad?” she asked, feeling a lopsided grin spread across her mouth.
“Yes, very, very bad. You should stop it. Immediately.”
Prospero turned on a heel and began walking back down the corridor.
“Ah, my ears, I can hear no more of your treasonous libel,” he said blandly, before exiting.
“What just happened?” Dimitri demanded.
“I’ll explain it to him,” said Sam.
It took fewer than five minutes for the sound of the key turning in the lock to be heard again. Nigel Peters entered the corridor with a face as red and snarling as a redhead’s hairdo in a convertible. The door slammed shut behind him with a boom that echoed throughout the corridor.
Aleph remained on her bench and rolled her eyes as his footsteps approached. How such a drama queen had made it so high in the ranks she could never fathom.
“How much worse are you trying to make this for yourself?” he hissed at her, coming right up to the bars of her cell. “Prospero told me what you said. If you insist on continuing this battle, I will make it my mission to have each and every one of your followers exterminated. I will leave you powerless and alone while the tiny handful that remains curse your name. Now, you keep your mouth shut, or by God, I will make you wish you had.”
Her nails bit into her palms, and she did her best to keep the rage off her face. Aleph made her way to the bars, trying for all she was worth to fix an expression of desperation on her face. It didn’t look like it worked because the Assistant Commissioner took an unconscious half pace back. Still, she must have got it partly right because he stood his ground, red-faced and nearly vibrating in fury. If he had known what kind of emotions gripped her at that moment he would have taken more than a single pace back.
“But Assistant Commissioner,” she said with a hint of panic in her voice, clutching at the bars. “You can’t do that!”
Her words had the desired effect. Nigel stood straighter and squared his shoulders. “You are not in any position to tell me what I can, or cannot do! You are nothing, you are the last casualty of a defeated nation that was rightfully wiped from the face of the Aether.”
Aleph seemed to cower before him, and as she hoped he would, he took that half-pace forward. Thank whatever hoary ancient god had deemed fit to create the male ego. She struck. Her arm flickered out from between the bars, seized the front of his uniform jacket and jerked him forward. His head smacked into the bars with a resonant bong that she found deeply satisfying.
In the time it took a quick breath, she’d pulled his arm through the bars and snapped her bracelet around his wrist. It was a poor fit, her wrist was much more slender than his, and she had to squeeze tightly to make the clasp catch. He let out a gasp of pain as the two ends came together. She found that part satisfying as well.
As the Assistant Commissioner was cut off from magic, Aleph caught the look of horror that flashed across his face. If he hadn’t guessed what she was up to before, he knew it now, he was cut off from the healing Panacea in his blood, and he knew it.
She pulled his stunned face close to hers until the bars began to push into his flesh.
“You will not so much as look in the direction of my children,” she said, tracing a sharp black fingernail around the edge of his eyelid until it just broke the skin. “If you do, or if I find you have interfered with them in any way, I will make sure their beaks tearing out your eyes are the last thing you see as you are staked to the ground for them to feast on. Do I make myself understood?”
Nigel nodded as best he could held up against the bars, his eyes bulging.
She balled up the front of his jacket tightly in her fist and shoved him roughly back out into the hallway. He staggered back with a cry of surprise before she pulled the material and whiplashed him into the bars of her cell with a shout of rage. His head made a loud, much more satisfying crack this time as it hit the bars, and she let his limp body collapse to the floor of a corridor. The bars hummed a fading note on a tuning fork from the impact. She might have to come back and record the sound as a ringtone. It was a sound she found to her liking.
“Did you kill him?” Sam asked, aghast.
“Probably not,” Aleph replied indifferently. “I wouldn’t be sad to see him off though, some people just need killing.” She looked critically at the crumpled body. Nobody threatens my children,” she growled, seating herself on her bench again.
It didn’t take long for Prospero to come back, this time Miranda came with him. On seeing the Assistant Commissioner’s collapsed form, she came sprinting forward. It never ceased to amaze Aleph how fast a watchworker was able to move when it had a mind to. Miranda skidded to a stop, sliding on her knees for the last fifteen feet before coming to a rest beside Nigel. She carefully rolled him over to discover two dark vertical welts each running straight down from his forehead and down over his cheeks. The skin on his temple was partly abraded and there was a small trickle of blood running up into his hairline.
Miranda began to thoroughly check him over, running her hands over his limbs and torso looking for additional injuries.
“Assistant Commissioner! Can you hear me, sir!” she shouted this in his ear to no response.
“He came in here and just ran right into the bars!” said Dimitri.
Miranda turned her head and eyed them, an expression of incredulity easily recognizable through the round glass lenses of her eyes.
“It was like watching one of those nature documentaries about mountain sheep,” said Sam, doubling down on the stupid and smacking his hands together to illustrate.
Dimitri nodded his emphatic agreement. “Just like mountain sheep.”
Neither of them would be winning an Oscar for their performance, thankfully Prospero wasn’t looking for one.
“Oh my goodness,” said Prospero in an expressionless voice. “How very clumsy of him.”
At his words, Miranda turned her expression to her Sergeant Major. “Sir…” she began, then stopped. Her fingers had found something. She pulled back the sleeve of his black uniform jacket and found the bracelet clamped around his wrist. The hand beneath the bracelet was beginning to turn a shade of dark purple from where the band of metal had cut off the blood supply. She looked up at Prospero questioningly.
Prospero eyed the bracelet, then looked at Aleph. “That’s no good,” he said gesturing toward it, “we’ll need a bigger one”
Aleph shrugged. “I think it’s alright.”
“Even with a bigger bracelet, won’t seeing the Assistant Commissioner with one of those things on be a bit obvious?” asked Sam hesitantly.
Prospero nodded slowly. “You have a point. We should have thought this through better.”
“I think we’ll be just fine,” said Dimitri with a confident note in his voice.
Prospero turned a questioning glance toward him.
“That one’s only too small for his wrist,” Dimitri explained.
“What do you suggest?”
“We should put it somewhere less noticeable. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Prospero wasn’t biting.
He tried again. “Somewhere where they’ll be less likely to look.” He gave Prospero a knowing look.
“His ankle is…” Prospero’s line of thought was brought up short and a look of sick realization fixed itself on his face. “Oh. I see.” He paused and Aleph began to laugh. “Wouldn’t that be, ah, too small?” he asked delicately.
“I thought of that, and it all depends on where we attach it. I hope you guys have latex gloves because someone’s going to have to run interference to get that thing on.”
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