"Tell your serving girls to pick four purple basil leaves, a sprig of rosemary, fresh Gallian mint, and four olives from trees imported at great expense from Romalia. Send that handsome and limber serving boy down into the ice cellar to recover mandarin liqueur from the Mystic East, and ice-distilled spirits from Rus. Fetch a bottle of gin from your private collection which only you have the key for – I recommend one of the thirteen remaining bottles from the Black Abbey of Tolou. Have your scantily clad serving girls mix the drinks, in a ratio of five parts mandarin to three part Rusean spirits to one part gin, while your alchemist crushes the herbs and rubs them over the surface of the olives, and then adds powdered windstone to give it fizz.
Strain into a glass through whale baleen, add ice, and then drink."
– "11 Highly Decadent Drinks and 23 Rather More Boring Ones", by the comte de Mott
...
From afar, the walls of the town blazed with light in the late evening. Lanterns hung from bunting, and long crimson draperies nearly reached the ground. The rattle of coaches and the hoofsteps of horses – not to mention the grumbling of coach drivers and manservants – filled the air around the traffic jam by the gates. Nobles and merchant-commoners were coming from all the surrounding market towns and villages, for the start of the midsummer festival.
An old woman watched the coaches rattle their way in through the town gates. Ancient gnarled hands gripped her walking stick tightly, knuckles whitening and hands shaking. Finally she could take no more.
"Doom! Doom! Doom has come to the town! Even now it walks among us, veiled and disguised!" wailed the countess, who had been cleaned up – something which had evidently not removed the cobwebs from her mind. She jabbed a finger into the crowd. "There! A demon walks among us! Beware!"
"That's my cousin!" the lady Emmanuelle said, sounding highly offended. "Are you blind, countess? He might have Albionese blood, but that doesn't make him a demon!"
"For goodness sake," the mayor sighed, "where is her medicine? We cannot have a repeat of the last time she had one of her... uh, little incidents. And..." he trailed off, as he went to greet more noble guests arriving in carriages. "Ah, Madam de Moulession! So good to see you at this little festival! And..." he trailed off, "I'm sorry, mademoiselle," he hazarded, "I don't recognise you, but that is a very scary costume for a little girl!"
"I'm in disguise," the short woman in armour said, her painted-red lips visibly smiling under her shadowed helmet.
"And a very good costume it is," he said genially. "Why, it's much better that the people who are just wearing masques! Who are you meant to be? No, wait, don't spoil it! It's much more fun if I can find out on my own! My, my, my, that's..."
"I'm sorry," the young woman said, "but I'm meant to be meeting a friend here. But if you want to guess who I am... uh, the invite did say there was a grand unmasking, didn't it? You will see me there..."
Honesty demands that the way that last sentence was said was perhaps a trifle melodramatic, and that the mysterious lady was smirking. And the mayor missed it entirely.
"Ah yes, of course, of course..." the mayor turned, recognising an old friend, "Oh, Lord de Penetion, you're a very dashing wolf!"
In the noise and hubbub, the short woman slipped away, and her freshly repainted coach – driven by a short, smelly coachman swaddled in robes and blankets despite the heat – rolled off, into the town.
...
The coach-park was a clearly designated area. A field outside the walls had been set aside for the coaches and horses noble guests had brought with them. And hence the fact that the mysterious armoured guest's coach was going into the town was something which was not meant to be happening. It was entirely against the rules.
However, that didn't seem to stop the perfectly ordinary human driving the coach from not following the clearly marked signs – which had symbols as well as writing, in case of illiterate drivers. Instead, he made his way along the narrow streets behind the walls, and only got very slightly totally lost. Fortunately, the perfectly ordinary human children in the coach behind him were always there to shout insults, curses, and occasionally useful suggestions.
The coach rattled into place, stopping in front of the squat building which, allegedly, the taxed wealth was being stored in. A windship was anchored beside the building, moored to its mast, but its lights were off and no crew could be seen from this angle – quite unlike the guards who were present around the solid stone structure. An astute observer would have noticed that the mere presence of guards in such force during a holiday suggested that something of notable value was being kept inside the building; it was a dead giveaway. However, the coachman was not an astute observer, and was merely doing what he was told to do.
It should also be noted that the one who had been doing the telling had been astute enough to realise that, and so had told the coachdriver that if there were still guards around, it was a sign that the treasure was probably in there. And if it wasn't that treasure in there but instead some other one, it was still to be looted. The teller had then sighed, and realised that she had not needed tell that to the coachdriver and his compatriots. It was a given.
Finally, the coils of the local polity ground into motion as one of the guards outside the building stepped promptly up to the coach. "'ello, 'ello, 'ello," he said in greeting. "You really 'ave to be moving along, sir."
The coachman adjusted the scarf – worn despite the heat – around his neck with one gloved hand, and coughed. "But I told to go here," he protested.
"That doesn't change things. Move on, up the way, and then we'll talk."
The driver grumbled under his breath, but complied. The coach rolled to a stop past the solid stone structure, and the driver cleared his throat. "So, why me not allowed to park there?" he asked.
"Rules," the guard said, with a shrug. "'ey, aren't you lot meant to be parking outside the town?"
"Oh." The coach driver shrugged. "But me got a bunch of real sick orphans in here. They got to be attending the parties!"
The guard twitched the curtains open.
"Yeah! We real ill!"
"Cough! Splutter! Wheeze!"
"Oh, the huge seal!"
"Vampires ate mah babies! I mean parents!"
And indeed, the coach was packed with perfectly ordinary, albeit somewhat pungent human children. That was to be expected, because as all men knew, the death of one's parents produced a strange odour around a child – and while those uppity philosophers at Amstelredamme might have said it was poverty, real men knew that it was a sign of something much more sinister. He squinted at the seated man. "Why'd a bunch of orphans..."
"They part of entertainment, silly!"
With a clanking of metal, the guard relaxed. Yes, that made far more sense. "Oh, well, in that case, you'll want to be 'eading towards the supplies and requisitioning bay."
"Oh. Man at gate tell I I meant to go here. He have fancy hat and chain, so I not argue."
The guard sucked on his teeth. If the major had order this... well, it was more than a man's job to argue with this sort of thing. "Right, right, then if it's 'is orders, you'll need to park in the bay on the other side of the street," he said, puffing up his chest. "This is a secure location, and that means that even 'e can't do that."
The coachman slumped, hand going into his clothing to recover a bottle. "Boss men," he sighed, pulling a swig. "They so stupid. I work for real stupid v... man until few months ago. He real bloodsucker, never give us holidays even when he should have. And work us to bones."
"You said it," the guard agreed, leaning on his pole. "I ask you, is it fair that I 'ave to go guard this place during the festival, and so don't get any time off. And they say that they're going to let me have a day off later this week, but that'll be when the party's over, and that's not fair! That's not fair at all."
"Want drink?" the coachdriver said, in the spirit of the commiseration of the proletariat which had been occurring.
"Don't mind if I do!" the man replied cheerfully.
Maggat hit him over the head with the bottle as hard as he could, which put an end to any later conversation. The minion hazarded a look behind him, but the now-unconscious-and-covered-in-cheap-wine guard was out of sight. "Right lads," he hissed, "get all of you out! Stick him in alley and loot him. And 'member, we nice sweet innocent orphans so no killing until we gots all the gold out, or the overlady will be so angry at us. And Gnarl will be very upset and that hurt and can last for days until he let you go! So no screwing this up. 'Specially you, Fettid."
The green minion looked up from where he was playing with his newfound sword, having already stolen the guard's helmet. "Huh?"
"... Maxy, Igni, Largo, Bob, Muenchy, if Fettid look like he going to kill someone when he not meant to and so get us in trouble with overlady or, worse, Gnarl, kill him. When problem go away, than you bring him back, yes?" Maggat sighed. "Less painful for him an' us in long an' short run."
...
Steel heels clattered against cobbled streets and a deep red robe swished as Louise de la Vallière stalked through the streets of the town. She was working on keeping calm, so the illusion cast over her glowing eyes would not give her away, even as butterflies flapped in her stomach from the nerves.
"A drink, sweetie?" asked a tall man, dressed in elaborately lavish clothing and a cat mask. From what she could see of the lower half of his face, he had the style of immaculately trimmed moustache in style at court at the moment, not a hair out of place. That, combined with the cut and set of his clothing, indicated that he was not a gentleman from this backwater.
... well, on one hand, that was an aggressively improper action, to introduce one's self in such a manner to a woman. But on the other hand, this was a masked party, and thus the normal rules were relaxed. But on the third hand, or possibly on a foot, she didn't appreciate being called 'sweetie' in that manner. And on the fourth hand, he did look to be fairly handsome, in a somewhat primped manner – like what Scarron seemed to be going for and overshot in his demonic way – and she was feeling somewhat hot in this armour during the summer night. So she accepted the drink.
"Thank you very much," she said graciously, and forced herself to titter. "I am somewhat regretting this costume; who could have thought that it would be this hot!"
"Oh, quite so, quite so." The man looked her up and down, and Louise repressed the sudden small spike of irritation which left her wanting to set him on fire. "Perhaps, for the next party, you might want to leave off some of the unnecessary bits – I'm sure you're gorgeous under that breastplate, and there's no need to cover your figure in metal like that. It'd certainly be cooler to wear."
Louise de la Vallière, who was quite aware that her breastplate was doing clever things with angles and shaped metal and curves to make it worthy of the name did not respond to that. "I like your cat mask," she said, trying to change the topic.
"Oh, la! This isn't a cat mask, per se; indeed, it's not actually a cat," he replied, with a light-hearted chuckle, the two of them walking side by side through the thronging streets. "As a matter of fact, it's the skinned face of a great cat from Ind, imported through Rub al Khali. Papier-mâché is so passé, you know? It's so very dull here... from your accent, you're a proper noble, yes, not some backwater merchant whose blood is more dilute than the wine they're serving here?"
The girl nodded. It was hard to get more noble than her, and that was a statement of fact. Something inside her stomach shifted; she was unsure whether it was pride or embarrassment from how often the de la Vallière name had appeared in the books back at the tower pinned to both heroes and villains. Mostly the latter, it had to be said. But it was something!
"Well, yes, hmm," he continued, dropping his voice. "I have to say, so far it's been a disappointment here. This festival is..." he affected a yawn, "... boring. Drinks and fire-jugglers and dancing, oh my. And I do have to say that the most beautiful women here are the ones I bought with me... oh, thank you, my sweetling," he said to a masked woman wearing about three handkerchiefs'' worth of material. She looked more than a little cold, even in the summer air. "Although from what I can see of you under that armour, you have more than a little promise about you! Your costume is actually interesting, novel, quite unlike these backwater provincials with their shaped paper and painted wood." He sighed melodramatically. "And that armour and its curves make so many promises that I long to see if are true! I really like the heels. I mean, really like them."
Louise's cheeks were ablaze. Hopefully he couldn't see that from what little of her face was exposed, but the lecherous look in his eyes suggested a certain awareness of such things, drat him! Men! They were terrible! Montmorency's complaints back at the Academy, in the long long ago of a few months, now made even more sense. "Th-thank you, sir," she stuttered, when a thought struck her. "I'm s-sorry, I've been at school, out of contact for the last few months, and you s-sound so worldly and the like. Do you know what the current tales at court are?"
The man in the cat mask smiled lazily, and chuckled to himself, as if she had said something hilarious. "Oh, certainly," he said. "In fact, it could be said that I am one of the most informed men there is about the deeds at court. I know who's involved with whom, and all sorts of things." He reached out with one gloved hand, but she stepped back, and forced herself to smile.
"It is just... well, I had heard rumours that... that the Viscount de Vajours, Jean-Jacques de Wardes... well, I heard that his fiancé had died tragically, and... well... he's so..." she forced out, drawing upon how she had used to feel, "... so very brave and heroic what with everything that's going on, and... well, I was wondering if... if you knew if he was involved with anyone?" She took a sip of the drink he had given her. It really was very good quality wine.
He smiled broadly. "How adorably naive," he said. "Yes, after the death of his fiancé, the poor man was just broken. He hasn't got any formal arrangements, but," the man paused, "... well, so that you don't get your sweet little hopes up, rumour has it that he is courting Françoise Athénaïs de Mortemart, marquise of Montespan."
Louise let her shoulders slump – and it wasn't entirely false. This was confirmation from someone at court, not just a demon. It wasn't that she had harboured that hope that maybe Scarron had been lying or wrong about that; it was just that... well. Never mind. "Well, th-thank you, sir," she said. "I am afraid I have to go see a friend who I am meant to be meeting, but I may see you again later." Not if she could help it, but it was the polite thing to say. "Good evening."
"So soon?" he asked, perching on the edge of the fountain. "But I was enjoying your adorable conversation."
"I really have to go, really really!" she squeaked, darting off into the crowd and dropping her glass in her haste. And the reason for the change in her behaviour was that she had seen a familiar brown-haired, red-ribboned head. Which meant that she had to get out of sight.
Heart pounding, Louise ducked around the corner! What was she doing here? What was that filthy-minded, indecent, improper, unrighteous female doing at this festival? Just because she had been going here anyway... when she had been attacked by a dark force of Evil, she should have gone back home in tears, not hanging around! And she'd be able to recognise that Louise was not actually wearing a costume, but was instead – in a purely technical sense – a dark force of evil coming to loot and despoil.
She had wasted enough time already. She had to do what she needed to do, and then it wouldn't matter if people recognised her as an overlady. Looting canapés and a fresh drink as she went, Louise de la Vallière went down the streets to the river, in a search for her destination quayside.
...
The pack of minions scrambled up onto the rooftop, their long, ape-like arms aiding them in their climb. Some of them were trailing heavy packs and equipment, removed from the cart.
There were guards on the roof.
And then fairly quickly, after the small group of greens led by Fettid had done their work, there were no guards left. Well, maybe there were. It all depended on one's precise philosophical position vis a vis the nature of death and whether a man who had had several smelly goblins stick poisoned blades into painful points of his body and cut his throat still counted as a man. But alas, with no concrete empirical evidence on the nature of personhood and death – well, unless you went and asked a necromancer, and they were shifty bastards a little too fond of dead bodies, to a man and woman – all that could be said was that there were lots of corpses on the rooftop, which got promptly looted.
"We pretty sneaky, all in all," Scyl said in a satisfied tone. The blue was perched on top of the ledge, wrapped in his black cape. It was only ruined a little by the girl's bonnet he was wearing. "Now?"
Maxy nodded. "Now is stage two of plan," he said. "Sneaky like little mices, we make hole in roof with pick-axes."
"An', I would like to say," Maggat added, "anyone one of you who make too much noise – 'specially the ones who haven't been all sneaky-like before – is going to taste my fist. And I bigger than most of you and the overlady say I do good job, so we got that clear?"
The other minions gulped.
"Now," he continued, "Igni, get them fireworks set up. The mistress want to know when we find gold. And..."
Scyl interrupted him. "Hey, Maggat? You think there gold on ship?" he said, pointing at the unlit windship.
"I think we not paid to think right now, so we need to find gold before overlady get angry and set us on fire," the brown said brusquely. He paused for a moment. "But I also think that if we get chance, we should take little looky inside, and take stuff. It like bonus..." he concentrated, "... ob-jar-sive on mission, and as we know, if overlady happy because of us, she reward us. It called 'carrot and stick'. If you do bad, she only give you carrot as weapon, but if you do well, she give you stick. Maybe even with nail in it."
"I not think that actually how saying goes," the luckless Maxy tried, before he was hit around the head, and presented with a pick-axe.
"Just for that, you start by digging first," Maggat growled. "That was po-etical thinkin'."
...
Silently, lights extinguished and the bodies of the original crew disposed of overboard, a river barge drifted into the dock. Warehouses and high fences helped hide this area from the streets, keeping things out of sight and out of mind. The dark figures manning it, shrouded in stolen too-large sailor costumes, kept remarkably quiet as they helped paddle the vessel in the final approach, aided by blue shapes in the water helping push. And as they expected, a steel-armoured figure was waiting for them.
Light bobbing over his head, Gnarl looked up at his dark mistress, long shadows painted over his face. "Ah, my lady," he said. "Everything went as planned. The hold is packed with minions, ready to plunder and pillage, and you merely need to move the construction equipment here," he nodded towards the next dock along, where the skeletal shapes of the cranes were waiting to be moved from where they had done their work, "and we will take it downstream and back through to the tower." Even as he said that, a horde of small, smelly goblinoids was ready and unloading itself from the barge.
"Good work, Gnarl," Louise said.
"For Evil," he said, half-bowing.
The girl left him behind, waving the assigned minions forward to the warehouse by the docks she had seen on her exploration. A gesture, and they swarmed onto the two guards by the entrance; clearly, the guard was reduced here because of the party. A bit of her disliked killing... being responsible for killing men like this, but they were working for the comte de Mott. By Brimiric law, that meant they were traitors. Or, at least, they would be when she rescued Princess Henrietta, restored her to her rightful place, and they had all the Council declared guilty of treason.
But the point remained, even if they weren't technically traitors yet, they were traitors who had only avoided righteous justice so far because the head of the royal courts was among their corrupt number. Which made it morally acceptable... no, it even made it good, because it was always good to punish traitors.
Even as those thoughts ran through her mind and the minions bickered over the muskets – and wasn't that enough proof of the corruption of the comte de Mott, that he could afford to equip warehouse guards with muskets? – she marched over to the doors. Her attempts to throw them open were stymied by the fact that they were locked, but luckily she had the universal lock pick known as 'lots of minions'.
"Now," Louise said, smiling with malevolent intent, "if you will notice – as I did when exploring this town – the trading house here owned by the comte de Mott specialises in moving certain volatile oils and perfumes up river for the trade with Germania. This is a very profitable affair, because as we all know Germanians have a poor sense of personal hygiene and eat too much pickled sausage, and so will pay a lot for good perfume. Which means that this warehouse has, as I expected, no small amount of stock present. Now," she said, "who can tell me what that means?"
There was general confusion among the minions.
"Stock is what you put in water to make soup," one wearing a chef's hat contributed. "I eat one cube of it. It nice, but need beer to wash it down. Or wine."
"Is 'profiterole' something to do with priestys?" another asked.
Once again, Louise observed, she had overestimated her audience. Especially since she had needed to send the brighter, and almost universally older minions out for the other tasks she had set them, which left her with the ones which were dumb by minion standards. Which was also coincidentally dumb by the standards of, say, sheep. Or mould on cheese.
Not ponies, though. Few things were more stupid than ponies. Dumb things that wouldn't leave her alone in peace and quiet. So she had to set them on fire! For their own g... no, that wasn't true. For her own good, at least, which was a rather more compelling reason than whatever a bunch of stupid animals wanted.
"I mean," she said, with a weary sigh, "that it is full of things which will burn nicely when we set it on fire." She paused.
"Uhh, you mean..."
She downgraded again, just in case. "Burny happens?" she hazarded.
"Big burny?"
"... yes," the girl said, momentarily reflecting on how months of exposure to normal minions had done marvels for her patience. Once, she would have got furious at such egregious stupidity. But getting angry at minions for being stupid was much like getting angry at water for being wet. Something she only did once in a while, when it was more irritation than she could cope with right now or it got in her way. The rest of the time, it was sort of the background state of the world, and it would be jolly silly if she went around shouting at random rivers for their dampness.
She gestured with the gauntlet, curling her fingers and drawing the minions – who were already starting to look vandalism-inclined – back to her. "But the fire comes later," she ordered. "Now, that we have confirmed that the perfumes are here, first we will need to go to the next quay along and move the construction equipment onto the barge. And you need to get it done before the other ones get the fireworks set off, or I will have you all flogged. And I also won't let you watch the fire. And I will personally oversee the confiscation of looted equipment from those who fail me!"
...
The red moonlight streamed in down through the narrow hole cut in the roof. There was the squeaking of a wheel, and the light was momentarily blotted out as something small and remarkably pungent was lowered down. Muttered voices and the momentary flash of a dark lantern were lost under the noise from the streets below.
"Lower," the whisper came. "Come ons, you slackers."
The wheel squeaked again. "You can see it, Fettid?" one of the cranking figures asked.
Lantern light revealed itself from the hole, dancing over the inside of the solid stone building. "Yes," the green hissed back up. The light shone upon gold bars and solid crates. "Shinies are there."
"Right," the largest shadowy figure at the crank said, "we do what the Overlady said the plan was. Fettid, you grabs one bar at a time, and we crank you up. Igni?"
"Yep?" another figure said, standing by a collection of tubes. There was a small pop, as it lit a flame on the end of one of its fingers.
"Make sky-boom happens and mistress know we find gold for her."
"Oh yay," the other figure said gleefully, lowering its burning finger towards the end of the tubes.
There was a crackle, and a whoosh, as four rockets shot up into the sky, their exhausts coincidentally setting their igniter on fire. That did not seem to phase him, however, as he "oooh'd" and "aaah'd" at the explosions in the sky.
Which was only matched by the thunderous detonation elsewhere in the town, by the river. A fireball blossomed in the night, rising up in a oily belch of flames. In the general consensus of the now-very-drunk townfolk, it was pretty, although all the alarm bells and running guards was a bit of a party pooper.
...
See! It's now two days after "two days ago". We caught up with the in media res section from the chapter before last. And it's funny that we're talking about things catching up, because appropriately the narrative attention is shifted over to Louise de la Vallière, who was stood by the gleefully burning, very nice smelling wreckage of the warehouse owned by the comte de Mott. Against the fires, she was a dark silhouette, her eyes patches of glowing light shining out from under her helmet. In the inferno, flaming goblins ran and played in the heat, throwing even more fire around and generally having the most fun that they had enjoyed in years. Down the river, a barge floated, laden down with plundered construction equipment, and manned by a minion crew.
Decency prevents one from observing that the dark lady was cackling.
She was, however, interrupted by a cry of "My warehouse!" from a tall, muscular man wearing a cat-mask, who – despite panting from lack of breath – nevertheless managed to properly cast a spell which had water rise up from the river to control the volatile blaze.
"Oh," Louise said. Then, "Oh. Oh. Oooooh."
She grinned. My, this was a wonderful party, no two ways about it. Softly, she chanted to herself. A ball of fire popped into existence in her hand, concealed behind her back. "My goodness," she said, advancing on the mage – the comte de Mott – slowly. "Whatever could have happened, s..."
"You!" The jet of water collapsed as the man spun and pointed his wand at her. "You! You did this! You're evil! It's not a disguise at all, is it! The mark of evil is in your eyes!"
Ah. The eyes. Yes. She must have got excited at some point and broken the illusion.
Drat.
...