LITMIR.BIZ

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you know Sixrivets, grandfather? Were you protecting an old friend?’

      ‘Something like that.’

      Smike pointed to the opened grave, the steamman’s remains keeping company with the two halves of the dead thug’s body. ‘What did the flash mob’s lads want with Sixrivets’ corpse, then?’

      ‘I was hoping you might know the answer to that question.’

      Smike shook his head. ‘Not me, mate.’

      ‘Pity. Well, I have my suspicions. But they are not for sharing.’ The old man picked up the criminal’s fallen sack, climbed into the grave and began to fill it with the rusted parts of the entombed steamman. When he had finished he pulled himself out and passed the sack to Smike.

      Smike looked at the sack in disgust. ‘What do you want me to do with this?’

      ‘I’m sure you’re not completely unacquainted with the means of concealing ill-gotten gains.’ He produced two silver sovereigns. ‘One of these is for hiding Sixrivets’ body parts some place the flash mob will not be able to lay their hands on the old steamer. Please don’t just toss the sack in the river, Sixrivets deserves better than that, and if that is what I desired, I could throw him in the Gambleflowers myself and save the cost of a sovereign.’

      ‘And the other coin?’

      ‘For carrying a message to someone who can help clear up this mess. You must tell them what you saw this night, and you must memorize what I am about to tell you.’

      Smike listened intently to what the old man had to say. Those two shining coins were more than he usually managed to steal in a couple of months.

      When the old man had finished relaying the message and answered most of Smike’s queries to his satisfaction, the lad concluded by asking the obvious question. ‘How do you know I won’t just pocket your two coins and do a runner?’

      ‘Firstly, because I will find you and remind you of a bargain badly made. Secondly, because when I return from my business I shall pass you another coin to befriend the two now warming your pocket.’

      ‘But you don’t even know where I live …’ said Smike.

      The old goat tapped the side of his nose. ‘The musk of cheap mumbleweed? I shall find your lodgings. Even if you move. You will have to be patient for your third coin, though. I may be away some time, as my business will be taking me out of the capital for a little while.’

      Smike waited until the blind old man had disappeared into the smog, the tapping of his cane against the gravestones fading to nothing, before he gathered the courage to bite into the silver sovereigns. The coins were real enough. Smike looked at the two halves of the Catgibbon’s enforcer spilled across the grave that had been opened. Time to be off, in case the crimelord’s blades came back in force.

      The coins vanished back into the pickpocket’s jacket and he slung the sack over his shoulder. ‘Carry a message for me, boy. Hide Sixrivets for me, boy. What does he think I am, a bleeding postman or a bleeding undertaker?’

      But conceal the body and carry the message he would. Out of fear … and for the promise of another silver sovereign.

      Professor Amelia Harsh nodded politely to the steamman pushing a flattening-roller across the lawn, a little iron goblin with a single telescope-like eye. It nodded back at her. The drone was not intelligent enough to enter directly into conversation with Amelia, but it would no doubt pass on word of her arrival back to the central consciousness that controlled it.

      Amelia walked along the gravel path and looked up at the tower, a large clockface dominating the upper storey of the building. Tock House showed little sign of the ravages of war now, but it had been left in quite a state after the invasion of Middlesteel. Attacked, burnt, then finally occupied and looted by the shifties. Amelia knew she was lucky that she had been out in the counties in Stainfolk when Quatérshift’s vicious Third Brigade had seized Jackals’ capital; but she had counted as friends those who had lived here – and one of them, sadly, had not been as fortunate as she had. Amelia had helped the current tenants of Tock House search for Silas Nickleby’s body in the undercity, but they had not even found enough of his corpse to bury out in the orchard.

      Before Amelia got to the pair of stone lions flanking the stairs to the tower, the house’s door pulled back, revealing a flame-haired young woman waiting to greet her. Amelia stuck out her over-sized hand to meet the pale, slim palm extended towards her.

      ‘Professor Harsh, it has been too long. I heard about you losing your position at the college, but you weren’t at your lodgings when I called on you.’

      ‘I’ve been out and about, kid, you know me. So where did you hear that piece of scurrilous gossip?’

      ‘A mutual friend,’ said Molly Templar. ‘One who works in the engine rooms at Greenhall.’

      ‘That weasel Binchy? I’m surprised he’s still talking to you after what happened to him during the invasion.’

      Molly shrugged and led Amelia into the comfortable hallway of Tock House. ‘Once a cardsharp, always a cardsharp. He’s got nothing better to do than set his punch cards to work on the drums of Greenhall’s engines. He’s probably keeping tabs on all of us. Do you need money, professor, to finance your work?’

      ‘My work always needs money, kid, but not from the likes of you.’

      ‘You saved my life, professor, and whatever problems I have now, thankfully money is not one of them.’

      ‘Yes, that much I figured,’ said Amelia. ‘I read your last novel, Molly, along with most of the rest of Jackals.’

      ‘Just so that you know,’ said Molly, ‘the offer is always there if you need it.’

      ‘Borrow money from your enemies. Never from your friends or family. That’s an old Chimecan proverb. No, I’ve come to call on the old sea dog, if he’s around?’

      Molly took her along a sweeping staircase. ‘The commodore is up with Aliquot Coppertracks. He has been helping the old steamer all week on his latest obsession.’

      Amelia nodded. The enthusiasms of the steamman genius that shared Tock House’s rooms with Molly and the commodore were never anything other than wholly committed. Coppertracks’ laboratory resided alongside the clock mechanism of the tower’s top floor. Sometimes it was hard to see where the cogs and parts of the clock house began and the rotating, twisting, chemical-misting mess of the steamman’s research ended. Aliquot Coppertracks rolled across the floorboards, his transparent skull ablaze with the fizz of mental energies, drones – the mu-bodies of his expanded consciousness – scurrying about their steamman master, closely followed by Commodore Black. An oil-stained leather apron had replaced the submariner’s usual waistcoat and jacket, and the bear-sized man was staggering under the weight of a crate of machinery.

      ‘Ah, Aliquot. This is no work for a poor old fellow like me. Another box for hulking down to the woods.’

      ‘Dear mammal,’ said Coppertracks, ‘the quicker we move this material to the woods the quicker we can begin work on the next stage of our project.’

      The commodore saw Amelia standing with Molly and he stumbled across to them. ‘Professor Harsh. Have you come to offer us the strength of your blessed muscled arms today? Coppertracks has us all building a mad temple to his genius out in our orchard. Most of Middlesteel would be pleased to grow apples and pears in their gardens, but we must labour on some damn fool tower for him.’

      ‘Amelia softbody,’ implored the steamman. ‘As a fellow creature of learning you must talk some gumption into our recalcitrant friend. We are setting up a mechanism to detect vibrations across the aether. It is my contention that there are intelligences on the celestial spheres neighbouring our own world, and that they may wish to communicate with us should a suitable mechanism to commune with them be constructed.’

      Amelia stepped aside as a couple

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