Page 16 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
Before Miss Viola could make reply, we were interrupted by her fiancée.
“There you are.” Miss Beck seemed wryly amused at having temporarily misplaced her intended, and knowing what I did of Miss Viola, I suspected it was a not uncommon occurrence. “If you wanted to lurk in a dark corner, you could’ve just asked.”
Miss Viola smiled as she had on the dance floor. “If I wanted to lurk with you in a dark corner I’d pick one that wasn’t already occupied and wasn’t in a formal banqueting hall filled with half the dignitaries of the Ubiquitous Companies.”
“Och, where’s your sense of adventure?”
The two ladies shared an embrace, Miss Viola having shed utterly all of the suspicion and hostility that had characterised her manner since she first accosted me.
“I’m sorry for vanishing on you,” she said. “I just spotted Mr. Wyndham here. He’s a wool trader lately arrived from Ey. I happened to meet him in town and I realised that we haven’t yet arranged for a blessing in the name of the Creator at the wedding. After all, if anyone would know the proper rituals, it would be an Eyan.”
As a lie it had the uncomfortable virtue of being plausibly close to the truth. Khelathrans, especially those amongst the Ubiquitous Companies, have a somewhat transactional relationship with the gods, and it is considered both wise and propitious to arrange for any significant undertaking to be blessed by as many deities as possible. And I would, in fact, have been most happy to provide such a service for Miss Beck and Miss Viola. All that being said, the facility and alacrity with which our client concocted so unfalsifiable a deception gave me pause.
“Good thinking, Eirene. We can probably fit him in between theoffering to Thotek the Devourer and the Scourge-Priest of Vu.” She loosened her grip on Miss Viola and turned towards me. “So what brings you to Khelathra-Ven, Mr. Wyndham?”
“Um, well, that is, I... I mean...”
“While we can’t expect Mr. Wyndham to give away trade secrets,” Miss Viola cut in, sparing me further mortification, “I believe I overheard one of the tailors speculating that there would be a surge in demand for wool in the coming months owing to the emergence of new markets in the Silver Byways of Farath-Lein.”
“But of course,” I added, endeavouring to deceive as honestly as possible, “I couldn’t possibly comment.”
Miss Beck nodded emphatically. “I quite understand, Mr. Wyndham. You never know who’s listening at these kinds of events.”
There followed a moment’s awkward silence. This is my perennial experience of large social gatherings but was, in this instance, further exacerbated by the awareness that I was required not only to subtly interrogate Miss Beck regarding the possibility that she, or a close associate, might in fact be a nefarious blackmailer but to do so in the persona of a wool merchant. I knew then, and know now, nothing about wool.
“Might I observe,” I said when the lull in conversation had long passed the point of acceptability, “that you make a very handsome couple?”
“You might.” Miss Beck flashed me a grin that put me somewhat in mind of Ms. Haas in one of her more wicked moods. “Go on, then. Observe it.”
I flustered. “Well, you... um... you make a most handsome couple.”
The ladies laughed, although I thought I caught a look of suspicion just fleetingly in the eye of Miss Viola. “Aye, I struck lucky with this one,” continued Miss Beck rather proudly. “Not that my parents see it that way.”
“They object to your choice?” I flattered myself that my gambit had worked rather well. And another flash of warning from Miss Viola suggested that such flattery was not wholly unwarranted.
“You know how it is,” Miss Beck replied with the air of one who confidently assumes that you will indeed know how it is no matter how manifestly divergent your circumstances are from her own. “They think everyone from Carcosa is a malingering lotus eater taking food from the mouths of hardworking Athrans.”
Miss Viola pressed a fleeting kiss to her fiancée’s cheek. “Some of us are even stealing your women.”
“I prefer to think of it”—Miss Beck had that wicked look again—“as a long-term investment in an emerging market.”
I seemed to have lost the ladies’ attention, for they were, once more, quite rapt with each other. Under any other circumstances I should have left them to enjoy their evening, but I was conscious of a certain pressure to return to Ms. Haas with useful intelligence. “In Ey a lady would never dream of marrying a person of whom her parents disapproved.”
Of course, in Ey a lady would never dream of marrying another lady. Then again, perhaps I was being naive. I have, after all, myself lived a life that the culture of my homeland holds unconscionable.
“Eh.” Miss Beck shrugged. “They’ll come round. In Athra, you can get away with anything as long as it’s not bad for business, and Eirene’s been very open about her past. She was adventurous and a bit disreputable when she was younger, but it’s not like she’s murdered anyone.”
I cleared my throat, which had gone unexpectedly dry. “That would—”
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, I was spared the embarrassment of either affirming or denying the veracity of Miss Beck’s somewhat misguided assertion for, at that moment, a tremendous commotion occurred on the other side of the hall. Turning, I saw Mr. Donne—therepresentative of the Ossuary Bank who had asked me so forwardly for coffee earlier in the evening—standing over the prostrate body of his undead servant. As the crowd parted around him I saw also that he stood opposite the sorceress Shaharazad Haas, her multicoloured silks gleaming in the lamplight, one hand raised, an incantation dying on her lips.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Disagreement
“You just destroyedmy revenant.” Mr. Donne’s tone was less that of a powerful necromancer incandescent with fury and more that of a man who has left a restaurant to find that the hubcaps have been stolen from his carriage.
Ms. Haas lowered her arm and wiped what appeared to be a bloodstain from her palm with a fine handkerchief. “Your powers of observation, sir, do credit to your order.”
