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At least, he told himself, it isn't raining.
The young man had long since mastered the art of moving swiftly through a crowd without seeming to employ undue haste—it made people nervous; a gazelle only needed to outrun its fellows, not the actual lion—and so did not attract much attention as he made his way along the thronged boulevard. Anyone who did notice would not have remarked upon a well dressed fellow such as himself, even one who seemed to be in a bit of a hurry; there were a dozen different reasons he might have been making his way through the center of town at such an hour. None of them would have guessed at the haste with which he'd thrown his ensemble together, nor could they have divined the sick, anxious dread that twisted in his gut from his smoothly handsome features.
Ash didn't need to glance at his pocket watch to see how late he was; the lowering darkness of evening was enough to spell out how badly he'd misjudged things. He was half-convinced it was sheer perversity. He'd spent a dozen sunsets patiently waiting for direction, only to be ignored in favor of the encyclopedias; the one night he counted on more of the same, he had returned at dusk to find instructions awaiting him. Which did not precisely make sense—the premises were most definitely unoccupied, despite the difficulties in timing that fact presented—but it was finding it more and more easy to overlook discrepancies in what he thought he knew. There were many parts of his life that did not bear careful examination; this was merely another phase.
He wasn't entirely certain where he was going, but his gaze flicked briefly upwards, confirming that his internal compass was mostly accurate; assuming the city fathers had seen fit to mark their avenues, he shouldn't lose too much time in hunting for the address. He was not certain what to make of the character of the neighborhood in which he found himself; but, then, he was not certain what to make of Bucharest at large. Prague, at least, had been wholly upfront in its lavish decay; one knew where one stood, whether it was amongst prostitutes or parliamentarians.
Ash had originally blamed his uneasiness on the company; but while he found himself growing comfortable with that, the city itself still unnerved him. Bucharest was by far the most mysterious part of the east he had thus far encountered, despite its cosmopolitan veneer. Was it a grand city sinking slowly into wrack and ruin, or a desperate, barbaric place cultivating a metropolitan veneer? Every time he came close to making up his mind, something happened to change it. Not that he necessarily considered that a mark of disfavor; he quite enjoyed a challenging environment... he just wished for more solid footing within it.
Now, for instance, was a splendid example of his problem: was he entering an area of fine old manor homes whose aristocratic owners were allowing to moulder gently away, or a district of repurposed tenements designed so that the worst sort of urban untermensch could be stashed away out of sight? He honestly could not have said. The streets were practically deserted, so there were no passing individuals by which to judge, but the sight of the looming buildings hulking behind their wrought-iron fences did little to reassure him; who knew which side the riff-raff were meant to stay on?
Wishing he'd thought to grab a walking stick, he instead thrust his hands into his pockets and began to whistle the opening of “Der Hölle Rache”. Ash had found that when traveling in uncertain territory, no matter how out of place you might find yourself, acting as if you had every right to be there was often the best policy. Even the most disagreeable sort of people generally assumed that you would never dare behave so without good reason, and those that didn't were often loath to attack what they perceived as a madman.
Besides, the tune had been running through his head all day, and this was as good an opportunity to purge it as any. He'd seen a playbill announcing a production of Die Zauberflöte this season, and had been surprised to see it advertising the presence of a diva he'd read nothing but good notices regarding in the role of the Queen of the Night. He'd yet to hear a soprano acuto sfogato that sounded like anything other than a dying steam engine, but hope sprang eternal. It was another part of Bucharest's strange dichotomy: why would a French singer known far and wide across the continent come here? But it was also exactly the sort of thing he was learning to cease questioning. Things happened as they would; he simply had to appreciate the good along with the bad.
Speaking of which... Ash peered ahead as he crossed a cobblestone street, searching for a sign. The lamplighters had not made it this far yet—if, indeed, they attended this district at all; he was coming rapidly to the conclusion that they did not—but his sight was keen, and if he recalled the hosteler's directions correctly, then... yes, that was it. His steps sped up as he made his way down the block, his eyes fixed on the street sign bearing the name he'd sought. He couldn't be far now.
As he turned the corner, he glanced around him. These were the exact same manses he had been passing since leaving the city center, only larger, if anything; the one he stood beside, as well as the one across the road, both ran the lengths of their blocks. Yet the fence was practically on the street, with the house itself set back from it perhaps a half dozen yards; he might easily have taken them for the townhouses of wealthy families were they not so cheek by jowl. But it was definitely a singular building, and he could not fathom what other kind of structure of such obvious stature would be allowed to stand untenanted.
Perhaps the closeness was simply some Romanian peculiarity; fed up with the solitude of their wilderness estates, they desired the most gregarious congress when in the city. For it was a fine building, he realized as he made his way down the sidewalk; a master mason might have made a life's work—or his fortune, at the least—on the facade alone. Yet the building had fallen into terrible disrepair; the frieze was so caked with soot that he was unable to guess at what it might depict; broken windows gaped like blind eyes; even the sculpted iron of the fence had rotten, open patches. Which would prove to his advantage, he realized as he caught sight of the next cross street's sign, for this was the place he had been directed to find.
Despite his earlier haste, Ash paused before the building, deep in thought. He was not certain what he had expected to find—had not really allowed himself time to think of it—but this... had not been it. Nor was it particularly encouraging.
But, then, it wasn't as if there was any particular reason to lure him to a secluded place, either. He doubted such a precaution would prove necessary, should his fortunes reverse themselves.
He didn't like it. This was a dead place, without even the scuttling semblance of activity most of Bucharest was able to shroud itself in.
But, then, where better to meet a dead man?
Glancing up and down the road to make certain that he was unobserved, Ash ducked through a hole in the fence, and had a terrible moment as something long and sharp scraped along his spine. He stifled a strangled cry of fear, almost tripping as he spun around, and nearly cursed aloud when he realized he'd simply failed to get all the way beneath a jutting, broken bar. He straightened, rolling his shoulders back; the breath hissed between his clenched teeth as he forced himself to relax. He scanned the street once more, and then, under the guise of straightening his cuffs, glanced over his shoulders to see if he could spot a surreptitious watcher from the building. The windows appeared to be empty of observers... but that certainly didn't mean that they were.
Ah, well.
Dead, dry grass crackled beneath his boots as he quickly made his way across the small scrap of lawn; untended for ages, the first rains of the season had been unable to bring it back to even a vague semblance of life. The brick walkway proved even less steady footing, its stones wobbling beneath his heels; he skipped up the stairs to the relative stability of the crumbling stone porch with relief.
Now then... The massive double doors must have been an impressive sight once upon a time, but they too had fallen prey to neglect, and he frowned his displeasure as he considered them. Never mind the crude, cast-iron lockplates that fronted them; if the hinges had seized, or rotted, there would be absolutely no moving them. Not without battering them down, at any rate, and while he had quickly adapted to the life of relative leisure he'd been leading, he was not foolish enough to pretend that it was not at least partially predicated on some of his more craftsman-like skills.
Fishing a thin leather case from his waistcoat, he selected a long, thin metal probe by feel and, without bothering to look down, deftly inserted it into the keyhole; to any casual passersby, it would simple appear as if he were an honest householder fumbling with a key. He was already regretting not simply having selected a window to crawl through as the lock's mechanism failed to yield to his delicate prodding. The indifferently mended bones of his left hand began to throb in protest as he was forced to apply more pressure; a clumsy job, but the right was still nowhere near clever enough for a pick of any sort. He gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore the pain and, worse, the absurd feeling of betrayal, as he continued to work the lock; he could not repress a sigh of relief when the heavy, still mechanism finally yielded to his ministrations.
Not quite candy from a child, but... well, he'd done worse. Which is how he'd ended up in this situation in the first place. It had been a long while since Ash had felt like quite this much of a thief—weeks; perhaps even months, by now.
Pick into case, case into pocket, and he shouldered those thoughts aside much more easily than he was able to move the door. For a second he feared that, after all his work on the lock, the hinges were in fact fused; but after a moment's determined leaning, the right side of the door gave, sliding slowly along its arc.
Grit and gravel crunched beneath his boots as he slipped inside; he stepped around the door to remove himself from sight of the street, but did not hasten further inside. What little light the opened door and the windows that had shed their boards allowed through showed him that he was, indeed, standing inside of a large, abandoned building; disappointingly, it seemed to have been stripped of anything of interest. There were a few pieces of what might have been damaged furniture, or just as easily might have been heaps of rubbish; what had once been a grand receiving salon now stood empty and moldering.
Ash had been hoping for rather more of a clue as to what it was he had come here for.
The floorboards did not even creak as he slowly made his way forward; they yielded beneath his tread with an alarming sponginess. He balanced carefully on the balls of his feet, with some notion that this might save him if he put a foot down on a truly rotten section of the floor; he could all too easily imagine himself plunging through to the cellar below and shattering the rest of his bones. Hopefully his skull into the bargain; he was isolated enough here that no one would hear his screams for help.
Delightful thoughts. He shook his head to clear it of them, wiping the back of a gloved hand across his mouth as he peered ineffectually into the gloom of the massive hall; he could make out practically nothing except its size. Not that he had the slightest notion of what he might be looking for. While he was occasionally directed to make contacts, meetings were not arranged for him, so he was unsurprised to find the place unoccupied; he supposed he was meant to fetch something, but what on Earth could it be? More pressingly, how in Hell was he supposed to be able to identify it? Questions were not a tolerated part of his professional life any longer. He was going to have to figure it out. Some how.
It was a good thing he was as clever as he was.
Ash swiveled his head, gleaning as much information as he could from what little the dimness revealed. The room ran wide, rather than deep, so it was a safe assumption it ran most of the length of the building. That meant that most of the back of the building would be taken up with a kitchen, perhaps a smaller receiving room; easy enough to search. Upstairs... well, he would have to hope that the floors had held up better than they seemed to have down here, as that was likely to be a warren of rooms for living; he had not thought to note whether the roof sloped enough to permit an attic while he had stood outside. And the cellar—or cellars—he refused to let himself sigh. All would be revealed in time. He was entirely confident of that fact.
He made his way forward carefully, determined to be systematic about the situation, despite his hunch that whatever he sought would prove to be upstairs. First of all, he would require light to see by; the illumination permitted by the windows was scarcely enough as it was, and would be entirely lost to him once he proceeded deeper into the house. He knew better than to hope for anything so useful as a lantern, but there must be something—a table leg, a poker he could wrap in rags, something that would permit him to continue his explorations in relative ease, if not safety.
But his initial searches yielded little, besides confirmation that the heaps he had spotted were in fact refuse. He was not quite desperate enough to go rummaging through them yet, but was beginning to despair of being able to avoid the prospect. Yet neither could he convince himself to abandon his quest and go forward. The prospect of creeping around in the dark did not distress him unduly, but the prospect of what he might find there, given the circumstances under which he had been directed to this place...
Ash turned his head once more, examining the debris along the walls beneath the windows by the scant light they admitted, hoping against hope that his eye would fall upon some useful item he had thus far failed to notice... but his attention was not so focused that he missed the faint dimming of the room's perimeter as one precious slice of illumination was lost to shadow.
“I do beg your pardon,” he breathed.
Thinking about the situation during the day was a simple matter, which he always sought to remind himself of at times like these. He had discovered a wealthy patron to whom he was able to make himself useful in a seemingly endless variety of ways, and reached out to form a mutually beneficial relationship. Put that way, it sounded completely respectable; almost prosaic.
Being alone in the dark with it—him—could prove to be quite a different matter.
Yet when he turned to face his companion, Ash's features were schooled into a smoothly pleasant expression, despite the sweat that suddenly beaded his brow, and his richly unctuous voice gave no hint as to his inner turmoil. “I trust my... inelegant entrance has not interfered with your plans.”
The tall, lean figure stood motionless, watching him from beside the now-shut door. Ash could make out little of his form in the darkness, save for the unearthly pallor of his face and hands; but his appearance, ghastly as it was, had never truly alarmed Ash. It was the unspoken truth of what he was—the enormous strength it must have taken to heave that great slab of wood closed without so much as a creak; the calm, effortless silence with which he moved—that never failed to make him rethink their arrangements.
But Ash was pleased to note that he had deigned to put on the greatcoat he had acquired for him before taking to the streets, adding a little normalcy to his gaunt, twisted silhouette. A facile remark rose to his lips, but he swallowed it. Though he was trying very hard to get his charge adapted to a more pedestrian lifestyle—and though he seemed somewhat amenable to it—even after weeks spent in his presence, Ash still had little idea of what might provoke his savage temper, and could not, in these already tenuous circumstances, justify the risk.
Ash paused, waiting for a response, but it—he, damn it—turned away from him, and slowly began to make his way deeper into the building. Ash followed at a discreet distance. His stony silences had petrified Ash at first, leaving him utterly unable to guess what sorts of unfortunate conclusions he might be coming to; but as they had grown more familiar, Ash had come to truly believe that sometimes, he simply forgot to speak, lost in his own alien thoughts.
“I am of a mind to heed your advice.”
The sound of his voice was like great, rough-edged slabs of marble grinding against one another, the silence ending so abruptly it took Ash a heartbeat to make sense of what he'd heard. “I am always pleased to be of service,” he said, without the slightest idea of what was being referred to.
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coat, craning his head to look upward; a stray beam of moonlight picked out the long strands of fox-red hair that slid over his collar; he'd combed it, finally. “I've dined here,” he rumbled contemplatively.
Whatever light rejoinder Ash might have made died in his throat as the peculiarities of that statement sank in; there were two ways in which it might be taken. The more pleasant alternative was still unnerving to contemplate, but not outside the realm of possibility: he truly was old enough to remember when this house had still welcomed guests. The other was, well... “Where are we?” he asked, as gently as he could.
“It was raised by the Szagzres. I am given to understand that they are now extinct.” He raked the empty hall with his gaze, as if he expected one of them to emerge to challenge his claim—a thought Ash did his best to quash immediately. “I am sure you will have little difficulty in establishing its provenance.”
“Its—” Ash's brows rose. “Provenance. Oh, indeed. I assume you have no objection to a solicitor's aid.”
He gave no indication that he had heard.
Ash thought quickly, trying to revise his opinion of the situation in light of this new realization; he had never for a moment assumed that his employer would consider house-hunting in town. “I apologize for my lack of forethought; I had simply believed that you would be more interested in something, ah, rural.” And what could he want with such a bloody great wreck as this? Their current arrangements were less than ideal, it was true, but this was a bit too far in the opposite direction.
“The cellars run deep,” he said. “The rest...” His eyes swept the room. “I leave to you to determine, beyond what little I will require.”
“My lord, I...” Ash surveyed the ruin before him once more, scarcely able to fathom what sort of effort would be required to restore it to a decent state. “Our artisans may no longer meet your standards. It would take years to render this place liveable once more.”
“Yes.” He turned to regard Ash over his shoulder. The one eye was barely visible, lost in its deep, skeletal hollow; one corner of his hectic, red mouth was lifted in a mocking smile. It was all Ash could do not to flinch as he turned and began to approach; he squeezed his eyes shut as a thin arm settled heavily across his shoulders. “It need not be liveable.” The gravelly voice resonated in his ear, the mouth it issued from close enough to kiss. “Only serviceable.”
“I—” Ash struggled for coherence, for the quick wit that had won him free of so many unfortunate situations, but the cold, still presence robbed him of his loquacity. If only it wouldn't touch him— “I'm not certain that I, ah...” But wait: what had it said? His advice; and here they stood, in a monstrous old hulk— “...could assemble the necessary, ah, talent, in a short period of time,” he prevaricated. He opened his eyes, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the floor as he tried to keep from stammering. “Some improvements will need to be made before that time, of course; there are certain standards that it will prove easier to uphold.” He swallowed thickly, realizing that attempting to conceal his fright was useless. “I regret that I do not have a more thorough proposition to offer you, my lord. I had not thought you considered my notion worth merit.” Despite his terror, a whole realm of possibility was opening in his mind. He truly hadn't thought—but with that kind of capital, and this sort of premises—he'd been thinking of a tavern, a salon, at the most, but this—
He laughed softly, cutting through Ash's spinning thoughts like a jagged blade. “Your scheming may yet do you credit. Please me in this, and you shall have time to see it bear fruit.” Long, bony fingers slipped beneath Ash's curls, icy on the back of his neck. “I am more patient than you have cause to know.” His voice lowered to a near whisper. “But that has never extended to cupidity.” Long, pointed nails slipped beneath his starched collar to trail over the half-healed wounds in his throat, tugging lightly at the scabs; Ash found himself trembling uncontrollably. “I require your utmost fealty, in this and all things.”
Ash closed his eyes once more, fighting the urge to collapse against him. “It is a privilege to serve you, Lord Vladislas,” he gasped.
“May you hold that always in the forefront of your thoughts.” Just that quickly, it was as if it had never happened: the voice spoke from a few feet away; no chill weight bore down on him. Ash sighed, one great, heaving exhale, pulling himself back together by sheer force of will. “I shall leave letters. There is an arbitrageur you must call upon.”
“Of course. All shall be arranged in accordance with your wishes.” His voice was almost even. Ash turned to watch as he made his way back to the door. “Is there anything I may assist you with tonight?” He licked his lips, his mouth dry with tension. “Will you require... company?”
He waved dismissively, never breaking his stride. Ash's stomach turned at what he was too slow to glance away from: one moment, he was there; the next, something else was; then Ash was alone, as if he always had been.
He inhaled shakily, raising a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, gritting his teeth against the nausea of reaction. His hands ached miserably; he hadn't realized he'd been holding them clenched into fists. He tried to breath deeply, attempting to force himself into calmness despite the shivers that threatened to overtake him once more.
There were many, many better ways to earn a living. He'd even tried some of them.
But never would he find another that offered him the chance to make one. Not like this.
Not forever.
And there were so many worse alternatives.