#arcana rewrite: tides of chaos

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK  VII: THE CHARIOT

Chapter 4: The Dark (1182 words)

Warnings: Explicit chapter. Domination/submission dynamic, mild degradation, semi-public, handjob, edging.

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Julian sinks to his knees before me; his height is such that it makes him only half a head shorter than myself. But that is of no consequence. His submission, and my acceptance of that submission, is what matters here.

This is what truly pleases me - his desperation, his willingness, his helplessness to resist. It is as natural for me to take control as it is for him to yield it. It is this essential duality that brings us together, something as inevitable as the pull of one lodestone for another.

Even this is not enough to make him stay with me. But it is enough to keep him here, in this moment. Having discovered this, or perhaps re-discovered it… I will take what I can get, before it is gone.

I lift his chin in my fingers, and he looks at me in turn, his eye heavy-lidded with his desire. I bend forward slightly, bringing our lips into contact once more. He presses himself up to me with a pure hunger that seems to infuse his entire being.

“Jinana, please…”

“I can’t read your mind, Julian. You have to ask.” 

He flushes so violently that I can feel his skin heating itself under my hand. “I… I want you to… touch me. Let me take that much with me - the memory of your touch, your kiss.”

It doesn’t have to be this way. He condemns himself with his own stubbornness.

“To touch you? That covers a lot of ground, Julian. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

He makes an inarticulate sound, then his gloved hands fumble after my hips, pulling me to him. As once before, I feel an obvious and heated hardness pressed to my thigh, and he shudders against me.

I plunge my right hand into his hair, taking a firm grip at his nape, tilting his head back so that he is forced to look at me. I run the thumb of my other hand lightly over his lips, and he parts them, taking the digit into his mouth and sucking eagerly at it.

“Show me how much you want me to touch you.” With a soft moan, he begins to rock his hips against me, as he did the night before, rubbing himself against me through the fabric of our clothing.

���Just like a dog,” I laugh, and he makes a strangled little sound. “How cute.” I know what he wants; he wants to be punished, even as he is pleasured. He wants me to demean him, to use him; it’s what he feels he deserves. What he wants most, however, I will not give. 

He has not earned it.

I release him, taking my thumb from his mouth. My hands fall to his shoulders, and he lets himself be pushed back against the nearest piling, landing with legs akimbo. I advance upon him, one hand again seizing his nape, while the other yanks open his collar. He hisses in his breath as I deliver sharp bites to the skin, his own hands running over my back, my hips, my legs. My lips find the place where the mark hides beneath his skin; my teeth cause it to reveal itself, briefly.

Julian’s hand clutches at mine, taking hold of it, dragging it down his body. He groans as our joined hands encounter his restrained erection, trapped under those close-fitted trousers of his.

“My goodness,” I tell him. “So worked up already.” I don’t feel like fussing with the sash tied about his waist; a snap of my fingers causes it to instantly unwind itself, falling aside, and he grunts in surprise. “You’ve been with a magician before,” I say. “Surely it is not so startling?”

But he is more concerned with tugging up the hem of his voluminous shirt, unfastening the top of his pants and spreading them open. It is too dark for me to be able to see much, but my hand finds the peculiar coolness of his skin, following the trail of hairs that leads down his flat belly.

That coolness quickly becomes heated as I continue, my fingertips running over the softer, more delicate skin of his rigid cock. Julian’s hips press urgently to my touch, and I find that I like this, too. I pull his head back with my grip on his hair, bringing my mouth down on his even as my other hand strokes him. He gives a low whine in his throat as I bite roughly at his lower lip.

His pleasure and his pain are at my command, willingly given, and once again there is that sense I had before, of something that is correct. I move my hand more quickly, encircling him as best I can - my hands are small, and he is not. Julian begins to groan, his mouth moving under mine, trying to push his way into my own. His body squirms and undulates under my touch, fascinating me.

If only there were more time to explore this, to understand - but he is committed to his course.

His breathing is coming harshly now, the tension in his frame rising to a crescendo - and I abruptly cease my motion, causing him to give a sharp cry of frustration, to mutter and plead under his breath even as his hips lift to try and seek my touch.

“Oh god, Jinana, please -”

“Beg me for it.” Again, I have surprised even myself with this command. But Julian simply accepts it, immediately loosing a torrent of groveling words, until the resumed motion of my hand takes the power of speech from him again.

Interested, I repeat this process a few times, until his entire body is quivering with denied need, until his entreaties have become a disjointed, fevered repetition. Only then do I take him to completion, his back arching, hips jerking, the cries he makes muffled by my own mouth.

He seems rather dazed as he comes back to himself, his breathing ragged, his limbs trembling. It is, of course, a simple matter for me to remove all evidence of this encounter with my magic, and any marks I may have left on his skin are long healed.

Let him have only the memory.

Julian remains where he is, sprawled against the piling with pants and shirt in disarray, jacket rucked up from his waist as he catches his breath. As tempted as I am to rise, turn and walk away - he surely deserves it - it feels wrong, somehow. I do not have it in me to do this and to leave.

I help him to rise on unsteady legs, to put himself back together. His shaking hands fumble with the sash, and I take this task over for him; soon he is presentable once more, as if this thing had not occurred between us.

But it is reflected still in the way he looks down at me, and in the way his hands cradle my face as he tips it up to him one last time, for one last kiss, longer than breath can hold.

[the-iron-orchid]

At this very moment, Jinana is beaning Julian straight in the face with a bottle.

Meanwhile...Heron doing some late night reading on his way back to Vesuvian. Little does he know, back home things are descending into chaos. He should enjoy the peace while he can.

[the-iron-orchid]

Tides of Chaos: Book VI CG: The Garden

Jinana discovers a few things about Julian... and vice-versa.

[Full Size]

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK  VII: THE CHARIOT

Chapter 5: The Return ( ~2060 words)

Warnings: None.

We must part, before this desire overwhelms us both. 

Julian’s hands fall from my face to my shoulders, gripping tightly, as if that can forestall the inevitable. He swallows hard, looking not at me, but past me, an unbearable sadness on his face.

“Being with you… it’s the first thing I’ve really wanted for myself in a long, long time.”

And he has squandered it, standing here gathering his will to leave me, while I must push down the pain and the emptiness, let it slip aside before my magic can respond to it. I must let it go… I must let him go.

“Another compromising tale for the future? Is that what you wanted?” I regret the sharp words the moment they leave my mouth, but the instinct to lash out, to hurt in return, is too strong for me to stop when it’s all I can do to keep my restless magic from stirring up a sandstorm on this beach, from lashing the waves to a frenzy.

Julian stares at me for a moment before his expression breaks apart, falling into pieces. “...no,” he whispers. “Not that I have a future, but… this mattered to me. You�� matter to me. The last good thing in my life, maybe. And more than I deserve.”

Perhaps he’s right, in that.

“I’ll… walk you home,” he offers. I do not need his protection; in fact, I pity anyone who accosts me like this, brimming with chaotic magic that wants the least excuse to rend, to unmake. But I relent, simply because he looks so miserable.

“Very well.” Restraining my instinct for destruction leaves no room for warmth in my voice; he cannot fail to hear the lack.

He swallows again, his throat clicking dryly, and shakes his head. It cannot shake away the despair he has brought upon himself. He plunges his gloved hands into his coat-pockets as if to hide them, as if he is afraid of them. In this way, he leads me back into town.

It is a tense, somber procession all the way back to my shop, while the overfull reservoir of power inside of me retreats, ever so slowly. Sometimes, he looks back at me, as if he’s about to say something, but then he stops himself, continuing on. He does not seem pleased to arrive, and for a moment he can only look at me wordlessly in front of the door.

“I came back here to find some answers,” he then tells me, his voice hoarse. “Finding you… was an unexpected gift.”

He reaches out, but stops short of my shoulders, as if afraid to touch me at all. My heart wrings itself inside of me, as if it must crack, but I do not permit this to reach my face.

Julian leans in to give me a chaste kiss on each cheek, with our bodies as far apart as possible. His lips linger there a fraction longer than they would for a mere salutation, but it’s little consolation.

“I won’t forget you,” he says, low in my ear.

I have an entire life that I have forgotten. I do not say this.

He cannot, after all, prevent himself from touching me one last time, though I feel only the brush of cool leather as his fingers trail along my jawline. And then he is gone, a dark shape vanishing into darker alleyways. 

For a few moments, I remain standing there, seeing nothing, while a great, painful void expands in my chest, the too-familiar feeling of loss. For all of the strange ways that we seemed to fit together, two pieces of some puzzle whose greater picture remains unknown… it was not enough.  I… was not enough.

I’m not certain that I ever shall be.

---

The shop’s interior is warm and smells of cinnamon and spices, the lanterns lit already. I know what I will see even before Asra’s head appears around the stairwell, silky white curls bouncing. His dimpled grin is as bright as ever, seeing me, welcoming me home. But he knows me too well for me to hide what I’m feeling right now, and his smile dims as he descends into the shop.

“What happened?” he asks, and the concern in his eyes almost undoes me.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I manage to say, around the fresh grief closing my throat.

“Then you don’t have to,” he assures me, wrapping his arms around me briefly before leading me up the stairs. “Come drink some chai, habibe. I brought back that kind that you like so much.”

I would be more astonished at the change in his manner, but the pain overwhelms my attention. Still, he knows just how to soothe my spirit… even though my first instinct is to go to ground, to hide myself like a wounded animal. I do not have to face this feeling alone.

I wonder if Julian can say the same. Would that I could despise him for what he has done… but he, too, is only trying to protect me.

He is a fool. I wonder if I might have been in love with him, just a little bit… for whatever that is worth now.

Perhaps I am the fool, here.

A smooth, heavy coolness glides over my feet, and I stoop to gather up Faust before seating myself at the rickety little corner table where we take our meals. The snake wraps herself around my shoulders, as if to comfort. Asra bustles about in the kitchen, humming softly. I start slightly when he appears at my elbow with a cup of saffron-infused chai, sweet with honey and cream.

“Faust tells me that you’ve been spending time with Ilya,” he ventures, sitting next to me with his own cup.

“Am I spied upon?” I ask, once again regretting my words as he lowers his amethyst-dark eyes.

“No,” he says quietly. “Just… making sure you’re safe.”

“...I know,” I say, just as quietly. “Let’s just say… I was spending time with him.”

Understanding dawns on Asra’s face. “Ohhh, let me guess. He ran on ahead with what he thought was best for you, even when you told him how wrong he was. No doubt after jumping headlong into a relationship with you in the first place, featuring at least one dramatic speech.” He considers, a finger to his lips. “Knowing him, probably more than one. But at least one was about what a bad and terrible person he is.” He grins at me. “Well, how did I do?”

I give a weak laugh. “Got it in one.” Of course, he is a fortune-teller.

Something about the sympathetic look he turns on me causes the dam to finally burst, for the story to come out. There are no salacious details, and no tears, but it is enough.

Asra just listens in silence, then sits back, his gaze narrow over his mug.

“That really does sound like Ilya, taking longer to end something than to do it.” He sighs. “Can you even really say that you were together at all?”

I wrap my hands around my own mug, watching steam condense onto the glaze. “I don’t know.” 

“Well. I know Ilya, at least… better than he suspects. The only thing he truly loves is drama, and his own suffering.” He snorts. “And he is bound and determined to chase both, no matter the cost to himself… or anyone else.”

Asra sips his chai thoughtfully. “It’s easy to forget that, of course. He knows how to drum up excitement and adventure… he knows how to make you feel special, and wanted. And then he inevitably sabotages it all, ruins everything he’s built up. I’ve never met anyone quite so dedicated to their own unhappiness.”

It’s so true that my eyes begin to sting, but again I must let the pain carry itself away, before it can do harm.

“Well. It is no longer my problem,” I say, flatly, and Asra raises his brows.

“Isn’t it? You’re still tasked with bringing him to justice… if that’s even what it is.” Something goes over his countenance, some shadow, but I cannot guess at it.

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe not, if he’s so determined to throw himself into harm’s way.”

“He is an idiot,” I mutter, staring down into my chai.

“Yes. But for good or ill, you are now tangled in his fate.” Asra reaches out, smoothing the hair back from my forehead. “I know that look, ya albi. You are angry - of course you are. You have every right to be. But you also want to go after him, if only to shake some sense into his fool head.” He gives a rueful little smile, then sobers. “While I’m the first to admit that stranger things have happened… I’m not sure that anyone can shake that man out of his cycle of self-destruction.”

“Whatever I think of him personally… I don’t think that he is guilty of this crime. That much, at least, I do owe him.” I drain my mug, but continue to keep it in my hands, so that I do not have to meet Asra’s too-knowing eyes.

“Jinana…” There is something in the way he says my name, now, but I can’t yet take the time to examine it. “You’re your own person, and you can make your own decisions. But please… don’t hurt yourself trying to save him.”

I feel like there is something else there, above and beyond his own history with Julian, or how Julian might hurt me. But Asra changes the subject, to the deck he entrusted me with. I hand it over, feeling a small surge of energy as they return to their creator. A matching look of relief comes over Asra’s face, and he asks if I am all right, if anything odd has happened with the deck itself. 

They’re just cards, though; colorful bits of painted and gilded pressed paper. A conduit, not the source.

“We’re home now,” he says, as if reassuring himself, or perhaps the deck. Then, “I’ll make us some dinner.” I nod, and he returns to our tiny kitchen, humming again as he works, coming by to refill my mug. I continue to stare down into it, trying to make sense of it all. But no matter how all of this pans out, my intuition tells me that Asra is correct, that I’m not quite done with Julian… not yet.

If so, I’m going to have to place a wall between myself and this pain. I remind myself that he is not its cause… I am. It is my own expectations, my feelings. Julian is also his own person, and can only affect me as much as I permit him to do so.

It still hurts.

Asra and I share a light dinner of fragrant rice cooked with savory spices, butter and toasted cashews. It’s one of my favorite dishes, though the knot of misery in my throat and guts means that I eat little. We speak of other things for a time, then retire to the lone bed in the small bedroom above the shop, as we have for three years. 

I suppose that I could blame Asra for all of this, tell myself that an unmet need is what sent me into Julian’s arms… but it is not his fault. He has never been anything but kind to me. I do take some solace from his presence, the knowledge that he, perhaps, has suffered this same hurt.

Asra gingerly reaches out to me, no doubt able to sense the way I’m feeling from my aura. I let him curl himself around me, taking the comfort he offers. Though the pain is a banked coal burning in my chest, my eyes are dry. The tears of a magician are too powerful to squander on a broken heart.

Eventually, I sleep. My dreams are fragmentary, unformed, made up of replayed bits of memory and things only dimly glimpsed, as from a great distance.

When I awake, I am alone again. I am used to this. Asra very frequently leaves in the night, silent as a cat. But today, it just reminds me of waking up alone in the hideaway under Mazelinka’s home, alone after sharing something I thought might have had meaning.

I am definitely the fool, here.

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK VI: THE LOVERS

Chapter 5: The Hole (~5800 words)

Warnings: Bad language from an old lady, smutty bits (thigh riding, mild domination, biting, scratching), people who won’t stop saying The Hole

Notes: Heron Phan belongs to @vesuvian-disaster and appears with permission!

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There are areas of South End where even the city guard hesitates to go… but Julian does not. We pass through dim streets and shadowed alleys where the only light is the glow of cigarettes and the occasional oil lamp as folk pass around bottles, play at dice or cards, or (in at least one case) get what they paid for from a local prostitute. Julian passes through it all with the total assurance of familiarity, and we are politely ignored.

(Save by the customer, who drunkenly cheers for ‘Ilya’ apparently having found his own night’s entertainment.)

We eventually come to a particularly dark and quiet portion of South End, where a number of squat little dwellings line a square delineated by murky canals. Each plot has its own tiny garden, and each faces inward, as if huddled together against the night.

Stopping in front of one of these huts, Julian pulls open a small shuttered window, then takes hold of my waist once more and boosts me up. “In you go!” I don’t have much choice, so I scramble inside, narrowly avoiding some bottles resting on the inner ledge, and a planter beneath. Julian quickly follows, somehow getting his long form through the tiny opening.

This place is built low, his hair brushing the ceiling - though of course this is no issue for me. The wattle-and-daub interior is tidy, warm and homey, and there’s a mouth-watering smell coming from a pot suspended over banked coals in the hearth. Bundles of herbs have been hung about to dry, and cloth-covered fermentation crocks have been stashed in various places. I reach out with my magical senses… and encounter a protective sort of energy. There is a ward on this place.

“Mazelinka?” Julian calls, but there is no answer. He looks down on me and explains, “A dear friend of mine. She must be out for the moment; I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”

He collapses heavily into a chair by the kitchen table, as if days of fatigue have come upon him at once. But he reaches out for my wrist, pulling me close enough for him to look me over. “All in one piece?” he asks. His hands come to my shoulders and gently turn me from side to side. “No strains, sprains, or abrasions?” His touch slips casually down to my waist, lingering at my hips. 

“Only a hole in my tunic,” I say, poking my finger through the teeth-marks in the silk. I speak a word, and it closes itself up, magically mended.

“You really do use magic for everything, don’t you?”

“I have to. I’m… like a wellspring. Magic bubbles up in me, and it has to get out.”

“And that’s why your blood is full of little stars?”

I laugh. “Well… it changes. Once it… it sang, a different note for each drop that fell.” I don’t know if he’ll believe me about the times it has become a flight of crimson butterflies, vanishing into the air.

“How poetic,” he says, reaching up to brush the hair back from my face. “Is this a result of your magic, too?”

“Yes.” I reach for the hem of his jacket. “Speaking of magic… how is that wound?”

“Oh, it’s fine.” He lifts up his jacket and shirt, showing skin that is perfectly whole, only a faint pink mark remaining. “Which is more than I can say for anyone else I've ever tried to treat for a bite like that. You and I are the only ones who have made it.” He grimaces. “They aren’t naturally aggressive, you know. The eels, that is. The conditions are just wrong for them here. They’re only here at all because of the Count.”

The Count. I think of the thing that pushed me from the aqueduct, and can’t suppress a shudder. Perhaps mistaking why, Julian takes my hands in his own. “It’s all right now,” he says.

But is it? Just how far can that presence go, and how much can it do? I doubt I can explain this to Julian, I don’t know that he would even credit spirits. And I have other questions for him.

“May I ask you something?”

“Anything,” he says, his eye wandering over my face, as if fascinated.

“Why did you come back? To Vesuvia, I mean. You escaped. Why throw yourself back into the fire?”

He raises his brows, then releases me, running his hands briefly through his hair. “Because I need answers, before I lose my damned mind. And this is the only place I have a chance of getting them, from the only person who might be able to tell me. If you only knew the years I’ve spent, the distance I’ve gone to try and find your master… but I’m sure you know how impossible it is to find him if he doesn’t want to be found.”

I don’t know, but Asra has seemed very surprised indeed when I have managed to find him in dreams, or by magic.

“Ah, well.” Julian reaches out again and places his hands lightly on my hips, as if having touched me, he cannot keep himself from doing so again, and again. “It’s not as if there’s anywhere else I’d rather be.” A half-smile tugs his lips to one side. “Now, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted by that patrol…?”

I laugh aloud. “Only one thing on your mind, hm?”

“At least two.” He gives that insufferable grin of his, pulling me closer. 

“I see. Well, if memory serves… it was like this.” I slide my hand into his hair again, taking a firm hold on the curls at the back of his head.

“Mmm, yes, just like that…” The look he gives me is frankly sensual, his eye heavily lidded, his lips parted. It is an invitation I cannot bring myself to resist. I lean in for another kiss, more authoritative this time. His hands grip my hips, his mouth moving under mine with sudden hunger. My hand reflexively tightens in his hair, wringing a groan from him as I give him what he wants, deepening the kiss, pushing into his mouth. 

For the short time I can remember, my life has been a struggle painted in greys and blues, underscored by a frustrated longing I could never articulate. Ironic that it should be the touch of the man I am tasked with bringing to justice that imbues it with color, casts light upon that darkness. He draws that deep inner current to the forefront, where it seems he is eager to drown himself in it.

“Come here. Come closer.” He mutters the words against my lips, pulling me to him, into his lap. His kiss becomes voracious, shoving his way inside my mouth, momentarily overwhelming me. I wrench his head back, making him hiss in his breath. His eye is darkly dilated, looking at me frantically.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice husky. “Too much? Just tell me… I’ll be good. I’ll do whatever you want.” His face is flushed, his chest heaving under the jacket, just from this short contact.

He has only surprised me, not upset me. But a sudden rattling at the door startles me apart from him, springing away like a spooked cat.

With a grunt from the other side, the door yields, admitting a low, sturdy figure in keeping with the home itself, wrapped in a shawl against the evening breeze.

“Ilya! Stop squeezing through the window, you damned slippery boy!”

Julian gets up so fast that he smacks the top of his head against a beam of the ceiling, wincing. Still, he sweeps over and offers his arm for support, his cheek for a brusque kiss.

“Mazelinka, my dear, aren’t you just a sight for the sore eye!” He accepts the bag that is shoved into his hands, taking it to the kitchen table. “Love the shawl, is that new?”

“Don’t you bullshit me, Ilya,” Mazelinka says, but her tone is fond. “I thought you might be about when I saw the guards running around like chickens with their heads off - but what’s this?” She peers up at me, her brown eyes shrewd under heavy, greying brows. 

“Oh! A, uh, new friend of mine. This is Jinana.” Julian turns and places an arm loosely about my shoulders - easy to do; they are in the vicinity of his waist.

Mazelinka grins broadly. “Oh, is that it? Make yourself at home here, Jinana. You two are just in time, supper’s almost ready, and… dammit, Ilya! What have I told you about the calendula?” She sighs heavily and fusses over the slightly-crushed yellow blooms in the window-box.

“I’m sorry, Mazelinka, that’s totally my fault, I wasn’t thinking, and -”

“And you don’t fit through the front door? More like you don’t have a key.” She snorts and goes to the hearth, lifting the cover of the pot and giving it a stir. “When’s the last time you ate anything? Or slept? Look at you, half-dead on your feet and your eye practically rolling back in your head.”

“It’s fine, dear, I mean since the curse I don’t need - “

“Like hell you don’t. You’re still a human being, Ilya, and I won’t watch you run yourself straight into the grave.”

The blood rushes into his cheeks, and he looks down at the floor for a moment before his eye comes to rest upon me once more. “I’m fine, really.” He smiles. “I... haven’t felt this good in a long time.”

It’s now my turn to flush, hopefully less evident against my darker skin.

“Well, I’m happy for you two… but I’ll be happier after you’ve eaten something and rested!” She waves the wooden spoon in her hand at him, rather threateningly. “Now get yourselves comfortable, the soup’s ready.”

Julian very obediently starts removing his outer layers. The greatcoat seems oddly heavy, even for its size; he folds it with care and sets it aside, followed by the jacket and the gloves. He rubs absently at the murderer’s brand on his left hand, a stylized heart transfixed by a dagger. Even if he did not do this deed, the mark is indelible; it will remain for the rest of his life.

I’m not familiar with the foods that Mazelinka sets before us - a hearty soup of meat and vegetables, ruddy with summer-sweet tomatoes and tangy with pickles, served with slabs of black bread and some lightly-fermented beverage. But I am hungry, and it’s very, very good.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working for the Palace?” Mazelinka asks, so bluntly that I almost choke on my food.

“Mazelinka, please!” Julian rubs one hand up and down my back as I cough.

“No, no,” I manage to say. “She's right to ask. Ahem.” Cautiously, I clear my throat. “I am working for the Palace… for the Countess, really. She asked me ‘to find Doctor Devorak’... which clearly I have.” Mazelinka laughs at this. “But it turns out there’s a lot more going on here than, uh, meets the eye.”

Mazelinka cackles. “I’ll say!” Julian flushes abruptly red, but tries to cover it over by busying himself with his bowl.

“Frankly, it’s a mess. None of it adds up.” I give Julian a stern look. “But I’m not the only one who finds it very hard to believe that you - a non-magician who was, at the time, dying of the Plague - could have somehow managed to set Lucio on fire and not even scorch his bedclothes.” 

Mazelinka looks significantly at Julian, whose eye has gone wide with shock.

“You… you know about me having the Plague?” he asks, diffidence in his tone.

“The Praefectus told me - that is, Marcus Aquila Summanus. Ey worked with you, back then. Under Valdemar.”

The name of the Quaestor causes Julian to go even more pale than usual. He frowns and rubs at his forehead, as if pained. He has said that he does not remember things… I wonder if the headaches come for him, too. 

Julian shakes his head. “Damn... it’s gone. But this… this remains, and it probably always will.” He removes the eyepatch he wears with a flourish, blinking as his other eye is exposed to the light, pushing his hair back from his face as he turns to look at me.

The sclera of his right eye is blood-red, the unmistakable mark of the Plague-scarred. No wonder he hides it under an eyepatch; survivors of the Red Plague are frequently shunned from misplaced fear or even envy - why should this one person have lived, when so many did not?

He watches my face carefully; it’s clear that he expects me, too, to react with fear or revulsion. But it’s nothing I have not seen before.

“If it bothers you… my friend creates glamours for precisely that. That is, a magical item that casts an illusion to cover it up. The nobles pay through the nose for them… but he gives them away to those in need.” I smile.

Julian just stares at me for a moment, then seems to relax suddenly. “Oh, I don’t know… I feel like the eyepatch has become part of my look, I can’t give it up now.” He laughs. “Doesn’t it make me look rakish, maybe a little dashing?”

“Doesn’t it ever make you run into things?”

“Oh, sometimes. Don’t tell anyone else, though.” With both eyes visible, he can now wink at me.

Mazelinka shakes her head, rises, and starts collecting dishes; I stay her for a moment, passing my hand over the dishes and leaving them sparkling clean.

“Where does all the dirt go, I wonder?” Julian asks, rising to take the dishes to their shelf. “Is there some kind of dimension of pure filth where it all ends up?”

“You’d have to ask Heron… or Master Borgia. He was our teacher.”

“I thought Asra was your teacher?”

You were never a student to me… I still have not processed what happened at the fountain that night, afraid of what it means, of what it might do to me. “He is, in his way. Master Borgia was my teacher when I was young.” Or so I am told.

“I see.” Julian gives me a peculiar look, but before I can inquire about it, Mazelinka sets me to filling crocks with soup, telling Julian to go and see to ‘The Hole’. This rather confuses me, until I see him push a rug aside and pull up a cleverly-concealed hatch, disappearing into some space below.

“Be a dear and get that small cauldron from up there, would you?” Mazelinka points to a shelf that either of us would need a stepstool to reach. Of course, I simply send my mage hand up to retrieve it, and she nods to herself, as if something has been confirmed.

Mazelinka places a number of ingredients from various bundles, jars, and canisters into the cauldron. Some of them are herbs and flavorings - worrywort, chamomile, scullcap, rock sugar. Others are stranger, like a pinch of sand and what looks like a chip of moonstone. She stirs the items together with the tip of her smallest finger, mumbling something under her breath, and my othersense detects a slight current of magic. She pours water from a clay jug into the cauldron, and sets it directly atop the banked coals of the hearth. The liquid inside quickly comes to a boil, and she sets it aside to steep.

“What are you making?” I ask.

“Just a little something to help Ilya relax and sleep. Otherwise he’ll be up all night, pacing and talking to himself, driving me batty. Even with this, you may have to pin him down to get him to stay still long enough to sleep.” She eyes me briefly. “Did he use that curse of his to heal something? He can’t hide it from me, he’s exhausted.”

I nod slowly.

“I’m fine, Mazelinka, really, I just -” Julian’s voice emerges first, followed by his improbably long self.

“Fine, nothing!” She scoffs. “Now, I'm going to go take some food to Petra, she’s recovering from a fall. You’d better be in bed by the time I get back!”

“I can carry that for you, let me help -”

Mazelinka ignores this, turning back to me. “I assume you’re staying, too? There’s plenty of room down in The Hole.”

Julian looks at me, and I at him, the both of us immediately blushing like fools, and Mazelinka snickers. “Well, I guess that answers THAT question.” She pours the faintly steaming concoction she’s made into a little bowl, straining it through a cloth. Peering at it, the liquid shimmers golden in my magical sight - a soporific, not as potent as a true sleeping spell, but enough to encourage slumber. It’s not unlike the ones Heron or I make for our insomniac customers. “Make sure he drinks this - I expect he’ll take it from you.”

Julian flushes darker yet, mumbling something about not being tired - then interrupts himself with a yawn, rather giving the lie to this.

“That’s what I thought.” Mazelinka tucks a crock and some of the black bread into a basket. “Don’t overstep yourself, Ilya, or you’ll answer to me.”

Julian affects a look of wounded innocence. “I? Overstep? I am an absolute gentleman, thank you very much.”

“Sure you are. You’d best hold him to that, Jinana.”

“You can hold me any way you like,” he says, grinning, and both Mazelinka and I roll our eyes. 

“Just get some sleep, you ridiculous boy.”

“I can’t promise that,” Julian says, still with that unbearable grin. But I can.

Mazelinka dismisses this, taking her leave to deliver the food. The moment she is gone, Julian slumps in his chair with a sigh.

“I guess I can’t lie to her,” he says ruefully. “She knows me too well for that. It’s strange though… stab me in the back and I’ll walk it off. Blows, falls, even poison… none of them keep me down for long. But healing someone else will take everything I’ve got.”

“All the more reason to rest, then,” I tell him.

“We don’t have to go to sleep right away,” he says, with a lazy smile. “We could stay up for a bit... get to know each other.” 

I bring the little bowl to him, offering it to him, but he makes no move to accept it, just looking down at it with a bittersweet expression. “Bless her, she makes this drink when I can’t sleep. Don’t know what’s in it, but even when I’m at my worst, it seems to calm me down. And it even tastes good.”

I lift the bowl to his lips, as if he is a naughty child who must be bidden. “Drink.” I slowly begin to tip the bowl, and he must drink or have it splash down his shirt. He gives a little huff through his aquiline nose, but he obeys, drinking it down.

As I set the empty bowl aside, he once again reaches out, taking my hands in his, where they are lost. He looks down at them, then up at me. “Are you really ok with… this?” he asks, earnestly.

“With what?” I ask, puzzled.

“All of it. Me. I’m a wanted fugitive, in case you’ve forgotten, not to mention the plague-eye and having no place of my own to call home. A real prize, no?” He laughs.

“I’m a fortune-teller with no memory of my life beyond three years ago. Is that so much better?”

Julian’s jaw drops, his hands clenching around mine involuntarily. “You… don’t remember anything?”

“A few things. But if I try to recall too much… the headaches come, or worse.”

“Oh god, the headaches. I wouldn’t wish those on anyone.”

“Well, we’re not alone. I believe that something happened the night Count Lucio died, something strange and terrible. There are others suffering from this, too, and I intend to find out why.”

I wonder, if I ask Asra the date of the first thing that I recall - his face, as he held my strengthless body in his arms - would it be that same fateful night, or perhaps the day after? It would all line up.

What else has he withheld from me, from fear or worry?

“I can only imagine that you will.” Julian smiles, though his face is becoming drawn with his fatigue. “I don’t think anything can stop you.”

A petty spirit almost did put a stop to me… but there are greater protections against such things, and I will be better on my guard.

“Come on,” I tell him. “You’re going to pass out in that chair if you stay there much longer. Into The Hole with you.”

He raises his eyebrows, but gets up from the chair, mildly unsteady. “It’s dark down there,” he informs me. “There might be bugs.” 

I laugh. “The one day I don’t have a centipede or a giant beetle in my pocket. Probably for the best though, the poor thing would have drowned when I fell in the water.”

Julian gives me a peculiar look, as if he can’t tell if I am joking or not. (I am not.) “Well, the worst you might see here is actually a cellar spider or three.”

“Those are adorable! They have such long legs.”

“Are you sure you’re not pulling mine?” he asks, dropping directly down into the hideaway. Standing, he can just peer out of the hatch.

I follow him down the wooden ladder; I feel his hands come around my waist to steady me as I descend. I conjure my little lights, shedding their soft glow on the space.

Vesuvia is an old city, primarily built upon more of itself from ages past. It isn’t uncommon to find that one has an unexpected cellar, formed by a previous building. This looks like one such situation - a small, squareish space with a packed-earth floor, the walls of rough-hewn stacked stones.  It’s notably cooler down here, no doubt due to the insulating earth, and the only real feature is a sort of nest of various quilts and pillows.

Julian reaches up and shuts the trapdoor, enclosing us. It’s very quiet, the city sounds blocked out. He sits down - there is no way he could comfortably stand - and removes his long boots, unwinding his sash. He reclines upon the pile of blankets, looking up at me in the soft light of my magic, and pats the space next to him.

“See?” he says, grinning. “Plenty of room.” But behind his bravado, I sense a certain nervousness in him, in the way his eyes flick over me, the inability of his hands to be still. I feel it, too, summoned by all of this being more intentional, alone in this private little space with him.

Resolutely, I begin removing my clothing, and his eyes widen before he rather charmingly averts them. It’s hard not to chuckle as I place my garments in my bag - being magical in itself, it has survived the night’s adventures none the worse for wear, its contents secure in their pocket of otherspace.

Clad now in my undergarments (being Nadia’s gifts, they are quite splendid), I lie down next to Julian. He looks down on me as he draws a blanket over us both, his expression pensive, his hair skidding down into his face.

“Am I coming on too strong?” he asks quietly. “God, but I’d love to be able to have something real with you. If we only had more time…”

He must mean the looming threat of execution. I reach up, brushing the hair back out of his face, and he sighs. “Ah, I must be tired, to let myself ramble on like that,” he says, with a crooked, charming smile. “Ignore me.”

Instead, I draw him down to me, and he whispers my name in a soft, wondering way before kissing me very gently. The next kiss is less gentle, and I allow this. The hunger is there, like this is something he must have before it disappears. But if he hungers, then I starve... and I answer with all that I have lacked in three empty years, winding my arms around his broad shoulders.

His skin is still oddly cool to the touch, despite the wild hammering of his heart. My own heart is beating quickly, strongly, but nowhere near the speed of his, and this intrigues me. It feels like I frighten him as much as I interest him.

(Why does this feel as it should be? Surely, I am not so frightening.)

Curious, I slip one hand inside his loose shirt, running my fingertips lightly over his skin. I discover the architecture of his collarbone, the solid expanse of his chest, the little hairs that grow there. I encounter one of his small nipples, quickly standing up under my touch. I work it gently between my fingers, and Julian groans against my mouth. His arms pull me against him full-length, as if unable to get close enough. Our legs tangle together, and now his skin does begin to warm where it touches mine.

There is a peculiar familiarity to all of these actions; it was the same with many other things, when I re-learned them. Just as I know what to do when the tabla drum sounds, without conscious thought, so do I also know what to do here, with a confidence that I do not understand; I can only allow it to lead me. I want to see where it goes; I want to know.

Julian’s hands roam over my body with a strange care, as if he fears me to be fragile. (I am not.) I run my own hand over his side, causing him to give a ticklish flinch, and continue around to his back. My nails are short, but the henna has made them very strong. I dig them into his skin, and he surges against me with a muffled sound.

I bring both of my arms around him as best I can, dragging my nails down his back. It should do him no real harm… and he certainly seems to enjoy it, whispering his encouragement against my mouth.

“Mmph, yes, harder…” I grant this to him, raking over his skin hard enough that the faint glowing mark under the skin of his throat activates, immediately healing whatever damage I have managed to inflict. He sucks in his breath, letting it back out as a soft moan. “Ohhh god yes, just like that…”

I leave his mouth to visit a lovebite on the white column of his throat, and he whispers my name. I repeat this for him, all down his throat and shoulder. Between this and the sensation of my nails on his skin, I find his hips have begun to move of their own volition, to press themselves toward me. One of my legs is caught between his own, and I bring it up so that my thigh presses against him, just so. A shudder goes through him, emboldening me. I slide my hand down his body, over the front of his pants; it’s easy to feel how aroused he is already. He tries to press himself to my hand, but I pull away.

“Jinana, please…” he says, and the desperation in his voice is incredibly satisfying to me. “I can’t take much more of this... I’ve been holding back all night.”

I set my hand to the small of his back, pulling him in, the heated hardness of him pressing to my thigh. “Then do it,” I say. “Make yourself come for me.”

All the air seems to leave him, as if I’ve punched him in the gut. (To be fair, I have surprised even myself with this.) Then he finds my mouth again, kissing me in that way that devours, as if there’s a need inside him that can never be filled. He rocks his hips shamelessly, rubbing himself against me through the thicknesses of our clothing. He seems to have forgotten his carefulness, clutching me to him in a frenzy of need.

There’s something thrilling about this, a form of power. He is much bigger than I am, definitely stronger, and apparently able to brush off any injury. But he submits himself entirely - eagerly, even - to what I allow. The mild humiliation of what I have chosen only seems to have excited him even more.

My mouth is occupied, filled by his, but my hands are free. I dig my nails even more fiercely into his flesh, down his back and over his flanks, and he moans all the more for me, his breathing becoming ragged as he moves himself faster. The way he gives himself over to this fascinates me; he starts to whimper and to curse, until suddenly his arms tighten around me and he gives a series of choked little sounds, almost like sobs, his body shuddering in long waves.

I hold him close as he begins to relax, lifting my head to speak low into his ear.

“Good boy.” 

Julian groans softly, then buries his face in between my neck and shoulder, his hair and his breaths tickling my skin. He repeats my name again and again, like a mantra. I can feel that he is shaking, just a little, and I run my hands soothingly down his back.

Presently, he lifts himself up a bit, looking down on me again. His kiss is much more gentle, now that the crisis has passed. 

“I’m afraid I’ve made a mess of us,” he says quietly, but the look on his face is unrepentant.

“I am a magician,” I say, chuckling indulgently. I gather my power and pass my hand slowly over our bodies, leaving us clean and dry once more.

“That is handy, isn’t it?” he says, then runs his own hand over my waist, resting at my hip. “But what about you? Wouldn’t you like me to, ah, return the favor?”

We both start slightly at the sound of the door rattling above; Mazelinka has returned, her footfalls sounding overhead, muttering faintly to herself about how ‘that fool boy’ had best be sleeping down there.

Julian and I muffle our laughter against one another. “Another time,” I whisper. “You really should get some sleep.” His eyelids are heavy with fatigue, his body relaxed. I reach out with my own magic, touching that of the potion he has imbibed, adding to it.

“If you’re sure…” he says, uncertain, then yawns.

“I’m sure.” I beckon him down; ever obedient, he stretches out beside me. “Good night, Julian.”

A gesture douses the soft glow of the magical lights, leaving us in the hushed darkness. I feel him shift against me, can hear his breathing slow as he quickly descends into sleep.

I lie awake for a time in the blackness, my mind trying to make sense of everything that has happened tonight. The library seems so far away, the horrible dungeon another world entirely. Yet it was only this morning. Then the aqueduct, the malign presence, the fall… and Julian.

We should not have done this. I should not be here. But there is something about the way that a single gesture or a firm word renders him utterly compliant, his complete lack of shame in pursuing his own pleasure at my command...

It disturbs me, because I have no memory of ever doing such things. Yet something inside of me knows exactly how to respond to the cues he sends, with an assurance that both thrills and terrifies me.

I must admit to myself that I do like feeling him yield to me. I want more of it. I want… I almost have the words, the images, but then it fails me, blurring into a vague yearning for something I can no longer easily define.

But what of Asra, or Nadia? How will I face either of them? How will I explain my whereabouts? I am so loath to lie to either of them, yet Julian will surely hang if I do not.

The thought of Asra causes a pang in my chest, but not of the type that heralds an episode. He says he cares for me, he wants me, and yet here I am, lying next to his former lover turned almost-enemy. Am I so faithless?

This man is my quarry, I have pledged to bring him before the Countess to face justice… and yet, here I am.

It is a strange misery, to follow the strange elation of feeling Julian respond to me in that way that is so oddly affirming to a part of myself I scarcely comprehend.

Gods, but I wish Heron were here. He is the only one I could possibly tell about this, the only one who might be able to give me insight into this part of myself - if anyone knows, it will be him. I am told that there were no secrets between us in the time before my accident; there are none now.

But all I can do for the moment is to try and get some rest myself.

I am just beginning to drowse, lulled by the slow and steady rhythm of Julian’s breathing, when a magical Sending arrives directly in my brain, as if thinking of Heron has summoned him:

We’re on our way back. It’s been an interesting journey. I hope you’re doing well and staying safe. I’ll see you in three days’ time.

Snapping back to wakefulness, I scramble to grasp the thread of magic, to formulate a reply:

A lot has happened in the last few days. The Palace sought out my services. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.

After a moment, a second message arrives in my head:

The Palace? What’s going on? Where is Asra? If you need me, we can arrive by magic tomorrow. The cargo can wait for the boat.

The nature of the spell requires my response to be brief. The Countess wanted a diviner to help investigate the late Count’s death. Asra is traveling, but I’m all right. I’ll see you in three days.

I wait, but no further Sending arrives; either Heron has accepted this, or he has expended too much magical energy this day to send another message. Perhaps both. But there is too much that has happened for me to be able to communicate it via brief magical missives; best to wait.

I try to relax once more, to take slow, deep breaths and let my thoughts unwind. I, too, am fatigued by all that has happened, and it does not take long for me to follow Julian into sleep.

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK VII: THE CHARIOT

Chapter 2: The City (~3600 words)

Warnings: Masked makeouts, biting/marking, a tiny amount of blood

Notes: The musicians (Adina, Vedra, and Ia - along with Biba, Brun, and Slim) belong to @sharpfawngz​ and appear with permission! :)

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The Market is bustling, thriving, a living thing. Peddlers come and go, trading spaces, hawking wares. Some are on the move to seek out their customers, either loaded down by packs of goods, or wheeling carts of varying sizes and levels of durability.

Our breakfast is buttery paratha stuffed with spiced potato, hot from the mobile tandoor that one enterprising young man has rigged from nested clay pots in a wagon. (Julian insists on paying.) We take our time wandering the rest of the market, seeking out the items of Mazelinka’s list along with a few other sundries. There is much to see here, and Julian seems only too happy to put off this talk of his by showing me everything.

He takes a peculiarly defensive position as we walk, as if he fears somehow losing me in the flow of the crowd. (To be fair, I am not large.) The throng eddies like water around his tall form, his arm never far from my shoulders or waist, keeping me in the lee formed by his body.

It’s surprising to me just how many of the locals call out to Julian as we pass them by… and how unconcerned they seem to be by my presence. Most frequently they call him Jules, or Ilya; a few refer to him as Doctor Devorak. Everyone, from the local leech collector to various vendors to other doctors, seems to have something to say to him.

The fact that I am in the employ of the Palace seems to be known, if Mazelinka’s reaction is any indication. But Julian’s presence at my side seems to negate this for the residents of South End, and I wonder at it… though it may only be the way he hovers about me, making it obvious that something is going on.

Just another compromising story, perhaps, in a lifetime of them.

There is a milling about ahead, a clustering of the crowd. An apparition rises above the heads of the marketgoers -  the antler-crowned head of a deer, pure white in color. At first I think it must be some headdress or other creation... but then it blinks, turning fluidly toward a raised human hand. A large group of children (and not a few adults) is gathering round, come to gawk at the animal in awe and sheer wonder.

A closer look shows that there are three people accompanying the creature, one resting their head briefly against its snowy neck. Then a strong singing voice of a dark timbre rises over the chatter, borne aloft by a companion ocarina, and the bright jingling rattle of a tambourine. The deer-handler, too, lifts their voice, weaving around the first, embroidering wordless harmonies upon it.

The musicians are clad in colorful, eclectic clothing, jingling with jewelry and chains of little bells. The words of their song can be made out to be a tale of a life of survival in a crumbling city forgotten by its leaders, sinking into the hungry waters; the lively meter and rhyme lend it an especially scathing edge. Some of the market folk are bobbing or even clapping in time with the rhythm, and coins are flung irregularly at the musicians’ feet.

The people here don’t have very much to give, beyond their attention… but I suspect that is what is truly being sought here today. Music always has a message.

A low, sturdy shape bumps my leg as we draw alongside the group. Julian gives an audible gasp, folding to half his height with a suddenness that is nearly alarming, squatting down with a stream of delighted babble.

“Hi Brun, hi girl! Ohhhh, what a good dog, goooood doggie, pretty pretty girl!” His gloved fingers stroke over the short brindled fur of a fair-sized dog with floppy ears. Her soulful eyes gaze up at him adoringly, forehead wrinkled as if in deep thought. Not only her tail but her entire muscular body begins wriggling in a surfeit of joy.

The musicians have noted Julian’s presence, grinning at each other. The tall and beautiful one who has been singing harmony and soothing the deer takes over the melody for a final verse: 

Damned be to Lucio, wherever he’s gone,

The sins on his head would fill another song

The nobles will always want scapegoats to shame

I don’t think the doctor is who we should blame

Whoever did do it was perfectly right,

They gave us a gift on that Masquerade night!

Laughter erupts around us as Julian rises back to his feet, startled. Brun slobbers happily on his boots. “That’s, uh, not how that song usually ends, is it?”

The tambourine-bearer laughs - with their shirt open clear to the waist, the effect is, frankly, hypnotic. “Not always. Depends on the crowd.”

“Hey, doc.” The blonde ocarina-player grins broadly, showing a picturesque gap between their front teeth. “Found yourself a new friend, huh?”

While Julian stammers and blushes, a plump white rat wearing a tiny vest swarms up the musician’s lanky frame, depositing a coin carried in its mouth into one of their pockets.

“Oh, uh, well, yes, I suppose… say, aren’t you lot a bit far from your usual haunts?” For once, Julian seems to be trying to deflect attention away from himself.

“We get around,” they answer, the glint of mischief in their peridot eyes as they glance at their compatriots. The tambourine-player raises their instrument again, rattling and striking it in a rhythmic fashion, smirking as they begin to croon a well-known and rather ribald love song. The other two quickly join in, and Julian begins to back away, trying to somehow keep himself between me, the crowd, and the musicians all at once. He’s almost long enough in the limbs to accomplish it.

“Great to see you all again, keep up the good work, gotta go!” He reaches into his coat and tosses a handful of coins at the musicians before grabbing my wrist and beating a hasty retreat, to the accompaniment of more merriment from the onlookers.

In putting several blocks of space between us and the musicians, he seems to forget that I must take two running steps for every one of his. “Julian, please!” I gasp out, my chest burning from the effort.

He stops suddenly, whirling about to face me, and I nearly run straight into him. His hands grip my shoulders, steadying me as I take in great lungfuls of air.

“Next time… just pick me up like a ball, why don’t you?” I wheeze. “It’s got to be easier… than being dragged behind you.”

“Sorry, sorry - I just didn’t want you to be embarrassed, you know? That bunch can be pretty ruthless in their teasing.”

“It takes a lot more… than a spicy song… to embarrass me,” I tell him, laughing despite my breathlessness, and he grins.

“So it seems,” he answers. A thought then seems to occur to him, and he reaches into his coat again, rummaging inside whatever hidden pockets are there. “Hm… I think I may have accidentally given them a week’s wages worth of Galbradan doubloons, though. Ah, well.” He shrugs and takes my hand again. “At least I didn’t throw a handful of bottled leeches at them.” He laughs as we begin walking.

“...you have leeches in there?” I give him a dubious look.

“Of course. Never know when you’re going to encounter a medical emergency.”

I attempt to imagine the circumstances under which one might require leeches at a moment’s notice, but find myself coming up short.

“So, uh, about that talk…” Julian’s hand tightens on my own even as he says this. I glance at him, but he is not looking at me at all. “There’s a place I know, I think you’ll - ”

Before he can finish, before I even really know what is happening, I find myself engulfed in his arms and the blackness of his greatcoat, his body hunched over me and braced for impact. My instinct guides me to throw my Shielding spell at his back, sight unseen. There is an instant, terrific crash, followed immediately by the sound of small objects striking the ground.

A single, battered apple rolls to a stop against my foot.

“Ser? Ser!” comes a frantic voice, one I have heard before. Julian slowly straightens, and I fight my way free of his coat, which seems intent on devouring me. “Ohhh, not again.”

The dismay on the apple-seller’s face is near comical.

“Is it a habit of yours to overfill this cart?” I ask, and I can hear Nadia’s influence behind my own words.

“I know,” the seller says mournfully, looking down at the ramshackle thing. The other corner has given way this time, separating completely, spilling apples everywhere. Several folks pocket fruit as they pass by - some surreptitious, others brazen. “But it’s all I’ve got, so…” They shrug helplessly. “Deepest apologies, ser.”

“Oh, uh, here, let me - “ Julian fumbles within his greatcoat again, pulling out a nondescript little sack that jingles with coin. Just how much is he carrying around in there, anyway?  “At least I can pay you for the ones that have been lost…”

A bizarre reverse-haggle begins to take place, as the seller insists that the fault was theirs, and Julian presses currency upon them. While this is happening, I once again use my magic to repair the cart - the damage is more severe this time, and it takes a greater amount of magic to reverse. But soon it is back to its former state (such as it was), and the seller is alternately staring at me and at the coins in their hand - more than enough to make up for any apples they may have lost to the crowd.

“Well, sorry about that, we should be off, have a nice day!” Julian seizes my arm and begins walking purposefully away, steering me alongside - a bit more slowly this time, at least.

“What was that about?” I ask, when we are out of earshot.

“Oh, I just wanted to get out of there before they realize that while they were gawking at you, I slipped enough Hjallan drakkr into their pocket to buy a better cart.” He laughs, pulling me in closer, lacing his gloved fingers through mine. “If they can find someone to exchange it, I guess…” Something alters in his face as he looks down at me, and he releases me just as suddenly. “Anyway… you’re sure to love this next place. It’s a little teahouse I know, very cozy. Just the place for a… talk.”

By now, we’ve crossed over from the northern part of South End, and into the southern districts of Goldgrave, home of entertainers. Our destination seems to be a multistory building, its once-lavish ornament degraded by time and moisture. There are no external windows or doors to be seen, only faded frescoes crazed with fine cracks in the plaster. Still, they can be seen to show scenes of romance and adventure - here, two princes in the finery of different lands meet in a passionate embrace; there, a swashbuckler brandishes her blade against a sunset gone pastel with age.

“Ah, there it is,” Julian says. “I never could resist coming here, before. The ceilings in the underground lounge are vaulted, and the booths are very private.” The incorrigible grin briefly surfaces. “I could stay there for hours, just… talking.” Once again the peculiar stiffness of manner takes him over. “And, well, we do need to talk, don’t we?”

I wish he would just get to the point, instead of all of these intimations and mixed signals. But he starts making his way down a set of spiraling stone stairs, well-worn by many feet, and I can only follow.

At the bottom is an iron-bound door, slightly rusted, resistant as he heaves it open. Then he bows with a flourish, indicating that I should precede him. “After you, my dear.” I brush past him without a glance.

It’s very dim in here, hung about with curtains of heavy, somewhat moth-eaten fabric. The space is crowded with all manner of strange curios, leaving only narrow, winding walkways. The sound of low, distant conversation comes to me, a susurrus of hushed voices.

Julian peers about in seeming concern, and then down at me. “Hmmm… this is not how I remember it.” His voice is pitched low. “The old place must have gone under. How sad, they used to serve this tea I really liked… I think the leaves were smoked, or somesuch. Never have been able to find it again.”

As we continue to wend our way through the clutter, I attempt to place a classification to all of this. A large moon-face of hammered tin smiles sublimely from its place, propped up against massive bolts of various fabrics. A collection of spears and polearms bristle from within a barrel. A wooden chest spills garlands of bells, dusty articles of clothing and stray feathers.

“What is all of this?” Julian muses. “Some kind of… antiques-seller? A warehouse?” He shakes his head. “How embarrassing, after making you walk all this way. Ah, well.” He places his hand at the small of my back, as if to guide me out again, but something over my head catches his attention.

“...now what on earth is that?”

I turn to look. A tall mirror in an ornate brass stand reflects the two of us - not very well; its silvering has long since gone cloudy, the edges eaten away by corrosion. A mask has been left hanging carelessly from one corner, dangling by its satin ribbons. It bears a passing resemblance to the one that Julian himself wore that first night, and later cast into the water. But where that one was bone-white and blood-red, covering the entire face, this one is somewhat more elegant: velvet-black, covering only the upper half of the face. Nearby stand two tall boots, stuffed with more rolls of fabric, not entirely unlike the ones Julian himself wears. Perhaps at some point, they were in fashion.

He reaches out, taking up the mask and peering at it. “Not really a medical mask, is it? How odd.” He turns it in his hands, as if fascinated, tapping the end of the beak with one finger. “We used to stuff the beak with herbs, you see - camphor, lavender, rose petals - anything to combat the miasma. But this just seems to be a fashion-piece of some sort.” He turns it over, showing that the beak of this mask is wholly unable to hold such herbs.

“If it’s so interesting, maybe you should try it on,” I say, somewhat sardonically. He does seem fascinated by it.

“Oh? Do you think I miss the one I tossed to the eels?” he asks. “Which, by the way, it pains me incredibly to have been caught doing…” He sighs, his gloved fingers running over the surface of the mask, like a caress. “I suppose this… imitation doesn’t bother me nearly so much as the real thing.” He shrugs, an elaborate gesture. “If you want to see it, why not?”

My shrug in return is not nearly so showy, but Julian affixes the strange mask to his face, nimbly tying the ribbons in back. He peers at his dim reflection in the old mirror, giving a short, muffled laugh. “Who’d have thought this sort of thing might become an aesthetic? I may not have contributed much to modern medicine… but I guess I was at the cutting edge of fashion, and didn’t even know it.” He turns back to me. “So? How does it look?”

It’s macabre, somewhat bizarre… but also compelling, the disguise-that-is-not of a masquerade. His eye glitters in shadow, his features partially obscured, drawing attention to the shape of lips and jaw.

He must note the direction of my gaze, for he continues: “Can you imagine how hard it must be to kiss someone in one of these? Now imagine how tough it must be with two involved.” He gives a low chuckle, tilting his head back slightly.

The motion displays the long white line of his throat, and a sudden, intense memory of the night before sweeps over me - the feel of that skin between my own teeth, sharp kisses that bruise. Something in my face must remind him, as well, because I see the pulse there jumping, picking up speed.

Despite all his insistence that we must talk, he does not move to avoid me when I step right up to him, nor does he resist when I pull him down to me, placing a soft kiss where last night I left the marks of my teeth. (Of course, those marks are long gone.) Under my hands and the layers of jacket and shirt, his heart is again racing. I place another gentle kiss on the side of his neck, and he pulls me against him. I continue on over his adam’s apple, just barely letting the heat of my breath touch his skin where the mark lies invisible beneath.

“Tease,” he says, his voice becoming husky. “That’s not what you did last night.”

His hands come up to gently guide my head, until my lips rest just below the ear, near where that pulse continues to thrum. Of course, I know exactly what he wants... but all of his little games today have left me feeling contrary. I instead move along his jaw, the faintly rough texture of shaven skin under my lips.

Julian groans softly. “You don’t have to be gentle with me, you know that. You know how I like it.”

“I do.” I pull back, looking up into his face. “But what have you done to earn it?”

His eye goes wide, blood rushing into his cheeks, and I take advantage of this to pull him back down to me for another kiss. But even as I start to pull back, he pursues the kiss, and I allow it. It goes on for a long time, so much so that it leaves me light-headed before he finally lets go, with seeming reluctance.

“Sweet,” he remarks, licking his lips. “Maybe too sweet.” He runs a gloved finger along my jawline. “Too good to be true,” he says. “Too good to last. But you are adorable, aren’t you? Delectable, even.”

Being what I am, this merely provokes me. He tilts his head, leaning in for another kiss - but I slip aside, striking like a serpent. His breath catches, and I can feel him shiver as I apply a bruising pressure to the skin of his throat.

“Mmm, that’s more like it.” He pulls at his collar, exposing more skin to me. “You don’t have to worry about marking me up. Bite as hard as you want, I love it.”

I oblige him with a trail of sharp bites, all the way from his collarbone to the corner of his jaw, strong enough to make him gasp, to suck in his breath at each one. Curious, I pull back to peer at the livid marks my teeth have left in his flesh - not quite enough to fully activate the sigil under his skin, but fading all the same. 

“Of course, the curse means you have to try a lot harder to leave a m-mmmph!“

Before he can even finish, I’ve struck again, catching his lower lip between my teeth. I sink them into the tender flesh, and he gives a muffled moan. There is a metallic taste in my own mouth as I release him; I have managed to draw blood, this time.

“Yesss,” he hisses, “that’s it, don’t be shy about it. Give me a little something to remember you by.”

What? Before I can get him to clarify that, he neatly spins us around, so that now it is my back against the mirror, the beak of the mask hovering over my face. Something about it disturbs me - the way it shadows his eye, obscuring his expressions. A quick gesture of magic releases the tie behind his head, and the mask drops into my hand.

“...is something wrong?” he asks, startled.

“It’s in the way,” I answer, and this is true.

Julian licks his lips, the little bead of blood gone, the injury healed over. “Let’s try it without, then.” He bends down to kiss me again.

It is easier like this, without the beak of the mask in the way, and he certainly knows what he is about. I suppose I could lose myself in this, the sure and certain caress of his lips and the stealthy infiltration of his mouth into my own… but his kisses of last night were different, desperate, full of a raw need. This is merely a display of his skill, betraying a certain detachment, a distance.

Acting.

He gives a carefree chuckle as we finally part, but it rings hollow to me. 

“Ah, it looks strange on me anyway,” he says. “This one… and the one I wore before. I’ve enough of a beak of my own, don’t you think?” He briefly bumps the tip of his nose to mine, and grins. “Silly of me to let another one come between us.” Then his expression changes, and his arm leaves me.

“Well, this is definitely not a teahouse anymore. I guess we’ll just have to go somewhere else and… talk.”

I clench my teeth around my retort; this continual whipsawing of closeness and distance is becoming exhausting. But before I can speak, a sudden, terrible wailing rends the air, sending my heart into my throat.

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK  VII: THE CHARIOT

Chapter 3: The Theater (~4530 words)

Warnings: Medical discussion of wounds/amputation, mildly spicy makeouts

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Julian instantly places himself between me and the apparent direction of the awful sound, taking the stylized plague-mask from my hands and donning it once more. “Humor me a moment… but stay close.” He leads the way with a stealthy step, winding through the clutter.

We come to yet another set of heavy curtains, these of burgundy velvet. Brilliant light leaks through the thin gap between.

Beyond lies a stage, illuminated by a series of lamps and a magical spotlight. A figure lolls about on a huge prop bed that is eerily familiar to me, clad in a robe of sheer scarlet heavily (and strategically) embroidered with faux gold. The actor’s face is covered by another mask, this one white as porcelain. The eye-holes are surrounded by bloody crimson, veining outward. Painted tears like melted kohl streak down its cheeks.

“Left to languish alone in my bedchamber on my own birthday??? Oh, what anguish unbearable!” The actor throws himself dramatically down to the bed. “What am I to do, beg for scraps from my own table? How can they do this to me? After everything I’ve done for them!”

“Oh my god,” Julian whispers. “Honestly… it sounds just like him. Lucio, that is.”

Clearly this portrayal is not meant to be complimentary to the late Count. Beyond the stage lights, I can just make out a small but packed seating area, a rapt audience. The occasional jeer makes its way to the stage - not aimed at the actor, but at the Count himself, the very idea of Lucio. 

The actor soliloquizes at length, outlining every perceived injustice and self-pitying thought the plague-ridden Count could possibly have had. The massive backdrop begins to slowly scroll by, turned by some unseen, creaking mechanism. Humorously, it goes from displaying a sun in the blue sky, through sunset and twilight, turning toward night as the ‘Count’ rants on.

“Well, it’s good to see the arts are flourishing again in Goldgrave,” Julian murmurs, then his eye widens behind the mask. “You don’t think… are they really re-enacting the night of the mur-”

A heavy sandbag drops nearby - and Julian abruptly vanishes. A coil of rope has snared his ankle, lifting him up and away. The only thing left is his greatcoat, piled at my feet… and now I know what drives the moving backdrop.

Looking frantically upward, I spot him - now hanging upside-down over the stage and its lone actor, who stares up at him in turn. Even as I am wracking my brain for some spell that might be able to help, Julian curls himself upward - an impressive feat of core strength - and pulls what looks like a small knife of some sort from his boot to cut himself loose.

I mutter a word, pointing at him from my place behind the curtain - a feather-fall spell, causing him to land lightly upon the bed, practically in the surprised actor’s lap.

“Doctor Devorak!” The actor cries. “Here to cure my boredom!” His quick recovery has the audience laughing along, even as the new arrival looks about wildly. Then Julian seems to gather himself, rising up on the bed, looming over the “Count” with menacing laughter.

“Oh, my poor, poor patient. The clock strikes thirteen for you tonight!” He spreads his arms wide, like some kind of malign raven, and the false Lucio falls back with a dramatic intake of breath. “Let that gasp be your last!”

“Oh? What are you going to do, smother me with your thighs? Sponge-bath me to death?” The audience howls with laughter. 

“For the hundredth time… no.”

A mock struggle ensues, the two grappling on the bed, with the actor playing Lucio giving lascivious giggles throughout. He then flings himself from the bed and reaches underneath, drawing a prop sword that wobbles about with a comical sound. He jumps back upon the bed in a fighting stance, somewhat ludicrous in the disheveled dressing-gown. “Come now, Doctor! Give me a real fight… man on man.” He waggles his charcoaled eyebrows above the mask, and the audience titters. “We’ll see who’s gasping then.”

“If it’s a fight you want… oh.” Another prop sword appears in Julian’s hand, lowered from the rafters above. “...it’s a fight you’ll get! En garde!”

A duel ensues, punctuated by the absurd sounds of the comedic (and admittedly rather phallic) prop swords, and the audience eats it up. The actor knocks over a torch stand as they battle across the stage, the prop torch in it rolling away. Curtains of fine, rippling silk begin to flutter down around the stage, painted with flames, trembling like them. The lighting gradually turns yellow, then orange. Somewhere above, I can see a shadow moving in the rafters - a stagehand?

Finally, the not-Lucio is knocked back against the bed, Julian’s superior reach holding him at bay, one booted foot planted in the other’s midsection and the wobbling sword at his throat.

“Speak your last words, villain... but choose carefully.”

“I can give you money! Fine things! Gold, women, men, goats - anything!” the false Count babbles. “We’re friends, right? I can be very generous to my friends! You know I’ve always liked you best, Jules!”

“You can’t buy back the lives you took.” Julian sneers, pressing the ‘blade’ closer. “I only ought to have done this sooner.” He pretends to shove the blade into the ‘Count’s’ throat; the prop sword suddenly ejects streamers of crimson crepe. The actor sells the action for all he is worth, gurgling and choking, going limp.

Julian steps back from the ‘body’, leaving the prop sword to fall next to it. He looks even more bloodless than usual,. “Oh… well, uh, that was… easier than I thought it would be.”

He straightens. “The dark deed is done,” he intones. “Though I did this for Vesuvia… the law is clear. I must pay for my crime.”

“Guards!” comes a rather nasal shout from offstage, then another figure enters from the far side. With a questionable wig and teetering heels, this is clearly meant to be the Consul. “Hang the murderer!”

“...but not today!” Julian cries, and dashes from the stage, to uproarious applause. He bursts through the curtain, discarding the mask before scooping me up like a sack of potatoes, bundled greatcoat and all. He dashes back out at a run, scattering props and dusty feathers in our wake.

Outside again, we take shelter between two nearby buildings, catching our breath. Julian is still pale with shock, sweat beading his forehead. “Well, that was… certainly something. A real trip.” He takes a deep, shaky breath. “I seriously doubt that anyone thought it was really me… but they don’t hold back, do they? Skewering Lucio in more ways than one.” He gives an uneasy laugh, then falters, watching as I attempt to calm my own nerves, my racing heart. I offer him the greatcoat, and he drapes it over his shoulders once more.

“That… really was not what I had in mind. Listen…” He takes my hands in his own, looking into my face. “Will you go back to the Raven with me? We’ll get something to eat… my treat, of course. And then, after that… we can… have a nice walk down to the beach, how does that sound?”

“Will you finally tell me what’s on your mind, then?”

“I… yes. Of course.”

We take a more circuitous route back to South End, just in case. We stop by Mazelinka’s cottage to drop off her items; she herself is not there, but an elderly woman waves to us from a vegetable garden next door. Chickens wander at her feet, scratching and pecking things from the ground. She proceeds to talk our ears off about everything from her opinions of the city’s rulers (poor), to the increasing cost of flour (ruinous), to what she suspects her adult grandchildren are up to, over in Goldgrave (no good).

Julian listens to it all with the greatest attention and patience. He normally has such an erratic, tight-wound energy to him, it surprises me. After we finally manage to make our goodbyes and move on, I tell him so.

“When you grow up with a dozen babushkas, it’s better to let them bend your ear a bit than to have them drag you around by it.” He laughs fondly. “They say it takes a village to raise a child… when it came to me and Pasha, it was definitely true.”

By the time we make our way to the Rowdy Raven, the light outside is turning gold and the tavern is starting to come alive. A thick stew served in hollowed-out loaves arrives at our table, along with tankards of the cider-like drink I’ve had once before. Around us, conversation runs the gamut from shady dealings to mundane workaday talk. Julian’s eye flies up to meet mine when two people begin discussing the play they saw earlier today.

“I don’t know, I thought the new guy playing the Doctor was pretty good.”

“The swordfight was fun, but I just don’t think it sounded like him. And he was kind of gangly.”

“Yeah, the last guy was burlier and had a deeper voice.”

“This one was really tall, I’ll give him that.”

I struggle mightily not to react, but the vexed look on Julian’s face dooms me, and I dissolve into snickering.

“You laugh,” he says, low but accusing. “I don’t look enough like Doctor Devorak to suit my audience, and you’re laughing.”

“I am,” I say, “because it’s hilarious.”

Julian snorts. “Yeah, I guess it is, actually.”

The food is good, but my growing anxiety about this looming talk of Julian’s causes it to sit heavily, and I pick at my meal. He, too, seems keen to avoid moving on, talking about just about everything else under the sun, stretching over another tankard for each of us. He speaks of some of his stranger medical cases, and the little-known fact that it was he who amputated the late Count’s left arm, back when Lucio was a mercenary hired by the previous Count, and Julian himself only a young apprentice.

“Oh, it was terrible. The arm was in such poor shape that there was no choice but to remove it; he almost bled to death as it was. And what he got was me, seventeen years old and absolutely terrified, with my mentor shouting instructions at me while they were busy tending to Count Spada.” He shakes his head and drains his tankard. “Mercifully, the man blacked out before I really got to sawing.” He seems to catch himself. “Sorry. This isn’t the best dinner conversation, is it?”

I laugh. “It doesn’t trouble me; Heron saw to it that I got practical experience in healing. I’ve seen plenty.”

Julian frowns. “Don’t you just, I don’t know… magic that stuff away?”

“Little things, yes. But it isn’t a miracle. Do it wrong, and you can cause more problems than you fix.”

He frowns. “Really? What can go wrong?” The gleam of professional interest is in his eye now.

“You still have to clean and prepare the wound. Heron once took a nasty slash to his arm, and had to use magic to close it before he bled to death. But the wound became pustulent, and he still almost died, magic or no… and he has a huge scar from it.”

“Huh. You keep mentioning this Heron - who is he, exactly?”

“He knew me… before. We grew up together. He’s my closest friend - more like a sibling, I guess. The only family I have left.”

Julian gives a small, bittersweet smile. “I’m glad you have someone like that.” He looks down at his tankard. “Well… I suppose we should get moving. The old docks are quieter, for sure.”

As we leave, he drops some coin on the bar, and Barth nods to us.

Julian is nearly silent as we walk through the city, cutting through nighttime Goldgrave. The sounds of revelry can be heard, colorful lanterns illuminating the playhouses and music halls. We pass them all by.

The thin crescent of the moon sheds only the faintest light as we approach the old docks on the rocky beach. But the stars, too, give some illumination, and during the summer the waves themselves have a faint glow. Julian stays slightly ahead of me, a black cutout that obscures the starry sky. The tension in him has been winding tighter and tighter during our walk; his aura practically hums like an overdrawn bowstring.

The gentle breaking of the waves provides a rhythmic counterpoint to the drone of singing summer insects. While the more westerly side of the docks sees activity all times of the day and night, this portion has been largely abandoned, fallen into disrepair.

Julian pauses on a pier that hasn’t seen use in years, the far half of it fallen into the sea. He looks out over the dark waters, scanning the horizon.

“Ahhh, the salt breeze. A good night for sailing, really.” He heaves a sigh, his shoulders slumping. “Jinana… we really do need to talk.”

“We’ve been talking all day,” I say drily, though I know this is not what he means.

“...yeah. I guess I’ve just been enjoying myself too much to get to the point.”

“I was enjoying myself, too.”

He turns, looking down at me. “Truly? Even when we were being attacked by rogue carts of fruit? Or my accidental stage debut as a highly-fictionalized version of myself?”

“Especially then.” I laugh. “I guess you could say that my life is normally pretty quiet. Dull, even.”

Julian scoffs. “How could being a magician ever be dull?” he asks.

“People think it’s all cosmic powers and summoning demons,” I tell him. “But most of it is just… making sure I’ve got enough powdered bat milk and dried crickets in stock. Using my magic to clean up messes or reaching high shelves. I study a lot. But out here… well, everyone seems to know you, don’t they? They really seem to like you.”

His expression goes pained. “They’re good, hardworking people, just trying to get by… and even if I am responsible for Lucio’s death, they didn’t have a lot of love for him, or for the Palace. But it isn’t safe for them to cover for me like this. If I’m being honest, I’m just putting them in danger by walking around like this. By being back at all.”

His long-fingered hands clench inside their gloves. “Jinana… I’m nothing but a disaster waiting to happen. A calamity about to unfold. And I don’t…” He swallows. “I don’t want you wrapped up in that.”

I think of waking up alone in the darkness, the empty house, the sinking feeling when I found him gone. “When you left this morning… you weren’t planning on coming back, were you?”

“I, uh - well all right, I panicked a little. A lot. But I would never have just left you there like that. I don’t… want to leave. But I just can’t see any way this can go on. Whatever it was, whatever it might have been.”

He walks out onto the remains of the pier, where stone pilings still support it, and seats himself at the end, by the water. His legs are so long that his heels nearly touch the surface of the waves as they come and go.

I follow suit, though my own legs merely dangle a ways above the water. I lean lightly against his side; he leans upon me in return, rather more heavily. We sit like this for a time as he stares out over the waves, at a low black shape that can just barely be made out in the darkness, an absence of stars.

“Do you know what that is?” he asks.

“Who doesn’t?” I answer. “It’s the Lazaret.” I cannot tell him about the strange fascination it has for me, the way it appears so often in my dreams… or how I met Nadia there, a wandering soul loosed from her body.

“The perfect monument to my failure,” he says. “Always reminding us of the horrors of the Plague, of how many we lost. Every one of those deaths, every single body we cremated there… each one is a mark in the ledger of deeds, condemning me. And there are so, so many.” He straightens, running his hands over his face, through his hair. “Ashes still wash up on the beach. The sand is grey with it. Almost nothing can live in the water until you get a mile out.”

“Julian… you did everything you could. The Quaestor said there were so many doctors that they started numbering them. Why do you think you have to bear it all alone?”

“Because I was close. I was so damned close to figuring this thing out. Blood was the key, it had to be… but I ran out of time.”

“Only because - “ I stop myself; I don’t know what harm it might do to him to be reminded of Lucio’s terrible ‘motivation’ for him. “Because you caught the Plague yourself. It’s a miracle you survived.”

“Is it?” he asks. “I don’t know that I’d ask anyone to live with this kind of guilt.” He shakes his head. “Look… I don’t want to drag this out longer than I have to, Jinana. It has to end, before it’s too late. Before you get hurt.”

“Are you planning on hurting me, then?”

“No! But I will, somehow, if you stay with me, I just know it. It’s how it is… how it’s always been. I’m the first one to admit my many, many faults, all right? I lose myself too easily… and then it all goes wrong, and I end up hurting people. One way or another. You deserve so much better.”

Perhaps I do… but here I am.

“I’m not afraid of you, Julian,” I tell him. “And pain holds little fear for me anymore.”

He looks back at me, grimacing. “Don’t be so cavalier with yourself, Jinana. With your own safety.”

“That’s certainly ironic, coming from you.”

“I’m only trying to protect you - “

“No-one needs it less.”

His face falls. “It’s all I have left to give. I’m not a good man, Jinana. I’ve done things - terrible things. They must be terrible, even if I don’t remember most of them - where else could all of this guilt and dread come from? I don’t want you following me down the path of destruction.”

“Do you think so little of me, that I would follow blindly?”

“No! It’s just… there’s a doom on me, and I don’t want it to happen to you, too. I don’t want you wrapped up in this at all.”

“I already am, Julian. Have you forgotten that the Countess herself sent me looking for you?”

“All the more reason you should stay as far away from me as you can. If she finds out -”

“I am in the best possible position to try and exonerate you!” The water beneath my feet begins to swirl and slosh, reacting to my growing frustration. “The Praefectus doesn’t think you did it! Even Valerius had to admit that he couldn't be certain you had killed the Count - only that you were on the scene. He said you confessed that you came to kill the Count - not that you had.”

“What’s the difference?” he demands. “If he’s dead and I wanted him that way -“

“The difference is everything!” I feel my hair and clothing begin to stir, unrelated to the sea breeze. I pause, taking a deep, centering breath before continuing, more calmly. “Because if you didn’t do it, there’s a murderer running loose. One that I’m tasked with finding.”

He opens his mouth as if to speak, but for a moment, no words emerge. Then, “It doesn’t matter. I can’t let you take the risk.”

“That isn’t your decision to make.”

“God damn it, Jinana! Can’t you see that I’m trying to keep you from being dragged down with me?” 

“Can’t you see that I’m trying to keep you from being dragged down in the first place?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose between gloved fingers. “It’s very kind of you to try. But I don’t deserve it. And I don’t want you to get hurt in the process.” There’s a note of finality in his voice. “This is my problem, and it’s up to me to see it through. Alone.”

His thick-headedness is enough to make me want to scream, but the gods alone know what would happen if I did. The wild magic in my blood seethes, and I must keep my eyes lowered, in case it is manifesting in them.

Another silence falls upon us as I struggle to master my own innate power, as Julian looks out at the Lazaret with a blackly brooding stare.

I must let it go. I must let him go.

Gradually, I am able to relax, to let the building energy recede like the tide. Finally, I speak into the space between us once more. “I have just one question for you, then.”

He turns and looks at me warily. “All right.”

“Do you want me?”

He starts so badly that he nearly tumbles off into the water, just barely managing to catch himself. “What? That is… I mean… I must have… misheard.”

“I asked,” I say, enunciating very clearly, “if you wanted me.”

“Ah. Well. So I, erm, I didn’t mishear you at all.” I didn’t think he had. “That’s, uh, kind of a strange question to ask when I’m breaking up with you, isn’t it?”

I merely look at him as he hems and haws.

“Not that we had much of anything to start with, I mean. Just… one night, snatched from the jaws of time.” His voice goes strange and he swallows hard, so wound up that I fear he will spring away if I so much as touch him.

“Do I want you? That’s a, uh, tough question to answer, isn’t it? I want you to be safe. I want you to be happy. I want you to stay out of this whole mess that I’m in. I want…” His shoulders slacken, all of a sudden, like a string-cut puppet. “It doesn't matter what I want.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, Julian.” My tone is firm, even as he squirms about with words.

“You’re a tenacious one, I’ll give you that. I like that about you. No matter what… you don’t give up. You keep on going. You’re like a beacon, a tremendous light… and I’m just some battered old moth that can’t help being drawn in, too weak to resist. Not strong enough to stay away.”

He gives a tiny sigh, unable to even look at me as he admits, very quietly: “I do want you. More than you know. That’s what makes this so hard.” His voice picks up volume as he speaks, the words rushing together as they spill out of him. “I know it’s only been a few days… but I feel like I’ve known you forever. Something about you puts me at ease, in a way that very few can. I want to be around you… and when I’m not, I can’t stop thinking about you. And it’s tearing me into pieces, because I know that I can’t be with you… but something in me just keeps pulling me back.”

“Then stay,” I say, and he whirls on me.

“You don’t understand, Jinana! Can’t you see how it will go? It doesn’t take a fortune-teller to know how the story will end.” He hunches miserably inside his greatcoat. “Whatever we could have had… it all leads to ruin and damnation. And yet I’m still selfish enough to want you. So selfish that I’m terrified that I won’t be able to stay away, clinging to you and drowning us both. There’s no future there… not one that doesn’t end in grief for you.”

I have grieved the loss of an entire life, almost thirty years. He knows this.

“What future do you want, then?” I ask. “I know the one you fear.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want.” The words grit themselves out from his clenched jaw.

“It matters to me. But I guess you just can’t see anything outside of your own little tragedy, can you?” A warning splash comes from the water below us; I must not lose control of my emotions, lest I whip up a minor tsunami.

He stares at me for a moment, then slumps again with a bitter little chuckle. “That’s what I’m best at, you know. The star of my very own one-man play, a tragedy in three parts. Look… we shouldn’t waste time and energy imagining what we can never have. We shouldn’t… hope. It just hurts all the more when it comes crashing down.”

“That’s no way to live,” I tell him. “Without any hope… what’s the point?”

“What, indeed?” He gives another humorless laugh, raising his eye to the black shape of the Lazaret. “What do you want me to say, Jinana? That I want a future, that I want to live? That I want something with you, something real?” He rises, and I follow suit, though I have no idea what he needs, what comfort I can possibly give as he paces nervously, shaking his head.

“Oh sure, I can see it all now. No more lonely sleepless nights. No more tears for Pasha. Friends and family all around.” One long arm makes a sweeping gesture, the hand on the end clenching into a fist before falling at his side. “Things I just can’t have. But you? You’ll survive. You were fine when I showed up, you’ll be fine when I’m gone.”

“Will I?” I say, and this stops him in his tracks. He pivots on one bootheel, his eye tracking me as I slowly close the distance, looking up at him.

He has no idea of the things I have survived.

“The future will take care of itself,” I tell him. “We’re here right now, together. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe one last night… is enough.” My voice cracks on the last syllable; I ignore it.

“Can I be that selfish?” he asks, plaintive. 

“Do you want to be?” I ask.

The air sighs out of him, even as his body sways toward mine. “...Yes,” he whispers, and pulls me up to him, to the lightest brushing of our lips. Another kiss, and his shaking hands grip my tunic, one sliding up the back of my neck in a way that is now familiar.

“...just once more.” He kisses me again, his lips parting against mine. A strong shudder goes through him as I allow him access, and he moans softly into my mouth.

Perhaps it is unfair. Perhaps it is only my curiosity, and three years of lack. But even as I run my hand down his body, feeling him respond, I know that he will not deny me… and in that knowledge there is a sense of power that I cannot resist.

 I do not think we will be disturbed here. The darkness is in league with us… or we with it.

[the-iron-orchid]

Tides of Chaos: Book 1 CG

Tired and bemused by the evening’s events, Jinana considers what the cards have to say of hir own future.

[the-iron-orchid]

Tides of Chaos: Book IV CG

The Countess inhabits a world of beauty, and perforce all things must be beautiful.

Jinana dresses hirself up for the pleasure of the Countess.

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK VI: THE LOVERS

Chapter 4: The Aqueduct (~5000 words)

Warnings: Blood, injury, bad language from a bird, mild masochism :P

Notes: Marcus Aquila Summanus belongs to @vesuvian-disaster​ and appears with permission!

(back to table of contents)

The clatter and screeching of the lift sounds from beyond as I strip off the safety gear and hand it back to Valdemar, not giving them a chance to assist. A familiar voice bounces down the rough hallway as I push open the big metal door.

“Jinana! There you are.”

The sight of Marcus Aquila fills me with a relief so intense that I nearly stumble. Valdemar’s voice floats over my shoulder, asking if the shipment has been taken care of.

“Yes, Quaestor. And Portia was just asking after the Inquisitor.” Ey looks at me pointedly.

“Ah, yes. Well, we are done here… for now.”

The Praefectus takes my elbow, ushering me back to the lift with some haste. Ey sends me up first, following directly after.

“What was it you said... eccentric?” ey says drily as we walk toward the passage to the library, and I snort. “I guess you didn’t even have to ask for the Dungeon of Death tour. Did they make you dress up in an apron and mask, too?”

“They insisted. Very nostalgic for them, it seems.” It’s honestly a lot funnier here and now, away from that dreadful presence.

“It would be.” We step out into the library, and the shelf slides closed behind us once more. “Portia really was asking after you. She said she would be in her garden for a while - it isn’t far from here.”

Before I can inquire about this, a voice comes faintly through the window. “Look, you little bastard, I need to get in there!”

Marcus Aquila glances at me with barely-smothered amusement. “Mister Shitbird strikes again, it seems.”

“You are really trying my patience!” It’s definitely Portia, arguing (presumably) with the yet-unseen Camio.

“I think I can find the way,” I tell the Praefectus, struggling not to laugh myself - being away from that awful place below the Palace has left me mildly giddy.

“Go from the veranda, and around the hedge maze. It’s a tad quicker.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. And… the more I find out, the more I think you are right about this. For what it’s worth.” 

Marcus Aquila smiles a little. “I would bet my family name that Devorak did not set the Count on fire… but that he probably did try to put him out.”

I laugh before I can stop myself. “Well. I just hope that everyone will be able to rest a little easier once this is settled.”

“As do I. Good luck, Jinana.”

I know my way around well enough to quickly arrive at the veranda (empty), and continue out past the hedge maze. There seems to be some sort of impasse going on, with Portia alternately beseeching to be allowed into her shed and promising to roast her opponent for supper. 

“HOW DARE YOU! DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

The sound is shrill, piercing the ears, clearly that of a bird mimicking a human. 

“You’re about to be a meal for Pepi, is what you are!”

Nestled among the trees that line the outer edges of the gardens, I see a humble little cottage, ringed by a flourishing garden that threatens to swallow it whole. There is a work shed perched nearby, upon which perches in turn a brilliant white cockatoo, strutting, screeching, and snapping at Portia whenever she tries to wave it away.

“Oooh, that’s it, Mister Shitbird! I warned you! Get ‘im, Pepi!”

A pudgy little cat with brown markings at face, legs, and tail scrambles up to Portia’s shoulder, launching itself toward the menacing bird. This, finally, seems to be too much for the creature, who suddenly wings away, almost clipping Portia in the process.

“They’ll never forget me! They’ll never survive without me!”

“Get lost, you horrible thing!” Portia calls after it, stamping her foot. Spotting me, her face goes pink. “Oh! Sorry about that... that bird has lost his tiny mind, and he likes to make it my problem.” She sighs and adjusts her apron. “Anyway, welcome to my little abode! Mind the grasp-gourds, they’re full of it today, and the lavender mint can be overly friendly.” Even as she speaks, a stray vine seems to be slowly circling her ankle, and she kicks it away.

“Marcus Aquila said you were looking for me?”

“Oh, yes! Pardon me while I do a little work here, I like to use my midday break to tend the garden.” She opens the now uncontested shed and pulls out a hoe, attacking the weeds with a will. I’ll never know where she gets so much energy.

Meanwhile, the cat is circling my legs, bumping me and making curious peeping noises until I bend down to scratch its furry little head.

“Pepi can be very demanding,” Portia says, laughing. “Don’t let her bully you!” She attacks a stubborn clump of sedge with the hoe. “I just wanted to know your plans for the afternoon, in case you needed me for something.”

She smiles, and once again I feel a small twinge of guilt for adding to her workload. I wonder if Nadia has found something else to take off of her plate - assuming that Portia herself will allow it.

“Just investigating,” I assure her. “The Praefectus has given me a lot to put together. Ey knew your brother, you know.”

Portia’s eyes widen in shock. “I - well, I guess that makes sense, but… of course, Marcus Aquila doesn’t know about me.”

I would not bet upon that, myself - ey is too good at piecing things together. “For what it’s worth… ey seems very convinced of his innocence.”

She pauses, leaning on the hoe for a moment, and presses briefly at the bridge of her nose as if to forestall tears. When she looks at me again, her eyes are glimmering with them, but she blinks them back. “That… actually makes me feel a lot better, Jinana. Thanks for telling me.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Portia. I promise.”

We speak of smaller things until it’s time for Portia to return to her Palace duties. The untamed garden yields a bounty of sweet sun-warmed fruits for us to share as a snack. We walk back together, until our paths must diverge - I need to investigate that strange run-off, and quickly. I would much prefer to bring a full report to Nadia, rather than interrupting her preparations for the Masquerade just to tell her I saw something odd.

I think I know how to get back to that rear corner of the Palace from here... it’s just a bit of a walk through less-orderly portions of the gardens. Fortunately, today’s outfit is more practical than a sari - though I tuck the various jewels I am wearing into my bag, just in case. It wouldn’t do to lose any of them amid the tall grasses.

Approaching from the other side, I see the evidence before the odor of rot can reach me - a river of browned grass, even a couple of sickly-looking trees. As I get closer, I see the stream that Marcus Aquila spoke of… but it is crimson, dyed through by the foulness.

Misgiving growing in the pit of my stomach, I follow the course of the stream with my eyes. Quite naturally, it flows toward the city - but to where? I have to find out.

The back of my neck tingles with the sudden, intense sensation of being watched, and I whip about - but see nothing. No ghostly goat-form, no red eyes.

Be on your guard… but do not give him your fear. He doesn’t deserve it.

I inhale, exhale. It’s just a specter anyway, a sad remnant of a dead man. There is very little that such a presence can do, especially with one’s wits about one. And under normal circumstances, such remnants cannot go terribly far from their home territory - in this case, most likely the Palace grounds.

Keeping the stream within sight, but staying clear of its aura of decay, I begin following it down.

The Palace is perched upon a sort of rocky cliff overlooking the city. The many streams that supply Vesuvia’s water converge and flow downward through the massive stone aqueducts. This one is no different.

I pause at the point where the rugged stream transitions to smoothly carved stone. It’s quite a vantage point - all of Vesuvia is laid out before me, as if in miniature. I can see countless rooftops and canopies, gondolas in the canals, people about their business in the streets.

And I can see the scarlet water wending its way down to them, like a wound, like an ill omen.

The aqueduct is more than wide enough for me to travel along it, as those who maintain these structures do. I am not particularly afraid of heights... but the prospect is still somewhat daunting.

We need to know where this goes, what harm it is causing. Grasping my resolve, I step out onto the aqueduct bridge.

A shadow passes over, dark wings against the afternoon sky. It’s a large raven, extremely common here in Vesuvia, perhaps attracted by the shiny embroidery of my tunic. It circles back, swooping lower, mildly concerning me.

And then it lands directly on my shoulder, talons lightly gripping the fabric of tunic and dupatta. It peers at my face with one night-black eye, then the wicked beak opens - but only to preen at my collar. (I am glad that I put the shiny jewelry away.) The raven seems agitated, its feathers puffed up, but it is making no aggressive move toward me. I’m not sure what to do.

“Uhm...?”

Once again, the beak opens. “That FUCKIN’ guy!”

This is so unexpected that I break into laughter, and the raven takes off, flapping away and down amongst the buildings.

I wonder if it is the same one I have seen before - but then, Vesuvia is full of ravens, grown large on the easy pickings of a city. It’s not hard to believe that someone might have taught one hilarious obscenities.

I continue to follow the aqueduct as it curves around the outer city, encompassing the land that is not part of any district, but is where Vesuvia inters her dead. (Or was... until the Red Plague overwhelmed both capacity and gravediggers.) I dare not rush, lest I lose my footing, so my journey takes some time. The sun is setting as I come to a sharp turn in the aqueduct’s path, even as another, lower one comes alongside from the west. Taking a moment to survey my surroundings, I can see where this goes.

South End. I recall the sluggish, clogged canals, the murky reddish-brown water.

Dread grows within my guts as I follow the turn, the inexorable flow of the poisoned water into one of the most vulnerable parts of the city. I think of the rough channel through which the runoff reaches the stream, and I can only wonder if that is intentional.

But who would do such a thing? The Quaestor? Someone else? Someone, perhaps, looking to foment unrest and undermine Nadia’s rule by poisoning the citizens?

If so, they’re not being especially sly about it.

Darkness gathers in the streets as the sun sinks, and soon I will have to use my magical lights to navigate - unfortunately also acting like a beacon for my location. But it is better than falling off of the aqueduct, which is still a good 15 feet in the air. As I approach South End, its squatly stacked buildings rising up before me, the aqueduct crosses over a reservoir of sorts, into which the majority of the water empties some distance down. 

“Jinana?”

This startles me so much that I nearly do lose my footing. A tall, broad, very familiar form in black seems to coalesce before me - how does he do that? I didn’t notice him at all.

“Julian!”

He’s standing right at the edge of the aqueduct, and as he turns I spot something very white in his gloved hands - the beaked mask of a Plague doctor. Recovering from his shock, he eyes me in the dimness.

“Fancy seeing you here, of all places. Not exactly suitable for a little evening stroll, is it?” He looks aside from me, down into the water. The color can no longer readily be seen; it is only murky.

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

“I - er, well, you’ve got me there. I suppose I was just… thinking. Life’s a strange, fickle thing, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think I’d be standing so close to the water if I were you.”

“Oh, no, it can’t hurt me. You probably shouldn’t go for a nice swim in it, though. Or drink it. Fortunately, everyone here with any sense boils their water. The Plague itself might be over, but some contaminated places still remain. It can still make people sick, or even kill, but it ends itself with them. Isn’t it amazing? They figured out how to beat it… or maybe we just outlasted it in the end.”

He looks down at the mask in his hands. “And I couldn’t do a damned thing, then or now.”

“There’s always a need for doctors,” I point out.

“Certainly… but not a failed doctor with a price on his head.” He gives a short, bitter little laugh, then spreads his arms wide with a dramatic flourish. The action causes his hair to skid into his eye, forcing him to shake it aside with a toss of his head. “So this is what’s left. Me, throwing away everything I used to be, my last link to a past I don’t remember, and can’t reclaim. Ah, well.” He tosses the mask into the water, the pink tinge becoming visible as it swallows the white mask. Around it, the water comes briefly alive as long, pallid forms writhe around the fallen object, then fall away when they find it inedible.

Vampire eels. The horrible things really do seem to have established themselves in any sizable body of fresh water here in Vesuvia.

“Julian…” I begin, unsure what I should say. I am cut off by a sudden screech, one I’ve heard before -

A big raven dives between us, nearly colliding with me in its haste. It must be the same bird, the one from the tavern, and perhaps from earlier today.

“Best be going, there’s guards afoot. Come on!” He turns and dashes down the access bridge that connects to the street levels, taking the shallow stairs three at a time with his long legs.

Even as I start to follow, something gives me a sudden, sharp shove. As close to the edge as I am, I cannot recover. The last thing I see as I fall is two glowing red eyes at the height of a man, alight with wicked glee.

The water is so cold, so dark, and so deep, the impact taking my breath from me. I struggle weakly to find the surface, the lip of the reservoir - I was not far from it. But my movement is not the only one here, and something smooth and strong slips by me… before latching on to my side, with a dreadful pain.

I hear my name, in the strange way one hears things underwater, then feel my wrists manacled by something… two gloved hands, pulling me and the creature which has attached itself to me up out of the water. The eel wriggles, its translucent-pale body suffusing with red as it drains me.

“On three, then. One, two…” On three, Julian expertly grasps the vampire eel behind its horrible head, releasing its jaws from my flesh with a fresh shock of pain. He tosses the animal back into the water, then assists me to rise.

“Easy, now. I’ve got you. We have to go.”

Gasping, stumbling, freezing, I can barely hold myself up as he half-drags me, leaving bloody puddles in my wake. They sparkle briefly with rainbow lights that quickly vanish - the wild magic escaping from me with my lifeblood. I have very little control over it right now.

Shivering helplessly, I can barely even hold on to Julian’s arm. Noticing this, he simply picks me up and dashes into the deeper shadows of an alleyway, where he lays me down and inspects the injury.

“I’m sorry, but I need to see the bite.” I am barely conscious enough to even notice as he lifts my sopping wet tunic. His hands probe gently at the wound, making me suck in my breath at the pain.

“That’s, um... well, no time to worry about why you seem to be bleeding out little stars.”

I wonder if this is how I will die… in a dark alley, with a (falsely?) convicted killer frantically attempting to stanch an eel bite on my belly while wild magic escapes my body with my blood. I wish I had the energy to laugh.

“Damn it all. They have an anticoagulant in their saliva. The bleeding isn’t going to stop.” He sits up, stripping off his gloves, scowling. Upon the back of his left hand, the black brand of a murderer is stark against his pale skin. His right hand presses directly to the wound - cold, at first, then burning like ice.

He admonishes me to hold still; I have little choice. “Take slow, deep breaths.” His left hand slides up to gently support my head, so it is not pressed to the hard stones.

Suddenly, I realize that the pain has melted away; my body, no longer needing to be clenched around it, relaxes.

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” I manage to say, surprising a short, sharp bark of laughter from him.

“If you can talk back, you can get up. Slowly.” The back of his cool hand presses to my brow, then he helps me to sit up. The blood loss makes my head swim, but I grit my teeth and manage not to black out.

“At least you didn’t catch me breaking and entering,” he says, with a wry smile. “This time. You did surprise me, though. I’d say you’ve got some kind of luck… but you are a magician.”

My eye is drawn to a soft, white light emanating from where his collar stands open - I can just make out a mark of some kind, shining under the skin. Its form is familiar; I saw it only hours ago.

Julian frowns, seeing the direction of my gaze. “Recognize your master’s handiwork?” he asks.

What?

It’s then that I notice that the side of his own jacket is wet - not with water, but with blood, which comes away on his hand as he touches it gingerly. 

“A parting gift, I suppose. A curse. I can take the wounds from others… as I just did for you. But in return, I get to suffer them myself.” He swallows thickly, swaying slightly. I reach out to steady him, unthinking - he is almost twice my size. “Don’t worry, it won’t last. Nothing does.” A pained grimace. “A suitable curse from a witch who fears commitment, no?”

This is like no work of Asra’s I have ever seen… and he is hardly someone who fears commitment, I think. Not when he took care of me for so long.

“But then, I’ve never been bitten by a vampire eel before, so this will be… interesting.”

“Interesting?” My head is clearing now; it seems that whatever magic afflicts him, it takes all effects of the wound away, including those of blood loss. How bizarre. He allows me to open his jacket, peeling his shirt from the seeping wound. Gathering my magic, I clean the blood away, allowing me to get a better look at it. It isn’t pretty, and more blood quickly obscures it. But it isn’t flowing the way it did when I was wounded; it’s sluggish, slowing even as I watch.

“Fate just keeps finding new ways to test the limits of this body of mine,” he says, looking down at the wound. “Not nearly as much fun as the ways I’ve come up with on my own, mind.”

“Oh, really?” I arch a single brow at him, and he gives me that incorrigible grin.

“Absolutely.”

“Then I suppose that is interesting,” I answer, and his grin broadens.

“It certainly can be, if -”

He does not get to finish this statement; footfalls echo, all too near. The city guard are making their rounds.

Julian gives a low curse in a language I do not recognize, snatching up his gloves in one hand and my own wrist in the other, pulling me bodily into a dark, narrow alley. He crowds up against me, boxing me in, and I realize that he is attempting to hide me from view behind the blackness of his greatcoat and the shadow of his own body. 

Pressed together like lovers, we wait in silence. I can feel him shivering slightly, his breathing quick and harsh with exertion and pain. 

The guards arrive in a jangling of armor and the thud of boot-heels, and I feel Julian’s body tense against mine. But they pass us by.

We wait a bit longer to be certain they have gone. Surreptitiously, I summon enough of my magic to dry our unpleasantly wet clothing. In the darkness, I feel the fringe of Julian’s hair brushing the top of my head as he bends down.

“If they catch us,” he says quietly, “say I’ve taken you hostage.”

There’s a sound near the alley entrance, and in a flash, Julian drags me out the other side at a dead run, only slightly slowed by the weaving evasions we take through alleys and behind precariously stacked houses. But his stride is so much longer than mine, I’m hard-pressed to keep up, and I nearly stumble several times.

Then I see it - a rusty wrought-iron gate, with an equally-rusty padlock and chain holding it closed. Behind, an overgrown garden runs riot between two leaning buildings.

I tug Julian’s hand sharply, and he glances back. Spotting the garden, he seems to have the same thought. He lifts me up by the waist without preamble, and I scramble over the gate, dropping to the ground with an ungainly thud. Julian lands next to me, light as a cat, and pulls me into the cover of a thicket of vines, once again using his greatcoat to obscure me. Booted feet go past at a run, and he presses a cool finger to my lips, despite my saying nothing.

When the street outside has been still long enough to suit him, he rises, assisting me in turn, checking me over for further injuries as I look around. It feels otherworldly here, a place lost to time, folding us into a deep, dense silence. Most likely, it is a place abandoned during the Plague Times, and never reclaimed. Choking ivy obscures the statuary, making beasts of men and monsters of beasts, spilling from the fountain as water does not. Rampant tree roots have heaved up the flagstones, making for a treacherous surface.

Julian pulls his gloves back on and picks his way around these obstacles, admiring the sights. He is definitely not moving like a man who has sustained a serious injury. “Look at all of this!” His voice is pitched low, not to carry outside the garden walls. “What a perfect little sanctuary. I wonder how many more of these there are in the city… neglected, forgotten.” He pauses to admire the statue of what appears to be a minotaur, one horn broken, its powerful body clothed over in ivy. “Why hello there, handsome. Come here often?” He puts an arm around the statue’s massive shoulders with a cheeky grin.

“A little dangerous, don’t you think? It’s not in good repair.”

He leaves the statue and comes back toward me, circling me slightly and striking a pose. “Oh, but you see, I live for danger. I find it positively enchanting.” He grins. “What about you? I don’t think you’d be out here with a wanted fugitive if you didn’t like at least a little danger.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“You suppose?” A teasing grin, which fades into something more serious. “But do you know what you’re getting into, I wonder? You’re smart and you’re brave, sure… but will those qualities see you through?”

Through what? I sense a different dimension to his question, thinly veiled.

“Do I have to know? Isn’t it the mystery that makes things exciting?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that’s the most exciting thing… but I suppose it doesn’t hurt. Though I don’t mind a bit of that, either.”

I eye his side, where the bloodstained patch is only visible by its wetter sheen. “Is that what makes your ability a curse? The pain?”

“Oh, no. One becomes well-acquainted with pain in my line of work. Intimately so.” He places a certain stress on the word, with a smile that borders on the lascivious.

Again, that thing stirs within me, the unknown part of me that seems to always rise to his bait. But is it really so unknown?

Julian’s brows go up suddenly. “Ah… hold still.”

I obey this unexpected order, worried that the guards have returned. But he simply reaches out for something that has fallen upon my shoulder - a strange flower, luminous in the dark. Looking up, I realize that there are many of them, like stars in the canopy above, shedding a gentle bluish light. He offers the bloom to me with a theatrical little bow, the smirk once more curling his lips. 

But as I stretch out my hand, he twitches the flower back toward himself, curls bouncing as he shakes his head.

“Lovely, isn’t it? But it has a dark heart. Like almost everything here; this is a poison garden. They were all the rage before the Plague.”

He’s right; almost every plant I lay eyes on is baneful - belladonna, foxglove, castor, hemlock.

He twirls the flower in his long fingers. “This one is called deadly starstrand for a reason. The toxin distilled from these flowers is so powerful that a single drop can kill. It doesn’t discriminate - from tyrants to martyrs, from innocent babes to infamous criminals, it has taken them all. In the wrong hands, it could topple an empire.”

I am unfamiliar with it, but I feel that I am entirely familiar with the game he is attempting to play as he once more offers the flower to me, its glow reflected in his eye as he watches me avidly.

“Do you still want it?” he asks, and once again I feel that deeper undercurrent. I watch him steadily as I pluck the bloom from his fingers, lifting it to my nose. It has a strange, acrid scent, at odds with its ethereal beauty.

“The poison has to be distilled, you said.” I smile. “It cannot hurt me.”

He blinks. “I suppose not… though I wouldn’t eat it, if I were you.”

I laugh and let the bloom fall from my fingers, but Julian snatches it back up with deft hands, stepping close to tuck it into my hair. “Beautiful,” he says, his touch following the shell of my ear, along my jawline, his leather-clad thumb daring to trace over the edge of my lower lip.

That inner thing is clamoring within me now, demanding that I act, take control… dominate. I don’t know how much longer I can push it down, not when Julian insists on provoking me like this.

Does he even know? (He must.) His eye looks down on me, flicking between my own eyes and the vicinity of my mouth. Even in the dim light of the fingernail moon, the stars and the glowing flowers above, I can see the flush on his cheeks. The very tip of his tongue flicks out to nervously wet his lips, an unspoken question.

For an answer, I reach up and take hold of his collar, pulling him down to me, and touch my lips to his. It is a fragile, hesitant thing, despite the authority of my grip - this is not something I have done, not in my memory. But his eye flutters closed, his hand sliding up the back of my neck, and my heart begins to race despite myself. His lips caress mine in turn, with a sureness that can only draw me with it. My hands unconsciously clutch at his jacket, forgetful of the wound he took from me.

Julian moans against my mouth - not exactly a sound of pain - and I can feel him shudder under my hands.

He breaks from me, looking down on me with something like desperation. “Jinana…” He takes a step back - but stumbles on the uneven flagstones, fetching up against the crumbling fountain with a grunt.

I advance on him, coming right up to stand between his bent knees, his head only a little higher than mine like this.

“Let me help you with that.” I pass my hand over his side, using my magic to leave his shirt and jacket clean and innocent of blood once more. Experimentally, I press my palm against the area of the wound, to see if any more blood soaks through. It does not… but Julian makes a strange little sound. 

“You like that,” I say, and it is not a question. In response, his hand comes up over mine, pressing it harder yet, and he sucks in his breath, catching his lower lip between his teeth. I tangle the fingers of my free hand into the curls at the nape of his neck, and he goes utterly pliant, not resisting at all as I bring him back to me. He parts his lips slightly in anticipation, whispering my name, his other hand coming around my waist to pull me closer -

The sound of hobnailed boots on the cobblestones outside shatters this moment. With a muffled curse, Julian clamps his hand around my wrist, and we vault over the dilapidated rear wall, once again on the run through the night-dark streets.

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK VI: THE LOVERS

Chapter 3: The Quaestor (~5100 words)

Warnings: Descriptions of lethal disasters and highly unethical medical procedures. Smoking CW.

Note: Marcus Aquila Summanus belongs to @vesuvian-disaster​ and appears with permission. :)

(back to table of contents)

I lift my head from yet another record, yawning mightily. I’ve been in the library all morning, and it’s just been more of the same. When Lucio wasn’t killing and extorting his way across Venterre and beyond, he was draining the coffers with lavish parties, statues to his vanity, and various follies built across Vesuvia.

I have read over many, many requests for civic funding, most of which went ignored. Several of these can be connected to later accidents or even disasters, as critical infrastructure gave way to the relentless actions of water and time. In fact, here and there I find slips of paper tucked between the pages, upon which neat lettering cross-references some of these ledgers and notes. It looks like someone else has been connecting these dots, as well - no doubt Marcus Aquila emself.

It’s easy to see exactly how the entire Flooded District situation came to pass. Once the port’s Market District, it now stands as a crumbling, mold-infested testament to Lucio’s neglect. Several other areas of Vesuvia face similar peril, or worse… and worse has already happened in at least one place.

Some ten years ago, a sinkhole opened up beneath a multistory building in Goldgrave - entirely due to failure to maintain the drainage system beneath the city. 19 were killed, 23 injured. But even this was not enough to budge Lucio’s intransigence.

Reading the account, it seems to come vividly to life despite the impersonal tone - I can smell the rank, moist air belching up from below, the stink of fear from those trapped, and those trying to help… A sudden, sharp pain jabs into my skull, another arcing over my ribs, and I find myself struggling to breathe. My hands are numb yet burning, my arms aching, my eyes gritty -

“Inquisitor... forgive me, Jinana. I thought you might be here.”

I open my eyes - when did I close them? Marcus Aquila stands before me, eir manner rather different from that of yesterday. There’s a tension in eir frame beneath the elegant drapings of embroidered voile that make up eir dress.

“Are you all right?” ey asks. “Some of that makes for very unpleasant reading, I’m afraid.”

I take a deep, somewhat shaky breath; the constriction starts to ease, the beating wings of impending panic to lift. “I… yes. I’ll be fine.” I close the book firmly and set it aside. 

“Some air and a change of scenery may help. Will you walk in the gardens with me?”

I am coming to understand that this phrase has a certain meaning about the Palace, namely that one wishes to speak privately on matters of importance. “Of course,” I answer.

“Wonderful. If you’ll follow me?”

I rise, shouldering my bag, and follow the Praefectus as ey leads the way deeper into the library. We pass among the tall shelves, until Marcus Aquila pauses, reaching up to slip a particular book from its place… but it does not slide out. It merely tilts, standing out at an angle. Ey does this to a second, then, grumbling, hitches the skirt of eir dress slightly and ascends a stepladder to pull forth a third.

“Dramatic bastard.” I am uncertain to whom this is addressed, exactly, but before I can ask, an entire section of the bookcase slides aside, revealing darkness. It’s a short passageway, rough-hewn despite the clever mechanism that obscures it.

Marcus Aquila steps down into the darkness without hesitation - I can just make out the first stone steps. “Be careful,” ey warns. “The steps are uneven.”

I summon my globes of magical light, illuminating my way. Marcus Aquila clearly has no need of this; ey must use this passageway constantly. I pick my way down, finding a T-junction at the foot of it. The Praefectus turns left, and I follow.

The glow of heatless torches greets us here, though the passageway remains rather rustic.

“What is all of this?” I ask.

“Oh, just a little relic of the Plague Times. It was all very hush-hush back then… but it hardly matters now. You could probably ask Valdemar for a guided tour and they’d give you one.” A mirthless little laugh.

We pass another tunnel that seems to lead to a more finished section of the complex, with a series of doors visible, but Marcus Aquila leads on. The floor begins to slope upward again, and a final section of tunnel leads to a dungeon-like door of iron-bound timbers.

We emerge, blinking, into sunlight. We seem to be behind the Palace, in a less-used (and less-maintained) portion of the vast gardens that nestle between the Palace proper and the high defensive wall that rings it. Here, stands of trees almost obscure the white limestone cladding of the wall beyond.

Marcus Aquila fishes in a pocket in eir dress, removing a single embroidered glove. Ey puts it on, rather baffling me, then slips a small chased-silver case from the same pocket. It opens to reveal a number of pre-rolled cigarettes, and a tiny device of some sort. Marcus Aquila places one of the former between eir lips, and uses the latter to ignite it, holding the cigarette in eir gloved hand and blowing the plume of tobacco smoke considerately away from us.

Ey gives a little sigh of seeming relief, then starts slightly. “Oh, how rude of me. Would you like one?” Ey proffers the silver case in my direction.

I decline with a smile, and ey tucks the case away once more before leaning against the cool shadowed facade of the Palace and taking another drag. “Earlier today, I went to check on… some old things. I thought it might jog my memory, so that I could give you more information.” The sunlight seems only to enhance their pallor, almost as if one could see the bones underneath shining through. “I found something that perhaps you should see.”

“It has to do with the investigation?”

“Maybe not in so many words. But it could very much cause trouble with the Countess’s plans.” 

The Praefectus pushes off of the wall and begins leading me along the rear perimeter of the Palace. I can see the stacked-stone foundations emerge as the ground slopes gently away. The breeze brings an odor wafting toward us, not quite putrid, but unwholesome, like spoiling meat.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” Marcus Aquila says with a grimace. Ey gestures to the rear corner that stands perhaps thirty feet away. “Don’t get too close… it can’t be good for you.”

Ey pulls a folded white square out of another pocket, shaking it out and handing it to me. It is a scented handkerchief, lavender and citrus mercifully overpowering the whiff of rot. Ey then stands back fastidiously, alternately puffing from eir cigarette and holding an identical hanky to eir own nose.

Here, the foundation stands almost my own height above the ground. I can see now that a reddish substance appears to be oozing from between the stacked stones at ground level, looking for all the world like the Palace is bleeding. The odor is stronger the closer I get - and I do not want to get very close at all. I can see that the liquid gathers in a sort of narrow, irregular trench, leaving visibly blackened grass to either side.

“There’s a stream, further down,” the Praefectus explains. “I’m concerned that this… run-off is getting into it, maybe even into the city’s water supply. Since you seem to have the ear of the Countess these days, at the least you can bring it to her attention.” Ey gives me a sidelong look. “It really would not do to have revelers stumble upon such a thing.”

“No indeed.”

Ey nods, taking another deep drag from eir cigarette. There’s still a tight-wound feeling to em, an anxiousness that seems great even given what we have just seen.

“May I ask a personal question?” I venture, and Marcus Aquila gives a brittle little laugh.

“Why not? You are the Inquisitor, after all.”

“Forgive me if it’s intrusive, you don’t have to answer. It’s just that you seem very, um, invested in exonerating Devorak. Were you close?”

Marcus Aquila raises eir eyebrows. “Close? No, I wouldn’t say that… but we worked together under tremendous pressures, and I suppose that does form a kind of bond. Moreover, I saw what they did to him. I still have nightmares about it - all of it. We all do. I’m sure that Devorak does, too.”

I remember the way the color drained from Julian’s face when I showed him the drawing, the one that he said was a human brain... one of many. There is a part of me that is sorely glad that I have no memory of the Plague-time and its horrors. “I’m so sorry,” I offer. “It sounds like it was a terrible time.”

“It was a desperate time,” ey says, shaking eir head. “None of our hands are truly clean… but Devorak doesn’t deserve the gallows. Not after everything he went through - everything we all went through - just because of fucking Lucio finally catching the damned plague.” Ey says the dead Count’s name as if it is the most vile curse ey can muster.

“You must understand… I was there when they did it. I watched them force a fucking plague-beetle down the man’s throat. And I could do nothing to stop it.” Ey drops the remains of the spent cigarette, crushing it out under eir heel, and immediately pulls out the silver case again, fumbling to open it. “Lucio wanted to make an example of him in the cruelest, most horrific way possible… probably because Devorak wouldn’t fuck him.” The shaking of eir hands makes it more difficult to light the fresh cigarette, but ey manages. The action seems to calm em slightly.

“I’m not about to stand by and let him be executed on top of that... and for something I don’t think he even did.” This is punctuated with another cloud of smoke. “I can try and do that much, at least.”

“I understand,” I say, though I am still trying to digest what ey has said. It sounds too awful to be true… but it seems that no cruelty was beyond Lucio. “Was the Count in the habit of, um, forcing his attention on people?”

Marcus Aquila snorts. “Actually, that was the one thing he wouldn’t do… but he would also never stop trying his luck. Even right in front of his own wife… though there was no love lost there, either. That was certainly no secret.”

Ey takes another, more thoughtful puff. “That’s what’s so strange about all of this, though… why does the Countess want Devorak dead so badly? Those three spent the better part of a year being almost inseparable.”

“Nadia, Devorak, and Lucio?” I ask, puzzled.

“Oh, no. The Countess, the doctor… and your master, Asra.”

I blink. Asra did mention once being close to Nadia… but she has forgotten it all. He also spoke of his former relationship to Julian… but not of Nadia and Julian being close. Clearly this knowledge has also been lost to Nadia - and perhaps to Julian himself. I am unsure of the extent of his own memory loss.

I can only hope that it extends to the terrible thing that was once done to him.

The Praefectus lifts eir head, as if ey has heard something that I cannot. “We should return, before I am missed,” ey says, and begins leading me in the direction of the door we came from. “With the Masquerade so close, there is much to do.”

We walk back in silence, each in our own thoughts. As we approach the door, Marcus Aquila extinguishes eir cigarette and slips the glove back into eir pocket. Ey pulls open the door -

And Quaestor Valdemar is standing there, unblinking as their pupils close tightly against the sunlight. (Are they… slitted? They can’t be. Can they? Why, exactly, is their presence so upsetting to me?)

“Ah, there you are, Marcus.” The Quaestor seems to be smiling, though it’s hard to tell behind that cloth mask. “It seems our shipment has arrived ahead of schedule. I want you to oversee it personally.”

This does not seem to be welcome news to the Praefectus, but ey nods. “Of course, Quaestor. I can escort Jinana back with -”

“Oh, no, that won’t be necessary at all.” Valdemar leans forward, uncomfortably close, but I stand my ground. “I’ve been looking forward to a chance to speak with the new Inquisitor.”

This seems to please Marcus Aquila even less, but ey bows eir head. “As you wish, Quaestor.” Ey glances at me. “I simply hope that the Countess is not inconvenienced.”

“Our dear Inquisitor will be back in time for supper… I promise.”

This seems to carry a strange weight with the Praefectus, who closes the door and then nods briskly to me. “Thank you for your time, Inquisitor.”

“And you, Praefectus, for yours.”

With one last glance at Valdemar, ey sweeps past in a rustling of voile and the scent of lavender.

I must go on the offense, here; I must take control of the situation. It is my job to be the one asking questions, after all.

“Where would you like to talk, Quaestor? It’s quite lovely out at the moment, and I do have some questions of my own for you.”

Valdemar turns their back on the door that leads outside, and begins walking. (So much for taking control of the situation.) “You are here investigating Doctor 069, yes?” they ask, as I hurry to catch up.

“I’m sorry?”

“We went through so many doctors,” they say with a wave of one gloved hand. “We began giving them numbers; it was simpler to keep track of them that way. Doctor 069 was the one who appeared at Lucio’s rooms that night.”

“I see.”

They lead the way back toward the passage that Marcus Aquila and I took down here… and pass it, heading into the gloom, barely a white smudge in my vision. I summon my magical lights once more.

“Oh… you do need light, don’t you?” Their cold, dry little voice sounds almost amused.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Why, to the dungeon, of course. I’ve not taken anyone down there in so long. You simply must allow me to show you around.”

Without waiting for an answer, they continue down the tunnel. At its end there looms some strange cagelike contraption, with an inscribed plaque that reads:

Bloody hands may turn the key. Know the weight of your sins, and enter.

This does not strike me as a motto of doctors.

Valdemar touches the plate with their gloved fingers, giving a little sigh. “Ah, truly an inspired bit of decor, don’t you think? It frightened them so much, the gullible little creatures.” They reach into a pocket of their apron and remove a strange key. Its surface is an oily-looking black; it is set with a stone of a sullen red color. I am reminded of the fluid seeping from the Palace foundations.

The lock gives an ugly screech as Valdemar turns the key; the door of the cage slides open with a grudging groan of disused metal.

“Go on, now.”

“Into a cage?” I ask, incredulous.

“An elevator,” they say, unperturbed. “Oh, are you claustrophobic?”

“No, but -”

“I don’t actually care,” they continue, in the same exact tone. They advance, and I don’t have much choice but to back into the elevator as they crowd in with me. The space is small - hardly big enough for one adult - and the only reason we both fit in here is my own lack of size and Valdemar’s thinness. I press my back to the bars behind me, everything in my being warning me away from the Quaestor, who simply watches me from over their mask. In this light, their eyes seem as blood-red as the key, or the ruby brooch at their throat... and I finally realize what it is that disturbs me about them.

Everything that lives has an aura, an energy that emanates from and surrounds them. It isn’t that Valdemar doesn't have an aura... it’s that it is so utterly void as to be like a hole in existence, a negative cutout, an inverse aureole. To my sight it is intensely wrong... unnatural.

They pull a lever, and the whole thing begins to descend in a shrieking, rattling cacophony of rusted gears. As it does so, the darkness grows and grows around us, until my lights are barely a feeble flicker reflected in Valdemar’s unblinking, reptilian gaze.

And then even that goes out, the darkness pressing in almost dense enough to touch.

I force down my threatening panic as the lift comes to a bone-jarring halt, and once again I hear the horrid scraping of the door as it opens. There is a rustling, and then the suffocating blackness gives way to flickering shadows as an ordinary torch is lit. It’s almost worse for the ghastly way it illuminates the Quaestor’s sharp features.

“Hurry along now, there is much to see.” Valdemar strides forth with the torch, lighting more torches set in holders as they go, revealing a rather narrow stone hallway. I hurry to catch up - light or no light, I don’t want to be alone in this place... or lost.

“You have questions about Doctor 069, yes?” they offer as we walk.

I do, and I should not let this chance escape me, as bizarre and unsettling as it is. “What, precisely, did he do here?”

“Oh, a little of this, a little of that. I didn’t pay much mind to any of them, you see.”

I wish this answer surprised me, but Marcus Aquila did say that the Quaestor cared primarily for their research, and little else.

“He was always on about leeches, I seem to recall… saying that blood was the key to the Plague. But if you want the specifics of his research, I’m afraid you’ll have to ask him yourself.”

My heart stumbles for a moment - do they know that I have been in contact with him? But Valdemar continues on to a huge door set into the end of the hallway, pushing it open with another creak of protesting metal. Inside is some sort of mudroom or dressing-room where oiled-leather aprons hang by the dozens, with various tools of obscure purpose set into racks. At the far end there sits a legion of familiar bone-white beaked masks upon a rack. The torchlight gleams off the red lenses, making it look as if there are eyes behind them.

Valdemar sets the torch they are carrying into a holder by the door, and claps their thin hands together sharply. “Now, then! Please hold any further questions until the tour is concluded. First of all…” They turn abruptly, causing me to stop short as they once again inspect me from an uncomfortably close distance. It takes all of my courage not to flinch away when their gloved hands reach out - but they seem to be taking my measure, like some bizarre tailor.

“You are very small, aren’t you? I’m not sure we’ll have anything that fits.” Valdemar turns away just as suddenly, striding toward the gear hanging on the other side of the room. Their fingers walk over the aprons like purposeful spiders, finally snatching one that seems to meet with their approval, along with one of the masks.

“Safety first… or so they tell me.” The Quaestor returns to hold the apron up to me, checking its fit. The leather bears very old stains - black from ink, brown from… well. Best not to think on it.

“Arms up.” I comply, once again forcing myself to keep still while they fit the apron over my clothing and the mask over my face. Their touch is as cold as death, even through their gloves, seeming to suck the living warmth from my body. “Ah, perfect.” Mercifully, they then retreat, opening the next door.

The elderly herbs packed in the beak of the mask cannot hope to entirely cover the indescribable fetor that rushes in. Valdemar pauses just beyond the threshold, almost causing me to collide with them, and turns to face me once more. They reach up and pull down the mask covering the lower half of their face, closing their eyes and taking in a deep breath, like one might in a summer meadow. “Ah, memories.” Their thin lips curl into a cruel smile, and they walk backward into the chamber, their eyes never leaving mine.

Even empty, this is a place of horrors. At its center there is a sort of elevated stage, bearing a metal table with well-used restraints. There is a dark stain on the stone platform beneath that no amount of scrubbing could ever remove, I am sure.

With some relish, Valdemar explains how it was used, shows me the additional ranks of vivisection tables… which eventually became dissection tables as their unfortunate occupants perished. With a flourish, they point out the cages where they kept their ‘patients’ - and the many doctors who became patients. 

I don’t know if Valdemar is trying to unnerve me with their blithe commentary, but it’s working.

“All lovely, of course, but this is my favorite part. The poor little dears just don’t get to eat like they used to... but they are very hardy.” Valdemar pulls a rusty old lever, grinning widely, revealing rows of inhumanly sharp teeth. (Vulgora, too, had such a smile… I am beginning to wonder if any of the courtiers are truly human.)

A scraping sound draws my attention to a strange pit, almost like a half-well set into the wall. Its cover lifts itself up, triggered by some mechanism, and a sound like trickling water comes forth.... no, it is a strange, dry scuttling sound. Not water, but beetles, so many that they flow like a liquid over picked-clean bones, the distinctive carrion beetles synonymous with the Red Plague. Their long, thin antennae are more like those of roaches than anything else, their chitinous red bodies once the source of a prized crimson dye that is now shunned as a reminder of the Plague.

Crimson fluid drains from this pit, into a channel that disappears into the wall behind. I know where this goes - or at least, where it is ending up now. The same smell of bad meat is here, but a hundred times stronger in the enclosed, airless space.

Insects do not disturb me… but this does. There’s something so deeply unnatural about it that it sets all the hairs on the back of my neck bristling. And amid it all, Valdemar stands, still grinning that terrible, sharply tessellated grin.

“Such marvelous little creatures,” they muse. “So fascinating… and quite lethal. And so very effective at disposal.” They sniff. “Not that everyone appreciated this. Corpses burn poorly at best, it was so much more efficient to toss them in here. But people are so squeamish about these things.” They give a clucking sound, and restore the cover to its place. “I’ll see you again, my little darlings.”

They turn back to me, cocking their head to one side like a curious bird. “Well, that concludes our little tour. What do you think?”

“Why would anyone do this?” I ask, my voice thick with revulsion.

“Why? Why for science, of course!” Valdemar shakes their head. “069 was the same way, really… always on about consequences and morals, when all the patients were just going to die anyway. Always scribbling, always doodling, never really getting hands-on with the science. Elbow-deep, as it were.” 

I can’t help but note that their own gloves rise well above their elbows.

“Ah, but you weren’t here for the Plague, were you? Most patients went from feeling a bit poorly to being quite dead within three days. A very few lasted a week. There were so many bodies that we could never have buried them all… or even burned them. By the end of it, corpses piled up in the streets faster than they could be carted away. Those left alive were nothing but corpses yet to be.” Once again the inhuman grin, their eyes alight with a sinister sort of glee.

“Compared to that, what were a few dying a day or so earlier, in the pursuit of a cure? Necessary sacrifices, and all that. The ends always justify the means.” They sigh wistfully. “Those were the days.”

This avails me nothing.

“Doctor 069 - wasn’t he in his office during the last Masquerade?”

“Oh, yes, locked inside in fact. He’d come down with a touch of the Plague himself, you see. Such a shame he survived; I’d been looking forward to prying open that thick skull of his. But perhaps I’ll still get the chance, if our dear Countess has her way.”

“Show me his office.” I try to keep my voice firm, to reclaim some modicum of control. Valdemar merely indicates a barred wooden door with a tilt of their head.

“There are still personal effects of his in there, for what it is worth. Perhaps they will hold some clue to tracking him down.”

I peer into the tiny barred window set into the door. It is a mean little place, but also oddly homey, cluttered with items. I can somehow feel that it was his, a residual energy embedded in this small hideaway in a place of unending horror.

Cold, spidery fingers grip my shoulder, and Valdemar’s chilly spareness leans over me to look, as well, their icy cheek brushing mine. I flinch away in startled revulsion, unable to help it, but this in no way upsets them. Indeed, they are grinning again, the most horrid expression I have ever seen. 

Clinging to my purpose, I demand to be let inside. They are clearly enjoying my discomfort, but they open the door and leave me to investigate. They will be right out here, they tell me, indulging in nostalgia for the Plague days.

Inside the little chamber, the air is stale but not nearly so vile. I remove the mask, the better to see outside of those disorienting red lenses. It must have been very cramped in here for Julian, and there is a distinct damp. A small rumpled cot is in one corner, and it’s hard to believe he could have fit all of his limbs onto it. Over it, rickety shelves hold long-dried bottles of leeches, a few trinkets, mildewed books. A desk takes up the remaining space in here, covered in papers. The inkwell is overturned, the quill discarded, the wooden stool pushed away.

I close my eyes and try to summon the feeling of such a desperate time, when Death itself ruled the city, the greatest of tyrants. My mind paints an image of Julian so detailed, it’s as if he is truly present. I can see him just so, in my mind’s eye. Feverish, dying himself even as he worked to find the cure. A feeling of vertigo, of falling, though I remain standing...

When I open my eyes, I can see him, just as he must have been then, down to the last detail. There is a quill between his long fingers, his hands bare of the gloves... and the sclera of his right eye is scarlet. The other is hidden under the messy, lank fall of his hair. The quill scratches over parchment as he mutters to himself incoherently, occasionally sending a hunted glance to the door of this little cell. He must think, he tells himself, before the faculty is taken from him by the Plague. But none of it makes sense, none of it works.

Sudden frustration overtakes him, inkwell and quill falling victim to it. 

It is oddly painful to watch as he runs the gamut from anger to unstable laughter to fear, wrapping his arms around himself and hunching forward on the stool, shivering with fever.

“...is this… is this how you felt?” His voice is low, pained, exhausted, and he slumps to the desk, unmoving. Before I can help myself, I reach out to him… but it is only a memory, and my hand passes straight through.

I startle back when he suddenly leaps to his feet, babbling wildly that he has found the cure… and the vision fades. In frustration, I reach out again with my magic. But the memory is gone. 

With a curse, I look around the room for anything else that might afford some small clue.

That’s when I see it… a faded chalk outline of an oddly familiar symbol - though I cannot say exactly where I might know it from. I know only that it is magical. But why would a symbol of magic be in this place of science?

I search more thoroughly, scattering papers and dusting off books, until I find a tome inscribed with the very same symbol. The language inside is unfamiliar to me, but I have seen something like this before. It resembles one of Asra’s books, once seen back at the shop. But why is this here, sitting for three long years in a godsforgotten dungeon cell?

I page through the book, finding Julian’s distinctive scrawl decorating the margins in places. I can make out perhaps one word in five. It’s clear that he was delirious by then, with disjointed writings about a man with the head of a raven, about belief and portents. A torn page has been shoved in between the back cover and the endpaper. The words I want to believe are scribbled over it. I unfold it carefully - and almost drop it in shock.

The drawing is crude, but it is unmistakable: The Hanged Man, 11th of the Major Arcana, the very image that is in the deck I carry with me. I open my bag and fumble the card from the deck, listening desperately for the voice of the card - but it offers me nothing, beyond a sense of waiting.

Once again, I am on my own.

Valdemar’s inquisitive voice almost makes me leap out of my own skin. (They wonder if I am quite done here.) Quickly, I stuff the book into my bag, and replace my safety gear. I say that I’ve seen enough, and Valdemar asks if I am very, very sure. (I am.) Humming some nameless little tune that is at odds with this place, they lead me out and away, replacing their own mask over their face as we go.

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK VI: THE LOVERS

Chapter 2: The Investigation (~3600 words)

Warnings: Descriptions of Lucio’s crimes (extortion, murder)

(back to table of contents)

My legs dangle like a child’s in the overstuffed library chairs, so I have seated myself upon the enormous patterned rug under the streams of light from the stained-glass window. Portia was kind enough to drop off a little basket of provisions - bread, cured meats, cheese and olives - and it has sustained me through my hours of study. True to my word, I have permitted no crumb nor spot of grease to betray the presence of food in the library.

As promised, there is much here. None of it has improved my opinion of the late Count; quite the opposite, in fact. So much for impartiality.

It seems that he came into power after saving the life of the previous Count, and subsequently being named Spada’s heir. It also seems that he was rather capricious in his application of Vesuvian law… which, it turns out, largely consists of the word of its ruler.

The intricacies of actual legality are a thing for Vesuvia’s populace, not its Count.

So far, I have found a number of executions - summary and otherwise - involving everything from forcing ordinary people into gladiatorial combat, to having them set on fire. (One must suppose that this makes his own end a form of poetic justice.) Restitution was made to more than one city after he drew steel upon a major official for some perceived slight, killing them on the spot. There are also quite a number of ‘contracts’ with various merchants and suppliers, many of which amount to sheer extortion.

Perhaps the most curious of these records involves the city-state known to its inhabitants as Tenochtli, “the trunk of the cactus” - the center of what was once, centuries ago, a thriving civilization. (Outsiders call the area Nopal, for the abundance of this plant that grows there and its importance to the local economy.) The Count rode out to demand a regular tithe, which was understandably refused. According to the record, the city was then attacked by some ill-defined creature, against which the Count ‘generously’ offered his help. Regular tithes of a certain amount of the maize crop are then recorded until the Count’s death... which event presumably negated whatever ‘contract’ he had made.

Nopal/Tenochtli occupies an arid landscape, surviving primarily by the harvests of maize and its namesake cactus, along with tourism to colorful seasonal festivals - surviving remnants of their ancient traditions. I can’t imagine the strain that tithing to Vesuvia must have placed upon the people - but is it a motive for murder?

And if it were, could anyone have blamed them?

With a sigh, I close the journal I have been using to take notes and place it in my bag. I stack the ledgers neatly upon the table, awaiting tomorrow’s work. The locks of the library door are readily turned from the inside, and click easily back into place from the outside.

“Inquisitor!”

My first instinct is to look for someone else, but a liveried servant hurries over to me with a bow. They appear quite young, and rather nervous.

“Yes?”

“Th-The Countess requests your presence for dinner, ser! She wishes to discuss your, um, work…?”

I nod - though this will not make for the most appealing of dinner conversations. “I will be there. Thank you.”

Visible relief sweeps over the servant’s face. “Yes, Inquisitor!” They bow once again and retreat hurriedly, disappearing behind yet another wall hanging.

I am used to people being uncomfortable around me, or even intimidated - such is the life of a mage. But the reactions of the Palace denizens are so varied, from Valerius’ uneasy contempt to the friendliness of the senior staff, to the near-awe of others - none of which I feel I’ve done anything to earn. Perhaps it is merely my proximity to the Countess, who has so quickly formed a sort of bond with me.

And I with her, it must be said.

I can only feel that all of us are in this together - Nadia, Julian, Asra, Portia and myself… and even, perhaps, the shade of the late Count, and the mysterious seer of the Market. Something binds us all in a pattern that is not yet clear to me, barreling headlong toward a future that even I cannot readily glimpse.

The sensation of eyes upon me causes me to turn - but the hall is empty, my own footsteps echoing. Still, I have the persistent feeling of being observed. 

Knowing that the malicious presence is not confined to the Count’s abandoned wing does not help this.

I hurry to my room to freshen up, half expecting the sensation to follow me… but it does not. All the same, I am glad that I took the time to gather components from my shop yesterday. Last night I was too magically exhausted to ward my quarters; I will not neglect this tonight.

In the dining room, the table is piled with delicacies as always, a rare wine poured as I take my seat under the scarlet eyes of the dead Count’s strange painting. (Watched, as always.) Nadia appears shortly after I do, smiling as she is seated across from me.

“Ah, Jñāna, what a pleasing sight you are.” She is as lovely as ever, but there are small signs of fatigue and strain that she cannot conceal entirely. “I do hope that your day was more fruitful than my own.”

“I take it that the Aedile was not to be placated?” I sit back as plates of food are placed before us.

Nadia laughs. “He and a dozen like him.” She sips from her wine glass with a tiny sigh. “But it is I who proposed this Masquerade on such short notice; it is I who must ensure that they all have what they need to bring it to pass. What of your investigation?”

What, indeed? “I spoke with Praefectus Summanus today. Ey provided a stack of ledgers to go through… and eir own perspective on the situation.” I glance at the servants going in and out. Nadia appears to take my meaning, nodding her head fractionally. “I will say that ey did not envy me the task of sifting through the late Count’s list of enemies, because truth be told it’s longer than your arm.”

She closes her eyes briefly. “I wish I could say that I am surprised.” She picks up one of the many forks; I see that I have chosen incorrectly. “We shall discuss this in more detail after dinner - do you enjoy sweets, Jñāna?”

“I do.”

She smiles. “I am not especially possessed of a sweet tooth, but there is a certain dessert that I enjoy regularly. A comfort food, perhaps. You simply must try it for yourself.” Nadia signals a passing servant, to whom she murmurs instructions.

She then turns to more casual conversation, saving the subject of the Count for a more private setting than this. With the Masquerade looming in scant weeks, preparations are, of course, occupying the majority of everyone’s time. Nadia confides that she is concerned that Portia is overworked - she is normally so reliable, and her recent air of distraction is very unlike her.

It’s hard enough keeping Portia’s secret when Nadia clearly cares as much about her well-being as Portia does for hers, and I do not think myself capable of lying outright to Nadia. Not with those eyes of hers that see so much, and the ability of foresight that allowed her to even find me in the first place.

“I do worry that looking after me is only adding to her workload,” I say, and it is absolutely true. 

“There is no other I would entrust with such a task,” Nadia declares. “I will simply have to see if there is some other duty I can transfer to lighten her load.”

I am coming to know this tone very well; she will not be denied.

When dinner is concluded, Nadia rises and bids me follow her through the other door, on the opposite side of the dining room. She leads me down a pristine hallway, up a narrow flight of stairs, and out into yet another marble-lined corridor. There stands the carved door I saw just this morning. Nadia touches certain cabochons inlaid into the wood, and the door unlocks itself, opening into her private rooms.

The curtains have been closed against the night; with the dark moon so recent, there is little light to be had from outside. Magical lanterns illuminate the room with a warm, rosy effulgence.

Nadia gestures to a marble-topped table, with two finely-carved chairs. Even as I am seating myself, a knock comes at the door, along with Portia’s voice.

“Special delivery!”

Nadia bids her enter, and Portia arrives with a cheerful smile and a gilded tray. Upon the tray, a gilt-edged plate bears a small cake, extravagantly decorated with piped cream and candied flower petals.

“Milady’s favorite, just as you asked!” Portia sets down the tray, which also contains embroidered napkins and two delicate golden forks.

“Ah, Portia, truly you are a blessing to me. Thank you.”

“Of course, Milady. Is there anything else you require?” At Nadia’s fractional shake of her head, Portia gives a little bow. “Then I’ll leave you two to enjoy your dessert!” A sort of glee dances in her eyes, and I’m sure Nadia can see it, too, before Portia turns to leave.

I think I recognize the confection before us, though I have never seen one quite so grand. It’s sometimes known as a Love Cake for its lush scents of rosewater, vanilla, and cardamom.

“Now... I would just love to know your opinion of this.” Nadia takes up her fork, cutting a morsel from the soft cake, and holds it out to me, like an offering. Her full lips are curled in an expectant little smile.

I simply enjoy fussing over you. There is no harm in it, and it seems to please her a great deal. Despite a vague embarrassment, I lean in to allow her to place the bite in my mouth. She draws her hand back slightly, just enough that I cannot reach. Before I can stop myself, I give her a warning glance - but she just laughs and relents, placing the morsel between my lips.

It is much more delicate than any such confection I’ve had, fragrant as a flower, light and airy as a bit of cloud.

“It’s delicious.” Quickly, I pick up my own fork, offering her a bite in turn. Her brows go up, but she leans in and accepts it, holding my gaze the whole time as her lips close on the tiny fork. (Mercifully, this keeps me from having to avert my gaze from the bountiful cleavage this action also brings into view.)

She sits back, the very tip of her tongue flicking out to lick a bit of cream from the corner of her mouth, like a cat. “Ah, I should not tease you so. We are of one ilk, you and I.”

I’m not certain what she means by this - we could not be more different, could we? Or does she mean that other thing, the part of me that responds so strongly to those coy little cues that Julian sends out, the part of me that pauses in confusion when Nadia makes such bold overtures?

“I’m afraid that I was exposed to a great deal of teasing, growing up; with six older siblings, I suppose it’s inevitable that they would find ways to trivialize me and my efforts.” Nadia takes another bite of the cake, sweetness to chase away a bitterness. “Oh, they didn’t mean to, I’m sure, but…” A look of mildly startled realization comes over her face. “You would tell me if anything I did made you feel that way, wouldn’t you, Jñāna?”

For a moment I can only stare at her, but she seems so earnest that it disarms me. “Of course,” I tell her, and her expression relaxes.

“You must know how much I value you,” she says, as I take up another forkful. “You bring me a perspective on city life that I cannot gain… even were I to leave the Palace grounds every day.”

Not that I leave my own home district very often. But I do interact with the people of the Market, and of course those who come to my shop, ordinary people with ordinary concerns.

“Though I will admit,” Nadia continues, setting down her fork, “that I do enjoy the experience of seeing this world through your eyes. I’ve never known anything else… but for you, it is new, and through you I see its beauties.” She rests her chin on folded hands, her gaze soft upon me.

“And its foibles?” I ask, and Nadia laughs as I set my own fork down on the empty plate.

“Another might have used this as an opportunity for sycophancy… but not you, and I find that very stimulating.”

Perhaps this is why she puts up with Valerius’ air of resentment, so thinly veiled with fawning words.

“I encourage you to question,” she continues. “Even to oppose, if you feel strongly enough. Power needs to be checked… or it has the potential to corrupt.” Her expression darkens. “Which, of course, reminds me… what did the Praefectus have to say about our beloved Count Lucio?”

“Nothing good, I’m afraid.” I glance about, but I don’t feel the presence here; I wonder if her rooms are warded. “Ey pointed me to a number of ledgers outlining many… questionable deeds.”

Nadia sighs. “I feel you’re being more polite than he deserves.”

“I suppose so. He was, not to mince words, a murderer himself… just one shielded by his position.”

She rubs lightly at her temples. “Of course, that does not make the crime of killing him any less punishable.”

“This is true. But… I’m not so sure that Devorak is the one we’re looking for, here.”

“Oh?” She lifts her brows. “But he was placed at the scene by five people. He confessed to the crime.”

“People do strange things under pressure.” I shake my head. “The Praefectus knew him, and ey finds it hard to believe that Devorak could kill a fly, much less a man. There is also the question of what, exactly, caused the Count to burn while leaving his furnishings unharmed. And…” I think of how readily Julian is able to walk about, bare-faced, secure in the knowledge that none will turn him in. “There seem to be many others who share the Praefectus’ assessment of the doctor. But more importantly, the Praefectus says that Doctor Devorak was sick at the time of the Count’s death, perhaps dying… that he had deliberately been infected with Plague and locked away, in order to ‘motivate’ him to find a cure.”

Nadia frowns, then winces, a hand to her forehead. “Deliberately infected?”

“So ey says. But after the Count’s death… people started to get better. It’s almost like the Plague ended with Lucio.”

“How peculiar. The Consul did say that Devorak seemed agitated, unwell… but then he was well enough to escape some days later.”

“Perhaps he confessed because he was delirious… or because he thought he was dying anyway, and his confession might save the life of another.”

“Perhaps.” She does not look convinced.

“Begging your pardon…” I begin, and Nadia’s eyes flick over me curiously. “Even if Devorak is the killer, kicking off the Masquerade with a public execution just seems a little... macabre, doesn’t it?”

Nadia closes her eyes. “It’s barbaric,” she says, shaking her head. “But it’s what the people will expect. It’s what Lucio would have done.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong... but I feel we’ve established that Lucio was not the best humanity has to offer,” I say, and Nadia’s lips quirk. “You are not Lucio. You’re better than he was.”

“...am I?”

The question is rhetorical, but so full of regret that I impulsively reach out to take her hands in my own. “I think so. But if not... well, you can be. Being a better person - or a worse one - is a choice, after all. And you have the power to make a real difference in Vesuvia.” Her words this evening tell me that it is not mere retribution she seeks, but rather to show the people of Vesuvia that justice is to be had, that one cannot murder and go free... despite Lucio’s bad example.

Nadia looks down at my hands, then bows over them, a courtly gesture. “I can only strive to live up to your belief in me, Jñāna.”

“And I, to yours.”

Nadia presses a soft kiss to the back of my hand, then turns it over and rests the palm lightly against her cheek. “Truly, you set my mind at ease. Thank you.” She smiles, then releases my hand before rising from her chair - a touch carefully. Clearly, the headache is back.

“You should rest,” I tell her. “I’m afraid the investigation is going to take some time; I’m not even halfway through the materials that Marcus Aquila gave me, and ey said that there was much more to be had.”

“I have no doubt.” Nadia sighs, then smiles. “But I can rest easy, knowing this is in your capable hands.” She steps forward and folds me into her arms, her voluminous sleeves resting on my shoulders and back like wings. The sweet scent of precious jasmine attar envelops me.

Asra is always very free with his affection, embracing me, giving little kisses to my cheek or the top of my head. Heron and I are so constantly in physical contact that others are always mistaking the nature of our relationship - we hold hands, we link our arms or drape them about each other’s shoulders or waists. And so I, in turn, am free with such gestures. I wrap my arms around Nadia’s corseted waist and rest my head against her shoulder, feeling her stiffen very slightly in surprise before relaxing. I can only wonder how seldom she receives such simple human contact.

“Would that I could keep you here with me… but we each have our duties. Send word when you have more information. Perhaps we can share a favorite dessert of yours next time.” She rests her chin briefly atop my head, then releases me. “Good night, Jñāna.” She runs the backs of her fingers lightly against my cheek, as if loath to relinquish contact.

“Rest well, Nadia. And pleasant dreams.” We both smile at that.

 ---

Back in my own quarters, I place small sachets of protective herbs in the four corners of the room. I then move the table so that I can create a mandala in the center, carefully pouring powdered chalks through cones of rolled paper onto the marble tiles. Standing in the center, I complete the final ring, then close my eyes and take slow, deep breaths, gathering my power.

I haven’t used much of my magic today. This means that it takes a few moments to still myself enough to allow the energy to pour along the metaphysical channels I have created, without allowing it to overspill the banks in a bubbling rush. (At least, not too much.)

I visualize the ring of energy becoming a dome, expanding like a soap bubble. It fills the room, creating a boundary that nothing can cross without alerting me to its presence. When I open my eyes, my magical sight shows me a glimmering outline at the door and windows, where the energy has established itself. The mandala consumes itself in a ring of light… and I am left surrounded by a dozen illusory goats the size of mice, with red eyes and white coats. They frisk and toss their tiny heads, then vanish.

It’s nearly impossible for me to keep such minor side-effects from occurring when I use my magic for anything more than simple cantrips. Sometimes it’s a ring of fanciful mushrooms that disintegrate into glowing motes; other times a flurry of butterflies or a small swarm of shining beetles that fly away into nothingness. It’s harmless, but mildly embarrassing. I should have more control over my magic.

Feeling much more secure with my quarters properly warded, I spend the rest of my evening journaling and organizing my thoughts. (Faust appears to have gone her own way for the moment.) I can’t resist doodling a little image of Seneca playing dead in Marcus Aquila’s hand. VERY DRAMATIC, I note.

This done, I go through my routine of preparing for bed; I plan to start my work early. All the same, I lie awake for a time in the darkness of the silken canopy, thinking.

Asra. Nadia. Julian. It is entirely understandable that I should be drawn to Asra; he is such an important fixture of my life. It is just as understandable that I should be so drawn to Nadia - a beautiful and powerful woman, a connection to a heritage I have lost, maybe even a chance to make a real difference.

But Julian (Ilya?) confounds me. Despite my attempts to be impartial, it’s becoming harder and harder for me to believe that he is a killer. Already, I have permitted him to play a dangerous game with me. I know exactly where he is, and yet I withhold this information from Nadia.

We are of one ilk, you and I.

I must find the missing pieces, no matter what it takes - though it may simply be long, dull days of poring over dusty ledgers in the library. I must make sense of this, if only for my own sanity.

Eventually, I slip into sleep.

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK V: THE HIEROPHANT

Chapter 6: The Game (~3480 words)

Warnings: None.

Notes: Donatello belongs to @bottomvalerius​ and appears with permission. :)

(Back to table of contents)

The morning sun pours over the veranda, the stone blinding white against the drowning green of the gardens. Two chairs sit opposed across a small, marble-topped table with filigreed legs. The table is occupied by a gaming board of some sort, and one of the chairs is occupied by the Consul, preceding us. Valerius gazes out over the gardens, wineglass to hand even at this hour, his face pensive.

“Ah, Consul, good morning. I trust we have not kept you waiting for too long.”

Valerius rises from his seat, with a small, stiffly-given bow. His eyes travel over me with a strange intensity, like one examining something under glass. He smiles, clearly well-practiced, but it does not quite reach his eyes.

“Countess, how delightful to see you. But how many times must I insist upon it before you will call me ‘Valerius’ at these little meetings of ours?” There is something brittle in his voice, hard for me to place.

“No doubt a few times more, Consul.” Nadia, too, smiles, somewhat thinly. “I’m sure you remember my companion, Jinana?” Once again, she uses the version of my name more suitable to the Vesuvian tongue. Her choice of words, however, causes the Consul to lift a single brow.

“Of course.” The Consul lowers himself back down to his own seat as Nadia takes hers. Even as I move to take a standing position to one side of her, she gestures to one of the servants. A third chair is brought in, placed close to Nadia’s own.

As I seat myself, I sense Valerius’s eyes upon me again; I return his look steadily. I am a magician, after all.

He gives a faint sigh. “Permit me to apologize for my… indiscreet behavior last night. It was not my intention to make a fool of you.”

Was it not? But before I can answer, Nadia’s voice cuts in, acid-edged. “Truly, it was your actions that seemed foolish, not hirs. I should expect that you could better hold your wine, Consul.”

I am surprised to see him flinch, very slightly, but he does have the grace to appear mildly abashed. “You are correct, Countess. As always. It was a rather trying day in court… but that in no way excuses my actions.” He inclines his head toward me. “Allow me to humbly beg your forgiveness, Jinana. I can assure you that such a thing will not happen again.” He extends his hand to me, across the table.

I feel the barest brush of a hand against the side of my leg, beneath the table, as Nadia gives me a certain look. I know what it means; any personal grudge is not worth potentially losing his cooperation.

I clasp his hand across the table. It is the pampered hand of a noble, manicured and innocent of calluses. “No lasting harm done, Consul. We are only human; who can say they have never made a mistake?” I give him my best smile; unaccountably, he flushes slightly, then clears his throat before releasing my hand.

“I thank you for your gracious acceptance. It seems the Countess places great store by your... counsel.” Again, an oblique look.

“As a magician and diviner, Jinana is a valued guest here; hir counsel is of unique service during these difficult times.” Nadia’s expression is neutral, but her tone has not entirely lost its edge.

“Of course it is.” Valerius nods, then takes a sip from his glass. “I do believe that yours is the first move, Countess.”

I know nothing of the game they are playing; each piece seems to represent a unique little beast-creature, arrayed in a star-shaped layout. Each seems to have its own pattern of movement. The conversation continues as they play, almost idly.

“You did not bring hir here simply to re-introduce us, did you?” Valerius’ eyes are upon the board.

“Of course not. You know now that Jinana is conducting an investigation into the death of our beloved Count, so that the murderer Devorak might be caught.”

A twitch of something - irritation? - flickers over the Consul’s expression. “Indeed. And you truly believe that sorcery and fortune-telling are the answer to such troubles?” He glances in my direction. “No offense, of course.”

“None taken, of course.” I smile, but my hands itch to cast a petty Prestidigitation upon him. Just a little one, to turn his hair bright green, or to make his wine taste of ham.

“Thus far, nothing has brought results,” Nadia says. “What else might you propose?”

Valerius grimaces faintly. “I find that I am forced to agree, Countess. Under the circumstances... it may be a reasonable solution.” His eyes flick back to me. In this light, their color is a pale gold, like white wine in a glass. “I only hope that you are up to the challenge, Jinana. I have had the Palace Guard searching tirelessly for that man for three long years.”

I frown slightly. “Doesn’t the Countess control the deployment of the guard?”

Once again I feel a brief little caress of my leg under the table, then Nadia’s hand comes to rest upon my knee. “The Consul has overseen many of the city’s operations for the last few years.”

“Yes. Why should our Countess be troubled with such minor details?” I cannot decipher the look that Valerius gives to her, before turning his gaze back to the board. “So then, I suppose that this is to be an interrogation.”

He is that perceptive, at least.

“There are certain gaps in the narrative, Consul… ones we hope you might be able to fill.” Nadia looks at him levelly.

“Gaps?” Valerius lifts his brows. “You must remember the night it all happened, Countess.”

Nadia’s eyes narrow slightly. “I know what I saw, Consul. But it was not I who had the doctor arrested… it was you. You were in the Count’s personal wing that fateful night. Our prime witness.”

Valerius frowns. “I was not the only witness. I was not even the first on the scene after the doctor appeared. Surely, your valuable time would be better spent interrogating the others.”

I dislike to lie. It is difficult for me to sustain a string of fictions. But my instinct tells me that I must pin him down now, if we are to learn anything useful. “You are our prime witness, Consul… we never said you were the only one. Speaking with the others has brought us no answers, only more questions.”

I feel the hand that has been resting upon my leg give a light squeeze, and Nadia smiles.

“Precisely,” she says. “There are too many conflicting accounts of that night. We were hoping that you, dear Valerius, might be able to clarify for us. After all… I trust your word over theirs.”

“Your trust in me is greatly touching, Countess.” Valerius once again looks out over the gardens, as if considering. “Yes, I’d imagine that those vapid imbeciles had little to offer the investigation. You saw the way they acted last night… such behavior is in no way out of the ordinary for them.”

“Then perhaps you could enlighten us,” Nadia puts in.

“Of course.” Valerius pauses, taking a thoughtful sip of his wine. “It was near to midnight when I noticed that the Count himself was absent from the festivities.”

“What, exactly, made you notice this?” I ask, leaning forward. 

For a moment, he doesn’t answer, merely contemplating his next move with a piece carved to resemble a goat - albeit one that seems to be snarling, gnashing its carven teeth. 

“I do not know the extent to which the Countess has informed you of the late Count’s personality, or his... proclivities. He adored being the center of attention. He always ensured that his presence in a room was noticed, making his absence all the more obvious.”

Nadia gives me a sidelong look. Of course, she has not been able to tell me much of anything of the Count… but it is certainly obvious that he was fond of his own face. One may draw their own conclusions.

“Naturally, I assumed he must have retired to his private rooms - still, that was odd, because he would never miss one of his own parties, much less his own birthday Masquerade. But when I sought him out - well.” Valerius’ face is impassive, but I see his throat work as he swallows dryly. “It was a hellish scene, the room aflame and four shrieking fools gathered uselessly about the door.”

“Four?” I’m beginning to have my suspicions.

“The other courtiers, of course. Praetor Vlastomil. Pontifex Vulgora. Procurator Volta. And Quaestor Valdemar.”

From Nadia’s lack of reaction to this, it seems that she was thinking the same thing.

“And where exactly was Doctor Devorak at this time?” I ask.

“Still inside the room.” Valerius' brows draw together. “It was strange, though…” He trails off, lost in memory.

“What was so strange?” I prompt, and he recollects himself.

“At first I assumed that the four of them were screaming at the doctor. ‘He won’t get away with this’, and such.” He glances down at the board, making a gesture with his free hand. “It is your move, Countess.” Nadia starts slightly, as if from some reverie of her own, and examines the board.

I realize, as she moves the token of a domestic cat, that the pieces represent the Major Arcana - twenty-two in all, and each with a different way of moving. However the game is played, this move seems to be the decisive one. Valerius sits back with another small sigh.

“Well played, Countess,” he says, with a small nod of abdication.

“One day, perhaps, you may hope to best me. But sadly, not today.” She gives a small smile. “Now then, Consul. What on earth were the courtiers doing all gathered outside my husband’s door during the Masquerade?”

Valerius’ braid rustles as he shakes his head, a line of consternation forming between his brows. “That is the problem. I can’t think of a single good reason they might have had for being there, particularly all at once. Valdemar, certainly, as Head Physician, but the rest…”

“Was the Count ill?” I ask. Some rumors speak of him having caught the Red Plague himself, lingering long after most would have perished, thanks to rare magics and priceless draughts. The thought of the eccentric Valdemar as one’s physician, however, is enough to make the blood run cold.

Valerius’ frown increases, and he tilts his head to one side in apparent puzzlement, blinking. The movement puts me in mind of a mildly vexed housecat.

“My apologies, Countess. I did not know that this information was withheld from our… Inquisitor.” His eyes move to Nadia.

“There has hardly been time to speak of every detail, Consul. But rest assured, you may speak the truth in front of Jinana.” Nadia gives a small lift of her chin in my direction.

Valerius nods. “Very well. The Count was sick, near to dying. He was one of the final victims of the Red Plague.” His face is very carefully neutral as he says this - he is hiding something, I am sure of it. But what, I cannot say.

“Yes,” Nadia adds. “It is the reason why we invited so many experts from all over to the Palace. Though I’m sure that the welfare of the citizens was not so much on Lucio’s mind as his own.” She frowns, her lips thinning in pain of some kind. Is the headache returning? Greatly daring, I place my hand over hers, beneath the table. I feel her thumb stroke briefly over mine, and her face relaxes.

“And he was expected to attend the Masquerade like this?” I ask, unable to keep the incredulousness from my voice. “Was no one concerned about spreading the Plague?” 

“His was... a strange case,” Valerius says, his gaze far off and his expression once again calculatedly blank. “He was sick for over a year, but did not seem able to transmit it himself. Perhaps it was the treatments… or simply his strong constitution, keeping it at bay.”

I’m beginning to have a few more suspicions about how Valerius knows this, but for the moment I keep them to myself. The more I hear of this Count Lucio, the less I care for him… but I must try to be impartial.

“So the other courtiers were outside the door…” I prompt again, and Valerius continues.

“Yes, I assumed that they were trying to get in to save the Count, when the doctor slipped out the door. But they did nothing. It was only when I called out to the doctor to halt that the others even noticed us at all. They immediately commenced wailing and throwing themselves at the doctor - not to detain him, the useless creatures, but simply, it seems, to vent their upset. In any case, it did slow him down long enough for me to have him arrested.” He shakes his head with a slight grimace.

“You say the room was ablaze.” I recall the abandoned wing, my first night at the Palace… and the acrid ash. The memory still makes the hairs want to stand up on my arms and the back of my neck. “But the furnishings of the Count’s room are not burned, not even the bed curtains.”

Nadia glances at me curiously; of course, she does not know that I have seen this. I squeeze her hand under the table, and as I hoped, she picks up the thread.

“This is true,” she says. “It is most mysterious. All is covered in ash... and yet nothing else burned.”

Valerius is looking a touch pale to my eyes, even for him. “I cannot speak to that,” he says. “I did not witness the actual… death of the Count. I saw only the flames and smoke from under the door, and behind the doctor as he attempted to escape.”

“What was the doctor’s state when he was apprehended?” I ask.

Valerius considers for a long moment. “He was… stumbling, agitated. He himself seemed to be exhibiting signs of Plague, and at first the guards did not wish to lay hands on him. It was only when I accused him of murdering the Count that they performed their duty.”

“Signs of Plague?”

“He was shivering, sweating profusely, with redness of one eye… though it’s possible that last was simply an injury. Perhaps the Count resisted his assailant. After all, Devorak did manage to escape some days later - had he truly had the Plague, he should have been far too weak, or even dead by then.”

Some other injury… which could have led to the loss of sight, and thus the eyepatch.

“What happened after he was apprehended?”

“Devorak confessed that he had come to kill the Count that evening, and was subsequently sentenced to hang. He was sent to the dungeons to await his execution… but then he escaped, and has been at large ever since, despite our efforts. It is suspected that he had aid, but it is not known from where. And that, I fear, is all that I know of the matter.”

Even as he speaks, a person appears at one side of the veranda, someone I recognize: the Consul’s scribe. Nadia, too, has noted their presence, and gives a tiny nod. Donatello gives a bow of acknowledgement, then leans to murmur something into the Consul’s ear. He frowns, then nods, and the scribe begins collecting the game pieces, placing them into a satin-lined box. I can’t help but to notice that they steal little glances at Nadia and myself, not entirely able to suppress a smirk.

I can only imagine the rumors that must be flying around the Palace these days about the Countess and the common fortune-teller she has so suddenly transplanted into her service.

“My apologies, Countess. It seems that something requires my attention. As for the investigation… my suggestion would be to interview the others about that night once again… but separately.”

Nadia nods. “An excellent suggestion, Consul. Thank you for your forthrightness; you have been a great help to us.”

The two of them rise as one; I hasten to follow suit. Valerius gives Nadia a respectful little incline of his head, before turning to fix me with his pale stare. 

“It was a pleasure speaking with you again, Jinana,” Valerius says. “Allow me to apologize once more for yesterday’s… unfortunate incident. You seem a capable Inquisitor; I trust you will resolve this matter in a timely fashion.”

“Thank you, Consul.” I bow my own head slightly.

With one final bow to Nadia, Valerius takes his leave, followed by his scribe, who gives me a cheeky little grin as they pass. I can’t keep my own lips from quirking; their obvious glee is strangely endearing. Nadia simply pays it no mind; she has no need to.

When we are alone, Nadia smiles and seats herself once more. “What a brilliant little charade, Jñāna, I must say. I am grateful for your quick thinking.”

I don’t personally feel that my performance was so impressive, but who am I to argue?

“How did you know about the Count’s chamber?” she asks. Her tone is not accusatory, as I had feared it might be, but wondering, even impressed.

The truth is probably my best course. “The first night here,” I explain, “I encountered something. A presence in the abandoned wing. The two sighthounds sort of… accosted me, I suppose, and led me there.”

“Mercedes and Melchior,” she murmurs. “They are known to be rather temperamental.”

“They are also each as big as I am,” I add ruefully, and the corners of Nadia’s eyes crinkle in amusement. “They tugged me into the abandoned wing, where the door to the Count’s room stood open. I saw that everything was covered in ash... but none of the furnishings were actually burned, and the painting there was fully intact.”

Nadia nods to herself. “I have seen the room myself… trying to spur my memory.” It’s clear that it did nothing of the sort. “But what of the presence? What did you see?”

“At first, nothing. Just the sense that something was there… then a whispering voice, taunting me. Toying with me, it seemed, trying to push me around. And then it… tripped me as I was backing away, so that I fell back against the bed.” I shudder with the memory of the powdery ash covering my skin and hair, stinging my eyes.

“Oh no, my poor Jñāna.” Nadia takes one of my hands between both of her own, tutting.

“After that, I was able to escape… but as I did, I saw it. A strange apparition, a goat that walks like a man, with glowing red eyes.”

Nadia’s face pales, her hands on mine growing cold. “Like the painting in the dining room.”

“Yes. But the left arm was missing.”

Nadia brings my hand to her chest, clasping it like a lifeline. I can feel that she is trembling, very slightly. When she speaks, her voice is scarcely above a whisper. “For all of my recent memory, this apparition has haunted my dreams, at the very center of the terrible events to unfold. And now it appears in the waking world.”

I am reminded of the coming storm that Asra mentioned, fates flowing together into an inescapable maelstrom. Why would Nadia choose to pursue her agenda now, not consciously knowing that Julian had also chosen this time to return to Vesuvia? It’s as if some net is tightening, pulling us all together.

The Chariot drags all of us behind it, inexorable, without mercy.

Our separate thoughts are interrupted by the appearance of Portia on the veranda, tension writ in every line of her body. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, Milady, but it’s Aedile Vellos - “

Nadia sighs, releasing my hand. “And just what does the Aedile have to say that requires my attention so very urgently?”

“He’s demanding you meet him in the salon, but he won’t say exactly why. I tried to send him away until later, but…” Portia gestures helplessly.

“That’s quite all right, Portia; you did your best. With the Masquerade coming, the Aedile is no doubt under a great deal of pressure. Tell him I will meet him in the salon shortly.”

“Yes, Milady!” Portia bows with visible relief, and departs.

“My deepest apologies for this interruption, Jñāna, but duty calls. The day is your own; we will continue this discussion later.” She smiles as she rises from her chair; I follow suit. She takes my hand once more and presses her lips to its back; under her gaze, I feel the blood rushing into my cheeks.

Then she releases me and brushes past, leaving me on the veranda with the scent of her perfume in my nostrils and a thousand questions in my head.

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK VI: THE LOVERS

Chaper 1: The Praefectus (~3300 words)

Warnings: some cussing 😱

Notes: Marcus Aquila Summanus belongs to @vesuvian-disaster​ and is used with permission. Ey is agender, using the pronouns ey/em/eir.

(Back to table of contents)

I linger at the veranda for a short time longer, looking out over the gardens, wondering what to do next. Valerius’ story has laid in a few more pieces of the puzzle, but this has only added to my questions. Why were the others gathered there? Why was their behavior so peculiar? When, exactly, did Julian arrive on the scene?

Most importantly, why would someone wish to kill the Count in such a terrible fashion... and how did they even manage such a thing without burning down the room itself, and half the Palace with it?

The return of Portia brings me out of my thoughts. Her body language is much more relaxed, now that Nadia has presumably taken the Aedile off of her hands.

“Hey! I came back to see if you needed me for anything. What’s your plan for today?”

“I need to do more research,” I tell her. “I need to find out more about the Count, the things he did, who might have had it in for him. But where do I even start?”

Portia considers for a moment. “I think I know just the person you should speak to… but first…” She glances about; we are alone. “Walk with me in the gardens a bit? I want to ask you something.”

I blink, but acquiesce; I think I know what it might be. “All right.”

We descend from the veranda, and out into the Palace gardens. Near the hedge maze, a dragonfly alights upon the drape of my sari, like a jeweled decoration itself, before flitting away again.

“Milady’s put a lot of trust in you, hasn’t she?” Portia ventures, her voice quiet.

“It seems so.”

“I am glad she’s found someone to rely on… she’s been alone for so long. I was there, you see… when she woke up.”

“Woke up?” Nadia did mention a feeling of awakening, some months prior.

“It was before my time here that she… fell asleep, or into a coma. I’m told it happened not long after Count Lucio’s death. By the time I began working here, she’d been asleep for almost a whole year. Well, I say asleep, but… it was like no sleep I’ve ever seen. She scarcely seemed to breathe, and didn’t move at all. And then, three months ago, she just awoke, like nothing had happened.”

That does not sound like anything in my experience, either. Save for the lost memories, Nadia does not in any way seem like a person who recently awoke from years in a coma.

It doesn’t take spectacular reasoning to deduce that magic must be involved here. And what of my own memory loss? The thought that this, too, could somehow be related to what happened to Nadia and Julian is bizarre, nearly absurd, and yet...

“I know it troubles her so much, not remembering. Not knowing why, or what happened… then, a few days ago, she tells me that she’s had a dream, that she knows just who to speak to. And now you’re here, and honestly it seems like Milady is smiling for the first time since she woke up.” Portia, smiles, too. “She looks like she has hope.”

“I only hope I can live up to what she seems to expect of me,” I say, and Portia pats my shoulder.

“She thinks you’re the key to working all of this out. No pressure, right?” We laugh. “But really… when someone like her believes in you, it’s hard not to rise to the challenge.”

What a difficult line for Portia to walk. It seems that she truly cares for the well-being of the Countess and believes in what she is trying to accomplish… and yet, there is the issue of Julian.

“And what of your brother?” I ask. I was not certain that was their relationship, but the shock that washes over Portia’s face tells me that I am correct.

“I… I’m sorry about that scene in your shop. I just was so surprised to see him there!” 

“Me, too,” I say, drily.

“He’s always had a flair for the dramatic.” She rolls her eyes. “I didn’t even know he was here, in Vesuvia I mean, until I laid eyes on him. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing here, mind you… Oooh, I should have smacked him for it, he’s going to get himself killed, the idiot.” Even Portia’s scowl is adorable, really.

She sighs heavily. “So did you meet him before or after Milady hired you to find him?”

I feel my own face warm, and wonder how noticeable it is. “He appeared in my shop the very same night, right after she left. Scared me half to death.”

Portia snickers. “Sounds about right. But why didn’t you tell Milady?”

“I just didn’t know enough. I still don’t. How can I condemn someone when I don’t even know the truth yet?”

The memory arises of Julian looking me in the eye across that table in the Rowdy Raven… and telling me that he does not actually remember if he did this deed or not, the bewilderment on his face mirroring my own. Truly, there is something else going on here, something that is behind all of these lost memories, the confusion, the strange persons and malevolent spirits.

Portia gives me a tremulous smile. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Jinana. I don’t know what sort of trouble Ilya’s gotten himself into this time, but… I trust you to do the right thing.”

There it is again: Ilya. I wonder if it is his given name.

“And if you need information… I think I know just the person to introduce you to. At the least, ey will be happy for a little distraction from all the chaos surrounding the Masquerade preparation.” Portia shakes her head, and begins leading us back toward the Palace. “Praefectus Marcus Aquila Summanus has been working for the Quaestor since long before I got here; ey came into eir position during Count Lucio’s time.”

I recall the unhealthy hue of the Quaestor’s skin and the strangeness of their eyes, the cold intonation of their voice. Come to think of it, all of the courtiers, save Valerius, had something deeply unsettling about them - not only in physical traits, but in their energy, their auras. I am still unsure why one such as Nadia would surround herself with such an eccentric court… and I can only imagine what a trial it must be to work directly for them.

“Ey is responsible for the majority of the finances around here, and for a lot of records. That’s why I think ey can help you.”

I nod and follow her lead as we re-enter the halls of the Palace. Portia makes a few brief inquiries of passing staff, and leads me back to the library, taking the large ring of keys from her pocket once again.

“We’re in luck,” she says. “Ey is often in here, because of the records.” I wonder if ey also has a ring of keys like this, or if there is some other entrance to the library.

Past the door of gems and locks, the late morning light inundates the stained-glass window, picking out dust motes drifting lazily in the air. All seems quiet, almost deathly compared to the bustle of the rest of the daytime Palace.

“Marcus Aquila?” Portia calls, quietly in the hushed space. “Are you here?”

“Back here, Portia.” There’s a certain note of relief in the voice that floats to us from behind the rows of massive bookshelves.

She leads the way unerringly around the shelves, until we come upon a slender figure, perhaps slightly more than Nadia’s height. Ey is dressed in a richly embroidered black linen tunic of the finest weave I have ever seen, and a matching skirt that nearly sweeps the floor. The contrast of this and eir dark, wavy hair against the pallor of eir skin is striking. 

Ey smiles as ey catches sight of Portia, pushing a heavy tome back into its place on the shelf. “What a welcome distraction,” ey says to her, and nods eir head toward me. “Inquisitor.”

“Please… just call me Jinana.” I am unused to the title, and find its use somewhat disturbing.

“Of course.” Ey speaks in the same highly-articulated way as Valerius - another scion of Vesuvia’s nobility, then. “You may call me Marcus Aquila. What can I do for you today?” Next to em is a table piled high with stacks of papers and books, upon which ey resolutely turns eir back.

“I’m looking for records of the late Count’s dealings with other nobles, other city-states… anything that might have led to enmity.”

“And you have all the dirt,” Portia says to em, with a wink.

“Oh, yes,” Marcus Aquila agrees, grinning. “Who knows where the treasury goes better than the person who pays it all out?”

“Exactly! I knew you were just the person to help us.”

“And there is plenty here. Though as much as I’d love to dish with you, Portia, I know you’re just swamped right now. I can take it from here.” Conscience twinges in me - having to escort me around and check up on me has only added to her workload, I’m sure.

Portia gives em a grateful little bow, hands pressed together. “Thanks so much!” She turns back to me. “I’ll come back between tasks to see how you’re doing, all right? Maybe bring a snack from the kitchens... it’ll be our little secret.” She giggles as I solemnly place one hand over my heart.

“I promise not to leave any incriminating crumbs in the books.” 

“I’m holding you to that!” Portia then takes her leave of us, and soon I can dimly hear the sounds of the outer locks being re-engaged.

“I will warn you,” Marcus Aquila says as ey scans the shelves, “if you hear a sudden, horrible shrieking, it’s probably just Camio... the late Count’s cockatoo.  I’m afraid the poor thing has quite lost his mind without his chosen person. I believe that Portia refers to him as... Mister Shitbird.” A quirk of eir brow. “He does give her quite a lot of grief in the gardens... and he does like to shove his beak through the window and scream.”

“I’ll, uh... I’ll keep that in mind, thank you.” I suppress a snicker. Mister Shitbird, indeed.

“Now, then, let’s see…” Marcus Aquila flits from shelf to shelf, assembling a little stack of these volumes as ey goes. Eir movements are quick, almost erratic save for their purposefulness - it’s clear that ey knows exactly what ey is looking for.

“How long have you been working here?” I ask, following. Portia said that ey was here long before her, but ey looks rather young to me.

“Since I turned eighteen,” ey answers, scanning along the rows for something before snatching a faded tome from between its brethren. “So ten years, now? How the time flies.” There’s a curl to eir lip as ey says this, and it is not a smile.

Intensely curious, I can’t help myself. “What’s it like working for the Quaestor? They seem… a little eccentric to me.”

Marcus Aquila pauses, and for an instant I fear I’ve offended em. Then ey bursts out laughing, clutching the stack to eir chest. “Oh… oh, that’s an understatement!” Another little paroxysm of laughter overtakes em as ey sets the stack down on a nearby table. “A little eccentric… oh, I do apologize. How could you know? You’re new here.” Ey shakes eir head, sobering. “Working for them is certainly an experience.”

“So it seems.” I glance at the stack of books; they appear to be ledgers of some kind.

“The Quaestor is primarily interested in their research. The more mundane work of seeing to the treasury and taxes to keep Vesuvia afloat, perforce, falls to me.” Once again, I have the inescapable feeling that the courtiers are not highly thought of here, despite their lofty positions.

“Did you ever interact with the Count when he was alive? What was he like?”

Marcus Aquila’s face drains of the last traces of hilarity. “They say a man is defined by his deeds. There are plenty of records of Lucio’s deeds… and exactly how much each of them cost Vesuvia. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, a complete and utter piece of shit.” Eir cultured accent makes the unexpected obscenity all the more startling.

A prickling sensation goes up the back of my neck, and a sudden gust of hot wind sends papers and scrolls scattering. Something rushes by, tugging at the edge of my sari and at Marcus Aquila’s tunic and skirt, but the Praefectus is seemingly unmoved. I can feel the same thick, almost oily-seeming energy that accosted me in the Count’s bedroom, congealing nearby.

The trained instinct that came to my aid in the Market causes me to summon my shielding spell just as several objects come flying at me - the quill in its stand, and the inkwell, splashing ink over the floor, my feet, and some of the papers. A small but sharp-ended letter opener bounces off the field of magical energy, falling to the marble-tiled floor with a clatter.

“Oh, my, how terrifying, being visited by The Spirit of Minor Inconveniences.” Marcus Aquila says this in a loud, almost theatrical way, dripping sarcasm.

I would swear that for a single instant, two glaring red eyes at the height of a man narrow at the Praefectus - and then the dense, unpleasant energy dissipates, vanishing as suddenly as it arrived. Marcus Aquila rolls eir eyes and stoops to pick up the letter opener, tutting at the spilled ink.

“You’ve… encountered that before?” I ask, casting about with my magical senses, heart hammering in my chest. But the presence is nowhere to be found, no matter how far I stretch.

Ey places the gilded, dagger-shaped object on the table. “Yes,” ey says quietly. “Be on your guard… but do not give him your fear. He doesn’t deserve it.”

I nod, rather shakily, then stoop to assist the Praefectus in gathering the scattered items. I summon enough of my magic to remove the spilled ink from the papers, the floor, and myself. Eir eyes widen, but ey simply murmurs eir thanks to me before accepting the spotless papers.

“So I’m... guessing the Count had a lot of enemies.” Clearly another understatement.

“Stunning, yes?” Ey lifts a sardonic brow, rising. “I don’t envy you the task of sorting through them all.”

“But then, the doctor confessed… which everyone seems to place a lot of store by.”

“Why wouldn’t they? It’s neat, and above all it’s easy.” Ey taps the papers into a tidy little stack on the table once more. “But Devorak? That man couldn’t hurt a fly, much less burn someone to death.”

I feel my eyebrows go up, quite involuntarily. “You knew him?”

“Certainly. I worked with many of the doctors that were here during the Plague times. In fact, that’s how I met my husband.” Ey smiles fondly, then turns and begins seeking along the shelves once again, pale fingers skittering lightly over the book spines. “Ah, there you are.” Another volume is plucked from the shelf. “Don’t get me wrong, Devorak certainly had no love for the Count by the end of it all. But even with everything that was done to him, I cannot see that particular man being a murderer, no matter how justified it might have been.”

I lean back against the shelf behind me, digesting this. “What did the Count do to him?” I ask, not certain I want to hear the answer.

“Devorak was the one attending to the Count for the last months of his life. Which, no doubt, meant an unending parade of highly inappropriate comments and demands for sponge-baths.”

I recall the way the presence pushed me to touch the painting, the leering quality of its whispered words, and cannot entirely restrain a shudder.

“What Devorak got in return was to be intentionally infected with the Red Plague and then locked in the bowels of the Palace, as the Count’s ‘incentive’ to find a cure for him faster.”

I can only stare at the Praefectus, jaw agape. “He had the Plague? And survived?”

“A number of people did, at the end. They just… seemed to recover spontaneously. It was bizarre, but who wishes to question such luck?” There is a shadow behind eir amber eyes as ey says this, and I wonder at it.

Plague cases are very rare now, if they even still exist at all anymore. But here and there, those few who survived the Plague can be spotted by the scarring of their eyes, the whites a deep crimson. There is a certain stigma to it, born of fear, and perhaps the envy of those who lost loved ones to its ravages.

Valerius mentioned that Julian seemed agitated, sweating, shivering… with redness of one eye. I have never heard of the Red Plague affecting only one of the eyes, but perhaps...

“But if the doctor was imprisoned at the time… how did he get out?”

The Praefectus shakes eir head. “That I don’t know. Things were very chaotic the night the Count died, as they always are during a Masquerade… even moreso during a Plague. Perhaps someone simply forgot to lock the door again after bringing him food and water, who knows?”

A piping call and the sound of wings cause me to turn just as a tiny shape arrows past in a blur of red and black. It lands, clinging to the sheer vertical side of the stack of books - a tiny bird, folding its strikingly-patterned wings into streaks of crimson and black against its grey body. It opens its long beak and lets out another piercing call.

“Thank you, Seneca,” Marcus Aquila says, reaching out with one forefinger to delicately stroke the bird’s head. Turning back to me, ey says, “I am sorry to cut this short, but I’ve been awaiting the message that he carries… and I’m sure he’s very tired after flying all this way.”

Ey holds out eir hand - and the bird falls like a stone into the open palm, landing on his back with wings slightly spread. He lets out a sad, tiny peep, his little taloned feet sticking up stiffly, and Marcus Aquila sighs. “He is also very dramatic.”

It is then that I notice the runed band of gold adorning one of the bird’s legs - a very small version of the rings that mages (and those who can afford to commission such items from mages) use to exchange messages privately.

The Praefectus indicates the stack of books, which is now rather high, with a lift of eir chin. “But these ought to be enough to give you a good picture of the... situation with the late Count.” Ey gives a thin little smile.

“More than enough to get me started,” I tell em. “I’m grateful for your time.”

“Glad to help,” ey says, the smile becoming more genuine. “All right, Seneca, let’s get you some mealworms and a drink of water, hmmm?” The bird rights himself, shaking out his brightly-patterned wings. “Say goodbye to Jinana.” The needle-like beak opens, emitting another strident little call. “And good luck with your investigation. Don’t hesitate to ask if you need more from me… I have no wish to see fictions kill a man when facts may say otherwise.”

“Nor do I. Thanks again, Marcus Aquila.”

We exchange farewell nods, and ey sweeps away through the library, Seneca ascending in a series of little fluttering jumps to ride along on eir shoulder. I notice that ey does not proceed toward the great door, but further into the recesses of the library; there must be multiple entrances, then. Interesting.

Alone, I begin transporting the books to the work area in the center of the library, one portion of the stack at a time.

There is much to do.

[the-iron-orchid]

Prologue: The Doorway 

(~1250 words, no particular warnings)

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Dreams are a doorway, my teacher says.

I have many dreams. I dream of the mundane - simple retreads of my daily life. I dream of the absurd, the surreal. I dream of vast white sands and achingly blue sky, of being a beast rather than a human. I vividly feel the sand under my paws, the great strength in my hind legs as they propel me into the air, the life draining from the small creatures I catch in my powerful jaws.

I dream of the Lazaret, a terrible place which holds a strange fascination for me. So many suffered and died there; I often wonder if it is this awful collective energy which draws me. Being what I am, I am sensitive to such things.

Haunting the Lazaret of my dreams is a woman, tall of stature and stately of bearing. Her face and form shift in my perception, but these other things remain the same. I can never quite recall our conversations... but they are lengthy, in the way of old friends.

She may be an ancestor. She may be a representation of my own higher self. She may be nothing but a lonesome spirit, one of countless victims of the terrible plague, bound to that place by her suffering. If my company eases her pain, then I am glad to provide it.

It has been years since I have seen anyone with the marks of the plague upon them - the extremities blotchy and veined, the whites of the eyes stained with scarlet. It ceased even more quickly than it came… though I do not remember when it came. My memory begins, or perhaps ends, three years ago.

Jinana Aditya is my name, but it means nothing to me. It connects me to no-one that I recall… no-one except Asra Al-Nazar, who is my teacher, and Phan Đạt Linh Heron, who is my best friend.

I’m told I was in a terrible accident, one that resulted in the loss of my memory and function. These two people have taught me almost everything that I know - from how to walk, talk, and care for myself, to the handful of spells that I have managed to master.

Heron has always been my best friend, since we were children. I do not recall this time, of course… but I trust him with my life. Along with Asra, he is the closest thing I have to family.

It is because of Heron that I journal so diligently, recording my dreams alongside my experiences, recipes, and thoughts. I have asked him about the woman I see in dreams, but he too is unsure if she is a spirit, or perhaps another dreamer. Even the living can become trapped in the realms of dream... and they can trap others, so I must be careful.

I have spent today’s waking hours as I spend most of them - minding the humble magic shop that is also my home, and practicing my spells. I am encouraged to use magic as readily as I use my hands, the way Heron and Asra do. Otherwise, the magical energy builds up inside of me like water behind a dam, and eventually finds other, less controlled ways to escape.

(I am told that this is how I came by the odd color of the hair on my head - it is entirely unlike the hair anywhere else on my body. I am also told that this is technically considered a curse... but I don’t mind. Children love my peacock-colored hair.)

Another thing I do is read the cards - the ones that anyone may purchase, and the ones that Asra made himself. In the hands of a magician (or a magician’s apprentice), the Arcana themselves may speak. Everyone wants to know what the future holds; our little shop has garnered something of a reputation.

It isn’t a glamorous life, or even a very exciting one. I keep mostly to the Center City District, and do not wander far afield on my own. In fact, I have not left the walls of the city within my memory.

But my life is comfortable enough. I want for little... except more frequent company. 

Maybe we should get a shop cat.

The shop is quiet this evening; I am alone, as I so often am. I sit in the worn, patchy armchair to one side, journaling as is my habit. I put the finishing touches on a sketch of a mud-dauber wasp which alighted upon my hand as I tended the rooftop plants this morning. She was beautiful, her carapace gleaming phantom blue over black, her waist like a thread and her eyes like jewels.

My sketch completed, I set my quill aside and rub at my tired eyes. I close them, just for a moment… just long enough to rest them. Then I will go and make myself some dinner.

In just a moment more…

...

I stand in a spectacular space, surrounded by towering marble walls. They are intricately carved, in places even gilded, set with stained glass windows that pour rainbow light over everything. Beneath these windows, three fountains spill endlessly into a pool below, crowded with floating lotus blossoms.

A meditative figure rests upon a pile of silken cushions before the lotus pool. The figure is feminine, but her face is obscured by the pure white light that emanates from her Ajna chakra, the third eye of the mind. Her long fingers are folded in a mudra of concentration. 

I know her immediately - the woman from my dreams. I have not seen her in some weeks, even months. But I have never seen her like this before, or in such a glorious space.

I can feel her keen awareness rake over me like the light. Beneath the obscuring radiance, her lips form a smile.

“There you are.”

I return to wakefulness with a start, just as the curtains to the back room part to reveal Asra.

“Oh! Jinana… did I startle you?” he asks, eyes wide.

“I was… just resting my eyes,” I tell him. “I must have dozed off. I’m about to make dinner, if you’re hungry.”

Asra smiles. “Then my timing is perfect. Look at this.” He comes over to the chair, proffering his gathering basket. He’s been out foraging in the forest again, it seems, and he’s brought home a bounty of mushrooms, potherbs, wild onions, berries, and even a few eggs.

“You’re leaving again, aren’t you?” I ask, and his face falls a little.

“...Yes,” he admits. “There’s something I need to attend to. But I didn’t want to leave you with the larder bare.”

I nod, smiling despite the little sinking ache that blooms in my chest, as it does every time he leaves. “Well, how does a dinner of wild-mushroom pilau sound?”

“It sounds wonderful,” he says, looking at me in that odd way he sometimes does - smiling, but with a certain tension about his brows and a shadow over his violet eyes. Perhaps he is impatient to be away from me.

We ascend the steep little staircase, heading into the tiny kitchen to prepare our meal. Asra wakes the stove salamander - a quaint accoutrement of the shop - while I clean and chop the mushrooms and onions. As I work, I ponder my dreams. What does it mean, to have seen the mysterious woman again, and in such a setting?

I suppose that I may find out when sleep comes to me again.

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK V: THE HIEROPHANT

Chapter 1: The Key (~3000 words)

Warnings: semi-nonconsensual touching, innuendo

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This morning is my own - at least until the announcement in the square, and the square is not far from my shop. Over my breakfast, Portia reminds me that the Palace’s fleet of carriages is at my disposal; she herself has business in the Market before the announcement, if I would like to ride with her. Of course, I accept.

We chat idly as I change into the ensemble that Nadia has allotted for today, suitable for meeting with the courtiers. The top, skirt, and drape of the lehenga choli are all heavily embroidered in silver, as are the shoes, and with Portia’s help I am once again armored for the day ahead with cosmetics, scent, and matching jewelry.

I mutter, perhaps ungraciously, that I feel like Milady’s dress-up doll, and Portia laughs. But truly, there is no harm in it; I have the sense that Nadia wishes me to feel connected to our shared culture. And when will I ever get the chance to wear such things again?

The city below is blanketed in a thick morning fog, and the carriage driver must keep a cautious pace. Still, it is much faster than walking all the way to Center City. We disembark at the Market, where we part ways - Portia to her business, and I to mine. I walk the short distance to my shop briskly, impatient for the humble, familiar, comforting surroundings of home, however briefly.

Ascending the steps, I lay my hand upon the door, speaking the words that will release the wards. The sigils glow, then die away. I key the physical locks and push the door open, inhaling the familiar scent of herbs and resins -

And find myself face-to-face - or rather, face-to-chest - with Julian Devorak.

We both freeze, his single eye staring down at me in shock. He manages to break his immobility first, striking a pose and grinning broadly.

“Oh, well, hello there. Fancy seeing you.”

“In my shop?” I retort. “Where I live?”

The cockiness vanishes from his face as color rises in it. “Er, well. I was, uh, you know, in the neighborhood, and, um…” His eye travels over me in an unmistakable fashion. “And you look marvelous! Splendid! Fantastic. ...I’ll stop wringing my hands.”

He does not stop wringing his hands.

For an instant, I consider calling the guards - but only for an instant. For one, they may think I am aiding him. For another… I’m not so sure he is what they say he is. Regardless, we cannot stand here in my doorway, fog or no fog.

I give him a short, sharp shove, surprising him so much that he simply stumbles backward into the shop as I close the door behind me, advancing on him before he can recover.

“How do you keep getting in here?” I demand, jabbing his chest with my forefinger for emphasis. “I lock and ward this place so tightly that a fly shouldn’t be able to sneak in here, much less...” I gesticulate, indicating his general sizeableness.

His expression falls, his shoulders slumping. “You’re right,” he sighs. “Unless, of course... I have a key.” He reaches into an inner pocket of his greatcoat, producing it. “But I won’t be needing it anymore.” His lips press themselves together. “That much I can promise.”

I compare the key to my own keyring; it’s a copy of the key to the back room.

It still doesn’t explain how he can pass the wards.

“How did you get this?” The question is short, sharp, and irritable… but so am I.

“You don’t, uh…? Oh. Ahem.” Pinkness starts to creep up his neckline again. “Let’s just say… I needed to make a few house calls. After hours.” The grin returns, curling the corners of his mouth.

House calls? To the shop? When? Was it when I was too incapacitated to remember? I don’t recall Asra ever being ill…

Oh. It all clicks together in my head like tumblers in a lock.

“I see,” I say frostily, pocketing the extra key. “And now? What do I have here that you could possibly want?”

The color at his neckline abruptly blooms up into his face again. “Want? Why, I’m not after anything, what would I be - oh, I hope you don’t think I’m a thief.” His eye narrows. “I may be many things… but not that.”

His expression of innocence slandered is rather spoiled by the smirk that creeps up over it. “But don’t just take my word for it.” He doffs his greatcoat with a flourish, swiftly unbuttoning his jacket and stripping it off his torso, leaving him in the open-front shirt I’ve seen once before. He extends his arms in a theatrical gesture of submission. “Search me,” he demands. “If you find anything of yours, I’ll show myself to the nearest garrison and they can put me in stocks.”

For a long moment, I just stare at him. “Go on,” he urges. “Search as thoroughly as you like.” As if to underscore this, he spreads open the shirt, baring more of his chest and belly, before returning to his elaborate attitude of presentation.

He’s trying to gain the upper hand by embarrassing me; I’m not about to permit that. Whatever game he is trying to play with me... I am determined to win.

“Fine. I will.”

His eye widens in apparent startlement; clearly he did not expect this. But even a mouse will bite when cornered.

“Well, you’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” he purrs, but I am not to be deterred by this, or by the suggestive look he gives me. “Don’t be shy... I promise to behave.”

“You had better.” I allow a flicker of arcane energy to briefly crackle along my left hand, a warning.

I step closer, putting as much authority into my bearing as I can. I have to reach up to pat down his arms in their billowing sleeves and leather gloves; my head does not quite reach the level of his shoulder. His body is peculiarly cool through the thin fabric of his shirt. Perhaps that is how he runs around in so much clothing at the height of summer without breaking a sweat.

I feel the musculature of his arm bunch under my hands as he flexes it, apparently for my benefit.

“Mmm, such lovely little hands. You don’t have to be gentle with me, you know… I like it rough.” He gives a rakish smile. “Maybe take a few liberties with my person, hmmm?”

I do not dignify this with a response, merely proceeding to the other arm.

“Come to think of it, this is the first time I’ve really seen you up close in the light. You’re quite a sight, aren’t you?” I feel his free hand at the small of my back, attempting to pull me against him.

Reflexively, I slap the hand away. “Stop that,” I snap, unthinking.

For an instant, I think that maybe I’ve gone too far. Then I notice the deepening blush across his high cheekbones, a darkening of his eye as he looks down at me.

Pressing this advantage, I slip my hands right under his loose shirt, running them down his slim torso. The pulse in his throat jumps visibly, thrumming quickly. But as I move toward his waist, he twists aside with a strangled sound - and the uncanny dexterity he’s displayed twice before.

“Nonono, not there!” he cries, then flushes with seeming embarrassment. “I, er... I’m afraid that I’m terribly ticklish.” He gives a sheepish chuckle. “You, uh, you won’t tell anyone, will you? It can be our little secret.” With a single visible eye, I cannot tell if he is trying to wink at me.

Tiring of the little games, I push him back against the counter. (He wants rough? He can have it.) “For the last time, hold still.”

To my surprise, he flushes clear down his chest, his teeth catching his lower lip. His eye watches me with intense interest. 

“I had no idea you were so… hands-on,” he says. “How bold of you. What if someone walks in?”

“Did I say you could speak?”

“...no.”

“Then don’t. Turn around and keep your hands on the counter.” My tone brooks no contradiction; he complies instantly. It is… extremely satisfying to me, in a way I don’t fully understand.

But it’s clear that he likes being ordered around, the tips of his ears now flushing brightly, his body trembling slightly under my hands as I continue my search.

“And after all… you broke into my shop. I’m not the one who has to worry about being seen.”

“Oh, er... yes, I suppose so…”

He is so tall that his hips are not far below the level of my own chest, making it very easy for me to run my hands over them. He makes a strange little sound. He has small, flat pockets sewn into the front of his trousers, and here I stop, encountering something hard and flat.

“Ah... don’t worry about that.”

It’s a small folding knife, concealed in the pocket. Not much of a threat; my knife for gathering herbs is bigger.

Julian turns his head to look back at me over his shoulder. “But I am happy to see you. I could show you just how happy, if you like.” He raises his eyebrows suggestively.

Through his ridiculous attempts to discommode me, I sense a deep, nervous tension in him, in the way he cannot seem to keep himself still. Something about it calls to something in me, though I do not know what it is or where this thing came from. 

I give his nearest flank a light, insolent slap, telling him to turn round once more. Once again, he obeys… though his face is now very red, and over the short distance between us, I can feel a certain amount of warmth radiating from him.

I step back, and his body betrays him with a small sway in my direction, as if magnetized, before he catches himself. Whatever game he thought he was going to play with me, I have clearly won.

“Now tell me what you were looking for. I’m not going to ask you again.”

His throat works as he swallows hard, visibly trying to collect himself before answering. 

“I was… looking for answers,” he says quietly, a tremor in his voice. “But I found nothing. That’s why I can promise... not to trouble you again.”

“I’m not sure I believe that. But I believe the rest.”

“I - you do?”

“Yes.”

He shakes his head. “Never take anyone at their word, lit - Jinana.” He swiftly corrects himself at my warning glance. “Least of all me.” The incorrigible grin resurfaces. “But I do hope you’re satisfied with what you found. I would just hate to leave you... wanting.” His eye flicks over me again in that flirtatious way.

I roll my eyes at him. “Get out of here. If I find you in here one more time, see if I don’t summon a demon to chase you all the way back to South End.”

His jaw drops. “You can do that?”

“Break in again and find out.”

Julian gives me a narrow look, unsure whether or not he should believe me; I return it levelly. He spreads his gloved fingers in a placatory fashion, then makes a big show of putting his jacket and coat back on, like some sort of reverse strip-tease.

“Well, you’re a busy person, I’m sure, so I’ll just... be on my way and leave you in peace, shall I?”

“You do that.”

He gives me a wide berth as he passes, careful not to make contact. Perhaps he is afraid he won’t be able to maintain his composure, such as it is. Perhaps he truly has taken something, and has it hidden in his coat. After all, he is still smirking.

It doesn’t actually matter. I was able to track the man himself with my magic once before, I can absolutely track anything he has taken from me.

But before he can make good on his exit, the door swings open, revealing Portia. She stares in open-mouthed shock, even as Julian freezes in mid-stride.

“Ilya?!”

The single word is loaded with more emotion than one heart can possibly bear. She launches herself over the threshold, directly at Julian, not seeing me at all.

“Ilya, is it really you?” Tears choke her voice as she clutches at Julian’s jacket, then reaches up to take his face between her hands. She is visibly shaking, and Julian’s eye blinks rapidly with water.

His voice is rough as he answers: “It’s me, Pasha.”

Portia’s lip trembles as she struggles to get the words out. “You - you - You absolute bastard! What are you even doing here out in the open? Are you trying to get yourself killed? Oooooh, you’re such an idiot!”

Her grip on the sides of his face becomes a grip on his ears, tugging him downward.

“You’ve grown up strong, haven’t you?” Julian winces. “I’m... sorry I wasn’t there to see it.”

“Oh, I’ll show you sorry, you…” Portia lapses into another language briefly. It doesn’t sound like a term of endearment. She lets go of Julian’s burning-red ears and takes hold of his collar in a double grip, dragging him out the door. 

“Jinana!” she calls, sniffling, “I’ll catch up with you at the square!” And with that, she unceremoniously drags the doctor down the steps and into the nearby alleyway. All the while he is flapping ineffectually, like a snared bird. 

The last thing I hear is a muffled, “Pasha, language!”

I close the door behind myself once more, slumping against it. What was any of that about?

A letter to his sister, unsent.

I haven’t seen her since she was, oh, maybe this high…

Portia’s look of horror when Nadia spoke of the doctor’s execution.

The doctor can’t be the only suspect we have, right?

Ruddy curls, pale skin. Though all the rest differs - the one short and stoutly built, the other tall and lean - one could see a resemblance, if one were looking for it.

The Chariot hurtles forward at breakneck speed, but I am not at the reins. I am only dragged deeper and deeper into a dark, churning sea of intrigue and secrets.

And then there is whatever it was that just happened between Julian and myself. 

I acted without thought, in response to cues I was not consciously aware of. This has happened to me before; sometimes it has triggered an episode, a crisis of body and brain. Other times… I have simply done things. The sound of the tabla drum in certain songs may cause my feet to move, to stamp lightly in a particular way, my arms to lift and my hands to flow into motion - stiffly at first, and then with increasing assurance as I set conscious thought aside, allowing my body to take over.

There are times Asra has returned to find me singing absently to myself in the shop or the kitchen, songs I do not recall learning. And though he smiles, though he says he loves to hear me sing, a brief tear or two may escape, water from amethysts.

I must assume that these are the skills of my old self, resurging in response to… what? I do not know. And I do not know why these things which cause Heron to rejoice may cause Asra to weep.

But this… this was something else, something that moves through me like a leviathan through deep waters, and when it surfaces, it is not to be denied.

Something about Julian draws it to the surface, despite the danger, or perhaps because of it.

I suppose I could explain it all away as a simple desire for control, born of having very little of it. Swept along by external forces and events, why wouldn’t I seize the opportunity to feel more in control of things?

But I cannot stop thinking of how good it felt to be so quickly obeyed, without question… no, it was far more than that.

It felt correct, in a way that very few things do.

I recall the strange vision by the fortune-teller’s tent, Asra’s coy glance as I beheld my own hand lifting his chin.

I don’t know what to do with this information; more and more, I wish that Heron were here. 

But life goes on. I head up to the roof to check up on my ragtag collection of plants. They do not seem the worse for wear. In fact, the sprouting bean plant is even growing its first true leaves. I water them all, pausing to admire the bees that have come to drink from the wildflowers, their wondrous little jointed limbs combing up the pollen that dusts their fuzzy bodies golden.

Descending into the shop again, I gather the things I came here for - the material components of certain spells, a few of my own journals. Even when Asra is gone from here, some relics of him remain - clothing, books, magical items. The faint scent of oudh clings to them, and in his absence, it is mildly comforting.

I seek a particular book of his, one that speaks of the Arcana… but though I hunt throughout the shop and the living space above, it is nowhere to be found. Perhaps Asra has taken it with him, in his own magical bag that holds far more than it seems. After all, he has left the deck with me.

Eventually, the distant single chime of the half hour tells me that my time is up. I will have to ask Asra about the book the next time I see him… or when I speak with him by other means.

I secure the shop once more, wards and all, and I begin making my way to the town square for the big announcement.

Never keep the Countess waiting.