The Benson estate was a tomb of expectations. Jacob returned to it feeling the weight of his disguise—the velvet and cravat—like a physical burden he had yet to shed.
He slipped through a servants' entrance, Alexander a silent shadow behind him.
"The salvation army was most grateful for your… assistance, milord."
Alexander murmured, the pre-arranged code delivered with dry sarcasm.
The Salvation army, was a ruse developed by Jacob which included offering charity work or handling distribution of food to the poor (used most times) to attend the meetings held at the Aethelstan Club and Social Foundation.
"Their gratitude is my reward." Jacob replied, the archaic phrasing feeling more hollow than usual.
He retreated to his chambers, a suite of rooms as vast as a museum gallery.
He removed the wig of dark curls, running a hand through his own, shorter white hair—a trait of the Benson Family.
He shed the extravagant clothes, hanging them in a secret compartment of his wardrobe, a relic from a more rebellious ancestor.
In his own silk dressing gown, he stood before the window, looking out over the manicured gardens that stretched to the high, iron-barred fence.
The meeting had been a spark in the gloom.
The Oxford Club.
It was raw, unformed, but it had potential.
It wasn't steeped in the tedious, self-important rituals of the Sons of the Deep, with their endless toasts to the god of the seas and waves. This was different.
He thought of the members.
_The Anchor is clearly an intellectual, sharp and analytical, but devoid of artistry. A man who sees a song and thinks only of its grammatical structure._
_The young woman with the blank alias is a burst of untamed color, a splash of watercolor on a page of precise, black ink. Delightfully out of place._
_But The Lonely Saviour… he is the intriguing variable. The founder. The man who spoke of hidden systems with a flat, controlled accent that my trained ear suspects to be a fabrication. There is a gravity to him, a depth of purpose that goes beyond academic curiosity. He isn't just studying the machine, he seems to be at war with it._
Jacob sat at his ornate, leather-topped desk.
He opened a journal bound in tooled leather, far finer than the one Foster used. He did not write in prose. Instead, he began to write verses.
The Lonely Saviour calls a tune, To cut the silent, stolen noon.
The Anchor weighs what is unsaid, While vibrant hues by Quill are led.
A trinity of chance, a solemn art, To take the hidden world apart.
He leaned back, reading the lines.
Yes, that was it.
This wasn't merely a diversion. It was a new form of poetry.
The poetry of investigation. Of pulling back the curtain.
The Lonely Saviour, he felt with a poet's certainty, held the key not just to the city's secrets, but to his own artistic and personal liberation from this cage of his.
For the first time in weeks, the act of writing didn't feel like an escape. It felt like a beginning.