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Chapter Text

London, 1893

Unlike the quiet streets outside, The Long Spoon buzzed with the murmur of the numerous dinner conversations of its patrons. Dishes clattered, food sizzled as it cooked, and a sad tune was played on a stringed instrument by a squid-man who occasionally interrupted the song to gurgle his gratitude toward when a piece of rostygold fell into his hat. Two men sat along the dimly lit bar. One of the men was clothed entirely in the same shade of black as his hair, which fell into a mess about his shoulders. His pale skin, which gripped his thin face tightly, stood in a stark contrast to his clothing, which was dark and hung loosely about his limbs. The other man wore a suit of garish magenta which clashed greatly with his orange eyes. He was very tan and muscular, but by no means intimidating. They spoke to one another quietly, as if they were unaware of the din.

“I do so enjoy seeing you.” The man clothed in magenta said to the man in black.

“And I, you,” the man in black replied, his lips curling into a twisted smile. “But. . . I have heard tell that you have been seen with another.”

“Banish the thought!” The man in magenta gasped. “You are the only one for me.”

The man in black retrieved a small red notebook from his pocket and flipped to a page to which he had pasted a photograph. It showed the man in magenta holding hands with an auburn-haired woman dressed in the scandalous crimson gown typically worn by those under Sinning Jenny's employ and a pair of heavy, hob-nailed boots.

“You are an awful liar, Dante.” The man in black said, sliding the notebook down the bar. As he realized what was on the page, the color fell out of the man in magenta’s sculpted face.

“She means nothing to me,” the magenta-clad man said. “Moreover, I have not seen nor heard from her for a number of weeks.”

“What is her name?”

“She owns the room next to mine at the Brass Embassy.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“V-Virginia.”

This made the man in black stop suddenly. “That is a lie. Virginia and I are quite familiar,” he said, gritting his teeth. He retrieved a small green bottle from the same pocket as he had produced the notebook. He pushed the bottle toward the man in magenta.

“Let these jog your memory.” The man in black said as he pulled his hand from the neck of the bottle. The man in magenta stared hungrily at the bottle's shifting contents. “Are those. . . for me?”

“If you tell me her name.”

The man in magenta struggled with the decision for a moment. He began to speak, but no words came from his mouth. He tried again.

“Kensington. Miss Therese Kensington. She is a Correspondence scholar, or was. I believe she was removed from the University due to some politics or other. I have no interest in her any longer, besides.”

“Why is that?” The man in black asked, raising an eyebrow.

“She is soulless. To be without a soul is to be an empty husk, incapable of experiencing joy or despair, delight or revulsion. She has lost the spark of romance that gives a life meaning. Given her circumstances, though, she’s better off without it.”

“How terribly hypocritical of you. The only reason you bought me dinner tonight is to try to convince me to relinquish my own soul.”

“Mister Laffan!” the man in magenta exclaimed. “I am astonished that you would think so little of me. I simply thought we might have a nice evening of dinner and conversation. You are the one that insisted on turning everything so dramatic.”

“Not to worry. Beatrice is trying to convince me as well. I can say whatever I want to either of you. You will still invite me to dinner every night this week and next week as long as I still have a soul.” The man in black put his fingers through his long hair. “Once you relieve me of that, I daresay you will be done with me.”

“I am a very busy devil, Mister Laffan. Surely you cannot expect me to spend every moment with those I have Abstracted? I would never get anything done!”

The man in black reached once more into his pocket and retrieved a series of letters. He handed them sequentially to the man in magenta.

“I suppose that you forgot about how you invited me on this same dinner date four times this week. You even used the same letter! And in this one,” the man in black pointed to the top of one of the letters. “You forgot to remove the ‘NAME OF TARGET’ field in the header.” He laughed. “For shame, Dante. I knew Hell was bureaucratic, but you could at least proofread your form letters.”

The man in magenta stared down at the polished counter, struggling to form a response. The man in black returned the notebook to his coat and rose to his feet, rubbing his chin.

“You know,” said the man to the wordless devil, “We are not so different, you and I. I may give you my soul at some point just out of pity.”

By the time the devil had formed an appropriately pithy response, the man in black was gone.

X

It had been nearly thirty years since London spontaneously relocated to an isolated cavern beneath the Earth’s crust. This event was colloquially referred to as The Fall, though few who survived it maintained their sanity long enough to give an accurate account as to whether London actually fell through some sort of fissure or simply appeared inside the cavern at some arbitrary depth and let gravity do the rest. The cavern itself—known colloquially as The Neath—was surprisingly large; London occupied only one of a litany of islands which formed a smattered archipelago in a massive basin of briny, abyssal water. The inhabitants of the islands surrounding London, unlike many of the residents of London proper, ascribed their origins from a number of different cities across a lengthy timespan. Some remembered when it was not London which sat at the center of the archipelago, but Karakorum, or Amarna, or some other city which existed only as relics buried in the dust and bones beneath London. For most of the citizens who dwelt below, talk of these cities was just rumor and myth. Only the most tenacious and foolhardy residents of London could ever be bothered to find the truth therein.

Chapter Text

Therese Kensington dreamt of water. Black, oily water that surrounded her on all sides and filled her mouth and nose with metallic bitterness. She struggled to break through the surface, but there were chains wrapped around her limbs, trying to drag her further down into the peligin depths. She gasped and the water poured into her lungs, thick as treacle. Her heartbeat stuttered in an erratic tattoo as she clawed the inky waves, desperately searching for something to grab onto. But there was nothing but water and pain and hunger burning in the pit of her stomach, hunger that would devour everything until—

THUNK.

The sound of a heavy object landing on her desk startled Therese awake. Standing above her was Dr. Victor Orthos, an archaeologist by title and a thief by trade. His hands free, he began twisting the tip of his immaculately starched mustache thoughtfully. He had dropped a rectangular clay tablet on her desk before her. It had caused significant damage to her brass nameplate.

“Good morning, Miss Kensington!” he said in a voice that betrayed how glad he was that he would no longer have to share the academic spotlight with her.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Orthos?” she mumbled, pinching the bridge of her nose and rubbing her bleary eyes. It was a miracle the grating man had even made his way into her office. Much of the floor was obstructed by towers of crates and boxes; a monolithic labyrinth in memorial of her ruined career. She carefully extracted her nameplate from beneath the tablet, only to toss the dented brass into a haphazardly packed box. It was worthless now, much like her reputation.

“I know that the Provost has ordered your department dissolved, but could you see to a favor before you go?” He asked with no hint of sympathy in his voice. He lifted up the rear end of the tablet so that she could see the inscription on its face.

“Correspondence?” she said, puzzled. The maddening alphabet which she had devoted her entire academic career to deciphering spotted the tablet, interspersed between pictures of birds and corn and humans with dog-shaped heads. It was not the presence of the Correspondence which puzzled her—many tablets had been recovered from various ruins around London. Few, if any, however, possessed both the Correspondence and hieroglyphs. She fumbled in a near empty drawer for her reading glasses while Orthos prattled on.

“It is a shame to see the Department of Conflagrant Semiotics go under, but translating this should be no trouble for you. Especially considering your lack of employment.”
She ignored him as she placed her glasses on the end of her nose and examined the tablet again. She had not been mistaken. The tablet was written in a combination of Correspondence and Ancient Egyptian.

“I was on Bullbone Island, running for my life from a vicious Blemmigan Queen.” He began, twirling his mustache. “Cornered, I had no choice but to fight! I reached down to find a solid stone with which to strike the beast, but by my luck I found this tablet!”

“And you managed to bludgeon it to death without breaking the tablet?” she asked in a distracted tone. No doubt the tablet had been stolen. He had claimed the exact same story word for word about a Third City stone idol at a university dinner a month prior. He had likely not remembered she was there.

“I didn’t kill the creature,” he sputtered. “No, Victor Orthos is not a man of cruelty! I gave the creature a good sound thrashing. When it realized how strong and capable I was, it was forced to retreat! As a man of honor, I accepted its resignation with dignity and respect.”

“What exactly do you expect me to do with this paperweight?” she asked, setting the tablet to the side and pressing her fingertips together. While there were a number of recognizable Correspondence symbols carved into the clay, she would not give him the satisfaction of appearing interested in his stolen goods.

“As you are well aware, I am no longer employed by the University,” she continued. “There is no notability to be gained in asking my expertise.”

Aggravatingly, Orthos continued to twirl his mustache. Therese pressed her fingers together harder, largely to keep from picking up the glass knife sitting on her desk and forcibly shaving him.

“You may be leaving the University, but Conflagrant Semiotics are all the rage! One can hardly publish without a pesky reviewer asking for a transliteration of Correspondence.” He stopped twisting his mustache and rubbed his hands together.

“Besides—if you aid a prominent figure in the archaeological realm such as myself, perhaps the Provost would see fit to have you placed in my department, rather than out on the street.”

She exhaled slowly and folded her hands together.

“As much as I appreciate your generous offer, I would hate for your reputation to suffer the same sullying as my own,” she said through gritted teeth. “Allow me some time to consider before I make a decision.”

“Of course!” he exclaimed gaily, backing towards the door. “Take all the time you need. I would hate to interfere with your more . . . illustrious prospects. Now if you will excuse me, I have an appointment with a most enchanting deviless.”

Therese bit back a scoff. If Virginia was anything like Dante had been, she had no interest in Orthos’ personality. When the door closed with a resounding slam, Therese allowed herself to slump forward onto the desk. She plucked of her glasses and set them on top of the tablet before burying her face in her arms. Years of carefully cultivated research wasted, and for what? Because she insisted on poking her nose in interdepartmental politics. She raised her head to glumly survey the surrounding detritus of academia. Lead Correspondence plaques lay in forlorn piles, weighing down papers covered in illegible scribbles. Empty pots of violant ink were strewn across the floor. Boxes gaped like open maws, ready to swallow her entire life. She listlessly picked up a teacup precariously close to the edge of her desk. It was empty, save for a dried crust of tea dregs at the bottom. She let the cup drop from her fingers, shattering against the floor in a tinkling of china. With a resigned sigh, she picked up an empty box from beside her chair and began sweeping the scattered items from atop the desk into it. The knife she returned to its sheath on her hip, while the gold-rimmed spectacles she returned to the edge of her nose with a faint grimace. She had not needed them once, but the unending gloom of the Neath and the twisting sigils of the Correspondence had begun to take a toll on her vision, and it never hurt to have an extra layer of protection against the arcane language.

When the box was full, she hefted it into her arms and gave the room another examination. There was no point in gathering the majority of the office’s contents. The notes were useless to those without the proper knowledge, and the Masters had made it quite clear that there was no viable reason for that knowledge to spread more than it already had. There was also a board in the corner of the room, wound with strings connecting various ephemera to an envelope full of black rose petals. For the briefest moment, she considered taking down the board. She shook her head and stepped towards the door. Much like her Correspondence research, it was meaningless without the proper interpretation, and she had no interest in continuing to pursue that particular investigation. Brushing a lock of auburn hair from her eyes, she crossed the room, shards of glass crunching under her boots. There was nothing else for her here.

X

Word of the end of Therese Kensington’s tenure at the University spread far and fast. The reclusive novelist turned expert of esoteric semiotics was known well among every stratum of society. The homeless children who roved the streets of London, known affectionately as urchins, spoke of when she would listen with great interest to the stories that they exchanged of flaming letters that appear in odd places around the city. The few who were literate were not well-read enough to know the difference between a Correspondence sigil and a letter with an accent-mark, but she had taken notes all the same. The artists and writers and models of the city fawned over scandalous novellas and morally dubious stories which, much to her chagrin, made her name as an author. Principal among these was The Midnight Moors, a gothic romance novel wherein a nubile young heroine is sold to a nobleman and consequently discovers that he is a practitioner of black magic, as well as a fantastic lover. It sold very well despite disapproval by both high society and the Ministry of Public Decency—a government body tasked with ensuring that all published writings were absent any questionable content. To protect, or perhaps subdue the humans of The Neath, The Masters ruthlessly thwarted her research efforts. The only reason that she was able to maintain her career as long as she did was that they underestimated her ability to maintain her sanity in the face of the mind-numbing letters.

Perhaps it was because of this iron resolve that when she returned to the small zee-side cottage she called home, she was unsurprised to find an unconscious man sitting in her parlor with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a jar of Prisoner’s Honey at his feet. If the entire city knew of her disgrace, it was likely that James Corcoran had known first. She unceremoniously dropped her box from the University onto the floor beside him, causing a thunk not dissimilar from the one that had woken her earlier. The man immediately shot up from the chair, a ratwork derringer inexplicably appearing in his previously empty hand. He wildly waved the gun around the room before eventually settling his eyes on her.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Reese,” he said in a hoarse voice. “What if I woke up honey-mazed?”

“If you woke up honey-mazed in my house, I would have thrown you into the bloody street,” she said firmly. “What are you doing here, James?”

He returned the gun to the inside of his rumbled coat and rubbed his irrigo stained eyes. James Corcoran was arguably the closest thing Therese had to a friend. She had met the American after a rather disastrous Feast of the Exceptional Rose some years prior. He had accosted her for her loud drunken singing, and she retched on his shoes in response. Despite his notorious love for the insidious narcotic known as Prisoner’s Honey, he managed to maintain an exceptional talent for murder, and was a highly valued member of the Great Game. There was little information that escaped his notice.

“I heard about what happened at the University. Thought you could use some cheering up,” he explained, waving the whiskey bottle in his hand. Therese placed her hands on her hips and frowned.

“If you heard about what happened, you should know I have no interest in company right now,” she replied, folding her arms. He shook his head, causing his sandy hair to jostle against his shoulders.

“I know how you get when you’re alone too long. You brood.”

He held up the half empty bottle to the gaslight before taking a deep pull of its contents. He offered the bottle to her, but she declined with a small shake of her head.

“I think I have earned the right to brood in this instance. I am disgraced, James. What am I supposed to do? Go back to writing tawdry penny dreadfuls and anonymous gossip rags?”

She collapsed into an overstuffed green armchair by the fire.

“There’s always the Game,” he said helpfully. She snorted in disgust.

“It was blackmail and poisoning that just cost me my career. I have no intention of getting involved in more of it.”

She settled into the chair and watched the flickering flames in the fireplace.

“I have been banished from the Palace and the University,” she announced. She propped her boots up on the tea table in front of her as she began ticking the city’s factions off on her fingers. “The Masters despise me. The Bohemians love me because I appeal to their insipid tastes. Society only delights in my scandal.”

“What about the Labyrinth? The Bishop of Southwark needs a new Theological Husbandry assistant.”

“You know I cannot involve myself with the Church,” she countered. She gazed down at her boots. An absence gnawed at the pit of her stomach.

“The Docks then. I’m sure the Widow would take you on as a runner.”

“Perhaps,” she murmured. A familiar weariness was settling into her bones—no doubt the brooding that he referred to. As a member of the city’s eleven per cent, melancholia was a frequent companion. James she was certain remained with his soul intact, despite his Commandment-breaking profession. Her gaze travelled from the warm glow of the fire to the box she had left beside James’ chair. Her parting gift from Orthos peeked out from the top.

“Orthos tried to bait me into a job in his department,” she revealed, attempting to stave off the creeping gloom with idle chatter.

“You don’t need to work for that pompous mustache if you want to go robbing,” James scoffed. “I’ll set you up with the Topsy King if you want to go into burglary.”

“I have no interest in anything of the sort,” she scoffed, making a face of displeasure. “Though I do wonder why . . .”

She trailed off. She knew James had not cared for her Correspondence studies. Though he would not admit it, he was likely pleased with her dismissal. He had admonished her countless times that the studies were dangerous and clearly not meant for human comprehension. He hated the way she took to the impossible syllabary, tracing writhing letters that twisted on the page and burned on the tongue. Time and again, she had shrugged off his concerns. He had his profession, she had hers.

“Why what?” he asked, interrupting her train of thought. She shook her head.

“It does not matter. Orthos’ only interest in the Correspondence lies in what he can offer to Virginia,” she said dismissively. “I have no intention of being his liaison to the Embassy.”

“Already ticked that box, didn’t you?”

She shot James a nasty glare. Despite certain rumors undoubtedly perpetuated by the Brass Embassy, her interactions with the devils of London had never ventured into the intimate stage. At least not by mortal standards.

“I think you should be getting home now,” she said sourly. “You have done a very fine job of cheering me up.”

He immediately turned regretful. “I didn’t mean it.”

“No, no,” she said airily, waving her hand. “You have reminded me of my personal failings on an academic, social, and spiritual level. There is little more you can do than that. Make sure you lock whatever window you used to break in, Corky. I don’t need Echo getting out.”

His face darkened at the nickname, but he gathered his neglected jar of Prisoner’s Honey without comment. Therese returned her fixation to the fireplace. It was a low jab, but she did not need a reminder of yet another lapse in judgement.

“I got your mail,” he said in an offhand tone.

“Thank you,” she said, attempting to sound grateful. “I’ll get to it later.”

He shrugged as she resettled in the chair. It was as close as either would get to an apology. Theirs was not a friendship based in contrition. Not when she desecrated Saint Joshua’s shrine, not when he recommended a zee-voyage that left her Storm-touched, and not now. Life in London was too volatile for apologies. She closed her eyes as he quietly left the room. It was not his fault she had been sacked. She thought her discoveries would pave the way for a new understanding of the mercurial creatures that had whisked the city underground, and perhaps uncover the mysteries of the cities that had come before it. She should have known that the Masters would prefer their motivations to remain hidden. Whatever they were or the reason for their motivations was to remain obscured to the denizens of the city. Better to just enjoy the eccentric creature comforts that the city had to offer and leave it at that.

When Therese opened her eyes again, she saw the box. Orthos’ tablet seemed to be mocking her, innocuously jutting out above the papers and other ephemera she had grabbed. With a heavy sigh, she stood up and plucked the tablet from the box. Her pale grey eyes swept across its surface, a frown furrowing her brow. The symbols were tightly packed together, as if whatever story it told were too dangerous to risk separating into multiple slabs. She lowered the tablet and thoughtfully chewed on her bottom lip. Her Egyptian was patchy at best, but hadn’t she picked up a book of hieroglyphs in that load of books from the Radical Antiquarian’s estate auction? Translating the inscription would be a better use of her time than sulking, and it wasn’t as though she had any obligation to tell Orthos she had done it. Her mind reluctantly made up, she took the tablet to her study.
James had clearly seen to play housekeeper before she had returned, an amusing gesture considering the state of his own apartments. A fire was burning in the grate, casting shadows across the walls of bookcases. A snow white mynah was fast asleep on the mantle, curled up in a nest made of shredded literary journals. Therese smiled fondly at the bird before making her way to her desk. The hieroglyphic dictionary was where she had left it, in a pile mixed with journals of minor Surface nobles and some apparently scandalous poetry she meant to properly catalogue but had forgotten in the flurry of the investigation of the Provost. She set the tablet on her desk and carefully extracted the dictionary before opening her journal to a clean page. Hieroglyphs may have read left to right, but Correspondence rarely seemed to follow in such a straightforward pattern. Hopefully being incorporated to a human—albeit antiquated—logography would grant the passage a semblance of structure. Picking up a pen in one hand and the tablet in the other, she began to read.

X

Eventually, the pecking roused Therese from her trance. A series of sharp, not exactly affectionate nips to the ear that reminded her of the outside world. She batted irritably at the pain, only to be rewarded by a rasping squawk and another nip to the finger. She tore her eyes away from the tablet and stuck her bleeding finger in her mouth to glare at the preening bird perched on her shoulder. The bird fixed her with a steady amber gaze and attempted to caw again. The largely mute mynah had been her companion nearly as long as she had been in the Neath, since the aftermath of the shipwreck that commemorated her first death. Satisfied to have gained her mistress’ attention, she fluttered from Therese’s shoulder to return to her perch on the mantle.

“What is it, Echo?” Therese asked. The sensations of life returned one at a time. A dull ache in her back and hands from hunching over the desk and clutching her pen. Dry eyes from staring at her work so long. She blinked rapidly and gazed around the study. The fire had died long ago, shrouding the room in a pale blue glow from the moonish light outside. She pushed back from the desk and stood, her joints aching in protest. She could not remember the last time she had gotten so absorbed in her work. It was a fascinating read. Information about the Second City was notoriously scarce; its rulers more so. Based on her haphazard Egyptian, the tablet appeared to depict some kind of love story, the sort of torrid, star-crossed affair the Masters typically disapproved of. The tale concerned the story of an Egyptian princess and . . . she wasn’t quite sure. The deuteragonist was represented by an utterly unfamiliar Correspondence sigil. It almost appeared to resemble a corrupted version of the symbol used to denote one of the Masters, but she could not put her finger on what about the symbol seemed wrong.

As her attention wandered around the drawing room, Echo croaked again. On top of the mynah’s carefully crafted nest was a small black envelope. Therese frowned. It was unlike her to leave any scrap of parchment unscathed. Notes temporarily abandoned, Therese retrieved the envelope. The front was blank, and the back had a curiously ghastly seal of lamplighter beeswax depicting two skulls in profile, or perhaps one skull split down the middle. An ominous pain twisted in the pit of her stomach. She had never seen such a grisly seal before.

“Where did you get this?” she asked uneasily. Echo shook her head and raked at her now empty nest. Therese reluctantly picked at the seal, dimly noticing that in her work trance, she had splattered ink on the back of her right hand. She returned her attention to the seal. It peeled away with remarkable ease, and she unfolded the paper to find a stark white note inside.

Miss Therese Kensington,

I hope that this letter finds you in good spirits despite your circumstance.

Recently, an Egyptian tablet was purloined from the personal collection of a certain eccentric Neath-parliamentarian. I have spent the better part of a month tracking its whereabouts through a series of transactions and have reason to believe that it is in your possession. The tablet may contain clues which may help to identify a nameless presence which drives all who search for it to a self-destructive madness.

If you have such an item, you will find it in your financial interest to return it to me rather than any of its previous owners. If money is not the object of your desire, then we may discuss other terms.

I await your response,
Gideon Laffan

“The news is already public, then,” she muttered. No doubt Orthos had helped fuel those flames. She silently reread the letter, mulling over its implications. A self-destructive madness? That seemed melodramatic. She had suffered worse effects from Correspondence research than being overly absorbed in reading. Given her new-found unemployment, it would probably be best to gather what resources she could before turning to . . . less favorable options. She shook her head. A dull snarl in the pit of her stomach reminded her that she could not recall the last time she had eaten, and there was no accounting for how much time had passed since she had begun translating the tablet. Whoever this man was and how he knew about the tablet, it could wait until after she scavenged something appropriating a meal.

As she moved to leave the letter on her desk, her eyes fell upon her notes. It appeared at some point she had drifted into doodling, her careful script devolving into of the tablet’s more unusual Correspondence symbols, a portmanteau that denoted the phrase ‘North-bound.’ It was drawn over and over across the pages, and in a few cases on the desk itself. She frowned at her carelessness and reached into her pocket for a handkerchief. As she moved to wipe up the ink, she froze. What she had casually dismissed as overzealous splatter on her hand was not violant ink at all. The corrupted sigil had been carved into the back of her right hand, fresh blood oozing from the wound in horrifically precise lines. From the corner of her eye, she saw the pen she had set aside. The nib was tipped with bright crimson. A curious lightheadedness overtook her, and she clutched the back of her chair as she swayed.

“What have I done?” she asked in a horrified whisper. Tendrils of fear burrowed into the metaphysical void where her soul once lay. The mysterious letter sat primly amongst the wreckage of her desk, illuminated by the moonish light from the window. Self-destructive madness caught her attention once more. Before she could rethink her actions, her trembling fingers reached for her blood-dipped pen and a mostly clean sheet of parchment.

Mister Laffan, she wrote,

Though I am wary to confirm it, I have recently come into the possession of an artefact of the Second City. I cannot attest to its origin, as it came into my hands via a rather unscrupulous former colleague who is not known for his honesty. Nevertheless, I refuse to release the artefact into unknown hands. Based on my preliminary examinations, I can safely say that it is far more dangerous than any artefact I have ever encountered in my studies. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to obtain such an item, but I assure you that monetary value holds no persuasion in this particular case.

You may join me for dinner in two days’ time so that we may discuss the artefact in question and perhaps negotiate some sort of arrangement for its transfer in ownership.

Until then,
Therese Kensington

She folded the letter into thirds as neatly as she could muster and turned towards her mantle. Echo had nestled happily back into her nest, oblivious of her owner’s unusual behavior.

“Echo, you wretched bird. I do not know where you obtained that letter, but you will take this to wherever it came from,” Therese instructed, hoping she sounded as assertive as she did not feel. “Do not leave until you have a response. Do you understand?”

The bird lazily opened an eye to regard her before slowly rising with a grumpy ruffling of feathers to accept her task. Taking letter in beak, she hopped over to the window Therese wrestled open and flew out towards the distant city lights. Therese wrapped her arms around her torso and watched as the night swallowed her pet, steadfastly ignoring the twisting feeling in her stomach that could easily be mistaken for fear. It’s only hunger, she told herself. Only hunger.

X

Two days had passed, and Echo still had not returned. Therese tried not to fret about her absence, setting her study back to rights and carrying on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. She took a trip to the Bazaar to restock her abysmally empty pantry and prepared a simple zeefood chowder with fresh baked bread and a bottle of Greyfields to drink. As seven o’clock rolled around, she set the table for two, just in case. That had been hours ago. Now she sat with a sprawling mass of paper in front of her, cold chowder pushed off to the side but the bottle of Grayfields she had opened sitting next to her inkpot and half-empty. She had not bothered with a glass. This was how things were supposed to be. Just her and her work. No mysterious envelopes or cursed tablets or probationary hearings. Just a pile of fresh parchment and a fresh fountain pen filled with violant ink. Still, she found her eyes drifting up towards the neglected setting across the table. She imagined a shifting black form in the chair, a living shadow to take the place of her absent guest.

“You invite yourself into my life and refuse me the decency of a polite meal,” she remarked at the empty chair wearily. “How terribly inconsiderate of you.”

The chair remained silent. With a laborious sigh, she returned to the manuscript in front of her. With her career at the University over, she would have to fall back on fiction. Much to her dismay, the most profitable of her work tended to be melodramatic gothic tales involving crumbling castles and artfully torn bodices. Alas, it seemed she had no choice now. Picking up her pen, she began again.

Veronica took a step back, unwittingly trapping herself against the door. Captain Harker continued calmly stalking towards her, like a tiger cornering its prey. He was dressed only in his breeches, and though his back was no longer facing her, it was too late. She had already seen the scars across his back; long, vicious lines of red scoring across his pale flesh.

“Now you know,” he said quietly, his eyes as dark as the lashing waves outside. “Tell me, milady. Did your father ever take a whip to your backside?”

Therese buried her head in her hands and groaned. Perhaps it would be better to accept this mysterious Mister Laffan’s offer of financial compensation. Though she could no longer make any claim to artistic integrity, this sort of work was humiliating. She pulled the black envelope from under the stack of parchment and mulled over it as she had multiple times over the past two days. Gideon Laffan. The name was unfamiliar. French, maybe? There were a few in London. Her social engagements had largely fallen by the wayside since the Provost’s trial had begun, and even before then she had strived to avoid all but the most necessary parties. James may have been able to uncover something, but she did not want to devolve into another argument about her career choices. Her eyes subconsciously flickered to her injured hand, slathered in amber slime and wound tightly with bandages. Or that I may be involved in something much worse.

Before she could dwell on these darker thoughts, Echo glided into the room, another black envelope clutched in her beak. She dropped the envelope onto Therese’s manuscript before turning her attention to the abandoned bowl of stew.

“Echo! Where have you been? I was worried sick! What took you so long?” Therese demanded, picking up the envelope and brandishing it at the bird.

Echo looked up from the bowl, a scrap of chowder-coated tentacle hanging from her beak. Unlike the illustrious ravens of London, mynahs were incapable of human speech. The bird could not have told her even if it could make a sound. Therese shook her head with disapproval and tore open the envelope.

Miss Therese Kensington,

Owing to the forbidden nature of the tablet’s script and your brief membership with the constabulary velocipede squad, I must insist that we meet in a more public arena. Please understand my caution regarding these dire matters. I will be in Caligula’s Coffee House tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.

I offer my sincerest apologies for spurning your dinner invitation.
Gideon Laffan

She groaned again.

“How terribly rude! You would think he would have thought to reply a bit sooner than—” she glanced up at the clock on the mantle, “Eleven at night!”

She glared balefully at Echo, who was far too busy gulping leftovers to notice her owner’s distress. Keeping her grumbling to herself, Therese began to stack up the unused plates and set them on the sideboard. Her housekeeper—a devious young woman more interested in jewelry than housework—had yet to be replaced. The kitchen would have to be cleaned quickly if she was to gain any semblance of sleep before her meeting with the elusive Gideon Laffan.