by A. C. Cobble
Not that he worried much of the scandal. Josephine wasn’t of high enough blood to suit his station, but she was certainly of high enthusiasm. If his tutors didn’t manage to track him down soon, he wasn’t sure he’d survive her attentions. The girl, like many he’d shared company with in Finavia, had a vigor for life and love-making that he hadn’t experienced before. The girls in Enhover were rather sedate compared to their continental sisters.
Josephine tugged him up to the bar, elbowing aside two men that were standing there. The two of them glared at Josephine, until they noticed Oliver in her grasp, and then they offered shallow bows and moved aside, lips pressed tightly together.
An earl and a marquess, he thought, though the titles of the peers in Finavia were just different enough he wasn’t sure he had it right. His tutors had probably tried to explain it, he suspected, but he hadn’t come to the continent to understand the ranks of these simpering fools. He’d come for the drink and the company.
Though, he admitted to himself as Josephine ordered more wine, it gave him some pleasure to tweak the pompous bastards. A man of his station, the son of the king, a part of the royal line that for the last five years had ruled over this land, was not expected to be spending time with a chevalier’s daughter. Oliver guessed, if it wasn’t for her association with him, Josephine wouldn’t have even made it through the doors to the party.
He grinned at the two Finavian peers, enjoying their uncomfortable looks as they realized that their titles, their birth into Finavian nobility, meant nothing now. Finavia — the entire United Territories — were tributes to Enhover. The power of the place no longer flowed from the blood in their veins, it flowed from Southundon, and the allowances that Oliver’s father granted.
Josephine, ignoring the looks from the other Finavians, turned with his new glass of wine and pulled him back into the crowd, selecting a couch right in the middle of the room and sitting him down beside her.
He sipped his drink, enjoying the light, bubbling libation, and studied the room. Beside him, his paramour preened under the scrutiny of the crowd. Not that any of them were being obvious about it. From the sides of their eyes, in quickly averted glances, the revelers watched the foreign noble who ruled them, and the minor peer who sat beside him.
He decided that when he left Finavia, Josephine was likely to have a difficult time from this crowd. He wondered if she realized that, but as he felt her worming closer to him, pressing her body against his, the thought fled.
It was replaced with a young man’s lascivious imagination. He mused, fuzzy and drink-fueled, what new tricks the girl would have when they retired to his rented apartments. Finavians had a creative streak, in their painting, their poetry, and in their beds. It was one thing they excelled at compared to those in Enhover. It was one thing he’d quickly admitted after just a few weeks on the continent.
He was still thinking about it, letting the bubbly wine work its magic on him, when a slender man, with an even more slender mustache perched atop a simpering curled lip, spilled a glass of crimson wine right into Josephine’s lap.
She gasped, astonished and stunned, at the pool of blood red liquid that was soaking into her dress.
Oliver shot to his feet.
Red wine, from Ivalla no doubt, was considered toxic amongst the social set in Finavia. The crowd at the party drank only the golden, sparkling stuff from their native vineyards. That the man had even been carrying a glass of red was proof he’d meant to spill it.
Thin mustache, as Oliver thought of him, stepped back, laughing. An empty wine glass was in one hand, and the man brought a thin cigarette to his lips, turning his amused eyes from Josephine’s panicked expression to smirk at Oliver.
Oliver reached forward and slapped the man’s cigarette out of his hand. “You bastard, you did that on purpose!”
“Bastard!” protested the man, his face flushing. “I am the son of—”
“You’re no one,” snapped Oliver.
“I am Reginald de Bussy, son of the great general!” declared the man with a flourish of his glass, “and you, foreigner—”
“How dare you!” shrieked Josephine, jabbing a finger at the man. “You’re just jealous I left you for—”
Reginald de Bussy backhanded Josephine, his hand thudding into her rogue-dusted cheek, silencing her, and the room.
Eyes on the floor, she dabbed a hand at her lips. Trembling, she muttered, “I think I may start bleeding.”
Reginald, his thin mustache quivering, snorted in amusement.
Hot rage filling his body, Oliver asked, “What is the punishment for assaulting a woman, a peer, in Finavia?”
“No, I-I… we are in a relationship!” cried de Bussy, shaking his head. “It is not like that. She…”
Oliver swung at the man in a stilted uppercut, his knuckles catching de Bussy on the chin.
The slender peer reeled backward, caught by a group of well-dressed men behind him.
All around them, the room as silent. It was rare an assault against another peer would be prosecuted, but it was a crime, and in this case, someone had struck the lover of the king’s son. That son had swung back, and if de Bussy defended himself, he’d be striking someone of the royal line. The punishment for such an attack was not gaol, it was execution.
Reginald de Bussy had made a rather poor decision, it seemed the crowd believed. He quickly compounded it.
He hurled his empty wine glass at Oliver’s face, and when the young peer from Enhover ducked, de Bussy ran.
“Stop him!” shouted Oliver, dashing to the chase.
No one did, and de Bussy burst out the door of the parlour, racing down a marble floor with Oliver in pursuit. The Finavian peer sprinted out the front doors of the expansive townhouse, and Oliver saw him leaping into an open-topped mechanical carriage waiting out front. Within seconds, the carriage lurched into gear, the axles grinding as the driver shifted it into motion.
Reginald de Bussy was sitting on a padded couch, waving madly at Oliver as he implored his driver to move faster.
Watching him pull away, Oliver cursed.
Josephine came skidding to a stop beside him. “The bastard. He thinks he can run? Not from your father and his empire, neh?”
“Not from my father, and not from me!” growled Oliver.
He darted to another one of the mechanical carriages and clambered onto the driver’s bench. He looked down at the controls, realizing that in Enhover, the carriages were closed compartments, and he’d never actually seen the levers and throttles that the drivers used to maneuver the puttering contraptions.
Josephine climbed in behind him, her knees on the backward facing passenger couch, her face over the bench beside him, looking furiously at de Bussy’s carriage as it pulled away. “You know how to drive one of these?”
“Not yet,” he admitted.
It couldn’t be that difficult, could it? There was the steering T, a lever, and another lever. Some buttons. A dial. He frowned. He pressed a button, but nothing happened. He turned the dial, and nothing happened. Then, he hauled on a lever, shifting it down, and a terrific screeching sound wailed from beneath the floorboards. He pulled the other lever, evidently releasing the brakes, and the mechanical carriage flew into motion.
He nearly tumbled back over the driver bench into the open passenger compartment, but he grabbed for the steering T and twisted it, the carriage skidding on its steel-bound wheels over the cobblestones.
Josephine cried out in surprise, but a quick glance over his shoulder showed she’d just tumbled down onto the other couch in the back of the carriage.
Looking ahead, Oliver cursed and jerked the steering T again, narrowly avoiding the back of a horse-drawn vehicle.
The driver shouted at him in Finavian as they barreled around the slower moving traffic that filled the evening streets of Rouchan.
Ahead of them, he could see de Bussy’s slightly panicked face sitting in the back of his carriage.
Oliver, wres
tling the steering T, barely managing to keep the rocketing contraption on the street, wincing as they veered around another horse-drawn vehicle and clipped the back of it. A chorus of shouts in Finavian rose behind him, but he ignored them, and instead focused on his quarry in front. The other vehicle was pulling away as de Bussy demanded his driver increase their speed.
Oliver looked down at the available levers in front of him. One, he’d pulled and they’d started to move, so it must be the brake. The other had to be the throttle. He opened it up all of the way and heard the shift of gears beneath his feet. They sped up, their steel-bound wheels a racket, people scattering out of the way of the two racing vehicles.
Reginald de Bussy’s carriage took a hard right turn at the avenue which bordered Rouchan’s river, the wheels bouncing onto the promenade that ran alongside it, sending a vendor diving out of the way as the carriage smashed into a little cart the man had been pulling.
Oliver, gritting his teeth, twisted his steering T, suddenly realizing he should have slowed before attempting to make the turn. The carriage tilted, two wheels rising off the cobblestones. “The other side, the high side,” he shouted back to Josephine. “Put your weight on the high side or we’ll flip.”
They skidded around the turn, wobbling, before the wheels smashed back down to the street, eliciting an excited squeal from Joesphine.
The reckless maneuver had gained them two carriage-lengths on de Bussy, and now they were just twenty yards behind.
To the left of them was the river, reflecting brilliant sparkles from the lanterns that lit the promenade for late evening strolls. To the right were the giant manses of Finavia’s peers. Oliver guessed that de Bussy was headed toward his. The son of the nation’s most famous general was certain to have one in a prime location along the promenade.
Oliver, his heart racing, his mind spinning from too much drink, thought only of chasing down the man. Whether de Bussy reached his home or not seemed important, though Oliver couldn’t have explained why. He wanted to catch the man, see the look of chagrin on his simpering face as he was clapped in manacles and dragged off to gaol, for his attack on Josephine, for thinking that the name de Bussy still mattered.
All around them, people screamed or cursed, though it was de Bussy’s vehicle leading the way and putting the pedestrians at risk. Oliver told himself that, as he twisted and wrenched the steering T, dodging around those who’d rushed out of the way of one carriage into the path of the other.
He was catching up and had cut the distance between them to ten yards. Close enough he could hear de Bussy shouting at his driver, and hear the man insisting he could not go any faster.
Oliver stood, only his grip on the steering T preventing him from flying off the side of his carriage as he drove it onto the promenade again, the jar of the stone curb rattling his teeth.
“Stop now, on the authority of King Edward of Enhover!” he shouted.
The driver of the other mechanical carriage looked back in confusion.
“Watch where you’re going!” screamed Josephine, pointing ahead to where de Bussy’s carriage was aimed directly at a young couple that was strolling down the middle of the pedestrian walk.
The couple made as if to dive in different directions, and de Bussy’s driver was paralyzed with indecision. There wasn’t space to pass between the two, and either way he turned, he risked crashing straight into one of the pair.
Oliver slammed his steering T to the right, their carriage protesting and skipping as the steel wheels skipped over the cobblestones, then they got traction and the carriage careened right, crashing into the back wheel of de Bussy’s, smashing the two speeding vehicles together, spinning de Bussy’s and flipping it.
Jolted hard from the impact, Oliver fell to the floorboards, and the carriage rolled to a slow stop as its engine coughed and sputtered, broken in the jarring impact.
Oliver scrambled to his feet before peeking at Josephine in the back.
She was lying on one of the couches, her mouth open, gapping like a dying fish, but she appeared uninjured, just shocked.
Oliver jumped out of the carriage and raced around the end to where de Bussy’s was lying on its side. The driver was sprawled on the cobblestones, clutching his forehead, but moaning and cursing.
Glancing around wildly, Oliver couldn’t find de Bussy at first, but then he saw the young Finavian peer shoving his way through the growing crowd.
Dashing after him, Oliver demanded he stop, but de Bussy kept going, evidently running to find somewhere he thought would be safe.
The man was limping, and Oliver caught him with little effort. He grabbed de Bussy and spun him around, ignoring the growing circle of bystanders, and the rising shouts from the city’s watch as they closed in on the crash site.
“I-I’m the son of General Pierre de Bussy,” mumbled the young peer. “My father is an important man, a scion of Finavia, a governor now. You cannot— You must release me.”
Grim-faced, Oliver shook his head. “You’re a subject of Enhover now, mate, and in Enhover, it’s illegal to strike a woman.”
Shaking his head, de Bussy mumbled, “She was not hurt. I am—”
Oliver, tiring of the man’s babbling pleas, punched de Bussy in the face. His fist crashed into the side of the other man’s head with a solid thump, and the startled peer collapsed onto the cobblestones.
The crowd around them gasped, and the watch finally pushed their way through. A man Oliver took to be the sergeant demanded, “What is the meaning of this?”
“Earlier this evening, this man struck a defenseless woman,” declared Oliver. “He did that and, ah, whatever crimes on the road he committed. I demand his arrest.”
“On what authority, neh?” questioned the sergeant, looking skeptically at Oliver, perhaps wondering if both peers should not be hauled off to the gaol where they could sort it out, or perhaps wondering whether he had authority to arrest a peer, even with such obvious evidence of a crime.
“On the authority of the King of Enhover, the ruler of this land,” stated Oliver.
“I am his son, Duke Oliver Wellesley.”
The watch captain shifted, adjusted his grip on a wooden club at his waist, then turned to his men. “Alright then, let’s bring him in.”
Struggling futilely, Reginald de Bussy was dragged away by the watchmen.
Oliver turned and saw Josephine standing a step behind him, her hand over her mouth, watching as the Finavian peer was taken away. Her eyes showed shock and fear, until they turned to Oliver, and he saw something entirely different reflected back at him.
“Look at that stain on your dress,” said Oliver, stepping to her. “Let’s get you to my apartments and get you out of that old thing, shall we?”
She smiled. “Yes, m’lord, I think we shall.”
7
The Commander: a Short Story
Branden Ostrander glanced at the cards in his hand. Five pieces of stiff paper, carefully painted and lacquered. They felt smooth under his fingers. New, like the artist had delivered them just that morning. The detailed artwork was exquisite. The cards alone were worth twice what he’d earned over the last moon playing at the tables. He briefly thought about snatching the deck and running. Why risk the gamble when such a sum was sitting in his hands?
A brief and foolish fantasy. He’d have to collect the entire thing, for one. Not even richest peers were stupid enough to purchase an incomplete deck of cards, and he had to worry about the gleaming silver sterling that was piled up around the table. He’d been staked to join the game, and if he didn’t return the silver he borrowed, Tollefson was going to slide the sharpened edge of a blade across his neck.
No, the easy score as an illusion. Nothing was ever easy. That didn’t mean it had to be a gamble, though.
Forcing himself to hide his grin, he shifted and felt a stiff card press against his flesh underneath of his sleeve. Nearly ten hands he’d played, waiting until he’d drawn a high druid. He’d slipped it
beneath his wrist and then casually flicked the rest of his hand into the discard pile.
It was the kind of sleight-of-hand that would have been spotted immediately in the gambling dens and flesh markets where he’d learned to play, but in such esteemed company, no one expected a thing. The merchants and peers he was playing against in the smoking room of the exclusive Seawatch Club may have sharp eyes when it came to negotiating trade agreements with foreign factors, but they didn’t stand a chance against the fast hands of an experienced Sink’s cardsharp.
“Ah, two sterling,” muttered the young man across from him and he tossed two of the heavy silver discs into the center of the table. They landed softly on the thick velvet and clinked gently against a growing pile of shining silver.
“You’re throwing your coins away, brother,” advised Nathaniel Child, brother of the newly elevated Baron Josiah Child. “I’ll match you and add another two to the bet.”
Next to Branden, a thickly-bearded man who reeked of the sea and cigar smoke sat back shaking his head. “Too rich for me, boys.”
“Captain,” teased Nathaniel, “I thought this was going to be your hand.”
“Aye, perhaps it would have been, but I see what you two are doing,” accused the captain, holding up the smoking stub of his cigar and pointing it at the younger brother. “You’ll run up the bets, thinking that one of you can take the pot. It’s not my first time playing cards, you know?”
Nathaniel grinned at the captain. “Everyone said you were one of the most fearsome players in Eiremouth. I was told you’d teach us how the sailors play.”
The captain snorted and traded his cigar for a silver tankard filled near to the brim with dark red wine. “The evening is long, my boy, and there is time yet. I’ve been on grog rations for the last two weeks and I need to wet my throat ‘afore I take all of your coin.”
The two brothers laughed and turned around the table. Two more players dropped out, and the two peers turned on Branden.
