After Hours: Tales From Ur-Bar

by Joshua Palmatier; Patricia Bray

  When asked, it healed Azami’s arm. Once she regained her energy, the three of them headed back to Hokuga. It didn’t take long to encounter the samurai.

  “Remember, do not kill anyone,” Azami said to the kappa as fourteen warriors surrounded them with their weapons drawn.

  “Must eat,” it whined.

  “Human blood? Or can you drink animal blood?”

  “Oh, both. And like cucumbers. Yummy.”

  “You will be fed in exchange for protection.”

  It perked up. “Protect now? Fun? Make men run?” The white liquid completely filled the kappa’s dent.

  “Only if they attack us.” She took the kappa’s hand in hers. Then she turned in a slow circle and met each samurai’s gaze, holding it until the warrior acknowledged her with a nod and sheathed his katana.

  “What now?” Saburo asked.

  “We go home.”

  THE FORTUNE-TELLER MAKES HER WILL

  Kari Sperring

  “FIRE,” whispered the angels. “Fire is falling.”

  Their voices slipped between her daughter Madeleine’s lips, silken and sweet, some high, some low. And the fire followed them, long ghost banners of it. It licked the tips of her fingers, rolled out across the table top, danced and pranced and spun out on every side. On the other side of the table, the fortune-teller shivered, her eyes fixed on her daughter’s face. “Fire”. No matter how she phrased the question, the answer was always the same. Fire. Fire for the fortune-teller and her associates. Fire for the pretty wife of the councilor, with her hunger for beauty and money and freedom from marriage. Fire for the complacent priests and the perfume-sellers; fire and pain and darkness. It reached its fine red fingers for the rakish comtesse in her web of plots, for the dashing duc with his hopes and hidden hatred, for the peerless marquise in her royal boudoir. It limned the slim silhouette of sweet Madeleine as she sat at her mother’s table to channel the angels, blue eyes blank and empty, fixed on nothingness. The future was full of fire and it would consume them all. It rolled and danced about the room, threw hot shadows across the vials and bottles, the jars of herbs and the heavy bound books. It ran its hands over the fortune-teller’s face, down her throat, closed its fingers about her, hot and heavy. She gasped and shuddered from it, breaking the spell.

  Madeleine’s eyes snapped shut as her head dropped forward. The red light winked out, leaving the workroom pale in the inferior glow of the candles. For long moments the fortune-teller sat in silence, calming her breathing, swallowing down her fears. Fire and only fire. There was no way out for her, then: the angels had spoken. She must face that, head high, and make of it what she must. But Madeleine.... Rising, she went round the table to her daughter, who had slumped forward. Madeleine’s skin was soft with sleep, her breathing low and regular. The fortune-teller stroked back the long curls. The angels had touched her. The angels, surely, would want to save her, this vessel, this innocent through whom they worked? She patted the girl’s cheek and returned to her own seat. Opening one of the drawers of her work table, she took out three sheets of the finest paper.

  She was not, perhaps, the most gifted of the diviners of Paris. There were others more apt with the arts of conjuring or the skillful manipulation of smoke and mirrors. But in the art of presentation, none surpassed her. Her bower was the most fragrant, her consulting room the most opulent and alluring, her person—if not by nature attractive—the cleanest and most reassuring. And then there was Madeleine, with her blue eyes and blonde curls and wide sweet smile; Madeleine, through whose soft pink lips the spirits spoke—angels, most certainly, for no demon could find foot-hold in such an innocent vessel. Madeleine brought the clients in, to sit on soft settles and hear the words of the otherworld. No matter that the words were often garbled or unclear. Her voice was soft and bell-toned and her face guileless. And her step-mother, the fortune-teller, was always on hand to offer explanations and translations alongside other, more practical services.

  Fire on all sides. But not, the fortune-teller told herself, for Madeleine, the agent of angels. Dipping her quill into her purest ink, she bent her head and began to write.

  The fortune-teller thought long and hard about these letters, to be delivered should anything befall her. She crafted each word with exquisite care. No outsider, reading one of them, must catch so much as a glimmer of what they contained: a warning, a threat, a wish. Under the seal of each she placed a strand of her thin grey hair, whispering words to the soft wax she placed over it. Her will. Her will. Her will be done.

  Thaïs stalked into the cabaret and flung her hat down onto the long counter. The bartender, Monsieur Gilles, cast a knowing look at her, before setting a small cup of something thick and potent before her. She drank it off without looking at it, coughed, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and swore.

  “Your marquise wouldn’t like to hear you talk like that,” said Gilles, moving the nearest bottle out of easy reach.

  “The marquise can dance on a sharpened spike.” Thaïs glared into the cup. “What was that? The contents of your pisspot? Give me another.”

  “You don’t need it.” Gilles took the cup away and replaced it with an earthenware goblet which he half-filled with red wine. “Try this. The chevalier de Lionne sent me two barrels to clear his tab.”

  The cabaret was situated on a low corner, where the Rue Servandoni met the Allée de St-Paul, in the damp undercroft of a print-shop. From outside there was nothing to distinguish it—no sign, no welcoming flambeau, only a short flight of stone steps and a rather battered door. It had no formal name: it was known simply as the bar de l’heure, from the great clock of the Église St-Paul opposite. It was seldom more than a quarter full. “Those who need us find us,” said Gilles, when customers asked. Thaïs had stumbled across it one day some three years earlier—quite literally, when her ankle gave way and she tumbled down the steps. The door had opened just quickly enough to conceal her from the young nobleman who had stepped, quite unexpectedly, out of the book-shop three doors down. Chances were he would not have been able to place her, but she did not like to take such chances. Not when one filled one’s pockets in the fashion she did.

  Her employer knew Thaïs could read: that was part of her value to Madame. She had no idea, however, that Thaïs was one of those who supplied the print shop over the bar de l’heure with its steady stream of satires and filthy songs on courtiers, ministers, mistresses, and the king. Madame was rich and spoiled and expected her maids to be loyal.

  Now, she sipped her wine and pulled a face. Too sweet and too thin, like the young women the chevalier preferred for his bed. Like Madeleine, the little witch who haunted too many of Thaïs’ dreams. Gilles picked up a cloth and began to polish a pewter tankard. He said, “Give it time to breathe. We’re all the better for a little breathing.”

  She threw him a dusty look. He went on, “I take it your latest work was too hot for my neighbor?”

  “He doesn’t want to offend too much.” She mimicked the mincing tones of the printer. “Not in the current climate, with La Reynie and his policemen hunting up trouble all over the city.”

  “Ah.” Gilles set the tankard down and wiped imaginary dust from the top of the squat clay tablet mounted over the back of his bar. For any other man, it would have been a reach. Gilles was not any other man. He was the tallest man Thaïs had seen, taller even than the giant musketeer who went by the name Porthos. If La Reynie came here with his men, he’d have a real fight on his hands.

  Not that La Reynie, the Lieutenant-General of the Paris Police, was remotely interested in cabarets, however odd. Or printshops, not right now. The word on police lips everywhere these days was “poison.”

  The house of the marquise was in uproar when Thaïs returned. Madame could not find her preferred fan—some careless servant must have misplaced or broken it. Madame’s chicory water was too sour, too warm, too dusty. Madame’s creditors were daring to contact her: had they no idea who she was? Nothing and no one
was pleasing to her in any imaginable way. The king, murmured a tiring maid to Thaïs, had been late to arrive and early to depart, and had, moreover, dared to raise with Madame the matter of her spending. Madame had raged and ranted for fully two hours before finally finishing her toilette and sweeping out to soothe her spite by exercising it on those she professed to call friends. Shedding boots and breeches and male doublet in the narrow room she shared with three others, Thaïs murmured quiet thanks to her guardian angel—if she had such a thing—that today had been her jour de congé.

  Madeleine believed in angels. “As beautiful as your Madame,” she had whispered to Thaïs, on one of the visits Madame had paid to consult with her mother the fortune-teller and, through her, with Madeleine. Madeleine’s angels visited her regularly, at her mother’s command, and used her lips to speak to the elect, promising—or so the fortune-teller swore—every kind of benefit and earthly advancement. “Your Madame is blessed,” said Madeleine, who could not credit that angels might have truck with any but the good, the pure.

  If angels spoke to her Madame, then Thaïs had no faith in angels—or else the angels who came to Madeleine were of that company no longer welcome in heaven. If Madeleine understood the questions Madame put, she, too, might be more ready to doubt. But Madeleine remembered nothing, once the angels settled upon her. It was her mother who called them down into residence, her mother who decoded the strange sweet words they spoke.

  Angels. Demons. Or perhaps just Madeleine’s private madness. Thaïs neither knew nor cared overmuch. It was Madame’s gold that went to pay the fortune-teller, not hers, and Madame’s interests that the visits sought to serve. Now, Thais wriggled into her dress, tied her hair into a perfunctory knot and went downstairs in search of food.

  Madeleine was waiting for her in an antechamber, nibbling on one of the dainty pastries rejected earlier by Madame. Her long pale hair fell forward over one shoulder in lustrous curls; her blue gaze examined the delicate porcelain plate from which she ate. If Madame knew she came here.... It was one thing to consult soothsayers in their Parisian lairs. It was quite another to admit them to the gilded precincts of Versailles. The king had no love for such creatures, whom he regarded as charlatans at best. And as for those who consulted them.... Not even Madame’s beauty and her long sojourn in his regard would help her if the king chose to believe her guilty of seeking to influence him through sorcery.

  Madeleine looked up and every part of her face smiled as she saw Thaïs. Thaïs pressed her lips together, fighting the wave of pure delight that threatened to rise in her at the sight. She would not be softened by blue eyes and curls and that endless, guileless innocence. She plumped herself down at the table opposite Madeleine and grabbed a handful of pastries from the platter. “What are you doing here?”

  “Maman sent me.” Madeleine’s voice was as sweet as her exterior. “She has sent a new lotion for Madame.”

  “Madame won’t be pleased. She doesn’t like your mother sending people here.”

  Madeleine’s lips drew down. She never seemed to know what to do with contradiction or complication. She looked back at the plate, small fingers playing with the remains of her pastry. Her mother, the old witch, would have told her to deliver the message personally, of course. Thaïs sighed. “Give it to me, then, and I’ll make sure Madame gets it.”

  Madeleine looked up and once again that smile was written across her face. “I knew you’d help me.”

  “Well.” Thaïs shrugged and held out her hand. “The lotion?”

  “Oh!” Madeleine reached into the bodice of her dress and drew out a tiny phial. “Here it is.” Thaïs took it and tucked it into a pocket without looking.

  She said, “You’d best be going, then.”

  “Oh, but....” Another pout. “One of the other maids told me Madame was out. I had thought. . . .” Her fingers traced the bright borders of the plate.

  It would not do. It would never do. The whole thing was hopeless, stupid. If they were caught.... Thaïs swallowed her last mouthful and stood. “Very well, then. Come on.”

  It was her own fault, of course, for telling Madeleine about Madame’s lovely gowns and fine furnishings. The trouble was, Madeleine loved to hear of such things, and Thaïs loved to tell her of them and watch those blue eyes grow round with delight. And as to her promise to show them, should Madeleine ever visit the palace.... Foolishness, from start to finish, and all too like to draw upon her precisely the kind of attention she did not desire. They were bought with blood and lies, all those beautiful things: tricked or wheedled out of the king, who should know better than to squander his tax revenues on his spoiled mistress. Of course, Madeleine would never think of that. Madeleine saw only the prettiness.

  Thaïs led Madeleine along the narrow back corridor that led to Madame’s boudoir. She listened carefully at the door before opening it and ushering them both inside. This was the heart of Madame’s lair, where she entertained the king and displayed herself to choice friends and rivals.

  The room was a treasure-box of gilded wood and rich fabrics, mirrors and crystal, fine-turned and decorated furnishings, fine porcelain and gold and silver objets d’art. Madeleine’s breath caught and her mouth opened on a silent “Oh,” as she took in the Turkey carpet and the great carved bed, the heavy tapestries depicting goddess and nymphs at their sport, the silver candelabra and the great crystal chandelier. She put out a hand towards the nearest object, an inlaid cabinet, and drew it back, shaking. She said, “Madame lives like a queen.”

  “Better than the queen.” Thaïs said. She took hold of the closest edge of the bed hangings and gave them a tug. “The queen has to make do with old cloth and dust. These are new.” They were crimson, these hangings, and richly damask: a whole village could have lived in comfort for a year on what they had cost. Thaïs herself had earned three times a month’s wages with a ballad written on what they witnessed every night.

  Not that Madame knew about that, of course.

  “So many pretty things,” Madeleine said. She had advanced into the center of the room. “I wish I was you, to see these every day.” There was a great portrait of Madame, dressed in a loose robe and with her hair unbound, hanging on the wall opposite the bed. “Madame is so beautiful.”

  Madeleine would not think Madame so lovely if she saw her in a rage. But Thaïs did not say that. She picked up one of the silver-backed brushes from the dressing table, and said, “She knows how to make herself look well, I’ll grant you.” Crossing the room, she set her hands on Madeleine’s shoulders. “But your hair is lighter than hers, and longer, too. Sit down.” She gave Madeleine a little push, guiding her to a straight-backed chair. “Hers is coarse, these days, and her hairdresser has to help her with the color.” She tugged the cord from Madeleine’s hair and began to draw the brush through it. “You’d look much better than she does in most of her gowns.” Under her fingers, Madeleine’s hair was silk. Thaïs closed her eyes. She should not be doing this, if she was caught it would be her job, and worse.

  “I wish I lived here, like you,” Madeleine said. “I’d love to look after all these things.”

  Thaïs shook her head, opening her eyes. “It’s harder work than you think.”

  “I’d like it. I could dust and wash and mend. I like to do all those. Much better than what Maman has me do.”

  The angels, or whatever creatures it was that the fortune-teller conjured from those soft lips, that was not a safe profession, not in these days. Thaïs said, “I’ll speak to Madame. Perhaps she’ll have work for you. But your mother. . . .”

  “I don’t like it,” Madeleine burst out. Under Thaïs’ hands, her neck was suddenly rigid. “It makes me feel dizzy and strange when Maman calls them. The voices make my throat hurt and when they leave, I have a headache. I don’t know what they make me say. I don’t like it. I want an ordinary life, like yours. To work for someone like Madame. Some day a husband and babies. But not the voices.”

  Louis Vanens was the he
art of a network of poisoners, who had accomplished the death of the Duke of Savoy. The rumor started in the depths of Vincennes, as those rounded up by Monsieur de La Reynie prolonged their lives by naming names. It traveled fast, on the lips of gaolers and guards, clerks to the inquiry and officers of the police. Monsieur de La Reynie was vindicated, it seemed, in his conviction of the corruption that engulfed France. Vanens, sanguine, wrote to the king offering to share his occult knowledge of the philosopher’s stone. The king did not trouble himself to reply. Another captive, Madame Bosse, knew nothing of Vanens, but she had her own tales to tell, of the four hundred or more diviners who plied their trade in Paris.

  La Reynie and his men listened to them all, accounts of spells cast to find treasure or secure the love of a desired person; descriptions of confused, semi-Christian rituals designed to make husbands less cruel, of fortune-telling sessions to uncover the death-dates of those gentlemen, of potions and magics designed to hasten those deaths. The stories spun out and out—black masses here, animal sacrifice there; aphrodisiacs and perfumes; abortifacients and skin creams. The names mentioned reached higher and higher, closer and closer to the king. Husbands began to look askance at wives, lovers at their mistresses. Highborn lords dismantled the alchemical equipment in their cellars and burnt their correspondence. Court ladies smiled too brightly at one another as they proclaimed that they, of course, had never had recourse to the perfumers and magicians of the city to aid complexions and love affairs. With each new revelation at Vincennes, La Reynie added another diviner to his public list and another aristocrat to the more private list he shared only with the king. With each new arrest, the blame spread further and further. The king ordered the creation of a special court to try the magicians and poisoners, the Chambre Ardente. Officers of the police force came by night to capture the fortune-teller’s associates. And, at last, one night, they came for her.