by Alexis Hall
I discovered Ms. Haas in the sitting room, surrounded by an undulating cityscape of newspapers, reference works, and handwritten notes. “Ah,” she said, “Captain. What news?”
I settled into the wingback chair. “Very little, I fear. As you suspected, the paper is of very ordinary manufacture and my analyses revealed no evidence of the letter’s having been handled by a third party.”
“And what does that tell you?”
“It would have been difficult to write, seal, and deliver a letter without leaving any alchemical trace of your presence. This would suggest that the blackmailer took great care and may even have had specific knowledge of the transubstantial sciences.”
She gazed at me for a moment. Having grown accustomed to her personal habits, it was startling, and a little unsettling, to find myself the subject of her unwavering scrutiny. “That is certainly one explanation,” she murmured.
“Are there others?”
“Always, Mr. Wyndham. In my world, to disregard the impossible is to limit oneself needlessly. In this case, however, we shall begin with what is merely probable.” She indicated the carnage of printed matter scattered about her. “I have narrowed Eirene’s accomplished list of enemies to the five most promising names. The sixth file”—she gestured to a slew of papers piled haphazardly against one wall—“concerns the associates of Miss Cora Beck. While it is most likely that our blackmailer comes from our client’s past, we cannot rule out the possibility that they are, in fact, targeting her fiancée indirectly.”
Having served in the Company of Strangers, my life has not been wholly without incident, but warfare, in my experience, is long periods of tedium punctuated by flashes of terror. What I now felt was something rather different: the sense that one was about to embark upon a true adventure. Of course, I was cognisant of the fact that my present excitement was possible only because Miss Viola found herself in a thoroughly unpleasant situation, a reflection that tempered my enthusiasm less than it should have.
I leaned forward a little in my chair and enquired, “Will you tell me a little of your findings?”
“I suppose that I could.” For all the nonchalance of her tone, Ms. Haas launched eagerly into an exegesis. “Charles du Maurier is the first, most obvious, and least interesting suspect.”
“Because he knew of the unfortunate Mr. Roux?”
“That, and because he’s . . .” Here Ms. Haas gave me a detailed and unflattering summary of Mr. du Maurier’s character in terms sufficiently colourful that I would not even attempt to put them before my readers. “Which,” she concluded, “makes him exactly the sort of person to stoop to blackmail. He considered both Eirene and me his protégés at one time or another, a belief in which, I should stress, he was profoundly mistaken, at least in my case. Before I even met the man I had stolen curses from the Elder Witches of the Hundred Kingdoms and caught spirits in nets spun from moonlight. And while he was drinking cheap brandy and bothering actresses I was walking the Vitrine Road and reading the tales of the Other Kind of Glass. He’s a petty, grasping, arrogant coward who, in a rare display of good taste, was briefly obsessed with Eirene. Trying to ruin her marriage is exactly the kind of uninspired excuse for spite I’d expect from him.”
As it seemed likely that my companion would extemporise on the gentleman’s faults indefinitely, I thought it best to move the matter on. “You mentioned that he operated a theatre?”
“Of sorts. Mise en Abyme is a one part playhouse, one part nightmarish pseudoreality ruled by capricious, thought-devouring ungods.”
“That must make it difficult to attract an audience.”
“You underestimate the Khelathran love of spectacle.”
She passed me a playbill advertising a production of The Exceeding Violente, Piteous & Unnatural Fayte of Goode King Leontius’s Virgin Daughter, and I could not help but notice Miss Viola’s name beneath the title. “But this looks like the worst kind of salacious, unimproving, improper—”
“Yes, so you can see why it’s so popular.” Ms. Haas grinned with disconcerting relish. “The small risk of having one’s soul devoured just adds a little extra frisson.”
“I find it hard to believe a lady like Miss Viola could appear in such tawdry entertainment.”
“Mr. Wyndham, if you’re going to be shocked every time you discover that Eirene did something unsavoury, this is going to be a very long conversation. Besides, as I recall she was rather good. Of course”—she handed me another flyer—“he has since acquired a new heroine. A Miss Katrina de la Martynière.”
“If,” I suggested, “Miss de la Martynière is an intimate of Mr. du Maurier might she not also wish harm upon Miss Viola?”
“You forget that our blackmailer expected Eirene to be familiar with their handwriting.”
I blushed. “Of course, how foolish of me.”
“Pay attention, Captain, and I’m sure you’ll improve with time. Now, let us move on.”
My discomfort at my recent error was somewhat ameliorated by the notion that Ms. Haas foresaw a future in which she did not tire of me. “Who is our next suspect?”
“One Mr. Enoch Reef.”
“Enoch Reef!” Although there were more notorious criminals in Ven, the infamy of Mr. Reef was sufficient that even I, with my relatively limited exposure to the seamier side of the city, had heard of him. His star had been somewhat on the rise while I was at university and, when I had rooms in Ven, his name was spoken regularly, usually in the context of a fellow student seeking to supplement their income by selling this or that item of gossip on the open market. “I find it hard to believe a lady like Miss Viola could—”
Ms. Haas retrieved her pistol from close at hand and discharged it into the ceiling. “Mr. Wyndham, I gave you quite explicit instructions. Eirene Viola is, or at the very least used to be, a delightfully wicked woman. She has done many delightfully wicked things. Live with it.”
“But she comports herself so respectably.”
“And therein lies her charm. And, indeed, a large part of the reason she was so useful to Mr. Reef for so many years.”
“Given his position on your list, I take it that they did not part on good terms?”
She absentmindedly reloaded the firearm and tossed it onto a pile of discarded papers. “Indeed they did not. Some years ago Mr. Reef acquired a confidential client list belonging to the Ossuary Bank.”
“Good heavens,” I exclaimed. “That seems a dangerous thing to possess.”
“But immensely valuable.”
That it would undoubtedly be. The soul-changers of the Ossuary Bank embodied two of Khelathra-Ven’s most despised and most indispensable professions, being at once bankers and necromancers. They offered loans at competitive rates of interest, asking only an eternity of service after death as collateral. This in turn gave them access to a veritable army of spirits with which they could secure their vaults and discourage their opposition, and who the city’s wealthier luminaries were able to hire at a princely sum for sundry unthinkable purposes.
“Unfortunately for Mr. Reef”—Ms. Haas rose from amongst the detritus of her researches, stretching with immodest enthusiasm—“the bank has very efficient mechanisms for safeguarding its secrets.”
“I’m surprised Mr. Reef survived the experience.”
At that, she turned to me with a faintly mocking smile. “The Ossuary Bank has a thoroughly terrifying reputation but, as I know well from personal experience, the great advantage of a terrifying reputation is that one seldom needs to act on it. The bank learned long ago that bribery and subversion are far more effective means to achieve their goals than armies of shambling corpses and shrieking spirits. They simply paid a large but tolerable sum of money to one of Mr. Reef’s associates, and she stole the list back for them.”
“That associate being Miss Viola,” I remarked. “It would explain why Mr. Reef might wi
sh her harm. But surely such a man would have both the means and the inclination to seek more violent retribution.”
“My dear Mr. Wyndham, it seems that in your world there are but two sorts of person. Those who are incapable of any vice and those who indulge wantonly in all of them.” Stepping over a pile of newspaper clippings, Ms. Haas retrieved a decanter from the sideboard and, having recently smashed all the tumblers in a fit of distemper, drank from it directly. “Many an upstanding citizen has resorted to murder for profit and many a licentious reprobate has stopped short of it.”
This would not be the last time that Ms. Haas gave me occasion to reflect on assumptions I had not hitherto examined. Although her approach to morality was often disturbingly flexible, I realise now that my own—for all my attempts to move beyond the rigidity of my father’s teachings—was, in many ways, shamefully limited. Over the long course of our acquaintance, she introduced me to a bewildering number of new perspectives and experiences. Many of them were near fatal but, taken as a whole, I sincerely believe they made me a better man. And for that I shall always be thankful to the sorceress Shaharazad Haas, wherever she may be.
“Besides,” she went on, “Reef trades in information. It is his most precious commodity and his most dangerous weapon. Should his thoughts turn to vengeance, there would be no better way for him to pursue it.”
My wound, which had given no difficulty at all these past several days, suddenly jabbed me in the ribs. I adjusted my position to compensate. “Then it seems we have two promising leads.”
“Quite so, and the remaining three are scarcely less promising. The first, Mrs. Yasmine Benamara, is a poetess of some small repute and the wife of a noted barrister-priest. She and Eirene had a rather disastrous affair that severely damaged both her husband’s career and her marriage. She apparently swore to Eirene that she would ruin her future happiness by any means at her disposal.”
That Miss Viola had been so brazen as to seduce a married woman once again startled me. But, the pistol still being nearby and the ceiling having suffered quite enough for one day, I made an outward show of equanimity. “A marriage for a marriage seems a plausible motivation, but would a barrister’s wife really have the means to uncover the fate of Mr. Roux?”
“She moves in artistic circles. Her set are more conventional than those found at Mise en Abyme, but I’d be amazed if there was no overlap. On top of which, she has an income and it wouldn’t be so very difficult for her to hire an investigator or an informer.” My companion, who I was fast learning could not abide stillness, began pacing in front of the fireplace, pausing occasionally to sip from the decanter. “That just leaves the prince and the vampire.”
I spluttered. “I beg your pardon?”
“One of Eirene’s former lovers was the Contessa Ilona of Mircalla. My sources inform me that she has recently returned to the city and, vampires being notoriously possessive, I think it highly probable she would have concocted some scheme to win back Eirene’s affections. She appears so far down my list only because blackmail seems an uncharacteristically subtle strategy for such a creature.”
Since the Witch King Iustinian had counted a number of vampires amongst his court, and the church taught that they were unholy abominations in the sight of the Creator, I was inclined to concur but, having been recently chastened for my ethical simplicity, I said simply, “I am sure I would not know.”
“I mean they vary, of course, like any species, but the typical modus operandi is something rather more along the lines of ‘fly in on black wings of night, slaughter everybody you care about, and carry you away to a terrifying isolated castle.’” She paused, seemingly caught in something I could have sworn was nostalgia. “Nasty letters and veiled threats are so lacking in panache. But we live in changing times, and even the undying nobility have difficulty keeping their standards up these days.”
“And the prince?” I asked.
“Icarius Castaigne. Not technically a prince, but one must be allowed a little artistic licence now and again. Before Eirene left Carcosa she was betrothed to a scion of another of the great houses. For the last decade, she’s believed that he died in the revolution—either killed in the fighting or executed as an enemy of the people—but she discovered recently that he had survived, renounced his previous lands and titles, and accepted a position within the party.”
Hailing from a revolutionary background myself, I had followed the story of the popular uprising in Carcosa with some interest and had, in all candour, mixed feelings about the affair. The ancient regime had been a byword for decadence and corruption throughout the cosmos, but the stories one heard of the new People’s Republic were hardly less disturbing. There was talk of disappearances, of secret police, of labour camps and show trials. I was not sure what I thought of a man who would willingly serve such an administration, but perhaps he was only doing what was necessary in order to survive.
“But why,” I wondered aloud, “would somebody who had gone to such lengths to distance himself from his former life go to still greater lengths merely to ruin the happiness of a woman who now lives in another reality and of whom, in all likelihood, he has not thought in years?”
Ms. Haas’s attitude remained somewhat wistful. “Back in the good old days, Carcosan court intrigues were fabulously intricate, to say nothing of being tremendous fun. I mean, for the people who weren’t driven mad by them. I’ll admit it’s an outside chance but, in my experience, betraying your peers to a hostile power that threatens your entire way of life, vanishing mysteriously for a decade, and then pursuing your former fiancée with cryptic blackmail letters is exactly the kind of thing that Carcosan nobility used to do all the time.”
This was not the first time, even given the relative brevity of our acquaintance thus far, that Ms. Haas had demonstrated an understanding of “fun” that differed not only from my own (as, in fairness, did those of most people) but from everybody else’s as well. It would certainly not be the last. I elected not to draw attention to the fact at this juncture.
“And which of these individuals,” I asked, “do you think most likely to be the culprit?”
Ms. Haas cast herself upon the chaise longue and draped an arm across her brow. “Du Maurier. He has the most direct connection to the events described in the letter; his character fits a blackmailer perfectly; he has no need for money; and he is petty.” She sighed. “It would be so much more interesting were it to be somebody less obvious. But criminals seldom value originality.”
“I’m sure Miss Viola would prefer that the matter be straightforward rather than interesting.”
“Mr. Wyndham, I’m a consulting sorceress. My job is to do what my clients cannot. Their happiness is not my concern.”
I was forced to concede that, on some level, she had a point. Although I could not shake the feeling that on another, more fundamental level she had missed it entirely. “So, are we to bring our suspicions to the Myrmidons?”
“Certainly not.” She flicked her fingers in a languid, dismissive motion. “Firstly, Eirene, whose feelings you apparently care about intensely, would not wish it. Secondly, the last thing this case needs is a gang of jackbooted thugs like Lawson, Roberts, or Garibaldi blundering around interfering with my work.”
“Then what are we to do?”
“You are to change immediately.”
“Might I ask why?”
“We are going to the theatre and you are most inappropriately dressed.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mise en Abyme
In truth, I did not own anything that would be suitable for such a venture. The theatre had been banned in Ey since shortly after the revolution and while I had gone occasionally as a student I had always found the experience a little unsettling. I attributed this partly to the aversion one must naturally feel when undertaking an activity that is illegal in one’s homeland and partly to the equally natural hostility tha
t the theatrical set expressed towards people of Commonwealth heritage.
Nevertheless, I attempted to comply with Ms. Haas’s instruction and promptly changed into my best quality doublet and polished the buckles on my shoes and hat. Emerging from my room, I found Ms. Haas already waiting for me, attired in a burgundy frock coat, embroidered with a pattern of gold roses, and matching breeches. Lace cascaded from her cuffs and collar, and her ivory silk waistcoat was worked with hummingbirds. I did my best to avoid looking lower, for her stockinged calves were clearly visible, but I found it difficult to ignore her frankly remarkable shoes, which were dark red satin, adorned with bows, their tall heels set with diamonds.
“I thought,” she said, “I told you to change.”
“I have changed. This is wool, not worsted, and I’m wearing new cuffs.”
Her gaze swept disapprovingly across my person. “You know, your kingdom used to be a really fun place for a party.”
“With all due respect, ma’am, while I have no doubt that there were pleasures untold at the court of the Witch King, the rest of us spent our lives hiding from the dreadwraiths and toiling in fields.”
“Whereas now, presumably, they toil in fields and hide from the witch hunters.”
“The witch hunters spare the innocent. The wraiths did not.”
“Fair point. I suppose Iustinian did kill rather a lot of people over the years. I personally try to stay out of politics. It’s usually boring or fatal, and rarely anything in between.” She offered me her arm. “Shall we go?”