by M F Sullivan
Of course, when she emerged, hacked hair pomaded down with gunk from René’s toiletry bag, the professor was already off gambling. She sucked the gaps in her teeth while Basil, ears pinned, assessed her with displeasure. After standing up and sitting down in place a few times, the dog whined.
“You sure you’re not mad at me?” She patted the border collie’s head while it sighed. “You’re a really great dog, you know. I just don’t understand how you got out. The timing doesn’t make sense. Even if the cops got the tanque open…”
Dominia frowned, rolling off into the fog of her thoughts. As the dog tilted its head, a small exclamation point leapt in the corner of her vision. She started as if having perceived a fly dart into her visual field before the notification resolved: the sort of thing she’d see on her watch, if more alarming. Her traumatized brain was ready to flood her body with adrenaline at a second’s notice, so as she read a box that said, “Congratulations! Miki has confirmed your appointment,” she had to steady her trembling hands by resting them upon the dog.
“It seems like every time I try to ask myself what’s going on with you”—she laughed to the wag of his tail—“I get busy with something else. Try to behave, okay?” Then, already nearing that hour to which she’d set the appointment and wishing she’d set it out (as if it mattered, as if this were really an appointment, a “date”!), Dominia glanced into the bathroom, and back to Basil. “You seem like a smart dog. I assume you can figure out the toilet, right? Or something? Tell me?”
To her bizarre relief, the dog pranced into the bathroom. “So well trained,” she marveled, trying to tell herself that was the explanation, because any other was too weird. Safe to leave the animal alone, Dominia gathered her wits, her gun, and her pounding pulse, then left the room behind.
The normally comforting revolver concealed in her slacks gave her an odd feeling as she walked down the gold-carpeted hallway of the Satin Car; Dominia smiled lips-closed to herself, rearranging the letters into the “Stain” Car, and, of course, the “Satan” Car. She had to keep herself amused. Had to keep a sense of humor. If she lost it now after all those harrowing and horrific years, well—that was a bad sign. Moreover, she had to look like she was having fun on a train that cost between three thousand and fifty thousand American dollars a ticket. Otherwise, she’d be liable to attract the attention of one of the many helpful conductors and porters nodding and bowing as she passed, eager to see her pleased because she resembled money.
She did have money, a small amount of gold cashed out for the trip and a large amount in her thawed Halcyon; but outside of spending the latter on Miki Soto to rub it in her Father’s face, she daren’t use a penny. It killed her that René was off spending his cash in the Dragon Car, which merited a non-fabric name because they wanted to draw attention to the casino. Not that Dominia could criticize the professor. She was about to spend a large portion of her finances on a prostitute, whether it was Dominique LeBlanc or Dominia di Mephitoli about to do the spending. The privacy damage would be somewhat mitigated by the purchase of Redcoins for the transaction (the Red Market’s legal defense for their activities, since their clients were not paying for sex, but rather an unrecognized form of cryptocurrency not legally exchangeable for goods or services and therefore useless in reimbursing prostitutes). She had to hope René had taken the extra step of acquiring his own off-market cryptocurrency before they set out on their trip, especially if he used those electronic slot machines.
The soft piano and murmur of conversation that filled the Dining Car didn’t so much as miss a beat as she entered, her appearance garnering no more than a few glances of acknowledgment. Thank the Lamb. The host, smiling with bright-white teeth and not saying anything at all lest he mis-presume his guest’s native language, marked that she expected company and took her to a quiet corner of the gilded car. The man clearly had his job due to a sixth sense for what people needed; or maybe it was the shifty look in her eyes, the anxiety winding tight her jaw, that made him want to get her out of sight. Either way, she was glad to be alone in a quiet, civilized corner of existence with a bottle of wine that was soon to arrive and better, for some reason, than any she’d had in years. Its rich oak fragrance and stinging taste honed her senses to a dagger point so that, when the door opened and Miki stepped in, the General was ready to get some work done.
Much as had Dominia, Miki had made a stark transformation, though less long-term. The escort’s dress was scarlet and silver, as fit for a red carpet as the makeup that transformed her shrewd face into that of a porcelain geisha; her lower lip curved like a rose petal and made Dominia remember its taste, made her anticipate the scent of lavender that rolled down to her table. The scent accompanied Miki along with, to Dominia’s mild displeasure, a stranger. No doubt for Miki’s protection: a body to throw in front of the martyr if things got ugly. Some meek, blushing businessman whose lowered eyes avoided all others in the car as Miki zeroed in on Dominia with complete disregard for the poor host who tried to seat her.
“I wasn’t expecting you to bring company,” said the General, who, for the benefit of the surrounding passengers, kissed Miki’s hand before helping her into the booth. She regarded the businessman, who studied her in nervous return. “Who is this?”
“He’s nothing, don’t worry about it. Some stupid client. He can’t even speak English. So¯deshou ka? Kisama wa baka desu.” The man winced and then, in a way both apologetic and creepy, smiled.
“Does he have to be here?” asked Dominia. Miki laughed.
“No, but then, neither do I.” The host arrived with two empty wineglasses; on his leaving, Miki removed a cigarette holder from her embroidered clutch. Now that she was still, it appeared the fabric bunched at her shoulder was the sole non-makeup decoration near the human’s neck. No diamond.
“Where is she?”
“You’re not in a position to be making demands, Mephitoli-sama.” As Dominia tried to hiss her volume down, Miki giggled again, then stomped on the man’s foot and snarled something in Japanese. He responded by filling her drink. “Annoying pricks like him like to get lazy, so they’ll be punished for their laziness. I don’t care for it. If they’re going to pay me to dominate them, I’m going to be the one in charge of the whens and the wheres and the whats. Right? Anyway—don’t worry so much! No one is listening to us. They’re all too obsessed with themselves. I could climb under this table and go down on you”—the blanching martyr scrutinized the lovely fleur-de-lis wallpaper, gold and malachite—“without them noticing a thing.”
“How about you return my wife and we’ll call it good, before I make this ugly.”
“If you want your wife back, you have to play along.” Miki had gotten her cigarette lit—by the slave, probably, Dominia hadn’t seen—and blew a smoke ring across the table. “Trust me. You’ll thank me for all this later.”
“Thank you for what? Stealing my wife? The small amount of brain damage I’m still healing from your stunt?”
“Saving you, of course. And your wife.”
Somehow able to suppress the roll of her eyes, Dominia refilled her glass and hid her lips behind it. “I hope somebody’s able to save you from me.”
Giggling, Miki shook her head, and Dominia was amazed that none of the elaborately piled locks fell from the places where they’d been pinned with plum blossoms. “You’re not a threat to me, Mephitoli-sama. If you kill me, you will never see your wife again: whether as a diamond, or in the flesh. And that’s enough to take the wind right out of your sails, isn’t it.”
“Maybe you’ll explain to me how you know all of this?”
“My boss briefed me on you. She said, ‘You’ll meet her in the shipping cars of the Light Rail before it embarks on its journey.’ Of course, I gave up when it started moving—but wouldn’t you know.” Catlike, she smiled, and ashed her cigarette into the empty glass of the man. He regarded it with reluctance until she deigned to splash some wine overtop. As he drank it and Dominia tried not t
o be disgusted, Miki carried on. “I hooked up with idiot over here to get a free ticket and earn us cash for the trip.”
“The trip.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What trip is this?”
“Our trip, of course.”
“Of course,” she repeated as Miki perched her chin upon the palm of her hand. This action did not smudge her meticulous white makeup, or the vermillion petal of her lip.
“Did you cut your hair since last I saw you? You have to let me fix it. Sort of cute.” The laughing prostitute reached across the table and, amid the batting of Dominia’s hand, tugged an embarrassing chunk from behind her ear. While the martyr smoothed it back, the human sipped her wine. “I liked your long hair better, though.”
“Me, too, but it’s conspicuous. I’m conspicuous. People will recognize me.” She ran a hand over her forehead. “Stop getting me off the point, please. Everybody’s doing that. I can barely think. I’m already on a trip, you may or may not know.”
“Of course, but you’ll need a companion on your journey. Someone to keep you safe while you sleep. What are they called? Renfields?”
Dominia snorted. “So pejorative. Wouldn’t you rather call yourself a ‘footman’ or something? Anyway, I already have one.”
“You want to keep around a weirdo like René Ichigawa? I saw that guy’s file. I don’t like him.”
“Want to explain how your boss has so much information on who I’m with and what I’m doing?”
“And where you’re going. I don’t think even you know where you’re going.”
“To Kabul, in the Middle States.”
“Yeah, and then? You’re going to walk into the Hunters’ lodge and say, ‘Send me to Lazarus?’”
“That’s more or less the plan.”
Lifting her eyebrows in a patronizing way, the geisha demanded, “And what will happen when you get Lazarus? You think the Hunters are going to let you walk away with a man they’ve tried to acquire for the last two thousand years? With your wife? Hunters hate lesbians almost as much as they hate martyrs. They’ll let you keep Lazarus busy while they sweep in to get their hands on his blood.”
This notion had crossed her mind more than once in both the planning and escape stages of this mission, but she’d been in a one-thing-at-a-time frame of thought. Now here was someone as concerned about the issue as she, despite René’s many protests that she need not worry. “How much more do you know?”
“I know more than you know. More than you’re willing to admit, at any rate.”
“And how does your boss know this?”
“My boss knows everything.”
“Does your boss have a name?”
“The Lady’s names are taboo to martyrs.” Miki snuffed her cigarette with a smile that was sly, or smug—hard to tell with the makeup. “You should know that by now.”
The General’s eyebrows lifted. Oh, sure, she understood that the Lady was the legendary head of the Red Market; but, much as she once thought of Lazarus, she had always believed the woman a human myth. The stuff cults were made of, not anybody’s direct supervisor. This was a notorious enemy of the Hierophant, with many names taboo to martyrs because the words themselves were believed to possess corrupting influence on the soul. This, of course, had bolstered young Dominia’s research on this subject—a fruitless effort, since the Hierophant had wisely censored all those religious texts. When he had found out about it by reviewing her tablet’s search history, snooping in his Family’s private business being his number-one hobby, he had once more disappointed her with his calm desire to educate. He had even told her a particular name of the Lady that she had not found in her cursory research, explaining that it was not the Lady’s real name, or even Her oldest one, but that it was still very old and one of her favorites. He loved to mock her pursuits of knowledge by flaunting the depths of his own. “The Lady is your boss,” skeptical Dominia repeated to Miki. “I mean to say, your direct—manager?”
“Yeah, she is. She is now, at any rate, since my promotion! She called me to me and said, ‘You will be the one to bring her to me. If you do this for me, I’ll make you live forever.’ The chance of a lifetime.”
A likely story. “Because She’s a martyr, I’m sure. To have lived since the dawn of time? I mean, She has to be.”
This earned a scornful look from the glittering geisha, and while she snapped something in Japanese, the man hurried up to skitter away. Alone, Miki slid to Dominia’s side of the table. She pressed the martyr into the corner of the booth where they were shielded by the high seats and the discretion-friendly drapes hung between each set of guests.
“The Lady is no martyr,” murmured Miki, lips parted against Dominia’s ear to release a voice light as a wisp of cotton. “She controls life and death; She is the seer who gazes into the mirror of the world.”
“That sort of nonsense is why the Hierophant calls the Red Market a cult.”
“The Lady is a religious leader, whether or not you men will accept it.”
Laughing, Dominia began to say, “I’m not a—” but considered her tie—René’s tie—with a frown.
“You’ve spent your whole life controlled by men: losing your eye to men, losing your wife to men, losing your hair”—she tickled long fingernails across the back of Dominia’s scalp—“to men. And now you’ll go to the Hunter’s lodge and expect them to help you? Now you travel with René Ichigawa, and expect him to help you?”
“What do you know about René Ichigawa?”
“I know that someone like you should never trust someone who comes to you of their own volition.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Of course not. I came because I was told—and because you booked an appointment, remember?”
She supposed Miki was right. Nothing good came of trusting people who came to her. The Hierophant had come to her. So had Cassandra, and look how that had turned out. Now René had come to her, and she expected him to be different? What Miki suggested was not a new idea. This was why she had trust issues, why she’d never settled into her friendship with the professor. It was all so convenient that he should come to her with this story of resurrection, no matter what rescue organizations with which he worked, or which groups had him in their pockets. Not that those groups didn’t have good reason to seek her out in a time of need if they thought they might use her, but…
Was she being paranoid? Were these feelings of mistrust the result of being in a situation where, more than ever before in her unstable life, she was surrounded by strangers possessing their own malicious agendas? Were these feelings because she had lost the last good thing in her life and now floated around, clinging to absurd dreams and waiting to die?
As Dominia drifted into thought, Miki lowered her eyes. “I see you’re a woman who needs more convincing than logical persuasion. Some evidence of treachery will be necessary before you see the truth, won’t it? Well, don’t worry: it won’t take long, I’m sure.”
From her clutch, she removed a business card that on one side featured an embossed lotus. Another link, Dominia observed, to Miki’s profile. The prostitute’s name and private number were printed on the reverse. “If you want to make another appointment,” she said, a coy smile on her lips as she scribbled a four-number code with a pen from her purse, “or, if you just want to come by my suite, this is the guest pass code.”
“You aren’t afraid I’ll break in and kill you in your sleep? We have at least ten more hours on this train. That’s plenty of time for something to happen.”
“Too messy, too much attention. Besides, you know I have my own friend with me: he might not be good for much, but he’ll take bullets enough for me to run screaming down the hall.”
Smirking, Dominia accepted the card and memorized its 7162 code. As she looked back up, Miki snapped shut her purse and slid out of the seat. “Think about my offer of friendship.”
“You’ll take me to Lazarus, will you?”
“We’ll find him
together, if you promise to come with me to see the Lady after.”
“What does the Lady want with me?”
Sporting that sly expression, Miki bent and gave Dominia a glimpse into the plunging depths of her décolletage. “If you want to know that, I suppose you’ll have to come to your senses about me.”
Those lips pressed to hers once more, along with that insidious tongue. Dominia could not relax as last time but all the same accepted, her eyes falling closed to fool her brain into believing it was Cassandra on the other side of their shut lids. “Hail Amaterasu,” crooned Miki, who pulled away to breathe the illegal word. “I’d have thought a martyr’s lips to feel cold, like stone.”
“I’d have thought your makeup to taste like paste, but I guess we’re both wrong. Don’t do that again.”
With a laugh in her voice and a wiggle in her step, Miki left the Dining Car; Dominia, alone with her thoughts, finished her wine under a cloud of paranoia. Why did she need to believe in René? Dominia had no attachment to the man himself, but in what he represented. Miki put her finger on it with her troubling insight into Dominia’s trust issues. The martyr wanted to prove to herself that not everyone who came to her did so with poisonous hearts. With a great wall of lies erected to mitigate the chance of true connection. The kind of wall Cassandra had erected in secret before they’d ever met.
That wasn’t fair, of course. Or maybe it was—when their relationship was founded on false pretenses, how could Dominia but grapple with betrayal? Even close to a century after their meeting, it still stung. But there wasn’t anything to be done. She hadn’t been about to end their marriage—not once they’d eloped and Cassandra was martyred—and the illness had claimed her in three days, which came a mere eight weeks after their meeting. So stupid! But it had seemed more romantic than stupid at the time. The woman had thrown away her whole life for Dominia, to be with Dominia: or so Dominia had thought. Too soon, she learned she could never trust the motivations of others to be quite so pure as her own.