by J Jordan
The light was odd for a tomb. It had focused into a sliver in the darkness, like an unseen door ajar. Romney ran toward it, knees buckling as he crossed into the threshold. He cannoned through the door and tumbled onto plush carpet.
The light came from two golden fixtures on the alabaster ceiling. Romney squinted up at them, his eyes still adjusting to the sudden change. Somewhere in this new room, he could hear the faint clicking of a clock and the subtle swoosh of its pendulum. He sat up by degrees, taking in the details as they came to him. The crystal glassware on the left table and the bottles of spirits at attention behind it, like a formal dressed minibar. He stood and turned to see the room at large. The elko wood desk at the center had a pristine typewriter with silvered keytops and mithril typebars. Beside it, a VockBook Pro with accounts and long figures running across its screen. These two were joined by a full gold stationary set and a series of rubber stamps. A stack of papers on one side was more work to be done. But it had taken enough of his time. He was hungry.
The minibar acted as a divider between the office and a small living room, with velveteen couches forming a perimeter around a glass coffee table. The coffee table had its own set of liqueurs and crystal glassware. A large, thin TV looked over the couches from its high place on the far wall. Its glassy surface was blank at the moment. And the light tapping came from a grandfather clock nestled in the opposite corner of the living room, a dark rosewood affair with a shined mithril face. The pendulum was also mithril, its bluish-silver body flashing with each swing. This was a nice setup, indeed.
But where was it located?
There was a knock at the door. Romney wasn’t expected any friends over, and unexpected guests meant only one thing: bad advice or opportunities to lose everything. That was the nature of this business. There were people who looked out for you, but the majority were out for blood. He approached the door, hand moving carefully toward the handle. Romney hated those silver-tongued devils, and loathed dealing with them. He took a breath to ease his nerves, then cracked the door open.
It was a young Andaran woman in a full bellhop getup, complete with a small, white fez on top. Without a word, she thrust an envelope through the crack and then left her hand in when Romney took the letter. Her palm was face-up, fingers flexing. Romney grinned at this.
“Sorry, no cash.”
She didn’t answer. There was something striking about her, some detail about her that made her instantly familiar. Was it her eyes? Her dark hair? It was like a bad itch. Where had he seen her? The bellhop waited, until she was certain he wasn’t tipping, then withdrew her hand and moved down the hall. Romney watched her until she disappeared around a corner at the far end. For some weird reason, he imagined her scaling a mountain.
The envelope contained a message printed on a small card. Its stark lettering was written with a careful pen. The message was three words long.
“Turn back now.”
Romney was standing in the passageway of Hirna Andrea, with its smooth stone walls and its dust floor. He wiped sweat from his brow. The air was suddenly heavy and sweltering, like a sauna in high gear. Each breath was like taking in a cloud of steam. Romney looked down at the note again, bringing his flashlight to its surface. The light glowed through the thin paper and caught the glossy lettering. The message had changed. There were more words now.
“You forgot dinner again. It’s waiting downstairs.” And then a heart made of thin flowing lines.
Romney peeked again through the crack at the hallway. It had burgundy carpet and cream walls with dark wood doors on either side. It seemed real enough to him. No cubicles on this floor. These offices were reserved for the big guns, the movers and shakers of the firm. And Romney Balvance was the biggest gun of all.
Where did the messenger go?
Was it dinnertime already? That meant he had missed lunch again. He had spent the bulk of his day shoring up the Proudmoore’s retirement account. They had taken a hit with the recent decline in Katarin futures, but he had quickly traded them off before any real damage had occurred. Two more ounces of gold, a few more of silver, and now the Proudmoores were back on track. Then he was still sorting out the Graylords and their college fund. Twins heading to Gonford University. A tremendous sum would be needed, but the Graylords had nothing to fear. They would be ready, with Romney Balvance on the case.
But the note was right. It was long past lunch time. The heart at the end was a signature. This note was from the Matron.
Who was the Matron?
The owner of the firm, of course. President and CEO of Matron Financial.
Romney moved down the hall, his hat tipped down to shadow his face. But after a few steps, he realized he didn’t need to hide. The offices were dead quiet, save for the droning buzz of something below. An air conditioner, probably on its last leg. That explained the heat. Romney made a note to check with maintenance, to make sure everything was in order to fix it. He was just that kind of guy, always thinking about the people under him. Even if they were overbearing at times. Or downright cutthroats. Romney checked both ends of the hallway, just to be safe, then called the elevator. The door opened and the messenger appeared, grimacing at him. She made no attempt at conversation on the way down. When they reached the lobby, she thrust her hand out again.
“I told you I don’t have anything,” said Romney. “Sorry.”
She waited patiently for Romney to pay up, then watched as he stepped out of the elevator. He turned back to see her glowering through the closing door. There was something familiar about her. Romney tried digging through memories to find where she fit. Was it the Red Flamingo? She looked like Carmen, the money manager on floor eleven. The one who smoked fat cigars and wore satin gloves that shimmered in the moonlight, the kind that went up to her elbows.
What was Carmen doing as a bellhop? She was ready for the second floor. She was going places.
Romney leaned against the smooth stone wall, then recoiled. The stone had left a red mark on his hand, along with a world of stinging pain. He whipped his hand and blew on it, attempting to put out the fire in his fingers. The wall seemed to have a faint blue glow now. This dull glow added new features to the tomb’s single passageway. The dust floor was now a thin layer of smooth stone, polished to mirror finish. And there was now a faint corona marking the path forward. Romney’s flashlight yielded no other details. It was useless in this strange, new light. The passageway had become a boiler room, all radiating heat and smoldering ozone. Each breath was sucking down steam, burning his nostrils and tickling his throat. Why was it so hot?
Andy. That was the bellhop. Short for something. He couldn’t think of it. She was one of the interns, a courier of sorts. It was a running joke. The interns wore bellhop costumes when working on the upper floors, and sometimes people would give them a tip. No one under floor two thought it was funny. But Andy was different from the other interns. Her messages came straight from the top. It was Andy’s job to be the eyes and ears of the Matron. She was paid over the table, like any other intern, so no one in accounting would sound the alarm. She was a perfect managerial tool, a surveillance camera hiding in plain sight.
If only the others knew what Andy made in a day, they would never tip her again. The Matron provided for all, but she liked her eyes and ears best. They wanted for nothing. Andy was no exception.
The ground floor was filled with the bustle of Lanvale finance. It was the perfect opportunity to blend in. Romney made for the dining room, the secretive dinner spot for the Matron’s elite. He moved to the mahogany double doors and showed his badge to the waitstaff. They smiled blankly, and ushered him in. The dining room was not primarily a place to eat. It was a place where the greatest minds in finance clashed over the day’s outcome. There was talk of futures and shares, rising and falling, bulls, bears, and once the grim prospect of a phoenix market. This is where the economists became legends. The ideas shared in this room were worth billions. You couldn’t get this kind of knowledge a
t a university. Not just anyone could enter the dining room. You had to prove yourself to the Matron.
Some time ago, Romney Balvance had proven his worth. His trades were the stuff of myth. It was like he knew where to look, when to buy and when to sell. He just knew where all the trends were pointing. There were no gods in this pantheon, but Romney was the closest to divinity. It was as if he could never lose money.
He never lost money. Not once.
This was entirely impossible. It was mathematically unfeasible, for one. Every economic principle had a lost case. Of course, there were winners too, but no one person could win every single time. No statistical probability, no matter how skewed, could ever reach 100 percent in a realistic market. There were too many factors that needed to come together. This wasn’t a grim outlook. It was practically a law of nature.
And, anyway, losses in any market were natural. That was the give-and-take of any healthy economy. All of it relied on business, commerce. Supply and demand would ebb like any tide. The only way to win every time was to cheat. And in this business, that meant doing some pretty ugly things.
Things Romney would never do.
The details of Romney’s winning streaks weren’t important. The fact was that, at one time, he was a rainmaker. He had proven himself worthy of the dining room long ago.
At the center of the dining room was a dark wood bar loaded with top-shelf booze, enough to kill a bank account in a single evening. The bar was surrounded by a circle of tables, each with four chairs perfectly squared, except for one. One of the tables had a single chair pulled out and angled to welcome Romney as he approached. This table was reserved for the Matron’s finest employee. He took his seat and surveyed the room. You didn’t need a menu in the dining room, because the cooks knew what you wanted. They knew what Romney wanted. Pollos rhocanos, blackened with a solid layer of spice, grilled to juicy perfection, sitting like a king on a mound of golden rice. In fact, Romney didn’t even have to order it. The divine plate was coming to him, carried on the forearm of a vixen in black satin.
This was the Matron. Unmistakable. Sure, any woman could have a curtain of wavy black hair. Many did. And many had that silvery satin evening gown in their closets somewhere, likely inspired by the original. Sure, you could buy her crimson lipstick at any store in downtown Lanvale, at great cost. And any lady could carry herself with all the grace and confidence of an Alta Mirran starlet—Alexa Darria and Jennifer Oathkeeper are two modern equivalents that come to mind. But no one had the Matron’s eyes. They were two lustrous sapphires suspended and forever burning in moonlight. They were the blue center of fire. A casual glance from her could burn through lesser men and a few women too. Her eyes were fixed on Romney.
And now that he was thinking about it, she was more beautiful than Alexa Darria could ever be.
Romney could see the source of the blue light. There was a shimmering entryway before him that wavered like the surface of a lake, wreathed in blue fire. As he approached, he couldn’t make out the shape of things beyond as they rippled in the heat. Each step toward this fiery threshold made Romney sick. The heat was baked into his shirt, like the outside of an oven mitt stuck into a furnace. And every breath was filled with electric steam that buzzed in his chest. He stood at the threshold and looked into its rippling surface. The intense heat dried the sweat on his forehead, then began to burn a dull ache into his scalp. From here, he could make out the expanse beyond. He pressed a hand into the wavering surface and felt the raw electric power course through his arm. But as he pulled away, the fire wrapped around his forearm. He yanked at it and pulled with all his weight, but his arm didn’t budge from its spot. The surface branched into two long tendrils of fire and enveloped him. And, with no effort, they pulled him in.
Romney passed into the burning portal, and he could see the wild expanse unfold before him. It was a place where dreams were forged, all of them at once, each careening through the blue fires, to collide and burst against the terrible conundrums that held them from reality. The binding tendrils carried him through the scorched and cobalt plain, that stretched into the fiery horizon—a line broken by the shapes of impossible towers and mountains formed on a whim. This place could not exist within Hirna Andrea. It was somewhere else entirely. This was the chaotic world of dreams, where the energy of wild hopes was in constant friction against the laws of nature, binding the gears and grinding the pistons. The inside of a nuclear reactor, full of raw power, heated and electric. The potential energy of anything. And at its center was the shape of a person floating in midair. She was a powder-blue spark, with the shape of arms and legs, and a face with two bright, young stars. The two stars were fixed on him. A hand of blue fire raised up and began an indecipherable motion. A conjuration. The tendrils pulled him closer.
This was the place where Andrea kept the magical artifacts. And the trouble with magic was that it promised everything and delivered on time, natural laws be damned. This was the result. The magic had worn down the world around it and made a place of its own. This was a total breakdown. A conflagration forever burning, the inside of a star. And at its heart was the Matron.
Romney watched the plate of pollos rhocanos from his seat, occasionally looking back at the gorgeous Matron. She stood over the table, her crimson smile fading with each passing moment.
“What’s wrong?”
He played it cool, his heart jackhammering in his throat.
“Can you box it up for me? I’ve got a long night ahead.”
Her brow furrowed, but the smile remained taut.
“But you just arrived. Aren’t you hungry?”
There was a pit in Romney’s stomach. He couldn’t eat, even if he wanted to.
“I know, I’m sorry. But there’s something I need to do.”
The tendrils raised him up as an offering. Romney was now face-to-face with the true Matron, her floating lightly in the air and he gripped in place. Her face had no features, save for the two eyes. Romney could see them swirling in their fiery sockets.
The Matron was an inch from his face, her breath tickling his nose.
“It can wait, can’t it?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Romney.
“Not even for me?”
“It’s serious business.”
“You don’t mean the Wrathborne account, do you? Don’t worry about it, love. We can have Hulgrad on it in the morning. There’s no need for all this worry.”
“No, it’s something else,” said Romney.
“Whatever you want,” said the Matron, with eyes of burning potential. Her hands wove new possibilities into place.
There were stacks of money on the table, and more food, and other glimmering treasures. The Matron sat on his lap, her hands running through his hair, her face close to his ear.
“Anything for my Romney,” she cooed.
Anything his heart desired. Power, wealth, love. The means to be his own boss, to be somebody worth something. It could be his. All of it.
No, it couldn’t. Not for free. They were hollow things if he didn’t earn them. They had no place in the real world. That was the trouble with magic. All its promises were empty.
He needed to find Videra’s necklace. But first, he needed to escape this world of magic.
Romney thrashed in the grip of the tendrils. They squirmed around him but quickly lost their purchase. He fell.
“What are you doing?”
Romney was headed for the door, but the Matron was tugging at his arm.
“I gotta go.”
Romney hit the scorched earth with a spark that wracked his bones. He staggered to his feet and broke into a hobbling run. His feet were pins and needles, each breath a heated storm cloud. He ran, even as the fires swarmed up his legs and into his chest, to tighten their grip around his heart.
The portal was nowhere in sight. The burning blue lands and their odd landmarks stretched on forever.
“Don’t leave.”
Romney turned and loo
ked the Matron right in her sapphires.
“Thanks for everything. The dinner, the money, all of it was great. You’re really nice and attractive, and I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But look, I’m not in a good spot mentally, and none of this is going to work out. Okay? So, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to your treasure room.”
The Matron’s brow furrowed again. The blue flames seeped into the corners of her eyes. Her voice took on a low rumble.
“But this is what you want. To have power and wealth beyond measure, to be loved and feared, to be seen. Why do you run from me?”
The dining room was hotter than before. Someone had switched on the heater.
“None of this is real,” said Romney. “It can’t exist. Not without breaking the rules.”
“You don’t need the rules,” the Matron hissed. “I can make this real for you. A world of profits and glory, with Romney Balvance as its king. All you need to do is ask.”
The Matron was upon him, her fiery hands grasping his coat. Romney ripped it off in one motion and tried for another burst of speed. But his legs faltered. The blue plains stretched on, the horizon never moving, and the Matron’s grasp mere inches from his collar.
“It would never work. None of this is real.”
“It can be,” said the Matron. “You just don’t understand. Let me show you.”
Her grip tightened around Romney’s shoulders. The magic roared through him like a thunderbolt, down every nerve ending, seizing muscles and locking bones. The Matron’s power was very real. It coursed through him at a level unfathomable, clouding his visions and crashing through thoughts. He could see it traveling through him, veins of pure burning light, glowing through his skin, sizzling with raw potential. His feet stayed planted, immovable. The Matron’s face was upon him. Her eyes flared.