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By Root 639 0

in his left shoulder and lower back. His body was being ravaged by a disease known as the fades. It was the cause of both the transparent patches and the terrible pains in his joints. He had contracted it in his youth, probably as a boy, trying to earn a little money by scraping ichor-fat from the gutters in the Arcadium that he could sell back to the factories. The disease was mercilessly slow and inexorable. He’d had it since he’d first joined the coroners, barely out of his teenage years. It had manifested then as a numbness in the backs of his hands, and had actually helped him become a bare-knuckle boxing champion. The disease had begun to eat away at him in his thirties, sapping a little bit of the heady pleasure of his glory days. It hadn’t started to disfigure him, covering his face and chest with raw bloody patches and cracking his joints and nerves until he turned forty. Everything had gone down-hill from there.

Beckett opened the small chest by his washbasin and removed a little bottle of seven percent Veneine solution, made from the venom of the Corsay dreamsnake, the elixir that the hoodlums called Fang. Small doses would ease the pain; large doses made you see things. Beckett didn’t like to hallucinate, but he’d been building up a tolerance to the painkiller, so overdoses had begun to happen more frequently.

When a man first began to taking Fang, he would feel warm and heavy. Pain and fear and anger all vanished, leaving a warm lassitude in its place. Once a man began to take large doses of the drug, he began to see strange things. Every minor thought or feeling suddenly leapt out through the eyes and into the world; life became a menagerie of dueling forks and winged cats and people bleeding from their eyes. If a man took too much he’d feel numb and heavy and he’d want to lie down. If he took far too much Fang, his mind would go places. The first place it went was Cross the Water, which Beckett had seen six times. He had been past it into the City of Brass only once, and it had almost killed him.

Because Beckett’s joints hurt him, and because he didn’t want to see Cross the Water ever again, he sucked half of his regular dosage into his hypodermic. Beckett grimaced at the small scars on his forearm. It really did look like he’d be savaged by a viper. With a wince, he thrust the needle into a vein and pressed on the plunger. A warm numbness spread from the wound immediately, and began to press the aches away. After a moment’s consideration, Beckett packed the hypodermic and the bottle into their leather travel case.

Leaving the rusty washbasin, which stood in a small, dark corner of his small, dark sitting room, Beckett prepared the morning routine of a man who suffered from the Fades. First, check the fingertips to make sure they were not cut. It was tricky because of their transparency, but if he’d been cut he’d be able to see drops of blood, floating strangely on invisible digits. Because the fingers were numb, a small cut might go untreated and lead to infection. Beckett checked his fingers, then his toes. He looked at the three clear patches of skin on his chest, invisible spots the size of his fist that revealed bloody muscle beneath. In one place, the virulent transparency had progressed so far that he could see his ribs. There was a new patch of dark purple like a bruise on his hip. Beckett prodded it and was dismayed to discover it was numb, too. Transparency would probably overtake it in a few days.

Secondly, once the inspection is over, wash everything carefully, and rub the faded places with fluxion salts. The little green and gold-flecked granules were grievously expensive, but the Imperium, as a reward for years of loyal service, partially subsidized them. The salts are meant to slow the progression of the fades; Beckett had never noticed them helping very much.

Finally, get dressed. Beckett put on his sober-cut charcoal suit, his heavy leather boots, his heavy leather gloves. He put on his belt with his old revolver, and the heavy wool overcoat. Because his clothes were standard issue for