Mainspring by Jay Lake Page B

the morning’s light.
    â€œI’d stay out of the desk,” Ellis growled. “Mister Phelps don’t like people in his drawers. Bar’s on your right.”
    Then the door was shut, and with a clear, clanking thud, locked.
    Not knowing what else to do, Hethor looked around the room. This place was vaulted, too, he realized with a glance at the ceiling. It stank of salt and mold—the sweat of both men and bricks. The bar was a small cabinet pushed against the wall; it proved to contain three cut-crystal tumblers in need of a cleaning, half a bottle of lemon squash, and a tin of biscuits. He wiped one of the
tumblers on the tail of his shirt, poured out a glass of squash, and opened the tin.
    If this was a prison, it was a strange prison. Yet the door was locked.
    Ignoring the desk, Hethor sat on one of the settees.
    The window was too high and too small for him to fit through. Besides which, it had the ironwork on the outside. The door’s hinges were out in the hallway. He could starve in this room if no one came.
    Hethor closed his eyes and listened to the world.
    First and always there was his own breathing, and the snick-snick of his pulse in his ears audible as his head leaned against the couch cushion. Hethor listened past that, to the rattle of cart wheels in the street outside the dingy window and the faint murmur of voices from elsewhere in the bricked basement. Perhaps someone in the hall. He listened past that, to the very faint groan of the foundation’s stones bearing up under the heavy building above, and the even fainter rattle of the world’s turning.
    Only this time the rattling of the world—always the least of sounds, like a mouse in the forest—seemed louder, easier to find. Almost like it was coming toward him. Eyes still closed, Hethor listened to it click and whir, like the greatest of clocks, the sound filling him up until he realized that what he heard was the key in the lock of the little brick room.
    His head jerked up with a start.
    A small man with a huge head, his body so diminutive as to be almost a grotesque, stood in front of Hethor. This man wore tradesman’s garb not much better than Hethor’s, though cleaner and more free of wrinkles. His eyes were clear blue, almost the color of ice, and his hair a crinkling red-brown.
    â€œI am Mister Phelps,” the newcomer announced, “and Lord William suggested I come see you this evening.”
    Hethor looked down to notice the crystal tumbler shattered on the floor. The lemon squash was no more than a sticky spot around it. How long had he been sitting here,
listening to the world? Hours. A trance, perhaps. “William,” he said, feeling as stupid as if he had been roused from sleep. “Of Ghent. The so-called sorcerer?”
    â€œOr perhaps William the tile setter’s boy,” said Phelps softly. “I see I have caught you unawares.”
    â€œNo, no, I … my apologies.” Hethor made as if to stand, then realized that would set him quite a bit taller than Phelps. He wound up sitting again with his hand half stuck out in abortive greeting. “I’m here to see the viceroy.” What had happened to him? Caught up in listening to the world and forgot where he was and what he was about.
    Phelps ignored the hand. “So I understand.” The small man hitched himself up onto the desk, sitting so that his swinging heels banged against the pediment. “Mister Cannon at the entry hall says you claimed to be a Special upon your arrival, mentioning a certain white bird. Sadly, Sergeant Ellis thought you were an imposter when I sought him out in a tavern for a second opinion.”
    â€œI’m sorry, sir,” said Hethor. Albino toucan. “I don’t know what a Special is.”
    â€œHeh.” Phelps looked thoughtful. “I thought you might not. Let’s just say that Specials are men, and very occasionally women, who aid me in my discreet