Chapter 26 – Safe Passage

Alice stood at the mahogany counter of the Exchange, her purchases arranged in a neat row by the attendant’s careful hands. Two grimoires, one thin and charcoal-bound, the other thick and disturbingly moist. Two clean revolvers, matte gray and anonymous, sitting on a square of oiled cloth beside a box of unmarked cartridges. A worn leather glove with one finger missing. A blank, featureless metal faceplate. And a coiled obsidian serpent with ruby eyes, resting on its velvet cushion like a sleeping pet.

Alice stared at the spread. It looked like the inventory of a very eccentric burglar.

She closed her eyes and ran the arithmetic behind her mask. The Volatile Catalyst had been six hundred and twenty. Reasonable. The Velvet Scripture, that blood-soaked ransom note of a book, had been fourteen thousand, three hundred and thirty. Criminal. The two revolvers and ammunition were a pittance by comparison, barely fifteen chips combined. The Thieves’ Glove, two thousand four hundred. The Visage Mask, five thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine. And the Vitric Lover, six thousand one hundred and ninety-nine.

She added it up. She added it up again, because the first number couldn’t possibly be right.

Twenty-nine thousand, four hundred and sixty-three chips.

Alice opened her eyes. She looked at the neat little row of objects on the counter, objects that could fit into a single satchel, and felt a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with exhaustion.

She had just spent the equivalent of a small warship. Fully crewed, armed to the teeth, with cannons and a flag and everything. She could have commissioned one, sailed it into the harbor, and still had change left over for a captain’s hat.

In one afternoon.

In a basement.

“Your current remaining balance stands at sixty-four thousand, one hundred and sixty-two crowns,” the attendant said, sliding a receipt across the mahogany with the measured grace of someone presenting a document of great consequence.

“Sixty-four thousand,” Alice repeated. The number settled into her skull like a stone dropped into still water. The ripples were disorienting. It was still a staggering sum. Enough to live comfortably for decades, buy property, fund a business, retire to a coastal estate where she could spend her twilight years yelling at seagulls. Provided she didn’t develop a habit of buying artifacts every Tuesday.

“Put it all on credit,” Alice said, straightening up and smoothing the front of her dress with hands that were only slightly trembling.

“Of course, Madam.” The attendant was already sweeping the items into individual wrappings of dark silk with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been packaging dangerous objects since before Alice was born. She bundled them neatly, securing the grimoires with leather straps and nestling the artifacts in padded cloth before placing the lot into a sturdy canvas bag. “It is already done.”

The bag slid across the counter, its contents landing with a satisfying, weighted thud.

“Will that be all for this evening?”

“I think I’ve done enough damage,” Alice said, reaching for the bag.

The attendant flinched.

It was a small motion. A slight jerk of the head, a tensing of the shoulders, as if something had stung her behind the ear. Her right hand drifted up for a fraction of a second before she caught herself and smoothed the gesture into an adjustment of her mask.

Alice noticed. She noticed everything tonight. Her nerves were scraped raw and humming like piano wire.

“Change of plans, Miss Dragonslayer,” the attendant said. Her voice shifted by a half-register. The saleswoman’s warmth was still there, but something new had been layered beneath it, a note of professional urgency held on a very short leash. “As you are such a valued member of the Cellar, management has decided to offer you a bonus.”

The word bonus landed on Alice’s ears like a lead coin. Heavy, dull, and immediately suspect.

“A bonus,” she repeated flatly. She slung the bag over her shoulder, adjusting the strap so the weight sat against her hip. “I appreciate the sentiment, truly, but I think I’ve had enough bonuses for one evening. The tickets, the favor, the winnings. My cup runneth over. I’d prefer to leave.”

“I understand your caution,” the attendant said, and to her credit, she sounded like she meant it. “But I would strongly recommend accepting. Management was quite insistent.”

She stepped out from behind the counter and gestured not toward the Vault or the pits, but toward the main exit corridor, the one that led back up the spiral staircase toward Sorto Manor.

Alice hesitated, her fingers tightening on the strap of her bag. Every instinct she had was telling her to be wary. The Cellar had been nothing but a series of escalating surprises since she walked through the door, each one more dangerous than the last. What fresh hell was management cooking up as a parting gift?

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But the attendant was gesturing toward the exit. The same exit Alice needed to take regardless. It wasn’t a detour; it was on the way out. Refusing would mean standing here arguing about the route she was already planning to walk.

“Fine,” Alice said, the word clipped. “Lead the way.”

The attendant inclined her head and set off, her heels clicking a precise rhythm against the polished floor. Alice followed, her satchel of weapons and forbidden knowledge thumping softly against her hip with each step.

They left the Exchange behind, passing back through the heavy iron archway that separated the casino floor from the service corridors. The noise of the Cellar, the distant roar of the pits, the murmur of the tables, faded as they ascended, replaced by the muted silence of cedar paneling and gas-lit hallways.

The attendant stopped in front of a wooden door. Plain, unassuming, and deeply familiar.

The parlor. The same small, intimate room where Alice had sat across from a man in a wooden arrow mask and played a children’s card game for her entire livelihood just hours ago. The green baize table was still there. The two high-backed leather chairs. The single gas lamp casting its cone of amber light.

“In here,” the attendant said, pushing the door open and stepping aside. “Please.”

Alice stepped inside.

The room was as she remembered it, the same dark wood paneling, the same shadows pooling in the corners, but the card table had been cleared. The deck was gone. In its place, resting in the center of the green felt, was a folded garment of black fabric and a pair of sturdy, high-laced leather boots. The clothes were arranged with the meticulous care of a valet’s presentation: fabric smoothed flat, boots positioned side by side at a perfect parallel.

“Mr. Celo has prepared these for you,” the attendant explained from the doorway, her hands clasped at her waist. “To divert danger.”