"Welcome, milord!"

  The woman watching the bordello's door that night was in high spirits, her cheeks smeared with rouge and her eyelids speckled with golden dust, her lips painted so thoroughly red that streaks of it ended up on her teeth when she grinned at him For once, all the finery of Fatima's ladies was an afterthought, there to keep up pretenses for the casual observer out on the street. Their real concern was their arsenal. Including the crossbow the woman barring his way had in hand, along with the rapier dangling from the silk sash around her waist.

  "Bonsoir," Mirk said, returning her smile, able to feel her eagerness pressing against his shields but unable to match it. As was so often the case before balls and meetings, Mirk felt like he was going to hack up his last meal onto the bordello's front steps. "Is...euh, everything well?"

  "’Course it is!" the woman replied with a firm nod. "Sent the girls who aren't keen on getting in a dust up out to the bars to keep the menfolk distracted, and the rest of us are here waiting to show anyone who comes looking what for."

  She paused, looking Mirk over and propping her crossbow up on her shoulder. "Thought you were going to be getting all fancy, milord. Thought that was the whole point."

  "That's why I've come here, mademoiselle. Euh...I'm not very good yet at putting on my own things, I'm afraid. Methinks it might be better to go to people who are very good at it if I want to make the best impression."

  The woman cackled. "Mademoiselle! Oh, you're always great fun to have around, milord. Sure, come on in. Someone in the back will get you all shined up. Think Fatima's still here, even, though she's rubbish at painting faces."

  That bit of news startled Mirk. Fatima had gone along with the five ladies Mirk had delivered to Madame Beaumont's in the dead of night yesterday, though she hadn't bothered putting on servants' clothes like the others. And had been quick to inform his godmother that she was no one's servant, that she was only there to survey the townhouse's back hallways and kitchens and storerooms for clever places to cram extra weapons.

  His godmother had been very disapproving of all of it. But she also hadn't stopped anyone. Instead, she’d sat in her front parlor with the curtains drawn, watching all the odd goings-on out in her foyer with a certain sharpness in her eyes that was at odds with the effects the poppy tea she continually sipped should have had on her. The tumors riddling her body must have been horribly painful for the poppy not to have put her to sleep or made her dizzy. That or she'd been drinking it longer than Am-Hazek thought she had.

  "I thought Comrade Fatima would be at the townhouse," Mirk said, shifting the laundry bag he'd done his best to fold his suit for that night up into without getting it horribly wrinkled. He hadn't bothered bringing any of his other things, the temperamental curlers or the powder and rouge Yule had loaned him months ago. Though he had brought the wefts of hair. He’d bought them on a whim and hadn't yet settled on whether or not he'd put them in.

  "Alice came back to nurse Ella one last time before the party," the woman said, directing him off down the hall that led to the back room. There was no one around to take her place at the door. And there was no abandoning her post that night, not even for a second, and not even for a lord. "They'll be in the back with the girls staying to watch those angels."

  After thanking the woman for her help, Mirk made his way to the back room. The atmosphere in the bordello that night was unnerving in its stillness. Usually it was full of laughter and shouting from the common rooms, pervaded with the smell of gin and ale and lusty, eager emotions Mirk was willing to sacrifice a large chunk of his potential to shield out, at least until he got to the safety of the back room.

  That night, there was nothing but murmurs and whispers. All of the doors to the private rooms, where the bordello's main business went on, were standing open. Beds made, magelights off, shields unengaged. Save for the one that Samael and Sharael had to be hiding in. That one had a woman and a man standing guard on either side of it, the man an Easterner Mirk couldn't recall the name of and the woman dressed plainly in the sort of working clothes Kali favored, large pantaloons and a plain leather vest over an equally plain tunic. She had a sword strapped across her chest.

  Mirk hesitated, wondering if it'd be right for him to check in on the children. He'd put them through a lot of trouble lately. And he hadn't done much to assure their protection, like he'd promised he would. Genesis was sure that Imanael would appear in a bolt of light from Heaven at any moment, a whole flight of Thrones behind him, to reclaim the children for himself. Considering the bindings on Genesis’s arms, Mirk couldn't fault him for his caution.

  But he knew angels better than the commander. As people rather than as looming nightmares who never came to him aside from out of a desire to cause him pain. The Empire was never in a rush. That was their greatest strength, his father had always said, the one thing that kept the number of full-blooded angels from dwindling too low. Angels lived for millennia. If one chose to rebel against the Emperor, once the immediate threat was contained, the angels were happy to wait for their enemies to simply die rather than actively pursuing them. Time was on their side. In a way that it wasn't for most other peoples scattered across the realms, with a few notable exceptions. Like the djinn.

  The threat to Samael and Sharael that night, Mirk knew in his gut, wouldn't be coming from Heaven. It would be coming from inside the City of Glass. But he'd done all he could to guard against that and dwelling on it wouldn't do him any good. He had a party to host. Mirk continued on past the young angels' room with a smile and a dip of his head to the guards, through the curtain and into the back room.

  A half dozen women laden with weapons were gathered around the back table, plus Fatima and Alice at its head. Beside Alice, the older woman who often minded baby Ella for her was getting an earful. As Ella nursed, Alice rattled off her concerns to her, jumping from topic to topic as she tried to think up every last thing that could go wrong.

  "She doesn't like those old Scots songs of yours, Peggy. Too rough for her sweet little ears. Pick something nice and soft. She likes hymns, doesn't matter where from. Just nice and soft and low. Always goes right to sleep whenever I take her into a church to sit," Alice said, stroking her daughter's hair as she talked away. It'd grown back in, as dark as it had been when she'd been a newborn infant. Perhaps even darker.

  "She goes right to sleep anyway, but I'll mind you," the old woman said, shooting Mirk a sideways look as he waffled about near the table, not knowing where to begin or which of the ladies to bother with his needs. It seemed wrong to ask one of them to serve him, though he saw them help each other all the time.

  "Nob's come, Fatima," the old woman said, since neither Fatima nor Alice turned to look at him when Mirk dared to clear his throat. Fatima was hunched over a ledger, checking and double checking some sort of schedule or roster written by hand in her cramped, tiny script.

  Fatima drew in a sharp breath, her eyes narrowing as she looked up at Mirk. "What are you doing here? The party starts in two hours. Get to the house."

  "I need to get dressed first, Comrade Fatima," Mirk said, lifting his sack as proof of his intentions. "I'd do it at madame's townhouse, but methinks all your ladies there must be busy by now." That aside, it wasn't as if the women left at his godmother's were trained servants; they were only dressed like them. They knew how to apply rouge and do hair just as well as the weapon-laden ladies at the back table.

  "Well, get on with it," Fatima said, waving a dismissive hand as she went back to work. "Don't have all night."

  No one needed to help him with his suit, Mirk supposed. It was cut close, but wasn't so tight that it was hard to get over his shoulders without someone to help. He went to the end of the long counter lined with mirrors and drew out the pieces of the suit, laying them down along the edge of the counter after first checking for errant spots of kohl and rouge.

  That suit was a true extravagance, but Mirk knew it was imperative that he make the right impression at his own ball. Genesis's comment about the nobles choosing and donning their three piece suits and gowns like how a fighter piled on armor had been weighing heavily on his mind ever since the wedding. If there was any truth in the commander's words, then he needed the best armor money could buy that night, when so much was at stake.

  The suit was white. Partially. Not a common color among either the French or English nobles for the fabric of the suit itself, though a white shirt and falls of lace were a given. Mirk had elected to reverse the traditional pattern. The shirt he already had on underneath his robes was black, and so was the lace cravat that he plucked from the sack. As was the silk lining of the justacorps. An odd request that the Nasiri brothers had scrambled to accommodate with just two weeks' notice, though Mirk had paid them well for it.

  The outside of the justacorps wasn't pure white, though the breeches that went with it were. He'd need to be aware of everything he leaned against and every step he took to make sure they didn't get dirty. Embroidered all across the justacorps was an intricate floral design, curling green stems and oval leaves, the stems dotted with sapphire flowers. At their centers were clusters of tiny crystal beads that matched the crystal buttons he favored.

  The flowers were mirrored in the silk of the waistcoat, which Mirk was planning to leave the justacorps open over for once. It was the closest color the Nasiris could find to that of his mother's favorite gown. And the silver stitching on it was the same as the pattern that'd been on that dress. Mirk couldn't have forgotten the pattern if he'd tried. He'd sketched a repeat of it at the bottom of the letter he'd sent to Paris with his other specifications.

  None of it followed the traditional language of colors that the English followed, everything matching up with the wearer's element and guild ranking. Nor did it follow the French language, the one that shifted with the seasons and took the colors that were in fashion among the mortals at the Sun King's court and elevated them to new heights. But all of it meant something to Mirk. White for his father and sister, blue for his mother. The flowers for himself, green and sprawling. And the black to show what he intended to make of himself — a dedicated K'maneda, despite his unwillingness to wield a sword.

  Mirk stripped off his cloak and his gray-green robe that was worn out at the hems and the elbows, half from being dragged through muck at the infirmary and half from all of Genesis's scrubbing. He could feel some of the women at the table watching him dress, but Mirk didn't mind their curiosity brushing against his mental shielding. They were experts in bodies as much as he was, albeit in a different fashion. There was nothing there for them to see that they hadn't already seen hundreds of times before. That and he'd come prepared, wearing his good braies and his new black shirt underneath his robes.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  As always, the Nasiris didn't disappoint. The suit was tailored perfectly, the justacorps drawn in at the waist and snug on the shoulders, but not so tight that it'd constrain his movements. All the rest of the parts were the same. And true to Genesis's observation, Mirk did feel less nervous as soon as he had it on. Armored. Presentable.

  Aside from his windblown hair and his splotchy complexion. Mirk sighed as he peered into one of the many small mirrors arrayed along the counter. He didn't look as sallow and wan as he had that winter, his cheeks filled out and rosy once more now that it was spring, but there were still bags under his eyes. He hadn't had a decent night's sleep since the night after the wedding, when he'd passed out for a solid twelve hours from exhaustion and too much drink. Mirk scanned the counter for the necessary materials. Fatima's ladies used the same kind of powder and rouge that Yule did. It'd be better if the older healer didn't know that.

  His hair was as flat as he remembered. Mirk took hold of the fistful of wefts on the counter — more or less the same color as his hair, a bit brighter, but not so much that it'd be hard to blend — and turned to look back toward the table. Alice was already getting to her feet, the bodice of the servants' uniform she was wearing laced back up. Though Ella was still in the makeshift sling wrapped around her, pressed tight against her chest.

  Mirk raised his hands in protest, catching sight of Fatima glaring at him from her place at the head of the table. "Methinks you must have better things to do, Miss Al—"

  "Aw, stop it," she said, shooing him toward one of the chairs that was only half pushed in against the counter. "I'm the best at hair, and you all know it," she added over her shoulder to Fatima. "Besides, nothing's happening till he's at the house anyway. Might as well keep my hands busy instead of just sitting around."

  Reluctantly, Mirk sat down in the chair. After rummaging around underneath the counter for a minute, Alice came up with a sheet, shaking it out to make sure there weren't any wayward bits of rouge or kohl still clinging to it. "Fanciest thing I've ever seen," Alice said with a laugh, running a finger over the embroidery around the lapel of his justacorps before draping the sheet over him. "Must've cost all your golds and silvers."

  Mirk nodded agreeably, unwilling to divulge just how little of a dent the suit made in the family ledgers. Though he did turn for a moment to look back at Fatima while Alice sorted through the wefts, comparing them to the selection of clips and pins jammed into a bin among the ladies' other supplies. "The ghosts at the London house didn't say anything when I came in again. Methinks either Lord Kinross didn't notice or he's decided not to mention it to the ghosts."

  "My gold's on the second," Fatima said, without looking up. "He's coming, right?"

  "Yes, he should be."

  "Watch him," Fatima cautioned, making a mark in her book, her frown deepening. "If he doesn't bring his djinn, we'll know for sure. Unlike the rest of them, he doesn't need one to fight."

  Mirk sighed, sinking down into his thoughts as Alice set in on his hair. She had a soft touch, sectioned and combed it without yanking on any tangles. "Got good hair for this," she commented idly. "Not too smooth, not too rough. Magic on the clips should stick for days."

  "So I've heard," Mirk said with a quiet laugh, remembering Genesis's words, the touch of his cold, delicate fingers as he stroked his hair with that peculiar deliberateness of his. Though Mirk was tempted to sink down into the memory, retreating from the weight of where both he and Alice were headed that night, he fought against it. Instead, he did his best to strike up a cheerful conversation. "How is Ella doing? Methinks she's much bigger than the last time I saw her..."

  It was the right topic to pick. Alice was happy to ramble on about her daughter without pause as she did his hair, recounting all the tiny things that a mother noticed but that the rest of the world was blind to — the way Ella smiled, the songs she cooed along to, how she perked up and grabbed at her fork whenever Alice ate fish. Because her own father had been a fisherman down near the mouth of the Thames, Alice explained. Some things carried through the blood more strongly than others. She hoped that Ella's magic would be the same as her grandfather’s rather than her own, if her daughter ever showed any potential.

  Mirk had never once heard Alice mention the child's father, not in all the months he'd known her. And he knew better than to ask, though he did wonder. If he'd been in the same position, he likely wouldn't have breathed a word about the child's origin either.

  Then again, he nearly had been.

  "You want a wave in it?" Alice asked him, jerking Mirk out of his thoughts. She really was skilled. If he'd needed to clip in the extensions himself, he'd have been at the counter for hours. "Don't think they'll take a full curl like those wigs all you foreign nobs like so much. Not without more magic than I've got."

  Mirk nodded. "Just so that they match the rest," he said. The wefts were a few inches longer than his natural hair, meant to add a certain dramatic volume and flair that his own wasn't suited to. Too thin, like his father's and his sister's.

  "Easy peasy," Alice said, fetching the ladies' set of magicked clay curlers from the end of the counter. "We can do your face up while they set."

  "Methinks I'm all right at the rest, Miss Al—"

  She cuffed Mirk in the shoulder as she returned with the wooden box of curlers. Runes were scratched into its side, to hold potential that could be run through the curlers to heat them. "I've seen your work. You don't have a steady hand. Can't have you looking bad in front of the other nobs."

  Mirk sighed, relenting. "You're already doing so much tonight. It...methinks you deserve more time to rest, Miss Alice."

  She shrugged, activating the runes on the box, wrapping her arms around Ella as she rocked back on her heels and studied him. The infant clutched at her mother's chest, and a smile came onto Alice's face. "I don't like just standing around. And that's what they've got me doing over at the big house. Just watching and waiting for the nobs to call for more drinks. Besides. It's not like I don't owe you any."

  "That's not the same," Mirk said, quietly.

  "If you feel so bad, get that fancy surgeon lass of yours to teach you to how to keep steady. Never seen hands like that. Could make a fortune crafting and painting faces, but I suppose being a healer for the nobs pays better," Alice said, plucking a heated curler out of the box by its ends with equally deft fingers, managing not to come even close to touching the hot part of it as she wound up a strand of Mirk's hair.

  Mirk laughed, both at the thought of Eva hunched over one of Fatima's ladies with a bit of kohl in hand and the way both Alice and her child giggled along with him. It was comforting being around Fatima's ladies in a way Mirk hadn't expected.

  It reminded him a little of the luncheons he sat through with his mother and her closest friends, how they spoke to one another without talking, even though none of them had the empathic gift. They always knew when to press, when someone wanted to divulge a secret but needed urging. And when to draw back, to change the topic to avoid something better left alone. The only other place he'd been in where he’d been drawn into that dance was with the healers. It always made him feel relieved.

  That relief was shattered by the bang of a teleportation spell from out in the hall. Mirk heard all the ladies at the table behind him jump into ready positions with the clatter of knives and crossbows. By the time Mirk had turned to look, the new arrivals were already pushing their way through the curtain and into the back room. A woman wearing a fighter's uniform, clutching her stomach to keep her innards from falling out on her feet.

  One of the Easterners was half-carrying her on one side and Danu was on the other, making use of her Deathly magic to give her the strength to keep the woman upright. As a group they hobbled over to the table, which the other ladies cleared off the far end of so that it could serve as a makeshift operating table. A moment later there was a second bang and Yule rushed in, dragged along by Mordecai.

  "Danny can't do one this soon!" Mordecai was yelling at Yule, who was only making a token attempt at wresting his arm from Mordecai's grasp. "You have more healing potential, see what you can do." With that order, the teleporting mage vanished again, leaving Yule cursing under his breath and rubbing his arm.

  Fatima was already up and out of her seat, stalking to the end of the table, completely ignoring the woman's agony as she patted her on the cheek, sharply, to get her attention. "Did you get it?"

  The woman only groaned in response, her eyes rolling back in her head. Something fell out of the pouch buckled around her waist. An empty bottle.

  "Guess so," Fatima grumbled, backing away just far enough from the table for Danu and Yule to step up and examine the wound across her stomach. Waving away Alice's protests, Mirk got up from his chair and approached the table. With a start, he recognized the woman's slack face. She was the same one he'd been first called to the bordello to tend to, who'd had a curse carved into her chest.

  "She gave the djinn to Lina," the Easterner said, struggling to find the right words as he stared down at the injured woman. His fear was a hot, urgent thing against Mirk's mind, nearly as strong as the woman's pain. "Went to check like told. No Lina. No white rock. Just her and bottle."

  Mirk glanced down at the bottle. It was dusty, like it'd been locked away in some cellar. The label on it was written by hand, in French. Cabernet Sauvignon. Like the kind Seigneur d'Aumont's less prosperous cousins made, a must-have at any ball or dinner party.

  "What's going on?" Mirk asked as he tried to push himself into his usual place, beside Yule.

  Fatima cut him off, throwing up her cane to block his way as she braced herself against the table. "Not your problem. Your job's getting Alice her shot. Don't get distracted."

  "But she's—"

  "She'll probably make it," Danu said, her voice as distant as her eyes, which were filmed over black with her Deathly magic. "It'd be better if we could take her to the infirmary..."

  Fatima shook her head, keeping her cane raised, lest Mirk try to slip over to Yule's side. "You two dragging a half-dead girl into the infirmary at this time of night? Cyrus will be on it in a second. Can't risk word getting out."

  "I'll be burning a quarter of my potential keeping her with us if we stay here," Danu said.

  "More than that, maybe," Yule said as he examined the woman's wound, blood already seeping into the sleeves of his robes. He'd forgotten to pull them up in his haste. "It's bad. I need potions. Tools."

  Fatima turned to the Easterner, scowling. "Run your ass back to the infirmary and get it. It's on you if she doesn't make it."

  Without any further prompting, the Easterner bolted for the front of the bordello. With a warning glare at Mirk, Fatima finally lowered her cane, only to use it to hook a bag out from under the table. She dropped it on the table beside the dying woman. "These are all we managed to steal. Work fast. Neither of you burns more than a quarter of your potential. She might be the first, but she's not going to be the last."

  "Comrade," Mirk begged, trying one last time to get to the table, already reaching in his justacorps pocket for his grandfather's staff. "Fatima, please."

  "You're the one who wanted a party. And the one who decided to wear white. Your job is to make sure Alice gets her shot. After it's done, you can heal as much as you want."

  Fatima turned back to the woman on the table, looking down into her face. Mirk couldn't feel a thing from Fatima. But the hard look on her face, her furrowed brow and the way she passed a hand over the woman's eyes to fully close them, said enough for Mirk to understand. "This had better not all be for nothing," Fatima muttered, as she limped back to her seat at the head of the table.

  "She's right," Yule said, sparing only a second to glance up at Mirk. "Do your part. Let us do ours. It'll work out. As long as that idiot doesn't get lost on his way to the infirmary."

  Aghast, Mirk could do nothing but stare down into the woman's pale face pressed between Danu's hands, at her blue lips, stewing in her pain without trying to strengthen his mental shielding against it.

  Joan. Her name was Joan.

  "Come on, love," Alice said, taking him by the shoulders and guiding him back toward the chair. Ella was still sleeping soundly against her chest, oblivious to the pain filling the back room. "Let's get you finished. Then we can all head over to the big house together."

  Mirk let himself be guided along, let Alice finish putting the curlers in his hair and start in on his powder and rouge. But the easy, peaceful feeling that'd settled over him earlier had vanished.

  All he could do now was pray that he knew what he was doing. And that their plan would work, that none of the sacrifices that were being made on the table behind him would be in vain.