Chapter 26
As he ran home, Slant wondered whether he'd made a mistake: he knew nothing about Wasp, besides that he cared about justice. In spite of his doubts, he had been swept up in the idea of the Custodians, in the hope he did not fight alone. But now, with a little space, dread lined his stomach. Wasp could be anyone, could still have been a Gang Lord, though his repeated repudiation of that claim seemed borne of disgust.
His Mother was in one of her good moods when he returned home. With no one to make her breakfast, she'd thrown together an omelette, which she quietly ate when he entered, his mask up his sleeve. Seeing her bright, doing something for herself, robbed Slant of his dread.
“Morning, Slant,” she said with a smile. Greasy hair gripped her face. “How was your shift?”
“It was fine, Mother,” he said, walking over to kiss her on the forehead. The clarity in her eyes was welcome. “Busy. But then, it always is.”
She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped, frowned. “What... What is it you do again?”
“I'm a night labourer for a Merchant,” he lied. “Someone paid off the books.”
“That's just not right. But I suppose it keeps us in food.” She looked around the kitchen. “Not that there's much in here. I suppose I'll have to go and get some...”
“I don't mind,” Slant said immediately. “I was going to go out anyway.”
“Then why'd you come back?”
“To check on you,” he said, stepping away. “And to get the money to pay for our food.”
“Oh. Okay.” She finished the last of her omelette. “I suppose I'll have a bath then.”
Slant stopped at the edge of the kitchen. He couldn't trust her with the fire to warm her bath. “Have a cold one? The firewood is a little damp. We can't smoke the place out.”
“No, imagine how furious your father would be when he got home!”
Slant winced, but entered his bedroom anyway. If it meant he could leave, get some food, and perform some other errands, he wouldn’t shatter her delusion.
He changed, hiding his robes in a false panel beneath his bed, then pulled a handful of Circles and his real Identity Papers from beneath the floorboards.
“A nice cold bath,” his Mother said when he reappeared. “I think that'd do the job.”
“I think so too. Remember, the pail is in the third cupboard,” he said, pointing, “and the water from the tank comes out faster than you'd think.” That reminded him to order more water, eat into his reserves.
“Will do. See you in a bit, Slant.”
He sprinted to Done, the Farmer who supplied food to refugees and the poor. The great obese woman took his order, jotting it all down with a pencil thinner than her fingers, and promised it would be there that evening. Dropping money bought with his strength into her greasy hands was usually difficult, but he didn't hesitate today. Especially as his other errand took him to Sol's Haven.
He needed to go to the Bureau.
Slant had only entered the beautiful Cathedral, with her graceful white rises and stained glass, when invited: the Clerics liked to give their trainees' families tours, show them they weren’t wasting their children's futures by allowing them to join the unglamorous Station. This would be the first time he went uninvited.
The Cathedral, though enormous, only had three public entrances: the main entrance, enormous doors it threw open during celebrations or Pyres; the Lord's entrance, wreathed in gemstones; and the Bureau's simple double doors, wide enough to allow a constant exchange of petitioners. During times of crisis or at the holidays, that line could stretch for half a mile. Today, it was barely fifteen people deep.
Slant walked past the waiting people. After an s-shaped corridor and some stairs down, he came out into the Bureau's main hall, a half-mile wide square below the ground. Great chandeliers with meticulously-tended candles shone onto dozens of red-robed Clerics, many of whom loomed over the petitioners from tall desks and chairs. Piles of paper rested either side of these great desks, and other Clerics ran between them to remove bundles or add another. Occasionally, the bundles filtered out of the main hall: Tower said they either go to more senior Clerics, or to great pre-Cleansing archives further beneath the Cathedral.
A Cleric approached him, a thin man with glee in his eyes. “You have not queued with the other petitioners. This is not allowable. You must return to the back of the queue.”
Beside Slant, two wrinkled women on their Rest tutted.
“I'm not here to petition,” Slant said, looking around, but determining that he'd have to deal with this man rather than anyone sensible. “My sister studies here. I need to get a message to her.”
“Do you have your Identity–”
Slant cut him off by unrolling his Identity Papers, handing them over. “Her name's Tower.”
The hawkish Cleric examined his Identity Papers twice, and then a third time. “Very well. There is a form for that. Allow me to fetch it and a quill. Then you can complete it.”
“But what if it were an emergency?”
The Cleric handed his Identity Papers back. “Slant, if I didn’t think it were an emergency, I would send you to the back of the queue.”
Not wanting to push his luck, Slant gave him a weak smile. The Cleric turned his hooked nose up, then went out into the vast field of paper to find the form.
Slant watched the petitioners as he waited, tapping his hands against his hip. Most were Stationless, but he spotted young Merchants, Doctors, and Farmers amongst them, their coloured robes standing out easily in the swathe of simpler clothes. A Contegon and a Lord breezed past the line, moving into the roiling tides of paper without being challenged.
“How come they don't have to queue?” he asked the Cleric who marshalled the queue, his voice low.
“Those who do the greater works of Sol must not waste their time,” the Cleric replied, a squat woman with a healthy complexion for someone who spent their life underground. “They have vital things to do.”
“How do you know?”
The Cleric frowned, considered it for a moment. “I just know.”
“Because someone told you?”
She shrugged, knowing it wasn't much of an excuse. “That's Bureaucracy.”
He shook his head. 'That's Bureaucracy' was a common refrain whenever he and Tower talked about the Bureau: the Clerics were how they were, and no one could do much to stop that. Cleric Councillor Pale was considered a revolutionary for introducing forms that allowed people to document their petitions so they didn’t have to be delivered in person. Even that had faced incredible resistance. It all seemed like such a waste, but Slant could never say that to his sister, not when their livelihoods would depend on that wasteful system...
The hawkish Cleric reappeared two minutes later with a form, quill, and ink pot. “Here. If you wish to keep your message secret, tell me now,” he said, thin cheeks dancing with his words.
“I do. Want to keep it secret.”
“Of course you do,” the Cleric sighed. He reached into his robes and pulled a small slip of paper out. “Fill in the form, then write your note on this paper. It will only be read by your sister.”
“Thank you,” Slant said.
Desperate to get moving, he dropped down and filled the form against the Cathedral's smooth white floor. He checked it twice, and then wrote his note to Tower.
The thin Cleric checked and double-checked the form, then gave Slant a small nod and walked away, ready to process the petition and hand the message on to whoever would ensure Tower read it.
Slant gave the busy, hive-like main hall one last look before tutting and jogging home.
Their apartment was quiet when he entered. There was no sloshing of water and no greeting. Scared, he closed the door behind him, and called, “Mother?”
No response.
The door to their small bathing room was slightly open. He pushed it and found the room empty and dry. Closing it again, he went to his Mother's room, knocked quie
tly.
“Mother?” he said, trying to keep his voice level.
Still no response.
Gently, he pushed the door open. He was relieved to see her asleep. She had likely been awake all night, absorbing as much of the night as she could. He allowed himself a deep sigh, tried to calm his furious heart and the images that'd rattled around his head, and left her to her rest.
His Mother slept right through the day, giving him time to clean the house and do some maintenance jobs he'd been putting off. She was still resting when Tower came home, a scroll in her hands and a look of fury on her face.
“How dare you?” she hissed. She nearly slammed the door, but caught herself, knowing it would be unwise to set their Mother off. Especially when she wanted to have a go at her brother first.
Slant was sat at the kitchen table massaging his bruised muscles. He stopped, held up his hands and said, “I needed some information and—”
“I thought she had died, Slant!” Tower said, walking into the kitchen and dropping his note on the table. “A senior Cleric walks into our classroom and calls me outside, saying my brother sent an urgent message? What else would I think? And then I open it and you're after some information on a former Councillor! How dare you? How dare you?”
Slant rose. “I hadn't thought it would seem like that. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you.”
Tower turned, shook her head. He walked over to her, and took her in his arms. She resisted at first, but then returned the hug. “I just couldn't stop thinking about all the things... what I'd...”
“It's okay,” he said. “I know you didn't mean it really.”
“I did though. I did.”
They stayed in silence, holding each other. It was the most sororal she'd been in some time... and, he supposed, the most fraternal he'd been.
“But you got the information?” he asked.
She nodded into his shoulder. “Why do you need it?”
“He offered me a job. I want to be sure of the kind of man he is.”
“A proper job?”
“More proper than my current one,” Slant said.
Tower pulled away and rubbed her red-rimmed eyes. “Well, I found out a good amount.”
Slant sat down again. “You said he used to be a Councillor?”
She nodded. “He was the son of Ant, the Merchant Councillor a few years ago. Merchants operate under Nepotism, so he inherited the position. But he had a mental break during the Second Invasion, and was relieved of the position.”
“A mental break?” he asked, tapping his sideburns thoughtfully.
“It didn't say what. I guess he saw something during the Battle for Aureu? I don't know. He took fifteen months to recover, which killed his standing and the Wasp Mercantile Concern. There's little else on him apart from tax and sales records until two years ago, when his company was set on fire. He lost almost everything, including the sight in his right eye.”
“Left,” Slant said without thinking.
Tower frowned. “You've met him then?”
“Last night.”
“Well, that's interesting, as there's been nothing of him since the Hereticum.”
“He was held to a Hereticum?” Slant asked, his eyes wide, his heart dropping.
Tower sat down. “Don't worry, he was acquitted: charges were levelled because he hired ex-Shields and Stationless folk to tear apart a section of Outer Aureu. They killed thirty Gangers before the Contegons stepped in. Those he hired were conscripted, and he was charged as a Heretic for taking justice into his own hands. The Guardian judged him innocent when he proved the Gang had set his company ablaze. His history of mental illness counted in his favour, as the incident was recorded as a second mental break.”
Slant blinked. Wasp had said he'd been nearly executed for doing something like the Custodians before. To think, he murdered a Gang because his business was destroyed. That scared Slant at first, but the Gang must have tried to extort him and he had earned partial blindness and the loss of his business for refusing. Wasp had likely wanted the right thing to happen, but it might not have happened without his intervention.
“What happened then?”
“His business wound down, and he was booted from the Merchants. Then nothing.” Tower sat back in her chair. “He hasn't been mentioned in any documentation since.”
His first thought was to wonder how he could fund the Custodians. His second, he vocalised. “Wasp told me that he'd petitioned to create a new Station. Would there not be records of that?”
“Sol, there's a question my examiners would put to me...” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Sorry.”
“No, no, I can get this...” Tower closed her eyes and moved her lips as though reciting something. “No... Yes! The records would remain with the Councillor he petitioned, and would only come to the Bureau if the Councillor put it to a Council vote.”
Slant briefly wondered whom Wasp had petitioned. “Thank you for doing that, Tower. I appreciate it.”
“You don't need to thank me. I said I was doing an exercise on gathering someone's history, and picking Wasp seemed random enough to get away with it. It was good practice.” She shifted in her chair, looked down at the floor. “Is that what you've been doing at night then, working with someone who delivers his own justice?”
“It might be best if you don't know,” Slant replied.
“Just... just promise I won't have to ever see... see you at a Hereticum.”
Slant took her hands and kissed them. “I promise,” he lied, never ceasing to be surprised at how easy it was to lie to his family when they wouldn't like the truth.