The Sixth House

The thick mist had already settled on the streets of Godglaive with the blood red moon glowing eerily in the darkened sky as it had done each night since the gods had been killed. Wren was just about to finish his final preparations for tonight’s job. Getting into the city had been surprisingly hard when the train’s conductor had almost noticed that Wren’s passport was a fake one, and he had been saved only by accident, when another stowaway had panicked and taken his chances by attacking the man. During the chaos, Wren had managed to slip away and stay unnoticed. Had Wren been caught, he would have been turned over to the cityguards, who would most certainly have found his guild’s brand and arrested him for it.

And ending up there would have meant a fate worse than death. Even the thought of it made Wren gulp out loud.

It had been a long while since Wren had been in the city of Godglaive. Last time he had left, he had barely made it out alive and sworn that he would never return, but over the past few years, the need for vengeance had become too much to bear, and as soon as he had heard about the job, especially how no one had been able to fulfil it, Wren had seized the moment. Someone had paid well in advance for the city’s First Magister Mael of the Sixth House to be robbed, and Wren planned to make good on that promise. Accomplishing such a task would not be easy, but Wren liked the challenge along with the chance to pay back for the last time. The Magister had taken a lot from him, but if Wren managed to get his hands on the requested artefact, he could steal everything from the Magister in return. It had been almost fifty years since the Old Gods of the past era had been slain and taken most of the world’s magick with them, but some of it still lingered in the cracks of the earth that was bleeding dry. First Magister Mael had been one of the heroes who had freed the people from the gods’ chains and now wielded the same magick that he had once fought against. In a greed for power, he had forgone his heroic ideals and turned into a villain that every civilian of the Godglaive knew well enough to fear. While the chancellor of Godglaive might have had the governmental power over the land on paper, the First Magister was truly the one pulling all the strings. Where the gods had had a natural attunement to the magick, humans needed anchors, and one such anchor was the artefact which Wren aimed to steal. Taking it would also take away the First Magister’s powers, leaving him with nothing.

The First Magister Mael. A godslayer and a great magi. Revered and dreaded man, who was known to be cruel to anyone who did not bend to his will.

Wren’s right hand found the small brass wind-up key from his pack, slid it into the hole on his left arm, turned it until it no longer moved, and put it back in his small leather pack. The gears inside his brass arm began to whir. Wren stretched his arm, rotating his wrist and closing his hand to a fist to make sure it worked correctly, before putting on his deep black tailcoat that made his milky white skin and light grey eyes look almost sickly in contrast. He hid his steel grey ringlet curls underneath a bicorn, leaving only a shoulder-length braid to lie against his left shoulder. With the dark cane with a silver handle and a tip in his gloved hand, Wren looked just like any other young man of Godglaive looking for a fun night at the pleasure district, and that was where he was heading, but not for sexual reasons. The First Magister’s head steward frequented the pleasure district often, and he had what Wren needed to get inside with him: a small sigil etched on a gold plate that worked as a key to the First Magister’s tower. Not only would it allow him to enter, but it would help him to disengage the magical traps deeper within. Those traps had been the fall of many of Wren’s kind, and he had determined to be the exception and secure his place as a high-ranking member back at the guild.

The Nightmoth Guild dealt with all things too fragile or unlawful to stand the light of day. Among which were little such things as forgery, thievery and assassinations. Wren had leaned on the thieving part of it, as it had not only been a way to earn enough money to live, but it was also where his skills seemed to shine the most. His hands were nimble and still, and he was smart enough to outwit most of his targets, like the one nobleman whose precious painting he stole a couple of years ago. The beautiful painting of the Lady Silent that had been hanging on his gallery had been a fake one, and the nobleman had kept the real one safe in his bedroom, right above his bed. Wren had found his secret lover, who had told him about it. When the nobleman had been away during his manor’s reconstructions, Wren had stolen the forgery, which the nobleman had expected to happen, even going so far as bragging about it, and replaced the real one with the fake one, disguised as a worker. As far as Wrein knew, the nobleman still had the fake one hanging over his bed, none the wiser of what had actually happened.

Wren gave a last look at his lodgings to make sure he had everything ready if he had to leave quickly and closed the door behind him. Going down the corridor that creaked beneath his black leather boots in a way only an old building could, Wren’s pace did not betray his confidence. If he had been truthful with himself, Wren would have recognised that he was heading to a place where he would be a fish out of water. He had planned to get the sigil either by stealing or, if things came to it, by seducing the man. Yet, the art of seduction was not one Wren had a lot of experience with. he had never slept with another man nor a woman and had only experimented alone after coming to adulthood. When he and his friends had gone for drinks, they had flirted and succeeded in finding willing partners, but Wren had been too shy even to try and had instead spent most of his time honing his skills as a thief. A coin from there, a set of bracelets from here, all those things had been his, and over time, his skills had earned him a reputation of good standing. That might have been one of the reasons why the guild elder had allowed him to take this job; if anyone was going to get it done, it would be Wren. After some time, Wren had come to terms with dying as chaste as he had been born, but if his revenge was hanging in the balance, he had decided that he would lie with the head steward if there was no other choice.

The cobble street Wren walked on was relatively empty. Only a few figures were walking through the fog, along with the sound of a lone horse coming from somewhere further away as hard hooves hit against the rocks. Life had moved to the saloons lining the street. The warm, yellow lights cut through the fog, where the shadows of the people revelling inside were cast on it like they were performing a shadow theatre. Two cityguards dragged a cocked man from one of the bars and began to beat him with their batons right in the street when he refused to get up. Wren quickly dodged to the other side of the street, determined to get where he was heading. His first stop would be the pleasure district and a gentleman’s club known as the Black Chalk Cornerclub. If and when he got what he needed, he would head deeper into the city the same night. The Head Steward would realise that his sigilkey is missing as soon as he returned to the magister’s tower, giving Wren a little room to plan otherwise. Accomplishing two very different tasks over one night was risky, but so was the job itself. Wren recognised that there was a chance that he would not live to see the next dawn, but if he did, then the world would be all the better for it. Of course, the resulting chaos of one of the most powerful men losing all of his powers would bring its own harm, but Wren had been blinded by his need for revenge and, as such, had made himself believe that his deed would be justified in the end.

Through the heavy fog colored by the red and blue lights of the pleasure district, Wren could finally see the building that was called the Black Chalk Auction, named for its dark walls and history. It had once served as the largest black chalk distribution centre in the world, a mineral that was highly sought after because of its qualities. Unlike white chalk, the true black chalk could be used to make glass stronger and infused with a little bit of magic, leading to countless possibilities. Yet, as soon as the old gods were struck down, the price for magickal items and abilities shot through the roof, killing such common use for magick, taking the black chalk industry with it. Now the old auction house served another kind of customers: it had two different clubs, one serving men lusting for other men and the other serving women loving women. The women’s cornerclub was marked by the blue lights, whereas the men used the red colour, making the whole district a colourful blend of red, blue and purple. The black iron gates into the district were closed during the day, but wide open as the evening had fallen. Wren stepped right through them, feeling a bit nervous when he saw a man at another club throwing leery glances at him. As an opposite to the main street before it, the pleasure district was bustling with people, men, women and everyone between or outside of them had gathered around, dallying with each other despite the class and status. During the day, they would seldom meet or speak to each other, but here in the pleasure district, especially during the night, every door and way was open to those who only needed to come through.

Wren made his way through the crowd, entering through the double doors of the Black Chalk Auction that drew heavy shadows over the other buildings around it. The concierge guided him to the door of the Black Chalk Corner club. Wren was met with a scent of cigarettes and rich bourbon floating in the air, and the sound of the phonograph playing in the background. Everything in the room screamed of masculine desires: everything was shaped to resemble phallic shape, from the symbols on the wallpaper all the way to the table and chair legs. Even the phonograph was hidden in a statue that had been carved to resemble a nude, young man. Wren found himself blushing before he was pushed deeper inside by the other arriving gentlemen. Wren had to remind himself that he was there for a job and pushed his tricorne hat down to hide his red cheeks and got himself a glass of iced water as a distraction. From a seat that looked as if a large, wooden phallus was about to enter his rectum, he looked over the room to find his target.

The men in the club were all well-dressed and varied greatly in age. Some looked as fresh-faced as Wren himself; others were far older and could have easily been great-grandparents to the younger men they were hanging with. Wren witnessed exploratory looks and kisses, a hand on someone’s thigh, caressing the inside. When their communication between the men became too hot, they slipped away together or in a small group into the back of the club, from where a narrow staircase would lead them to the private rooms to continue their deeply immoral exchange. It took a moment for Wren to note the man he was looking for, and to his disadvantage, the head steward was already groping another on a couch. The red-haired young man seemed to be into the older man, whose hair had already fallen, but it looked like he was also eyeing another man in the room. Wren moved closer, trying to come up with a plan on how to separate the two, when suddenly, the red-haired boy got up and moved to get another drink. Taking his change, Wren moved in. He sat next to the man as if only looking for a place to sit, which was not very hard, as more people were standing around than places to sit. The head steward looked slightly infuriated, but his expression changed soon when he looked at Wren a little bit closer. Wren could feel his dark blue eyes explore every visible part of him, from the beauty mark on his bare chin all the way to his thighs. The man licked his lips, moving closer to the thief who tried to act like he hadn’t even noticed him.

“Say, I haven’t seen you around here before, haven’t I?” the older man started and slipped his warm hand on Wren’s thigh.

“Hey… Umm… Yes, I moved here for work just recently,” Wren said truthfully. He could smell the whiskey in the man’s breath along with the years of hard smoking. His teeth were yellowed by the tar, and the wrinkles on his face were as much the work of the years of hard labour as they were due to his age.

“Oh? What do you do as a job?” The steward asked.

“Horses,” Wren answered and took another sip from his drink, “My master buys and sells horses. My job is to look for them, so I travel a lot.”

“Really? That must be an interesting job,” the man feigned his interest, bursting with the intention to reveal his career. It could be seen in his grin and in the way his wrinkles turned up around his heavy eyes. “I work for the First Magister himself,” the man finally let out. Working for someone like him was a matter of pride; the association alone was enough to separate the steward from the rest, and that pride was something Wren could use. he did his best to act surprised, interested even, and widened his eyes while consciously lifting his bottom lid.

“Really? What’s it like?” he asked.

The steward moved closer, his fingers pressing against Wren’s inner thigh, while his other hand moved behind the thief to lay against his shoulders. He tipped Wren’s hat back up to see him better and smiled.

“You know, not easy,” the steward chuckled, “I take care of his household, and make sure the servants are doing what they are told to do. It’s a lot, but I still have time to… play… after the hours, and I like to play rough.” He pulled up his pendant that held the sigil key Wren was looking for, “See?” the man said, “That’s his mark,” and pointed at the golden pendant before slipping it back inside his coat. The sigil resembled a simple key with the magister’s mark carved through it. The symbols were easy enough for anyone to copy, but they only worked if they had been embedded with the sigil holder’s magick, whose glow could be seen in the carving cracks.

This time, Wren did not need to feign his interest and shared his full attention with the man.

“What’s your name?” Wren asked and moved his hand over the steward’s chest, gently pressing it to see where he might have hidden the sigilkey, finding it and measuring how long the waxed string on it was. Wren had a thin ring on his middle finger that hid a small, cat-like claw blade in it. If he got close enough, he could cut the string and steal the necklace, but only if he could do so without being noticed.

“You can call me Adolphe,” the steward’s hand pressed hard against Wren’s tight and he had to fight to keep himself from yelping out loud.

“I-It’s good to meet you, I’m Válery,” Wren lied through his biting lip, which Adolphe took as a sign of interest, not distress. Wren pulled in closer, raising himself a little to lean against the steward and moved his hands over his shoulders as if he was about to kiss him, but then the steward suddenly pulled away.

“The night’s short and I need to be up early.” Adolphe stated straight out, “I’m not here to gamble, only to play.” Wren cursed loudly in his mind as the man stood up from the couch and turned his back on him. He needed to recoup and get the man’s attention back to him again, and do so soon.

“Are you coming or what?” Adolphe turned back to Wren.

“Y-yes!” Wren stuttered, relieved that he had not lost the situation after all. He walked to the steward, who grabbed him by the buttocks and squeezed them hard. Adolphe began to lead Wren to the corridor, and he could already hear the thumping and moaning echoing through the walls. Wren had hoped he would not have to be with the man alone, nor that he would have to go further than a kiss with him, but the man had been right about night being short, and Wren was not going to stop until he got what he wanted. It looked like he would not get another choice, and as such, Wren allowed the man to lead him to a private room for two.