“Coming!” Rapid feet approached within. “I didn’t expect you so ear—oh…” The voice had a hint of paternal cheer, which faded as soon as the door opened enough to reveal the strangers. “Sorry, I thought you were the grocery kids. Can I help you?”
With the door open, the smell went from delicious to maddening. “I hope so,” Thisbe answered. “We’re supposed to follow up with Dominic Seneschal about some urgent work, but we can’t seem to find them anywhere. We were hoping you might have seen them around here.”
That won a chuckle. “You and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. What do you need them for?”
Thisbe’s false laugh is beautiful. “It’s rather absurd, but I’m supposed to be running a pro forma background check on, of all people, Tribune Mason.”
“A background check on T.M.?” The chuckle matured into a hearty belly laugh.
Thisbe joined it. “Yes, I know, but every new system has its paperwork. I’m supposed to interview associates, bash’mates, family’s going to be exciting. You may well be someone on my list too, Member…?”
“Hiveless,” the housekeeper corrected, turning so they could see the Blacklaw Hiveless sash behind her fresh-stained apron. “Gibraltar Chagatai.”
I should describe this figure. Chagatai is not much over fifty, but has let silver grace her ponytail, and her face is creased with lines gained through trials, not age. Those features and her silvered stubble, broad shoulders, and jolly belly laugh grant her a weathered handsomeness which middle-aged widows find irresistible. She has enough Mongolian ancestry to look ambiguously Eastern, but wears no nation-strat insignia, and few insignia at all that mean much to non-Blacklaws. Her hands are too thick and strong, better suited to sport or spears than teacups. That day she was wearing only the comfortable pieces of her uniform of servant’s black and white, for there was no need for more when the Master was not expected. Carlyle says he didn’t see a weapon, but I cannot believe so wise and wild-spawned a Blacklaw would open a door without some blade or pistol hidden in an off hand. Would you, reader, if you lived in days of banditry and honor duels, as she, by choice, still does?
“And who are you?” Chagatai asked.
“My name is Thisbe Saneer. I do security for the facility where—”
“The Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’, of course. I had heard.”
“This sensayer is Carlyle Foster.”
“Checking up on Dominic for the Conclave?” Chagatai offered friendly, too-firm handshakes. “Who suggested this address? I didn’t get any notice that you were coming. Usually I should.”
Thisbe had her lie ready before Carlyle could flinch. “Mycroft.”
“Mycroft Guildbreaker?”
“No, Mycroft…”—she glanced at sweet, oblivious Carlyle—“who is a Servicer.”
“Ah, that Mycroft. You’re being very thorough. Why don’t you come in? You can check me off your list, and, if we’re lucky, Dominic may turn up within an hour or so. Fingers crossed.”
Pride glowed in Thisbe’s smile. “Thank you.”
“Hold,” Chagatai commanded as Thisbe’s boot threatened the lintel. “I have to check your credentials first. Could you both send them over?”
Carlyle hesitated before giving the ‘send’ command, but trusted Thisbe’s promise that she had cleared all during their flight.
Chagatai’s face softened as the data flickered across their lenses. “Excellent. Come in. You can—oops!”
It was the chirp of a kitchen timer that cut the Blacklaw off, and she rushed back toward an inner doorway and the scent of meat beyond. “Please come through. You’re welcome to the bathroom if you need it, and to look at the collection. Just be careful touching anything that looks more than a few hundred years old.”
Her invitation left little they could touch. The hall was practically a museum, its walls lined with low bookcases filled with books whose spines of aged leather long predated printed titles. On the waist-high tops of the bookcases crowded a mass of tiny statues: Buddhas, Madonnas, Anubis jackals, Venus figures, a thousand votive figurines in bronze, jade, clay, porcelain, silver, even dream-bright gold. The walls above the shelves were crowded too, even more dazzlingly. Icons. Hundreds of them, saints, angels, brilliant in paint and gold leaf, crowded edge to edge, an endless stream of flat, stylized faces. It is hard to believe the world produced so many, though these were just the tiniest fraction even of what survives. Most of them were ugly, crude at least, too rough to be objects of aesthetics in our modern age, the kind of icon poured out thousand upon thousand in that desperate Middle Age when images were objects of utility more than art. Objects of hope, and desperation, remedies against despair and plague before we had our great salvation, Science. There is judgment in their painted stares, but also something pitiable, these things, almost beings, that had been worshipped, loved, brought offerings, sweet burnt incense, that had been the most precious things in their first owners’ world, yet today it was hard to believe anyone cared enough to dust them all.
“This used to be a church, didn’t it?” Carlyle called toward the kitchen.
“Yes,” Chagatai called back, her deep bass rumble easily drowning the kitchen’s sizzle. “It was a ruin ten years ago, but T.M. was sad seeing the state of the place, so Chief Director Andō gave it to them as a birthday present.”
“T.M.” Carlyle repeated. “You mean Tribune Mason?”
“Sorry, yes. I know they have too many nicknames.”
“This collection is magnificent.”
“Yes. I think T.M. owns something like sixty former churches now, all fixed up and turned into hospices or Servicers’ dorms or other useful things. Can’t stand to see old churches rot. But they do insist on cramming them all with this collection.”
Thisbe gaped. “You mean they have sixty times this many?”
“What, the icons? They’re all President Ganymede’s, things they dredged up from collection basements. The Art Situation program is fine at finding homes for Greek pots and Ming vases, but nobody wants a hundred thousand identical Madonnas anymore. Nobody but T.M., anyway.”
Tempting as this strange gallery was, the smell was stronger, and lured both to the kitchen like a honey trap. It was a magnificent kitchen, six counters each a different temperature, three fridges, four different ovens from the most modern to real brick with firelight within. The kitchen tree which hugged the greenhouse windows was programmed, not for standard snacking fruits and crepe-edged lettuces, but a chef’s array, branches of savory and bay and allspice berries crowded between fiery peppers, currants, young pumpkins, tomatillos, with shallots and radishes bulbous among the tree’s fat roots. Carlyle says every burner was going, pots of steel and clay smelling of garlic, biting oregano, onion, salt, and infinite butter.
“I don’t think I’ve smelled anything so tempting in my life.” Thisbe could offer no truer compliment. “Are you having a belated party?”
Chagatai had taken from the meatmaker a sheet of rosy flesh two centimeters thick, as wide as a dinner plate and long like an unrolled scroll. She had already massaged in the spices, and now, with her larding needle, was injecting slivers of garlic and pancetta. “No, this is just one dish. My own recipe, Carnivore Roll. It’s Dominic Seneschal’s favorite food. T.M.’s idea. You know when your dog’s missing so you get some of their favorite treats and leave them on the doorstep and hope they’ll come back?”