Quest of the Five Clans: the Harlequin Tartan

CHAPTER 12

Every Name must have a Face

I, Endymion Daler, being of sound mind and body, lacking cousin, wife or progeny, do hereby leave all my worldly possessions to my chief customer, fellow art enthusiast and friend, Master Rayne Gray. And I leave him both my thanks and a final charge.

First my gratitude, for that he hath spent coin in my shop as sailor home to shore, thirsting for the joy of things of beauty and grace. But far more than for his custom and coin, I thank him for the evenings spent in the joy of his quiet house, wherein master, servant and friend alike laughed, sharing wine and fireside, reading aloud lines of play, tale and poem. Those times I shall not forget, even in death. Though I now pass beyond a thousand loud dinners in houses far greater in wealth, far lesser in joy.

Second, I charge the aforementioned Gray with my last request; that he take the things of my shoppe and my home, and find some manner to share them with the world. Gray, you forever would harangue men, dogs and me with your pleas of freedom for the poor, the worker, the dogs. Well, let Art now have its chance to speak, and show its import to the world, the power of grace and joy to break chains!

Signed and witnessed this day,

Endymion Daler.

I sighed, folded away these last words from my dead friend. A friend I'd slain before he could shoot me. Dated two years before friendship's breaking. But kept? Why not, he'd supposed me dead. But could he find none else to so gift? 'Lacking cousin, wife or progeny'... Poor Dealer. I had not seen how he felt himself near part of my household. Elspeth had. Thus her chiding me for mocking the fellow.

How had the man who wrote these words of friendship turned enemy? Simply because he adored my Elspeth? What harm there? She was art, he was connoisseur. No need for love to poison the heart, requited or no.

Perhaps his love had simply turned to greed. Was that not the vice of the collector? One begins with enthusiasm for the thing itself; and declines into lust for owning the thing. Perhaps Elspeth became a collector's prize, not a person. And so came between us. How many hours did Dealer spend before Black's damned portrait of a young Elspeth? Hell, he'd died before it, a martyr cut down at his altar of worship.

At some point Dealer had learned Elspeth spied for Black, been his mistress. What a fall that must have seemed to his purist's eye. From chaste icon to traitor and whore. How did that change his view of our shared evenings? Perhaps for him the treasured moments turned at once to bad art, a façade hiding rot.

Dismal thoughts for the carriage ride to the man's shop. I folded the letter away. My valet sat before me, tinted eyes gazing unto tinted infinity. I felt the urge to pick quarrel with him. I did not. I liked Phineas. He possessed humor and competence; and knew to play ironic foil to my rougher manner. He was not family as Stephano had been. Excellent. I no longer wished for family.

But his calm confidence mocked my quickening slide. A dead man's head rolling at my heels was the least of it. What had happened today? What had been real? A foe in the fog, a mechanical boy, snake-girls and puppet-theatre. Dragons. Voices. Most disturbing of all, that dream-like sense of loss and sorrow...

And Black! How could he be risen from the grave? Simple answer. He was now a vampire. Mattered nothing that such creatures were mad belief. I was clearly mad. Fine. A week would see the Charter ascend to heaven, else descend to hell. I could last a week. I need only remain calm, ignoring voices and visions and vampires.