She looked like a demon or a deviant prostitute, or some combination of the two. Her shoulder length blond hair was styled as though it had been cut with garden shears and it stuck out in all directions. She had dropped charcoal dust into her large grey eyes, creating thick black borders around them like the ancient Argrathian queens, and she had framed them with green malachite eye shadow. Her lips were so dark that it was more the red of blood than that of the rose. Though her skin was alabaster white, as was Iolanthe’s own, she wore no rouge on her cheeks to give her that aura of health and vitality. She wore no hat, and to Iolanthe’s eyes, no clothing.

The woman’s ensemble was bizarre and lewd in the extreme. It was clearly meant to frighten and baffle at the same time. It was a collection of women’s undergarments transformed into outer clothing. Her arms were covered in fishnet gloves, though they couldn’t really be called gloves, because they didn’t cover her fingers. They simply attached to rings around her thumbs and her pinkies and then ran up almost to her shoulders, where they were held on tight with silken bows. She wore a corset made of black leather with a series of five belt-like straps with buckles running up the front, which Iolanthe suddenly realized, would allow the woman to don and doff the device without the aid of anyone else. The low-cut brassier portion of the corset left much of the woman’s chest bared and exposed two tattoos, each a five pointed star, two and a half inches across, outlined in black but filled in with red ink. She wore a kind of leather skirt over the corset, but it reached down only about fourteen inches from her waist, leaving the tops of her stockings and the twelve suspenders connecting them to the corset, completely exposed. The stockings were fishnet mesh, matching the gloves. They were mostly unseen however, as the woman’s leather boots reached all the way past her knees to mid-thigh. These boots each had seven of the same belt like straps with buckles that her corset had, as though they were made to match, which they probably were. The boots had thick square four-inch heels. This last detail was the least striking, as high heels were the fashion. Iolanthe’s own shoes had similar heels, and owing to the fact that she could look the woman directly in the eye, the two women must have been of about the same height, with or without heels.

“Zurfina, I presume,” said Iolanthe.

“Zurfina the Magnificent.” The woman had a husky voice that put Iolanthe in mind of a teen-aged boy.

“Am I supposed to call you Zurfina the Magnificent?” asked Iolanthe. “Do I say ‘good morning Zurfina the Magnificent’ or ‘meet me for tea, Zurfina the Magnificent’ or ‘look out for that falling boulder, Zurfina the Magnificent’?”

“You are of course quite right, Miss Iolanthe Dechantagne,” said the woman. “We shall be on a first name basis, Miss Iolanthe Dechantagne.”

Iolanthe heard a small sound coming from behind her and to her right and suspected that Yuah was suppressing a laugh, or perhaps, worse, a smirk. She didn’t turn to look at the dressing maid, just aimed evil thoughts in her direction.

“Show us some magic, then,” she said. “I feel the need to be impressed. I know my brother is already.”

Augie, who had been so engrossed in the woman’s posterior, that he had not even noticed that his sister had entered the room, suddenly startled to awareness and stood up straight. The blond woman favored him with a sly smile over her shoulder. Then she raised her arm out straight in front of her, palm down. Turning her hand over, a flame sprang up in her palm. Within two or three seconds, the flame had coalesced into a humanoid figure, eight or nine inches tall, which immediately began pirouetting and spinning in a miniature ballet, all without leaving Zurfina’s hand.

“That’s it?” asked Iolanthe. “That’s your great magic?”

“Well I thought it was smashing,” said Augie.

“You don’t like fire?” said Zurfina. “How about ice?”

The tiny figure turned from fire to ice, but continued dancing, breaking off little pieces of itself as it did so, to fall to the floor like tiny snowflakes. Iolanthe pursed her lips.

“My brothers and I are preparing to embark on a great expedition,” she said.

“I know all about it,” said the sorceress.

“Then you know I need a magic user with real power. Just dressing like a necromantic whore doesn’t make you a powerful witch.”

“Oh, you are so right,” said the sorceress. “Clothes do not make the woman.”

She waved her hands in front of her own body, and her clothing became an exact match for Iolanthe’s own evening gown, right down to the red and black trim.

“Or does it?” Zurfina said.

She waved her left hand in front of her face and it became an exact match of Iolanthe’s. She even had the red and white carnations atop her head. The false Iolanthe gave a very flouncy and very un-Iolanthe-like curtsy, then raised her chin and said in a very Iolanthe-like voice. “Yuah, fetch me a white wine!” Yuah took several steps forward before remembering herself and stopping.

“Outstanding!” shouted Augie, clapping his hands.

Iolanthe took a deep breath. “Not bad, I do admit. But show me something that I won’t see one of our journeyman wizards do.”

The sorceress pointed her arm at Yuah, fingers splayed. “Uuthanum uastus corakathum paj.” There was a grinding sound, as though someone were walking upon gravel, and suddenly Yuah froze in place. She, her grey and white dress, and everything else she wore had been turned into a stone statue. She looked like one of the apostles that lined the nave in the Great Church of the Holy Savior. It was as though Pallaton the Elder had been brought from his time into the present to capture the essence of a Zaeri dressing maid.

“My God!” said Augie, absentmindedly crossing himself.

The soldier to the left, the one with the crimson brocade piping on his uniform, had a thick shock of light brown hair, and long sideburns. He had a slightly sleepy look on his face, half closed eyelids obscuring his light blue eyes. He leaned back in his chair, with one leg stretched out and the other crossed over it.

“I’m telling you, sister dear, we’ve made the right decision,” he said. “Birmisia is the promised land. There are riches there, just waiting for someone to go out and pick them up. No one is there yet. Mallontah is thriving, but it’s thousands of miles away. We’ll have to build our own infrastructure.”

“What do you know about infrastructure, Augie?” said the woman.

“I know you need it.”

The soldier to the right, the one with no crimson brocade piping on his uniform, was older, his darker brown hair showing the first bits of grey at the temples. He, like the woman, sat rigidly in his seat, though Senta doubted that in his case this was necessitated by a tightly laced and rigid corset. His features spoke of his family connection as well as the other soldier’s words had.   His dark blue eyes looked kind—kind but sad.

“So we aren’t considering Cartonia?” he asked.

“Cartonia was never a serious consideration,” the woman replied. “It was simply obfuscation.”

“Well, you had better be sure,” he said.

“I am sure. I’ve used every ounce of influence the family has, to set this up.”

“I’m sure too,” said the younger soldier. He and the woman both looked at their older brother.

“All right,” he said.

Senta didn’t hear any more of the conversation. She had moved far enough along, as she cleaned the wrought iron railing, that the conversations of other patrons, though to her mind far less interesting, obscured that of the woman and her two soldier brothers. There was also the noise of the street. So the eight year old girl continued scrubbing, now with nothing as exciting as the far away lands of Cartonia and Birmisia to occupy her. Soon enough she was finished cleaning the railing, and returned once again to the janitorial closet in the back of the building, where she exchanged her bucket of soot-filled water and scrub brush, for a clean cloth and a small jar of polish.

Her last job of the day was to polish the brass dragon at the entrance to Café Carlo. It was about three feet long, including its serpentine tail, and about four feet wide, its wings outstretched. It sat on a stone plinth, so that it could just about look Senta in the face. She didn’t know for sure, but it always seemed to her that the brass dragon was very old. She was sure that it had been sitting here in this very same spot long before Café Carlo was here. It might have even been here before the plaza. Maybe before the great city was even here. Senta polished the entire body, head, tail, and wings of the dragon, taking great care to get the creamy abstergent worked into every nook and cranny. Taking care of the dragon was by far her favorite part of her job. When she was done, she returned the supplies to the janitorial closet and went back around to the front to wait for Carlo. She was careful to stand in a corner, out of the way of any patrons, and clear of the path of the waitresses.

She had to wait several minutes for Carlo to notice her. He was busy delivering sandwiches to the two soldiers who sat with the woman in the white pinstriped dress. Not cucumber sandwiches on white bread. Their sandwiches were thick slices of dark bread, piled high with slab after slab of ham. This was no surprise to Senta. Soldiers were always hungry. She had seen them eating many times: the officers here at Café Carlo, and the common soldiers purchasing food from vendors near the park, or at the beanery in her own neighborhood. At last, Carlo noticed her and held out his hand to her, dropping her fourteen copper pfennigs for the week into her callused palm. They were small coins, with the profile of the King on the obverse side, and the front of a stately building, Senta didn’t know which building, on the reverse side. She stuffed the coins, a few fairly bright, but most well worn, into her pocket.

“See Gyula,” said Carlo.

A surprised Senta nodded and scurried back to the kitchen. This was an unexpected boon. Gyula was the junior of the two line cooks, which meant that he was the lowest ranked of the four people who prepared the food in the café. An order to see him was an indication that she was being rewarded with foodstuffs of some kind. When she entered the kitchen, Gyula looked up from his chopping and smiled. He was a young man, in his mid twenties, with a friendly round face, blond hair, and laughing eyes. He was chopping a very large pile of onions, and the fact that he had only his left hand to do it, seemed to hinder him not at all. When Gyula was a child, about the same age as Senta was now, he had worked in a textile mill, where his job was to stick his tiny arm into the gaps in the great machines and remove wads of textiles that had gummed up the works. In his case, as in many others, the restarting machine proved quicker than his reflexes, and snipped off his arm just below the elbow.

“Hey Senta!” said Gyula, setting down his knife and wiping his left hand on his white apron.

“Carlo sent me back.”

“Excellent,” said Gyula.

He became a one-handed whirlwind, as he carved several pieces of dark bread from a big loaf, and piled an inch of sliced ham, slathered with dark, brown mustard between them. He wrapped the great sandwich, which Senta happily noted was even bigger than those the soldiers had received, in wax paper. He likewise wrapped a monstrous dill pickle, and placed both in the center of a large, clean, red, plaid cloth; folding in the four corners, and tying them in a bow, to make a bindle. Gyula handed the package to Senta, smiling. When he had the opportunity, the young line cook favored Senta with great, heaping bounties of food, but he dared not do it without Carlo’s permission. It wouldn’t be easy for a one-armed man to find a job this good, and no one in his right mind, however kind-hearted and happy-go-lucky he was, would endanger it for a child he didn’t really even know.

“Thank you, Gyula,” said Senta, and grabbing the red, plaid bundle, scurried out the door and down the sidewalk.