The Cogspeare Conspiracy (The Cogspeare Chronicles Book 1)

Chapter 1:

A small, nervous man twisted his scroll of notes in his skeletal hands and stuttered,

“And so, in conclusion, I estimate that the storm will hit western Cornwall in twelve hours.” He looked anxiously at the seated men, their lamp-cast shadows looming eerily over the table. There were only half a dozen board members, but each was as large as an aerobateau in full flight.

              So, what exactly are you suggesting, Mr. Jepsum?” asked Mr. O’Brian, resettling himself in the hydraulic chair that was his prison. His waistcoat looked as though it was ready to explode, and the man across from him, Mr. Liniver, leaned sideways to avoid the bullet-like buttons should they pop.

              “Um, Mr. O’Brian, sir, I believe that it w-would be m-most p-prudent to s-suspend all mining activity until the storm has passed, and then for at least three days after that, especially given that we are dealing with a new shaft?” he ended on a squeak when he saw the irate faces in front of him all simultaneously turn puce.

              “Why, that’s unacceptable!”

              “What utter rot!”

              “Think of the cost, man, think of the cost!”

              But once the other five had yelled their opinions, the man at the other end of the table raised his hand and said, quietly but sternly,

              “Thank you, Mr. Jepsum, for your aetherological and geological advice. We will take it into consideration. You are dismissed.” Jepsum couldn’t run out of the room fast enough, and mentally relished the moment when he returned to the house he shared with his mother.

Once they knew that he was gone, the board members turned back to Clinton and all looked at him for guidance, for leadership.

“James!” he called out, and his secretary quickly entered the room from a concealed doorway behind him. The only thing one could tell about the man, bathed in shadows as he was, was that he was less than middle aged and of a middling height. 

“Yes, sir?”

“For the weekly pulse to the Port Prudence mine, just tell them…full steam ahead.”

Chapter 2:

The rain poured down on the Port Prudence miners as they trudged towards the open pit.

              “Right old storm this is,” growled one very wet miner. He had what looked like a giant corkscrew thrown over his shoulder.

              “Aye, Bob. ‘Tis a right one. You think this be it, then?” Bob shrugged.

              “Don’t rightly know, Davie. Y’see, this storm could just come down right quick and then pass on, or maybe the water won’t slush down the right paths. Then again,” he continued as they waited in line with dozens of others for the hydraulic descender, “this could be just a normal storm without any stuff in the clouds.”

              They both looked up, and Davie Marshall sent his drinking buddy a sceptical look through his goggles. Some of the rain clouds were a deep grapefruit pink.

              They marched forward to the front of the queue.

              “Name?” asked their foreman, standing guard before the descender.

              “John, we drink a pint together every night!”

              “Name?”

              “If you don’t know my name by now, I’d say you’ve spent too much time above ground!”

              “Name!” the haggard man shouted. He looked more miserable than any of his men had ever seen him, and that was saying something; his wife had died a few months before, and he had just sent his only child down the mine to the newest shaft. 

              “David Marshall,” the miner said quietly. John Craggs hitched his clipboard under his arm and popped off his goggles. He wiped his eyes which were watering profusely.

              “Damn, this stuff burns!”

              “John, you alright there?” Craggs nodded wearily.

              “Aye. You boys get along. But be careful lads, this is a bad ‘un.”

              “Aye, Craggs, we can see that,” replied Bob jovially. “And my name’s Robert Chambers, just for the record.” Bob and Davie stepped onto the descender, and as one of the miners- one of the seven Smiths, probably- worked the lever, John mumbled,

              “Just for the record…”

              The last glimpse Bob, Davie and the others had of the sky, red clouds were rolling in.

              Down in the caves, the slow job of prying open another shaft continued.

“Alright, lads, let’s get moving!” yelled the head miner. “Smith!”

              At least seven heads popped up. “No, no, not you lot. The other one. Smyth. I say, Paul!” he yelled, his beautiful baritone rumbling through the dark, wet cave. The only source of illumination were tallow candles flickering in their small glass canisters impaled on pikes,  swinging to the beat of the drilling.

              “Aye!” Paul Smyth shouted back. He came stumbling down between the two lines of miners to the front part of the cave. The more advanced miners were drillers, wielding the massive corkscrews with ease, while the others, mostly boys, picked up the debris and stacked it into massive carts that would be hauled to the surface once the rain had stopped. The head miner had sent another few lithe lads along to scramble out a new, promising shaft.

              So as not to touch the reactive spesium, everyone wore gloves woven with brass and iron. Though they wore goggles, that didn’t stop most of them from having small burns on their faces. But then again, everyone in the village had them from the rain.

              “Right, Paul,” continued Bob once his second in command had arrived. “I wanted to show you where another possible vein might be.” He whipped out a crude map of the cave that he had drawn himself. Pulling a pencil from behind his ear, he jabbed it at the paper, saying “I sent some lads to check it out.”

              As they discussed the intricacies of spesium mining, water dribbled down the roof and sides of the cave, slowly turning from a pale pink to a violent crimson colour as it reacted with the ruby-like spesium.

              There was a drip-drop.

              The miners, all involved with heavy machinery, froze in their tracks. Another drip-drop sounded. The sound of death to them.

              Bob and Paul looked at each other through their gritty goggles, the former’s eyebrows brushing up over them. They slowly looked up and saw the red water slowly, inexorably begin to drip down onto their paper. Their paper that was dirty with graphite. With carbon.

They had just enough time to close their eyes before they were blown into oblivion.

Chapter 3:

A month or so later…

The scarlet spesium smog was dissipating and the sun could just be glimpsed beside Big Ben. It was a beautiful day, but Magnus Cogspeare was filled with a deep sense of foreboding.

              He really hated Mondays.

              All five of his younger brothers were born on Mondays, all heralding another new, annoying addition to his world.

              Throughout his childhood, every Monday signalled the day where he would be forced to take oboe lessons, the only thing at which he really failed spectacularly. That, and relationships, of course.

              It had almost been inevitable that it was a Monday when his brothers almost blew up their childhood home in Mayfair. It had been an explosion that had taken away more than just his left ear.

              Mondays were now the days when his boss, the eminent Sir Nicodemus Grimsby, assigned cases to him. Some were interesting, but the majority were relentlessly dull. Really, one would think that more serious cases would come his way…

              His former valets, now numbering twenty-seven, also all seemed to quit on Mondays. Today would prove to be no different.

              Bracing himself for the day ahead, Magnus rolled over and got out of bed, automatically patting down his ginger hair as he padded across his sparse bedroom to the newly-renovated bathroom. The brass taps all gleamed, and Puddleby’s handiwork was evident as his two toothbrushes, one for the upper teeth and one for the lower, were already covered in paste.

              After his ablutions, Magnus dressed with his usual, some (alright, all) would say overly fastidious care. He was arrayed head to toe in black, enlivened only by his snowy, wing-tipped shirt, starched to within an inch of its life. He resembled nothing so much as a red-headed crow.

              He then, very carefully, slathered hair jelly into his unruly hair and combed it so that it was securely pasted to his well-shaped skull.

              For the finishing touch, with long, deft fingers, he attached the silver scroll-worked hearing-augmenter to his stub of a left ear. It had been a gift from his brother Declan on his most recent birthday.

              The twenty-seven year old barrister emerged from his bedroom.

              “Sir, I must resign!” declared his valet Puddleby, slamming down a silver salver with exasperated aplomb.

              “Oh, must you?” After years of playing out this scene, with variations on the level of histrionics (always on the part of the manservants, naturally), Magnus merely approached the inevitable with a suppressed sigh.

              “Indeed, I must, sir, I must! I cannot stand the pressures any longer!” The older man tossed his head like an agitated horse, his greasy grey hair revealing more than anything the true state of his agitation.
Oh, dear,
thought Magnus,
this has all the markings of a full-blown tantrum. Best to clamp the coils before emotions flare up to unsupportable levels.

              “Well, if you must, Puddleby, you must.” He even turned up the corners of his mouth in a smile. Puddleby took a nervous step back, never having seen his employer crack a smile before.

              “Yes, and do make sure to collect your wages and severance from my accountant, and ask the agency to send over another valet as soon as possible.”

              Magnus passed the deflated man and had just crossed the immaculate room, furnished almost entirely in pristine shades of whites and greys, when Puddleby coughed.

              “Yes?”

              “Um, sir; the agency has no more valets.” Magnus frowned and turned his icy grey stare onto his former gentleman’s gentleman.

              “How is that possible?” Each word dripped with ice. The brutal barrister in him was making an early appearance.

              “U-um, s-sir,” stuttered the poor man, “You s-see, there are still available valets, of course, but j-just, um, none for you?” He ended the statement so hesitantly that it had to be finished with a question mark.

              “Indeed?” Magnus drummed his fingers on the table. Puddleby swallowed and began to wring his hands.

              “Yes. Sir, you’ve gone through fifteen of us in the last year. Fifteen! It’s unprecedented sir! You’ve frayed all our nerves, and even sent old Meclesby into a breakdown!”

             
You know nothing about frayed nerves,
Magnus snarled internally.

              “Sir, measuring out the five grams of tooth paste each day is a bit much, and laying out your shoes in alphabetical order of their colour is eccentric. But separate dishes for each food item, all the furniture against the walls, and polishing your seven umbrellas; it’s unsupportable!

“All of us pride ourselves on our organization and fastidiousness. Indeed, no one appreciates a finely ironed newspaper more than a gentleman’s gentleman, but what you ask us to do borders on the obsessive, even the insane.”

Magnus briefly acknowledged that the umbrella-polishing might be a bit much before his mind was engulfed with a wave of pure rage. Because, Puddleby had made the colossal mistake of uttering those two words that always sent Magnus over the edge;
obsessive
and
insane

His eyes clouded over and he managed to growl “Get-Out!”

Puddlesby made the quickest exit of his life.

Magnus took deep breaths, trying to tame the raging beast. He slowly sat down at his small, perfect table set for one, his plates of eggs and bacon and toast and porridge growing cold, unheeded.

He fought to find something to grab onto, something to bring himself back to reason, and then remembered another reason to hate this Monday. His mother had asked to see him this evening.

His rage dissolved in a solvent of dread, because if his mother asked to see him, that meant she needed him. And if she needed him, that either meant she needed legal advice, or that one of his brothers was in trouble, or both. Either way, he would have to be the voice of reason in the ongoing opera of outlandishness that was the Cogspeare household.

He thrust back his chair and left his neglected food untouched, donned his black leather cape and top hat, and selected his black Monday umbrella from the six other identical ones standing at attention by the door.