Synopsis
(Steampunk, Fantasy, Romance, Same-Sex)
Inspector Edward Bishop is a humorless man. An explosion years ago cost him an eye and a hand, both replaced by experimental devices that break down as often as they work, and left him scarred both physically and mentally. Now, on top of his usual workload, he's just been ordered to find the criminal mastermind who's been turning people into human automata. Nobody is supposed to know about his new assignment, but when the "Skullscrew Murderer" uses Bishop's longtime nemesis Jay Whitsun, a member of the information-disseminating underground organization Imprimatur, to set Bishop up for a hit, the inspector realizes that somebody has been talking out of turn. To make matters work, that cocky bastard Whitsun ends up saving Bishop's life and getting involved in his investigation.
Although Bishop has always considered Whitsun a mockingly flirtatious pain in the ass, he soon discovers that Whitsun's flirtation was never intended to be mocking at all. Can the beleagured inspector keep them both alive, stop his mechanical hand from jittering nervously around the handsome young criminal, avoid becoming implicated in Imprimatur's anti-censorship activities, AND solve the Skullscrew Murders before he loses his sanity, his self-control, and his reputation?
Probably not....
Excerpt
“This is it,” Whitsun said with a shiver. He reached out toward the door handle and faltered, pulling his hand back again. “Do you want — do you want to go in first?”
Exasperated, Bishop jammed the handkerchief into his coat pocket and held out the umbrella.
“You’re soaking,” he said, as Whitsun’s fingers closed over the ivory handle. “Should have stood closer.” He forced himself to wait until the textjacker stepped to one side before reaching out and opening the door.
Not so bad, he thought, taking in the scene. The smell of vomit, blood, and excrement was pungent in the small room, but after an initial twitch of distaste, he ignored it. An oil lamp burned on a table, casting its unsteady yellow light over an older man’s sprawled corpse. Blood covered the man’s head and eyeless face and was smeared over the wooden floor, but it was the bizarre set of metal plates screwed into his skull that drew Bishop’s eyes.
He walked into the room and crouched by the body, reaching out with his flesh hand to touch the blood-speckled metal. Cold. He examined the arrangements of plates, noting the scar tissue around them. Not a new job, this one. Work over the ear — that was one of the dangerous spots, Bishop knew from his studies. Secrecy, greed, and destruction, if he remembered correctly. And a plate he’d come to recognize now, clamped down tightly to deform the top of the head, where benevolence was controlled. Whoever the phrengineer was, he didn’t want his victims feeling compassion and altruism.
Bishop expected that the phrengineer’s own head must be as deformed by nature as his victims’ were by mechanical means.
Whitsun had been lucky. If he’d hit his attacker over one of those plates, he’d never have won the fight.
“Who was he?” Bishop asked, standing and looking around the rest of the room.
“Harold. I don’t know what his last name was.” Whitsun’s voice was faint. Bishop turned and saw him standing in the doorway, knuckles white around the umbrella’s handle. Rain blew in around his legs. “He was a carter. I’ve known him for years.”
“He delivered Imprimatur’s books?” Bishop picked up several of the cheaply printed books around them and flipped through the pages. Pornographic texts, mostly, a number of them illustrated. Standard fare, he was secretly relieved to see. He set the books back down and prowled through the room. Harold hadn’t been a wealthy man, although he’d accumulated more books than most poor people were wont to do. A perk of working for an underground publisher, Bishop assumed. The collection was limited to smut, though. The cheapest and most useless of all ‘jacked texts.
“Do you make money on this?” he asked, gesturing to the books as he opened a battered metal trunk. Old clothes. He moved them around with his metal hand to make sure nothing was hidden beneath. “I assume you don’t give it all away.”
“No. We have expenses, and donations don’t cover them all.” Whitsun finally took a step inside, lowering the umbrella and closing the door against the storm. “Pornography always sells well.”
“And it doesn’t bother you, printing trash like this?”
“You sound like — like someone else I know.” Whitsun stared resolutely down at his feet. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s boring and repetitive, most of it, and not very well-written, but it doesn’t do any harm.”
“It’s sick and cultivates a disrespectful attitude toward women.”
“I don’t know,” the ‘jack countered. “I like reading pornography about men, and I don’t think it’s made me less respectful.”
Bishop gave a disbelieving laugh, closing the trunk’s lid.
“You don’t have an ounce of respect in your body, Whitsun. All I’ve ever seen out of you has been pranks and mockery. You seem to think life’s a joke.”
“I don’t think this is a joke,” the textjacker said, quietly.
