[IC] A New Age Dawns [Steampunk Drama]

[Palamon]

Well this certainly is not the right direction. I am pretty sure that I don't live anywhere where people defecate in the streets. The smell is just Opium and strange meat now, and obviously still shit. I don't know where I am going, I don't know which direction is home, dam the universe and its infernal sense of humor.

Patrick was startled by a voice in the fog, he squinted, but saw no one. When the foreign man approached he was suprised, but tried to maintain compsure as the man spoke.

Whose there? What is this, why are these nanman men talking to me? Why are they here? What did they ask? Who am I? Wait... Who am I? Dammit Patrick who are you? Oh yea that's right. You are Patrick... I mean, I am Patrick O'Rielly. Yea say that, that'll sound good...

Patrick straightened himself, although his drunken demeanor still haunted him, "I erm, the Pashtrick O'Reelly. Mermersh of the Opern Councils."

Dammit I'm still drunk, this is not working. I need to breath and try again.

"I am... Patrick O'Rielly, seat on the Open Councilsh for the Existentialist Party."

Patrick's brow dripped in cold sweat, he felt the unpleasant queasiness that usually accompanied such heavy drinking. He tried to brace himself as he looked at the nanman men, he hoped to all that was in existence that he would not make the mistake of vomiting right now.

[Tenshi_of_the_Flame]

James took the Duchess by the arm as he navigated the arteries of the Commons. It was not the most glamourous arcade for demonstrating his talents, but an effective one. Unmarked streets, their signs long since pried loose and sold for scrap, often ended in murderous cul-de-sacs and treacherous avenues. Dead end was apt here. Knives and ill intentions were the law.

So it was strange that they met with no unkindness during their trek. They were certainly making little effort to be stealthy. Though they walked in silence, James’ footfalls projected into the swallowing fog. In fact, he seemed to be making an effort to attract attention. James usually moved with a cat’s grace, making no sound in action. It was a trait that many found disconcerting and more than one of the Duchess’ household staff had developed a nervous condition since the Tallyman had come to haunt Briarwood Park. But there was something even more unnerving about the sound he made now.

His footfalls echoed like funerary church bells. Solemn. Final. Of course, that was the point. Centuries of evolutionary social pressure had imprinted to the point of instinct in the minds of the Commoners. The lambs and jackals that roamed these narrow streets knew to fear the wolf’s approach.

Tanner was not well known in the Commons. No one was really. But his presence was felt. The darkly dapper man with the echoing tread was a spice they knew, even mixed in the mire of filth and urine. More than one loose tongue had spread the rumor that James was a Practical, or some other faceless agent of the Inquisition. The slander would make him smile.

Whether through the armor of well-tread caution or simple fortuitous chance, the pair remained unmolested in their march on the Commons. Finally, the rebounding echoes of their passing dissipated as the street opened up into a wider fare and more fog. As church bells fell into silence a new sound took up the refrain. Sounds of strings and brass through stone. Sounds of curses both of joy and malice from the other side of a rough, wood door. The stomp of heels on floorboards. Life.

A ship to the castaway, the Bawdy Pathist rose out of the mist with sails of linen thick enough to keep out the daylight. Pausing at the threshold, dancing shadows flitted through gaslight under the door, James turned to the Duchess. One eyebrow raised. In all things Tanner served, would this?

[Taerra Firma]

She stared at the door, listening to the sounds of abandon from inside, and licked her lips nervously. She glanced sideways at James’ inquiring expression and couldn’t stop the grin that pulled her lips wide, her teeth flashing. She took a breath, which was perhaps not the best choice when she caught a whiff of something foul on the air. Well, she who hesitates is lost. This was the type of immersive experience she had wanted. There was no point bemoaning the sordid parts.

When she opened the door, she was hit with a blast of humid, smoky air, ripe with the scent of sweating bodies, fermented hops, and cheap tobacco. There was a hulking man blocking entry, and before she could even wonder at his purpose, James’ hand passed over the other man’s, dropping a few coins. The thug moved aside, and she and her escort stepped into a whole other world.

“Perfect!” she shouted up at him, the sound of her voice disappearing beneath the roar of clapping hands and stamping feet. She couldn’t help noting the differences between this atmosphere and the familiar soirees she was used to. She grabbed his hand long enough to pull him deeper into the building, all the while staring around avidly.

The “hall”, like society’s more decorous cousin, was really a number of smaller rooms coming off the large main one used for dancing. The plaster was faded and crumbling, and no amount of applications of whitewash could actually conceal the yellowed tinge. The wooden floor was scarred and pitted. The people were packed in, making it difficult to move quickly. Unlike a society ball, everyone here seemed to be enjoying themselves. You came to this place to have fun, not just see and be seen. The music was no measured waltz played by a discreetly hidden quartet, but a catchy Ryken reel that soon had her own toes tapping. Up on a stage in the corner several neighbors with fiddles, flutes, horns, and drums formed an organic band that gained and lost members throughout the night. Moments after arriving she was swept into the mass of dancers, her hand leaving the safety of Tanner’s grip as she was swallowed up by the enthusiastic crowd, spinning and stomping her way across the wood.

Tanner took up vigil at the far end of the long bar, with its sticky lacquer of liquor and decorous carvings of what several people would do for a penny. Amidst the barflies and wallflowers, James observed the evening's revelries. From the maelstrom of faded silks and dreams, bright dyes and smiles, and too much skin and spirits, the occasional flotsam would wash up to the bar. Some tried to solicit alcohol from Tanner, some for him. Some tried to offered less common tonics and means. Most were the standard. Prostitutes. Alcoholics. Men and women of confidence and cunning and little else. A few of the women, and one sly man, seemed genuinely interested in his company. Those were flattering, but unwelcome. Eventually James ordered himself a large, dirty mug of lager. He didn't drink it. That was not his vice.

Some songs later, when she had found her way back to him, not that she had ever been far from his sight, she was laughing, radiant, her eyes glittering with a fevered excitement, and her face flushed pink without the need for paint. She managed to convey her thirst, and from somewhere, Tanner produced a mug of the foamy ale that they were serving. She drank it gratefully, head tipped back, a bead of sweat running a glistening trail from her temple, down the side of her throat, and over her collarbone, as she quenched her thirst. James, for the first time that evening, averted his gaze from the Duchess.

Something was happening. The tide of bodies ebbed and shifted. Salt-dog intuition played in James’ eyes. A twitch of the eyebrow. The corner of the mouth. He looked back at the Duchess. No. At Bess. James smiled.

No one had ever accused Tanner of being a great dancer. He was not. In point of fact, James was a very skilled dancer, technically. He had witnessed enough society balls from the shade of velvet curtains, stood as a fixture at all of the Duchess’ soirees, to learn the steps. He had a measure of natural poise and precision. What James’ lacked, was presence. His was not to be center stage. The limelight was the Duchess’ domain. James was simply the silhouette at intermission. The hand that changes night to day. The facilitator of the act. A stagehand. Nothing more. James was, however, in point of fact, an excellent dance partner. He was steady, sure. A herald for his opposite. Guiding a way for his partners grace. The Duchess’ grace.

It was no stamping line now. Ryken fiddles had been replaced with continental horns. The music now carried with it the breeze of an inland sea. It spoke of spice and sun and sweeping limbs. It was not the sort of tune one usually found in proper society. Or even improper society. This was something foreign. Exotic. Dangerous. This was the day at dusk. Light and dark and distance. Backlit by the Duchess’ radiance, James cast their shadows before them.

She was fascinated by the music as it floated sinuously on the air, wrapping around her imagination. James expression as he led her to the floor seem almost nostalgic, which begged all sorts of questions that she could not voice here. She was soon too swept up in the music to care.

The dance had no set steps. Or at least, none known to most of the room. It shifted and snapped between sharp pose and flitting fluidity. The relation between the dancers was equally as fragmented. At times, amidst the spins and dips and whirling, James and the Duchess circled one another at some distance only their wrists touching. At times they moved close without being in contact at all. At times it might almost have been a leisurely park-bound promenade. For her part, though she did not know the steps, the Duchess never lost pace with James. When the piece came to it’s final, abrupt, crashing, and tremulous crescendo, she was right there with him, arms and eyes locked. James panted, hard and slow through the nose as he looked at her. He did not sweat. He was hound in more ways than one. James smiled of the sort he rarely graced her with, and even more rarely bestowed on anyone else. It said that James was pleased. That somewhere in the distant part of him that he kept from others’ sight he approved. He respected. He pulled away and upright.

She had never felt so relaxed after such exertion, and she smiled back at James, sincere pleasure in every line of her face. The composition of the dancers was changing once again as new musicians prepared to start the next set, most trickling to the sides of the room, or deeper into the building. A few remained, waiting for the music to start again. She and James found themselves near a small window, and she couldn’t help but tip her cheek to the faint whiff of outside air.

She leaned in toward James, pitching her voice just loud enough that only he might hear above the laughter and conversation. “You continue to surprise me. That was beautiful. Where...?” But she stopped, just smiling, and shook her head. She looked blindly across the room, avoiding his eyes. She could not ask. When he had come into her service so many years before, it had been an unspoken agreement that the past could remain there. She had never crossed that line before. After all he knew of her, she still held back her own past demons, and it would be discourteous not to accord him the same respect.

Her maunderings were arrested by a glimpse of something more intriguing through another door, back in the corner past the bar. A rough man was speaking, his face impassioned, his calloused hands gesticulating to emphasize his point. Now this looked to be something she might want to see. She made her way around the edges of the room, leaving James to follow in the wake of her abrupt departure. When she reached the room she could hear, in the relative absence of loud music, a deep, foreign voice rumbling out familiar words. So familiar, in fact, that she could still recall her own frame of mind when she had written them. She had only just had them delivered to the publisher two days before.

“...you rebel against repressive tactics from the master, they will arrest you for criminal sedition, then lynch and scalp you. But if you are passive and patient, they will take advantage of both.” Other voices rang out in disgruntled agreement. She stepped into the room to listen, wondering what they thought of her efforts.