The greenroom was as crowded as it ever was after the closing performance of The Crimson Key. A veritable crush of patrons thronged backstage, hoping to present their congratulations to the stars, or else to make their acquaintance. The crowd was more male than female--a fair number of them were there for the sake of the girls in the ballet corps, from which came many of the mistresses of the capital's well-to-do gentlemen. But it was the stars who were the shining lights, and it was the newest diva, the ingenue-turned-lead soprano Amoretta Virgine upon whom the greatest attention was showered.
Young Kurt Miller found himself buffeted to and fro by the press of bodies as he tried to make his way to Miss Virgine's side. With deft use of his elbows he managed to fend off much of the crush, at least to the extent that the bouquet of scarlet roses he bore was not damaged.
The singer herself stood in the middle of the crowd, quietly and it seemed shyly accepting their congratulations. The more effusive compliments she often cut off, thanking the giver when he would pause for breath and brushing him aside. She exchanged a few words with the saturnine Baron de Sangri, whom Miller was relieved to notice had brought no flowers, then had a large sheaf of lilies pressed upon her by the foreign diplomat, Prince Tokayev.
Aware of the Prince's growing reputation as a ladies' man, Miller surged forward at once, thrusting his bouquet upon the beautiful singer.
"My dear Miss Virgine, please accept these flowers as a token of my respect and admiration. I've never before heard such an exquisite performance, Elie brought to life so beautifully."
"A poor compliment, this," Tokayev sneered down his aquiline nose at the young man. "To be the best in a boy's experience? What, is the most you can say of her magnificence that she was better than the one time, two times perhaps, you have seen this opera?"
Miller flushed with anger and humiliation.
"Why, you--"
"You must permit me, Miss Virgine," Tokayev went on in his rich, lightly accented baritone that had charmed so many women, "to escort you to Garnier's Cafe for refreshment. A friendly hand to disperse the press of this rabble will surely not offend."
"Don't listen to him, Miss Virgine!" Miller shot back. "I may be young, but at least my heart is true, unlike this...this roue."
"Roue, is it?" Tokayev snapped, much to the interest of the crowd. "There is little honor in chastizing an unruly child, but if in this fashion you keep on, I will not hold my hand!"
"If you think--"
"Amoretta!"
It was a woman's voice, and the singer's face brightened at once at the sound of it.
"I'm here!" Miss Virgine called, holding up a hand.
The woman approached, sliding through the gathered crowd with surprising ease, even piercing the clustered gentlemen surrounding the soprano without much effort. Some of the men--though not, Miller noted, Prince Tokayev--actually moved back to make room. It made her easy to notice: a tall honey-blonde with unbound hair, wearing a rich purple gown that matched her eyes. She seemed young, perhaps twenty or a little more, a couple of years older than Miss Virgine. Her gaze flicked from face to face, taking in the knot of eager adherents.
"You've won yourself a lot of admirers, Amoretta." She reached out and brushed her fingers over one of the bouquets that stuffed the girl's arms. "A lot of flowers, too. I hope Gaff doesn't have any allergies."
"I don't think so, Lillet. Elves are spirits of nature, so they shouldn't have any kind of negative physical reactions to it." The singer's voice, Miller noted, was high and sweet, with a hint of sensual breathiness. It was the kind of voice he could listen to for hours on end.
The violet-eyed woman, the one Miss Virgine had called Lillet, raised her hand from the flowers and instead brushed the singer's cheek. Miller's fingers tingled at the sight; he envied this Lillet the fleeting contact even as he wanted to slap her hand away from Miss Virgine's skin.
"Should I have brought you a bouquet too, then?"
"Why? You could bring flowers in from the garden when we get home."
Lillet's lips curled into a smug, knowing smile and her gaze flicked in an arc, meeting as many of the watching eyes as she could without actually turning her head. Miller didn't get it at first; he was young, after all. Then he realized.
When. We. Get. Home.
She couldn't mean...?
"In that case, let me give you something else."
Lillet bent her head and brushed her lips teasingly against the shorter girl's, once, twice, as if casting out a lure to the singer--who struck at it, arching her neck and pressing her mouth hard to Lillet's. There was nothing friendly or sisterlike in the kiss, and it made the serpents of jealousy twist and roil in Miller's belly.
"Here, now! This is hardly the place for that!" he said. Both women looked at him in surprise, as did quite a few of the other men.
"I suppose you have a point," Lillet sighed, then turned back to Miss Virgine. "Shall I wait for you at the stage door? I'll have the carriage brought around."
"That would be nice. I might be a while, though. I'll have to finish here, then get changed out of my costume."
"I don't mind waiting for you."
She half-turned, giving the singer one last, lingering look, then walked away. Miller stared after her, emotions roiling, and he wasn't the only one.
"Who was that woman?" he exclaimed, surprise and wounded pride clouding his good sense. "How dare she take such liberties?"
"Know her, you do not?" Tokayev was the one who answered him. "Not much at Court, you are?"
"At Court? What, who is she?" Miller snapped, ignoring the stab at his pride, the Prince's jab at his social status.
"Lillet Blan, she is. Mage Consul to Her Majesty."
"Mage...Consul?" Miller stammered, trying to wrap his mind around the concept.
"The chief magician of the kingdom? Surely of this you have heard? She is said to be as skilled a witch as your famous Gammel Dore."
The name crashed through Miller's mind, Tokayev's sharp words at last cutting through the young man's emotions. He did know Lillet Blan's name, had heard the stories and rumors of how amazing a magical prodigy she was. No wonder so many of the men made way for her, he thought. Who argues with someone who can turn you into a bug? And how she'd acted had simple enough: she'd sent a clear message to the throng of admirers. Hands off. She's mine. A sentiment which Miss Virgine seemed to fully agree with.
Maybe...maybe she's enchanted her. The thought swirled through his mind, appealing and exciting. Evil witches were supposed to do that sort of thing, weren't they? And the sober puritanism of Miller's merchant-class, respectable burgher background certainly knew what it thought of a woman who was both a magician and carried on a romance with her own sex. His imagination ran wild--perhaps he could save Miss Virgine from the witch's clutches! The fantasy grew and grew in his mind--he saw himself as the heroic rescuer, freeing the innocent girl from her captor's spell, carrying her off to marry her...until at last, like a castle built of elaborate spires and flying buttresses without a solid foundation, his fantasy fell to pieces under the weight of its own absurdities.
Or, he admitted to himself, I could just be an idiot who became infatuated with a woman who already loves someone else.
There must have been something of his thoughts in his face, for Prince Tokayev smiled at him without the mockery from before.
"And so do the young learn wisdom," he said, not unkindly. "Come," he announced, clapping Miller firmly on the shoulder, "my guest you will be tonight. We will toast our bad fortune, and seek the company of ladies more amenable to our station. Take heart, for such disappointments are what make one a man."
It was amazing, Miller thought, how much easier it was to appreciate a man's good qualities when they weren't fighting over the same girl.
"All right," he decided. "Why should we waste our time on a woman whose heart is taken?"
"Why, indeed?"
"For God's sake, clear these people out of here! Do you want a riot on our hands?" Raoul Ballatore barked. The Inspector of the Watch wasn't really all that concerned about the two dozen or so curiosity-seekers who were pressing close to the alley mouth, trying to get a look part the watchmen who were holding the line. It was more of a tactic to clear the constables away from the crime scene than anything else, to keep them from treading evidence underfoot and to spare their stomachs. The first constable to find the bodies hadn't been able to hold his, and with good reason.
Ballatore hooked his thumbs into his swordbelt and looked at the tableau again. The word wasn't inappropriate, he thought; this scene had been carefully set for the finder's viewing "pleasure."
"Someone's pleasure, anyway," he muttered. He'd like to get his hands around the throat of whomever took joy in this. This was the kind of crime for which the violence of public hanging was a well-suited punishment.
There were two victims this time, both of them women. One of them had been hung from a metal post that jutted from above a door halfway along the alley. The bar, Ballatore noted, was a signpost; the sign itself had been torn down by force and tossed along the alley to give the killer a place to hang the woman from. Her hands and arms had been tied, mounting them in place so that they clutched the head of the second victim to her breast.
It was the second victim that was the horrifying one. Not merely content with decapitating her, she had been disemboweled, her belly torn open and her innards lying in a glistening pool of blood. Even that, brutal as it was, wasn't the worst of it. What made Ballatore have to fight down his gorge in the stinking alley was that the first corpse hadn't been hung by a rope at all, but by a length of the other corpse's intestine, and the binding fixing her arms in place holding the head were strips of skin ripped from the eviscerated girl's abdomen.
They were girls, too, eighteen or even younger though already their faces had begun to show the ravages of drink and disease common to the profession suggested by their cheap but flashy dresses. Prostitutes, common streetwalkers rather than expensive house-girls or even more expensive mistresses. There would have been little enough hope or happiness in their lives as it was, without--
Details, man, details! Ballatore snapped at himself. There was a time to see the forest for the trees, but this wasn't it. Stare close enough at a mosaic, no matter how ugly or vile, and all you saw were chips of colored tile.
The sign. It was lying several yards down the alley from the corpses, as if it had been flung aside. The thought that it had been torn down by force looked to have been accurate; the place where the bolts had been sunk in to hold the chains had been literally ripped out of the sign, and the exposed wood was light-colored, not weathered by the elements.
He wondered what kind of strength that had taken. The person must have been huge, or in the grip of some overwhelming emotion. But then again, what was insanity but emotion unchecked by reason, and the acts performed against the two women were certainly lunatic.
"Inspector," someone called. Ballatore turned back and saw a constable approaching. By the uniformed watchman's side was a woman wearing a plain, even drab gray dress and a white lace cap typical of well-to-do dowagers. She was around thirty, with sharp features but expressive chocolate-brown eyes. "Ms. Riesling is here."
"Janice; I'm glad you could make it," he said with genuine affection.
"I'm glad to see you too, Raoul, though not in these conditions." She shuddered, gripping her forearms tightly. "This is...vile."
Ballatore nodded. There was no more he could say to that.
"What kind of person could do this?"
The Inspector sighed.
"I was hoping you could help tell me."
Janice Riesling was an expert who worked for the Watch, only her field of skill wasn't scientific or technical. She was a witch.
Looking around herself, she shuddered again.
"You want me to try to call up the spirits of these girls?"
"You once told me that the souls of the recently dead often linger near their bodies. This killing isn't more than a couple of hours old. If they can point me in the right direction..."
Riesling took a deep breath.
"All right. I'll give it a try."
She took out her wand, then drew in several deep breaths, as if centering herself for the work ahead. The Inspector had worked with her before, so he knew more or less what to expect, but it still amazed him. In his father's time, magicians were dubious characters at best and in his grandfather's time they were actively hunted, subject to arrest and burning at the stake. From what he knew those had been the attitudes towards magic that had prevailed since the kingdom had been founded. Centuries had passed with magic being either persecuted or viewed suspiciously as the whim of the people suggested. Now, though, thanks to Her Majesty and Gammel Dore, there were magicians operating openly and freely, officially in the kingdom's service.
Looking past Riesling at the dangling corpse, Ballatore found himself glad of it. When faced with that kind of horror, it was comforting that at least some supernatural forces were on his side.
The witch began to sketch out a pattern on the ground before her, tracing her wand's tip over the filthy cobbles. It took her about a minute or so to finish. She then held the wand above the area where she'd sketched and her body was gripped by a sudden tension, her face strained as if she were exerting herself in some way Ballatore couldn't see. After a couple more minutes of this, her struggle was won, and the pattern she'd sketched was outlined in pale blue light. She'd explained in the past that this was a Rune, a magic circle that concentrated the power of a magician to summon familiars, replacing the need for chants and incantations, vile potions brewed up in cauldrons, and the other trappings associated in the popular mind with magic.
Ballatore still didn't like to look at the Rune; the necromantic light was unnatural and frightening. If he stared at it too long he even thought he could see figures in it, writhing images of human souls trying to fight their way out of Purgatory and into the living world. Instead, he tried to look anywhere else, letting Riesling do her work without interruption. The Rune's glow lit up the alley, illuminating the cobbles slicked with blood and foulness, the trash and debris scattered in every angle and corner.
And something else, besides.
It was on the alley wall just above where the broken sign lay, as if the torn-down placard had been left as a marker. In the darkness, though, it had passed unnoticed; the focused beams of the Watch's dark-lanterns hadn't been played along the alley walls away from the bodies. A message had been painted there scrawled in the blood of the deceased. The lettering was surprisingly neat, marred only by places where droplets, still wet, had trickled down like tears. The message seemed, at first glance, strange and impenetrable: My heart is hollow; my soul is ash. Yet something about it nagged at Ballatore, an insistent drumbeat against his mind that he should know what it meant.
Behind him, there was a deep groan, a sepulchral sound that echoed from the alley walls. Ballatore turned and saw, floating above Riesling's Rune, a twisted shape of pale fire a foot or two in height and the same color as the Rune. It was a corpse candle, a once-living spirit, the ghost of a dead human.
"Spirit!" Riesling ordered. "You are bound to obey me! Are you the ghost of one of the women recently murdered here?"
The spirit began to writhe and bob in mid-air, twisting its bodiless shape in on itself and flicking off gouts of light. Ballatore got the sense of agitation, of emotion, suggesting that it was indeed the ghost of one of the dead prostitutes.
"Show me!" Riesling ordered it. "Show me what you can about your death, so I can catch the one responsible."
When she'd been able to successfully do this in the past, the spirit would take on shapes, project images of its killer, perhaps the murder weapon, whatever it might have seen. Although the testimony of the dead was not evidence in court, it could point the Watch in the correct direction and save valuable time and effort.
This time, though, no easy answer seemed forthcoming. The ghost's agitation seemed to increase, twisting and bobbing, flexing and changing as it burned. Then, suddenly, a ghastly scream exploded through the alleyway, a high-pitched wail full of horror and torment that made Ballatore shudder as if his own soul was the one suffering. The light blazed up, burning fiercely, and then was gone, the ghost and the Rune suddenly vanished, both snuffed out as the last note of the banshee howl died away. Trembling uncontrollably, Riesling dropped to her knees.
"Janice, are you all right?" Ballatore asked at once, hurrying to her side. The phrase his mind had attached to the ghostly wail--"banshee howl"--echoed in his thoughts as he recalled legends of those who died after hearing such a sound.
"I...I think so," she said, still shaking. "It...it was her, one of them at least, but I couldn't hold her. She was still too close to life, too close to her pain, and was crazed by it. It made her into a more powerful spirit than I could control, and the backlash shattered my Rune."
The explanation made sense to Ballatore; he'd had to arrest or subdue lunatics in the past, both those suffering from genuine madness and those out of their minds temporarily from drink, terror, or rage. They seemed able to exert a strength no sane person could match. Apparently the same held true for the dead.
"But you yourself aren't hurt?"
She licked her lips nervously, then seemed to gather herself, the trembling starting to ease.
"Yes, I'm all right."
He extended a hand and helped her to her feet.
"I'm glad; when I heard that scream like a devil's song--" He broke off suddenly as it came to him like a thunderbolt. "Of course!" He snapped his fingers loudly. "The posing, the message...it all makes sense now. It's not random in the slightest, and I know what it's referring to. Come on; we've got work to do before morning."
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NOTES: Baron de Sangri (another character from "Life in a Bottle") takes his name from Sangria, and Prince Tokayev from Tokay. Miller, being an upstart from the middle class, gets his name from the beer. Inspector Ballatore and Ms. Riesling take their names from a brand and type of wine, respectively.
...I swear, I'm starting to get weird looks when I go up and down the wine and liquor aisles in the local supermarket with a pencil and notebook, looking for potential GrimGrimoire character names!
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