Crown Jewel by Megan Derr

Author:Megan Derr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Less Than Three Press
Published: 2011-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

Outside, Celeste weighed his options, then summoned a rickshaw and told the driver to take him to the Entertainment Quarter quickly. He flipped the man a silver piece when they arrived and clambered out of the seat, brushing dust from his clothes even as he started walking. He did not bother going to the teahouses; while they would undoubtedly provide information, it would take too long and he would have to scrape the useful bits from the lies and half-truths people gave him. No, Celeste had better ways of spending time and coin. If he was hunting who he thought, then he would do better simply to head to the lairs where the monster likely lurked—the dream smoke dens. He hated the dream smoke dens; there was nothing like a room full of fools and lunatics with no control over themselves to put a man completely off humanity. But he had unwittingly helped make this mess and he would set it to rights.

Celeste headed for the Theatre District again, walking away from the teahouses toward the far end of the Theatre District where only the inhabitants ever went. Visitors never saw that corner of the glamorous world of the stage—the shops and boutiques where costumes and paints and everything else was made, the warehouses that stored old sets, props, even entire buildings that had been torn down and hidden away until they could be used again for something else. Some of the buildings also granted access to the Catacombs.

The crown had ordered the Catacombs sealed up once and for all several years ago, on the grounds that they were too dangerous for the average person and provided prime fodder for breeding criminal elements—all of which was true, since the authorities had a damned hard time hunting down the scum that hid in the Catacombs. They still had trouble with it, although much less than they'd had before. Those portions of the Catacombs that could still be accessed were mostly given over to the secret, opulent chaos of the dream smoke dens. The majority of those were right there in the Theatre District, because separating the dens from the Theatre District was like trying to separate sex from the Pleasure District.

It took only a few coppers and the right smile to gain access to a den—but three hours and half a dozen dens later, Celeste still had not found any hint of the man he sought. He hung on the fringes of the latest den, looking on the dream smokers with contempt. They were everything he despised in people multiplied by a hundred—out of control, pretending to be shameless when they really came here to hide from their shame; people who tried too hard to be something they weren't and wasted all of their energy avoiding themselves. They were even worse than actors, and it did not surprise him in the least that most of them were of that profession.

All of the dream smoke lingering in the air was making Celeste's head spin and his eyes sting.

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