NationStates Jolt Archive

With special thanks to Amestria, without whose collaboration this project would not have been possible.

It had at last been confirmed, all but the final votes had been counted and the opposition candidate had even telephoned to offer his congratulations. The Lord Mayor and Provost-Viguier of the city of Fängänyn had won his second term in office. He would now have to go out and accept his election victory.

At moments like these, moments he recognised were of great importance in his life, he felt ill-at-ease, self-conscious, a little embarrassed in fact, if he were to be honest. He paced restlessly and then stopped, he sighed, quietly at first and then very loudly, very dramatically, trying to expel the pent-up nervous energy. His heart pounded but that was normal, his breathing was even and relaxed.

Upon a wall, beside the monumental double doors that opened into the crowded ballroom beyond, there hung a tall mirror, framed in exuberantly swept, gilded and painted wood carving. Slowly and thoughtfully he approached it, crossing the hall with steps that squeaked on the shiny lacquer, worried all the while at the general effect of the appearance he beheld in his imagination. The handsome gentleman in full evening dress that peered back at him was scarcely recognisable, had in fact been unrecognisable for many years now. He at least, Jérôme Faustâriel za Vayètte, belonged in these splendid surroundings. He looked an extremely smart and distinguished gentleman, in a fitted scarlet tailcoat over a brocade waistcoat and an elaborately wrapped cravat, tall and well-built, with broad shoulders and slim hips. The glaring lights of the hall had bleached his finely narrowed features – Xirniumite rooms were always sickly overbright – and seemed to the gentleman to give his soft blue-grey eyes a scornful air.

There was none of the doubt the gentleman felt in those contemplative eyes. What right had Zavâyette to be here, when za Vayètte fitted in so well? But the gentleman was za Vayètte, for he could scarcely glimpse a trace of his old self in the tall wall-mirror. Still brooding, he buttoned his tailcoat with a sweeping motion, parting his lips. Was the effect too cool, too unfriendly, or was it by contrast proud and dignified? No it was fine, not too aloof. If only there had been an ice-cool decanter of water with which to slacken the thirst which had settled in his parched throat, but that was just nerves too. The za Vayètte in the mirror didn’t need a drink. He sighed again, although he felt that sighing was becoming trite, and decided his appearance was satisfactory after all, was indeed strikingly handsome. Looking as he did za Vayètte could not but succeed. And unlike those beyond the door, complacent nobles born into old money and landed estates, he possessed a determination and burning drive to succeed. He mumbled something quietly, indistinctly, but stopped because the echoing hall seemed to protest at having its silence disturbed. Instead he untied his neckcloth, and then retied it.

Procrastination was for others, it was uncertain and hesitant, he should be decisive. Striding quickly across the hall and suppressing a childish urge to run and jump he pushed open the great double doors and was suddenly in a world of noise and swirling colour. Here were assembled the friendly upper classes of Fängänyn, film stars and nobles, business chiefs, media barons, writers and poets, politicians, artists and singers. They clapped politely and their murmured comments were a dull roar. The Lord Mayor and Provost-Viguier of Fängänyn raised an elegantly cuff-linked hand to acknowledge them, smiling charmingly. He shook and pressed the hands of those who, because of rank and status, were positioned nearest him, gentlemen and ladies of great import. He kissed the hands of aristocratic benefactresses and whispered words of thanks. Along the wall at the far side of the ballroom was hung a large orange and green flag representing the November List, a centre populist party virtually unknown outside Fängänyn, and along the sinuously fluted marble columns were affixed slender orange and green banners of the same.

‘Thank you, my friends,’ za Vayètte smiled, and waited as the noise slowly, stubbornly subsided.

The ballroom was if possible even brighter than the hall adjoining it, illuminated by too many lamps and hanging crystal chandeliers, each one containing tens of thousands of pieces of cut and polished glass, a dozen galaxies of sparkling silver droplets weighing more than a tonne. The hall was predominantly white and gold, with slight touches of painted vermillion, but this scarcely mattered, for the floodlights and snapping cameras were such that they washed all the colour away. It was also excessively hot, something never uncommon in Xirniumite buildings, where typically the furnaces were left stoked and blazing continuously from September to March, and also uncomfortably crowded, though there were less than two hundred people in the hall. The Xirniumites seemed to excel at invoking a sense of airless claustrophobia in the most open of interior spaces, and the ballroom was certainly not small at some thirty metres wide. But it was prickly overdecorated, with too many florid stucco friezes, too many powdered artificial arrangements of luridly bright flowers, too many fantasticated friezes, all suffocating the senses. It mattered not that the walls were white and clean.

‘My lord, ladies and gentlemen, my dear compatriots, good evening,’ began za Vayètte once again, beaming with pleasure. The crowd had waited impatiently for him to emerge and now silence reigned as they listened. ‘Emotion, powerful and unrestrained, sincere from the heart, overcomes me tonight, as doubtless you will understand. I wish to thank you all for continuing to place your trust in me, to serve this city and her people. It is the greatest honour that once could wish for, and fills me with humility and gratitude. Like all of you, I have always felt incredibly proud to consider myself a burgher of such a great, such an ancient, and such a cultured city, Fängänyn the Beautiful. Hers is a bright, grand destiny, and I’ve no illusions as to the weight of responsibility that you have continued to allow me to bear as guardian of that dream.’

***

Not all that many people had come to Heldêvara Square to listen as the opposition candidate made his concession speech. Large segments of the crowd were Socialist Forum supporters who had volunteered part of their time for the campaign, distributing pamphlets or erecting political placards about the city. Others were members of affiliated organisations, like the Students’ Unions or Fabianist societies. Still others were the writers and artists of Fängänyn, ever essential to political campaigns in the Bright Republic.

There were not one but two worlds of letters that existed in Fängänyn. Both claimed to be fabulous oases of intellect and wit, places where writers and artists, the latter-day knights of the Bright Republic, jousted not with lances but with quickly flowing repartee. Both circles were elitist and discriminating, enforcing a type of aristocracy of the mind. But that was where the similarities largely ended.

The first literary circle held court in the drawing rooms and salons of Fängänyn, and it was this world that the Lord Mayor za Vayètte and his party the November List had courted to great effect. Its members were the celebrity intellectuals of the commentariat, their names printed in the lifestyle columns of the papers and known to all the public, made rich by their second and third edition publication runs and by theatre box office figures. They gossiped and backstabbed incessantly.

The second literary circle was the one that the Socialist Forum had traditionally counted on for intellectual support, and unlike their swankier colleagues in the writers’ fraternity they gathered usually in run-down cafés and crowded coffeehouses. These were the lisping aesthetes and starving artists, the true bohemians, convinced of their own great genius but hidden in mediocrity. Many of these people had come to Heldêvara Square, where with their colleagues they might criticise in patronising tones the popular choice of the burghers of Fängänyn, or perhaps just flaunt their well-cultivated pessimism.

Of course some of the people in Heldêvara Square were not, strictly speaking, interested in politics at all. Young sweethearts might recline on intricate cast-iron benches and whisper secret things to one another, gazing absently at the old buildings, aristocratic mansions and palaces in Baroque and Neoclassic facades that surrounded the square, each a subtly different hue by day, pale yellows and creamy whites, coral pink, powdery blue and smoky green, though all seemed whitish grey in the indelicate floodlight.

Parents living in the residential districts nearby often brought their children to the square to run and play, and tonight was no exception. The children, curious as they were, went to see the few forlornly flapping banners of the vanquished, delighting at the red and grey streamers tied about sundry flagpole finials, reading aloud the few wittily chosen slogans. They hummed along with the catchy modern tunes that played from loudspeakers lashed to the overbright lamps of the square. The children of course were not the only ones to amble closer to the crowd, the better to catch a glimpse of the rally, but generally it was the Socialist Forum’s supporters who clustered at the northern end of the square, about a low stage erected beside the statue of some long-since forgotten patron of the Elderflower Revolution, their necks craning to catch a glimpse of their candidate.

Xáver Haynêrth was a tall, intelligent looking gentleman with a short, untidy crop of wiry coal-black hair and an overpale countenance. His features were owlish and dignified, but affable. He wore spectacles on his nose and had watery grey-green eyes hid something of a quirky zeal. Beneath his polite habits and bohemian temperament there dwelt what seemed to be the soul of a kindly if slightly ridiculous university professor, the type that wore leather patches over his jacket elbows and whose hairstyle was never particularly fashionable. Like most gathered in the square he had on a thick, knitted scarf, gaily bright, which he looped high around his neck and tucked into his practical, heavy brown overcoat.

‘Thank you, thank you, my dear, dear friends, for your touching support and for the effort, hard work and long hours invested by you all during this tough campaign,’ Haynêrth began, his magnified voice frightening the hoards of white-grey and reddish chequered pigeons that called Heldêvara Square home. Startled into the air, they abandoned the paving stones to coo resentfully from the narrow ledges of nearby buildings. ‘I wanted more dearly than you can know to provide for everyone who supported us, but it seems we were fated to fall short of the final prize this time at least.’

A few volunteers were handing out fresh, flaky praline-filed pastries and chocolate meringue kisses with cups of steaming hot coffee. While a few grateful members of the crowd munched on these welcome refreshments, others cheered a little at their candidate.

‘It was from here, my friends, that four weeks ago today we launched our campaign for the mayorship, a principled, uplifting campaign,’ he continued. ‘We began with scarcely a single political analyst or psepholohist giving us a prospect of electoral victory. And yet we received the highest share of the votes in the first round, more indeed than the Lord Mayor za Vayètte, and have increased our vote in the run-off compared with previous election campaigns, though to what precise extent remains to be seen given the ballots left to be counted this evening.’

At this small consolation, a few of the more grimly determined candidates and those who had finished their praline pastries or who could find a place to rest their coffee clapped.

‘I would like to thank everyone who believed in us, who voted for the principles of social equity and social consensus that my party the Socialist Forum represents,’ Haynêrth explained. ‘I would like to thank, again, all of the supporters of the Socialist Forum. I am particularly indebted to my personal staff, who like you all have worked tirelessly for our progressive cause. It has been a distinct honour to represent the Socialist Forum in this campaign.’

More people clapped and cheered, and a few waved flags and banners.

‘I regret not for a moment any of the policies we ran on,’ he continued, smiling encouragingly. ‘They were right and we should be proud of them. We’ve supported opportunity for all who live in Fängänyn, we’ve dared to imagine something bigger and better. The evening papers have written that we’ve run a brave campaign, that we’ve stood on principle and conviction and that the electorate, though they have rejected us and have consigned the Socialist Forum to Opposition, respect me all the more for my honesty. That’s not enough for me and I know that’s not enough for you. I vow to you now to continue the fight, and in the coming months and years I will continue in my democratic role of holding his Lordship the Mayor and Provost-Viguier to account.’

Stuffing the few notes that he held into his inner coat-pocket, Haynêrth descended at a jog the small wooden stage amidst a swell of clapping and cheering. At the bottom he was met by a press of individuals eager to shake his hand or offer their support.

‘Well done!’ managed one fairly elderly gentleman who grasped at his hand.

In his late sixties and smiling kindly, like a benevolent bachelor uncle, the gentleman had been an activist of the old school of Xirniumite progressivism and had supported Haynêrth from the start. He was tall and thin, almost rake-like inside his overlarge double-breasted coat, which wrapped tightly around him and exaggerated his angular form with its shoulder padding.

‘Thank you!’ exclaimed another supporter, this one a fluttery middle-aged lady who had to stretch out her arm to reach him.

Pleased to have finally shook her candidate’s hand she stood back and touched at her watch as she watched Haynêrth wade through the crowd. Her hair had several grey strands and yet she had left it undyed in the manner of a fashionable Xirniumite matron, though in contrast it had been cut short to the shoulder. There was an unconventional stylishness to her - in place of the usual red her lipstick was tinted with a striking heliotrope purple, she wore strange hanging earrings and a white turtleneck. Her lips were thin and austere. She was a party member, which occasionally made for interesting table conversations with her easily bemused Liberal-voting husband.

Further from the stage, a cheery undergrad student and her phlegmatic boyfriend met the candidate and shook his hand. She wore cute little glasses and a light pink woollen poncho buttoned only at its floppy collar, with hair that had been dyed chestnut brown. His dark brown hair was flounced forward and out in a dashing and messy style, and went well with a debonair designer coat whose collar he left standing upright and lapels stood jutting out strikingly. It flared dramatically below the waist, where his hands remained warm inside its pockets, with tails flapping slightly in the chill air.

‘Better luck next time?’ she smiled, eternally optimistic. The defeated candidate thanked them. There would definitely be a next time; Haynêrth knew he would have another chance.

After he had moved on the young woman turned to her boyfriend. ‘His poetry was really wonderful?’

At the edge of the crowd, in front of a stately but modest car that waited to receive him, Haynêrth turned and thanked the assembled once more. He asked that they not linger for too long, as it was cold and getting colder, and with a final wave ducked inside his car and out of sight. The reporters on hand whose job it was to dissect the speech were agreed that Haynêrth’s was a thoroughly respectable concession. Most were left with the impression of a great dignity in the presence of defeat.

***

It was one of those hopelessly trendy places, more pretentious than the would-be celebutantes with whom it seemed endlessly popular and just seedy enough to be all the rage amongst the wealthier Xirniumites. The overall style was an unlikely fusion of deco chic and Scandinavian minimalism with a postmodernist twist, all plastics in deep purples and violent blues, with several rows of floor-to-ceiling vita-glass windows and glossily painted ferroconcrete floors. Zsuzsánna Flavërgnë, the famous columnist, sat on one of the club’s many overscaled velvet upholstered banquettes, sipping a cloudy milk-white cocktail that despite its exciting-sounding name, Anticipation of a Lover’s Return, was an unmemorable mix of lime juice and rum.

Washing softly over the space, the unnatural illumination of the glowing bars and subdued ceiling lighting cast dark and intimate shadows. Walls were upholstered in different shades of blue and set with circular, mottled mirrors. The club was a swirl of colours from the artist’s palette, with hints of vibrant reds and touches of gold in addition to the spectrum of purples and blues. Shimmering beaded curtains, like insubstantial waterfalls, separated different sections of the club, the private bars from the dancing stages and the patrons’ lounges. The air was heavy and thick with smoke, the dry ice mist forming spiralling whorls and eddies within the blinking purple beams emitted by hidden projector lights. Sounds seemed relatively quiet and strangely muted, as though perhaps they were heard underwater, and a dull throb in the walls was discernable from the synthesised music playing in the disco hall below. Tonight the area was unusually empty.

The columnist was neither as cute as the ultra-trendy female staff members, with their sheer black silk skirts and filmy white blouses, nor as young as the frivolous party-going socialites who on certain nights crowded throughout the club, high on cocaine or appellation contrôlée wines, but she exuded her own unique modicum of class. She wore very dark cherry lipstick and a somewhat conservatively styled business suit, indicating perhaps that Flavërgnë had come straight from work without a moment to change. And yet there were also hints that she had dressed with foresight for the evening, with little touches of charcoal on her eyebrows, which she plucked, with little liberal splashes of gold jewellery, suggesting her hurriedness was more affectation than truth.

The columnist fidgeted with her earrings, white diamonds with white gold, she twisted the chain of her filigree necklace round and round her finger. There was a warm, thrilling exoticness to her expensive perfume, which combined the powerful scent of labdanum resin with patachouli leaves, clashing strongly in theme with the reservedness of her skirted attire.

It had all proven something of a wasted effort, reflected Flavërgnë, who had found the takings at the club depressingly lean. All the really interesting men were already with company, usually younger and in skimpier skirts, and that left few alternatives. Her eyes roamed and examined. There were of course the businessmen with more money than personality or wit, the tedious fashion executives and movie financiers. She mistrusted their eyes, they seemed to look around impersonally.

There was also a dandy by one of the mirrors who Flavërgnë knew, Fabrice za Vyttsà, a gossip columnist and men’s fashion writer for glossy magazines and periodicals. He kept tugging down at his gold-laced silk waistcoat and running his fingers through his hair - ridiculously light, soft dark hair brushed into glossy curls. Far too much publicity seemed to surround this self-absorbed exquisite, Flavërgnë’s own columns occasionally made reference to his latest controversies, and he was forever involved in some bitchy, acrimonious exchange or another. It was all much more trouble than she needed. Mercifully za Vyttsà decided that wooing someone who made him a subject of popular fun was beyond even he, and he was trying his luck instead with a pretty honey blonde with large blue-grey eyes.

The columnist sighed, she could not bear to sit still, her clear-eyed face looked bored and impatient. Distracted, she had finished her drink too quickly, and Flavërgnë had always felt the only thing more unbecoming than sitting on a banquette alone was doing so without a drink. She rose to buy another drink and sat at one of the barrel-shaped stools at the bar, where she waited impatiently for the bartender to finish serving some other woman, watchful and alert so that no one else could steal his attention before her.

The bartender was a gentleman of slightly above ordinary height, though broad-shouldered and deep-chested. He had a vaguely upturned nose and high cheekbones, the lines of his mouth were slightly crooked, as though he were given to wry glances. His countenance was bright with healthy hues, but long, delicate and pale. In place of a more traditional cravat he had pinned in his shirt-front a pretentious group of lavender-coloured violets. He wore a velvet surcoat the shade of indigo blue and a turquoise-embroidered waistcoat, with a pattern of long-stemmed blossoms spreading from heart-shaped acanthus leaves, a shirt with a flat-pleated frill, and close-fitting cobalt-coloured trousers. His hair was coal-black, beautifully brushed and powdered.

The columnist found him quite handsome and charming, possessing the perfect mix of strong wide shoulders and powerful, sleek long legs. He was a young man, perhaps twenty-five, with attractive light glacial eyes. Though affectedly concerned with his clothing and appearance he had driven all youthful softness from his figure, replacing it with the rigid hardness of a man who regularly trained. Flavërgnë could discern corded muscles in his arms, on his chest, pinching in his lower torso above his narrow hips. He had just given a direction to a pretty little barmaid with large almond-shaped eyes, glitter in her hair and wilful, petulant lips and she nodded enthusiastically, biting at her lip as she turned and skipped to her task. When the bartender finally turned to Flavërgnë, she misheard his first question.

‘Mmm?’ she asked, ridding her mind of one particularly persistent image.

‘Another Anticipation of a Lover’s Return for the beautiful lady sitting all alone?’ asked the bartender smoothly, his voice just loud enough to be heard above the muffled throbbing of the music.

The columnist nodded quickly.

At the bar she noticed a muted television screen that had been set to a commercial station where news reporters were glossing over the results of the mayoral election. A young artificially pale-blonde anchorwoman who certainly seemed enthusiastic enough but lacked something of the presence required for journalism was interviewing a well-known psephologist and election analyst.

With the sound off it had become more noticeable that the pretty journalist seemed at times to stare a little fixedly during the commentator’s response, that she pressed her lips together in pensive thought before each unheard question, and that her eyes blinked rapidly. The faint animation on the psephologist’s face every time he got to share a few more of his well-memorized facts and figures was also more apparent. As the stuffy gentleman’s lips moved it occurred to Flavërgnë that she mostly only ever heard him during election nights, where he was usually first to call the return or defeat of a government, and never outside election campaigns.

Flavërgnë wondered what he got up to the rest of the time.

Maybe he freelanced in the Resurgent Dream, where there were over a hundred governments with all manner of bizarre voting systems. Maybe he just read opinion polls and bided his time. It was a perplexing curiosity.

From za Vayètte’s proud, beaming smile, it seemed that the Lord Mayor and Provost-Viguier of Fängänyn had been reelected to a second term. A cursory glance at the digital tally list and little swing bar graphics at the bottom of the screen confirmed this. It was a welcome development, so long as the za Vayètte remained in office, she would always be able to placate her editor’s demand for the next column by churning out tactless, amusing little pieces on his extra-curricular antics.

Of course Flavërgnë had not been invited to the Lord Mayor’s heady victory celebrations. Partly it was because she was often searingly critical of his policies and behaviour, attacking him to widespread amusement on a diverse range of topics from immigrant workers to homelessness to his costly attempts to rid Fängänyn of crows. Partly it was because she took such an irreverent, mocking tone on his personal life. In one of her most lively articles, “Beware of the Dog”, she had compared za Vayètte’s ill-advised, intoxicated, and public affairs with his colleagues’ wives to the scandalous antics of Séverin Vanäntä, the extraordinary rich and hunky, though of course pathologically unfaithful, lead male character of Little White Lies, who at the end of last season had fallen off a bridge.

From the small snakeskin-leather valise Flavërgnë often carried to work she retrieved a notebook and a shiny black pen. The bartender watched curiously. The columnist had already thought of a working title for her next week’s column, which of necessity would focus on the election’s unremarkable though not unimpressive outcome, and she was eager to put it down in ink. She paused for a moment, glancing at her new drink, which she had yet to sip, and quickly scribbled across the page in her tiny, looped, slanting copperplate hand, “Our Operatic Regime Continues”, underlining it twice. The columnist tapped her fingernails on the bar and then wrote whatever came to her mind.

She used no plan or even a vague outline, instead writing fragments of sentences here, making brief notes of popular culture there. Gradually something like a thesis emerged from the clutter, one written for the voyeurs-turned-armchair psychologists whose favourite guilty pleasure these last four years had been analysing the nouveau riche pretensions of Fängänyn’s newly reelected Lord Mayor. Her scratchings were frightfully indecipherable - punctuation was inconsistently applied, capitalisation was eccentric, and hyphenation was prolific. Multiple sections were not neatly crossed out but scribbled over messily.

Satirising the mayoral election as something like a long-running soap opera seemed a natural step. The Lord Mayor, or as Flavërgnë had named him, Lord Vettie, was, with a little bit of imagination, Lucillian Váncillon from You Didn’t Here This from Me, having bounced back from early mishaps to claim the final prize, the mayoralty - although a poor first round didn’t quite compare with three years in a comma after being hit on the back of the head by a cheated wife. The opposition candidate, who she called Mister Herth, was Nithard za Navônne from The Pink and the Green. Well meaning and affable enough, certainly clever or at least impliedly so with his bookish looks and noble airs, but lacking the raw charisma and natural self-assured presence needed to compete against his flashier and more exciting rival.

Articles like these tended almost to write themselves, and Flavërgnë’s mind wondered around the club as she scribbled in her notebook. By the mirror, she was pleased to see that the slim little blonde with the black vinyl miniskirt had vanished, leaving za Vyttsà alone and tapping his fingertips on the table, with a hapless look and two very downcast, empty glasses. Flavërgnë smiled with an uncharitable delight.

***

Even at this late hour of the evening, amblers, passers-by, strollers and loafers were common on busy Voralêmnar Street. The moon had just come out, wintry and bleak, and the street was bathed in a pale white light. Gas-jets, entrapped within heavy iron lanterns, illuminated an arcade lined with long restaurant windows and glittering shop displays, and the inside of one charming, popular café could be seen. At one end was located a long, dark wooden bar, at the other end a corkscrew-shaped, iron staircase afforded access to a narrow balcony on the first floor. It was a quaint, bottle-green, wooden building, with a curiously sheepish facade, the Café Nârvinya, and it formed the corner of Voralêmnar Street. Its milky-white panes of glass blazed with light and heat from within, causing it to resemble with some imagination a great lantern, burning like a beacon even in the mistiest Xirniumite night.

The air inside was stifling, the warmth was heavy, and suffocating, and close, like a greenhouse. An odour of alcohol, similar to that of a cellar, permeated the hazy café. At the bar, where many rows of glistening, almost dripping, tulip-shaped wineglass hung upside down from racks above the bartenders’ heads, there were displayed the many series of ports, the pale and dark vermouths, the sherries and their derivatives, and the sweet and sour wines, all of which could be purchased by the cask, or the bottle, or just the glass. The café was sparsely crowded, with three or four small groups of men and women seated at zinc-topped tables, talking now quietly, now loudly, though it was apparent that their conversations had been disturbed. Their usually familiar and unguarded, complacent gestures had faded to sourness, their good humour replaced with a wary distractedness. Their tones were no longer affectionate, or dulcet, but seemed ill at ease.

As he often talked in public and wrote a great deal, had once been a journalist for the influential left-wing protest newspaper Provocateur, and was commonly regarded as a man of great personal energy and spirit, as well as trenchant beliefs, Hyàcinthe Verulâm found himself a man much sought after and listened to by ordinary people with unsophisticated views. Three years in university, a lifetime in cafés, and all the philosophical writings he had read without ever understanding them profoundly had qualified him for the world of political commentary. He was a terrible ranter and often expressed the strangest of political theories, taken quite incorrectly for enunciations of conscientious indignation by his supporters. His popularity had led to his current appointment as a columnist on the Internet-based arts and culture magazine Loadstone, a role in the long-popular and influential satirical newspaper The Speculative Contrarian, and occasional articles in the slick, sophisticated monthly news magazine VQ, aimed at the affluent so-called “wing-collar workers” of Xirnium.

Tonight Verulâm sat awkwardly and alone at the end of the bar. His dress-coat collected high, in pleats about his upper back and shoulders, like the wings of a vulture, and he hunched as he stared morosely at a news report. His eyes were deep-set and limpid, blood-shot, with the sooty blackness of insomnia around them. A waxen complexion, greyish in hue, had set in about a drawn face, which seemed at once livid and lifeless. Verulâm grumbled at the report, taking issue with both the outcome of the mayoral election and its implications, and drew by turns resentful glances, perservering disregard and disturbed gasps from the patrons of the Café Nârvinya.

At his side he had an oval bottle of wine the colour of deep amaranth purple, of the venerable old Vangilôt vineyards famous for their chamomile-flavoured sherries. The label described its contents as “dark and medium-sweet” and “very light delicate” with the finest flor and Amôrnilla grapes, and made much of the fact that in the early nineteenth century it had been a favourite at the loyalist court of the prince-electors of Angärthä, “during the reign of Valáfariel Neuvêstnaya”. Ever the public historian, Verulâm had torn the yellowing label angrily from the bottle. It left streaks of tattered paper, with fragments of gothic type, and part of a picture of a stately grey chateau, but no reference to the recently departed monarchy.

At the start of the year Verulâm had registered a change in his place of residence for the specific purpose of voting in Fängänyn’s mayoral election. He was deeply critical of the Lord Mayor, and had penned dozens of attacks against him that had been published in several local newspapers. In the mornings he would call for them at the café, replying indignantly if the paper in question was not yet standing on the rack and demanding that it be bought at a newsstand for him at once. Verulâm would exclaim to himself as he read his articles, looking for all the world like an everyday gentleman in his frock-coats and trousers of finest cloth, drinking his coffee, or sometimes his tea or wine, and drawing attention from any patrons seated next to him. He would carefully leave the paper open at the page of his column after paying his bill, and cast glances over his shoulder as he pulled himself from his chair and briskly gained the door.

There was no insolent swagger in his movements tonight, though. In fact he grew more and more grim, more and more agitated, as the Lord Mayor’s return was confirmed.

The news report had dragged on beyond the ballot count, the early swing analysis, and the victory and concession speeches of the two rivals, so that now the host of the programme was interviewing a familiar left-wing commentator from the University of Närväryn. Kévin Hêldor was aged in his early forties, not handsome but certainly good looking, with a very neat and very tidy appearance. He was well-groomed, his jet-black hair swept casually to one side, and had a slim though not slight figure. Affixed with gilt brass buttons to his stiff, starched shirt were detachable collars, which he wore with a flashy silk tie and a black satin waistcoat. Over his shoulders he wore an overcoat with a velvet collar.

The academic spoke confidently and with frequent digressions to obscure literature. He chuckled a little as he made a small joke, referencing an obscure character in the post-Vynêthean psychoanalytical novel of some forgotten nineteenth century Intuitionalist poet. Mentioning the brooding setting of one of the last, forgotten spasms of the Neo-Ambiguist School.

‘That wasn’t funny,’ growled Verulâm, his hand gripping the neck of the wine bottle suspiciously. At a nearby table a couple made noises of distaste and scrapped chairs against the floor as they stood to leave.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ whispered the gentleman in one of those indignant voices that carries to every corner of the room. Helping the lady into her rain-cloak as he picked up his silk umbrella – the two had come admirably well prepared – he guided her with a hand at her shoulder. Verulâm turned to watch them go with a type of half-sideways twist, but found the report seizing his attention again.

‘One curious point is that we’ve not yet really seen the results of the Fängänyn elections, which for the last three terms have placed in power regional parties exclusively, replicated in the other administrative capitals, like Ingàthern or Elvërhëlm,’ explained Hêldor after a tiny pause for thought. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, these are mayoralties held by the major national parties. Of course you do from time to witness the phenomenon of somewhat geographically-localised parties, um, the Radical-Socialist Party of Eldarêndi, the preposterously whimsically-named Popular Democratic Convergence in Anáryadal, but they’re for the most party minor parties, or alternative parties.’

‘And yet here it seems the major parties are as far away from the mayoralty as ever,’ the reporter pointed out.

‘Quite right,’ agreed the commentator with a nod, shifting a little in his seat as he cleared his throat. ‘And I think that the major parties have yet to grapple adequately with the exact reasons for this, which was reflected of course in the outcome. Whatever else contributed to za Vayëttë’s victory, the Progressive Party ran a poor campaign. Both poorly planned, in that the message chosen and policy grounds they sought to fight upon weren’t ones that particularly resonated with voters, and poorly executed, in the sense that the issues of timing and packaging were ill considered. But they certainly demonstrated quite a fundamental misunderstanding of the mood of the electorate.’

‘Could you elaborate on that point about packaging, as you call it?’ the anchorwoman inquired.

‘Sure,’ agreed Hêldor. ‘Well I think that their candidate, for example, was poorly chosen. This election revealed that the Progressives really have some serious problems with talent in Fängänyn, since Mister Vaúblen definitely did not fare well against the far more photogenic and flashier za Vayëttë. He was not dynamic enough - in particular he gave a very lukewarm performance in his only televised debate with the Lord Mayor and Mister Haynêrth, who were both at their oratorical best – and he failed to inspire. Of course, the local Progressive Party’s pre-selection controversy and caucus brawling, not to mention public recriminations and allegations of branch-stacking, did not look good.’

‘It’s interesting you mention that, because of course at the national caucus of the Progressive Party is one of the most disciplined and united in Xirniumite politics,’ explained the reporter.

‘I think that’s probably based more on personality politics than ideological fissures,’ frowned the sociologist. ‘Prime Minister Gildá possesses that curious mixture of subtlety, effectiveness and civility which has united the factions into a disciplined and congruent cohort. She’s nuanced and shrewd and a proficient networker. Of course, the Progressives are now facing the problems that come with long-term success and a lack of any real internal debate. All of their revisionist left-of-centre goals have been accomplished, and their intellectual justification as guardian of the Elderflower Revolution has run its course.’

‘I’d like, if we can, to shift our focus to the Liberal Party now-’ indicated the anchorwoman. ‘Let’s stay on the theme of ideology.’

‘There is a perception that the Liberal Party has lost its way and no longer knows what it stands for,’ Hêldor began. ‘Voters want more than the disingenuous promise of a Progressive Party with lower taxes and more market-efficient services, which seems to be the timid position advanced by most in the Liberal leadership nowadays. By some quirk of fate the Liberals appeared to field a candidate subscribing more to the latter mould than the former, somebody earnest and personable with few interesting ideas - such as a curious experimental approach to transport services and policing - but he never had a chance of winning.’

‘Why do you say that?’ pressed the journalist.

‘For reasons quite outside of his control Vogàret was never able to make a good case,’ Hêldor explained. ‘Part of the problem lay in assuming that a careful, systematic deconstruction of the mayor’s populist administration by way of detailed policy papers and manifestoes would provide the splash of cold water the electorate needed. Of course no one doubts he is the municipal technocrat par excellence, but the voters he was – or, at least, should – have been targeting are not looking merely for sound administration.’

‘Of course not!’ scoffed the columnist Verulâm, who had been silent for some time. ‘That’s because the Sceptrists and Erminites wanted someone who could nurture their restoration fantasies, not someone who likes to play with model trains!’

‘It was interesting to see how the bitter contest between the parliamentary coalition partners harmed the Green candidate. The goal may have been to undermine the Greens’ primary rival for centre-left votes, but it proved a distracting, messy brawl which backfired. The November List also showed some ingenious electioneering, outflanking the Greens with their own ecological planning policies which by contrast received strong business support.’

‘A strategy, I might add, that the Nationalist Unity Party has also tried to use in national politics,’ the reporter pointed out.

‘The NUP however provides the best illustration of the generally sage advice that national success does not necessarily translate into results at the local level,’ explained Hêldor, his lips curling slightly at one of the few encouraging developments that the intelligentsia could take from the election. ‘Ironically their greatest flaw lies in the reason for their recent gains in Parliament, and serves as an interesting lesson for the November List as they prepare to move into national politics. You see the NUP, like the November List, is a party built around a popular, charismatic, perhaps larger-than-life figure – there’s definitely a bit of a cult of personality incorporated into their appeal. Augústine Verdâlgelot comes across as suave, intelligent and stylish, but the local chapters of his movement are rife with infighting and mediocre yes-men or embarrassingly inflammatory greycoats. The content of their message didn’t change and, really, all that talk about kicking the foreigners out of the Bright Republic or protecting Xirnium’s pagan roots from fundamentalist Abrahamic extremists simply sells itself. When it’s delivered by a dull functionary, however, or worse a fiery duckspeaker, it just doesn’t have the same effect, not much at all in fact. Za Vayètte was much more stylish, much more exciting, and the NUP suffered because of it. If the two parties didn’t appeal to substantially the same class of people the November List might not have been so successful at almost completely undercutting them.’

‘Any lessons for the future?’ asked the journalist.

‘The NUP will always face difficulties dealing with the type of meteoric personalities that tend to rise and fall in local politics,’ Hêldor pronounced. ‘Their constituency – I mean their mainstream one and not their core – is not a loyal one. They are not an established party – indeed, they are formed out of voter apathy and disaffection with the middle-road process. In effect they have poached voters away from the various major parties by clever use of targeted wedge issues, but there’s no coherent base of support. You can’t build a real movement out of a few radical positions. It’s an important lesson. Live by populism, die by populism.’

‘And finally, as it seems we’ve run out of time, the November List.’

‘This result seems to have finally validated the November List’s claim to a maturity and sophistication at once comparable to that of the established centre parties and broader in scope than the NUP,’ the academic explained. ‘In repeating the stellar outcome of last term they have demonstrated the ability to adapt to the vagaries of public opinion and the well-funded campaign tactics of seasoned political opponents. It’ll be interesting to see where they go to from here.’

A group of friends, sitting in the window under a gas-burner shaped like a “U”, had been trying through all the interruptions to finish their game of euchre, and determined that the time had come to take their leave. They took the opportunity to pay a waitress for their drinks – two purple pitchers of wine, a single glass of shoe-polish black walnut cordial and a bottle of Vesseldardil-side brandy – before striding out of the Café Nârvinya. The essayist ignored them and continued to watch the news. Meanwhile, the news programme had moved on, and a new person was being interviewed.

The academic had a curious manner of speaking. At first she left little in the way of a definite impression, save perhaps of a slight staleness, but steadily one accumulated a list of observed mannerisms, with which anyone could have imitated her. She spoke measurably and at a slightly slower tempo than the usual Närvärynian staccato. The reason for this became apparent as one listened, for she chose her words carefully and for precision from a wide though unpresumptuous vocabulary. The effect was like listening to an essay being read aloud. The slightest question derailed her, like a train caught in an avalanche, leaving her to um and ah for up to half a minute as she amassed the verbal paragraphs to reply. She was, however, surprisingly funny, lacing her commentary with a mordant humour delivered without the slightest change of pitch or modulation.

She explained the poem that za Vayètte had recited from in his acceptance speech. Dreams under Autumn Stars was a panegyrical pagan sonnet from after the Elderflower Revolution. Its Xirnium was a sacred land and fortress, where the Gods and their truest servants found sanctuary and stood firm against the demoniac.

The essayist didn’t know what precisely he found so infuriating about the poem. In the tortured reflection of its elegiac couplets it subversively recalled an Arcadian, pastoral paradise that the Xirniumite Isles had never been. Pagandom’s promise of a supreme harmony with natural surroundings and the power that flowed irresistibly from it was, Verulâm knew, the ideological foundation for vicious, disturbing creeds. Nothing was questioned in a universe where nature, heaven and humankind were perfectly balanced, everything was provided for in the order of things. Fortress Xirnium, chosen land and sacred refuge of the true gods from the rampaging forces of desert demonism. A wild, only semi-tamed, dark age place of powerful priestesses, wandering sorcerers, walled city states, and violent landed warriors; all connected together as one by a single holy meeting hall and single divinely sanctioned throne. Of course za Vayètte didn’t recite any lines in the epic that referred to the monarchy; that would have been unsubtle.

Verulâm’s very vocal indignation, of course, proved even less articulate than his rambling thoughts. Unable to ignore him – as some most had studiously tried – any longer, most of the patrons had left the wine-shop, and those who had not were shifting to the tables vacated by those who had been sitting further away from him. A few glanced at him resentfully, but it was not in their nature to seek confrontation, and in frustration they did not know what to do.

‘Sit, damn you! Sit!’ he cried as, half stumbling, as he got on his feet, hand waving to encompass the room. He added incomprehensible demands and slurred complaints, wavered for a bit before collapsing into his chair and pulling out a slender, slightly bent cigarette.

The bartender, whose expression had been a mixture of quiet desperation and shame at the drunkard’s conduct, became animated at this action.

‘I’m afraid you can’t smoke here,’ he patiently reminded Verulâm. The bartender’s countenance hardened sternly as he summoned courage from the machinery of bureaucracy – rules were rules.

‘No smoking, in a coffeehouse? In Xirnium? What nonsense!’ replied the essayist, groping in his jacket for his lighter. ‘You’d think this was an operating theatre.’

‘Those are our public enjoyment and occupational health and safety regulations,’ the humourless bartender explained. ‘Smoking has been against the law in all cafés and bars since the first of October.’

‘But that’s just intolerable!’ the drunken essayist declared, becoming increasingly incensed as he looked for his lighter in vain. ‘You can’t ban smoking in coffeehouses. Do you think Zavâyette follows all these rules, these regulations? Of course not, but then he’s cruel and chameleonlike, who suspects him?’

‘The café will get a five thousand crown penalty,’ the bartender tried to explain.

A lady stood up from her table of friends and said abruptly, without preparing Verulâm in the least for her declaration, ‘I actually think that smoking is a dreadful habit, and doing it in a room full of strangers is entirely inconsiderate. I support the ban. It lets everyone breathe fresh clean air and you don’t have to worry about your clothes and hair and stuff smelling like cigarettes the next day and it’s healthy too.’

And she sat down like a concerned resident who had made a point at a town-hall meeting, shifting excitably but looking stern.

For a moment Verulâm was quite flabbergasted. She was a rather strange young lady, wrapped in a brown threadbare shawl like an antique piano covering, holding a white tourist umbrella in a long hand and wearing blue jeans decorated with a collection of cute colourful safety pins. She had made up her dark hair with shiny black chopsticks and a little amber comb. Having stated her opinion as plainly and completely as she could, the woman chose not to respond to Verulâm’s withering glare and was insensible to his huffing until an addendum occurred to her.

‘And the November List wasn’t actually the only party that supported the ban, lots of parties did,’ she explained, correcting Verulâm with an address to the room at large.

Colouring only slightly, the woman snorted derisively, tossed her hair and returned to her drink, her dignity preserved.

‘Excuse me, sir, but you’re still smoking. You can’t smoke.’ The bartender was now quite annoyed.

‘Oh shut up! Shut up!’ cried the essayist . ‘There are plenty of places where I can quite happily smoke in peace. Do you think I need to stay here?’

‘So pay the fine then and go elsewhere! Make your heroic stand for the common bore!’ the now thoroughly exasperated bartender cried. ‘But you can’t smoke where you sit now.’

‘Fine, and let me just say that to make your enforcement of Zavâyette’s silly decrees difficult, frankly, makes me happy.’

Verulâm stood up.

‘Do you think I care whether any of you agree with me?’ he asked with cringeworthy gravity. ‘No. What do I care if you don’t? It’s quite apparent that Zavâyette is a sinister two faced opportunist, a marionette, a trickster, an intriguer, an enemy of societies displaced and humble, and friend to some of the most determined enemies of the Republic! Yet in office he remains. There’s apparently nothing a majority of the voters of this city wouldn’t make excuses for or overlook, is there? No, no, well I see clearly, I see what he is. And I see that he must be destroyed… and I shall do it!’

He awkwardly stuffed himself into his jacket, corked his bottle of wine, and with that he was gone, and the remaining patrons of Café Nârvinya laughed with relief.

****

The news had not been good.

It was late and, ordinarily, Vivian Augúste zy Everthàrgna, the city of Fängänyn’s oldest surviving former Lord Mayor and the first to have come from the Socialist Forum, would have been rather tired, in his bed or at least preparing for it, boiling one last brew of tea to which he usually added on the advice of his physicians a compound of cassia and iris, but he had taken a nap earlier to conserve his energy and he still had some of it left. He had made some arrangements with his devoted niece Louisétte and she had agreed to pick him up at the end of the hour.

Normally of course he would simply have taken a tramcar, as he almost always did, but Vivian was afraid of falling asleep on the seat and being woken up at the very end of the line and nowhere near his apartment. For his imposition on her he would, naturally, have to compensate Louisétte for the perpetually-present traffic congestion toll, and wait in her trendy little, alleyway-zipping Aerostream Q-Type hatchback, egg-shaped and charming in its anthropomorphic way, with vibrant tomato-red fabric stretching over foam seats and soft, protective-looking interior panels, while she stopped for a large number of groceries. He would probably fall asleep and wake up with a stiff neck.

A late visit to the Pairs Club was the reason behind the changes to Vivian’s usual nocturnal routine. Seized with a desire to speak with a few friends on municipal elections night, knowing there was only one place where he would find them, he thus found himself in the street, walking down the pavement towards the familiar corner. Paper-deliverymen were already dashing from kiosk to kiosk delivering the latest evening editions, but he preferred to hear it from those in the know. He was an old aristocratic gentleman of consummate kindness, without guile, solemn, seventy-eight years of age, with a silky crest of white hair and a turned up nose. Tonight he wore a stiff collar and salmon-pink cashmere cardigan, one hand free and the other clutching an unopened umbrella that had the misfortune to be stuck. Over his arm was a mackintosh. Always admiring, always respectful, with an innocent, unconcerned air.

‘Good evening sir,’ the porter Adrián Volenté greeted Vivian in that friendly, familiar voice that bespoke respect for a member of the Club. ‘I presume you’ve heard the latest, that they’ve taken control of the city council?’

A wryly smiling Vivian replied banteringly to the porter’s greeting with “morthëmnë”, a traditional salutation cursing tonight’s “black” evening.

‘Found time to vote earlier, I hope?’ asked Vivian.

‘First thing this morning,’ replied Adrián.

In the visitor’s room of the Club he asked for, ‘clean writing paper and a glass of hawthorn-flower tea, if you’ll please, mister Serùsiel,’ adding with an afterthought the requirement, ‘so long as the bottle was opened today, if that isn’t too much trouble.’ The waiter nodded good-naturedly and, only stopping on the way to the kitchen to address a query about two gentlemen’s orders, went to fetch the items.

Every evening of the year these two could be found, between the hours of ten and eleven, seated in this visitor’s lounge affectionately known as the Owl’s Roost. Vespásien za Vivônel was tall and consumptive, attired in a black and white houndstooth dinner jacket with detachable collar and flowered waistcoat, the other, Palamède Fagâra, was perhaps “wellderly” in the current, trendy, Närväryner parlance, sporting a pair of frightening canines when he smiled, wearing collegiate club sweater with leather patches and tweed plus fours. Together they would order breakfast, splitting the cost because though light it was still perhaps too much for a single person of modest appetite who wanted only to play with his food. It was one of the peculiar customs of the Pairs Club that the kitchens always served breakfast in the visitor’s lounge, because after all the great clock always made four, and as it had been morning when the pendulum finally stopped swinging morning it had stayed.

From a tray set with a double-folded, thick snow white tablecloth wafted the sweet and wholesome scent of fresh black pumpernickel bread. The silver shone, clashing aesthetically with the finely-decorated earthenware crockery, reflecting off the glinting cruets and glasses, and the napkin, which was of cloth and placed upon the plate, had been folded into a peacock.

It was certainly a bizarre little breakfast, as one might expect of a meal served at an hour when most were still in bed, or at least intended for that time, with eggs painted in gaudy colours and resting on elaborate wire stands, which also held crisp slices of toast done only on one side and piled up as though to make a funeral pyre, in tier after tier and thin as autumn leaves. There was strong, pungent coffee, of course, without the usual supplement of cream but still at least the option of brandy, and plenty of frosty sugar cubes. Variety came in the assortment of waxed and coloured tropical fruits, the honeys and jams, jellies, nuts and spices. Perhaps most unusual amongst the many scalding hot Fängänyner delicacies were juvenile salt fish, scrod, split and headless, their shiny, silver-grey scaled skins like mailed armour remaining attached on one side, peat-cured flesh exposed on the other, poached in milk and resting in ink-blue saucers.

Only Vespásien had ever touched the fish, nibbling at it once in twenty years, but the two always picked gingerly at the exotic fruit. Seated with his back to Vivian in a part of the visitor’s room divided from the majority by braided velvet rope, where there were little low tables from which, with just a tiny bit of stooping, club members and their guests could dine, Vespásien did not notice the former mayor’s entry. His friend Palamède did, though, and raised a hand in greeting. Both Vespásien and Palamède the former mayor always found tiresome, so he simply nodded to them as he walked passed and they did the same. They were talking about the election and Vivian found himself catching a snippet of what was being said as he waited for a couple to go through a point of congestion between the tables.

‘I mean, it’s not like if the Augùril platform had been brought in before pre-selection it would have made any difference,’ opined Vespásien.

‘Mrm,’ agreed Palamède.

Unlike Palamède, Vespásien seemed distantly satisfied with the night’s result. In some respects this was unsurprising, given Vespásien was a quiet supporter of restoration and a loud advocate for a written constitution, though za Vayétte was only sympathetic on the former issue and the November List’s party platform had only ever mentioned the latter within the context of encouraging greater public debate concerning the structure of the national government. Nonetheless, the defeat of Vespásien’s party in the first round was, no doubt, made up for by some perceived abstract advancement on those two issues.

Nobody could tell exactly how long the clock in the visitor’s lounge had been broken. Certainly none of the currently listed members at Pairs Club – and some had even served in the Blood and Tulips Parliament – remembered when it had reliably told the time. If any former members did, then apparently they had never said so to those still left on the rolls. Some time long ago, it seemed, a spring had snapped or a gear had jammed, and the clock had stopped ticking, its hands forever frozen at the hour of four.

It wasn’t quite that late yet, though it was getting closer. If it had mattered to Vivian Augúste zy Everthàrgna he could have checked his watch for certainty, but he felt that four was as good an hour as any other. The society’s iconic club mascots, two large speckled brown owls which surmounted the yellowing clock, seemed all the more appropriate a decoration at that hour, their eyes sleepily half-closed with the knowledge that, soon, the sun must surely peak out from just beyond the horizon.

Four was also the busiest hour of at Pairs Club, and with all the extra people turned out tonight, perversely obsessed with the outcome of the election despite having fled their homes and living rooms to escape its saturation coverage, it might have been four. They all, in their own way, seemed to ignore the counting at the polls, unless they were alone. At the bar the gentlemen were standing up and drinking, their canes at their sides, carnations in their buttonholes. Operagoers, their capes and tall, stovepipe-shaped tophats taken off and abandoned on chairs, warmed themselves at the fireplace. One could tell the early-comers from those just arrived from the theatre or a concert by the amount glittering studs in their white shirt-fronts, or by the furred collars of their capes.

The room itself presented a combination of elegance, clutter and disharmony that was bizarre to a degree. Large and high, its furnishing included deep-seated and tall-backed wing chairs, of the uncomfortably rigid and buttoned variety, their curtain-like fabric coverings all delicate tints like salmon pink, maize and rose, arranged in a condition that lacked any order. The parquet floor must originally have been of contrasting colours, now dulled from age to an insipid, uniform manganese-brown, but still shiny in a track to the door. The ceiling of course was hand-painted with touches in white and gold, including the inevitable scrolls twisting amongst garlands of roses and ribbons, but from the centre of the room hung a florid electrolier.

As Vivian crossed two Ts with a single flourish of his pen, it occurred to him that the decorators of the room must not have considered that most of the colours appeared weaker and less clear under artificial light. The ceiling’s painted shades of pearl grey and lichen green, very subtle colours once garish but long since faded and peeled, were each robbed of their blues by the harsh electrolier and left either dirty white or a febrile, inconsistent yellow. Old rose became too pronounced, silver grew sullen and heavy.

In one of the corners was a family Vivian recognised.

Inattentive, hyperactive, a careless mother duck content to let her little ducklings drift to the furthest reeds of the pond before herding them all back with her wings to her nest, Albertine zy Augêsvalar nonetheless gravitated to her daughters, the tyrant who craves her people’s approval. She might have been fifty but still handsome, neat, straight with auburn hair too bright and golden to be natural, wrists modestly adjangle with bracelets and brown wooden beads. In the corners of her eyes lines had been furrowed, from squinting into the wintry sun above the foremast of her yacht. She talked endlessly to a young woman at her side, her eldest, who was twenty and her very picture. They were a strange pair, Faústina and Albertine, they disputed, they quarrelled, the former shy and unassertively, yet still self-consciously stubborn, though behind daughter’s black horn-rimmed reading glasses hid a dutiful and upright, if reluctant, devotion.

They were all sitting in a window. The chattering of her younger sisters, unguarded, trill, punctuated by giggling, by the tap tap taping on a shoulder with which one indicated to the other that áabeth “eSEED” headphones be taken out of ears, pursuant to the sharing of some observation, embarrassed Faústina, but no amount of stern, sour glances of disapproval in their direction appeared to produce in her mother a single reproving remark. Églantine was the oldest of the younger pair, sixteen, chewing gum, in her senior years of high school, moody and vain and prone to tantrums, and full of worldly advice for her sister, Célimène, now a teenager too, beaming and fidgety in a new silk dress and grinning.

‘Ugh. Your lips are blue, Célimène, you know that, right?’ Faústina asked, distracted, derailed in thought by the rising of her gorge, her tone laced with a big sister’s catty concern as she interrupted her own conversation with her mother.

‘Wha?!’ replied Célimène, eyes wide and full of dismay.

‘Yeah, they’re dark blue, black really, like you’ve been biting on a pen or something,’ she added.

Hygienic and clean, disinfected, thoroughly scrubbed, Faústina prissily shrugged her shoulders, bared her teeth to her canines, manufacturing disgusted disapproval in the shape of her mouth. Her sister Églantine rolled her eyes at this unwanted interruption, tossing the black silk flag that was her hair as she folded her legs under her skirt and removed her bluePhone from her pocket. She was already clicking buttons as it appeared.

‘It’s, like, those ice lollies?’ she explained, an incriminating tint of orange-green staining the bottom of her own thin lips as she spoke, exposing her complicity. Faústina’s nostrils flared at the accompanying, unmistakable chewing-gum smell of wintergreen and mint. ‘She’s had, like, three already? Or is that your fourth, Célimène?’

Célimène shook her head, which was evidently some manner of reply to the question, and no longer seem mortified now that her condition had been diagnosed. Just ice-lolly dye, thank the Starling-Cloaked Goddess! Églantine showed her something on her bluePhone and elicited a giggle.

A spectator in an exchange that she could not fully participate in, missing little nuances the way a cinephile only ever incompletely appreciates dialogue in a foreign film, Albertine smiled in a self-conscious sort of way and took a moment to sip from her dandelion wine. Her two youngest were drinking the same as their mother, but next to Faústina’s tulip-shaped glass there was instead a plastic bottle of sparkling mineral water, with no ice. Despite this superficial difference, Albertine connected far more viscerally with her eldest than she could with her younger daughters. Idle small talk like this had been forbidden at the dinner and coffee tables of Albertine’s youth, and the children, encouraged to read the Närväryn Times-Herald by the age their contemporaries were playing with hoops and yo-yos, had always discussed national issues together over tea.

Spotted by the zy Augêsvalars, Vivian had little choice but to be polite and say hello. The Drowning Goddess forbid, it would be the height of rudeness not to! Well-known, famous even, a woman of some influence in the higher levels of Fängänyner organised progressivism, Albertine was an effective fund-raiser and voluntary lobbyist if never a politician herself, though she came from a family of notable politicians. She had been watched and reported on most of her life, from the time of her upbringing by the businessman and financier, then vice-consul of a trade mission to New Albion, Wilbert za Vyärd, grandson of the za Vyärd of the same name who had made his fortune as a bull-market plunger, shipbuilding magnate and sometimes motion-picture tycoon, the patrician participle before his name an item of groundless vanity on the part of his aunt, and his second wife, Winéfride zy Augêsvalar-Zângar, herself a vaired and ermined dowager, an entertainer in Fängänyn’s glittering salons, one-time backer of the Root and Branch Parliament and supporter of the Progressive Party. Albertine’s struggles to pass the bar exam were a matter of public record, her activities as a patron of the arts, and more recently her involvement with the boards of a number of charitable foundations and non-profit organisations, including the neopagan community outreach group Helping-Hands Sanctuary, were equally well known.

Her insufferable peacemaking had played its part in ensuring that bipartisan cooperation did not fall apart, as would have been most humane, during the funding and planning of the loathsome Vinaigrarium. Dedicated to the work of one of the Eternal Republic’s best known modern comic-book artists, it was not particularly ugly, exactly, although the soaring structure of precast concrete and floating glass, wrapped around a large ribbed wooden form like the hull of an upturned ship, seemed rather boring in its contrived unconventionality. It could almost have been the work of some Confederal architect aping from across the Atlantic the truly innovative thought of the Ingàthern School.

Of course the Ingàthern School was part of the problem. Monstrosities in unfinished steel and exposed brickwork, eyesores like the Vinaigrarium, only happened when you tore up all the rules.

More serious was its message, that this was not merely a hall for some popular culture convention but instead a gallery for high art. The Goddess of the Watching Wings knew that there was a time and a place for everything, even cartoon strips, but Vivian would be a lonely shade on the Fingernail Ferryboat before he counted the near-bawdy antics of Vinaigrette of Myrrh and his thin, trembly-lined Toulouse-Lautrecian friends in the same breath as true works of literature or art.

Albertine had also been complicit in the resurgence of amateur plays and concerts in the city, and especially in the embarrassing revivalist practice of staging street plays on pageant wagons. Supported by the new, misguidedly progressive board at the Fängänyn Academic Art Theatre, there was no aristocracy of culture in the performances. Enthusiasm counted for more than talent or taste, and an inevitable effusion of colour and noise was the final result.

Nor was she idle. Her latest project involved a joint exhibition between the Worshipful Company of Confectioners, a Fängänyner cooking guild, and the culinary magazine Edibles Illustrated. Its object, at least so far as Vivian could construe, was to point to the various sweet biscuits and small crisp cakes of neighbouring cities, particularly the excellent ground almond macaroons of Neúvenârta or the treacle gingerbreads of Värdlingén, and claim them as their own through either supremely dubious or fancifully obscure lineages.

That, and promoting home-grown sweet biscuit varieties at the expense of unassimilated competitors.

But all of this was left unsaid behind a polite smile of recognition. Faústina pushed her hands into the depths of the pockets of her red dress, thought better of it apparently, and then clasped them beneath her chin. Sensitive, taciturn, serious, she chewed at her upper lip, considering the interruption.

Albertine though was all intimate familiarity.

‘Oh hi there, Vivian! It’s nice to see you?’ she said.

Vivian paused, puzzled by the wayward inflection. ‘Is it?’ he asked.

‘Is what?’ replied Albertine, blinking confusion.

‘Um, never mind,’ Vivian answered, trying not to look taken aback. He always found casual conversations difficult whenever they involved that new, increasingly common, inflection. ‘It’s, um, good to see you as well, Albertine,’ he finally added.

Albertine and her eldest daughter half-rose haltingly from their chairs and exchanged cheek-to-cheek kisses with Vivian, three each, the latter with a stilted imitation of her mother’s practiced fluency. Vivian paused briefly and only kissed Églantine on one of her cheeks, barely receiving an obliging tilt of her head in return, and for Célimène he reserved a grandfatherly kiss on top of her head, in her hair.

Much too old to be greeting her elders with a shy “lamàla”, or “I kiss your hand”, Célimène still beamed. She held out her box of frozen sorbets, torn open at the end, brightly coloured in livid swirls of toucan greens and yellows, with still a thin frosting at the corner.

‘Would you like an ice lolly, sir?’

Vivian had not been the first Pairs Club member offered an ice lolly, and Albertine’s patience was wearing thin.

‘Célimène…’ she warned.

‘Um,’ said Vivian.

‘This one’s, you know, like key lime?’ Célimène added quickly, disregarding the usual avenues of appeal and making her case directly to Vivian, intent on helping him make up his mind before her mother cut her off for good. ‘This purple one’s punch, only Églantine says punch is supposed to be warm and have rum in it? And this is frozen and for children? Or whatever. Oh, and this one’s blood orange flavoured? That’s my favourite.’

‘Célimène! Stop pestering him!’ her mother snapped. ‘Sorry about that?’

‘Sorry about-? Oh, right,’ Vivian replied. Um, it’s quite alright. I’ll have the key lime, dear heart.’

Célimène grinned and handed him his ice lolly.

‘Good, mostly, because I don’t really like those?’

‘You don’t?’ asked Vivian, causing the young girl to blink.

‘Don’t what?’

There was a confused silence.

Albertine gave the former mayor a look that might have meant ‘anyway...’

‘I hear there’s going to be some local reorganising?’

‘Is there?’ asked Vivian

‘Yes, and Gilda’s promised not to meddle?’ Albertine went on.

There was a pause while Vivian figured out that she had not been asking him. ‘You sound happy about that.’

Albertine smiled. ‘Our city’s local politics can be a little more temperamental than her sisters’. Every Prime Minister learns that the hard way?’

‘I’ve always done my part,’ Vivian agreed.

‘You always do? I’m going to miss your editorials, you know? You always seemed to have the best sense of things, of him, pity they won’t be nearly as frequent?’ Albertine of course meant the Lord Mayor.

‘I’m actually thinking of combining them all into a book,’ Vivian explained, ‘with maybe a few essays and a little history.’

Églantine glanced up from her bluePhone. ‘Have you thought about getting a blog?’

Albertine looked exasperated.

‘My nieces and nephews tell me I’d be perfect at it,’ said Vivian, smiling, ‘but I think I’m just too old.’

‘Nah you’re not that old. I mean, like, okay you’re kinda old but you’re sort of a “cool” old guy, right?’ Églantine mused. ‘Not, like, “boring” old, you know?’

Albertine was determined not to have her conversation derailed. ‘If you do put out a book I have a friend who’s a publisher and might be interested?’

‘We’ll see, I have to talk to someone first.’

****

Mr Jérôme Faustâriel za Vayètte sat consulting his annotated, hardback Complete Modern Library edition of Heavenly Influences and Supplementary Propositions, a bestselling collection of pagan writings on astrology, dreams and divination, translated from the High Speech of Old Xirnium with helpful commentary and a revised new introduction. At around noon that day, he had begun to become apprehensive about his appointment with the parliamentary prefect who was to swear him in for his second term in office as Fängänyn’s mayor, which was to occur in two more hours. In his fortune book he made calculations, drew a few rough diagrams and figures, as he attempted to cast his horoscope.

His suite of offices on the third floor of the Guildhall building on Winterglum Street overlooked the bay. Through the many-mullioned, lofty windows he could watch gleaming white ferries and ponderous black cargo ships as they entered, passing beneath the city’s great, long, cable-stayed bridge, thin and vaguely convex like the horizon, with radiating ruler-drawn wires like the strings of a harp or lute tuned tight enough to snap. At this moment a russet funnelled ocean liner could be seen steaming away beyond the northern head, but Mr za Vayètte did not care. Going to one of the windows he unfastened the velvet-tasselled cord and pulled with two tugs the heavy brocade curtains over part of the view. The large central office became a little less bright, softer and more pleasant, so he didn’t have to squint against the shimmering surface of the water. Now he could reflect more thoughtfully.

Already, before he had even left his house to come to his office, he had received Mr Aulêriel’s imperiously-worded inquiry. How was it that the Palace of Safety always found out about these things? The serjeant-at-arms, humourless, unimaginative bureaucrat from Närväryn, had learnt of Mr za Vayètte’s intention to take down the revolutionary banners and pennants from the investiture hall and he was not at all happy about it. Maladroit pedantry, combined with silly doctrines. Always snooping around, suspecting everyone of heresy. Well the town hall was under his authority and there were no laws of any sort requiring them there. The first time he had taken his oath outside in the cold to avoid standing in front of those wretched things. This time he would be inside and they would be boxed up somewhere.

May as well practice for his speech. He stood in front of a gilt-framed mirror on the cream office wall, composing a face of calm, unruffled, inspecting his sharp features for any deviation to what he wanted. Look composed but firm, he told himself.

Mr za Vayètte’s thoughts were interrupted by his secretary’s knock on a door pane.

‘I’m sorry,’ apologised Mr Lúpin Syfrètte. He was a slender and rather dark haired gentleman, well dressed, fashionable. ‘Hórten Aulêriel was on the line again just now. He wants you to return his call.’

Mr za Vayètte still recalled with a pang his previous secretary Ms Séptima Neränyä, a pretty young blonde with flyaway hairs behind her head and a habit of wearing skirts that were too tight. He especially missed the blue carnations that used to adorn her hair, a splash of colour just the thing to brighten her sober, strictly conservative attire. After his womanising had come to light both had agreed that some might get the wrong idea about them sooner or later, so when another secretarial position opened elsewhere she discretely moved on and filled the place.

‘Thank you,’ Mr za Vayètte replied, though he made no move to reach for the phone.

‘Also, there’s a priestess here to see you.’

Mr za Vayètte sprang from the mirror. ‘Why didn’t you mention that? How long has she been waiting? Send her in at once, please.’

‘Yes sir,’ Mr Syfrètte said.

‘Wait one moment, Lúpin. I will be in my office for the next–’ Mr za Vayètte pulled back a cuff as he checked his wristwatch, ‘–hour or so, I think. Handle any routine matters for me. And divert any callers, please. Take down messages for later.’

‘Sir?’

‘I would like some time alone, clear all my appointments before I have to meet the prefect. Send in tea too, please,’ he added.

‘Yes, sir,’ Mr Syfrètte nodded.

Mr za Vayètte was elated when he saw the priestess, Martine Augèrteuil. She was not young but not old, fifty perhaps, handsome, erect and serene but still cheerful, approachable and friendly. She had feathery, plaited auburn hair, a wreath of oakleaves crowned her pale and narrow forehead. From under a kind of chalky white woollen cloak that hung long and loose in folds, sleeveless and rectangular, there dangled a woven jute bag and a string of amber beads. Over her right shoulder she wore the blood-red taffeta lining of her hood, it was long and flat against her back, folded and draped.

‘Good afternoon dear sister, thank you for coming.’ Mr za Vayètte was effusive and courteous, hastening to kiss the fold of her cloak’s sleeve.

‘My pleasure, sir,’ smiled the priestess, touching her hair. Mr za Vayètte liked that she wore silver gilt hoops on her ears, matching the bracelets on her arms.

‘Is that the scroll?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I brought along the sacred scroll of Ellador and Alimä to sanctify your inauguration, as you requested,’ she explained, holding up the enormous alder wood relic, upon which one swore to the divine pair of justice and truth.

‘Let me get that for you,’ offered Mr za Vayètte. ‘Oh! Unless that’s not appropriate?’

The priestess giggled and touched her hair again. ‘You’re very kind, I’ll manage.’

‘It’s good to see you again,’ said Mr za Vayètte.

The two sat not at his desk but in a corner of a room where they had the benefit of a low coffee table, Mr za Vayètte in a narrow armchair and the priestess on the arm of a long settee, after putting her oakleaves on the table. Both seats were covered in strong, thick plush velvet, a pale purple-coloured material speckled with little yellow silk flowers.

His secretary, Mr Syfrètte, stuck his head into the office, saw that he was off to the side with the priestess, and arched an eyebrow in his mind. Just the mayor’s type, like a worldly, married woman, her features attractive but irregular, and look at the friendly and mischievous expression she is giving him!

He said, ‘I have your tea, sir. Would you like me to place it on your desk?’

‘Here would be just fine, Mr Syfrètte. Oh, and about our friend in Närväryn?’

‘Yes?’

‘Remind him,’ said Mr za Vayètte, ‘that I’m well within my powers, and that our Party does not feel the display of those symbols by local government to be conductive to the fostering of open debate. And let that be the end of it. I am completely uninterested in anything more he has to say.’

Martine Augèrteuil smiled and looked on silently in a way suggestive of some small but meaningful triumph.

Soon Mr za Vayètte and the priestess were dipping slices of toast spread with whipped butter in their cups of thin, frothy tea, an expensive and much desired blend of three different yellow grades from the Far East, made by fermenting withered leaves just long enough to produce a smoky flavour, then scenting it with rose petals.

Mr za Vayètte began. ‘I’ve been taking stock of everything lately, all the possible omens and portents, trying to determine how fate shall treat my victory,’ he explained, showing the priestess his private fortune diary. She unfolded a pair of small, metal-rimmed glasses and took a look.

‘I see you couldn’t wait there,’ observed the priestess.

Mr za Vayètte nodded. ‘Using my hour and place of birth, as well as last night’s stars, I inquired for something rudimentary. The horoscope I cast was ambiguous. I couldn’t infer from it any good advice.’

By which he meant it was as vague thus useful as the everyday ones in newspaper columns.

‘You really should have waited before attempting that,’ chided the priestess gently. ‘You’re not trying to discover the ordinary, and even if you had gotten something it might have been a mistake.’

‘I know, it’s just–’

‘But don’t worry,’ she continued. ‘We can go over it and divine together, do you have time now?’

‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Mr za Vayètte excitedly, nodding. ‘I’ve set aside another room for the purpose, we won’t be disturbed.’

He jumped from his seat and retrieved from a locked cabinet a number of totems he had been asked to have ready. A hat and a watch, a smooth stone from a riverbed, a touch piece, and a wonderful old button that had long been in his family.

The Priestess approved of it all. ‘Now, let us start on the basics,’ she explained.

Mr za Vayètte sat still and focused. He waited quietly as the priestess rummaged through her embroidered hessian bag, biting on her lip as she sifted through the random miscellany of a practicing soothsayer, including scented candles, packs of tarot cards, some incense and scattering salt, her knife and a portable three-legged brazier. Presently she produced a box of die, a little handbook, and some jotting paper filled with notes from last session’s examination.

‘Give me your palm.’

Ms Augèrteuil had held all the good-looking guys’ hands just like this in high school, and as she toyed with Mr za Vayètte’s hand, watching him – all excited and impressed like some of those boys – she enjoyed herself immensely. The moon line was unusually branched, and fused with the feverfew and evening-star creases, Fledèrlina’s influence was still strong! The ring finger was long and elegant, but also the index wasn’t short, and neither was the little finger. He was endowed with an intensity of purpose and a single-mindedness, but of what one might ask? Well, the Sisterhood knew.

Overall he had a nice hand, flexibly tense and quiet strong. Clearly to those properly trained Mr za Vayètte was someone who burnt quite bright with fire, a man of high energy, ambition, and creativity.

‘I’m just going to check if there’s been any change from last time,’ the priestess explained, making several notes and searching for anything, however minute.

And as she continued what was only the beginning of what would be a lengthy measuring of his overall fortuna, Mr za Vayètte felt truly happy and empowered.