Firebrand

by A. J. Hartley

  I dropped into an ungainly crouch, thanking the gods I wasn’t wearing that damned sari, and slid crablike down another stair, head as low as I could get to see the corridor below.

  Someone was there.

  He was no more than ten yards away from the stairwell. I shrank back instinctively, but when I heard no further movement, risked another cautious look.

  There was a man in evening wear, but minus his jacket and tie. And his shoes. He was standing barefoot and quite still with his back to the door he had surely come through, looking for all the world like someone who had forgotten what he intended to do next. He was perhaps fifty, gaunt, his gaze unfixed, and his body very slightly unsteady. As I watched, he seemed to waver in place, his head lolling slightly like he was drunk or stunned.

  All my desperate need to get down to my second-floor room faded in the strangeness of the moment. I kept very still, knees drawn to my chest in a froglike hunker, and watched as he reached back vaguely for the door handle. As he reached it, he turned absently and, for a fraction of a second, seemed to look right at me, though his eyes seemed unfocused, and he moved like a man in a dream. He pushed the door open, and just stood there before lurching his way into the room. In that moment, I saw the blue haze of smoke billowing out. Once he was inside, I got to my feet again and began to slink down the stairs, but not before I caught the strange tang of the smoke, sweet and sickly. I breathed it in, trying to decide if it was a kind of incense, and almost instantly felt my senses fog, so I blew it out and shook my head to clear it.

  Opium. It had to be. I had seen such places in the garrets and derelict warehouses of the city. They were noisome, squalid, and dangerous places full of the lost and the desperate. Their clientele was, I had always assumed, the very poor, either because the drug offered the kind of relief from the miseries of the world that especially appealed to those with no other means of escape, or because their addiction had a way of making them poor in the long run. That Elitus might be running an exclusive version of the illicit back-alley pipe rooms for the use of its members was, to me at least, extraordinary.

  Astounded, I forced myself to continue my descent, listening for signs of anyone moving about. I reached the second floor as quickly as I dared. My room was at the end of the long gallery near another corner staircase, marked by the great vase of lilies on its stone plinth. I was halfway there, my eyes fixed on the nondescript door of number 236 when someone came round the corner ahead. It was Wellsley, the doorman from the lobby.

  I saw the certainty in his face immediately, and I froze. He reached round to the small of his back as if to draw a weapon, and his mouth opened in a cry of anger and alarm.

  CHAPTER

  15

  THE DOORMAN’S CRY NEVER came.

  Instead, he folded at the knees, crumpling into a heap and revealing, behind him, cosh raised where he had bounced it precisely on the back of Wellsley’s head, Namud.

  The manservant said nothing, but set to dragging the unconscious doorman behind a potted palm in a large stone urn. I made for my retiring room, tearing the steeplejack grays from my body the moment I crossed the threshold. My mask off, I leaned back into the corridor and gave an urgent jerk of my head to summon Namud. He rushed over, but hesitated at the door, uncertain and embarrassed.

  I gaped at him, and he stepped reluctantly into the chamber.

  “I need to be downstairs now,” I said, closing the door behind him, “and in that sari. Help me.”

  “I hardly think that appropriate, my lady.”

  “You just laid out the doorman!”

  “It seemed the expedient thing to do,” he said. “The gentleman will awake with a headache and a confused memory of seeing an intruder, but I do not believe he will connect said intruder with their esteemed foreign visitor.”

  “Unless I don’t show my face as Lady Ki downstairs in about a minute,” I said, exasperated. “Avert your eyes.”

  He turned comically away, eyes screwed shut as if his life depended on it, and I undressed.

  “Hold this,” I said, stuffing the end of the sari’s fabric into his hand as I wriggled into the choli and began turning myself into the long skein of silk. “Now this,” I said, pushing another bit of the elaborate skirt into his free hand while I got the rest in place and secure. “Unlace my boots,” I added, then kicked them off as he finished and began searching for the delicate slippers with my toes. “Now go.”

  I pushed the door open and swept past him, almost running to the staircase, flinging the shawl-veil over my face as I sped along. I was still adjusting, Namud breathing heavily in my wake, as I reached the lower level, where I met a mixed crowd of revelers from both clubs, flowing in a steady, excited stream out into the courtyard above which I had been hanging only minutes before. I took a deep, steadying breath, thought again of the neutral mask, and became the Istilian princess once more.

  Not a moment too soon. My arrival in the courtyard, which was now packed with glittering people, was greeted with polite applause and a little fanfare from the band at the far side of the square. This, it seemed, whatever it was, was at least partly in my honor. As the music stopped, I was beckoned forward by the florid-faced man called Markeson—husband to the indomitable Agatha and sponsor to the killer she so disliked—who had surmounted a specially erected podium in front of the statue. He was not alone there. Beside him, flanked by an honor guard of the clubs’ private sentries in their scarlet tunics, stood a white man, but darkly complexioned and with slicked-back, crow-black hair. This, like his dress, which was formal and similarly black, but augmented with color and sparkle—a crimson sash with gold braid, matching epaulettes on his shoulders, and an unfashionably large ring with a gigantic emerald—marked him as foreign: judging by the ornamented crest on the pocket of his blazer, this was the Grappoli ambassador. His eyes glittered with pride and amusement as he surveyed the crowd and alighted on me like a heron selecting the plumpest frog from a pool.

  “Lady Misrai,” he said clicking his heels together in the way the comedians in the music hall did whenever they played Grappoli. He extended a gloved hand to help me onto the podium. “I am Count Alfonse Marino, Grappoli Imperial Ambassador to the Court of His Royal Highness King Gustav, serving the city-state of Bar-Selehm.” He bowed, a sort of sideways nod that lowered his eyes, then kissed the back of my hand and came up, smiling. “I regret not being present for your earlier entrance. I had to take a rather important meeting.”

  With Richter, I thought.

  His Feldish was superb. Only a fractional lilt spoke of his own native and more musical language.

  “I hear these are trying times,” I said, as if I was remarking on the warmth of the evening.

  “But not here,” he said, closing the matter with a smile. “Not tonight.”

  Our entire conversation had been conducted in low voices, but even so, the crowd that now packed the courtyard had grown still enough to overhear anything further we might say. Agatha Markeson, imperial in her shimmering shawl, pressed her way to the front and up onto the platform beside her husband, where she gave me a serene smile and waved vaguely to her friends in the audience. At the back, alone in a corner, I spotted Violet Farthingale, her makeup smeared and her eyes red. I thought back to our maddeningly innocuous gathering in the Merita sitting room and tried to imagine what could possibly have happened to so upset the woman.

  “Gentlemen of Elitus, Ladies of Merita,” boomed Agatha’s husband. “It is my great honor to welcome not one but two illustrious visitors to our humble club. I am—as some of you know—alas, incapable of making the kind of speech such worthy guests deserve, but I am sure you will, as they say, make allowances for my imperfections, and trust that we greet them in honor and in joy. I speak, of course, of the Grappoli ambassador, Count Marino, whom many of you have met before but who is no less welcome for all that, and to our somewhat more mysterious and, might I say, radiant, visitor from the kingdom of Istilia, Lady Ki Misrai.”

  Th
e sea of white faces broke into polite applause, and some of the gentlemen murmured “hear, hear.” I felt naked, transparent, and not just because I wasn’t an Istilian princess. I did not belong here, and under all their politeness and their awe at my fake riches and spurious nobility, I suspected most of them hated me a little and would have liked nothing more than to see my fraud exposed so that I could be thrown out in ignominy. For a moment I almost ran, more unnerved by being looked at like this by the cream of the city than I had been forcing my way into the office window. But as I scanned the crowd, I saw one by the door who fit in no better than I did. Namud caught my eye, took a breath, and nodded once, small but encouraging. I kept my veil in place, but I smiled to the crowd, bowed fractionally, and said nothing.

  “I confess,” Markeson went on, “that I find myself quite overawed by the prospect of saying anything suiting the occasion, but”—he raised a finger and smiled—“we trust that the visitors in question will not take our attempts amiss, and fireworks are, I am assured, always welcome. You’ll be pleased to hear that that’s all I have to say, other than to ask that you join me in a toast.” He raised his glass, and the honor guard behind him drew their sabers and held them formally upright. “The king,” he said, “and foreign guests.”

  I stood there, smiling, heart rate slowing, as the assembly repeated his toast. There was another round of applause, and the first rocket went up, a great soaring stream of light that burst with a cannon roar and an explosion of golden fire like a massive trena flower leaping into bloom. The crowd aahed and gasped as more fireworks went off overhead, great blazes of light and color popping in the night sky, but I tore my eyes away and looked at the people, faces upturned with admiration and delight, save for a single person, who had blundered out into the courtyard holding his head.

  The doorman.

  He staggered, gesturing as first one servant, then another stopped what they were doing and rushed to his side. Two of the club’s elderly members forced their way through the throng to speak to him and then one, the skeptic who had unnerved me earlier—Nathan Horritch—raised his right hand and looked directly at the podium where I was standing. In the corner of my eye, I saw the two guardsmen, their sabers still drawn, step forward.

  I flinched, and as I half turned, I found the Grappoli ambassador’s black eyes on me, his mouth turned into a smile of interest.

  “And I thought all the excitement would be about the fireworks,” he remarked. I blinked and opened my mouth to speak, but nothing would come out. I was glad I’d kept my veil down.

  The guardsmen stepped forward, one on my side, one on the ambassador’s, and with their nonsword hands, they gripped each of us by the elbow and moved us steadily to the steps down from the podium.

  “This way, if you don’t mind,” said the nearest.

  “What is happening?” I demanded, recovering my voice and something of my aristocratic persona.

  But the guard said nothing, propelling me down and into the crowd, who were parting unevenly before us as the fireworks continued to boom their floral fire overhead.

  “I demand to know what is happening!” I sputtered. Namud had joined the huddle around the injured doorman, and when he looked around at me as I plowed through the sea of wealth and power, his face was hard, unreadable. He met us midway.

  “This rough handling of a foreign guest demands explanation,” he barked.

  “Sorry, sir,” said the first guardsman. “Orders.”

  “Of what nature?” inquired the ambassador. He looked less put out, more amused, but his manner was brusque. “The lady’s gentleman is correct. You owe us an explanation. Horritch?”

  The keen-eyed man, who seemed to have taken charge of the situation, took two purposeful steps toward us and said, “The club’s security has been breached. An intruder, perhaps more than one. Take our guests to the library and lock them in, one of you inside with them, the other outside the door.”

  One of the guards gave a very military “sir!” and set me in motion once more, practically lifting me off the ground as he led me into the house.

  “Oh I say!” exclaimed the ambassador. “Is this really necessary?”

  “Until the house has been thoroughly swept for undesirables, I’m afraid so,” said Horritch flatly.

  We were met in the hall by two more guards, these with shouldered rifles. One went in front of us, and one joined the rear behind Namud. At the double doors of the parlor, the lead guard barked, “Wait,” then stalked into the room, unslinging his rifle. As we waited, absurdly in the hall, he paced the room, checking behind sofas and parting the window curtains with the muzzle of his weapon.

  “Clear,” he announced, stepping to the window and taking up a watchful stance like a sentry as we were herded in and the doors shut upon us.

  The library faced the street, but its windows had bars across them. Anywhere else, the room might have been too dim for reading, but this was Elitus, and that meant a luxorite chandelier burned in the center of the room with a pair of matching standing lamps with green shades. The walls were books, floor to ceiling, elegantly bound and housed in dark wood cases. The only furnishings were leather wing chairs with side tables and a pair of desks with inlaid tops, inkwells, and blotters. In any other circumstance, I would have been in my element, but as it was, I was scared. They said I was being protected, but the room would serve just as well as a cell if they suspected I was not who I claimed to be.

  What did Wellsley remember? How much of me had he seen before blacking out?

  It wouldn’t take long for the break-in to the office with the membership ledgers to be discovered. Perhaps they would assume some thief had been intent on getting access to the club’s funds, been foiled by the safe, and made the best of their escape. Perhaps.

  I studied a pair of oil paintings so that no one would see my face, heroic scenes depicting huddles of crimson-uniformed white soldiers in pith helmets fighting off hordes of spear-wielding Mahweni warriors. I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to represent one of the original conquests of the lands around Bar-Selehm or one of the later native rebellions. The black men wore loincloths of weancat skin and somehow all seemed to have the same face.

  I turned round.

  The ambassador looked less amused now, and though he selected a book from the shelves and flung himself into one of the leather chairs to read, he quickly slammed it shut and exclaimed, “Oh, but this is intolerable.”

  “I’m sure it is only meant to protect us,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as him.

  “If their security were worth a damn, they wouldn’t need to,” he shot back.

  Before I could respond, the door opened again, and though the guard’s hand went to his weapon, it was only Lady Alice who peered in, pink faced and anxious.

  “They said I should be with you, to be on the safe side,” she said, slipping in and moving toward us, avoiding the eyes of the guards.

  She looked scared for sure, but there was something else, a kind of acute embarrassment, which, in spite of everything, was almost funny. She took a step toward the ambassador, thought better of it, pulled a book from one of the shelves at random, and buried her face in it. It was so extreme and ridiculous a ruse that I turned my bafflement on the ambassador, only to find him doing something similar, not so much reading his book as staring fixedly at the page.

  Again, interesting.

  “Why did they think you might be a target, Alice?” I inquired.

  She looked up, and her face was as transparent as the look she stole at the ambassador before she began her lie.

  “Well, I am the daughter of Harrolf Welborne,” she said. “He’s a very wealthy industrialist. Someone might want to kidnap me.”

  “Has that happened before?” I asked, moving to her and taking her trembling arm in mine.

  “No,” she said in a small voice, “but Father says one never knows.”

  “That is very true,” I said. She was trying, unsuccessfully, not to lo
ok at the ambassador. “Should I introduce you?”

  Her flushed hesitation was all the confirmation I needed, and before she could venture another lie, I said as much. “But then you already know each other,” I said. “Well.”

  The ambassador got up at that.

  “Now, just one moment,” he began, full of righteous indignation, “I don’t know what you are implying, but—”

  “Yes,” I said, smiling sweetly and speaking in my gentle Istilian accent, “you do, and while you clearly don’t want your relationship discussed, the fact that people in the club are sufficiently aware of it that they fear any threat to you may also be a threat to Lady Alice here suggests that ship has already sailed.”

  The ambassador’s entire body language altered. He seemed to crumple, like a marionette when all the tension is taken out of its strings, and the hand he put to his face was visibly unsteady. In the next instant, he had crossed the library to Alice’s side and enfolded her in a tender embrace. She clung to him, squinting warily at me over his shoulder.

  “I beg you not to tell anyone,” she whispered.

  “Who would I tell, and why?” I said, shrugging. It felt like the first genuine gesture I had made in hours. “Your secret, such as it is, is safe with me.”

  “Only Wellsley, the unfortunate doorman, is fully aware,” said the ambassador. “One or two of the senior members may suspect, but no one knows for sure.”

  “And I’ve told no one,” said Alice quickly. A little too quickly, in fact, and I suspected the girl was lying again. She had boasted of the ambassador’s interest in her to someone. Maybe to more than one person. I recalled Serafina Dearbeloved telling Alice she was a silly girl and thought, with a flash of irritation, that the old battle-ax was right. In the current political climate, any kind of relationship between a Bar-Selehm society lady and a Grappoli ambassador, however innocent, could be extremely dangerous to more than their reputations. “Frankly, I don’t know why we don’t tell people. We are friends,” she said primly, “dear friends, perhaps. But nothing untoward has gone on. Not like some of the guests here.”