Chapter Text
It was Friday. Nearly midnight just three days after the circus had debuted. The crowds were large, activity winding down slowly as it always did when the circus first opened somewhere new. At the end of a busy work week, no less. The patrons had nowhere to be the following day, no reason to wrap up their visit early. The Pierrot was closing out the evening's shows in the Red Tent, and the Doctor's tent would remain open to visitors until Bil began ushering out the last stragglers of the night. The Harlequin was mingling amongst the crowds, offering impromptu scares to the visitors who wandered too far from the flock. Jester had excused himself to his personal quarters at the conclusion of his last show that evening.
He was seated at the desk in his personal quarters. Reviewing their opening week's attendance and scheduling the following week's shows, ostensibly. His eyes scanned the pages, but he absorbed none of the numbers. His mind remained elsewhere. It was an unusual state of affairs for him, but scheduling was rote. What occupied his mind was novel. It unsettled him, he knew, even as he felt numbly detached from the odd beating of his heart and squirming in his gut.
His hand brushed the cover of the small, dusty book beside him on the desk, though his eyes remained on his work. It sat at the top of a stack of three, all of which were obtained at a used book store located on a seldom tread side street of the town. The shelves were piled high with old, well-loved books; the aisles narrow as the stacks overflowed into them. The books on the shelves were organized by subject, then alphabetical by surname. The books on the floor appeared to follow no organization method at all.
He'd found the three books in a side room with creaking floor boards on a small shelf labeled Mythology/Supernatural. Three texts on various folklore of the world, with dog-eared pages and broken spines and worn covers. They didn't stand out as anything special against the books of myths and legends and cryptids surrounding them. They weren't hidden away in some secret nook as if they were precious gems to be protected. They simply were. An inspection of the rest of the books on the shelf uncovered nothing else of note. The shopkeeper was a young woman with dyed hair and a dozen facial piercings whose only words to him were the sum of his purchase. It was anticlimactic. The storyteller in Jester was almost disappointed by it.
Jester had since spent his free hours skimming over the pages for something, anything at all on the Vex. How helpful they had thus far been was dubious at best. The Vex had not revealed themselves to him personally. His only interaction had been mediated through a third party. What little he knew about them was vague, such that he could not pinpoint their origin in any particular region. Aes sídhe, diwata, djinn, nymphs. The Vex. It seemed that every culture had tales of impish creatures extorting those who trespassed against them, yet none had any called by that name.
He had even less of an idea where to begin searching for information on the Vex's errand girl, Talc. She had the same appearance of ornamental stone as a grotesque or gargoyle did, but her skin was soft and yielding like flesh. Her hair shifted and swayed as his own did. She didn't bleed, but she had treated him with caution after he'd grabbed her, like an creature capable of feeling pain. No breath passed her lips, and yet she could speak. Nothing about her added up. The books had detailed stories of living statues and other beings of stone and earth, but none that appeared as Talc did, or exhibited the abilities that Talc had. The stories about the living statues rarely had any connection to the fairies and nymphs that resembled the Vex, either.
Jester straightened, rolling his shoulders and feeling the vertebrae in his neck pop as he did. The ornate clock on his desk read 11:56. The fairgrounds would close soon, the crowd bottlenecked at the gates as they left. Nothing Bil couldn't handle by himself. Nothing he hadn't dealt with before.
Despite knowing there had been an intruder on circus grounds just days before—because Jester couldn't keep anything a secret from Bil, even when he tried—he would maintain his composure and direct the circus's visitors as a maestro did his symphony. There was nothing to be done about the trespass of a creature that could disappear into thin air, and so there was no use in worrying over it. Even if he was, anyway.
"Doing a bit of light reading, are we?" A voice called. Familiar, although he had only heard it once before. The air shifted, the sunbaked warmth of the canvas tent and stale dust overtaken by a flame-born heat and rich earth that was gone just as quickly as it came. It hadn't come soon enough to warn him of the intruder in his quarters. Jester looked up to find Talc sitting across the tent on top of a console table, one leg crossed over the other, kicking idly as she watched him. She was back in her ogre-dog mask. The comedy mask was missing from her belt, and in its place was a full-face masquerade mask in the shape of a cat's head. The blue-grey mask had also moved positions on her belt, sitting in front of the Venetian mask on her hip now.
"Speak of the devil..." Jester murmured. He commanded his heart to calm against his instincts demanding it to race. There were only two reasons that Talc would be here. One was to follow up on an unspoken promise. The other was to follow up on a threat.
"Oh? Were you thinking of me just now?" Talc said, pressing a hand to her bare chest. "How flattering!"
"Indeed," Jester said. "I was just wondering when I could expect this exact invasion of privacy."
"Invasion of privacy?" Talc said in mock offense. "You make it sound like it's a bad thing!"
Jester gave her the thin smile he reserved for the kinds of visitors who tested his patience. The strays. He laced his fingers together as he asked, "To what do I owe the pleasure of this intrusion, Talc?"
"Forgotten already?" Talc slumped. "I'm hurt." Jester only blinked at her, unamused. Her apparent habit of drawing out the tension of a situation had lost its charm the first time he'd been forced to endure it. Talc hopped off the table, the facade of her injured feelings vanishing. "We have a date."
"Excuse me?" Jester said flatly, his thin smile straining to remain a smile at all.
Talc crossed her arms. "You asked to see me again." Which was a willful misrepresentation of the words they had exchanged during her last visit.
"That isn't how I remember it," Jester said.
Talc waved a dismissive hand as she sauntered over to him. "Semantics. The point is—" Here she leaned down, elbows resting on the desktop and chin resting on her hands. "—I'm here. And you're here. And we're alone. So that makes this a date."
She was close enough to touch, if Jester wanted to. Close enough to trace the lines of golden kintsugi framing her shoulder and wrist. Close enough to run his fingers through her wild, celadon hair and feel if it was silky like his own. Close enough to tear the mask off her face. He did none of those things. Just cocked his head as he examined her. "You're acting awfully bold. Are you not afraid of me?"
Talc let out a soft, derisive chuckle as she cocked her head back, mirroring him. "There's nothing for me to be afraid of, darling. You couldn't hurt me if you tried."
The assertion was made with such confidence that Jester almost believed it was true. But he had seen the hesitance in her body language when she took the costume from him. The hesitance to be within arms reach, though the hesitance appeared absent in her now. If she could not be hurt, then why?
No. She could be touched. Even if she had her escape routes, she could still be touched. And if she could be touched, she could be harmed. It was just a matter of figuring out how.
Talc cleared her throat and straightened, pulling herself out of Jester's reach as if reading his mind. "Anyway," she said, enunciating the three syllables with finality; redirecting the conversation where she wanted it rather than allowing Jester to control its trajectory. A rather inelegant course correction, but he let it stand. "As this is a date, I thought it only appropriate that I bring you a gift."
"Is that so?" Jester said, permissive in his curiosity. He suspected, based on his limited experience with Talc, that whatever gift she was about to produce for him would be a selection made to pick at his seams, loosening threads like a kitten with a ball of yarn. Talc did not disappoint. With a magician's flourish, she produced a squat, flask-style bottle of honey-amber liquid and presented it for him to inspect. It was a bottle of alcohol. The label was simple, with a refined serif script and a minimalist illustration of sugar cane. Unopened. Presumably expensive. A rather generic token, if not for the fact that the label was in Portuguese.
It was cachaça. A Brazilian spirit. A thoughtfully pointed choice telling him that Talc knew where the circus—where he—was from. Another one of those things about him that was not a secret, but not something she had any reasonable way of having learned. It was of minor comfort that the region of the distiller was Minas Gerais, far from his home. Talc's earthenware mask stared down at him expectantly. Jester did not reward her with the reaction she was no doubt hoping for.
"I don't drink," He stated plainly. Oh, how he wished he could see Talc's face when he did. Whatever she felt about his response was kept carefully out of her body language.
"Are you snubbing me?" Talc asked. "After I went through the trouble of obtaining this for you?"
The heavy thud of the bottle against the hardwood of his desk was the only indication of Talc's annoyance. Jester did nothing to mask his pleasure at that, but he reached for the bottle and began to peel the capsule away from the neck. Indulging the Vex's fool again, for reasons he didn't care to examine. Not now. Talc leaned a hip against the desk, careful of the masks resting along her waist, as he worked the cork from the bottle. Watching him silently, arms crossed and head cocked. It was impossible to discern what thoughts were running through her mind. What emotions might be seeping into her expression beneath the bulging eyes and sharp teeth of the ogre-dog.
Jester retrieved two demitasse cups from the coffee service he kept near his desk. They were small, with a wide lip and sturdy handle. Charming like China cups, but less decorative, less fragile. More practical for frequent storage and travel. Not the most efficient for the volume of coffee he often found himself drinking, but he enjoyed the ritual of each new cup poured and prepared. They were more than sufficient for the task at hand. He poured each cup half full with the cachaça and offered the second to Talc. She responded to the gesture with a laugh, melodic the way a shattering glass was melodic. "Oh, darling. I don't drink, either."
"Well, now, isn't that convenient," Jester said. He set the cup beside Talc anyway, giving her a pointed look. Of course it wouldn't be that easy to get her to remove her mask. Why had he thought any different? "You expect me to drink when you won't partake yourself?"
"I'm afraid my hands are tied," Talc sighed, holding up hands that Jester couldn't help but notice were not, in fact, tied. "I'm on the clock."
"I see," Jester hummed. "You're wasting the Vex's time on your personal affairs. One has to wonder how it is you've become such a valuable asset to them with a work ethic like that."
"The better question to ask," Talc said, wagging a finger at him. "is how bad are the rest of their agents that someone such as myself might rise above her peers?"
Jester clicked his mask open and brought the cup to his lips, giving the cachaça a deep inhale. The aroma was nearly overwhelming in its complexity. He could pick out hints of cinnamon sugar and caramel, scents he was familiar with from the food stalls of the circus, but whatever lay beneath that was impossible for him to discern. He had never been particularly interested in alcohol, neither the taste of it nor the way it made him feel. Especially the way it made him feel. Perhaps if he had spent more time studying it he would have developed the necessary palate to appreciate the subtle intricacies of its flavor. The tolerance to consume more than one cup without feeling tipsy. Instead, he could at best describe the flavor as overwhelmingly bittersweet. He could stop now and remain in control of himself.
"Tell me, Talc," Jester said, setting his cup down with a barely disguised look of disdain. "Do the Vex appreciate it when you undermine their image with your foolishness?"
"That's quite rich coming from someone who didn't even know of the Vex's existence a week ago." Talc laughed her broken glass laugh as if he'd told a particularly funny joke. Mocking in a way that made Jester bristle instinctively. She craned her neck to fix her masked gaze on the stack of books beside him. "Now, tell me, Jester. Have you found anything enlightening in your studies yet?" She walked her fingers across the desk's surface, claws click-clacking against the hardwood until her hand reached the books. She scooched the one on top as if she were turning it to better examine the title. "Or perhaps... you find yourself hitting dead end after dead end?"
Jester laid his hand over Talc's, and let his grin widen when he felt her go rigid beneath his touch. His eyes met the pinprick pupils of her mask as he responded. "I've found a good deal of promising sources on your Vex." Then, without breaking eye contact, he nudged her hand away and tore the books from her grasp. She jolted as her prop disappeared out from under her, catching herself on the desktop with an audible huff. "You, however, do remain an enigma."
"Oh?" Talc's rasping voice held a smile. Jester imagined her face stretching into a wide grin beneath her mask, teeth bared in feral delight. "You're curious about me?"
"Regrettably so," Jester agreed.
"Well, I'm here now, aren't I?" Talc held her hands outstretched, presenting herself as an open book. "Don't be shy. Ask away."
"The last time you said that you ran away after some mild prodding," Jester folded his hands under his chin and leaned forward, grinning at her. "Are you sure you can handle my questions this time?"
Talc huffed again, turning away to examine her claws petulantly. "Let's find out, shall we?"
It was like pressing on a fresh, plum-colored bruise. She was so quick to upset, yet she continued to invite him in anyway. What could she possibly gain from giving him more points of weakness from which to carve her open? More wounds for him to sink his claws into? She was like a child touching a hot stove after being warned away from it. Or perhaps there was something more sinister driving her odd behavior. The contradiction only served to pique his curiosity further, but she was frustratingly difficult to read.
Jester hummed as he considered his options. The last time they'd spoken, he had insinuated that the Vex were the only thing that gave her life meaning. Perhaps that would serve as a good starting point. It may give him insight into both the Vex and their liaison, if she could stand to answer such questions. There was only one way to find out. "Tell me how you came to know the Vex, then."
Talc rolled her head to look at him again. "Forgetting your manners so soon?"
"I don't recall inviting you into my tent," Jester countered. "I have to assume if the Vex were dissatisfied with my offering you would have mentioned so by now, so if you aren't here on business..."
"Watch yourself, Jester," Talc said, her tone deceptively light for the thinly veiled threat she was making. "This may be your tent, but you're still leasing the space it's staked upon."
Jester couldn't help the low growl of annoyance that escaped him. In the game of cat and mouse, he rather preferred to be the cat. There was more on the line for the mouse than the spoiled house cat playing with it. A cornered mouse may still bite, but if the cat decided it was more trouble than it was worth, that bite could cost it everything. What did Talc have to lose? Nothing, Jester thought, while he had everything.
But Talc did not wait for him to beg, as if she had flexed her power over him for its own sake. It made his blood boil that she had the luxury of granting him that mercy. "The Vex came to me for assistance with a project many years ago, and it presented a fortuitous opportunity for the both of us. We've been in partnership ever since."
There were a number of threads dangling from Talc's vague response, each one as tempting to pursue as the next. Jester took a breath and picked his cup of cachaça back up just to have something to occupy his hands. The other option was to let his claws scratch grooves into the surface of his desk, which was not a weakness he would allow himself to display. As interested as he was in this fortuitous opportunity and Talc's curious use of the word partnership, neither one would grant him the answers he sought about the Vex. "What was this project?"
Talc drummed her own claws against the desk as she considered her answer. "Talismans, or totems, of a sort." Jester narrowed his eyes at her, and she chuckled at the demand he held in his glare. "To commune with their agents."
What she was describing was a magical object representing the Vex, or more accurately, a connection to the Vex. Something their agents would, presumably, carry on their person. And, presumably, Talc would carry one as well. It wasn't difficult to narrow down what that object might be. Aside from her trousers, the only thing Talc seemed to have with her was her belt of masks.
"Do all of the Vex's agents carry the same totem?" Jester asked.
"We do," Talc said.
"And do you carry it on you at all times?"
Talc cocked her head at him, a grin in her voice as she said, "Some of us do, yes."
Us, implying she herself was one of the ones who did. But she was tricky, and she had clearly caught on to what he was truly asking her. He did not care if you, plural, carried them at all times, only if you, singular, did. Jester was not stupid enough to count on the honesty of her answer. "Are you among those who do?"
"Indeed," she said gleefully, as if her answer was a prize he'd won in her games. And perhaps it was. Her answers had ruled out the cat mask, which had not been on her person during her last visit, and the comedy mask, which was missing this time. If it was not the comedy mask, then it was unlikely it was the tragedy mask either. That left the ogre-dog mask she was so partial to wearing; the elaborate Venetian mask; and the plain, blue-gray mask. He didn't know enough about any of the masks to say which was most likely.
Jester hummed. "I don't suppose you would simply tell me which one it is, would you?"
"Come now, Jester. And ruin the fun?" Talc laughed. "Why don't you take a guess? I'll even tell you if you're right or wrong."
He had a one-in-three chance of guessing correctly, and if he didn't? He would still come out of the conversation knowing more than he had at the start. The Vex's fools wore their affiliation in the form of a mask, just as the circus's fools did. Jester set the cachaça back down, ripples darting across it from one side of the cup to the other.
"The one you're wearing," Jester said, nodding at it. "The ogre-dog. Is that your totem?"
Talc laughed a humorless laugh, the almost pleasant tinkle of the shattered glass absent in favor of a hollow sound, echoing like an empty vessel. "Is it the mask on my face?" she said. "I'm wounded that you would even suggest such a thing."
Then she stopped laughing and slammed her hand down, rattling both of the cups, sending more urgent ripples scattering about the honey-amber liquid and spilling droplets from the cup closer to herself. She had leaned forward over Jester's desk until she was mere inches from his face, and when she spoke he imagined her lip curling into a snarl. "Do you believe me so shallow—so lacking, that I must resort to wearing the Vex's face as if it was my own?"
But hundreds of years mediating spats between Pierrot and Harlequin left Jester unmoved by her tantrum. He had once more found a crack in Talc's facade, a vulnerability he could exploit in any future dealings he had with her. With the Vex. He didn't hesitate to pry upon it.
"Earlier you said you were in partnership with the Vex," Jester said. "But the last time we spoke, you said you were in their employ. So tell me, my dear pet. Are you their equal?" Jester paused here, letting the words sit with Talc, letting the tension coil beneath the skin as any good storyteller would. "Or are you just their fool?"
Talc's hand curled into a fist, claws dragging across the hardwood surface of Jester's desk with a nails-on-chalkboard screech of protest. "I am nobody's fool."
Jester smiled at her, the same condescension he smiled at all of the circus's guests with lacing his teeth. The mouse's gambit paid off. The cat was left bloodied and without its toy. "It appears I've won our little game again."
Talc huffed, a hard and deliberate breath taken by a creature that did not breathe just to make a point, and turned away. Then with a growl she swatted her untouched cup to the ground like a petulant child. Jester did not reward her outburst with a reaction.
"The next time you go searching for information," Talc said coldly. "Try the fine arts. You may find it more illuminating than mythology." And in a puff of colorful smoke, Talc disappeared.
Jester sat back in his chair, letting the tension he'd built unwind from his body now that he was once more alone. He took a breath, then picked the remaining cup back up and downed the rest of the cachaça within it. It would always be a gamble, angering Talc, but this time had paid off. She had revealed too much of her hand to him. Her working relationship with the Vex was not as harmonious as he had thought, and the more he pried at that crack, the bigger the chasm would get. The bigger the chasm, the weaker that relationship. The weaker the relationship, the less he had to fear retaliation. Even so, he would be wise not to let his guard down. She was volatile too, and he had no idea how short of a leash the Vex kept her on.
Jester sighed as he set the empty cup down. If he was to allow himself to loosen control, now would be the time to do so. He reached for the bottle, mind already filing away the conversation with Talc—the questions that still remained, the suggestion, the work that she had interrupted—and stopped short. The bottle, which had been bare of decoration when he had handled it initially, now had two brass bells hanging from a leather cord around its neck.
He recognized the tarnished finish of the bells; the dent on the throat of one, the scratch running horizontally through the petals stamped into the other. The initials in the center of each, naming a craftsman that had died more than a century ago, the meaning of the letters forgotten by all but the Jester who had purchased them. They could have been left there by no one but the very imp who had taken them from him in the first place. A gift for him, secreted away from the Vex and returned to him as...
As what? What did Talc gain from the gesture? What was her aim? What was the play?
He didn't know. He hated that he didn't know. He hated more that a part of him wished he hadn't taunted her and driven her away so soon. That he couldn't demand further answers.
That he could not thank her.
Jester pulled the cord, snapping it off the neck of the bottle, and held the bells in his palm. His little piece of the past, piece of himself, restored to their proper place with him. He felt a part of himself relax, a part he hadn't known was stretched taut.
Jester tucked the bells into a drawer in his desk; filed them away with masks, the fine arts, and the spilled liquor and shattered cup he still had to clean. And then he poured himself another cup of cachaça.
