To Stephanie Wang - You're right! Oz was initially planned to be female. Maybe she just didn't feel like changing the wardrobe XD
This time, Oz is a history nerd. Also, a mastermind. A cute mastermind. How dare he. Also, another edition of Worldbuilding! The chapter.
Beyond the Winding Road
By Emori Loul
Advance XII: ~ Lufsig~
The returning walk down from the Oz Vessalius room was possibly one of the most awkward moments in Anderson's life, what with Gilbert randomly switching from sharing life stories supposedly of his brother to apologizing quietly but repeatedly from behind him. He snapped at the man twice and immediately regretted it, since Gilbert always reacted by making faces closely resembling a puppy being shooed out the door by its owner.
Damn, how did Lewis and Hedia deal with this guy? Gilbert was more of a nutcase than his brother.
Worse still, they ended up getting lost together.
"We're not lost," Anderson insisted. "Shorty just can't stay put." He stared down the three split directions of the strangely-constructed hallway and missed Gilbert's double-take at his words.
"…this part of the house underwent severe renovations during the Idvitzen occupation." Gilbert finally told him. "There was talk that Morton XI planned on turning it into his palace after we captured Ostene.* So I'm afraid I can't help you on where we are right now."
Anderson groaned, shifting to the side as another tour group came through.
"Now this floor of Lamontre is particularly exceptional for its time period because this entire floor, with the exception of the servants' passage running behind this wall here, was dedicated to guest bedrooms. The Vessalius, for the most part, prided themselves on their accommodations and hospitality, and it was said the mansion could house over a hundred night guests on this floor alone. Our first room of note here, just off the Living Hall, is the Folchart Room, where celebrated author Fenoglio Folchart stayed during his visit in the summer of 1847 while doing research for his famed classic The Demesne of Cynosure.* Its dimensions have been changed slightly since the Idvitzen Occupation of 1948, but the original Carte Desk on which the book was written—"
"Let's just join the group," Anderson suggested. "We'll find them on the way out."
Neither Gilbert nor Anderson were particularly excited about joining the history tour (history was for nerds like his brother and dad), but both knew it would probably be easier to run into Oz and Hedia that way.
The tour guide (an uber-composed snowy-haired college student in a vintage walking suit and square glasses) took them through the North and South tower passages, stopping every few feet to explain some important guest that stayed in the nearest room, until they entered the hall with another staircase and found a congested amount of people on the corner counter-cross.
"One minute, please, everyone," she said calmingly, and she turned away to push herself through the crowd to the front. The rest of the tour group milled around confusingly, wondering why everyone was so eager to get a look into the Marc IV room.
Until, as people quieted down again, Anderson and Gil recognized the voice in the center of the crowd.
"…Marc's proposal to Lady Joséphine was an especially smart political move, as the Vessalius family had been gaining wealth and power at an extraordinary rate for a Dukedom only four decades old, and more often than not they were rivaling the royal family for political influence. With the Duke's sister safely wedded to the future King, the interests of the royal family and the Grand Dukedom were now realigned in cooperation. According to rumor, Prince Marc actually proposed to Lady Joséphine while staying in this room for an extended use of hospitality over the spring of 1829 while viewing the newly completed mansion. To be honest, though, many of the family did not like Lady Joséphine's choice in suitors."
Of course it was Oz, standing next to a speechless Hedia and an amused Miz Rainsworth (and her stunned-stupid companion), happily talking their ears off and seemingly supremely unconcerned with the massive crowd gathering around him. (Most of whom, Anderson noticed to his sudden annoyance, were wearing pins depicting two intersecting golden wings and labeled "The Vanished Vessalius Mystery Club."*)
"Prince Marc was, at the time, the youngest of Queen Pétronille's children, unlikely to gain the throne with his two older brothers in the way," Oz explained to Miz Rainsworth, who was looking at him with a strange sort of pride, "Duke Xavier also believed him to be of terrible disposition and foolhardy egotism, and though it was these traits that made him easy to manipulate later in life, they did not endear him to his in-laws. However, after the suspicious assassination of his oldest brother Pharamond and his brother's Nightray bride, Princess Magalie, and his second brother Prince Ermenegilde's abdication of the throne, Lady Joséphine's fiancé was suddenly the sole heir. By the time the Great Dukedoms met their downfall in the revolution seventy years later, six different royal families from nine different countries and city-states were closely related to the head of the Vessalius family. After the death of King Marc IV in 1852, this room was remodeled to be used as the royal guest suite for King Achille—who died before he even made his first visit."
Looking over the crowd, it became obvious that several people had their hands raised. "Yes?" Oz asked, nodding over to a girl on her tiptoes standing behind a very tall bodybuilder of a man.
"Does this mean you're related to royalty?"
Oz laughed breathily. "In a way? We're a good century removed from all of this, really. And truth be told, every person in the world is probably related to a member of some royal family." He glanced over at the newer guided group that had converged on their own quasi-tour cluster, all of whom had raised their hands at once when he answered the first question.
"Oh, um." He sighed, and next to him Miz Rainsworth chuckled. "Okay, for all the people just showing up, first things first—my name is Lewis Tale, nicknamed Oz for… obvious reasons, and I'm the great-grandson of the last Duchess of Flambeau, Ada Vessalius." He saw some of them begin to put their hands down. "Yes, I am well aware there is a strong family resemblance." The rest of the hands went down.
Anderson and Gilbert's tour guide pushed herself into the front, and Anderson used the gap left in the crowd to do the same. "Miz Rainsworth, what's going on?"
As Anderson and Gil joined the group, the older woman looked between the tour guide and Oz fondly. "Ah, Vilhelmina, perfect. I'm considering giving this young man a job, actually."
"What?" cried Anderson quietly in surprise, until Hedia slammed down on his foot with her heavy soled boots.
Thankfully, his voice was covered up by both the sound of the slowly departing crowd and by another cry of 'what,' this one by the young man that had been accompanying Miz Rainsworth.
"What indeed?" she replied, amused. "The boy clearly knows his stuff, and certainly has the patience and charm for the job. With all the times people have asked him about Oz Vessalius in the last ten minutes, I'd have been tempted to box some ears." She turned to Oz. "As the major financial backer of the Lamontre Historical Association, I'm putting my support behind selecting Mr. Oz here to fill the vacant position."
The tour guide looked the two of them over, then shrugged. "All right then," she said, extending a hand for Oz to shake. "H'llo there, Oz." She giggled when saying his name. "My name's Vilhelmina Daniels, I'm junior manager of staff. I help out all our minors on the pay roll—"
"Hey," Anderson whispered urgently to Hedia. "What's going on?"
"A bunch of people started following us, thinking O-Lewis was some sort of tour guide." She huffed. "I'm pretty sure Miz Rainsworth set this up from the moment she met Lewis, if she was really looking for a new tour guide from the beginning. And I'm pretty sure Lewis knew it." She huffed, annoyed. "The pains of having a cute mastermind for a best friend."
Anderson sent her an unimpressed look. "Cute?"
"Shut up, Potato."
Anderson sputtered, but then came back to focus. "Shouldn't we be stopping this? There's no way he can explain knowing all this without people thinking he's crazy—"
He was silenced in surprise by the nasty glare and yank on his arm pulling him down eye to eye with his brother's childhood friend.
"Anderson, I swear to god," Hedia whispered back to him, always quiet at her most furious, "Do not mess this up for him."
Anderson swallowed, eyes wide. He nodded.
Back in the front of the group, tourists were thanking Oz for the wonderful addition he made to their tour and congratulating him on his unusual method to getting a job. Many also paid their respects to Miz Rainsworth as they left, nodding or thanking her for her many charities.
"So," Oz said conversationally, waving goodbye to the final guests in their faux tour group, "How much did your grandmother tell you about us?"
Miz Rainsworth smiled the same distant, knowing smile as her grandmother Sharon. "Only that I had a better chance of seeing you again than she did. Oh, and to bring Chocolat Oolong to your next tea party; she didn't much enjoy the Earl Grey your uncle served."
And that evening, Oz left with a new job, a number, an address, and an open invitation to visit. Old ladies getting on in their years liked to hear fairy tales too.
Night had fallen, and as they waited for the final bus back to Reveille, Oz was having trouble finding Gilbert.
"Maybe he's just staying in Loupe for the night," Anderson suggested, although he himself sounded worried. "You said he had apartments everywhere."
Hedia returned from the restroom just in time, looking relieved she made the bus. "He's behind the entrance barrier, on the phone." She pointed over to a stone column topped with a lamp post, next to which a tall man in a suit could just be made out amongst the shadows.
Gilbert slid his phone shut and approached them again. "Oz, we need to talk."
Surprised, Oz nodded, and the two walked a little ways away from Hedia and Anderson, conversing in low voices. As their companions watched, Oz's face dropped from concern and surprise to harsh seriousness.
Oz nodded to Gilbert and returned to the group, Gil walking away in the opposite direction down the unlit path to the parking lot.
"He's getting a cab and heading home," Oz said immediately, answering the unspoken question on their faces.
Hedia still peered after Gilbert in the dark anyways. "To Ely House?"
Oz nodded again.
Anderson looked so stunned he forgot to be annoyed. "What's happened?"
His brother glanced around, noting that no one else at the bus stop was really near enough to hear. "Edith's grandparents are counter-filing a claim of custody for Edith."
AN: Hedia: "Anderson, I s2g, you mess this up for him and I will cut you." *terrified nodding*
Also, you didn't think we'd just drop Edith's subplot, did you? It takes three people to make a trio, guys. Three. (And don't think you got out of that graveyard visit so easily).
But in all seriousness, Oz getting offered a job is a pretty big deal. I mean, discrimination against those recorded as mentally ill is technically illegal in most Western countries, but how many people are going to willingly hire someone with that history if they can avoid it? There's a reason Oz works in his mother's flower shop (well, many reasons, actually, but that's one of them).
Also, Echo was pretty intimidating early in the series. Less so to Oz as time went on, but I bet Hedia used that latent skill to make Anderson regret everything whenever Oz cried when they were children.
Details:
*Beatrix (via Richard) briefly mentioned the destruction of Ostene back in Advance III! There's a lot more to it, but basically, after the Great War, Sable regained its independence after the back to back revolution/invasion/world war. And by that, I mean they and their allies defeated the many countries that invaded, and one that lost particularly hard was Idvitz, which held a grudge it finally acted on when Sable got a weak king in 1947. Idvitz invaded again and successfully annexed Sable in 1948. The cousin of the exiled Sablen king, Géraud, Arch Duke of Glaive, returned some six years later to claim the throne for himself and led an Idonian army in to recapture the country. His first act, though, was to capture the Idvitzen capital of Ostene in 1953 and raze it to the ground, destroying both Morton XI's palace, most of the Idvitzen nobility's homes, and the famous Hanging Gardens. Morton XI then attempted to move the capital of Idvitz to Reveille—making Lamontre his new royal palace—a move which would make it extremely hard to separate Sable from Idvitz if it had been fully established. However, he was overthrown and removed from power before he could bind the two countries together too tightly. His actions, however, only heightened the two countries' grudge, and between that and the severe damage to his home country, Idvitz's nobility never fully recovered its power. After a failed attempt by the nobility and Crown to regain control over their own country, Idvitz became a republic in 1960. The older generations still hate Sable for this. Sable doesn't care because they won.
*Fenoglio Folchart is a reference to Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, about a family that can read stories into reality. His name comes from the author of the titular book, Fenoglio, and the surname of the "silvertongues," Folchart. The Demesne of Cynosure is a historical fiction novel about the founding of the Vessalius Dukedom, following the Hero Jack Vessalius' oldest brother Roch as the main character, since Jack, after reorganizing and stabilizing the government with the founding of the Dukedoms, died with no heirs. It mainly centers around the political situations that led to the rise of the four Great Dukedoms —each designed to keep each other's power in check, unlike the Baskerville clan who amassed all their power into one family—and the controversy and personal strife many of the families had as certain members rose to power. The book was written from a Dukian-era perspective, and so is common required reading in college literature classes.
*Intersecting golden wings appear to be the Vessalius family crest, as they appear on brooches worn by many of the family members during significant events (some of which are simplified—the brooches worn at the first coming of age ceremony are far more modest in design than those seen later). Jack is even seen wearing the simple brooch in a flashback to Sablier. The full crest, rarely seen, is two golden wings enclosing a crown. It'll appear later.
*Ada is referred to as the last Vessalius Duchess because the Dukedoms were not technically stripped of power until 1901, a little under a year after the Tragedy of Reveille. During that time she acted as Head of the family (a very lonely position, I imagine, since there was literally no one for her to be Head of), and used her resources to aid those who had lost homes and loved ones in the Tragedy, opening up the ground floor of Lamontre as a shelter for the ill and homeless. The one thing of grandeur she added to the estate before she lost it was the addition of two new tombstones in the family cemetery on the tiny Isle of Élysée in the middle of Égaré Lake. Later, after the revolution and war and after things had calmed down, she was allowed to be interred there herself, as were her descendants and the remains of her father (which were found long after Ada had lost her privileges and title as Duchess).
*Miz Rainsworth knew who Oz and his friends were the second she saw them. Oz figured this out when she started calling him "Mr. Oz" back in Advance X, despite never asking his name. She's pretty relieved to meet him, actually—she was raised on stories about her grandmother's friends, and Oz, Alice and Great-Uncle Xerxes in particular were her childhood heroes (she went as Alice Baskerville for All Hallows Day three years in a row; to her mild disappointment, nobody outside the former Pandora members' families knew who that was. She had better luck when she went as Oz himself in middle school, though she was still sometimes confused for Ada Vessalius because of Oz's taste in clothes [so much lace, so many bows. So. Many. Bows.] and no one could understand why her top hat had rabbit ears on it.