Aaliyah thumped the table with the palm of her hand. “How’s it hangin’, Roger?”
The goblin closed the plain composition notebook he’d been writing in with a sigh and looked each of them over. Eresthanon examined the goblin in kind.
Roger was about five feet tall, not huge for a goblin but above average. He had a large head with features that made him look like a furless fruit bat — pointed, forward-facing ears near the top of this head; a stubby snout ending in a leathery nose with rounded nostrils; and round, solid-colored eyes that took up about a third of his face. Eresthanon knew Roger was no garden-variety goblin; his ancestry came from one of the surface-dwelling tribes.
Two things gave Roger’s heritage away: his eyes and his skin. Roger’s eyes were black, instead of red, a trait only found among those who had needed protection from the sun’s light. His skin was green, but it was a deep shade of green, not the pale green or gray of his people who lived in vast warrens dug into the earth. That marked him as likely being from a forest tribe, as the high-altitude tribes had dark gray skin and the rare mountain tribes had brown or red skin.
Of course, the times had changed for everyone to some degree or other and the goblin’s roots said very little about who the individual was now. The forest-dwellers, for instance, had once been seen as the most vicious and uncivilized of the goblin tribes. Yet Roger sat in a quiet booth at the rear of a Tribeca wine bar, wearing a suit cut in a British style more than a century out of date, and idly fingering the brim of a bowler hat he had dragged across the table to cover his notebook.
“Quaesitor Dean,” the goblin said in an effete British accent. “Absolutely corking to see you again. And who, pray tell, is your associate? Don’t tell me you’ve finally settled down with a proper gent! You know I’d be devastated to learn my love shall go forever unrequited.”
Eresthanon tried to look casual. He didn’t know how this fellow felt about elves and didn’t want to give the impression he was looming as it might make it harder for Aaliyah to convince him to share whatever information he might have. A casual lean only went so far, however, when you were six feet tall and the other person was a foot shorter and seated.
“This is Eresthanon, but you can call him Eric if saying elf names will set you on fire and whatnot,” she said, gesturing at Eresthanon.
The goblin scoffed. “I’m not sure if you’re trying to get a rise out of me or your new friend, but it would behoove you to take an approach that doesn’t make it sound as though you’d been snorting Tolkien fanfiction.”
The goblin turned to look at Eresthanon and raised two fingers to his forehead. “Good evening to you, Eresthanon, and welcome to my humble establishment. You may call me Roger, if you like.”
“That’s not a usual goblin name, I think,” Eresthanon said.
“No more than Eric is an elven one. My given name is Rognur. I take it from your presence that someone has finally accepted the burden of trying to work with Ms. Dean here. I shall salute you for your bravery, rather than presuming — rather more sensibly, I shouldn’t think — that it was foolishness which has led you to such a lowly state.”
“Thank you for the consideration of my character and reputation,” Eresthanon said, with a small nod. “I wonder if I might inquire for a moment about your bartender?”
“Soo?”
“Sue?”
“No, Soo. Soo McGoo.”
“Really? Soo McGoo?”
“It’s true; a boy named Soo. Soo McGoo.”
“Thoid base!” Eresthanon said with a wink and the shadow of a hint of an exaggerated Bronx accent. The other two just gave him befuddled stares. “Yes, well then, about Soo…”
Rognur didn’t quite roll his eyes. “He has a very low-grade disguise enchantment, bound into a piercing, of all things. He can afford better, but he’s… let us say frugal. Plus, there’s a sexual element involved.”
“A sexual element?” Eresthanon asked.
Aaliyah interjected with a sigh. “Soo’s gay as a daisy, but he’s got a taste for normies — straight normies in particular — so he disguises himself as women. Not that cis or trans women need that particular baggage added to our already oversized heap of bullshit, but it doesn’t violate any of the Pillars, so kicking the shit out of him would be problematic. It’s gross and I wouldn’t personally call his affairs getting informed consent, but it’s not exactly in our wheelhouse…so long as he’s not using prohibited alchemy or breaking the Third.”
Rognur’s grin was exasperated. “He takes the whole ‘taste of manflesh’ thing a bit far, in my estimation, but he’s an otherwise upstanding citizen. While I may not personally approve, it seems to be doing little harm.” The goblin paused, thoughtfully. “Well, I will confess that the number of lads I’ve seen besotted after a night with a young lady who is — as far as they can discern — preposterously out of their league is much higher than one might see in other cosmopolitan establishments such as my own. I imagine, however, Ms. Dean would leave the same trail of broken hearts if she were more cuddlesome.”
“Please; flattery will get you kicked in the groin,” Aaliyah said. “We’re not here about Soo, Roger, I wanted to check in on whether I was right about those crystals.”
“Your suspicion turned out to be all too right,” Rognur said. “That aetherium passed every test I could muster, but when I tried to cut or shape a sample, it broke down into aetheron gel with far less capacity than the crystals showed. You did me a great favor, there, and saved me from losing a bundle.”
The young woman glanced meaningfully at Eresthanon and he titled his head slightly to acknowledge that he caught the reference. Rognur had just described almost the exact case Dylan and West had bragged about less than an hour prior. Aaliyah had apparently known about it well before it had spread far enough to target wealthier, more powerful marks. The con had probably started being run on the seedier side of society and, when it proved effective, moved on to target bigger scores.
Why Aaliyah had passed up the case when she had been so bored was a bit of a mystery, until Eresthanon remembered her comment about it being penny ante stuff and barely a violation of the Second Pillar: Thy essentia is thine own. But they needed a united front for dealing with this potential informant, so now wasn’t the time to question her about it.
“Well, I’m glad I could lend a hand,” Aaliyah said, slapping the table again. “One good turn deserves another, wouldn’t you say?”
Rognur groaned. “I owe you for the tip, fair enough; make your pitch so I can figure out whether I want to piss and moan about it. Scratch that, how much I want to piss and moan about it.”
“First of all, Booger Joe, you owe me for a lot more than just that tip, but I’ll let that little comment slide for the moment.”
“Booger Joe?” the elf and goblin said in unison, interrupting Aaliyah.
“Yeah, y’know, on account of he’s all green and slimy? Anyway, whatever. There’s been a real dip in what you might call ‘nefarious doings’ lately and it’s got my hairs standing on end. I feel like there’s something big going on or about to be going on. You heard anything that might make sense outta something like that?”
Rognur considered her for a few moments. “Are you saying… it’s too quiet?”
Aaliyah pursed her lips at the goblin. “Clichés have roots in truth, you goon, they just get overused so’s people got sick of them.”
Rognur drummed the long fingers of one hand on the brim of his bowler and the tip of a finger on the other against his lips. “Hmmm. At a moment’s notice, I can’t say that I’m aware of anything that might be of interest to you in that regard. However, I will make some discreet inquiries of my various associates, and get back to you if anything pops out at me.”
“I can’t ask for more than that,” Aaliyah said, scooching to the end of the booth. Eresthanon stepped back to give her room to stand. “I hope to hear from you soon, Roger. If you get something good, that’ll square us on the aether scam.”
The goblin sketched a deep bow with his large head — all the more odd because he was still seated, bringing his bat-like snout within inches of the table — and the two vigilum departed. As they left, Eresthanon overheard Soo McGoo, the orc bartender, telling some guy in a polo shirt his shift ended in a little over an hour. Eresthanon frowned slightly, but ignored it as much as he found doing so distasteful.
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Aaliyah was right — it wasn’t exactly informed consent from Soo’s partners — but the other side of that stance opened the door to legitimizing arguments for gay and trans panic. Informed consent from Soo’s preferred partners would also require violating the Third Pillar: The secret must be kept. Soo’s seduction of unwitting men was uncomfortable for Eresthanon, but what was the alternative? It would be a far greater miscarriage of justice to forbid him from sleeping with other men or to prohibit miscegenation between mythic and mundane.
The orc was lying about who and what he was to his partners, but was it Eresthanon’s or the Vigiles’ place to police that? Eresthanon didn’t think so, especially when he measured it against worse outrages taking place in the world and the terrible things Creaturae were not forbidden from doing to humans. After all, the First Pillar usually only served as a prohibition on the killing of other Creaturae, not mundane people.
It was a morally contemptible position and the Vigiles could rightfully be criticized for abrogating a greater responsibility, but they could not — and should not — be policing everything that happened in the entire world. A pragmatist might argue that the Third Pillar acted as a check on the killing of humans or that the many various factions policed such things among their own. Eresthanon didn’t think he was qualified to form an opinion one way or the other, yet, in part because elves generally stood aloof and distant from both mundanes and Creaturae, but also because his real, lived experiences in the world extended back only a few hours.
On the walk back to the office, the sun was setting in earnest and the sky had begun to darken. Rather than delve too deeply into the morality of the Four Pillars, Eresthanon used the opportunity to ask Aaliyah the questions that had occurred to him during their brief meeting.
“You knew about the aetherium scam?”
Aaliyah shrugged. “A guy I know got ahold of me maybe six weeks back, said he’d bought some aether-infused crystal that was supposed to be a game changer. He broke the crystal doing some goofy shit and it turned into this nasty sludge. A bit of spellwork later and he finds out the sludge was a low-yield aetheron. It had been magicked into a crystalline form that somehow gave off a way stronger reading of aether than it should have. He was wicked pissed and comes asking me to kick down doors to get his plat back.”
Aaliyah stopped at a food cart to get a churro, putting her story on pause. Warm pastry in hand, she continued.
“Well, I’m not just going to go on a rampage, but I figure there might be a violation there. I go talk to Roger on account of he’s one of the most plugged-in dirtbags I know. He don’t know nothing from nothing, but he tells me he’ll keep his pointy ears open seeing as he owes me.”
She paused and glanced at Eresthanon out of the corner of her eye. “No offense to the pointy ear community.”
“None taken. So, obviously, he did hear something.”
“Oh no, yeah. He calls me back a couple weeks later telling me someone was trying to sell him on some new ritual that could create aetherium with almost no loss of aether. They don’t try to get him to invest any juice, right? Just coin. I figure that’s the endgame on the con. He says the whole thing felt hinky, ‘cause why wouldn’t someone who built a better mousetrap go Downtown to finance that operation instead of letting bums like him in on the ground floor? Not his words, of course, about being a bum, but still accurate.”
Eresthanon nodded thoughtfully. Aether suffused everything and it could be harvested, for lack of a better term, from just about anywhere. The intangible material was drawn into a corporeal state then refined into one of three physical forms — a metal called aetherite, crystals called aetherium, and non-solid states called aetheron, which included liquids, gasses, and gels.
The rate of accumulation at a random, magically-inert location would make the process essentially pointless — far more magical power would be spent in gathering aether into a physical form than that aether could store. The best places to create an aether distillation process would be saturated with mystic power, like the nexus of multiple ley lines.
“So someone found a way to make aetheron appear to be aetherium and seem as if it had the storage capacity of aetherite? That’s rather impressive magic, actually,” Eresthanon said.
“Sure,” Aaliyah shrugged, “but all you could really do with it is scam people out of their coin.”
“And trust no one would break a crystal with such value by accident.”
Each of the three physical states of refined aether had its own advantages and drawbacks. All three could be used as a kind of catalyst, component, or battery for various applications of magic, but they had more simple properties that set them apart, as well.
Aetherite, which Eresthanon had recently learned was often called aethril these days, lost the least aether in the refining process. However, the product was essentially permanent, the infused metal being only useful as a metal once it was made. It could be forged into objects or smelted into alloys, which had certain benefits in the creation of magic items, but the aether inside lost much of the versatility of the other forms. Aetherite was also used in the production of coinage and could be turned into a dust that was very useful for some kinds of enchanting.
Aetherium, the crystalline form, wasn’t as efficient to produce, but the aether within could be utilized and drawn from in a variety of ways. Perhaps the most intriguing benefit of aetherium was its ability to slowly replenish its aether reserves as long as it wasn’t completely drained, which would break the crystal. The greatest weakness of the crystals was that shaping or cutting them was very delicate and the entire thing could break apart, losing the stored aether.
Aetheron, despite being a catch-all term for a variety of refined products, shared many properties. It was the least efficient to produce and had the lowest capacity to store aether, but it was also the most manipulable form, allowing it to be used in ways the solid couldn’t.
A final product of aether harvesting existed — aether in a pure form, which manifested as something like light or transparent plasma — though it wasn’t particularly useful. It was an excellent conductor for magic, but it was highly volatile, nearly impossible to contain, and it reacted unpredictably to any active magics in its proximity.
Eresthanon hummed thoughtfully. “So you knew the gist of the scam, but it hadn’t breached the Second Pillar, nor had it reached a point of having serious ramifications. I would guess you referred the matter to someone in a lesser office?”
“You got it. Filed a report with Khaldun and everything. And it’s not like I wasn’t bored outta my gourd, but I’m not trying to scrounge up cases. I’m certainly not strong-arming other vigilum out of their case. Especially not one that could put them on the come-up. Ya with me?”
Eresthanon was glad to hear his assessment of Aaliyah had been accurate; not only was she diligent in her duty, but she was considerate of her fellows. Both were signs of strong moral fiber.
“Sound reasoning, Quaesitor. So, this Rognur fellow. I presume he operates in the underworld in some fashion, but I’m curious why he would be especially connected. He didn’t strike me as a secret broker or anyone of notable influence.”
Secret brokers and information peddlers were the shadier counterparts to lore masters and other academically-oriented consultants; they traded what they learned for coin, aether, or new information of interest to them. They were exceedingly rare — especially if they worked independent of a larger faction — because creatures of myth and magic zealously guarded their secrets.
Eresthanon doubted that any broker who’d be likely to have worthwhile information would have ever allowed a relationship like Rognur appeared to have with Aaliyah to form — they couldn’t afford to be in debt to the Vigiles Creaturae and they certainly couldn’t be so cavalier about it.
The lack of any significant security presence at the wine bar also suggested that Rognur wasn’t a powerful figure in a major underworld syndicate or other criminal enterprise. Goblins were cunning and could be terribly vicious, but they were physically and magically weaker than many other Creaturae; any goblin with a potential target on their back would want a strong security presence for protection and as a deterrent.
Aaliyah snorted. “That little snotrag runs a number of operations, but they’re all just shy of being problematic. He’s a prolific fence, only he’s real careful not to deal in anything that contains aether, so he ducks violations of the Second. He’s also a loan shark, which is predatory and shady but not a violation. And he runs some kind of pit fights out of a basement arena in his bar. It’s supposed to be non-lethal and no deaths have ever been tied to it, but I’m not sure it doesn’t happen… and maybe on purpose. There’s big money to be made on deathmatches.”
The conversation had carried them all the way back to the building that housed the Vigiles Creaturae offices. The troll in the brown suit was sitting on the same bench reading the same book in the courtyard next to the garage entrance.
Aaliyah raised a hand to the huge man. “Evening, Eugene.”
The troll looked up at her, grunted, and went back to his book. Aaliyah shrugged and turned to Eresthanon.
“We’ve got a few hours to kill before we can see my next contact. That works out in our favor because you’ll need to get changed. Maybe grab some dinner or something, too.”
Eresthanon lifted an eyebrow slightly. “Changed?”
“Oh yeah, you gotta look the part where we’re going. They have a very particular style and you’ll want to blend in.”
“I have clothes ranging from sportswear to formal attire.”
“You won’t have what you need for this place, I guarantee it. You want something…” She paused in thought for a moment. “Okay, so imagine Edgar Allan Poe is going to one of those Victorian parties where they take selfies with corpses and have seances or whatever, right? But then it’s also a BDSM club. Put all that together and you’ll be in the ballpark.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Eresthanon said, idly rubbing his chin.
“Just google ‘goth boutique near me’ or something like that. They’ll get you sorted, I’m sure. Give me your number so I can text you the time and place later, alright?”
He provided his number and Aaliyah took her leave, walking back the way they’d come. Eresthanon wondered if this was an unusual amount of free time to have while working at the Vigiles Creaturae.
Then again, Aaliyah had told him they basically had nothing to do, hence why she was trying to be proactive in reaching out to contacts. He felt confident making inquiries of her other informants would be a more delicate operation than their visit to Rognur had been. Well, mostly confident. Aaliyah seemed to be a very straightforward person.
Nor could he say he was being idle, exactly; he now had to procure some kind of outfit so they could infiltrate a seedy part of the underworld to facilitate their search.
He didn’t know if it would be dangerous, but she had made a good point — it was prudent to take all possible precautions.
Thus, he had some clothes shopping to do.