Back to Alterstar, where Jet de Melzaio is demonstrating thick-headedness, a sad lack of common sense and a real knack for getting into trouble! I love that crazy city, especially when the characters populating it develop alarming lives of their own. Between the last bit posted and now, I found the story’s title and wrote four new sections, but three of them are of dubious relevancy…so only this one is here. For now.
In direct defiance of his father’s orders, Jet stormed to his rooms and called Dar Tower. Or tried to. There were only two numbers listed in the directory: the general line and Lord Visterra’s direct line, which Jet did not have either the authorization or the inclination to use. He spent half an hour hunting in vain for any other numbers, then gave up and went to change out of his damp and by now very smelly clothes.
Bath, breakfast and a handful of painkillers later, Jet felt considerably more clear-headed. Someone had left a stack of files in his study, probably his father’s secretary hinting that he ought to read up on the laws of the noble houses. Jet poked around in them for a while. Then, rubbing the bruise growing on his jaw, he slipped out the back gate and went to call on Dar Tower in person.
Dar Tower stood at the southernmost point of the inner city, looming over the bridge it guarded with as little personality as the blank-faced guards who marched up and down before its gates. The gates were very heavily barred, Jet noticed, and the walls were very high. Needle-like spikes bristled from the top of walls and gate alike. There were no windows anywhere in sight—not in the walls, and not in the bluish-gray façade of the tower itself.
Telling himself there was nothing intimidating about the place, Jet marched up to the tower gates and looked in vain for the guard captain. There seemed to be no officer in charge here—just six guardsmen with no rank insignia whatsoever.
“You over there!” he snapped at the nearest one. “Where’s your commanding officer?”
Six blank expressions turned towards him, and turned away again. The way they all reacted in unison was sufficiently unnerving that Jet took a few steps back before collecting himself. “I asked you where your commanding officer was!” he repeated, his voice rising.
Six blank expressions looked at him again and looked away again. He might have been talking to a collection of clockwork dummies.
Jet’s temper started to rise again. He stamped forward and demanded right into the first guard’s face, “Do you know who I am, you bloody idiot?”
“What he knows is not important,” a voice said lazily behind him, and Jet leapt right off the ground. “Turn around when I speak to you, boy.”
Jet was already turning, grabbing automatically for the enamelled pistol at his belt. His fingers closed around it just as he saw the tip of a stun rod right in his face. His eyes crossed.
Behind the stun rod, a pair of thin lips curved into a smile. “Are you trying to draw that gun on me, boy?”
With an effort, Jet let go of the pistol, stepped away from the stun rod and made a jerky bow. “Good morning, Lord Visterra,” he said, trying so hard to keep his reaction under control that his voice came out in a barely recognizable squeak.
Lord Helios Visterra did not acknowledge the greeting or lower the stun rod. Behind him, another squad of six guards had emerged from the guardhouse and spread out into a line covering the gates. It was a formation that Jet had seen in bar fights, just before a large group beat the crap out of a smaller one. In fact, he had seen it just last night, when the priests of Damni-Dar tried to corner him and Mirror in the Purple Rain café.
That thought got him back into focus. Forcing his voice back to a normal pitch, he said, “I apologize if I have interrupted anything.” Over the shoulders of the guards, he could see an official car drawn up at the curb, the Dar Tower insignia swirled across its half-open door in twisting gold and gray. In his annoyance with the guards, he hadn’t even heard it arrive.
“Jet de Melzaio of House Infernarr,” Lord Helios said thoughtfully. “What are you doing here, then?”
The stun rod was still pointed right at Jet’s face, and he couldn’t move to either side without bumping into the gate guards. “I—was looking for Mirror,” he said, and then, rather stupidly, “I owe him a drink.”
Lord Helios’s expression changed so swiftly and suddenly that Jet’s eyes, still fixed on the glowing tip of the stun rod, crossed again. Then it was back to normal, and in the same lazy voice, the Lord of Dar Tower said, “Keep your hands off my property, boy. And that includes my guards.”
“Your property!” Jet burst out, all his anger coming back.
The stun rod moved forward like a striking snake. Jet recoiled, and the guards flanking him seized his arms. There was a moment of frantic scuffling on his part—the guards barely moved—then it ended with the tip of the stun rod so close to his face that he could feel his nose going numb.
Lord Helios was smiling now. “Your father excels at shouting and throwing things,” he said. “I don’t doubt you do too. But shouting at me is not a good idea, boy. Or are you too dense to have realized that yet?”
With a tremendous effort, his eyes now watering from the stun rod’s field, Jet made himself say, “I apologize, Lord Visterra,” and clamped his mouth shut before anything else—like censorable language—came out.
“You seem very reluctant to do so,” Lord Helios said. He extended one long finger, as slim and delicate as a woman’s, and touched the bruise on Jet’s jaw—not gently, but prodding hard. “One of my sons used to be very much like you. Stubborn, defiant, given to physical action.”
Jet was fighting an urge to cringe away by now, and not just because the prodding hurt. There was something indefinably nasty about the way Lord Helios was leaning over him, not only leaning but looking very closely at his expression.
“Very much like you,” Lord Helios repeated. “Breaking him was…very enjoyable.”
He stared into Jet’s eyes for a moment longer, then stepped back and nodded to the guards. With a powerful heave, they shoved Jet forward and released his arms. Jet staggered several steps forward, fell off the edge of the curb and landed on his face in the road. As he pushed himself back up, spitting out dust, he heard the car door close and Lord Helios’s voice say through the open window, “Run home to your father, boy, and enjoy the freedom he gives you…while it lasts.”
The car started. The gates of Dar Tower opened to admit it, then slammed shut. Jet stood in the middle of the road and stared at the barred gates, and wondered if, in the heat of the moment, he had only imagined the sudden hate and fear that passed across Lord Helios Visterra’s face at the mention of Mirror’s name.
Writing this section was delicious. I’d never met Helios Visterra before it. Creepy bastard! If he faces off with Casten de Melzaio, my money’s all on Lord Casten being the one to land in the ornamental pond. Although I’ll cheer for House Infernarr, because now that I think about it, the personal habits of the not-so-good Lord Helios are not the sort I want to support.
One has to wonder just what happened to Mirror’s mother…
Some years on from the time of this story, Mirror is going to develop tendencies very similar to his father’s. Talent runs true in the noble houses of Alterstar, but so do the less desirable personality traits. Fortunately – and almost miraculously considering his upbringing – Mirror isn’t as psychotic as his father. But certain people will regret crossing him. Very, very much.
Along with inherited personality traits, it is also a cliche that the ruling families of the Four Towers end up walking the paths of the gods their respective families were founded (by?) (to appease?) (to serve?) (in honour of?) Thus Dar Tower is often involved in bloody scandals; Ka Tower suffers familial tragedies every generation; there is constant infighting in Kerrind Tower; and Tenn Tower produces more mad scientists and demented artists than all the other noble families put together. Why? No one knows. They’ve always been like that.
