[i]Fallen London, The Echo Bazaar[/i]

The frequent mists and weeping rains of London had never bothered Alex. They were staple facts of life, true, but minor annoyances at best; she had plush carriages and servants with umbrellas to keep her from the cold and the wet. Watching the curtains of rain sweep down from the roof onto the outskirts of the city from the spire-heights of her home, seeing the myriad gaslights blur into diffuse, useless haloes, that was oddly soothing. Particularly when the wild weather was safely locked on the other side of a pane of glass.

Even as London’s doughty workers scrambled for shelter, she knew, the less salubrious denizens of the Neath would be making their moves and fighting their battles amid the cloying anonymousness of the mist, relying on the chill creep of the rain to wash away the evidence and their tracks both.

Knife-and-Candle players, the agents of the Foreign Office, gang members, dockhands, even the odd academic, all of them would be flitting from shadow to obscuring light, jockeying for position, power and influence under its spell.

Not that Alex was [i]immune[/i], exactly, it was more that the majority of her schemes and plots were done at a remove. She had, these days, [i]people[/i] to go out and get their hands dirty. Most of them didn’t even know the title of their employer, still less her actual [i]name[/i]. Which was just fine by Alexandra St. Clair, just fine indeed. Of value to the Bazaar she might have been, but – simple capitalism told her – there was a point where expenditure on an asset would outstrip its value, and at that point the [i]pragmatic[/i] thing to do was to cut one’s losses. Better all round, therefore, to keep things low-key, restrained. The Bazaar was, after all – in all things save love – ruthlessly pragmatic.

Besides, the rain would be good for the roses.

And thinking of roses…a knife-like smile cut across her bloodless features, and she rose from her wing-backed armchair in a silken susurrus, her Parabola-silk gown tumbling in liquidly-gleaming ruches about her wasp-waisted form. 

[i]Red[/i] was the overwhelming impression, rich crimson bleeding from every fold and ruffle. Scarlet dripped from her jewels, too, rubies and black opals in dark profusion, and her lips were the colour of Mr. Wines’ finest vintage. She almost seemed to leave vermilion trails in the air as she glided through the world; that overwhelming redness had become, over the years, something of a trademark. Many assumed that the Lady in Red was so for her striking clothing – not so. 

Red honey, that beyond-illegal stuff of dreams and memories and nightmares, [i]that[/i] was the real reason. A gardener of particularly eccentric tastes, taking delight in the infliction of painful senility far more than anything that might be gained supping the nectar of Parabola, Alexandra St. Clair’s prettily-manicured hands held the spigots of much of the Fifth City’s honey trade, and it was her immurement in the crimson part of it in particular which had given her the soubriquet.

That she played up to it with her clothing was merely a pleasant happenstance, a frivolous bit of obfuscation which surprisingly many fell for. Helped along, perhaps, by the poison-green viric glow of her eyes.

She sent her majordomo, a discreetly-efficient deviless with burning red eyes – furthering the Red Lady’s idiosyncrasy, naturally – to summon the carriage. Veilgarden would be humming, the district that was the haunt of the low and the dissolute, the depraved hedonists and struggling artists, all of whose habits and muses, their path through life, was eased and soothed by the sweet kiss of honey.

Alex St. Clair had a vast network of agents and distributors, of course, but there were times when it paid to make a [i]personal[/i] visit. Just to keep an eye on things, and to remind those highly-placed enough that their employer still had her finger on the pulse. And with the honey-sippers and lovers, the desperate and the depressed, the repressed and listless, the uninspired artists and jaded whores all driven indoors, well, that was the time for the honey-sellers to make a [i]killing[/i].

The exquisitely-sprung coach and four thundered through the rain-slick streets from the spires of the Bazaar, trailing bats and streamers of scarletine light as it passed, the mist bursting apart before it and swirling crazily in its wake. The coachman’s lash was a line of flame in the gaslit gloom, and the horses’ brass-shod hooves struck cataracts of sparks from the cobbles as Alex St. Clair bowled through the city, scattering pedestrians like ninepins.

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[i]Fallen London, Veilgarden District[/i]

Music and merriment saturated the air of Veilgarden in spite of all the rain could do, the bars and clubs of the district full to bursting as the denizens of London sought escape in wine, women and song.

Alex felt a pang of nostalgia as her sinfully comfortable carriage halted in front of Veilgarden’s most famous – and infamous – tavern. Even the [i]sign[/i] was the same, swinging gently in the zee-breeze and beading with the moisture in the air. She paused in the entryway for a moment, even as her coachman fussed with the horses, letting the poet’s bawdy lines wash over her and the fug of a well-stocked taproom wrap her in its invisible arms.

Her baleful eyes swept the crowded Singing Mandrake, missing very little as they danced across musicians and artists, the bartender – with a nod – and the staff, and then played over the more unusual patrons, driven in by necessity or whimsy. Rubbery Men, slurping unobtrusively in one of the darker corners. A couple of deliverymen, looking anxiously out at the lashing rain. A bristling soldier-type, too, all guns and bewilderment, as ill-suited to the Mandrake as the Mandrake would have been to an Army barracks. 

Hmm. She’d expected the Mandrake to be busy, but not [i]this[/i] busy. A smile at the bartender - a demure upcurve of her painted lips, not the white-spired too-wide grin of true mirth or fulminant rage – saw one of the staff hurrying forward with a fortifying spiced wine, redder than blood and with the thinness of its alcohol hidden by the riot of spice. 

Glass in hand, Alex St. Clair swept towards the most unobtrusive person in the tavern, reasoning that they were probably trying to appear so and therefore might be interesting. Or at least worth keeping an eye on.

“[b]I hope you don’t mind,[/b]” she stated, sliding elegantly into the seat opposite Dawn Memoli in a whisper of dancing Parabola-silk, her glass gleaming amidst the ophidian-crimson gleam of her gloves and her venom-green eyes level and calm. “[b]Foul weather we’re having, even for the Neath. Good for business, though, no?[/b]”