Think, girl, the tailor had said, but thinking was hard now, with his lips so close and murmuring pleas.
Then in a moment his posture shifted, suddenly nervous, his shoulders dipped in worry. When Ivette followed his eyes, Madame du Lambert in all her hideous childlike frills was nowhere in the crowd.
“I have to go,” he whispered. “I’m unspeakably sorry.”
“Alexander” bowed a hasty apology and pulled himself away without another word. A few of the dutiful granddaughters tittered at her behind their fans, and one elderly maven gave her a disgusted look in between dance steps with a much younger colonel.
Ivette fumed. There was no way to follow him with any dignity after his kiss and departure, and wherever he had gone, it surely had to do with the matter at hand. She felt the weight of her blades below her skirts and flounced in the other direction, playing the spurned paramour. If she hurried, she was sure she could find him from the outside.
* * *
“Alexandre” had left the party when he’d noticed du Lambert gone, and so Ivette headed first to the old woman’s personal balcony, sliding as easy as a slow waltz under the great terrace of the ballroom with the help of her spider leg apparatuses. She tensed when the cutter constructs scuttled by, scissor mouths poised to defend the integrity of the upper levels, but she had come across them before, and as long as she wore the husks of their brethren on her hands and knee, they seemed to accept her as one of their own.
Madame’s bedroom suite was below the ballroom and out of the view of the guests, a common arrangement that let the host and any special guest slip away for privacy without giving up the free air of the vertical streets. Ivette unlatched one hand from the construct and drew her epee, moving as close as she dared to the balcony doors.
Immediately, she regretted the choice. Madame du Lambert reclined on a couch in the suite, exercising her questionable wiles on the old General Troussard. He shook and fawned, and she giggled like a girl of ten.
“Oh my big strong buck, my war hero,” Madame cooed, and Ivette turned away before she could reveal herself with an unladylike gag, but Madame’s next words brought her back. “Were you able to lay hands on it? Did you bring it to me?”
Ivette held herself still above the side windows, beside a spray of bright wisteria. She could see them in profile, and the general looked pained and shrunken as he reached below the curtain of medals that granted him access to the troves of treasure he had won expanding the Empire. He drew out a cut diamond so large it seemed his old hands held a lantern full of unmitigated starlight.
The Reve d’Eternite; the centerpiece of the Imperial collection. She had seen it before, at palace fêtes, always guarded and behind glass. It was worth more than all of du Lambert’s estates and hers combined.
What could du Lambert have that would interest an Imperial agent indeed? Her fingers tightened around the hilt of Menace.
From somewhere near her window, a door burst open. Had “Alexandre” begun his arrest without her? Ivette ducked her head back and listened as two heavy boot treads passed her. No, not him. She spied back through the glass. It was the two young men in the old, unfashionable mink.
No, she realized, looking closer at the coats, not old. No wear, none of the lines of long storage. The coats were an old design but newly made, with embargoed furs, and she could see the faint lines of long, curved knives underneath—those of the Croviata Regent guard.
Ivette circled the window, gaining the high ground for a charge. To steal the Emperor’s treasure was one thing, but to sell it to the Empire’s enemies? There could be no forgiving it.
The old general made a strangled noise and brandished a chair at the closer of the two men, while du Lambert retreated behind the other with the gem clutched in her powdered claws. In a movement so quick and casual it looked like he was swatting a fly, the Croviat splintered the chair with one fist and slammed the other through poor Troussard’s blinking face. The general’s medals jangled like bells out of tune as he plowed backwards, skull-first into the carved cherubs of du Lambert’s bed post. Ivette did not think the cracking sound came from the wood. Du Lambert gave a little cry, but she righted herself and placed her hand on the arm of the Croviat screening her.
“I truly am sorry, my Love,” she said to Troussard, and almost sounded it. “But I’m going to live like an Empress.”
Ivette could not tell if the old man shuddered from weeping, or if it was only the throes of an ignominious death. She kissed Menace’s hilt and promised make them pay for it. The old general was guilty only of theft and love. He’d never intended treason.
And yet. These were not alley thugs she could thrash without breaking a sweat. These were a trained military elite. Professional killers. Men who could break her like a naïve heart.
One of the Croviata was dragging something from a corner of the room that Ivette could not see—probably a chest heavy with du Lambert’s blood money. Ivette measured the stance of the other one, calculating if she could take him out by surprise before the two of them could get around either side of her; then all at once she noticed a crack in the far door that had not been there before.
“Alexandre” caught her eyes and gave her a wink as he drew his sword and threw the door open.
“I think not, du Lambert!” His voice and sword were both steady and steel.
Idiot! Ivette thought, but at the same time she wanted to bury him in kisses as if he were the hero of some foolish opera. All eyes turned on him, and du Lambert’s Croviat drew his crescent moon knives and advanced. So much for catching that one by surprise. “Alexandre” parried the first of the man’s crushing blows, but it knocked him back. Ivette did not think he could survive many more, and the other Croviat had drawn his weapons as well and was advancing from the side.
Ivette kicked off the wall and let the force of the spin around the tether of her remaining spider glove send her crashing through the window. The construct claws on her knee caught du Lambert in the back of her atrocious gown amid the shower of glass, and the old woman crumpled, crying out. Underneath her, the Reve d’Eternite skittered across the marble floor, followed quickly by two of Ivette’s flash pots.
“Eyes!” she barked, and “Alexandre” threw his arm up in time to shield himself. Neither of the Croviata did. From around the corners of her gloves, Ivette caught a squinting glimpse of the flash of light cut and magnified by the enormous diamond in burning rainbows on the bedchamber walls.
She did not wait for the closer Croviat to recover but laid into him from behind, knowing she would not get a second chance. Even dazed and half-blind, he was almost fast enough to avoid Menace cutting a canyon into the flesh of his arm. His rejoinding elbow in the close quarters sent her staggering, breathless, backwards into an armoire full of ghastly hosiery. She gulped for air and brought Monsieur Menace up just in time to slow his thick knife enough to dodge. She thought she saw “Alexandre” start toward her, concern on his face, before the other Croviat cut him off from view.
Somewhere on the edge of the chaos, du Lambert was blubbering about plans and wastes.
Ivette fought her lungs back into functioning as she dodged blows that left hand-deep gouges in Madame’s furniture. The Croviat’s bleeding arm slowed him down, but he was still able to drive her away from the middle of the room. She bent for Mademoiselle Surprise; his arm came up in a swipe that took away a red sliver of her hat and sent her dancing back into a corner flanked by disturbingly coquettish portraits of Madame.
No, this would not do. She was faster on her feet, but he had the reach, even with the length of her epee. She needed freedom to move, and the cluttered bedroom was not the place.
And if need be, with the spider legs still raking at the air on her knee, she was almost certainly more dexterous on the walls. She jabbed in hard and reckless with Monsieur Menace and feigned terrified surprise as the Croviat batted her aside toward the balcony. His eyes compressed with murderous intent, and the predation in his gr
in leeched away the thrill of combat. Her trained rational self knew intimidation was only another tactic, an attack not on her body but on her mind, but her instinct thrashed to run, screamed that death was the least of the things the lumbering tough could inflict on her.
She fought it down and raised her sword to block, letting him push her back toward the balcony rail and the plummet beyond. There was nothing in her vision now but him and the bleeding swings of his blade.
From behind him, she heard du Lambert cry out and the sickening, choking sound of blood spilling across the floor, bubbling up as from a cut throat. The old woman wept. It was the sound of someone dying.
And with that all the thought went out of her fight. The quailing inside of her became something more visceral, more powerful than fear. That these pretenders, traitors, and foreigners could come into the heart of everything elevated and beautiful; that they could pluck the crowning star of the Emperor’s treasure; that they could seduce and befuddle old heroes; that they could take the romance of her escapades and turn them into pain and danger; and worst of all that they could destroy so perfect a work of living art as the man pretending to be Alexandre du Lambert. It was a travesty beyond the bounds of reason, and one that demanded an answer in steel.
Her swings were wild in truth now but with all the force of her body behind them. The Croviat’s eyes widened and he fell back as she railed into him with the steel needle of Menace. He regained his footing and shoved back at her, the long curve of his knife reaping the lace at her neck and leaving a long, shallow cut across her cheek and into the fabric of her mask.
There was no going back to the party now.
The Croviat pressed her, stronger, bigger, kept at bay only by her fury and her speed in a balcony space that was quickly running out.
“Kestrel!” came a voice behind the Croviat. “Duck!”
Ivette hit the floor.
“Alexandre”, his face covered in blood, barreled full force into her attacker. The Croviat stumbled across her back, his arms outstretched like useless wings, and pitched over the shallow railing, “Alexandre” still on his back, wisteria and hyacinth blossoms spraying like fireworks above the chasm of the street.
The Croviat’s thick fingers flailed at the balustrades before he caught a bloody hold. Ivette snapped herself up to the rail and finally breathed again as she saw “Alexandre” below, dangling with his feet over the drop and his arms around a bit of decorative flourish carved in the face of a beautiful lady of the court.
All along the wall, there was a sudden silence as the guardian constructs, like great clockwork spiders, honed in with mindless mechanical determination on the two intruders climbing above their station.
“Hold on!” Ivette cried down to him, her fingers working the grappling mechanism as fast as she ever had. “I’m coming for you.”
The Croviat hauled himself up and got his elbow around the balustrade. He reached a hand up to Madame’s balcony rail.
It was him that the constructs reached first.
Cutting fangs as sharp as diamonds bit into the fingers that held the railing, and Ivette turned her face away from the pops of blood and the crunch of small hand bones. The man slid away, slick, and screaming out in his native tongue, his voice echoing blasphemies up the tall indifferent walls of the city of roses and balconies for what seemed like an eternity before the hard and inevitable silence.
She secured her rope against the statuary above the door. Half of the spiders turned toward it, and the other half to “Alexandre” struggling below. She had no time.
She leapt from the balcony, the rope burning her fingers as she juttered to a fast stop with her back to him. “Hold on to me!” she snapped. “Do it now.”
One arm went around her neck, the other about her waist, and his head was buried in her shoulder when she felt them cut the rope.
But by then, she had the gloves on.
The free-fall drop, suspended from nothing, sent her heart up into her throat. His muscles tightened around her, warm, desperate, full of trust. She put out her hands, and the claws, meant only to carry one person from a state of standing, screeched and screamed in protest as they gouged the marble sides of the chasm. Her shoulders felt like fine fabric stretched to tearing, and the jolt of slowing knocked them both hard into the walls.
But it worked, and by the time they had fallen to one of the middle levels they were moving down at a pace such that she could direct them onto a darkened balcony. “Alexandre’s” feet touched the tiles first, and the arms that had clung to her for life turned into gallant support as she slumped, arms burning. She turned her head and caught him in a long, deep kiss that held no reservation or propriety.
When she finally pulled away, his look was one of wonder and surprise that seemed the most genuine thing she had ever seen in all her years among the poised and practiced darlings of the court.
“Thank you,” he said, as he helped her to her feet, though she could not say if it was for the kiss or for saving his life. She supposed it didn’t matter.
“It is a patriot’s greatest pleasure to assist an agent of the Emperor,” she returned, setting her chin as became a woman of the aristocracy. Her knees were still weak under her, her arms quivering from the shock of the fall, but she was a lady, and she knew how to look like one, under any circumstances.
“Agent....” He looked, for the briefest moment, confused. Then he laughed. His smile was a work of art. “Yes,” he said after a moment, reaching into his breast pocket, “about that.”
Between his soft fingers, the Reve d’Eternite sparkled like conquest in a lover’s eyes.
Ivette’s jaw dropped. Not an imperial agent? She tried to recover. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadva—mmph” she began, but he cut her off, for the second time that evening, with a kiss.
“They’ll be missing Mademoiselle Ivette du Brielle up there,” he whispered into her ear, and she thrilled at the feel of his breath against—
Then, without a warning, he was off and running. She straightened her mask and brushed a bit of blood from her cheek, in order to grant him a few extra moments’ lead. He’d earned that when he pushed the Croviat for her. Perhaps she’s catch him, or perhaps he’d escape.
Either way, the chase would be glorious.
Copyright © 2013 Leslianne Wilder
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Leslianne Wilder was born in Austin, Texas. Since then she has lived in Osaka, Miami, and San Antonio before coming to rest in Oxford, England. Her work has appeared in Shock Totem and Black Dog and Leventhal’s Psychos anthology. She blogs at lesliannewilder.blogspot.com.
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COVER ART
“The Frost Valley,” by Jorge Jacinto
Jorge Jacinto is a twenty-three year old digital artist from Portugal. His work has been featured as a workshop in ImagineFX magazine. View his concept art and commissions in his gallery at deviantArt.com.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2013 Firkin Press
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