Page 40 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
I should, perhaps, have stopped here. But I confess that between my particular discomfort at the line of questioning the Augur Extraordinary had chosen to take and the strange exhilaration that came from giving myself licence to speak freely when I ordinarily would have done no such thing I became unforgivably indiscreet.
“Your name,” I continued, “Joy-in-Sorrow, signifies that your mother died bearing you and must, therefore, have been given to you by your father. A man who would bestow such a name upon his child is clearly a pious and, more importantly, orthodox adherent of the church’s teachings. This is not the sort of person who could be anything but ashamed to see his daughter running around the south dressed in men’s clothing and pursuing a calling that is explicitly forbidden to her sex.”
At this, she struck me. And, while I have spent much of the latter part of my career advocating for more structured regulation of the techniques employed by the Myrmidons during interrogations, I do, in retrospect, understand, if not entirely forgive, her reaction.
She brought her face very close to mine and spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. “I am an Augur Extraordinary of the Sorcerous Crimes Unit. You are a suspect. Take that tone with me again and I will have you up on charges of attempting to subvert a Myrmidon by witchcraft.”
My emotions in that moment were sufficiently complex that I am finding them, even so many years after the fact, difficult to articulate.Having been attacked by this woman both verbally and now physically my instincts quite naturally ran to the defensive, but I was not quite so lacking in compassion as to be unaware that my remarks had, in fact, gone rather too far and been rather too personal. I was, of course, also still mortified at having been arrested in the first place and increasingly uncertain about what the future would hold, since the charges against me appeared to be mounting in severity.
The truth is, I was somewhat loath to back down, since I have never in my life found it pays to submit in the face of aggression. However, I had, in this instance, genuinely wronged the lady, albeit in response to her own discourteous behaviour. I decided it would be best to apologise.
“I am sorry, Augur Extraordinary,” I said. “I spoke injudiciously and of matters on which it was not my place to speak.”
This did not, however, have the desired mollifying effect. “I don’t want an apology. I want you to answer my questions. Now, what is your relationship with the sorceress Shaharazad Haas?”
I opened my mouth to reply but was, once again, interrupted by the crash of the interview room door being flung open behind me.
“He’s my companion,” announced Ms. Haas, for on this occasion it was, in fact, she. “But not in a sexual way.”
I was a little bemused that she felt the need to clarify that point, but very glad to see her.
Augur Extraordinary Standfast, needless to say, was not. “You have no right to be here. Return to your cell or I will take you there by force.”
“I think Commander Pennyfeather might have something to say about that.” Ms. Haas flourished an official-looking letter bearing the seal of the leader of the Myrmidons.
“How do I know this isn’t a trick?”
Ms. Haas appeared to give the matter some thought. “Well, you could ask him yourself, but he’s just gone back to bed so I doubt he’dappreciate the disturbance. Alternatively you could simply rely on the fact that if I ever did choose to leave your custody illicitly everybody in this city knows that I live at 221b Martyrs Walk, so you could send a cart to collect me in the morning. Now come, Wyndham. It is getting late and we have much to discuss.”
Since the Augur Extraordinary did not seem disposed to prevent me, I rose gratefully to my feet. My hands, of course, were still in shackles, a detail that did not appear to concern Ms. Haas. She set her fingers lightly over the locks and whispered a soft invocation, causing the mechanisms to spring merrily open.
Catching the chains as they fell, she tossed them across the room to Augur Extraordinary Standfast. “I believe these are yours.”
The Augur Extraordinary left her arms pointedly folded and the manacles clattered to the floor beside her. “Get out.”
We obliged.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Some Poetry
I confess Iwas quite relieved to collect my personal effects from the front desk and depart New Arcadia Yard. My encounter with the Augur Extraordinary had been unpleasant in ways to which I had grown unaccustomed since leaving Ey and had left me a little shaken. On our relatively short journey by hansom to 221b Martyrs Walk, I endeavoured to distract myself by asking Ms. Haas how in the world she had contrived to secure our release from the custody of the Myrmidons.
“Commander Pennyfeather,” she explained, “is an odious little twerp, but his ambition makes him biddable. A truly staggering number of influential people throughout Khel, Athra, Ven, and beyond have reason to be grateful to me for various services I have rendered them, and the merest implication that one of them might be displeased by my arrest has generally proved enough to bring the man abjectly to heel. If that fails, I can also remind him of the innumerable high-profile cases that my assistance has been instrumental in solving, and that his reputation as a firm-handed, fair-minded, and above all efficacious commander of Myrmidons may at any point depend on his ability to call once more on my assistance.”
I was somewhat troubled by this revelation, although I was somewhat more troubled by the realisation that I had quite deliberately waited until I was safely out of the hands of the Myrmidons beforeeliciting it. “I’m not sure being well connected or having been of assistance to the commander in the past should allow one to disregard the law.”
“Oh, I quite agree. I believe the right to disregard the law is intrinsic and inalienable.”
“That’s not quite what I meant.”
“I shall tell you a liberating but terrifying truth, Mr. Wyndham.” Ms. Haas hitched up her skirts and produced from her other intimate garment a book of matches and a packet of Valentino’s Good Rough Shag. “This cosmos which we inhabit is vast and indifferent. Every law, every teaching, and every tenet by which you might choose to live your life is a fiction that exists only so long as those around you agree upon it. In reality, you are entitled only to what you can take, duty bound to do only what you cannot avoid doing, and protected only by what power is in you to protect yourself.”
“Perhaps you are right, Ms. Haas. I am, after all, well aware that the Creator Himself is believed by experimental theologians to be nothing but a seething mass of mindless energy. But it seems to me there are certain things which, even though they may not be the case, our lives are improved if we behave as though they were.”
She put her pipe to her lips and lit it. “That, Captain, is why I got us out of prison while you have spent your life in one.”
“I should perhaps point out,” I pointed out, “that you also got us into prison.”
