Chapter 1 of Unnamed Novel [Industrial Fantasy, 1679 Words]
- Would you keep reading?
- Are the scenes too short in any way?
- Is the hitman's presence / personality coming through? And Caliban?
Thank you!
Caliban Stent nodded, and a tall man in black overalls spun the crank handle of a vise a half turn and flattened the thief’s hand. He waited for the screaming to subside and nodded again. The handle turned another half cycle and blood poured out of the thief’s fingertips and small bones crackled.
At a glance from Caliban, the torturer released the vise and withdrew to the wall. The thief sat slumped in his iron chair, his voice slowly receding to an incoherent babble. Caliban drew up a stool and sat, his eyes level with the man’s.
The thief looked up, his eyes dull. His mouth opened and closed, but nothing decipherable came out. Caliban waved his hand, and the torturer jabbed a needle into the thief’s arm. After a few seconds, the broken man’s eyes snapped into focus, his face white and breath heavy.
“They are not coming to help you,” he said.
“Who are—why are you doing this?”
“The money you stole. Where is it going?”
“I didn’t steal anything. You don’t know what’s going on.”
“Please try to explain.”
Caliban regarded him. Middle-aged and sweat-slicked, his body bulged out of an expensive gray suit that a thinner man had purchased. His name was Sorvin Yates, and he owned half of what Valcora wore and most of what it ate.
“I have no idea why I’m here, or why you’re hurting me. I’m a businessman, not a thief,” Sorvin said.
“I believe you are a businessman. A very successful one. That is precisely why I am puzzled.”
“What do you mean?”
“How many employees work at Yates Chemical Company?”
“What?”
“Are you deaf, Mr. Yates? Unconversant? Misinformed? Was my question unclear? I do not like repeating myself. Do you need me to?”
“You’re making a mistake. Do you understand what I am? I have dined with the Sovereign—”
“Your money has no value here, Mr. Yates. Now listen closely. You have made poor choices, choices which have brought you here to this room. You have one more decision: you can tell me the truth, the complete truth, now, or you can watch as I crush your other hand and break your legs and pull out your toes and bring in Veline and Maybelle and Toman and have you watch. The outcome will be the same either way.”
The man’s eyes widened, and Caliban gripped his chin, pulling him in. The dam broke, and words stumbled out of Sorvin Yates’ mouth. Most of it Caliban already knew. Yates Chemical Company was a front; it employed no men and possessed no fertilizer or land. Money came and went through clearing houses. The new pieces came from Sorvin, between wet breaths.
“A man came to me. Three years—three years ago.” He swallowed. “Said I’d make a fortune. Hardly any work.”
“And the money?”
“It was clean, I swear. Equipment, supplies, things like that. My cut. I never—I didn’t choose any of it. I don’t know who did. The man, probably.”
His eyes flickered back and forth, avoiding his ruined hand. “I was just supposed to be the cover, the rich man who owned it. I don’t even know who paid us.”
Perhaps the man was telling the truth. Perhaps he was not. The stranger who had approached Yates was smoke, but the officer who paid money for fertilizer that did not exist could be found.
He rose from the stool. “I believe you, Mr. Yates.”
The man’s face crumpled. “Then I can go. Please, I told you everything—”
“You told me what you know. That isn’t nothing, and for that you have my gratitude.” Caliban turned to the tall man. “Set the hand. Stop the bleeding and keep out the rot. Amputate if needed. Find him a room with a bed.”
“You said you believed me.”
“I do—that is why you are still breathing.”
The Kingdom had reached into the muck and made this man a prince, and the prince had repaid his debt by becoming a common thief. He did not know what he would do with Sorvin Yates, but the man would never breathe free air as long as he lived. The door swung open, and two guards lifted Yates from the iron chair. He did not struggle, and his mangled hand hung limp as they carried him out.
It took Caliban’s men two days to put a name to the officer who had paid Yates Chemical: Teo Bessent, Superintendent of Supply at the Ministry of Agriculture. He worked on the top floor of a soot-stained three-story harborfront building that had once been a fish intake plant.
Caliban stood by Bessent’s desk, watching the ships slowly drift in and out of the harbor through a large arch window that occupied most of the wall. Small steam tugs and sailing ships darted between massive steamships with black smokestacks. The red-orange light of the rising sun filtered through thick smoke, leaving an iridescent haze that settled over the water.
The office was small and overflowed with papers that piled up on the mahogany desk and cheap shelves that crept up the walls. The smell of burning coal and the musty scent of old books tinged the air. A framed agriculture degree from Mesthen University hung crooked next to an unmarked calendar flipped to last year.
Someone pushed the door open, and a thin man with no hair and thick-rimmed glasses and a tired suit walked in, carrying a briefcase. He stopped at the door.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“Superintendent Bessent. Please, sit.”
“What’s all this about?”
“We just need a few minutes of your time. Inquiries have been made into a few business concerns that fall under your purview.”
The bureaucrat sat. Caliban leaned over the desk, bringing his face down over the thin man, who held himself perfectly still. The silence stretched, and Bessent’s fingers drummed against his leg and his eyes fluttered.
“You’re making me a bit nervous. Who are you? Do you work for the ministry?” Bessent said.
“Please, call me Caliban. I work with the Public Security Bureau.”
“Public Security? Have I done something wrong?”
“That is a funny question.”
“Come again?”
“Do I live inside your heart-of-hearts, superintendent? Am I an emissary of the Light Above, with the ability to peer into your mind? Who here is better equipped to answer your question: you or I?”
“I’m sorry. I apologize.” Bessent’s fingers had stopped moving; his knuckles were clenched white. “I’ve always just done what I’m told. I haven’t done anything improper.”
“I am inclined to agree. But there’s a matter we need to discuss. Yates Chemical Company—Sorvin Yates. A familiar name?” he said.
“Yates—yes, the fertilizer business. They supply most of the fertilizer for our frontier soybean and corn farms. Extremely reliable.”
“Too reliable, perhaps?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve read the delivery reports. Have you ever known a contractor to never be late?”
Bessent leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. He frowned. “I suppose that would be unusual. Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
Caliban turned the man over in his head. An unambitious man with an undistinguished career, content to pore over trade ledgers. A slight disappointment to his family, a good father to his daughters. Someone who would betray the Kingdom?
No, thought Caliban, staring past the still man. He was telling the truth.
He lowered himself into the leather chair. Bessent’s hands opened, his palms lying flat in his lap.
“Have you ever met the man who signs the reports?”
“Lomax? Yes, once or twice at Ministry events. A lovely chap. Is he—you think he’s mixed up in something?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I suppose I’ll need to get out to Mastille to ask him a few questions.”
Caliban rose and put out his hand. Past Bessent’s shoulder, in the doorway, stood a man he had not heard come in.
He had mismatched eyes: one a dull hazel-gray and the other a piercing deep-blue. The low sun washed over his narrow face and slicked-back military haircut, casting shadows around his long nose and deep-set eyes and hard cheekbones. He was wearing a brown suit with light stripes and sharp creases along the sides of his trousers. An unfamiliar gun with a black barrel and two red-brown grips separated by a gray flat drum angled downward from his left hand.
Caliban threw himself onto the hardwood floor. Through the gap beneath the desk, he could see two pairs of shoes, one old and scuffed, and the other polished to a shine.
A heavy, stuttering thunder ripped across the room. Shards of glass rained down on his back, and he heard a soft thud on the desk. Spent shells cascaded onto the floor at an impossible rate. He felt something drip on his back.
Was this the end? Shot to death on his stomach by a man wearing his monthly wage on his feet?
He reached above the table, his hands landing on soft flesh slick with blood. Bessent’s body slumped over the table. When he pulled himself up, the stranger was leaning against the far wall, the mysterious gun smoking and pointed forward.
“Howdy,” the stranger said. He had a peculiar accent that Caliban could not place, but reminded him of his father, a hard man who had raised cattle in the eastern outback.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Haven’t decided that yet.”
“Seems like something you should have thought about before the shooting started.”
The stranger bounded across the room until Caliban could see the whites of his mismatched eyes. He felt warm metal sticking into his ribs. “I used to row like you. Hard, with both arms. But the River goes where it goes.”
“And now?”
He flashed a smile. “Now I float.”
For a long moment the man looked at him, his face frozen. The sharp pain in Caliban’s ribs disappeared, and he realized the man had lowered his gun.
“Return to your office, Subdirector Stent. The kingdom has many enemies.”
The stranger turned around and left, trailing wisps of smoke.
Filter bypass words: "I have tried"
