Idol Lane
Two years later

She had first become aware of it as an irritation. A sore on her forehead that would not vanish no matter the time and effort she put into it.

Then came a rash, then a fever, then more reddened weeping sores, and in more intimate places.

The day Jane Orr confronted the truth of what had happened to her was one of the worst days of her life, of all of her lives, and she thought she had suffered unendurably before this.

But this…the pox. She had contracted the pox. This was to what her pride and ambition, her heritage and promise, her power and beauty had brought her.

The pox.

Given to her no doubt by one of the sailors Weyland had forced on her.

A whore, and now a poxy whore.

MagaLlan, Darkwitch, Mistress of the Labyrinth: inheritor of a heritage so proud, so stunning, that few could have comprehended it, and this is to what it had brought her.

A poxy whore. Despised by all who laid eyes on her. That Jane no longer worked the mattresses was of no consequence. Everyone who saw her knew her profession from the open weeping sores on her face. All would despise and pity her, men and women alike.

How could she—MagaLlan, Darkwitch, and Mistress of the Labyrinth—have come to this? A poxy whore.

The temptation was there to blame Asterion for all of it—for her downfall, for her degradation, for her daily humiliations—but Jane no longer had the energy to evade the truth. She was as much to blame for this as he: her blindness, her stupidity, her damned arrogance…

Oh gods, her ambition to rule the world through the Troy Game. Perversely, rather than hating Weyland, Jane found herself hating Brutus. If it wasn’t for him…if only they hadn’t attempted to create the Troy Game…if only they hadn’t ignored the danger of Asterion…

If only she had never met Brutus, and had lived out her life as MagaLlan and Darkwitch and nothing else. Gods, then she would have had the respect of all who beheld her.

Now she lived her life in the house that Weyland had purchased in Idol Lane. She was its mistress, a fact Weyland often remarked upon with a small smile on his face. You are the mistress only of a whore-house, Jane. And generally, after that, some crude jest upon the labyrinthine ways of the whore’s bed.

Jane ran the house as well as those pitiable girls that Weyland dragged in from the streets to work for him for a few years. She wasn’t sure where he found them, but find them Weyland did, and he gave them to Jane to feed, wash, manage and advise. They lived and worked in Idol Lane for a year or two, perhaps three, and then Weyland grew tired of them, and set them loose back into the streets. Where they went from there Jane did not know, but she worried about it from time to time, wondering what kind of lives these girls faced, alone and friendless. Weyland might do many terrible things to those girls, but at least he’d fed them, and put a roof over their heads.

Weyland had no financial need to run a brothel, but Jane suspected that it amused him. Most certainly he enjoyed humiliating and tormenting Jane, and grew fat on her despair.

At least Jane now lived in some manner of comfort. Weyland had moved her here from that terrible, stinking tiny room they had shared for so many years. It was a strange house, growing almost organically as it did out of the bone house of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East, and in a state of disrepair when first they’d moved in. Weyland had hired men to fix the roof and to replace the floors and to glass the hitherto unglazed windows, and now the house was not only more than comfortable, but a comfort in itself. Here there were many rooms, places where Jane could exist for hours at a time in some solitude and in some manner of peace.

Her favourite room was the kitchen. How Genvissa and Swanne would have laughed! That they had come to this, a whore who took pride in her kitchen. Kitchen it might be, but the room was one of the largest in the house, and it was comfortable, and warm, and it did not stink of sex for sale. The girls (three at the moment) that Weyland had working for him lived in a tavern cellar on Tower Street (he would not keep them at the house), and fulfilled their duties to Weyland and to every lustful carter and sailor and ironmonger in two rooms on the first floor of this house. They came to the kitchen to eat, and to rest, and to sit in silence, partaking of the same comfort in the room as did Jane.

Weyland sometimes joined them. He ate in the kitchen, and he usually tormented either Jane or one of the girls while he was there, but generally Weyland was either out in the city, or he was upstairs on the top floor of the house, where he had constructed something…strange.

Weyland had felt it as soon as he had climbed the stairs on that first day he’d wandered into the house from Idol Lane. The first floor was nothing, merely a collection of small rooms that would serve well as bedchambers, the next floor no different, but the top floor of the house…well, that was something special. It was one large open space, and it stank of magic and power. Weyland had spent hours up here that day; firstly, searching the space with his eyes and his darkcraft, making sure it could truly be what he needed and, secondly, trying to scry out the source of the attic’s power. In the end, after hours of seeking, he could not manage to discover the source, but that did not trouble him. Indeed, he felt that the power was not antagonistic to him, but rather in some strange way was actually sympathetic.

This was the place he’d been searching out for so many years.

This would be his home, his sanctuary.

His Idyll.

The instant that damned wool merchant had spoken the word “idyll” Weyland now realised the house had been calling out to him.

Here I am! Here I am!

And here it was indeed. Once the house had been repaired and Weyland moved in, he had made it abundantly clear to Jane and the other girls that the attic space was out of bounds.

“It is my den,” Weyland said to them as they stood in a line before him, faces solemn, hands clasped behind their backs. “My lair, my nest, my shadowy corner of hell. Keep away from it.”

They had. Weyland had infused enough threat into his voice to impress even Jane. He kept the top floor of the house in Idol Lane to himself, and out of this space Weyland fashioned his Idyll.

It took him over a year, and he needed almost every particle of his darkcraft to accomplish it. Weyland knew that so much expenditure of power would bring him to the Troy Game’s attention, and he had been worried for many months. But nothing had happened.

And the Idyll had grown.

It was far better than Weyland ever expected. It was his hidey-hole and his sanctuary, but it was also something far deeper. It was Weyland’s expression of self, of what perhaps he might be, given the chance…and the kingship bands.

It was his kingdom.

Yet, even so, Weyland was somehow dissatisfied with his Idyll. Oh, it was pleasant enough and beautiful enough to keep him happy and contented for many a long night, but there was still something missing—some tiny element that Weyland could not quite put his finger on—and that irritated him. He wanted his Idyll to be perfect and to have perfection evade him by a fraction, and to not know what it was that he needed to fill that small, missing space…well, that was frustration incarnate, and those days that Weyland spent hours in his Idyll, studying it, and fretting over what might be needed to complete it, those days were the ones when his temper too often frayed, and either Jane or one other of his whores was likely to feel the full force of his temper in her face.

Weyland understood that he had years to wait until the time was right to make a play for the kingship bands, and he was furious that he might have to spend those years fretting over what, probably, was no more than a small detail of decoration.

He was greater than that, surely.