Текст книги "Irregulars "
Автор книги: Astrid Amara
Соавторы: Nicole Kimberling,Ginn Hale,Josh lanyon
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Текущая страница: 28 (всего у книги 32 страниц)
Standing at the foot of the futon, Jason looked nervous but utterly unaware of the forces surrounding him. He watched Henry with wide, dark eyes. His long fingers lightly tapped an uneasy rhythm against his legs.
“Let’s give it one more go,” Henry decided and Jason nodded his assent.
Just as Henry drew the burning power of an unformed spell into the hollow of his mouth—felt it flickering across the tip of his tongue—he saw Jason’s mouth move just a breath. Henry went still, straining to catch the word on Jason’s lips.
Henry felt, as much as heard, a bittersweet melody wash over him like the promise of redemption. Beautiful and definitely magic. Henry swallowed his burning spell back into his gut instead of wasting the energy.
“Do you know what you did just now?” Henry asked.
“Me?” Jason looked startled. “Nothing. I was just standing here like you told me to.”
“No, there was something. I felt it. Tell me what you were thinking about a second ago.”
“Nothing.” Jason shook his head. “I just had a little tune in my head but—”
“What tune?” Henry moved closer to him, drawing in the faint whisper of power before it could dissipate with Jason’s exhaled breath. Penetrating the camouflage of warm domestic tastes—coffee and milk—Henry discerned that spark of fire that he’d mistaken twice for cinnamon.
“It’s just a little song that I sing when I get nervous. My mother taught it to me.”
“Yeah? Like that song she taught you about the Stone of Fal?”
“That, and ‘Greensleeves’,” Jason replied.
Henry smirked. Jason definitely hadn’t been singing ‘Greensleeves’. No, an immensely potent magic fueled that other little tune of Jason’s.
“I need you to think about that tune—don’t sing it, not even a whisper. Just think about it, will you?”
“Sure.”
For a moment Jason simply looked thoughtful, his gaze distant and his fingers absently tapping in time to an unuttered melody. Then Henry felt the wards he’d set begin to shimmer and shudder with a kind of excitement. As he watched, his glinting, serpentine wards slithered and wriggled closer to Jason. They wove around him like love knots. Henry’s own damn spells. No wonder he couldn’t come close to hitting Jason.
“Fuck me,” Henry whispered under his breath. Then he raised his voice. “You can give it a rest.”
“Okay.” Jason looked nonplussed and Henry felt his wards slipping back into his control. “Did it help?” Jason asked.
“It cleared a few things up.” Henry studied Jason. “Tell me, when you were thinking of that song, what were you imagining—I mean, did you see anything?”
“It always makes me think of being safe…” Jason shrugged, but then added, “Anytime I hear music I sort of see the shape and color of the melody. With that particular piece I imagine the notes are weaving a shining gold orb around me…Sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”
Henry shook his head. “You see the orb when you’re thinking of the tune?”
“Yeah, but I see all kinds of shit—” A look of realization suddenly lit Jason’s features. “Is it really there?”
“Yeah, it’s there all right,” Henry assured him. “Your mother taught you a powerful protection spell. Clever, too, because it manipulates the powers around you so that someone watching for magic might not even notice that the spell is coming from you.”
“My mother knew all that?” Jason asked.
“I imagine she knew quite a bit more,” Henry responded. “How many songs in all did she teach you?”
“Dozen and dozens, but most of them are just normal songs. You know, ‘Do-Re-Mi’ sort of stuff…” Jason frowned at the small bone fife on his shelf. “Though there was one that was very strange…”
“Yeah? Strange how?” Henry prompted.
“I never got to play it,” Jason replied. “She made me memorize the fingerings for the melody on my fife but insisted that I never play even a note of it aloud…‘Amhrán Na Marú.’ I think that was the name of the piece. I’m not sure. It’s been a long time since I’ve even thought of it.”
Henry didn’t recognize the name of the song, but he did know what marú meant in the sidhe language. Slaughter.
“When you were practicing the fingerings on your fife, did you ever see anything?” Henry asked.
“Not really…” Jason responded slowly and Henry could tell that he was rethinking those pure, simple memories of his childhood. How different were they now that he knew his mother had been secretly training him to perform spells?
“One time, when I was about six, I’d gotten all excited about reading and writing music. I remember trying to write down the melody of ‘Amhrán Na Marú.’ I could hear it as I wrote it and then I started to see it...It scared me, all those white shining notes, razor sharp and spinning around me like saw blades. My mother caught me and tore the notations to shreds. She spanked the hell out of me. And after that I couldn’t forget about ‘Amhrán Na Marú’ fast enough.”
“Quite the lady, that mother of yours,” Henry commented.
“What do you mean?” A strain of offense sounded in Jason’s tone, but Henry ignored it. Jason needed to be told the truth—or at least as much of it as Henry could work out—but he didn’t imagine that Jason would thank him for it…He supposed that there wasn’t much Jason would thank him for.
Princess eyed him from the windowsill.
“Do me a favor, Princess. Keep Gunther company at the office and keep your ears pricked for any news concerning Jason,” Henry told her. “Find me if the sidhe court makes any more demands.”
Princess gave a quick nod and then slipped out the window. Henry turned his attention back to Jason.
“We should get a move on as well.”
“But I thought you were going to teach me how to defend myself?”
“You already have more skill than I could teach you in a single morning. You’ve just got to commit to unleashing it. The next time someone corners you, don’t just whisper that song under your breath, belt it out.”
“I’m supposed to sing to them?”
“Music soothes the savage beast, isn’t that what they say?”
“You’re serious?” Jason seemed caught between incredulity and amusement.
“Dead serious,” Henry replied. “You might want to bring that fife of yours along as well.”
“Of course.” A hint of sarcasm colored Jason’s voice as he snatched his fife from the shelf. “I can always knock someone over the head with it if serenading fails to produce an effect.”
Despite himself, Henry laughed and Jason’s annoyance seemed to dissipate.
“So where are we going?” Jason asked.
“The Grand Goblin Bazaar,” Henry informed him. “And while we’re on our way we need to have a talk about ‘The Stone of Fal’ and all those other songs your mother taught you.”
Jason looked apprehensive but tucked his fife into the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt and zipped it up. Then he followed Henry out the door.
Chapter Seven
Jason wasn’t certain if the events of the last day had simply depleted his ability to feel shocked or if he was somehow becoming accustomed to the surreal. A week ago he would have reeled with denial when Falk informed him that, in all likelihood, he harbored some mystic relic in his bones—the very Stone of Fal he’d described to Falk only a day ago. Falk played it easy and offhanded as he mentioned that there really was a usurper, Greine, who wanted the stone as well as a group of sidhe revolutionaries who were desperate to keep it from him.
More than likely the woman who’d raised Jason hadn’t been his biological mother but her lady-in-waiting, Fionn.
Jason wished he could dismiss it all as crazy, but he no longer possessed that capacity. Instead Falk’s words resonated through him with the inevitability of truth.
“Nobody’s going to get to you.” Falk’s blue eyes seemed to blaze against the gray morning mist. “Soon as we track Phipps and find out what he’s sold Greine, we’ll be ahead of the game.” He left much unsaid, Jason knew, just from the careful way he chose his words.
Ahead of them the crosswalk light flashed. And for the first time Jason noticed that the icon of the walking man looked like the chalk outline of a murder victim: his head severed from his body, his hands and feet missing.
“Do you know if it was Greine or the revolutionaries who killed my father?”
“No way to know for sure.” Falk glanced quickly to him and Jason thought he read worry in Falk’s expression. He probably thought Jason was going to start bawling, but Jason had cried about all he could over his father’s death a long time ago. Not that he didn’t still feel the hurt and horror, but it wasn’t the open wound it once had been. He certainly wasn’t going to go to pieces in front of Falk.
Then Falk reached out and pulled Jason to him with an awkward but oddly comforting squeeze of his shoulder. An instant later Falk released him, but they continued to walk closely. Jason could feel the heat radiating off Falk.
“If I had to put my money on one or the other,” Falk said, “I’d bet Greine was responsible for what was done to your dad. Revolutionaries would have torched the entire house to cover their tracks and keep Greine from knowing where they’d been looking for you. The way your father’s body was left, that strikes me more as a message from Greine to the revolutionaries. He’d want them to know he was close to reclaiming the stone and just what he’d do to his enemies.”
Jason wasn’t violent by nature, but in that instant he wished he could lay his hands on this bastard Greine. He’d be more than happy to loose the razor notes of the ‘Amhrán Na Marú’ upon the man.
“If it’s revenge you’re thinking about, don’t,” Falk told him with an uncanny insight. “Trust me, no good comes from stewing on all the wrongs of the past. There are just too many to ever reach the end once you start down that road.”
“So what do you suggest?” Jason retorted. “That I just pretend nothing ever happened?”
“I didn’t say that.” Falk shook his head. “I’m just telling you that it’s easy to lose sight of your future when you’re caught up with the past.”
“My future?” Jason almost laughed at the idea. He’d lost the only promising job he’d had in years, he was being hunted by monsters as well as a supernatural megalomaniac, and the closest he’d come to a romantic encounter had been a morning-wood pity fuck from Falk—which Jason couldn’t even think about right now without feeling disheartened. Really, the idea of his future should have depressed the hell out of him, but there was something about Falk’s company that kept Jason from pitying himself; he certainly wasn’t going to whine about his job prospects and sad love life to a guy who just shrugged off bullet wounds.
“You said yourself that you’ve spent years trying to have a normal life and you obviously have a future as a musician.” Falk gave him another of his quick, piercing glances. “What I’m trying to tell you is that this world around you here and now is full of possibilities and hope. That’s what you should be living for, not some dank, dead past…You don’t want to end up as a haunted, half-dead relic like me, I promise.”
“You’re not so bad,” Jason responded.
Falk just snorted at that.
“I think you’re kind of charming,” Jason admitted because it was obviously true, otherwise this morning wouldn’t have started the way it had. Falk might not want it to be so, but Jason wasn’t going to lie, at least not to himself.
“Yeah?” Falk actually laughed. “That’s me all right, Prince Charming.”
Jason flushed but then shot back, “What would you know about it? I’m the one who can see people as they really are, not you.”
To his surprise, Falk didn’t have a response. Jason wasn’t certain, but he thought a faint flush might have darkened Falk’s tanned cheeks.
“We’ll want to turn right up here.” Falk quickened his step and Jason moved swiftly to match his long strides. As he walked alongside Falk through the damp morning mist, he picked out a plump man with the face of a carp selling cut flowers to a couple of tourists. A day ago the gaping jaws of the flower seller would have terrified him; he would have interpreted them as a sign of his disassembling sanity.
But now he knew he wasn’t out of his mind, and as he surreptitiously studied the flower seller arranging a bouquet of peonies, Jason noticed how the scales on his hands and face glinted iridescent gold in the passing breaks of sunlight. Across the street two young girls chatted. Tiny wings fluttered and flashed like butterflies on their shoulders.
The world was stranger than most people would ever know, he realized, but also more beautiful.
When Falk showed him to a blue port-o-let near the harbor, Jason wasn’t surprised to discover rolling green hills and a cerulean blue sky beyond the door. He followed Falk out onto an oddly serene and empty hill. Countless tiny flowers carpeted the ground and perfumed the warm air. Sunflowers the size of Jason’s little finger bowed over even smaller sprays of scarlet poppies and white roses. The brilliant blue port-o-let seemed to be the only notable landmark as far as Jason could see.
“This doesn’t look like a grand bazaar,” Jason commented.
“Nah, this is just a layover.” Falk fished a pocket watch from his trench coat. “The portal to the bazaar won’t be aligned for twelve more minutes. All the portals have different schedules. Nowadays, of course, computers track most of them and set up layovers like this one. But back in the day we had to do it by memory and feel. It took skill and balls, like jumping trains.”
“You sound like you miss the old days.”
Falk appeared troubled by the idea.
“No, they were rotten times, really. People died—sometimes badly—and nobody could afford to give a crap because that was just the price of knowledge back then. I’m glad all that’s gone now.” Falk closed his pocket watch and slipped it back into his coat pocket. Then he offered Jason one of his self-conscious, crooked grins. “I’m just a codger who misses the man he was before all those good old days took their toll.”
Jason considered him: his ghostly, luminous quality and his rough appearance, all those scars, his missing finger, and that tattoo like a brand left on him by the man who’d recruited him.
“Something really bad happened to you back then, didn’t it?” Jason asked.
“Something bad happened to most everyone back then. At least I’m still walking,” Falk replied. He watched Jason almost warily. But Jason wasn’t about to force him to talk about anything he wasn’t ready to share. He’d endured too many mandatory psychiatric sessions himself to treat another person’s private history so cavalierly.
“So where is this place?” Jason asked instead.
“Remains of the Elysian Fields after the bombings of ’42,” Falk replied. “Eight square miles of dwarf-flower preserves. A community of faeries settled here about fifty years back. Whatever you do, don’t swat any of them.” Falk thumbed up at the sky.
Jason gazed up to see a single, colorful cloud rolling slowly closer. As it drifted near, Jason realized that it was composed entirely of pale moths and butterflies. The majority of them settled across the carpet of flowers but several of them fluttered only a few feet from Jason.
A faint haze surrounded each insect with what looked like the silhouette of a human body. Then suddenly the haze around the nearest moth grew solid and in an instant the moth was gone and a dainty woman with oddly yellow hair, eyes, and lips stood only a foot from Jason. The faintest shadow of a moth fluttered over her heart. Jason didn’t scrutinize it too closely, since it did nothing to clothe her small, bare breasts.
“A new face to our sunny fields!” The woman cocked her head back to beam up at Jason from just above his belt. “Have you come to dally among the flowers, fair traveler?”
“No. We—we’re just passing through,” Jason replied quickly. The woman’s flirtatious gaze and nudity unnerved him far more than her sulfur-toned mouth.
“He’s with me, Buttercup.” Falk took an almost proprietary step closer to Jason. Buttercup’s lemon brows rose and she peered up at Jason.
“You don’t look like one of the dead.” She leaned so close that her cheek brushed his arm; her skin felt as cool and powdery as cornstarch. She flicked out her shockingly orange tongue as she drew a deep breath of Jason’s chest. “You don’t smell dead either…Oh, not at all! In fact, you smell sweet and fiery and young, like cinnamon bark and semen!”
An embarrassed flush heated Jason’s face.
“Give it a rest, Buttercup. He’s spoken for.” Falk gently drew Jason back and Buttercup stared at him.
“Oh! That’s how it is?” She raised her brows.
“Yeah, that’s how it is,” Falk stated firmly, though he shot Jason an odd glance. Then he went on talking to Buttercup. “But I have a different proposition for you, my girl.”
“Of course you do! But what could a tiny starving faerie offer you, Half-Dead?” Buttercup smiled brightly at Falk and batted her long yellow lashes. “Not my helpless little body?”
“Your little body’s about as helpless as a black widow’s,” Falk replied. “I’m looking for three pinches of dust.” Jason wasn’t sure what exactly that meant, but Buttercup nodded.
“What you got for it?” Buttercup eyed Falk speculatively, though Jason noted that she never drew too near him.
“Treasure from another kingdom.” Falk reached into his pocket and drew out what looked like three red-and-white-striped straws.
“Pixy Stix!” Buttercup’s entire expression lit up. The shadowy moth floating over her heart beat its wings wildly, as if attempting to fly to Falk’s hand. Jason noted several other moths rise from the flowery carpet at their feet, but Buttercup swung her arms out, waving them away.
“Mine!” she called out and the moths fell back. When she returned her gaze to Falk, Jason thought her eyes might actually be sparkling. “Three for three.”
“Three for three,” Falk agreed. He extended both his hands, proffering the paper-wrapped candy to Buttercup with his right. “A trade fair and true, says I.”
“Fair and true, says I,” Buttercup echoed. She flicked her right hand from her chest to Falk’s empty left hand three times. Each time Jason saw her fingers brush through the shadowy moth at her heart, collecting a velvety gray dust from its wings, which she brushed across Falk’s palm. The instant she made the third exchange she snatched the candy from Falk and bounded back as if she expected to be pursued.
Falk closed his hand into a fist and then slipped it into his coat pocket—where Jason was beginning to suspect he kept an inordinate number of odd things.
Buttercup tore open one of the red-striped straws and tossed back the contents. An instant later she let out a crow of joy and danced back to him and Falk. Her cheeks flushed bright orange and her feet hardly touched the ground as she skipped around them gleefully.
“What was in that thing?” Jason asked softly.
“Colored sugar, citric acid, and all the anticipation of a six-year-old on Christmas morning.” Falk’s expression softened slightly as he watched Buttercup. “The bright packaging doesn’t hurt any.”
“More beautiful than phlox, sweeter than honeysuckle, sharper than lemon blossoms!” Buttercup paused a moment to hold the straws to the cloudless blue sky. “I would wed you, sweetness, if I weren’t going to devour you instead!”
Falk gave a quiet laugh and then asked offhandedly, “You haven’t heard anything of a bauble-snatcher called Phipps lately, have you, Buttercup?”
“Passed through early yesterday, sweating and swearing. Left word that buyers could find him at Red Ogre’s.” Buttercup glanced away from the bright candies for only an instant. “Be careful doing business with him, Half-Dead. He’s just your opposite, a handsome hollow wrapped around a rotten pit.”
“I’ll keep my head up. You take care as well, beautiful.” Falk flashed her a smile, then turned to Jason and beckoned him toward the port-o-let.
“It’s about time for us to go. But first, there are a few things I need to tell you about the bazaar. Most importantly is that our human laws have no authority there, so be careful and stay close to me. Law in the Grand Bazaar is a force unto itself. Definitely don’t accept anything unless you’ve paid for it, even if it seems like it’s being offered for free—nothing is ever free at the bazaar. And don’t give anyone your real name. Your identity in particular needs to be protected. So today you’re Agent August, got that?”
“Agent August,” Jason repeated, though he doubted that anyone would mistake him for an agent of any kind. “What should I call you?”
“Most everyone knows me as Half-Dead Henry.” Falk sounded tired of it, but then his tone lightened. “You could just call me Henry, if you like.”
“Sure, Henry it is.” Jason didn’t know why, but he felt almost touched to be on a first-name basis with Falk. Then he scowled at his own sentimentality. Fortunately Falk had turned to return Buttercup’s farewell wave.
“I don’t really look the part of an agent,” Jason commented as Falk’s attention turned back to him.
“But you will.” Falk raised his dusty left hand and lightly traced a symbol across Jason’s brow. Then Falk leaned close. Jason smelled the earthy aroma of his skin and saw silver light flash between his lips as he whispered, “Faerie dust, deceive all eyes. On this stately form lay August’s dour guise.”
Jason tensed, feeling the tingle of a spell pass over him. But it faded in an instant. He glanced down at his hands and arms. Nothing seemed different. But then how would he know, he wondered.
“Did it work?” Jason asked.
“Like a charm. Now you just have to remember to keep looking unimpressed—” Falk lifted his head slightly as if catching a scent on the air. “I think our ride is rumbling into the station. Let’s leg it.” Falk drew Jason through the port-o-let door. When he opened it again, an entirely new world spread out before them.
***
Jason did his best not to gape at the vastness of his surroundings. He stood only a foot from the edge of a dark, watery canal that flowed between long alleys of densely packed and ornately carved stone buildings. Brilliant banners and strings of gold bells hung from the upper floors of the buildings. Below, crowds of odd, eerie, and beautiful creatures hustled past Jason, conversing in a cacophony of strange languages. The air felt hot, smelled exotic, and pulsed as if filled by hundreds of foreign radio stations.
Two small creatures that looked very much like goats from a children’s book—complete with beribboned aprons and prim bipedal gaits—bleated loudly in Jason’s direction. When he glanced to them, they lifted their aprons to display bulbous pink udders. They both let out shrieks of laughter at his shocked reaction but then raced away when Falk turned his attention to them.
“The Pepper Sisters,” Falk told him. “I think you just got an eyeful of the new ad campaign for their dairy.”
“Were those the owners or the producers?” Jason asked.
“Both. It’s an employee-owned co-op. Chemical-free too now that Pickle’s quit smoking.” Falk moved ahead into the tight confines of the crowd. Jason followed him, still trying to take everything in.
Overhead a cluster of gold birds took wing from a windowsill, and higher in the clouds, Jason thought he sighted something that looked like a fighter jet—but with wide, gaping jaws. Rays of light flashed off its silvery body and fell across the cobbled streets like streams of sunlight.
Despite the sinister coils and huge, serpentine heads of sea creatures breaking the surface, a fleet of small boats skimmed across the deep, dark canal waters. As Jason watched, three beautiful youths lifted their faces from the waters and then hefted their muscular torsos and long fish-like tails onto the deck of a moored boat. They pulled nets filled with wriggling eels up after them.
Commerce fueled it all, Jason soon realized. Beneath every banner and in every doorway displays of ludicrous, luscious, and glittering goods abounded. Jason glimpsed pungent fruit, gaudy baubles, skeins of feathers and fabric, oily bicycle chains, and steel cages brimming with glassy-eyed teddy bears. Merchants called from both the surrounding streets and the canal waters and shoppers bartered with them through a din of competing transactions.
Only the ubiquitous flocks of tiny, bright gold birds seemed to have nothing to buy or sell. They flitted between buildings and watched the populace passing below with dark indigo eyes. What Jason could catch of their songs sounded like quiet laughter.
“Do you know what kind of birds those are?” Jason asked.
“Birds?” Falk glanced between a large raccoon selling blood sausages and two plump women offering a variety of felt hats.
“The little gold birds flying all around us.” Jason started to point one out, but Falk caught his hand.
“It’s not polite to point,” Falk said. Then he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Especially not at spies no one else can see.”
A nervous thrill rushed over Jason and he quickly averted his gaze from the nearest of the birds. Falk quickly drew him down a narrow, dark alley.
“Spies?” Jason asked under his breath.
“Shadow Snitches, they’re called,” Falk replied. “Are any of them following us?”
“No. They’re fluttering around all over the place, but none seem interested in us.” Jason tried to appear casual as he scanned the lichen-crusted bas-relief of the surrounding walls and peered up at the azure sky. “Who do they spy for?”
“Anyone with a few pounds of pumpkin seeds,” Falk replied quietly. “The bazaar’s famous for its gangs of invisible informants. Some may even be on the lookout for you. I should have mentioned them, but I didn’t think it would matter with the glamour protecting you.”
Jason felt the blood draining from his face. He didn’t think he could stand another encounter like the one that had taken place at the HRD Coffee Shop yesterday.
“Don’t look so worried,” Falk told him. “As far as anyone here can see, you’re an Irregulars agent who dresses far too nicely for the company you’re keeping. That’s all. The only thing that might give you away is if you started pointing out Shadow Snitches and the like.”
“Right,” Jason agreed, though he wasn’t certain how he was supposed to know what everyone else wasn’t seeing.
“Here. These should help.” Falk dug down into his coat pocket. “They’re pretty scuffed up, but I think the glamour on you will disguise the worst of it.” He held out a pair of plastic sunglasses that looked much like the ones he’d given Jason when they’d first met. One of the lenses bore hairline cracks along the edge and the black frames were scratched, but otherwise they appeared to be intact.
“You lost them in the shade lands and I picked them up before we left.”
Jason slipped them on and all at once the stone walls lining the alley took on the luster of abalone shell. The flocks of gold birds blinked out of sight, as did several doors and windows. Bright signs filled with flashing gold script popped into existence over numerous doorways. Simple boats bobbing in the canal transformed into resplendent gondolas.
Jason also noted his clothes—yellow T-shirt, hooded jacket, jeans, and old sneakers—had upgraded into a tailored charcoal suit, a white dress shirt, and tastefully expensive-looking leather shoes.
Beside him, Falk dulled. His eyes cooled to a washed-out blue; wrinkles and shadows weathered his naturally luminous flesh. For the first time Jason wondered why Falk disguised himself in such a manner. Had he, like Gunther, been transformed?
“Are you wearing a glamour too?” Jason asked.
Falk snorted derisively. “I don’t know just how bad I look to you without the glasses, but I promise you, if I bothered to doll myself up with a masking spell, I’d certainly aspire to be better than hobo handsome.”
“But there is something…” Jason insisted quietly. “It’s like a shadow over you—”
“The long dead leave their mark,” Falk cut him off briskly and then started walking. “Red Ogre’s isn’t far, but we’ll want to get there before the tide comes in.”
“All right.” Jason let it go and followed Falk in silence down ever narrowing alleys and across a series of badly eroded bridges, until they reached a slum of dank, half-flooded catacombs, crumbling temples, and what looked like the wrecked remains of a fleet of galleons. Strange figureheads of monstrous creatures leered from the deep shadows of the surrounding buildings while huge, glossy red centipedes sheltered beneath cracked portholes and under the eaves of roofs. Heaps of tiny bird bones littered the moss-damp ground and barnacles studded the flagstones of the largely abandoned streets.
The air smelled oddly fragrant. Jason recognized the scents of malt and yeast but couldn’t identify the clean floral perfume that drifted to him from what looked like rotting masts and collapsed rafters.
A glance over the rims of his glasses revealed not only the golden corpses of Shadow Snitches in the jaws of several centipedes but also a sea of ghostly pale flowers cascading over the wrecks and ruins.
“You take me to the weirdest places,” Jason commented.
“All part of the service.” Falk stopped in front of a white tower that looked to Jason like a cross between a lighthouse and a Hindu temple, replete with carved figures in various states of naked frolic decorating the walls and staircase that wound up some seven stories. Whelks and drooping strings of emerald kelp encrusted the lower levels of the stairs, making the images difficult to discern, but by the time Jason reached the heavy hatch-like door on the fifth floor, he’d realized that the carvings presented a far too detailed parade of mermaids, unicorns, satyrs, and griffins indulging in pornographic gymnastics with a variety of slender men and women.
If it was advertising, Jason was pretty certain he wasn’t up to making any transactions. Something pink blurred past the tiny fish-eye porthole set in the rust-red door.
“So what exactly is this place?” Jason asked just as Falk raised his scarred right hand to knock.
“Depends on what you’re looking for when you come. They have rooms to rent and don’t ask questions about the kind of company you might like to keep,” Falk replied. “But most come to the tower for the drinks. Red Ogre and her wife have been brewing their own beers from all the way back when this district served as a shipyard for the Atlantean Navy. You can still see their influence in the art.” Falk gave a nod to the lewd menagerie decorating the walls and staircase. “The most perverted culture I’ve ever encountered.” With that he gave quick rap against the door.
