Nightingale's Lament

  “She has no agent,” said Chabron. “Cavendish Properties represents Rossignol. You can understand why I am so concerned.”

  I looked at him thoughtfully. There were things he wasn’t telling me. I could tell.

  “What brought your daughter all the way to London, and the Nightside?” I said. “Paris has its own music scene, doesn’t it?”

  “Of course. But London is where you have to go to be a star. Everyone knows that.” Chabron sighed. “Her mother and I never took her singing seriously. We wanted her to take up a more respectable occupation, something with a future and a pension plan. But all she ever cared about was singing. Perhaps we pressured her too much. I arranged an interview for her, with my bank. An entry-level position, but with good prospects. Instead, she ran away to London. And when I sent people to track her down, she disappeared into the Nightside. Now … she is in trouble, I am sure of it. One hears such things … I wish for you to find my daughter, Mr. Taylor, and satisfy yourself on my behalf that she is well and happy, and not being cheated out of anything that is rightfully hers. I am not asking you to drag her back home. Just to assure yourself that everything is as it should be. Tell her that her friends and her family are concerned for her. Tell her… that she doesn’t have to talk to us if she doesn’t want to, but we would be grateful for some form of communication, now and then. She is my only child, Mr. Taylor. I need to be sure she is happy and safe. You understand?”

  “Of course,” I said. “But I really don’t see why you want me. Any number of people could handle this. I can put you onto a man called Walker, in the Authorities…”

  “No,” Chabron said sharply. “I want you.”

  “It doesn’t seem like my kind of case.”

  “People are dying, Mr. Taylor! Dying, because of my daughter!” He took a moment to calm himself, before continuing. “It seems that my Rossignol sings only sad songs these days. And that she sings these sad songs so powerfully that members of her audience have been known to go home and commit suicide. Already there are so many dead that not even her management can keep it quiet. I want to know what has happened to my daughter, here in your Nightside, that such a thing is possible.”

  “All right,” I said. “Perhaps it is my kind of case after all. But I have to warn you, I don’t come cheap.”

  Chabron smiled, back on familiar ground. “Money is no problem to me, Mr. Taylor.”

  I smiled back at him. “The very best kind of client. My whole day just brightened up.” I turned to Cathy. “Go back to the office and get your marvelous new computers working on some background research. I want to know everything there is to know about the Cavendishes, their company, and their current financial state. Who they own, and who they owe money to. Then see what you can find out about Rossignol, before she went to work for the Cavendishes. Where she sang, what kind of following she had, the usual. Mr. Chabron…”

  I looked around, and he was gone. There was no sign of him anywhere, even though there was no way he could have made it to any of the exits in such a short time.

  “Damn, that’s creepy,” said Cathy. “How does he do that?”

  “There’s more to our Mr. Chabron than meets the eye,” I said. “But then, that’s par for the course in the Nightside. See what can you can find out about him, too, while you’re at it, Cathy.”

  She nodded quickly, blew me a kiss, and hurried away. I got up and wandered over to the bar. I shoved the cork back into the bottle of wormwood brandy and handed it over to Alex. I didn’t need it any more. He made it disappear under the bar and gave me a smug smile.

  “I used to know Rossignol. Bit skinny for my tastes, but a hell of a set of pipes on her. I hired her a few years back to provide cabaret, to add some class to the place. It didn’t work, but then this bar is a lost cause anyway. You couldn’t drive it upmarket with a chair and a whip.”

  “Were you eavesdropping again, Alex?”

  “Of course. I hear everything. It’s my bar. Anyway, this Rossignol was pretty enough, with a good if untrained voice, and more importantly, she worked cheap. In those days she’d sing anywhere, for peanuts, for the experience. She had this need, this hunger, to sing. You could see it in her face, hear it in her voice. And it wasn’t just your usual singer’s ego. It was more like a mission with her. I wouldn’t say she was anything special back then, but I always knew she’d go far. Talent isn’t worth shit if you haven’t got the determination to back it up, and she had that in spades.”

  “What kind of songs did she sing, back then?” I asked.

  Alex frowned. “I’m pretty sure she only sang her own material. Happy, upbeat stuff, you know the sort of thing, sweet but forgettable. There were definitely no suicides when she sang here, though admittedly this is a tougher audience than most.”

  “So she was nothing like the deadly diva her father described?”

  “Not in the least. But then, the Nightside can change anyone, and usually not for the better.” Alex paused and gave the bar top a polish it didn’t need, so he wouldn’t have to look me in the eye as he spoke. “Word is, Walker’s looking for you, John. And he is not a happy bunny.”

  “Walker never is,” I said, carefully casual. “But just in case he shows up here, looking for me, you haven’t seen me, right?”

  “Some things never change,” said Alex. “Go on, get out of here, you’re lowering the tone of the place.”

  I left Strangefellows and walked out into the night. One by one the neon signs were flickering on again, like road signs in Hell. I decided to take that as a good omen and kept walking.

  Downtime in Uptown

  If you’re looking for the real nightlife in the Nightside, you have to go Uptown. That’s where you’ll find the very best establishments, the sharpest pleasures, the most seductive damnations. Every taste catered for, satisfaction guaranteed or your soul back. They play for keeps in Uptown, which is, of course, part of the attraction. It was a long way from Strangefellows, so I took my courage in both hands, stepped right up to the very edge of the passing traffic, and hailed a sedan chair.

  The sedan chair was part of a chain I recognised, or I wouldn’t have got in it. The traffic that runs endlessly through the rain-slick streets of the Nightside can be a peril to both body and soul. I settled myself comfortably on the crimson padded leather seat, and the sedan chair moved confidently out into the flow. The tall wooden walls of the box were satisfyingly solid, and the narrow windows were filled with bulletproof glass. They were proof against a lot of other things, too. There was no-one carrying the chair, front or back. This particular firm was owned and run by a family of amiable poltergeists. They could move a lot faster than human bearers, and even better, they didn’t bother the paying customers with unwanted conversation. Poltergeist muscle was also handy when it came to protecting their chairs from the other traffic on the roads. The Nightside is a strange attractor for all kinds of traffic, from past, present, and future, and a lot of it tended towards the predatory. There are taxis that run on deconsecrated altar wine, shining silver bullets that run on demons’ tears and angels’ urine, and things that only look like cars but are always hungry.

  A pack of headless bikers tried to crowd the sedan chair with their choppers, but the operating poltergeist flipped them away like poker chips. The roaring traffic gave us a bit more room after that, and it wasn’t long at all before we were cruising through Uptown. You could almost smell the excitement, above the blood, sweat, and tears. Nowhere does the neon blaze more brightly, neon noir and Technicolor temptation, the sleazy signs pulsing like an aroused heartbeat. You can bet the lights here never even dimmed during the recent power outages. Uptown would always have first call on whatever power was available. But even so, it’s always that little bit darker here, in the world of three o’clock in the morning, where the pleasures of the night need never end, as long as your money holds out.

  You can find the very best restaurants in Uptown, featuring dishes from cultures that haven’t existed
for centuries, using recipes that would be banned in saner places. There are even specialised restaurants, offering meals made entirely from the meats of extinct or imaginary animals. You haven’t lived till you’ve tasted dodo drumsticks, roc egg omelettes, Kentucky-fried dragon, kraken sushi surprise, chimera of the day, or basilisk eyes (that last entirely at your own risk). You can find food to die for, in Uptown.

  Bookshops contain works written in secret by famous authors, never intended to be published. Ghostwritten books, by authors who died too soon. Volumes on spiritual pornography, and the art of tantric murder. Forbidden knowledge and forgotten lore, and guidebooks for the hereafter. One shop window boasted a new edition of that infamous book The King in Yellow, whose perusal drove men mad, together with a special pair of rose-tinted spectacles to read it through.

  People bustled through the streets, following the lure of the rainbow neon. Scents of delicious cooking pulled at the nose, and snatches of beguiling music spilled from briefly opened doors. Long lines waited patiently outside theatres and cabaret clubs, and crowded round newstands selling the latest edition of the Night Times. More furtive faces disappeared into weapons shops, or brothels, where for the right price you could sleep with famous women from fiction. (It wasn’t the real thing, of course, but then it never is, in such places.) Uptown held every form of entertainment the mind could conceive, some of which would eat you alive if you weren’t sharp enough.

  And nightclubs, of every form and persuasion. Music and booze and company, all just a little hotter than the consumer could comfortably stand. Some of the clubs go way back. Whigs and Tories argue politics over cups of coffee, then sit down to wager on demon-baiting matches. Romans recline on couches, pigging out on twenty-course meals, in between trips to the vomitorium. Other clubs are as fresh as today and twice as tasty. You’d be surprised how many big stars started out singing for their supper in Uptown.

  The streets became even more thickly crowded as the sedan chair carried me deep into the dark heart of Uptown. Flushed faces and bright eyes everywhere, high on life and eager to throw their money away on things they only thought they needed. In and among the fevered punters, the people who earned their living in the clubs and nightspots of Uptown rushed from one establishment to another, working the several jobs it took to pay their rent or quiet their souls. Singers and actors, conjurers and stand-up comedians, strippers and hostesses and specialist acts—all of them thriving on a regular diet of buzz, booze, and bennies. And walking their beats or standing on corners, watching it all go by, the ladies of the evening with their kohl-stained eyes and come-on mouths, the twilight daughters who never said no to anything that involved hard cash.

  This still being the Nightside, there were always hidden traps for the unwary. Smoke-filled bars where lost weekends could stretch out for years, and clubs where people couldn’t stop dancing, even when their feet left bloody marks on the dance floor. Markets where you could sell any part of your body, mind, or soul. Or someone else’s. Magic shops that offered wonderful items and objects of power, with absolutely no guarantee they’d perform as advertised, or even that the shop would still be there when you went back to complain.

  There were homeless people, too, in shadowed doorways and the entrances of alleyways, wrapped in shabby coats or tattered blankets, with their grubby hands held out for spare change. Tramps and vagabonds, teenage runaways and people just down on their luck. Most passersby have the good sense to drop them the odd coin or a kind word. Karma isn’t just a concept in the Nightside, and a surprising number of street people used to be Somebody once. It’s always been easy to lose everything, in the Nightside. So it was wise to never piss these people off, because they might still have a spark of power left in them. And because it might just be you there, one day. The wheel turns, we all rise and fall, and nowhere does the wheel turn faster than in Uptown.

  The sedan chair finally dropped me off right outside Caliban’s Cavern. I checked the meter, added a generous tip, and dropped the money into the box provided. No-one ever cheats the poltergeists. They tend to take it personally and reduce your home to its original components while you’re still in it. The chair moved off into the traffic again, and I studied the nightclub before me, taking my time. People flowed impatiently around me, but I ignored them, concentrating on the feel of the place. It was big, expensive, and clearly exclusive, the kind of place where you couldn’t get in, never mind get a good table, unless your name was on someone’s list. Caliban’s Cavern wasn’t for just anybody, and that, of course, was part of the attraction. Rossignol’s name blazed above the door in Gothic neon script, giving the times of her three shows a night. A sign on the closed front door made it clear the club was currently in between shows and not open for business. Even the most upmarket clubs have to take time out to freshen the place up in between sets. A good time for someone like me to do a little sneaking around. But first, I wanted to make sure this wasn’t a setup of some kind.

  I have enemies who want me dead. I don’t know who or why, but they’ve been sending agents to try and kill me ever since I was a child. It has something to do with my absent mother, who turned out not to be human. She disappeared shortly after my father discovered that, and he spent what little was left of his life drinking himself to death. I like to think I’m made of harder stuff. Sometimes I don’t think about my missing mother for days on end.

  I studied the crowd bustling around and past me, but didn’t spot any familiar faces. And the sedan chair would have let me know if someone had tried to follow us. But the case could be nothing more than a way of bringing me here, so that I could be ambushed. It’s happened before. The only way to be sure there were no hidden traps was to use my Sight, my special gift that lets me find anything, or anyone. And that was dangerous in itself. When I open up my third eye, my private eye, my mind burns very brightly in the endless night, and all kinds of people can see me and where I am. My enemies are always watching. But I needed to know, so I opened up my mind and Saw the larger world.

  Even in the Nightside there are secret depths, hidden layers, above and below. I could See ghosts all around me, running through their routines like shimmering video loops, moments trapped in Time. Ley lines blazed so brightly even I couldn’t look at them directly, crisscrossing in brilliant designs, plunging through people and buildings as though they weren’t really there. In the passing crowds, dark and twisted things rode on people’s backs—obsessions, hungers, and addictions. Some of them recognised me and bared needle teeth in defiant snarls to warn me off. Giants walked in giant steps, towering high above the tallest buildings. And flitting here and there, the Light People, forever bound on their unknowable missions, occasionally drawn to this person or that for no obvious reason, but never interfering.

  But what really caught my third eye were the layers of magical defences surrounding Caliban’s Cavern. Intersecting strands of hexes, curses, and anti-personnel runes covered every possible way in and out of the club, all of them positively radiating maleficent energies. This was heavy-duty, hard-core protection, way out of the range of even the most talented amateurs. Which meant someone had paid a pro a small fortune, just to protect an up-and-coming singing sensation. However, none of those defences were targeted specifically at me, which argued against this being a trap. I shut down my Sight and looked thoughtfully at the closed door before me. As long as I didn’t use magic, the defences couldn’t see me, so … I’d just have to think my way past them.

  Luckily, most magical defences aren’t very bright. They don’t have to be. I grinned, stepped forward, and knocked firmly on the door. A staggeringly ugly face rose before me, forming itself out of the wood of the door. The varnish cracked loudly as the face scowled at me. Wooden lips parted, revealing large jagged wooden teeth.

  “Forget it. Go away. Push off. The club is closed between acts. No personal appearances from the artistes, no autographs, and no, you don’t get to hang around the stage door. If you want tickets, the booking of
fice will be open in an hour. Come back then, or not at all. See if I care.”

  Its message over, the face began to subside back into the door again. I knocked again on the broad forehead, and the face blinked at me, surprised.

  “You have to let me in,” I said. “I’m John Taylor.”

  “Really? Congratulations. Now piss off and play with the traffic. We are very definitely closed, not open, and why are you still standing there?”

  There’s nothing easier to outmanoeuver than a pushy simulacrum with a sense of its own self-importance. I gave the face my best condescending smile. “I’m John Taylor, here to speak with Rossignol. Open the door, or I’ll do all kinds of horrible things to you. On purpose.”

  “Well, pardon me for existing, Mr. I’m going to be Somebody someday. I’ve got my orders. No-one gets in unless they’re on the list, or they know the password, and it’s more than my job’s worth to make exceptions. Even if I felt like it. Which I don’t.”

  “Walker sent me.” That one was always worth a try.

  People were even more scared of Walker than they were of me. With very good reason.

  The face in the door sniffed loudly. “You got any proof of that?”

  “Don’t be silly. Since when have the Authorities ever bothered with warrants?”

  “No proof, no entry. Off you go now. Hop like a bunny.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Two large gnarled hands burst out of the wood, reaching for me. There was no way of dodging them, so I didn’t try. Instead, I stepped forward inside their reach and jabbed one hand into the wooden face, firmly pressing one of my thumbs into one of its eyes. The face howled in outrage. I kept up the pressure, and the hands hesitated.