Absinthe Moon

Prologue

"You live in the Fourth ward?" she said, growing increasingly confused. "You do know you have First ward designation. You must."

"Perhaps I'm waiting for the designation I'm really after. You know what a pain moving can be."

"But—" she began and stopped again, blinking at him as if he could not possibly be serious. "Why would you live there if you could live—"

"Here?" he said, interrupting her. It was not what she was going to ask, but he wished to make a point. It seemed he had.

"You wish to work here?" she asked him. "As...?"

"Do I not qualify?"

She needn't look again at his results to answer. She could look directly at him and tell that he was more than qualified to enter the Moon's doors, and to do it in any way he wished. That was not to say he was quite free of the evidence of the city's pollutants. No one was. He displayed a slight shadow beneath the eyes, as if coal-ash had been smudged there on purpose. It suited him, made his blue eyes all the bluer. His fingers, those he needn't hide beneath thick leather gloves, were graced with the pervasive indigo hue borne by every person who lived within the city's walls. His tinge, however, was lighter than most, a cerulean that just clouded his nails and stained his cuticles, but which had not yet touched the flesh of his fingers. He was remarkably clean for a man of his age. For a man who had lived the entirety of his life in the Fourth ward and not above it, in the First and Second, from which wards the majority of the Moon's clientele were selected.

He was young, though; twenty-three as of today. The contamination would grow and spread. It must. But it was not the greatest of his flaws by far. He would do whatever it took to keep up the pretense of physical perfection, for disabilities—disfigurements such as Mayhew possessed—were not tolerated by the Icarus Project. For him, today or any day, it was quite literally the difference between life and death.

"I've come to see Madame Moon," he said, at last stating his purpose.

The receptionist smiled at him awkwardly. "I would be happy to put in a request for you," she said, "but it often takes weeks, even months, to get an appointment with Madame—if she'll grant it at all. And to be quite honest, she usually doesn't. Madame Moon's time is guarded very carefully. No doubt you understand."

He smiled in return and resisted the temptation to let the gesture slip into a smirk. "I think you'll find she'll be willing to make some time for me." He took a slip of paper from his coat's inner pocket and scrawled a message—An old acquaintance wishes to reacquaint himself on his birthday. He slid it across the counter to the receptionist, who read it and looked up at him.

"You are already acquainted with Madame Moon?"

"Let's just say that she was, at one time and briefly, intimately acquainted with me," he said as if the connection meant little to him.

She considered the note a moment longer before motioning to another of the Praefectors. He arrived at the window.

"Take this to Madame, won't you?"

He gave her a sideways and doubtful look, which turned briefly upon Mayhew before he at last turned and left to deliver the message. Mayhew was instructed, then, to move to the back of the reception room, where he waited five minutes, ten, then twenty, checking his watch every minute or so. Would Madame receive him? He had spoken with certainty but in truth he was anything but certain. She might not remember him, might not want to. She might be revolted and throw him out, reveal him as the charlatan he was, for if anyone knew his secret, it was certainly she who had been there to witness the events that had resulted in the necessity of keeping it.

He checked his watch again.

"She'll see you," the Praefector said, reappearing suddenly, his tone gruff and impatient. "Follow me."

Mayhew returned his watch to his pocket and followed as the Praefector led the way. On the top floor the elevator stopped and opened onto a private foyer. There were no other doors. The Praefector struck the knocker and then left him alone. His heart beat so hard he felt the blood pulsing in the back of his throat, threatening to strangle him. If only he could remember to breathe!

The door at last was opened by a young boy and Mayhew was led without question into a lavishly appointed sitting room, where one of the Bloodmen was putting away his needles and the sample he had just taken. He closed his case and, without looking at Mayhew, nodded his respect to Madame and then quit the apartment.

Madame sat half-reclined on a tufted and richly upholstered divan. She appeared pale and somewhat ill at ease in a kimono-style robe that was loosely tied over a long skirt and a bustier. Madame Moon was known throughout New Londinium as a timeless and ageless beauty, as the goddess of her profession and a representation to all women everywhere as to what it was possible for a woman to accomplish. For all of the acclaim, she appeared rather spent and tired as she sat before him.

"What can I do for you?" she said, tucking an artificially red curl behind one ear and addressing him with an air of indifference. Her trembling hand suggested she was anything but indifferent.

He did not answer her but looked away as he laid his walking stick and hat aside. With a gloved and trembling hand that he did his best to steady, he unlatched the closures of his overcoat and drew it off. He laid it over the back of a chair. It nearly tipped over with the weight of it. He caught it in time and laid his coat, instead, upon the chair's seat. He unbuttoned his waistcoat next and laid it, too, aside. He removed his right glove and added it to the pile before loosening his necktie and then, one by one, each of the buttons of his shirt. He hesitated a moment before removing it, but at last slid it from his shoulders and let it drop to the floor. He drew off his left glove and tossed it aside, and then, and with greater courage than he had so far exercised, he looked at her, prepared at last to receive her reaction to this display. He was not here to audition. Not here to enjoy the fruits the Moon had to offer—not from Madame, at any rate. He had merely come to introduce himself, and to do it by the only way he knew she would understand. His secret was now revealed—his disfigurement on display for her to see, to understand, and to judge him and determine, as she had the power to do, whether he should live another day or die as he was meant to have done twenty-three years ago today.

There was no reaction on her part. At least there was hardly one. Her face was devoid of both emotion and color. And then she closed her eyes.

Was that it, then? Was it over? Just like that, after all these months and years of preparation?

At last her eyes opened again and he waited for her to summon one of her guards. She remained silent, though; staring at him, she examined his face, first; then, pausing as if to steel herself for the rest, she shifted her gaze to his shoulder and allowed it to lower very slowly down the length of his arm. She looked again at his face, her eyes now filled with emotion.

"You have come back to me," she said and smiled through tears.

Mayhew, overcome by relief, sank to his knees. "You are not surprised," he said. "You do not ask why."

Her answer was simple and unexpected. "I already know."