Silkshore
For all the fatigue in Doskvol, his training officer used to lecture, there's no excuse for looking like a maggot. Crowley coughs into a pocket kerchief before he pushes on a brazen door square below a sharp sign reading "Tide | On The Ease". It stays. A light drone of sparktech lamps hums inside. Bartemeus' in. He pushes the door again. It doesn't give. A heavy sigh. The windows are blacked out, but it's nothing strange. The windows are always blacked out. An ear to the door. Nothing but that drone from inside. A look over his shoulder. A glance over the other. No traffic. Gingerly, the spider strafes a nearby alley, finding a familiar door to the other side of the block. Used paraphernalia and gnawed scraps line the alley. It reaks of rot. It always reaks of rot. He covers his nose and mouth with the kerchief. Perfect for fronts to hide contraband with. Right in and around the same muck they allure. Try finding a needle in a stack of splinters. The door creaks as he opens it. The smell persists, even inside. No fresh tintara. The halls are dark, but the wood beneath must've been polished recently for all their tack. The door to the next room sits ajar, as if daring him to enter. He enters.
He'd been here enough that the drone of Bart's lamps had become white noise to him. But in the low ambience, they loom a deafening choir of cicadas. The smell persists. Rot. A chair in the centre of the room is surrounded by tailoring mannequins, a mockery of a phalanx guard in half-finished coats and suits. Not a chair, but a throne, and on it, a swollen mass. A drip. He stalks over to the corpse. The boards weren't polished, he realises. If not for a birthmark the shape of the effigy of echoes, Crowley wouldn't have recognised his own tailor.
"Ah, shit."
A click from across the room. He isn't alone. "How long have you been waiting?"
"You're sloppy, Vale." Crowley knows the voice. Can't put a name to it, but knows it.
