Mr. Stitch

limitless calculations, of astonishing insight. Mr. Stitch was almost never wrong, and its advice invariably turned out to be not just useful, but the best possible advice that anyone under a particular set of circumstances could give. Beckett hated it.

He hated this particular advice as well. Gorud was a therian, a kind of ape-man native to Corsay. Small numbers had been brought to Trowth; because of their linguistic dexterity, they were used often as translators or interpreters. Since the end of the war, the numbers of therians in the city had increased. They were generally a pleasant, good-natured people, though unused to the frigid temperatures of the imperial capital. Gorud wore a bulky coat that fitted him poorly, despite the fact that it had a hole cut out for his tail.

If Beckett didn’t like Gorud, it was certainly nothing personal, as the therian was as good-natured an example of a member of his species had could be desired. It was not even a particular specism on Beckett’s part, though he did tend to lean towards the human-centric. In fact, Beckett just didn’t like it when things changed. He spent all his time trying to get on top of things, trying to manhandle the elements of life and work in to place, to make everything just so-and then, invariably, he was saddled with something new. Just when he’d gotten everything figured out, gotten everything sorted, the therians came along, or the sharpsies went mad, or something equally frustrating and inconvenient happened.

“You,” Beckett told the therian, who sat on his heels on the couch. “Come with me.”

Gorud, sensitive to Beckett’s disdain, said nothing, and padded after the old coroner on four legs. They found the Coroners’ regular coachman, Harry, in the guardhouse outside, and set off for Red Lanes.

Beckett and the therian rode in relative silence, as the coach creaked and clattered along. Outside, Harry had been outfitted with his best winter gear, and a variety of small heating elements-small bands he could wrap around his hands, an emitter that sat next to him. It was a waste of energy that would have been unthinkable a year ago, but since the end of the war, fuel was cheap and plentiful.

Inside, Beckett watched the therian. Gorud had a strangely long, leathery face, that seemed largely impassive, except for a pair of quick, roving eyes. He sat on his heels, his arms wrapped around his knees, as usual. “Do you know Red Lanes?” Beckett asked him.

Gorud twitched and puffed out his cheeks. “Live there,” he said. “With some cousins.” Gorud had a warm tenor of a voice which always surprised Beckett with its clarity and timbre.

“Know any of the gendarmes?”

The therian looked up at him with an unreadable expression, and shifted in his seat. “One,” he said, finally. “Nasty thing, with a mark on his face, like this.” He drew a number five in the air with one long, agile finger. Therians were predisposed to illiteracy, Beckett knew, but at least they could recognize symbols. “He kept trying to move us from the eyrie, but we didn’t like it.”

“And?”

The therian yawned, abruptly, displaying a huge mouth and four canine teeth each as long as Beckett’s thumb. “Haven’t seen him in a while,” Gorud said, and made a popping sound with his lips.

“Hnf.” Beckett replied, and silence predominated for a while. As they clattered down the hill, Gorud abruptly perked up. “What?” Beckett asked him. “What-” A faint rumbling reached his ears growing in intensity, the sound of a massive wave rolling towards them. “What is that? Do you hear…?”

The rumbling turned into a ringing sound in his ears, and suddenly black water crashed through the windows of the coach, washing over him, tearing him from his seat and out, out into the dark riptide of salty ocean that choked him, strangled him, struggled down this throat and threw him hard against smooth rocks. Beckett’s head banged against metal; he felt a rib give way.

The water retreated then, leaving Beckett on a smooth brass beach that sloped steeply downward, and he fell, sliding along its length, still coughing up seawater; he saw the moon beneath him, green and leprous, luminous with its own baleful light, black cities crawling across its surface, as hands reached out from the hot, red-gold brass and clutched at him, hands that were made of tangles of fat, black, boneless leeches, that sought out bare skin with their tiny, puckered mouths. The hands gripped him, and something like a mouth appeared, a nest of teeth with no lips or throat, just independently shuddering dentition that stretched and jittered and longed to puncture…

And then it was gone. All gone, the vision disappearing with the same sudden completeness as ectoplasm gone up in flame. The hands on his arms were Harry’s hands-ordinary, rough coachman’s hands. The face made of curved teeth was only Harry’s face, his ordinary, ugly old face.

The ringing began to fade from Beckett’s ears. “-eckett!” Harry was shouting. “Mr. Beckett! Are you all right?” Gorud had retreated to a corner of the coach, watching, his eyes wide.

Two dark green shoots sprung from Harry’s nostrils, tendrils with sharp thorns, springing from the soft places of his body, curling back to scratch at his own eyes.

“What…” Beckett asked, his voice hardly above a whisper. “Garrett? Garrett, your dead,” the old man declared, as the twin green vines blossomed into blood-red flowers.

“It’s me, sir,” Sergeant Garret said, more thorny vines pouring from his mouth, “it’s me, it’s Harry, sir. Can you hear me? Are you all right? Do you know me sir?”

No, Beckett told himself. It’s Harry, it’s just Harry. Garret died. They were still inside the coach. Beckett was wedged against the seat; his ribs were still sore. “What happened? What was that?”

“There’s something up ahead of us, some kind of explosion,” Harry told him, the vines gone, his face his own again. “Shook the whole place up. I came to see if you was all right, and then…”

“You fell,” Gorud picked up. “When the shock came. Your eye did this,” he rolled his eyes up in his head, so that only the whites were visible. “And then you coughed and choked, and then Mr. Harry came in to help.”

Beckett coughed wetly, wiped his mouth, and pulled himself upright. “Explosion?”

“Something up ahead, sir.”

Beckett scrambled from the coach, a sinking feeling in his stomach. He barely noticed the bitter cold outside, as it struck out at his already-senseless extremities. His good eye raced over the narrow, high-peaked and gabled Ennering-Crabtree buildings; houses, offices and shops that had been converted from old abattoirs. People were timidly peeking out from their doors and windows, a few braver souls actually taking to the streets, consternation on their tongues.

At the end of Augre Street was the smoking husk of a building, a great slaughterhouse that had been repurposed, as the city expanded, into some other professional edifice. Its pointed roofs, now crooked and tumbled, would have looked out of place even if they’d remained intact. Smoke poured from its windows, and a hysterical gibbering rose from the inside.

Beckett limped down the hill, Harry and Gorud at his heels. He drew his revolver, swiveling his head from side-to-side, struggling to reconstruct what had happened. A man in a blue coat stumbled from the building; he was covered in soot, and his eyes were wild and white-rimmed.

“…the overwhelming way of winter’s seven towers,” the man was screaming. A dark, thick fluid dribbled from his mouth and nose. “I saw the red gold walls and the ivory-towered teeth.” He charged at Beckett, grabbed his wrists, tried to bear him to the ground. “There are men in the dark,” he said, weeping that same black fluid from his eyes. “There are stone sounds..”

“Get off!” Beckett shouted, twisted his body, trying to let the man’s momentum throw him away. Harry managed to get hold of him and pull him off the coroner, but the strange man continued to lash and struggle and wail, blubbering nonsense as the foul ooze began to poor from his eyes and mouth and nose.

Beckett struck the man across the face with the butt of his revolver, and the stranger went limp. It seemed merciful; the twisted rictus on the man’s face relaxed away.

“Tommy,” said a soft voice nearby. Beckett turned to see a young man, very pale, staring at the smoking building with a strange absorption. His left sleeve was empty, and pinned up to the shoulder.

“Tommy?” Beckett asked him. “Is that his name? What happened here?”

“It’s Tommy, innit?” The young pale man said. “They dropped them bombs on us.”

Beckett clutched at his revolver, ready to knock this man senseless as well. “Tommy who?”

“Vinegar Tom,” the man said, still not looking at the coroner. “The Ettercap.”

The Ettercap. The Ettercap used oneiric munitions-bombs that had a psychic component as well as an explosive. The damage caused by concussion and shrapnel was trivial compared to the disorder, chaos, and damage