In the time of the ancestors, the symbols were carved directly into the body. The pain was extreme. The risk was considerable. Many who attempted the inscription died in the process, or were left changed in ways that had nothing to do with power.
But those who survived and who carried the symbols correctly found something the accounts agree on: the symbols did not merely grant ability. They rewrote the bearer. Some described it as learning a language from the inside out. Others said it was more like being translated into a different version of yourself — one you had not consented to become.
Over generations, the inscription became unnecessary. The children of bearers were born already gifted. Faintly, imperfectly — but gifted.
— On the Nature of Script Magic, compiled by the First Schools. Year of Foundation, 44.
Kaelin stood in the doorway looking out at the hall, searching for a way to get the body out. But there were too many people and everyone was in constant motion. Even if she moved quickly, someone turning a corner at the wrong moment was more than likely. She needed another way out.
She pulled the door open just enough to slip back inside and closed it behind her. Seeing the body again tightened the pressure bearing down on her. She was beginning to understand that she was racing against time. If she didn't find a solution, someone would eventually come through that door and find it. After that there would be no going back.
"Think, Kaelin, think," she muttered to herself. "I need to get rid of this hundred-kilo sack of shit somehow."
She began running through every exit and scenario she could think of. The ideas that came to her ranged from screaming and running out the door to cutting the body into pieces and removing it in stages. Most of them managed to frighten even herself. But she couldn't just sit there with her thoughts while she waited for a solution — she had to be ready in case someone came to the door. Getting the body off the bed and tidying the room was a sensible first step.
She moved quickly toward the bed and then stopped. The body she had just been dissecting in her mind was something she now found herself reluctant to touch. The distance between thinking and doing was exactly this wide. Just like leaving through that door and walking away from this life — something she had been thinking about for months, maybe years.
"Come on," she said under her breath. "You could touch these bastards when they were alive. Dead ones should be easier." It was a cheap attempt to normalize the situation, but right now there was no one here to support her or help. She had to handle everything herself. Same as always.
She reached down and grabbed the body by the ankles and pulled it slowly off the bed. It didn't go as smoothly as she'd hoped — the body dropped from the edge rather than sliding, and its weight made a noticeable thud against the wooden floor. At least the floor below is empty, she thought, though the sound had tensed her up all the same. She dragged it two steps away and left it beside the table across the room, then turned back to straighten the bed. The table and two chairs would partially hide the body from anyone looking in from the doorway.
She leaned over the bed carefully, as if something foul were lying on top of it. She picked up Koreth's jacket and shirt and dropped them on the floor, then started straightening the sheets. There was no blood or staining anywhere, which made the job easier than she'd feared. Within a few minutes she had the bed looking the way it was supposed to. But she hadn't reached the most unpleasant part yet.
She bent down and picked up the clothes she had dropped. She separated them and shook them out, then walked toward the body. When she reached his feet she stood there holding the garments, looking at the man's whitening lips. She had never imagined that dressing a man could feel worse than undressing one.
She crouched beside him and began carefully putting the shirt back on. It felt like picking someone's pocket — not fear, not disgust, but something wrong. And that sense of wrongness felt strangely familiar.
The sounds from outside kept grinding at her nerves and adding to her stress. A moment ago her hands had been ice cold, and now she was starting to feel hot. Still she kept dressing him without even wiping the sweat from her forehead. When she reached the last buttons of the shirt she paused and looked more carefully at the serpentine circular symbol.
The snake coiled itself into a knot, wrapping around a straight vertical line at the center. The serpent was unsettling, and seeing it branded into human skin was deeply disturbing. But there was something about the shape. The knot the serpent formed felt strangely familiar, though she had no memory of where she might have seen it. Something had almost surfaced in her mind, like a word hovering just beyond reach — and then a sudden slam of a door from outside snapped her back. She stopped staring at the symbol and quickly finished the remaining buttons. One was missing, but that wasn't even close to making her current list of concerns. She still hadn't figured out how to get rid of the body.
She had hung Koreth's jacket over the back of the nearby chair — that needed to go on him too. As she reached for it, something caught her eye. In the back corner of the room stood a partition screen. Its dark cloth was covered in red floral patterns and it looked as though it created a small private area behind it for changing. Some guests used it for other purposes. But its real function was something else entirely.
Red Lantern houses catered to upper-class guests, and everything was presented to them in the most appealing way — elegant, flawless, clean. The rooms were cleaned during the day, but they still needed to be seen after every guest, with sheets changed when necessary. Yet guests never see any of this happening. The solution was the same in every Red Lantern house, and it was simple: service elevators.
Mistress had explained how they worked and how to use them on her very first day, alongside history lessons nobody asked for and etiquette rules she hadn't cared about then either. But the basics were simple enough — every room had a service elevator that sent dirty laundry straight down to the basement laundry room. A pulley system, nothing complicated, but it solved the problem as fast as anything could. The partition screen was a perfect mask for it. When Kaelin's eye landed on it now, something lit up inside her. The elevator was narrow, but she thought she could squeeze Koreth in. All those times I got shouted at for cramming things in and trying to force them through in one go, she thought. Finally going to be worth it.
But the brief flicker of hope went out almost immediately. Damn it.
There was always someone in the laundry room, and every elevator that came down was emptied right away. Extra cleaners had even been brought on for night shifts to keep the system running. If she put the body in and left it on this floor, it would accomplish nothing — the body would still be traced back to her room. If she sent it down, someone would notice immediately and it wouldn't take long to expose her. And she certainly couldn't claim it was an accident. On top of that, they would realize instantly which room the body had come from, because — "Oh!"
Kaelin's eyes went wide. She had found the way out.
"I can do this," she said to herself. The confidence in her voice was unmistakable.
◈ ◈ ◈
When Rhoren stepped into the grand hall he remembered that the last time he had been here was two months ago, for a murder case. The girl had barely been twenty, and the only reason she was dead was because a wealthy merchant had lost control of himself. Just remembering it had deepened the look of disgust already set into his face. He might have been the only man in this building who had always been uncomfortable being here.
Meanwhile Tarr'en surveyed the room with an expressionless face, though this was no idle observation. He was scanning it like a hunter — tracking every suspicious movement, cataloguing every possible entrance and exit. Tarr'en, like most people, possessed an innate ability. This allowed him to perceive nearly all details simultaneously and see connections that others couldn't. But being able to see the order in things didn't mean he could understand people or emotions — these were almost entirely beyond him. The Ledger sent him on field work and to important meetings precisely for this reason. A cold, analytical eye was exactly what they needed in someone of his rank. Beyond that, his position had come with a second ability — the Ledger had granted him a very particular script and with it a very significant responsibility. If he failed to fulfill that responsibility, the consequences would be proportional.
Seeing the grand hall as though it were a spider's web, Tarr'en immediately identified the single figure at its center. A woman in a deep red dress was issuing instructions in a tone so unnervingly steady it seemed almost rehearsed, and everyone was doing exactly as she said without question. She appeared to be in her late forties, with her hair drawn back and a single gold ring at her throat as her only ornament.
After finishing her instructions the woman turned and walked directly toward them. She approached with slow, unhurried steps. "Gentlemen," she said, with a small smile — rather colder than the warmth she showed the girls. "If you'd like, we can speak in the corner," she said, gesturing toward the partition screens in the corner. But this was neither a request nor a question. She had told them what they were going to do and immediately started walking.
Rhoren had been forced to speak with her many times before and the conversation had never once been under his control. He held a strange kind of respect for her, had even caught himself looking at her differently on occasion. But whenever he was actually talking to her, all of that disappeared and she became insufferable. They followed her without speaking — they had no other choice. Tarr'en didn't appear particularly bothered, still scanning the room as if searching for something or someone. Rhoren, meanwhile, was setting new records for the expression of displeasure on his face.
The private tables behind the partition screens were a thoughtful detail — somewhere for early or unannounced guests to sit without growing restless. A girl would be at their side almost immediately. New girls were usually placed here first. The screens created a degree of privacy between the relatively close tables. The woman picked up the teapot at the center of the table, poured tea into two cups, and set them at the table's edge.
"I am Sereth Vahl," she said, turning to Tarr'en. "I manage this establishment. You may call me Mistress, as everyone else does." She extended her hand gracefully toward him, ignoring Rhoren entirely. Tarr'en took it gently and brought it to his lips. "A pleasure, Miss Vahl," he said, in an equally measured and quietly defiant tone.
Not a single expression crossed her face. "I don't know what happened here tonight," she continued, "but I did everything in my power to maintain order before your arrival and keep the chaos under control. I expect the same from you." A brief glance toward Rhoren. "I cannot afford to embarrass our guests any further this evening. I'd ask that you resolve this as quickly as possible and leave." And again, this was not a request.
"With your cooperation, I believe we can resolve it quite quickly," Tarr'en replied. That he disliked taking instructions was just barely audible in his voice. Without giving her the chance to respond he pressed on. "Let's start with you, Miss Vahl," he said, stepping closer until only half an arm's length separated them. "Would you walk me through what happened here tonight?"
The woman exhaled with undisguised weariness. "About an hour ago everyone in the building began having some kind of vision at the same time."
"A vision?"
"They were all awake, but for a short while they — saw something. Like a daydream, or a hallucination."
"Could you be more specific?"
"I spoke with both guests and staff. Everyone saw something. Some said they relived a memory. Others described seeing a war — a war they hadn't lived through and didn't remember."
Tarr'en stared into the middle distance for a moment as if something were being confirmed in his mind. Then he continued. "And could you tell us what you yourself saw?"
The woman made no move to step back, though she made no effort to hide her weariness either. "As I told the detective — I saw myself on the other side of the city. I was in my twenties. I found myself in the house where I used to live, but there were sounds of war coming from outside. I ran to the window on instinct and saw smoke rising everywhere. People were trampling each other as they ran through the streets. I heard an explosion — and then I was back." She paused and looked into the space in front of her. "The place where I used to live... It felt very real. But it was like a memory I don't actually have. A vivid dream." Then she put her serious expression back on and turned to face him again. "Given that the Ledger has sent one of its heavyweights, I don't imagine it was simply a dream." She stepped closer as she said it, fixing her eyes on his face from just inches away, as if accepting a challenge that had been extended.
Tarr'en didn't step back immediately, but after a brief pause he turned toward Rhoren and began walking back through the hall. "Thank you for sharing, Miss Vahl. One more thing I'll need from you — a complete list of tonight's guests and staff."
The woman hadn't moved. The two of them were now facing opposite directions. "Of course," she said, and called over the nearest girl to whisper something in her ear.
"No objection to us inspecting the building, I trust, Miss Vahl?" Tarr'en asked. He was already heading toward the stairs.
"Make yourselves at home," the woman said quietly, watching them go — almost to herself. Then she turned and walked without breaking her composure toward the door of the room that served as her office. She moved close to the woman standing guard at the entrance.
The woman's hair was cropped almost to nothing and she was likely the most physically imposing person in the building. She wore a dark red sleeveless dress beneath a dark brown leather corset, the skirt of the dress split deep on both sides. When the mistress approached and the woman turned toward her, the muscles in her arms and calves came into sharp relief. The mistress took a small sealed envelope from her pocket and slipped it into the woman's corset, then spoke quietly into her ear. "Take this and give it to the doorman. Use the tunnels. Don't let anyone see you. Then come straight back." The woman gave a single nod without a word and disappeared into the back corridor past the staircase leading upward.