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, Reuben 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, he 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 dramatically and sang out one last soulful note. Missing her own youth, Reuben could discern.

Further back, an eager group hovered at the edges of the crowd, impatience and disgruntlement emanating from them. Upset at not having a good enough view as Reuben and Isolde did a bit of synchronized footwork, he could tell.

And then there was the bored, idle man in the back who stood exuding impatience—waiting for the next stellas to perform, Reuben somehow knew.

It was an overwhelming experience every time, but still a useful one. With enough focus and his violin as a conduit, Reuben could channel his music to sift through the masses until he spied out the individuals amidst them that watched his movements with particular interest—and lust.

Which made his next job easy, once the last number of their little act was performed and Reuben channeled the final riff of his violin into a small demonstration of crowdcraft, creating a sparkling burst of illusory petals to fall over them in time with the applause. By then, the music had already told him which would be most desperate for his attention tonight, as sure as the clothes they wore would soon tell him how much cantergold his attention might be worth.

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

Tonight, one entity had stood starkly out of place all throughout the act. Reuben’s music echoed back awareness of a focused, powerful presence—not admiring or lusting, but not carrying the rarer reactions of scorn or judgment either. Perhaps only of note to Reuben because the sheer intensity of it felt strangely menacing . . . and familiar, somehow.

And yet he could not spot its source with his own two eyes during any of their musical performances. Only Reuben’s years of relying on this particular gift of music kept him from doubting whether he’d imagined it entirely. Now, as the crowd continued cheering and Isolde collected their tip bowl from downstage, Reuben scanned the masses more blatantly for the dark presence he could feel in the room’s midst. Watching Reuben closely in return.

His search proved useless. Isolde walked in front of Reuben’s view as she waved one last time and began hurrying 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 hiding their backstage, 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 look 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 curtains closed again, muting the lingering buzz of the crowd behind them. “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’s sweet, ethereal voice again,” he said while they walked the short distance to the backstage green room. Adding, as he placed the violin gently back in its case, “Although your lute does require less upkeep—I’m running out of rosin every other year.”

Isolde sat down in front of the mirror vanity as if to check her makeup, though her eyes narrowed instead through the reflection at the bow still in his left hand. “Hm. I’d wager the fraying hair on that is to blame,” she nodded at it.

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.

“Well, good thing I’m here to keep you humble,” she replied with a smirk, though she didn’t let the matter drop yet: “Surely it doesn’t cost that much to rehair a bow?”

Reuben shrugged and didn’t answer, 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, it was just then that two of their fellow stellas, the young dwarf 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 one of his shoes.

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

“Wait, Bittie, don’t forget—!” Isolde warned, just in time for the dwarf woman 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 had quickly become a crowd favorite ever since they’d been sent here five years prior.

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 had the hair at the back of Reuben’s neck standing on end.

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

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

No, something else about it told him he had felt this specific presence before, Reuben was certain. But his conscious mind still shuddered away from the hidden depths that might stir up a specific memory, if there was one. He wasn’t brave enough to dip a toe in that darkness, much less delve deep and head first.

“Reubie?”

Reuben blinked, realizing the curtains had already fallen closed again before jerking his head away.

Isolde frowned at him. “You’re acting spooked. Is something the matter?” she asked, in that upfront but caring way she had.

Reuben sometimes could successfully lie to her—but not with nearly so much ease as he had around anyone else. “I’m certainly done performing for the night,” he side-stepped the question instead, putting on a small, sheepish smile. Inwardly deciding that, perhaps just this one time, he wouldn’t go fishing through the main hall for the most agreeable, wealthiest customer he could find, if it meant accidentally running into the person that malice had sourced from. 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 had seemed to grasp his tendency to dodge questions over the course of their friendship.

A flash of concern whitened her face, his friend quickly stepping toward him and speaking in a sharp but hushed tone, “Did you spot one of your old clients?”

“No! No, I didn’t see anyone,” Reuben denied, even as his stomach flipped just 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 most 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,” he added, watching in relief as she relaxed with a knowing shake of her head.

“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 wisdom often proved true, and this case was no different: 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 makeup lightly 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, a reasonable 20 cantergold, they moved out from the tiny green room into the back hallway connected with the kitchens and other hidden, unglamorous sections of the bordello’s lower floor. Meanwhile, Reuben tried to force the unsettling oddity of that dark presence from his mind. 

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

They rounded back to the front, entering the main hall of the house of revelry from a side door just between the grand staircase and the main desk. While Isolde moved to join the masses, who were cheering as the twins performed another feat of acrobatics on stage, Reuben steeled himself before heading 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, older elvish man with receding brown hair and an easy, winning smile. Sidarchus—once a fellow stella at the Starlet Eye, now the house manager—was busy scribbling into one of his ledgers like usual, handing a key over to the person at the front of a surprisingly long line.

Of course, the bordello had an array of overnight customers: some here just for a room with excellent balcony views of the city and the Sazzeran peaks surrounding it; some wanting intimate company with a stella on top of that; and a spare few who paid for private showings of more sensual performances. With the crowd now spilling out from the main hall, through the front doors, and into the vine-laced pergolas that wreathed the bordello, they would easily have every bed filled tonight.

Which gave Reuben added certainty he had no need to posture and prance around for his gold like usual 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 looked surprised, even a bit alarmed, at the sight of him. “Is it Isolde again?” he responded, half-shouting as well.

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

Unsurprisingly, Sidarchus was not quick to agree. “That is highly irregular for you, Reubielocks,” the older, handsome elf replied with a grimace while opening up a smaller book. “I’m very used to letting you book the majority of appointments for yourself, I’ve trusted you with it,” he muttered as he hurriedly flipped through the pages holding the schedules of all 24 stellas who worked in the bordello, “and on a night like this, with every page and businessman and off-duty guard in a twenty-league radius here in Sazzera . . .”

The large woman behind Reuben blew out a breath—not unlike a horse, Reuben thought unkindly—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 and shook his head. “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 that moment, Reuben nearly resigned himself to what often worked in the past. He didn’t know who had been watching him in the crowd earlier—but the fact he could only feel them with his music, not see anyone with his elvish-sharp eyesight, was worrisome enough. He was in no mood to be threatened, he couldn’t afford to be robbed, and he’d rather not get beaten by another old rejected customer with how easily his flimsy health was to collapse of late. There were much safer, if more distasteful, options.

But before he could so much as grab the man’s weathered hand in one of his or lean in any closer, the infernal woman intervened.

She let out a gruff sound as she stepped forward and nudged her shoulder into Reuben’s. Not with any considerable force, but plenty to throw him in particular off-kilter, a twinge going down his always-aching spine. Reuben was unable to do any further convincing after righting himself, much less start bargaining, before she placed a small envelope and sack of gold on the ledger in front of the house manager and turned Sidarchus’s attention away.

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

He would have to brave the crowds still, it seemed. Either that, or waste an entire night of coin 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.

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

Reuben only bothered to give the woman’s back a small glare of annoyance before he glanced around for the nearest willing body.

He’d made it just a few steps before Sidarchus called, “Reubie! Wait!”

Reuben paused, brows raised as he turned to look back at the house manager. Approaching the desk once more, he was just in time to watch as Sidarchus drew a line through every appointment slot on Reuben’s schedule for the night.

“You’ve been requested for especially, stella,” Sidarchus said, a quiet pride in his voice as he gestured at the woman Reuben had budged in front of. “For the whole night, too.”

“Me?” Reuben repeated, glancing at the woman with incredulity. Taking in more closely the gray horns that curled up from her forehead around a head of short dark hair, the warm fuschia tone to her skin, the forked tail behind her, the leather armor 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 businessman.

Most interesting of her features—no pupils. Nothing but a flicker of icy white flames amidst black sclera, in the gaze that may or may not be 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 or playing a song 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 excitedly. “500 canters up front, the other 500 upon appointment completion. Dear—this is only half,” he said with a wink. Speaking to Reuben with enthusiasm, now that he was about to earn him money.

Not that Reuben could really blame him. He felt his own eyes widen as he stared at the heavy sack dropped on the desk. 

The bordello naturally took half, not counting the additional fees for rent, food, and other necessities. And most appointments earned Reuben 30 gold at best. When he ended the night with more than 50 gold 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 night the bordello was open, 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.

“Where to? With whom?” Reuben still had to ask, 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 again 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. There was always the chance Reuben could 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.

“Let me . . . fetch my things,” Reuben agreed with a slow nod of his head.

As he hurried up the stairs, Reuben found it difficult to recall if he’d worked outside of the Starlet Eye more than half a dozen times, in all his four decades here. Once, early on, he’d been used as entertainment for a rather racy parlor party in the nicer parts of the city’s main ring. There’d been a few rare occasions since, hired as a client’s companion to dance with, show off, and sexually service in some quiet corner before being sent back to the bordello—but usually for an event, and never for an entire night. 

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

But not once had he been offered such a sum of gold. That was for the concubines and courtesans of High Ring—a much smaller subsection of the vast city that the rich elite and Zaldian Priesthood called home, where the Aureate Cathedral crowned the city’s summit with its impressive bell tower. 

No, the most Reuben had ever earned for a single appointment was 200 canters, and he hadn’t been able to walk for days after the experience.

His feet faltered for a moment at the thought of what this private client could want for a thousand canters.

Still, even if their tastes turned out less savory than simple taboo, there were plenty of positives to going, Reuben reasoned with himself as he reached his chambers. Getting away from the threat of whoever had been watching him concealed in the crowd, for one, if they lingered in the bordello. Much more importantly, entertaining this rich, aloof individual well enough even to secure them as 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 told him 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.

He’d resented many of her choices in his youth, right up until he’d been faced with them himself. Now he understood his mother all too well—and as he prepared for a night that could just as easily turn out a nightmare as a miracle, Reuben could only hope he had a bit of fight left in himself to lose.