“That won’t be necessary, Serenity,” Madam Erys said quickly. “I know a psychic surgeon who owes me a favor. I’m certain he’ll quote you a reasonable price.”
“How soon would he be able to do the work?”
Madam Erys reached into her décolletage and removed a heart-shaped locket-watch on a golden chain. “If we hurry, he should be able to squeeze you in today.”
“I thought you said we were going to your doctor-friend’s office?” Hexe frowned.
“I didn’t say he was my friend,” Erys replied a bit sharply. “Just that he owed me a favor. Besides, he conducts most of his business from here.”
As it turned out, “here,” as Madam Erys so put it, was none other than the Stagger Inn, one of the lowest of Golgotham’s low taverns. It was not the kind of establishment one would expect a respectable psychic surgeon to be hanging out in during office hours. However, if you were looking for cheap intoxicants and a knife fight, you’d definitely come to the right place.
“I don’t like this at all,” I whispered. “And I really don’t like her. Something’s screwy about all this. Can’t we just forget about this gauntlet thing and go back home, please?”
“Normally, I’d agree with you,” Hexe replied. “But these aren’t normal times, Tate. I have to regain the use of my right hand. If that means becoming involved with a dodgy sorceress . . . well, it won’t be the first time.”
“Dori was different, and you know that,” I protested. “And I can’t believe I just defended someone who tried to turn me into a toad.”
“Is there a problem, Serenity?” Madam Erys asked, turning back to give me a disapproving look as she opened the door to the Stagger Inn.
“No, everything’s fine,” he assured her.
Against my better judgment, I followed them into the bar. The moment I set foot inside, my eyes began to water and I started to cough. Kymerans tend to smoke like clogged chimneys when they’re sober, and even more so when they’re drunk. The interior of the Stagger Inn was filled with a blue-tinged pall that hung in the air as thick as fog. Judging from its smell, the miasma was a mixture of tobacco, hashish, and opium smoke from a variety of cigars, hookahs, and pipes.
We continued through a low-slung archway into a public room with ponderous beams overhead and worm-shot planking underfoot. The main room had neither electric nor gaslight fixtures, and was instead lit by stray balls of witchfire, which bumped against the low ceiling like wandering toy balloons. The Stagger Inn’s clientele was composed of the hardest drinkers in Golgotham, mostly satyrs, ipotanes, maenads, and leprechauns, and it was reflected in the pub’s atmosphere. This was not the kind of place you go to in order to celebrate a birthday or commemorate an anniversary; this was the kind of place you go to in order to drink as much as possible, for as cheaply as possible, for as long as possible before either throwing up, losing consciousness, or being thrown out, if not all three.
At the back of the room was what passed for the bar, behind which stood an older maenad, her leopard-skin cloak askew and one boob hanging out. As I watched, she poured absinthe into a greasy-looking cocktail glass and handed it to a blowzy nymph, who transported it to a booth in one of the shadowier corners of the main room.
“That’s our contact,” Madam Erys said, pointing to the older Kymeran the waitress had just served.
Although I had never personally met the tall, thin man with the receding sage-colored hair and long, tapering fingers before, I instantly recognized him as Dr. Moot, who occasionally worked for the Maladanti. This was because, months ago, I had seen him reflected within a scrying stone, mutilating the feet of my friend Lukas with a silver scalpel.
Hexe recoiled, his mouth twisted into a grimace of distaste. “You can keep the gauntlet, Madam Erys. I know this man, and I refuse to have anything to do with him.”
As Hexe turned to leave, Dr. Moot raised his glass of absinthe in a mock salute. “Have it your way, Serenity,” he said in a slightly slurred, overloud voice. “But good luck finding anyone else willing to work as cheap as me. Or, perhaps, you’ll find a boneknitter somewhere who can turn a Malleus Maleficarum fracture widdershins.”
Hexe spun back around to glare at Moot, his face gray as old porridge. “How do you know about that?”
“How do you think I know?” the psychic surgeon sneered. “Now sit down before you call any more attention to yourself.” He gestured to the seat opposite him with a long-fingered hand. “The tosspots around here aren’t so soused they won’t eventually notice the Heir Apparent slumming it amongst them. And if Marz finds out I’m talking to you, he won’t hesitate to clip my wings, so to speak,” he said, miming cutting off one of his fingers with a pair of scissors.
Hexe hesitated for a moment and then grudgingly sat down in the booth opposite the disgraced surgeon. I slid in after him, leaving Erys to drag over a chair from a nearby table. The smell of wormwood radiated from Moot so strongly I at first assumed he’d accidently spilled his absinthe onto himself.
“When Madam here told me she had someone interested in the Gauntlet of Nydd, I knew it had to be you. I’ve agreed to do the surgery—but only because I owe her a debt. After which, we’re done; is that understood?” Moot said, shooting a meaningful look in the glover’s direction.
“Of course,” Madam Erys replied stiffly.
“I used to be friends with your Uncle Esau, you know,” Dr. Moot said as he studied Hexe over the rim of his glass. “I worked with him on those clockwork limbs of his. He first learned how to construct them from the Royal Surgeon, Dr. Tork, but Esau later went on to refine the technique. He crafted the limbs, and I handled the surgery. That was a long, long time ago, though.”
“Did you know his wife back then?” Hexe asked.
The question seemed to catch Moot off guard. He glanced over at Madam Erys and then dropped his gaze into the green depths of the absinthe. “Of course, I knew Nina,” he said solemnly. “I’m the one who introduced them.”
“What was she like?” Hexe asked, a quizzical look on his face. “No one in my family is willing to talk about her. In fact, I never even knew she existed until recently.”
Before Dr. Moot could reply, Madam Erys abruptly stood up as if an unseen puppeteer had yanked her upright by invisible strings. “Please excuse me; I need a drink,” she said in a cold, clipped voice. As the glover headed toward the bar, a look of relief flickered across Dr. Moot’s eyes.
“Nina was a wonderful, wonderful woman,” he said, speaking in a conspiratorial whisper, as if afraid of being overheard. “I met her at the same place I met your uncle—at Thamaturgical College. She and I were both studying the Healing Arts, and happened to take the same potions class under Professor Kohl. I later went into psychic surgery, while she developed into one of the best potion-makers I’ve ever known. One day I invited her over to the workshop I shared with your uncle, to see what we were working on. The moment she and Esau saw one another, any chance I had with her went out the window.” He gave a wry, sad laugh at that point, and suddenly, despite myself, I felt a twinge of pity for the butchering bastard. “Nina was a very kind and caring woman—and that’s what made her such a marvelous healer. She could not look at a person in pain and not be moved to alleviate their suffering.”
“I’m having a hard time imagining my uncle being married to someone like that,” Hexe said skeptically.