Defy or Defend

by Gail Carriger

  “The angels are dead,” cried Lord Finbar, lifting both hands to the ceiling.

  Dimity made shooing motions at Cris, urging him back behind the curtain.

  She turned away – no more time. Rosie had returned holding the teal gown and its bustle, which Dimity had had shipped all the way from Paris.

  “Let’s get to it, shall we?” Dimity led the way to the trap door, where Rosie helped her pile the dress into her own arms and climb down the stairs.

  Dimity didn’t let the girl come any further. “You go back, Rosie. Distract Mr Theris if you can find him. I have a feeling he might suddenly show up and try to save the day by coming to the baroness’s rescue and we can’t have that. I’m expecting a claviger from the Sheffield Pack. He’s to be directed to Mr Theris and no other. Also, you need to be there for Lord Finbar, so he can see you clapping as he finishes his poem.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Of course, ma’am.” Rosie scampered off.

  Dimity trotted as fast as she could (while holding that much dress) down the long limestone tunnel. All the while, she could hear the angry yelling and near hysterically shrill cries of the hive queen echoing against the stone.

  “Where is my dear Betsy? After what was done to me! After what I have suffered. Why does she not come to me? Why must they all leave? Why must I always endure such heartache?”

  Dimity reached the door and knocked, loudly. She extracted her key, prepared as always for an infiltration.

  “Betsy, is that you?”

  “No, Baroness, it’s me, Mrs Carefull. I believe we ought to introduce ourselves now, don’t you?”

  Silence.

  She fit the key into the lock and turned. The tumblers gave with a thump.

  The door creaked open.

  Dimity held up the teal dress before her as if it were a shield. “Isn’t this absolutely lovely, Baroness Ermondy? All the way from Paris. And look here, a bustle, the very latest thing.”

  Baroness Octavine Ermondy was a stunning woman, rail thin and quite tall, with high cheekbones, big blue eyes, a thin-lipped mouth over four prominent fangs, and a mass of gorgeous red hair. She looked profoundly aristocratic and pinched by decades of suspicion.

  “Well, yes, that is very nice material. But who are you, child?”

  “Oh, you know who I am.” If vampires did nothing else, they gossiped, even the crazy ones. She had no doubt Mr Theris (in his biased way) and then Betsy had been keeping the queen well informed on the doings above ground.

  “Where’s Betsy?” There was a slight tremor in the baroness’s voice.

  “Unavoidably delayed. Won’t I do?” Dimity didn’t believe any of it. She knew artifice when it was trembling before her. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this woman, reclusive vampire with threatening Gothic overtones or not!

  Dimity gestured at her own throat. It was still adorned with the large necklace, but nicely displayed by her low-cut gown.

  “You do have a lovely neck.” The queen’s eyes were full of avarice all of a sudden, and her voice lost its hesitancy.

  Dimity tilted her head to one side and then the other, pretending to look at the limestone ceiling. “And I come bearing bustle...”

  “Yes, I read about those – the new decade brings with it new, ground-breaking fashions for the posterior.”

  “Superior and flattering ones, don’t you feel? Especially for one with a willowy, elegant frame, such as yourself.” Dimity moved one step into the room.

  “Oh, do you think so? After what was done to me...” The tremble was back. Really, she ought to have gone to Finishing School. There were much better ways to curry sympathy.

  “What was done to you, Baroness?” Dimity pushed, just a little.

  “Well, I shouldn’t...”

  Dimity waved the dress at her seductively. “I’m sure I should love to hear all about it. And this dress won’t fit me, you know?”

  “Come in, dear, do, and let me tell you all about it.”

  Dimity went in, closing the door firmly behind her.

  She missed the fact that Cris was already at the end of the tunnel, trying desperately to chase after her.

  Lord Kirby followed Cris when he ran from the library. Cris had managed to evade him all the way down and into the limestone tunnel, not because Cris was faster or more nimble than a vampire, but because until he threw back the cellar door and swung himself to drop down (bypassing the steps), the vampire didn’t understand where he was going.

  Lord Kirby swung after him easily. “No one but a drone and a meal are meant to be down here! My queen left strict orders!” At the bottom of the stairs, he grabbed Crispin as if he were a scamp of a schoolboy, and not a man desperate with worry for his beloved. The strength in him was frightening, Crispin was no sapling, but the pudgy vampire handled him as if he were no more than a toasting fork.

  Now Lord Kirby held him hard and tight at the mouth of the tunnel beneath the hive house. Lord Kirby, who wanted to be praetoriani, who intended to always protect his queen. Lord Kirby, who might look like pudding shaped into a man in a robe, but who was still a vampire. And any vampire was stronger and faster than any human, even Sir Crispin.

  Justice, having followed them as well, climbed down after and pressed her hands firmly over Sir Crispin’s mouth to keep him from calling out. “We aren’t supposed to be down here, Kirby! She banished us from following her here, remember? So we would not see her shame.”

  “Oh, I remember, but this one is obviously worried about something going on. Let us wait a minute or two more.” Lord Kirby shook Crispin a little.

  “You’re in defiance!” Justice gasped, placing her free hand to her lips in shock.

  The two vampires continued to bicker softly.

  Cris had never been so frightened in his life. He’d caught Sparkles shutting the door behind her, locking herself in a cave with a crazed vampire queen. Dimity had carried some fluffy garment in with her but no apparent weapons, and she was wearing a red gown with a very low neckline. Anyone who knew her as Crispin did could only surmise that she had intended this all along. Red to hide the blood.

  But how would she do it without fainting?

  And how could he trust that this lovely young woman who had made beauty out of darkness, who had transformed a whole hive with her artistic skill, would not be too tempting a prospect for a vampire queen? What if the baroness decided to keep her? What if the baroness wanted to drain her? Horrific visions danced through his head.

  Cris struggled in vain against the iron hold of Lord Kirby. He bit hard at the hand of Justice. But the two vampires were like steel around and against him. They had not seen her enter the sanctuary, so they did not know Dimity was in with the queen. And he knew that, though they might like Sparkles, if forced to choose between rescuing his lady and defending theirs, they would always do as ordered by their queen. It was the way of a hive. Neglect notwithstanding, hive-bound vampires never disobeyed their maker.

  He had forgotten they were monsters.

  How could he have forgotten that?

  Above and behind them, having assumed the mad leap of a dancer from behind the curtains merely a mark of a brief intermission between speakers, the guests clapped politely for Lord Finbar and settled back to listen to Pillover recite Catullus. Pillover, who had no idea what his sister was up to.

  So the vampires held Cris tight as may be. And tears of frustration leaked down his face while he stared at the locked cave door and, for the first time in his life, was perfectly still.

  “So, you see, it’s all Countess Nadasdy’s fault. That fanged viper! She’s so very womanly in shape and form and she guided fashion down in London, and thus everywhere else, further and further into those huge crinolines and hoops and wide sleeves and sloped shoulders and they look awful on me!” The hive queen’s voice was a whine of deeply felt injustice.

  Dimity listened, nodding sympathetically, while she helped the baroness out of her dres
sing robe and into the bustle and underthings. “I can see how they might, but now fashions are shifting at last.”

  “Are you certain? I don’t understand how Nadasdy could lose her grip on popular taste so thoroughly.”

  “Well,” said Dimity, “let me tell you. London is overrun with werewolves these days. You heard about Lord Maccon? That always affects fashion. And those French hives are not to be discounted, simply because they are in hiding. I mean, not when silhouettes are at stake. Honestly, no one likes a crinoline, not really, not as big as they’ve become. Ridiculous impractical things, they get caught on just about everything, and they take up so much space. A bustle is so much nicer. There, you see?”

  She twirled the hive queen about and stood on a step stool to drop the teal skirt over the vampire’s head, fluffing it and fastening it to fall properly over the bustle at the back.

  “Only see how this complements your figure? Oh, I should so love to be as tall as you. This sort of dress is beyond flattering when you have the height to carry it off. Shall we try the bodice? Now, please go on, tell me of your troubles... what happened next?”

  “Well then, my lovely Lord Rashwallop, my oldest and dearest friend, went all funny. And BUR put him down, like an animal! And he only killed, you know, half a dozen or so people. Really, BUR might have been nicer about it. And after that, well, I had this lovely young drone and she left me. Left me! For a career as an opera singer. Said Nottingham was too provincial. At that juncture I took to my bed, it was all too much.” Her face pinched and her eyes snapped, more in anger than sorrow. As if she were annoyed to have been left.

  “Who wouldn’t?” murmured Dimity, sympathetically.

  “Then one of my dear drones, he asked if he might try for the bite. Then I would not be so lonely, with my dear Lord Rashwallop gone, if I had another hive member. And so I did bite him, and he died in the attempted metamorphosis. I could withstand no more trials. So I retired here, to my cave and my grief. And the other drones all left me too, and only Mr Theris remained. And he wouldn’t let me bite him.”

  Aha, thought Dimity, so that was his ploy. Deny the queen until she was desperate for him and him alone, and thus wholly dependent upon him. It wasn’t a bad plan, actually, if one wanted control of a hive in such a way. And didn’t know the dangers of isolating a queen and driving her to Goth.

  Dimity guided the baroness around to stand and admire herself in a mirror. “But the fashion papers I sent you, these gave you hope?”

  “Oh yes, and then lovely, lovely Betsy, such a very sweet girl. I’ve always had a terrible weakness for milkmaids.”

  “Well upstairs, Betsy has gone missing, dear Baroness, and not willingly. Frankly, you’re desperately needed now. Everyone misses you so very much and we need your help to find her. Besides, you should be seen in a dress as fine as this. You look wonderful!”

  The baroness admired herself in the massive gilt mirror against the wall. “I do, don’t I?”

  “And, of course, if you require a bit of a nibble before we go up, to restore yourself, I’m willing to provide. Although, I am bound to warn you, I shall probably faint. I’m not very good with blood.”

  “Oh, that is a tragedy. You aren’t a new drone candidate, then? Because that would never work. If you were lucky enough to survive the bite, what kind of vampire queen would that make you, who faints at blood?”

  The queen flashed her double set of fangs at Dimity, displaying the second, maker set, sharp and wicked large.

  Dimity shuddered. “Oh no, you are correct in that assumption. I’m not interested at all in being a vampire. Never was. I’m only here to redecorate. I mean, at first I thought I might, and then I saw your lovely house and I thought what it really needed was some color and then maybe you would love it again. “

  “Capital,” said the queen. “It was getting rather run-down. I forgot to care, you see, about appearances. I should like to see what you’ve done with the place. It was awfully shabby. Betsy has reminded me there is more to live for than simply fashion.”

  “And your vampires?”

  “I have missed them too. My darlings. I’m sure they have been well enough, no?”

  “Oh no, Baroness, they could not function at all without your guidance and attention.”

  “You didn’t step in to fill the breach? You seem a flashy, capable girl.”

  “Only in matters decorative. They pined for you. They never stopped pining.”

  “Pined, you say? Isn’t that sweet? They are dears, of course. I should be up there with them. But I was so lost to my melancholy, you understand? I forgot about such things, lost to the depths of despair for a while. Until Betsy. And this dress.”

  “Are you feeling better now, Baroness? Shall we go up, then, and find Betsy? Reunite you with your pining vampires?” Dimity thought now might be the perfect time.

  “Yes, dear, let’s do that.”

  As it turned out, it was.

  Crispin’s knees trembled and he nearly collapsed at the remarkable sight of two women emerging from the limestone cave. First came a tall redhead wearing a teal evening gown of extremely flattering and rather modern proportions. Dimity followed directly after her.

  Lord Finbar and Justice instantly let go of Cris.

  Cris stumbled forwards.

  “Bow, you fool!” hissed Lord Kirby.

  Cris bowed, eyes still desperately on Dimity, searching for any sign of injury. Sparkles was walking demurely down the tunnel, a little behind and to the side of the other woman, who could only be the hive queen. Dimity’s neck was white and smooth and entirely unblemished.

  “Oh, my dearest Lord Kirby, how fine you look tonight. And is that my little Justice? In a pretty pink dress? You look divine, darling, absolutely divine. It’s so nice to see you both again, it’s been too long. Now come into my arms, my hive, my little loves.”

  Justice and Lord Kirby rushed to the stately woman and she embraced them, petting them and kissing their cheeks.

  “And who is this strapping young specimen of humanity?”

  “My husband,” Cris heard Dimity say quickly, “Mr Carefull.”

  “Husband, is he?”

  “My husband, your ladyship. Mine.” Dimity sounded very firm on the matter.

  The baroness laughed. “Understood, little bird. Now let us find Betsy.”

  “Betsy is missing?” Cris straightened, weak with relief, almost shaking, he was so happy to see Dimity whole and unsullied.

  Dimity paused to stare at him, her face a picture of concern. “I’ve never seen you so white.”

  “I thought you were going to feed her. I thought you might die!”

  “I was intending the first if necessary, but never the second. And if she took too much, I was prepared to defend myself.” She obviously wasn’t worried about the vampires overhearing her, no doubt assuming they would think her a silly chit to imagine she could defend herself against any vampire, let alone a queen.

  The vampires disappeared up the limestone steps, Justice and Lord Kirby solicitous and worshipful of their hive queen’s resurrection.

  Dimity shifted aside, using Crispin’s body to shield her from their view. She reached up to the enormous, ornate ruby necklace she wore about her neck. Cris had grown so accustomed to her ostentatious taste, he’d not even really noticed it.

  She pressed the largest jewel and with a quiet snap, a sharp wooden spike ejected from behind the necklace, pointing downwards.

  “I had it designed specially,” said Dimity, proudly. “When have you ever known me to be unprepared, my dearest tuppenny knight?”

  “Are all your sparkles deadly?”

  “Every fabulous one of them.”

  “I love you.”

  “As you very well should, considering I feel the same. I’m delighted my jewelry has forced a confession at last.”

  “What else would do it?”

  She twinkled at him, hazel eyes squinte
d in pleasure. “So, husband mine, one last performance before Mr and Mrs Carefull retire for good?”

  “And we have to find Betsy,” he reminded her.

  Betsy, as it turned out, had been locked in the silver cabinet. A room to which, mind you, since the departure of the butler, only Mr Theris had the key. Given the queen’s caterwauling, no one had heard her on the other side of the scullery. They let her out, gave her a small fortifying glass of port, and saw her set to rights.

  Mr Theris was outside in the back gardens, being seduced by a werewolf claviger from Sheffield who’d come down especially to do nothing more than exactly that. When confronted about his ill conduct, and informed that the queen had emerged, he declared himself thoroughly disappointed in the whole lot of them. And that they could hang for all he cared – he was going to Sheffield. Dimity said she had very little doubt about the hive’s eagerness to release him from his drone contract. And she intended to make that a truth as soon as could be.

  Dimity and Crispin returned to the house to find the baroness graciously holding court in the library. Lord Maccon still watched with interest from his lurking book nook, only he was now eating ice cream and looking moderately more relaxed. Meanwhile, an adoring crowd of interested intellectuals hung on Baroness Ermondy’s every word. They seemed to think she was one of the speakers for the evening.

  “How wonderfully existential,” Dimity heard one gentleman say to another.

  “Oh, Mrs Carefull,” the hive queen said, when Dimity walked in, “so very kind of you to arrange this little gathering to welcome me back above ground. And what you’ve done to Budgy Hall, quite exceptional. I shall recommend your talents in the matter of furnishings and wallpaper to all of my friends.”

  A round of introductions was required then. Justice had to present Gantry to the queen, while carefully not calling her a queen or a vampire, the implication being that Justice was the baroness’s ward and Gantry her prospective suitor. The baroness thought Gantry nicely robust and meaty (which the watchers took to mean he would be an excellent father to healthy heirs), and said that of course he could come live with them if it made Justice happy (which the watchers thought a little odd, but then the very wealthy were often quite eccentric in matters of marriage). Dimity understood this to mean that he would soon become an official drone, which would make Justice very happy.