by RW Krpoun
The talk in the circle was women subjects, and things someone from outside of Teasau could safely sit out of without giving offense, sit out of and study. The topics seemed harmless enough, but the questions and comments tossed at the newcomers were a bit more probing than would normally be heard at such a gathering, and there was a strong undercurrent of inside humor and unity amongst the other women that Elonia was sure was more facade than fact. The Duchess and her girls used the second category women as stage props and concealment while they stalked their prey.
The group broke up on some signal of the hostess’ after Elonia had been there for the better part of an hour, to drift about the party and peck at the buffet. The Duchess stayed on her arm, to ‘introduce you to everyone, dear’. When they went past the drinks table Elonia quietly traded her half-glass of wine for a freshly-poured one and took a real drink to drop the level a bit; she also noted than none of the fine brandy they had sent to the Duchess was available, even though its quality was such that it wouldn’t have been out of place.
She saw Maxmillian sitting at a wicker table with three other men, playing careau for shillings and talking about something or another; Elonia did not like the look of one of the players, a hard-eyed man with a pointed beard, but there was no way to signal her ‘husband’, as the Duchess firmly steered her away from that area.
“Is that your wife with the Duchess?” Ansel asked, shuffling the tiles on a piece of felt to preserve the faces.
Maxmillian turned to look, and winked at Elonia as she passed some distance away, the hostess clinging to her like a barnacle to a hull. “Yes, that’s Ella, and a tenth of my stock.”
“Lovely woman,” Lyndon Mascal observed automatically, having hardly glanced away from the shifting tiles. “Been married long?”
“Three years,” Maxmillian picked up the first tile as it was flicked to him. “My second marriage, I’m afraid; I became a widower some years ago.”
“You’ve done well for yourself, she moves like a stream of gold dust,” Ansel finishing dealing the opening tiles. “Lyndon, your open.”
Mascal, a prosperous dealer in furs, tossed a ten Shilling piece into the center of the table, beads of sweat standing out on his bald scalp; none of the other players paid attention to it, Lyndon sweated constantly. “Ten to open.”
“Are you and Ansel teaming up again?” Uwin Lyster inquired, a sharp-faced man of indeterminate years who wore unadorned black and gray, a barrister who specialized in business law. He slid two five Shilling pieces into the pot. “I’m not sure I trust anyone at this table.”
“Then you’re getting into the spirit of the game,” Ansel grinned, although his eyes never changed. “Maxim, enough slap-fingers and button-pulling, it’s time we see what sort of a man you are.”
The scholar laid a gold Mark next to the three coins. “A large man, in fact.” And one who had slipped the Gray King up his sleeve while sliding the tiles over at the end of the last run, he added mentally.
The horse trader raised his eyes in surprise. “Confidence, eh? I hear women like that sort of thing.” He matched the bet and nodded for the fur broker to start, a thoughtful gleam in his eyes as he picked up a tile.
“Alas, I’m a married man again, and my hunting talents are wasted.” Maxmillian sighed, laying out a tile and taking up two more, covertly exchanging the King in his sleeve for a Blue Pikeman he had drawn.
“As I said earlier, there’s a great deal here in Teasau that’s open to a man with the stones to grab it,” Ansel grunted, tossing a Mark onto the table and selecting two tiles.
“I’ve stones, but poor tiles,” Uwin stacked his playing pieces in the dead pile. “I’m for a drink while you finish this run, can I get anyone anything?”
“Port,” Lyndon matched the Mark and added another; Maxmillian had long since marked him as a man who loved to gamble while having absolutely no skill.
“Nothing, thank you,” Maxmillian matched the bet and uncovered three tiles, making a Full Tent; picking up two more tiles, he tapped his highest exposed tile. “I believe we stand at the brink, gentlemen: I call Usurper.”
Ansel grunted. “A man of daring, at least with the tiles. Here, I’ve five Marks that says you’re bluffing. Lyndon?” He discarded two and laid out two on an incomplete Barrier.
The fur broker mopped his brow with a soggy silk handkerchief. “I’m daring but not stupid.”
Maxmillian tossed a ten Mark piece on the table. “You shouldn’t listen to coins, Ansel, they’re faithless creatures.” He uncovered two tiles, adding a Sword to his Tent, took one, and discarded three.
“So I’m told.” The horse trader matched the bet and added five Marks, completing his Barrier with two tiles, taking up three, and discarding one. “Much more of this and I’ll have to wager my wife.”
A small hand was laid on his left shoulder, making him jump; Maxmillian looked up to see a handsome woman his own age standing between Ansel and himself with a hand on either man’s shoulder, the lowest point of her neckline on level with his eyes. “You can’t hear yourself talk for the sound of gold thumping on this table,” she murmured. “Are you going to bridle the horse-breaker, good sir?”
“Maxim Dorfeller, at your service good lady, and yes, should the tiles permit.” Maxmillian uncovered three, going for a full Castle, and discarded four, leaving him with two tiles face-down. “How much do you suggest I wager?”
“A bold man always holds my admiration,” the woman murmured, stroking the scholar’s neck with the tip of her thumb. “I am Myra Soutar, by the by.”
“Your admiration is a treasure I covet.” Maxmillian laid two ten-Mark pieces on the pot. “How say you, Ansel?”
His opponent matched the bet, doubled it, added the Swords cross-suite to his Barrier, and discarded all but one tile. “I’m harder to impress than the good lady here.”
The scholar dug a small white velvet bag from his pocket and spilled a fine one-caret cross-cut ruby onto the table next to the coins. “For the purpose of betting, shall we say this is worth two hundred Marks?” It was worth twice that, but it wasn’t his money he was throwing around. Lyndon openly goggled, and Uwin, just sitting down with a fresh beaker of wine and the fur broker’s port, whistled.
Ansel picked up the stone and studied it carefully as Maxmillian let the Pikeman slip from his sleeve onto the dead pile between himself and the horse-trader. “I’ll accept that; Lyndon, can you spot me a hundred?”
“Of course.” The sweating man counted five twenty-Mark pieces onto the table as and Maxmillian flipped over one tile, adding a Green Gate to his Castle.
Replacing the stone in the pot and adding one hundred twenty Marks to the pile, Ansel laid out his last tile. “Barrier with Sword and Night Hag suit- relative.”
“Cunning, a very cunning artifice,” Maxmillian nodded grimly. “But the Gray King placed over my Blue Banner gives me a Tower pan-Suite; my run, I believe.” The hand on his shoulder tightened, and a breast warmed his ear as Myra leaned forward to examine his tiles.
The pointed beard twitched several times before Ansel spoke. “Luck has been with you, friend. I’m afraid that’ll be an end to my playing tonight, and a sharp lesson to me.”
“A sharp lesson to us all,” the barrister observed. “The main one being never to play with friend Maxim again unless we’re set a pot limit, I think.”
Ansel’s departure broke up the game; Maxmillian watched him wander off into the party as he repacked the stone and sorted the money. ‘I wonder if he had any idea how many thousands of games I played back at the University,’ he thought. ‘Always with our sleeves rolled up so no one could cheat.’ As a young man he had spent hundreds of hours mastering basic palming skills and card tricks, a simple hobby that the older archivists had directed him to learn: spend too many hours focused on cataloging and researching would make you go batty, they said; learning and practicing those tricks kept your fingers limber and gave your mind a rest.
“So, what do
you plan to do with all your gold?” Myra purred in his ear.
“Well, first I would like to buy a beautiful woman a drink.”
Elonia was told of ‘Maxim’s’ run of luck at the tiles and was careful to appear impressed, although she knew of the historian’s abilities at sleight-of-hand and strongly suspected he had been cheating, having learned the scope of his skills at such deceptions during a game where they had wagered items of clothing. Although she was no mean player, he had had her down to her jewelry into no time at all.
Things were moving along in terms of the party, although the Duchess stayed constantly at her side; the liquor was flowing more freely, and several of the guests were slipping off into the more shadowed areas and coming back dreamy or bright-eyed and talkative. One of the other newcomer couples had left abruptly, and the other two, like herself and Maxmillian, had been expertly separated from their mates.
She had switched wine glasses again, and then gotten another after ‘spilling’ one that she was sure the Duchess had slipped something into, the noblewoman using a hollow bracelet that was as good as anything Elonia was herself wearing; her hostess was apparently tiring of her guest’s apparent inability to read the signals she was being shown. Normally the Seeress wore an Amulet of Purity, a device that would have rendered her immune to poisons or drugs, but she had left it back at their quarters as it might be detected and give her away.
Others weren’t as careful or experienced as she: one of the female newcomers, a bright pretty girl whose husband was engrossed in a game of cards suddenly became the worse for drink; two of the ‘helpers’ led the dazed young woman into the mansion while the Duchess reassured the half-drunk husband that all his wife needed was ‘a bit of a lie-down’. It knotted her stomach not to step in and intercede, knowing perfectly well what awaited the girl as she was led into the brooding, run-down mansion by the two smirking women, but there was a larger game afoot, and much higher stakes wagered. She fingered her gold bracelet, and kept her peace, but she marked the faces of the two ‘helpers’ in her mind.
The tempo of the party was picking up in an odd way: there were a few couples dancing to the notes of the small group of musicians, but otherwise the scene had not changed much; still, to her trained senses she could definitely feel a growing excitement, a sense that the night’s activities were only just beginning. Leopold passed them and saluted the Duchess with his glass; abruptly the older woman broke off the conversation she was having with a portly woman and led Elonia towards a distant gazebo. “There’s someone I would like you to meet, dear, a wonderful friend of mine. He doesn't mingle much, being a man of a certain position within the community, but I’m sure he would love to meet you. Afterwards we could go to the little observatory on the roof of my mansion, the view is very lovely.”
“How nice,” Elonia murmured, wondering if she could trip the noblewoman while climbing the stairs and close out the title a little early.
The man seated on the steps to the gazebo drinking wine was tall and whip-cord slender, dressed in elegant silks he wore with casual aplomb and a grace that was almost feminine. He stood easily as the two women approached despite the age that his snow white hair indicated, his clean-shaven, aquiline features reflecting intelligence and humor in equal proportions, his blue eyes calm and deep.
“Geraz van Feuchter, I should like to present my very dear new friend Ella Dorfeller, a visitor to our city.” For the first time Elonia heard the noblewoman speaking with less than absolute certainty. The Duchess released her arm and reluctantly stepped away as the Seeress curtsied.
“What a lovely young woman you are, and what a privilege it is to meet you,” Geraz smiled warmly, taking one of Elonia’s hands in both of his after executing a graceful bow. Their eyes met, and even in the poor light she felt her heart skip a beat as warmth filled her veins and tingled in her fingertips. A soft, seductive smile formed on her lips before she realized it.
“The pleasure is all mine, good sir,” she purred, watching his eyes with wonder as she squeezed his hand. It was always like this, like controlled lust, or the delightful anticipation of some slightly guilty deed done in secret. “Truly, all mine indeed.” She met his clear, intelligent gaze and saw the twisted blackness of the Void; held his warm, dry hand and felt the pulse of sick, corrupted power coursing through his veins. She had grown up around creatures like this, learned from them, studied them, bested them at their own games, and killed many of them. That part of the Avenger that remained to her stepped to the fore and carefully arched her back with her breath half-held to give her bosom just an extra bit of lift.
She had found a member of the Gate.
Maxmillian stayed in the center of things, flirting with Myra and watching the party, finding that the role of guilty husband on the edge of adultery gave one an excellent reason for constantly looking around. Elonia was still dancing with the white-haired nob with whom she had come out of the shadows, the Duchess following with a sour look on her face; it was their third number and she seemed very taken with him, but the historian felt not the slightest hint of jealousy: the few times he had seen Elonia act that way with someone, they ended up dead soon after.
There was a pretty brisk business of wife-swapping going on as the party went on, men and women disappearing in twos and threes in the direction of the mansion, and Maxmillian was getting good and nervous about what he would do if Myra pushed the issue. He and Elonia had an understanding which he wasn’t going to violate for any mission, and there could be a dagger awaiting him in those shadows if they had somehow figured out he was a spy.
The solution came when Ansel staggered by on his way to drinks table, clearly under the influence of a considerable load of alcohol and possibly other substances; the Badger tossed off the remainder of the tankard he had been nursing and executed a short bow to his companion. “If you would excuse me for a moment, I need to refill my mug; may I freshen your drink?”
“Thank you, yes,” Myra drained her glass and then licked a few stray drops from the goblet’s crystal rim.
“Perhaps when I return you might show me the observatory everyone has been talking about,” Maxmillian found leering easy to do under the circumstances.
“I would love to, my dear.”
“I’ll be just a moment, then.”
The horse trader was scowling into a glass of something clear and strong when Maxmillian passed him, walking close enough so that he put a heel onto one of the man’s toes without being obvious, bearing down hard on that booted foot. Ansel roared with pain and surprise, shoving the scholar away and off his foot. Expecting the blow, Maxmillian stepped with the push, pivoted, and hit Ansel once, throwing his weight into it the way Kroh had taught him, burying his fist into Ansel’s gut just below the solar plexus. Caught by surprise, the horse dealer folded, gagging, to the ground, where he began vomiting. Several other party-goers grabbed Maxmillian and pulled him away; he gave only token resistance, loudly protesting that Ansel had attacked him first.
Elonia appeared at his side out of the press, and a few moments later the Duchess appeared. “Honestly, Maxim, what are you yelling about?”
“That bastard shoved me!” Maxmillian began, but subsided to angry mumbling as his ‘wife’ shushed him.
“I don’t approve of fighting at my gatherings, Ella,” the Duchess said, a statement which was belied by the excited flush on her features. “You’d best have a word with him.”
“When he’s in this sort of mood the only thing I can do is take him home,” Elonia advised the noblewoman. “I’m very sorry.”
“Don’t worry, dear, there will be other parties.” The Duchess, caught, put her best face upon the matter and patted the Seeress’ arm. “We’ll see a great deal of each other, I’m sure.”
Maxmillian kept up his grumbling and arguing until the carriage dropped them off at their boarding house; he had been careful to give Myra a significant glance before his ‘wife’ had hustled him out of the garden, and had kept up ap
pearances in case a few Marks loosened the carriage driver’s tongue.
Back in their room he tore off his belt and coat, tossing them onto the floor as he collapsed into a chair. “By the Eight, that was rougher than most fights. How did you live with that sort of thing?”
Elonia laid her surcote aside and sat in his lap wearing her thigh-length underdress and stockings. “It’s like anything else: the more you do it, the easier it gets. Why the fight?”
“Myra Soutar was hanging all over me, and her husband was off in the bushes with somebody else’s husband,” Maxmillian kicked off his boots one at a time, bouncing the Seeress on his lap from the effort. “I was either going to have to slip off into the mansion with her or chicken out and be branded a prude, so I went to fetch one more round before play-time began, and then provoked Ansel so I would get kicked out, or at least have to lay low after drawing your attention. I figured brawling wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, so far as any cultists go.”
“No, and you’re right, it was a clever save. We did very well, Maxmillian, very well indeed: I found a definite cultist, a recruiter, no doubt the one who actually paid for the party, using the old degenerate noblewoman as a cover and filter.”
“Geraz van Feuchter, the white-haired gent you were dancing with?”
“Yes, who told you his name?”
“Myra; she seems quite taken with him, and not a little jealous that you had caught his eye. So he’s a cult recruiter, then?”
“Not a bit of doubt. And a good one, too; I’ve seen veteran Pargaie officers who were not much better at probing for information. The only real advantage I had is that he didn’t know what he was facing, and it has been a long time since he faced another professional.”
