Gin Mills and the Goods

Lady A

Hort won't say that he doesn't feel bad, because he does. But he was honest, and everyone always said that girls appreciated honesty, right?

Apparently the girl's saxophone-playing friend didn't, though.

(Did he even have a gun?)

To cut one of the longest stories of his life short, because, honestly, he doesn't want to think about it too much; he'd ventured further afield to visit Club Avalon, he'd met the girl of his dreams, rushed back to Gavaldon to tell Ravan, and remembered slightly too late, when he'd gotten there, about his current girlfriend- you know, the woman who ran the place- gotten slightly (very) drunk worrying about it, then made a spur of the moment decision, broke up with her in front of the whole bar, then nearly got shot by the saxophonist and had been kicked out by two of her bouncers.

His coccyx were still bruised.

Well, to say that he'd met the girl of his dreams was probably something of an overstatement- he'd seen her from afar, but he'd felt such a connection between them when their eyes had met that they may as well have gotten engaged right there. Even though they didn't know each other's names. And hadn't talked. Or interacted.

At all. Ever.

But Hort was still confident that he would do his best to get this mystery woman to like him back.

For all that, though, he was probably never going to be able to go back to Gavaldon ever again, as Ravan had gleefully pointed out the second he caught up with him. Nicola would never want to see him again, and, honestly, he wasn't too sure that he blamed her. But he liked Gavaldon. The drink was good, the entertainment was good, and he was dating the-

Oh, right. Not anymore.

So, that night, a few weeks after the fateful Gavaldon Incident, instead of taking the usual route through the city's slightly questionable grocer's into Gavaldon, Hort, this time with Ravan in tow, hurries back through the back entrance of a spa, down an unsettlingly steep, narrow, set of stairs, and to what looks very much like an ordinary wall at the back of a dusty, abandoned store-room. But Hort is well-enough acquainted with speakeasies and has, obviously, visited this one before, and knows that this isn't the case, so he raps sharply on the wall, hoping he's remembered the pattern correctly. A panel slides to the side, a set of eyes glare through the gap, and Hort mutters the password he used last time. Apparently this is satisfactory, because the panel snaps shut, and a few seconds later, a larger part of the panelling slides open, a gap just wide enough for them to pass through.

Hort and Ravan scamper through the gap and into the dingy passageway beyond, and the wall slams shut behind them.

-

--

After the muffled, hidden alleyways and the eerie, silent basement, the tumult of the speakeasy hits Hort like a blow to the head. Even though he'd visited speakeasies previously, Avalon was different, somehow- the close, smoky air, the raucous noise of chatter and laugher and the occasional bout of whooping, as well as the band, playing over it all, gave Avalon an enticing manner, dragging you straight into the crowd and to the bar, the stage, the booths and tables scattered around the place.

It's intoxicating.

Ravan grabs his arm and tows him to a table close to the stage, grinning wider than Hort has ever seen him, and there they sit for a good hour, listening to the band, watching the dancers, and getting steadily drunker as the night went on. They'd just finished discussing (arguing over) the finer points of one of the dances, when Hort spots someone sweeping into one of the booths opposite them, the crowd parting around her like the Red Sea for Moses. Someone tall and blonde, swathed in fine clothes and toying with a long string of pearls in one scarlet-nailed hand, clutching a cocktail in the other.