He returned to his room, collected his stick and the saber, blew out the lamp, and crept back out the window, closing it behind him. It wouldn’t lock, but given that the location was known to his enemies, it hardly mattered. He set off across the rooftops. The buildings of this block were directly connected, and his path was simple enough, with only a few slippery stretches of ornamental molding requiring caution. At the fifth building, which was abandoned, he pried open an attic hatchway and dropped down into darkness. He landed easily on the wooden floor, felt for a moment, and located a spot of loose planking. He pulled it back and shoved the saber inside, replacing the plank over it. He might never come back for it, but he had to assume his own room would be searched by more soldiers, and the less they found of their fallen comrade the better. He groped again and found the ladder to the landing below. In a matter of moments, Chang was on the street, still presentable and bound for the Palace, with yet another soul weighing upon his exiled conscience.
The house was named for its proximity to an actual royal residence given over—its fortified walls too out of fashion—some two hundred years ago, which had first been used as a home for various minor Royals, then as the War Ministry, then an armory, a military academy, to finally—and presently—as the home of the Royal Institute of Science and Exploration. While it would seem that such an organization would hardly encourage the nearby thriving of such an exclusive brothel, in fact the various endeavors of the Institute were almost all supported, in competitive fashion, by the wealthiest figures in the city, each striving against the others to finance an invention, a discovery, a new continent, or a newly located star to result in the immemorial attachment of their name to something permanent and useful. In turn, the Institute members strove against each other to attract patrons—the two communities of the privileged and the learned spawning between them an entire district whose economy derived from flattery, favoritism, and the excessive consumption that followed each. Thus, the Old Palace brothel—named, in another anatomical witticism, for perhaps the oldest palace of all.
The entry to the house was respectable and austere, the building itself crammed into a block-long row of identical stiff stackings of grey stone with domed rooftops, the doorway green and brightly lit, the walk from the street leading through an iron gate and past a well-occupied guard’s hut. Chang stood so he was clearly seen, waited while the gate was unlocked, and made his way up to the door itself, where another guard allowed him into the house proper. Inside was warm and bright, with music and distant decorous laughter. A fetching young woman appeared for his coat. He declined, but gave her his stick and a coin for her trouble. He walked to the end of the foyer where a thin man in a white jacket hovered at a high rostrum, fitfully scribbling in a notebook. He looked at Chang with an expression that kept just barely to the prudent side of amusement.
“Ah,” he said, as if to convey the multitude of comments regarding Chang’s person he was, through compassion and kindness, withholding.
“Madame Kraft.”
“I am not sure she is available—in fact, I am certain—”
“It is quite important,” Chang said, meeting the man’s eyes levelly. “I will pay for the lady’s time—whatever fee she sees fit. The name is Chang.”
The man narrowed his eyes, ran his gaze once more over Chang, and then nodded with a doubtful sniff. He scrawled a few lines on a small piece of green paper, stuffed the paper into a leather tube, and inserted the tube into a brass pipe fixed to the wall. With a gulping hiss, the tube was abruptly sucked from sight. The man turned back to his rostrum, making notes. Minutes passed. The man ignored him absolutely. With a sudden
“This way.”
Chang was led through an elegant parlor and down a long hallway where the light was dim and the closely patterned wallpaper made the space seem narrower than it actually was. At its end was a metal-sheathed door where the man in white knocked, four times, deliberately. In answer, a narrow viewing slot slid back and then, the visitors having been seen, shot closed. They waited. The door opened. His guide gestured for Chang to enter a darkly paneled room with desks and blotters and ledgers and a large abacus screwed into prominent position on a side table. The door had been opened by a tall man in his shirtsleeves, a heavy revolver holstered under one arm, with black hair and skin the color of polished cherry wood, who nodded him toward another door on the far side of the office. Chang crossed to it, thought it would be polite to knock, and did so. After a moment, he heard a muted request to enter.
The room was another office, but with a single wide desk, across which was spread a large blackboard that had been painted with various columns and inset with strips of wood with holes bored into them, so that colored pegs could be inserted along the columns, cutting each into rows, the whole forming an enormous grid. The blackboard was already scrawled with names and with numbers and dotted with pegs. Chang had seen it before and knew it corresponded to the rooms in the house, the ladies (or boys) at work, and the segments of time in the evening, and that it was wiped and re-written fresh every night of the week. Behind the desk, a piece of chalk in one hand and a moist sponge in the other, stood Madelaine Kraft, the manager—and some said actual owner—of the Old Palace. A well-shaped woman of uncertain age, she wore a simple dress of blue Chinese silk, which set off her golden skin in a pleasant way. She was not beautiful so much as compelling. Chang had heard she was from Egypt, or perhaps India, and had worked her way from the front of the house to her present position through discretion, intelligence, and unscrupulous scheming. She was without a doubt a far more powerful person than he, with high-placed men from all over the land profoundly obligated to her silence and favor, and thus at her call. She looked up from her work and nodded to a chair. He sat. She dropped the chalk and sponge, wiped her fingers on her dress and took a drink of tea from a white china cup to the side of the board. She remained standing.
“You’re here about Isobel Hastings.”
“I am.”
Madelaine Kraft did not reply, which he took as an invitation to continue.
“I was asked to find her—a…
“Returning from where?”
“I was not told—the understanding was that the quantity of blood was singular enough for her to be remembered.”
“Returning from whom?”
“I was not told—the assumption being the blood was his.”
She was silent for a moment, in thought. Chang realized that she was not thinking of what to say, but weighing instead whether or not to say what she was thinking.
“There is the missing man in the newspaper,” she said, musing.
Chang nodded absently. “The Colonel of Dragoons.”
“Could it be him?”
He answered as casually as he could, “It’s entirely possible.”
She took another sip of tea.
“You will understand,” Chang went on, “that I am being honest.”
This made her smile. “Why would I understand that?”
“Because I am paying you, and your bargains are fair.”
Chang reached into his coat for the wallet and extracted three crisp banknotes. He leaned forward and set them down on the blackboard. Madelaine Kraft picked up the notes, glanced at the amount, and dropped them into an open wooden box next to her tea cup. She glanced at the clock.
“I’m afraid there is no great deal of time.”
He nodded. “My understanding is that my client desires revenge.”
