Chapter One: Dark Presence

Reuben kept his eyes closed as his fingers danced across the strings of his mother’s old violin, trying to appear lost in the music.

In truth, he had never managed such a feat before. Even as his body swayed and the song flowed through and out of him with every kiss of his bow against the strings, Reuben was aware of the crowd watching. More than that, with the assistance of his crowdcraft, he could feel them.

The elvish woman near the front of the stage watched with admiration—but also a sprinkling of envy as Reuben’s performing partner, Isolde, dipped backward and sang out a long, soulful note. Missing her own youth, the music whispered to him.

Further back in the crowd, disgruntlement emanated from a few customers of dwarvish descent. Upset at their obstructed view as Reuben and Isolde did a bit of synchronized footwork, he knew without even looking.

And then there was the infernal-blooded man exuding impatience on the sidelines—waiting for the next stellas to perform, Reuben’s crowdcraft discerned for him.

It was overwhelming, tapping in to so many emotions and intentions over the course of a half-hour. But still well-worth the discomfort. With enough focus and his violin as a conduit, Reuben’s crowdcraft could sift through the masses until he spied out those who watched his movements with particular interest—and lust.

Which would make his next job easy. By the time they played their last number, Reuben always knew which customers would welcome his attention, as sure as their apparel would soon tell him how much cantergold that attention might be worth.

No, Reuben never escaped his surroundings when he made music. Sometimes he became much, much too aware.

Tonight, one entity stood out of place, distracting him. His music echoed back an unusual, powerful presence in the crowd, focused solely on him—not admiring or lusting, though not carrying the rarer reactions of scorn or judgment either. 

Instead, the sheer intensity of it felt malicious . . . and familiar, somehow.

And yet, to Reuben’s growing unease, he could not spot its source with his own two eyes during any part of their act. Not even at its end, when he could scrutinize the sea of faces better whilst channeling the final riff of his violin into a small demonstration of crowdcraft, a sparkling burst of illusory petals falling over them in time with the applause.

Only his years of practice in this particular craft of magic kept him from doubting whether he’d imagined it entirely. So as Isolde collected their tip bowl from downstage, Reuben took the chance to scan the cheering masses more blatantly, searching for the dark presence in their midst. Watching Reuben fiercely in return.

His search proved useless. Isolde walked in front of Reuben’s view as she waved one last time and hurried off the stage, breaking his focus before he could make any conclusions. And Reuben knew he should follow.

Still, he paused just in front of the curtains, his gaze lingering over the crowd right up until his friend pulled at the chiffon of his loose, slitted sleeve, raising a brow at him.

Reuben gave one last glance over the still-applauding audience—justifying it with a flirtatious wave and wink—before giving up on the search and ducking through.

“I wish you would sing and I accompany,” Isolde groused the moment the curtain closed, muting the crowd. “My voice already needs a rest, and the night’s just started.”

Reuben swallowed down the remnants of his unease and let out a perfectly soft, light-hearted laugh. “Oh, I think our clientele would have my head if they never got to hear their Songbird again,” he said while they walked the short distance to the backstage green room. Adding, as he placed the violin back in its case, “Although your lute doesn’t require much upkeep—I’m about to run out of rosin yet again.”

Isolde sat down in front of the mirror vanity, eyes narrowed at his bow through the reflection. “Hm. I’d wager the fraying hair on that is to blame.”

Reuben hid the admittedly old horse-tail bow behind his back and gave her a look of scandal. “I think that’s the first time anyone has dared to insult my hair,” he scoffed, nodding down at his actual red-gold locks, still perfectly waved and swept over one shoulder.

“Good thing I’m here to keep you humble, then,” she smirked, though didn’t let the matter drop yet: “Surely it doesn’t cost much to rehair a bow?”

Reuben shrugged, watching as she dumped the bowl and began splitting their earnings in half. Talk of personal expenses was one of his least favorite subjects, right next to hobbies and health and the future and—well, anything personal, really.

Luckily, just then two of their fellow stellas—the young dwarvish twins Bittie and Gringoll—burst through the door.

“Late as always,” Reuben commented while the two hurried past them in their usual bright, coordinated outfits, Bittie still tying up her dark hair and Gringoll tucking his heel into a shoe.

“Can never tell when you’re finally done soaking up the applause,” Gringoll shot back, a playful smirk on his stubbled face.

“Wait, Bittie, don’t forget—!” Isolde warned, just in time for the dwarvish girl to rush back and take the now-empty bowl from her, blowing Isolde a quick kiss in thanks.

“Not that you need it,” Reuben teased, though that was an absolute lie. The twins were a crowd favorite ever since they’d been sent here to the Starlet Eye Bordello, almost five years ago now.

Bittie threw Reuben a rude finger gesture just before Gringoll parted the curtains, and with that, brother and sister both ran out together for the next act.

This time, just a brief glimpse of the crowd beyond made the hair at the back of Reuben’s neck stand on end.

“Catch the eye of a promising potential?” he distantly heard Isolde asking.

The malice itself wasn’t what made the presence familiar. Reuben had encountered plenty of terrible people with terrible intentions in the 46 years of his extended elvish life working at the bordello. Encounters he didn’t wish to think about, names he never wanted to hear again, old games he had no desire to play. Only to be expected, after so many decades.

No, there was something else about it. Like a haunting melody he could only remember a few notes of.

“Reubie?”

Reuben blinked; the curtains had already fallen closed again.

Isolde frowned. “You’re acting spooked. Is something the matter?”

“I’m certainly done performing for the night,” Reuben side-stepped with a sheepish smile. Inwardly deciding that he wouldn’t go fishing for the most agreeable, wealthiest customer he could find tonight, if it risked running into the person that malice belonged to. He might even leave a few hours of his schedule open despite the hit to his nightly income, and not look for trouble.

Unfortunately, Isolde noticed his tendency to dodge questions over the course of their friendship.

A flash of concern whitened her face. “Did you spot one of your old clients?”

“No! No, I didn’t see anyone,” Reuben denied, even as his stomach flipped at the thought. 

But the bordello’s security guards knew who to never let on the premises again, and truly Reuben hadn’t spotted anyone at all. That was the unsettling part about it.

 He reached out and squeezed one of her crossed forearms. “I’m probably just tired, Isi. Took on too many customers last night.”

Isolde relaxed. “A lesson for tonight, I hope? I’m always telling you gold can’t solve all our problems,” she chided, waiting for his nod before she went back to counting coins.

His mother’s stern wisdom often proved true: In conflict, conceding a smaller, less-important thing often distracts the other party away from the original issue at hand, she’d told him once, whilst smudging powder over her bruised cheekbone.

Reuben found the tactic worked wonders on stubborn customers and, over the last three years since Isolde started here, on his new, well-meaning friend.

After Isolde gave him his half of their earnings—a reasonable 20 cantergold—they exited into the back hallway, and Reuben resolved to put that dark presence out of his mind. 

Just a trick of the music. Or another quirk of working at the Starlet Eye Bordello, where people with all sorts of motives from nearly every walk of life could walk through its doors.

They entered the bordello’s main hall from a side door just between the grand staircase and the main desk. While Isolde joined the masses, who were cheering as the twins performed another feat of acrobatics on stage, Reuben steeled himself and headed the opposite way. He didn’t feel that unsettling presence anymore, but he wasn’t about to linger in the crowd and find out exactly how familiar it actually was. No matter that he usually avoided this desk and the person behind it.

There stood a tall, slightly-stooped elvish man with receding brown hair and an easy, winning smile. Sidarchus—once a stella at the Starlet Eye, now the house manager—was busy scribbling into one of his ledgers, handing a key over to the person at the front of a surprisingly long line.

Of course, the bordello accommodated an array of overnight customers: some here just for a room with excellent balcony views of the city and mountainous skyline; some wanting a stella’s company on top of that; and a spare few who paid for private showings of more sensual performances. With the crowd now spilling out under the vine-laced pergolas that wreathed the bordello outside, they would easily have every bed filled tonight.

Which gave Reuben hope he wouldn’t need to posture and prance around to entice customers anyway. So he took no regard for the line, budging half in front of the horned, infernal-blooded woman about to approach Sidarchus next, and spoke loudly over the music and buzz of the crowd, “Sid! A moment?”

Sidarchus startled at the sight of him. “Is it Isolde again?” he said, half-shouting as well.

Reuben leaned in. “No, she’s fine, just—open my appointment book tonight, when you can? I’m feeling a bit under the weather to mingle for myself.”

Unsurprisingly, Sidarchus wasn’t quick to agree. “That is highly irregular for you, Reubielocks,” the older man replied with a grimace, opening a smaller book. He flipped through the pages holding the schedules of all 24 stellas who worked in the bordello, muttering, “And on a night like this, with every page and merchant and off-duty guard in a twenty-league radius here in Sazzera . . .”

The large woman behind Reuben blew out a breath and took an impatient step closer.

Reuben leaned further against the desk, both to avoid her and to argue back, “On a night like this, it should be easy to fill whatever openings I have, should it not?”

Sidarchus found Reuben’s section, just then, and they both looked down to find an entirely blank column.

Reuben did often struggle to secure repeat customers these days.

Sidarchus made a short tsk sound. “I simply won’t have the time. Now please,” he gave Reuben a dismissive wave, “you’re holding up my line.”

The bordello house manager could be frustratingly hard to work with at times.

In his desperation, Reuben nearly resigned himself to what helped soften Sidarchus in the past. Whoever the dark presence belonged to, Reuben was in no mood to get threatened, he couldn’t afford to be robbed, and he’d rather not get beaten by another old rejected customer with how his flimsy health liked to collapse of late. There were much safer, if more distasteful, options.

But before he could so much as grab Sidarchus’s weathered hand in his, the infernal woman intervened.

She stepped forward with a gruff sound, nudging her shoulder into Reuben’s—not with any considerable force, but plenty to throw him in particular off-balance. A twinge of pain followed down his always-aching spine, and by the time Reuben righted himself, she had placed a small envelope and sack of gold on the ledger in front of Sidarchus and turned his attention away. 

Sidarchus began apologizing to her in that entreating, yet assured way of his, opened the letter at her decisive nod towards it, and entirely ignored Reuben’s presence.

He would have to brave the crowds still. Either that, or waste an entire night of pay and use savings he desperately needed to hold onto for more dire times, like when his legs wouldn’t work or Isolde had an episode.

Worry was not enough justification. It never had been. And if there was one thing anyone here could say about him—not the favorite or the most beautiful, but the most seasoned in the bright constellation of stellas working here—it was that there was little Reubielocks wouldn’t do for a gold piece.

Reuben gave the woman’s back a half-hearted glare before he looked towards the nearest willing body.

He made it just a few steps before Sidarchus called, “Reubielocks! Wait!”

Reuben paused and turned, brows raised. Approaching the desk again, he was just in time to see Sidarchus draw a line through every appointment slot on Reuben’s schedule for the night.

“You’ve been requested for especially, stella.” Sidarchus smiled proudly, gesturing at the woman Reuben had budged in front of. “For the whole night, too.”

“Me?” Reuben repeated, glancing at her with incredulity. Taking in the gray horns that curled up from her forehead around a head of short, dark hair, the warm fuchsia tone to her skin, the forked tail behind her, the thick leather she wore as well as sheathed blades on either hip. Perhaps a lone traveler along the Red Road, or some kind of muscle for a merchant.

Most stark of her features—no pupils. Nothing but a flicker of icy white flame amidst black sclera, in the gaze that might or might not have been side-eying him now.

For a moment, he feared this was the source of the presence he’d felt earlier. Customers rarely booked for a full night with him, and it certainly seemed uncanny for two out-of-the-ordinary things to happen at once.

But even without humming a tune to channel his sharper intuition, Reuben could already feel a dutiful-if-disgruntled aura about her. Infernal heritage aside, there was nothing of uncanny intensity or malice, and certainly nothing . . . familiar.

“She will take you to her employer at a private location for the night,” Sidarchus continued, halting Reuben’s assumptions of this woman being the client. At hearing about a private location, however, a new wave of uncertainty washed over Reuben while Sidarchus gestured at the letter in his other hand. “500 canters up front, the other 500 upon appointment completion. Dear—this is only half,” he said, winking. 

Reuben’s eyes widened at the heavy sack on the desk. 

The bordello naturally took half, not counting additional fees for rent, food, and other necessities. And most appointments earned Reuben 30 canters at best. When he ended the night with more than 50 pieces of cantergold in his actual pocket, he called himself grateful.

Still, even with the cut for his employer—500 canters of his own?

If Reuben could make half that amount every working night, he’d be free of this place in five years, not another forty. Or better yet, could pay off Isolde’s debt before the job wore her down into the same shadow of a person he saw each day in the mirror.

Bright gold winked at him from the opened sack, and even from here he could see a couple of coins at the top stamped with the twelve-pronged, geometric symbol of the Zaldian Priesthood—designating it as the most precious, valuable substance across the entire continent of Monmark.

“Where to? With whom?” Reuben asked, reaching for the letter.

Sidarchus pulled it back out of reach. “They’re paying so well for the sake of privacy,” he answered, coldness leaking back into his tone. “Don’t be difficult, dear.”

Reuben glanced at the tall woman, but she still said nothing. Just watched their exchange with a vague sort of vexation on her face.

Maybe she didn’t care to speak—or maybe, hidden behind her confident stance and strong figure, was a discomfort for this loud, boisterous crowd. Reuben could always get more out of someone when he talked to them one-on-one, in a place quiet enough for his voice to lull and soothe with the same lilting timbre as his violin strings.

And even if this job turned out a bit dangerous, that gold could mean everything.

Slowly, Reuben nodded. “Let me . . . fetch my things.” 

As he climbed up the stairs, Reuben tried to recall the last time he worked outside of the Starlet Eye. In all his four decades here, it couldn’t be more than half a dozen times—and almost always for an event, not an entire night. 

The one and only experience he’d met a new client in a private residence, Reuben tried never to think about.

But even in his coveted youth, Reuben never earned such a sum of gold at once either. That was for the concubines and courtesans of High Ring—a much smaller subsection of the vast city that the noble high houses and Zaldian Priesthood called home, where the Aureate Cathedral crowned the city’s summit with its impressive bell tower. 

The most Reuben could recall earning for a single appointment was 200 canters, and he lost the ability to walk for days after the experience.

His feet faltered at the thought. What worse things could this private client want for a thousand canters?

Reuben entered his chambers, taking a steadying breath. Even if their tastes turned out less savory than simple taboo, he couldn’t pass the offer. Not if it meant escaping that malicious presence likely still in the crowd. Or if entertaining this rich new client might secure him a repeat customer, and actually make a dent in the debt that forever ruled Reuben’s life—just as it ruled his mother’s before him.

But Oriana had never given up: Freedom is the only song a person must fight to sing, she’d whispered just a few nights before her death, and that is why we must. You must keep singing, Reuben, so long as your voice is still yours to lose.

Most of the advice given to him by the distant, aloof woman he called mother was blunt and simple. These words, he never fully understood—but as he prepared for a night that could just as easily turn out a nightmare as a miracle, Reuben hoped he had some fight left in himself to lose.