Page 31 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
The interloper raised an impatient finger. “None of that, if you please.”
It was becoming rapidly apparent to me that I was being toyed with, which was, in itself, something of a giveaway. “Madam,” I said, “this is most inappropriate. Personating others by sorcery is monumentally illegal for a variety of very good reasons.”
Mr. Lutrell’s image shimmered in a fashion familiar from my misadventure at Mise en Abyme, and when I was able to focus again I saw Ms. Haas’s laughing face before me. “Come now. If we didn’t do things simply because they were illegal we’d get nothing done whatsoever.”
I am afraid I responded to that suggestion a little sharply. “I have managed quite well these past seven and twenty years.”
“Not the best example, Mr. Wyndham. You were a child for half of them, which hardly counts. And, as for the rest, they were spent severally under the reign of a charming but, even I will admit, tyrannical sorcerer king, then under the more evenhanded but no less draconian rule of the Lord Protector of Ey, and, of course, most recently you have been in a lightless nonspace beyond reality where the very concept of a functioning legal system is just one of the manyabstractions that the Empress of Nothing seeks daily to devour into unmaking. Bless her.”
Over the entire course of our acquaintance I can recall two and a half occasions on which Ms. Haas allowed another person to have the last word in an argument. This was not one of them and I conceded the point as gracefully as I was able. In truth she had reminded me that these matters were more complex than I am entirely comfortable to own. Although in Khelathra-Ven I have endeavoured always to conduct myself in accordance with the ordinances of the city, the fact remains that there are parts of this world in which the laws of the land are not acceptable to me, and I not acceptable to them.
“Are you absolutely certain,” I asked, “that this is the most effective way to proceed?”
Ms. Haas stifled a yawn behind her hand. “It’s the least tedious way to proceed. And also the one that gives Mrs. Benamara the least room for evasion or deception.”
“And the risk of being arrested and hanged?”
“That’s precisely what makes it so much less tedious than the other options.”
I was, by now, beginning to understand a little of my companion’s manner and was able to discern with some reliability when she was being sincere, when she was amusing herself, and when she was merely intending to provoke a reaction. In this case, her remark fell somewhere between the second and third categories. As such, I saw little purpose in pressing the issue. “Do we have an actual plan?”
“Certainly.” She sounded faintly affronted. “We shall attend the salon in the guise of Mr. Lutrell and his faithful secretary. That’s you. Then I’ll draw the suspect aside in order to ask her some questions about her latest work and use my art, guile, and intense personal charisma to lead her into confessing any role she might have had in the blackmailing of Eirene.”
“That doesn’t sound like a plan, so much as a sequence of conversations with tremendous scope to go wrong.”
She rose imperiously from the chaise. “I am the sorceress Shaharazad Haas. I never go wrong. I merely achieve things in a manner I had not intended.”
And so it was that Ms. Haas, glamoured into the appearance of Mr. Lutrell, and I, not glamoured into anything, made our way to the docks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Khelathran Strait
The Benamaras, whoit appeared had remained married despite the unfortunate incident involving Mrs. Benamara and Miss Viola, lived in a fishing village turned suburb named Ecet’s Cove. As the great city of Khelathra-Ven had expanded over the years, it had swallowed a variety of such settlements, incorporating them in a manner that it would be falsehood to describe as seamless into its ever-growing conurbation. Although the coastal suburbs could be accessed by road from the centre of Khel and would make for a pleasant carriage journey, they were most conveniently accessed through use of one of the many barges that plied the waters of the Khelathran Strait. I had lived in such an area for six months during my time at university, when I stayed in a cellar room in a house that I shared with four other students. It was swelteringly hot in summer and freezing in winter, and the kitchen was invariably a nightmare of used crockery and absent cutlery. Nevertheless, the beauty of the location made up for the privations of the accommodations and the impracticality of the commute.
The vessel we boarded on this occasion was operated by an extravagantly dressed woman with mechanical eyes and towed by some mysterious leviathan discernible only by the occasional glimpse of a many-hued fin breaking the water’s surface. Our journey took useastwards, away from the Rose Gold Bridge and beneath the steel skeleton of the half-constructed railway line that enterprising Athran industrialists hoped would one day allow passengers to travel between the northern and southern cities in a matter of minutes, weather and labour disputes permitting. Given the history of similar projects I was not myself optimistic. A short while later we passed the Isle of the Dead, that ancient necropolis where once the god-kings of Khel had been interred under the watchful eye of Anu, Lord of the Underworld, and which was now home to the headquarters of the Ossuary Bank, reputed to be the most influential financial organisation in six worlds. The countinghouse itself sat atop the great cliff that occupied much of the island and, in the last rays of sunlight, one could just about make out the vast effigies of Anu and Amn carved into the unforgiving rock by hands long stilled and forgotten.
I turned to my companion, only momentarily disconcerted to discover that she was Percy Lutrell. “It’s a pity, is it not,” I remarked, “that so sacred a monument is now the abode of commerce, necromancy, and usury?”
“To me it seems rather appropriate. The old gods were always transactional beings. You give this sacrifice for that favour. Make these offerings for those blessings. At least the bankers are honest about it.”
“But is there not value in the things we create in honour of something greater than ourselves?”
Mr. Lutrell stroked his chin pensively. “My good man, in all the universe there are two sorts of gods: those that are like us and those that are not. Those that are like us are no better than we are. And those that are not are infinitely worse.”
“It’s not the gods themselves, Ms. Ha— Mr. Lutrell. It’s the ideals they stand for.”
“In my experience, the only principles a god stands for are deflowering virgins and burning people.”
“That’s an oversimplification,” I protested.
“Yes.” He smirked. “Religion tends to be.”
I thought it best to let the matter go, and the monument that had precipitated the conversation gradually faded into the gloaming. As night drew in, gas lamps and arc lights crackled into life in both cities. On the hills of Athra, the windows of the Winter Palace glowed as brightly as they must have done in the days when the kings of Leonysse still sojourned there, though now they represented not the gaieties of the royal court but the industry of municipal clerks, labouring tirelessly over their minutes and memoranda. In the skies above Khel heatless alchemical flames burned along the edges of the mechanical platform that transferred scholars between street level and the entryway of the famous flying library, known colloquially as the Fata Morgana. Though they were not all visible, I knew also that a million smaller lights illuminated public streets and private homes, and I was struck for a moment by the bewildering immensity of things.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Salon of Mrs. Yasmine Benamara
