Lillandyr did not touch her tea and it had long gone cold. She watched her company with a bland look that betrayed her boredom. Merris Osterious, banker, purveyor of rare books and scrolls. He was known to deal in antiquities as well and always delighted her with the breadth and depth of his collection. However today? Today her patience was worn thin. She ran on very little sleep, and his calm, soft voice droned on and on about something she really couldn't be bothered to pay attention to.
Mister Osterious frequently unsettled her and he was doing so now. He leaned over the table and his onyx black eyes devoured her greedily, though she doubted the man was even aware of the longing glances he cut her way. And like he did at every meeting, he tucked a ruby red rose behind her elegantly pointed ear. He smiled wanly at her, as though he were sad somehow. Merris always looked so lost and wistful. He was a lovely man, attractive and always so very neat and smart in his finely tailored black suits and large silver ring. He was pale and slim and had a black, neatly trimmed beard along his square jaw. Under normal circumstances, she might have been charmed. Wealth, intelligence, and beauty drew her like flies to honey but something was off about Merris.
At times, the man spoke too animatedly; at other times his affect was utterly flat and cold. He would stop in the middle of conversation and just stare at her. He fiddled with his tea cup and took tiny sips. He seemed always ill at ease and fidgeted and shifted often. Usually, she tolerated his quirks because she found his company pleasant, his conversation challenging and charming, but a night with no rest and her conversation with that scum Kia Sin'del had soured her mood. Now she watched Merris with narrowed eyes as he tapped his long, spidery fingers over the lip of his tea cup.
Like Vassiago, she had tried to peer into Merris' thoughts many times. Unlike her flamboyant servant, Merris' head was a screaming, whirling miasma of darkness and whispers. She could make no sense of what was in there. It led her to believe he was god-touched. And she knew better than to meddle with the gods themselves.
She was subdued in dress now, forgoing all black and jackboots for a gown of soft navy silk that felt like butter on her skin. Black lace kissed her throat and her fingers were unadorned. She hadn't felt like going to the trouble again and she really just wanted to crawl into her big, soft bed and tug the sheets over her.
Tap... taptap... tap. She snapped her gaze to Merris and ground her teeth so hard they squeaked. "Stop fidgeting, darling," she gritted out. Lillandyr was fully aware the moment she said it that it would go over about as well as if she'd slapped a rotten fish on the table. Mister Osterious seemed to adore their teas. And usually, so did she. She'd shared tea with him almost every day for fifty years. She supposed he was her only true friend, as reserved and awkward as he was. Lillandyr was fond of him, even if his company wore on her at times.
Today's tea like most all their teas was pleasant. The morning was cool and the air was sweet. They sat on her balcony, and between them was a table dressed in lace and linen, china and shining silver. There were sweets and honeyed pastries. Blood orange jam. The tea was rose scented and it was delicate and sugary.
Lillandyr wanted to dash it off the balcony and lean and watch it all crash to the gilded courtyard below.
Merris sat back in his chair, folding his long-fingered hands over one knee. His lips were drawn thin. "Why, Lady Shadowglade," he said, his voice like the silk she wore, soft and slick. "Something vexing you? Or am I boring you?"
It was here she wished her and Mister Sin'del could trade places. What would the "Old Dog" say?
"Vexing me? Perhaps. Boring me?" She shrugged with a sweet, simpering smile. She let the question hang in the air. As usual, she toyed with him. They were mild, teasing flirtations. These always flustered the man. He wouldn't flush but he would frown and scowl. But today? He looked at her as though he'd very much like to toss her off the balcony. She balked a little and felt a strange, cool tingle of fear slide thin fingers over her skin. His eyes seemed too dark, the pupils too large. His tongue, a vibrant pink, flicked over his lips. Anger. Lillandyr could see it roil behind the soft, sooty fringe of his lashes. She felt suddenly like a mouse before a great, lazy cat. The tail swished, the yellow eyes narrowed.
Her brow pinched and she looked away, over the balcony, at her awakening kingdom of sadists and perverts and merry makers. Already the Feast of Saint Baellith was being prepared for. Streaming ribbons of her House colors twisted around every lamp post. Crimson and black. Flowers, lilies, and roses, set in great bowers, made the stink of the city more cloying than usual. Merchants from the Artisan Quarter were already pushing carts full of gowns and livery onto the side streets and alleys.
"I'm merely tired, Merris. Perhaps we should cut our tea short." She hated admitting to any weakness. She was the Lady. She did not tire.
She turned back to him and let him have a wan smile, a soft curl to her rouged lips. He didn't seem charmed. So it was just business this day. So be it. She didn't have the patience for coddling the maudlin fellow out of his sour mood. "I am sorry, darling. You know how much I simply adore our time together, but the week before Feast Day is always so hectic." She reached across the table and laid her soft fingers over his knuckles. There, there.
He clearly didn't appreciate her little "kindness" and he stiffened in his seat, his gaze hard, cold, and flinty. "Hectic," he mused. "Tell me, Lillandyr," he said, dropping the honorifics now that he was agitated with her. Lillandyr noted this and frowned at him. Not that it stopped him, for he kept going on. "Has the Oracle picked the man you must lay with on Feast Day?"
It was unseemly to talk about, even in private. Every year during Saint Baellith's Feast Day, Lillandyr made a sacrifice of herself. No noble had ever done such a thing, but she did. It made her people love her. It cemented her power and granted her favor with her god. A virgin oracle was chosen each year to read the smoke and bones, and she would give Lillandyr a name. The name of some stranger, either noble or peasant, merchant or fisherman, young man or old, whom she would have to let violate and take her in the name of her god. This was the fiftieth year of her rule. Fifty men. It wasn't a source of pride, but it was a great font of power and respect. She refused to be cowed by Merris or his tone. It never occurred to her that the man was seething with jealousy.
So instead of lashing out at him, she smiled, bright and broad. "Not yet," she said lightly. "Though I do count the days." She couldn't keep all the venom out of her voice, but it was just enough to let him know that he was trying the very last vestiges of her patience.
And his face, which was angular and perfect, symmetrical and handsome, soured so beautifully she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. He was such a curious creature, Merris Osterious. He glared at her and twisted the large, almost gaudy silver moth that rested on his finger. The sigil ring of his House.
They called him Meri the Moth in some circles. He always dressed in powder gray or black. He was always soft spoken and polite though generally evasive if pressed. Lillandyr frowned at him as she tried to recall how she'd even met Meriweather. He had so many names.
The rise of his House was the stuff of legend. He arrived in her Quarter with a thin story of how his family had been artisans, sculptors, and painters. And it was true that the man appreciated art and the finer things. The modest, elegant manor of House Osterious was filled to capacity with art. Paintings from up and coming artists, some from the masters. Some were very old and some were still tacky, still wet from being painted. At times, it seemed he'd simply magicked himself into existence and all the banks and counting houses and coin lenders bowed down to the might of his financial prowess. House Osterious quickly became the wealthiest House in all Belshalara.
She had been more flirtatious then, when she'd thought him a threat. She had cooed and stood too close and watched him take in sharp breaths as her lips nearly brushed over his cheek. But he never bent to her seductions nor did he turn them away. He seemed nervous and out of sorts and it annoyed her. And as time passed it became clear that Merris had very little in the way of political ambition. Thus it wasn't particularly advantageous to continue trying to bed him.
House Osterious consisted of just Merris. He had no servants that Lillandyr had ever seen. No friends that stayed with him. No, the thin, elegant man seemed utterly alone, rattling about his dimly lit home full of sculptures that watched her with dead eyes of stone.
When they had first met, she would receive invitations on fine, thick cards. Silver, swooping calligraphy, inviting her to join him for tea. It was here he offered his services. Merris and his House had come into power in the most simple and efficient way possible. Through money and his strict control over it. Through good investments and cutthroat, back room deals. He'd swiftly earned her respect.
House Osterious had come to her Quarter with retainers dressed all in gray, streaming his banners behind them. They moved and looked very much like a funeral party, all dour and colorless. It certainly didn't seem as though they belonged in the ribald Quarter of excess and revelry. His bannermen had called to her in her tower as a lover might his paramour. "Come down from your tower, Lady Shadowglade!" Thinking about it now made her frown thoughtfully. It had all been very strange.
Yet she couldn't deny how Mister Osterious had helped her. Her investments were always sound under his tutelage. And time spent in his manor, though uncomfortable, had not been time ill spent. He only ever allowed her into his drawing room, which reeked of opulence. There was a subtle hint there as the room was draped in silks of crimson, black, and gray. The colors of both their Houses. Sometimes Lillandyr wondered if perhaps he hadn't decorated this room just for her.
And while he had extended every courtesy imaginable to her when in his home, she had felt unsettled. The shadows breathed there. Inexplicably, there was a cloying, medicinal smell. Disinfectant. Formaldehyde. Her clothes had come away stinking of it when she'd returned home. Lillandyr couldn't repress a shudder.
"This book you ask for is very valuable, Lillandyr," he said, his voice, serious and grave, breaking through her remembrances. He held up the object of her desire. It was bound in black leather and had no markings on the front. Even holding that book was treason to the empire and it brought a flush of pleasure over her cheeks. She wet her lips and took a sip of honeyed tea. Her throat was suddenly tight.
"Yes," she whispered, reaching out a delicate hand to take it. The air was still. Not even birdsong disturbed it. Her face was painted with naked desire and want. She leaned forward in her chair, seduced by the promise of forbidden knowledge. Power was to be had in that book. Venorith, her true patron god, the Usurper. The Destroyer. There were spells and sutras in that tome that if read would bring on madness and death if you did not hold enough favor with the dark and vicious deity. She'd been looking for the Mad Penitents Codex for over twenty years. It had been purported to have been lost, but now, Merris had somehow found it for her. Even with her fingers hovering and poised to snatch it from Merris' pale grasp, she could feel the power crackling around the book. She could smell the faint ozone, like the air after a lightning storm. Her fingers trembled. Merris was so good to her.
Except this time he snatched the book away. Merris tucked the book into his breast pocket and folded his hands neatly back on the table. He fidgeted far less now and smiled at her. It was a thin, cold smile meant to taunt her, clearly. She sucked down the rest of her tepid tea. "Shall I say please?" she asked dryly, unamused.
"That, Lady Shadowglade, would be an excellent start," he said, his tone unfamiliar with its darkness. He never touched the food she had brought to the table and now he eyed it with distaste. He wasn't bothering with pleasantries anymore. He eyed her with distaste. That joke just wasn't funny anymore.
"Come now, darling," she said with thinly veiled anger. "Don't be a tease." She had shown too much want. She had miscalculated. She had pushed Mister Osterious too far. He wasn't as fond of their games as she was.
"A tease? No, my Lady. Not a tease. It's just poor business, wouldn't you agree? To keep giving you these little presents you so clearly don't deserve." He sneered at her. He looked disgusted, his thin lip curled over his white teeth. He didn't look nervous now, just angry and hurt.
Lillandyr was done with tea. She had an overwhelming urge again to fling the entire table to the ground, dash the delicate china just to hear the satisfying tinkle of breaking glass. It would soothe the jagged edges of her ill temper. Now was not the time to play games or torment her. But she had more self-control than that and she laughed softly at Merris as though this was all some great mummer's farce put on for her delight. "Of course, my dear. Of course. I suppose we'll have to make a deal then, won't we? What must I do to take that book off your hands?" She plucked a silver bell from the table to summon her butler to take the entire mess away before she cast it over the wrought iron railing of her balcony.
Like all her possessions, Lady Shadowglade's butler was a lovely creature, and decidedly not an elf. His skin was the color of burnished gold and his eyes were a licking furnace of red flame. Long, long metallic silver hair trailed after him as he moved with preternatural grace and deadly precision. Her butler was a vulgar display of her power, a demon servant of Venorith. With one of the rare tomes Merris had given her, Lillandyr had scried forth the name of this demon. And with the name, she bound it to her will.
"Xaphan'uth'inaril," she said, smiling smug and sweet up at the seething creature from the planes of flame and torment. "I'm quite done with tea. Clear this away." Because her chosen god favored wickedness and spite above all else, she never had the demon do anything more important than clearing dishes or polishing her boots. Xaphan was a fearful creature capable of far more than taking a tea table away, but she knew that his abuse at her hands pleased her god.
"Such a flagrant display, Lillandyr," Merris said, pushing away and standing as the great demon reached broad, clawed hands out to grasp the edges of the table. Meri the Moth watched her sharply and she could see the anger curdle in his gaze. "It would be a pity if someone took notice of... such a thing." He smiled, empty and cold, and the shadows of his expression cut her a little.
He shrugged it off, however. "If you want the book, my lovely Lady, you shall have to in turn give me something I desire." She felt hot under his analytical scrutiny. Uncomfortable. "There is, somewhere in the Underground, an Idol of Turtih." The god of war and strife. Of blood and conflict. God of the Crimson Struggle. "Such a thing will buy your tome and my silence."
Lillandyr arched a brow sharply at the dark haired man, watched him smile, his dark eyes cold and dead. She scowled and her lips parted with recriminations. How dare he threaten her?
But the words never left her lips. Shouts of her name were carried on the sweet, warm wind that stirred her hair. "Shadowglade!" Someone cried. And again. She turned as more shouts of alarm were raised. Delicate hands grasped the rail. There, in her pale courtyard, a smear of crimson washed across the shining cobblestones and a hulking, ugly shape thrashed a fallen man. A crowd gathered, milling about; her guards pushed them away, trying to get to the man.
Kia Sin'del was making a scene. Her lips thinned.
She watched, rapt at the sheer animal power of the big brute. It took four guards to subdue him. She could see the glitter of their weapons. No.
"Hold!" she shouted. "Hold, dammit!" She raised a slender arm and waved. With clear reluctance, they released the Old Dog. Lillandyr turned, heart racing. He'd killed the Captain as she'd asked and nothing pleased her more than her will done.
Merris was gone. It wasn't as though he'd simply left. Her demon stood staring at the spot the thin man had formerly occupied. She was left with a numb, tingling feeling as if the world around her were just ever so slightly off kilter.
"He vanished, Mistress," the demon rumbled before gliding away to polish teacups.
Gooseflesh prickled over her arms and up the back of her neck. Perhaps she had, all this time, underestimated Merris. Something between them had shifted in some fundamental way, but she wasn't sure, not just yet, what all that meant, and now she didn't have time to explore it or roll it around in her thoughts. She had work for Kia Sin'del.
She took her time dressing, as she was certain her guards would hold him for her. She wore something simple this time. Just a long, slinky red dress that clung to every dip and curve of her. Rubies flamed at her throat and a bright, sweet red rose sat amid a nest of honeyed curls. On slippered feet, she descended her tower, and raced over her courtyard. When she came to stop before the Old Dog, who was still spattered with gore, she was flushed and smiling.
The copper stink of the corpse made her wrinkle her nose. "Mister Sin'del!" she chirped cheerfully. "Walk with me while I take my constitutional." She offered him her slender arm. Her guards exchanged thin looks, and the Old Dog himself seemed momentarily disarmed and annoyed by her demeanor. But he was in a nasty spot, surrounded by her men and their weapons, so he snorted and threaded a big, hairy arm through hers and let her lead him away from the guards as they dispersed the gathered rubberneckers.
"I half expected you to do nothing." Her tone was cool now, all business. "But I'm pleased you came to understand my position." That you bent to my threat, she thought smugly. "It's opened the door, you realize, to a lovely working relationship." She was certain Mister Sin'del would've preferred that she just go back to overlooking him, but she knew his worth now and fully intended to exploit it.
Once they were out of sight of the crowd and the guards, his big hand closed over her upper arm and he squeezed a little too hard. "Yeah? Good," he said, his voice grit and smoke. "So back in your tower Shadowglade, and me back to my corner." He released her and strode away. His hand had left a smear of the Captain's blood on her ivory skin. She scowled and hurried after him, silk of her dress swishing around her ankles.
"I've work for you!" she called out to his back. She was livid. Manhandled and dismissed. Her tone crackled with her temper. The big man stopped and turned, clearly amused by her sourness. She had his attention without further violence so she calmed herself. "I know simple coin won't entice you, so I will offer you a favor. One favor." She held up a finger. "Surely you realize how valuable that is."
He studied her through his good eye as his fingers raked through his very long goatee. By the expression on his face, it was clear he understood the value of her favor. It was sought after. It was more precious than gold. She had the power to grant or destroy almost anything that anyone could desire. "I'm listening," he answered in a dry, sandpaper voice that had sucked too much cigar smoke.
"In the city's Underground exist a great many splintered cults. They're like rats." She sneered. Lepers and beggars. Criminals. It was a seedy, terrible place. Dangerous. "Some of them, likely a small Death Cult, hold an idol of Turtih. I must have it. If you retrieve it for me, I will grant you a favor. Either now or twenty years from now." It implied much. Flesh or blood. Spirit and pain. Pleasure or death. A rare treasure. And there was an unspoken threat between them. Neither wanted war with the other. Working together was far more sensible.
His good eye narrowed skeptically. He began to walk, expecting her to follow. The guards milled around and the crushed, splattered body was being cleaned hastily off the cobbled street. Gawkers and curious citizens were still being ushered and streamed away from the scene. He was still coated in gore and doused in fresh, warm blood. "Why?" he asked crisply, defiant. "Why not send your men out to get it?"
She hurried after him, skirts in hand. Her heels clacked over the cobblestones and she glared at his back. "Because, Mister Sin'del, I have asked you. Not my men. You." Her smile cut across her face sharply. He's familiar with the world below, he must be. She knew, with some chagrin, that her men were either not trustworthy enough or wouldn't be able to handle what they found down below.
Kia dipped into his pocket to find something to smoke or something to chew. He set a toothpick on his bottom lip, his eye straight ahead as he walked. He was a big man, and his strides were longer and quicker than hers, especially in her cumbersome gown. "I could send my men," he said coolly. After a moment of silence he continued, "I'm a busy man, Lady Shadowglade," he said flat and dismissive, "I know you're offering a favor. But I've a business to run. Why must I see to this personally?" he asked as he glanced over his shoulder to the woman. "We are done, aren't we? We exchanged people. My captain for your whore. I find it mildly insulting that you're now treating me as your errand boy and personal dog."
"Because, Mister Sin'del," she said with more than a touch of haughty impatience, "I've asked it of you. I think," she said, stepping up close to him, her chin lofted. Her proximity was to show him loud and clear that she was not afraid of him, even if the truth was that she was, a little. "You murdered a man, in broad daylight... in my courtyard. You did this in front of many witnesses and over the days to come it will take some real finagling to get things in order again. The people like justice, Mister Sin'del." She let the implication of her words hang between them.
She stopped him and he was at a pause. He stared at her as she stepped closer. She was blackmailing him. She was blackmailing him for doing what she had asked – sacrificing one of his men. Clever and cruel. He could not refuse; she knew this. His lips parted slightly and surprise briefly flushed across his ugly, unpleasant face. Then a touch of anger flickered through his eye. After a prolonged amount of thought and silence, his head bobbed. He nodded in agreement. "Just one fucking thing," he said, lifting up a heavy finger. "This fucking thing. This... idol of Turtih. Then? We are done, Shadowglade. Done," he warned. "I want things back to the way they were, where we ignored one another and went about our business, where our worlds did not cross."
She held up her slender hands, her lips quirked into a sly little smile. "Of course. It's what I want, too, Mister Sin'del." But that wasn't true at all. She was making plans for him already. She wanted him firmly under her thumb. The very thought sent an illicit thrill through her. To have the Old Dog at her beck and call. Perfect.
She smiled, pleased. Let Merris taunt her and tease her, keeping what she desired out of her reach. If he ever did so again, she'd send "her" Dog after him. "It would be cruel of me to send you alone," she said off-handedly. And it would. It was far too dangerous a job for just one man, no matter how big and mean said man was. "Go to the Emerald Docks in the Industrial Quarter. There, on Cannery Row, you'll find Stormcrow's office. Your partner." Before Kia Sin'del could protest, she turned and made her way back to her tower.
She looked over her shoulder once, then twice. She watched him snarl and eye her. Lillandyr's clear laughter rang out in the afternoon.
He removed his toothpick and flicked it away in clear frustration. It was obvious he was bristling in anger, upset at the sheer gall of her actions. He said nothing else as he stormed away. He was a sight to see. People stopped and stared, and the crowd parted for the large brute coated in the remains of a fresh murder.
Lillandyr grinned to herself as she heard the Old Dog curse, damn her and wish her ill. Let him, she thought. She knew she had his loyalty for now.