The Affair of the Mysterious Letter - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alexis Hall is a pile of threadbare hats and used teacups given a semblance of life by forbidden sorcery. He has a degree in very hard sums from a university that should, by all rights, be fictional.

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***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2018 Alexis Hall

Chapter One

Captain John Wyndham

That I must begin these reminiscences with a description of myself and my origins is a necessity that runs contrary to both my character and my upbringing. My editor, however, tells me that my readers will wish to know how a man of my unremarkable public reputation came to be associated with so extraordinary a person as the sorceress Shaharazad Haas. I shall endeavour, therefore, to assuage your curiosity by outlining a little of my early life, particularly the circumstances that led to my arrival in Khelathra-Ven, and to my falling into company with the woman who would become my most trusted confidant and truest friend.

I was born in the Kingdom of Ey during the four hundred and sixty-seventh year of the reign of the Witch King Iustinian. My earliest memory of childhood is being summoned to sing “Alas! Must I in Torments Dwell” for one of my parents’ friends. Such gatherings were frequent at that time and I never thought to question their purpose, though they occurred always after nightfall and were conducted with an air of peculiar secrecy. In any case, I performed poorly, and my father was disappointed, as he so often was.

As for my father himself, I will simply say that he was a man of strong principles and unswerving faith. He fought valiantly for his beliefs and, unlike so many of his contemporaries, practised in private what he espoused in public. Although his role in the revolution and subsequent part in the formation of the Commonwealth afforded him great power and influence, we continued to live simply and spend our days in contemplation of the Creator’s mercy and thankfulness for His blessings.

While I cannot say his stewardship brought much joy to his children, I am nonetheless grateful for many of the lessons he taught me. While some would argue that this world has little use for humility, loyalty, and diligence, I have found them to be constant sources of strength. But, to my shame, I have not the serenity to be thankful to him for his efforts to instil in me the virtues he felt becoming of his daughter. To this day, I am not sure how I would have endured my childhood were it not for my mother.

She shared many traits with my father, including his revolutionary fervour and his unyielding resolve, but she leavened them with kindness. It was of her devising that I was sent to the Honoured University of Khel at the age of sixteen. And it was there that I received my bachelor’s degree in transubstantial sciences and was able to be, for the first time, myself: John Wyndham.

Following my graduation, I made one attempt to return home. Although I had been away only four years, the Commonwealth and I had both changed significantly; I had left a kingdom unsettled from revolution and still bearing the wounds of five centuries of tyranny. I returned to a nation in the midst of renewal. Thomas Latimer, the man for whom I had sung so badly so long ago, had been appointed Lord Protector, and established an advisory council known as the Chamber of Regicides. My father’s disappointment in me, however, was unchanged.

It quickly became apparent to me that my future did not lie in Ey. Centuries of fear followed by a decade of transformation had left the people of the Commonwealth unwelcoming of anything that seemed to them foreign or mysterious. And I, with my varsity ways and my Khelish habits, was both. Ironically, in Khelathra-Ven I had always been too provincial, my friends mocking me for my prudishness and my adherence to my father’s faith, despite my having long since learned the Creator was likely little more than a mindless ball of protoplasmic fire that dwelt in a dead star at the heart of the cosmos.

Thus it was I came again to Khelathra-Ven and, like so many outcasts before me, sought refuge with the Company of Strangers, that queer but valiant battalion of soldiers founded some two centuries past under the joint auspices of the Kaiserin of the Hundred Kingdoms and the Uthmani Sultan. It was rare indeed for those two great powers to agree overmuch on anything, but the existential peril presented by the forces of the Empress of Nothing demanded a united response and the company was structured in such a way that it could owe no loyalty and, thus, would never be distracted from the conflict that rages from the Unending Gate. I believe most people, or at least most people who are familiar with such matters, know at least a little about that ceaseless war. They know, for example, that it takes place primarily across a kaleidoscope of ever-shifting, otherworldly battlefields, and that our enemy is by her very nature unknowable and unconquerable. They may even be aware that the conflict has its origins in the events surrounding the fall of ancient Ven. None of those facts, to my mind, are pertinent. My experiences during my time with the Company of Strangers are difficult for me to describe and I do not think they would make for edifying reading. I will not, therefore, attempt to describe them. Suffice to say that I am, even now, uncertain what it was that I hoped to find in pledging myself to such a cause. Perhaps little more than purpose and what passed for an honourable death. But there, in those strange and sunless lands, I soon learned that no death is honourable. Unlike many of my fellows I survived and rose, more thanks to circumstance than merit, to the rank of captain.

Just as I was beginning to contemplate the opportunities my unexpected successes had placed before me I was struck down by an extratemporal jezail, a fiendish weapon whose bullets displace themselves in time and space, meaning the injuries they cause recur unpredictably. Although I am quite well most of the time I shall, on occasion, be afflicted with a stabbing pain in my shoulder or my leg or, most peculiarly, by the recollection of such a pain in the distant past, long before I had even thought of going to war. Such a condition made me unfit for military service. And so it was that I found myself returning to Khelathra-Ven with little more than my clothes and the meagre savings I had accrued during my tour of duty.

Chapter Two

The City of Khelathra-Ven

My arrival in the city, following my demobilisation, was an unfortunately shambolic affair. Not having anticipated my injury, I had been unable to make any arrangements for accommodation ahead of my arrival. The only lodgings I had been able to secure at such short notice, a tiny unfurnished room above a dyer’s shop, proved both exorbitantly expensive and to reek of various unsavoury substances that I shall not name for fear of causing distress. From there I was able to move temporarily into the sitting room of an old university friend who, since graduation, had made a successful career for herself as an interdimensional metallurgist. Although she was most welcoming and her home infinitely more comfortable than the room above the dyer’s, I was ill at ease imposing too long on her charity.

My first order of business was to secure for myself some semblance of an income and, with the assistance of one my former tutors, I was able to take up a position as dispensing alchemist at the Little Sisters of Thotek the Devourer Hospital in Athra. My remuneration for this role was not entirely generous and I soon realised that I would be forced to choose between living in one of the least reputable parts of the city, and potentially taking my life in my hands on my daily walk to work, or else making an earnest effort to find a housemate. Even this strategy proved less fruitful than I had hoped. Many desirable properties remained unaffordable and many affordable properties remained undesirable. Furthermore, my Eyan origins rendered my company...