Phoenix's Call
CHAPTER I: Madness at Midnight
Swathes of silk and gossamer spun beneath the amber lighting of the majestic chandelier, the women donning the cloth equally as beautiful as the materials were expensive. Pearls tinkled softly as they twirled in the arms of the men, the latter dressed sternly with badges and neckties and perfectly coiffed heads of hair. The ballroom was decorated with the sounds of laughter and merry conversation, lilted tones speaking of recent events with hushed curiosity, eyes roaming, roaming, roaming—what they were looking for, they couldn't find, and so it continued, the conspiring and gossiping and wondering. The gathering, composed of society's elite, was merely a gesture of courtesy, a tradition that was followed annually, every 31st of December.
The tables lining the sides of the ballroom carried upon them food enough to feed the country's poor for months; ladies sent back half-eaten plates without remorse and gents swiped up glasses filled with crimson, faces steadily matching the color as the night grew darker. Yet, there were still eyes roving the ballroom. Searching. Waiting, but with impatience bubbling within.
Within this gala, a tiny figure scurried back and forth from the buffet, perilously balancing cast-iron pots that looked ready to tip over at any moment. Weaving through the crowd with practiced ease, honed over years and years of receiving rebukes for 'placing your filthy hands on my seven-hundred rubies' worth dress!', the girl made it to her destination without as much as brushing past a single person.
The scullery doors swung open, and instantly, the smell of roast infiltrated her nostrils. Tampering down the rumble in her stomach that arose as a response, she deposited the pots with the softest of thuds, grabbing a bar of soap and rubbing furiously.
"Finish the pots quickly," ordered the Head Cook, not glancing up from the bubbling pot in front of her. "There has been an… accident," her lip curled in disdain, "by the ballroom's entrance that needs to be mopped up."
The girl nodded, schooling her face into neutrality although the prospect of cleaning up someone's vomit made her want to hit something with the skillet she was holding. How irritating. Nevertheless, she placed the last pot away, ready for the other scullery-maid to deliver back to the buffet, and grabbed the mop and bucket on her way out.
Having worked in the castle ever since she was old enough to remember, she had grown used to carrying out menial tasks, most of which included the work that the other maids thought was beneath them, and so, it got handed over to her, the youngest of them all. Not that she minded; it kept her busy and away from the rest of the Royal Staff, who weren't too keen to spend extended periods of time around her anyway. They were never outright malicious, as there was the threat of the King's men doling out justice—there were strict laws in place ever since the new King had ascended, one of those laws including heavy penalties for cases of harassment—but she knew ostracization when she saw it. Still, it was better than living on the streets or, god forbid, working for one of the elite families as a personal servant. The King treated his servants well and justly, and she'd be content with that.
She did, however, mind when foolish men overestimated their capacity to hold their drink and ended up hurling the contents of their stomachs onto the once-pristine marble flooring of the castle's lobby. Much like the man currently stumbling around near the dratted staircase she was sent to clean, yellowish puke dripping steadily from the steps.
Muttering a few choice curses she'd picked up from the butcher, a burly man called Hagrid who occasionally entertained her with fancy chopping tricks, she dragged the bucket along the floor, the unpolished wood screeching against the squeaky marble. This alerted the man to her presence, his head snapping up immediately. He seemed to regret this action the very next moment, his eyes screwing shut in pain.
"Merde, could you be a little considerate?" he said with his lips pursed tightly. He ironed his temple with his fingers, the leather of the gloves sticking to the perspiration that rapidly formed over his tanned skin. With another huff, he sank down to the stairs, merely inches away from his own bile, and groaned.
Ignoring his pitiful cries, for a mere scullery-maid couldn't dare to talk back to a man of the military (the badges gleaming on his red coat screamed status), she began mopping up the mess. It was halfway through this process that she noticed there was a sudden stillness in the air.
She looked up from the bucket's murky depths, and noticed that the man had, quite simply, stopped breathing.
A heartbeat, and then—
He'd been poisoned, she realized with slowly dawning horror, as froth bubbled at the corners of his full lips. The man, a highly-ranking official of the King's Army, had been poisoned within the castle's fortified walls, and he was slumped here, on the precipice of death, with no one around but a mere scullery-maid—if someone found them now, it would be disastrous.
Her hands quivered.
Any time now, the ballroom's double-doors would open and someone would slip out, either to frolic in the dark or to escape the heavy air for a bit, and they would see, they would see her hovering over a practically dead man.
She could take her bucket and mop and she could run, but the other maids knew she'd been sent here to clean. What else could she do? Where—
The doors boomed as they were thrown open, and a strange gargle of fear manifested itself in her throat. As she glanced at the ballroom's direction with terror, she realized it wasn't there that the sound issued from. No, it was…
The Prince stared down at her contemplatively, his riding cloak billowing as the outside air seeped into the lobby. A smudge of motley brown painted his cheek, and his hair was windswept. His eyes, however, focused on the man that laid strewn across the staircase. Then, they leisurely turned to her face, presumably drained of all blood in lieu of her fright.
"Have you an alibi?" he asked.
What?
She stared at him in shock, having to crane her neck to compensate for the good six inches he had on her. Did the Prince believe that she was genuinely just a bystander? Not that that wasn't the truth, but experience had taught her that sacrificial lambs were often made out of the lower-ranked members of the household. A bitter taste rose to her tongue, and she blinked away the memory forcefully.
"I…" she began, throat somehow extremely dry.
"No use," the Prince hissed, the sound of boots thundering in the silence. "They're about to come out. You, girl," he rounded on her, cloak swishing around with him like a faithful limb, "stay quiet."
A tad redundant, seeing as she hadn't spoken a word until now, but she nonetheless nodded in compliance. If she ended up evading a hanging today by the grace of all the gods she didn't believe in, she would be in the Prince's debt, undoubtedly. Her trembling began anew when the ballroom's doors opened, the Prince's presence at her back abruptly vanishing. She didn't dare to turn around and look, too paralyzed by the torrential rush of voices.
"By the Heavens, what happened here?!"
"Is that—? That is, that's Commander Potter!"
"He's been poisoned, someone call for the healers!"
A steady buzz of frantic yelling and hysterical women rose in synchronized, chaotic cacophony.
"Hermione, what are you doing here?" hissed a voice into her ear, and she jolted like a rabbit hunted, her heart threatening to burst.
One of the kitchen maids, holding silverware to be delivered to the banquet, stared at her in confusion and, it seemed, a fair amount of suspicion.
"I was sent to clean," she replied, gripping the handle of the broom tightly. Then, remembering the Prince's instructions, she snapped her mouth shut. She felt his icy gaze on her, piercing her skull, and squirmed.
"Clean the mess, yes, not clean up the man's intestines! By Gods, who would've thought you had so much in common with your mother?" the maid said, clicking her tongue. "How much did you get paid to do it, huh?"
Hermione resolutely kept her silence, struggling to keep her temper under a tightly sealed lid. The healers carried Commander Potter away quickly, leaving the crowd even more incensed as they remained in a state of confusion and, daresay it, fear.
"Your Highness!" squealed one of the women, tear tracks gleaming on her porcelain face like liquid diamonds, her eyes pools of cerulean blue. How does she look pretty while crying? Hermione wondered. "You've finally arrived!"
The mob seemed to realize his presence just then, the Prince hidden well by the shadows that tangled with his dark attire. He stepped around Hermione, shooting an unreadable look at the maid, who suddenly clammed up. With his hands diplomatically clasped in front of his chrome black breastplate, he spoke.
"Chancellor, if you would…?"
The man appeared out of thin air, his hair thick yet greying, and his coat barely brushing the floor.
"As the representative of the Royal Family, I issue an apology to all of you for this dreadful event," he began, his voice velvet-coated iron. The gathered crowd tittered. "The night is not lost, and Sir Potter will receive the proper treatment and will recuperate within a fortnight. I urge you all to go back inside and enjoy the remaining festivities. It would not do to end this year on a sour note, yes?"
He ushered the crowd back inside, the uncertain voices vanishing behind the heavy-set doors. The only people remaining were of obvious military stature. Their hard gazes rested on the Prince, and when he didn't budge, they shifted over to her. It seemed that the other kitchen maid had scampered off with the rest of the audience.
"You, maid," one of the Commanders said. "You will come with us for questioning."
Hermione's nerves felt like ice had been injected within. Her ears rang with a soundless tune, piercing needles flowing up her arms when she tightened her numb fists, the sensation magnified by the dead silence in the room. No one had thought to close the entrance doors, and for a crazy, absolutely insane moment, she thought she might just be able to outrun them all.
But the Prince had told her to be quiet, hadn't he? She would just make them more suspicious of her if she misspoke or tried to make a break for it.
"There won't be any need for that," the Prince said. "She is innocent."
"Is there substance to your claims, Prince?" asked one of the men, his burly arms crossed over his chest like twin maces, gloves studded with iron tips. Another Commander, then. By Gods, they were all huge.
"Scullery-maids are not allowed to touch the silverware, or have you forgotten?" the Prince said with a quirked eyebrow, hidden partially under his windswept pale hair, undone from its usual pompadour.
"And you think a murderer would see fit to follow rules, Draco?" the man snidely asked. "Friend, your ideas of righteousness and justice are wasted upon such folk."
"I stand as witness that this girl is innocent," the Prince stated once again. "If you wish to go against my words and brand me as a liar, feel free to do so."
His warning hung clearly in the air.
The burly Command huffed, rolling his eyes.
"Draco, apparently, has adopted a puppy, gentlemen," he drawled, fixating his hawk-like gaze on her. "We'll wait for Potter to get back on his feet and get the story from him. Until then, I'm keeping an eye on you, scullery-girl."
With that, he turned and left. The rest of the men, a little cowed by the Prince's ominous presence and yet unwilling to let a potential suspect to their fellow Commander's assault go free, stood there for a good few moments, unsure of what to do next. When the Prince merely stared at them in response, his expression unwaveringly stony, they sighed and left in the burly Commander's wake.
The second they were out of earshot, Hermione rounded on the Prince.
"I am extremely grateful for your help, Your Highness," she began, bowing at the waist, her braid slipping off her shoulder and hanging in the air. "And I owe you a life debt for your graciousness. But I wonder…" she straightened up, brows furrowed in contemplation, "why would you do that?"
The Prince stared down at her, not threatening, but not entirely welcoming either. It was her first time conversing with someone that wasn't a part of the Servants Quarter or the Royal Staff, and the fact that it was the Prince himself didn't help her shaky nerves either. But her curiosity burned brighter than her rationality and sense of propriety did. And at this point, what was propriety anyway? A man had been poisoned! The Prince protecting her, for whatever his nefarious or not-so-nefarious-but-still-odd reasons may be, had only bolstered her confidence to ask him questions without expecting rebuke.
"Would you rather get framed for Potter's attempted murder?" he asked. She noticed he had an strange accent, like a Northerner from the mountains.
Hermione knew a fair bit about most things. Her entire life had been spent sequestered in the scullery, and whatever books she could find lying around in the attics or in storerooms she'd been sent to clean had been all of random genres—some were historical accounts, a few were fine literature, others were poetry, and most were rags that were fit to be thrown in the fireplace as fodder (she turned a faint pink at the latter). Yet she'd tried her best, and now, unbeknownst to the Cook, in a secluded part of the kitchen where they dared not keep anything lest the rats got their teeth into it again, Hermione had built a sanctuary of sorts. She'd begged Hagrid, the perpetually-smiling butcher, to lend her the hammer he used to pound meat into submission, gathering bits and pieces of wood from the storerooms she cleaned and crafting a makeshift box where she neatly stored whatever books she'd managed to smuggle away. It was her little box.
She'd particularly enjoyed the book on geography she'd plundered from the Duchess when she'd thrown out her things in a fit of rage, having found the Duke with a mistress. The ensuing tantrum had led to an entire room being destroyed in her fury, and Hermione had gained three new books by the end of it. The book had come in useful when, not even a week afterwards, they had received guests from the Northern Winds. They had been tall, cloaked in garb fit for subzero temperatures that rarely visited this side of the continent. The Western Fields were tropical and sunny, and Hermione hated the humidity that ensued after every instance of rainfall. The books described the North as a cold place, and she would much prefer being bundled up than being forced to wear a full uniform of a petticoat, a dress, stockings and gloves in this miserable heat.
Well, the gloves were a necessity, she supposed. Everyone had to wear them. But everything else…
The Prince, when he spoke, sounded much like he'd spent a good amount of time in the North. Hermione wouldn't know, though, since she rarely ventured out of the scullery and didn't care to partake in castle gossip. All she knew was that the Prince was a mysterious figure that was close to only his Commanders, as the King had bequeathed the military to his son after deeming himself too 'busy' with other political affairs.
"Well, not exactly," she frowned, twisting her fingers in a tight grip. "I'm not sure why you're not suspicious. Anyone else would be—is, actually."
The Commander's words rang in her ears again, an ominous weight on her shoulders.
"Because I poisoned him."
"What?"
The Prince laughed, a short, dry sound.
"A joke," Hermione muttered in disbelief. "Your Highness, this is not the time!" She promptly slapped a hand over her mouth, eyes widening in terror. She, a mere scullery-maid, had no right to talk to the future King that way. Oh Gods, this was it. He was going to take back his support and send her off to the gallows for a crime she didn't commit. The burly Commander was going to have a field day with this.
Hermione, you absolute Neanderthal!
"I find humor to be the best distraction when a man nearly dies," the Prince informed her quite seriously. "Don't fret, I won't have you hanged. Yet." He shot her a sardonic smile. "As for your question, I know you're innocent because Potter has… let's just say he's made quite a few enemies, ones that I'm all too aware of. The man is a fool."
The Prince leaned down, his eyes gleaming amber in the firelight.
"I want you to resume your duties as normal. Do not speak of this to anyone. Not that you know anything important, but I'd rather not have to save you again. My sense of justice can only prevent you from harm for so long."
"Y-Yes, Your Highness," Hermione said, feeling weighed down. Her eyes felt heavy, her head throbbing in a rhythmic pattern akin to a second heartbeat. "Thank you, once again."
He waved her off, and with a blink of her eyes, he was gone.
The entrance doors remained wide open, wind howling in the moonless night.
The next morning dawned bright and sunny, as if there was nothing wrong with the world and everything was just perfect. As if Hermione hadn't inadvertently been witness to a Commander choking on his own saliva as he struggled to breathe, hereby branding her as a suspect in everyone's eyes except, wasn't this funny, the Prince.
"I'm not sure if I should send you out for errands today," the Head Cook said, scrutinizing her from head to toe as if she'd find a symptom of the plague on her body any moment now. "The castle's in a bit of a tizzy."
"A bit?" scoffed May, the maid from last night. "I wouldn't be surprised if there's a witch hunt going on outside right this very moment."
The Cook ignored her. She scanned Hermione up and down once more, and arriving to a conclusion, pointed to a rickety wooden stool in the corner, morosely surrounded by heaps and heaps of potatoes the size of her head.
"Peeling duty it is," Hermione muttered under her breath, shuffling over obediently. After the night she'd had, potatoes were a welcome reprieve. At least stabbing them with the peeler wouldn't land her in jail.
Grabbing the first potato, a sad and lumpy looking fellow, she began to viciously skin the mottled vegetable, thousands of thoughts racing through her head as her hands moved in autopilot. It was therapeutic in a way, to be doing something so menial to occupy herself physically. It gave her the peace required to truly think.
What, exactly, was going on? Why did the Prince stand up for her last night, against his own men, no less? And who would want to poison Commander Potter? As far as her knowledge rang true, Potter was one of the King's most prized men, revered by the general public and respected by his underlings. That would've made her untimely demise even more agonizing—if the Royals hadn't personally ordered her beheading, then certainly she would've been lynched by a mob sooner or later. The citizens loved Potter; him with his handsome looks and charming personality.
Then why poison? Hermione wasn't so innocent and naïve as to be ignorant to the Court's politics, but it simply didn't add up. Potter didn't hold any sort of sway over anything, except for the battalion he commanded. Everyone knew the Prince was the sole authority when it came to the military, so there was no point in getting Potter out of the way.
Ugh, it was all just so confusing! She slammed another naked potato on the slowly-growing pile to her left.
"…they're saying someone broke into the Treasury last night! Could it be the same person who…"
Hermione's ears perked up, the two gossiping women behind her chattering away obliviously.
"Poor Commander, he must be in so much pain…"
"…the guards shot at whoever it was, but it was too dark to see, so the dratted snake got away! I wonder who it could be…"
Well, this was new. Could it be, then, that Potter had been attacked by this very same person?
The endless possibilities were driving her crazy. It wouldn't have bothered her so much if the man hadn't been dying right in front of her! Or if she hadn't almost been framed for it! Or, the worst part, the Prince hadn't confused her so! How was he even so sure of her innocence?
Internally screaming, she decided to let the matter drop for now. There was no use pondering over it until she got more answers, and for that, she would have to wait until more news about Potter's condition was released. Hopefully, the man would survive and live to tell what actually had happened, absolving her of the fear of suddenly being thrown into jail, lest the Prince change his mind on her "innocence".
And to think she bemoaned her life for being ordinary. Hmph.
Author's Notes: Well, look who's back with more twist and turns and convoluted plots. Leave a review if you enjoyed this!