The Great Game by Lavie Tidhar

investigation.
    Â Â Which suggested some interesting possibilities…
    Â Â The most prominent of which was the simple assumption that, whatever Alice and the fat man had been killed over, someone, or several someones, wanted very much to keep it a secret.
    Â Â He was sitting upstairs at the Bucket of Blood , by Covent Garden. They staged bare-knuckle boxing there but that would be later and for now the place was quiet. They served good pie and bad coffee and they didn't serve bluebottles, crushers, coppers, or whatever your term for the agents of the law may have been.
    Â Â Which suited Smith.
    Â Â He waited and presently there came the soft steps he had been waiting for, and he saw him – it – he never really knew what they preferred – come up the stairs.
    Â Â He stood up. The other came and stood by him. His gait was slow and mechanical, and his blank eyes always terrified Smith, false eyes that were meant to suggest humanity, but somehow didn't.
    Â Â "Byron," Smith said.
    Â Â The Byron automaton extended his hand for a shake. His flesh was soft and warm. It was made of rubber of some kind, Smith knew. The automaton, despite his age, looked younger than Smith remembered. Clearly he'd been well maintained. He had ascended in power since the council of eighty-eight brought an end of sorts to lizardine control of the empire, and had given human and machine, for the first time, equal say. The Queen still reigned, of course – but the machine faction had grown stronger, though it was not like France, where it was said the Quiet Council held absolute – if quiet – power.
    Â Â "Smith." Byron's voice was still the same old voice, scratchy in places, a voice made of numerous recordings of a real human voice, mixed together, played endlessly back. Babbage Corps. – Charlie Company, they used to call it in the old days – had built him, one of the early prototypes, and he was, Smith knew, second in command in the automatons' mostly hidden world. Machines feared humans, relying on them for survival. Byron – and his master – preferred to act, as much as possible, behind the scenes. "It is good to see you again."
    Â Â They had crossed paths a couple of times, the automaton and him. No one knew the city better, nor had a wider net of informers and listeners. Machines listened, and most people never gave them a glance. They had worked the Prendick case together, successfully fighting the Dog Men Gang, a case which had left its scars on both of them. Smith had been taken captive by the gang and flayed, and on some nights he still felt the fine, white criss-crossing network on his back as though it were inflamed… "I wish I could say the same," he said, and the Byron automaton nodded mechanically. He understood.
    Â Â "I am sorry about Mycroft," the automaton said. "He was a good man."
    Â Â Smith snorted. "That's a lie, and you know it."
    Â Â "Very well," the Byron said. "He was a useful man, an empire man. His loss is our loss."
    Â Â He was speaking for the automatons. And Smith nodded, understanding.
    Â Â "What do you know of his demise?" he said. The automaton didn't reply. His strange blind eyes moved as though scanning the room. How the automatons saw was a mystery to Smith. He knew that, between themselves, they communicated by means of in-built Tesla sets, and that was something he needed to find out about. There had been more and more traffic on what was coming to be called the Tesla Network, and while most shadow operatives dismissed the automatons, Smith didn't. He knew better than to underestimate Byron and his kind.
    Â Â "Byron?"
    Â Â "I thought you were retired," the automaton said at last.
    Â Â "They brought me back."
    Â Â "A pity."
    Â Â Smith looked at him. "I don't understand," he said at last.
    Â Â "You should have stayed in the village, my friend," the automaton said.
    Â Â "Is that a