The Past
And later, he would tell himself that the evening at Saidin's had felt wrong from the start, that even as he had followed Ava along that corridor, shuffling through a trampled mulch of rubbish, he had sensed it: Jamila's death, waiting.
They had gone out after he had seen Edain, and paid off his debt to Dett—the alliteration had made him laugh painfully when he said it aloud—with a handful of gold from Galeas. His advance. Dett had liked that, his boys had liked it less, and Ava had grinned at Oren's side with a kind of ecstatic feral intensity, obviously longing for one of them to make a move. A kinder soul would have called it maternal instinct; it was only a killer's lust. Then he had taken her back to the Hellshouse for a drink. She laughed again at the sign outside: Sister Ava’s Home for Wayward Girls.
"Wasting your time, kid," she said when he took out his last tablet from the pocket of his jacket.
"How's that?" he asked, then held it out to her. "You want one?"
"Mystic's blessing, Oren. The shit we've been pumping into you keeps your body from absorbing that. Galeas' special request." She tapped that tablet with a burgundy-lacquered nail. "You are incapable of getting off on that."
"Shit." He looked from the tablet to her face, seeking the lie.
"Eat it. Eat a handful. Nothing will happen."
He did. Nothing did. Three beers later, he was asking Maus about the fights.
"Saidin's," Maus said.
"I'll pass," Oren replied. "I hear they kill each other down there." Ava perked at that. An hour later, she was buying tickets from a skinny kid in baggy clothes, hand-me-downs, or perhaps they were layered to conveniently hide the ragged tears from stabbings past.
Saidin's was a dome behind a portside warehouse, taut gray canvas reinforced with a net of thin metal cables. Walking in the door, there was a heat differential. It was a disaster waiting to happen, but there was fire everywhere, along the walls, under the metal netting where the fights took place. The hot air moved upward and kept the dome supported. The air was damp and close with the smell of sweat and, closer to the cages, the occasional coppery whiff of blood.
None of that prepared him for the arena, the crowd, and the tense hush. Benches sloped away in tiers to a kind of central stage, a raised circle of interlaced cables over the fire as though the flesh fighting was being prepared to feed the bloodthirsty crowd. Strata of intoxicating smoke rose from the benches, drifting until it struck currents of hot air rising from the fires.
He watched Ava's eyes fixate on the men circling below. Steel flickered in their hands. The knife fighter's grip is the fencer's grip, she had taught him long ago, the fingers curled, thumb aligned with the blade. The knives seemed to move of their own accord, gliding with a ritual lack of urgency through the arcs and passes of their dance, point passing point, as the men waited for an opening. Ava's face was smooth and still, a predator watching.
"I'll go get us some food," Oren said. She nodded, lost in contemplation of the dance.
He didn't like this place. He turned and walked back into the shadows—too dark, too quiet. The crowd, he saw, was mostly local. Not really the crowd from this neighborhood, but men and women who knew where to find illicit things, but lived far enough away from the danger that it felt like a drug. He had made nearly a full circuit of the dome before he found the food stalls, spits of shawarma slow roasting over open fires and the like. He bought two skewers of roasted meat and vegetables and a growler of beer big enough to split. Glancing at the knife fighter's, he saw that blood laced one figure's chest. Thick sauce trickled down the skewers and over his knuckles.
He closed his eyes and he could still see, only the world was shapes made of pure light, patterns and hues, intense and beating like a heart. Or twisting like his gorge was rising. He wasn't well. How long had she said this would last? The Mystic might have brought him a Goddess' grace, but Galeas had poisoned it. Her gift twisted him up inside, made him feel wrong. It was the runes carved into his arms, hidden under his biceps, the wounds easy for her to heal, though the marks on his soul remained feverish. She had cured him of his addiction, but he felt sicker now than before.
Shadows twisted, shadows and after images of the fighters. He shouldn't be able to see them like this.
Then the fear began to knot between his shoulders. A cold trickle of sweat in the hot air worked its way down and across his ribs. The healing hadn't worked. He was still here, still meat being grilled along with all the other deadbeats and thrill-seekers. Ava wasn't waiting, her eyes locked on the circling knives. Galeas wasn't waiting in his palatial suite with plans for some big job that was going to turn Oren's life around. It was all some dream, some pathetic fantasy. Hot tears blurred his vision.
Still, he could See the blood spraying from a jugular in a red gout of light. And now the crowd was screaming, rising, screaming—as one person crumpled, fading, flickering. The raw edge of vomit lined his throat. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them, and saw Jamila step past him, her gray eyes blind with fear. And gone. Into shadow.
In pure, mindless reflex, he threw the beer and skewers down and ran after her. He might have called her name, but he would never be sure. He followed a single hair-fine line of red light seared into the ground beneath the thin soles of his shoes. Her own feet flashed, close to the curving wall now, and again the ghost line branded itself into his eyes, bobbing in his vision as he ran. Someone tripped him. Stone tore his palms. He rolled and kicked, failing to connect. A thin young man, blond spikes of hair lit from behind in a rainbow nimbus, was leaning over him. On the stage, a figure turned, knife held high, to the cheering crowd. The man smiled and drew something from his sleeve—a razor, etched in ruddy firelight, then red as it intersected the trail that Jamila had left for him. It continued past this man, into the dark. Oren saw the razor dipping for his throat like a dowsing wand.
The man's face distorted as a knife slammed into his jaw. The grotesque view was accompanied by the gurgle of blood and escaping air as a second knife took him in the throat. He coughed once, convulsively, and toppled across Oren's legs. His blood was warm as the womb.
Oren was walking toward the stalls, into the shadows. He looked down, expecting to see that ruby needle emerging from his chest to lead him to that fucking woman. Nothing. He found her. She was thrown down at the foot of a pillar, eyes closed. There was a smell of cooked meat. The crowd was chanting the winner's name. A beer vendor was wiping his taps with a dirty rag. One of her shoes had come off, somehow, and lay beside her head.
Follow the wall, he told himself. The curve of gray canvas. Hands in pockets. Keep walking, past unseeing faces, every eye turned toward the victor in the ring as he kicked his fallen opponent's body off the cage-like island and into the fires below. A lucifer flared in the shadows, illuminating a seamed face, dancing in the sudden glare, lips pursed around the short stem of a pipe. The tang of narcotics filled the air. Oren walked on, feeling nothing.
"Oren." Ava emerged from deeper shadow. "Are you all right?"
Something mewled and bubbled in the dark behind her. He shook his head.
"Fight's over, Oren. Time to go home."
He tried to walk past her, back into the dark, where something was dying. She stopped him with a hand on his chest. "Friends of your good friend. Killed your girl for you. You haven't done too well for friends in this town, have you? We know Edain from way back. He would throw anyone into the fire for a handful of gold. The one back there said they got her when she was trying to fence your cache. Just cheaper for them to kill her and take it. Save a little money... I got the one to tell me all about it. Coincidence we were here, but I had to make sure." Her mouth was hard, lips pressed into a thin line.
Oren felt as if his mind was coming undone, his senses warped by the magic they had inflicted upon him. "Who?" he managed in a croak. "When sent them?"
She had already told him, but she passed him a bloody bag of confections from Edain's desk. He saw that her hands, too, were sticky with blood. Back in the shadows, someone made wet sounds and died.
"You're doing it again," she said, eying him hard. The glamours, he supposed, though he couldn't really see what she was seeing. He only saw the syringe flash in his peripheral vision. "Let's go home, Oren."
***
After one last visit to the Mystic's clinic, Ava took him to the port. Galeas was waiting. He had chartered a riverboat. The last Oren saw of Cathena City was the lights as a mist closed over the black water and the drifting flotsam and jetsam drifting in the eddies where a bend in the river slowed everything down.The Present
If one considered the three fabled buildings on the plaza as sisters, the Golden Peacock was definitely the most elegant of them. It was an intelligent move, he thought, a graduation from the Velvet Cabaret. Here all he would have to do was manage the books and make wise financial decisions and he would have legitimacy in the business world of Kalzasi.
And then the real work could commence, his keiretsu gaining momentum. He would build resources, the better to protect the handful of people he actually cared about in the world, from Elwes who had stuck with him from his beginnings in the Middens and the Low-City to Ashoka who was born to some privilege, but was at the mercy of those with the real privilege. And of course, Arry, who hated him, and Torin, who loved him. Stupid boys. He would take care of them, as well. He tried not to think about people he had failed before. He tried not to think some lingering curse followed him from that city on the river. This was that mythic place where winged men guarded people against harm, a place for new beginnings.
He shifted, his nice coat had always been a bit tight across the shoulders but he so rarely wore it. He probably should have stood so as not to wrinkle it, but the triumvirate was in a closed-door meeting and he had no idea how long that would take. He tried to sprawl, to fall into his rakish role. Arry had faked Arvalyn until it was true. Oren had faked Aurin until it was true. He tried to hold onto that.
Aurin had almost managed to relax into his customary nonchalance when the door opened and Celisa Kolkis stepped out.
"Master Kavafis? Aurin—come in, please."
"Of course," he said, sweeping up to his feet and following her into the room. It was much nicer than anything in the Velvet Cabaret. Things here were elegant rather than chintzy. He recognized Lord Yserloo Choi, though he had to pretend he had only seen him from afar. Elric Hansom was handsome and—not furtive, but—of a somewhat manic temperament. They all rose to greet him, which felt odd, to say the least.
"Master Kavafis," Yserloo intoned with a nobleman's self-importance. "Aurin. Let us not stand on ceremony. We have conferred and agreed to offer you the role of managing director of the theater effective immediately, the better to give Celisa time to ease you into things."
"My lord," Aurin said, then smiled to Hansom and Kolkis, "gentlefolk, I gratefully accept."
"Congratulations, Master Kavafis," Hansom said. "May I call you Aurin?"
"Of course, of course. We'll be working together and as Lord Yserloo said, we needn't stand on ceremony."
"You'll find I say a lot of things," Choi said magnanimously, though glad to have his words parroted. "But one ceremony I would like to stand on is a toast. Celisa, be a dear and fetch us some champagne?"
Aurin, at least, saw how her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. He supposed Elric did as well, being an artist of performance and a student of human nature.
"Of course," she said smoothly. "Congratulations, Aurin. I'm certain you will rise to the challenge." Then, quietly when she was close, "Do send my warmest regards to Master Darus."
He smiled urbanely as she went to fetch for the angel investor. Turning his gaze back on the men, who were already conversing among themselves, he considered. Yserloo Choi was going to be a direct line to information from the upper echelons of society. Elric Hansom would have all the strange, organically grown connections that he had come to expect from artists while working with those at the Velvet Cabaret. But he was also established and had some clout in society, which would put an interesting spin on things.
"I don't suppose you would mind giving me the inside track on some of the performers at the Cabaret, would you, Aurin?" Elric was asking. "I know Lunaria will glare at me for a while for sniping you, but so many of them keep auditioning. I can tell which ones are talented, but you would know which ones are easy to work with. Sometimes that's the most important thing." The man seemed friendly enough, though there was a vague sort of condescension that he had received from some people in the arts who figured he was a money man or at the very best, an impresario. He could live with that, though. The theater had an excellent mission, and he could divorce his personal feelings from the work. But he could also stay in his lane and promote the artists he thought worthwhile.
"Oh, I'm certain you have a much keener eye for talent than I have, Elric..." He paused, making sure the first name basis was comfortable for all, then proceeded. "But hopefully I know enough to gatekeep for you somewhat. You must be harassed so often. Feel free to blame me for decisions that upset people. I have a thick skin and ultimately, my goal will be to make sure the finances support your vision. But I would be happy to give you my input if it would help you make your decisions."
"That would be a life-saver," he gushed with dramatic relief. "And don't sell yourself short, Aurin. You must have run interference for Madame Lunaria. I'd be happy for you to do the same for me. At least weed some of them out so I don't have to waste my time on everyone starry-eyed ingenue who thinks she was made to tread these hallowed boards." Hook, line, and sinker.
"I'll drink to that," Yserloo jibed and they all laughed appreciatively. Such wit. Celisa had returned with a helper and the requested libations.
Let the wild rumpus commence.
