Harry Encounters Some Resistance

The Silvergrey Sea

Part Two: Serious Business

Harry Encounters Some Resistance to His Inquiries

* * *

I don’t think I’ve slept better since university. My dreams were mostly about Drago and this world, spiced with carnal fantasies.

One in particular was quite arousing. Someone was riding my dick. I woke to find my fantasy come to life.

My ‘slave’ was astride my hips, facing away from me and pistoning smoothly on my John Thomas. Her ass was jiggling and wriggling as she rotated her hips in eccentric curves, twisting and torturing me most exquisitely.

I let her know I was awake by getting a firm grip on each hip, sitting up and nibbling her neck and ear, whispering, “Ride that cock, you whore! Come on! Jerk me off with that tight, wet cunt!” and other bits of poetry.

She began making sounds of arousal I suspected were feigned. I appreciated them anyway.

Continuing to serenade her, I reached around to her sopping pussy only to find her hand already busy there. I slapped it away and began my own stimulation. Her hands began playing with my nuts.

She really had been close to her own orgasm. It hit within seconds of my ministrations. The rhythmic contractions of her cunt set off my own.

I bit her shoulder hard as I came.

We both flopped back, panting. I played idly with her teats as I waited for my extremities to stop tingling.

I drifted off.

She woke me a while later when she climbed off and headed for the shower.

I was up and ready for my turn as she emerged and began towelling off.

We exchanged smiles.

I was just finishing up when her head poked around the curtain. “I’m off, lover.” She leaned in for another kiss. “Same again tonight?”

 “Sorry. I’ll likely be too busy the rest of my stay.”

“All right, then.” Another smile and she was gone.

* * *

Speaking of work, I had yet to decide my first move.

Sometime during the morning, likely as I had showered, a ceramic carafe of strong black coffee had been placed on a small table in the far corner of the room. I poured a mug, turned on the hanging lantern above, sat, and pulled my epad from my valise.

After my first sip of strong, scalding, and in every other way excellent coffee, I reviewed.

Drago might have been born here thirty-three years ago, though I no longer believed that at all probable. To find out what happened three hundred years ago, I’d need access to the local archives.

One : The Hermetists didn’t have those records, else I would have had that info before I left Noir. Probably. Maybe they were just ‘unavailable.’ It wouldn’t be the first time.

Two : I didn’t know if they even existed.

Three : or where they were if they did exist.

Four : or if I could even access them legally.

Five : or how long it would take to get permission if I could access them.

Six : or from whom to get permission.

Seven : or what to do if I were turned down.

I lit a fag and took a gulp of coffee. Leaning back, I thought awhile.

Going to the top seemed the best way to find out most of what I needed to know: if the records existed, et cetera. That would be one of those big buildings on the hill.

I came down to the common room for breakfast.

Thirty minutes later, fuelled up on half a gallon of coffee and enough animal protein to stave off hunger for several hours, I began my hike up the hill.

I was not used to mornings this bright, nor this cold. The shade offered by my fedora was not much help. Overcast was scattering the altogether too bright light of Hyborea’s white sun. I spent a full minute squinting before my eyes adjusted.

The cold was familiar from my youth on a world that had a temperate bordering on arctic climate. I found it pleasantly nostalgic, a feeling almost as alien to me as the damned daylight.

I still needed warmer clothes. A look around augmented by street signs and a judicious question or two eventually landed me in the local equivalent of the garment district. After due consideration, I chose an opera coat looking thing made of finely stitched animal skin with a deep hood, the whole dyed black. I was offered a series of warm caps but was loathe to stop wearing my trademark headgear, as I was sure I thought better whilst wearing it. The hood fit over it, anyway. My faithful old gumshoes, ankle-length and lined with fur, were plenty warm, so I ignored the footwear selections.

The coat was sleeveless. A short cape over the ankle length coat itself kept my arms relatively warm. It was even belted, so I didn’t feel too much like an idiot wearing it. I didn’t bother with the hood, just yet.

Feeling warmer and slightly less conspicuous, I lit a cigarette and trudged skyward. The buildings’ pale stone made them look frosted, increasing the psychic feeling of chill around me. Most were of large irregularly sized oblongs that fit together like puzzle pieces. The mortar was white and recessed a good inch and a half. Like all the windows I’d seen, the ones on these structures were mullioned and diamond-paned in untinted glass.

Rarely more than three storeys, the structures all had upper floors larger than their ground floors. The streets were uniformly paved with small ceramic tiles, most in quite decorative patterns. Bevelled five-sided wrought-iron lamps, unlit at this time of day, topped tall posts, defining the outer edges of pedestrian walks. The tendency of this culture to confine its decoration to monochrome lines made even its beauty a cold one. I found myself wondering what summer would be like here.

Halfway through my ciggy, I began to wheeze and cough as my lungs closed up. It was more a reaction to sucking cold air into my lungs than to the tobacco smoke, I was sure.

Fairly sure.

I crushed out the  butt and continued, fighting nic-fits all the way.

I didn’t begin breathing normally until I had crested the hill and was strolling along the wide, winding boulevard that snaked along it. I risked another smoke.

Better.

Being the highest part of the city, Summit Avenue naturally had the best and biggest structures lining it. The gentle curves only had buildings on one side, opening the other for truly inspiring views of the bulk of the city and the harbour beyond. One thing about the weather here: it made the chill, desiccated atmosphere crystal clear.

There was a severe beauty here that I hadn’t expected.

Unlike the sky, which seemed determined to hide its character behind blinding white, the landscape below it was sharply etched in vivid detail. Like the architecture of this city, it was all in shades of grey and filled with fascinating razor thin lines etching the scene in fine detail.

The harbour was much larger than I had assumed, two sea walls curving inward to an entrance more than ten miles from the quay. A patch of fog four or five miles out and to my right marked the entrance to the Silvergrey Sea.

Just at the edge of vision, close to where haze hid the horizon, I could see a half dozen darker lines that must have been islands. A single spot of scarlet was clearly visible between the leftmost two. I wondered what it might be. Closer to the harbour, ships dotted the sea.

The iron-grey water’s gentle waves looked like pale staccato line-patterns, densely stacked, just watching them drew my eye downward to the jetties. I felt myself slipping away and became a little dizzy until I recovered.

Below and to either side of my vantage, the metropolis coated every undulating surface. Again, I was struck by the same pattern-like essence of Phrygia. Every aspect of the cityscape looked like part of an elaborate illustration, rather than the reality I knew it to be.

The stones in the façades of the buildings were bevelled. This allowed me to pick out the irregular patterns in which they were laid all but the most distant. The windows were paned in the same baroque way from uniformly clear glass. Warm, yellow light twinkled from most. Hundreds of columns of chimney smoke supported the white ceiling above.

Turning back to the street and to my task, I began to stroll, looking for purpose in the buildings and hoping to find one that would suit my goal of digging into the local records. All seemed to be government buildings.

Check that.

Most had a college feel to them. After wandering into a few and asking some judicious questions, my guess was confirmed. All the buildings I has so far walked past were part of the local university. I did find out that the bulk of the government buildings were at the far end of the avenue.

I wandered along until I got there, checking the signs, and looking for something official. The black cube of the local Hermetist chapterhouse was obvious from far away. I found a courthouse, but nothing else of a bureaucratic nature until I came abreast of the imperial palace.

Hmm.

‘Might as well try it,’ I thought.

It was not as impressive as the name implied, being more military looking than palatial. Given this world’s history that was hardly surprising. It was easily the tallest building in the city.

The steps to the entrance were steep and railless. At the top stood three large gentlemen who looked ready to take on the barbarian hordes. They scowled down at me as I ascended. I tried to look indifferent and was almost sure I succeeded.

“Pardon me,” as I stood on the step below them, “I’m wondering where I might find the local records archive.” I put on my least offensive smile.

Only the one in the middle acknowledged my existence. After giving me a look that made me sweat, he said, “Inside,” and took a small step sideways.

I moved between two of them, suddenly anxious. Something was up here. I brushed against the gorillas on either side, shoulders hunched, wishing I’d brought my revolver.

I was through.

I didn’t relax until I passed the open doors of the palace proper. Resisting the urge to look back was not as easy as it was when I was younger and less cautious.

I had just unhunched and even opened my new coat against sudden warmth ahead when someone threw a building at my head and the floor hit me in the nose.

— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, September 2026

© Gideon Jagged
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