by Nyna Queen
Darken pulled out a chair for Alex. When she was settled, he slipped into the chair beside her and steepled his fingers. “You have something for us?”
Belaris fell into one of the chairs opposite, all buttery grace and trouble. “You bet, man. And that’s despite the fact you provided me with such meager information. Had to burn one of my identities for it, too. One of my favorites, I should say.”
“Belaris.”
“Yes, yes, master of impatience. Coming right to it. Give a genius some time to work.”
Apparently, he suffered from the same case of hubris as Darken did. Figured. Perhaps it was a natural trait that came with being born forfeit.
Darken forcefully cleared his throat.
“Pushy, isn’t he?” Belaris hit Alex with a melodramatic stare and sighed. “Well, hold onto your knickers, ladies.”
Reaching behind his back, he produced a folder from only the-Jester-knew-where and fanned himself with it. With a flourish, he dropped it on the table and flipped it open. It contained a stack of memoras, transparent sheets of some magically-processed material that depicted three-dimensional images which could be hologrammed with the right equipment. They were separated by thin sheets of crystalline paper, all filled with tight, orderly notes.
The top picture showed a guy with a bull neck, close-cropped hair, and cold, almost black eyes. Alex felt her lips curl back with a hiss as her true teeth itched to emerge. The guy who’d shot at the kids in the Jester’s Inn! She’d remember that stone-cold smile anywhere.
Belaris acknowledged her reaction.
“May I introduce: José Santino. Discharged from military service for punching his commander after receiving a disciplinary measure for, well, beating up a comrade-in-arms. Slow learner, this one.” Belaris wagged his head and held up the next picture. “Bryce ‘Cutter’ Cuttermole. Charming fellow. Tried to get into the guardaí department in Salisburgh. Failed the psychological tests three times in a row. Declared emotionally unstable. He tried again in Sacariah but they found him out and blacklisted him. Vanished from the screen after that. Oh, and here’s one of my favorites.”
Belaris flipped up another picture of a familiar face. Blondie, the clubbing prince; the giant she’d thrashed in the Jester’s Inn. “Svensi Steinbach. He was a professional wrestler in his early twenties.” Well, at least that explained why he had been able to take so much. “Got evicted from the league because he bit off his partner’s testicle—yes, you heard me right, his testicle—during a training match. Claims the guy insulted his mother. Don’t you adore a loving son?”
Mother’s mercy and Jester’s grace!
“This one here actually surprised me.” Belaris tapped a memora of a man with a tattoo behind his ear—a dagger piercing the center of a rose. “That’s a popular symbol used among the members of a Special Forces bomb squad.” He frowned. “Too bad dear Aaron here used his knowledge in a bank robbery in which a dozen civilians were killed. He was put on trial but pardoned on some technicality. After that, he was never again mentioned in official records.”
More pictures. More names. Some faces were known to Alex, others were not.
“Officer insult, brawling, rape, attempted murder.” Belaris ticked the points off on his fingers. “The list of transgressions is long and the crimes are manifold. To cut a long story short, most of your guys have some kind of military or at least combat experience. We have a pretty high capacity for violence here. And apparently, somebody has been busy recruiting.”
Alex chewed on her lip. According to their research, both Henry Saunier and Cassius Roukewood were known to have gone through military service, but that was neither here nor there. Anyone could hire people with this background. And Senator Alistair Devilier wasn’t exactly an outspoken opponent of war, it was an eye problem that had prevented him from serving his country.
“And do you know what else all these guys have in common?”
Since Belaris was clearly dying for them to ask, Alex did him the favor. “What?”
“They all enjoy the artistic pleasures of performance.”
“What?”
Darken looked equally confused.
“The theater,” Belaris told them in an affected royal accent, visibly delighted that they weren’t able to follow. “Cabaret, wine, girls. Don’t tell me you’ve never been to the theater, sweetheart.”
The words catapulted Alex back to a memory of her little spider-self, dressed up very nicely, with a white bow in her brushed hair, sitting in a theater performance between her sire and her older brother Makesh. Right before leaving, her sire had hammered it into her how important it was to stay in her human skin and she’d been so afraid of a slip during the whole play she’d missed most of the story and when they got home she’d felt so sick she threw up all over her dress. Her one and only theater experience.
“Her knowledge of the theater is not in question here,” Darken said sharply and something about the way he looked at her, told her that somehow he knew exactly what was going on in her head—which was, of course, impossible.
Belaris huffed and muttered something about kill-joys.
Alex frowned. “What does the theater have to do with anything?”
“Ah.” Belaris grinned and showed them a small slip of paper between his right thumb and forefinger. He vanished it, shook his fist, and when he opened it again, the slip of paper was resting against his open palm. A crumpled piece of white with a blue line on it.
Great. A piece of trash.
Alex frowned. “Do I have to get—”
She cut herself short when she noticed Darken was utterly focused on the scrap of paper, eyes narrow and dark.
“‘Bluebird’ wasn’t quite right, but close enough,” Belaris smirked. He raised his other fist. Like a magician, he bumped it against his already open hand and unfurled his fingers to reveal yet another rectangle of paper with punched edges.
“Bluetail Grand Theater. It’s a small variety theater in Green Pine Meadow, where you can wine and dine in style while watching amusing plays without being watched by the haut monde. They also offer a hostess service.”
Alex raised her eyes from the ticket. “So it’s a brothel.”
Belaris gave her a scandalized look. “Why, Alex, don’t say that. It’s a respectable establishment that offers every visitor a full and pleasurable sensory experience.”
“In other words—a brothel,” Alex quipped.
“I think the ladies—and boyos—who offer their services at the theater would be quite put out if you called them whores. I think they prefer the term escorts. After all, a customer may well choose to only have a companion for dinner.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “Escort. Courtesan. Whore. Same tits in different lingerie.”
That made both Darken and Belaris laugh. Alex rolled her eyes some more.
“Anyways”—Belaris tossed the scraps of paper onto the table—“brothel or no, I checked the joint and it looks all clean from the papers, company audits and all. Two audits in the last three years, and not so much as a piss splatter outside the toilet bowls. Some late payments here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary. The company behind it has a couple of shareholders none of which would arouse any kind of suspicion on my side. Plus, the current manager has been sick with some incurable autoimmune disease for months. He rarely sees the place and I doubt he knows what is going on at his joint.”
Belaris filled three mugs with tea and handed them out. He took a sip and smacked his lips in approval before continuing.
“Not nearly as much dirt as I had expected, which I thought was quite intriguing. So I took the liberty to pay a visit. Field research, so to speak. After all, I have always been fond of the theater.” He leaned forward with a glint in his dreamy blue eyes. “And barely had I arrived at the place when I came across a man who pretty much looked like he broke bones for a living, if you get my drift. So I decided to have a little chat. Turned out he actually knew a lot about this particular … side
business … that is taking place at the Bluetail Grand.”
Darken stiffened. “Where is the man now?”
“Oh, he died later that night,” Belaris said matter-of-factly. “Mugging. Quite unfortunate. But not before he told me everything I wanted to know. He was a rather brave man, too. Even tried to lie to me.” Belaris tsked and shook his head. “But in the end, it all poured out of him, along with his lifeblood.”
Alex felt her hackles rise at the way he spoke about killing that man. No emotion flickered across his handsome face. He could have been talking about which socks he decided to put on this morning. Well, except for the red glow that was consuming his irises. A glow that was mirrored on Darken’s face.
Oh, bloody forfeits!
“And what did he tell you?” she asked loudly.
Both men snapped out of their blood-crazed reverie.
“Oh, this and that.” Belaris shrugged. “If you know how the scheme works, it is actually quite simple. Elegant, even. It all runs on an invite-only basis. They are pretty careful, too, according to our dead friend. No names. Everything goes through a middleman.”
Well, that just confirmed what the kid outside the Pacified Zone had told Darken.
“Assignments and payments are run through the joint,” Belaris said. “Let’s say you’re a military reject and you’ve been approached and asked if you were interested in some highly profitable but slightly shady sort of business. If you accept, you’ll eventually find an ad about this new theater play in your letterbox. On the day of the play, you go up to the counter and speak to Tiffany, the lady in charge who also makes sure that assignments and payments reach the right people.”
Darken snorted. “A fixer.”
“Yep, a fixer,” Belaris agreed. “You ask for the ‘special seat’ indicated in your flyer, say the magic password that is also hidden in there somewhere, and, boom, you get your ticket and beneath your seat, you find a neat little package which either contains your newest assignment or a sweet paycheck for past efforts.”
Simple and elegant, indeed.
“Me and my newly acquired knowledge went right up to the counter to test the theory and sweet, sweet Tiffany was indeed quite helpful.” Belaris bared his teeth with a wide grin. “She played along unwittingly and assigned me my ‘special seat.’ Even asked me if I wanted an escort for the evening. I told her, only if it was her. That made her blush like a happy bride right before the consummation. Unfortunately, she was still on duty, so I had to watch the play by my poor lonesome. It was quite the lousy love story, too—so cheesy I got hungry for pizza.” He made a pouty face before perking up. “Oh, before I forget: Chester the Molester was there for payment. I even have the cash to show for it.”
Belaris reached beneath the table and shook a bag at them. Alex could see thick wads of bills outlined through the fabric. She shuddered. Blood money. Yet she also couldn’t help thinking that such an amount of money would have paid for her living in the Bin for months, if not years.
Yep, crime paid. She knew that only too well.
“And after the play?” Darken asked.
“When the performance was over, it didn’t take much persuasion to convince Tiffany to take me home to her place. Not much persuasion at all.” Belaris looked like the cat that got the cream. “Perhaps there was a little something in the drink I fixed her that loosened her tongue a little bit and after a while, she was very eager to confide in me all her little secrets, like her sister’s affair with her best friend’s wife, and the one time she had it off with Uncle Boris when they were both drunk after her cousin’s funeral, and that secret bank account her brother is keeping from their parents …” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“I asked her about her work—women just love it when you show some interest in their lives—and she was really proud to tell me all I wanted to know. It was her brother who got her the job at the theater. He seems to be some small fish who apparently knows people who know people. I asked her wasn’t she nervous because of the not-so-legal part of her occupation and what if the guardaí caught on? And she told me there was no reason to worry, the people on top knew what they were doing and she had been reassured that it was completely safe. And then she said that they had great security measures in place and the master looked out for his people. Really, you should have seen her eyes when she said ‘master.’” Belaris scrunched up his face. “Like he was the priest of some charitable organization or something.
“Anyway, I asked if she’d ever had the honor of speaking to said ‘master’ in person and she told me chidingly that I knew very well that no one could directly contact the master, and wasn’t I sweet for suggesting otherwise. And I said, surely, someone with an important role such as hers had a way to contact him, right? And after a bit of hemming and hawing, she finally admitted that, yes, in the utmost emergency—like if the joint was busted—she had a way of giving the master an emergency notification. Something that was safely hidden in the secret safe in the back office of the theater whenever she wasn’t at work. And then her tongue was inside my mouth and I had to pause to show her a good time before I got eaten alive.”
Darken shook his head. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
Belaris grinned. “Every man needs his vices. Mine is that I am an unearthly charming fellow and sublime lover who can’t keep the girls at bay.” He winked at Alex and she laughed.
Then her laughter turned into a frown. “Didn’t your tattoos make her suspicious?”
She supposed he usually took his gloves off before getting down to the nitty-gritty. Then again, who knew? Although keeping them on might have been just as suspicious.
Belaris laughed that off. “Oh, with what I gave her, she won’t remember anything from that night.” He paused. “Except perhaps that she was hooked up by the most gorgeous guy she had ever seen and treated to the best night of her existence.”
Alex chortled into her tea.
“Hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Belaris said with a come-hither grin.
“The girl,” Darken interrupted firmly.
“Oh, well, the little something I gave her also made Tiffany really, really sleepy and she passed out on the sheets the moment I pulled my cock out of her. So, while she was all snuggled up in dreamland, I took her keys, went back to the theater, let myself in and disabled the security system. Took me about five minutes tops. So much for great security measures!” He rolled his eyes. “To give them some credit, I might have missed that hidden safe if Tiffany hadn’t explicitly mentioned it earlier. Breaking into it was laughably easy though, and I had to be careful too, to be able to properly reseal it afterward. What I found in there, among some other interesting knick-knacks, is this …”
He swiped a hand over the table and a flat black disk with a crystal inlay appeared on the tabletop. Show-off!
It was a hologram projector and a memora had already been inserted into the slot at the bottom. With a spark of magic from Belaris, a three-dimensional image popped up above the base. It was a hologram of a silver ring. The projector had to be one of these high-end, hellishly expensive devices, because the ring looked as real and solid, as if it had been conjured from thin air and was now floating in front of them over the table. It made Alex want to reach out and touch it, just to disprove her eyes.
The ring was extremely simple, except for a small black stone at the top. Alex couldn’t see what was so special about it.
“Cartoriem fieri,” Darken whispered.
Belaris nodded.
“Can you speak in a way that normal people might understand as well?” Alex snapped.
“In the vernacular, they are called ‘communicators,’” Belaris jumped in. “Except that isn’t quite accurate because, unlike vis-aural emitters, they provide no way to actually communicate with another person. It’s only one-way contact. They usually convey a single, predetermined message.” He cocked his head to the side. “I believe their initial purpose was for spies to give a quick, undet
ected warning to their superiors if their cover was blown, so they could cut all ties and distance themselves from their agents. I suppose you could also use this to send a notification if the cops stormed the Bluetail Grand Theater.”
Alex peered closely at the ring floating in the air in front of her. “You mean like a panic button in a halfborn bank?”
Belaris nodded. “Something like that, yes. If the spell is triggered, the recipient will receive an energetic signal through the connected spell in his or her own device and thus know that the shit has hit the proverbial fan.”
Excitement shot through Alex’s body. “Does this mean we can expect this master-person to wear a ring just like this one?”
“Not necessarily, no.” Belaris shook his head, at once pouring cold water onto her flaring hope. “Technically, the twin spell can be woven into any kind of device,” he said, “although of course, due to its purpose the choices are somewhat limited. Usually, these devices are designed to be worn on your body so you will be certain to get the message at any given moment. Time has shown that rings are best suited because they are unobtrusive and commonplace and the chances of its wearer missing the notification are very small because of the constant skin contact. However, even if it was a ring, it could be any kind of ring. Say, you’re always wearing your wedding ring anyway, then the cartoriem fieri spell could be woven into that, too.”
Alex considered that for a minute.
“This might be a stupid question, but would this carto fire spell work inside Crona Palace what with there being a magic ban and all?”
“Cartori—” Darken started but broke off when Alex gave him a withering glance.
“Oh, that shouldn’t be a problem,” Belaris said brightly. “Low-key magic appliances still work inside the palace. The c-spell”—he flicked his fingers at the hologram—“only contains a tiny magical charge and it isn’t something you could, for example, detach from its device and use for any other purpose. So, it’s not like someone could bring fifty of these things into the palace and, you know, built a magic bomb out of them or anything. And since they cannot be used to do any harm, there is no reason why they would be confiscated at the entrance control.” He rested his chin in his hands. “The magic ban only prevents heavy-duty magic like opening a portal, or shielding spells, intercepting spells and the like. But bread-and-butter magic below a certain level of energy won’t trigger the banning spells. Although, as far as I know, you can only use a vis-a in one specific area and all calls are recorded. Which brings me to this.”
