Page 17 of Harmonic Pleasure (Mysterious Arts #6)

F arran knocked on the door, a bit warily.

Not that the building was that imposing.

It was tucked into a small magical street near Bedford Square, where people without magic wouldn’t think to look for it, even without the warding and illusions.

The street was narrow, with houses and shops on both sides, but this was an ordinary house, more or less.

Later Georgian, which made sense given the history of Bedford Square, but of course not nearly as posh.

A moment later, the door was opened, with an older woman peering out warily. “I’m here to see Mistress Beaumont.” The woman stared at him, and Farran added. “Farran Michaels. Consulting about a piece of art.”

“Oh. She said you’d be by. Up the stairs, door on the right. No visitors after half-eight. My ladies need their rest.” Farran didn’t argue. Lena had trained him better than that. Though he wondered what Vega’s schedule at the club did to that orderliness. He nodded again and went up the stairs.

At the top, one door had a neat label in the bronze holder, saying “Vega Beaumont” in beautiful copperplate print.

Farran knocked just once before the door opened.

The rooms were small, and surprisingly, not terribly cluttered.

Why Farran had assumed her rooms would have a lot of stray items around, he wasn’t sure.

She wouldn’t have chosen the wallpaper, of course, or the furniture, but he could see a few things out on the shelf and desk that had brighter flashes of colour.

What he could see was a sitting room with a phonograph, a small sofa, a desk by a small window that faced out to the street, and a small setup for a magical tea kettle.

A hallway led away from the door, and of course he wouldn’t pry.

Even if he rather wanted to know how the rooms were set up, since it was the sort of thing he thought about a lot because of Thebes and their residents.

Vega had stepped back toward the hall. “Thank you for coming here. I hope it wasn’t too much of a bother. ”

“No, not at all. A pleasant walk.” She looked a little surprised, and Farran said, “I take the Tube or a cab or a bus, but I enjoy walking. Seeing different parts of London. Each street has a different view.”

“Oh.” Vega seemed a little off-balance at that. “Tea?”

“If you’d like.” Farran couldn’t tell if she’d find making some soothing or not. “Where would you prefer I sit?”

“Oh, there, the sofa. I’ll pull over the chair.

” Vega turned away, and the next couple of minutes were spent with the kettle coming to a boil and Vega putting leaves in the pot and setting out two cups.

She had only three, but Farran supposed she couldn’t fit more than three people in this space terribly comfortably.

Finally, she poured the tea and sat down on the edge of the desk chair, her knees together, looking definitely nervous.

“May I ask, um.” Farran stalled. “Something’s changed?”

“For one thing, I have rather a lot more information from my family.” Then she took a breath. “I beg pardon, can I ask if you know someone? Or is that inappropriately personal?”

Farran considered. The network of people he knew was, in fact, a professional skill and something of a professional secret.

On the other hand, it was his knowledge or his application of knowledge that she was paying for.

And he was sitting in her sitting room. “We are not entirely proceeding in the ordinary way of an auction negotiation. Why don’t we agree that asking is fine, and I may or may not answer?

Or you, for that matter. Both ways round is fair. ”

She blinked at him over the cup of tea, a delicate set even if in an odd number.

He thought it might be one of the Staffordshire magical potteries.

Porcelain, with a deep purple design, but not one he knew by sight.

Turn of the eighteenth century into the nineteenth, most likely, but he could be a decade or three off.

It was in excellent shape, but it was curious that she had this here, in lodgings.

He took up his own cup, peering at it, but of course the tea obscured the cup itself, and he could scarcely peer at the saucer or the maker’s mark.

“Yes.” Now she sounded more decisive. “My question is whether you know Vivian Porter.” She said the name evenly, but Farran had to catch himself before dropping the teacup and set the saucer down carefully.

“Yes? May I ask why you ask?” It was the sensible question, honestly, because there were multiple reasons someone might ask.

“Her name came up when I was talking to my aunts. Older aunts, you understand, with connections to many people?” Vega met his eyes briefly, then shrugged. “Through work, or something else?”

“Multiple ways. I knew about her for quite a while. A good friend of mine’s older sister is her assistant. Runs the office, all that. And then I asked her to help with something, hired her. I was not yet twenty. I had no idea what I was doing.”

Farran considered whether to say the next bit, but he had that instinctive feeling that it mattered.

And Master Philemon had trained him to trust that, not fight it, if he couldn’t see a logical problem with it.

“She and my uncle Cadmus have been seeing each other since. Five and a half years or so. They don’t live together.

Uncle Cadmus is tied to our house in Oxfordshire.

But she visits regularly, and he comes into Trellech to see her.

” Farran shrugged. The way they sorted their lives sometimes baffled him, but Uncle Cadmus was happy, and Farran was fairly sure Vivian was as well.

Whatever Vega had expected to hear, it was apparently not that.

He got a glimpse of her surprise, before she formed her face back into something smoother, as any competent performer could.

“Oh. All right. That explains something, maybe, that my aunts said.” She looked as if she might ask something else, then shook her head.

“They gave me more information. So I suppose the question is whether you’re willing to continue helping.

We can pay your fee, of course, and work around your other obligations. ”

Farran considered that ‘we’ and the implications.

He couldn’t quite fit the pieces together tidily there, but there was something lurking just outside his scope.

Some detail of the piece he hadn’t spotted yet.

Or, more likely, didn’t have the right angle on just yet.

“To be frank, I am not sure how much I can be of help. But I am glad to try. And if you decide I am not the right person, well, we can part ways amicably.”

“Who would you suggest, if not you? You’ve a sense for the feel of the magic.

That’s not something everyone has.” Farran was about to say something else, but Vega raised one finger.

He was caught by how fluently she used the gestures of the stage.

It was her own particular mode of sign language, that framed what she was doing as smoothly as Lena’s hands said what she was thinking.

“I can scarcely go down to a high street shop and ask for an archaeologist of the appropriate period. Whatever period that actually is.”

“And to be honest, there’s not a lot of people doing work between the fall of Rome and Edward the Confessor.

Some, but not so many.” Farran scrunched his nose up.

“Some of them are not very easy to be around, either.” He’d met a few.

One of the things about his work was getting invited to a range of parties of people who wanted to talk about their latest discoveries or their collections or both. “All right. How do we go forward?”

“Look, let me put out the notes I can share.” Vega considered, then moved a small table over.

“Still smaller than a breadbox, but possibly a plate or something like that, rather than something worn. Or possibly something worn.” She went on, going through each point deliberately, which Farran appreciated.

But it also seemed a more orderly way of managing information than many artists he’d met so far, no matter their art form.

“And this, here, is that an indication of materia?” He tapped one particular symbol. “I don’t know that one.”

Vega flushed. “It’s not terribly common. Meteoric iron. Maybe gilded, but they’re not sure.”

“Higher chance of rusting if it’s not.” Farran said, automatically, then he looked up to see her seem startled. “Er. Is that, did I say something wrong?”

“Not the reaction I expected?” Vega hesitated, then moved to sit down on the sofa, still a couple of inches away. But here she could look at the papers if she needed to, without bending over.

Farran considered her age, the fact he hadn’t heard her name in any of the usual places.

That could mean she was using a stage name, but she appeared in various public records before she began singing.

He’d checked, like Vivian had recommended.

“You didn’t attend Schola, I think? Where should I start with the materia explanation? ”

That, somehow, made her relax a bit, visibly. “I had a thorough education in the subject, privately. My family. Begin where you like, and I’ll ask questions.”

“Well, meteoric iron has a number of properties similar to terrestrial iron, but the balance of the ores. Much more nickel, as I understand it. Not my specialty, mind.” Farran shrugged slightly.

“Uncle Cadmus likes a bit of blacksmithing, though I don’t think he’s ever tried that.

Anyway, I know it’s much softer, it won’t take an edge well unless you alloy it with something that will, or do a lot of work with it.

Possibly magic. The temperature is a factor. ”

Vega was staring at him by the end of that explanation. “How do you know that much?”

“Part of my job? Oh, not meteors, yet. But identifying metals, yes. One thing I turn out to be surprisingly good at is getting a sense for the materia of an object. Of course, I can’t just tell someone that a piece is a fraud, based on that.

There’s no way to prove it on my word. Even the truth-telling magics wouldn’t help enough, they’d just confirm I thought it was true.

But it means I can get a feel for an item, and then do the research more efficiently to prove what I already know. ”

She blinked at him now, as if he’d done something unexpected.

Not bad, it wasn’t that kind of reaction.

And besides, Farran had got a little more comfortable talking about this the last few years.

“I know someone who can tell you the publication date of a book within a three year period, just by picking it up. Odd but amusing party trick, but also very helpful given he specialises in books.”

“What if something’s been rebound?” Vega asked it, as if she were thinking about other questions.

“He stares at his hand and looks rather confused, and then he sorts through which bits go together. The faces he makes are particularly good when they kept the book boards, of course, especially if he can’t actually touch them.

A core of something older, the newer binding.

..” Farran gestured at the pile of notes.

“The problem with your question is there is a great deal of possible material to sort through. But if it is meteoric iron, that feels different.”

“Tastes different, I’m told by someone.” Vega said it without explaining. “All right. Could we begin with that premise, especially if it’d help us narrow things down? Be open-minded about other options, too, but we have to start somewhere, right?”

“And it is a large, venerable, and busy city.” Farran leaned back as he thought through the implications.

“I think so. If you can give me a couple of days, I can probably put together something that will make it easier to sense that or, mmm. Make that louder? That’s probably the metaphor.

A soloist, not one of the supporting chorus. ”