“Thank you, m’lord,” said Sloot, immediately following the first whack of Olga’s wand for the evening.
“Yes,” said Constantin as he entered and everyone rose, “welcome back, Mr. Peril. I’d never imagined in a hundred years that you’d have the intestinal fortitude to brave the Carpathian capital, much less convince my Willie to do the same. Yet here you are!”
Constantin sat, then Willie, Mrs. Knife, Gregor, and everyone else with respect to their relative importance at the table. There was a round of toasts primarily directed at Willie, though Sloot and Roman were mentioned once or twice. At Olga’s prodding, Sloot dutifully insisted that all of the credit went to Willie, and that he’d never have made it out alive without Willie’s heroism. It was his day after all.
“Tell me about that,” Constantin said to Willie, as the servants laid out a course that had all the trappings of soup, but came with a hammer and a knife. “You returned a full day ahead of the rest of them―”
“Through the east gate,” interrupted Mrs. Knife, “and without any permits! You’re not above the law, Willie.”
The whole table broke into laughter. Gregor supported Mrs. Knife in a grimace.
“I admit it,” said Willie, “it was a dashing bit of daring-do that got us out of there. Roman was very concerned about Greta―”
“Where is Greta?” asked Roman. His mannerist gave him a firm whack. “Please forgive the interruption, m’lord, I just assumed she’d be here with us.”
“Miss Urmacher is recovering from her ordeal,” said Mrs. Knife. “The poor thing is hysterical, has trouble remembering that Willie is her fiancé.”
“Trauma!” said Constantin, a bit louder than expected, causing everyone to jump. “It happens to many people behind enemy lines, but not my Willie! It was his cool head and bare-knuckled gumption that saw them through it, wasn’t it, Willie?”
“Right you are, Father. Oh, and Roman’s potion, too.”
“Potion?” asked Constantin. “What potion?”
“I think―” began Roman, who then succumbed to a whack across the throat that was forceful enough to throw him into a coughing fit.
“The blue one,” said Willie. “He brought it to me, unlocked my door, and told me where Greta was. I took a sip, ran down to the gardens where she was walking alone, threw her over my shoulder, and made for the stables.”
Sloot stared at Roman with his mouth open, which earned him a whack on the chin.
“Greta kept fighting to get away, so I had to tie her to the saddle. The poor thing—she seemed to think that she was in love with Vlad, and was trying to go back to her!”
“Not Vlad the Invader!” exclaimed Sir Dennis Frumpton, who was all moustache. His monocle dropped into his soup.
“That’s right.” Willie turned to the side and leaned an elbow on the table. It was a maneuver that Sloot had seen him practicing on a few occasions, something called the Softly Now, Dolly. Wait, no—if paired with the smile that Willie was also doing, it was the Long Cool Sunday. If he’d been glaring instead, it would have been called the Long Cold Fish.
“Elbows off the table,” whispered a smiling mannerist standing behind Willie’s chair, “if you please, Lord Hapsgalt.”
“What do you think of that?” said Constantin. “My boy gave Vlad the Invader what for!”
“He endangered the lives of Old Country citizens,” said Mrs. Knife. “He left the city without permits, his crossing of the Carpathian border could be considered an act of war, and he consorted with a known criminal to plan the venture!”
“Permits,” scoffed Constantin. “Willie’s a Hapsgalt! Did you think something like that would make a Hapsgalt man pack it in? He used his gumption! I’d have expected nothing less.”
Roman was avoiding Sloot’s gaze. Sloot was doing his best to place trust in the spymaster, but he’d lied! Willie hadn’t overpowered him and escaped, Roman had all but sent him home in a carriage!
The next course was brought out. It looked like a leafy tower with feathers on top. Sloot considered it with caution and picked up a fork, which was summarily whacked from his hand.
“This one’s just for smelling,” said Olga. “You can’t eat it, it’s poisonous.”
“It’s a glorious day,” said Constantin. “My son, the explorer! A very respectable accomplishment. I believe that he has indeed rendered proof of his worth!”
The sound of dozens of rings clinking against stemware filled the room. Sloot wasn’t quite fast enough in remembering which spoon was the glass-clinking one, and received no fewer than three gleeful whacks before he worked it out.
“People have been to Carpathia before,” said Mrs. Knife. “It’s hardly exploratory if you’re on roads and cobbles the entire time.”
“He went into hostile territory,” said Constantin, “for the benefit of … well, for our benefit. Isn’t that right, Gregor?”
“Yes and no,” said the pasty old wizard. “I’d have sworn it yesterday, but now I do not … have the proof, if you will.”
“What do you mean?” asked Willie.
Everyone went silent. Sloot and Myrtle exchanged worried glances. Roman continued to avoid eye contact. Constantin gave a little wave to one of his butlers, who approached so the old man could whisper in his ear.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the butler, “Lord Constantin thanks you for joining his table on this joyous occasion, and wishes you a pleasant evening.”
No one appeared upset about the prospect of missing dessert. The malnourished look was all the rage in those days, and people who dressed in ensembles that had financial portfolios of their own tended to grow despondent when their cheekbones fell into subtlety.
Sloot tried to stand up because everyone else was doing it, and the very idea of not following a trend made him uneasy, but Olga’s hand was surprisingly firm on his shoulder.
“Where’s everyone gone?” asked Willie. “They must have been bored, too. I told you I should have brought my sword with me, I could have shown them some moves.”
“You said you’d handle it.” Constantin was glaring at Mrs. Knife. He had a way of making eye contact with a person that left them cursing themselves for not having died sooner.
“I did,” she replied. “Gregor had the connection yesterday, didn’t you, Gregor?”
Gregor seemed to have nodded, though it was a clumsy maneuver that may have been his neck attempting to rot out from beneath his head. He was greener than the first time Sloot had seen him, thinner too.
“Oh, is this secret business?” Willie looked positively delighted, like he’d just been told that Snugglewatch would fall on his birthday this year. “Can I invite my friends into the club?”
“It’s not a club, Willie.” Constantin’s eyes closed, and he pinched the bridge of his nose.
Fate rarely goes fishing. It’s got quite a lot to do, and simply can’t spare the time; but every once in a while, it dangles a line in the face of the unsuspecting. And like a fish, people rarely have the good sense to ignore it and find something less risky to do.
“What’s he talking about?” asked Sloot, who would shortly regret having done so.
“We’ve already said too much,” said Mrs. Knife.
“About what?” asked Willie. “Do you mean the Serpents of the Earth?”
“Curse you, boy!” said Gregor, spittle flying from his mouth.
“Of course,” said Roman, “it all makes perfect sense! It was your blood star, wasn’t it?”
“How did you know what it was?” asked Gregor, looking genuinely surprised.
“You handled a blood star for the Serpents of the Earth?” said Myrtle, gaping at Roman.
“You know about all of this?” Sloot gaped at Myrtle.
“I’m as surprised as the rest of you,” said Willie, who wasn’t, but didn’t want to feel left out.
“Silence!” shouted Constantin. You have to practice to get that good at shouting. Even Mrs. Knife flinched.
“Yes,” Constantin continued, after pausing for dramatic effect, “we sent a blood star with you into Carpathia, and by ‘we’ I mean the Serpents of the Earth. Of course, now that you know about it, we must determine whether you can be allowed to leave this place alive.”
“Please don’t say anything else,” said Sloot. “I don’t know anything about the Serpents of the Earth, and I’d be happy to refrain from remembering anything about this conversation.”
“That’s a lie!” snarled Mrs. Knife. “He was the fool who impersonated Roger Bannister to gain access to the archives!”
“You, Peril?” Constantin appeared to be surprised, possibly for the first time in his life.
“It’s a secret club,” said Willie. “All of my friends are in it. Well, not you. Hey, Dad! Can Sloot and Roman and Myrtle join the club? Please?”
Mrs. Knife exhaled in disgust.
“Curse you again, boy,” said Gregor. “You’re a legacy! Don’t you know what you’ve done?”
“I just asked if my friends can be in the club. They’re really nice, they helped me escape from Carpathia! Not that I needed the help, I was just about to break out on my own before Roman―”
“That’s enough, Willie,” said Constantin. “By the Book of Black Law, you’ve just invited these initiates into our court for proving.”
“What? Oh no, I couldn’t.” Sloot flinched, then remembered that Olga had left the room.
“Nor should you, Mr. Peril,” said Mrs. Knife. “You see, Constantin? He’d rather die. I can see to it.” She slid her knife from its sheath, causing Sloot to whimper.
“Oh, can you?” Constantin crossed his arms. “If that were the case, would he not be dead already? Oh, don’t look so surprised, Mrs. Knife. I am the Eye of the Serpent, after all. I know about a great many things you think you’re hiding from me.”
Constantin was staring daggers at Mrs. Knife. Even Sloot avoided his eye, on the off chance that looks really could kill.
“He knows too much,” croaked Gregor. His voice was so dry and cracked that taking up smoking might have improved it. “If he won’t join us, he’ll have to be murdered and imprisoned.”
“Shouldn’t that be the other way around?” asked Myrtle, or rather, Arthur.
“You might think so,” Gregor replied, “if the sum of your accomplishments in the afterlife totaled the possession of one girl. Honestly, did you even bother peering beyond the veil, seeing what fates lurk beyond it?”
“How did you know about Arthur?” asked Roman.
“That’s something you’ll find out soon enough, if you fail the initiation rites.”
“This is fantastic!” said Willie. “You can all be in my cabal. I’ve never had a cabal before! I’m not really sure what they do.”
“Willie!” shouted Mrs. Knife.
“That will be all,” said Constantin. “Leave me, all of you.”
“Looks like he needs a ponderance,” said Arthur, probably.
“What do we do with them?” asked Mrs. Knife.
“Those two are free to go,” said Constantin, pointing to Sloot and Roman. “She can be Greta’s maid of honor. She’ll be our guest.”
“Free to go?” croaked Gregor. “But sire―”
“They’ve got work to do at Whitewood,” said Constantin, the edge in his voice waving around at the throats of any further back-talk. “And Peril wouldn’t think to try anything, with his lover under our protection and our eyes everywhere.”
Scheming Conspiracies
“We have to talk,” said Sloot, for about the hundredth time that evening.
“We are talking!” said Roman. “Glenn here was just telling me about how the boys are going on strike next week, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it! Am I right, boys?”
A cheer went up. Sloot had never seen that many people in his regular pub at once. No mystery there, it wasn’t a very nice pub. But Roman was steadfast in his resolve to avoid talking about why he’d betrayed Vlad, and he was using the Union of Queue Position Engineers as a shield.
The UQPE had a list of grievances as long as the lines at Central Bureaucracy, and Roman’s distraction spared no detail in dressing down everyone from The Establishment to Those Pencil-Pushing Nitwits over a seemingly endless supply of pints.
Sloot felt a bit strange about not putting a pint under his chair for every one he drank, but the goblins had long since passed out. This was a relief for the bartender, who was able to slow down to a pace that did not dangerously resemble exercise. That was just the sort of thing they tricked you into. One minute you’re getting people drunk, and the next you’re wearing leotards and using phrases like “feel the burn” and lifting heavy things for fun. They have a word for that sort of thing in bartending: hypocrisy.
“Central Bureaucracy won’t know what hit ’em!” shouted a slender man with a pronounced underbite. He punched the air, and so did a bunch of other people who shouted “Yeah!” in response.
“The fools!” shouted a young woman standing on a table. “What do they think will happen with no one standing in the lines? The gears of regulatory commerce will come grinding to a halt!”
“Yeah!” shouted the chorus.
This went on for several hours. Someone would yell something about injustice, or the common man, and everyone else would punch the air and yell “Yeah!”
Disaster nearly struck when the pub ran out of beer. Fortunately for the bartender, who had just taken up fearing for his life—which was still preferable to exercise, mind you—the first rays of dawn cut through the room at about the same time, using their natural talents to find their ways directly into the eyes of each and every reveler. Rays of sunlight are real redacted swear words that way.
Instead of turning their collective frustration against the bartender, they all succumbed to the inevitability that sunlight inflicts upon a pub, paid their tabs, and left.
“Not here,” said Roman as they walked toward Whitewood. “We can’t discuss you know what business out in the open. I’ll tell you what, I promise to come clean as soon as we get back to the house, okay? Now, who wants to find another pub?”
Sloot blinked. Unable to find the words to convey the depth of his frustration with Roman’s stonewalling, he had nearly reached the end of his tether.
That’s it, he thought. As soon as I come up with a string of swear words vile enough to shock the truth out of this old geezer, I’m not holding back. Unfortunately, Sloot didn’t have a lot of experience with really vile swear words, so the work was slow-going. Before he finished, everything went black.
***
“There’s our boy,” came a sing-songy voice like sunshine that gave Sloot the impression it was the sort of Sunday to be spent in his pajamas. He was only able to open his eyes to a squint, seeing nothing but very bright light.
“Am I dead?”
“No, though we were wondering the same for a while.”
His eyes finally adjusted enough for Flavia to come into focus. She was wearing the same white dress as before and smiling sweetly at him.
“You thought I was dead? Wait a minute, how did I get here? Did you poison me?”
“No, nothing like that. Well, actually yes, in a manner of speaking, but not enough to kill you. We’d never do that, silly! Unless … oh, never mind. How are you?”
“My head hurts,” said Sloot, “and I appear to be tied to a chair.”
“I’ll get you some water.” Flavia snapped her fingers. A man brought him a glass of water and left. “You’re not tied to the chair, by the way. Perhaps you’re just not feeling well.”
Sloot looked down. She was right. It was even quite comfortable, the chair to which he was not bound. So comfortable that he had no desi
re to leave it. Tied there by his own desire for leisure, then. Clever.
“Oh. All right then. Wait, why were you wondering if I was dead?”
“You were in Carpathia for a very long time,” said Flavia. “We heard no news from you past old man Entrailravager saying that you were headed in via the catacombs.”
“Entrailravager is an informant? That yokel?”
“Now, now,” Flavia wagged her finger, “yokels are a vital asset for the intelligence community. One can’t bury bodies in well-lit places with easy access, you know.”
“I know,” said Sloot, who’d never buried a body anywhere. He took a sip of his water. It tasted soapy.
“So tell me, what happened while you were there?”
While they’d been in Ulfhaven, Sloot had felt that he could trust Roman. He’d never have considered turning him over to Uncle, but he refused to provide any explanation for betraying his homeland. Could a person like that be trusted at all?
“Oh Sloot,” said Flavia. “Poor Sloot! You’ve been through so much in these past few months. Being a double agent is simply dreadful, I know. It’s so hard to know who to trust, isn’t it?”
Without warning or explanation, Sloot started crying. It wasn’t the reserved act of shedding a single tear, which true stoics reserve for their mothers’ funerals, amputations of their own limbs, and their boulderchuck teams’ championship losses. It was the wheezing, heaving, wet with drool, every facial muscle contorted in agony variety, replete with a limp slide to the floor and flailing arms. Even toddlers take a moment to stare at their newly-acquired boo-boos in abject horror before descending into this, the most petulant performance of self-pity; but not Sloot. The belief-defying speed of his declension into conniptions was enough to put any other hopefuls off taking it up as a professional sport. They knew in their hearts they’d never achieve his greatness.
It was a traumatic half hour or so before Sloot’s breathing returned from hysterics, and he realized that Flavia was cradling him in her lap. He sat up slowly and wiped enough partially crusted mucus onto his sleeve to ensure that his shirt could never be worn again.
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