Beneath my feet, the Queen’s deck began to vibrate, and even though I couldn’t hear a thing over the din, I could feel her pistons wake and begin to move.
Within moments we were underway. I couldn’t see the big red wheel turn. Some sorcery prevented us from hearing it churn the Brown’s muddy face, but I could see the metronomic splashes of water on the aft glass, and as these increased in volume and frequency I knew we were on the move and picking up speed.
Give her this-she was a graceful lady, the Queen. Not a single wine glass fell. The deck never swayed. We might as well have been sitting in my office rather than thrashing our way to the middle of the Brown.
Evis motioned with his hands. Bright red balloons fell from the Queen’s ceiling and exploded just as they neared the tops of our heads. A tiny shrieking dragon, glowing like an ember, flew from each balloon, darting to and fro overhead as the crowd shouted and cheered.
The diminutive dragons vanished, one by one, with a loud pop and a puff of radiant vapor. Evis bowed and left the stage as a line of musicians took their places in chairs at the rear.
Music sounded, loud and clear, though the musicians hadn’t sorted out their horns and harps, much less started playing. The music was strange, unearthly, and I couldn’t begin to even name the instruments, much less the melody.
Around us, the crowd began to move. Most made their way to the gambling tables, eager to line Avalante’s pockets by betting on dice or wheels. A surprising number of couples took to the dance floor in front of the stage.
I set off in that direction myself, Darla at my side. I found us a spot in the dim wash of light that crept from the stage and put my back to it before bowing and formally offering Darla my hand.
She didn’t laugh. “I’d be honored,” she said as she slipped into my arms.
“Keep an eye on the musicians,” I whispered into her ear.
Around us, couples bowed and curtseyed and stepped and spun, all moving according to some ages-old custom that demanded all the precision of a military drill corps and promised roughly the equivalent measure of intimate contact with congenial womenfolk. I reflected upon the probability of imminent mayhem, put my arms around Darla’s waist, and just started swaying.
She pretended to gasp. “Why, Mr. Markhat! The scandal!”
“I’ll have Evis put it on my tab.” I pulled her closer, ignoring the curious stares of our fellow dancers, who still moved in their ever-changing hops, curtseys, and rounds.
The music played, slow and suggestive. Something stringed made mournful notes while a deep bass drum beat like a weary heart.
“I like this music,” I said. Darla leaned into me. “What the hell is it, and where is it coming from?”
“Gertriss and I heard it earlier. It’s a recording made from music that Evis and his people found playing on that long-talking device they have hidden away under Avalante. Evis thinks it comes from another world.”
“It might.” A woman began to sing with the music, her voice low and husky, her words foreign and incomprehensible, but her amorous intent crystal clear.
We swayed. I moved my feet around a bit. The couple closest to us gave up their precise choreography for a halting but enthusiastic embrace.
“Look, dear, we’re trendsetters,” I whispered.
She smiled and moved with me. Before the foreign song faded away, and another began, half the dance floor was standing close and swaying in the dark, while the traditionalists glared and pranced and gave us room.
I scanned the crowd for Evis or trouble and saw neither. I did catch a brief glimpse of Gertriss’s bright green gown and braided blonde hair, both of which were surrounded by smiling, eager young men hoping to outshine his fellows.
We did a half-turn.
“They’re wasting their charm,” said Darla. “Any sign of our toothy host?”
“Not since he left the stage. I’m sure he’s got orders to give, boats to steer, brooding, dark looks to cast dramatically across shadowed, empty halls.”
“Were we ever that confused?”
“You never wavered in your quest to win my heart, oh first wife of mine.”
She pinched me. “First wife? You have another?”
“Not yet, but the night is young.”
Gertriss slipped away from her bevy of suitors and I lost sight of her in the crowd.
“What’s this?” Darla’s hand paused casually over the wax-sealed tortoise shell in my right jacket pocket.
“A gift.” I recalled Stitches’s admonition that I tell no one of the false huldra, even Darla. I told Darla the whole story in whispers.
“You should throw it in the river,” she said when I was done. Her eyes were somber. “I like Stitches. But I don’t trust her.”
I dipped Darla and made her smile. “If I do, I might wish I hadn’t.”
“Let me then.”
“We’ll see.” The music faded away, and the spotlight flared to life, and a tall black woman in a long white gown took the stage as the musicians tapped out a rhythm and began to play.
The Queen lurched-just a bit, but enough to cause the remaining pair of formal dancers to stumble and lose their place. The lights even flickered.
And then it was over. The sounds of dice clattering and wheels spinning and gamblers shouting and cheering never faltered, not even for an instant.
“Did you see that?”
“I did.” I felt Darla’s heart beat faster. “Trouble?”
“Don’t know.” We kept dancing. The black lady introduced herself as Lady Rondalee of Bel Loit and dedicated her first song to ‘all the lovers out there.’
“Trouble,” she sang. “Trouble, bad trouble, been dogging me all my days…”
“Well, that’s comforting,” whispered Darla.
“Ain’t no comfort, ain’t no comfort, no comfort ever comin’ my ways…”
“I think she can hear you,” I said.
“I hear you, I hear you sayin’, sayin’ I needs to be changin’ my ways…”
Darla stopped swaying. “You don’t think-”
“I don’t. Coincidence. We’re on edge, that’s all. It’s just a song.”
A waiter pushed his way through the crowd. His starched white shirt was stretched to near bursting by his muscular physique. A scar ran all the way down the right side of his face. Something under his black dinner jacket bulged, and I didn’t think it was a salt shaker.
He bore down on us, mindful to keep his hands visible and open, palms toward me.
He stopped a few paces short of us, and waited until I gently disengaged from Darla and moved to stand in front of her.
He nodded, reached slowly in his jacket, and came out with a note. He held it up and I took it from him, and he vanished into the crowd-doubtlessly to employ those muscles in the precise pouring of any one of Rannit’s finer wines.
I unfolded the note, just halfway, to make sure it didn’t bear hex signs. Instead, I recognized Gertriss’s tall plain hand, and opened it all the way.
BOSS, it read. BY THE PORT STAIR. COME QUICK. IT’S BAD.
Darla gasped, reading over my shoulder.
“Don’t suppose I could convince you to wait here?”
“Waste of time trying, dear.”
And we were off, weaving through the dancers, plowing through the drunks and the gamblers and their noisy entourages.
I caught one more stanza of Lady Rondalee’s song, before the din drowned her out.
“One day soon, one day soon, trouble gonna be the death of me…”
“Not tonight, I hope,” I muttered. Darla didn’t hear.
I put my shoulder to the mob and charged toward the stairs.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I found Gertriss.
Blood, maybe. Bodies, possibly. Mayhem, certainly.
But what we found appeared to be a shapely, young, blonde woman locked in the throes of rather public affection with a young man deep in his cups.
Gertriss and her companion had chosen a tiny table for two at the very back of the Queen’s casino deck. It was tucked into an alcove formed by the stairwell and the wall, and as such, it was deep in shadow and as well out of sight as any spot on the entire casino floor.