Amberlough(66)

“Who was it?”

His glare came at an angle, over the tops of his spectacles. “Nobody important.” The snap of the folder closed the conversation. “This, however”—he pulled an envelope from inside his dressing gown—“rather is.”

Cordelia reached for it, but Aristide pulled it away. “Ah! Instructions first. Zelda’s shop will be shuttered. There’s a b-b-bell rope in the alley. Pull it. One of her runners will let you in by the fire escape. Give this letter to Zelda, and only Zelda. Understood?”

“I got ears, Ari.”

“Only. Zelda.” He sliced the air with the edge of the envelope to emphasize.

“And don’t forget to lock the door when you get in.” Cordelia rolled her eyes and snatched the envelope away. “Don’t worry, Ma. I clock you.”

“I’m sure you do.” He peeled one of his false eyelashes away, fastidious as a grooming cat. “But it never hurts to take care.”

*

Zelda fronted as an art dealer, and kept a little store in the heart of the southwest quarter, just up Elver Street from Station Way. Cordelia got off the trolley and hiked the few blocks north through the crowds of night revelers until she saw the sign for Peronides Fine Arts and Antiquities. It hung from a wrought-iron hook at a dark second-story window. Instead of ringing the bell at the front, she went down the alley, like Ari had told her, and pulled at a length of tattered rope looped casually from the fire escape.

Nothing happened. She pulled a second time. And a third.

Just as she was turning away, thinking Ari had been wrong and Zelda must be asleep, or out, a thick-armed man in black jersey slipped from an open window and lowered the fire escape. Despite its weight, it moved quietly on well-oiled tracks. She climbed up, taking his helping hand when she could reach it. He fairly hoisted her onto the platform, and slid the ladder up after her.

“I got a letter for Zelda,” she said. He said nothing in return, just waved her through an open window. She parted curtains onto a dark room filled with shrouded sculptures and furniture. Muffled voices came through the walls. He came in after her, and pulled the curtains to. Blindly, she followed his grip on her arm. When he opened a door onto bright chaos, she blinked and threw up a hand against the light.

“Marto, what’s—oh, stones, just set her in a corner.”

Cordelia was duly pushed into an ornate chair with threadbare velvet upholstery. She peered through dazzled eyes at the uproar around her. Marto, the barrel of a man who’d brought her in, had gone to a table at the center of the room, where a woman with nubbly knots of dreaded hair was stretched over the green leather desktop, hissing against the strap between her teeth. Her bloody cotton sailor’s shirt was in a pile on the floor. Bruises mottled her torso. A sawbones pulled his curved needle through the flesh of her left breast, drawing the edges of a wound together. A blush boy with a black eye sat in the corner, holding a steaming cup in his hands. He stammered excuses to a small, swarthy woman in culottes and a brocade smoking jacket. The woman had plastered careful sympathy overtop of deep annoyance, but the annoyance looked to be breaking out faster and faster as the blush boy talked.

“Came out of nowhere. Thought they were ACPD, but the uniforms was wrong. All black, no blue. And no badges. We took the hooky in through the back door of the place, like you said, and the madam was real happy with it. Had those rubies round her throat faster than you’d credit. She let us stay on for a little fun, and when we came out—”

Here, the woman in the smoking jacket interrupted. “Out where? The front? Did you come out the back or the front?” She looked like she wanted to slap him.

“Front,” he said, meek as a mole. “And the blackboots got us good. One had a knife. Then the real hounds came round to break it up and clocked Duriyah for your gal. We had to scramble, but quick.”

The woman in the smoking jacket looked at the wounded runner on the table. “Duriyah’s been with me a long time,” she said. “And you’ve only just started.”

The blush boy flinched, like he was waiting for bad news. But all the woman said was, “She should have known better than to go out the front. And you both should’ve known not to come back here!” Cordelia thought the woman really would slap him now. Her hand was stiff, drawn back slightly from her hip. But an intercom crackled from the desk, beside Duriyah’s foot, and she whirled to listen instead.

“Hounds coming down the street,” said a high, fuzzy voice. Sounded like a kid.

“Everybody shut up,” said the woman in the smoking jacket. “Keep quiet. And Marto? The lights.”

Marto flipped the switch at the doorway, and the room was plunged into blackness. The only sound was Duriyah’s shaky breathing.

Cordelia’s toes curled. If she ended up in the trap for delivering a letter she hadn’t even read, she’d lay every curse she knew on Ari’s curly head. Not that it would do her much good.

Thirty tense seconds later, the intercom crackled again. “S’good. They gone past.”

Marto brought the lights back up. The blush boy had his eyes tight shut, his hands like claws around his cup. The doctor’s face was unreadable, but he was already reaching for his coat. The woman in the smoking jacket, who must be Zelda, finally got an eyeful of Cordelia.

“And who are you?” she snapped.