“That’s very good. That’s very good indeed.  Because you see, my little Senta, you are going to come and live with me. And if you are very good and do everything that I tell you, I am going to teach you things.  Ponderous things.”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Senta.

“I know you don’t. My name is Zurfina the Magnificent.”

Zurfina stood up and took Senta by the hand and led her down the sidewalk, away from the palace where the woman who had once worn the white pinstriped dress lived. By the time she had taken her fourth step, Senta no longer wondered at the strange turn of events that had overtaken her.  By the time she had taken her tenth step, she no longer thought of pulling her hand from the grip of the blond sorceress and running away.  By the time she had taken her sixteenth step, it seemed to Senta as if she was exactly where she was supposed to be, walking down the street at the side of her mistress.

“Come along, Pet.”

Zurfina led Senta on a long walk through the city, finally turning south on Prince Tybalt Boulevard and passing Hexagon Park.  Throughout their trek, none of the many people on the street seemed to notice the strangely dressed woman leading a small child along by the hand.  No one turned a head at all.  Just past the park, they turned west on Prince Clitus Avenue and came to a small storefront.  There was a sign above the door, but Senta couldn’t read it.  It seemed to be written in a strange language. Zurfina opened the door and led her inside.

The shop contained counters and shelves filled with goods, though Senta couldn’t make out what they were.  Several shopkeepers scurried about to help the half dozen customers making purchases. But something was very strange. The customers, the shopkeepers, the counters, and the shelves were all translucent, as if they were made of the same stuff as rainbows, gathered together and transformed into the semblance of people and things one would find in a city shop.

“What do you see?” asked Zurfina.

“I see ghosts.”

“They aren’t ghosts.  They’re illusions.  To everyone else, they seem real enough.  To the people on the street, this shop is just one more emporium of useless mundania. No one ever questions it, and no one ever comes in.”

Zurfina, still holding Senta by the hand, walked through the shop and through a doorway in the back, to a staircase leading upwards.  At the top of the stairs were a landing and a door, but the sorceress continued up a second flight of stairs to the third floor, where the stairs ended in a blank wall.  The sorceress waved her hand and a door appeared.  She opened the door and led the girl in to a large and dark room, filled with all manner of strange things.  More of the translucent people were moving about.  Here they were packing away items in large black steamer trunks and stacking trunks into great piles.  Unlike downstairs in the shop however, the steamer trunks and the items being placed within them were not, like the people, partially transparent. The items being packed and moved here were real, opaque, and completely solid.

The first thing that caught Senta’s eye in the room was the dragon. It was almost an exact replica of the dragon that sat in front of Café Carlo—about three feet long with a wingspan of about four feet, sitting on a stone plinth.  Instead of a burnished brass color though, this dragon looked as though it were cast from steel.  The effect was that this dragon looked far less lifelike than the brass one at the café. It looked far less lifelike until it moved.  First it blinked its eyes, then it yawned, then it folded its wings and curled its neck up, exposing the underside of its chin.  Zurfina rubbed the bottom of its long neck with her fingers, but when she pulled her hand away, it snapped at her with a mouth full of needle sharp teeth.

Iolanthe Dechantagne walked slowly down the wide, sweeping staircase that led into the vast foyer of her home.  She had expected to make a rather grand entrance, but was disappointed to find no visitor awaiting her at the bottom of the stairs.  The room was peopled only by several members of the household staff: the doorman, one of the maids, and a young man on a ladder cleaning the wall behind one of the gas lamps.  Iolanthe turned slowly to look at Yuah, who stood just behind and to her right.  The dressing maid, in a gray and white dress that made her look rather more like a governess than a maid, shrank back slightly. She knew how disappointed Iolanthe was, especially when she had purchased the new evening gown for just this occasion.   It was white, and the skirt featured seven layers, one upon the other, each trimmed with red and black, the hem creating a circle more than five feet wide as it swept the floor.  The bodice featured matching red and black trim.  It was of course so thin at the waist that no one could have worn it without a patented Prudence Plus fairy bust form corset and it featured, as was the style, a prominent bustle in back.  It was strapless, leaving an unobstructed view of Iolanthe’s long, thin neck, her smooth shoulders and the top several inches of her chest.  Instead of a hat, she wore an arrangement of red and white carnations atop her carefully curled hairdo, which matched the rest of her outfit perfectly.

“She was here, Miss,” said Yuah.

It had been two days since her brother had learned from a police inspector that a powerful sorceress was available for hire.  She had arranged a meeting, carefully setting the precise date to give herself plenty of time to prepare.  When one met a powerful magic user, especially when one intended to hire a powerful magic user, one had to make a good impression.  If Iolanthe was going to hire this woman, if this woman really possessed the gifts that she and her brothers would need in their great enterprise, she intended to show the woman, right from the beginning, who was boss.

Yuah scrambled down the steps of the sweeping staircase and whispered to the doorman. The doorman whispered back.  Then Yuah ran back up the stairs to Iolanthe’s side.

“Master Augie just took her to the library.”

“Bloody hell, Augie, you idiot,” said Iolanthe.

She stomped her way down the remaining steps of the staircase and through the foyer, stopping just outside the door to the library. Hyperventilating for a moment, she stepped through the door with a stately and unhastened grace.   Yuah followed her, several steps behind.  The library was a relatively small room, about thirty by thirty feet, but with a ceiling two stories high.  All four walls were completely covered in bookcases to the ceiling.  Two railed ladders allowed access to the books at the very top.  The room made quite an impression—when full of books. Unfortunately, the books had been packed and loaded onto the H.M.S. Minotaur.  The resulting room, empty except for the three overstuffed chairs, two small tables, two oil lamps, and a single volume—Baumgarten’s Brech Stories—was noticeably unimpressive.  Along the far wall, Augie leaned against one of the ladders with practiced nonchalance.  In the center of the room stood the woman—the sorceress.

Zeah Korlann watched as Miss Dechantagne spoke to the policeman.  If he had come home covered in blood, and then called the policeman to tell him that he had just shot two men in an alley, he would be sitting in the deepest darkest cell in Ravendeep by now.  Miss Dechantagne on the other hand, took a careful sip of her tea, keeping her pinky straight, from a teacup that matched her dressing gown, as she told the blue-clad officer of her “adventure.”  She then told him about how she had driven herself home and taken a long hot bath, after ordering her steam carriage cleaned and her clothing disposed of.   Maybe the key was not being nervous.  Policemen were used to dealing with guilty, twitchy, little people.  Miss Dechantagne never felt guilty about anything, she never twitched, and she was most definitely not one of the little people. Then again, the policeman probably wasn’t listening to a word she said.  She sat there with her luxurious auburn hair hanging loosely about her shoulders, her skin the very picture of porcelain perfection, her lips painted luscious red, and those unusual aquamarine eyes.  And she was wearing what? Certainly not a bustle or a corset, just yard after yard of violet and silver silk dressing gown, from her neck to the floor.  Maybe the key was that, as far as the policemen knew, there were no underclothes at all under that dressing gown.

“Normally in these situations,” said the policeman, “we would bring the journeyman wizard from Mernham Yard to cast a truth spell, but I really don’t see the need. Everything seems to be straight-forward enough.”

“Thank you officer,” said Miss Dechantagne.  “You have been most considerate.”

“My pleasure, Miss.”

“Would you please leave your name and address with my man before you leave?  I would like to send you a thank-you gift for your kindness in this trying time.”

“That won’t be necessary, Miss,” said the policeman, clicking his heels and bowing before he left, but he gave his name and address to Zeah anyway, revealing the true key to living an existence free from police trouble.  The officer would receive a gift basket filled with fresh fruit, expensive jams and jellies, canned kippers, loaves of rosemary and garlic bread, some very nice cheese, a sausage, and four or five hundred one mark banknotes.

When the head butler had closed the front door behind the policeman, he turned on a heel and walked back into the parlor.  Miss Dechantagne already seemed to have forgotten that she had been dealing with police business.  She continued to sip her tea, but now she did so while reading the latest issue of Brysin’s Weekly Ladies’ Journal.  Yuah entered carrying a small plate with three carefully arranged peppermint candies upon it.  She gave Zeah a quick wink.  It was just like the girl to get cheeky on her birthday.

“Are you ready to go about your duties for the day, Zeah?” asked Miss Dechantagne.

“Yes, Miss.”

“A little birdie has reminded me that it is your daughter’s birthday,” said Miss Dechantagne, biting into one of the peppermints candies.  “I do hope you have plans to celebrate it.”

“The staff will be presenting her with a cake at dinner,” said Zeah.

“Excellent,” said Miss Dechantagne, then turning to Yuah.  “Take the rest of the evening off.  I shan’t need you.”

“Very good, Miss,” said Yuah.

“Birthdays are important,” said Miss Dechantagne.  “They come only once every three hundred seventy-five days.”

“Yes, Miss,” said Yuah, and exited the room.

“Do you have a gift for her?” the lady asked the head butler.

“I’m picking up a scarf for her today.”

“Excellent. Pick up something appropriate from my brothers and me.  Charge it to my account.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“I’m sorry to ask you to make an additional stop today, Zeah.  I had planned on stopping by the docks this afternoon to consult with Captain Gurrman on how much space still remains in the cargo hold and what other equipment that we might need.  Unfortunately, my ‘adventure’ pushed those plans completely out of my mind.  I need you, after you have completed your other duties, to stop at the docks and complete this mission in my stead.  I trust this will not make you late for your daughter’s birthday party.”

“I’m sure it will be fine, Miss,” he said.  He well knew that taking a side trip to the docks, in addition to everything else he had to do, would make him miss any birthday celebrations entirely.  What he couldn’t figure out was whether Miss Dechantagne didn’t understand the constraints of time on his schedule, or did understand and simply didn’t care.

Zeah left the house on foot.  Anyone else might have called the abode a mansion, or a manse, or possibly even a palace, but Miss Dechantagne called it a house, and so it was a house.  He walked with the brisk pace of a much younger man.  He could have taken the steam carriage if he had wanted.  Miss Dechantagne would have allowed it without a second thought.  He had her complete confidence, as his family had held the complete confidence of her family for five generations.  But he had never learned to drive, and he was too old to learn now.  It didn’t matter.  With the breadth of the horse-drawn trolley system in the great city, under normal conditions, he didn’t have to have to walk very far. Going to the docks in the evening would complicate things of course.  He had carefully planned out his journey in his mind, to minimize his travel time and allow him the efficiency that always gave him comfort.  He would follow that plan to the exact step.  The first stop had to be the bank, and so he traveled due west.