The hallway which led to Dizadh's quarters was a stark contrast to the one housing the Dolls. High-ceilinged enough to accommodate Gillian's height and a chandelier with plenty of wriggle room in between, and wide enough for a man of Gillian's breadth to spread his arms and just about touch his fingertips to the walls, and interspersed by sliding doors made of panels of smooth, polished wood, which let out not a whisper nor a glimpse of the private affairs going on behind them. The doors were identical save for the golden letters emblazoned upon them, spelling out the name of the courtesan who resided within.
The man in the gold-trimmed blue toga halted before the door bearing the name Dizadh, bowed deeply to Gillian, then scurried soundlessly away. Gillian followed him out of the corner of his eye until he had disappeared round the corner with a flutter of his robe, before pushing aside the door.
The room was brightly lit with paper lamps set along the curtained walls and hanging from the ceiling. Dizadh was right across from him, reclining against a long triangular cushion. His black eyes widened at the sight of his visitor, and he rose to his feet with a swish of his crimson toga and much jangling from his rows of bangles. Golden and silver threads were still entwined in his river of black hair. If he had entertained another client after his canceled session with Lady Hyacinth, it was impossible to tell.
"You've come in place of the Lady Hadrian?" He asked, his voice soft and fearful. He'd probably recognized Gillian as one of the Greeneye girl's entourage. The man was sharp. Very well. It saved him trouble.
"She would've come personally, if not for the danger." Gillian thrust the door back against its frame with a slam then marched into the light, glaring down at Dizadh from his towering height, his grip tight around the hilt of his curved blade, "Where are those Greeneyes? What have you done to them?"
Dizadh shrank under his shadow, trembling hands raised in surrender.
"Please. I'm your ally." He whispered, shaking his head side to side, "I answered Lord Hadrian's letter in Healer Hasif's place. To warn you. She called me to the palace for a session a few days ago."
As Gillian froze, frowning, Dizadh swept towards the red floor-to-ceiling curtains draping over the wall and tugged them aside, revealing the sliding screens once concealed behind them.
"I was beginning to fear you'd never come for them. I can't keep them for much longer."
He rambled, his voice bursting with sobs, then slid back the screen. The lamplight flooded the once pitch-black cupboard, illuminating its occupants—a teenage girl with long golden-brown hair whom Gillian recognized as one of Baroness Hadrian's maids-of-honor, a stocky brown-haired man in his prime, and a middle-aged man with chestnut hair and mustache.
There they sat in a row, hunched in the cramped space, limbs akimbo like resting marionettes, lifeless but for the slow rise and fall of their chests. They had been stripped down to their undergarments. Their signature eerie, glowing green eyes had been replaced by blue human eyes, perfect but for their lack of a soul, and their glass-like gleam when touched by the light. The stale stench of piss and shite billowed out and inundated his nostrils, faint yet pronounced against the perfumed air of the room. Dizadh must have been feeding and cleaning them to the best of his ability over the past few days.
As the pieces fall into place, Gillian clenched his trembling hands, hissing through gritted teeth,
"Where are their eyes?"
Dizadh had just scurried off and returned with fresh towels and a water basin. Streams of clear liquid were flowing down Lady Persephia's bare legs, yet she appeared not in the least aware.
"The brothel owners sold them to Healer Hasif. If we're in luck, she might not have used them yet." He knelt down and mopped up the mess. Gillian ducked inside and half-heaved, half-dragged the brown-haired man out to make way and prevent him from getting soiled as well.
"And where is the other Lady Graye? The human twin? Have they silenced her?"
Dizadh shook his head with a shudder.
"They were about to. She convinced them she'd work for laudanum, so they let her live, but her addiction's getting worse. She's working in the Dollhouse."
"The Dollhouse?"
⏳
The staff woman stood waiting impatiently beside the door as Coris and Christopher hurried over to join her. Zier and Simon were standing before the door, their heads tipped back. In the dim light, Coris could just make out the letters scrawled in carmine ink across the wooden panels.
Dollhouse
An apt name. So innocent it was unnerving. The enormous woman tossed Coris a key along with parting remarks,
"Your room's down that way. Number's on the key." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating another hallway perpendicular to the one they had just traversed, then nodded at the Dollhouse's door,
"You have one hour. Try any and as many dolls as you want. Just be considerate of other clients. Take one at a time. I'll come knock when your hour is over."
With that, she strode back the way she came. Christopher, Zier and Simon watched the bald woman until she disappeared into the shadows, tossed incredulous looks at each other, then turned as one to their leader.
"So...do we each snag a doll first?" Simon asked hesitantly. Coris met his gaze in the gloom and nodded.
"I'd say our best shot is to blend in and ask other clients if they've seen any of the missing four." He explained as a furrow appeared between his eyebrows, and tremors wracked his slight frame,
"To be frank, I reckon we'd be lucky to even recover their remains. Greeneyes are mindless golems without their eyes, and Agnes isn't worth anything as a prostitute thanks to her burns. If I were the brothel owner, I'd sell the dragon eyes to Hyacinth authorities in exchange for protection, bury the Greeneyes alive to destroy the evidence, and silence Agnes."
The cruel yet irrefutable guess left his three friends speechless, petrified in horror. As his wavering resolve threatened to succumb to despair, Coris turned pointedly away from their bloodless faces, their gaping eyes, and pushed open the door. As leader, he didn't have the luxury of showing weakness. It was important to maintain his men's morale. Yet, he must also ensure their safety and the success of the mission by keeping them abreast of exactly what they were up against. It was a fine balance to strike. He wasn't sure he had made the right move, but now that he had chosen, forward was the only direction he could take.
Unlike the dingy hallway, the Dollhouse was bathed in pleasant orange light. Two bald, well-built women were already inside, browsing the rows of 'dolls' sitting propped against all four walls of the room.
The 'dolls' were life-sized, bundled in vividly colored togas decorated with intricate patterns. There were male and female dolls, child and teenage and adult, blonde and brunette and dark and redheaded, snowy and fair and olive and brown-skinned. Their eyes, however, were all glassy blue, gaping unblinking into space. They appeared too lifelike to have been mere gum molded over a wooden skeleton. So lifelike it was uncanny, and too masterfully crafted to be exploited as an economic alternative to living prostitutes.
The two clients seemed to have been acquaintances. They selected their preferred doll and left the room together, giggling. One picked a doll resembling an adult man, and the other nabbed a young girl, proof of their differing tastes.
Coris shifted aside to make way for their exit. His eyes strayed towards the dolls lolling on the floor nearest to him, then he nearly yelped in fright.
He could have sworn he saw their chests moving—rising and falling in the slow rhythm usually indicating deep slumber in actual humans. A male doll that looked to be his age sat with its mouth ajar. A trickle of drool was seeping out through its parted lips.
No—No, not it. Him.
A wave of freezing cold cascaded down his back as the harrowing realization dawned upon him. Coris faltered back and bumped against Christopher.
"Oh, Goodly Freda." The Meriton heir pressed his hand over his mouth, stifling a retch, "They're breathing."
"I should've guessed this," Coris shook his head as he alternated between disbelief and rage, "How obvious. How disgustingly ingenious."
Yes, the brothel had kidnapped Greeneyes and sold their priceless eyes to Hyacinth authorities. However, they didn't simply dispose of their comatose bodies after the deal was sealed, but had decided to milk the Greeneyes for what they were worth, forcing upon them a fate perhaps worse than death.
Zier dropped to his knees, shivering. Simon gritted his teeth. Setting his emotions aside to be acknowledged later, he glanced wildly around, scanning the dozens of eerily empty faces for a familiar one.
"They must be here. Find them, hurry!"
He barked at his paralyzed friends as he dove towards the Greeneyes nearest to him, spurring them to follow suit. Before long, he came upon a young woman with flowing brown hair. He grabbed her chin and pulled her closer, shut her eyelids over the distracting glass eyes and compared her face against Persephia's in his memory.
A grating noise sounded from the far side of the room. He glimpsed a slab of the wall sliding open out of the corner of his eye, and turned around. A wheelbarrow sat in the doorway, carrying a naked, unconscious Greeneye girl who seemed to have just been cleaned after her session with a client.
Behind it stood a young woman with a wooden mask covering half of her face. Her visible eye, bloodshot and shadowed, welled up with tears as she noticed them. Her hair was unkempt. She wore the same red maid uniform she last had on when she parted with them at the dried lake, plus some large splashes of water and dark spatters of what was likely human excrement.
"Agnes?" Coris breathed.
⏳
Over to Meya, now standing in the doorway to Healer Hasif's secret chamber, she was also facing her darkest fears turned reality. The shelves along the far wall of the hidden lab held rows of glass jars, crowded together like merchandise to be sold. Each and every was labeled, and each imprisoned a glowing green, metallic eyeball.
On the worktable was a complex metallic contraption with a small windmill attached to one end, and an eggcup-like receptacle the size of a teaspoon at the other. The windmill was spinning so fast, it had turned into a psychedelic gray whorl, likely powered by the glowing, acid green stone held in the clutches of the spoon.
Two bowls sat nearby, one holding a dozen similar glowing stones, and the other littered with what appeared to be cracked shells made of opalescent metal—Lattis. A vat sat at the corner of the table, half-filled with clear, syrupy liquid. Thousands of minuscule particles hung suspended throughout the jelly, winking in the room's light like flecks of powdered sequins.
"Oh, Freda. Goodly Freda. Freda Freda Freda."
Lord Ahmundi rambled feverishly under his breath, his fingers tangled in his curly black hair. Strength deserted Meya's legs. She crumpled to her knees, then slumped against the wall. Her guess was correct, but only partially. The whole truth was worse than she had expected, worse than her wildest nightmares.
The green crystal wasn't simply a dragon eye by another name. It had been harvested from inside a dragon eye.
⏳
The journey back to Hyacinth Castle began as an arduous slog suffered in stealth.
Gillian had rendezvoused with the young noblemen at the Dollhouse, then snuck the as yet glassy-eyed, struck-dumb Agnes with them through the hallways over to Dizadh's quarters. There, Dizadh unveiled a secret passageway leading outside the brothel.
Carrying the three unconscious Greeneyes between them, the men edged and scraped their way down the narrow staircase, which leveled into an underground passage, then rose to emerge on the side of the bustling road, its exit hidden underneath an innocuous manhole cover sitting just behind the fence swinging with purple paper lamps.
From there, they hiked back up the rising road until they found their wagon, thankfully still parked in front of the grand brothel.
As soon as he disembarked at the foot of the stairs leading up to the adobe complex, Coris sent the guardswomen to notify his mother of their return and the mission's success, so Baroness Hadrian would call off the search.
Gillian, Simon, Christopher and Zier had just deposited Persephia, Cleygar and Lors down on the bed in the Hadrians' guest quarters when the door burst open. In came the Baron and Baroness Hadrian, and Lady Hyacinth, followed by the remaining Greeneyes.
For a beat they stood rooted, eyes transfixed by the prone figures on the bed. Mother was the first to break the spell. Tears of relief streaming down her cheeks, she threw her arms around Coris.
"Lexi, you've found them! Thank goodness!" She withdrew and surveyed him for as if to spot missing chunks, then turned to the rest, "Thank you. Thank you all."
She grasped Gillian's hands and shook them, nodded at the two squires and embraced Zier. Pulling away, she finally turned her scrutiny to the long-lost Greeneyes. Her eyes widened as the rosy tinge of blood drained away from her face. The dabs of rouge on her cheeks stood out starkly against the white.
"Oh, Freda."
Prepared, Father and Zier caught her as she crumpled. As the bedside chair was already occupied by Agnes, who was absentmindedly stroking Persephia's hair, they led her to the sofa instead. Lady Hyacinth turned to one of her two guardswomen,
"Fetch Healer Hasif. She should be at the herb gardens with Lady Crosset."
Mere moments after the guard rushed outside, another bolted in with a wide-eyed look which seldom heralded pleasant news,
"My lady, Healer Hasif requests your audience at her lab." She gasped. Lady Hyacinth raised her eyebrow, affronted at being summoned by her own subject. However, her displeasure faded when the guard clarified,
"The Lady Hadrian has broken into her lab and barricaded herself inside. She's also taken Lord Ahmundi hostage."
"What?"
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