The dull thud of an explosion from the train station, several blocks back, rattled windows and brought all the conversation on the street to a dead halt. Then, as a tendril of black smoke rose to the grey sky, the chatter resumed, redoubled and excited. Yael glanced back, tongues of flame reflected in the lenses of her mask.
“And I am certain you know just such a person, Tobi. I know I can rely on your resourcefulness.”
Tobi led her to a small park a few blocks away, out of sight of the distant smoke. It was a bleak place: a few withered trees and an oblong patch of half-dead grass with a concrete canal running through the center of it. Tobi sat on the edge of the canal and then began the laborious process of cleaning his paws. Yael dangled her legs from the lip of the concrete channel, over what could generously be called a stream, wishing for the sun to come out. She didn’t take her mask off, even though the readout claimed the air was clean.
She wasn’t ready to face the city without a filter. Not yet.
“You are correct,” Tobi said coolly, shifting his attention from one forepaw to the other. “Actually, I know any number of people – shoppers and vendors both – who frequent the Night Market. Any of them could tell us when and where the next one will be held, in trade or in return for past favors. But few of them are in a position to shield us until then. And there are fewer still...”
He trailed off.
“That you can trust? Are my enemies really so powerful?”
Tobi looked at her with obvious scorn.
“You poisoned an avatar of Nyarlathotep. The Outer Dark was already moving against you, no doubt, but I’m afraid you made it quite personal. Bringing Jenny Frost to the Nameless City – a very questionable decision, I might add – when it becomes common knowledge that you had a hand in that, then we will be left with precious few allies. And I would imagine that your family’s legal firm will make that information public very soon.”
“Maybe that was a bad idea,” Yael admitted, tossing a pebble into the slow, murky water. “But I owed Jenny. I am not certain that I would have survived the journey without her.”
“And those are your only reasons for helping her?”
Yael winced inside her mask, glad for the privacy.
“I will take all the help I can get. As you said, my enemies are powerful. Enough of this nonsense,” she said, shaking her head and throwing another pebble. “Tell me what we should do now, Tobi.”
The cat glanced up from whatever was occupying his attention on his hindquarters.
“I will think. Why don’t you take a nap?”
Yael had to agree – she was tired, after all. And she had an important meeting, she thought, sliding out the business card that Jenny had given her. Yael clutched it to her chest so she could feel the weight of the silver key through the cardstock resting on her palm. Then she shuffled to a nearby bench and peeled off her mask, attempting to make herself comfortable by using her duffel bag as a pillow.
Yael was worried that she wouldn’t be able to sleep on the hard wooden slats, but her worry was short lived, as she started yawning as soon as she was prone.
***
“This is folly!”
“Or inspired.”
Yog & Sothoth, the sign read, embossed gold on mahogany in a san-serif font. Very professional, fashionably antiqued. The tasteful wallpaper it was mounted on was as false as the burgundy carpet she stood on and the air she breathed. She heard the whir of air conditioning, the muffled sounds of business in nonexistent neighboring offices. Yael smiled at the laboriously detailed illusion despite herself.
The door was open. Yael didn’t bother to introduce herself. There were two men in the poorly lit office behind a massive desk with an antique lamp that cast an abbreviated cone of the blue light that the Visitors preferred.
They wore voluminous robes with scarves wrapped around their heads, draped around the neck in a way that made them look North African to Yael. Their veils were constructed of chain-mesh links of the Visitor’s metal, treated to refract light like a prism, making it impossible to look at them directly. Above their veils, their eyes were as black and calm as those of insects.
Their shape, overall, was simply wrong, in a manner that defied nature and decency. Their chests were too broad and their skulls overly elongated. The contours of their veils traced the bizarre dimensions of their faces.
“Good evening, Yael Kaufman of Roanoke,” Mr. Sothoth buzzed, in his grating, high-pitched voice, like worrying a splinter just below the surface of the skin. “I am pleased to see you again.”
“And I,” Mr. Yog agreed flatly.
“Is that so?” Yael asked, her voice light and friendly. She had always been nervous around them, despite Mr. Sothoth’s general solicitousness, despite their reliable, stolid natures – Yael had always been afraid of them, of what they represented. Something inside her had changed, apparently, because as she walked into the plush office, running her hand along the smooth wood banister beside the stair, she felt only echoes of the old fear, the same way a playground that seemed massive in memory would be mundane in the present. “Your actions suggest otherwise.”
Perhaps it was the potential they had once represented, future and nightmare rolled into one. Yael’s mother had rushed into marriage and children, she knew, to avoid being eligible.
Whatever the case, it was irrelevant now. Yael knew where she stood.
“Oh?” Mr. Sothoth blubbered curiously, his black eyes glinting. “What action do you speak of, Miss Kaufman? We have always served your family faithfully.”
“To the best of my knowledge that is true. Tell me, then – do you serve my family at the moment? In your current capacity?”
“Ah,” Mr. Yog said quietly, playing with an ornately engraved puzzle box with his odd, multi-jointed fingers. “She speaks to the heart of things.”
“Agreed. And deserves an answer. Our client, I’m afraid, must remain confidential. The truth is, however, that we always keep the best interests of your peculiar family at heart.”
Yael took a seat in front of the desk and crossed her legs so that she could rest her hands on her knees. She used an expression reserved for moments of state and conversations that she did not wish to participate in, with private gratitude to her stepmother for teaching it to her.
“I see. And when you employed Jenny Frost?”
“To watch over you, Miss Kaufman of Roanoke,” Mr. Sothoth enthused, slobber glistening on the mail covering his mouth. “Admittedly, not the best class of chaperone, but your abrupt departure left us few options...”
“I would imagine so,” Yael said, smiling at the memory of the familiar path down the brick chimney adjoining her room, her fingers having years before memorized the spaces between the bricks where they could find holds. “Still, your decision to inform such an admittedly questionable character about the Silver Key in my possession seems somewhat unwise. From the perspective of my continued existence, of course.”
“No such mention was made,” Mr. Sothoth insisted. “You have been deceived. Tell me – did she mention the Silver Key first, or did you?”
Yael felt her confidence momentarily falter, though she kept her face composed. Nonetheless, she found herself wishing for her mask, even in a dream.
“I did,” Yael admitted hollowly. “Nonetheless, it is suspect...”
“Nonsense,” Mr. Yog said flatly, as another plane of the intricate box snapped into place. “Frost is lost. Not to be trusted.”
“My colleague is right. It is not in Miss Frost’s nature to be trustworthy...”
“...this is why it is suspect that you would choose such a questionable character to escort me, if your concern was truly for my safety, sirs.”
They exchanged a slow, calculated look, implying a private conversation beyond her hearing. Yael had lived long enough amongst the upper classes and their emulated Visitor fashions to know it was a display for her benefit; a play for time and a show of power. She pressed her advantage.
>
“And that is not all, sirs. I have spoken to another of your clients, and he showed less discretion than your own admirable selves...”
The silence was broken by the eerie, broken glass sound of the puzzle box in Mr. Yog’s gloved palm rotating into place.
“Chaos,” Mr. Yog said softly. ”A most challenging client.”
“Most challenging,” Mr. Sothoth echoed wetly. “What did Nyarlathotep tell you?”
Yael took a deep breath and thought of her brother’s face, which had been kind, though her memory of it had grown indistinct.
“He offered me assistance and in the process he revealed that he had done the same for my brother, in his own quest to defy the King in Yellow. There is no need for further deception, sirs. I am well aware that I am in the presence of enemies.”
“Motivation?” Mr. Yog said, setting the box down on the table and then pressing a brass button inset on one side. A clockwork mechanism within rotated the gleaming box into a new configuration. “A terrible risk.”
“Again, my colleague is perceptive. Why would you put yourself into our hands, Miss Kaufman, if you believe us to be your enemies?”
“Because I do believe that you served my family honestly in your own way. My family sought to defy the King in Yellow. My brother tried to play the Outer Dark against itself and paid a terrible price. He tested his wits against the unthinkable and he lost. I don’t blame you for your part in that,” Yael said firmly, tapping the heel of her shoe against the beveled wood of the antique chair. “You were simply doing your job. I simply felt you deserved the courtesy of a warning.”
The face plates on the puzzle box split and reformed, blades blossoming like a flower from the interior.
“Warning?”
“What sort of warning, Miss Kaufman?”
“That I intend to oppose Nyarlathotep, the King in Yellow, the whole of the Outer Dark including its legal counsel. It seemed only fair to tell you in person given your professional relationship with my family.”
Yael smiled back confidently at the sparkling black eyes, knowing that faltering, even for a moment, would rapidly become failure.
“Chaos,” Mr. Yog said approvingly. “Everything is permitted.”
Mr. Sothoth shook his heavy, misshapen head in an imitation of regret.
“We regret the loss of your brother. We will regret your loss all the more, Miss Kaufman.”
“Don’t be so certain,” Yael said, standing up from her chair and calmly tearing the Yog & Sothoth business card in half, then in half again. She crumpled the pieces, then deposited the shredded remains on the ancient wood of their desk. “I am not as kind as my brother.”
“You are just a girl,” Mr. Sothoth hissed, the links of his veil clinging damply to the bizarre contours of the face it hid. “Nothing more.”
“And you are simply a bad dream,” Yael said, tugging the Silver Key out of her shirt and wrapping her fingers around the smooth, tarnished metal. “It is time for me to wake.”
***
“Yael!”
“Hello, Sleeping Beauty. We wondered when you would join us.”
Yael briefly thought she was seeing double. But that didn’t make any sense, because the cats were different colors – the new one beside Tobi was a shabby white – and she didn’t recognize the voice.
“Terribly sorry,” she said, rubbing her eyes and sitting up on the wooden bench, one hand pressed against her stiff back. “I’m afraid I didn’t hear you arrive, sir.”
The white cat laughed, the kind of laugh that belongs to a big man after a bit too much to drink. It seemed wildly improbable coming from a good-sized white tomcat, scarred from the secret wars of the feline race, but Yael was beginning to adjust to that.
“You are right, Tobi. I do like her,” the new cat said warmly. “She is very polite.”
“Yael,” Tobi said, his voice tight with surprising urgency, “this is Snowball, the Lord of Ulthar, our sanctuary in the Nameless City.”
The name was ridiculous, of course, but Yael immediately understood Tobi’s concern. She had already learned the oddities of how cats obtained their names, so Yael managed to keep her laughter silent and her face serene.
“Nice to meet you, sir,” Yael said, bobbing her head. “Are you a friend of Tobi’s?”
“Indeed. I was – am – a friend of your brother’s.”
Yael froze halfway in the motion of getting her brush out of her duffel. She turned to the cat, one hand resting against the Key beneath her shirt.
“Really? I am glad to hear it. May I ask a favor of you?”
Snowball shook his head sadly.
“You can, of course. But I already know what you would ask. Your brother is lost, Miss Kaufman, to us as well as yourself. Where he has gone, even we cannot follow.”
“I had assumed as much,” Yael said gravely. “I wished only to inquire as to your past with him. My brother spent much of his time sleeping,” Yael admitted hurriedly, willing herself not to blush. “Of necessity. It was his occupation, his art and his passion. But it left him with little time for... for us. His family.”
Snowball licked a paw and used it to clean his nub of a left ear. Tobi busily groomed the ridge along his back. Yael had spent enough time amongst cats to know that they were masking their own discomfort with the emotional nature of the conversation.
“Is that so? I’m afraid that you already know the answer. When your brother was taken, the majority of our memories of him were taken as well.”
“O-of course. I should have known.”
Snowball leapt on to one arm of the park bench, walking across the ornate metal with a stately grace that belied his weathered appearance.
“Come, Yael,” Snowball said, trotting past her head and off the bench, toward the park entrance. “Walk with me. You as well, Tobi. She isn’t at the Night Market yet.”
“Of course.”
“The Night Market,” Yael exclaimed, hurrying after Snowball, her duffel slung over her back and her mask hanging from one hand. “Do you know where it is, sir?”
“Snowball, please. And of course I do, child. Where did you think we were going? The market will be held this evening, in the empty district, Kadath. We have four hours before sunset and it is a pleasant enough walk.”
“Thank you,” Yael said, looking first to Snowball and then to Tobi, who lingered behind and seemed nervous. “But I don’t understand why you are helping me. I know that Tobi promised to guide me to the Night Market. Are you guiding me because he is your friend?”
“No. I’m doing it for you.”
“Why? Because of my brother?”
“No,” Snowball repeated firmly. “Because of you.”
“I am nothing special.”
Snowball laughed as he went, leaping from flagstone to banister, signpost to outcropping, darting across the ground when he was forced to touch it. Yael was very nearly sprinting in an attempt to keep pace.
“Aren’t you? You stood alone against the Outer Dark, Yael – you humiliated and even injured an avatar of Chaos, to the extent that it can be harmed. Do you know how long it has been since that happened?”
Yael tried to remember the stories her brother had read her from his dusty, ancient books, the stories she had learned in dreams.
“No, I don’t. How long?”
The white cat paused on top of a grotesque marble gargoyle mounted at one end of a small bridge, the details obscured by weather and the passage of years. Snowball’s eyes sparkled with amusement.
“Not since Randolph Carter, almost four hundred years ago.”
“No, that can’t be right,” Yael said, shaking her head. “My brother knew Mr. Carter. He was one of his teachers. I remember meeting him once. He was very old, but he certainly wasn’t four hundred years old.”
“Time is a relative concept,” Snowball warned. “And a poor basis for reasoning. Recite for me, Yael. Remember your studies. Where are we?”
Yael caught herself in ti
me to avoid tumbling in the street. The further in to the hilly neighborhood they went, she noticed, the larger the buildings became and the fewer people were on the street. Snowball slowed his frantic pace as if they had crossed an invisible boundary, leaving behind whatever had motivated his earlier precaution.
“The Nameless City. The place abandoned by God.”
“By the Gods,” Snowball corrected.
“That is a matter of opinion.”
“How would you describe a hundred-foot tall winged immortal with an octopus face, then?”
“Hideous.”
“Never mind that. Continue. Where are we going?”
“The empty district of Kadath. The hollow heart of the Nameless City.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Everything is permitted,” Yael recited sing-song. “Nothing is real.”
“Then you understand?”
“Yes. Of course. Sorry about that. This is all rather new to me.”
Snowball chuckled, hopping down from a sign post to walk beside her.
“No one would know,” he reassured her. “You seem very self-possessed.”
“I’m not, actually,” Yael said, surprised and relieved by her admission. She hadn’t realized how badly she wanted to admit it to someone until she had the opportunity, even if that someone was a cat. Especially if it was a cat. “I was prepared, that’s all. In my dreams, every night – that was my education. I have always taken an interest in preparing for what I knew would be inevitable.”
Snowball eyed her with obvious interest as they walked.
“You knew that you would come here?”
“No. Nothing that specific. But I always knew that I would have to go somewhere.”
“Then you didn’t know anything we all don’t know, I’m afraid.”
“You don’t understand,” Yael objected, a tad irritably. “My brother taught me...”
“Miss Kaufman, if I may,” Snowball cut in smoothly. “I do not question the useful nature of the tools that you have been provided. But I believe that you attribute your success incorrectly.”
The Night Market Page 16
