by William Ray
The three devotees, including Madame Jande, had tossed back their gray cloaks, and the silver brocade worn beneath gave them each a share of that divine radiance. Emily could make out Madame Jande’s silver amulet worn atop the brocade, glowing like the moon itself in the reflected light that bathed the room.
The gathered faithful gasped and murmured in wonder. For some, it was their first experience of this seasonal rite, but even though it was Emily’s third, she still shared in their awed reverence.
Slowly, the light began to fade once more as the moon continued her trek across the sky, moving beyond the circle of the well above them. Gradually, the lanterns were illuminated once more, and groups began their journeys away down the dismal passages they had followed to reach this hidden temple.
In ancient times, the faithful had to flee quietly, and all in separate directions in the hope of evading discovery by the Triumvirate’s orthodoxy, but in modern times, they paused to greet one another and give their thanks to the priestess before being hurried out by the cold of the season.
Emily stepped carefully around the pool; the paving tiles were kept dry, but the water below was still fearsomely frigid should anyone slip. Madame Jande lit her own lantern, bowing her head to each compliment and wishing her congregation well as they gradually slipped back into the night.
The priestess smiled as she saw Emily approach and said, “I always worry we might have clouds, but it seems she blows those dragons aside for us every year!”
Breathless with giddy elation, Emily could not help but gush over the service. “It was … marvelous. It’s been such an unpleasant week, and suddenly I feel like she has lifted the weight from my shoulders.”
“Those Wardens frustrating you still?”
Emily nodded, frowning a little at the reminder. “The woman … there was this woman who was involved with them, and she wore a black fox stole. At the time, I’d noticed the hook and the loop on it were mismatched, with a silver loop and a copper hook. At the time, I thought it meant she just wasn’t quite as rich as she pretended, but then it occurred to me—”
“It must have been leased,” finished Madame Jande, following the logic readily enough. No respectable furrier would have made that sort of repair. Any decent odds shop would have had either type of clasp available, which meant that whoever did the repair just happened to have a spare hook or loop on hand but was too hurried to care about the match.
“Exactly!” The import of such a detail could be gossiped over in a social setting by real women of rank, but it would be practically invisible on stage. Theaters would often supplement their ticket sales by lending out disused costume pieces as she had discovered in her prior career and had subsequently made extensive use of in Gus’s employ.
Madame Jande nodded and looked interested. The room was growing quite dark once more as the other worshippers slipped away, and bitingly cold. Emily hugged herself and continued, “I asked around, but no one I know recalls ever seeing such a piece at the usual places. Then I went by wardrobes in both Potter and Tanner and turned up nothing.”
“Well, what else was she wearing? If she borrowed the fur, perhaps the rest was borrowed as well? What did she look like?”
Emily nodded, replying, “Well, she was a tall blonde,” and then held up her hand to show how tall. “Not that you care that she was blonde, I suppose, but the dress was nothing fancy, just blue in a Garren cut.”
“That’s unusually tall for a woman—did you check Boskin’s?” When Emily shook her head no, Madame Jande said, “It’s on Chandler Avenue and often leases appropriately tailored feminine attire to a more … masculine clientele. Oh, don’t look so shocked! That was an old tradition in theater, going back centuries, and why shouldn’t they turn a little coin when such costumes are already in hand?”
Biting back her words, Emily forced a smile and said, “That shall be the very next place I check. Thank you, Madame Jande.”
* * *
The man who admitted Emily at Boskin’s Theater seemed taken aback by her interest in their wardrobe leasing but nevertheless escorted her down into the basement where they stored such things. He was lanky and tall enough that Emily suspected he took on his current calling after his height made acting roles difficult to find. He also had thin, flat hair that looked nearly as painted on as his eyebrows, which made Emily suspect he often loaned wardrobe to himself.
The Boskin’s Theater’s wardrobe storage was cool and dry, smelling of stale cedar and dust. As lending was merely a side business of the stage productions, there was no show room or even any effort at lighting their storage space, requiring her to review their stock with only the illumination of a hand-held lantern carried by her host.
Coats and furs were all hung together on one side of the room and packed so tightly that she had to wrestle some of the pieces free in order to pull them into the light of the proprietor’s lantern. Black and brown furs looked nearly the same in dim light, and she was close to giving up when her eye caught the uneven gleam of that mismatched clasp.
“This is it!”
Looming behind her and holding up his lamp, the proprietor sniffed incredulously at her choice and said, “Truly? You know, if you keep looking, I know we were just returned a number of others that I think might better suit your color.”
“No … ah … well, I wasn’t hoping to borrow it myself, I’m afraid.” She smiled apologetically, and the man’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I was rather hoping you could tell me a bit about the person who last rented this.”
The proprietor drew back in affront and held his head high as he replied, “Madame, we respect our clientele too much to go about revealing their custom to anyone who might ask. This theater has been lending costume for centuries, and we—”
“It was a tall blonde woman, not a man. She might also have borrowed a blue dress?”
“Oh! Oh, her. Yes, I do believe she borrowed that very piece. Unpleasant woman. She actually bought the blue dress from us, over my objections—it was the perfect thing for the part of Lord Hampsted hiding in the magnar’s terem in our upcoming production of Revolting.”
“Did you happen to catch her name?”
“Oh, I don’t think she had one, at least nothing to be interested in. She looked like a factory girl when she came in, and I would have chased her out as a vagrant if that Mister Mors hadn’t come in along with her, waving the money.”
“Who?”
“He signed to Terry Mors, which now I’ve had to commit to memory because he’s on our list of custom-to-be-refused. We fitted his factory girl for shoes, hat, fur—an entire thing, and he shows up here with just the fur and the shoes, a damaged hat, and no dress at all! He paid for the dress and the hat, but that hardly sews their replacements.”
Emily tried not to look too excited over the name and focused her attention on the stole, toying with the mismatched clasp. “I don’t know the Mors family, do you?”
“No, and I begin to think I wouldn’t care to.”
“Any idea where they’re from? I’ve been sent after the woman,” she said, and the wardrobe proprietor’s eyes narrowed, so she hastily added, “If I find her, I can try to recover that dress for you.”
“Well, he was in brown twill when he came to pay for the dress, so I imagine he planned to skip town. Besides, he paid for the thing, so I imagine it was because she ruined the dress.”
Emily nodded. A brown twill suit would be an unfashionable choice for anything but travel, which lent itself to Gus’s supposition that they’d left town. She checked the spelling on the man’s name and bid the wardrobe proprietor farewell. A consummate gentleman, he then escorted her outside and helped her flag down a taxi, which she directed to the Royal Library.
Chandler’s Crossing was thankfully near Government District, where the Royal Library stood, so the cab’s fare was reasonable. With all their petty cash with Gus in Khanom, Emily was forced to dip into her own savings for the inv
estigation she continued here. Gus never challenged her when she requested reimbursement for expenses, which somehow made her all the more conscious of her spending.
The Royal Library was never the most interesting building, architecturally little more than a giant cube from the outside, but within was a copy of nearly every book ever published in Verin. Within the entrance stood a column bearing the three stars of the Trinity and an inscription in Elven, whose Verin translation just below read, “Knowledge is Illumination.”
According to legend, the library had been built atop a temple of the Triumvirate, and buried somewhere in the depths of the building was the lintel of an ancient shrine which read, “Knowledge is Truth.”
Emily put little stock in that scandalous tale, for the library was the frequent haunt of the city’s inquiry agents, who were all notorious gossips, so such a thing would never remain hidden for long. Those agents frequently gathered at the northwest corner of the third floor for the same reason she headed there now—that was where the library stored its collection of directories.
Every profession, fraternal order and social organization of any decent size maintained books of addresses so that its members might find one another. As such books were written in Verin, copies were sent to the Royal Library. An inquiry agent armed with a name, a city, and a career could very quickly track down an address for nearly anyone of note in the Empire.
Unfortunately, all she had was a name. After an afternoon of searching through professional directories from both Gemmen and Khanom, she had a list of several in each city and very little idea how to narrow it any further. Worse, it occurred to her the man might be from any number of towns surrounding either city or any other place in the Empire, and that was all assuming he wasn’t just using a pseudonym.
As she stared at the list she’d already written out, the men gathered at the carrells across from hers broke out into another peal of laughter. If the headache of staring at endless lists of names and addresses weren’t bad enough, the cluster of gossipy inquiry agents had not given her a moment of quiet all afternoon.
“… so he says, ‘Of course these are genuine. I got the original plates stashed at home!’” The group erupted into laughter again, and Emily rose to go tell them to hold it down. Three she recognized as agents from Drake’s, although she wasn’t familiar with the fourth of their quartet.
“Ha! Tell me you got witnesses to that!” said one of the man’s companions.
“Oh, it was so close. This blonde was sitting at the table next to ours, and she must have heard the whole thing, but after we clapped him, she refused to sign, so we didn’t push it.”
Another of the group grinned and added, “He’s playing up his courage for you—she looked ready for fisticuffs, and when she said no, he backed off like a kicked pup!”
“It’s not as if you were chasing her down for it. A dainty miss I might press, but she wasn’t that. Innkeep told me she carried her old pa up the stairs on her way in, and I believe it.”
Emily took a sharp breath to begin her reprimand as she approached, and then paused in thought. Their eyes all turned to her, and she asked, “Was this a tall blonde? Maybe in blue?”
The first man nodded and said, “Yeah. Came across her in Duros but didn’t get the name. You think you might know her? Innkeep said she was travelling alone with her father into Aelfua. If she heard that part about the plates, even just a signed letter to that effect would really help us out.”
He was grasping at straws, but then so was she. “Tall blonde, muscular, travelling with an older man with kind of a square beard? And still in that blue dress.”
“Yeah. Well, I don’t know about her pa. They drove out of town at first light, so I never saw him.”
“Drove?”
“There’s no rail in Duros!” That was apparently an earlier punch line, and the other three laughed heartily.
Realizing the implication, Emily turned and raced for the stairs, hoping she could make it to the telegraph office before it closed.
~
Carol Thomas, “A Call for Civic Prudence”
Nowhere is the failing morality of our fledgling metropolis more visible than at the literal den of inhumanity that sits in our very heart. In a year’s time, when the city bustles with visitors seeking to glimpse the glories of Khanom’s future, let us not seek to please their basest instincts with foreign girls in the all-together dancing upon the strings of even lesser creatures.
Though the initial raids by our diligent protectors in the police force has yet failed to find sufficient evidence to secure legal remedy, we may still draw out this poison by denying its entry into the circulation of our commerce until it is forced to withdraw itself. An entertainment club requires patrons, food, and libations, and if we bring ourselves to deny them those, then our civic shame will wither away ere it embarrasses us before the eyes of the entire world.
– Khanom Daily Converser, 13 Tal. 389
~
- CHAPTER 20 -
Lost in his own musings, when Gus looked up again, it seemed as if the Viridian had suddenly appeared beside him. The building it sat at the base of lacked any sort of decorative frontispiece, unlike many others along the street, but alongside the doors it bore an elaborately sculpted nameplate in polished bronze atop a backdrop of artificial verdigris.
He was relieved by the green backdrop, although when he stepped inside he discovered it wasn’t quite as dim as he’d hoped. There was a stand just inside the door, where the head steward greeted guests before having someone escort them through heavy black curtains that kept even glimpses of the outside world from entering the club without permission.
Gus was critically reviewed when he approached, and the man seemed reluctant to even admit him, but eventually he insistently asked to store Gus’s coat and hat, both of which he carried off as if reluctant to touch. Another steward then approached to escort him through the curtains and into the club proper.
The inside of the Viridian was far more lavish than anything Gus had imagined the Aelfuan frontier capable of. Black and white tiled marble floors were polished to an almost mirrored sheen, and the various tables scattered across the floor were far nicer furniture than anything at the sort of places Gus could afford to frequent—black wood carved into elaborate Elven style swirls and topped with stark white tablecloths of the finest linen.
The whole affair was extensively lit by gas sconces that hissed quietly along the walls, their light refracted off the polished floors to make the entire room gleam, even without windows. Above it all, there hung an enormous chandelier with harshly angular sheets of jade green glass alternating with curving sheets of frosted white. Light shone from within that aerial centerpiece, but other more traditional chandeliers hung all around, hissing their constant illumination into the club below.
It was early, and few patrons were seated yet, but still the steward maneuvered him towards the back, where fewer of his customers would have to see. Despite that placement, it would still afford Gus a good view of the stage, albeit a distant one. The stage itself was currently concealed by a heavy curtain, but the sconces on either side of the curtain differed from those in the rest of the room; they were sculpted to look like torches, although they were as clearly gaslight as everything else in the place.
Gus idly wondered what it must cost to keep all those lights on every night, and then it occurred to him that he might not be able to afford a dinner here. The menu provided no indication, just a list of options for each course, so he ordered the courses that looked cheapest along with a strong drink to help him with the bill later on.
As a lover of cheap food and potted meats, he was entirely unprepared for the enormous plate of beef ribs that was brought to his table in the club’s opening salvo, so he ordered another strong drink. Before long, the club began to fill with well-dressed men and ladies bedecked in glittering jewels, and Gus wondered if there were other exits he could use later, when he
needed to sneak out on the bill.
A band was kept somewhere just out of sight, and their music filtered throughout the Viridian, just loud enough to be heard above the rising din of supper chat, yet shy of overbearing. The music they played was a strange, foreign tune with the sort of snappy baseline that was usually only heard in far more vulgar establishments than this. Gus didn’t recognize the song, but the patrons seemed to enjoy it.
Looking around at his fellow diners, Gus was surprised to see the number of women amidst the crowd. Clubs like this were often segregated for their safety and dignity, lest the combination of music and spirits make otherwise sensible people suddenly forget themselves. It was a custom he had never quite understood since neither theaters nor restaurants were segregated, but for some reason it remained common in Gemmen’s fancier establishments. Khanom was clearly more liberal in these matters.
A roaming susurration caught his attention, and Gus looked over towards the commotion. The goblin he had met at the Exposition offices was dressed in a well-fitted dinner jacket and wandered about the floor of the club. Salka paused at several tables, and to Gus’s astonishment, the swarthy gob was greeted with nearly universal enthusiasm; even the ladies seemed to be concealing any disdain with easy laughter.
Gus could not make out their conversation from the back of the club, but the mellow rumble of Salka’s deep voice carried over, even if his words did not. As the gob’s circuit of the room drew him towards closer tables, Gus could make out more of the conversation, and he overheard a young woman pleading with him for a song. The gob’s olive features looked flattered, but he politely demurred, to the very visible disappointment of the lady at the table as he moved on through the room.