"Who am I speaking to?" A distorted voice rattled out from the handset pressed against her ears.
Laid on a makeshift bed of three wooden chairs placed side-by-side, Liari smirked, bemused. Liari knew the lineage, background, and location of every customer that struck up deals with the mansion. Such disguises had maybe worked on the former arbiter, not her.
"The operator," she said.
Silence.
"May I speak to the Arbiter?" The tone had softened now. "I have a deal to make."
He lies. She snarled her lips in contempt. Had the mansion's fallen to this extent while she was divining the final arbiter's birth that a mere human dare to lie to her so blatantly? Cullwell being a good customer was the only reason she would let the insolence pass. She was the Operator, and she saw all.
"He's missing," she replied, lifting her head to peer at the bloated and chalky corpse encased in a glass coffin and set before her on the expansive dining table that took up most of the hall. The light from the suspension bulb overhead called attention to the stitches that held up the corpse together. He isn't missing anything. She thought and chuckled to herself.
"Where to?" Came the abrupt question, implying that the customer knew she wasn't telling him the truth, and that irked her.
"You have wasted enough of time, customer," she said sternly, pale lips a flat line. "Since you've called the mansion, I will accept the deal you have to make. Else you'll face the penalty." One more question. She thought in anticipation. After the fourth question, if a deal isn't made within an hour, the customer loses privilege, the tomb had said. Generally, every customer knew this rule, but taking into account Ruffler's repulsion to rules and patience, she hoped the pig for once had done something that favored them.
"I apologize, Operator, for the impudence," the voice said, and her mood soured.
"There is no need for an apology, Cullwell," she spat. "I'll give you till tomorrow to evening to make a deal, else I'll be there at noon, in your house, when you are present, and make you watch while I dismember your family and eat them." She waited a moment for her words to settle in. "Do you understand?"
"I do, operator."
"Good," she flung the handset up the backrest and heard it clatter against the marbled flooring.
She perched herself up, hem of her beige skirt grazing the floor, and looked down on Mr. Ruffler's corpse. "You went to the Desolate lands to flee from us," she scoffed. "And you still ended back up here. You couldn't even figure out when the penalty had applied, did you?" It wasn't fair, she knew, after all, as the Operator, her job was to aid the arbiter in the his collection, and she hadn't appeared before Ruffler until now, after his death. Even then, he wouldn't have lived past this month.
She had divined the Final Arbiter's birth and location and he was no longer required. She would've gotten rid of him herself had he not went and got himself killed in the Desolate Lands.
But, it didn't matter to Liari the fairness inscribed in the Spirit of a Trade, all that mattered to her were what she felt, not anyone else, and the Mansion cared not as long as it was fed; the rules that really applied were the one's she and Mansion dictated.
Enough talking to the dead for today. She thought, turning to observe the grandfather clock hung over the double-sided polished wooden gates leading into the hall: 11:37 PM. Taking a final glance at the former arbiter's corpse, she willed it to thrown out the Mansion and onto the streets of Steinwell; it would serve as a warning. It would make the job of collecting debts from the story Ruffler had crafted a year before his death a lot easier. Still have to get rid of his children. She suddenly remembered, and sighed.
So much to do before retirement.