The Clarity of Cold Steel: Tales of the Machine City, #1

By Kevin Wright

Detective Avinash Singh is dying by degrees.

 

Outcast from his people, on the lam, and stricken by a deadly plague, Detective Singh survives on the fringes by his keen wits, quick draw, and cool silver tongue.

When a slick grifter hires the hard-boiled sleuth to locate a missing kid, a desperate search leads him through a maze of deceit and murder. But unraveling threads and digging up long-buried skeletons sets powerful forces clambering for his head.

Can the streetwise gumshoe withstand the endless onslaught long enough to locate the missing kid, and if he does, will he wish he hadn't?

The Clarity of Cold Steel is a gripping steampunk detective thriller.

If you like gritty heroes, twisty thrillers, and hard-boiled sleuths, you'll love The Clarity of Cold Steel.

Gain some clarity and buy the steampunk thriller today.

Praise for The Clarity of Cold Steel:

-Semifinalist in the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition
-"So much I loved about this: the amazing prose, the dark humour, the complex and flawed anti-hero." -Superfly
-"Hands down one of the finest independent genre reads I've encountered this year." -Dreamerdown
-"I enjoyed it immensely." -Amazon Customer
-"exceptionally well paced and I found it hard to put down." -Jimmy Robinson
-"Mr. Wright is a talented plotmaster who knows how to pull all the threads together. It's a good read." -Amazon Customer
-"The pace is fast, but each sentence, sometimes each word, really packs a punch." -Marianne Germain
-A good read - so good that I was late to work and I had to force myself to put book down" -K. Smith
-"Highly original tale." -Amazon Customer
-"The pace is fast, but each sentence, each word almost, really packs a punch. Reminded me of JG Ballard." –Amazon Customer
-"I can only highly recommend to people who truly love literature." –Amazon Customer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Wright
• Release date: Aug 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386144366

Kevin Wright

About the Author Kevin Wright studied writing at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell and fully utilized his bachelor’s degree by seeking and attaining employment first as a produce clerk and later as an emergency medical technician and firefighter. His parents were thrilled. For decades now he has studied a variety of martial arts but steadfastly remains not-tough in any way, shape, or form. He just likes to pay money to get beat up, apparently. Kevin Wright peaked intellectually in the seventh grade. He enjoys reading a little bit of everything and writing sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. He does none of it well. Revelations, his debut novel, is a Lovecraftian horror tale. GrimNoir is a collection of his best short stories, and Lords of Asylum is an insane detective fantasy. His mom really likes all of them even though she’s never read any of them and wonders continually why he can’t just write anything ‘nice.’ Kevin Wright continues to write in his spare time and is currently working on a new full length novel.

Book preview

The city goes by many names.

PLAGUE-TOWN, THE MACHINE City, Mortise Locke, last bastion of mankind in all its fallen glory.

Where the sum total of life is cheaper than in part.

Where the dead rise and the living lie.

Where the great cogwheels bleed rust atop pillars of iron, elevating the rich and grinding the poor to dust. Beneath a fissured sky burned black as soot, the city festers, feeds, grows.

A fair few call it Hell-on-Earth, and they ain’t wrong.

But me?

I call it home.

—Avinash Singh

Chapter 1.

I SLOUCH INTO MY OFFICE with all the verve of a laudanum addict pulling an overnight on the docks. Kashmira’s plying her secretary’s desk, giving me the evil eye over her bifocals and shaking her head slowly from side to side. Tsk. Tsk. Like she does. I’m late apparently. Again. I set a coffee down on her desk, between two plateaus of cheap novels, because maybe that’ll distract her enough to not bite my head off, and because I’m a prime example of human decency. But you probably already knew that.

Look like a damn thug, Kashmira mutters, snatching the drooping cig from my mouth, stubbing it out. But she takes the coffee, too.

What, uh, time is it? I glance at my watch which I forgot to wind. It’s not forthcoming with a riot of accurate information. Not sure I could read it if it was.

You sleep in a gutter? She draws in a long whiff of the steaming coffee. Licks her wizened lips. Precoital bliss.

I shudder, shake my head. In the comfort of my own home.

She takes another whiff of me, scrunches her nose. Been punishing your liver?

How’s it ever gonna learn?

Just get in there, Kashmira grunts, nodding her cottontop toward my office door which is opened a crack. A man’s sitting inside at my desk. He looks well-dressed from what little I can eyeball.

Suit? I check my breath against my hand. It ain’t good. But I most likely ain’t kissing this bloke, either. I doff my tricorne hat and greatcoat and smooth out the lapels of my suit.

"Suit and tie. Then she mouths, Expensive," and shoos me in with both hands.

"Really? I mouth back as I hand her my great coat. Huzzah." While her back’s turned and she’s hanging up my coat, I snatch back her coffee and pound past. Before I close my office door, I turn back for an instant and give her my most winningest smile. Thanks, darlin’.

Oh, you’re welcome, sunshine, she calls out in her ginger-peachiest secretary voice, all butter and honey and grandmotherly goodness, all the while dead-eye dicking me through one large caliber eye and chucking me one lone monotone middle finger with that arthritic claw.

I waggle my eyebrows and disappear within the confines of my claustrophobic office, mule kicking the door creaking shut behind. The man in the seat turns, appraising me from beneath one raised eyebrow. He’s Hindu, like me, a lot shorter and a lot plumper, and far less debonair. To be fair, though, I set the bar high in that department. And he is well-dressed, a fine suit, as Kashmira said. Kashmira knows her business. Why I keep her around. Suit’s tailor made. Charcoal-dark. Sheen of sharkskin. Not the best, perhaps, but far and away better than I’m used to with regards to my typical clientele. The aroma of money’s on him, and I try not to drool. And he looks familiar, but I can’t place him.

Coffee? I offer out Kashmira’s steaming cup.

No, thank you. He waves a delicate hand.

I set it on the desk. You’ll have to pardon my tardiness. A glance at my watch for effect. Busy busy. Was working a case last night. Late last night. I hold out a hand. Avinash Singh. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.

The bloke glances at my outstretched hand as though it’s some exotic animal that he’s not sure is poisonous or not. I’ve wondered the same from time to time. After an uncomfortable pause, he finally rises and takes it, sits back down, all prim and proper. Ahem. He wipes his hand surreptitiously on a lavender-scented handkerchief as I round my desk. We’re already acquainted, Mister Singh.

Eh? I take a sheaf of papers, mostly scribbles of naked women and dragons and impossible inventions, and tidy them up, tapping them on edge lightly on the desk, then set them aside. Face down. I clear my throat. Ahem. That familiarity again. Like something from a dream. I know this bloke, but I can’t place him, and I already don’t like him, so I toe the party-line with a congenial rictus.

You were in quite a state at the time, though, as I recall. My name is Chirag Khanna, he announces, lets it set in, a shitty smirk lengthening his lip line, stretching that dead caterpillar glued above his pallid lips.

Shit, I blurt out as realization gongs me like a hammer, my smile wilting flaccid. This bonny bloke’s a giblet slinger, a snakehead, an illegal dok dealing in the graft trade. Hell, he’s the graft trade in the borough of Malabar. And I owe him. Big. Well, this is truly a pleasure, I lie. He specializes in black market organ donation and transplantation. Chirag’s connected, and I don’t mean to the telegraph system. He grafted me a liver on loan. So technically, the liver’s still his. He also supplies — or his office, I should say — supplies me with my daily dose of immunosuppressives that make sure my body doesn’t attack and kill my grafted liver. I rip through some quick math in my head, which’s never been my strong suit; I’m still trying to find my strong suit. I’m paid up through the month, ain’t I?

What? Chirag stiffens in his seat. Oh, no — I mean, yes, Mister Singh, your account is paid up in full. A look of consternation scrunches his mug as he waves a hand as though erasing the draconian rates he charges. And in any case, I employ professionals to ... settle indigent accounts. What he means is he employs repo men, probably from one of the Kalighat Syndicates that owns his ass, who specialize in hunting down men and cutting out their transplanted organs. Excision with precision, they call it on the street. Or settle indigent accounts as Chirag more pleasantly puts it. I’m here because I want to hire you.

I deflate and let out a near-audible groan, clutch my precious liver, or his precious liver, if you want to get technical. I’ve some history with the Kalighat Syndicates of Malabar. And not the good kind.

I’ve heard tell you’re adept at finding, ah, missing persons. He smooths out his dead caterpillar, licks his lips like some tepid reptile.

I am that. I nod, dig in, a bloodhound hot on the trail. Who is it gone missing?

My nephew.

I reach for my auto-stenographer, pause with my finger poised above its switch. Do you mind?

Ah, no, certainly not. He resettles in his seat, giving the auto-sten a wounded look.

I flick the switch and the auto-sten whirrs into life, the mech-arm scribbling a test strip before settling into silence. What’s your nephew’s name? The auto-sten whirrs, transcribing my question.

Gotham Khanna.

And how old? I steeple my fingers on my desk, lean forward, try to look professional despite five o’clock shadow creeping on premature.

Four — no, fifteen-years-old.

The auto-sten screeches to a halt, starts scribbling a mess of jagged mountains that probably mirror my heart rate.

Sorry. Piece of junk. I flip it off, pull out a notepad, jot down the key notes old school, trying to salvage my shattered aura of professionalism. Where was he last seen?

His home. He points over his shoulder in the direction of Brahma knows where. "It’s a sod-hulk moored out in Boneyard Bay. The Iphigenia."

Tough part of town. Pen poised, I glance up through one eye. What I mean to say is Boneyard Bay’s an armpit. At best. And in Mortise Locke, the Machine City, last bastion of humanity on earth, that’s saying something fierce.

It is that.

We’re in agreement. Where in the Boneyard?

On the, ah, east side. Far out. Armada.

Even better. What he means to say is Gotham’s home’s a boil on the armpit.

He and his family are share-croppers, Chirag continues. They grow and harvest, he scratches his neck, something.

I scribble down ‘something’ in quotes and underline it. Twice.

I would appreciate it if you would put out, ah, some feelers and perhaps get a lay of the land, he says in the lingo. He’s talked to someone about me. Gotten a lay of the land. Put out some feelers.

How long’s he been gone? I ask.

Two days.

The eighth then? I nod. Scribble-scribble. Any chance he just ran away?

"He is a cropper in Boneyard Bay."

Right. More than reason enough, though to be fair, an equal chance of him having had his throat slit and been dropped in the drink. But I don’t say that. Cause I’m inimitably professional. Fifteen-years-old. Hindu boy. Gotham Khanna. I look up. You his guardian?

What? He straightens. Deer on train tracks, wheels rolling, whistle blowing. No.

Who is then?

His parents. My brother Parth and his wife Catia.

Can I talk to them?

"Yes. Of course. They work on the Iphigenia as well."

Sort of a family business?

Certainly.

Anything distinguishing about Gotham? I ask. What’s he look like?

Ah, he screws his eyes shut like he’s trying to remember the date of his anniversary, he is missing his right arm, below the shoulder, and most of the fingers on his left hand.

By Shiva’s sword. I shake my head sympathetically. Or empathetically. One of those. Maybe both. The slough or a farming accident? You never know. Sodbusters and sharecroppers? All that machinery they run, you find one with half his marbles and all his fingers and you might as well call him a bloody unicorn.

I ... I don’t know, Mister Singh. He dabs his forehead with that handkerchief. Forgive me. You see, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve been estranged from my family for quite some time. A falling out with my brother, you see?

It happens. I snap my notepad shut with one hand. Smartly. "I’ll head out to the Iphigenia post haste. We hash out a mutually acceptable agreement, and then he’s out the door. I’ll get a lay of the land, I call after. Put out some feelers. Won’t rest until it’s..."

The door slams shut.

Kashmira’s at her post, working her way through some penny dreadful spooker.

Coffee? I ask, offering the tepid cup.

She licks a finger, turns a page, pointedly ignores me, so I ease my office door shut, dose myself with some whiskey of the dog and stare at a cold cup of coffee until I pass out dead in my chair. Post haste.

Chapter 2.

THE GANGWAY ONTO THE Iphigenia creaks and rolls beneath my feet, and the rigging looming high above hangs limp and rotten. The sea air is cold and bites at my face, my nostrils, my lungs. I blaze up a cig to warm me inside and out. Ancient war-hulks and derelict vessels span off infinite in the distance, each one deader and more decrepit than the last, all moored loosely alongside one another by bridges and snakes of parabolic chain.

Poised at the prow of this salt-scaled leviathan stands a figurehead carved in the boat’s namesake, a beautiful young woman before time and the worms ate into her, boring through her body, her face, her worn splintered soul. She leans out perilously over the surf, one hand by her side whilst the other clutches the hilt of a dagger plunged deep into her own heart. The look carved onto her face captures some occult emotion, making it difficult to discern whether she’s plunged it there herself or struggling to draw it free.

As I set foot on the sod-hulk’s deck, some bloke’s suddenly prostrate on his knees in the dirt. Oh, praise the lords.

My foot sinks into the carpet of soft earth plowed evenly across the deck. Strings of heat lanterns hang above the green sprouts cultivated in even rows up and down the hulk’s expanse, delicate wisps of life coming into being. How’s anything grow with all the salt and no shine? I blow some smoke.

The man’s fingers are stained black from the earth as he raises them toward the sky in prayer. Mister Singh?

You’re Parth? I hazard, tipping my tricorne hat down, turning my collar up against the wind. It ain’t strong, but it’s cold, it’s constant, it’s coarse.

I am. Parth rises from the sod. I imagine rusted hinges squealing in protest as he labors up off his knees, smears his hands across his thighs, and treads toward me. He looks like his brother. More worn, though. More tired. More tough. "They claimed you would not come. He casts a glare at the other croppers, heads down in the dirt, sowing, toiling, ignoring. One notices, though, casts a rotten glance, spits. But I knew you would. Chirag wrote me you would, and he is many things, but no liar."

Myself? I ain’t so sure, but Chirag did pay me up front and that’s more than enough if he is. Just call me Avinash. My bones ache and joints grind gout-like as I grab onto rigging when a wave broadsides the hulk. Parth doesn’t seem to notice. Sea legs. Fully intact. How long’s your boy been missing?

Two days. Parth clamps his eyes shut.

I nod. Never hurts to corroborate. I flip open my notepad. He’s fifteen, I rattle off, about five feet tall. Missing his right arm, below the shoulder. And most of the fingers on his left hand.

Parth’s eyes glisten over as he nods. A skinny boy. Bushy hair like they all wear now-a-days.

The arm and fingers, I raise an eyebrow, cropper accident or the slough? The slough’s a bad bit of shiny new pestilence afflicting the lot of Mortise Locke. Technically, it’s called neoteric leprosy, but no one calls it that. And no one knows where it started or how it’s spread. But it did. And it is. And it will.

It was the slough. Parth takes a deep breath, mastering his sorrow. It came on about three months past. It came on fast. Bad.

That’s what it does. And strikes randomly, hitting folks up and down the economic and social strata, rotting appendages off or gnawing organs clean out, and then it’s just gone. Sometimes it takes an arm, a face, a kidney. Sometimes it takes more. Sometimes everything.

No internal damage?

Parth shakes his head. He was lucky.

Though lucky is a narrow term cause how lucky can a crippled cropper boy be? One arm. No fingers practically. How do you lift a hoe? Dig a trench? Plant seed? Any idea as to what happened? The disappearance, I mean. Nothing good, I’d hazard. The good news is, I’m only here for some precursory snooping. I ain’t going the whole nine yards. Just copping a lay of the land. He ever try and run away? Putting out some feelers.

The other croppers are glaring up now, furrowed brows mimicking the furrowed earth. One cropper hisses something. A few rise, rusted metal tools in hand, gleaming at the edges.

I believe he was taken, Parth ventures, wiping his neck.

Taken? I ask. By who? Now that’s a tall order in this city. Kidnapping, murder, organ pirating, all flavors of the day in Boneyard Bay: sea-born paradise for an armada load of dastardly bitches and bastards. And the thing about the Machine City as a whole or in parts, with regards to nefarious doings, is that it does not discriminate on account of ethnicity or age or sex or anything in between. Some hazard the whole city’s festering top to bottom with untapped veins of villainous scum. Like maggots dining through a week-dead corpse. Me? I ain’t that optimistic.

I don’t know. Parth shakes his head, clutches his hands together in prayer. Old boy ought to pray harder next time. Might get better results than me.

The other croppers have pulled a collective Lazarus and shamble forth through the thick earth, stepping over rows, moving forward like the walking dead until they form a half ring around Parth and myself. Men and women. Some children, too. Ugly children. A lot of them are sporting stumps. Eye patches. One of the women, stocky would be the political way to describe her, with dark skin and darker freckles, wraps her only arm protectively around Parth’s midsection, clutching him tight. His wife, no doubt. Together they stand. Ain’t they a pretty picture? My wife, Catia, Parth says.

I nod. Any idea why someone would take him? I raise an eyebrow at Catia. There’s iron in her glare. Strong, sure, but brittle. And when brittle things break, they’re wont to leave sharp edges. But I digress.

Catia frowns, averts her gaze, shakes her head just a mite. Parth, for his part, looks dumbfounded. The others all finger their sharp tools and do their damnedest to make me feel welcome. The cold breeze blows.

What’s the problem? I ask, though I already know the answer. These dirt-worshipping sods eking out a life of salt-caked ocean-borne misery, on their knees, backs bent, bones ricket-brittle, think they’re better than me. Caste system bullshit. They’re poor, they’re ragged, they’re subsistence-level serfs dying by degrees under the thumb of some backwater ship-baron. They own nothing. They have nothing. They are nothing. Yet still, they might not be wrong.

Parth shifts uncomfortably from one foot to another.

It’s Catia who speaks up, staring out toward the city proper, at the plague walls rising, dividing the shoreline. Above it all, the three cogwheel metropolises churn together on high. The arcologies. Maybe the limp shit they’re sowing here might one day garnish the plate of some highborn lord or captain of industry? Dare to dream. You’re a dalit, Catia spits. What she means is: I’m the lowest of the low. An untouchable.

I nod. I am that. Now. I didn’t used to be. Didn’t want to be. Must be tough massaging all this mud from that high horse. I take a gander round the sad premises. You never think about it when you’re sitting at the top of the pyramid, you just think you deserve it. I’ve had second thoughts on it as of late. Third, too, truth be told.

We own part of this ship. In her fist, she clutches a garden trowel like a dagger.

Sure. Got a rich brother-in-law? A shot across her bow.

We work for ourselves.

And my-my, the good it’s doing you. I whistle low.

We don’t want your help.

Parth raises a hand in peacemaking, but I stifle him with my own, take a drag, blow. "Lady, who here said anything about want?"

Catia rumbles a bit, and the mob at her back shifts uncomfortably. Those farming implements have a dual purpose and don’t I know it.

Your boy’s gone. I flick my dead cig over the side. Couple days now. I point to Parth. And I wouldn’t be here if you all could handle it on your own. Shit, you probably tried, mustered up, marched in circles lockstep like lemmings, got lost in the maze, fumbled around like some fifteen-year old copping his first lay. All left hands and club feet, trying to find the hole.

Catia straightens. Don’t she just adore me? Who sent you? she demands, then glares Parth’s way. I admit I prefer it that way. Who sent him?

My brother, Parth admits.

A haze darkens over the collective visage of the cropper blokes, a grumble, and they start to move in toward me. I’m supposing Parth’s brother ain’t a crowd favorite, and by proxy, neither am I. But instead of copping chicken, I turn their way, coolly, calmly, heart hammering, and slide my hand inside my greatcoat. They give pause. Sure as shit they do. I’m strapped for bear and it ain’t a shovel I’m packing.

Anyone notify the coppers? I ask. I’m thinking of notifying them myself. Forthwith.

The cops... the wife scoffs.

The cops don’t want us asking any questions. Parth absently touches the bruise round his eye. They made that clear.

Who’d you talk to?

A bastard named Draegar, Catia says.

I’ve never heard of him. Why would someone take your boy? I ask again, eyes on the halted mob.

Still, no one says anything.

Money? I venture. Ha! From a sharecropper? I almost laugh at my own query but ask it I do. Hell, Catia claimed they owned part of the bloody boat. A berth maybe. More shaking of heads answers me, though. Wide-eyed, their implements of destruction lower. Women?

No.

Drugs?

No.

He tight with the gangs?

No.

He like to bet? Gamble? He a violent lad? No, no, and no.

Parth and company listen to each of my questions and offer curt shakes of the head after each and every one. They’re starting to take a shine to me, but I still ain’t getting anywhere, and I’m blowing my own sweet time doing it. I could be drinking.

He’s a good boy, Catia says, a smart boy.

They’re all good boys, lady, until they ain’t. Just to get one question answered, I pitch a straight one right down the middle. Who was the last one here to see him?

Catia looks down. Away. Just like the rest of them. But enough eyes peek up her way. Parth’s holding her around the shoulders now though whether it’s to comfort her or keep her from stabbing me in the gut with that garden trowel is anyone’s guess.

I can leave? I offer, glancing at the mob, pressed in. Stifling.

Please, Parth turns, his hands up, begging them to leave us be.

After a moment and some grumbling, they do, meandering with over-the-shoulder glances of misgiving and menace. They don’t go far.

Catia? Parth glares down at his wife. His voice is low. Please. He lifts her chin until she’s staring into his puppy dog eyes. He blinks. Begs. Practically whimpers. I couldn’t say no. Answer the man.

I fix her a look no woman can resist.

I... Catia’s eyes are glistening, threatening to burst, to drown us all. I was the last one to see him. Maybe she ain’t cast out of iron after all. Her shoulders slump as she cracks, breaking down, falling to her knees in the sod. He went to Mac Heath’s.

Parth’s eyes narrow. Who?

He, her voice cracks, "he was going to the Cartagena."

He what?! Parth bites his finger to allay a scream.

"What’s the Cartagena?" I ask dumbly.

"He went to that fucking Butcher?" Parth snarls, glaring bundi daggers at his wife.

The Butcher? Well now, doesn’t that sound promising?

Chapter 3.

STORMING ACROSS THE deck of the Cartagena, the Gremlin comes at me with a knife, though to call it a mere knife is to undermine the considerable degree of danger which it poses. It’s a kukri, which means it’s nigh on a foot long, angled midstream to add weight to blows, and it’s about half an inch thick along its spine. I’ve seen them used as pry bars with considerable success.

And the little fucker’s fast, faster