DIRTY CASH (MONEY TALKS)

When In Doubt

The great houses of Mayfair had thrown open their doors to revelry. Music drifted through the streets, muffled by heavy curtains and the downpour that refused to let the city breathe. Lanterns shone upon slick cobblestones, and footmen stamped their boots to drive away the cold. Carriages lined the square, their horses restless, snorting steam into the rain-soaked air.

Inside the house of Lady Trumbell, chandeliers glittered above a sea of masks. The ball was to honor the generosity of London’s merchant princes and financiers, those noble souls who had funded new almshouses and schools. Champagne glasses clinked, the violin sang, and the painted smiles of the wealthy gleamed through silken disguises.

But at midnight, the horses outside fell silent. One by one, they bent their knees, lowering themselves into the rain as though bowing before a procession no human eye could see. The footmen, too, faltered. Their eyelids drooped, their spines slackened, until they slumped against the doors. Not dead, not drunk, but overcome by some invisible decree.

Inside, the music stuttered. Guests murmured at the sudden stillness beyond the windows. Then the mirrors began to cloud. Along the ballroom walls, great panes of silvered glass grew dark at their centers, fog blooming outward. The masked faces that gazed into them found their reflections had turned away. Some caught only glimpses: the tilt of a helm, the sweep of a sword, the suggestion of armored shoulders blotting out candlelight.

A line appeared upon the first mask. It was no deeper than the score of a quill upon parchment, yet it burned. The woman who wore it shrieked, clawing at her face, though no blood came. Then another guest staggered, hand pressed to his cheek, where a line no thicker than a hair had appeared. Panic erupted. Guests tore off their masks, only to find the same welt upon their skin, matching the shape and curve of the cut in the mask itself.

The candles guttered. Across the parquet floor, a shadow glided. Not a man, not fully, but the impression of a fortress given legs. His armor devoured the glow of every flame, each plate a cliff face of darkness. He passed without sound, and yet each guest felt him pause behind them, a coldness at the nape of the neck, a weight that bent their knees.

The revelers broke, rushing for the doors. But the carriages outside would not move. The horses remained bowed, their manes heavy with rain, their eyes rolled white. The footmen did not stir.

Inside the ballroom, silence stretched again. The sigil was everywhere now. It traced itself in condensation upon the windows, in the veins of spilled wine across the floor, even in the seams of the gowns and coats worn by the fleeing crowd. It was as if the geometry itself had seeped into the fabric of the night, impossible to avoid, impossible to unsee.

Lady Trumbell, trembling, sank to her knees in her jewels and silk. She raised her head to the vaulted ceiling, as though expecting deliverance. Instead she saw him, standing upon the balcony, rain lashing the glass behind his vast form. Grathok. His visor glowed faintly with reflected lightning, his gauntleted hand upon the hilt of a blade so long it could cleave a hall in two.

He did not move. He did not need to. The guests collapsed in terror, their masks cast aside, each marked forever with the line of his passing.

By dawn, when the constables dared enter, they found no bodies. The revelers had dispersed, fleeing into the city with faces marred. The servants remained asleep, breathing softly, as though the night had never touched them. Yet the mirrors bore cracks, each one splintered in the shape of a gate.

And on the grand oak table where the champagne glasses still rested, there lay a single iron key tied with black thread. Its sigil was carved so deep the wood beneath it had blackened.



Chapter VII: Night of Silent Carriages

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