Sands of the Solar Empire (The Belmont Saga)

by Ren Garcia

  He found he liked the place as it unfolded around him.

  Moving about in the streets in the salty sunshine marred only by seabirds and the tall masts of sailing vessels, he noted a thriving cottage industry was at work everywhere—the Fiend of Calvert, that murderous madman who had terrorized the place for years was now like a second-son. Stenstrom saw inns and taverns called “The Fiend’s Hideout” and the “Madman’s Pleasure.” He saw vendors selling Fiend merchandise and, most prevalently, he saw people dressed in a variety of garbs offering Murder Tours, where the curious bystanders and amateur sleuths could visit the murder sites for themselves and try to figure out who the Fiend was.

  As he made his way down the street near the docks, he became aware of a tall woman following him—a woman dressed in gray and wearing a broad gray hat.

  It was her, the Astral Traveler!!

  She closed the distance. From behind, she reached out for him.

  Quickly he turned and seized her by the wrist, hauling her down and drawing a MARZABLE.

  He put it to her throat.

  “Oh!” the woman said as she fell, her hat falling away revealing a head of blonde hair.

  “Who are you!” Stenstrom roared.

  “I … I just wanted to see if you would be interested in joining us for a tour, sir … Please …”

  Scattered at her feet was a stack of pamphlets. They read:

  The Fiend of Calvert Murder Tour

  Spanning two cities (Bezzel, St. Edmund’s).

  —See all of the most notable locations where the Fiend plied his trade from the mobile comfort of your seat.

  —Witness his escape route across the rooftops of St. Edmund’s.

  —Pick from a list of notorious suspects and try to guess who did it.

  Calvert’s Best Guided Tour given by

  Grand Dame Lady Miranda of Rosel,

  noted authority on the Fiend and author of several acclaimed books on the subject.

  Lunch served.

  *Midnight Lantern tours available during Summer months.*

  She looked up at him, wide-eyed. He checked his white Holystone—it was silent. She was just a woman dressed in gray.

  “Good Creation, ma’am, I am so sorry!” he said picking her up. “Are you all right?”

  She checked herself over. “I think so.”

  Stenstrom picked up her stack of pamphlets and her hat and gave them to her. “Please forgive me. Is there anything I can do to make this up to you?”

  She put her hat on. “No, no, it was an accident. I shouldn’t have sneaked up on you like I did. This is Calvert after all. I should know better.”

  Stenstrom felt miserable. “Please, I would like to purchase a tour.”

  He paid the lady his money, and she showed him to a large, fairly classy open-air hover float parked by the docks. Several people were already seated inside, awaiting the tour to begin. As Stenstrom took his seat, she handed him a rather thick packet of pamphlets detailing the layout of Calvert, the scenes of some of the Fiend’s more gruesome crimes, and his escape route in the city of St. Edmund’s. As Stenstrom looked it over, more people joined him in the hover float, lead by other ladies, also dressed in gray.

  The lady he assaulted seated herself on an opposing bench and readied herself for the tour.

  “What is your name, please, ma’am?” Stenstrom asked.

  “I am Grand Dame Lady Miranda of Rosel.”

  Stenstrom looked at his pamphlet. “Ah, our hostess for the afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Again, I apologize for my behavior earlier. I have a rather sour history with ladies dressed in gray.”

  “Do you? May I ask what you’ve encountered? Obviously, as I make this subject my trade and chief point of interest, I am most keen to gather all information I can.”

  “Is a woman in gray a facet of the Fiend of Calvert lore?”

  Lady Miranda became excited as she spoke, clearly a devotee of the subject. “Oh yes, sir, yes. As we shall discover on the tour, the Mad Lord of Walther, who engaged and pursued the Fiend across the rooftops of St. Edmund’s, is the only person who ever saw the Fiend in person and lived to tell the story. He claims, and my colleagues dispute this, that he saw the Fiend of Calvert as a lady dressed in gray. That’s why I and my assistants dress in gray, for I believe the Mad Lord’s account. I believe there is evidence to support the notion that the Fiend of Calvert was indeed a woman.”

  She got out a roto-pad and took down Stenstrom’s account, of the incident at the FoxPark when he was a boy, at Rustam Labyrinth, and again at the university, nodding as she took the dictation, Stenstrom adding repeatedly that he believed the woman to be nothing more than a bad dream.

  When he was done, she smiled at him. “Well, I think you’ve given me some remarkable information to think about. I shall perform research and … are you staying in Calvert? You do not look like a local. I should be happy to call on you if I have further questions, and I know I shall. Oh, this is most exciting. I finally have mounting evidence to argue with Rodrick of Dee.”

  Stenstrom told her he was staying in town for a few days and would drop in on her in a day or two.

  She was thrilled, and the tour began.

  * * * * *

  He settled into Calvert the next day and began his task. He was armed with a ton of Belmont sesterces, which went a long way and opened a great many doors. He’d been stealthily deducting the money from his account and saving it over the past year—moving the loot from one unmarked account to another, his newly won skills at accounting helping him hide the deductions so that Mother would not get wise. Flush with cash and determination, he prowled the crooked streets and windblown allies, looking for scalawags and pinch-pricks, and not having a hard time finding them, much he mused as the Fiend of Calvert had thirty years prior. Soon, he discovered just the men he was looking for. He found the seediest Notary he could, a Lord Gissel of Wheeze, down on his luck and ready to deal. Stenstrom sat him down in the bars, filled his cups, and greased his pockets. Before long he had a whole stack of notarized endorsements, each more impressive-sounding and outlandish than the last. With Notary Gissel happily stamping anything put in front of him, Stenstrom could have proclaimed himself the governor of Planet Fall and gotten a notarized stamp to prove it. With this pile of bought paper, he could claim as much tenure as he wanted.

  He bunked out in a fallen-down cricket shack near the wharf called “The Toothless Dame.” Despite his lavish upbringing in Belmont Manor, he found something of an affinity with the peeling paint and the dirty flooring of his room, the air tepid with the smell of old stockings and people’s dinners. Hiding out in Calvert, he felt like he was on one of the adventures he so longed for as a child, and he didn’t want it to end. He decided to unpack and take his time. Nestled in his bag, he found a small card placed there by Alitrix as he unpacked. It read: “One Year” with the date and her holo-account information at the Bones Club. He set the card out on his desk, feeling close to her. He wrote her as he promised, using the seedy VX terminal in his room.

  She wrote back stating his mother was not happy at all and looked the devil to pay.

  So much the better.

  She also wrote saying one year was provisional—that she would wait as long as he needed. She wrote she missed him terribly.

  So far, Calvert had been fairly safe, his mother clearly not suspecting he was anywhere near the region. His most persistent caller was Lady Miranda of Rosel. He must have whetted her appetite for information, and he saw her prowling the streets, inquiring at every inn she could find, apparently looking for him. He was sitting in the tavern of the Toothless Dame having an ale when she happened to walk in. A casual fade into the shadows, and she walked right past him, marching up to the counter and persistently speaking to the innkeeper.

  The innkeeper pointed at the table where Stenstrom was sitting.

  She looked over. “Well, I don’t see him,” she said. She left her card with the in
nkeeper and departed, giving his table one last look as she walked past. He laughed and fetched the card.

  He would be sure to meet up with her later once his task was finished and answer whatever questions she had. He still felt he owed her for knocking her down the other day.

  On a more serious note, as the days passed, the net around him cast from distant Tyrol was finally beginning to tighten.

  While walking back from Notary Gissel’s office with yet another ream of bogus papers under arm, he was sure he saw the gossamer veils of a Black Maiden in the crowds, sniffing the air, heading in his direction.

  Black Maidens, the airy watchdogs and nursemaids of his mother and bane of his wayward sisters—they were on the prowl, and were closing in on him. They closed in on his scent, and no hiding in the shadows could protect him. Sooner or later, they would have him right back at Belmont Manor with his mother ready to pounce.

  He felt the hand of desperation. What was he going to do? Some of his sisters had been adept at evading the Black Maidens, at prolonging the chase. Constance was one, and his other sister Xantrope held the record for running from the Maidens, having successfully eluded them for two months. But, others were terrible at evading the Maidens: Calami the wayward was one, Nathalie, Elma and Lenta were others, rarely lasting more than a few hours.

  Now it was his turn to run.

  He tore down an alley, the reaching veils in slow but steady pursuit. He emerged on a crowded side street—the now familiar vendors and tour guides arranged in a row down toward the docks plying their “Fiend” trade in earnest. He saw Lady Miranda standing amid the crowd in her usual gray dress and hat looking for customers.

  Thinking fast, he ran in her direction. “Lord Belmont!” she said seeing him. “Lord Belmont, there you are! I have been looking all over for you. You promised we could sit down and discuss matters in greater detail. I have a whole slew of new questions for you, sir!”

  Breathless, he approached her. “Lady Miranda, I promise, you can ask me anything you want, but first I must ask a novel favor of you.” He whispered in her ear, and she was shocked.

  “What? You’re not serious?”

  “I’m deadly serious!”

  “And, you’ll answer my questions?”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “Well, all right, if you must.”

  Quickly, he got down on all fours and put his head up the folds of her petticoat as the Black Maiden passed.

  Some people laughed. She stood there, clearly embarrassed, but determined to get her information. “Oh, do mind your own business, please,” she said to some gawker.

  After a minute or two, Stenstrom emerged, Lady Miranda red-faced, louts across the street clapping and hoping for a turn. “Will you kindly tell me what that was all about, please?” she asked.

  “It’s complicated. Suffice to say, I am pursued by unusual forces. Standing in your presence with my face obscured shielded me from being discovered. Your scent protected me.”

  “My scent—I see. I didn’t notice anything just now.”

  “No, you wouldn’t, unless you know specifically what to look for.”

  She got her rotopad out and added a few notations to it. “Well then, sir, I have delivered on my part of the bargain. I shall expect you to be at my disposal this evening, for I have many questions, and I expect a dinner to be provided by you at a place of my choosing.”

  Stenstrom just had his head up her dress; he couldn’t refuse.

  * * * * *

  That evening, he and Lady Miranda sat at dinner, she with her roto-pad out, peppering him with questions.

  “. . . And, going back to the FoxPark incident, you say there were many men there with the Woman in Gray?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they look like? How were they dressed?”

  Stenstrom thought back. “I don’t know … like sailors, I suppose.”

  “Like Calvert men? They looked like men from Calvert?”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  She added a few notations to her pad. She smiled. “Ah, see, this all ties together.”

  “What does?”

  “I have long conjectured that many of the men suspected of being killed by the Fiend were actually abducted—there were no bodies found in many cases. The missing men were simply assumed to be murder victims, their bodies hidden and not found. The Fiend, however, took no pains to hide his work in most cases; therefore, I believe that those men were not murder victims after all, but abductees, somehow spirited away and kept hidden. See, many of my colleagues have failed to take the Mad Lord of Walther at his word—they considered him to be a drunken and unreliable source of information. Though he tended to freely embellish his exploits in his memoirs, there is a kernel of truth to everything he writes. The Mad Lord suspected that the mindless men he encountered in the City of the Dead were somehow under the sway of the Fiend of Calvert, a theory that has been debunked by my colleagues as poppycock.

  “I recall reading about the Mad Lord’s exploits with my sister when I was a child. Something about zombies and lost men in a hidden place.”

  “Yes. I think those men you saw in FoxPark were more abductees from Calvert.”

  “I really don’t think the Woman in Gray exists. She is an apparition of my fears. If she did exist, then she would be in league with the Fiend”

  Lady Miranda tapped the tablecloth with her fingers, her excitement clear. “No, no, the Woman in Gray you encountered at FoxParkis the Fiend of Calvert. The Mad Lord wrote that the Fiend of Calvert was, in fact, a woman in gray—it fits; it all fits. Oh, by Creation, how I wish I could have been there with you.”

  They talked a bit further and concluded the meal, Stenstrom tired and ready to return to his rented room.

  Lady Miranda, though, had other ideas. She went to the clerk and bought a room for the night and bade him join her for a nightcap, and there she invited him to make love to her. Every bit of Stenstrom told him that this was a trap—that he was in mortal peril. However, Lady Miranda did not read as having been to the Astral Plane, and she did not smell of strong woman scent. She obviously had little skills beyond the scholarly.

  No, this was simply a woman who desperately wanted to be close to someone who had stood in the presence of the Fiend of Calvert—her life’s passion.

  He obliged her, spending a steamy night, and then took his leave come morning.

  21 Stenstrom’s Baggage

  Back in his rented room, he was again to his task, and the growing troubles that dogged him.

  Mother. He saw five Black Maidens as he made his way back to the Toothless Dame—the lingering smell of Lady Miranda upon his body still offering him a bit of cover.

  Mother was going to magic him back to Tyrol, and to fight fire with fire, he needed his books. He had them in a chest back in his room at the university in Bern; he had to leave them behind after his hasty flight from the city. He wrote Alitrix to send for his baggage, and he gave her the number of a locker at the air, sea and land port in St. Edmund’s which was just up the coast.

  In disguise, moving in the shadows, he staked out the place and waited for his baggage to arrive. He had to be careful. His mother had ways of finding people, both worldly and other worldly. Her vast network of friends was formidable. Any passing person could be on the look-out for him, hence his disguise. Additionally, any number of summoned entities could track him down if it got close enough, and he had no protection, other than his NTHs, which were overkill and sure to alert other entities should he use them. He needed a way to quietly detect the spirits and devise countermeasures.

  He needed his baggage, and, specifically, his chest full of his books.

  A few days later, the baggage arrived. Trying to be discreet, he carefully spied the surroundings, and waited for a good moment to collect and be off with them.

  Drat! Was that Lady Chatstra of Owens standing over there? What in Creation was she doing in Calvert? She was a friend of his mother’s from Mercia, and
she saw everything.

  True to her name, she was chatting with friends near the counter where his chest was held, and she didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

  He waited in the shadows for her to depart.

  Black Maidens! They were emerging from everywhere, and no hiding in the shadows would suffice against them—they were going to sniff him out.

  He could not linger—he had to flee the port, his mother having clearly won this round, and he seethed with frustration.

  * * * * *

  He waited in his small room, not daring to go out. He paced the floor, impatient.

  There was a knock. He moved silently to the door and gave it a small rap with his knuckles. Three raps came in reply. He smiled and opened the door.

  Lady Miranda quickly walked in, pulling a float litter behind her.

  “Lord Belmont, I have fetched your baggage as you requested. I saw no one at the station. I felt no danger.”

  There was his baggage—four large trunks emblazoned with a garish “B” and a slightly smaller wooden chest containing his books. They appeared innocent enough, but …

  “Thank you, my lady. These trunks are trapped.”

  “Trapped?” Her attention turned to the baggage, and her interest began to peak. “I think you should explain in further detail, Lord Belmont.”

  “My mother … she is a Tyrol sorceress. And she has trapped my baggage with out-worldly snares. If I open these trunks, I’ll be back to Belmont Manor in a flash.”

  Lady Miranda stared at the trunks, her eyes wide with interest. She then curtsied and lifted the front of her skirt. “Well then, let’s see it. I’m not afraid. I offer you protection, as I did before.”