The Clarity of Cold Steel
Chapter 30

THE ARCHBISHOP of Tinkertown’s a sterner nut to crack than Father O’Malley. First off, his diocese is Claflin Bodge — most call it Tinkertown — a hard-working, blue-collar, mostly-white borough located atop the great hill just west of Gallow’s Tor. It’s as industrial as they come in the Machine City. On the surface roads, from plague wall to plague wall, great red brick multi-tiered factories toil night and day, pumping smoke and grease and particulate thick into the ether while the ground vibrates from the great machines chugging hundreds of feet below.

“We had to cut him loose,” I say, strolling along. We’re jawing about Clipper. He wanted to see this thing through, and I wouldn’t let him.

The low roads through Tinkertown are claustrophobic. On a good day and this ain’t one. Almost feels like an undercity, with no sky and the factories packed nearly against one another, leaving only about five to ten feet at ground level for the low roads. The streets running above, the high roads, soaring in arcs from building to building, are more open, lighter, which is why we’re trogging it down here.

Chugging along, Brooklyn shrugs. “He wants to be here. Wants to be part.” Hearing him’s tough as we’re both still wearing ash-masks to filter particulate. Could almost cut it with a knife. The masks also cover our faces to some degree, which can’t ever hurt, considering the cops on our trail and the fact that the melanistically gifted are occasionally lynched in Tinkertown just on principle. Just like everywhere else. “Can’t say as I blame him.”

“I don’t disagree,” I admit, adjusting my mask. “He’s a fine chap, but he’s fractured inside and we can’t coddle.” I fix Brooklyn an eye, “Tell me I’m wrong,” step over a homeless bloke laid out in the carbon filth, a dented cup in his hand. I hear a clink as Nikunj, behind, does his due diligence advocating for the downtrodden.

“Give the man a second chance,” Brooklyn implores.

“He’ll cost one of us our life.” Bodies slide past us, fish fighting to get upstream. The early morning commute. “Might be his. Yours. Mine.” People do live in Tinkertown; there’s a ring of coffin high-rises buttressed against the plague walls nearly three-sixty, but that still ain’t enough humanity to pack the factories. Lot of out-of-borough commuters. “Bottom line, he ain’t a pro.”

“And you are?”

“Well,” I start, flummoxed suddenly, but I regather, regroup, thumb over my shoulder at Nikunj, “he is, at least.”

Brooklyn nods. “No shit.” He slaps his leg, grinning ear to ear beneath that mask, tickled pink. Metaphorically. “Shakteel.” He holds his hands up and stares through them like he’s reading a theater marquee.

I reign in on slapping him. Hard. “It’s my name, too.”

“Ain’t the same.” He shakes his head. “Shee-it, even the chief’s a big fan. Used to talk him up all the time. Best knife fighter he’d ever seen. Bar none. And if you know the chief, you know that ain’t nothing. Jawed on about how this one time…”

Blah. Blah. Blah. I shake my head, lift my mask, spit, drop it back, ignore, continue on. Everyone knows my brother, even though he’s humble and doesn’t advertise and could give a shit. Prick. We cut out of the labyrinth, pouring along with a hundred others, a thousand others, and they keep on coming from behind, surging water through a broken dam.

The one exception to the factory glut of Tinkertown is its square. It’s about a hundred yards wide dead center in Tinkertown’s heart. By Brahma, you can actually see. The God Pillar rises not far off, its base lost behind church and factory, holding up the sky. A rickety stage’s been set up practically in the middle of the square. Looks like it was glued together using toothpicks. There’s a strike going on, been going on, for over a week now. Something about one of the textile factories replacing workers with clock-mechana constructs. The future coming on strong. Workers fighting hard. Papers said it got violent a few days past. Strikebreakers. Some Pinkerton boys. Naturally. Heads got cracked. Bodies broke. Widows made. Old hat.

Forecast’s showing the same today.

Nikunj takes the lead, and we skirt along the outer fringes of the morass as someone mounts the podium and starts barking pleasantries about forming a union. We ain’t here for them, though. We’re casing Saint John of the Cross, the biggest church in Tinkertown. It tops the hill and stands adjacent to the square. Even though it’s the highest church in Tinkertown, it’s still a small edifice cause land in Tinkertown’s like land everywhere inside the plague walls: tight. They say most services spill out into the square and the archbishop uses loud-speaking ansibles to conduct Mass.

“Give it two hours,” Nikunj says, “just in case. If there’s a problem—”

“I’m a dead man and there ain’t anything you can do about it,” I finish, glancing up at a clock set into the gable of a saw-roofed munitions factory across the way. Two hours and I go into the lion’s den. Is it worth it? I know that it is. I know the man in the iron mask’s the only link to Gortham. I know that if I find him I’m still in the liver queue and have a line on pills. And maybe I’ll get lucky one of these days and get my life back. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Nikunj nods. “Cause you’ve already got that covered?”

Brooklyn snickers behind a fist.

“Fuck off,” I rebut cleverly.

Brooklyn and Nikunj peel off, and I watch them disappear into the crowd. Off to keep eyes on Father Menon. I watch the crowd. Case the area. Ease down into an alley, away from the bustle and bonebreaking sure to come. The factories have been moving in the direction of mech and mechana for years. Robots don’t complain. Don’t eat. Don’t drink. Don’t take breaks. Don’t ask for more money or even minimal amounts of respect.

Beyond the church, a great iron riser, the God Pillar, erupts from beneath the smooth cobblestones, reaching a quarter mile straight up. Balanced above in a perpetual spin, so slow you’d have to sit there all day to catch its movement, is the Vatican Wheel. It’s a great, toothed shadow circle from below, like some alien saucer invasion from the penny dreadfuls. Don’t know what it looks like from above. Still waiting on an invitation.

Two hours burn by and the crowd’s gaining heat, friction. They’re chanting, holding signs, pumping fists into greylight. Some lads might be strikebreakers are looming on the horizon and I’d say it’s time for me to shift into gear and get the hell out of Dodge. I stroll toward the great granite stairs leading up into the maw of the church. Swallow you whole, both body and soul, someone once told me.

Doffing my ash-mask, I’m up the stairs in two taps of a hair trigger. I step through the front doors, opulent doors, and freeze as a pair of Swiss guards lower bang-stick halberds, crossing them before my path. Their blue and orange striped Renaissance garb looks ridiculous. The twin ten-gauge barrels riveted to the hafts of their halberds do not.

Straightening, I adjust my clerical collar, cover my mouth, clear my throat. “Ahem. Pardon me,” I say. “Father Joshi, here to see Archbishop Carmody.”

Steel grey predator eyes regard me with suspicion, but they relent after a clerk I didn’t notice waves me through. Those gun-halberds rise, tentatively, metal sliding against metal, opening like the toothed mandibles of some gargantuan mantid.

“Many thanks.”

I stride right through the vestibule and down the aisle, pews passing to either side, ceiling vaulting seventy, maybe eighty feet straight up. Support rods crisscross above, seismic retrofits added against the perpetual rumble of the great machines below. Cracks like lightning fissure across the fresco of angels and demons painted far above. A crew on scissor scaffolding affects repairs.

So, how did I get an audience with the Archbishop of Tinkertown on such short notice? It goes like this: I sent his office an urgent telegram requesting an audience. Its particulars were extremely concerning. And all true, mind you, barring that I marked it from a certain Father Amos Joshi, the parish priest of one of two small sects of Christian-Hindu’s located in the Razor high rises of Malabar.

Now hopefully, the archbishop hasn’t investigated Father Joshi’s request. And hopefully, the two aren’t personally acquainted cause Father Joshi’s a one-armed albino, and that’s slightly beyond even my considerable abilities to chameleonize myself. So I’m a mite nervous. If the archbishop cops my grift, I’ll be pushing up daisies by dinner.

I pass another pair of Swiss Guards and head down a hallway, take a seat in a waiting room, sweat profusely. Outside the window, a cog railway screams a wuff of steam then starts from its station, chugging up the steel road wrapped around the iron riser like the stripe on a barber’s pole. Guards infest the station in formation, in force, herding a subdued crowd into lines. How many are there? And why are they there? Don’t look like old money or new money or anything in between. The train chugs up the iron road.

The door to the archbishop’s office opens and out leans a priest. “Father Joshi?”

I stand like I’m outside the principal’s office. “Yes.” Does he know I’m not me?

He holds out a hand.

Yes…? No…? Maybe…?

“Your grace.” I step forward, take his hand, shake it, bow. No armed Swiss Guards in orange motley accost me. No god strikes me with a thunderbolt. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“You’re welcome, and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.” Archbishop Carmody is younger than I had expected. Middle aged. Fit. Clear brown eyes. Doesn’t reek of booze. No comb-over of slicked hair. Not the great old man of office I had expected. “Come,” he says, stepping aside.

I nod, stride past.

A great desk commands the small spartan room, and a great Bible seated at its center commands it. Books line the wall, and a simple crucifix adorns the sole empty space.

“Please,” he holds out a hand to a chair, “have a seat. I’m in something of a perpetual rush, especially since the pope’s taken ill, so I beg your forgiveness. Paperwork,” he laments as he takes his post behind his desk and grasps a pitcher. “Water?” he offers as he fills one glass. “Our filtration system is excellent.”

“Please.” I’ll miss the sweet tang of lead from the Malabar cistern, but… “What’s wrong with the pope?”

“His heart again.” He pours a glass and hands it to me. “They … they say he hasn’t much time.” He waves a hand. “The Cardinals are all jostling. Plotting. Gossiping like old women.” He shakes his head, crosses himself. “Forgive me. I forget myself. Ahem. I must admit I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting with any of the clergy from Malabar. In fact, I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t even know of your congregation’s existence until your telegram.” He reddens softly and offers a sad smile. “Hindu conversion? I’d never considered such a thing…” He taps a finger thoughtfully against his lips. “An untapped vein hidden right before our eyes.”

I take a sip of water. “It’s but a small congregation. Much work to be done.”

“How many Hindu congregations are there?”

“Two in Malabar. Dacoit Dirge also has one, though it’s smaller than either of Malabar’s.” I found all this out yesterday, memorized it like I was cramming for an exam.

“And none in Sepoy?”

“Sepoy’s where the Hindu coffers lie,” I explain. “The rich are less likely to buck the status quo than those in straights, and Malabar and the Dirge have those in spades.”

He nods. “Are there many converting?”

“We’re growing … incrementally,” I offer sheepishly. “It’s a hard sell, your Grace. Millennia of cultural conditioning to overcome.”

“I understand,” he frowns, “and call me Edward behind closed doors.”

“Yes, well, change is a hard sell, even to those whom it would clearly benefit. And some of the money in Sepoy’s campaigning against it for obvious reasons. Tradition. The caste system. But,” I hold up a finger, “the good word is spreading and many of the untouchables — that’s our lowest caste — are always looking for a way to better their situation.” I know I am. “They’re seeing that Christ offers them a path. He offers them hope, and they’ve been in short supply of that for a long while.”

He nods. “And where did you go to seminary?”

“Dead Hand,” I say looking askance.

“No, no,” the Archbishop waves a hand, “none of that, none of that. It’s the work you do, not where you do it that matters. I, myself, came up through Red Chapel.” He sits back, lets it sink in. “It was White Chapel back then. Came up through the war. That was no picnic dandy, I’ll tell you. I have some stories,” he pauses for a moment, “but you? I’m sure they put you through the wringer there. A darker chap in seminary?” He shakes his head in wonder. “You’ve some grit in you, Father Joshi.”

“Thank you.”

“No.” He shakes his head as though exasperated. “It’s the order that should be embarrassed. In this day and age.” Hell, maybe he is. “You’d think that men would practice what they preach at least in our chosen calling. When ignorant folk stone each other to death, you can almost understand it, but when men who are supposedly learned cannot see their own actions clearly, well…” He throws up his hands.

“Well.”

“I admit I am curious as to why you’ve come to me, however. You’re under the arm of Bishop O’Callahan if I’m not mistaken?”

“No, you are not … Edward.” I find I like this man. Is it a ploy on his part? Are the teeth of some hidden trap laying in plain sight, ready to snap shut on me? “It was explained to me that you’ve dealt with some of the same issues I’m currently facing.”

He purses his lips, knows something bad’s forthcoming. “Out with it.”

“It’s concerning the other congregation in Malabar…”

“Please, whatever it is you have to say,” he holds out a hand, “continue.”

“Yes. Forgive me. A series of complaints have been filed against Father Menon.” I adjust my glasses. “He ministers to the Razor Towers. They’re slums in Malabar’s heart. Ah… Liberties were taken by him, with some of the congregation’s members. All youths. All boys. Most fatherless. Some have no parents.”

It’s a horror story, but a true one. After Clipper spun us his yarn, it wasn’t hard to find the story of another priest. Hell, we found ten stories about ten priests, but Father Menon was the only one who fit our bill, being both Hindu and a piece of shit. What luck!

“As I said, Malabar’s congregations are both small,” I explain. “Its community is small. Word travels fast. Hard. Especially news of this nature. Something must be done or I fear the faith shall never take root. Its fields will become salted, fallow, untenable.”

Archbishop Carmody nods along, listening intently.

“And that’s just inside Malabar. The three Hindu communities are separate, but there are many links. Familial. Business. Etcetera. And the old guard in Sepoy’s not happy about any changes to the caste. Anywhere. Can’t have untouchables thinking they’re worthy of respect. Worthy of saving. Worthy of anything.

“Sepoy’s money’ll capitalize on this, mark my words. Capitalize and kill us dead. They’re already moving that way. And so it must be addressed immediately if the church is to survive. I, myself, found out yesterday, and I’m the senior clergy member. I … I didn’t know how to address it. I thought you might advise me? But if you would prefer, I could go to Bishop O’Callahan?” I make to stand. “I simply thought—”

“Nay, nay.” He reaches across his desk, pulls out a sheaf of paper, scribbles feverishly across it. “You did right to come to me, Father Joshi.” He looks up, meeting my gaze, holding it. “Discretion, I need not tell you, is the order of the day for this sordid business.”

“Of course.”

He lowers his gaze and jots down a few more sentences, the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching as he works.

I watch quietly. Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the (ꜰind)ɴʘvel.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

He signs the paper near the bottom, folds it, presses his seal into a dab of warm wax. When that’s done, he stares at it for a moment. “Tell your people that Father Menon shall be dealt with forthwith.” His forehead is beading sweat. “My concern is the growth of believers in the India-towns. It must be nurtured, protected, grown. You acted quickly, decisively, and I want you to understand that should you prove commensurate to this task, through this difficult time, I would be more than willing to lean any of the considerable powers I wield into forming Malabar into its own bishopric. Down the road, as they say, a new diocese would require an able man of faith to oversee it. Would that be a position that appeals to you?”

I nod succinctly. Bishop of Malabar? Nice to have a fallback career.

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