by Rob J. Hayes
“Are you beginning to understand the precariousness of the situation and why I needed the very best charlatans I could find, namely, you.”
Amaury expected Revou to make light of the situation, to quip or mock but instead the man looked thoughtful.
“Do they really believe we can win a war against Great Turlain?” de Rosier asked.
The Seigneur nodded, his face a solemn mask. “The world is full of fools who believe they can succeed where others could not and the prize of introducing Elemental blood into our own noble lines is too great for many to see past.”
“But the Queen is from Great Turlain,” Revou protested. “She would never…”
“The Queen has no power of her own,” the Seigneur countered, “only that which the King and the title gift to her. She has influence over the King, it’s true, but once she has provided him with an heir she is…” The Seigneur faltered.
“Removable?” Franseza offered.
“Indeed.”
“You should have given us this information from the start, Seigneur Daron,” de Rosier said seriously.
The Seigneur snorted. “I didn’t trust you with it.”
“You have a rather sharp axe hanging over our heads,” Revou pointed out. “Trust is hardly the issue here.”
“We could have made a mistake in our introductions to Duc Lavouré and the others,” de Rosier continued. “In order to play our parts properly this is information we should have been privy to. If there is anything else I would suggest you inform us immediately to ensure we do not slip up inserting ourselves into the movement.”
The Seigneur continued to give them detailed information on those he believed were involved with the seditious nobility, he had nothing concrete but he had suspicions of who was involved. He gave them just enough information to see them through the Lavouré function but no more.
After Franseza had left, taking Revou and de Rosier with her, Amaury spoke up. “You didn’t tell them everything,” he accused.
The Seigneur turned unapologetic eyes on Amaury. “If I had told them everything they would right now be selling everything of any worth in that mansion and would proceed to jump on the first ship, air or otherwise, heading anywhere but here. They know what they need to and no more and it is to remain that way. Am I clear?”
Amaury nodded.
“I want you and Franseza as close as you can get during the Lavouré function.”
Amaury shifted in his seat. “Not much we’ll be able to do from outside the estate.”
“You’ll do whatever you can,” the Seigneur snapped and stood, stretching the kinks out of his back. “Come. I find myself in desperate need of my bed and a sleeping draught.”
Chapter 11 – A Real Man’s Weapon
“The trick to it,” Jacques said as he easily plucked the twirling form of Isabel from the floor, spun her around once and deposited her back onto the floor, “is to use the force of the momentum.”
“Sounds a lot like fighting,” Franseza said with a yawn.
“Remarkably similar in many ways,” Isabel said as Jacques led her into a dip and held her there.
“Though a fair amount of physical strength is needed for some of the more vigorous executions.” Jacques smiled at Isabel, his face mere inches from hers. The music stopped.
“I don’t think there’ll be much of either at this function,” Franseza said as she removed the needle from the phonograph interrupting the beautiful rendition of Autumn’s Fall.
Jacques carefully lifted Isabel back to standing and kissed her on her left cheek. She smiled back at him and curtsied, he gave her a swift bow.
“Dancing, fighting and acting use many of the same principles,” Isabel said as she took the music disc from Franseza and placed it in its own cushioned box to preserve the quality. “Once the act has begun, much like once a dance has begun, a lot of what we do is simply use the momentum the characters have given us and coast along.”
Franseza didn’t look convinced.
“Our act has already begun and the initial effort of starting that act has set the momentum going,” Jacques said with a grin as he threw open the curtains to allow the morning light into the bedroom. They had recently constructed the fantasy that Franseza was a visiting friend and old duellist acquaintance and that gave her reason to come and go as she pleased and it also gave them reason to spend time apart from the staff in their visitor’s private rooms.
“Our audience, in this case the Duc Lavouré and his friends, have already formed opinions of who they want us to be,” Isabel continued.
“So for now,” Jacques picked up after Isabel, “we simply play along and allow them to see us as they want to see us.”
“With a little prod here and there to make certain they know we have the acceptable political mind-set,” Isabel finished.
“Hence we are using the momentum of our established personas to carry us through the next act.”
Franseza looked anything but convinced as she perched upon the desk. Jacques had noticed the woman tended to avoid chairs wherever possible but instead chose to perch on furniture much like a cat ready to pounce into action at a moment’s notice. “So you just let them see what they want to see?” she asked.
“Precisely,” Isabel said with a luminous smile as she placed a different music disc into the phonograph and set the needle to it. A moment later the bitter-sweet notes of Ecstasy’s Lament played solely on strings filled the air.
“So what is it they want to see?” Franseza asked.
Duc Gaston Lavouré was waiting for the Bonvillains at the edge of his estate. More accurately he was sitting on a bench along the drive way through which carriages arrived at his mansion, while smoking from a pipe. Adeline only spotted the Duc as he took a deep draw from the pipe and the resulting flare lit up his eyes. She banged on the carriage roof to stop and she and Bastien departed the carriage to greet their host. Having already noticed the man they determined it would be rude to then ignore him.
“Ah,” the Duc exclaimed with the pipe still lodged firmly between his teeth. “Bastien, Adeline, thank the Creator you’ve arrived.” He brushed his hair back then wiped his hands on his jacket and stood to greet them. “Save me from this monstrosity I’ve created.”
Bastien took the Duc’s hand and gave it a firm-but-not-too-firm shake. “Monstrosity, Duc?”
“How many times must I remind you to call me Gaston?” the Duc took Adeline’s hand and gave it a light kiss then stood quickly and pulled the pipe from his mouth. “Oh Maker forgive me. I’m so sorry, that was possibly the most inexcusably rude breach in protocol I have ever accomplished. Kissing a woman’s hand while smoking a pipe. You must think I have never learned an ounce of manners.”
“Not at all,” Adeline said with a smile. “And if I may be so bold; men like yourself only break such protocol when their minds are elsewhere and therefore they have more important things to consider.” She leaned forwards a little. “Bastien has been known, from time to time, to do much the same.”
Bastien coughed to hide his embarrassment. “You mentioned a monstrosity, Gaston?”
“Oh yes,” the Duc said and placed his pipe firmly back between his teeth and started walking through the extensive garden. Bastien and Adeline hurried to follow. This part of the garden was dark and unlit but the Duc seemed to be certain of his way and the Bonvillains followed in his step. “A bad idea from the start maybe. Somehow my peers managed to get wind of my little gathering and I was forced to invite some I had no intention of.” The Duc threw his hands in the air. “You can’t imagine how much of a bore is old Duc Valette.”
“Duc Valette?” Bastien asked sounding a little more startled than he would have liked.
“Indeed. Have you met him?”
“We’ve never had the pleasure,” Adeline said. Duc Lavouré chuckled but said nothing. “I have heard much of his son’s exploits though. Are any of his children here with him?”
“I don’t think so,” the Du
c stopped suddenly and looked around as if lost then turned to his right and continued walking, cutting through a dense flower bed. The Bonvillains spared each other a look then followed. “I wouldn’t know what they looked like though so I couldn’t be certain.”
The mansion loomed up high on their left but the Duc seemed to be taking them to the side of it rather than the front. That was, Adeline admitted, presuming the Duc had any idea where he was going.
“I was hoping to get some time to talk to you later, Bastien,” the Duc said. “That might not happen now but maybe another time. Oh!” The Duc stopped at a flower patch and plucked a white orchid from its home. “Here you are, Adeline.” The Duc handed her the flower and was off again. Adeline looked at Bastien, unsure of how to react. He took the flower from her hands, threaded the stem through her hair just above her left ear and winked at her then hurried to catch up with the Duc.
“There we are!” The Duc exclaimed happily and struck out towards a door edged in warm yellow light, trampling a small stone garden on his way. “They will all be gathered near the front door expecting your arrival,” the Duc said.
“Expecting our arrival?” Bastien asked.
“Oh yes, some of them you have already met but many you haven’t. I’ve taken it upon myself to extol your virtues to them, well some of them at least, and they are eager to meet you.”
The Duc opened the door and the sounds of activity flooded out along with the light. Inside was a busy kitchen with almost a dozen staff in frenzied preparations. The Duc, heedless of how it might look, led his new guests through the kitchen, stopping only briefly to steal a sweet cake and offer one to the Bonvillains who, as was only polite, accepted graciously.
Duc Lavouré stopped in a hallway. A great set of stairs, easily three metres wide at their smallest and carpeted in deepest rouge, led up to a small balcony and then split left and right to snake around the hall leading to the first floor. A chandelier lit with a thousand alchemically charged bubble lights hung from the ceiling high above and scattered the hall with shards of light. The Duc looked lost.
“Percy?” Duc Lavouré all but shouted as he looked about the hall and took a bite of sweet cake. “I’m terribly sorry about this,” he said around a mouthful of cake. Adeline stifled a laugh.
An ancient man in a pristine, if antiquated, butler’s uniform shuffled out from one of the ground floor connecting rooms. If Adeline had to guess the man’s age she’d have put it at older than the founding of Sassaille. His face was a drooping mass of skin and his eyebrows were so bushy she wondered how the man could see through them.
“My lord?” Percy wheezed in a voice as cracked and ancient as he looked.
“Ah, Percy,” the Duc said with a wave of his half-eaten cake. “I seem to be lost again, all turned around you might say, but I did find the Bonvillains. This is Bastien and Adeline.”
Percy sketched a lethargic bow and straightened with no small amount of effort. Adeline felt sorry for the man and gave him a smile. He might have smiled back, the skin on his face definitely contrived to move, but Adeline couldn’t be certain.
“Baron, Baroness,” the ancient butler said. “Thank you for finding my lord Lavouré.”
“I told you, Percy,” the Duc protested, “I found them.”
A great bushy eyebrow twitched in the Duc’s direction but Percy said nothing of it. “The other guests are this way, my lords and lady.” Percy shuffled off away from the staircase leaving Adeline, Bastien and the Duc to follow slowly in his wake.
“He’s a grumpy old thing but I’d never find myself without Percy around,” the Duc said as they walked. Percy let out a low sound in reply that may have been an agreement or not.
The room Percy led them to was a study by name only; it was easily as large as all the studies in the Bonvillain mansion combined. It was currently occupied by nine people all of whom wore their nobility on full display both in their bearing and in their wardrobe. There were four women in the study, none of whom Adeline recognised, and five men, most of whom she did.
“Lords and ladies…” Percy began before Duc Lavouré barged past.
“I’m back,” the Duc announced to the room. “Sorry to have left you all for so long but I found the Bonvillains taking a romantic moonlit stroll and kidnapped them.”
Adeline suddenly found both her and Bastien the subject of a great many appraising eyes.
“There’ll be drinking,” Franseza pointed out lazily, emphasising her point by knocking back a soldier’s portion of whiskey (so named because soldiers tended to drink as much as they could whenever they could in case they never got another). Jacques had noticed she only ever seemed to drink when the Seigneur was absent.
“There always is,” Jacques agreed. He closed his eyes, let out a loud sigh for dramatic tension and proceeded to reassemble his pistol from its base components into a fully functioning, death-dealing weapon in precisely ten point eight seconds. He grinned, spun the gun around his trigger finger a few times for show and slotted it deftly into its holster on his belt.
“Wonderful,” Franseza said. “Now if only you could fire the thing worth a damn.”
“Men of my calibre find the more skilful use of a weapon to be winning before the first shot is even loaded into the gun,” Jacques said in the most pompous voice he could muster.
“Fancy words,” Franseza agreed pouring herself another soldier’s measure. “They might work on those fancy noble folk but I’ve actually killed a man in cold blood. The more skilful use of a weapon is shooting the other person before they shoot you.”
“There are ways to drink without becoming drunk,” Isabel said interjecting herself into the conversation before it could turn into another argument between the two. Over the past couple of weeks she had discovered that Jacques and Franseza would either laugh together or shout at each other but there appeared to be no middle ground. “The trick is to appear as though you are getting drunk.”
“How’s that?” Franseza asked as she knocked back another shot. The woman did not appear to believe in sipping.
“Bitter Bark,” Jacques said confidently.
Franseza made a face. “The bark that grows on Yrilloue trees? We have four in the back garden.”
“Have you noticed that two of them are suspiciously missing strips of bark?” Jacques asked with a grin.
“Can’t say I spend a lot of time looking at trees,” Franseza admitted.
“It’s all in the preparation,” Jacques said. “When prepared correctly Bitter Bark stays in the stomach, indigestible, for hours and does a wonderful job of soaking up alcohol before the judgement-impairing toxins can enter the blood.”
“It won’t soak up all of it, no matter how much you eat,” Isabel said.
“No matter how much you drink,” Jacques added.
“And it’s about as comfortable to pass as broken glass,” Isabel continued. “But it will allow one to drink a good amount of alcohol without becoming too inebriated.”
“Where’s the fun in that.” Franseza said with a grin. “What happens if it isn’t prepared properly?”
Isabel paused and gave Jacques a knowing look. Jacques shot that exact same look back at Isabel. “If it isn’t prepared properly it has entirely the opposite effect.”
“One drink will feel like five,” Isabel said. “We once used it to great effect on a money lender outside of Lelouch. We had him practically forcing ducats into our pockets at no interest inside of two brandies, a foul-tasting ale, and a wonderful concoction the bar tender called a Fizz Topper.”
They retreated to a Veranda overlooking a particularly expansive grassy garden. Adeline could just about make out circular shapes sticking out of the grass but her night vision was impaired by the brightness of the lights from the roof. The smell of smoke lay heavy in the air and hung close with barely a breeze to stir it. Bastien did not partake in the gentlemanly pastime of smoking but many of the other men did, Duc Lavouré being chief among them.
As was often the way with these sorts of functions Adeline and the other women had sectioned themselves off from the men to allow them to talk about all manner of manly subjects while the women talked about more feminine topics such as the discipline of unruly house staff and just how pretty the Queen looked in her new dress with her skin the colour of pink rose petals in bloom. In truth Adeline found the conversation to be somewhat short of interesting and was doing her level best to keep track of the men’s conversation at the same time, which she had to admit, was just as tedious.
“… I can’t abide those damned zealots,” Duc Valette said managing to only slur a little. “Honestly I wish the Navy had put them down once and for all. We should just get a few airships together and bomb the whole damned, uh, country.”
“That wouldn’t be the most practical solution, Lesod,” Adeline heard Marquis de Roe say around his pipe. “We are allies with Arkland after all, and an operation like that would…”
“… another. Would you like another, Adeline?” asked Duchess Sophie Valette.
“I most certainly would,” Adeline said with a warm smile and only slightly red cheeks. “This fruit wine is beyond sumptuous. I may have to ask Duc Lavouré for a case sometime.”
The Duchess waved over a serving girl to refill their glasses. “I believe it comes from his own personal winery,” she said with a knowing, and only slightly pompous, nod. “Only one hundred bottles ever made.”
“I heard that too,” said the Marquise Vienne de Roe. “It is a wonderful blend of tastes.”
Adeline was well into her fourth glass and the refill would put her onto her fifth but she barely felt it. Back in the von Elmer estates the Baroness was, in fact, well known for her ability to consume vast amounts of alcohol and remain sober. She could have extolled those virtues to her current company but Adeline was of the mind-set that actions spoke louder than words and boasts were most often made by those who had little to boast about.
“… I heard she may be expecting,” said Vicomte la Fien in an emotionless tone.
“What?” exclaimed Duc Valette.
