NOTE: I had considered "The Hollow Heart" done after Chapter 13; that was the way I had outlined it from the very beginning. My readers, however, didn't seem to agree. One reader asking for an epilogue might just be a single opinion. Two readers starts to seem like a pattern, though. And three readers looking for more starts to make it seem as if I've gone and left threads dangling, points not explained, a story genuinely incomplete. And when one of those three readers happens to be my wife, well, it becomes time for me to pick up the old pencil and paper and get back to work. So this chapter is dedicated to E-ANiL, Sunder the Gold (Lillet and the fate of the book are for you!), and especially Tarma Hartley.
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"There's a buyer for those four crates of dreambane root," Charles Danae told his assistant. "Fetch me the manifest so I can verify the specifications, will you?"
"It's illegal to import dreambane in its raw state into the kingdom, Danae."
The importer jerked his head up, then relaxed as he saw who it was.
"Inspector Ballatore. I didn't hear you come in."
"The Watch doesn't always go around kicking down doors and waving swords, regardless of what you read in the Star."
"I understand that congratulations are in order."
"I could say the same. After all, we ended up making a dozen arrests while working through your list. Your competition in the area of, shall we say, dubious transactions has become substantially thinner."
"Dubious? You wound me, Inspector, you truly do. Take the shipment of dreambane root you mentioned. It is currently stored on a ship anchored--not docked, mind--upriver. I am merely brokering a deal from one foreign merchant to another, and it will be taken on to Albion without ever touching our shores." He smiled broadly. "What could be fairer than that?"
"Dreambane root is illegal in Albion, too."
"It seems to me that would be the concern of the buyer, not either of us."
"Maybe so. Right now, I think we need to be concerned with this."
He tossed a crumpled piece of paper onto the desk.
"Like to take a guess where I found that?"
Deane picked up the paper and unfolded it. He had a fairly good idea of what it was, but he managed to keep his thoughts from showing. He hadn't survived this long without emotional control, after all.
It was what he thought.
"In the pocket of the man we arrested last night. It appears to be a warning note, telling the recipient that the Mage Consul and the Watch were looking for him. A warning to the sorcerer and torture killer preying on this city. Does the handwriting look familiar?"
"I'm afraid not. Do you believe it belongs to one of my competitors?"
"I wouldn't say that."
"Then...?"
Ballatore plucked one of the records off Deane's desk and held it in front of the importer's face.
"Kind of like the writing there, isn't it?"
"Are you implying that I--?"
Ballatore dropped the manifest; his hand snapped out and down, fisting in the front of Danae's tunic.
"Yes, Danae, I am. Now, which of the various offenses would you care to confess to first? Trading in contraband goods? Accessory to murder? I think we could even make a case for treason, since your little warning resulted in an assault on a Court minister."
"Inspector! This is preposterous! I...I helped you when you came to me."
Ballatore hauled the importer up out of his chair.
"Now listen to me, you little worm. Less than twenty-four hours ago I was standing in the same room as a greater devil, a duke of Hell. You probably don't have the slightest idea what that feels like, or what it was that you were helping Calvert to do. That's the difference between us, because I do know, and that means that I have no patience at all for a squirming, squealing piece of filth like yourself who thinks that it makes your hands any cleaner because you didn't ask what Calvert was going to do with the items, or the information, or whatever the hell it was that you provided. Believe you me, Danae, the only way I'm not going to see you hang is if you force me to kill you right here and now."
Staring into the Inspector's eyes from no more than six inches away, Danae found that he believed him implicitly.
Royal Magician Manfred Riesling was plump and rubicund, quite unlike his daughter, though she did take after him in coloring. As with most evenings, he was found in the lounge of the Royal House of Magic; Janice found him sitting alone with a glass of port on the table by his elbow.
"Ah, Janice, dear," he said, smiling at the sight of her. "I understand that congratulations are in order."
"Pardon me?"
"The Calvert case. I admit that your name may not have been mentioned in the broadsheets, but I do try to keep aware of what my daughter is involved in."
"Yes, well," she said, making a sour face, "I had little enough to do with the solution."
"I wouldn't say that. After all, Mage Consul Blan even added a note of commendation for your assistance in rescuing her."
She flinched as if struck.
"She did what?"
"Apparently your magical assistance was key in helping Miss Virgine and Inspector Ballatore rescue her."
Janice sighed bitterly.
"My God, I swear she must do it on purpose."
"Eh?"
"May I?" She touched the back of a chair.
"Please do."
She joined her father at the table.
"Did she mention that I clashed with her at nearly every turn, at one point all but accused her of the crimes, and leapt to the conclusion that she had created Miss Virgine herself for..." Janice hesitated at that point; some things one never became comfortable discussing with a parent. "Immoral purposes," she settled on.
From the thunderstruck look on her father's face, she knew what the answer was.
"No, I guess she didn't. But who knows, next time I may step on the toes of someone who doesn't get their revenge by constantly taking the high road so I stew in my own shame."
"Janice, what were you thinking?"
She sighed.
"I don't even know any more. Did you know that she didn't create Amoretta?"
"No; I knew she wasn't a familiar in the ordinary sense, though."
"I wish I'd known that. That was the worst part, I think. I just..." She shook her head. "Free-willed or not, she treats that thing like a person. And it, she, whatever, returns the attention. It's almost sickening how devoted they are."
"Ah," her father said. "I see. It bothers you that a homunculus can find love, when..."
"This isn't about--" Janice snapped reflexively. "Oh, whom am I kidding? Of course it's about me, and Dierdre." Beautiful, charming, seductive Dierdre, who'd started out as a typical girls'-seminary crush and became the first real love of her life. Tempestuous, militantly unfaithful Dierdre, who'd stepped on Janice's heart yet was still the face that came to her on lonely nights.
Her father laid his hand over hers.
"There's someone out there for you, Janice. Never doubt that."
"And in the meantime, I'm jealous of a creation some alchemist grew in a lab."
"There, of course, we have the major problem with a free press," Lillet said, setting the last of the day's broadsheets aside. "Give people the legal right to express their opinion and they promptly insist on doing so."
Amoretta giggled and snuggled up closer. They'd been lying side-by-side in bed, reading, but now that she didn't have to make space for Lillet's arm or the open broadsheets the homunculus wasted no time in curling up full-length against her lover instead of just having their hips touching.
"At least they left my name out of it," Amoretta said.
"Well, since we left before anyone other than Ballatore or Riesling showed up, there was no one else to talk, and they respected your wishes. I still don't see why you didn't want your part mentioned. People ought to know that you're a heroine."
"That wasn't heroism; that was just love. It's only natural to do your best for the one you care about. You'd do the same in an instant--in fact, you already have, several times."
"You have such a unique way of looking at things." Lillet shrugged. "Ah, well, I just want everyone to know how wonderful you are, but if it would bother you instead of making you happy there's no point in doing it."
Amoretta leaned over and kissed Lillet on the cheek.
"Thank you."
"I'm just glad it won't take more than another day's work to extract anything of genuine value from the Key to Avernus so we can destroy it. So much of it is positively nauseating; I'm afraid I'll have bad dreams."
"Do you have to do it all yourself?"
Lillet sighed.
"Probably not. It's just that with something like that, the better one is at sorcery the less dangerous it is, because you have a better understanding of the risks and because you know easier and safer ways to accomplish the things it promises."
"I see. Since you're the best, you're in less danger than any of your staff that you might assign the job to."
"Plus I can get though it faster so as to put the thing on the fire that much sooner. At least the Rune I made to summon Malphas would take a master sorcerer to cast, and someone that skilled is less likely to do something stupid--and there's simply very few of them. That grimoire, though, is full of things that an untrained, unbalanced person like Calvert could do to put both himself and others at risk."
Amoretta slipped an arm around Lillet just below her breasts.
"I'll be sure to hold you close, then, so you don't have any nightmares."
Lillet nuzzled affectionately against her lover's hair.
"Thank you. It's impossible to have bad thoughts while you're in my arms."
With that she turned, blew out the lamp, and spooned up next to her beloved, closing her own arm over Amoretta's and pressing her lover's hand to her heart. Before sleep claimed her, the thought came to her that she had one thing to be thankful for out of the horrors they'd come through: now, when she thought of the golden light of angelic fire, there was a happy memory to associate it with instead of only nightmares.
"If I was sleeping with a master magician, would my voice be that good?" Maria Bacardi muttered under her breath. The critics--and the public--had spoken, and she was back to being the opera company's second soprano. Ah, well, there was always Valentine and Gerard in two months, where the acting was as important as the voice. The Virgin would have to step aside for that one, at the least.
It was too bad, she thought, that Calvert hadn't managed to finish her portrait. Thanks to the twisted minds of collectors, the man's merely adequate work had started to ascend in price as soon as the news came out that he'd been an insane, murderous sorcerer. If he'd completed the piece, she could have banked a tidy sum towards her retirement.
She walked out on the empty stage, her footfalls echoing throughout the cavernous theater. La Bacardi wanted to shine here, sure enough, wanted to reclaim the lead and was willing to fight for it. But if she had to be in second place, then so it would be, something that Maestro Terne never seemed to understand about her.
But to a singer in this kingdom, the City Theater in the capital was the promised land, and unlike so many others Maria Bacardi knew that it was better to serve in Heaven than reign elsewhere.
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