Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly
To my parents, who read to me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
You wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands if not for my editor, Diana M. Pho, and my agent Connor Goldsmith. They believed in Amberlough enough to turn it into something beautifully corporeal. Thanks, Max Gladstone, for being in the right hot tub at the right time to provide the right entree to the right editor. And thanks to Victo Ngai, for such a luscious cover.
I owe gratitude to a whole swarm of Sarahs (Sarah Brand, Sarah Mack, Sarah Gulick), along with Olivia Sailor, Ken Schneyer, and Kendra Leigh Speedling. They helped me mold the clay of this world and these characters into something coherent. My dad’s reaction to my novel pitch told me the book was ready to shop around. My mom was the one who turned it into a novel at all.
Amberlough began its life as a short story, mercilessly but lovingly critiqued by wonderful alumni of the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers. That short story got me into Clarion and later became my first fiction sale. After some growing pains, my incomparable Clarion class helped me hone the novel. Thank you, Awkward Robots, for your time and insight and unconditional love.
Seth Dickinson and Rich Larson, whose novels I critiqued while writing this one, inspired me. Their intricate plots and sparkling prose made me fiercer with my own revisions, more demanding in my drafts. Sam J. Miller swooped in while I was just about sick of this book and led me astray to work on a wonderful collaboration, giving my brain some much-needed resting space. Leah Zander—literary and literal savior, actual angel, and fellow mischief-maker—saw me through some major life upheavals and the bitter tail end of copy editing. Brayton Joseph Phair provided me with Microsoft Word when I needed it most.
Gwenda Bond and Christopher Rowe sheltered me during a blizzard and gave me excellent advice about the publishing industry. Pat Donnelly and Marty Raff put me up in their strange and beautiful house while I wrote most of this book. The whole Raff-Donnelly-Von Roenn clan made a place for me at their table and made Louisville feel like home.
And my thanks to Sunshine Flagg, co-kween of the Pickle Palace, who fed and watered me with pasta and gin, and who made up some marvelously off-color jokes for Ari’s act. She kicked me in the seat of the pants so hard I ended up in New York City, the magical land that spawned her.
He wondered whether there was any love between human beings that did not rest upon some sort of self-delusion.…
—John Le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Does it really matter so long as you’re having fun?
—Sally Bowles, Cabaret
PART
1
CHAPTER
ONE
At the beginning of the workweek, most of Amberlough’s salaryfolk crawled reluctantly from their bed—or someone else’s—and let the trolleys tow them, hungover and half asleep, to the office. Amberlough City, eponymous capital of the larger state, was not home to many early risers.
In a second-story flat on the fashionable part of Baldwin Street—close enough to the river that the scent of money still perfumed the air, and close enough to the wharves for good street food and radical conversation—Cyril DePaul pulled himself from beneath a heavy duvet of moiré silk. The smell of coffee was strong outside his nest of blankets. An early spring storm freckled the bedroom windows with rain.
Though this was not his flat, Cyril slipped from bed and went directly to the washroom without hesitation. He ran a wet comb through his hair, brushed his teeth with cloying, violet-flavored toothpaste, and borrowed the dressing gown hanging on the bath rail. Despite Aristide’s penchant for over-warming his rooms, the last of winter lingered in the tiled floor. Cyril left the cold mosaic of the washroom behind and gratefully took to the plush carpet running the length of the hallway. Its tasseled end debouched onto the parlor, where he met the maid balancing an empty tray.
“He’s at the little table, Mr. DePaul,” she said, without so much as a blush.
“Thank you, Ilse.” She had charming dimples when she smiled.
At the far end of the parlor, where it joined with the dining room, the corridor belled outward into a breakfast nook bracketed by windows. An elegant, ochre-skinned man sat at his ease in one of the gilded chairs. Reading spectacles rested halfway down his dramatic nose—narrow at the top, wide at the base, deeply curved: as if a sculptor had put her thumb between his eyes and pulled firmly down. His thin lips were arranged in a pout practiced so often in the mirror it had become habitual.
He held the society pages of the Amberlough Clarion against one knee. The rest of the paper—all the crosswords done, and still damp from the storm—was scattered among a silver coffee service set out for two, and dainty plates of almond pastry. As Cyril sat down at the unattended coffee cup, Aristide snapped his paper and said, without looking up, “Finally. I was beginning to wonder if you’d d-d-died in your sleep.”
“And miss the pleasure of your company at breakfast? Never.” Cyril poured for himself, luxuriating in Aristide’s affected stutter, and the soundless slip of coffee against the shining glaze of his cup. “Are you finished with the front page?”
“Ages ago.”
Cyril reached for the paper and grimaced when the wet ink left streaks on his palm. “Been up long?” He asked the question casually, but over splotchy headlines he catalogued Aristide’s appearance with strict attention: satin pyjamas under a quilted dressing gown, the same set he’d—almost—worn to bed. His tumble of dark curls had been swept casually over one shoulder, but they still showed traces of damp. A flush lingered across his cheeks. He’d left the flat already this morning, but changed back out of his clothes. Something illicit, then, and Cyril was not supposed to notice. Obediently, he ignored it, just as Aristide ignored his scrutiny, and his question.