The morning after the soiree, the grand house on Vesper Lane felt less like a home and more like a stage after the actors had gone home. Lutz ate the breakfast Eliza prepared—eggs and sausage—with a quiet focus. When he was done, he prepared himself to go out.
"Off to explore more of the city's character, sir?" Eliza asked, clearing his plate.
"I've got business" Lutz said with a easy smile. "A man can't build an empire on ballroom introductions alone. Need to see the engine room, not just the captain's quarters." He gave her a wave and stepped out into the morning, dressed in his good, but not dazzling, attire.
His destination, however, was the safe-house on Sokolov Street. The transition was becoming a familiar ritual. The creaking stairs, the key in the lock, the simple room. He changed quickly into the rough wool trousers, the linen shirt, and the worn coat, stuffing his finer clothes into the wardrobe. The flat cap pulled low over his eyes completed the transformation. He was no longer James Morgan; he was just a face in the crowd.
Alright, Yan, he thought, the name a convenient label for this anonymous state. Time to go listen to the city's heartbeat. Let's see what the rats in the walls are chattering about.
He started where he'd left off: The iron's Ale. The tavern was quieter in the morning, smelling of last night's beer and the day's first pot of stew. Bogdan the bartender was wiping down the bar with a damp rag.
"Back so soon?" Bogdan grunted, not looking up.
"Need to find work," Lutz said, sliding onto a stool. "Real work. Not just hauling crates." He lowered his voice. "I hear there's places in this city where a man with… specific interests… can find like-minded folk. Places where things aren't always what they seem."
Bogdan stopped wiping and gave him a long, flat look. "You ask a lot of questions for a man looking for work."
"I'm a curious guy," Lutz said with a shrug, laying a silver on the counter. "And I pay for my curiosity."
Bogdan's eyes flicked to the coin, then back to Lutz's face. He slowly palmed the coin. "Try the market square near the old clock tower. Look for the stall selling 'remedies'. Ask for Kateryna. Don't say I sent you."
Kateryna. "Appreciate it boss."
He left The Iron's Ale and made his way towards the clock tower, a soot-stained stone spire that loomed over a bustling, chaotic market square. The air was thick with the shouts of vendors hawking everything from live chickens to rusty nails. He wove through the crowd, his instincts automatically noting the pickpockets working the edges and the lookouts watching for the city watch. 'Ha! Amateurs'.
He found the stall tucked in a corner, half-hidden by a seller of used pots and pans. It was a rickety wooden cart draped with faded cloth, covered in bundles of dried herbs, small clay pots, and bottles of murky liquids. The woman behind it had a sharp, weathered face and eyes that missed nothing.
"Kateryna?" Lutz asked, his tone neutral.
The woman's gaze snapped to him, assessing him in a second. "That's me. What do you need?"
"I'm… looking for things that are hard to find," Lutz said, choosing his words carefully. "Things out of the ordinary. Not your everyday medicines."
Kateryna gave a dry, rasping chuckle. "Aren't they all? I sell what I sell. If yer' looking for a party, you looking in the wrong place."
"A party?"
She leaned forward, her voice dropping. "The Winter Garden. That's where the strange flowers bloom. But it's not a place you just walk into. You need an invitation. Or you need to know the right 'gardener'."
The Winter Garden Salon again. "And how does someone find one of these 'gardeners'?"
"Who knows" she said, her eyes glinting.
Lutz subtly flashed the edge of a Gold Hammer in his palm.
Kateryna's eyes locked onto the gold. She was silent for a moment, weighing the risk. "There's a bookseller. Gordon. His shop is on Inkwell Lane, near the old cathedral. He's a… facilitator. He might know a gardener. But he doesn't talk to just anyone."
"Gordon on Inkwell Lane," Lutz repeated, committing it to memory. He slid the Gold Hammer across the counter, where it disappeared under a bundle of herbs. "My thanks."
He spent the next few hours drifting through the Kholm Quarter, his ears open. He listened to dockworkers grumble about a new foreman named "Igor" who was skimming their wages. He overheard two washerwomen gossiping about a "fancy man from the spire district" who was seen asking questions down by the tannery, a place no one from the spire district had any business being. He filed it all away, pieces of a puzzle he didn't yet have the full picture for.
His feet eventually led him to Inkwell Lane, a narrow, quiet street that smelled of old paper and dust. He found the shop easily; its window was so grimy it was almost opaque. The faded letters above the door read simply: Gordon's. Bookstore.
A bell tinkled as he pushed the door open. The interior was a canyon of books, with towering, precarious shelves threatening to swallow the narrow aisles whole. The air was thick with the smell of decaying paper and leather.
An old man with a wispy white beard and spectacles perched on the end of his nose looked up from a massive, ancient tome he was mending at a cluttered desk. He said nothing, just stared at Lutz with watery, unnervingly sharp eyes.
"I presume you're Mr. Gordon?" Lutz asked, his voice hushed in the temple-like silence.
"Might be" the old man replied, his voice a dry rustle. "And you are not here for a book."
"I was told you are a facilitator. A man with connections."
Gordon closed his book with a soft thud. "I am a bookseller. I sell books. Sometimes, the books contain information people find valuable. Sometimes, the people who buy them are… interesting. What is it you wish to know?"
Lutz stepped closer, lowering his voice. "I'm looking for a way to get an invitation. To the Winter Garden."
Gordon's expression didn't change. "The Garden is a myth. A story for gullible and desperate men."
"Kateryna didn't seem to think so."
At the mention of the name, a flicker of something—annoyance?—crossed Gordon's face. "Kateryna should tend her herbs. The Garden is not for tourists. It is for cultivators. What do you cultivate, boy? What is your business?"
Lutz met his gaze steadily. "My business is in the acquisition and reallocation of assets through a plethora of methods." It was quite the pompous way of describing burglary and pillaging.
He saw the old man's eyes narrow slightly. He was listening.
"You speak in circles," Gordon said, but there was a new note of interest in his voice. "Prove you are not a waste of my time. There is a man. A collector of antiquities. He seems to have recently come into possession of a small, carved stone with a seal. It is… disruptive. It causes unease. Retrieve it from him. Bring it to me. Then, we'll talk gardens."
A test of skill, discretion, and perhaps a test of his nature.
"Who is this collector? And where does he keep this… disruptive seal?"
Gordon took a scrap of paper, scribbled a name and address, and slid it across the desk. "His name is Yevgeny Andariel. Do not disappoint."
Lutz picked up the paper. The first real thread. "I'll be in touch, Freeman."
Gordon looked at him with a confused expression.
He left the bookshop, the bell tinkling behind him. The afternoon was waning. As he walked back to his safe-house through the gathering dusk, he felt a familiar, grim satisfaction.
The next three days settled into a rhythm as precise and deliberate as a watchmaker's craft. Lutz lived a double life, his time neatly partitioned between the persona of James Morgan and the reality of his mission.
His mornings belonged to Vesper Lane. He would breakfast with Eliza, discussing the household's needs with an air of frivolous preoccupation. "Eliza, please bring more of those little lemon cakes. They're essential for maintaining one's constitution against this dreadful northern chill," he'd say, while his mind was cataloging the weak points in a lock mechanism. He spent a few hours each day as James Morgan, the aspiring entrepreneur, writing letters of introduction and taking meetings with minor merchants in coffee houses, carefully building the facade of a man preoccupied with legitimate, if slightly naive, business ventures.
But by early afternoon, he would excuse himself, claiming a need for "solitude and strategic contemplation." He would then make his way to the safe-house on Sokolov Street, the transition into the rough-spun clothes of "Yan" feeling more natural with each passing day. This was when the real work began.
His first objective was to acquire the simpler ingredients for the Swindler potion. The formula was bizarre, but some components were at least recognizable in the mundane world.
The 10 grams of chestnut balm was the easiest. He found it at Kateryna's apothecary. The shop run by the old woman who looked as dried and preserved as her own herbs. She didn't ask questions as she weighed out the sticky, dark salve, used for treating horses' hooves and, apparently, for brewing potions that would let you lie through your teeth.
The lapis lazuli required a bit more tongue. He found a dusty gem trader's stall in the market, a man with suspiciously clean hands and a calculating gaze. The man had a small, raw piece of the deep blue stone flecked with gold pyrite.
"For a friend with particular tastes in jewelry," Lutz said, his tone casual as he picked up the stone. As his fingers touched the cool mineral, he subtly channeled a trickle of spirituality into Creed, the stiletto hidden in his coat. A wave of faint persuasive energy flowed through him.
"You know," Lutz began, his voice taking on a smooth, captivating quality, "this piece has a fine color, but the matrix is rather… common. See these fractures? It would be a nightmare for a lapidary to work with without shattering. A shame, really. I'd intended to pay the asking price, but for a specimen of this… compromised integrity…" He let the sentence hang, shaking his head with a look of profound, sympathetic disappointment.
The gem trader, who a moment before had been ready to drive a hard bargain, blinked. He looked at the stone, suddenly seeing its flaws magnified. The confident pitch he'd prepared evaporated from his mind, replaced by a nagging doubt. "Well… I… it's not that flawed…"
"Of course, of course," Lutz soothed, his voice like honey. "It has its charms. For a collector of… lesser standards. Tell you what. For half your price, I'll take it off your hands. Save you the embarrassment of trying to sell it to a more discerning client." He flashed a disarming smile.
The man, utterly disarmed and his own confidence eroded by Creed's supernatural instigation, found himself nodding. "Half… yes, half seems… fair."
Lutz paid and pocketed the stone, feeling a slight, gnawing hunger in his gut and another, more embarrassing sensation a bit lower—Creed's drawback. He made a mental note to eat a large meal later.
Then, 20ml of Another's Tears, was one of the most unsettling. He couldn't very well go around asking people to cry into a vial for him. Instead, he visited a small, new somber church dedicated to the God of Steam. He waited near the font of holy water until he saw a frail young woman, her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs, kneeling in a pew. It felt like a profound violation, but he pushed the guilt down. As she wept, he used his Agile Hands to discreetly position a small, clean glass vial, catching a few of the tears that dripped from her chin onto the wooden bench before her. He collected maybe 5ml. He repeated this grim exercise over two days in different locations—a public park where a child had fallen and scraped a knee, he then gave him a Silver Shield to buy some candy. Lastly, a tavern where a man was mourning a lost love—until he had the required 20ml. The vial felt cold and heavy in his pocket, a weight of stolen sorrow.
But these errands were mere distractions from his primary focus: Yevgeny Andariel's residence.
The house was a big puzzle box of dark brick, tucked away on a quiet, cobbled lane not far from the merchant district. It was a place of contradictions. It was wealthy—the ironwork on the windows was intricate, the roof tiles were new, and there was no sign of decay—but it was utterly devoid of life. No flowers in the window boxes, no welcoming light from within during the day. The curtains were always drawn, heavy and dark.
For three days, Lutz became a ghost in the neighborhood. He was a laborer taking a break on a nearby wall, a lost traveler consulting a map, a customer lingering in the small tobacconist's across the street. He used every minute to observe.
He learned Yevgeny's routine. The man was a creature of habit, and his habits were bizarre. He left the house precisely at 10 AM, his face a mask of grim severity, dressed in impeccably tailored but somber black clothes. He never acknowledged anyone, his eyes fixed on some distant, unpleasant horizon. He returned exactly at 4 PM, carrying a small leather satchel. Where did he go? What did he do? Lutz didn't know yet, and it didn't matter for the theft. The window of opportunity was six hours.
He studied the house itself. The front door was thick oak, banded with iron—a no-go. The ground-floor windows were barred. But the second floor… there was a small, arched window, an entrance from a bygone era, that was unbarred. It was accessed by a sturdy-looking drainpipe that ran from the roof gutter down to a secluded alley at the side of the house. It was a risk, but it was the only way in.
Exits were trickier. The same window was the best bet for a quick, silent escape. The back door opened into a small, walled garden, but the gate was bolted from the inside with a heavy, rusty lock. It was an exit, but a slow one.
He also noted the human element. An elderly, stooped housemaid arrived at 8 AM and left at 6 PM. A burly, silent man who looked more like a guard than a butler would sometimes appear at the door in the evening, but he didn't seem to live on the premises. The house was most vulnerable, and most empty, between 6 PM and 10 PM, after the maid left and before Yevgeny retired for the night. That was his window.
On the evening of the third day, Lutz ran through the plan one final time. The moon was a pale crimson, offering little reddish light. The air was cold and still. He felt the familiar, cold focus settle over him.