Rowena laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth. The last answer she’d expected was a joke.
The old man shrugged. “It’s only a theory, of course.”
“So, what am I supposed to know about them?”
“Supposed to know? Well—” the Alchemist rose, “—that’s another matter.”
And he was gone, shrugging past the long curtain separating the front of the shop from its ramshackle back. Soon he returned with a hefty book bound in peeling orange leather. He set the book on the table and opened the dusty front cover, spinning it the right way round to show Rowena, then resumed his seat. The frontispiece boasted a fine etching of a snake coiling around a pillar made of the heads of many creatures—wolf and mist-ox and chimer and eagle and such—and a long title in a gothic typeset, the words far longer than any Rowena had tried to read before.
“Find ‘Aigamuxa.’”
“I don’t . . . I can’t really read.”
The old man raised an eyebrow. “You read the sign outside.”
“I knew what the shop was called before I came.”
“Start looking in the A’s.”
Rowena grimaced at the book. She pawed back and forth through its stubborn pages, the paper a thin onionskin, its dog-eared corners needing to be teased apart. Finally, she spied something powerfully long staring with an “A-I.” Rowena turned the book back around and pointed.
“Is this it?”
The Alchemist reached down to his shirt front and donned his spectacles.
Nodding, he read:
“‘Aigamuxa, singular and plural. See also “aiga.” The aigamuxa are a tribalist species originally descendant of ogres in the jungle regions of eastern Leonis. Males grow roughly half again the size of human males, with females equal to males in height, but lesser in weight. Their physiognomy is distinct for its structurally stooped posture, their fourth joint on each digit, and the seemingly ill-adapted location of their visual organs on the soles of their feet. While walking, aigamuxa must stop at regular intervals to raise their feet and look around with them, a process made easier by the great range of motion afforded in their extraordinarily limber hip and ankle joints. Xenobiological field reports indicate aigamuxa are capable of approximately two hundred seventy degrees of motion in these areas and can see in the dark through some ill-understood process of heat recognition. The jungle environment and the range of motion in their limbs have combined to make brachiating their most efficient locomotion.’” The Alchemist paused, looking at Rowena over the rims of his spectacles. “Brachiating. That’s swinging from tree to tree.”
Rowena nodded. She remembered the pink eyes staring down at her from the awnings and window ledges as she ran. The Alchemist searched the page for his lost spot, then continued.
“‘Among the few jungle creatures capable of seeing with equal facility, night or day, the aigamuxa tend toward nocturnal habits. The awkward placement of their eyes has also led to species adaptation of the other senses, which are strikingly keen. An aigamuxa hunter can smell its prey on a windless night at a distance of roughly two miles. They are omnivorous and thrive on highly variable diets.
“‘Aigamuxa are intelligent, but (apart from those assimilated through forced labor into human civilizations) do not generally exercise this intelligence to use human languages, considering themselves above condescending to lesser beings. Aigamuxa racial lore declares them the “first people” of the world, rationalizing their unusual physiognomy as a sign of their eternal connection with and attentiveness to the earth itself. Many aigamuxa legends describe the first people as the inevitable rulers of the world of sapiens. Shortly after Unification, large populations of humans native to Leonis became victims of a rise in aigamuxa tribalism, marked by a campaign to “cleanse” humanity from the continent. This began the Ecclesiastical Commission’s aggressive relocation of Leonine refugees to human settlements in Europa, the Amidonian continents, and across the Indine and Lemarckian territories. The historical record remains unclear as to whether this genocide preceded, or was in response to, humans capturing aigamuxa for use in industrial labor. In recent generations, free tribes of aigamuxa have known considerable success working in human lands as heavy laborers, mercenaries, and bodyguards.’”
The Alchemist closed the book. “I wouldn’t call that an objective piece of scholarship, but it’s accurate on the most significant matters.”
“So, they hate us because they think they’re the superior species and they should be in charge of things?” Rowena ventured.
He nodded, removing his spectacles. “Do you know what was in that package?”
It was the question Rowena had been dreading. She’d been under the Alchemist’s roof for nearly an hour, and barely anything had been said of the package. She’d hoped that he’d put it out of his mind.
“Not exactly, sir.”
“If you know something inexact, you know more than I.”
Rowena stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve ordered many things from Ivor over the years. He has always carried out the process in the same way, sending me notice in advance of a delivery so nothing is left to chance. There were no arrangements this time. And I had nothing on order awaiting delivery.” The Alchemist picked up his pipe again and stabbed at its burnt-out bowl with a tobacco-stained thumb. “You don’t know what was in that package. Neither do I.”
“But . . . the aiga know now.”
“Very likely they knew what it was when they took it.”
“It might’ve been just bad luck. Lots of people get mugged by aiga these days, since they were turned out of the factories.”
“True. But it takes very little study to see you haven’t any money.”
“The satchel was big. Could’ve made it look valuable,” Rowena noted. “It was a book. Belonged to some EC doc—Reverend Chalmers.”
The old man shook his head. “I’ve never heard of the man.”
“Then why would Ivor send you the package? I can’t figure it. He en’t one to just give things away.”
“Ivor,” the Alchemist said, “had something he wanted to keep from someone. Sending packages to me has been such common business for so long it shouldn’t raise suspicion. If whoever wanted the book believed Ivor wanted it, too, and knew anything of his nature they wouldn’t suspect he’d part with it. But Ivor didn’t contact me. That alone tells me something is quite wrong.”
Rowena frowned. “The book you just read said that aiga don’t care much for human languages and stuff, right?”
“Right.”
“So if you’re right and they knew what the delivery was, why would they even want it? What good can they get from a human book?”
“None, perhaps. But they’re often hired by humans. They might be taking the book to someone else entirely.”
It was an answer, but not one that really answered anything, Rowena supposed. The water clock on the pantry shelf showed eleven. She bit her lip.
“So, what do I tell Ivor when I go back to the warehouse?”
The Alchemist picked up the bestiary book. He turned it over in his hands. “I think it’s a fair assumption Ivor won’t be there if you do.”
Rowena opened her mouth to ask why, but the set of the Alchemist’s jaw gave her the answer. She recalled the wild look in the old smuggler’s eyes when he shoved her through the door and felt an icy knot in her stomach.
The Alchemist turned back to the curtain again. “You’ll need a place to sleep tonight. It might as well be here.”
11.
The look Smallduke Herridge gave Bess was somewhere between gracious and hungry, a leer that made the skin along her shoulders crawl when he kissed her hand. He was as broad as a barrowman’s cart, and bald except for a ring of hair above his ears, the rest seemingly migrated into the dense bush of ruddy beard covering his throat. Every movement was accompanied by the music of his medals clinking. None were military. Tokens for philanthropy or civil service, maybe.
Bess wasn’t entirely sure. She withdrew her hand, grateful that her long lace gloves shielded her from his fleshy fingers.
“She is,” Herridge said, speaking with his eyes distinctly appreciating Bess’s cleavage, “very lovely, Regenzi. Your godchild, you say?”
Regenzi nodded. “Our families have long connections.”
“I’m sure they do.”
Bess adjusted her mask of peacock feathers. She hoped that its flourishes hid her surely deepening color. Herridge had to know she was no more Regenzi’s godchild than the lanyani servers were. Still, her lover had been telling the lie for two hours. It seemed courtesy demanded the assembled ignore their host parading his courtesan around as an honored guest.
The ball Bess had been anticipating all day turned out more opulent than she had dared dream. It was a midnight masque, though it had truthfully begun at eleven o’ the clock. The Regenzi manor comprised a half block of row houses merged together with a bit of architectural ingenuity years before, carving from the crowded splendor of the Upper Districts space enough for yet another self-made noble. Now, it was teeming with wealthy merchants; famous debutantes; dukes and duchesses both great and small; most of the members of the city governor’s cabinet; elegant companions and escorts of all descriptions; and exotically skirted lanyani serving girls, whose fibrous flesh had been planed raw, down to bare sapling skin with the perfect feminine curves of bodies utterly devoid of nipples, of hair, of navels. Men and women alike watched them sway among the guests, carrying trays of cordials and cocktails, little canapés, folded serviettes, and every other nicety Bess could imagine. Their long, leafy manes were all autumn fire. Regenzi had been very particular that none of his lanyani spend time out of doors in the days before the masque, lest their colors fail and their fine, smooth-grained skin shed all its ornamentation. Everything had to be perfect.
Everything was perfect.
Bess had been afraid of her looks measuring up before entering the grand ballroom. As she came down from the private apartments above, she’d heard the string quartet playing—one of six stationed throughout the sprawling manse. The strings rang high and sweet and every bit as tight as her nerves, each step down the brocade stair a descent into scarce-concealed panic.
Panic left in a rush as she stepped into the room and saw the rest of the women.
Except for the professional courtesans, the ones with papers and licenses, the women of the ball were creatures of money, and it had made them plump, or enervated, or merely dull. Bess had seen a glossy-haired woman with the wide, round face of a Malay, her belly and breasts so vast she might have been mistaken for one of their pre-Unity fertility idols. Another woman, stick straight and bound up in a buttercream-colored wrap only a shade deeper than her sallow skin, drifted between the long halls as if she’d lost something. Bess had begun to wonder if it was her wits. Countless others, their features only half-hidden by understated opera masks, wore faces of powder and stain that had already crazed like old pottery, doubling whatever age the cosmetics had been meant to hide. Bess could barely breathe for the tightness of her corset, but she knew it was worth it to show up these crones. Her fine auburn hair was pinned with silver and amethyst clips, her bosom swelling up from a wine-colored bodice slashed with silver satin. Regenzi looked very fine, too, his tawny whiskers trimmed and his jewel-colored coattails pressed. He wore no mask. It was important, he said, for his guests to be able to find him readily.
There had been applause from the assembled as he swept her into the room. No one could have heard Bess’s gasp over that roll of thunder when Regenzi pinched her side, hissing into her ear.
“Smile, my dear. Always smile.”
Bess offered him the smile again—the painted one, the porcelain one. The one he liked best.
“Of course.”
The next two hours were a blur of dances and introductions. Bess shook hands, curtseyed, chatted, and laughed her best nightingale giggle, her skirts swirling as she bustled from one room to another. Remembering faces to go with the names was impossible, so Bess remembered masks. There was the minister of streets in his leopard face; the third Greatduchess Salend and her tamarind’s mane; the owner of the six grandest hotels in the city wearing a wolf’s snout. Bess had met dragons and demons and eagles and even a hedgehog, though she couldn’t remember which guest belonged to that bit of whimsy. Abraham said her mask was the tropical dove, a bird common to Trimeeni cities in the distant southern hemisphere. Bess had never seen one, but its exotic details appealed to her, so she wore it with pride—and relief, when men like Smallduke Herridge let their gaze linger overlong.
There were many members of the Ecclesiastical Commission attending, each one an invited guest of some other guest. Bess saw so many black collars and dresses it seemed the Decadal Conference must have moved its sessions to the manse. The EC guests hunted after Smallduke Regenzi, plying him with requests to fund some experiment or other. He took their calling cards graciously, making certain that each knew Abraham Regenzi was a friend to the Grand Unity.
Bess turned to hail a lanyani girl carrying a tray of vinas when she noticed Regenzi turning the other direction. A florid, middle-aged deacon stood beside a short, broad-hipped woman. Both wore the simple domino masks provided at the door to those guests who had come unprepared. This included nearly all the Ecclesiastical commissionaries.
Regenzi gripped Bess’s arm and turned her back toward the pair now crossing the room to meet him. “Stay a moment, will you?”
“Do you know them?”
“The man is called Fredericks, I think. . . .”
“Regenzi!” the man the smallduke called “Fredericks” cried, arms and smile wide. “I had thought I might go the whole evening without seeing my host. Do you remember me?”
“Leopold Fredericks, Order of Historical Statistics,” Regenzi answered with absolute confidence.
Fredericks shook his head admiringly. “You’ve a mind like a trap, my lord. There must be a hundred black collars here to remember.”
“I always remember the important ones.” Regenzi turned to the woman. Her dress bore the pin of a reverend doctor: balances resting on a set of books, overlaid on a silhouette of the globe. “Might I have your help, Fredericks, in expanding my repertoire?”
“Of course. Reverend Doctor Nora Pierce, I give you Lord Abraham Regenzi. And Doctor Pierce, this is . . .”
“Beatrice,” Bess said helpfully. “I’m Lord Regenzi’s goddaughter.”
Fredericks bowed, touching his brow. He was an awkward-looking man, a little rumpled, but he had a good smile—sincere and content to leave her bosom to its own devices. Bess smiled back.
Bess studied the Reverend Doctor Pierce carefully, trying to figure what was so unusual about her. All evening she’d been watching people sporting the oddest affectations, yet something about this woman in her black dress with nothing more than a domino mask covering her dark-eyed face struck Bess as . . . odd. That was the only word for it. Odd.
“My lord,” the woman said, curtseying slightly. “I am honored to have been invited.”
“Invited. . . .” The look Regenzi offered her was, for a moment, absolutely blank. “Wait, Pierce. My God, you’re the keynote speaker for the conference! Some villain told me you’d missed the galleon out of Lemarcke or some nonsense. Your coauthor, Chalmers, is supposed to carry on alone.”
“The galleon had a malfunction. Things looked very bad when I sent Phillip the spark, but enough passengers complained the owners called a new ship up from storage and had us in the air a few hours later. I arrived after supper, and I haven’t had the chance to stop by Coventry Passage and sort out the confusion. That can wait till morning.”
Regenzi patted Bess’s arm and flicked his eyes toward a sideboard of refreshments some yards away. She nodded and untangled herself from him with a murmured apology, hearing his voice behind her: “You must be exhausted from your travels. Let us get you a drink.”
Let “us.” Bess sighed inwa
rdly. It was only a little thing. Regenzi was handsome, powerful, still quite young. He had a temper and a certain proprietary air, but he’d never raised his hand to her, let alone had her across the back with a hawthorn—or worse.
At the sideboard, a teenaged page dressed in the bright green house livery prepared trays of vinas for the lanyani girls. Barely looking up, he passed two flutes to Bess. She opened her mouth to ask for something different—Abraham had told her once that vinas gave him a sour stomach— but the page’s back was turned. Two lanyani girls were looming nearby, their white, pupil-less eyes staring through her. Bess realized she must be standing in their way and stepped aside, whispering an apology.
She regarded the flutes of vinas in her hands grimly. She might ask for a replacement, but still. . . .
Better not make them wait longer.
The room was far longer than it was wide, a sort of gallery with space cleared toward the center for the most determined dancers. Bess paused, scanning the room for her smallduke and the reverend doctor. For a moment, she couldn’t find them amid the strolling and dancing forms, or tucked in the knots of chatting gentry. Finally, just as she began to wonder if they had moved on to another room without her, Bess spied them standing near the quartet, half-hidden by a decorated paper screen.
She frowned. If conversation was their aim, it was a strange place to take it up. Standing only ten or twelve feet from the musicians, the smallduke dipped his head down to better hear the Reverend Doctor Pierce.
Bess studied them as she skirted the dancers. She hoped she did not appear to be watching—or stalling.
Jorrie Downshire, rest his soul, had known a few things about reading lips. He’d taught Bess some of the trick one slow afternoon as they lay in the loft above the warehouse. Bess recalled his curly brown hair and his mischievous eyes. The memory of the rest—his hands on her new-budded breasts, her lips against the warmth of his throat—was faded, though it had been barely three years before.
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