18 February – 3 March, 848 IE — Charterhall
The last days of February went to preparation. Two things the Old Town Echoes wanted were sitting in the same building: Tarley’s “Aria”, the price Oswin Rall had set on his partnership, and Cyril Lancaster’s black book, which Edrin Holt had been poring over since the winter. Both were inside Bluecoat Headquarters — a seven-storey tower in the bureaucratic quarter a few blocks east, among the city hall, the courthouse and the records offices, with a central carriage yard full of wagons. It housed the watch for the whole city, the Charterhall station, and the inspectors, the less bribable men such as Holt. Questions put quietly to Darmot filled in the rest. The Aria was a painting. It sat in long-term storage on the first basement level, and they now had its lot number. The black book was probably not in storage at all; it was more likely on Holt’s own desk on the third floor, and they learned where that desk was. Cam came back with plans of the building. Freakshow came back with a handwritten order to transfer that lot from the lock-up to an antiquities dealer at The Meridian for grading ahead of auction. It would pass with a Bluecoat, though it would never survive a judge. Out of his disguise kit he also made two passable uniforms, one for himself and one for Watcher. Cam also spent part of the interval on pleasures she could not afterward fully account for, and somewhere among them she told someone a good deal more about the crew’s recent work than she should have.
The Cells
They went in from below at about three in the morning, following their maps through the old tunnels to a place where, generations ago, construction work had cut into the catacombs. The wall there remembered being an opening. They joined hands and walked through it, into total blackness, damp and mould and a smell of human rot. Boo reached into the ghost field and made out a cell, and Bluecoats passing rarely along the corridor outside, usually carrying a tray. Watcher’s goggles showed the rest: chains on the wall, a bucket, a pallet nobody should sleep on, and a stone-and-iron door standing open. Outside were four cells, three of them open, one shut, and from behind the shut door came the faint drag of a chain on stone. Nyx oiled the hatch and Watcher slid it back. It was not quite silent.
The woman inside had not spoken in a long time. She was shackled at the ankles, emaciated, her wool dress in rags and her hair coming out in patches, with a cough that hurt to hear. Her name was Samantha Oliver. She had been down there for almost ten months, fed every other day or so. She had been blackmailed, after a fashion, into trying to sabotage a stretch of the rail line out by the gate — the rail that carries goods between what is left of civilisation — and had been caught at it. She had been first mate on the leviathan hunter Night Hunter, and she asked them to tell her captain, Captain Klyra, where she was. Watcher remembered December’s newspaper and the list of Lancaster’s poisoned dead. Klyra had been on that list. He said nothing of it to her, only promised that they would try to come back and that her message would reach someone either way. Nyx picked the cell door and one of the ankle irons; the other lock rusted solid and broke, so she would walk out, if she ever did, trailing a length of chain. Boo left her a flask of whiskey. Watcher closed the cell door and then the hatch, and apologised.
Upstairs
Beyond a barred gate, which Nyx opened by reaching through the bars, the rest of that level was a dumping ground nobody had visited in decades: crates of Bluecoat uniforms twenty years out of date, files rotting on their shelves, chairs and cabinets under canvas. Stairs climbed to a solid iron door locked from the far side. For that, Cam had gone to Quellyn beforehand, who had sold her two small balls that open every lock within five feet when crushed. Cam crushed one, a tiny voice giggled somewhere, and the lock let go. The door opened onto a lit corridor, lightly travelled, under a sign reading Authorised Personnel Only.
There they split up. Freakshow and Watcher straightened their uniforms and went up. At the foot of the first stairs two clerks in plain clothes were talking, and Watcher, out in the open, could not stop himself drifting toward the shadows; Freakshow took him by the arm and steered him past. On the busy main floor, and up the open stairs through the atrium, Freakshow settled into the part completely — he had the walk, the voice, every mannerism of a man who owned the building — and the two of them marched to the third floor without anyone looking twice. In a small bullpen of six desks, at exactly the desk Darmot had described, sat Inspector Edrin Holt. He was haggard and exhausted, his head in one hand, a small electroplasmic lamp beside him, papers spread around Lancaster’s black book as he wrote notes.
Below, Cam, Nyx and Boo crept through the first basement while a steady stream of clerks went back and forth from the stairs to a filing room, and they spent much of the journey ducking into broom closets. The ghost field showed nothing that had ever been a door in the lock-up’s walls. The clerk on duty, middle-aged and immensely bored, brightened when Cam’s head came round the door, and then Nyx’s dart took him. Hey — what the hell? He stood, stumbled, and dropped. Cam pulled the dart, propped him over his desk as though he had dozed off, and took the gate key from its hook on the wall. Boo pocketed the little drinking-bird toy on his desk.
Shelf 37A
The lock-up was a long room of shelves, boxes and dangling tags. On shelf 37A Boo and Nyx found a canvas-wrapped package about three feet by five. Under the wrapping was a painting of breathtaking skill: a beautiful woman in a flowing white gown on a precipice in a storm, one hand reaching up toward the sky. It was so real they could almost hear the thunder. Then the woman in the painting turned her head, looked straight at them, startled, and screamed.
System Notes
- Downtime: Watcher trained Study (1 → 2) and worked the conspiracy (Lancaster’s Conspiracy 3/8 → 6/8). Cam trained Prowl (2 → 3), overindulged her vice (Bragged, +2 heat) and acquired building plans (Tier 1). Boo indulged her vice and began researching a tracking ritual (Boo: Tracking Ritual 3/8). Freakshow acquired forged transfer orders (Tier 1, passable to a Bluecoat but not a judge) and trained. Nyx completed Tissue Sustainer Research (9/12 → 12/12) and began Nyx: Clockwork Mind (2/8).
- Heat 4 → 6. Rep holds at 10; crew coin holds at 2.
- Light load for the score. Freakshow’s disguise kit covered Bluecoat uniforms for himself and Watcher.
- Engagement roll: partial (risky start), entering through the catacombs via Underground Maps and Passkeys and Ghost Echoes.
- Flashback: Cam bought two lock-opening charms from Quellyn (1 coin, 1 stress).
- New clock: There are imposters among us! started at 2/6 after Watcher’s failed Sway, and reached 4/6 after the basement group’s prowl.
- Samantha Oliver was found and partly freed. The crew promised to try to return for her on the way out.
- XP: 1 to everyone present; Freakshow also received the 2 he missed last session. Boo has filled her special ability track and will choose a new one before next session.
- Score continues next session.
