the sceptre’s delivery with the minimum of fuss; and the postponement of police interest until later.’
‘The Cat-gibbon will not be pleased.’
‘She is a pragmatist, like all the rulers of the flash mob. We have made, let us say, an accommodation with her.’
That would have been an interesting conversation. Wish I could’ve been there.
‘May I say that one exists between us also?’
Charlotte slipped her calling card back into his lapel pocket. ‘For art, Mister Twist. For my masterwork.’
Charlotte made to leave the room, but the man casually raised his cane blocking her exit.
‘You appear to be practised in the arts of mesmerism, for—’
‘For …?’
‘For one so young, Damson Shades. Where did you learn such an art?’
‘An old gypsy woman taught me.’
He shrugged and lowered his cane, disappointed. ‘Well, hold to your craft’s secrets then. We will be in touch through the contact woman you use to intermediate with the Cat-gibbon.’
No, really. A gypsy woman.
Twist’s broken-nosed companion lowered his pistol as the door closed. ‘Do think she believed you, sir?’
‘Not everything, Mister Cloake. I sense there is a little more to her than that which she professes to be. But she will do the job for us. That is all that matters.’
‘We could get the sceptre ourselves, given time. Steal more pass cards; threaten the guards and the people protecting the vaults.’
‘Time,’ sighed Twist. ‘I think we have waited long enough, don’t you? Better it looks like a robbery. No questions asked about how the thief got so close to the sceptre. Nothing to implicate us and our friends until it is too late for events to be stopped.’
‘And if she is successful?’
‘Charlotte Shades' trade is a high-risk occupation. It wouldn’t do for her to be captured and coerced into telling others who she sold the sceptre to. If she succeeds, it will be time for her to retire, Mister Cloake.’
The bruiser licked his lips as he pocketed his pistol. Retiring people like her always provided such good amusement.
CHAPTER THREE
In Greenhall, the heart of the Jackelian civil-service, you could always hear the beat of government – even here on the top floor of the jumble of buildings that sprawled for miles, the throb of the transaction-engines housed in the underground chambers could be felt underfoot. Unlike the great towers of the capital’s business district, the natural order of the placement of offices was inverted here. Those government departments with the most pull and political capital got the rooms closest to the eternally warm underground chambers housing the house-sized thinking machines. Those with the least got the unheated rooms near the top of the civil service’s spread out complex. It was not by accident that the State Protection Board occupied the unheated rooms under the great glass palace that formed the roof.
Dick Tull looked out of the crystal panels as he waited for his meeting with the head of the service, playing with the edges of his greying moustache. If he looked carefully through the forest of chimneys venting steam, he could just make out the network of canals running between the Greenhall buildings, navvies with axes chipping away at the ice. Even now, in the depths of winter, the great engines of government needed to be cooled with water.
Miserable, cheapskate jiggers, those engine men are. Sweating in comfort down in their echoing caverns, shovelling coal into their furnaces while they let me freeze up here. They get paid more than me too, closed shop with guild exams to get in. Sods. That’s why they give out regimental ranks in the board, so they don’t have to pay me civilian civil service rates.
And here, walking down the corridor, was a prime example of the board’s officer class. Another one of the chinless wonders who had joined after him, then unfairly risen so far above Dick’s position in life: Walsingham. He stopped before Dick, scratching his dark sideburns, his neat moustache twitching as if it had a life of its own. Walsingham’s face was so vague and nondescript that in his absence you could usually only recall him by his fussy manners and over-neat clothes, every fold tucked, every crease ironed to tight angles. Never what he looked like. A little walking blank passing through life unremembered.
‘Sergeant.’
‘Major.’
‘Last night,’ said Walsingham. ‘The surveillance at Lord Chant’s residence. It was badly done.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Were you drinking?’
Had that young sod Billy-boy ratted Dick out about his hip flask too?
‘Of course not, sir. Is Beresford not coming in with me to see the head?’
‘He’s been reassigned, Tull. To someone who can tutor to him in more than the art of skiving.’
Of course he has, conniving young sod. Already William Beresford was being pushed onto a trajectory that would carry him far beyond Dick.
‘I’ll try to manage without him, major.’
‘Better you had. Watch what you say in front of the head, he’s feeling a little … withdrawn, today.’
Circle’s teeth, not another one of the old steamer’s funny turns?
Dick tapped the side of his nose. ‘See all, sir – say nothing.’
We wouldn’t want to confuse the head with details, would we? Not when you’ve got your ambitious little gaze set on his position. That would suit you, wouldn’t it, making sure you get the glory for bagging the royalists? Another success to bolster your section, to polish your already well-honed reputation. Well, the transaction-engine chambers will run cold below your feet before I help you inflate your pension any more, you supercilious old bugger.
‘Best you had Tull, and when you’re finished in there, I’ll introduce you to your new partner. Someone to make sure you don’t get into any more mischief behind my back.’
‘You can rely on me, sir.’ Just as sure as I can rely on you.
When the clerk outside the head’s office bid Dick enter, he found Algo Monoshaft bent down on the floor, the gas lamps in the room turned down low, allowing the natural light of the glass architecture to spill across hundreds of pieces of paper connected by thin crimson yarns. Daguerreotype images of faces, newspaper cuttings and scraps of paper scrawled with the steamman’s own iron hands littered the floor. Algo Monoshaft had started off in the board’s cipher section – no finer mind for cracking enemy codes. But that had been centuries ago, and now the steamman was well past his best years. The single stack rising from his spine trembled as his boiler heart struggled to fully power the creature of the metal’s ageing systems. Where once the single steel sphere mounted to
