The Affair of the Mysterious Letter

by Alexis Hall

  “In my experience, the only principles a god stands for are deflowering virgins and burning people.”

  “That’s an oversimplification,” I protested.

  “Yes.” He smirked. “Religion tends to be.”

  I thought it best to let the matter go, and the monument that had precipitated the conversation gradually faded into the gloaming. As night drew in, gas lamps and arc lights crackled into life in both cities. On the hills of Athra, the windows of the Winter Palace glowed as brightly as they must have done in the days when the kings of Leonysse still sojourned there, though now they represented not the gaieties of the royal court but the industry of municipal clerks, labouring tirelessly over their minutes and memoranda. In the skies above Khel heatless alchemical flames burned along the edges of the mechanical platform that transferred scholars between street level and the entryway of the famous flying library, known colloquially as the Fata Morgana. Though they were not all visible, I knew also that a million smaller lights illuminated public streets and private homes, and I was struck for a moment by the bewildering immensity of things.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Salon of Mrs. Yasmine Benamara

  Some thirty minutes later, we disembarked at a small, suburban dock.

  “She’d better be guilty,” opined Mr. Lutrell. “If I find that we’ve come to this godsforsaken place for nothing I shall be most put out.”

  I looked around me at the tidy cobbled streets lined with brightly painted houses and sweet-smelling trees and was hard-pressed to observe anything to which any reasonable person might object. Although, given what I was fast learning about my companion, that was probably the exact issue.

  I placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. “Fear not, Mr. Lutrell. We may yet be attacked by a beast from another dimension or an assassin hell-bent on halting our investigation.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but I fear the most deadly weapon we’re likely to be confronted with in a place like this is a sternly worded letter from the borough council. Besides, I’ve been to this sort of salon before. Nothing interesting ever happens at them.”

  This, it transpired, would be one of the few occasions on which my companion was wrong. Although she would, when later confronted, refuse to admit it.

  It was a short walk up the hillside to the Benamara residence, an eminently respectable detached property commanding a fine view of the strait. On Mr. Lutrell’s presentation of his invitation (to this day, I know not where he acquired it) we were ushered inside by a demure maidservant. We followed her into a tastefully appointed chamber, decorated in modern Khelish fashion, which leaned towards geometric designs, bold colours, and abstract patterns. The guests, who were mostly lounging on divans and floor cushions, ran a terribly specific gamut, from the controversial end of bourgeois to the bourgeois end of controversial; which is to say I recognised one or two unorthodox theologians but no outright heretics, a number of famous beauties but no actual courtesans, and a group of celebrated reformers who nevertheless drew the line at revolution.

  At the sight of my companion, a louche, long-haired Khelish gentleman, dressed flamboyantly in a somewhat outmoded Athran style of slashed sleeves and half hose, rose from where he had been reclining. “Mr. Lutrell,” he cried. “How dare you show your face in this company? Your review of my Sigurd and Ivan was the most ill-articulated, venomous, petty-minded, plebeian agglomeration of sputum that has ever disgraced print.”

  Mr. Lutrell’s pale eyes glinted. “Lord Bahrami—”

  Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce for my readers the remainder of his response. Suffice to say, it was short, to the point, and quite spectacularly vulgar, recommending as it did a course of action quite beneath his lordship’s dignity, not to mention his physical capacity. It also garnered a reaction from the room that I, having grown accustomed to moving in circles with no regard whatsoever for social mores, found quite unsettlingly appropriate.

  “You”—Lord Bahrami subjected my companion to a look of rather magnificent contempt—“are no gentleman. And, worse, you are no wit.”

  Although, of course, I had the utmost respect for Ms. Haas’s abilities in many areas I was becoming concerned that in the art of subterfuge her extraordinary talents were somewhat at odds with her mercurial nature and fondness for the dramatic. Indeed, I was not entirely certain that she was, in this exact moment, cognisant of the fact that she was meant to be playing a part.

  “Come now, Mr. Lutrell,” I whispered. “We should avoid making a scene.”

  “Ah. Quite right.” He closed his mouth with a snap. “And you are most correct, Lord Bahrami. I am no gentleman, nor no wit. Nor any person of value or consequence. And certainly not possessed of any remarkable gifts of will, intellect, or capacity to command—”

  I thought it best to prevent Mr. Lutrell from further disquisition. “Well said, sir. You are, after all, merely a literary critic.”

  “You didn’t have to interrupt me, Captain. That’s exactly what I was saying.”

  “Believe me, Lutrell, nobody cares what you are saying.” Lord Bahrami turned and, moving with the slightest of limps, vanished through an archway into the perfumed garden beyond.

  Unfamiliar as I was with this variety of artistic gathering, I was at a loss as to whether the disruption caused by our arrival was an unforgivable social transgression or an expected element of the evening’s entertainment. This uncertainty, I fear, left me somewhat discombobulated. My companion, however, suffered no such affliction, making directly for a tray of baklava and helping himself with indelicate gusto.

  Across the room, a lady extricated herself from a small crowd of guests and came towards us. She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties, with a grace of bearing and neatness of person I found rather charming. As she walked, her tastefully embroidered abaya fluttered gently in the breeze from the open windows.

  “Mr. Lutrell?” she asked.

  He paused in his assault on the refreshments. “Yes?”

  “I’m so sorry about Bahrami. You know how geniuses are.”

  “I can quite confidently say that I do.”

  “I’m very glad you could make it to my little gathering. I would love to introduce you to some of my guests.”

  With that, the lady—who I presumed to be Mrs. Benamara—took my companion by the arm and drew him firmly away from the pastries. I trailed after them, content to observe and place my possibly misguided faith in Ms. Haas’s judgement and subtlety. We moved first to an eclectic cluster of persons, engaged in an animated discussion of Ilari love poetry.

  “. . . fully aware of the cultural and historical context,” a pallid gentleman was saying in an accent I couldn’t quite place. “But the verses themselves are vilely insipid.”

  His interlocutor, a dark-skinnned Khelite in the silk-trimmed robes traditionally worn by fellows of the university, subjected him to a withering glare. “The mere thought that an educated person could hold such an opinion—”

  They paused, as if the notion was genuinely too dreadful to countenance, and were immediately interrupted.

  “Vasile is not an educated person,” murmured the third guest from behind an elaborate and grotesque carnival mask. “He’s from Pesh.”

  Vasile, as the pale gentleman was apparently known, flushed a sickly shade of pink. “As one exile to another, I’d thank you not to use my homeland against me.”

  “Darling, you wrote an entire cantata about your people’s hostility to original thought.”

  “That is precisely my objection to Farah’s tedious obsession with the Ilari.” He paused, coughing into a slightly bloodstained handkerchief. “There is neither originality nor value in devoting one’s life to fellating an extinct civilisation.”

  The scholar sighed. “Oh, Vasile. It is comments like that which ensure your works will ever be the sensation of the moment; a child’s tantrum th
at draws brief notice, fast grows wearisome, and is soon forgotten.”

  To my relief our hostess chose this juncture to formally introduce Mr. Lutrell. Of our present company, I learned the following. The consumptive gentleman, Mr. Vasile Kovac, was a recent arrival from the Hagiocracy of Pesh, a composer of revolutionary bent and atheistic leanings. The academic I already knew by reputation; they went by the mononym Farah and were one of the foremost authorities on Ilari poetry. The second gentleman in the group, who had not thus far spoken, was Iacomo Van der Berg, an Athran poet of the jobbing sort, who had spent the last fifty years producing unexceptionable verses on such subjects as society weddings, military victories, significant deaths, and civic festivals.

  This just left the masked lady and her companion. The former went by Ambrosia de Luca and, as I might easily have concluded from her attire and the peculiar lambency of her eyes, was of Carcosan stock. Apparently she was an up-and-coming playwright, whose works to date had focused primarily on adapting traditional Carcosan folk narratives such that they could be enjoyed by a Khelathran audience without too great a risk of the terrible truths contained within them, driving said audience irreversibly to madness. Her partner, who had apparently come to the salon out of duty and affection and did not appear to be enjoying a moment of it, was a Marvosi force captain by the name of Domitia.

  For those who are unfamiliar with that people or their homeland, the world of Marvos is a vast red desert orbiting an unremarkable yellow star at the edge of a distant galaxy. The Marvosi themselves are tall, green skinned, and warlike, their conquests driven by an unending need for two resources: water and labour. They make fine soldiers but terrible dinner guests. At mention of my name, the force captain looked down at me with slightly more interest than she had hitherto displayed. “John Wyndham? Captain John Wyndham who held the pass at the Senescent Void?”

  Preferring not to discuss such matters, I replied only by a slight inclination of my head.

  “Impressive.” She paused. “For a human.”

  Miss de Luca batted playfully at her lover. “Try not to be such a stereotype, darling.”

  “It was a compliment. Most humans are weak and cowardly.”

  “You do remember that I’m a human, as is everyone else in this room.”

  “Yes.” Force Captain Domitia blinked slowly. “And the majority of you are weak and cowardly. I fail to see how the comment was relevant.”

  That Mr. Lutrell had remained silent until this point had engendered in me an overly optimistic complacency. He now entered the discussion. “We’re not all weak and cowardly,” he observed. “Some of us are arrogant and undisciplined.”

  “That is worse.”

  “I wonder”—Mrs. Benamara placed a hand gently on Mr. Lutrell’s shoulder, making a none-too-subtle attempt to steer the conversation in a more productive direction—“have you yet had the opportunity to attend Mr. Kovac’s latest opera?”

  Mr. Lutrell started, an expression of visible horror on his face. “Gods, no. Why would I do such a thing?”

  “Because,” I suggested, “you’re a literary critic, sir.”

  “Oh, opera. I’m so sorry. I thought you said ritual disembowelling of a sacrificial heifer.”

  There was a brief pause, and then Mr. Kovac said, “It is called The Pyres of Autumn. It takes its inspiration from the revolution in the Kingdom of Ey. A group of villagers become convinced that the spirit of the Witch King is influencing members of their community and turn upon one another in a futile outpouring of hostility and fear. It is a sad but necessary commentary on the corrosive effect of religious superstition on the minds of simple people.”

  While I was aware that the regime in Ey was not without its failings, I was not wholly pleased with the way Mr. Kovac appeared to be representing my country. I cleared my throat. “Might I ask why you did not choose to locate this narrative in Pesh?”

  Mr. Kovac crushed his handkerchief in his fist. “I am under no obligation to justify to a theocrat the manner in which I choose to write on the subject of theocracy.”

  “With respect,” I demurred, “Ey is not a theocracy. It is a parliamentary republic.”

  “A republic governed in accordance with the tenets of a cult that worships a deity who is nothing more than a mindless ball of degenerate nuclear matter.”

  At this, Mr. Van der Berg broke his silence. “Come now, Vasile. Art’s all well and good, but the Creator is a god and worthy of respect.”

  “Pay him no mind, Iacomo.” Our hostess shook her head indulgently. “You know what Vasile’s like.”

  The unpleasantness might here have dissipated. I was no more content than I had been at the start of the exchange, but I would have let the matter go for the sake of civility, to say nothing of the mission from which it appeared we were becoming increasingly distracted.

  Mr. Kovac, however, suffered no such scruples. He turned upon me, with a look of disquieting resentment. “Of course, the great irony is that you stand here piously bleating about the unforgivable slander my opera perpetuates against your people, when your people will be unable to view it because your own Lord Protector has banned all forms of theatrical performance. Thus those most in need of my insight are the ones least able to access it.”

  “It was not my intent to make you angry, Mr. Kovac.” I did not appreciate his tone, but I felt it was important to moderate mine. “I simply wished to know why you would choose to set this story in my country, rather than in your own.”

  He stifled a fresh bout of coughing. “I cannot write about Pesh without bringing with me the knowledge of the hundred years that my people have been ruled by the Assembly of Hagiarchs. There is too much history. Too much suffering. Too much everything. Writing about a distant land gives me the freedom to do what I otherwise could not.”

  “That seems rather unfair on the Eyans,” remarked Mr. Lutrell, somewhat to my surprise.

  “The Eyans are not my concern.”

  “Did you not just claim that they were the ones most in need of your insight?” Mr. Lutrell grabbed a stuffed vine leaf from a nearby tray. “I’m sure Mr. Wyndham understands that you don’t want to reduce the history and culture of your nation to a simple parable about religious intolerance. But at least do him the courtesy of admitting that your creative choices were made for your benefit, not his.”

  Mr. Kovac curled his lip in open contempt. “Go back to your magazine, old man. You know nothing.”

  At which juncture, Mrs. Benamara caught him firmly by the arm. “Oh, look, dear Vasile, Ifunanya Liu has just arrived.” The lady did a remarkable job of remaining calm and measured, as though it truly were a mere happy coincidence that an appropriate distraction had arisen just as the conversation was becoming awkward. “She was telling me just the other day how greatly she admires your work. Do be sweet and go bother her instead of these people.”

  “You are all philistines and lackeys,” he retorted, although with less venom than he had previously employed, “and I do not know why I associate with you.”

  “I always thought you only came for the food, Vasile.” Mr. Van der Berg sauntered, chuckling, in the direction of the buffet.

  Although I was rather ashamed to have precipitated it, the dissolution of the discussion group came as no small relief to me. I was equally conflicted on the matter of Mr. Lutrell’s intervention, for while it comforted me to know that my companion would come to my defence, in truth I felt for Mr. Kovac and would not, if left to my own devices, have spoken so harshly to him. It is a hard thing to know that your homeland rejects you and I begrudge nobody the strategies that enable them to bear it.

  Mr. Lutrell took the opportunity to pursue the playwright and her consort, the force captain, who had retired together to a more intimate nook. They did not look entirely pleased by the intrusion.

  As we approached, the force captain narrowed her violet eyes and utt
ered a low growl. “Begone. You are not wanted.”

  “Which part of ‘influential literary critic’ do you not understand?” returned Mr. Lutrell.

  “The part that would stop me breaking your spine like the leg of desert spider.”

  “Darling”—Miss de Luca put a restraining hand upon the Marvosi’s muscular thigh—“we’ve spoken about this. In our part of the cosmos, threats of physical violence are not considered a sign of respect.”

  Mr. Lutrell smirked in a manner that, momentarily at least, made him look a lot more like a sorcerer and a lot less like a journalist. “Believe me, as physical threats go, that was pathetic.”

  There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.

  “Ambrosia”—Domitia reached slowly for her gladius—“this man is annoying me. Let me kill him. It will save a lot of time and energy.”

  I was, at this point, in no especial fear for Mr. Lutrell’s safety. I had seen only a fraction of my companion’s sorcerous powers but was confident that she would be in no danger from anything so prosaic as a sword, even one wielded by a Marvosi force captain. Still, I was keen that this altercation not escalate, as it would likely lead to our expulsion from the party and unnecessarily impede our investigation.

  Placing myself between Mr. Lutrell and Domitia, I stood as firmly as I was able and spoke as follows. “Force Captain, you are armed and we are not. You will draw your sword and kill us now, or you will be silent.”

  This was, I will admit, a gambit not wholly without risk. During my time with the Company of Strangers I had, on occasion, needed to face down angry Marvosi and had always found they responded best if you spoke plainly and stood your ground. I had been stabbed twice and suffered a broken jaw attempting such a strategy in the past, but those outcomes had always been preferable to the alternative.

  After appearing to seriously contemplate both options, Force Captain Domitia loosened her grip on her weapon and nodded sharply.

  “So, Mr. Lutrell,” said Miss de Luca, barely missing a beat, “what can I do for you? You’ve already made your feelings on The Inhabitant quite clear.”