James A. Hunter
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Vigil's Valor: 38 – Tiers of Delight
🕑 Added 2022-08-18 17:01:02 +0000 UTCThe game plan was to wake up early.
To spend the whole day breaking down doors.
Finding answers.
Kicking ass and taking names.
Instead, I slept for sixteen hours. Sixteen. Hours.
By the time I got up and hosed the dried blood off, it was sunset. The whole day was gone, there was a pulsating lump of black flesh on my bed, my room looked like a set piece for Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I still didn’t know any more than I had the day before. To top it all off, Cal had also gotten extremely bored and had decided to draw a dick on my forehead. Except there were no sharpies, so he opted to use black paint. Oil-based black paint.
Needless to say, things weren’t exactly going according to plan. Yet, somehow, they were also exactly par for the course. Next time I read a Legacy Scroll, it would be in the comfort of my Soul Vault, where I’d be safe from Cal’s shenanigans.
Grumbling and bitching the whole while, I tidied up my quarters as best as I could, futility attempted to scrub the painted dick off my face—there was still a faint, ghostly image plastered right over my Vigil brand—then struck out for the city, hoping to make up a little lost ground.
The bodies were piling up, things were spinning out of control, and even as an outsider, it was obvious that these killings were both targeted and politically motivated. But there were pieces of the puzzle I was still missing. Murdering the prince’s advisor seemed almost self-explanatory—as did the attack against the prince and his guards—but how did the Information Broker from the Sprawl and the kid from the Baker’s District fit into the picture?
I wasn’t sure. But if I could figure that out, maybe I could also determine who would benefit most from these deaths.
The Baker’s District was inside the inner city but bordered the outer wall, which separated Wildespell from the Sprawl. The neighborhood encompassed roughly three-square blocks and, as the name implied, the entire place smelled like freshly baked bread and homemade pie. Most of the shops were closed for the night—already preparing for the day to come, I had no doubt—but street carts dotted each corner. Apron-clad sellers hawked loaves of bread, day-old meat pies, and sugary fried dough balls to passerbys.
It seemed there were at least three constants no matter what world you ended up on: People loved fighting, beer, and fried dough. People also happened to include me.
Since I’d skipped dinner and my stomach felt like an angry blackhole, I picked up a couple of pastries while casually asking around about a murder. Just another glorious day in the life of a Vigil. The meat pies were heavenly and the off-brand, medieval donuts were hot, fresh, and tasted like poor life choices. I couldn’t stuff my face fast enough and thanks to my enhanced metabolism I didn’t have to worry about the thousands of calories I was shoveling into my pie-hole.
Unlike the tight-lipped thieves and thugs at the Society of Vicious Whispers, the vendors practically begged to give me any information they had, especially if it got me away from their carts. It seemed the presence of a glowing-eyed monster hunter was bad for business. Everyone had heard about the attack, of course, but I had to ask at four different stalls before I finally found someone who knew the mother of the dead kid.
A lady named Terrwyn.
When I asked where I could find her, the vendor got a little squirrely, but after a very direct suggestion using Honeyed Words, they pointed me toward a stately four-story building at the end of the street called Tiers of Delight. A hulking door, sturdy enough to withstand a battering ram, was flanked by a pair of oil lanterns that spilled watery light onto the cobblestone street. Frosted glass windows displayed elaborate, multi-tiered cakes fit for royalty and despite the late hour, the shop appeared to be open.
I watched from the shade of a canvas awning as a wealthy-looking gentleman furtively approached the door. He had salt and pepper hair, a strong nose, and the bearing of a soldier, but his clothes said noble. He wore a crushed velvet doublet and a top hat, though the sword at his hip was all business. He knocked sharply at the door five times. There was an odd, halting cadence to his knock that seemed unnatural. Probably a passphrase.
After a few seconds, the colossal door swung silently inward and a stern looking middle-aged woman wearing wide black petticoats quickly ushered the guest inside.
“Well, that’s not in any way suspicious or unusual,” Cal grumbled, beside me. “Might as well put up a neon sign that says, ‘Shady Shit This Way.’”
He wasn’t wrong. I glanced up at sky. Twilight was already fading fast, and true night was starting to set in. “Yep,” I agreed. “Seems like an awfully weird time to go cake shopping.” The door thunkedshut and, thanks to my enhanced senses, I could hear a heavy metal bolt slide home.
“Those cakes must be made out of diamonds,” Cal said, “because hot damn is that some good security.”
“Interesting clientele, too,” I whispered. “Cake shopping doesn’t strike me as the kind of thing a guy in a top hat would be doing. Tomfuckery is definitely afoot here.” Like the Drunken Crow over in the Sprawl, it was quickly becoming apparent that Tiers of Delight was more than it appeared. I really didn’t want to spend another night squaring off against a bruiser like Bramin if I could avoid it, but unfortunately, there was no way to tell what I was getting myself into until I was already elbow deep in the shit.
“Okay, you go case the perimeter,” I finally said. “Make sure I’m not walking into another trap or stumbling into a bakery-themed death cult, dedicated to summoning a frosted god of chaos.”
“Oddly specific,” Cal said, “but you can count on me.”
I waited for him to disappear around back, then stepped out of the shadows and quietly made my way toward the front door with my cowl up and my head down. I knocked, matching the same halting rhythm as the gentleman with the top hat. The bolt clanked and the door opened a couple of inches, revealing the stern-looking woman from before. Her eyes widened in shock.
Obviously, I wasn’t whoever she’d been expecting.
“Vigilant One,” she said, voice husky. She was trying valiantly to hide her dismay, but I could see the signs. “What brings one of the exalted ones to my humble establishment at this hour. There is no trouble, I hope?”
“No trouble at all,” I replied easily. “Just planing to throw a surprise party for a friend of mine and decided I needed a fancy-ass cake to set the tone. I was hoping you could help me out?”
“I do so apologize,” she stammered, “but I’m afraid we are closed for the evening. You are welcome to try back tomorrow, however.” She made to shut the door, but I slid my boot forward, jamming my toe into the crack.
“That’s funny,” I said, offering her a wide smile, “because I could’ve sworn I saw another patron enter not but a handful of minutes ago. Guy wearing a top hat and a fancy doublet.” It was a statement not a question.
This time a look of unadulterated panic flashed across her face, but it was gone almost as quickly as it had come. She was a pro at keeping her composure. This wasn’t her first brush with the law.
“I’m afraid you must be mistaken,” she said simply, this time flat out lying.
“Maybe,” I nodded. “Still, it’s so hard for me to get time off. The Custodians can be real sticklers about Vigils taking personal days. Surely you can make an exception this one time? Let me in.” I coated the words with Arcana and watched her resolve sag beneath the weight of my magically reinforced will.
“Yes. Yes, of course. How could I say no to one of our city’s exalted champions? Please, right this way.” She stepped aside, back stiff as a board, and motioned for me to enter.
The interior of the shop was exactly what I expected of a high-end bakery that specializes in layered cakes. It was all frills and white lace with several tables sitting out, displaying cakes of various colors, styles, and designs. Along the back wall was a glass counter, meticulously clean and well-maintained, which offered elaborate silver cutlery and floral plate ware. A non-descript door behind the counter presumably connected to the kitchen.
There were two problems.
One, this was a four-story building and from all appearances the shop itself only took up the front half of the first floor. Assuming there was a bakery attached at the back, that still left three floors unaccounted for. That was a lot of space for a bakery. Problem two, the shopkeeper and I were the only people in the store and contrary to what she claimed, I knew for a fact that the guy in the fancy jacket had waltzed in here not but five minutes ago.
So where in the hell was he?
Something wasn’t adding up here.
“What type of cake are you interested in looking at?” She asked, swishing behind the counter so that her body obscured the door to the back. “We offer a variety of different flavor profiles and texture types. Chocolate, vanilla, sponge and marbled. We also have an excellent orange and lemon cake or a rich, earthy Kaffkae-flavored cake if your tastes run more toward the exotic.”
Cal slipped in through the wall, invisible to the matronly woman, but plain as day to me.
“Yeah, this place ain’t no bakery, dude,” he said. “It’s a front, just like the flophouse over in the Sprawl. Behind here is a kitchen, but the rest of the building is some kind of classy brothel. The whole second floor is a bar and lounge, and the top two floors are all private rooms. Lots of women and a handful of guys that look like they have permanent memberships at their local country club. I didn’t see any magical wards. There are a couple of bouncers, but nothing that you can’t handle.”
I should’ve guessed. With a name like Tiers of Delight what else would it be? I nodded at Cal in acknowledgement but said nothing.
“I’m interested in a very specific flavor,” I told the woman, resting my forearms against the counter. “Terrwyn.”
Her face went pale and her back went rigid. “We’re not doing anything illegal,” she said suddenly. “The Citadel might not look kindly on our work, but there are no laws on the books against pleasure establishments. If you’re on some sort of crusade, looking to hassle working women, why don’t you go over to Red Paint Row? You’ll find all manner of degeneracy there. We run a respectable establishment. No drugs. No fights. All of our girls are clean.”
I had no idea what kind of laws Wildespell had regarding prostitution, but her body language told me that she wasn’t lying this time around. “If it’s not illegal,” I asked, dropping my voice a notch, “then why all the secrecy?”
She seemed to battle internally for a moment. She didn’t want to tell me, but the power in my words compelled her. Finally, something broke inside of her and she slumped forward in defeat.
“Nothing we do is illegal,” she said again, adjusting her petticoats, “we just cater to a more sophisticatedclientele. The kind of clientele who appreciate absolute discretion and are willing to pay a premium for it. You can’t very well expect men of means to go tromping through the muddy slums of the Sprawl, now can you? They’d be robbed blind by those hooligans in the Society the second they stepped foot outside the safety of Wildespell’s walls.”
“Look,” I replied, straightening. “I don’t give a shit that you run a brothel or a pleasure establishment or whatever the hell you want to call it. So long as everyone here is a consenting adult, what you do behind closed doors is none of my business. All I want to do is talk with Terrwyn, okay?”
“She’s not in trouble, is she?” the woman asked before licking her lips nervously. “Right hand to Raguel she doesn’t have anything to do with the killings and she’s already lost so much…”
“Listen, lady,” I said flatly, “if she hasn’t done anything wrong, she doesn’t have anything to worry about. I aim to put a stop to the monster that killed her kid and I think she might know something that can help me. That’s it.”
The woman’s face softened. “Brand was such a good boy,” she said. “He had the sweetest nature. He loved helping with the cake batter. He’d wake up early and would run to the market for fresh eggs and milk, then help prep the dough.” She faltered and glanced up at me through hooded eyes. “You’re really only here to ask about the killings? To try to help?”
“Like you said, right hand to Raguel,” I replied. I could’ve used Honeyed Words to make sure she knew I was on the level, but I didn’t. I wanted her to see my sincerity for what it really was.
“Very well. Follow me.”
The rest of the first floor really was a kitchen, complete with multiple stoves, large wooden paddles hanging from the wall, and counters covered with mixing bowls and wooden rolling pins. We didn’t linger in the bakery, but instead marched up a set of wide stairs that dumped us into a lavish salon. A barely clad server loitered behind the bar while three men reclined on upholstered chaise loungers and padded leather sofas. Soft music and clouds of fragrant pipe smoke danced in the air as more half-naked women circulated through the room.
Everyone froze and the music cut off with an abrupt screech as the madam marched through the room with me in tow.
“Don’t mind our newest guest,” she said, voice light and bubbly. “Just another honored patron looking for a good time and a bit of discretion. Please, right this way.” She waved toward another staircase that connected to the third floor.
A round of hushed but excited whispers broke out as we left the room. Murmurs of “Vigil” and “Inkarnate” followed behind me like accusations. Great. Perfect. There was no way that this wasn’t going to come back to bite me in the ass. But honestly, I didn’t give a shit what anyone thought, so long as I got to bottom of these killings before the city imploded and people started eating each other.
The madam took me by the hand and half-dragged, half-guided me to the last room on the third floor. She rapt softly on the door and opened it without waiting for a reply.
There was a soft sniffle. “I’m sorry, Domina,” came a reply from within, “but I’m still not ready yet. I know it is so much to ask, but I beg for just a little more time.”
“Hush, Terrwyn,” the woman scolded softly. “You know you can take as much time as you need. This isn’t about work. This is…” she paused. “Something else. I’ve brought someone who wants to help…”
The woman on the bed turned and looked at me as the door fully opened. “Dogan?” she asked, breathlessly.
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BelligerentGnu
Curiouser and curiouser...
