CHAPTER SIX: ALEXANDRIA

by Josh Reynolds

Ari Quinn sat back in her chair and watched the crowded waterfront below. The hotel was a good one; not great. But the view was exceptional. The Corniche ran along the eastern harbor of the city, and was a main arterial route for traffic. It was the heartbeat of the city. A fathom bell rang out across the water, and she turned to the woman sitting in the chair next to hers. “We really need to stop meeting like this. People will talk.”

“Which people?” Alessandra Zorzi asked, as she lit a cigarette. She passed the latter to Quinn, who took it with a nod of thanks. “Your employers in the Foundation? Or merely the great unwashed? Regardless, what does it matter?”

“To you? Nothing, I suppose. To me, my career – my reputation…” Quinn shook her head. “I don’t even know how this happened!” She paused. “Again!”

Alessandra lit a cigarette for herself. “I am told that I am quite charming.”

Quinn laughed. “I suppose that’s the word for it.”

Alessandra frowned. “That is a fine thing to say to me. How hurtful.” She reclined in her seat and blew sulky rings of smoke into the air. She was beautiful, Quinn had to admit. There were worse people to do something stupid with. “And I suppose you will want to talk about work now? So tedious.”

“It’s why I came to Alexandria,” Quinn said, feeling guilty despite knowing better. Alessandra was dangerous that way. Once she got her hooks into you, it was hard to extricate yourself, even if you knew the risk. Especially if you knew the risk.

“It is why we came,” Alessandra corrected, gently.

“Speaking of us, when is your little pal coming back?”

“My… pal? You mean Pepper? I sent her to keep an eye out for our guests.”

“Good,” Quinn said. “I don’t want her overhearing anything she shouldn’t. Loose lips, etcetera.” She put an edge in her voice. Alessandra smiled lazily.

“I tell her everything anyway, you know.”

“That’s on you. As long as she doesn’t hear it from me.” Gripped by a sudden need for distance, Quinn stood and went to the edge of the balcony. It had been a strange trip. She’d met Alessandra and her Southie tagalong in Milan a week ago, and offered the Foundation’s proposal: help them contact the Coterie, in return for fair compensation.

Since then, they’d been chased by agents of the Coterie in the employ of one of its more unpleasant members, encountered a rural Bacchic cult with weird ideas about public nudity, and gotten into a gunfight in Cairo. Oh, and she and Alessandra had – she clamped down firmly on the thought and pushed it aside. It didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that they were in Alexandria, waiting for a summons to meet the Claret Knight. He’d avoided all previous attempts at contact by the Foundation – not without cause, Quinn had to admit – but he was willing to meet Alessandra. Maybe she was charming, at that. Quinn sighed. “The Coterie is up to something.”

“Circling the wagons, I imagine.” Alessandra blew smoke into the air. “While I am not certain what occurred recently in Arkham, it was what some might call a seismic event. The gameboard has been tipped over, or at least thrown into disarray.”

“So I hear,” Quinn said. It was hard to tell what Alessandra knew at any given time. She absorbed information like a sponge. It was one of the reasons Taylor had been so desperate to make contact. The Foundation needed people like Alessandra; people who could see the patterns and weather the storms. “But what do you hear?”

Alessandra peered up at her through a veil of smoke. “About what?”

“Anything. Everything.”

“I hear about arrests; about missing poets and painters; about a nightmare shared by thousands, all across the world,” Alessandra said. “No one knows what’s happening, or if they do, they aren’t talking.”

“Anything less cryptic?” Quinn turned to her. “What’s the Coterie talking about?”

“And why would I know that?”

“That’s why you’re here, right? To talk to one of them?”

Alessandra studied her for a moment and then sighed. “I am not a member of the Coterie, Ari. I know members, yes, but I am not one of them, and thus not privy to the details of their correspondence.”

“But you’re a thief – and thieves know things.”

“Do we? Fine. Let us say we do.” Alessandra shrugged. “All of my peers – Ruby Standish, Arsene Renard, Chauncey Swann, another four or five whom you might even have heard of – their answer to this question will be the same as mine.”

“Which is…?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

Alessandra’s expression was unusually grim. “Because at the moment, it is very dangerous. Thieves profit most in settled times – especially thieves with an interest in the sort of things your lot are interested in. Right now, every cult, every illuminated society, every sisterhood of shadows in the world is on high alert for reasons they do not fully understand. And that makes for dangerous times.”

“So you’re cowards,” Quinn said, bluntly. “Hiding out until it all blows over. Only it’s not going to blow over, is it?”

Alessandra rose gracefully from her seat and joined Quinn at the edge of the balcony. “Darling, I have faced things more terrible than you can imagine – and all in the last bloody year. But a mouse isn’t cowardly for avoiding the eye of a hawk.” She gently brushed a strand of hair out of Quinn’s face. “Still, sometimes a mouse might risk it all – at least for the right incentive, I should say.”

Before Quinn could reply, there was a pointed cough from the doorway. She swallowed and turned to see Pepper Kelly lounging against the doorframe. The young woman was dressed like a man, and would easily blend in with the waterfront crowd. She tipped back the brim of her flat cap and said, “If you two are finished canoodling, we’ve got company.”

“Coterie agents?” Alessandra asked. “If not, someone’s horning in on their style.” Pepper gave Quinn a desultory once-over. “Tuck in your shirt, princess. We’re about to meet an honest-to-gosh knight…”

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