Untitled, parts one and two

The moon fell through my window like a wreaking machine

The notorious thief known to the press as Breath of the Dragon crept through the tiers, alleys, and metallic rooftops of the City of Brass. The topography seemed to undulate like flame, and as quickly, so swift was she, so much of the metropolis did she cover in her nightly rounds

And in the morning the prized only daughter of the Celestial Ambassador, known to her father as Glowing Jewel of the Moon, woke up, stretched like a cat, blinked her sleepy eyes and complained that once again she did not sleep well. Perhaps if her mattress was made of finer silk, or stuffed with softer down, at last she could get the sleep she so badly required for the role her father needed so desperately for her to play.

Every day she was granted her request, and what happened to her previous sheets and pillows and mattresses and illustrated storybooks and nightgowns and curtains and candles and nightcaps and blindfolds and tapestries and bed stands and canopies and stuffed animals and soft, purring mephits after they were
taken away, the Celestial Ambassador cared little about. Certainly, her daughter could not be bothered with such trivia.

Every night, the rogue Breath of the Dragon would appear at another palisade or temple or mosque or villa or money-lender or jeweler or embassy or brothel or gaming-house or milliner or bookshop or palazzo or artificer or glassblower or automaton-maker or golemist or haberdasher or museum or apothecary or architect or barber or holy slayer or sculptor or painter or clerk or dance-studio or train station or wheelwright or saucemaker or shipyard or mercer or embroiderer or necromancer or organmaker or oracle or far-seer or smithery and distract everyone with an outrageous display of swirling fabrics or incense or melted wax or soft, purring mephits, and she would make another clean getaway.

Despite her gifts, the daughter of the Celestial Ambassador was still not sleeping. Her father feared she would waste away, for although she inherited from him the powerful yang blood of the fabled and mighty
Yellow Dragons of the Celestial Bureaucracy, mortal blood flowed through her veins as well, and diluted some of the potency that should rightfully belong to a dragon’s daughter. He had no idea what maladies and afflictions and feminine problems she might pick up during the hours when her soul untethered from her mortal husk and wandered the country of dreams, lost and alone with no great dragons to guide her, there in the wild regions where the Bureaucracy had little control. The last dragon to act as Celestial Ambassador to the Dreaming Court had turned into a walking pumpkin and then, after so many adventures it would take another book the size of this one to recount them all, and even then it would be more like a list of the names of those adventures than a proper book with an understandable plot, the pumpkin who had been a dragon who later became a tree that bled silver tears and later still became a small silver ball that ricocheted through a Baroque contrivance filled with hellish ringing sounds and lights flashing like a deva’s eyes, finally emerged from the dreamlands as a minor god, who shortly picked up a modest cult somewhere in the barbarian lands, where the Bureau had little motivation to attempt a rescue if they even knew what to do with the poor transformed creature assuming they successfully brought it back.

The Celestial Ambassador, still trying to help his daughter, tried employing a Mesmerist, an elderly yuan-ti who came well recommended by his friends at the Grand Sultan’s court. With his golden watch and soothing words, the serpent-man put young Glowing Jewel of the Moon into a trance, and told her firmly and urgently that she would shortly experience a deep, relaxing sleep with an absolute minimum of dreams and other such unpleasantness, excepting that which her species required for proper functioning during the day.

The next morning Glowing Jewel of the Moon, still beautiful but with red eyes and dark circles underneath them, and hair in tangles from too much thrashing around in her bed (no doubt from those damnable dreams), gently and respectfully informed her father that Mesmerism was so much hokum and what she really needed was still softer sheets, perhaps of a more relaxing hue. As a personal favor to the Ambassador, the Grand Sultan of the City of Brass had the old yuan-ti Mesmerist snake-man put to death, but still the Celestial Ambassador pulled his whiskers out in frustration, for nothing would help his poor, helpless china-doll of a half-mortal daughter.

That night, the nefarious and brilliant Breath of the Dragon stole a glistening orb said to have been wrested from the skull of the beholder Great Mother from the curio-shop that had been displaying it, and as she ran off in a swirl of sheets of a not-so-relaxing hue, she laughed at her stupid father and the stupid Sultan and the stupid Mesmerist and the stupid curio-shop owner and the stupid Great Mother, and as she leaped from an aqueduct into the window of an unoccupied tract-house she thought about how much she loved her life, and how much better stealing things was than sleeping anyway. And where she put that glistening orb, the owner of the curio shop and the soldiers of the Great Sultan cared very much about, but the Celestial Ambassador cared very little and certainly his beloved fragile daughter could not be bothered about such trivia. The nefarious and brilliant thief of glistening, slimy orbs that might have come out of mad old beholder deities, meanwhile, climbed into bed and fell deeply asleep.

In the morning Glowing Jewel of the Moon forced herself awake and complained very convincingly that she had hardly slept at all, and no one who heard her doubted that her sleep-deprived ire was genuine.

But it was too late. The Celestial Ambassador needed to present his beautiful daughter to the court, for the ambassador of the Rakshasa Court of Light and Illusion had come to call and the Grand Sultan had demanded that she adorn his court for this special occasion. If because of her terrible curse she was somewhat less than perfect, well, the Celestial Ambassador had better make her perfect anyway, or expect to make up for the faux pas in other, probably more difficult ways. The Celestial Ambassador had not been an Ambassador in the City of Brass for 35,000 years without knowing when it was time to get on the good side of the Grand Sultan, so he hired the best beauty consultant he could find and told her to work miracles on his protesting child, miracles that would please even a rakshasa ambassador from the Court of Light and Illusion, even a Grand Sultan of the City of Brass, even a celestial dragon.

Gather these familiar shadows

The beauty consultant in question was a cambion of remarkably dark complexion and a suspicious number of fingers. He wore a tidy suit of expensive fabric and neutral colors.

"Ah!" he gushed. "You must be Glowing Jewel of the Moon ! You are more beautiful, truly, even than I was led to believe."

"Uh huh," said Glowing Jewel of the Moon. "Look, can we get this over with?"

"Oh, my dear," said the Beauty Consultant. "There is so much we must do before your big event, and my words, my praise of you, is actually an important part of it. To achieve complete beauty, I must convince you of it. You must embrace Beauty in both body and mind."

"Is this going to take a long time?" asked Glowing Jewel of the Moon.

"If you like," said the Beauty Consultant. "We can cut this short." He shot her with a dart dipped in sleeping poison and spirited her away.

A length of time passed.

When the Celestial Ambassador discovered his daughter was missing, he went into a blind panic for a time, transforming into his dragon aspect and trying to destroy all the local buildings with fire. This didn't work, of course, because the City of Brass is the greatest city in all the lands of elemental flame, and quite impregnable to such attacks. Except for the vehicles and kiosks of lesser races, no one was harmed, and no one important was killed.

When he finally calmed down, the Celestial Ambassador summoned his spies, Mr. White and Mr. Black, and demanded to know where his daughter was.

"Mr. White," he said, "You are in charge of knowing everything that happens during the period of waking. And Mr. Black, you in charge of knowing all that goes on in this city during the period of sleep. What have your contacts and underlings told you? Why has my daughter been allowed to leave the Embassy unescorted?"

Mr. White was human in appearance, though he hadn't been human since his death three hundred years before at the age of sixteen. It had been almost two hundred years since he had replaced the previous Mr. White in the City of Brass; he had been recommended for the job by his tutor, the governor of spirits in a large city on the material plane. Every spirit governor in the Celestial Bureaucracy had a Mr. Black and Mr. White; of course, the Celestial Ambassador was such a governor, though he would never use this title in front of the Grand Sultan. Mr. White wore a formal white suit, unadorned except for his prized jade cufflinks. Despite his youthful looks he had a severe, no-nonsense appearance, though in his actual youth he was thought to be a loose cannon and troublemaker; it had taken some long persuading before the Celestial Ambassador agreed to take him on, especially since his previous Mr. White had been killed in a duel with an efreeti, and he was looking for a calmer sort.

Mr. Black was not human in appearance and probably never had been. He was a squat, lizardlike creature with dark purple scales that shone in the city's red-orange light with a slight iridescence, but looked black when in shadow. Although humanoid, he did not wear clothes. He had served the Celestial Ambassador as his Mr. Black for the past five thousand years, and before that he had been a guardian of the Embassy's doors for another three thousand. Before that his history was unknown; it was believed that he had wandered the planes for centuries. After a demonstration of his abilities, the Celestial Ambassador had hired him on the spot.

"There is no indication of how or where she left," Mr. White admitted. "One moment she was consulting with the advisor you hired for her; the next both she and he were gone. The minders I sent to watch her woke up an hour later with small puncture marks on their skins. This "Beauty Advisor" is a well-respected, if eccentric, member of the aristocratic circles. He has practiced his trade here for nearly seventy years with no known incidents. Before that, he was known to practice similar skills in Sylvania, where he received his training. His parentage is unknown, but this is naturally not unusual for a half-fiend."

"I see," said the Celestial Ambassador in an ominous tone of voice. "And you, Mr. Black? What have you found out?"

Mr. Black's voice was very normal-sounding for a ranking Celestial agent, with perfect inflection and accent in over eighty languages. He was also a fine singer, a baritone with perfect pitch. Of course, he had had thousands of years to practice. Eight thousand years ago his voice had been a raspy, barely comprehensible hiss when he bothered to talk at all, his vocabulary limited to a few hundred words in the planar trade tongue and a sprinkling of Draconic curses. Incidentally, his scales had been a bright emerald green.

"None of the denizens of the night know anything, sir. The Beauty Consultant retires to his apartment alone, or he goes to parties held by one of the efreeti nobles. While of course no efreeti noble is above suspicion, he has had no unusual contacts that might indicate extraplanar influence."

"And that's it? Where, in your two experienced opinions, is my daughter?"

There was a pause. Finally Mr. White spoke. "Your honor, we must consult your predecessor on this. That is my experienced opinion."

The Ambassador's eyes narrowed. "And what would my predecessor know about my daughter that I do not?" Flame flickered between his narrow lips.

Mr. Black came to his colleague's rescue. "Your predecessor knows something about everyone," he said. "There are none more cognizant of plots and mysteries in this city, save the Mistress of Secrets and the Grand Sultan himself. We could ask them..."

"No," the Celestial Ambassador said quickly. "We will keep this to ourselves for now. Perhaps it is time to give the old man a call."