Dalshire: Rufus and Melrose

 “You made it!” said Melrose, his voice a little high and indignant.  “Where else should I bring it to be sharpened?”

“Anywhere!  Anywhere else at all!  Take it away, and stay gone when you go!”

“No-one else can sharpen it,” said Melrose.  He started to walk over to Rufus as he felt like he was shouting from a distance.  “I’ve asked.  I’ve paid.  I’ve even forced some people to try who…”

“Were reluctant?”  There was a note of scorn in Rufus’s voice.  He held up a hand.  “Stop moving, I can tell you’re getting closer and I don’t want you or that — thing — anywhere near me.  But, I will say that I’m slightly impressed that you offered to pay some of them.”

“I did pay some of them,” said Melrose stopping where he was.  He was nearer the house than the wall now but he was sure that Rufus could get inside and lock the door before he could reach him.  “I would have paid anyone who managed to sharpen it.”

“Remarkably honest of you,” said Rufus.  He reached up to his neck with a pale white bony hand and pulled his dressing gown tighter about his shoulders.  “Damn it’s cold out here.  Is it snowing yet?”

“Yes,” said Melrose.  “Now, are you going to let me pay you to sharpen this sword, or do we have to do things the hard way?”  He took another tentative step forwards, watching Rufus’s head to see if he was listening for footsteps.

Rufus sighed, a long drawn out exhalation of breath that sounded more frustrated than tired.

“I can hear you move,” he said.  “I’d love to tell you that my other senses got sharper when I lost my sight, but that’s not even slightly true.  I have a couple of devices that boost my hearing, my sense of touch — I don’t use that one much — and one that lets me feel changes in magnetic fields.  Nearby magnetic fields, of course, but it’s still an interesting one.  So stay where you are, please, or this conversation is over.”

“The hard way then?”

“Did I say that, idiot man-child?  Wait, did I call you that already?”  Rufus shook his head.  “Never mind, you puling imbecile.  What makes you think I can sharpen the sword if no-one else can?  That has to be the triumph of hope over common sense.”

“You made it!”  Melrose was aware that he sounded whiny now and his free hand clenched into a fist.  After a moment he realised what he was doing and unclenched, reaching up and sweeping the accumulated snow from his hair.  His head felt briefly colder.

“Ah,” said Rufus.  “There that is again.”  He shifted his weight to his other foot and shivered, causing a light snowfall from his shoulders.  Melrose realised that the snowfall was getting heavy.

“What do you mean?” A feeling of dread crept over Melrose, manifesting as an uncomfortable contraction of his stomach and a sensation that he’d missed something important.

“Well,” said Rufus staring up at the sky as though he could see the snow twisting and cavorting above him.  Melrose followed his gaze, but the mesmerizing dance of the snow was wasted on him and he resumed looking at Rufus.  “Well,” said Rufus again, and coughed.  Then he cleared his throat.  “Well.”

“Get on with it!”

“Aha, yes, I suppose I have to.  Well.  Well, you got the sword from me,” said Rufus, who seemed determined to drag the words out for as far as they would go.  “I accept that.  I agree with that, even.  That’s entirely true.  I had the sword, and I gave it to you.”

“You didn’t make it, did you?” said Melrose with a feeling of tired certainty.  “That’s the problem here.  You let me think you made it, and you didn’t.”

“I’ve made a lot of swords in my time,” said Rufus hurriedly.  “A lot.  Many more than most people, in fact.  Even blacksmiths, I’ve made more than some of them.”

“But you didn’t make this one,” said Melrose.  “That’s what this is all about.  You don’t know how to sharpen it, do you?”

“It’s not like I ever said I did!  And there’s no warranty with swords either, you get one and you use it until it’s done, and then you replace it.  Often with someone else’s sword, in your case, but that’s probably not what you want to talk about right now.”

Melrose glared at Rufus until he remembered that the man couldn’t see him now.

“Who made it?”

“Well—“

“Who made it?”

Rufus fell silent for a moment.  Then, “I don’t actually know.  It was a gift…” he tailed off as though he could feel the silent intensity of Melrose’s gaze.  “It was supposed to be pawned,” he said, correcting himself.  “The person who left it with me took a small amount of gold plate in exchange.”  Rufus ignored the sarcastic-sounding “Hah” from Melrose.  “They were supposed to come back and redeem the sword.”

Melrose shivered, feeling the cold that he’d been forcing himself to ignore all night.  “So you don’t know who made it and you don’t know how to sharpen it, and if I throw away all your rambling, you’re trying to tell me that you expect me to mug someone and take their sword to replace this one.  Is that supposed to be advice?”

Rufus coughed again.

“Oh for gods’ sake!  What now?  What else haven’t you told me?”

“It’s probably quite hard to, uh, get rid of that sword,” said Rufus in a quiet voice.  “I couldn’t until I sold it to you.”

Melrose’s shout of annoyance was loud enough that lights turned on, briefly, in the nearest houses.

“Look,” said Rufus waving his hands placatingly slightly to the left of where Melrose was standing.  “Look.  I never said I don’t know how to sharpen it, ok?”

“Yes, you did!”

“No!  No, I didn’t!  I just said that I couldn’t sharpen it.”

Despite his enhanced hearing, and the ability to feel the sword’s presence through the way it changed the magnetic fields, Rufus was still startled to feel Melrose’s hand clamp down on his shoulder.  He tried to shudder, but he was being gripped too firmly for that.

“That was amazingly fast,” he said weakly, trying to twist out of Melrose’s grip, but the man had fingers like iron bars.

“Yes,” said Melrose.  “Let’s go inside, because if much more me goes numb you’ll have to thaw me out in the Spring, and you can tell me all about how this sword can be sharpened and who is going to do it for me.”

Rufus sagged, trying one more time to get free from Melrose, but he found himself being held upright by Melrose’s grip and then pushed through the doorway.

“Inside, yes,” he said sounding defeated.  “I suppose I can show you the book, too.”

“Still haven’t learned how to read,” said Melrose, kicking the door shut behind him.  “But I can look at the pictures if there are any.”

Dalshire; evening, in the snow

As the sun set, gleaming redly between the sparse rooftops of Dalshire, grey clouds gathered and meshed, suffocating the crimson rays and hastening the onset of twilight. A few minutes later the first flakes of ashy-white snow began to fall and a light breeze sprang up from the north. The beggars that had gathered, rather forlornly, in the middle of Market Square, stood up one by one, carefully ignoring one another, and shambled or limped away, seeking shelter and warmth where they might find it. When the snow began to settle and mound only one beggar was left: wrapped in a colourfully striped blanket that was smeared here and there with crumbling brown dirt she was mumbling to herself and tugging absently at her greasy, rat-tailed hair as though trying to reset a wig on her head. At the edge of Market Square a lamp-lighter clutching a long pole hurried from one filigreed black-iron lamp-post to the next, the pole hooking open the little glass chamber atop each pole and dipping inside to light the wick there before tapping the glass shut again. Two of the lamps failed to stay lit but the lamp-lighter, huddling against the breeze as though it were much stronger, hastened on, uncaring of the darkness between pools of yellowish light.

Another figure appeared, walking stiffly. They seemed to see the lamp-lighter and let out a cry, maybe a call or a greeting, but the lamp-lighter never turned his head nor slowed his tread and soon vanished from sight. The beggar, whose feet were starting to numb with the cold, looked up without interest and watched until it became apparent that the figure had seen her and was now walking in her direction.

“You’re in the wrong place,” she said, her voice quiet but carrying well on the frosty, ice-enhanced air. “You should leave now.”

The figure didn’t stop its jerky gait, as though it had only learned to walk the day before, but it did raise its head slightly. The beggar thought that they might be male, and noted that the shoulders were broad and looked muscular.

“My name is Melrose,” said the figure in a voice that was deep and gravelly. The beggar felt a sense of unease stir within her, like butterflies in her stomach. “I’m looking for Dalshire.”

“You’ve found it,” said the beggar. “Well done. You can leave again now.”

“So I’m not in the wrong place,” said Melrose. “Why do you keep telling me to leave?”

“It’s for your own good,” said the beggar. She shifted uncomfortably, disturbed by something more than the increasing cold, and rubbed her ankles. She had to fight down an urge to get up and run away. When she looked up again Melrose had closed the distance between them and was now illuminated by a lamp. His face was passably handsome but scarred on the right side in several places, the oldest and whitest of the scars just missing his eye. His hair was blond and straight, dampened by the falling snow, and fell down his neck to somewhere behind his back. He was wearing a leather cuirass that was covered in blood that was too wet and too dark not to be fresh, and his arms and legs, all wrapped in leather strips, looked to be bloodied too. There was an iron smell in the air and something that reminded her of the slaughterhouse.

“I’ll decide what’s good for me,” said Melrose. He took another step forward and she realised that he’d been leaning on a sword to help him walk. He brought it forwards, planting the point on the snowy ground, and the blade was luminous in Melrose’s shadow.

“They won’t give you a room for the night,” said the beggar, gesturing at Dalshire. “They won’t offer you food, even for money. They won’t open their doors if they see that sword. You’re in the wrong place.”

“Have I asked for any of those things?”

The beggar thought about that for a moment. She’d been doing all the talking so far, she realised.

“Just warning you, friend,” she said, getting her feet under her, just in case running away turned out to the prudent option. The sword looked nasty, but the man looked injured; she thought her chances were worth taking.

“Hah. I don’t care for friends,” said Melrose. “The bookkeeping isn’t worth it.”

“Huh?”

“Is this Dalshire?”

He had to repeat the question before she started listening again, and then she nodded. “There’s nothing here for you,” she said, feeling like she was repeating herself.

“Let’s let the gods decide that,” said Melrose quietly.

“They make their own gods here,” said the beggar without thinking. As she heard her words hang on the icy air momentarily she clapped her hand over her mouth and jerked upright, throwing a small cloud of dusty snow around her.

“Now that sounds more interesting,” said Melrose, and for the first time he smiled. “Why don’t you tell me more about that?”

The beggar sprinted off and Melrose watched her go. Her blanket streamed behind her, clutched under one arm, like a strange flag, and she jinked from side to side as though worried that he was going to throw something at her. When she had vanished from sight he looked down, confirming that her footprints were clearly visible in the thin crust of the snow, and slowly shook his head.

“Thoughtless,” he said, probably to himself. He turned, wincing slightly as scabs over recent wounds were pulled taut, and lifted the sword. It had been described as a miracle of engineering by its makers, and despite its size and length making it look like it needed two hands to wield, it was light enough that he could wield it with one and even fence with it. The edge was dulled though and nicked in places and the leather wrapping on the hilt was worn and torn.

“Show me,” he said, addressing the sword, and a moment later he felt the sword pull on his arm, lifting it horizontal and then tugging it to his left. He let himself be turned, his feet squeaking on the new snow, until the sword stopped pulling and his arm dropped to his side.

“…” he said, looking up at the sky and realising that without the sun he couldn’t tell what direction he was facing. “This way,” he said, though it didn’t feel as convincing as naming the compass points.

The snow was unmarred as he walked through Dalshire, which was more a collection of houses than a village. Each house seemed to have been set up independently of the others and where three or four houses formed an impromptu street it felt like it had happened by accident. There were wells on almost every property rather than a single communal well, wooden fences and stone walls that just ended abruptly, presumably at the point where land ceased being claimed and became community property again. The houses were one, two or three storeys with little architectural consistency and the quality of their construction was as variable. Melrose struggled on, pain slowly building in his wounds as the chill of the night seeped into his bones. For a moment he wished that he was back in Tal Xlitif with its wide, straight streets and thoughtfully designed neighbourhoods and then he pushed that thought aside with vehemence and stared ahead through the swirling snow that was now getting heavier. When a two-storey stone building set in the middle of a grassy field with a low dry-stone wall around three sides of it finally came into view he stopped and looked it over carefully, counting the number of windows and checking the colour of the doors — one at either end of the property — and even estimating the distance between the nearest door and the dry-stone walls. When he was certain that he had the right place he strode across the grass, leaving dark footprints where the snow was crushed away, and knocked on the red door.

As the beggar had predicted, there was no answer. Melrose knocked again, to be polite, and then went to take a slab of stone from the dry-stone wall. He wiped it free of snow and hefted it thoughtfully, considering the windows. All were dark as though the house were empty. He selected a window to the side of the red door and got a grip on the stone as though it were a discus.

“Put that down!”

The red door had opened silently and a man was standing in the doorway holding a flask in one hand and a battered small wooden shield in the other. He was wearing a woollen dressing gown and seemed a very improbable warrior.

“Rufus,” said Melrose, lowering the stone to his side. “You’re still here.”

“Where else would I be, idiot man-child?” said Rufus. His eyes were unfocused and unseeing, but after a moment he shook his head as though trying to get water out of his ears. “Say something else, I think I might recognise you.”

“It’s Melrose,” said Melrose. He set the stone back on the wall. “You’re blind?”

“No, I just don’t like looking at things unless I choose to. Of course I’m blind, you cretin! Melrose…, that name rings a — oh dear Gods, no. You’ve brought that damnable sword back, haven’t you?”

The weight of the world

 Miss Trevelyan’s house had been designed by an architect who had been inspired by both Gaudi and Frank Lloyd Wright but lacked the technical skill and imagination of both.  There were four floors above ground and three below ground and the rooms were intended to have an organic aesthetic about them.  Large windows opened onto a subterranean garden on the second basement floor: an eternally gloomy, damp mushroom grotto of despair that housed a rare colony of albino toads whose presence meant that a preservation order had been slapped on the garden and no improvements or renovations could be effected without planning permission from all of seven different government agencies.  An ingenious cantilever moved the third above-ground floor out from the main column so that its glass floors could look down on the world below.  Since the planning authorities were adamant that the house could not extend over the road it had to extend over the neighbouring property instead, whose owners had promptly retaliated by installing a glass roof to look back up at anyone on the third floor.  The third floor had been intended to be a bathroom, sauna and bedroom area and this had caused some embarrassment and Miss Trevelyan was still embroiled in a law-suit regarding indecent exposure.

The housekeeper led Bill and Ben, gentlemen thieves posing as the Feng Shui police, into a lounge on the ground floor.  It was roughly oval in shape and painted in shades of red and orange that felt intestinal; this was part of the Gaudi elements that the architect had dreamt up.  The couch was lozenge shaped, tilted slightly forwards, and lacked a back, forcing visitors to sit awkwardly on the edge of it, stiffening their spines to remain seated.  There was a wooden chair in one corner that, given manacles and an electric cord, would have looked right at home in an American execution chamber and a television on the wall with a cracked screen.

“Bloody hell,” said Bill with feeling.  He looked around as though expecting to be sprayed with stomach acid at any moment.  “Is Miss Trevelyan a serial killer then?”

“No!”  The housekeeper’s eyes widened with horror.  “This is the Gastric Lounge!  It’s famous.”

Ben nudged Bill with an elbow to silence him.  “Indeed,” he said, grinning like a Cheshire Cat about to do a vanishing act.  “However, it’s also a listed part of a listed property, so there’s nothing we can change in here, you know.  We’re the Feng Shui police, you see, so we definitely can’t break the law.  And we have to be aware of all the laws we can’t break too.”

The housekeeper looked disappointed, almost as though someone had told her an immediate family member was terminally ill.  “Are you sure?” she said.  “Only of all the rooms in the house—“

“Very sure,” said Ben quickly.  “And,” he pulled his Feng Shui meter out of his pocket and tapped at the screen, “as you can see here --“ he flashed the device at the housekeeper too rapidly for her to read the number on the screen “— this room isn’t the problem room at all.  We’re too low.”

“Too low?”

“Yes, your madamling,” said Bill.  Still no reaction from the housekeeper and he was starting to wonder if she had selective hearing.  “Too low.  There must be an upper storey to the house, we could see it from the outside.”

Ben glared at him.  When the housekeeper looked upwards as though wondering to herself if there were more floors above them he slashed a hand across his throat swiftly.  Bill winked.

“Yes, of course,” she said.  She sounded bemused.  “But they’re off limits to guests.”

“We’re not guests,” said Bill helpfully.  “We’re the police.”

“And you’re not a guest,” said Ben.  “So as long as we’re with you, we’re fine.”

“Miss Trevelyan wouldn’t like it,” murmured the housekeeper, but she was sounding tired.  Bill slipped an arm around her shoulders.

“Bad feng shui can affect you as well,” he said comfortingly.  “I can see that you’re already feeling tired, and I suspect that everything seems a bit confusing.  When the Earth dragon gets chained to the ground and the Dragons of Wind and Fire are at cross-purposes, people get caught in the cross-fire.  I bet you’ve had a lot of minor illnesses recently?  Things you haven’t wanted to bother Miss Trevelyan with?  Things that matter, but you’ve put a brave face on because someone has to look after the place, and it’d go to pieces really quickly if you weren’t here to look after it all?  I bet you’re not appreciated for everything you do, either, are you?”

Ben slipped out of the room as silently as a shadow fleeing the sun while the housekeeper swayed on her feet, unaware that Bill was gently rocking her back and forth.  “I have been a bit under the weather,” she said.  “Now that you bring it up.  I wouldn’t want to complain.”

“Oh but you should,” said Bill.  He lowered the pitch of his voice by half an octave so that he almost sounded like he was purring.  "If you don’t complain about the things that are unfair, who else is going to?  Everyone else is always looking out for themselves, am I right?  You keep looking after them and no-one looks after you.  Am I right?”

“Well,” said the housekeeper.  She found herself sitting down on the couch, perching on the edge of it to keep her balance.  Bill stood next to her, resting his hand on her shoulder, unobtrusively holding her in place.  “Well, I don’t want to sound like I’m doing everything all the time—“

“But you are, right?” Bill sounded encouraging.

“Well, no,” said the housekeeper, honesty warring with the desire to have someone listen to her list of grievances.  “Maybe not all the time, you know.  It’s just that sometimes, when I’m here on my own—“

“And Miss Trevelyan hasn’t told you when she’ll be returning, again?”

“I mean, would it kill her to be a little bit more considerate?  I don’t want to complain about her, she’s a very understanding woman in her own way, but sometimes I think she treats me like furniture.”

“That’s why the Feng Shui affects you so much,” said Bill.

“What?” The housekeeper shook her head from side to side.  “Are you saying I’m furniture too?”  She tried to rise, but Bill’s hand was like a lead weight on her shoulder.

“Oh no,” said Bill.  “Definitely not. I’m saying that because Miss Trevelyan treats you like furniture you’re getting more ill.  The Feng Shui is affecting you much more than it would affect her.  That’s probably why it’s taken us so long to find you and come and investigate.”

“Oh,” said the housekeeper.  “That… doesn’t… make sense?”

Ben stepped back into the room, edging around the wall until he was behind the housekeeper.

“Well, if you’re not happy with us being here, we’ll leave,” said Bill taking his hand off her shoulder.  “I mean, we’re only here because you’re letting us in, and we’ve said that we can’t do anything in this room.”

“I think you should leave,” said the housekeeper, standing up and looking about her.  “And where’s — oh there you are.”

Ben waved a hand.  “Checking the walls for the Dragon of Damp,” he said cheerily.  “I think you’ll need a certified Feng Shui plumber to be honest, miss.”

“Your mademoiselle-let,” said Bill, still pushing for a reaction.

“You need to leave,” said the housekeeper, making her mind up.  “You shouldn’t have come in at all.”

“Fair enough, missy,” said Bill.  For a moment he thought she was going to retort, but then a sullen intransigence crossed her face and she shooed them before her to the front door like naughty children.

“Don’t come back,” she said as she closed the door firmly.

“Don’t need to,” murmured Ben.  Bill looked at him.  “Got it,” he smirked.

Envy

 The book was quite clear about the amount of mess that would be created if you summoned Envy into too weak a body. 

“Em? Where do you keep the whiskey?” Charlotte called out, her voice echoing in the dusty, unfurnished room.  She kept shuddering and she had to fight to keep her thoughts from returning to what she’d just read.

“At home,” called back Emily.  There was a moment of silence and then the steady pad-pad-pad of slipper-clad feet.  Emily came into the room holding a lump of green wax and a cloth bag closed with a golden draw-string.  “What’s up?” she said, looking at Charlotte.  “You’re shuddering.  At regular intervals, no less.”

Charlotte grimaced and tried to control herself but then her thoughts would start going back to ‘…eyeballs popping like untreated blisters and fountaining forth viscous humours…’.  “The book is quite graphic,” she said.  “I could use a drink.”

“I brought some camomile tea,” said Emily.  “But then I discovered there’s no kettle here.”  She sounded like this was home already despite having arrived only half an hour earlier.  “You could try sucking on a teabag if you like?  That’s probably quite unpleasant, it might do the trick.”

Charlotte tried to consider it but the thought of it brought up ‘…tongue will elongate to the length of their arm and loll from their swollen lips like an opium-fiend falling from a couch…’.  “I don’t think I can,” she said weakly.  “This book’s warnings are meant to be taken seriously, I think.  Are you sure we want to summon Envy?”

Emily wasn’t a pretty woman; some men might call her handsome, but others were likely to compare her to a horse.  Even so, the look of affront on her face at Charlotte’s question was enough to make Charlotte wish that her features weren’t quite so strongly defined.  Her eyes seemed to bulge outward and her jaw, a square, powerful apparatus that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a gorilla, for example, pushed forwards with an audible grinding of bone.

“I am certain,” she said in the tones of someone who is holding back a lot of their opinion, “that We. Need. To. Summon. Envy.”  The emphasis she gave the words, separating them and stressing them, left no doubt in Charlotte’s mind that Envy was being summoned and would be expected to feel happy about it.  “You shouldn’t worry about the warnings, I’ve read them all too.”

Charlotte shuddered again.  “Didn’t they affect you at all?” she asked.

“Not like this.”  Emily turned away.  “I need to finish putting the symbols in place,” she said.  “Do you want that teabag or not?”

“I’ll manage without,” said Charlotte, but her hopes of sounding put upon but determined were shattered by the pad-pad-pad of Emily’s feet as she walked off.  “And where did you find a pair of slippers already?” she whispered to herself.

Charlotte made herself reread the page in the book, hoping that it would somehow help.  It did a little as some of the images were so awful that she found she was blocking out the memory of them altogether, and she was gratified to find that she’d stopped shuddering.  Then she turned the page to the actual summoning ritual that Emily would be carrying out to find out how awful that would be.  The ritual was described in a single, short paragraph and Charlotte read it three times, marvelling at how simple and easy it sounded.  There was a two-sentence invocation and then the invoker just had to slap the intended vessel for Envy with a green lotus flower.

“Em?” she called.  She stood up; there was only one chair in this abandoned house and it had a broken leg so that it wobbled disconcertingly every time she shifted her weight.  She set the book down on the chair, which rocked and creaked.

“What now?” Emily sounded distracted rather than annoyed so Charlotte followed the sound of her voice.

The house had been built a century ago and was narrow but tall, with four floors above ground and a cellar below.  There were two or three rooms on each floor; here on the ground floor there was a narrow hallway containing the stairs, and a large sitting-room for guests and a small kitchen.  The kitchen still had its cupboards and counters intact but any equipment had been stripped out and taken away.  Emily’s voice came from upstairs where the first floor had a morning-room and two smaller rooms that were just empty cuboids that could have been used for anything.  The larger room was now covered in waxy green symbols that shimmered in a light whose source Charlotte couldn’t find.  Emily was standing facing the wall opposite the window, drawing something on it that was as tall as she was.

“Where are we getting a green lotus flower from?” asked Charlotte, squinting at the drawing.  There were curves and arcs and the whole thing seemed to be afraid of straight lines, but it was somehow hard to look away from.  “There’s no such thing, you know.”

“Hah,” said Emily.  She continued drawing.

“No, really,” said Charlotte after a pause.  “The closest you can get is a blue lotus flower.”

“You can get green,” said Emily.  “You just have to grow them the right way.”

Charlotte thought about this, while her eyes tried to follow the curves of Emily’s drawing.  It was like a maze; every time she thought she could see what a line was doing it turned away and she found some other part of the design catching her attention.  She closed her eyes and was startled to find that the design still glimmered on the inside of her eyelids, now in red lines instead.

“Do I want to know how you grow them?” she asked.

“I don’t know, do you?”

Charlotte turned around before opening her eyes and was very relieved not to see the drawing in front of her any more.

“I don’t think so,” she said carefully.  “I’ve finished reading the ritual now though.”

“That’s good,” said Emily.  “You can look round now, I’ve finished.”

“I’d rather not,” said Charlotte.  “It… it’s giving me a headache.”

“Hah,” said Emily.  “Lucky we don’t have to do the ritual in here then, isn’t it?  Well, if you’re ready then, so am I.  All we need to do is go and fetch Envy’s new best friend.”

Diplomatic Consanguinity

 “Fascism First,” murmured Manguy.  He turned a page of the dossier he’d been given when he walked into Meeting Room C and started reading from the top.  He was bland and uninteresting to look at, an appearance he cultivated carefully.  He had the faintest impression of a moustache that might, if you got closer than his bodyguards would allow, be drawn on with eyeliner.  His hair, too black for it to be a natural colour was slicked back with gel and his skin, a neutral olive shade that fitted his hair-colour just a little too perfectly for them both to be real, was clear and healthy.  He wore glasses, but they were delicate, platinum framed, oval-lensed things that looked like a strong breeze would blow them away and so made you wonder if they were actually necessary.  “What a concept.  That is has come to this….”

“It began with the Sweden problem,” said Demetrion who was sat against a wall. His copy of the dossier was set on the chair next to him and one long, bony leg was crossed over the other.  “Though I thought we resolved that one rather well, personally.”

“We did,” said Margoyle.  She was wearing her usual pearl choker and a tidy, pale rose fitted suit that contrasted pleasantly with the odd shade of grey that her makeup gave to her skin.  She looked a little bit like a statue that had inconveniently come to life before the sculptor was completely finished with it.  “We have that in writing.  In triplicate, in fact.”

“Then how did we get from there to Fascism First?” asked Manguy.  The other two carefully didn’t answer, spotting a trap when it was set in front of them.  “I suppose the exact route isn’t important—“

“It might be,” said Margoyle quickly.  “I have two interns on the problem.”

“We have interns again?” Demetrion sounded interested.  

“JDR has been… persuaded—“ there was a faint sigh from everyone in the room “— that he could play croquet with other… things,” said Margoyle.

“The exact route isn’t important,” said Manguy.  There was no hint of impatience in his tone, nor any note of censure, but nonetheless there was a subtle change in the atmosphere of the room.  “What is important is whether we are happy with the destination.   Surely we can all agree on that?”

This was a firm where agreement was so famously hard to come by that voting was done in absolutely secrecy with no way of determining who had cast what vote or even when they cast it, in order to actually achieve the occasional consensus.

“The GOO,” said Margoyle cautiously, using the acronym they had decided upon for the leader of Fascism First, “appears to have located a source of help.  Page seven,” she added as Manguy looked up from the dossier.  “Though it remains unclear who could be helping him.”

“Us,” said Manguy, turning the pages backwards to find page seven.  “We are the only agency with sufficient connections and knowledge to do this.  But we are not doing it, and we have no been contacted with regard to it.  Which should have been impossible.”

“I can put two interns on it,” said Demetrion.  His attempted joke fell as flat as a deep-ocean dwelling fish and as the silence lingered he started to wish that he’d thought a little harder before speaking.

“Unlikely to help,” said Manguy after the silence had stretched to breaking point.  “What we need to know now is what the agency is that’s helping the GOO.  Without some indication of who is behind this, we’re flying blind.  And JDR will not like that at all.”

“He doesn’t like it,” said a new voice.  Jeronica sat down on a chair next to Margoyle, who delicately edged away, one hand clutching her pearls.  Manguy pretended not to notice, but watched carefully out of the corner of his eye.  “But at the moment he is trying to ensure that he cannot be blamed for it.”

Manguy relaxed.  Jeronica was the person he considered his biggest rival and threat, but if she was reporting on JDR like this then this was probably one of their truce-zones.  He made a mental note to check where she’d been for the fifteen minutes prior to her arrival though.

“Naturally,” she continued, “he will determine that he cannot be blamed.”

She didn’t need to say the rest; as soon as JDR was satisfied there was no solid path that led to him he’d be looking for a scapegoat.

“Scaramantha,” said Margoyle as though coughing.  Absolutely nobody said anything for a few seconds.  Then Manguy carefully closed the dossier without ever finding page seven.

“Jeronica,” he said, and Demetrion noticeably tensed.  Manguy made a mental note of that; clearly Demetrion was more junior than he’d been led to believe.  “I think that you currently have Diplomatic Consanguinity in your remit?”

Jeronica nodded.  Manguy was well aware of that, just as she was acutely aware of all the areas that he was responsible for.  Bringing it up was just a formality, indicating obliquely that there was something here that might be held to fall into this category.

“If Non-local Genocides were to become unaffiliated,” said Demetrion looking at his fingernails and absolutely nowhere else, “then I could consider bringing them under Alpaca Issues and Isolation.”

“In that case,” said Margoyle, her voice distant as though she wasn’t aware she was speaking, “it would seem likely that Fruit Production and Distribution would need a new home as well.  In Orangeries, perhaps?”

Jeronica stood up without saying anything and left.

Manguy set the dossier down on the chair next to him.  That was that then; Scaramantha would be blamed for the emersion of Fascism First, Jeronica would reassign Scaramantha’s major tasks and then left… that left the problem of figuring out how to get a handle on the GOO and then using it to take control.  He sighed softly, knowing that Margoyle would understand and Demetrion would puzzle over it, and followed Jeronica out of Meeting Room C.

The Everpresent Joy

 “There’s no presence at the entrance to the casino,” said Pech.  He looked as though he was thinking hard.  “Nothing magical there either; the license doesn’t allow for that kind of thing.  Maybe you picked up on something outside the casino?”

“It was definitely inside,” said Sylvie.  She hugged herself as she remember it.  “I didn’t even notice it until I stepped through the door, and then it was all I could notice.”

“That can’t be right,” said Pech.  He sounded worried now and Rafael could see the man shaking his head very slightly from side to side.  “That would be a clear violation of the licence.  No-one would have installed anything there without checking with me first.”

“How could they… install? it without you noticing?” asked Rafael.  He was starting to feel some sympathy for a man who was clearly exhausted and overworked.  “I mean, unless you’re a nullie you can’t miss it when you come in.”

“It wasn’t there when I arrived,” said Pech simply.  “If what you’re saying is true, then it can’t have been there when I arrived or I would have noticed it.”

“If?” Rafael’s hackles, sensitive to the slightest perceived insult, rose again.

“Why don’t we go look at it,” said Sylvie, aware of what her partner was like and stepping in quickly to defuse the situation.  “If nothing else, maybe you’ll know what it is when you see it.”

“I’m not in the habit of lying,” murmured Rafael to Sylvie as Pech led the way downstairs and towards the casino entrance.  He’d clearly forgotten that Pech’s hearing was very good, or at least that his thaumic shadow was broad enough to catch small sounds, as the short mage’s shoulders noticeably tensed.

“You sort of are,” said Sylvie in her normal voice, hoping that would serve as a reminder.  “Think about you where you parked earlier.”

“That’s not a lie!  That’s… creative licence!”

Sylvie’s giggle was drowned out by Pech’s gasp.  He was just beyond the reception desk where the t-junction to the cloakrooms and the entrance was, and he sounded like he’d been punched in the solar plexus. Both Sylvie and Rafael sped up and reached him a couple of seconds later, just in time for Rafael to catch him as his knees buckled.

“You can feel it from here?” asked Rafael.  Pech just nodded, and Sylvie, looking around them, rubbed an arm.

“Me too,” she said. “Though it’s not that bad here.  It’s stronger now though, it stopped half-way down the corridor before.”

“Three-quarters of the way,” corrected Rafael.  Sylvie glared at him and he shrugged.  “Not in the habit of lying,” he said, grinning.

“What is it?” she asked Pech, looking at his face so that she could ignore Rafael.

“An eidolon,” said Pech.  He struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on Rafael.  “It shouldn’t be here.”

“A phantasm?”  Sylvie looked at the corridor as though it were in her way.  “It doesn’t seem like a phantasm to me.”

“No,” said Pech.  He heaved a huge sigh that made his whole body shudder.  “No, the other usage.  The idealisation of a concept.”

All three of them looked at the corridor now, but the corridor, apart from being badly lit and seeming like the worst choice to take to move around the casino, looked just like a corridor.  No ghosts emerged from the walls, and no bright lights or eerie sounds happened.

“How can you be so sure?” asked Rafael.  He’d heard about eidolons and avatars, but this was the first time he’d ever been told he was in the presence of one.  He looked about again, wishing that there was something to identify other than a faint feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

“Training,” said Pech.  “You probably wouldn’t have had it since you’ve not studied probability-changers.  It’s like… it’s like how if you study biology enough you learn a lot about mice or plants or moulds or what-have-you, but if you know a lot about mice you probably don’t know very much about moulds.  Your training’s all been in a different area.”  He was standing on his own feet again now but he was very pale and he looked like he was sweating.

“Fair,” said Sylvie.  “I’m guessing you wouldn’t know too much about South American Death Deities then.”

“Nothing,” said Pech.  “Although I suppose now I know that there’s something to be learned about them.”

“Right, fine,” said Rafael sounding a little testy.  “When you’re done swapping school stories, what’s the eidolon doing here then?  It looks like you weren’t expecting it.”

“What’s it an idealisation of?” asked Sylvie.  She was rubbing her arm again.

“It’s not permitted here,” said Pech. “Very illegal.  This would be a lot of trouble if we were open at the moment.”

“What’s it the idealisation of?”

Pech grimaced. “Joy,” he said.  “It’s almost certainly why no-one’s winning.”

Rafael looked at Sylvie, who was looking like she had hives.  Then at Pech again.

“How does that work?” he said.  “Surely everybody would be joyful if they won?  Is it stopping them from winning so they can’t be joyful?”

“No,” said Pech.  “More complex than that.  The Everpresent Joy is an aspect of the Goddess of Fortune, and she can choose to go whichever way she wants.  Someone’s put this Eidolon here to stop people winning; it’s drawing all the good luck out of the casino and into itself.  It will keep growing until it has it all, but these are games of chance; they create their own luck, so to speak.”

“I’m definitely not following you,” said Rafael.  “Just turn all the games off, right?”

Sylvie was scratching her arms now and moving backwards.  “No,” she said.  “Like he said, it’s complex.  But basically, since there’s a casino here, there’s a source of power for that thing.  And we can’t just turn it off unless you’ve got some way to make the casino just disappear into thin air.”

Rafael grinned.

“Without explosives,” she added.