Chick Manu
Chique Manu is a writer of some notoriety in the underworld of Europe, and a man got up with a cosmopolitan flourish — a fez upon his head and a collarless coat buttoned to the throat — which draws the eye of all about him. His fondness for the gaming table has raised him to great wealth and cast him down again by turns; and though his manner is warm, it masks a darker history, for his name has become a byword for the schemes of chance that have beggared many a man, and the middling sort above all.
Meeting Jean-Zera Mongé, he greeted her as an old acquaintance, recalling that he had sat with her father some months before in the south-east of France. Their talk ran light, yet with something layered beneath it, for he let slip that he had won away her father's return fare at play — a hint of bad blood — and showed a keen interest in the father's affairs, which seemed to reach past mere money.
He was much amused that the Janissaries should lean so upon his purse, holding them, as he did, upon a short leash. Once a poet of repute, he is now a wealthy fixer, well travelled across Europe and North Africa, and it pleases him to fund the Janissaries the better to spread his house's several dependencies; his connections among the great carry him through any drawing-room with ease.
With an invitation to the Karakoy Casino for that evening, he kept his playful humour whilst insisting that Jean-Zera answer for her own reckoning — a small mark of the indulgent life that as often as not leaves him laid up after a late night. His name goes before him across the whole of Europe, spoken in the same breath as Hano "the Widow" and Giannis "the Cut"; and there clings to him an allure that mingles charm with a whisper of menace.
Another face of the man showed at a festival, where he sat at an outdoor table near a shadow-theatre. Here his ordinary self came forth, with its love of shining things — chief among them a gaudy ruby ring he touches for luck. When animated shadows tried to filch it, he cried out for help from those at hand; and once it was recovered, he pressed upon Ahmet Yusuf a banknote worth some hundred gold, in a manner that told how much the ring meant to him.
At a clandestine gaming club, Chique Manu arrived with Gizem Faruki and Jean-Zera, and was waved through as a guest on the strength of his name. He spoke freely of himself — of his funding of the Janissaries and his standing as a wealthy fixer — and at the cards showed a fine skill, laying down a royal flush at a telling moment. When he was carried off in a carriage, Gizem and Jean-Zera gave chase, and after a confused affray of blade and conjuring he was got free again; he thanked Jean-Zera for her pains, dropped a single para into Rashad's hand in mockery, and went back to his game.
Chique Manu was present, too, at the Festival of Candles, where he saw the Ghost of March strike down the perfumist Nazif on a charge of betrayal. He stood aghast as the tumult rose and the guards proclaimed a state of emergency; and afterward he invited Jean-Zera to carry the evening on in private over stronger drink, which she declined.
When the festival was done, Chique Manu joined a company at a late café to weigh the Ghost of March and the recent doings. He listened as the others told of the Ghost's train, clad in the uniforms of the Sekban soldiers — men remembered for old violences in the city — and added his own thoughts upon what the Ghost's acts might mean, and how they might bear upon the Janissaries.
The party resolved to look over Nazif's perfume-stall in the Grand Bazaar, to see who would command the undercity's gates now that he was dead. Under cover of night, and in the thick of the emergency, Chique Manu and his fellows slipped into the perfumery, where they met Sharif the Strong Fur, a talking black cat who had taken up Nazif's office; Sharif set out the rules of magic within his domain and begged Sidra al-Najjar's help with certain ailing cats.
Of late Chique Manu has become a wealthy bookmaker and a heavy bettor in the chariot races of the Spectral Hippodrome. He works the crowd, talking of wagers and displaying his knowledge of the sport; he greeted Jean-Zera and Yasmin, praising their taste in amusements, and took the bets of the attenders, Yasmin's modest stake upon the Green Team among them. He was seen in talk with an elven woman, a sign of his standing in the racing set; and after the race he agreed to arrange a meeting between Jean-Zera and Susanna — Susanna having named him the contact who would reach out to set up a new race at the Spectral Hippodrome.