![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardHere is A Thing. I actually wrote this back in June, but I have been sitting on it for a while because of Reasons, which is also why it's going up under flock. Under normal circumstances I would probably continue sitting on it (for Reasons -- not quality reasons, I hasten to add, I really like it) until I forgot about it, but between dissertation craziness and wrist craziness and general life craziness I kind of feel like posting fic. I shall say no more, but I may or may not answer questions in comments if any come up.
As an aside, this is tagged with Revelations, but it probably takes place about a hundred years before Revelations.
the midnight man
They call him the Midnight Man.
No one has ever seen him in the daytime, but he shows up just as twilight slides into true night, wearing a smart suit and a fedora tipped low over his hazel eyes. He carries a cane tipped with a lion’s snarling head, expertly shaped out of silver, with gleaming ruby chips for eyes, though he doesn’t seem to need it – he just likes having it. He joins the backroom card games at the Haunt and the Poison Well, plays with a seemingly never-ending stack of notes that he produces from an inside pocket of his bespoke suit jacket, and doesn’t seem much bothered if he wins or loses. As the night goes on and the drinks start flowing, the jazz starts playing, he loses the jacket, rolls up his sleeves to reveal well-muscled forearms, faint scars that slash across his palms, calluses on his fingers like the ones that the squaddies from the fort at Tablelands have. He takes the fedora off to reveal black hair, an earring gleaming blue in one ear. He’s a handsome man, and the dames all fall swooning at his feet. He accepts their kisses as his due, grinning around his cigar, and lets them blow on his dice or cards for luck.
There’s a fight once, at the Haunt. He’s there even before the bouncers are, dragging the combatants apart and smashing their skulls together. He lets them fall groaning to the battered wooden floor, rebuking, “Don’t be rude.”
By the time the bouncers get there, he’s back at his table, sipping an Evenstar and flicking meditatively through his cards. He wins big that night, walks out of the club with a bag of cash that somehow makes its way to the front desk of the Lion’s Den orphanage in the Pearl. Well, it might not be the same bag of cash, but really, how many can there be floating around Cair Paravel?
No one knows his real name. No one’s ever been brave enough to ask, and really, at places like the Haunt or the Poison Well, real names aren’t preferred anyway. He’s been showing up for a month when one of the barmen at the Haunt points out to a dealer that the shadows always seem to sit a little oddly around him – as if they might move of their own devices, and not to do with whoever they’re attached to. That night he’s watched closely, more out of curiosity than anything else. Plenty of odd things in Narnia, even these days, and a man with a taste for shadows isn’t the worst of it.
It’s been a strange autumn. Summer has lingered long this year, and the High Reaches are ablaze with wild fires that probably won’t be dampened until the first snows come. The horizon sits heavy and dark to the west and north, and the smell of smoke is in the air all across Narnia. Despite the fact that it’s hardly for the season for such things, the Great River is swelled as if in springtime, and where fire and water meet there seems to be a battle, steam bubbling up from the shores of the river in what seems to be a war of its own. The augurs speak of it with dire foreboding, promising war and plague to come.
The Midnight Man never speaks of such things. He never speaks of much, really, though when he does his tongue is light and sharp, quick with a jape or an insult so sharp that the sting isn’t felt until later. He smiles with the words, but it never quite seems to reach his eyes – though no one’s willing to look too closely. There’s something about him that both attracts and repels in equal measure, and the one time that anyone had tried to meet his eyes they had fallen groaning on the floor an instant later, the Midnight Man calmly turning his gaze back down to his hand of cards.
The night the dame comes, it’s well past midnight, pale light beginning to stain the sky outside the shuttered windows of the Haunt. Nobody remembers her coming in, just that all of a sudden she’s there, a tall girl with bobbed brown hair and a dress the color of dawn putting her arms around the Midnight Man’s neck and leaning down over his shoulder. “So this is where you’ve been hiding yourself,” she says.
He tips his head back to smile up at her. “I just couldn’t take the yelling anymore,” he says. “I swear I can hear them from Lantern Waste. They still at it?”
“Why do you think I came looking for you?” She slips into the chair beside him, ignoring the stares of the other men at the table, and tips her hand for a waiter. “I’ll have a Rising Sun,” she says, and lets her mouth quirk into a smile. “He’ll pay.”
The Midnight Man grins. “I’ll have a refill too,” he says, and the waiter bobs his horned head in acknowledgment, collects his empty glass and taps away on soft hooves.
“Do you know each other?” one of the other players asks.
The girl turns her brilliant smile on him. “Ed’s my big brother,” she says. “Oh, thank you,” she adds as the waiter comes back with their drinks. Her fingers slip along the satyr’s wrist as she reaches out to take the glass from the tray, the tip of her tongue brushing against her teeth as she smiles.
The Midnight Man takes a sip of his own Evenstar. “Pete and Su didn’t send you after me, did they?”
“Pete and Su are too busy destroying the Reaches to worry about us,” says the girl. “Thank the Lion. I give it another week or so before they get it out of their systems. Deal me in, by the way,” she adds to the dealer, who does, still staring at her.
It’s only when they leave, hours later, when the sun is high in the heavens, slightly obscured by the smoke that still lies heavy over the country, that the barman realizes that the shadows lie easily around her as they don’t around the Midnight Man. Her heels click on the dirty pavement, the sunlight illuminating the clips in her hair, the brilliant red of the pendant at her throat, the gleaming ruby eyes of the lion’s head clasp on her belt. She and the Midnight Man walk together, her hand in the crook of his elbow, and after they turn a corner, they’re no more: vanished as if they’ve never been.
As an aside, this is tagged with Revelations, but it probably takes place about a hundred years before Revelations.
the midnight man
They call him the Midnight Man.
No one has ever seen him in the daytime, but he shows up just as twilight slides into true night, wearing a smart suit and a fedora tipped low over his hazel eyes. He carries a cane tipped with a lion’s snarling head, expertly shaped out of silver, with gleaming ruby chips for eyes, though he doesn’t seem to need it – he just likes having it. He joins the backroom card games at the Haunt and the Poison Well, plays with a seemingly never-ending stack of notes that he produces from an inside pocket of his bespoke suit jacket, and doesn’t seem much bothered if he wins or loses. As the night goes on and the drinks start flowing, the jazz starts playing, he loses the jacket, rolls up his sleeves to reveal well-muscled forearms, faint scars that slash across his palms, calluses on his fingers like the ones that the squaddies from the fort at Tablelands have. He takes the fedora off to reveal black hair, an earring gleaming blue in one ear. He’s a handsome man, and the dames all fall swooning at his feet. He accepts their kisses as his due, grinning around his cigar, and lets them blow on his dice or cards for luck.
There’s a fight once, at the Haunt. He’s there even before the bouncers are, dragging the combatants apart and smashing their skulls together. He lets them fall groaning to the battered wooden floor, rebuking, “Don’t be rude.”
By the time the bouncers get there, he’s back at his table, sipping an Evenstar and flicking meditatively through his cards. He wins big that night, walks out of the club with a bag of cash that somehow makes its way to the front desk of the Lion’s Den orphanage in the Pearl. Well, it might not be the same bag of cash, but really, how many can there be floating around Cair Paravel?
No one knows his real name. No one’s ever been brave enough to ask, and really, at places like the Haunt or the Poison Well, real names aren’t preferred anyway. He’s been showing up for a month when one of the barmen at the Haunt points out to a dealer that the shadows always seem to sit a little oddly around him – as if they might move of their own devices, and not to do with whoever they’re attached to. That night he’s watched closely, more out of curiosity than anything else. Plenty of odd things in Narnia, even these days, and a man with a taste for shadows isn’t the worst of it.
It’s been a strange autumn. Summer has lingered long this year, and the High Reaches are ablaze with wild fires that probably won’t be dampened until the first snows come. The horizon sits heavy and dark to the west and north, and the smell of smoke is in the air all across Narnia. Despite the fact that it’s hardly for the season for such things, the Great River is swelled as if in springtime, and where fire and water meet there seems to be a battle, steam bubbling up from the shores of the river in what seems to be a war of its own. The augurs speak of it with dire foreboding, promising war and plague to come.
The Midnight Man never speaks of such things. He never speaks of much, really, though when he does his tongue is light and sharp, quick with a jape or an insult so sharp that the sting isn’t felt until later. He smiles with the words, but it never quite seems to reach his eyes – though no one’s willing to look too closely. There’s something about him that both attracts and repels in equal measure, and the one time that anyone had tried to meet his eyes they had fallen groaning on the floor an instant later, the Midnight Man calmly turning his gaze back down to his hand of cards.
The night the dame comes, it’s well past midnight, pale light beginning to stain the sky outside the shuttered windows of the Haunt. Nobody remembers her coming in, just that all of a sudden she’s there, a tall girl with bobbed brown hair and a dress the color of dawn putting her arms around the Midnight Man’s neck and leaning down over his shoulder. “So this is where you’ve been hiding yourself,” she says.
He tips his head back to smile up at her. “I just couldn’t take the yelling anymore,” he says. “I swear I can hear them from Lantern Waste. They still at it?”
“Why do you think I came looking for you?” She slips into the chair beside him, ignoring the stares of the other men at the table, and tips her hand for a waiter. “I’ll have a Rising Sun,” she says, and lets her mouth quirk into a smile. “He’ll pay.”
The Midnight Man grins. “I’ll have a refill too,” he says, and the waiter bobs his horned head in acknowledgment, collects his empty glass and taps away on soft hooves.
“Do you know each other?” one of the other players asks.
The girl turns her brilliant smile on him. “Ed’s my big brother,” she says. “Oh, thank you,” she adds as the waiter comes back with their drinks. Her fingers slip along the satyr’s wrist as she reaches out to take the glass from the tray, the tip of her tongue brushing against her teeth as she smiles.
The Midnight Man takes a sip of his own Evenstar. “Pete and Su didn’t send you after me, did they?”
“Pete and Su are too busy destroying the Reaches to worry about us,” says the girl. “Thank the Lion. I give it another week or so before they get it out of their systems. Deal me in, by the way,” she adds to the dealer, who does, still staring at her.
It’s only when they leave, hours later, when the sun is high in the heavens, slightly obscured by the smoke that still lies heavy over the country, that the barman realizes that the shadows lie easily around her as they don’t around the Midnight Man. Her heels click on the dirty pavement, the sunlight illuminating the clips in her hair, the brilliant red of the pendant at her throat, the gleaming ruby eyes of the lion’s head clasp on her belt. She and the Midnight Man walk together, her hand in the crook of his elbow, and after they turn a corner, they’re no more: vanished as if they’ve never been.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-28 11:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-29 10:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-30 01:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-31 07:47 pm (UTC)