Raulin had been drilled in manners since he was a toddler. That was likely the reason why he wasn’t slumped forward, his fist pressed into his cheek, drool dripping from his open mouth. No, his back was ramrod straight, his arms folded above the table, and his face pointed towards whomever was speaking. He was polite because he needed them. Not for the free meal nor the company, of course, but for the false-front to his fake contract lest the Mantyger discover what he was really doing. And that meant listening to boring speeches.
He waited until Vetrio concluded his report on the finances of the group before he placed his napkin on his plate and stood. “You’re leaving?” Stevrin asked. “We haven’t asked any questions yet.”
Kaliv spoke. “And you haven’t told us what you need us for in your plan. How are we going to distract the Viscount?”
Raulin sat down again. “I’ve had some thoughts about that.” Actually, he hadn’t thought about it at all. “I’m not sure if they’ll work, though. Most of my ideas need a lot of coordination and luck.”
“We can try!” Kaliv said.
He fielded some plans he’d used in previous contracts: an overturned carriage that needed help, a fake mugging, feigned, severe illness. He even offered the plot to one of the Arvonnese alley novels Al had droned on about at one point, where Aubin had just killed a man in self-defense and needed help remembering who he was and with disposing of the corpse. “I’m just not sure any of those will sufficiently distract our target in his carriage as well as his trirec guard.”
“When is he arriving?” Saesara asked.
Raulin pretended to look at his notebook. “Friday.”
“We could meet here on Thursday, then, and have an emergency meeting.”
“That sound good, but only to start. I’ll need us walking around, having you show me some places in the city that might be good to stage the rouse. Perhaps we should meet a little later, say six o’clock?”
There were nods in agreement as he stood again. “Thursday. And I can’t thank you enough for your support.”
He wasn’t far from the restaurant when he heard a familiar voice calling his name. He turned and spotted Saesara walking brusquely to meet him. “Good evening,” he said with a slight bow. “I should point out that this is unfair to your fellow Society member.”
“Rubine’s brother escorts her home,” she said, waving the thought away as she placed her hand on his arm.
“Is it really necessary?”
“This neighborhood is rough. There was a robbery four weeks ago on Maglar Street.”
“One robbery per month is hardly ‘rough’.”
She gave him a shy smile. “Perhaps I just enjoy the company, then.”
“Likewise. I didn’t mean to sound as if I didn’t enjoy our walks home. What have you been up to this week?”
“At work, mostly. Did you know I have a job? The Acripla Gazette hired me as a secretary. I fetch drinks, welcome guests, take notes on stories for our reporters. It doesn’t pay well, but it’s far better than making matchsticks or shoes.”
“The hours are much better, I’m sure.”
She nodded. “I work seven to five-thirty and I get the weekends off. It helps with my dowry.”
“Any prospects?” She was quiet for long enough that Raulin suspected he had gaffed. “If that’s not too forward, that is. I don’t know your customs as well as I should.”
Saesara sighed. “You’ve seen my house. My father is a good man, but he’s never been successful in business. On top of that, my mother is sick and not getting any better.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I should have taken some interest, but I’ve never been one to waste my time going to socials and dances. I have to work.” It was then he realized she always ordered the least expensive meals and water with dinner.
“I admire a woman who puts her family’s needs before her own wants. It’s very mature of you.”
“I do what I have to do,” she said quietly.
“Other than the Society, do you get to do anything for fun?”
She shook her head. “That’s why it and its members mean so much to me.”
“I understand. Do you have to be home now? What if I escorted you to a play or reading?”
Saesara had a proud face, her strong bones reminding him of Telbarisk, but here she looked almost childish with her naked enthusiasm. “I doubt they have tickets left, but Maridy’s is putting on Twenty Nights in Kinto and I’d so love to see it.”
He smirked, the play reminding him of Al’s theatrical walk in their room in Iascond. “If there are tickets and if you promise not to compare me to Persisco, then I’d be happy to take you.”
“But I don’t have any…”
“I know you can’t pay your way; that’s what we were just discussing. It’ll be my treat.”
Thankfully Maridy’s Theater was within the mile radius he needed to keep, though it was close. The show was sold out, but several people had tickets holding and Raulin sweet-talked the box office clerk to selling him two that he admitted wouldn’t show anyway.
In Raulin’s estimation, there were mixed aspects to the play. Some actors were very good, others terrible and hammy. The gaffs made a few cue errors, but were mostly on time. The accompanying musicians played brilliantly. And while the errors stuck out a bit for him, he didn’t care. He watched Saesara when he could, studying her face, pleased at her happiness. He took so much from this world that he was happy to give back in kindness.
The play was two hours, with intermission, and the crowd enthusiastically applauded at its end, though none more energetically than Saesara. She almost lost her hat from the action and needed to pin the mauve and black feathered teardrop to her hair again before they left the theater.
She spent several blocks replaying her favorite scenes before Raulin spied an open shop. “Have you ever had iced cream?” he asked.
“No. Is it good?”
“Let’s find out.” He led her across the street and stood in line behind several other theater patrons, also speaking about the play they had just left. He purchased two cones, one chocolate for himself and vanilla with chips of chocolate for Saesara.
“Eat it slowly,” he warned. She didn’t and winced as she pressed the tips of her free fingers to her forehead. “It’ll pass, just give it a moment.”
It was a few more seconds of scrunched faces and groans before she shook her head. She smiled at his laugh. “I should have heeded your warning.”
“It was worth it,” he said.
They meandered on the streets, talking about the city in casual ways, finishing their cones a block or two from her home. “May I ask you a personal question?” she asked, eyeing the dilapidated house.
“I haven’t minded up to this point.”
“This is a question for Raulin, the man behind the mask, not the trirec.”
“Ask. If I can answer it, I will.”
“Do you get lonely in your career, hopping from city to city, then on to the next place when you’re done?”
“Usually.”
“Not this time? Not now?”
He chose his words carefully. “It’s not a job that affords me the opportunity to make friends or have beaus. Sometimes you find short reprises from planning and searching, a little bit of sunshine in the cold.”
Raulin looked down at her and was surprised to see her face just inches from his and moving closer. She kissed him, pressing her lips against his for just a moment before she stepped back. “I don’t care that you’re Merakian,” she said.
“I…I think you may have gotten the wrong impression from things.” Yes, taken from her position, it might have seemed one way. “I wasn’t expecting anything from you for this evening, or any other night.”
He saw the beginning of tears in her eyes. “I didn’t think you were.” She tried again, but Raulin realized in that moment he’d have a very hard time romancing any woman other than Anladet and he didn’t return the kiss. It was something for more careful consideration at another time. He did try to think from her perspective again and came up with another reason.
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“I think you might be confusing the something with the someone,” he said as he clicked the bottom part of his mask into place.
By this point the tears were falling freely down her cheeks and he did ache to see them. “I’m sorry if I’m not pretty enough or entertaining enough…”
“None of those things are true. I think a tryst between us would lead to regret.” She began to interrupt, but he stopped her. “You may be enamored with a trirec who’s friendly and willing to buy you tickets to a play and answer your questions. Things might have led to a room in a hotel for a night. And then what? I need to leave Acripla when I’m done with my contract. I won’t be back for some time. You know how it is for me.”
“I was willing to have a little bit of love with the pain of loss than nothing,” she said. “I have nothing and plenty of it! Why can’t I have something for once in my life?” She pressed her head against his chest and cried.
He sighed. There had been at least one instance he remembered where an anguished woman had coerced him into giving her what she wanted through tears. Not this time, though. “Come,” he said, gently moving her from his chest and enticing her to walk. “I think it would be better for you to set your sights on a man your age here. You’ll look back and thank me some day.”
She shook her head, but said nothing, not even “good night” before she slammed the door to her home.
* * *
Raulin opened his eyes and rubbed the sleep away. There was a knock at his door, now customary, and he opened it as Chayen. (Things were a lot easier now that he officially did not care if Telbarisk saw his face.) A boy waited, fidgeting with a box. Raulin held up his finger, took the delicate sphere from inside, and handed him the box to return to Anla plus a silver tip.
When the door was closed, he held up the blurry globe to his ear, and crushed it. He smiled as he heard Anla’s voice, though it seemed terse. A long night, perhaps.
“We caught a glimpse of the Man in Black. He had apparently killed a man, Dylar Hersh, and was fleeing the scene at the alley next to Biley’s Bar. This occurred in broad daylight, around two o’clock. We didn’t pursue, though Al would like it known for the record that he could have caught the man easily. We believe that the only connection to finding the Mantyger will be through the Man in Black, since he doesn’t seem to make public appearances. We will continue to quietly look into his whereabouts.”
Raulin waited. She usually said “good luck” as a signature, but there was nothing. He jotted down the name “Dylar Hersh” and did his morning exercises. By the time he finished, Telbarisk was awake.
“Do you need anything?” he asked. “I’ll have the mistress make some sandwiches for you and send them up.”
“Thank you.”
“What are you doing today?”
“Waiting. Kelouya knows I’m watching, but I have no real way to communicate what I want to do, what she needs for me to do.”
Raulin clicked his tongue. “Would you say you have good control over the wind?”
“To some extent.”
“I assume her room has dust. You might be able to ‘write’ with it, if you have precise control. Do you think you can guess what she wants?”
“I’m sure she wants to be free.”
“Yes, but her freedom needs to come at the right time, when she and others can make a change with it. Free her now, tonight, and she’ll just stumble into being caught and re-sentenced, this time with punishment and thicker bars. Work on your communication.”
Tel nodded and stood, drinking plenty of water and stretching. Raulin had demanded that he take better care of himself; a body wasted could hold no mind.
“I need to investigate myself.”
“Have you any progress with the Mantyger?”
“No. He hasn’t appeared, but that’s not really his style. His henchman was spotted by Al and Anla yesterday after he killed someone. I’ll need to check it out today as well as meet with the agent, finally.”
“Good luck,” Tel said, having picked up that phrase sometime recently.
“Thank you. You as well.”
Keta-li was waiting for him in Crimden Park. As he got closer, he noticed that she drummed her fingers on her thighs, turned to look around every few moments until she saw him. She stood, grabbing the briefcase next to her.
“You’re late,” she said, her accent thick.
“I’m busy and apologetic.”
“You need money and information on a contract,” she said, holding up the blue and orange stones he had left in the spot she had requested. “Money first.”
He pulled three orange beads off the string and she gave him three hundred gold.
“I know you,” she said. “You’re the miartha trirec. The trivren tell us that we are bad trirecs if a miartha can do our job better than we can. Perhaps they’ll only hire miartha instead of us Kachilan in the future.”
“I only do well because this is a miarthan land. They don’t question if I’m a trirec when I have no mask because they know miartha aren’t trirecs. If Arvarikor makes all their trirecs miartha, then the people of Gheny and Noh Amair will catch on. The miartha trirecs will have no advantage.”
It didn’t fully make sense; westerners would always highly suspect Merakians of being trirecs, but it didn’t matter. The answer seemed to satisfy Keta-li and she put her briefcase aside. “What contract do you need assistance with?”
“I need all the information you have about the Mantyger.”
She could technically steal his contract, which was why he didn’t say whether he needed to kill him or just identify him. Keta-li didn’t want it anyway. She started laughing lowly. “I do not envy you this mission. What do you know?”
“I know he controls many aspects of the city through forms of coercion. No one knows who he is. If he needs something physically done, such as a murder, he uses a henchman called the Man in Black. That is all I know.”
“There isn’t much else to tell you. Four black.” She was asking for beads that represented four gold, which he handed to her. “The Man in Black is often seen with a shadow, someone else in the vicinity. It is unknown if this is the Mantyger or another henchmen. There are a lot of crimes associated with him, but likely not as many as he’s committed. I’ve noticed that Ghenians do not tell people when they are being bribed or blackmailed; why is this?”
“Because they will have to admit to their neighbors that they did something worth being blackmailed over.”
She snorted. “All they need to do is let their neighbors know they’re being blackmailed and they will be cleared.”
“New here, I take it?” She nodded. “Ghenians are different. They don’t say things like that for fear of their reputations being tarnished. The fault lies not with the blackmailer but the one being blackmailed. Anything else?”
“He has moved away from certain crimes. At one point there was a gang of men that would ask businesses for protection money, or else they would beat the owners up and destroy the store.”
“That would be the extortion I heard about. He doesn’t do this anymore?”
“It has been a few years.”
“Were the men caught?”
“Yes, but later. They received no work for some time, they moved on. Some were stupid and bragged that they had been a part of this gang and the police arrested them. They couldn’t give any information; the Man in Black hired them and he never showed his face.”
“If I find the Man in Black, I could solve this. I doubt it will be easy. Thank you.”
He began to walk away before she stopped him. “There was a lull, about a year and a half ago, when the work dried up for those men. There weren’t as many crimes, no murders for months. This is all I know.”
“I appreciate you meeting me and your information.” He gave the name of the hotel he was staying at in case she learned anything new and walked towards Biley’s Bar after swapping his attire out for Chayen’s.
The alley was a dead-end, probably an unfortunate thing for Dylar Hersh. Raulin could see that a pool of blood had been disturbed; several stained rocks had been kicked from the spot and rested outside the area. He looked around. If there had been a shadow watching the crime, where would he have been? Across the street? Down from one of the windows above? Both buildings had long-term tenants renting the apartments. Likely the shadow had been lurking around somewhere with no fixed point.
Al and Anla didn’t discover anything new and had nothing to report in the following days. Raulin spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in bars and salons, trying to glean some gossip and getting very little, and what he did get was repetitive. He had hoped to have the man caught by the time Thursday night rolled around, but he wasn’t even close to a breakthrough.
He ate a quick dinner then changed into a different outfit and his mask before meeting the RAS in front of the restaurant. They all looked excited, all but Saesara who refused to look at him. He couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or indignant at what had happened between them.
“Thank you all for showing up,” he said, leading them to the wharf, which was only a few blocks from the restaurant. “Now, Fremark will arrive sometime in the evening tomorrow with his trirec in tow. He’ll need to take a hotel room. Assuming that the ship hasn’t provided a porter, I’ll need someone to act as that and steer him to the hotel we want him in. Any volunteers? Anyone know of a high-priced hotel nearby?”
“I’ll do it,” said Kaliv. No one had any suggestions.
Raulin crossed his arms. “Right. So, we need to canvas the neighborhood, maybe a block away, to find a place a viscount would want to stay. Clean, classy, maybe not top tier but something close to it. Split up and meet back here when you find a place.
They left. How am I going to do this? he thought, leaning against a building. He hadn’t thought of the logistics of carrying out this lie. He needed someone to pretend to be the Viscount and someone to be the trirec. This group would know who he was if he portrayed the latter, so he’d have to be Fremark. He’d have to get Al to be the trirec, wearing his mask. It wasn’t something he wanted to do. The wizard was far too keen and Raulin still worried about showing his face to him. What about Anla? They knew some women were trirecs. It could work.
He turned his head and noticed that Saesara hadn’t followed the rest. “Did you have a place in mind?”
“No. I…wanted to apologize for Saturday night. I realized I was ungrateful for your company and acted foolishly.”
“No need to apologize. I did try to tell you that you’d feel differently once you were outside the moment.”
“I disagree,” she said, clasping her hands in front of her. “I haven’t changed my mind, but I will respect your decision.”
“Thank you.” To fill the air, he asked, “Do you have any suggestions?”
She tilted her head in thought. “Don’t use Kaliv as the porter. He’s eager, but he’s like a puppy and he’ll be a giveaway in your plan.”
He nodded and waited.
They returned and gave suggestions. He picked one, not caring too much about it, then began to go over a half-hatched plan involving one person handing the Viscount a note to meet somewhere while two others started a fight in the hallway just outside the room. He took ideas for other distractions, should one not work. He gave the whole thing about a fifth of his attention.
The group split up and planned to meet at five o’clock the next evening. Saesara lagged behind. “Mind if you escort me home, one more time? I can pay.”
“Not necessary, but I will see your back at your abode safe and sound.”
“Thank you. I know I haven’t spoken about it, but the Mantyger frightens me.”
“Why? Your group said that he only targets people in power.”
She hugged herself. “I know. I’m not frightened because of that. It’s because the whole city feels less safe. The Mantyger kills a prominent businessman and a series of unrelated crimes happen right after, crimes that affect women, if you can gather what I’m trying to say.”
“I do. Whatever the crime, I have no problem making sure you’re safe.”
“And I appreciate it. Do you mind walking me to my door tonight?”
“Yes,” he said, “but I do need to return to my room to plan tomorrow better.”
She nodded again. They crossed the street and she led him to the back door she always used, down the alley next to her house. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, pulling her keys from her pocket.
Raulin was about to say good night when he saw a large, dark shadow move from around the corner and walk to Saesara. The man grabbed her by the back of the neck and pulled her away. She cried out in alarm just as Raulin moved to action, sprinting to her aid. “Fight me!” he yelled. “I’m the one you want!”
The man let go of her and turned to face Raulin. “Run!” he yelled to Saesara, who stood still with fright. He whipped out his knives and began circling to the alley, trying to put himself in between the man and Saesara.
He gauged him. Tall, thickly built, wearing as much black as a man could: cowl, mask, gloves, and the rest of his clothing. He realized then who he was facing and that he needed to knock this man out and question him.
The man moved to the left and forward, crowding Raulin back to the house. He didn’t lunge after Saesara, didn’t even acknowledge her, just focused on Raulin. He thought this was strange until he felt the back of his head being hit, wobbled, and blacked out before hitting the cobblestones.