They are still climbing. The weather has definitely changed and at her request he closes the car windows against the cool air prickling her bare arms with goosebumps. Distant clouds crowd the snow-capped peaks, but so far keeping at bay, not daring, without permission, to spoil the brisk sunny day with the inclement and the unpredictable.
They pass through three security checks, ad hoc roadblocks, the first of which she almost mistakes for a kidnap attempt: steroid-fed beefcakes with tint-windowed stares bulking out off-the-peg suits and tight-fit t-shirts, lounging bored and cool against hulking all-terrains, who lumber out into the road, palms up, lumber up to the car and proceed to perform face rec with their phones – Savvy plus one: ping! – and nod and wave them on their way as they lumber on back to lounge about some more.
This is finally the real deal. She’s invested a lot of time and energy in bagging him, and a lot more in keeping him happy, so much that she’s begun to worry that she’d backed the wrong horse – a minor scion of some Greek olive oil dynasty, eager to prove Babá wrong about him, that he could hack it at the big table and wasn’t just a waste of parental investment. All those hours spent on her back or her knees – she’s become expert in eighteenth-century ceiling mouldings, cornicing and corbels, the thread count of Egyptian cotton – or appearing rapt in doe-eyed admiration as he trots out yet another of his brain-numbingly banal psycho-business homilies (“Sometimes, you know, a man is just a man.” Lol. Quick! Call Stockholm!). And she’d started to wonder whether to ditch him and pick another ride – or, whether to choose another tack, another strategy. But it is finally paying off! She has actual butterflies.
“How far now, darling?”
“Another half hour or so?” He smiles. “Honestly, you’ll love it.”
She grins in mock-excitement – which, for once, is growing less mock by the moment.
She’s started to lose touch with what’s genuine. It’s all the acting. Everything is “mock”, now; fake, pretend, ersatz. Enthusiasms, opinions, orgasms. She’s beginning to worry that it will become so ingrained in her – her new false second nature – that she’ll be stuck with it forever. When the wind changes. A wind, however, that will blow in a brave new world; and all these avaricious arseholes to oblivion.
Hmm. Nice word, ersatz …
She’d hoped the meeting would be somewhere with an easier out, somewhere with more than one road, at least: a transport hub, ideally, a busy port, a place she could bribe some long-distance haulage driver or boat captain; not some supervillain’s locked-down remote fucking alpine lair. But where else would all the supervillains convene? The men who rule the world need somewhere discreet to divvy up their spoils, to hatch their conspiracies, establish their monopolies and undermine the democratic process. For they will be men, almost exclusively, she’s certain of that – it’s said The Society doesn’t allow the fairer sex. Well, apart from a token one or two, maybe, but the majority of which will be in the background, standing in the third row or out on the fringes, their faces blurred or fixed in a frozen smile – the wives and girlfriends, the mothers, maids and nannies, the secretaries and personal assistants – there to slick the machine, to prop up the whole fragile house of cards of their collective male egos. There to make tea and appointments, to clean and pick up after them, buck and cheer them up when they’re glum. And without them, this silent army of female enablers, who knows? Without their cosseting and ego-fluffing, without all the let’s-rub-it-betters and the be-a-big-solider-for-mummys, who’s to say the entitled offspring wouldn’t have turned out differently? Perhaps, even, for the better? Maybe the hand that rocked the cradle should have tanned a few more arses.
“So, darling, what sort of place is this?” she asks.
He returns a smugly knowing look – as in, only he knows; and safer it should stay that way.
The snow now is not just on the distant peaks (which are growing less distant by the mile), but also lies along the roadside, quiffed up in drifts like dirty meringue. Which suggests a fair amount of traffic has already preceded them. They pass a little alpine cottage – should she be memorising the landmarks in case she needs to come back this way? Well, there’s no “in case” about it: she will need to come back – at least, hopes she will.
Still, a bit remote. And where, no doubt, should her true purpose be uncovered, no one would even think to look for her strangled, throat-slit, or bullet-ridden corpse.
Yay.
“It’s really quite something, isn’t it?” Savvy says.
Well, it is definitely imposing – in a gothic sort of way. Tall spiked towers, enormous flying buttresses, dusky colonnades, archways carved with ghoulish and unsettling faces, gargoyles and grotesques. She’s getting a strong Castlevania vibe – is that game still going? Ha. The franchise that cannot die! (God, this better not be a vampire thing.) The place is now owned by a foundation, Savvy tells her, which had been coming here for years, renting conference space, and when the family that owned it had hit hard times, had bought the whole place to ensure that its annual visits could continue. (For “foundation” read “The Society” …?)
She realises she no longer even knows what country she’s in. Could even be Transylvania. But no, more likely … Italy? Switzerland? That little nexus point where all the borders converge, and you can order coffee in five different languages?
There is snow everywhere now, apart from on the long, meticulously swept drive, a judicious amount bowing down the pine trees, piped along rooftops and window ledges like royal icing by a skilled hand. It is almost idyllic – if Dracula did Christmas cards, perhaps.
They draw smoothly under a porte-cochère and a valet materialises silently from somewhere off-camera with the stealth of a white-gloved ninja, and sets about opening doors and removing cases, leading Savvy’s mechanical horse off to be fed and watered. Another appears and ushers them mutely inside with graceful gestures, nods and smiles. She stands shivering, rubbing her upper arms in the large dark-wood-panelled entrance hall, dark wood everywhere, varnish-grimed portraits in heavy gilt frames, ghastly hunting trophies. She feels suddenly vulnerable, inappropriately attired in her short, sleeveless summer dress, both in terms of insulation and social occasion. A solicitous pair of white-gloved hands reaches from behind to drape a soft-wool shawl over her shoulders; she turns to thank them, but they’re gone. What’s with the white gloves, anyway? Is this a hotel? A private home? A private hotel (if there is such a thing)?
“Let’s go and get warmed up, shall we?” Savvy says with a crass little wink, taking her arm in his. They follow another white-gloved guide down long, polished-wood corridors, up stairs lined with runners of scarlet carpet, and deeper into the castle (as she’s now thinking of it). Eventually, their guide presents them with another dark-wood door, hinged with curlicued brackets of blackened iron, which opens up into a large, tall, circular space, richly furnished in more dark wood – bookcases of seasoned-leather tomes, little tables, a rocking chair – and lots of deep-cushioned, dark-leather furniture. A log fire crackles and spits in a massive stone fireplace, an enormous bestial face graven into its centre, its chimney forming a central pillar that rises up into the ceiling like a spindle. Two stairways hug the curved walls, leading up into a sort of loft area – sleeping quarters? Three tall windows excise pristine oblongs of alpine whiteness from the postcard scene outside.
“Well?” Savvy asks, having left her a silent moment to take it all in.
“It’s incredible,” she says – and, for once, means it.
But she doesn’t like it.
Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi/fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. All instalments are free, but you can support my writing by taking out a paid subscription, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments.