Their Majesties' Bucketeers (4 page)

At the back of the hall, Leds had rearranged chairs into a cozy circle about the little wheeled serving table he’d brought with him, and we gathered round as he struck a match to the wick. It sputtered, and in a moment or two delicious invigorating vapors issued from the silver service as he placed its perforated lid atop the kood holder and took a chair of his own.

I inhaled deeply, relaxing. “Tell me, Mav, what is it you discovered up there on the plat—Mav?” My companion had quite disappeared while all of us had been preoccupied with the kood. “Mav?”

“Just coming now, Mymy,” an unseen voice replied, then he stepped out of the shadows through the door that had been open to the Weapons Hall. “Is that the kood I smell?” He rubbed his hands together. “How delightful!”

As he took a seat beside me and inhaled the vapors, I could tell that he was far more pleased than mere refreshments or a trip to the s.c. alone might account for. However, social decorum demands that nothing of moment be discussed while still the wick burns, so I would have to be content with the rough sort of small talk that serves not only males, but, worse luck, Bucketeers, for polite kood-time conversation.

Or so I had believed.

“I say, tell me, Leds old fellow, that’s a splendid kood service you have there. Does it belong to you?” Perhaps the strain had been too much for Mav, for he uttered these words in the same tones employed by the kind of person who sells my mother draperies.

The old lam puckered up his fur. “To me? Oh, no, sir, it’s the Museum’s. Seventy-five years old, it is, an’ once th’ property of Lord Admiral Roytoyt hisself. His heirs donated it, but Professor Srafen had an older one, an’ nicer, so he lets us—that is, he
let
us fellows use this one.” His voice betrayed the strain and grief of losing such a kindly and respected employer, and his fur was all adroop.

“I see,” answered Mav, seemingly unaware of the old lam’s feelings. “And where is it that you keep it when it isn’t in use? The Curator’s office at the north end of the Weapons Hall?”

“Sir? Oh, no, sir, in the atrium guard station, out front. You passed through it tonight when you came in.”

“Capital! Well then, what do you think of Ednotem this year? I hear the odds-makers give them three-to-two to take the City Medal.”

When the kood was nearly done with, Mav held up a finger and spoke quietly: “Now, Mymy, I’m aware you have a question for me. Do be good enough to come with me into the other room, for I believe I have this mystery more than two-thirds solved already.”

My amazement must have shown, but he was silent as I gathered up my bag and followed him through the door into the Weapons Hall. Here, instead of going straight across to the sanitary closets as I’d assumed he’d done before, he turned to the left, pushing aside the portable screen that blocked off the rest of the room. When we were on the other side, he reached into his pocket. “I trust you’ll forgive me that idiotic piece of conversation earlier, about the kood service. I had to be assured that no one had come through this screen and disturbed the contents of this room. Tell me, Mymy, what do you make of this?”

The article he’d handed me, an iron implement of some kind, was obviously ancient, for it showed that brownish-blue patina to which such metals are subject after prolonged exposure to the atmosphere. About twice as long as my hand, it appeared to be a solid rod about the circumference of my finger, and of unremarkable features save one end, which, through some cataclysmic force, had blossomed into a scorched and jagged deadly looking flower, the unmistakable stink of whitepowder smoke plain to discern. The other end was slightly worn and battered, little specks of bright, untarnished metal showed through the corrosion, but nothing so spectacular as the end, which, had been…well…

“Exploded! You found this on the stage? What is it? Is it—”

He silenced me again with a gesture and led me down to the extreme end of the room, where there was a door to the left, flanked on either side by suits of iron battle dress, one with a massive sword, the other with a giant war-hammer. In the center of the panel hung an olden shield displaying the arms of one of good Queen Viigoot’s ancestors.

“This door,” said Mav, “is that which, on the other side, adjoins the speaker’s platform. As you can see”—he pointed to the frame all round—“it has been nailed shut for rather a long time.” In fact I had already noted that on the other side. We were now just opposite the place where Professor Srafen had been murdered, and I said as much.

“You are correct. Observe what else we are near.” He gestured broadly at the room behind us, and my eye fell upon a display case, not more than a lam-height away, which had been—

“Broken into! How did this happen, Mav? Surely the explosion couldn’t have—”

“You’re quite right again, Mymy. This doubtless occurred sometime beforehand, when the villain removed…the murder weapon!” He pointed into the case, and suddenly I knew the identity of the iron implement that he had shown me. Lying on the velvet amidst a shameful mess of shattered glass was an old Podfettian springbow, much as the one Tamet’s tavern is named after. Octaries ago, before the invention of whitepowder and firearms, the device had been a potent weapon well thought of, at least by those who think of such things.

“Yet innovations,” Mav observed, “are never wholly taken up at once, nor reliable devices rapidly abandoned. Note those quarrels in the case.” He pointed toward a number of short, heavy arrows, some with ugly barbed warheads, others plain, as if made for target practice. But the one he indicated in particular must, at one time, have been a mate to the damaged bolt he’d picked up off the stage. Instead of barbs or blades, it had a bulbous, hollow end. “You see how it unscrews? It is empty now, of course, but if you were to fill it with whitepowder and place a percussion cap on the end, so…”

From somewhere on his person, he’d obtained the sort of little brass cup one finds with old-fashioned pistols such as were used before self-contained metallic cartridges came into general fashion. My father had equipped himself with such a gun in his youth, and it was hanging now, if I recalled, over the mantelpiece at home.

BANG
!
He’d let the springbow bolt plummet, point-first upon the granite floor. Without a charge of powder, only the cap had exploded, but I began to understand what must have become of Srafen. “You mean to say that someone shot him with this antique weapon?”

“One can hardly avoid the conclusion. Mymy, I have been right about the art of detection. The inherent logic of the evidence is such that it directed me immediately to this place. I
knew
no bomb could have been placed in the lectern—”

“What?”

“Precisely so, for in the first place, the only possible means of ignition would have been a lighted fuze—which surely Srafen, if no one else, would have noticed—or a clockwork timer, and the explosion would have strewn its gears and springs all over the stage. I found no such mechanical remnants.

“Also, what you told me of the injuries among the audience made it clear: one might reasonably have expected splinters from the podium, but
never
fragments of Srafen’s carapace—may rhe rest in peace—which a lectern-bomb would have propelled upstage, and
not
into the audience!

“These caps, and this whitepowder flask in my pocket, were tossed into the display case afterward where I found them. And come, look at this!”

We stepped back to the door and Mav made to pry up the shield, which I had assumed was nailed upon it. Instead, the thing was only hung there, and behind it was a large and ragged hole smashed brutally through the wood!

“Why, Mav, you’re brilliant! Obviously the culprit fired through the door! Now it only remains to question the guards to ascertain who passed through the
other
door during the lecture, and—”

“Slowly, Mymy. It’s possible the villain lurked in here for some time before the lecture, and thus did not have to pass through the door when it was supervised. Also, some practical questions still remain: how did he aim so accurately through solid wood. Well, perhaps he paced it off beforehand. In any event, I’m satisfied that we will soon find out—Hallo, what in the eternal dampness is this?”

I shifted my attention to the display case again as Mav began to trace a fabric-covered metal filament that dropped down from the glassed-in top and ran along the grooves between the blocks of granite flooring, out through the screens at the front of the room. This we followed around into the lecture hall and beyond, into the Grand Display Hall. Along the Way, we met old Leds, who accompanied us to the atrium guard station, where the wire joined dozens of others at a complicated and very modern-looking device attached to the underside of the cloakroom counter.

Disgust began to affect the texture of my companion’s fur as Leds explained how the Museum’s new electrical alarm-system operated.

Or sometimes didn’t.

“Musta been the explosion, sir. For some reason, right afterward, th’ clammy thing began t’ring its bloody jaws off. Soon’s I was able, I shut it down, but every time I try t’turn it on again, it rings.” This he demonstrated with a quick throw of the knife-switch. “Loosened wires somewheres, no doubt. Now I’ll have t’go over every one of these goddamp cases…” He waved an arm out across several acres of displays inside the Grand Hall.

“I think not, Leds. We’ve found your broken case and, I suspect, broken some rather fervent hopes of my own in the process. You see the difficulty, don’t you, Mymy?”

“I believe that I do. If the case containing the springbow was breached to permit the murder, then why did not the alarm go off until
after
the explosion?” My mind began to reel from exhaustion, confusion, and disappointment for Mav’s sake.

“And furthermore,” he said, again examining the damaged springbow bolt, “if this accursed thing passed violently through the door, why did it
not
explode upon that initial impact?” He held my glass very close to his eye and thrust the ancient weapon before it.

“And why, pray tell, if it did
not
explode until it struck our poor Professor, is the bottom of the powder cavity packed with fragments of cactuswood?”

IV: A Dubious Incarceration

It
is a curious fact that no one uses more than two-thirds of his brain at any given time. Following the brief hour of hann, recommended some three or four times daily for healthsake, an active lobe retires, its functions assumed by that one previously dormant, until the next hann, when the third lobe falls insensible. This phenomenon, though yet little understood by natural philosophy, was written of even in ancient times, for often soldiers, otherwise mortally wounded, commonly displayed no sign of it until some hours later, when the state of hann slipped over them, whereupon they instantly expired.

Whatever the underlying mechanism, had it been possible to employ all three lobes at once, my friend Mav would have been doing precisely that as he conveyed me home. Whether his occasional mutterings and inarticulate stirrings of pelt were at some unacknowledged grief, the destruction of his premature hypothesis, or the generation of a new one, I could not discern. With scarcely an intelligible word, he saw me to the door, where awaited an anxious maidservant. So concerned was I for Mav’s sake, and so fatigued myself, I didn’t particularly mind whether, on the morrow, the treacherous girl informed my mother I had arrived by prisoner’s van, there being so few cabs available at the hour.

Next morning, I came as usual to North Hedgerow Precinct, having walked the few blocks from my lodgings. The early accounts at the newsagent’s were full of the murder of Srafen, treated variously according to the style and bias of the publication, and illustrated both with cuts and photographs that pushed aside the usual news of Podfet’s latest evil doings in the world and of the Empire’s valiant, civilizing resistance. Conspicuously missing was such a picture in the
Intelligencer
; I’d surgically removed the reasons for the omittance from Niitood’s carapace, article by article, the evening before. I rolled the papers back upon their rods, tucked them between two arms, and, shouldering my bag, proceeded on to work.

At the Precinct, I was surprised to see a handsome and richly appointed coach-and-three in the process of departing. It wasn’t necessary that I strain to make out the arms emblazoned upon its doors, as I had witnessed this very carriage many times drawing up before my father’s house, bearing his old friend the Archsacerdot of North Hedgerow.

I thought this circumstance a bit peculiar, but put it out of my mind, as there was much work to be done, and I could trust the usual informal flow of news within the Precinct to bring me up to date eventually. As I entered, then, imagine my amazement when another, equally luxurious conveyance drew up on the cobbles to the curb behind me. Its driver clambered down to assist some personage of obvious dignity; as I would be conspicuous in the entryway, I was unable to remain there watching, but in any event, I had recognized the distinguished Lord Ennramo, principal adviser to Their Majesties and a prominent member of the Lezynsiin, or Upper House, of Parliament.

Exactly what to make of all this, I had no idea, so for the moment abandoning further surmise, I climbed to the first-floor infirmary where I belonged.

North Hedgerow Precinct, like many another public building (much like the Imperial Museum, in fact), occupies a city block, in this case bounded upon the south by Rihnat Road, the northeast by Kevod Lane, which wanders into the Kiiden, and northwest by Gesnat Street, an artery of the City. It is a massively imposing edifice in the style of architecture perhaps three generations old, whose ground floor is occupied by the watu barn, the pump and ladder companies, and a small, depressing chamber where criminals are brought to book before being taken to the basement, where the gaol is kept.

Above, the first floor is partitioned into working spaces for the paracauterists and shift-quarters for the Bucketeers, as well as permanent lodgings for those unmarried individuals who think it good to reside within the territory of their duties. This custom, octaries old, dates from a time when Fodduan soldiers, returning from the Continent after nonades of war and finding themselves unemployed, threatened, in the King’s view, the peace and civil order of the city. Thus the peace-keeping Bucketeers were commissioned and tranquility immediately restored—due in no small measure to the fact that it was the soldiers themselves who were hired to do the job.

Upon the second floor, Tis and his lieutenants maintain their offices. Inasmuch as North Hedgerow is not only the neighborhood Bucketeer station but also Battalion Headquarters for a third of the city, facilities are made available for administration of Sound Point Precinct, upon the upstream tip of King’s Island, and for Riverside, at the northernmost extremity of the town. Although it is not officially a part of our Battalion, we also associate quite closely with King’s Hall Precinct, possibly because our own Sound Point is little more than a formality as Precinct stations go, nominally protecting the Palace and Royal Grounds and, more important, providing brilliant-emerald dress uniforms and showily trapped watun for Their Majesties’ frequent parades.

Walking along the drab corridors of government-pink and red, at last I found my fellows busily at work sterilizing bandages in an essence not unlike those Mav inhales in his silver pipe, and rolling them for their kits. My own supplies in this regard had dwindled severely, having been twice called upon the evening before, so I cast the scrolled-up papers aside and joined my half-dozen comrades at the worktable. A pleasant wick of kood was smoldering as I offered a modest contribution to the morning’s gossip.

“The Lord Ennramo?” shrieked Poadpo, “Surely you must be mistaken, Mymy! Here, at old North Hedgie? What would a
Lord
be wanting here?” There followed numerous unlikely guesses, a few of them unrepeatable in mixed company. Poadpo always pretended neither to understand nor to believe whatever tidbits were presented by others. I suspect this disagreeable tendency of rhers arose at puberty when rhe was disappointed at not becoming male. In any case, rher own stock of rumors were invariably of the most personally ruinous variety, and I shudder to imagine what rhe said of me whenever I was absent.

“Perhaps,” offered Zoddu, it’s something to do with Chief Niifysiir, who visited our Chief this morning shortly after sunrise.” Indeed it seemed unusual for the Chief of Chiefs to call, particularly at such an hour as to require our own superior to arrive early. I added that I had seen the Archsacerdot—or some deputy, I conceded—which only generated more inane remarks from Poadpo, but was confirmed by Zoddu and others who lived here at the Precinct. “We’re attracting all sorts of celebrities today.”

“Aye,” agreed Nrydmou, leaning in the doorway. “An’ maybe it’s our prisoner that we booked last night. Plenty hot he was, goin’ on about th’ rights of th’ Fourth Estate, whatever that might be.” Nrydmou and Zihu, the other male paracauterist, preferred avoiding our “little surrie koodklatsches”; his sudden appearance now was nearly as unusual as the rest of the morning’s events. “In any case, I bear a message from our Glorious Leader upstairs, Mymysiir, m’love. I’m to inform you he desires an interview, whenever you find it convenient.”

Another precedent demolished, I thought, as with some trepidation I climbed the stony steps around the spiral slide of brass down which our gallant Bucketeers ride swiftly to their waggons when the fire trumpet calls. Before I could give much thought to what else Nrydmou had disclosed, I heard raised voices at the far end of the office-lined hallway.

“Great Blessed Anhydrosity, lam, what do you take me for? You said yourself how the soggy bastard stood and primed his deadly mechanism, whereupon your Professor simply—”

“Sir, I have also shown you this springbow bolt, which—”

“Which, in your own words, it is dampening
impossible
to’ve employed in the manner you originally…‘deedooced,’ did you say?” Tis’s blustering was unmistakable, as were Mav’s somewhat more restrained replies.

“Yet it’s sturdier evidence than that upon which you have—Hallo?”

I knocked upon the frosted glass somewhat timidly.

The door swung open, its knob in Mav’s leftmost hand. “Come right in, Mymy, and guess, if you can, who has been detained in the unfortunate matter of Professor Srafen!” He stood before the old Battalion Chief, irritated certainly, but crisp and undisheveled, as if he, too, had not skipped one or two periods of hann. For my part, when I miss my rest, my lobes cannot decide which pair of them should properly be on duty, and take a day or two to get things sorted out again.

Waad Hifk
Tis
squatted behind his battered freewood desk, thinning fur erect in indignation, as was ever the case when the two of them were in the same room. I was sorry indeed to witness, let alone be expected to contribute to, this altercation. The elderly civil servant looked rumpled, but there was nothing novel in this; he was the permanently rumpled sort, likely the despair of both his wives.

The ruins of Niitood’s camera lay scattered upon the desk in pieces large and small, and Tis poked at them occasionally as he spoke, as if they were some small, dead, venomous inhabitant of the damper regions east of the city. I’m sure that being summoned at an early hour to his post had done his disposition no great good. The cornerstone of Tis’s character was regularity of habit. Indeed, I have heard (from an Extraordinary Inquirer who shall otherwise be nameless) that upon the stroke of second hour every morning, as he has done unfailingly for thirty years, Tis removes his service revolver from a drawer in which he keeps it at home, carries it upon his person to the Precinct, and promptly discards it in an identical drawer. He has discharged it neither for practice nor in line of duty during all those years, except upon the Queen’s Birthday, when his family takes holiday in Tesret. Then he fires it three times in the air, emptying the cylinder, and reloads from a packet of cartridges purchased twenty years ago. On the first day of each month (and this I have observed myself), he disjoints and scrubs the poor machine with a ferocity that has caused it to become quite as worn as if he fired it every day.

Small wonder Bucketeers set both clock and calendar by him.

Some hardy spirit once inquired why he takes his enormous brood each year to Tesret, since he invariably complains for weeks afterward of the food, weather, prices, and accommodations. Why not Feviikdyho, or even East Gymnat for a change? He replied that he always holidays in Tesret and saw no reason now to alter the practice—which makes me wonder how he
acquired
his habits in the first place. They must have been new to him at one time or another, and hence unthinkable.

Returning my attention to lesser mysteries, I replied to Mav’s rhetorical question: “I gather Rewu Uomag
Niitood
of the
Mathas Intelligencer
had been blamed.”

“Too right,” muttered Tis with belligerent satisfaction, “And there’s an end to it!” He deferred to a corner of the room where sat an individual I hadn’t noticed until now and did not recognize, a smallish, professionally anonymous lam in the drab pink civilian “uniform” of a career bureaucrat. This socially invisible creature nodded confirmation, causing Tis to relax visibly.

“Of course, there’s
proving
it,” Mav offered mildly.

Tis began to splutter once again. “
Technicalities
, I say! By desiccation, we’ll demonstrate he had some sort of fiendish weapon secreted in this picture box of his! That is why I’ve called you here this morning, Mymy.” He pushed and poked the shattered remains around his desk top. Some portions had survived the violence surprisingly intact. “Would you say this is all of it, or has anything been removed or left behind?”

I leant over his desk to examine what was there. “It’s difficult to say, sir.” (The poor old fellow grimaced, as he always does. It confuses him that well-born individuals such as Mav and myself desire the work we do and, accordingly, address him by the honorific.) “It has certainly been severely damaged, although not quite as much as I recall under the strain of last evening’s events. The coincidence of Niitood’s standing at the very moment does bear consideration, Nonetheless—”

“
Yes?
” growled Tis, echoed by Mav with kindly encouragement. The plainly dressed stranger sat silently, as before, puffing on a little brass inhaler.

Summoning courage: “Nonetheless, these fragments bear no mark of having had a greater part in the catastrophe than simply being in the way when it transpired. They’re unscorched, nor do they have that odor of gunpowder, which Mav’s springbow—”

“Ehrumph…
thank you
, Mymy, that will be all.”

“Sir, if I may—”

“
Yes
, Mymysiir, you may
go
now. Ahum!”

“Sir, that isn’t what…I mean, I don’t particularly
like
Niitood, but should he be convicted, would they not—”

“Premeditated murder? The Blocks, of course, as he jolly well deserves!”

“I’d much prefer the ancient honored custom of
drowning
,” Mav remarked.

“Mind your language, Bucketeer, there’s a lurrie present!”

“Oh. Sorry, Mymy.” On the side of his carapace neither Tis nor his mysterious guest could see, Mav let his fur ripple humorously. “In any event, sir, I’m afraid you’ll have to let your prisoner go. You see, by peculiar circumstance, I examined this very camera not long before the murder, and I assure you—”