An Empyreal Retinue by Josiah Bancroft

Author:Josiah Bancroft [Bancroft, Josiah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781645241676
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2023-10-26T05:00:00+00:00

After returning to the ship, Byron did his best to avoid Edith. When she asked him for an account of his afternoon, he insisted that he first had to empty the traps in the Communications Closet and review the information contained therein. Some urgent news might await him.

In fact, the cages that received the Sphinx’s winged spies rattled with only a few new arrivals—a worrying trend that Byron could only attribute to Marat’s growing efforts to blind and deafen his master. Though, in the end, could anyone claim to have impaired the Sphinx’s senses more than her own Secretary?

Eight years. Eight years he had fed the Sphinx a fantasy. It was the Secretary’s duty to vet the facts rather than rubber-stamp them, as he had. But why had he? Why had he been so blithe with his trust? Because the reports appeared to follow a natural trend, one that pleased his own aversion to crisis, surprise, and upset. He had been seduced by the convenient—indeed the conspicuous—uniformity of the intelligence. On those occasions when the Sphinx presented him with some contradictory evidence, Byron had dubbed it an irregularity, an inconsequential wrinkle that had been innocently smoothed away by the clothes-iron of compilation and interpretation. One had to appreciate precedent to preserve the grander truth!

What a damnable lie.

Why had the Sphinx ever trusted him? And how could Edith trust him now?

Byron could console himself with the fact that the newly appointed Monitor was someone who had at least demonstrated an interest in the preservation of the Tower. Naturally, that person had not been the Fly Catcher, despite his paltry effort to wash and clothe himself during Byron’s brief absence. When Tobias learned that the Monitor had been relieved of his post, he had expressed great satisfaction, a delight that was immediately ruined by the discovery that he would not be taking the seat behind that coveted desk. That honor, or rather that burden, Byron had bestowed upon young Mr. Aaronson, the clerk who’d tackled the outbreak of blight in the absence of useful guidance. Though the institution seemed especially vulnerable to the cancer of cynicism, at least a younger person might resist the onset of the affliction a little longer than their elders.

Or so Byron hoped.

And he had cautioned Tobias that if he received word of a single fly in the Monitor’s study—whatever its origin—he would return with his own gallon jar to pickle the contemptuous clerk.

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