Pettiwren leads them along until the tumultuous tide of the Court recedes at last to something above a dull whisper.

They cross pungent galleries of atrous wood-panel and silver-leaf, interrupted by bare pillars of onyx, snaking and sensuous, smooth as newborn belly-skin, reaching up into the smokey crossbeams where pocky, unsettling patterns thread. 

The oily gleam of polished planking worn and yielding beneath their feet.

Here and there long divides are decorated by murals, parsimonious in brooding blue and black. 

The rare and storied centuries old tempera depictions of the underworld by the infamous Mechit, bastard emperor and widely well-beloved painter.

Up a long cascade of narrow stairs.

“We will call in the salon. A private, quiet space without eager ears.

“Not far now are Lord Meshmin’s apartments.” 

Murmurs Pettiwren, as they climb to a broad landing, high upon the secretive precincts beneath the great, prickly belltower.

Umin peers from a near, thickly-paned smoky glazed window. The Barrows a thousand jigging pennants of indistinct illumination far below now, rolling off into the obscuring height of the Shallows.

Curiously, he can hear nothing of the hiss and spark of burning tapers. Those unnumbered tallow-fires that depend precariously and by means of uncanny Weaving from the outwall, burning just beyond the bulwark before him.

Down a widening hall, lushly carpeted in a similar cerulean pattern to that as presently worn by Pyna. 

So much so, that as she moves spectrally across, she would appear to have sprouted like an apparition from out the floor.

To a modest, well fortified, broad and bulky door. Pitchy and iron-girded, guarded by another pair of watchful sentries. Hook-beaked masks vigilant and menacing.

Pettiwren moves unperturbed towards the confronting pair. With a dismissive finger-flutter they part swiftly.

One pulling the ponderous portal open on grim and silent hinges as the other looks watchfully on. 

He then leads his charges through, and into a chamber murky with incense and fruity perfumes.

Umin also detects a breezy hint of Shen Lichen, and the ever viperous Ur-saffron. 

Which when imbibed together warily, and in very diminutive and gracefully measured quantities, can conjure phantasms and fantastical dreaming.   

Pettiwren pauses in the centre of the wide, low chamber and bows sweeping and deeply towards a pair of figures reclining upon a minikin mountain of cascading cushions and fine, dark-cloth.

A man with a slim volume in hand, and a meditative expression, stormy against the face of a craggy, salt and pepper brow. 

And a woman, her face wreathed in a waving cataract of amber, silver-streaked curls. 

Slim clay-pipe a’puff between narrow, thoughtful lips. 

The Marquis and Marquess Meshmin, Lord and Lady of the Gate of Candles.