Apparently, fate had decided that I wasn’t going to be able to stay out of my suit for long. It was my only piece of clothing that you’d even remotely consider ‘high class’, even if suits were relatively mundane back on Earth. Here, though, owning a proper suit as nice as my own was a massive social statement.
Not only was it about money, but it was also about the power it represented, especially with it being a stranger derivative of the formal dress of the day. It signified that I was willing to push boundaries, to defy what the status quo might be, but also not so much that I was willing to abandon it all together; that was a different social power altogether if you could use it right.
The talk with the small collective that comprised the staff of the Skinned Lizard was enlightening. Once we had got into the nuts and bolts of the social dynamics or Crossroads, things became far more interesting for me. Lauka knew a thing or two about the gangs, and I’m sure she understood their social webs better than Tek or I did, though the Gek informant, Venn, probably knew a fair amount himself. Screw paying him for it though, that would ruin half the fun of learning!
Tek knew far more about the social web of the upper class, or really the links between the officials and the people with deep enough pockets to pay them off to be as corrupt as they are. Of course, at the top of the officials there was a whole conglomerate of people lining their pockets with the proceeds that come from slavery.
Apparently, much of this information came from him just being a hired hand, lifting boxes and unpacking carriages, which he then moved into being hired by officials to help move boxes during inspections. Apparently, the sheer number of slaves he had seen common merchants bring through from Vahla had been astounding, most of them trying to do so without sweetening the deal for the officials. If they weren’t being paid to be nice the officials, so concerned with the ‘peace of Crossroads’ were actually quite violent. Who would have guessed?
So, what was I up to? Simple, I was fishing.
Not in the traditional sense, of course. You don’t go fishing in a nice suit unless you’re a psychopath, but fishing in the social sense.
The crew had been remarkably unhelpful in telling me what I should do. Probably because none of them had even thought they would manage to ‘convince’ someone with any social prowess to join their scrappy band of revolutionaries. There were basically no plans because no plans were possible, but with me here plans were more than possible.
Hence, I sat in a nice bar in the northern most section of the city. I hadn’t gone exploring in the wealthier districts prior to today, but it didn’t take me long to find the spot I was looking for. My natural empathy was, unsurprisingly, extremely helpful in finding where I wanted to be, or rather who I wanted to be around.
I had scoured the main streets but most of the bars, even on the high end of things, were still catering towards travellers. Extraordinarily rich travellers, of course, but travellers nonetheless. Sure, there was likely a certain amount of political power that you’d have to own to be in places like that within Crossroads, and maybe even a few local faces would make short appearances there, but that seemed like looking for a saltwater fish in a lake.
Quickly I had resorted to calmly wandering the streets of the northern sectors, keeping my empathy feelers out. It had been a skill that I’d slowly gained proficiency in over time, especially as I very slowly got better at utilising ether and shifting. An hour or so later, I managed to find what I was looking for.
There was a specific set of emotions that defined a club with exclusivity. Snobbishness, sure. There was a lot of that around these parts, though. What really defined the exclusive club in this sort of area was the presence of openness. You have to understand, the pressure on the upper class was extremely high, having their positions constantly assailed from every direction; politically, financially, emotionally. Thus, if there is a public place that displays any degree of openness, then you’re in the right spot.
And boy was I in the right spot. As I walked to the door of the establishment, a grand, hulking thing that had its own bulky doorman, I washed my empathy over the building gently and felt the distinctly young minds inside. A club for the youth of the rich and powerful.
“One moment, sir.” The bulky doorman said, dressed in a well-made set of clothing, though purposefully a little dour in colour. “Do you have a recommendation from one of your peerage tonight?” I looked into the man’s face with a critical eye.
“You doubt my station?” I asked simply. The man’s eyebrow twitched, mostly because it was the fakest sounding answer you could give in a situation like this. The only thing stopping him from knocking me out was the flatness of my tone.
“Of course not, good sir. I simply have the confidence of your peers inside that I would keep those who wish to intrude out.” The doorman spoke very carefully, his brow furrowing with concentration as he spoke. I could only imagine what bullshit some shitty kid has tried to pull with his father’s influence. It only takes being burnt once for the overly polite and lawyerlike speech to make an appearance.
“Ah, I understand.” The doorman, while entirely unchanged visually, let out an internal sigh of relief. “However, I’m afraid my father has organised meeting between me and a client. It would be very disrespectful of their time if I merely left now, would it not?” I asked gently, making the sigh quickly turn from relief to a groan.
“Sir, I can’t let you in. Business is not facilitated inside of the Brightspark.” There was no signage on the outside of the building, so the name was news to me. However, I changed tactics a little, giving the man a slight look of condescension. We both knew that business not being facilitated here was horseshit and I was calling him out on it. I closed my eyes for a moment and sighing with grace—when I opened my eyes again, I let my face go dead, using my eyes as a piercing weapon.
“I want you to listen very carefully to what I say next.” I stated calmly, my voice staying at an even inside volume. There was a little jolt of panic in the man’s mind, but it passed as I spread out my aura around me, subsuming the man into my domain. He nodded affirmatively, unsure at how he could feel threatened and safe at the same moment.
“My father,” I placed as much ‘subtle’ emphasis on that word as possible, “set up a meeting with a client,” just as much emphasis again, “so that I may provide them with services. It would be awfully bad if I were to miss this meeting.”
It didn’t take much of that sentence for realisation to dawn on the man’s face. Of course, he had no idea what services I would be offering, or who my ‘father’ was, but the simple doorman wasn’t being paid enough to deal with the backlash that came along with any of the implied possibilities.
Of course, I didn’t know either, but he didn’t have to know that.
“I see, sir.” He said woodenly, before hesitating a moment. He had probably been ordered and been paid a lot of money to stand guard here, but not enough to risk life or limb for the job. “I will let you in, then,”
I nodded easily, as if the action was preordained instead of manufactured in the moment. The man didn’t keep me waiting, opening the heavy door just enough to let myself and him through, and leading me towards the main room.
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I say the main room because there was multiple, the main room having many people in it, all of them getting hopelessly wasted amongst their same age peers. However, I had higher aspirations than that.
I coughed gently, pulling the attention of the doorman who wanted as little to do with me as physically possible. As he looked at me, I pointed upwards towards the high roof above us both. A simple gesture for a simple request.
‘Take me to the other rooms.’
I was taken up a few flights of stairs, each staircase leading to a new floor of wondrous architecture. Every floor was a slight improvement on the last, though the floor that I was aiming for was the fourth. Upon arriving up the last flight of stairs, the lavish fourth floor was a grand improvement on the second and third, filled with red carpets, astounding carvings in simple wooden supports, paintings, lanterns, and everything else that made a space as beautiful as this.
The doorman, now extremely uncomfortable even being here, nervously looked at me and towards the next flight of stairs, terrified that I might choose to go up even further. There was no doubt why, there were two more floors in which there were only a few handfuls of people, maximum. The very top floor only housed one person.
To go up would be truly setting foot in the extremely exclusive areas, the kind of place that you needed actual recognition to penetrate. Trying to get myself into the fifth floor would probably lead to there being a death warrant on my head.
“That’ll be enough.” I said simply, trying not to smile at the man’s sudden relief. I slipped a hand into my pocket and pulled three bronze hum, which was a sizeable enough tip for the doorman. After a mumbled pleasantry, he quickly made his way back down the stairs, possibly preparing to run for the hills if someone came back out looking for his head.
I didn’t dally about from there, making a beeline down the warm and luxurious hallway and into the fourth floor’s entertainment room. It goes to show just how exclusive this floor is, because as I opened the door and walked inside with a practiced grace, every set of eyes turned towards me.
Initially, the eyes were filled with a curiosity, looking for a familiar face, as most that come to this location are. So imagine the surprise when a man walks in, a face no one has seen before, in a suit that is odd and ‘exotic’, but with the ease and confidence of someone who belongs?
The room was full of truly luxuriant chairs, the main colour of the room being a warm red and the chairs following suit. Each of the room’s inhabitants, somewhere around forty, were sitting in their own cliques—aside from a few who flittered easily from one group to the next. My presence in the room brought a whole new dynamic into play.
As soon as I sat in an open booth in the middle of the room, an area mostly barren due to the private and intimate nature of the venue, the quietest gossiping in the world began. Sometimes I forget just how powerful my powers were socially, being a mix of a natural empath and a literal Demigod of the Hearth, but now my powers shone as bright as they ever had.
Each word, or even gesture, made about me somehow reached my recognition. I didn’t need to turn to look at the man in the corner who gave dangerous look at another man to his left, one far more trained in the sword than he is. I didn’t need to listen hard to hear the whispers of the girls in the corner who were cross referencing social circles to see if anyone of their friends, or their friend’s friends, knew of me. They didn’t.
Another moment of attention was when I looked towards the bartender, a slightly larger but jovial looking man, and flicked my hand casually while making eye contact. It was a small and exceedingly general gesture, but one that had formed in this little club long ago, one that simply meant, ‘Surprise me.’
It wasn’t a shock that I knew the hand signal that the bar used, but it was enough to raise eyebrows, making me an even more interesting target. I could feel the eyes of the particularly keep socialites already training themselves on me, but I wanted to remove some of the more predatory attention. Attracting that sort of attention would only lead to a fight of some sort, and that would get me nowhere good.
As the bartender smoothly completed my drink, he walked over to my table with an air of dignity and quietly placed the drink on my table. It was a multicoloured mess of liquids within a very square glass. It looked thoroughly unappetising, but just as with the small gesture from earlier, my link to the Hearth fed me all sorts of interesting information. With a casual flick of my hand, I grabbed the long spoon from the arrangement of cutlery on the table and stirred quickly, but without hitting the sides of the glass.
While the mess of liquid quickly blended and slowly began to sparkle, I spoke to the bartender next to me with unguarded volume.
“A man of the Hearth, I see.” I stated. The man rose an eyebrow, though the surprise inside his chest was unmistakable. He almost stammered but reigned in the surprise in much the same way as Tek would have.
“I was not aware that my faith was obvious, or common knowledge, sir.” I shook my head with a mock dismay, lifting the still mixing drink and sipping from its swirling contents. The liquid fizzed gently inside of my mouth; the cacophony of tastes akin to a what an orchestra is for sound.
“How could it not be, when you serve Ehra’s own cocktail?” I took another sip as I eyed the man to my side. He was surprised beyond belief and did the best he could to keep it in, but it was enough for the army of elite socialites within the room to see the emotion.
“You… know of Him?” He said, his tone hushed. I did and I didn’t. To me Ehra, and even Lauka’s Kaliha, were like much older siblings. As if I had heard about them and their exploits my entire life, being well into their adulthood by the time I was born, but enough to know their names and roughly who they are.
“I know, and am friends, with many.” I replied, which was almost a boldfaced lie, if I didn’t consider the entirety of the Hearth Court. The bartender took a shaky intake of breath, steeling himself to cross the boundaries that his station would allow.
“And he still lives on?” The man said, a note of hopefulness colouring his words. I took another sip before responding, tasting the change as the ingredients separated into its splotchy blend of colours. A thousand tastes in one drink, all depending on how hard you stirred it, or if you stir it at all. A drink inspired directly by a God himself.
“Why are you still in this little room, serving drinks to the not-quite-nobility of Crossroads, Fehlen?” My voice was filled with that power that always reared its head when the Hearth empowered my actions. Of course, I had the distinct feeling that Ehra was putting forth his own power at this moment.
“I– what?” The man said, dumbstruck. I had called him by his true name of course, whatever that name might, or might not mean. It was simply the name he was hiding under the guise of another.
“Ehra is alive, if slowly wasting away as his followers die and new ones lose their faith in a waning God. Maybe it’s time that you do something about that.” I turned an eye to the bartender and knew that it was glowing with its golden fire. The man gulped, pushing down the wave of emotion as he understood just what had happened to him in the most unlikely of places.
I didn’t particularly like being used by a God I barely knew as a way to get a message across to one of his followers, and give them a quest to rejuvenate his following, but that God was a brother—however estranged—and as Fehlen stood beside my table, he came to his own conclusion. He bowed to me deeply, and then strode out of the room with a newfound purpose. The beginning of a lifelong devotion to Ehra, God of the Soothing Soul.
The room, understandably, was in utter shock. I doubt they’d seen so much emotion on the face of the bartender under any other circumstance. What it did do, however, was kill the interest of the small-time socialites—giving them the impression that I was way out of their league—and only leaving those who had no reason to think that they weren’t in my league.
So, when a beautiful young lady approached me, I knew she was a cut above the others. With skin far darker than I’d ever seen on a person, most of the contours of her body clearly displayed instead by the reflection of the soft lighting, it only leant further to her mystique. Her dress, a much lighter purple, fit her well and the wide, white smile broke her powerfully featured face with genuine cheer.
She sat herself at the table without introduction, letting me know straight away that she has social power even in this room of the elite, which was either a bluff or was something she actually had. The inner confidence told me that the striking woman wasn’t bluffing, though. Not even a little.
“I haven’t seen you around town, nor do I know anyone who knows you. And I personally know almost everyone, for better or for worse.” Her smile never faltered, even as her decisive words cut right to the heart of the issue. A woman after my own heart. She wasn’t done, I could feel more words within her—ready to nail me to the cross—so I stirred my drink again, making the very last of it spin with far more speed than the much larger body of it ever had.
“So, either you managed to get an invitation from someone up there, or…” She pointed upwards towards the fifth floor and trailed off dramatically, letting her stark white eyes almost glow against the contrast of her skin. I lifted the cup to my mouth, quickly imbibing the last of the drink, and basking in the astounding mess of tastes that my brother had helped to inspire. She waited patiently for me to finish, so I decided to be courteous and cut right to the chase, just as she had done.
“Oh no, I conned my way in here, of course.”