hallway, within hearing distance of the head of the Balam table, did notice. And she smiles.
“Three days hence,” says the spy under her breath, and walks back for more chocolate.
• • •
The spring storm spat rain like a drunk at a spittoon—wet and heavy and none too accurate. The river had swamped Riverside’s inadequate levee again. Tess could hear the water gurgling through the streets two blocks over, the drunks cursing, the drunks laughing. It was nearly morning. This weather might have held Ben up. She wouldn’t imagine anything worse happening to him, not until she had to.
She hadn’t been able to sleep. She had tried, but it was cold and the rain was a nasty bedfellow. Tess and Ben kept a nice little place, the second floor above a washerwoman. Clean enough to discourage most of the roaches, shutters tight enough to keep out most of the wind and rain. On summer days she liked it enough to feel grateful. Her folks, rest them, had lived worse.
She held the fat tallow candle closer to the page, careful not to drip any wax and ruin the job. Routine stuff—a letter of recommendation for a Riverside girl, a former housebreaker, now getting old for the business, who wanted work as a chambermaid in the Middle City. The family seal at the bottom was real enough, though obscure. The girl’s two years of loyal service, not so much. Tess sometimes had bigger jobs—credentials from foreign universities, arrest records—but this paid the bills. At least, it did with Ben’s help. He had regular customers, the kind of men who paid him well for his time, and could be counted on when there wasn’t such a demand for good forgeries.
She wouldn’t worry. Damn it, but she wouldn’t.
Heavy steps up the stairs. Maybe his, if he were drunk, the bastard. The sound of a key fumbling in the lock. Definitely drunk. Or hurt? She ran to the door, had it open before she’d taken a full breath. If someone had wanted to kill her, she’d have been on the floor taking a bath in her own blood. You had to think about things like that in Riverside. But it was just Ben. He was drunk and grinning like clown. She frowned.
“What’s the matter, sweet Tessie? You ain’t happy to see me?”
“What happened? Did your father recover?”
Ben frowned and shrugged. “Naw. The old man’s rotting six feet—well, three feet, at least—under.”
Ben hadn’t exactly been a dutiful son (and his bastard of a father hadn’t deserved it), but this still seemed too callous for a man just returned from his father’s graveside.
“What the hell’s the smile for, then?”
Ben stepped into the room and locked the door behind them.
“Here,” he said, and pulled from his waistcoat an oval locket on a long chain of linked gold. It was of an antiquated style, a master’s workmanship. At a glance, not a forgery. At least, not a forgery that was passing off gilt for silver. She took the locket and opened it. She frowned.
“What is this, Ben?”
He was grinning again, leaning against the wall. “Our ticket out of here. The only good turn that son of a bitch ever did for me. We’re going to be rich, Tessie.”
Tess looked up at him, that baby face just a bit too beautiful to do him any good. He was grinning and humming to himself, an old song about going to the country. She looked back down at the locket, at the contents that meant nothing to her, and shivered. Ben’s father had been a murdering lowlife. He wouldn’t rest easy in his grave. And any gift he gave his son would be heavy with sin—the kind that came due.
Episode 3: Heavenly Bodies
by Joel Derfner
Had the Duke Tremontaine noticed the anxious care with which his wife chose her gown that morning—silk the color of pale irises trembling open at the break of dawn, lace as fine as spiderwebs gathered at the cuffs, the bodice almost as exquisite as the collarbone it was cut to reveal—and the equal care she devoted to selecting the unutterably drab cloak with which she covered up all that silk and lace, it might, perhaps, have occurred to him to wonder exactly what impression she was trying to make, and why it was so vital that she do so. If he had seen her frown almost imperceptibly at the confusion her footman displayed when, rather than her own carriage, she bid him order an unmarked one from the hotelier in Napier Street, if he had overheard the strange address to which the driver was instructed to bear her, if he had observed the driver’s respectful assertion that he must have misunderstood and her subsequent denial of that assertion, he might have taken a moment to ask himself with what urgent aim, as the carriage wheels began to click and then to clatter over the cobblestones, she was leaving the ducal mansion.
Then again, he might not have. The duke had spent the better part of two decades not noticing things about his duchess, after all, and, unbeknownst to him, it had served him well.
Alas, that the good fortunes of men do not always remain so.
• • •
Someone was destroying Rafe’s room.
It was giving him a headache.
“If you are going to insist,” he said, burying his face as deeply into the tangle of bed linens and brown wool blanket as he could manage, “on entering my chamber in the middle of the night, by means of what blandishments do you suppose you might be prevailed upon to approach the task with slightly less vigor?”
“Develop a little talent for observation, pet.” Ah, the baritone voice meant the situation was as he’d feared. Rafe heard the sound of the curtains being flung open and squeezed his eyes shut tight; they were in no condition to be assaulted by the cold morning light. “The University bells rang fully two hours ago.”
“How barbaric. Have we been suddenly transported to Arkenvelt without my knowledge?”
“Oh, pigeon, do I have to do everything for you?”
Footsteps approached the bed. Rafe knew what was coming next, but moving quickly enough to prevent it would make his head hurt even worse. He therefore resigned himself to misery as he felt the bedclothes slip pitilessly off his naked body. He groaned and rolled onto his back, his arm flung over his eyes. “Besides,” said the invader, “I want sausages.”
“Joshua,” said Rafe with all the patience he could muster, “this is Liberty Hall. You are most welcome to procure yourself as many sausages as you like, and, having done so, to insert them with gusto into your—”
“I see you’re having one of those days again.” His dear friend’s voice was as smug as ever. “If you listened to my advice, you know, you’d have far fewer of them.”
“If I wanted a big brother I would have asked—”
“Yes, yes, you would have asked your father for one long ago. As well you should have.” A shuffle of foolscap pages. “On the Causes of Nature,” said Joshua. “You couldn’t pick a drearier title for your book, pigeon?” This was unworthy of a reply. “My, you certainly have scratched these equations out savagely. I take it last night’s measurements were of no more use than the rest?”
Rafe groaned.
“That bad, was it?” The groan grew more fervent and finally trailed into silence. “What was his name?”
