Part 3 (1/2)

Jethro glanced down towards his lap. There was the package, still unopened, the gift of the Inquisition's highly placed emissary. 'It is not my business; it is the Inquisition's. I reject it and I reject you, Badger-headed Joseph.'

More scratching sounded from the other side. 'Do you reject curiosity, too, fiddle-faddle fellow? Part of you must want to know what's in the folder. Whose Whose name is in the folder? The same part of you that stuck your hand in the fire when you were a child. When your grandfather warned you to watch out for the embers.' name is in the folder? The same part of you that stuck your hand in the fire when you were a child. When your grandfather warned you to watch out for the embers.'

'I am Jethro Daunt, I am my own man. I serve the rational order.' He tried humming the algebra-heavy mantra of the first hymn that sprang to mind, but the scratching grew louder, breaking the concentration needed to enter a meditation.

'Take care, little fiddle-faddle fellow. You make your intellect your G.o.d it has powerful muscles but a poor personality. Not like me. Here comes the rain...' There was a moaning noise of relief on the other side of the confessional booth and a powerful stench a.s.sailed Jethro's nose. The ancient G.o.d was urinating against his side of the booth.

'This is a rational house,' shouted Jethro, retching. 'It has no place for you, Badger-headed Joseph. No place for the old G.o.ds. I cast you out!'

'You're not a parson anymore,' growled the voice behind the grille. 'Make me happy, fiddle-faddle fellow; indulge your curiosity with the packet.'

Jethro Daunt woke with a start. His bedroom was dark save for the illumination of the triple-headed gas lamp in Thompson Street burning beyond his window. Just enough light to see the tightly bound folder from the Inquisition.

He looked at it, the echo of his grandfather's warning as his hand reached for the fire grate whispering across the darkness.

Boxiron thumped along the corridor. He had trouble enough approximating sleep during the small hours, the hearing folds on the side of his head wired into the inferior routing mechanisms of the man-milled neck join randomly amplifying the sounds of the night.

Opening the door with far more vigour than he had expected or requested from his arm servos, Boxiron was faced with a sight strange even for their chambers at Thompson Street.

Jethro Daunt was in the middle of the floor, the folder from the Inquisition cut open with a letter knife. Papers and notes sodden with the consulting detective's tears were scattered across a rug in the centre of the room.

Glancing up, Jethro noticed the steamman as he entered. 'She's dead. After all these years, she's dead.'

The light in the centre of Boxiron's vision plate flared with anger. This was the Inquisition's work. It wasn't just Jethro Daunt who was an expert at staring into a softbody's soul. Curiosity. Curiosity could always be counted on to undermine Jethro's resolve. Every time. The Loas d.a.m.n the devious minds of the Inquisition.

'You're going to do what they want, aren't you? You're going to take their case.'

Jethro rested his spine against the foot of the bed and stared up at the ceiling, a blank look on his face. A mask. 'Of course I am.'

And where Jethro went, Boxiron would inevitably follow. As he so often did, Jethro began to hum one of his mad little ballads as he leafed through the papers spread around him. He didn't hum church hymns anymore, that pained him too much; but he had picked up many ditties from the drinking houses their informers frequented. 'Well of all the dogs it stands confessed, your Jackelian bulldogs are the best.' 'Well of all the dogs it stands confessed, your Jackelian bulldogs are the best.'

The steamman noticed the stack of unpaid bills on the table in the room, a little higher every day. Boxiron hoped that the League of the Rational Court could be counted upon to pay more promptly than Lord Spicer's estate.

It was a terrible sight to see inside the cathedral normally so tranquil and shaded now lit by the brightly burning diode lamps of the police militia as they moved about the nave, throwing open the doors leading down to the crypt and checking the transept for any sign of ursks. n.o.body was protesting the presence of the heavily armed free company soldiers with them. The green-uniformed police militia was interviewing the few monks and vergers left inside the cathedral. Hannah and Chalph pressed past for a view of the confessional booths along the side of the far wall.

'We weren't here,' Hannah heard a verger telling a militia officer. 'Hordes of people came across the cathedral's bridges begging for help. We were out with the people carrying torches alongside the ca.n.a.ls. Only she stayed behind.'

She. Hannah looked unbelievingly towards where the police were kneeling outside the confessional booths, blood flooded across the flagstones. Dear Circle, those were the archbishop's robes on that stump. That Hannah looked unbelievingly towards where the police were kneeling outside the confessional booths, blood flooded across the flagstones. Dear Circle, those were the archbishop's robes on that stump. That decapitated decapitated stump. stump.

'Alice!' yelled Hannah, trying to press forward.

'Who let her in here?' frowned Colonel Knipe. Jago's imposing silver-headed police commander limped forward on his artificial leg.

'Is it Alice?'

'It is the archbishop's body,' said the colonel sadly, pus.h.i.+ng Hannah and Chalph back.

'Where's her head? Where's her head?'

'Don't look at the body, this isn't something for you to see,' ordered the colonel.

She couldn't take it in. There wasn't even a skull left on the woman who had raised Hannah as her own daughter. And some of their last words...The accusation that Alice had been trying to trap her here...

'Where's her head?' Chalph demanded.

'I wish I knew,' said the colonel. 'It's not inside the cathedral. The ursk that did this must have ripped pieces off the archbishop to feed on later.'

Chalph sniffed the air. 'I can't smell any ursk scent in here.'

'You think her head fell off of its own accord, sprouted legs and ran away?' snapped the colonel. He tapped his metal leg, the clockwork-driven mechanism inside whirring back at him. 'I know things about ursks, wet-snout. The only difference between filth like those monsters and your people is about twenty stone in weight and a leather s.h.i.+rt.'

'Pericurian free company soldiers are the only thing keeping Hermetica City safe,' cried Chalph in outrage.

'What a good job your people are doing,' sneered the colonel. 'I told the senate that paying for free company mercenaries to patrol our walls was a mistake of the highest order. When you fight for money, money is all you value. You wet-snouts let this happen, cub. You want to scare us all off your sacred soil, but it's not going to happen. We've been here for two thousand years and we'll be here for another thousand before your d.a.m.n archd.u.c.h.ess holds one inch of Jago's mud for her scriptures.'

'But there's no claw marks on the confessional's walls,' observed Hannah. 'Let me see the body!'

Colonel Knipe snapped his fingers and two of his police militia came forward grabbing Hannah and Chalph.

'I don't have time for this! You can see her body at the funeral like everyone else get these two out of here.'

Chalph snarled as the Jagonese militia pushed him rudely out of the cathedral, shoving with their lamp rods and rifle b.u.t.ts, no doubt venting the frustration they felt at the usurpation of their role manning the battlements by Chalph's race. They were only slightly kinder in their handling of Hannah.

In the crowd that had begun to form outside on the bridge, Hannah spotted one of the junior priests Father Baine the young man who usually clerked for the archbishop.

'Is it true?' he called out, seeing Hannah. 'The militia won't even let us back into our own rooms.'

'I think so,' said Hannah. 'There's a dead body by the confessionals and it's wearing Alice's robes. Sweet Circle, I think she's dead. The ursks...'

'May serenity find her,' mumbled the priest, shocked to the core by the confirmation of his prelate's murder. 'Have they shot the ursk that did it?'

Hannah shook her head. 'They're searching the crypt levels now.

Father Baine looked at Hannah and then more nervously at Chalph standing at her side as if he was expecting the Pericurian trader's apprentice to triple in size and transform into one of the b.e.s.t.i.a.l ursks in front of his eyes.

'They may not find anything down there,' whispered the young priest. 'The archbishop told me before our afternoon meditations that Vardan Flail had threatened her life and that the high guild head was no longer to be admitted to the cathedral. Not even on Circle-day for the open service.'

Vardan Flail had threatened Alice? The brief heated conversation in the testing rooms between them leapt back to Hannah. The odious little man leaving for the archbishop's chancellery two steps behind Alice.

'Did she say if the argument was about me?'

'Your call-up on the ballot list, yes.' The priest ran a hand through his prematurely thinning hair. 'But that's not all that they argued over. Vardan Flail mentioned to her that if she married him, it would invalidate your draft, but the archbishop told me she'd spurned such a clumsy offer.'

Chalph growled in surprise by Hannah's side. 'Marry Vardan Flail? Who would want to mate with such a twisted creature?'

'He was not always what you see limping through the vaults,' said the priest. He looked at Hannah, eager to impress her with his knowledge. 'Why do you think he was always making excuses to come to the cathedral? He had set his cap on the archbishop from the first day she arrived on Jago. In the early years, Vardan Flail was the only friend the archbishop had on Jago everyone else's noses having been put out of joint by the church thinking it could presume to appoint an outsider to the position, over all the Jagonese priests who had been waiting for preferment.'

Hannah was shocked. She had always seen Alice as an archbishop first and her guardian second but never as a woman, a woman that might marry. Hannah had been going around all these years with her eyes closed. A well of despair opened up inside her. How little she really knew the woman who had raised her how little she ever would, now.

Father Baine leant in close. 'We turned Vardan Flail away, just as the archbishop had ordered us to. On the south bridge, about five minutes before the city's breach bells started sounding. Flail was furious, cursing us and wis.h.i.+ng a plague upon everyone who worked inside the cathedral. He could have slipped back after the alarm sounded, murdered the archbishop while we were out with the people keeping a watch on the ca.n.a.ls.'