The Great Restoration (A Tale of the Verin Empire Book 2)

by William Ray

  Although she spoke with a conversational softness that was barely audible over the clatter of carriage and hooves, the driver instantly pulled his whip away. Gus and the driver exchanged glares, but then Gus opened the carriage door and slipped inside. He sank into a plush seat opposite hers as the door swung closed behind him and was surprised how quiet it was in the velvet interior.

  Looking unamused, Miss Aliyah Gale said, “I’m on my way to a meeting with the mayor. What is it you want from me, Mister Baston?”

  Her voice had an elegant burr to it that seemed vaguely foreign, but her accent was unplaceable. Dark curls were piled high on her head in an old-fashioned style, and she wore a glimmering green silk dress covered in Easternist dragon motifs. The dress was form-fitting enough to border on indiscrete, especially without the usual bedecking of ribbons and lace that Verin women typically wore.

  As entranced as he had been with her figure when he first saw her in Gemmen, now Gus could only stare enraptured into her eyes, for the first time noticing their color as their emerald sparkle was set off by the same shade in her dress. She seemed perfectly poised and composed as if strangers routinely leapt into her carriage on her trips through town.

  She sat patiently as he stared as if his awkward delay were similarly routine. Finally, he said, “I’d love to know what you were meeting with Doctor Phand about back in Gemmen.”

  She arched an elegant eyebrow and replied, “An interesting line of inquiry, Mister Baston. Very few people knew about that meeting. I was there to sign a contract. The details were worked out by wire, so we merely needed to meet to sign the papers, which we did. You think that relates to his disappearance.”

  He nodded, feeling awkward and uncomfortable despite the luxuriant seating—something in her sharp consideration withered confidence. Gus wondered what Emily would have thought of her. “What was the contract for? Something about the tower?”

  Miss Aliyah Gale gave a small nod and said, “It was. After certain political setbacks, he needed financing to complete it, so I agreed to back his project.”

  Gus blinked at that, more pieces falling together. “As I understand it, he needed quite a bit. Millions. You loaned him that much?”

  She chuckled and waved a manicured hand dismissively, and for the first time, Gus noticed the intricate jewels that adorned her hand. It was some exotic combination of rings and bracelets connected into a single elaborate piece by a fine golden mesh; the sort of absurd jewelry one might see displayed but never worn, and she had donned it for a meeting with a local politician. “Not a loan, Mister Baston, an investment. I purchased a large share of the tower’s future revenue. The project would also benefit the city immensely, which in turn would further enrich me and grow other investments I own here.”

  It seemed like an impossible sum, but having already seen so many displays of Miss Aliyah Gale’s wealth, Gus began to rethink his skepticism. “What sort of collateral do you get for all that money?”

  She shook her head, “It’s an investment, Mister Baston. The money won’t change hands until the contract is approved. Doctor Phand personally owns the patent on the tower’s design, even though he’s been developing the project through his firm. Without him, the deal won’t go forward. That would mean a considerable diminishment of profit for me, so I’m hoping he’s found soon.”

  Gus briefly wondered how much money you had to have before not owing someone a million peis would be considered a loss, but the carriage pulled to a halt, and the driver hopped down to open the door. She gestured for Gus to exit first, which he did, though a struggle against the stiffness in his leg left him embarrassed in the process.

  Miss Aliyah Gale made a far more elegant exit, smoothly rising out of the doorway and descending gracefully down the stairs as if weightless. Her hand lightly rested on the proffered hand of the driver, but it seemed to be more of a polite gesture than a matter of necessity.

  Taking advantage of the delay her descent provided, Gus turned and asked, “But you’d voted against the tower originally. You wanted a park. Why the change of heart?”

  Her eyes seemed to spark at that, although Gus supposed it could have just been a trick of the light. Smirking, she replied, “No change of heart, merely of mind. When Doctor Phand presented his construction plan, I saw I might profit from it after all.”

  She bowed her head in farewell, and then turned towards the city’s civic center. A well-dressed man waited eagerly by the door, standing ready to open it as soon as she approached.

  Gus briefly wondered if Miss Aliyah Gale had ever been down into the basement to meet with Secretary Ryerson and look over the model cities there. He supposed she must have at some point, as a member of the Exposition’s council, but somehow a visit to that cluttered space seemed too far beneath her station.

  Another question came to mind, and Gus called after her, “What would happen if he died?”

  The waiting man had already opened the door for her, but Miss Aliyah Gale paused in the entrance and looked back at Gus, considering for a moment before she replied, “The patent would be disposed of in his will, I imagine. It would go to his wife, or his firm, or whomever he’s designated.”

  Gus turned that over in his mind as she disappeared inside.

  If Doctor Phand died, someone else could build the tower. Miss Aliyah Gale might want to stop the tower to get out of her investment, but her contract was with him, so surely his death would have gotten her off the hook and been far easier to arrange than a strange kidnapping that already involved murder. If someone were just trying to stop construction of the tower though, then killing Phand would have just moved the rights to someone else, who could move forward with construction.

  To be sure he was neither dead nor available, they had to hold him until the Exposition’s deadline had passed. In just four days though, they would almost certainly need to dispose of him to avoid being exposed afterward. Why would they need to stop the tower from going up?

  ~

  “Royal Visit to Zutruss”

  Yesterday, the frontier fortress in Zutruss was visited by her highness, the Princess of Whitby. In honor of the occasion, both Verin and Garren border detachments turned out in full dress. With relatively few local settlers in the area, the gathered military forces featured more performers than admirers, but by all reports, the Princess was an enthusiastic witness to their maneuvers.

  Banners for the local regiments were unfurled above the fortress, and within, the walls were hung with a display of the seven Elven banners taken by Verin forces during the war. The collection also included the tattered remains of a Warden flag, which they surrendered to the Imperial forces upon being abandoned by their masters.

  – Khanom Daily Converser, 15 Tal. 389

  ~

  - CHAPTER 25 -

  Resuming his search for a taxi, Gus began to wander back over towards Queen’s. The ride to the city’s civic center had taken him in the opposite direction of KMC’s dormitories, and he was now on the north end of Palace Park. His mind tumbled through the variables as he stared down the length of the park that ran along Queen’s.

  As he continued to stroll along the street, he reached the end of Embassy Park and the beginning of Palace, where his eyes caught on one of the city’s ubiquitous white obelisks. Staring across at the manicured lawn and scattered plantings surrounded in those strangely one-side trees, Gus suddenly noticed a curious difference between Embassy Park and the park on the other side of 10th avenue. Palace Park had several monuments spaced around it, but unlike most blocks in the upper city, Embassy Park had none.

  Any other day, he’d have seriously considered turning back to ask Secretary Ryerson why that might be, but unless Ryerson was meeting with Miss Aliyah Gale, his office would almost certainly be closed today. As he contemplated going back to check anyway, Gus saw an empty taxi meandering south alongside the park.

  Relieved, Gus flagged it down and, remembering his experience visit
ing Mister Thomas down below, he waited until he was inside before he asked to be taken to the dormitories of the Khanom Mineral Company. The cabbie seemed disappointed by the destination but begrudgingly drove them south, towards the mountain.

  As the parks rolled past the window, Gus thought back on Ulm’s words about Phand’s proposed tower. It was ‘inappropriate’ because it was going up where the queen’s palace once stood, except the tower wasn’t going up there at all. The tower was planned to occupy Embassy Park, directly across the street. It was a strange error for someone on the Exposition Council to make, but Gus had no idea what that might mean.

  The road south took them beyond the tall buildings of the city’s center, and Gus was finally able to see the homes of Khanom’s well-to-do. Large houses akin to those in Gemmen’s Old Park lined the southern rim of the plateau, and he could see that others, just a trifle smaller, were along the slopes just beyond.

  Eventually the taxi reached the southeastern edge of the plateau, and Gus saw his destination. Sylvester’s workers were kept in a small valley between the plateau of the upper city and the steeped slope of the mountain. The strange ring of wind that created Khanom’s sooty kirtle was more diffuse here and became nothing more than a thin gray cloud that kept well above the KMC dormitories.

  Like the other corporate dormitories he had seen, these were large utilitarian edifices, utterly lacking the decorative whorls that festooned the city above. With no work today, miner’s coveralls hung from poles that extended through every window, mixed with a smattering of other laundry items, all waving like flags.

  He paid the cabman and looked around the empty lane to which he had been delivered, wondering how far he would have to hike to find a ride back.

  The dormitories were hemmed on all sides by the wealthier sections of southern Khanom. Gus was certain KMC’s miners had someplace to drink and socialize that didn’t require them to cross through the entire city at every recess. There were few people outside, so he decided to peek inside the first dormitory he came to and ask after the likely local watering holes.

  The entrance opened to a long, whitewashed hallway, adorned only by the stenciled numbers painted upon the uniformly spaced doors. The first two doors Gus rapped at gave no response, but beyond the third he could hear loud conversation and raucous laughter, so he turned the handle and looked inside without bothering to knock.

  At first, he took it to be a party, but as he looked over the room, he realized that no one lived here. Cheap household furniture, probably company issued to each room, had been rearranged, sometimes torn apart, and supplemented with other bits of junk to create a makeshift public house for the dorm dwellers to gather in.

  Community public houses, unlike fancy social clubs, were places men and women frequently comingled, and this was no exception. Beer was being passed around with little wooden chits trading hands in exchange, often passing through several hands before reaching the bartender.

  When Gus stepped inside, several of the patrons stared at him in obvious surprise, although the man standing behind the overturned bed frame that served as their makeshift bar gave a welcoming grin, likely happy to see a customer that would pay in cash rather than mining company scrip.

  Settling onto an old barrel that served as a chair, Gus looked around at the furniture and realized it was all much less temporary than he would have first guessed. Despite the improvised arrangements, the wear on nearly everything marked its consistent use in the makeshift pub for a decade or more. He wondered if Maurice Sylvester even knew this was here or if the barkeep had simply set it up in secret.

  As Gus approached the bar, the regulars greeted him with smiles and murmured welcomes, although conversation did seem to quiet down a bit at his presence. Gus always preferred something with a bit more bite than the three-penny beer the patrons here looked to be drinking. Counting out half a peis, he slid a small stack of pennies across the sideboard and asked, “You have anything back there other than beer?”

  The bartender grinned and scooped up the cash with one hand as the other set down a small, empty jar. With a flourish, he produced a clay jug and poured from it a light-yellow, clear liquid that looked like urine and smelled like turpentine.

  A hush fell around the room as Gus looked down at the drink, and unsure what else to do, he lifted his glass in toast to the bartender and then tossed it back.

  It burned his throat, and he had to fight back the urge to sneeze as the fumes of the stuff tickled his nose. Clearing his now sore throat, Gus set the jar down and panted as it burned at his gullet. The room erupted into a merry cheer, and several people clapped him on the back in congratulations; whatever that stuff was, it had clearly been a test he had passed.

  Without any demand for more coin, the bartender pushed across a mug of the beer, which tasted awful but at least seemed to soothe some of the burning in Gus’s throat. The bartender grinned over as Gus gulped it down and asked, “So what brings you down here, stranger?”

  His throat was still rough, and Gus coughed a few more times before he managed to reply, “Trying to find someone whose father used to work down here. Dorna Michts?”

  The bartender shook his head, but an older woman seated nearby answered, “Oh, I remember her! Little straw-haired thing.” Gus nodded, and she turned to the bartender and said, “Her father was Edmund Michts—they moved out here when her mother died. He worked the seam with us and even helped organize meetings back when there was still union talk.”

  Noting that her father ‘was’, Gus asked, “What happened to him?”

  The old woman sighed and said, “Oh, well, he was a good worker, got promoted to gold, and you know how it is. The copper’s dangerous too, of course, but the seam’s more recent—newer tunnels, better built. The gold mine’s running on forty years now. They have a lot more accidents.”

  Gus didn’t really know anything about mining but didn’t think he needed to, so he just nodded, and she resumed her story. “His poor little girl was left an orphan, but then some rich uncle or something took her in. He sent for her with his own carriage and everything. It was before these new buildings went up, so it must have been about twenty years ago.”

  “Did you know the uncle?” The old woman shook her head, so he asked the room, “Anyone here work the gold mine?”

  The bartender snorted, and the woman cackled, and a few of the other patrons grinned and shook their heads. The woman grinned at what was apparently Gus’s gaffe and replied, “No, no, they get their own dorm near the mine. It’s lots nicer, from all I hear. They make more money too, though that may change soon with all the electrical!”

  “Electrical uses copper?” he asked, and the woman nodded enthusiastically. Gus smiled amiably at her assumption of impending good fortune from the rise in copper, but one of the details in her story niggled him, so he asked, “If the gold mine has its own dorms, why was Dorna still here to be picked up by her uncle?”

  “Poor man didn’t last but a day. He hadn’t even been moved out yet when he died. Then the uncle came in, swept her away.”

  Thinking back to his conversation with Miss Aliyah Gale’s valet, he asked, “That uncle wasn’t Cornelius Zephyr, was it?”

  She laughed again, apparently already a bit tipsy, and said, “No! I’d remember if he came down here!” With a girlish giggle, she poked at one of her neighbors at the bar and said, “Remember those suits he wore? And the hats? He was always so fancy! You know, my sister worked as one of his maids for a week, but she was fired when she worried about the ghosts.”

  The bartender rolled his eyes, clearly too young to have known much about Zephyr, so Gus asked, “Ghosts?”

  Eyes widening, the old woman nodded earnestly and said, “She said at all hours, there was this voice in the walls, a deep rumble in a language she didn’t know. Probably elfish.”

  “Really?” He thought back to his visit to Miss Aliyah Gale’s office and the strange rumble he had heard there, fe
lt nearly as much as heard. Could it have been a voice? Gus was not a believer in most ghost stories, but he had lived through enough of them not to discount the possibility. The old woman nodded again, so he added, “She was smart to get out of there then. Did she know Miss Aliyah Gale?”

  The bartender chuckled and said, “Nobody did.”

  At that, the old woman nodded. “He’s right. She was named in his will, and a young girl rode into town the very day after he died and moved right into his office.”

  “Does she live there?” They shook their heads, so he asked, “Where does she live?” No one knew. “What about Miss Dorna Michts? Where is she these days?”

  The old woman shrugged, but a man spoke up from the back of the room and said, “She still lives in the city someplace. She came by here for the Hearth Festival with a bunch of others from the Upper. Wasn’t dressed like one from there, but she was helping give out food. She even remembered me.”

  “Blonde?” Gus asked, then held up his hand and added, “And about so tall?”

  The man nodded, and Gus finally felt certain he had the name of his false Alice Phand. And probably the D.M. from Saucier’s letter. Grateful, he laid down a peis to refill everyone else’s beers. Despite the enthusiastic gratitude, they knew little else about Dorna Michts, so he pressed for more about her father, but he had died so long ago few remembered him.

  Edmund Michts had died unusually quickly, but it seemed like most only worked there a year or two, even though they reputedly lived in far grander style among their fellow gold miners for as long as they stayed. A few were said to have struck it rich and left the city, but no one in the makeshift pub knew any of those personally.

  The mortality rate at Sylvester’s gold mine seemed disturbingly high, but despite that, none of the miners seemed concerned by it. Eventually, they all toasted to someday making the climb up there and striking it rich.