The tunnel leading down was wide enough for their car, but only just, and unmistakably old. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all cut stone. The paving stones were small, ruddy brown bricks smoothed to a glossy sheen closer to tile than brick; the rest of the structure was large, dark gray stone. The construction of the passage suggested it predated cars.
They crawled along through several turns of the tunnel before it opened onto a much broader passage. The passage here was the width of a two-lane road with a middle turn lane and elevated sidewalks ran along either side. A single light glowed green against the wall beside them. Apparently a green light meant the same thing in the secret magic people tunnels as it did on regular streets, because Griffin sped up and pulled onto the road.
“So these are the Byways, huh?” Aaron asked.
“Yes, secret paths accessible only to eidolons,” Kiara replied. “You can find them just about everywhere, but they’re only extensive in very large or very old places.”
“The Byways in New York were rebuilt in the 19th century to move them deeper underground,” Griffin said. “The average depth is just over five hundred feet below street level and they follow most of the major thoroughfares.”
As they drove, Griffin pointed out various intersections, sharing interesting tidbits about the geography of the city or some snippet of hidden history. They made their way through the Byway running under Columbus Avenue back to Columbus Circle, where it met Broadway. As with the landmark above, the intersection was a massive roundabout, though this one was built into a domed cavern.
The center of the space was occupied by a rotunda at least fifty feet high and much larger than the monument park above, owing to the narrower lanes. The walls of the structure were made of nearly-opaque glass that seemed to shimmer and glow faintly, which Aaron took to be an indication of enchantment. Stone bridges traveled from the cavern walls to the building overhead like the spokes of a particularly irregular wheel.
The perimeter of the roundabout alternated between branching roads leading away from the circle and indentations carved into the walls which housed small parking areas.
“What is this?” Aaron asked, craning his neck to look upwards.
Albert snorted. “They call it the Gate to the Underworld, but that’s just something some marketing gremlin came up with.”
“It’s a way station and outpost, one of the major entrances to the city below,” Griffin added.
“There’s another city under New York?”
Griffin made a waffling gesture with one hand. “Sorta. It’s probably not what you’re picturing, but the hidden borough is fairly expansive.”
Before Aaron could ask any of the dozen questions that popped into his head, they were out of the circle and Griffin was pointing out more intersections and talking about weird and funny stories from the secret history of New York.
A few minutes after leaving Columbus Circle, he pulled off the broader road and up another spiraling tunnel. Rather than pulling through a disappearing wall into a parking garage, Griffin parked the car at a small parking area right in the Byways, not unlike those that lined the walls of Columbus Circle. There was room for half a dozen cars, but only three spots were taken, including theirs.
“Attached parking,” Aaron said. “Very nice.”
“It’s only at the really big access points, but this one is right off Broadway,” Kiara explained.
Although they didn’t park in a garage, the exit from the Byways was still attached to one. A short tunnel led them to a security door that opened onto a stairway right near the street entrance.
It was an interesting corner — a 50s-themed diner, their destination, was across from them on one corner, a McDonald’s sat on another, and a massive black skyscraper on a third. The corner they exited the garage from had some kind of gift shop, but a huge vertical sign affixed to the corner of the building announced it as the Manhattan Hotel.
It really says something about mixed-use development that you can have a hotel that’s very swanky in most of the building and a janky ass gift shop right on the street where everyone can see it, Aaron thought.
At the corner, they waited for the light to cross and Aaron got a better sense of where they were. — the street signs announced they were at Broadway and W 51st. Behind the almost garishly blue awning of the diner, a large white sign announced NEIL PATRICK HARRIS and GATEN MATARAZZO, providing no other information. It was almost certainly a side view of the marquee, but Aaron didn’t know which theatre nor what the show could possibly be.
“What theatre is that?” Aaron mumbled, almost to himself.
“Which one?” Griffin asked.
“What do you mean, ‘which one?’” Aaron asked, pointing at the marquee. “That one, obviously.”
Albert chuckled. “That’s the Winter Garden just past the Stardust, but the Gershwin and Circle in the Square are both in Paramount Plaza, that big skyscraper across the street.”
“I’ve heard all those names, but I can’t think of anything more specific than that.”
“You’ve definitely seen the Winter Garden, even if you didn’t realize it at the time,” Griffin said. “The billboard above the marquee is annoying as balls for how often you come across it.”
“For sure,” Albert agreed. “Cats ran there for almost twenty years and Mamma Mia! for more than a decade. If you’ve seen the logo for either, it was probably a photo of the Winter Garden’s marquee.”
“Beetlejuice premiered there, too,” Kiara added.
That a musical adaptation of Beetlejuice had been on Broadway was news to Aaron. He marveled a bit to find himself within line of sight of places that were part of theatre history as the quartet crossed the street. According to Albert, they were lucky there wasn’t a line for the diner; they were able to get in and get seated quickly.
After they were situated at a table, Kiara fiddled with a small stone cube for a few seconds then set it on the table, right up against the wall. There were intricate lines etched into each of the cube’s surfaces, so faint that Aaron wasn’t sure if he was imagining them or not.
“It garbles what we’re saying so we sound like we’re speaking an indistinct foreign language to anyone more than a few inches away from the edges of the booth,” Kiara explained.
Menus were brought and drinks ordered. After their server left, Aaron opened his menu and winced as he looked at the prices. They were definitely New York prices, with everything that wasn’t an a la carte side costing at least twenty bucks. Aaron was worrying about the damage splurging on this breakfast was going to do until he remembered the account balances he’d seen earlier that morning.
“I’ll pick up the tab,” he said, grinning.
“That reminds me,” Albert said, retrieving a small envelope from his pocket. “I forgot to give you this back at the apartment.”
He slid the small envelope across the table to Aaron, who opened it to find another small paper sleeve. Inside was a bank card made of metal rather than plastic. The face of the card was blank save for an image of an ancient soldier embossed in gold. The card itself was, of course, black.
Was it the Greeks or Romans who had the helmets with the bristle brush tops? he wondered.
“No PINs, no passwords, only your ID and signature,” Albert said. “They’re still deciding whether to set you up with a Q-card or wait until after you’ve been confirmed.”
Aaron slipped the metal card into his wallet. “What’s a Q-card?”
The conversation paused before anyone could answer as their waitress returned and they placed their orders. Everyone got something different: Aaron went for a breakfast burger; Albert the chicken and waffles; Griffin wanted eggs Benedict; and Kiara went for peanut butter cup pancakes. Each of the guys ordered an additional serving of a different form of pork on the side — ham, bacon, or sausage.
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Ballparking the math as they ordered, Aaron realized the bill was going to be well over a hundred dollars. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling again; he was going to be able to leave a nice tip — why not do fifty percent? — without feeling like he was cutting his own hands off for the rest of the month.
A loud, pitchy shout suddenly erupted from one corner of the restaurant. Aaron was halfway out of his seat looking for the threat before he realized Griffin had a hand on his shoulder, urging him to stay seated. The unexpected cry came to an end and was followed by what sounded like several people stomping on the floor or banging on counters and tables. There was something rhythmic — familiar, even — to all the noise. Looking around, Aaron didn’t see anyone actually making the noise.
“Be easy,” Griffin said. “It’s a singing diner, remember?”
It took a few more repetitions of the shouting and banging for Aaron to piece it together — it was a song. A song from The Greatest Showman, specifically, maybe even the title song.
It’s the one with all the mumbling, Aaron realized. It’s a buh, it’s a duh, it’s a budda dudda…something like that.
Aaron was never very good at remembering lyrics, not without a lot of practice, and he’d only seen that movie a couple of times. He relaxed back into the bench, feeling sheepish but relieved. He hoped his companions wouldn’t think less of him for being a little on edge given he’d faced one — probably two — attempts to assassinate him over the past few days.
A guy dressed like Billy Idol was standing near the swinging door into the kitchen and was the one singing the lead part of the song. The customers were smiling and quietly cheering as the man crossed the diner and stepped up onto a table to continue his performance. He started the first real lyrics in a carrying stage whisper, winking at his audience.
The song was getting into full swing and Aaron decided it was time to try salvaging some of his own dignity.
“So, uh, Q-cards?” Aaron asked the table.
“Money is great for buying boring shit, but we don’t live in a boring world,” Albert said. “For everything else, MasterCard just won’t cut it. American Express isn’t anywhere you want to be.”
Kiara rolled her eyes at Albert. “They’re magic debit cards, basically. Do you know what aether is?”
“Aether is like the Force but without the bugs in our blood,” Aaron said, recalling his answer to the same question from Mallory.
That got some laughs from around the table — a much better response than Aaron had got from the old sorcerer — and Kiara confirmed that his understanding was basically correct.
The Q in Q-cards stood for quintessence. The cards were issued by banks that dealt mostly or solely in aether, which was used as currency by eidolons to trade between themselves for things that weren’t mundane in nature. Aaron was obviously lacking information because he couldn’t figure out how that would even work.
“How do you have an account of a material that is intangible? For that matter, how does something that’s basically omnipresent and infinite have value?”
“Water is pretty much everywhere, so why do people pay for it?” Griffin asked. “Same goes for oxygen, nitrogen, dirt — a whole host of other things that are abundant.”
“So it’s about purity?”
“It’s more accurate to say it’s about density,” Kiara said. “You’re right that aether, in its base state, is both intangible and everywhere, but it can be harvested or refined, for want of a better term, into a material form.”
“Aethril is the metal form and the most concentrated by mass,” Albert explained. “But there are alloys with other precious metals that are also used for currency. Copper, silver, electrum, gold, and platinum.”
“You can remember it like this — Cautious Serpents Earn Glimmering Piles of Aethril,” Griffin offered.
“Collectively, the different forms of aether currency are called lux and the individual unit of measurement for value is called lumens. Lux would be money and lumens would be a specific dollar amount,” Kiara said.
According to his companions, some unknown mechanism of magic in the universe limited the density of aether that could be refined into each metal or alloy. Moreover, it was an almost direct linear progression. Each coin was worth one-ninth of the next in value, so nine coppers were worth a silver, nine silvers a gold, and so on. The exception was electrum, a natural alloy of silver and gold, which was worth three silver and one-third the value of a gold.
“It’s like you guys took this shit straight out of D&D,” Aaron said. “Do these coins glow?”
“No, why?” Kiara asked.
“Because lux means ‘light’ in Latin and a lumen is a unit of measurement for how much light something emits.”
“I didn’t know that, but no, it doesn’t glow,” Kiara said.
Griffin picked up the explanation. “Anyways, lux doesn’t get made in a single, generic denomination. The scaling we mentioned is actually based on minimum and maximum densities for a given alloy to form.”
As Griffin explained it, that value scaling was actually more complicated than it had first seemed. Each alloy could be created with distilled or refined aether on a scale of purity with roughly nine steps. The last place on that scale, the absolute maximum for a given bit of metal, contained as much aether as the minimum needed to create an alloy of the next most valuable metal.
It was all surprisingly specific and quantitative, which Aaron would not have expected from some kind of mana-infused fantasy coin system. As he listened to them try to explain what was known and unknown about creating aether alloys, he was reminded of modern scientific understanding of some celestial phenomena, like black holes. Scientists didn’t necessarily know how or why certain interstellar marvels existed, but they could observe and measure them in fairly finite detail.
Albert finally broke into the increasingly detailed explanation of forging magic coinage. “You get the idea. The important thing to know is that if a piece of lux has a lumen value of five or less, it will be a coin, and above that it will be a small ingot.”
“Sounds a little like chips and plaques at a casino,” Aaron said.
“Or round coins and rectangular bills?” Albert suggested, snickering.
Aaron rubbed a hand across his eyes; he brain really wasn’t operating at peak performance lately. While he doubted these metal ingots were flimsy, paper-thin sheets, it was still a poor reflection on how well he was processing associations that he didn’t think of regular money when they were talking about magic… well, money.
“Sorry, you’re right,” he said. “That’s probably a much better comparison, but my brain isn’t brain-ing at its brain-est, right now.”
“Q-cards make it so we don’t have to carry around pouches full of loose change,” Albert said.
Griffin dangled a small, plain leather pouch above the table. “Plenty of eidolons do still carry money pouches and coin purses, but it’s usually just spending money; most of their cash will be in a bank.”
“Oh!” Albert said, suddenly excited. “Guess who runs the banks?”
Aaron turned on Albert with a scowl. “The answer to that question better not be what I fucking think it is.”
The smaller man seemed taken aback by Aaron’s sudden hostility. Albert glanced around the table and saw both Griffin and Kiara had covered their faces with a hand, concealing their own grimaces. It took a few long, awkward seconds, but Albert finally realized how his question might have sounded.
“No, no, no,” he spat out, chuckling nervously. “No. No way. I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of Jewish people who work in Q-banking, but that’s not what I was trying to get at.”
Kiara put a hand on Albert’s shoulder. “Shut up, idiot.” When Albert stopped babbling, she spoke on his behalf. “He was trying to say that it’s us — the Drakon is heavily involved in quint banking.”
“People give dragons their gold? I mean, aren’t dragons famous for, y’know, hoarding gold and treasure?” Aaron asked.
It turned out Aaron wasn’t completely off-base with his question. His companions told him that, when the Drakon moved to get involved in quint banking in the 14th century, there was a lot of reluctance to trust them with people’s gold. The drakus went to great lengths to prove there was no better group to distinguish between what was and wasn’t theirs — especially when it came to treasure — and that they would defend the wealth of others just as ferociously as they did their own hoards.
Working with other eidolons through aether banking turned out to be one of the primary ways the Drakon had built and maintained good relations with other groups. Historically, they hadn’t had many stable relationships, but their expansion into quint banking built bridges that had never been possible.
“The reason they’re considering holding off on a Q-card is that the Drakon pays each member a kind of stipend,” Kiara said. “That stipend is tied to their position and their activity on behalf of the Society.”
“Why would that be a problem?” Aaron asked.
“Because you’d probably be getting more than anyone except, maybe, Freeman and Mallory,” Albert said. “We have a lot of control in several Q-banks, but it’s not total control; someone might notice one of the largest stipends the Drakon has given out in more than two centuries.”
“Being in banking, it wouldn’t be too hard for them to put two and two together,” Kiara added. “At least one faction out there already seems to know, so it’s best to keep it from spreading.”
Griffin patted Aaron on the arm consolingly. “Once you complete all the doobly-doos and are confirmed it’ll be a different story. Until then, they’d rather not advertise there’s a potential new Primus.”
“Why not just give me less until then?”
“Because drakus are almost pathologically miserly,” Kiara explained. “One of the most ancient pacts that governs the Drakon is that each member will be given their proper due. I don’t think that’s the exact wording, but it’s something like that.”
“Even if you were cool with it, the powers that be still wouldn’t do it. It would undermine one of the foundations that enable drakus to work together as well as we do,” Griffin added.
“In any case, we can cover minor expenses, so we’ll stop by the market after the store and the tailor,” Kiara said.
With a plan in place and breakfast finished, Aaron paid the bill and they left the diner. It was an interesting experience and he was glad they’d gone, but it was definitely a bit over the top for his tastes.