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“Hey, kid. Thanks for bringing back my cloak.”
* * *
—
Glirastes is snorting drugs as Harnassus paces a hole in the briefing room carpet. A silver chimera drug dispenser full of sol dust slips out from the Master Maker’s voluminous sleeve. I pull up a chair and sit across from him.
He admires his chimera. “When I had my first bite of sol dust, I thought I had arrived. I was a young man, of course. And once you’ve had stallions galloping through your veins, well…” He dabs the golden powder that rims his nostril and looks at it. “Very nearly cost my career. It was a long time before I realized one doesn’t have to drink the whole glass in one gulp.”
Pulling back his upper eyelid, he works the powder into his eye and sighs.
“I’m told you’ve stopped working,” I say. “Sardines again?”
“Gods no, it’s a Thursday,” Glirastes says. “I’m sure you would agree certain standards must be maintained in a professional relationship between patron and artist. For instance, I would never deem it appropriate to imprison any of your friends and expect felicitations from you. It would simply compromise the relationship.”
“Harnassus says you’re close with this Cato au Vitruvius.”
“You sound tired, Darrow.”
“It’s been a long week.”
“Then don’t make it longer on yourself. Cato is, in many ways, my only pupil.”
“That callow boy?”
“That callow boy did what all your men could not. I know. When I first met him, I was as dubious as you are now. Just another fawning sycophant relying upon the wealth of his parents for access to me. Disgusting. But he has depth to him. He appreciates the grand without sacrificing the minute.
“You drowned half of Helios. I mourned for the dead. And now that one of them, a boy who is like a son to me, has come back, you think you can keep him from me?” Glirastes shakes his head. “I have done all you asked. I am your gateway out of hell.” He leans back and rests his hands on his tummy. “It is your army. So do what you will. But if Cato is not out of your prison and sharing a toast to life with me over a glass of shiraz by tonight, then you will have to find yourself another Master Maker to build your gateway.”
* * *
—
Through the video feed I watch Cato au Vitruvius admit that he is a libertine to our lie detector.
“Science?” I ask my Yellow science officer. Harnassus has assembled the team I put on Cato to deliver me their full analysis.
“We ran his DNA against the active Society military database and Gorgon NOC list with no matches. He is not a member, nor does he have relations in their military. Of course, without connection to Skyhall, we don’t have access to the census records.”
Screwface nods from his darkened corner. He brought us the military database information. “Ain’t laid eyes on that sorry Pixie before. If he’s a Gorgon, he’s young, deep, and out on a limb.”
“Linguistics?”
“His dialect is rare,” a Pink says. “It has inflections of Western Ladonese, which is the predominant accent of Erebos and its surrounding municipalities, but it is primarily Heliopolitan Aureate.”
“So he’s lying about his origins.”
“No,” the slender Pink says. “On the contrary, patrician families of Erebos consider Western Ladonese to be a plebeian tongue. Most embrace the Tychian accent, but a minority of ancient families consider that to be…inelegant, and so train their children against the grain in the affectation of Old Heliopolitan. It’s a nuance so particular the notion that he would think to imitate it beggars belief.”
“Why?” I ask.
“I can speak Common in ninety-eight dialects, and even I have not thought it practical to master Old Heliopolitan. No one speaks it except maybe two hundred families of Erebos.”
“Medical?”
A Yellow pipes up from behind his optical display. “He has no signs of military-grade implantation. No foreign elements in his person, nor radiation marking except minor radiation poisoning. His blood pressure is low. Heart is abnormally powerful: twenty-five beats per minute, and shows significant signs of Mithridatism, a practice common in secondary Aureate families as emulation of the more significant families.”
“Maniacs,” Harnassus mutters. “Poisoning yourself is now fashion?”
