Chương 112: Chapter 133: Quoissi

There was a young man washing my face clean, and I tried to ignore him while I slouched in a leather seat in a rented lawyer's office a block away. Lady Hanje had only brought eight or nine satchels of notes and diagrams with her, and the walls, floor, ceiling and fixtures were all papered with sigils to protect us. We were debriefing.

"Damn," she scowled.

"A niece of the duke? That's unusually close. And on opening night, someone really extended themselves. It's less subtle, and it speaks to desperation. There's been more tension and violence the past few years, but this is a new peak."

"Wendy's dead," I said dully.

"And if I was a necromancer perhaps I could advise her and comfort her, but as things stand I am charged with looking after the living," she snapped, then winced.

"Sorry, my lady. I feel the loss acutely but my position does not allow sentiment to slow me down. I knew Wendy well, for many years. She was a very warm soul, and kind. It would not relieve her at all to know that we have found the assassin and he is answering questions. When he runs out of answers he's going to be fertilizing roses. But I think you will enjoy that news." I considered it. The man that killed her was being tortured to death?

"I'm kind of numb right now," I said finally.

"I'll let you know my feelings later when I have them." She nodded. Her towering hair wafted as she did, refusing to bend or break.

"The killer was hired through intermediaries but we're sorting those out. A matter of time. We do know for certain that he was here to kill your brother, Bruce."

"Cousin." She looked at me with the most dead-eyed stare.

"I know that. You know that. The assassin was under the impression that 'Bruce' is a pseudonym your brother uses when he puts on glasses and goes about town." I sat and processed that. Ondre continued wiping my eyeliner away.

"Wait," I said dully.

"Bruce was almost killed by mistaken identity? The actual target was Nathan?"

"I currently have experts making very sure of that," she said.

"We should hear more soon." Ondre continued working. He at least looked genuinely sympathetic to this moment for me. I gave him the best smile I could manage under the circumstances.

"It's a fashion show," I said.

"How many assassinations happen at fashion shows?" Wait, didn't I once see a movie about this?

"In a normal year, one or two," she said.

"Plus one or two accidents, one or two fatal allergic reactions, a couple of mysterious disappearances and maybe someone is killed in a home invasion gone wrong. But they're usually minor players, support personnel, someone less well-guarded than ducal family."

"Wait, seven or- That's.. a lot," I said, aghast. I knew political assassinations were a thing, but... I didn't expect this scale. I'm not in a good place to examine the systems that produce that kind of culture, there has to be something at the root of all this. Corruption and assassinations really do go hand in hand.

"Yes it is," she said, with another very frank stare.

"And that's why I made sure you knew to surround yourself with family. At least they don't have any motive to want you dead. So, you were able to get through unscathed."

"But Wendy died!"

"Still counts as unscathed," she said with a matter-of-fact tone. Cold.

"Why did I even - why does anyone go to these things if people are getting killed!" She tapped some pages on her desk to even them up, and set them to the side.

"Because if you don't go, then you're an outsider. And you have to put up with six months of this shit. You don't want to hang a target sign on yourself for the next six months, not with stakes like these. If you go, you have to put up with a week of it, at most."

"What?! Says who?!"

"There's a lot you don't understand yet," Lady Hanje said.

"And I don't want to overwhelm you all at once. If you're not gathering influence and working the intrigue, then someone else is. Your title does not make you safe, it makes you a target. Your participation is what can make you safe. Having a network of goodwill and allies will keep you safe, if you tend to it. Because you are who you are, someone out there stands to profit from your demise. They can only act if nobody cares enough to watch your back. I feel for Wendy. I will mourn her next week.

Until then, I need to make sure everyone else is safe. That has to be my priority." Ondre finished, patted me on the shoulder, and left. I slumped in my club chair, feeling defeated.

"This was about Nathan."

"This was about the family," she insisted.

"Nathan is the heir apparent. He's the highest-value target for the family anywhere in the city. He's going in tomorrow night, and his bodyguards will be better than Bruce's."

"Bruce didn't have bodyguards," I said, confused.

"If you could spot them, anyone could spot them," she said, giving a sympathetic smile for the poor uninformed sorceress.

"They're no good to me if anyone could spot them." I had to process that again. This was a slow conversation for me. Maybe just lagged from such a long day.

"Wait, did I have bodyguards?"

"More than enough," she said.

"Quite a standoff between them and Lachel's protection detail outside of that bathroom." She was tuning me out now, looking down at her reports.

"Now, you need rest and time to acclimate to this. Head home, dear. I'll see you in a few days, we can discuss strategy. We will be composing your schedule for the year. Congratulations on your first Fashion Week. The first one is the hardest." One of the burning questions in my mind afterwards was "why is Princess Lachel still alive?" I needed a distraction.

Solving a mystery helped take my mind off the fact that a sweet girl had died because Bruce has a mistaken identify and I made a procedural mistake checking the glasses. So let's figure out what went wrong with the Lachel scheme. Skeici should have kidnapped and killed her by now. I needed to check something. I found the geography classroom that Nathan took his lessons in, and gazed through the Signet of the Seer to observe it. And later, I looked again so that I could watch the room.

I saw the class, I saw the teacher. Nathan and Lachel sitting close and talking in an intimate fashion. And no Skeici Gianwen. Her class transfer never went through. I found I wasn't actually all that fussed about it. I didn't want Lachel dead, any more than I want her humiliated. I just don't want her dating Nathan in four years. There's lots of ways to make that happen... but few of them are certain. When I originally tried to get her killed by Yandere Skeici, I was still mad after the class rankings thing.

It's been a while since then, enough time for me to cool off. But I can make other plans. It'll be fine. She's been moved way down my list of priorities. I still don't know who had Wendy killed. I need to get my adventuring treasure sold. I need to fix the class rankings. Figure out my sorcery affinity issues. Prepare for the Eyellon contract. Advance as many romance options as possible. Level up. Make it through this year. And of those, only one is going to make any progress today.

I set aside my music composition, and the script I'd been half-concentrating on. Zombies, house, evil computer, monsters. I put them away in their drawer and started getting ready for my day. I got the body out from under the blankets and walked across the floor, moving much more confidently and deftly than I used to. It barely looked like sleepwalking, it almost matched my natural stride. I hovered all around the body as a sort of fog, and guided it as it turned on the water, and washed all up.

A week now since Wendy died. The classes had just flitted by. I barely recognized any of them. Maybe that was the real sleepwalking. The girls have noticed, and they were worried about me. Vancy tried to cheer me up, Elica tried to distract me, Larianne tried to turn mourning into brooding, and Rinnie told me to fuck off. That's the best I could expect from her. On Threeday, I got an off-campus pass and a day's worth of excused absences so I could attend her funeral.

About a hundred Harigolds and another hundred cadet house members were there. Bruce's eulogy for his sister was deeply moving and I wept like a waterfall. Nathan attended, but he had never even met her. He and I did not speak during the wake or burial. We both did what we could to not acknowledge each other. We had to move on with our lives. Right now, I was up early, getting ready on a Sixthday morning. Soap and shampoo, keeping my movements correct. It's about practice, moving this way.

The Untethered Essence has been a huge liability for me a couple times, and only regular training and practice will help me overcome its dangers. Time to meet the man from Eyellon. The day started early this time, and I had to make the best impression. Quoissi Eyellon was an early riser and would only discuss business before breakfast.

"Just one of his quirky eccentricities!" his staff had explained. Well, his quirks and oddities have already held this meeting up for a month. I've been sending letters and getting runarounds. But on Fourthday this week, a letter came in that he would take my meeting. I tried not to make too much of the fact that this is coming so fast on the heels of Wendy's killing. I had a suspicious mind and it was mostly aimed at the Dominionist faction.

My magic wicked all the water away without even picking up a towel, and went to pick up my gown for the day. I had spent a good portion of Fiveday agonizing over what to wear to this meeting, but I was not going to second-guess my decision today. The idea is to present the family colors in a low-key fashion. A softer ecru skirt and blouse, off-white, less stark and cold than my usual choice. And a burgundy bodice and accents, red but not red, you know? Simple and businesslike, direct and unpretentious.

That was my role here, I'm the princess from Meadowtam, the noblewoman from the farming communities, and I'm meeting the Duke of Hearster, the head of the Eyellon family. Strictly speaking there's fairly little difference between his rank and my own. One step. But the Dominionists usually take a low view of the provinces, which to them includes all four marches, both protectorates, and Meadowtam. Sometimes all the land south of the Fissuring gets lumped in as well.

And of all the Dominion houses, the one known for taking the dimmest view of the provinces is Eyellon. Freckentop is businesslike to a fault, Eyellon is a pack of snobs. So I've picked out a nice peasant-cut dress and low-key jewelry, and worn my hair in one long braid secured with an amber clasp instead of my usual silver combs. It's about playing to the expectations. Maybe they'll underestimate me. Maybe not. If I dressed up sharply they might accuse me of putting on airs to fit in with them.

What I'm getting at is I should not expect a lot of respect for my station. I checked myself all over, and then folded myself down into the body. Compressing the massless volume, I found my habitual place within the mind and body and I woke up.

"Whoa," I chuckled, as I almost fell. I paused, bent over and adjusted my shoe.

"Almost got it right that time," I said to encourage myself. It's hard to put shoes on correctly when you can't actually feel the feedback correctly, so I'm crediting myself for the small wins. Things have been kind of down in the dumps since Wendy died. I'd only met her a few times, and never spent a lot of time with her. But she was nice, and now someone nice is dead. Dong. Elica blinked herself awake.

"Beh?" she said, sitting up. The only time of day I ever see her so undignified. I checked myself in the mirror again, then picked up my satchel of papers.

"Morning. I'll be around to chat later. Catch you in time for breakfast." And I conjured an opening into the blazing white void, covered my eyes to protect them, and stepped into a portal. And on the other side was the estate of the Duke of Hearster. The sun was deep in the east when I stepped out onto a garden path in Cliffside. Darker up here than it is down in the caves, at this time of day. The sky was splashed purple, blue-tinted clouds puffing along here and there.

A table was set up nearby, with a wonderful view of the gardens that spilled across the grounds just downhill. I took a seat and tried to enjoy the morning. As usual I kept an atmosphere of warm and comfortable air with me, much more convenient than a coat in this climate. True to his word, the door of the manor house opened mere seconds later, and a man came bustling out, white-haired and cheery. He was in flannel pajamas colored garish purple and orange, with a matching bathrobe tied over it, and house slippers.

His glasses were huge and owlish, and his walk was energetic and eager for the day.

"Ah! Ah ha!" he chortled to me.

"Lady Harigold! An auspicious day! I ask for prompt, and you are entirely prompt!" I stood, curtsied, "Duke Eyellon, thank you for agreeing to meet me today," I said.

"I've been informed your schedule allows few delays." He laughed that off and dropped into the seat opposite mine, staring off at the sunrise.

"Bah! My schedule is fine, I'm the one that demands efficiency! I do all my work for the day before breakfast, and spend the rest of my day in leisure. I'm rich and powerful and I've got staff who can worry about how they'll follow through on my promises. Now, normally I block out fifteen minutes at a time, but I'm told what you've got to present is going to deserve one of my hour-long blocks all by itself. Sorry if that has made it difficult to schedule."

This of course is exactly the right sort of excuse to toss out for keeping me waiting for weeks with childish runarounds and wild-goose chases. His staff have been cold-shouldering me and making sure I know about it, and now that I've paid my dues he's going to pretend that none of it happened. And for diplomacy's sake, so am I. Right now, I cannot afford to let this annoy me. I've got a lot of unfocused anger, and when it finds a target I don't think I'm going to make good choices.

So, I kept myself pleasant, and I kept myself distracted. I sat down, and put my folder of pages on the table between us.

"Your Grace, I want to join the north and south of the kingdom," I said.

"Starting in Hearster."

"Why?"

"Trade routes, efficiency, military movements, tourism, communications-""Nah nah nah," Duke Quoissi Eyellon said. He disregarded all of those with waving hands.

"That's why the kingdom needs this. Why is it that you, particularly, want to do this?" I stared at him, catching his profile. I had to make a judgement here. I only had a few seconds to assess his character.

"Because it's a great way to get paid for blowing stuff up," I said.

"I mean, there's the part where I'd be a legend forever, and I genuinely would like to do all that stuff that the kingdom needs. But the reason that I, myself, want to do this thing? These will be some of the biggest explosions I get a chance to set off in my life."

"I had heard you do explosions," he nodded.

"I wanna watch."

"Your Grace?"

"Sounds like fun. You've got schedules, surveys, shopping lists?" I patted the folder.

"Good. You seem like a well-organized kid. Got your shit together. Now then, let's talk a different business: nobody in Dominion had a thing to do with your cousin. Got me? I'm bringing you this information free, so you can catch the fink that made a pretty girl cough up blood all over Fashion Week. I love Fashion Week. Shame that people keep using it for infighting. Me, I like the clothes, and the girls if you'll forgive me saying so. But people get so nasty over it. All right, that's a fact of life.

Can't change a fact of life. But coughing up blood? Gauche. Gauche and vulgar." He stomped his slippered foot for emphasis.

"I know your people have their people all over this thing. Looking for answers. But it was no Eyellon, no Freckentop, no Brunbling and no Duskare. None of our cadets or minors either, I checked."

"Thank you," I said, a little hollowly.

"This is unexpected."

"I'm old and rich, I don't gotta do what's expected. Now, when you're tearing down the cliff, I want you to make it something I've never seen before. Something I'll never forget. Do your notes here have anything to say about showmanship?"

"The notes do not," I admitted.

"That part is all up here," I tapped my head.

"I have imagined it a hundred times. Usually in slow-motion." The old man watched the sunrise.

"Splendid. Just splendid. I've got my assistant, you give her exact dates, times, locations. She's gonna need maps and timetables, down to the minute."

"This is going to be a multi-step process," I said.

"Even with my ability to travel faster than anyone else, we'll be all day at this."

"You do it your way. Just give me a show," he said, smiling as he watched the sun rise. I took the chance.

"You've got your condition, I counter with one of mine," I said.

"You'll get your showmanship."

"You're up to something," he said.

"Something you're hoping I won't notice. What's your pitch, kid?"

"Five minute meeting with Ediscod the appeals manager in his office."

"And if I need to ask why?" he countered.

"That's another condition on your part," I replied.

"Done," he said.

"I hope you're not planning anything sneaky there."

"Perish the thought," I said.

"Sure sure. And speaking of perishing? You find out who disrespected my Gallery of Arts and my Fashion Week, I'll pay good money for whatever's left of 'em when you're done."

"I will leave myself a reminder to that effect, Your Grace."