Dearest Elayne,
If you’re reading this, you noticed my little joke. If not, then I remind you once again, as you cough up your lungs and breathe your last, to move slowly and be careful. I would send flowers to your employers and seek out what remnants of a family you no doubt possess were I not certain you had contingencies in place to resuscitate you in the event of your demise. An apprentice, perhaps?
It has been a pleasure to watch you grow, though of course from a distance. Partner now, and in Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao no less! How it would warm old Mikhailov’s heart to see.
I know you don’t welcome advice from me, dearest, but please understand. This is a complex case. Many twists and turns here, many shadowy corners where unsavory secrets hide.
Be careful. Watch the Cardinal. My roots in Alt Coulumb run more deeply than your own, and I know him as an untrustworthy and backward devotee of an untrustworthy and backward faith. I say this not as your friend but as your colleague, and one who, if the letters I have received today are true, is every bit as interested as yourself in the development of this case.
We should speak. I will arrive in Alt Coulumb tomorrow morning, but look for me tonight in dreams.
Your adversary of the moment, but always,
Your friend,
Alexander Denovo
A jaunty line from that last “o” jagged off the scroll’s edge.
There was no one in the room to see the momentary slouch of Elayne’s shoulders, the bow of her head. No one saw her set the scroll down and lean against the desk. Of the four million souls in the artificially brilliant city beyond her window, not one saw her bend.
Nor did they see her head rise and starlight bloom from her eyes and from the numberless, fractally dense glyphs upon her flesh, shining through her body and garments as if they were fog. The room darkened, and smoke rose from the parchment where she touched it.
Her wrath broke, and she shrank within her skin and was nearly human again. Breath moved back and forth over her lips. She lifted her hand from the scroll, and saw that her thumb had burned a small dark spot on the velvety surface, over the trailing line of Denovo’s signature.
Alexander’s signature.
She rolled up the scroll, placed it in a desk drawer, and wove a curse around the drawer so that none who looked within save her would see anything of note. She paused, considered, and amended the curse to exclude Tara Abernathy. Succession planning. You never could be too careful.
A wicker box lay on the desk, stacked with contracts to sign, bindings and wards against invasion and the client’s further decay. On top of that stack she placed the book containing the notes of Ms. Abernathy’s accomplice. What was his name again? She frowned, and gripped the memory as in her youth she gripped the trout that swam close to the riverbank near her house. Abelard.
Ms. Kevarian had taught herself how to tickle trout an age of the world ago, to hold her hand in the brook and entice with her fingers, to soothe with the light brush of skin against scale, and then, fluid and fast, to grip and lift. She had been five when she gained the knack. Her parents had noticed. Everyone noticed when the word got around, including a young scholar, a boy of nearly twelve whose family was passing through on horseback, bearing him away for study at the Academies, those faltering predecessors of the Hidden Schools. That young boy had asked her how she learned, and she said it seemed natural to her, and he said things that seemed natural seldom were.
Alexander.
He would be here tomorrow, as creditors’ counsel, representative of the gods and men and Deathless Kings to whom Kos Everburning made promises that could not now be repaid.
She had expected this. She always hoped for the best, and expected the worst.
She looked through the window upon the starless city, and though she did not pray, she hoped that Ms. Abernathy could protect herself for one evening. When she returned, there would be a great deal to do.
Elayne sat down at the desk, removed the first few hundred pages of documents, prepared her black candle and her phial of red ink, her quill pen and her thin steel knife and her polished silver bowl, and began to read.
*
“You’re sure you know where you’re going?” Tara asked.
Cat did not respond. She held pace five steps ahead, heels clicking on the paving stones.
“I mean,” Tara said, “no disrespect, but we’ve been walking for almost an hour.”
Click, click. Click, click.
Abelard, to Tara’s right, walked stiffly and said nothing that might break the tension. Tara wished she could ask him questions with her eyes, questions like, “I thought you said this woman was your friend,” and, “We’ve been to six bars already, how many vamp hangouts can there be in one city,” and, “Was she born with that attitude or did it accrete on her with irritation, like an irascible pearl?”
The Pleasure Quarters convulsed with sick life like a corpse on a novice Craftsman’s table. Dancers in second-story windows shook their hips in time with music barely audible above the crowd’s din. An ermine-robed man vomited in a gutter while his friends laughed; a candy seller blew tiny elegant animals out of molten sugar and breathed a touch of Craft into them so they glowed from inside out. An old man with a distended, hairy belly ate fire on a clapboard stage, while next to him a girl in a pink leotard, no older than twelve and painted like a china doll, swallowed the broad blade of a scimitar.
“You haven’t given me much to go on,” Cat said, and from her tone Tara knew she, too, was frustrated by their difficulty locating Raz Pelham. “Iskari sailor, vampire. Do you have any idea how many of those there are in this city?”
“No,” Tara replied, feeling testy. “I don’t. This is my first time in Alt Coulumb.”
Cat whirled on her. “Kos!” Had her eyes been less bloodshot and her complexion not as pale, she would have been quite pretty. As it was, the word that came to mind was “striking.” “Do you want to get jumped? Your first time. Might as well put on a schoolgirl’s dress and walk about complaining you can’t get the buttons in the back done.”
Already a few slick erstwhile tour guides had proffered their services. Abelard fended them off with no effect; Cat shot them a deadly glance and they fled.
Tara bristled. “I was trying to thank you for helping us.”
“I’m helping because Abelard’s a friend even if he hasn’t dropped by in months, and because maybe your Iskari sailor can find someone to get me high.” She took a deep breath. “Look. I’m sorry. There are thousands of bars and dance halls and dives and whorehouses in the Pleasure Quarters. Some are clean, good places, most aren’t. We can’t cover them all in one night. I’ve been hitting big vamp lairs, but who knows if that’s this guy’s idea of a good time? We need more information.”
“Well,” Tara said, “I’ve told you most of what I know about him. Iskari, pirate, sailor, vampire. Five-nine, maybe five-ten, broad shoulders, red eyes, black hair. Owns his own ship.”
“Do you know how he became a vampire?”
“What difference would it make?”
“Some asked for the change, some didn’t. Some are into the terror-that-flaps-in-the-night thing, some aren’t. Some mope around all night, some want to dance from dusk till dawn.”
“I only met this guy for a minute or two.” An excuse. You could learn much in a minute. She remembered standing by his ship’s ramp, about to descend into the milling dockside crowd. “He was … made about forty years ago. After Seril’s death. He doesn’t come here often.”
Cat pulled back when she mentioned Seril, and made a brief hooking sign with her left hand. Superstition? She didn’t seem the type, but Alt Coulumb had long been a city of gods and secrets. “Forty years ago.” Cat tasted the words. “The Pleasure Quarters weren’t so friendly to vampires and their ilk back then.”