The Relic Guild (16 page)

‘The Nothing of Far and Deep,’ Denton announced.

She swallowed and took a step away from it.

‘The pathways to all Houses lead through its primordial mists, Marney, and you must not be afraid.’ He offered her his hand. ‘Shall we?’

Marney held back. She trusted her mentor as much as – if not more so – Van Bam, but something stopped her from reaching out and taking his hand.

Denton smiled kindly, patiently, and said, ‘Gideon believes this trip will be good for you, Marney, and I concur wholeheartedly. It is high time you gained some experience, and it is not wise to keep a Thaumaturgist waiting.’

Marney’s stomach swirled, but this time when Denton offered his hand she took it. He led her up to the doorway. She held her breath, gripped her mentor’s hand tightly, and together they stepped into the heavy whiteness of the Nothing of Far and Deep.

The boundaries of the solid collapsed, bridging the distance between two different points in space. At first, Marney was utterly blind. She could still feel Denton’s hand gripping hers, but there was no ground beneath her feet. She thought to feel wet or suffocated, but all that came to her was a curious sensation of falling slowly … so slowly. However, with sudden and brilliant streaks of silver-blue that crackled around her like lightning, she saw she travelled with forward motion, as if she was drifting along a tunnel that cut through storm clouds. Beyond the tunnel’s ghostly walls, she could see their path continuing on, weaving through the Nothing of Far and Deep like a thread of black silk in a milky ocean.

Here it comes
, Denton’s thought warned her.
Don’t fight against it.

The streaks of lightning highlighted another portal up ahead. Like a stopper in the end of the tunnel, its glassy darkness swirled, devouring the wispy, cloud-like substance of the tunnel walls. Marney could not be certain if she travelled towards the portal, or if it was moving to her, but she was flying much faster than she realised. The portal and empath rushed to meet each other head on with a speed that showed no sign of slowing. Marney raised her hands to protect herself. The name of her lover tumbled from her lips, as if Van Bam could somehow materialise and save her from this madness …

There was no bigger nocturnal haunt in Labrys Town than Green Glass Row. Many denizens considered it a scab on their town, beneath which all of society’s immorality festered. Others worshipped its clubs and taverns, and abandoned themselves to the heady pleasures so readily available. Green Glass Row was the midnight creature that never slept, at least not while darkness shrouded the sky. Only sunshine could quieten the beast; only sunshine could send its worshippers scurrying like rats for their beds – sunshine and the shame that arrived with the cold light of day.

There was, however, one establishment that did not mourn the loss of night, a club that hid itself well along Green Glass Row: the Twilight Bar. It welcomed the morning sun, if less so the attentions of the Relic Guild.

Van Bam and Samuel stood in the main lounge of the Twilight Bar. The room was easily large enough to hold a dance floor and a stage for a band; but there was no stage or music playing, and where a dance floor might have been was a square expanse of carpet as thick as it was dark. Beneath the dull, blue glow of ceiling prisms, the stillness was broken only by occasional moans of pleasure, or sobs of despair, coming from a series of evenly spaced alcoves set into the walls. Behind diaphanous, backlit curtains, silhouettes writhed upon reclining chairs, lost to deep dreams. The bitter tang of narcotic smoke hung in the air.

Van Bam gazed at Samuel who was watching the silhouettes behind the curtains. He knew his fellow agent wore an expression of disgust, even though he could not see his face. Samuel’s hat was made from enchanted material, and the shadows cast by its wide brim steeped his every feature in total darkness. As for Van Bam, he had cast an illusion upon himself that smeared his facial features into an unidentifiable blur.

He raised his green glass cane, now appearing as a plain walking stick made of wood, and he used it to tap Samuel lightly on the shoulder. He then nodded towards the small bar at the far end of the lounge, and they headed towards it.

The features of the serving girl appeared almost demonic in the blue glow that radiated up from the floor behind the bar. Her smooth, black hair fell about her shoulders like a mane of oil.

Samuel reached her first. ‘Go and get Taffin,’ he demanded in a growl.

She stared at Samuel for a long moment, quietly standing her ground, but her eyes became uncertain as they tried and failed to pierce the darkness shrouding his face. Finally, she turned her gaze to Van Bam’s blurred features.

‘I’ll see if Mr Taffin is available,’ she whispered.

‘Of course,’ Van Bam said.

The serving girl stepped from behind the bar and disappeared through a side door.

Van Bam shook his head at his fellow agent. ‘Did it ever occur to you that you do not have to treat everyone like an enemy?’

Samuel snorted. ‘I hate this place,’ he said, gesturing to the alcoves. ‘Look at them.’

Behind the curtains, the patrons of the Twilight Bar were attended by shadowy female forms. These women held long pipes to the lips of their clients; and after every inhalation, in every alcove around the room, so many mouths exhaled long plumes of smoke – smoke that had first been emptied of far and distant visions.

‘They should learn to deal with things like the rest of us,’ Samuel said bitterly. ‘They’re not the only ones to lose something in this war.’

Van Bam always found it a little disappointing when Samuel expressed his intolerant outlook on life; it was so hard to sympathise with his opinions. The Twilight Bar was an exclusive and discreet club that catered for the tastes of certain denizens who wished to maintain their good reputation in town. Many of the club’s members were merchants who had enjoyed a lucrative import and export trade with the Houses of the Aelfir before the war. But in the two years since the use of the doorways of the Great Labyrinth had been forbidden, the wealth of these merchants had dwindled, with some of them now heading towards poverty. The Twilight Bar offered reprieve from reality and escape into dreams of what life had been like before the war began – if only for a short time – while the families of these struggling merchants believed them to be conducting business in the central district.

But where Van Bam saw fellow denizens on the brink of losing everything, Samuel saw greedy profiteers who had never deserved their privileged lifestyle in the first place.

‘We do what we must to get by, Samuel,’ Van Bam said. ‘Not everything in life is as cut and dried as you see it. There is no point in causing trouble.’

‘Me, cause trouble?’ Samuel scoffed. ‘I think you’d know more about that.’

‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

‘You know exactly what it means, Van Bam. And you and Marney are idiots if you think you’re not making trouble for yourselves.’

Van Bam barely suppressed a glare. Evidently, his relationship with Marney was not as secret as they both would have liked.

He felt a sudden pang as he thought of his lover. Denton had taken her, along with the terracotta jar, to see Lady Amilee, the Skywatcher. He couldn’t help but worry about how she would cope with meeting a member of the Thaumaturgists for the first time.

‘Whatever Marney and I do is none of your business, Samuel.’

Samuel shrugged. ‘I don’t care either way.’

‘Then why did you bring it up?’

Fortunately, before the conversation could go any further, the serving girl emerged through the side door and approached them.

‘Mr Taffin is ready to see you now,’ she whispered.

She led the Relic Guild agents out of the lounge of moaning silhouettes into a small stairwell, and then up a spiralling staircase of varnished wood.

Mr Taffin was the owner of the Twilight Bar. His clients paid him well to ensure they retained their anonymity and his employees asked no questions and saw nothing. The narcotic Taffin provided for his clients came from a fungus called cynobe. It grew in the forests of a few realms of the Aelfir, and was primarily used by oracles for revisiting dreams that might hold visions of the future. Officially cynobe was, and always had been, an illegal substance in Labrys Town, but Mr Taffin and the Twilight Bar were given special dispensation by the Resident.

Although it was impossible to import cynobe at present, Gideon had instructed Gene the apothecary to synthesise regular catchments of the narcotic so Mr Taffin could fulfil his clients’ cravings. It was necessary to show the heads of important merchant families that they had a friend in their Resident, who was occasionally willing to turn a blind eye to his own laws for them. The Labyrinth needed to keep the Merchant Guild functioning, at least on some level, for they would be sorely needed to re-establish contact with the Aelfir when these troubled times ended.

As a result Mr Taffin, perhaps most of all, profited from the war between the Timewatcher and Spiral. And in return for his good fortunes, he had become an informant for the Relic Guild. Not all of his clients were merchants, and his ears were burrowed deep into Labrys Town’s underworld. It was his information that had led them to the treasure hunter Carrick and the problems at Chaney’s Den.

The spiralling staircase led to an open plan attic apartment, decorated with gaudy statues and brightly coloured artwork hanging on the walls. Mr Taffin sat on a long couch at the end of the room, under the bright dawn light shining in through a huge round window behind him.

Van Bam looked at the serving girl. ‘You may leave us,’ he said, quietly but firmly.

She didn’t move at first, only looked to Mr Taffin for guidance. Not until he waved her away with his hand did she turn and head back down the stairs.

Once she was gone and out of earshot, Mr Taffin said, ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you again quite so soon, my friends.’

His words were met with stony silence.

Mr Taffin was a short, middle-aged fat man with a mop of grey hair and a perpetual smile that never quite reached his small eyes. He was dressed as garishly as always, in a suit of burgundy velvet with a matching cravat. Van Bam didn’t need illusionist skills to see through his pomp and oily smile. The man was frightened; he’d never had the Relic Guild come into his home, and he knew the reason for this visit could not be good.

‘Would you like to join me for breakfast?’ he said, casually, motioning to the table before him where a carafe of coffee stood beside a large wicker basket filled with sugary pastries.

Van Bam shook his head.

He and Samuel approached the table.

Mr Taffin dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin and frowned up at the concealed faces of the agents. ‘At least let me pour you some coffee.’

Further silence greeted the offer.

‘You are sure?’ he said, failing to hide the nervousness in his voice. ‘It’s ground from beans from Green Sky Forest. Expensive. Not easy to come by in the Labyrinth nowadays.’

‘Shut up, Taffin,’ Samuel said. ‘We’re not here for your bloody coffee.’

Mr Taffin struggled to keep his smile in place. ‘I-I don’t understand,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I sent no message to the Resident. I have nothing new to tell the Relic Guild. My stock of cynobe is full. I …’ Words failing, he looked at Van Bam as if seeking a more civil and understanding temperament.

‘Do not look to me for sympathy,’ Van Bam told him. ‘Not after you chose to omit certain facts from the recent information you provided.’

‘And by omitted,’ Samuel said, ‘he means you lied to us, Taffin.’

‘Lied?’ The club owner’s expression was one of almost genuine bemusement – almost. ‘Was my information not accurate?’

‘In part,’ said Samuel. ‘Carrick did arrange the sale of an artefact at Chaney’s Den, but the time of the meeting had been changed. When we got there everyone was dead.’

Unsuccessfully, Mr Taffin tried to blink away the fear in his small eyes. ‘But you can’t blame me for that,’ he whispered. ‘I pass on what I hear. I’m not responsible for what happens afterwards.’

‘No,’ said Van Bam, ‘but you are obligated to divulge every fact of note.’

‘Like Carrick’s buyer being an Aelf,’ Samuel added.

This time Mr Taffin’s expression was genuinely bemused. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘I told you the truth. I never discovered the buyer’s identity, or what Carrick was selling.’

‘Yet there is something you are not telling us,’ said Van Bam. ‘It is apparent in your expression, Mr Taffin.’

Mr Taffin looked from the hidden face of one man to the other and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

As an informant, Mr Taffin was very good at his job, but he was also sly, if not particularly clever about it. Van Bam knew as well as Samuel that he liked to hold back certain facts from the information he gave, as if he was collecting them as bargaining chips he could somehow use at a later date. Usually his information was sound enough, and whatever little secrets he kept were of no consequence. But not on this occasion; and the Relic Guild had no time to play his games.

Van Bam sighed. ‘Mr Taffin, you have been helpful to us in the past, and we are always grateful for your service. But you should know that you are not the only denizen capable of running the Twilight Bar.’

‘What?’

‘He’s right, Taffin,’ Samuel added. ‘One word to the entertainment council and a different name goes on this club’s licence.’

These comments had the desired effect of drilling into Taffin’s worst fears. During that moment of vulnerability, Van Bam read his micro-expressions and the answer to the secret he was keeping bloomed in the illusionist’s mind.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I believe there is something you forgot to tell us about Carrick, Mr Taffin. You are hiding a detail concerning his team of treasure hunters, yes?’

‘Surely not?’ Samuel said with mock disappointment. He then bent forwards over the table. ‘Save yourself some trouble, you idiot, before I shoot you on principle.’

Mr Taffin threw his napkin onto his breakfast and sat back on the sofa. ‘All right,’ he said, his expression darkening. ‘I didn’t think it mattered.’