Their Majesties' Bucketeers (17 page)

Mav’s recovery was swifter than I might have predicted, I suspect due to the prospect that he might, at last, be nearing some agreeable conclusion to this soggy and infernal mystery. Several times each day he came across the street, met me belowstairs, and accompanied me back to where he himself had grown accustomed to fidgeting against the possibility of action. How he occupied his time when I was not beside him I would not have cared to speculate; there also was Vyssu, who seemed almost to have given over whatever ordinary enterprises she pursued to this strangely static pursuit of Mav’s. Whenever I was there, we sat discussing art and politics, sports and drama, the weather, and every other incidental topic except that matter most at hand. With the failing light, my detective friend would escort me home, his pace visibly much livelier and healthier each occasion. I would then wait by myself until the next time he appeared.

Each such afternoon I protested that I might go shopping, visiting, or simply for a walk. This Mav surprised me by graciously agreeing to—provided I took Fatpa with me everywhere I went! It took me not more than a few seconds imagining that apparition occupying a cushion in my mother’s parlor or assisting me with packages through the gilt doors of some respected and fashionable place of retail business, to dismiss the notion and return to those same three walls I had come to know—and to dislike—so well.

I did derive some small amusement at the time contemplating how Tis might react to Fatpa’s imposing presence at the Precinct.

The evening of the third day, following yet another of my sociables with Mav and Vyssu, I felt the state of hann beginning to steal over me. This, as one might expect, was far from unwelcome as it would neatly dispose of a weary hour that would otherwise be occupied adding to the callosity on my trigger fingers. I secured the bolt upon the door, sifted the uppermost layer of sand in the hannbox, then settled into it, digging all nine arms as comfortably deep as possible. Drifting, I closed my eyes and—

Suddenly, a great commotion sounded in the street below!
With painful effort I wrenched consciousness back into focus, surging upward in a shower of fine, clean sand that spattered on the floor, mixing with the coarser grade that served as carpet in this place. Through the window, I could see a pair of waggons in the lamplight, their trees and traces tangled inextricably, the axle of one of them broken, a watu lying on the pavement, to all appearances sorely injured. The drivers, working-class fellows in crude and dirty habiliment, stood at the conjunction of the vehicles, waving all their arms and shouting loudly enough to rattle the pane through which I watched them. At any moment, it was clear, they would begin to strike each other savagely; despite the hour, a crowd was gathering in cheerful anticipation of such an unscheduled sporting event. All the neighborhood around about seemed compelled to offer, at the tops of their voices, suggestions and encouragement. Somewhere, faint in the background, a Bucketeer’s trumpet sounded, promising that there might even be a referee.

From my vantage, a full story above the potential melee, I suddenly espied something no other could have been aware of, and understood the true nature of the scene below: it was a sham. On the roof of Vyssu’s, a dark and silent form prised at a trap that would admit him to an upper floor. For some queer reason, the character of his stealthy movements caused me to glance down once more at the waggons—now I recognized one of the vehicles as well as the beast that had drawn it hither. I knew that figure among the chimney pots as well as I knew any other, despite the fact that he was clad now altogether differently than on the occasion when I had seen him last.

Finally, finally I say, something was about to happen, and I would not be left out of it.

I seized my little pistol, remembering also to snatch up the billfold with my official insignia, and dashed down the stairs. There the doors were bolted shut already. As I made to unfasten them, the owner emerged from her room.

“Here, now, missur, what’s goin’ on? You know there ain’t no comin’ nor goin’ after dark—house rules.”

I waved my Bucketeer credentials at rher suddenly widened eyes. “Be damned to your rules! Keep still and help me with this accursed night chain, for I am about Their Majesties’ business!”

My host complied with alacrity, giving the lie to rher Unarchist tendencies. Even as I charged out into the street, I thrilled at having uttered those stirring words as I had heard Mav do before me many times. I ran around the edge of the crowd toward Vyssu’s and pounded upon the door. Fatpa greeted me, flared a nostril as if to speak, took in the weapon in my hand, and moved out of the way. As he did so, I noticed him produce an intimidating knife from somewhere on his person; he followed me upstairs without a word.

There, upon the landing, stood the figure I had seen upon the roof. We very nearly collided, but he drew back in alarm and snatched desperately among the black robes that he now wore. I pointed my pistol at him. “Stand where you are, in Their Majesties’ names, or I shall—”

A metallic gleam shone from his hand, sweeping upward nearly faster than the eye could follow. I pulled the trigger. There was a roar and a sharply stinging slap at my palm, both of which I scarcely noticed at the moment. The figure staggered backward, fetched against a wall, raised his weapon again. I fired once more. His arm dropped and his gun discharged into the floor. When the smoke cleared from the air between us, the Reverend Mr. Adem lay in a heap of tangled limbs upon the carpet, breathing his last.

XV: A Criminal Convergence

Scarcely
aware of the smoking pistol still gripped in my hand, I crouched beside the fallen lam. He stirred a little, and in great apparent pain uttered a single word, incomprehensible to me: “Danokih…” Then, shutting out forever the light of the world, he closed his eyes and expired.

All round me on the landing, doors popped open, eyes peered timidly about the corridor. Dimly it occurred to me that, in each instance, in each doorway, actually, their owners were uniformly three in number, a male, a surmale, and a female. The reason for this even distribution of the genders, when it finally dawned upon my much-rattled sensibilities, swept a shiver of embarrassment through my fur. After all, I remembered, this
was
Vyssu’s.

I rose and turned toward the stairs, only to confront an individual known to me, a…well…a customer of Vyssu’s, caught, by me and by the violence of circumstances, unprepared. He withdrew in guilty haste into the room from which he’d just emerged.

“Your Eminence!” I cried in astonished outrage. “Whatever are you
doing
in a place like…” I stopped, then, and spoke no further, for I knew all too well the answer to my foolish question—and that, as well, the Archsacerdot of Mathas, my parents’ good and respectable friend, was unlikely ever to provide it to me in any case.

Precisely at that awkward moment, there erupted a commotion on the ground floor. As I could be of no further use to my patient, I rushed to the edge of the landing. Belowstairs, Mav and Vyssu, among others of the house, having by all appearances just recently hurried to see what the shooting was about, now were being distracted by an angry confrontation at the entrance. Fatpa, a fellow ordinarily quite capable of handling any threat of this kind, unaccountably was finding himself overwhelmed by a frail and familiar sweet little old Unarchist.

“Get out of my way, you oafish churl!” rhe shouted. “You minion of the Statist elite! Begone from my path, I tell you!” Here rhe brandished some metallic object, which I recognized to be the large and heavy ring of keys rhe carried out of continuous and proprietary habit to the numerous apartments rhe rented out. “One of my lurries is in trouble of some kind here! You’ll produce rher for me this very instant or I’ll have the Bucks on you!”

“But, but, but, but…” said Fatpa, dodging the old lurry’s substantial brass collection as it whirled viciously about his carapace. “But, but, but, but…”

“Madam—” Mav attempted, his tone and pelt nearly as urbane as the fashionable dressing gown he affected.

“Don’t you call me that,” retorted the landlurry, “not in
this
place!”

My detective friend recovered quickly. “Your pardon, dear lurry, I am Agot Edmoot
Mav
of Their Majesties’ Bucketeers. May I be of some—”

“A Bucketeer?” Rhe looked him over carefully. “I might have known! The corruption in high—”

Suddenly there was a resounding
crash!
The front doors, bolted once again by Fatpa, groaned and splintered, then gave way. A squad of half a dozen Bucketeers rushed in from out of doors, the waggon axle they’d employed as a battering ram still in their hands until they dropped it where they stood, grease spattering in the carpet sand.

“Here now, what’s goin’ on?” Their leader, a short, abrasive fellow, wielded a fire ax as his lamn began to search about, undecided, by their attitude, whether they were here to stop a fight or extinguish a blaze. One zealot among them seized upon the landlurry and started locking lamacles upon rher wrists. Rhe shouted angrily at him and began again to swing rher keys. Another, with similar ambitions toward Fatpa, faced that imposing worthy squarely, looked him over, up and down, gave a sheepish ripple, and turned his intentions elsewhere. His fellows now were overturning cushions and ferreting out suspicious wrinkles among the draperies.

Vyssu watched this for a while, shrugged her arms in boredom, and went out to get some kood started.

Mav reached into the folds of his dressing gown as if to produce credentials, but the squad leader, who did not know him, drew his service revolver. “Keep yer hands in sight now! Keep ’em up, I say!”

Behind me, the Archsacerdot, now fully clothed in a voluminous and concealing cloak, eased out of the little room he’d occupied and attempted to sneak past me on the stairs. “Your Eminence,” I cautioned, “I would not go down there, if I were—”

My landlurry, freed suddenly by rher startled would-be captor, began striking the poor fellow in earnest with rher keys as he cowered in anguish. Behind rher, through the broken doors, a little unkempt group of strangers entered at a run, spied rher with the Bucketeer, and fell upon him. Unarchists, then, I gathered. Some of the other officers leapt into the fray and soon there was a milling, noisy mass of lamviinity battling across Vyssu’s parlor and entryway. I determined then to remain precisely where I was standing, safe upon the upper floor.

Suddenly, behind me, a window crashed and tinkled. An oddly garbed lam swung through the shattered frame upon the end of a large length of rope, collided with a hatstand, and fell over it in a tangle of arms and headpieces. He sorted himself out, leapt to his hands, and tied the rope’s end to the metal wall bracket of a converted gaslamp, straightened out his cloak, and reached beneath it to produce a large, long-barreled hunting pistol. It was not until this moment that I realized I still held my own life preserver, both barrels now discharged, and that the spare ammunition for it was somewhere across the crowd-filled street in my medical bag. The fellow saw me and raised his gun, yet before he could so much as say a word, another of his sort slid awkwardly down the rope, and another and another.

The rope went slack an instant, then tautened once again. With a screech and an alarming shower of electrical sparks, the light fixture was wrenched from its place upon the wall and carried out the window, where a blurry form whipped by, his mournfully resigned wail descending both in pitch and position until it terminated with a crash in the alleyway below.

The surviving intruders lay piled upon each other in a heap. Considerable grumbling, cursing effort and much rough diplomacy were required before they separated themselves from one another and the hatstand. As one, they trained suspicious eyes upon me, along with an impressively mismatched array of weapons, making toward the stairs in single file. Here they paused abruptly, jamming into one another once again as they espied the crowd below, still engrossed in an enthusiastic and deafening fight. A shout of recognition came from one of the newcomers and from all. “Third Contraconventionals!” They clenched their fists and gnashed their jaws.

I buttonholed the last in line, a little fellow carrying a meat cleaver. “What, pray, is a Third Contraconventional?”

He growled self-righteously, pointing toward my landlurry and rher friends. “Revisionists and traitors to the Cause! We’ve run across a nest of ’em, it seems!” His companions, muttering agreement with his sentiments, started down the stairs. He moved to catch them up.

“A moment, sir, if you will be so kind. May I ask what
you
are, in this connexion?”

“A
Second
Contraconventional, of course, an’ soggy well proud of it! Now unhand me, missur, please, for I am needed by my comrades!” He followed his friends and together they trooped down the stairs—past the Archsacerdot, who clung timidly to the handrail—plunging with a single, sanguine shout into the battle. I felt a momentary pang of disappointment, for I greatly wished to inquire further—for example, about the
First
Contraconventionals—but it seemed that the Seconds and the Thirds were now happily preoccupied with one another and the Bucketeers and disinclined to answer questions.

Were there Second, Third, and even First
Con
ventionals? I must ask this of Niitood someday, I thought. Politics were growing more and more complex by the moment.

As I turned to give my last attentions to the remains of Reverend Adem, yet another flurry of shouts arose above the sounds of violence below.
A shot rang out!
Rushing to the stairs once more, I saw Mav calmly poking a finger into a large, ragged hole in Vyssu’s parlor wall, where it appeared that someone had just shot at him—and missed, fortunately. Across the crowded chamber, Fatpa, now swinging a screaming Bucketeer from a length of chain, plunged a heavily muscled hand into a curtained alcove from which there issued a considerable volume of whitepowder gunsmoke. He retrieved his arm and, with it, the disheveled figure of a lam held, securely, if without much dignity, by the fur atop his carapace. Retaining his hold upon the chain connected to the Bucketeer, Fatpa seized the weapon in the would-be assassin’s fingers. A large-bore shrimp-hunter—Great Merciful Pah (as Mav would have it), it was that fellow, the little gray Middle House bureaucrat from Tis’s office. Why—

FLASH!
That from the front door, where Niitood the reporter had just appeared, readying his camera for another shot. “
Imperial Intelligencer!
” he shouted absurdly, striding across the room, dodging bodies locked in mortal combat.
Flash!
He made another photograph. The leader of the Bucketeers turned, swung a vicious blow at the correspondent, who danced back, protective of his camera, and
flashed!
another picture.

Fatpa had a hand now upon each end of the shotgun, having turned a length of chain tightly about the bureaucrat’s upper limb and hung both him and the unfortunate Bucketeer whose chain it was from a chandelier, where they swung and crashed together, punching at each other vigorously. Vyssu’s bodyguard gave a grunt clearly audible even from my vantage and bent the gun almost in two, its stock splintering in his hands. He tossed it away, and before it landed on the floor, it struck one of the Unarchists—a Second Contraconventional, I believe, but it may have been a Third—upon the carapace. He sank groundward in oblivion.

Behind Niitood, a crowd of roughly dressed strangers barged indoors to claim their own place in the melee. Some of these I recognized from the crowd outside, likely disappointed now with what had turned out to be the bogus fight Adem had no doubt arranged to entertain and divert them. One picked up a sizable lounging cushion and threw it in my general direction the length of the room, staggering the Archsacerdot, who’d made it to the bottom of the stairs. The cleric stumbled, narrowly missing Niitood’s camera, and fell across the half-disrobed carapace of one of Vyssu’s females, who screamed and promptly fainted.

As if that were their cue, a freshly arrived troupe of stern and dignified individuals in sacerdotal robes nearly tripped over the form of their august superior, who was by this time crawling toward the door between the legs of the combatants. Someone struck one of the priests with yet another cushion, and the group of them was somehow absorbed into the fighting before they realized what had happened to them. These worthies’ heels were nearly trod upon by a character in Imperial Navy uniform, his dress sword dragging upon the floor and the rest of his attire in careless, unmilitary disarray. I suspected this was Hedgyt, Srafen’s old friend whom Mav had interviewed, for he carried in his arms some ungainly and complex device half-draped in a ragged length of sailcloth. The elderly Navy surgeon looked about, bewildered by the riot he’d blundered into, spotted Mav, and started toward my friend, clearly intent upon conversing with him. Through some fanatical transformation I have sometimes noticed in inventors, he quickly became oblivious to his surroundings once he had engaged the detective.

Despite the obvious perils of negotiating the intervening distance, I thought at once to join them, there being nothing further I could do for Adem, and took a measured step again toward the stairs, when I was pushed violently from behind and lost my balance, tumbling down several steps, trampled over by a dozen of Vyssu’s female and surmale employees, followed closely by a fresh squad of Bucketeers, who’d likely come in by the roof trap. As I regained a vertical attitude and orientation, yet another wave of hurrying lamviinity overwhelmed me; Vyssu’s customers and yet another Departmental brigade. By the time I had recovered my full sensibilities a second time, I somehow found myself at the bottom of the flight; those who had used me so unkindly were now indistinguishable from any of the others fighting with one another (for reasons they’d apparently forgotten long since) in Vyssu’s front hall and parlor. Indeed, the melee had extended itself to the kitchen and to every other nook and cranny upon this floor. There was a surge and sally that threatened to spread deliberations up the stairs, the way I’d come, as well. I ducked out of the way, only to trip over the Archsacerdot, and fell sprawling with him. The unconscious trollop he’d tripped over had caught a cheap and garish bracelet in his cloak; he’d dragged her with him until they were both directly before the front door.

I shook myself again to stimulate a sorely bruised apprehension of reality. Two trines of walking hands appeared before me, looking somehow familiar; I glanced up. There, of all the people in the world to choose among, was my vile, perfidious maidservant, Zoobon, and beside her, my mother, father, and surfather. A flying cushion struck my male parent between the eyes. He swayed, by dint of doughty character remained standing, straightened his hat with an angry wrench, and glared down at me, his nostrils quivering with reproof.