35 Spring 521
The cheery, shell-stuck facade of Nessa Reena’s townhouse remains just as still and unmovable as when he had first taken up his post.
It’s the early afternoon on the thirty-fifth day of Spring, and Caspian, having made the mistake of simply doing his job at the end of the last season, has now been tasked with the arduous process of following up.
Some several weeks ago, he had done what Mindy, socialite and aspiring divorcee, had asked, and confirmed that her estranged husband Harv was in fact seeing someone new. The consequences of relaying this information might have been predicted from the outset – the news did not make Mindy feel any better, even though she had been the one to initiate the split in the first place. Since then she had cursed and fretted – because the new fling is an actress, a burgeoning and pretty star, at least in the local theater circuit. Debatable, still, whether a handful of weeks is enough to declare any relationship truly durable – but Mindy had only worried herself further with each passing day.
And here Caspian is now, and under Mindy’s tearful directions, here to collect as much information as he can about said actress, preferably of the dirt variety.
“If it’ll make you feel better, I will,” he’d said to Mindy when she implored him to continue tailing her. As if he were a friend; as if she weren’t paying him, just like the cobblers and milliners and housekeepers, and everyone else she keeps in steady orbit.
He does feel a bit bad for Mindy. He’s hung around her house long enough to notice that if it weren’t for her checkbook, the place would be conspicuously bereft of company. The divorce proceedings had been sparked because Harv had carried on an affair with Mindy’s closest friend, another socialite named Lee. Since then, some people have come calling, but no one of any real substance.
That sympathy does nothing to cure his boredom, though. He’s very sure actress Nessa Reena hasn’t yet left home for the day. He’s also very sure – he’s learned the hard way – that she’s home in the first place. At exactly 10:30 that morning she had drawn back the scalloped lace curtains on the second floor – perhaps where her bedroom is. But since then there’s been no movement, at least none that he can sense from his position on a bench a few yards away.
Not for the first time, he contemplates simply getting up, fabricating this or that about Nessa Reena’s daily ablutions, and – well, doing anything else. It’s not like Mindy’s watching him, after all, and he’s confident he can come up with five quotidian details and one mildly sordid one to assuage her. Were he any younger, and dare he say it, less – responsible, he might very well have done so. But as it stands, he’s glued to his post, doing his job correctly and thoroughly. His excruciatingly critical sister Taalviel, if she ever bothered expressing it, ought to be proud.
“Hey. Are you Caspian?”
Caspian lowers the tobacco pipe that he had just raised to his mouth and regards the scruffy kid who’s just had the gall to accost him.
“Who’s asking?”
The kid shrugs, holds up a crumpled note. Holds out his other hand, which is empty.
“Yes?” Caspian says, raising an eyebrow.
The kid gestures insistently with his empty hand.
“No. Nope. Hard pass. Not paying you for shyke, kid, especially not for a message I didn’t ask to receive. So you can give me the note or petch right off.”
Though naturally curious to find out what the note contains – having had nothing else to occupy him today, the opportunity to mess with the kid is something he’s not going to pass up.
Were the kid from Sunberth, they might have pushed back, threatened or cajoled. But this is Zeltiva, and they clearly aren’t as prepared to deal with Caspian’s refusal to cooperate. Their shoulders slump, and they scowl as they hand Caspian the note in the end.
“Thanks,” Caspian says, snatching it up smartly. “By the way – how’d you know it was me?”
“She said you’d be the only man in a square mile wearing that much eyeliner.”
Well.
He can’t argue with that.
“Here,” he says, tossing the kid a copper. “Now scram.”
There’s zero sympathy in him as he watches the kid shuffle away. There’s only a small handful of people who would bother sending him a message, and he’s very confident that every one of them would make sure the kid was paid fairly before sending them off on their errand.
When he unrolls the note, he immediately recognizes the slim, slanted scrawl of his sister Taalviel. The message has him sighing in frustration. What she wants him to do – it’ll require him to abandon his watch on Nessa Reena.
Though longing for an end to this exercise, he just feels so close. She can’t stay inside forever; from what he’s seen of her on the stage, and the times he’s tailed her through the streets, she’s exuberant, extroverted, basks in attention and sunlight. Having been at home for so many hours, it seems ever more likely with each passing tick that she’ll finally emerge. And if he leaves now, he might miss that moment, and have nothing to report to Mindy tonight.
The note feels heavy in his hand, the ink unwavering and insistent. If it were anyone other than his sister, he might not bother.
“Oh petch. Fine,” he grumbles to himself under his breath.
He casts a quick look around the other benches, at the modest but neatly trimmed park before him.
“Hey!” he calls at the closest stranger. They don’t seem to be in much of a rush, idling at the perimeter. “Yeah, you! Sorry, I’m in a bit of a bind right now. Can you do me a favor?”
985
-1 CM
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