Author Notes: Not sure if I'll continue this, but it's been bugging me for a while, so I couldn't resist throwing it out there. With Chanson de Geste nearing its conclusion and classes scheduled to wind down in three weeks, I should get more time to continue my other works soon. In the meantime, though…
Trobant se Març ab Venus en un temple,
ensemps tenint Marcuri [en] sa presencia,
ordi hun joch de scachs, ab nou exemple:
prenent Raho per Rey sens preheminencia;
la Voluntat per Reyna 'b gran potencia;
los Pensaments per sos Orfils contemple;
Cavalls, Lahors ab dolça eloqüencia;
Rochs son Desigs que 'nçenen la membria;
Peons, Serveys pugnant per la victoria…
- Casselvi and Vinyoles, Schachs d'amor, circa 1475 (written in Catalan)
First Verse: Lelouch
Right on schedule.
Uncle Vivian was dead.
Vivian vi Britannia, ruler of the Holy Britannian Empire, was dead. Somewhere in the pile of rubble and corpses that Cornelia's fighter-bombers had made of the Pendragon palace, his body was waiting for our workmen to drag it out and bury it with the rest of the rubbish.
The Emperor was dead. Long live the Emperor.
I clicked the com system.
"Q-1?"
A face appeared on my screen: a woman in her twenties, with purple hair and a calm smile. Like most of her body (with a few glaring exceptions), her cheeks didn't carry an ounce of excess fat; almost sunken, but not quite.
"Speaking," she said.
"Television stations?" I said.
"Down. Bombed."
"Internet?"
"Down," she said. "For now."
"Godric?"
Cornelia frowned.
"No."
Curses.
I slammed the second com line.
"KB-1," I said. "Cornelia tells me that Admiral Godric's still around. What gives?"
A man with long blond hair smiled back at me. It was a soft gaze – feminine; almost benevolent. One of his many tricks.
"No need," he said. "We've cut the roads out of Pendragon."
I gritted my teeth.
"Clovis," I said. "If he manages to get any of Vivian's government out of here, they'll set up shop in the New Yorkshire industrial zone. Do I really need to explain to you what that would mean?"
Clovis swallowed. He rubbed his mouth with his impeccably white opera gloves, doubtless to quell the visions of working-class insurrection dancing through his head.
"No," he said. "I'll…ah…get right on that."
I clicked off the com line and took stock. No matter. Even if the remnants of Vivian's court did escape, they couldn't start a major uprising. Clovis's gendarmes would just have some extra mopping up to do, that's all: a couple more names to add to our wish-list of "disappeared" people.
I exhaled.
For the first time in seventy-two hours, I realized that my skin was oily, and it itched. I hadn't bathed. My eyes felt as if they'd spent the last three days staring at a computer screen without blinking. I sagged into my knightmare's cockpit and took a quick sip of water.
So…it had been perfect after all. The moves had flowed like a smooth chess combination: Nunnally's initial denunciation of the Emperor's policies from her perch in the Supreme Court had started the ball rolling. Schneizel's rabblerousing in Parliament had added to the avalanche; ultimately, his efforts had provided us with the Act we'd needed to hamstring the Emperor. Clovis's subversion of the police had kept the streets quiet while Cornelia's fighter-bombers had dealt the death blow.
…Soon, Euphie's charm would finish the act with a quiet, reassuring speech that all was well.
And I?
Oh, I hadn't contributed much. Just planned the coup that was going to make my father Emperor.
With any luck, public life would leave me alone from now on. Perhaps I could concentrate on my investments and finish that novel…
Hello, Ashikabi…
I saw a woman in gray, silhouetted against a red sky.
I blinked, but the vision didn't fade. Shadows obscured her face. Behind her, cities burned. The vision backed up, like a camera panning out, and I saw that she was standing on a mountain of bodies. Something twitched to her left. As more light flooded into the scene, I saw that one of the bodies was still moving. She grabbed the man's arm. The blade flashed as it fell. She threw back her head and laughed.
"Gak!"
I opened my eyes. Adrenaline was still pouring through my arms, like a cold electric current. I rubbed my face and remembered why I was there.
Breathe.
I turned on the searchlights. My knightmare complied. And then, I opened the cockpit and stepped into the gloom.
I confess that I'm as vulnerable to curiosity as the next man.
The fact that his name made him sound like a girl had been the least of my uncle's peculiarities. Long before his erratic pattern of conquest had left my family with the ammunition we'd needed to overthrow him, Vivian vi Britannia's indulgences had been a trifle…odd.
The Underground Cathedral had been a culmination of those indulgences. When Uncle Vivian had begun expanding the ancient catacombs beneath Pendragon, even Dad hadn't thought much of it. After all, bodies had been piling up quickly during Vivian's reign. We'd figured he'd needed the extra storage space. It was only when huge crates began arriving from Europe and Japan that we began to wonder.
Our contacts in the Exchequer hadn't given us further clues. Even now, with our coup d'etat almost a day old, we hadn't squeezed so much as a peep out of the Director of the Star Chamber. Schneizel's men had worked the former head of intelligence over for three hours. If he had known anything about the Cathedral, he must have been an extraordinarily tough man. I doubted it.
Okay, so maybe I shouldn't have gone there alone without an escort. Maybe I should have stayed in my knightmare rather than exploring its tunnels with a flashlight. Maybe I should have brought along three armor regiments, twelve batteries of artillery, and a tactical nuke.
…Yeah, yeah. And maybe hawks should leave mice alone.
There was something eerie about those catacombs. I don't mean the obvious stuff: the corridors that lead nowhere, the smell of mildew, the stone carvings of men and serpents entwined.
It went beyond the atmosphere. As I walked through hallway after hallway filled with carved runes and computer kiosks, I got the feeling that I was walking through my uncle's mind. The place bore Vivian's stamp. Medieval reliquaries reflected in the glass of modern test tubes. Digital organizers lay in piles with vellum manuscripts. Spidery Theban script spiraled along the walls and ceilings only to loop back across the floor again with little rhyme or reason. I didn't recognize the language. I doubted anyone would.
A monk's preserved head smiled at me from behind the branches of a fully grown oak tree, which sucked its water from hydroponic tubes. I saw a heap of broken black-and-white television sets. It must have been a hundred feet high if it was an inch. Loudspeakers in the walls whispered strains of yogic chants played at high speed, backwards.
Ashikabi!
"Huh?"
I wheeled around. When nobody stepped out from the shadows, I dismissed it as a symptom of sleep deprivation. I took a breath and kept walking.
In retrospect, perhaps leaving my knightmare frame had been a bad idea...
The tunnel terminated suddenly. I found myself in the doorway of a room the size of a football stadium. The ceiling was concave. An enormous number of silver chandeliers hung from it, as if I was looking at a root system upside down. Each gave off only the faintest white light, but together, they revealed a giant fresco of clouds and cherubs.
…At least, I thought they were cherubs. A hundred and eight of them. Apparently, my dear uncle had been dipping into Japanese numerology before we'd dumped a thousand tons of burning rubble on him. I reflected that it was a shame that I couldn't see this in the daylight. It had been executed in a classic style; a gigantic Sistine Chapel underground.
The floor was bare. The room itself didn't betray any hints of what it had been built for, except…
I squinted. Yes.
I walked faster now, and still faster, until I found myself running to the center of the room. My footfalls' clip-clop echoed from the stone. At last, I reached my destination. My own flashlight flickered. I smacked it until it grudgingly provided me with light.
I was standing in front of a sepulcher. An image of a woman lay on an altar, staring upward through empty marble eyes. She wore a dress, but her legs were covered in mail, and links from a hauberk poked out from the ends of her sleeves. I breathed in and realized that the smell of mildew had vanished. The air was still stale, but dry. Dust motes flurried around the sepulcher like mayflies as they caught the light.
"Hm..."
I leaned closer. The sides of the casket carried an inscription. Unlike the occult gibberish I'd seen earlier, this seemed to have been written in Latin. The message began with the obligatory "V.V." – my uncle's symbol, whose letters were crowned with a laurel wreath like the "N" from Bonaparte's day. I brushed away a piece of dust and started reading.
Nemo me…
Something clapped like thunder. All around me, I heard the sound of wheels grinding, and a groan that sounded like metal being bent. It was magnified, and reverberated across the room. The sepulchral monument split down the middle. I jumped away just in time. Each half smashed into the floor's tiles with a deafening crack. They revealed a smaller platform.
And there, lying in a tangle of feeding tubes, catheters, and breathing apparatus, was a woman.
She was thin, with long legs and pale gray hair that almost seemed white, yet she couldn't have been older than twenty-five. It was cut in a sort of bowl, except a bit more ragged, with some strands longer than others. The remainder was tied in a knot that ran down her back. The ponytail nearly stretched to her feet.
Two seconds after that, I noticed that she was clutching a sword to her chest – a mirror image of the medieval effigy that had entombed her. She had a uniform of some kind: a black double-breasted jacket that looked a bit like a Britannian student's, sans filigree and with a v-neck instead of a tight collar. Silver clasps on either side of her neck secured a cape that draped inward, covering her body like a bat's wings. The effect was somewhat marred by the miniskirt, black stockings, and go-go boots.
Yes, go-go boots.
…You're early.
"Ack!"
In spite of myself, I jumped back again. The voice had been louder this time, and decidedly feminine.
As if on cue, the woman's eyelids fluttered open. The eyes themselves were heavily lidded; even when she opened them fully, they gave the impression of sleepiness. Combined with her high cheekbones and sharp features, they made her seem almost catlike.
A very dangerous cat.
Her hand tightened around her sword.
"And just who are you supposed to—"
A screech behind us cut her off before she could finish. I whirled around and saw the most unwelcome sight in the world: several squads of knightmare frames, each bearing the double-V emblem of Vivian's Household Guard. Before I could move, they streamed through the doorway. They rolled along the ceilings and walls with the speed of a Ferrari with a hundred miles of open road ahead. Even before they reached me, I heard a few dozen Ker-Ssshunks! as they cocked their weapons.
No problem. I'd made sure to dress as a regular soldier, so perhaps they'd conclude I was part of a loyal unit…
A knightmare skated to the front. The cockpit opened.
Oh, crap.
Villeta Nu hopped down from the war machine. And she did not look happy.
In truth, I hadn't known her very well. She'd always hung back at the Army's social functions: a waifish, blue-haired girl with dark skin and an expression that suggested she'd stuffed smelling salts up her nose. Beyond that, I only knew that she was a social climber who'd caught my uncle's eye and received a commission that probably exceeded her qualifications. For all that, though, she was loyal.
Still, might as well try.
"Villeta—er—Ma'am! I'm so glad you arrived! Our communications have been going crazy, and I couldn't-"
"Can it, Lelouch. I know who you are."
Ah, well...
I shrugged.
"So what now?" I said. "Your Emperor's dead, Villeta. Perhaps it hadn't crossed your mind, but I'm pretty high on the new pecking order…"
Villeta raised an eyebrow. She flicked open a lighter and pulled a cigarette from her pocket.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, you are."
O-kay…Minor setback, then. A hostage situation would tarnish our image a bit…perhaps even force us to temporarily reverse a policy or two. At the very least, Villeta could use me as a bargaining chip to allow a few more loyalists to escape. While that didn't exactly scream "catastrophe", I didn't trust her goons to leave me unharmed before the hand-off. Uncle Vivian had a knack for selecting fanatics…
Someone cleared her throat.
It took me a moment to realize that it had been the woman behind me. Apparently, she'd torn the tubes from her body. One of the puncture marks on her arm was still bleeding, but she didn't seem to mind.
"What the—?" Villeta began.
If the woman heard Villeta, she didn't give any indication. Instead, she stared directly at me until I could almost feel those heavy-lidded eyes boring through the back of my skull. Her voice seemed lazy, though. Offhand. She was smirking.
"A prince of Britannia, eh…?" she said.
I heard Villeta cocking her pistol. (And really, who can blame her? She only had four squads of knightmares with autocannons…)
"Step away from the prince," Villeta said.
The woman's eyes remained fixed on me.
"Tell me, prince," she said. "What would you give me if I could make your problems…disappear?"
While I may be a sucker for drama, even I have a sense of the ridiculous. I looked from the petite woman clutching her Japanese sword to the twenty-odd Sutherlands with their high-caliber rifles and bladed weapons twice my size. I shrugged.
"Be my guest."
In the world I inhabit, a sense of the ridiculous is not a virtue.
A feral grin spread across the woman's face. Before I could reflect on this, her hand shot out and gripped the back of my head, pulling me toward her with surprising (dare I say "freakish"?) strength. Before I had a chance to yelp, I felt her tongue in my mouth. She may—or may not—have moaned slightly. I wasn't paying close attention.
Under the circumstances, I would have considered this a tad unusual. Then the wings grew out of her back.
At first, I winced and tried to cover my eyes. The wings were made of light – blinding light, which blasted my face with dry heat. When she sensed me trying to pull away, though, the woman yanked me closer again. Luckily, my neck wasn't strong enough to put up much resistance. She would have torn out a hunk of my hair otherwise.
I was told later that 'winging' was supposed to be transcendent, beautiful, sublime. I watched it happen a few times after that, and I'll concede the point in general. In our case, though, I feel obliged to report a slightly different set of adjectives and adverbs: Scalding. Rough. Migraine-inducingly bright.
You might say that I was in the eye of the hurricane. My companions weren't so lucky.
The wings spread perhaps three meters on either side of her back, and wrapped around us like a ring. I heard screams and the sizzle of burned flesh. When the woman finally released me and I opened my eyes, I saw Villeta writhing on the ground. She looked as if someone had ignited gunpowder in her face.
Those who hadn't been temporarily blinded were staring at us. Fools. They should have fired when they'd had the chance.
The woman sucked air into her lungs with a zeal that I found rather disturbing. Her sword came out.
"Wel-l-l-l-l-l…now…"
Her voice no longer had the world-weary lilt I'd heard earlier. There was something raw and joyful about it. Her smile was far too wide for my tastes.
"Sword of my pact," she intoned. "Massacre the enemies of my ashikabi."
"Wait," I said. "What—"
I can't recount in detail what occurred next. It happened too fast. I can only tell you what I remember of the aftermath less than a minute later.
The woman stood before me covered in blood. Exposed circuits sizzled from deep gashes in the knightmares' sides. The cockpits were crimson. An assortment of the pilots' parts covered the floor. A few of the more intact bodies hung from their machines like butchered game animals after a hunt. She had been very thorough.
The woman brushed her hair back, and drops of blood flicked off the ends. Her smile spread from ear to ear. Perfect white teeth contrasted with the mask of gore that had caked onto her face. She was breathing heavily, though perhaps 'panting' would be more accurate.
"Number Four," she said. "Karasuba. The Black Sekirei."
…Well.
My shoulders were tense. I relaxed them. I drew myself up to my full height and put my hand out in what I hoped looked like a nonchalant greeting.
"Er…Pleased to meet you. I'm Lelouch vi—"
Her laughter cut me off. She grabbed my face roughly and pulled it closer. Her breaths came even faster now, and I absently noted the body heat radiating from her face and neck.
"Save it, monkey," she said. "All that's important right now is that you're going to help me kill my rivals one by one…and then I'm going to take this world."
She thrust her tongue down my throat, and the wings of light burst through her back again. As they faded from view, she pushed me backwards. I stumbled until my back hit the stone wall. She stood over me, grinning as she swung her sword in ever-faster arcs until it seemed like a metal stream. Her hands crackled with energy. She laughed.
A 'pact'…?
The blessing and curse of the vi Britannia family lies in its instinct for opportunism. Without meaning to, I found myself running through scenarios: Succession arrangements. The vulnerability of the EU's general staff to a precision strike. Whether the Japanese Diet would reconsider its treaty obligations to Britannia if Prime Minister Kururugi suddenly turned up headless…
…Oh, yes. This could be interesting.