Chapter Twenty-Six
CHAPTER
Twenty-Six
THE MEETING ROOM still smells like blood, despite the custodians’ best efforts.
Six chairs, not seven, are placed delicately around the round table. The Hanged Man glances at the centre, still stained red, and turns green. Someone has helpfully placed a bucket next to his seat.
Unusually for these meetings, a fair amount of alcohol has already been consumed by the time they convene.
Kevin’s funeral was a few weeks ago, and they had perhaps gone or not gone, as accorded to their identities outside of this room.
But their Fool is dead, and protocols must be adhered to.
They’ve dressed in their best mourning wear, which for the Moon involves a black coronet, dripping with lace and polished obsidian stones.
The Empress has swapped out her blood-red corset—which was always in poor taste, Temperance thinks—for a black one, studded with diamonds.
Her lipstick is smudged across one side of her mouth.
Judgement is in all black, gloves pulled tightly over their small hands.
Only Temperance and the Hanged Man look much as they always do in their funereal wear.
Five chairs are filled; one remains empty.
The Empress massages her temples in uncharacteristic weariness. “Right, I’ll go first. Another batch of my booksellers have revolted. Something to do with the river, the treatment of the books, blah blah. Any ideas on a solution?”
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that just as the owners have their society, the booksellers have their own petty councils, too. If they don’t like the way a bookshop’s run, well, there are ways of interfering, if not outright thwarting an owner.
Something they’ve done a lot of, lately.
“Sun’s missing,” the Hanged Man says. “Shouldn’t we—”
“Fuck the Sun,” the Empress says. “Let’s just get this over with. Some of us have beds to get back to.”
Several gazes slide to the Empress. It isn’t lost on any of them that someone in this room murdered Kevin. Poor, harmless Kevin, whose greatest fault lay in the misfortune of being himself, it seems.
“Do we know who his bookshop will go to?” Temperance says tersely.
The Empress wags a manicured finger at him. “Don’t get greedy.”
“Didn’t he have a sister? Or a cousin?” the Hanged Man asks.
There’ll be someone else to take over. There always is.
The bookshop must always have an owner, after all.
Or else disintegrate under the weight of its volatile magic, with no caretaker to maintain its stock, or to keep the balance of power in check.
And the river is already stretched too thinly across what remains.
Every tributary bookshop, every drop of magic, buys them a little more time.
“The bookshop is gone.” Judgement’s voice cuts through the air.
“Gone?” the Hanged Man echoes. “But he had a protégé—”
Judgement shakes their head. “Not like that. Like the Sage.”
“Maud,” Temperance says tightly. “She rejected the title, so we shouldn’t give it to her.”
They all look at each other, a new worry overtaking the less imminent one of murder. Another tributary bookshop vanished, dried up despite their efforts. And the river all the weaker for it.
“There will be no successor, then,” Temperance says.
The Moon looks at Temperance with a calculating smile. “Why? Did you have someone in mind? A… sibling, perhaps?”
Temperance visibly stiffens; the Moon’s smile widens.
“I would suggest it unwise to threaten me.” Temperance pauses. “That is, if I thought you were capable of wisdom in the first place.”
The Moon flicks their fingers idly at the insult. Too many people have accused them of that for them to be truly offended.
But Temperance isn’t done. “I wonder,” he says, eyes glittering behind his mask, “how bloody your hands are underneath those dainty gloves of yours.”
The Moon’s smile vanishes, replaced with a snarl.
They lunge at Temperance. But Temperance neatly sidesteps them, and the Moon clips their shin on his chair as they tumble to the ground.
In desperation to latch on to something, they grab Judgement’s robes.
Judgement, who moves with the slow, careful gait of the elderly, lets out an irritated shriek as they topple off their own chair.
“Please,” the Hanged Man says, pained—though no one listens to him, as usual.
If Kevin was here, there would be none of this infighting.
He would have done something or said something with a careless idiocy, and then the others would have turned on him, happy for the distraction.
They’ve already forgotten that the Fool has a place at this table for a reason: to entertain, to deflect, to keep what little peace remains.
“Have you lost your fucking minds?”
It’s not Judgement, but the Empress. The swearing, normally so ignorable, shears across the noise, leaving silence in its wake. Her chair shrieks as she stands up.
“You know what, don’t answer that question.” She tosses her magnificent blonde hair. “I’m calling it. Meeting adjourned.”
The Hanged Man looks at her, aggrieved. “But only the Fool—”
She glares at him; he backs down. “Do you want me to drag his fucking corpse to this table to adjourn the meeting? No? Then I’m getting the fuck out of here.”
As they leave, the Moon shoulder-checks Temperance.
It’s petty, beneath both of their dignities.
But the Moon has long held a grudge against Temperance, for reasons involving last-minute auctions, double- and triple-crossing deals—and once, the same romantic interest. It’s fair to say they might have disliked one another for the former, but they’ve never forgiven each other for the latter.
“There might be blood on my hands,” the Moon says. “But do you know what that means, really?”
A flash of teeth. Nails, digging into flesh. Temperance grunts at the pain.
The Moon smiles viciously. “I get things done.”