Arc 9: Chapter 5: Wallflower |
The Candrian’s establishment was four floors, plus the roof with its pavilion and commanding view. The lowest level was an art gallery and wine bar, little more than an inviting facade. The second level held the common room and some private spaces for conversation, gambling, shows, and business. The third and fourth floors were the brothel.
I was well familiar with those halls, with the phantom noises of satisfied lovers, the fragrant scents of incense and perfume, the atmosphere of expelled lusts and disquiet wants. I’d once swam through them like a shark through blooded water, not long ago.
Ten years. It had passed so quickly, and yet so much had happened within that brief span, a whole life I’d lived. I was in no small part grateful to the alchemist Urizen for bringing me to this sweet nightmare, and hoped his soul recalled my visage in whichever gaol it burned in.
I found the Candrian on the second level. There were few guests, but it was late and most of them were probably upstairs, already lost in post-coital stupors with heads full of wine. The maestro of those pleasures spoke to a dreary looking official in the blue tunic of a Guild clerk. The young man did not look happy to be up at that late hour in that place, and I did not take him for a customer.
The Candrian waved him off, then noticed me waiting by the stairwell. The master of the City’s finest pleasurehouse beckoned me over, dipping his elegant girth into a bow as I approached.
“Ah, my lovely demonet!” The Candrian spread his arms out as though he were greeting me for the first time that night rather than the second. “Please tell me you are here to take me up on my offer?”
I smiled and tilted my head to him. All these years, and I still did not know exactly what he was. Many assumed he was a homonculus of some kind, or perhaps an alchemist ousted by the Guilds for some mishap. Perhaps the very one that had turned his skin blue.
“I am afraid not, Candrian. You said you wished to speak to me? Some kind of trouble?”
Though I could not see his sigh through the smiling mask, it was in his shoulders and the slump of his broad neck. “Ah. That. I have not seen you in months, my thorned flower, and had hoped to avoid unpleasant topics.”
“I would prefer you think of me as your father!” The Candrian exclaimed in mock affront. “Did I not take you in off the streets, feed you, give you comfort and a family?!”
“You gave me a silk bed and a legion of hungry paramours,” I reminded him, not adding that no mortal was old enough to be my father. I smiled to take the sting from the words. “But I am grateful to you. That is why I desire to offer my help. What was that above? Is someone beating the paphians, or threatening to?”
Unkind hands, were his own words.
The Candrian’s manner became grim, and he ushered me to some cushioned seats at the corner of the common room. We sat, and the man — if he truly was one — took some time to gather his thoughts.
“It began not long ago,” he said in a quiet voice. “I started allowing the paphians to take personal calls outside the house.”
My lips formed a thin line at that. “I distinctly recall you forbidding that very thing, a decision I agreed with. What were you thinking?”
Inside the house itself, any trouble from the patrons could be swiftly and harshly dealt with. This was no seedy back-alley taverna, but one of the most respected establishments in the city. The Candrian had arrangements with the Guilds and several Lodges. His paphians were clean and healthy, and given the services of chimera-chirurgeons with known acumens to modify them if they wished.
Almost all of them took this service, as unaltered humanity was considered boorish in Rot Voraag, a mark of either poverty or disablement. Even the meanest whore in the slums would offer herself to the knives and potions of aspiring krasis, often as the experimental test subjects favored by desperate or unscrupulous novices. But the Candrian’s people received good, trustworthy service, and rarely ended up disfigured or worse.
This also meant everything that happened inside these perfumed walls was watched. The paphians looked out for one another, were encouraged to, and clientèle that abused them were quickly abused in return, then just as swiftly exiled.
Not so when they left the safety of these walls, however. Outside, the Candrian’s creatures, some of the most alluring and attractive in all the city, perhaps all of Greater Agharra, were vulnerable to the most vicious predators.
The Candrian, who knew all of this as well as I did, threw his hands up in a helpless gesture. “I know! I know it, Shyora, but you also know as well as I do that the paphians will leave this house and seek private patrons with or without my leave! They always have, despite my warnings, so I decided to at least take some measures. I established a rotation, had them travel in groups… I even demanded they mark a calendar and provide the addresses of their customers. This way, I could at least keep some track of the chaos.”
I nodded along with his words. It made sense. I’d even drafted a similar system in my thoughts in the past, but became distracted from the flesh trade before doing anything with it. The fact I’d intended to use it to usurp the Candrian’s business had also played a factor in my reticence, something that seemed ironic now considering his offer to make me madam.
“It worked for a while,” the Candrian continued. “It worked well! I made it an official service of the brothel, charged extra for the privilege of being entertained in people’s own homes and businesses. The paphians were happy, it was bringing in good coin, and then…” His shoulders slumped and he bowed his head. “Then the attacks began. It started small, I thought just more city violence. I hired a Justikar to see to it, but he found nothing. I had to convince him not to fall on his own sword.”
I smiled at that, pleased at the image it conjured. The Justikars were one of the city’s more powerful factions, with their own Lodge. There was no official police force in Rot Voraag, no law save the Exalted’s whims, and cruel anarchy often ruled beneath the shadow of his palace. The Justikars were self-appointed punishers of the wicked and defenders of the weak, but in truth were little more than a bloodthirsty tribe of vigilantes, in some ways just as brutal and devoid of mercy as the Eusites.
Where Fell’s fellow outworlders killed for the pleasure of killing and to venerate their dark deity, the Justikars did it for a far more nebulous notion — their sense of justice.
I’d seduced one during my early days in the city. I hadn’t checked on her in a while, but heard she was still hunting me, intent on punishing “Crimes against the heart.”
Oh, I loved this city!
“It got worse,” the Candrian continued. “There was a burglary. We never found the culprit or culprits, but one of the paphians and their client were butchered and displayed in their room. It was horrible… Later, one of the others who’d been missing for weeks showed up at my door without his arms or legs. They’d left him alive. Without his tongue.”
I frowned at that. “Then they intended him to be the message. Of course, you had a krasis grow him a new tongue and new limbs?”
The Candrian’s posture shifted in what was to him a wince. “Of course, it was the first thing I attempted… But even once he regained his ability to speak, the man refused to. He tried to kill himself multiple times.”
“Did he succeed?” I asked.
“No,” the Candrian said. “He is currently under the care of an acquaintance of mine, an independent practitioner in the Nails. The man has an interest in ailments of the mind, and even if he can’t do something for poor Dedo…”
He shrugged, and I understood his meaning. I imagined this mind-surgeon had paid well for the chance at obtaining a valuable subject.
I pondered all of this, and came to the only obvious conclusion. “Someone is trying to destroy you.”
The Candrian scoffed. “If that was their intent, all they need do is burn this place to the ground. No, this feels too sadistic. They are terrorizing my people.”
They. It might have been a group, but I needed more information. A serial killer, perhaps, some madman with a vendetta against the brothel? It might have even been some kind of twisted courtship directed at one of the paphians, or even one of their own number responsible for the crimes. Rot Voraag was riddled with madness, both mundane and supernatural, and the explanations for this macabre crusade could be legion.
“I could discover more for you,” I said, then let my voice drop to a near murmur. “But my methods might hardly be more gentle than the crime.”
The muscles of the Candrian’s voluminous neck shifted as he swallowed. He knew what I was as well, and though few in the city outside the alchemists and individuals like Didikas understood the breadth of that, he had some fear of me.
“You…” He made a show of putting iron into his voice. “You will hurt none of mine?”
“It is best you not know the details,” I told him in a cool voice. “I will leave all I touch intact… so long as they are yours. And before you ask, I will not make a bargain of it. I am no Zosite, and such things do not bind me. All that said, do you still wish my help?”
The Candrian nodded. “I am desperate,” he admitted, then chuckled. “What a thing to say to a devil!”
“I am worse than any devil, Candrian. But I have a fondness for this place, and will protect it. Besides, the Lodge meets here.”
Even a treacherous ophidian like me could understand the value of having a den and a tribe. I had no wish to lounge over an empty city.
I took my leave of him then. That left me with many hours before sunup and a new quandary to ponder. Murdered prostitutes, an angry slaver, Ekasne’s elevation, and my own exposure to the city. No more operating solely in the shadows, not as I had before. It was a change.
Karvessa would be a problem, but one I could afford to ignore for the time being. She and the other gorgons would be angry, but there were greater powers than they, and I was fairly certain my fangs held more venom.
Of greater concern was the court and the new attentions that would be on me. As Ekasne took in clients and interacted outside our usual spheres, I would need to proceed with a mixture of daring and caution.
It was a game I enjoyed and knew well. I felt little trepidation, only a prickling energy. There was nothing I could do concerning my ambitions as I waited for the dice to fall, but I needed an outlet for this shiver in my spine.
Perhaps I would begin helping the Candrian that night. The paphians and their lovers would already be abed, save perhaps the most enthusiastic ones, and their exhausted dreams would be open to me. It had been a long time since I’d swam through those seas, or dipped beneath their surface into the strange realms beneath.
Mortals like to think of reality as a thing of wide spaces, of height, but in truth it is a thing of impossible depths. I, who had crawled out of perhaps the deepest of those depths, knew this truth well.
As I contemplated this, moving to the stairs that would lead me up to the room I knew the Candrian still kept unoccupied for me, I ran into Arlee. She had come down from the roof, and upon seeing me made a quick effort to school her features. I saw the telltale signs — her surprise, followed by the deliberate motions transforming it into a shy and inviting smile. The anxious flutter of her large, useless wings. While her natural mannerisms were not so serpentine as mine, the chimeric paphian had learned well how to mask.
“Shy!” Her smile was a touch too stiff. “I was just looking for you.”
Liar, I thought, but adopted a smile of my own and I said, “Were you?”
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“Yes,” Arlee said with a small laugh no doubt meant to invoke the loose humor of one fevered from wine. Her artificial teeth, fashioned of shining white pearl, almost glowed as she flashed them. She was taller than me by a good deal, that height and her long limbs the product of her modifications just as much as her alabaster skin and gemstone incisors.
Arlee — called Winged Arlee by many in the Bow Quarter — was one of the brothel’s paphians, and like many of Rot Voraag’s sex workers she’d allowed the alchemists to modify her to better lure customers. She had not been born with alabaster skin, pearl teeth, or opaline eyes. Nor had she come into this world with silken hair or the great downy wings of a seraphim herald.
I doubted she’d even possessed that saintly cast to her beauty before, that it too was born of a Guild chirurgeon’s aesthetic preferences.
Arlee leaned closer to me as she spoke. “Pazé and Tej want to share me tonight. I thought… I know it’s been a long time, and you aren’t in the trade anymore, but if you wanted to join us…” Her words became low and companionable. “It could be like old times. Today was a good day, and worth celebrating, don’t you think?”
This caught me off guard almost as much as the Candrian’s unexpected invitation earlier that night. When I’d still worked in the house, I’d done so as the succubus — the brothel catered to many, both local and abroad, drawn by the widespread rumor that Rot Voraag offered sinful fruits one could not taste anywhere else in all the world. Those rumors were largely true, and I’d found it novel to present as I was.
But I had shared my position as the favored paphian with Arlee for many of those years. She was originally a noble’s daughter sold to the flesh trade to pay off debt, and the Candrian had paid well to remake her.
The Candrian’s Angel, they called her, and indeed she looked the part.
I, who had supped on the blood and flesh of true angels during the Sack, knew her for what she was; merely mortal, and afraid. Afraid of getting older, or becoming sick, of meeting the wrong client and being harmed too badly to continue working. Frightened of that hungry city and all its horrors.
Afraid of me. While I’d still worked at the brothel, the Candrian had often presented us as a matched set — the demon and the angel, two otherworldly beauties, one with wings of sinew and the other with wings of feather. We’d fulfilled the salacious fantasies of many clients willing to pay fortunes for the privilege.
I also knew that Arlee did not look on those nights with fondness. Though great care had gone into her make, she was no different from any of the other human-chimera spat out by Guild laboratories. Just another harpy, if a fair one.
Whereas I was the real thing, a true demon, and that could not be hidden in such intimate encounters. My passions had frightened her.
So, knowing this, I could not understand this sudden invitation. She seemed to have been lying when she said she sought me out. Had I misjudged?
No, I could smell mortal lies. Which meant she’d made the offer unmeditated, or perhaps lied to herself. Was there no ulterior motive? Was she simply willing to suffer my touch again, for the sake of some fashion of nostalgia? Or was there some other angle I’d missed?
“Shyora?”
Arlee’s voice drew me from my reverie. She was looking at me with unease, and I realized I’d dropped my mask, become blank and unexpressive. To her, it would have looked almost serpentine, perhaps even insectile.
“Not tonight, I’m afraid.” I adopted an apologetic look. “Tej hasn’t the stomach for my play, and Pazé is still angry at me for that business at Jaak’s. Best I not intrude on your leisure.”
“Oh. Alright.” Arlee did not quite manage to hide her relief, perplexing me even more. Her smile became more warmer, her posture more relaxed. “Well, don’t be a stranger, alright? I’ve been worried about you.”
“Why would you be worried about me?” I asked the fake angel.
Arlee frowned as though she thought me simple. “Because you’re my friend, Shy. We worked together for years… Kiln’s Breath, we practically shared the same room that whole time!” She blushed and laughed, and I was impressed at her skill. “And now you’re running about the city, diving headfirst into Lodge intrigue, concocting all sorts of schemes and strategies… Half the house thinks you’re just making it up as you go along, and the other half think you’re going to be Queen of Rot Voraag one day.”
Well, that was the plan. Instead of saying as much, I tilted my head to one side. “And this bothers you?”
She reached out, hesitant, and placed a hand on my shoulder. She was much stronger than her slender build suggested, her fingers warm and solid. “You are like a sister to me, Shy…”
Sisterly, are we? I wondered privately, but let her continue.
“…I worry about you. So do Ekasne and the others, though they won’t say it. We just want you to be… Well. We all care about you.”
Not knowing what else to do, I fell back on my instincts and placed my own cold hand over her warm one, adopting a reassuring smile. “And I you, sister. I will be fine. As for now, you and I may be seeing more of one another after all. The Candrian has asked me to look into some trouble the house is experiencing.”
Arlee’s face turned grim. “The murders.”
I shook my head. “No one thought it worth mentioning?”
“You haven’t been here for some time,” Arlee said, not quite accusing. “We meant to tell you, but we didn’t want to upset Ekasne, not today.”
That was sensible. Sighing I said, “I intend to look into it, if only to see if there is some new player in the game. Besides, this place is mine.” I did not falsify all the coldness in my tone then. “No one will touch it and walk away unbitten.”
Arlee nodded. “So you are still our demon?”
“Just as I can see you are still their angel.” I smiled at her. “Now, go see to the twins. You know how impatient they get, and we don’t want them shanking each other over some accusation one or both of them scared you off.”
Arlee giggled, and I could tell it was not false that time. “Yes. You’re right. Good night, love.”
She hugged me with enough force that her marble strength made my bones creak. I returned the hug awkwardly, then she was off, her brilliant wings streaming behind her like a cloak.
It had been a strange day. Usually my lusts were more directed, even obsessive, but now they were torn in so many directions as to make me dizzy. Perhaps it was the wine.
Following my unexpected and interesting encounter with Arlee, I took to shadow-shape and melted into the depths of the Candrian’s House.
To call that form my “shadow shape” is perhaps misleading, though it would seem as such to any observers. My vessel was flesh and bone, not merely spirit, but my own essence filled its every atom. Over the decade since my transposition into the mortal coil, I’d remade that body in my preferred image.
My current guise had little in common with the young paphian the alchemist Urizen had so ungently shoved my spirit inside, having been modified by my own will. I was taller than she and looked old as she would have had she lived, a woman in her mid twenties with a slim build, my hair and eyes holding a less natural hue. Not unlike the changes forced on Arlee, in truth.
I was often tweaking my form, trying to find the elusive balance of my preference. My kind are amongst the most vain of all Abgrûdai , and each of us aspires to be unique — a status only our vicious broodmothers have truly obtained. Every demon is singular, but during our timeless dwelling in the Abyss we have formed tribes and likenesses.
Another demon once told me that the first succubi were proud seraphim banished from Heaven, hounded into the deepest chasms of Creation by their own kind. They were the seducers and the banes of ancient man, and since then there have always been winged temptresses luring errant planewalkers across boundaries they should not tread.
I do not believe I was born an angel. I was young when the war on Heaven began, a creature of instinct and impulse, motivated more by bloodlust and excitement than ageless hate like many of the rest. Perhaps I still was.
But I digress.
The changes were not merely superficial. Beneath my comely facade, my form was as ichorous as the proto-cosmic sludge still bubbling at the edges of many wild realms. I let my flesh melt into that ichor, became something halfway between a vapor and a slithering liquid. Scentless, soundless, though still capable of seeing, hearing, and whispering.
I found the room the butchery had occurred in quickly enough. The paphian had left her ghost there, so weak and wounded none of the others had noticed it. The city was infested with spirits. There were shades, cesswraiths, poltergeists, phantoms, eidolons, bloodmists, protospawn, specters, scadudemons, and all other manner of disembodied and disquiet remnant.
They tended to be little more than the rats or the flies — a constant, part of the background. It made the Exalted’s realm an appealing hunting ground for my own kind, and this would not be the first time I’d had to deal with a poacher. If it was another demon, there would be signs I would recognize.
Though the ghost had been more or less unnoticeable to the residents of the house, I could communicate with her, even make physical contact. I spent some time trying to coax information from her, but there was too little left. In the end, I embraced her as she wept herself out of being, stroking her phantasmal hair and resisting the impulse to maul.
Interestingly, the ghost’s eyes had been missing and there was no sign of the customer who’d also been slain here. There was a smell in that room. I did not like it, but could not tell what it was. A demon? A spirit? Something had been here, and it had left a stain on that empty room. On my territory.
I would know the scent if I found it again. Next I went from room to room, trying to find anything obvious — not every murderer in Rot Voraag was some dark mastermind, and I did not dismiss the idea that I might find trophies or some shrine to a fiend or feral god in one of the rooms. I did find a few icons of various faiths, kept by some of the paphians from their past lives and homelands, but nothing suspicious. They remained unaware of me as I slithered over their ceilings as little more than an ink snake.
I found Arlee’s room, and the Candrian’s Angel herself in the midst of being ravaged by the brother and sister rogues. It had been a long time since I’d heard her cries, and I realized I’d forgotten how sweet they sounded.
I considered changing my mind, but… It was too late, and the twins held less interest to me. As I slid past the door of another room, familiar voices inside made me pause and linger.
“I’m not joining the Exalted’s court!” One voice said with a subtle lisping music. “I’m not Shyora… It’s just a new studio, wealthier customers.”
“It’s more attention on you, fríðr naðra,” came the rumbling reply. “If anything threatens you down here, I can put a sword in it. In the Ring, or even up on the mesa? The upper city is a different beast. I just—”
I hesitated, then on impulse slipped under the door. The room within was like many in the house — spacious and dim, every surface softened by silk and velvet. Incense drifted from a jeweled vase by the window, and the bed’s curtains were open. The room’s two occupants were engaged in conversation rather than sport, their distinct forms revealed by the light of a glass lantern, a heatless thing produced by the Guilds. The Candrian had spent a fortune on those, but they did not stink and added to the house’s mood.
“You just worry about me, I know.” Ekasne stood by the wardrobe with her back turned on the barbarian as she answered him. As I slipped inside and took up position in the room’s darkest corner, I saw she had stripped out of the elaborate, many-layered garments of a city craftswoman. She wore only a thin nightdress, revealing her green-hued skin along with the patterns of darker scales that accented her muscles and circumnavigated the sharp, athletic ridges of her shoulders. Her living hair was free of its net, and the serpents — all in shades of emerald, teal, and soft yellows, roamed about their mistress’s head as though excited by their newfound freedom.
She did not wear a veil. Her eyes were merely pressed closed, her hands removing fine chains and colorful beads by feel. Fell sat in a chair against the far wall, watching the gorgon undress with hungry red eyes. Seeing her face in the mirror would not be lethal, but they were still being cautious.
“I do,” the Eusite admitted, frowning. “This city devours itself. You made yourself a more appetizing morsel today.”
“Appetizing, am I?” Ekasne’s lips quirked in amusement. She was tall — taller than me, though shorter than Arlee, and built with a graceful slimness. It seemed possible to cut one’s hand on her cheekbones, and her features were narrow and well defined. I realized I had never seen her fully unmasked like this.
Fell did not seem amused. “You know what I mean.”
In answer, Ekasne turned to him and spread her arms. The nightdress was so thin that her wiry physique showed through it. The serpents formed a slithering, multicolored halo about her not-quite-human face. “I am no taverna girl, Fell. My ancestors were Médousa, Stheno, and Euryale. I need but open my eyes at this moment, and I would slay you. You do not need to protect me like I am one of your garðrbrides.”
Fell ran a hand over his stubbled chin, showing no signs of wanting to look away from that dangerous beauty. “I would take you as one, if I had a bastion of my own. I would place you in its hall and make you queen. Legions of warriors would come to steal you from me, and I would build you a throne from their skulls.”
Ekasne’s lips twitched into a smile, and with slow, sinuous movements she advanced on him. I thought her serpents must have seen for her then, for she found him with unerring accuracy and slid into his lap. She had a serpent’s grace, the gorgon, such that she melted into her barbarian like he were the warm rock of her own den.
She brought her lips close to his, revealed the sliver-sharp edges of her fangs as she smiled. “I don’t want blood and skulls, eusite. I just want you.”
Her living hair wrapped around his head, his neck, flicked their tongues against him. They formed a scaled veil about the gorgon’s eyes.
“You would have to make me one of your statues,” the outworlder said in a strained voice. “I am Eus’s slave, fríðr naðra.”
Ekasne’s sharp nails brushed his hair aside. He’d undone his braids, let his burnt locks fall about his scars. “Maybe I will, one day… But not now. Right now I want you warm.”
They did move to the bed, eventually. The glyptis expressed her exultation over that day and over that god-branded warrior she’d bewitched, claimed he who had spurned even the concubines of demigods, who’d fought in nightmare wars across the very hinterlands of existence. She laid him upon his back and rode him, her every muscle rolling in a boneless dance as he grit his teeth beneath her, letting her take her pleasure on him until his fire-tanned skin was coated in sweat.
I watched it all from the darkness at the corners of the room, memorizing the scene from every angle. Mine was not the attention of a window-watching gawper, but I will not deny a perversity to my fascination.
Once, I’d tried to claim Fell even as the sculptor did then with her whistling, triumphant cries. He had interested me, especially after he became Ekasne’s lover.
He’d refused me. Had laughed.
I am not so foolish as to be lured by a huldra, he’d said.
But you are foolish enough to embrace a médousai. There is no guarantee I will devour you, warrior of Eus. I could hardly mark you worse than your own faith has.
Mine is not a faith, smádreki, but a truth. And I won’t do that to Ekasne. She’s a soft heart. It would hurt her.
I laughed at him then. One of his kind, fearful of hurting the weak? It had seemed ludicrous.
I could take her shape, I had told him, threatened. You would never know.
Never before and never since had I felt anything close to terror while conversing with the even-tempered outlander, but his look then had sent a shiver down my spine. If you ever do, and I learn of it, I will scorch your spirit from this layer. You will never recover from the burns I’ll leave on you. Find your sport elsewhere, demon. There is no shortage of it in this city.