“Hi,” Tara said with the cheer she always felt when about to ruin a snob’s day, and produced the invitation the porter had delivered to her cabin this morning. “We have an appointment.”
The doorman took the invitation, skepticism evident even through his dark glasses. Tara savored his surprise as he read the document twice, turned it over to check for a watermark, then read it again.
“Of course,” the doorman said joylessly. The doors opened at his gesture. A young woman in a white blouse, an uncomfortable black skirt, and heels that forced her en pointe emerged. “Antonia will guide you.” Antonia’s smile slipped when she read the invitation. “Enjoy your visit.”
And to the nine hells with you too, Tara thought as she led Shale into the club.
They followed Antonia down a pillared arcade between two courtyards shaded with plant life stolen from around the world. Antonia’s absurd heels left bloodred footprints on the white marble tiles. Ripples of color spread from those footprints as they faded, interlacing with the ripples Tara’s and Shale’s footsteps cast.
In a courtyard, a jazz quartet played soft music while clubgoers, skeletal or amorphous or many-limbed, broke their fast at an enormous buffet: glistening piles of fresh-cut exotic fruits and bewitching pastries, an omelet station, an elegant silver bowl of wriggling insects that laughed when eaten. In a salon to the left, a Shining Empire magistrate sipped tea with a Zurish mask-lord in the shade of a broad-leaved Dhisthran tree, all equally far from home.
The part of Tara that would always hail from a farming village on the edge of a desert pondered the expense of the shifting marble, the plants, the wards, the water, the band, the silver, the price of Antonia and the front-door jerkface and their comrades, carried the three to the ten million’s place—then abandoned the exercise. In a way, this kind of wealth was easier to accept than the ease with which Daphne picked up their check at lunch. Even if Tara made partner at Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, she wouldn’t have lived in this world. You earned this power by stealing continents and breaking nations; this was wealth you tore from dying gods.
She frowned at the thought. What kind of radical was Alt Coulumb making her, anyway? Focus on the mission, Tara. Follow Antonia in the absurd heels.
The club doors opened onto a marble stair that led down to a white sand beach. Tara blinked brilliant ghosts from her vision.
The beach was empty save for a man who was not a man anymore.
Antonia extended her hand. Tara thanked her and descended.
The King in Red lay in swim trunks on a lounge chair, his pale anklebones crossed atop bamboo slats. The red gold crown set into his skull glinted dull and bloody in the sun.
White sand pillowed Tara’s footsteps. Waves rushed and rolled. Bodies thronged the beach a hundred meters to her left and right: college kids tossed Frisbees, musician circles played guitars and drums and fiddles, surfers charged the breakers. Children kicked ullamal and cackled as they fell. Tara did not hear them. Their voices died on the crystal air.
The King in Red kept still as she approached. She gave his chair wide berth, rounding to the side. His ribs jutted from the chair like tree trunks a fire had stripped of bark and left to die.
One skeletal hand held a round glass three-quarters full (or one-quarter empty) of a weapons-grade pink cocktail shaded by four paper umbrellas and sporting a spear of tiny melon cubes interspaced with jadeite giraffes. Ice shifted in the glass.
He wore sunglasses, which made no sense. Golden tabs affixed the glasses to the holes where his ears would have been.
She stood, hands clasped behind her, watching and waiting. There were greater powers than the King in Red. It was just hard to think of any at this precise moment.
He raised the glass to where his lips once were, and drank. She watched the liquid disappear.
“Your Majesty,” she began, to be on the safe side.
“I know who you are, Ms. Abernathy. I know why you’ve come.”
His voice was almost human. The difference mattered.
“That will save time, Your Majesty.”
“Drop the Majesty. I have enough. I told Elayne I’d see you, and I have. You can go now.”
“I want to present my argument.”
“It’s good to want things.” He drank again, and again the fluid disappeared—reduced to chaos, all useful properties stripped to feed the Craftwork that kept the King in Red whatever he was. “Alive” was the wrong word. “I want to hear from an old friend once in a while for some reason other than business. You want me to hand you a fortune for no reason. Your stone companion wants to murder me, though he’s displaying admirable self-control.”