Fellport hove piecemeal into view, gradually revealing a light tower here or a pier there, exposing glimpses of herself through a veil of fog.
Beyda Aldus Chur stood at the bow of the Cenautic brigantine, admiring the teasing artistry of revelation, resolutely ignoring his past and his companion. Their destination was still an hour away, but already he imagined its cobbles beneath his feet, tried to picture himself at its core. How would it sound and smell? He strained his eyes, picking apart each new discovery as she drew closer, trying to fit it like a puzzle into the landscape he was building in his mind. He would be a foreigner in Fellport, but if he did not come to know her as though a lifelong inhabitant, he would be, much worse, a failure.
"Pretty enough," his companion grunted. Another gambit to initiate conversation. "But after three weeks with nothing to eat but sourbread and wine and nothing to breathe but the farts of sailors, anything would look like a palace, isn't it so, Bey?"
Once again there was no response. Unperturbed he clambered past Beyda through the rails and lowered himself onto the masthead, oblivious to the crashing rush of water a few feet below or the frequent blasts of spray driven up by the sipping bow. He straddled the statuette of a naked maiden in as obscene a pose as he could safely manage, bellowing, "Time for one last ride."
Bey rolled his eyes and said nothing. The little Lephali, whose name seemed to change on a daily basis - he currently insisted it was Herok and would answer to no other – had been making the joke throughout the voyage. At first it had amused him and the sailors, but with each repetition it became less so, until now most aboard wished his luck would ease long enough for a quick keelhauling. But he was surefooted and more at ease with heights and treacherous footing than was quite believable for someone who professed to be a complete landlubber. But his prankish and garrulous manner disrupted the quiet rhythms of shipboard life, and he had made no friends aboard who might have been interested enough to inquire.
Bey had kept himself to himself, resisting the Lephali's overtures easily enough, and making no particular attempt to acquaint himself with the ship's company. Even so, he had come to know a few of the sailors well enough to pick up some useful information about Fellport and Murburan beyond. He had fed his plans and imaginings on these tidbits, though even as he fantasised he knew things would be different and far more difficult. Language was not a problem. Bey spoke several, accumulated in years of travel, but the Murbs spoke his native Phalish, and he would soon overcome his accent.
Money and contacts were the real problem. He had neither, having invested the entirety of his remaining wealth in a voyage to somewhere he was entirely unknown. He would need to find his feet quickly. The prospect of poverty did not trouble him at all. He had been poor before. Wealthy too. But failure? Ah, that had weighed heavily on his conscience. His hasty departure ahead of that crowd of angry Dessilian moneylenders, the fiasco with the lavender-scented twins and the bakery, his doomed partnership with the secretly-bankrupt Earl of Hereward. Bey would be the first to admit, though not always cheerfully, that his innate inclination towards enterprise had not lead to an altogether impressive record of accomplishments.
Fellport was different, though. He felt it as an unidentifiable blend of optimism and omen. This city, where reputations were made and broken as easily and frequently as hearts and laws, this was his place. That he was a strangely-dressed, oddly-spoken foreigner without a coin to his name was of no immediate consequence. What mattered was Opportunity.
Opportunity was always at the forefront of Bey's thoughts. It possessed him, haunted him, drove his every decision and more than once had led him to ruin, injury, heartbreak or all three. He had courted it, seized it, gambled it and wasted it, but he had never ignored it. It held an irresistible lure for him. Opportunity was the altar at which he worshiped, and Bey was pious indeed.
"It's a woman you're running from, isn't it lad?"
That got his attention. Bey looked at the Lephali and feigned indifference, realising too late that any response gave him away. "What makes you say that?"
Herok returned his cool expression with an insolent grin. "It's always a woman that drives a man to Fellport, or so I've observed. Seen it often enough."
"You've been here before?"
"Aye, many times. Business calls, in the main. I've a fondness for her though. She's a rude host and the welcome's always cold, but she's sure accommodating when she's plied with the right words." He turned away toward the rising wall of dark hills, now visibly painted with white houses and grey strips of rough road. Below, the staccato rise and fall of buildings cast an indistinct silhouette through the fog. The tide line was a field of white triangles and dark jutting spikes, a moot of ships from every corner of the ocean. "She's practically a home to me these days."
"What is your business?" asked Bey, sizing the man up and down. During the idle hours of the voyage, he had occasionally wondered just that as he had watched Herok saunter about the deck playing the fool. He was childish short. He would not have reached shoulder height on Bey, who counted himself average at most. His shape was slender, but his sureness of foot and the thick bands of muscle gathered at his shoulders and wrists suggested physicality. He wore a constant infuriating grin that seemed to imply superior knowledge or ill-hidden amusement.
He was no sailor, despite his adroit step. Bey vividly recalled spending the first three days of the voyage propped at the stern, violently ill, and Herok right there beside him. So much time spent in each other's company but under the circumstances neither had felt like making the other's acquaintance. Bey had been thereafter reluctant to kindle any relationship, imagining somehow that the swelling, roiling nausea would be renewed by association.
An arrow man, perhaps, though those tended to come from much farther east than Leph. Not a mercenary, for those in that trade made much of their weapons and armour, and Herok had come aboard almost as empty-handed as Bey. Perhaps he was an entertainer? He could certainly play the fool – he needed only a gaudy costume and a caricature mask of some king, and he could probably pay his way.
"My business," he replied and made to continue, but then flashed a knowing wink and changed the subject. "You're between finances, I perceive. I saw that you dined with our dear Captain Rook no more than is customary. I fancy that, like myself, you find yourself ill-positioned to respond to further invitations with a suitable gift?"
It niggled at Bey to admit as much to a stranger, but he could hardly deny the truth of it. He had worn the same shirt throughout the journey, and the once-vibrant colours of the silk bandanna about his throat were running fast to fade. "Aye. I mean to make a new start in Fellport."
"I thought as much. Most everyone does, sooner or later. I did myself, once. Made quite a new man of me." He chuckled, though the joke was lost on Bey. "There are safer places to stake your future, friend. In point of fact, there aren't too many places less so. Why here, in particular? A craving for Murbish women? Surely not."
Opportunity, thought Bey, though he said "It seemed as good a place as any. I've not been here before."
"I'd guess not, or you'd soon revise your opinion." With a startling burst of movement, the little man clambered back up and over the rails. Bey had barely registered the movement before he and Herok were face to face. The little man's nose and whiskers dripped with sea spray, and his breath smelled like fish and vinegary wine. "Let me offer you two good pieces of advice, friend," he uttered, a new hardness in his tone. "One, never play at Packs with a stranger in Fellport. You may lose more than your stake if you're in the wrong man's debt."
"I don't gamble," Bey said. They both knew it was a lie. "What's the other piece of advice?"
"If you should have the great misfortune to make the acquaintance of Magistrate Ductio, don't compound it by remaining where he can find you."
Bey did not miss the bitterness in the remark, and was in two minds whether to pursue details with Herok, whose previous encounters with this Ductio had apparently not been resolved to his satisfaction.
Herok took the decision out of his hands by taking a few steps back and glancing ahead. The shape of the city had now sharpened, though the fog hid all but the docks, watch towers and the few streets closest. From here it seemed no different to any other port, the bulk of ships and spired piers and bulging warehouses obscuring any clues as to what lay beyond as effectively as the misty air. Bey could make out gangs of dock labourers unloading a four-masted ship alongside the pier to which they seemed destined, and beyond that he caught sight of a horse and buggy.
His instant comprehension at these sights was that they intimated wealth, which walked hand in hand with Opportunity. His habitual distracted so instantly and completely absorbed him that he barely acknowledged Herok's cheerful exhortation to "Join me at the Booming Oyster tomorrow eve. We'll talk more about women and business."
He did however notice when the Lephali propelled himself with two lithe steps into a graceful dive that carried him over the forward rails and into the churning waves below. Bey rushed to peer over the side, but Herok was nowhere to be seen.
"Magistrate?"
There were any number of circumstances under which Vernal Ductio would choose not to be interrupted by underlings. He took very exact care to precisely detail those circumstances. He was apt to repeat them until he was certain that his conditions were understood. And he was known by those in his charge to be less than tolerant of exceptions.
For that reason, amongst others, Kilritch appointed his most junior and expendable trainee to the task of fetching Ductio from his regular Hedgeday appointment at the Jade Street House of Pleasures.
The trainee, a weasel-faced youth of no exceptional wit by the name of Jedlow, supposed that he had not been heard, and nervously raised his voice. "Magistrate?" He was new to the Ducal Guard. The cheap brass buttons on his overcoat still retained some shine and the wax on his boots some lustre. Until now he had been assigned exclusively to assisting Staff Kilritch with his office work, which usually revolved around the brewing of cinnamon tea, the collection of greasy fish lunches and the delivery of wagers to certain large men who resided in Grape Corner. This was his first real bit of guardsman work. He was anxious that nothing go wrong.
Ductio, having only a few minutes earlier retired into the rooms and embrace of an implausibly-named but generously warm northern cyprian of considerable reputation, was not immediately available to respond. Though the guardsman was not in any position to know it, Ductio had made no signs of having noticed the interruption at all.
Jedlow had been given strict orders. "Drag him out by his ear if you have to," Kilritch had insisted. "It's the Duke's summons and he'll have all our scalps if he doesn't get his way. I'm not winding up feeding the Blue Duke's hounds just so Ductio can sample every doxy in Portside." He chanced a knock, firm and authoritative, just as he had been trained. Rap rap rap. "Magistrate? You are summoned."
From behind the red door, which was decorated with gold stars, moons and several men and women in old-fashioned costumes in a variety of intimate positions, there was a moan so fearful and strained that for a moment Jedlow though someone was in trouble. He snatched out his dirk. "Magistrate? Are you all right?"
Three thunderous footsteps closed on the door and it was yanked open. Magistrate Ductio stood there, naked except for his a towering red hat made of stiffened linen and a pair of black woolen gloves. He drew one gnarled fist back behind his shoulder and drove it into Jedlow's face with a snap. Jedlow's head twitched backwards and he dropped on the spot.
As he passed out on a wolfskin rug in a blaze of pain and tangled limbs, he heard "I'm summoned when I say I'm fucking summoned, boy. And I can't be summoned to two fucking places at once, now can I? Where are you going, Shrieks-like-a-hawk? Don't bother with that robe, girl, we've got a little more time yet."
"Gentlemen, did I exaggerate? Did I in any way mislead?"
Casimir Meldaran peered about the smoky room, trying to make out expressions through the dim murk. His face was a picture of confidence, his teeth gleamed with sincerity. But even from behind Lynnis could tell that the smile was straining at the edges and that sweat was starting to dot at his temples. She'd done the best she could to train them out, but he still had more than a few tells.
She arched her back a little more and put more weight into one leg to emphasize the calf, the movement imperceptible. There had been nothing wrong with the performance, she knew that. She'd opened with "Queen Nerati's Misfortune", accompanying herself on mandolin, and halfway through had segued into a ribald retelling of the Blue Duke's recent diplomatic mishap with the Leph ambassador's interpreter. It had been a calculated risk, playing the political card – Vormura had friends in spite of his unpopularity - but she knew what audiences like and she always gave it to them. It seemed to have worked – there were chuckles in all the right places – but this was the part that came down to Casimir's pitch, and there was nothing more she could do.
She hoped they would hurry. Her stage costume may have been calculated to inflame passions, but it didn't do much about the cold.
A large bald man in a velvet robe embroidered with exotic animals and ferns exhaled a cloud of fragrant smoke and hung his pipe back onto the hookah. He made a spluttering noise which Lynnis took to be throat-clearing. He waited somnolently while another man withdrew a creased linen kerchief from his long coat and held it under his nose. Without taking his inexpressive eyes off Casimir, the bald man noisily evacuated his sinuses, then waited until his mouth and chin had been dabbed clear of expectorant.
"She is not untalented. But we have many poets in Fellport. Many more satirists."
His unexpectedly high tone just added to the porcine impression Lynnis had formed. She kept that impression from appearing on her face. She hoped Casimir would be able to say the same. He had a tendency towards inappropriate humour when he was nervous.
"Oh, indeed, my good master. Fellport's many male satirists are renowned." Good, good. Lynnis's tension eased slightly. "Alas, so few of the fairer persuasion command such wit and humour as may satisfy an audience of such refined tastes."
"They are used to entertainments of superior quality. I give them what they want."
"How fortunate, then, that my client, Lynnis Chalcer, the Minstrel of Morningford, combines those excellent virtues with near-inexpressible beauty. Your saloon will undoubtedly become the most sought after venue in the region when word spreads of her talent."
"You speak of her talent. How well does she perform?"
"Master Trigosi, you have heard her emotional recitations, her sharp wit and her melodic charms. In our homeland of Corphena she is a renowned balladeer and orator. Of course you see for yourself her considerable physical attractions. Add to that her command of the mandolin, the flute and the harp, and I am sure -"
"You mistake me." The bald, piggish Trigosi stood, an uncomfortable ritual in which he was assisted by the two men flanking him, who hoisted him beneath the shoulders and fussed over the folds and creases of his robes until he deemed himself presentable. He stepped out of the small circle of padded cushions into the light at the edge of the stage and peered up at Lynnis with undisguised appraisal. Casimir, taken by surprise stood and shuffled deferentially to his side.
"Does she know the erotic arts? Can she satisfy a patron quickly without insulting his pride? Does she know to speak fair words or ill as a patron desires?" He reached up with a hand full of chubby fingers and squeezed her bare calf. His skin was clammy and colder even than Lynnis'. She repressed a shiver of revulsion and pressed herself subtly into Trigosi's lingering grip. Take the hint, Casimir, she thought, but his expression had changed and she knew he had taken offense.
"You have the wrong idea, Master Trigosi," exclaimed Casimir, stepping forward with fingers outstretched as if he planned to detach a leech. A subtle movement from one of Trigosi's silent companions discouraged him from completing the action, but his hand remained, hovering alongside Trigosi's. He attempted to turn it into a casual gesture of emphasis, but its original meaning had not been lost. "She is no courtesan to be pawed! No street doxy! Her sensibilities are artistic! She -"
"Her face is fair. Strong limbs." Trigosi released Lynnis' leg with a dismissive wave. "But she is thin in the foreign fashion. She will not attract more clients to my saloon."
Casimir persisted, unable to recognise the battle as lost. "Master Trigosi, reconsider. She will draw crowds. The court of the Viscountess Yarmellan once proclaimed her sonnets as insuperable! Her comedic impressions are-"
"Shit with her comedic impressions! I am not interested. If she will not pleasure customers in my back rooms, I will not have her under contract." He glared his challenge at Casimir. "Do you accept my terms?" One of his companions stepped forward, proferring a scroll and fountain pen.
Casimir stiffened and struck what was undoubtedly intended as a gallant pose. "I do not accept them, Trigosi. I find your crass manner most unpleasant. Put away your worthless contract, sir. It will never bear our names." He sneered defiantly, and suddenly Lynnis began to wonder if either of them were going to leave the saloon in one piece.
Trigosi shrugged indifferently, a gesture that gave the fleeting impression he had no neck whatsoever. "So be it, outlander. Our paths part here. But I do not think you will find greater fortune elsewhere. Your foreign scruples will make few you few friends in Fellport. I wish you well and caution you against hope." He stepped aside and gestured past a bar groaning with crystal decanters of exotic liqueurs to the exit.
Lynnis slumped out of her pose and allowed Casimir to wrap her cloak about her shoulders. As he led her towards the door, she allowed Trigosi and his companions to see a quick flash of disappointment cross her face. No sense in letting the bridge burn any more than it already had.
At first all he felt was a pleasant warmth, but as Jedlow slowly returned to consciousness his face began to throb. Clenching his eyes and teeth shut to ward off the pain, he gingerly probed the bridge of his nose and groaned. Broken. He opened his eyes and mouth, sucked in a deep breath and wondered where he was.
He was on the ground in front of a fireplace. Magistrate Ductio, now fully dressed in his greatcoat with silver buttons and epaulets and his cavalry boots, was looming over him. He had just enough time to register a small gathering of scantily dressed women giggling nervously at him when Ductio reached down with one hand, grabbed his nose between two fingers and wrenched it.
Jedlow screeched and clapped his hands to his face.
Ductio waited until his cries had trailed off into muttered sobs and said, "Two things, trainee. Never let an enlisted man treat your wounds. They don't know what the fuck they're doing and you'll end up hurt worse than you were." He grabbed Jedlow by the wrists and pulled his hands apart to inspect the damage. "You're nose is reset. You'll heal. But not before it swells to the size of a melon and blackens both your eyes. Let that be a fucking lesson."
Jedlow muttered words of gratitude. It didn't seem wise to antagonise the Magistrate any further. Nevertheless he couldn't help but ask: "What's the other thing, master" His voice was thick and slurred like a simpleton.
"The other thing, trainee, is a lesson you'd best clasp dear to your heart." Ductio leaned in close for emphasis. "Never, ever, interrupt me on my Hedgeday rounds. Understand?"
"Yes, Magistrate."
"Then we're already seeing eye to eye. Right. What's so important that Kilritch would send a man – even one as inestimable as you, lad – to his death to have me know it?"
Jedlow reminded himself that he was on guardsmen's business and tried to straighten up to deliver his news, but something cricked in his neck and he winced instead, clapping a hand to the injured spot. "It's Grape Corner, master. There's been a murder."
"So? There's a murder there every other week? What's in it to involve me?"
"Don't know, master. The Bl- er, Duke Vormura himself asked for you especially, is what I was told. He says it's a matter of State, or some such." There had been a few other details mentioned when Kilritch had given him his orders, but Jedlow had missed them in the confusion.
"Did he now?" Magistrate Ductio removed his hat and with a thoughtful expression stroked some fibers out of the fur. His fingers were precisely manicured and had been glazed a fashionably pale apricot. His worn and creased face was polished with smugness. One grey and one green eye gave the hat one last careful inspection and with a quiet grunt of satisfaction he swept it back onto his hair, which was black racing headlong to silver. "And who is the victim in this tragic affair?"
Jedlow remembered this bit. "A saloon owner, master, a lady one. Runs the Moistened Cardinal on Cerulean Street. Name of Piety Korsolten."
Ductio swore softly. Then he repeated himself, but much louder. "Fuck my horse! It's on again."
Jedlow wondered, Should I ask? He chanced a glance at the doxies, who were hanging on every word Ductio uttered. There was something meaningful in their expressions that suggested he was the only person in the room that didn't understand. This was not a circumstance that Jedlow was entirely unfamiliar with, and from long experience knew that it was better to expose his ignorance now than to proceed with everyone assuming he knew what was going on. Jedlow was by no means as stupid as he looked or acted.
"What's on, Magistrate?"
Ductio swore again, this time in a foreign language. "Salooneers, lad. They're occasionally disposed to get into disputes amongst themselves, and that's to put it polite. If it's come to that, there'll be blood in the streets."
Captain Rook had grudgingly met his maritime obligations by sending a couple of sailors out in a longboat to search the bay, but only after he had secured his ship and made arrangements to begin unloading his cargo. By that time, Bey was sure, Herok was either long drowned or safely ashore. Either way it was no longer any business of his, and he made his way clear of the docks with haste, before whatever authorities had jurisdiction detained him with their questions.
He wandered for a while, trying to get a feel for the sounds of Fellport. He made his way though the streets neighbouring the docks, trusting to previous experience, which had taught him that he would find little here but seedy guest houses, perfunctory brothels and rough taverns populated by the itinerant and the desperate. Nothing of value to a man who sought Opportunity.
Before long he found himself wandering the streets of a commercial district of some kind. By now the morning fog had burned away and his first impressions faded. The grey cast he had first observed upon the buildings had been transformed into rich hues of red, brown and ochre. The architecture was upright, functional and, where decorations occurred at all, was at the point of flaking and fading. Fellport was a town in autumn dress, and it suited her. It seemed grand and wealthy, yet teetering on the brink of weary decrepitude. Soon, it seemed, it would begin the long decline into decadent senescence, but for now it was holding out with the renewed and desperate vigour of middle age, clinging to the energy of its youth even as it bent itself to the accumulation of wealth.
This was Bey's kind of town. This was a place that cultivated Opportunity like a narcotic plant.
He loitered in a market area as the town began to come to life. When he first arrived, the vendors were there, setting up their tables and barrows and wagons, displaying their wares, shouting friendly greetings and boisterous challenges to one another. Bey listened, not to the words so much as the tone. He drank in their speech, the curiosities of emphasis and intonation, listening for the words and phrases that divided the local from the foreign. When a choice phrase would catch his attention, he would roll it over his tongue a few times, repeating it under his breath until it felt natural. He dropped his natural speech down a few tones, better to match the rounded Murbish baritone. He added "Isn't it so?" and "Don't you think that?" to his lexicon, and made an effort to tack it to the end of his sentences.
He practiced what he had learned, engaging a fruit vendor here with a casual discussion of the prospects for larger oranges in the spring, flirting with a coppersmith there about the shape of her trinkets. He made mistakes, marked himself as a foreigner, and tried again and again.
By late morning, Bey had developed an acceptable Fellport accent and a considerable hunger. He had stolen as much as he could from this morning's final meal aboard the ship, but now his resources had entirely evaporated and he was left to rely on his wits. Having failed to identify any more appealing option, he decided to get a job.
He retraced his steps to an area he had earlier marked as well-to-do, notable for its fresh appearance and general liveliness. Though he had a range of valuable and highly marketable skills, when in pecuniary waters as shallow as these, he invariably took tavern work of some kind. It paid him enough to live on and gave him a chance to speak to many people, and People meant Opportunity. He selected a saloon almost at random, swayed to the decision by a wrought-iron sculpture of a tipsy bishop rendered in gold leaf that appealed to his oft-suppressed sense of mischief. He slid one door of darkened glass aside and walked in.
Immediately he sensed there was something unusual about the place. It was not yet too late for people to be taking their luncheon, yet the crowd here seemed sparse. Those who were dining were hunched over their meals, speaking in low whispers if they had a companion, those without making no eye contact with others. In a far corner several of the serving staff were gathered in a conspiratorial huddle, apparently at a loose end. There was a bar – unattended, he noticed – and swinging doors to the kitchen.
He began to suspect that he had wandered into some unusual club with arcane rules and exclusive clientel when the kitchen doors swung open and a youth in a dark overcoat and fur hat stepped out. He peered at the collection of staff, who returned his stare with naked hostility. Finally he came to some decision and pointed at one of them, a short brunette woman in a housemaid's top. She passed an empty glass to one of her companions, muttered something which evidently did not succeed in amusing them from their restrained chuckles of acknowledgment, and followed the uniformed youth into the kitchens. A moment later a cook, dressed all in blue and with an belt of knives, spoons and other kitchen paraphernalia stepped out. He immediately crossed to his waiting coworkers and engaged them in a conversation of urgent whispers.
Something unusual was obviously happening. Opportunity was one thing, but Bey couldn't afford to buy his way out of trouble. He had made up his mind to leave when one of the waiters broke from the group and hustled across the dining corner towards him, evidently against the wishes of his fellows. "Ho there, master. Wait one moment!"
Bey pretended not to have heard and slid the door open, but something made him hesitate. There was something almost fearful in the man's expression that piqued his curiosity.
"I beg your pardon, master," he fretted. "The wait was unforgivable. May I show you to a table? We have an excellent view of the ornamental ponds from that window."
Bey licked his lips and sized the man up. A native, from his accent, taller than Bey and with more flesh about his pale pink face, another sure sign of the Murbish. He was older than Bey thought usual for a junior waiter, though he showed no signs of the unctuous superiority of the table captains Bey had known. Unimaginative career or something else? he wondered. He looked far from relaxed, with veins showing in his neck, upper lip twitching.
"Not right now." He risked assertiveness, figuring the waiter to be well back in the saloon pecking order. "What has happened here?"
"An unpleasant business, master, but nothing the Duke's men cannot handle. Perhaps a drink?"
Bey breathed out slowly and fixed the nervous man with his eyes. "Actually, I am not here as a customer. I would like to meet your manager, to discuss my employment at the, ah, the Moistened Cardinal."
The waiter's expression appeared divided between ghast and outrage. "Then I'm afraid your visit is mistimed. You cannot speak to Mistress Korsolten. She has been murdered this very day."
Bey winced as two notions struck him at once. The first was that the very thing he needed least was to become caught up in a killing, with its inherent emotional strife of speculation, accusation and denial, and of course the unknowable possibility that the death was not an exclusive event.
The second and stronger impulse was that this, unquestionably, was an Opportunity.