was short and stocky, runtlike, and what body he possessed he’d done little enough to care for. Rolls of fat sprayed over his belt buckle, and the broken red veins swelling his nose suggested more than a passing familiarity with drink. His clothing added another wrinkle to the mystery, for while I doubted very much the duke would employ an individual whose physique so clearly betrayed the poverty of his upbringing, I was certain he wouldn’t allow him to wear such an odd costume. It had been expensive once, though never fashionable, a black dress shirt and pants of the same hue, the cut and cloth the product of a master tailor. But their maker’s care had been betrayed by ill use, a sheen of mud on his leather boots that ran up the cuff, the tunic in little better shape.
If I hadn’t been invited to fulfill the function, I might have taken him as a member of my competition, combining as he did a seedy affluence with a hint of violence. Had I run into him in Low Town, I’d have assumed him a con man, or some low-level fixer, and never given him a second look-but here, surrounded by the cream of Rigun society, he demanded notice.
Also, he had been openly staring at me since I’d come through the door, a mocking little smile on his lips, like he knew some shameful secret of mine and was enjoying holding it over my head.
Whoever he was, I had no interest in responding to his scrutiny, so all these observations were made out of the corner of my eye. But still I kept enough focus to see him amble toward me awkwardly.
“Come here often?” he asked, and broke out into a chortle. He spoke in a thick brogue, and he had an ugly laugh, in keeping with everything else about him.
I gave him the half smile one adopts when refusing a vagrant’s request for coin.
“What’s the matter? I ain’t high-class enough to have a conversation with?”
“It’s not you personally. I’m a deaf-mute.”
He laughed again. In most people, jocularity is at least an innocuous quality, if not a pleasant one. But the stranger was of that kind whose cackling dug into your ears like rough canvas against a sore. “You’re a funny one. A real joker.”
“Always here to lighten up a party.”
He was younger than I’d initially thought, younger than I was-though bad living had aged him prematurely, graying his skin and sending lines out through his face and hands. These last were covered by an odd assortment of rings, silver interspersed with jewelry so bright and gaudy I knew them immediately to be fake, frippery that once again spoke of wealth spent without the benefit of taste. He kept his mouth unfastened, filtering air through a row of crooked teeth, stained yellow where they hadn’t been replaced with dull gold. His breath carried with it an unsavory combination of salted meat and vodka.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.
“Then I hope you don’t take offense easily.”
“You’re thinking, how am I gonna get at any of the fine trim swimming around with this ugly bastard yelling in my ear?”
This was not, in fact, what I was thinking. I was here on business, and even if I hadn’t been, I doubted I’d find much amorous success, being what I was and looking like I did. That said, if I had hoped to find a companion, the tumor standing next to me probably wouldn’t have helped.
“But see, these cunts.” He wagged his index finger in front of my face like a disapproving schoolteacher. “They ain’t interested in folk like us. We ain’t good enough for them.”
Even by my standards, this was a whole mess of hideousness. The stranger and I were getting to the end of our conversation, one way or the other. “We got so much in common, you and me?”
“When it comes to women, we got a lot in common,” he said, speaking each word with a slow seriousness.
“This has been riveting,” I answered. “But if it’s all the same on your end, how about you do me a favor and step off.”
“Ain’t no cause to be disrespectful. I come over here and talk to you like a man, and you give me the brush- off. You ain’t no different from any of these pampered little bastards with their noses in the air. And here I was, thinking we might even get to be friends.”
We were reaching the point of being a spectacle, something one tries to avoid when one has entered another man’s home for the purposes of selling him drugs. “I’m all up on friends, stocked full with associates, and met my quota of acquaintances. The only openings I got left are for strangers and enemies. Make yourself the first, before you find yourself the second.”
Up until that point I had taken the man for harmless if offensive, and I figured he’d be easy enough to frighten off. But my words had little effect on him, except to draw a glint of menace to his bloodshot eyes. “That’s the way you want it? That’s fine by me. I been plenty of men’s enemies-though never for very long.”
I found myself wishing that I could run through the play again, but having thrown down the gauntlet there wasn’t much for it but to continue in the same vein. “You talk like a man that ain’t been smacked yet today,” I said, my eyes turned back on Yancey, who was now waving me over. “But now’s not the time to rectify the situation.”
“You’ll get yourself another chance!” he exclaimed to my back, loud enough to draw the attention of the surrounding guests. “Don’t you worry on that score!”
It was a disagreeable interlude, and one I had the sense presaged future unpleasantness-but I pushed it out of my mind as I slipped toward the duke, careful not to intrude on the groups of flirting patricians.
If the human race has ever invented an institution more effective in the propagation of intellectual and ethical cripples than the nobility, I have yet to stumble across it. Take the progeny of a half millennium of inbred idiots, first cousins, and hemophiliacs. Raise them via a series of bloated wet nurses, drink-addled confessors, and failed academics, because Sakra knows Mommy and Daddy are too busy diddling themselves at court to take a hand in the upbringing of a child. Ensure any youthful training they receive extends to nothing more practical than swordsmanship and the study of languages no longer spoken, grant them a fortune upon the attainment of their majority, place them outside the bounds of any legal system more developed than the code duello, add the general human instinct toward sloth, avarice, and bigotry, stir thoroughly and, voila-you have the aristocracy.
At first glance Beaconfield looked every inch the product of this infernal social engine. His hair was coiffed in what I took for the newest fashion at court, and he smelled strongly of honey and rosewater. His rouged cheeks led to a goatee so perfectly manicured you would swear it had been painted on, and he was clothed in a brightly colored ensemble that was frilly to the point of being vaguely nauseating.
But there was something that wouldn’t allow me to dismiss him completely, a sharpness in his eyes that made me think the costume was half a put-on. Maybe it was the way his hand hovered about the hilt of his rapier, well used and surprisingly plain compared to the rest of his costume. Maybe it was the fact that beneath his lace there was a hard leanness that spoke of long hours bathed in sweat rather than perfume. Or maybe it was just the knowledge that the man in front of me had likely killed more men than the Crown’s executioner.
His entourage, by contrast, were such definitive examples of their type as to be barely worthy of notice, each attired similarly to their chief, each narcotized a few shades short of oblivion.
Yancey shot me a look meant to remind me of his earlier warning, and broke into the exaggerated patois he affected for the rich and white. “This my partner, the one I was speaking on to you.”
“A pleasure it is to make your acquaintance, your grace,” I said, executing a bow that would prove acceptable in any court in the land. “And truly may I say it is an honor to be allowed entrance to an affair of such elegance. Surely the Daevas on Chinvat fete no better.”
“One of my lesser affairs, little more than a warm-up for next week’s gala.” He smiled, wide and winning, oddly natural even through the whore’s paint.
“Men of my caliber would find even the meanest of your diversions fit for the divine.” That was laying it on a little thick, but then I was speaking to a man wearing pancake makeup.
“I was told you were a man of many resources, but no mention was made of your charm.”
“Had I the arrogance to contradict your grace, I would deny such unwarranted praise-but being a timid soul, I can only thank your grace for his kindness.”
“Were you a teacher of court etiquette before you adopted your current profession?”
“I did many things before I adopted my current profession, your grace.” This was going on longer than it needed to. No doubt the guests were starting to wonder why their host was giving audience to an ugly man in a dirty coat. “And I do a great many things even now. Perhaps your grace might indicate to me which of them he finds it pleasing to command?”
