Evidently, Irimina deemed our removal of her first impediment sufficiently discreet, because she soon sent a note to the railcar inviting us for another business tea. Since the weather was so “warm” that a heavy cloak might draw attention from the fashionistas of Brightstone, I opted for a day dress with a large crinoline, under which I hid Grandfather and miscellaneous weaponry. The steel hoops themselves functioned as armor. Far from appreciating the armory suspended around my legs, Faith homed in on the wonderful pouffiness of the skirts.
“Where did you get that?” she asked curiously, circling me so she could admire the precise tailoring.
“This old thing?” I answered in a mocking imitation of a society lady. “I’ve had it forever.”
“I hope that one day I will have one too! I mean, just look at that silk – I can tell from the weave alone that it’s imported from Iruvia, but the shade of blue is something you only achieve with a dye from a shellfish found only off the coast near Alduara….” She blathered on in that vein for a while, tagging along and blocking my way while Ash and I performed one last sweep of the railcar.
“Don’t let the door catch your ruffles on the way out,” I snapped.
Nothing daunted, Faith spent the entire trek to Brightstone haranguing us about how to identify lace from different isles. Then, during the short walk from Irimina’s front door to the parlor, she lectured us about the best types of fabric to use for settee cushions. “Like that!” she exclaimed, pointing at the ones positioned artfully under our employer. “Lady Irimina has impeccable taste in home furnishings!”
Sure, whatever. In my home, we preferred elaborately carved, un-cushioned redwood furniture, the better for enforcing good posture and alertness.
Languidly rising to a sitting position so we had time to admire her figure, Irimina smiled very faintly at Faith and asked us, “Would you like some tea?”
Ash managed to say, “Yes – ” before Faith jumped in.
“Why, there is little I’d love more.” She winked suggestively at the lady, who almost tittered.
Once we each had a dainty little cup of tea – an Iruvian blend of reasonable but not spectacular quality – Irimina got down to business. “Do you have any objections to killing an aristocrat?” she inquired conversationally.
Well, no. Why would we?
“That depends!” Faith tilted her head to a side, as if thinking very hard indeed. “Are they cute?”
But for her impeccable manners, Irimina might have spat out her tea. Looking appalled and revolted, she replied flatly, “No.”
Faith lounged back in her loveseat. “Well, that’s all right, then.”
“Who is it?” I asked, trying to steer us back on track.
“Lady Vhetin Kellis, the wife of Lord Kellis. He’s one of the leviathan hunter captains.” I nodded along, trying to hide my impatience. “She goes to a great deal of parties – all thrown in the name of charitable work, naturally – and attends the theater regularly. Spiregarden Theater here in Brightstone, of course. In short, there is nothing to distinguish her from any other frivolous society lady – except for blackmail.”
Ash pursed his lips censoriously. “Blackmail? We can’t have that. But if we simply remove her, is there a dead man’s switch?”
Irimina shook her head. “I don’t know. But she claims she hasn’t told her husband.”
“We’ll deal with it,” I promised.
“Parties, charities, and theater,” remarked Ash scathingly. “She sounds like a drain on society.”
Obviously the part-demon Tycherosi weren’t into charitable causes, but Irimina looked as if she rather agreed. “She’s involved in an orphanage in Crow’s Foot,” she volunteered. “Strathmill House, I believe it’s called. She hosts tea parties to raise funds for it.”
“That’s even worse! Not only does she waste her own money, but she gets others to throw theirs away too!”
Ash’s protest provided the perfect segue into the matter of our fee. Perhaps her brother had been gambling again, because Irimina offered only six coin for the removal of this blackmailing impediment. At which Ash asked, all innocence and concern, “Was our service last time not satisfactory?”
After some rapid mental calculations, she capitulated graciously. “Will eight coin be sufficient?”
“It does seem in line with our continued quality,” Ash agreed, then looked inquiringly at Faith and me in turn.
Since the last score, I’d worked out a rudimentary system of hand signals, which both Ash and Faith had memorized quickly, so I signed “Yes” under cover of picking up my teacup. Faith, on the other hand, had obviously decided that flirting with Irimina – or annoying me – trumped discretion. She just smiled and nodded openly.
Our business concluded, Ash and I rose as soon as we finished our tea, but Faith stayed right where she was, batting her eyelashes at our client. The lady rang for her butler to show us out and considered Faith, who didn’t look like she intended to go anywhere. “Another round of tea, please,” Irimina ordered.
Under the pretext of adjusting my boot, I urged Ash and butler to go ahead and lingered just outside the doorway. My efforts paid off. From the parlor drifted Faith’s remark, “I haven’t had such good tea since I was an acolyte in the Church of Ecstasy.”
“You were in the Church?” Irimina sounded startled, echoing my own thoughts.
“Yes, just for a little while….” I could practically see Faith’s pout. “You know, it’s not for finding pleasures.”
“No, no, it really isn’t….” Very cautiously, Irimina probed, “Are you still faithful?”
Flirtatiously, Faith replied, “I’m faithful to many things, including you.”
In a coy tone I’d never heard from her, Irimina admitted, “I have secrets the Church would look down on.”
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Faith dismissed her concerns with an airy, “And the Church has secrets I look down on. If you come over here, I’ll happily whisper them in your ear.” Then she burst into laughter as if she’d exceeded even her own tolerance for silliness.
Irimina didn’t chuckle. Instead, she said even more carefully, “Remember the first gentleman?”
“Why yes, how could I possibly forget him? He was so tragically devoured by hungry ghosts!”
As if determined to finish her confession, Irimina continued doggedly, “I, too, have an interest in ghosts. After all, who wouldn’t want to live forever?”
Teasingly, Faith replied, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to fundamentally disagree on that.”
There ensued such a long pause that I risked peering around the doorframe. On opposite ends of the loveseat, the pair sat angled away from each other, looking inexpressibly sad.
Then Faith faked a cheeky grin and diverted the conversation onto lighter topics.
Footsteps heralded the arrival of a maid with fresh tea and scones, so I ducked around a corner and scurried out to the foyer, where Ash was waiting awkwardly next to the coat rack and the butler. “Sorry!” I exclaimed breathlessly. “I got lost! This house is too big!”
They both pretended to believe me.
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Perhaps a half hour after our return, Faith pranced into the railcar looking insufferably pleased with herself.
“You were gone for a long time,” Ash commented mildly. “That tea was very tasty, wasn’t it?”
“The house is full of tasty things,” Faith replied archly.
I filed that away for future consideration, alongside her confession that she’d been a member of the Church of Ecstasy and Irimina’s revelation that she sought immortality. When Faith gave me a sidelong glance, as if daring me to admit to eavesdropping, I changed the subject. “Ash and I have been discussing strategies for the next score.” I made it sound like I was accusing her of sloth.
In answer, she yawned widely and flounced over to a window.
“Instead of just killing Lady Vhetin – which means the Kellises will continue to fritter away their money on charity and theater – why don’t we replace her permanently with someone who can funnel it towards better causes?” proposed Ash. “We’d have to find a way to account for any holes in her memory, though.”
I liked the idea of a steady source of income, particularly after Ash’s revelation that Irimina’s finances were on the wobbly side. “We could fake a mugging and blow to the head when she’s on her way home from the theater,” I suggested. “That would explain the memory lapses.”
From her corner by the window, Faith murmured, “What is it with you and muggings, Isha?”
She had a point there. Maybe I’d lived in Crow’s Foot for too long.
“There’s an option that doesn’t rely on makeup and hair dye.” Ash visibly steeled himself before reminding us tentatively, “My family is from Tycheros….” Groping for the proper phrasing, he explained delicately, “As such, we can use methods that others can’t….”
I shifted nervously in my chair, then mentally kicked myself for revealing my discomfort.
Meeting my eyes squarely, as he had during that first meeting, Ash asked bluntly, “Are you unwilling to use arcane methods to achieve your ends?”
I stayed silent.
“Wait a minute! Are you saying that you can impersonate people?” cried Faith, bounding over from the window and flinging herself into her chair. “Perfectly? Using demon magic?”
“Yes – ”
“Ooooh, can I make my own double? Can you change the form of someone unwilling?” She fired such a barrage of questions at him that he didn’t even have time to answer. “This opens up so many possibilities!” Pulling out a notebook from somewhere under her skirts, she flattened it open to a random page and began listing names frantically.
Meanwhile, I still hadn’t uttered a word.
“What are the long-term plans?” Faith asked eagerly. “I mean, Lady Vhetin’s double is going to have to abandon their own life to take over hers, right? How will we ever find an actress willing to sacrifice endless auditions and poorly-paid waitressing jobs in order to live in a magnificent mansion with swarms of servants and twelve-course meals and tea parties and balls all the time?”
Not taking his eyes off me, Ash asked her, “How well do you like tragic endings?”
“I love them!” enthused Faith. “They’re the best! None of this comedy nonsense!”
“Well, my plan is to have my sister Tesslyn impersonate Lady Vhetin. Tess will channel all the Kellis money to our cult, and then, when we’re done with her, I will ruin her.” The last he pronounced with a grimly satisfied smile.
Personally, I didn’t care what he did to the rest of the Slanes or their cult (although I suspected that That Which Hungers would approve). What mattered to me was the demonic influence part. “Tell me more about the transformation process,” I broke in. “What exactly will your sister need to do? Is this something in her blood from her, er, heritage? Or will she need to consort with demons?”
“Of course she won’t!” cried Faith energetically. “Isha, this is one of those questions – the ones you always answer ‘No’ to regardless of what the truth is.”
“No,” replied Ash flatly. “She’s not going to summon any demons. This is something in our blood. She can just draw on it.”
“So she won’t need to perform any demon summoning rituals?” Faith asked, looking crestfallen.
“No,” he said definitively. “No demon summoning rituals.”
I thought of the Demon Princes and the way they ruled U’Duasha through human servitors, of Ixis whispering lie after lie from his cracked crystal spire, of the endless cycles of blood vengeance that mangled my family. I remembered my theft of Grandfather, the assassins sent after me by my own kin, my flight across an isle and a half only to fetch up here, in a broken-down railcar with a part-demon partner.
But then I recalled Ash dragging me out of the haunted house to save me from specters; Ash surveilling Gaddoc Rail and the Silver Stag Casino with me, our abilities playing off each other in perfect harmony; Ash creating a distraction outside the brothel so Faith and I could escape first. Reluctantly, I decided to trust him.
“Okay. Fine. If you must.”
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I tailed him to his meeting with his sister anyway.
He’d chosen an abandoned office near the Old Rail Yard, which made it all too easy for me to creep after him and crouch under the warped window, listening as hard as I could. Tesslyn Slane arrived well after Ash did, keeping him waiting as part of an unmistakable familial power play.
“Hello, sister,” Ash greeted her through gritted teeth. “How are you doing today?”
Peeking over the window ledge, I saw him sitting ramrod straight in an old chair while a hooded and cloaked figure hovered impatiently by the door.
“Get to the point,” Tesslyn snapped. “I’m not interested in platitudes.” Betraying faint relief that they could skip the small talk, Ash outlined our plan for killing and replacing Vhetin, and at the end, she said curtly, “I know the Kellis family. What I want to know is – what’s in it for you?”
Offended that she even needed to ask, Ash retorted, “Well, lots of money, for a start.”
She snorted. “What makes you think I’d share it with you? What makes you think I need you and your little crewmates for this job? I can handle the replacement perfectly well myself.”
Ash literally bared his teeth. “I’d be happy to watch you fail and then take over your position in the family.” The siblings glared at each other in a brief stand-off before he removed a precisely-folded sheet of paper from his pocket and extended it like an olive branch. “Here. Your finances. Look,” he said placatingly, “you’re rich already, but you could be even richer. And you’re a Slane. We’re all greedy.”
The hooded figure angled its head towards the figures on the paper, as if Tesslyn were calculating how much she could augment them with the Kellis family fortune. Sounding less hostile, she reiterated, “I still don’t see why I need to cut you and your crew in.”
This time Ash was ready. He replied promptly, “Because you need us to replace Lady Vhetin smoothly. We specialize in…discreet removals. You could, of course, try to do everything yourself, but what if you left loose ends? What if the Kellises investigated and discovered you’re a fraud? Better to have more eyes and brains working on the problem.” He wheedled, “Think of all that coin, going to waste on charity tea parties.”
“Indeed,” she mused. “Very well. What do you want?”
“Half of the Kellis fortune.”
Nasty, demonic laughter filled the room to overflowing. “Try again, brother. You may have set up this opportunity, but I am the one who will bear the risk going forward.”
Somewhat defensively, Ash said, “Well, I had to start bargaining somewhere.”
After an aggressive, rapid-fire haggling session, they settled on a division that would provide a steady stream of income to our crew, with Tesslyn retaining the greater portion for herself.
“Once we have a replacement plan, I’ll contact you,” Ash promised.
“I look forward to it.” Tesslyn sounded like a judge of House Ankhuset pronouncing a death sentence.
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