Palimpsest

The Red Lantern began as a single establishment in a port city whose name has since been lost. It was founded by three women who understood, before most institutions did, that the wealthy would pay anything to be seen as they wished to be seen — and pay considerably more to ensure that certain other versions of themselves were never seen at all.

Within two generations, the establishment had become a network. Within four, the network had become something else entirely. It has survived wars, occupations, and the collapse of three kingdoms. Kingdoms, it has found, are negotiable. Desire is not.

— Red Lantern Guild: Doctrine and Practice. Distributed to senior membership upon appointment.

Chapter 2 The Greatest Pleasure Producer

The noise and shouting from outside reached the room only as a faint ringing. But Kaelin — her senses and her whole body numbed — could hear nothing inside it but the echo of her own breathing. As though the room had frozen in time, untouched by anything beyond its walls.

She hadn't taken her eyes off the dead man for the past few minutes, which felt like a lifetime.

Part of her was still desperately waiting for him to wake up — to pull her back into reality. She knew he was dead; she had felt it in the deepest part of herself. The connection she had built with him was still there when he died. She hadn't merely watched someone die — she had experienced, however faintly, what it felt like from inside. A void without name or shape, unlike anything she had felt before.

The soul she had touched was no longer there, and yet accepting it felt like an action that existed outside reality. She had no idea how long she had spent trying to process it all and pull herself together. Even though it still felt like the same moment, time kept moving. Eventually, when she finally accepted that he was dead, she chose to believe it wasn't her fault. The other option she had pushed as far away as she could.

She had only been doing her job — and if anything, she had perhaps been trying to do it better than required. Besides, he didn't die during the session — he died afterward, after he came out of it, she thought, almost as if trying to convince someone. And the symbol on his chest had nothing to do with her. The sounds from outside were slowly sharpening, the ringing in her ears beginning to fade. After all these thoughts, she finally managed to accept the situation and pull herself out of the shock — only to come face to face with an entirely different reality.

She was alone in the room with a corpse, and outside was boiling in panic.

New scenarios began running through her mind one after another. Almost all of them ended in prison or death. Anyone could burst through the door at any moment and see this. Maybe they would believe her, maybe they wouldn't. The real problem was what would happen if a warden officer saw it. The ringing in her ears rose again, this time arriving like a completely different sound.

Knock! Knock!

Kaelin jolted with a flash of fear, but her legs were so weak that she hit the floor hard enough to clack her teeth together. She had never felt so powerless. It took her several seconds to understand what had happened. The sound had come from the door. Someone had knocked — yet somehow it had landed on her like two hammer blows to the skull.

This time her eyes locked onto the door, but she froze again, unable to decide what to do.

"Kaelin!" came a gentle voice from outside. But it was so shaky it sounded afraid to even speak. There was a sharpness to it that cut right through the ringing in her ears.

"Kaelin, are you in there?" the same voice asked again, the fear now much more apparent.

Kaelin was growing more panicked, but she knew she had to answer. If someone suddenly came in and saw everything, it would only make things worse. Trying to explain that it was an accident with a half-naked dead man on her bed and a symbol seared into his chest might well be the last free thing she ever did.

"Shit."

Her voice was barely audible, but she was slowly beginning to come back to herself. Bracing against the wall, she managed to stand. That was when she noticed the tear along the slit of her skirt.

"When the hell did this happen?" she muttered under her breath. She was starting to come out of the shock. Saying it out loud had somehow made her feel more normal. Or maybe it was the cursing.

She began walking slowly toward the door, trying not to make a sound — almost on instinct, without knowing why. By the time she could move her legs without them trembling, she had reached it. She gripped the handle, cracked it open slowly, and leaned half her body out. The door was ajar, but Kaelin completely blocked the gap, pressing the handle against her body. She couldn't let anyone see inside.

"Mayra!" she said, somewhere between surprise and fear. The fact that someone was standing there, close enough to see past her at any moment, terrified her — but the fact that it was Mayra, of all people, eased her just slightly.

The moment she realized what a strange reaction she'd given, she felt compelled to say something else. "What are you doing here?" she asked without thinking, ignoring entirely the chaos unfolding outside. But the words were barely out of her mouth before she regretted them. Brilliant. A masterpiece of a response, you idiot, she thought.

"I — I was just worried about you," Mayra said, with the most innocent expression imaginable, her face tilted slightly downward as she looked up at her.

Ah, there couldn't have been a worse moment for you to be this sweet, thought Kaelin.

Mayra was still relatively new here — she had started at most three months ago. Since the day she arrived, the way this young woman's innocence showed so plainly on her face had made Kaelin feel almost protective of her. She had understood long ago that innocence in this place could only ever be used as entertainment. When she started she had said she was twenty-two, but Kaelin had known immediately she wasn't even twenty yet. Still, even that was hardly a lie here — in a building where almost nothing real ever happened.

Her wavy blonde hair and green eyes were always enough to knock the sense right out of Kaelin, but those extra-adorable looks were making this conversation even harder. Mayra didn't look at her that way, and Kaelin knew it — but that knowledge did nothing to kill her interest. She flirted with her often. Mayra always laughed it off, of course. But Kaelin kept doing it anyway, hoping that one day she might realize how much she liked her. Preferring the hope of the future to the reality of the present was always the most tempting choice.

She snapped back to herself when she realized she had been staring for too long. The seriousness of the situation flooded back into her chest with fresh fear.

"What happened out there?" Kaelin asked suddenly, pretending not to have noticed the chaos outside.

"You — I mean, didn't you notice?" Mayra asked, making a slight movement with her head as if trying to look inside.

"Notice what?" Kaelin replied, shifting to block her view with her head. She realized she was playing dumb a little too hard, but she still needed to know what was happening outside — even if the possibility that it was connected to her terrified her.

"The war."

Kaelin said nothing, but she had already stopped breathing. How could Mayra possibly know what she had seen?

"I was with a client in my room," Mayra continued. "We had just moved to the bed when he suddenly collapsed. He started shaking, his eyes making strange movements. I had no idea what was happening — it looked like he was having a seizure. Then all at once he came to, but the expression on his face was so terrified he couldn't even speak."

She paused and swallowed. It was obvious she was frightened too.

"Then I heard the noise outside and left the room. Everyone was talking about the terrible war they'd seen. Some said they had been hiding underground, others said they'd seen a battlefield directly. Everyone was terrified, trying to understand what it was."

Only then, as she glanced around, did Kaelin notice that all the other doors were open and people were running about in confusion.

"I saw that your door was closed, so I ran here."

"And you?" Kaelin asked, still scanning the hall with her eyes.

"I didn't see anything," Mayra said. "I think I might be the only one who didn't. Well — me, and you."

Her gaze came back to Mayra. She felt terrible for lying to her, but that guilt shrank to almost nothing against the possibility that she herself might have caused all of this. She was about to sink back into her own thoughts when she noticed Mayra trying to look inside the room and stepped fully outside, pulling the door shut behind her.

"And your client — did he see anything either?" Mayra asked, slightly relieved now that she wasn't alone.

Kaelin knew she couldn't just stand there drawing attention. She took Mayra by the arm and brought her close.

"I don't know what's going on," Kaelin said, keeping her voice low, "but I don't think we'll be doing much work tonight. Go to your room, change, then head home. I doubt anyone will say anything. When I'm done here, I'll come by and check on you." She held her gaze to make sure it landed. "Go."

She knew she was in danger — but she wanted to keep Mayra out of this mess.

"O-okay," Mayra said, casting what looked almost like a shy glance.

What the fuck was that look? Kaelin thought. She was certain she had seen something different in it — but she didn't have the time.

As Mayra turned and walked away, Kaelin realized the chaos around her would reach her sooner or later. Many doors were open, everyone was trying to tell each other something. She had to act fast — but she had very little idea what to do.

Maybe she needed to get rid of the body. The fact that this was the first solution that came to her had frightened her slightly, but at least it was something. Because the only thing tying her to the situation was that the corpse was in her room. If she could get it out, she might no longer be a suspect — especially with the entire building in chaos.

But how?

◈ ◈ ◈

Rhoren was a tall man in his late fifties, gray-haired, slightly thick through the middle, with a permanently furrowed brow. When he walked, it was as though the very air had something against him. He was known to almost everyone in Marialis — and feared by them. Being captain of the city's Warden unit had a great deal to do with that.

He took a long drag from his tobacco, while behind him the Red Lantern House's crimson reflection rippled across the harbor water. Directly above the entrance hung its lantern, its symbol known from here to distant lands. Despite the late hour, the light from the buildings was enough to illuminate the entire port. The Red Lantern stood out from all of them with its entirely red facade. The undisguised expression of displeasure on his face made no secret of how much he despised this district — this exact building.

Before these degenerates had arrived, Marialis had been a perfectly quiet port city. Trade had always been busy, but everything had moved in an orderly fashion. Now the district was overrun with gamblers on their way to the casinos and addicts who could barely stand. And then there were the occasional murders in buildings like this one — the kind that served the upper class — which meant he was constantly forced to come here and deal with the Red Lantern. And the ones who always walked were the same overfed dandies who couldn't figure out where to stick their dicks.

"The greatest pleasure producer in all the realm" — my ass, he muttered, crushing what remained of his tobacco against the entrance door. So knowing the bedroom secrets of the nobility gave you real power. Swindling sailors with pretty girls was just a bonus, apparently.

"Captain!" called a young man approaching from behind. But when he caught Rhoren's expression he paused for just a moment.

"Well?" Rhoren raised his voice without turning around.

"As you ordered, we've quarantined the entire block. All entrances and exits are sealed," the young man replied quickly, as though he'd already been told off.

"Good," said Rhoren, turning around — though the word coming out of his mouth and what his face was saying were telling entirely different stories.

"The Ledger representative has arrived, sir. Should we let him in?"

"Send him directly to me," Rhoren replied with a weary expression. "Then get back to your post and don't let anyone move until I say otherwise."

"Yes, Captain," said the young man, and headed back the way he had come at a brisk pace.

Rhoren didn't hate the Ledger Guild quite as much as he hated the Red Lantern — but the way they had wrapped the entire city around their fingers infuriated him. The king had granted them too much authority. The Wardens had ended up answering to a guild because of it, and there was supposed to be a limit to that kind of thing.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small metal box, flicking it open with his thumb to take out another length of tobacco, which he pressed between his lips. From the other pocket came his lighter. The small device — a gift when he had been made captain — was often the most valuable thing on him. A fairly simple contraption, really, just two stones and an oil-soaked cloth, but not something you came across every day. It was the only small luxury that let him feel, even briefly, like a man of some standing.

A minute after the young man disappeared around the corner, another figure appeared walking toward him.

Rhoren recognized him the moment he saw him.

"Strange," he muttered to himself.

The man was Tarr'en Rowe, one of the Ledger's senior members — known to be close to the king himself. He had appeared at the king's side more than once during royal visits to the city. What business could someone of his weight have here? Rhoren kept his thoughts to himself. He knew from experience that the less he stuck his neck out, the fewer headaches he'd have. The sooner this was resolved, the better for everyone.

As the man approached, Rhoren extended his hand. "Mr. Rowe," he said flatly.

Tarr'en looked at neither his hand nor his face, instead sweeping his gaze over the building. "Is this the source?"

Rhoren's hand hung in the air, his neck stiffening with irritation. "The largest disturbance was here," he said.

"Anyone in or out?"

Short. Precise. No eye contact, as though eye contact were something Rhoren hadn't yet earned.

"No one entered or left. I was at the door myself until you arrived," Rhoren replied, the irritation clear in his voice.

Tarr'en pushed the door open without a word and stepped inside. Rhoren took one last look at the city's reflection in the water, drew several slow breaths of the harbor air, and realized he already wanted another smoke — but it was too late for that now. He pulled the wooden door open and walked in after him with a low growl.