"The Lamplight Club is not a great sight of Jalkin. Technically it is scarcely a sight at all. From Balthar Street, which runs north into the western end of Caedon Road, all that is visible is a private three-story house and a flight of steps leading down one side to an unmarked cellar door. The club could more accurately be described a sound of the Cities, a murmur floating on the breeze. Stand in the wrong place and it is lost; but find yourself down wind and suddenly it is everywhere, a name of great import.
"For the Lamplight is one of the skewed, deceptive ways in which the Cities works beneath its official forms. It is a club for the business classes. More specifically, it is a club for especially ingenious, ambitious or underhand businessmen. Landed gentry expanding into commerce, empire builders consolidating their domains, middle-rankers desperately pushing upwards and novices yapping eagerly at their superiors; all gather in the Lamplight. While they will book formal conference rooms, barter commodities in the Pemby Exchange and generally put on a show for onlookers, many of their actual deals are conducted in the shadowy drinking den. For they know they will only meet their peers there. Aside from its concealed location, only members are allowed in. As local laws dictate, membership is open to all citizens. The sheer pressure of numbers, however, necessitates all new applicants being put on a waiting list which is scrutinised by existing members. Depending on what contacts the applicant has with that body, the wait could be two days or it could be the lifetime of several suns. To belong to the Lamplight is to be accepted. In the supposedly classless Cities it is one more intangible division, one more way of distinguishing the upstarts from the true parvenus.
"To Marcas it had always been legendary. His father was a lifelong member and, when his children were old enough, often brought home anecdotes from its walls. Marcas sometimes felt that Elak only visited the Cities to frequent the club, which was not always far from the truth. It was, he was told, a place of intimacy and intellect, of candour and parity, where rich and poor mingled as equals and left their reserve at the door. In short, it was the embodiment of everything the Cities is supposed to represent. Such brazen promotion almost guaranteed that Marcas' first visit was a disappointment. When he was eighteen and his brother sixteen, Elak took them in as guests. (Women are allowed into the Lamplight, if not exactly welcomed, but Elak's daughter refused to set foot inside.) They descended the steps, were courteously waved in by a colossal doorman lurking behind a desk and entered almost complete darkness. Daylight was naturally absent but the club's name proved something of a misnomer. A few standing lanterns were placed in the corners and a small chandelier hung from the ceiling but they were hardly enough to illuminate the low, expansive room. Even when his eyes had adjusted, Marcas remained less than impressed. There was no bar, no proper tables and no apparent decoration. Instead there were a collection of leather armchairs with occasional tables beside them, some placed in partitioned booths but most scattered at random around the room. When Marcas sat in one, the texture felt slimy and he noticed several rips in the upholstery. Young but already fully cynical, he wondered whether the subdued lighting was simply an excuse to never clean or change the furniture. Tray-bearing waiters scuttled in and out of a door in one wall, visible only when open as a rectangle of light from the room beyond. Apart from the waiters, little movement could be detected. Finely dressed men occupied many of the chairs, most in position when the Jeronés arrived and still there when they departed an hour later. Some talked softly amongst themselves, but many just worked their way through gargantuan lunches or cradled their drinks and stared into the shadows.
"Marcas had in
fact been revolted. The club seemed
like no hive of commercial activity.
Nor did it, as he had privately hoped, offer the entertainment of other
subterranean establishments, which usually involve certain young ladies
performing certain dances. It was
simply a hole for prosperous and grossly irresponsible men to crawl into
instead of attending to their business.
Marcas held harsh standards as a youth and he expected extremes. Either grinding labour or wild hedonism;
anything in between was a pitiable compromise.
Eight years later and a member in his own right, following an extremely
cursory waiting period thanks to his father's influence, he understood the
Lamplight Club more fully. It can be a refuge, and that should not
necessarily be condemned. Sometimes it
offers refuge from work, sometimes from the distractions of a workplace so
concentration is possible. It can also
be a rendezvous point, a conspirator's lair, a conference room, a brokerage
centre, a neutral meeting ground for rivals, a sanctuary from the beating sun,
a haven from the chill of winter or merely a place to have lunch. The Lamplight has few rules and no imposed
function. It can be whatever you and
fate bring to it."