Disclaimer: see some other chapter.
Notes: A longer chapter this time--sorry about the hiatus. Review responses below, as per usual.
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Holiday
by Nightfall Rising
part ten
w w w w
Zel tugged uneasily at his cloak. He'd looked in a mirror as they passed it (and what kind of house had mirrors at the top of the staircase, anyway?), and had confirmed with dismal resignation that his blue skin clashed horribly with the scarlet lining and the whole effect was emphasized by the shiny black exterior. Also, the butler had done something terrifyingly prim to his hair, which was making whiny metal groans in protest.
He hadn't even been allowed to wear a white shirt. The blue suit he'd been bribed into had looked snazzy on the hanger, with its sparring black zebra stripes, but as he'd known it would, it made him look like he was wearing nothing but a few strategic straps, a pair of dress boots, and a tan. Indigo. Something.
Val owed him big time for this.
The mazoku in question (who, he grudgingly admitted, was dressed even more tastelessly than he was and was dealing with it with much better grace) flipped the front half of Zel's cape back over his shoulder, exposing the lining and the suit again. "Stop fussing. You look stunning."
Since they were in public, Zel repressed all eighteen of the remarks which came into his mind in answer to this nonsense, and asked instead, "Where's your brother?"
"Oh, he'll be down," Val said airily. As these were the words Zel had been expecting, he was surprised at how rehearsed and automatic they sounded. More naturally, and more anxiously, Val went on, "Of course he will. I'm sure he will." Zel looked at him funny, and he explained, "He hates big parties."
"Not this one, though," Zel smiled, thinking of his biggest supporter.
He was surprised to see Val's face freeze into a sort of rictus smile, and then his betrothed cried out, "Oh, look at Daddy. Look how happy he is. He's so excited." On hearing his name, Gaav, who did look marginally less grumpy than usual, turned and lifted a hand in greeting. Val draped himself over the banister and blew him a kiss. Having grown accustomed to this sort of filial affection of late, Zel didn't so much as widen his eyes. "He really likes you, you know. You've completely won him over."
"He's been surprisingly decent to me," Zel admitted.
"He put this party together all by himself," Val said proudly.
Somehow, looking over the regimented slow dance of badly dressed demons, Zel wasn't surprised.
Two of the badly dressed demons were looking back at him out of the corners of their eyes as they walked towards the stairs. Unabashedly, he stared at the large, frozen-faced ice-blond and the youth with the acid-green eyes sitting on his shoulders, and strained his long, elvin ears to tune them in.
"Is that it?" Blond was asking.
"At least it's ornamental," Acid-eyes leered, and then broke into a terrifyingly broad grin as they reached Gaav.
"Those are our cousins," Val told Zel as greetings were exchanged. "The one who looks like Daddy fell into a vat of bleach is Dynast, and the twirp is Phibrizzo."
"Quiet," Zel ordered, goosing him to make him shut up. "I'm eavesdropping."
"When are you going to announce the thrilling news about little Valgaav?" Phibrizzo was asking with an innocently eager expression. His calling Val 'little' was ridiculous.
"In my own good time," Gaav rumbled smugly. "It is to be a surprise."
"Well," the little demon said with a tinge of doubt in his voice, sneaking a look upwards, "Valgaav -seems- infernally happy... I haven't seen Xellos all evening."
"Oh," Gaav said, pretending not to look uncomfortable, "Xellos has asked me to explain his unfortunate bone-shattering migraine."
"Oh, yes," Phibrizzo agreed, pretending not to sneer, "Xellos's little headaches. We understand perfectly."
A little alarmed at this, Gaav hastened to assure them, "He'll come down before the announcement, of course."
"Of course," Dynast echoed emptily. "Whose bones is he shattering? Are we having gelatin later?"
"Er..."
"Just leave it to us," Phibrizzo rescued him sunnily, and they turned away and started upstairs. "What's the matter with that boy--Oh, Mazenda, you look mind-bending! --I wonder where she found those hideous jodhpurs..."
"Gaav's worried," Dynast uttered.
The shorter one snorted. "I'd be worried, if I'd spawned Zelas and Xellos."
"I disapprove of bringing an outsider in."
"I'd expect it of Xellos," Phibrizzo agreed, "but Valgaav? Bringing a common chimera--a mere shamanist, too--into the family without even any real name!"
"He has family in the White community," Dynast said with heavy condemnation, and Zel bit his lips to keep his face straight as the two hit the top of the stairs and Phibrizzo burst into another smile half the size of his head.
"Oh, Vally, how lovely!" the youth said without specifying. He turned to Zel and said, with a definite note of patronization, "I'm Cousin Phibby, and I'm -so- happy about it. Oh, Vally, he is pretty, isn't he?"
"Dynast," the other announced, putting out a hand.
"Greyweir," Zel returned with equal brevity, taking it.
"A good family to marry into, Greyweir," Dynast proclaimed. "You're to be congratulated."
Fortunately, Zel had no eyebrows to raise at him.
Noting the slight purse of blue lips, Val hastened to say, "We all grew up together."
Zel bit down on the 'that's no excuse' that he really, really wanted to say.
Equally hastily, Phibrizzo gushed, "We've heard such -wonderful- things about you."
"Have you?" he asked with great courtesy and some interest. "From whom?"
Flustered, the youth stammered, "Er... uh... everybody," and hastened to change the subject. "It's a pity about Xellos."
"Frightful luck with those headaches," Dynast said, and Zel looked at him with more respect. He was clearly out of some loop here, but he could recognize a dig when he heard one, and he hadn't expected it from the icicle.
"Oh, there's Zelas!" Valgaav said, and almost made it look natural. "We've been looking for her. 'Scuze us." He dragged Zel over to where Zelas was leaning on a potted plant with a flute of champagne in one hand and an enormous black cigar in the other. She was better dressed than almost anyone there, with a sleeveless ivory shirt on over a silkily heavy thigh- length skirt of the same color, and sandals that laced all the way up to her knees. "Zelly, did you talk to Xel?"
"How do you find Dynast and Phibby, Greyweir?" Zelas drawled. "Are you honored to meet them?"
"What did Xel say?" Val pressed.
"Cheer up," Zelas urged lazily, with an elegant flick of one hand that sent smoke skittering into her brother's eyes. "If you find them bloody-minded and dull, wait 'till you meet the rest of the relatives. More you know about us, more impressively we rise. In your estimation. Father wanted a family, so Mother had me straight off to oblige him. But I was a girl, so Mother had Xellos, who took after her, so it seemed hopeless. Then Mother had Valgaav, and there was great joy resounding from the mountains. It was an obedient and devoted son, and the armies could be safely passed on. It must have been a great relief to Father. He must have been very grateful to Mother. Drink to Mother, Greyweir. She tried to be a Rubyeye for a while, and then gave up and died."
"Nonsense," Zel said, almost gently.
Gravely shaking her glass at him, Zelas uttered, "But it's ...not."
"What did Xellos say?" Val asked again, impatiently. "He's coming down, isn't he?"
Zelas choked on a mouthful of champagne and, recovering, said sharply, "Don't make me laugh, Brother."
"What is all this about Xellos, Val?" Zel asked, torn between anxiety and exasperation.
"Nothing," Val muttered.
"Thaaaaat's right," Zelas agreed expansively, sloshing, "it's nothing at all, just one of Xellos's whims. The silly little puppy wanted to give his kind of a party." Honing her voice to a katana-edge, she went on, "Between you and Father, you've managed to turn his celebration into a first-class funeral."
"He should've realized I couldn't announce my engagement quietly," Val snapped.
"Should have?" Zelas asked in that slow, deliberate way. "Sure. But unlike me, Xellos always hopes. Mud in your eye," she said to Zel, "To Xellos."
"Zelly," Val whined as she drained her glass, "You've been drinking since eight."
"So I have," Zelas grinned broadly. "On Long Night, too. Tsk."
"Make her stop," Val appealed to Zel.
"I will drink," Zelas said sharply, suddenly looking much less drunk, "exactly what I please at any party I condescend to attend." Relaxing back against the plant again and letting her long lids droop back to half-mask, she mentioned, "It's my protection against Father's and your tediou-- devoted and obedient friends," she corrected herself with another, satisfied, grin. "Mourn for my baby brother, Greyweir," she commanded, waving a manicured talon in his face. "He doesn't have any protection." She snapped her fingers, and a wisp of smoke appeared with a tray of glasses.
Val growled, and stalked off. Zel watched him go, then studied Zelas and suggested with friendly concern, "Take it easy, will you?"
Zelas studied him back, then put her empty glass down and saluted lazily.
w w w w
Downstairs, the butler was standing in the way of two young women, as garishly dressed as everyone else, but in an entirely different style.
"Professors Inverse and Nels Rada," the redhead in the white dress and gloves and black flying helmet and galoshes said, annoyed at the fisheye he was giving her.
"We were invited," added the taller one in the violet blouse with the oversized gold-accented tie, a little defensively. She reached into the pocket of her miniskort and pulled out an engraved card that went clang on the floor when the waiter, trying not to touch her gold nail polish, fumbled it.
"If I may take your outer gear," the butler said, carefully without reluctance. He took Lina's helmet, and the goggles Sylphiel had been carrying, and Sylphiel's swamp-green galoshes, and then Lina's black ones, and turned to the amphibious demon behind them.
Lina put her foot down and yiped as it came in contact with a puddle. "My shoe!"
As the butler conversed politely with the demon, Sylphiel tried to get his attention. Finally, as the other guest departed to join the part, he turned to them. "The elevator is to the rear and to the right."
"Yeah, great, fine," Lina said, hopping wildly, "but you've got my shoe!" She pointed at her galoshes.
He looked at her feet. One of them had a neat white boot on, but the other displayed only a black-stockinged calf. "I'm terribly sorry," he said, and fished the other boot out of it's galosh. She braced on his shoulder and tugged it on, with one or two unladylike grunts that made a few of the guests turn and stare.
When the boot was finally on, Sylphiel clutched her shoulder and whispered, "Don't tell anyone, but I think I've got a run in my stocking."
"That's it, you're wolf chow," Lina said regretfully, and looked sternly at the butler. "Tell anyone about this and I fireball your... um..." She craned her neck, trying to see whether the butler had a posterior to roast.
"No, miss. The elevator is--"
"To the rear," she said airily, giving up her attempts to see his.
"And the right," Sylphiel finished with great dignity. They bowed each other away, leaving the butler attempting to hide an interested perk behind an a long-suffering expression.
"I told you not to wear the blue stockings," Lina reminded her.
"I like this pair."
"I know. You've been wearing them at every party we've gone to for the last five years."
"The students like them..."
"Well, of course they do. My taste is impeccable. My point is, they're old."
"You'll have to get me a new pair. Lina, maybe we should just go home."
"We promised Zel we'd come. No wimping out. You know, this place reminds me of that nutjob, Halciform. I told you about Halciform; you remember him?"
"Oh, yes, the one with the poor little Snow White girl. Rubia, wasn't it? Whatever happened to him?"
But she wasn't destined to be reminded. Just then, they ran up against the fancy grillwork of the elevator. "To the rear," Lina informed Sylphiel.
"And the right," Sylphiel agreed as they stepped inside, and closed the doors. "Now where?"
Lina studied the panel of buttons, then clapped one hand over her eyes and slapped out randomly with the other. They waited. "Maybe I should try another button," she said dubiously. "Are we moving?"
In answer, the doors sprang open on a dismal greyness with torches. "Ooh!" Lina exclaimed, cheering up immediately, and propelled herself out of the elevator with anticipatory greed. "Cellars!"
Sylphiel followed more slowly, and caught up as she skidded to a halt in front of a shaggy pink carpet with enormous neon flowers all over it. "It seems to have been some sort of residence at one time," she commented.
"Shut up," Lina ordered. "Do you hear that?"
Sylphiel listened. The terrifying but unmistakable sound of 'Lorelie' tamed and whipped into submission and tethered to a music box drifted over the personality-laden shag carpet. Once it had been jazz. It tinkled. "We could dance to it?" she suggested.
After a moment, Lina decided, "No, we couldn't." She grabbed Sylphiel's hand and dragged her along, seeking out the source of the music, and came to the simple doorframe among the torches and black iron grilling.
When they peeked in, Xellos looked up from where he'd been morosely winding the music box up again. It had waddling mechanical penguins in various articles of clothing trying to dance on the top of it. "The party's upstairs," he informed them curtly.
"Well, excuse us for living!" Lina snapped, insulted, and wheeled around.
Sylphiel, less hasty, got to see the sulky expression under the purple-grey hair self-correct into hesitant interest. "No, wait," he said, putting the music box down on the table and half-getting up. His long, unfashionably soft dove-grey vest with its deliberate, lacy pattern of holes was undone over his crisp white shirt, whose buttonholes looked a little frayed, and he'd been sitting on his jacket. "You're Lina Inverse. You ran the Big Bangs workshop at Thaumverd Camp and never came into the nature area. I'm Xellos Rubyeye."
"Uh-uh," Lina objected. "Zel said his name was Valgaav."
"Val's my baby brother. Do you know Zel?"
"We've known him for years," Lina groaned expressively.
Cheering right up and moving to the door, Xellos beamed, "Well, then, pleased to meet you!" He plucked her hand up with a graceful turn of the wrist, kissed the air above her knuckles with a cheery flair, and nearly closed the door on Sylphiel. "What's that?" he asked Lina, eyeing Sylphiel with mild disfavor.
"Oh, that's my partner, Sylphiel Nels Rada," Lina explained unenthusiastically.
"Oh," Xellos grimaced, and moved away from the door with reluctant politeness. "You'd better come in, too, then. Close the door."
Giggling softly, Sylphiel complied, and got her revenge by sitting down on the white sofa in a ladylike manner while Lina zoomed across the room to drool over the bookcases. "Valgaav lives here?" she demanded approvingly, fingering a copy of -Magic for Maniacs- like she wanted to run away with it.
"I live here," Xellos corrected, and paused, and explained, "I live -here.- If you know what I mean."
"I see," Sylphiel said warmly.
Lina teased, "But you wouldn't eat your sweetbread this morning, so they won't let you go to the party, is that it?"
Xellos flopped down on the sofa next to Sylphiel, taking up all of it, and pulled a sad face. "I'm the mad brother," he whispered conspiratorially in her ear, "the one they don't talk about."
"The third brother in the fairy tales?" she asked. "The one who's too simple to chop down the oldest tree in the forest for firewood?"
"The one who wraps all-colored rags around his knees and sits on the mantel above the fireplace and gossips with the cats?" Lina added, coming to lean her elbows on Sylphiel's shoulders.
"That's me!" he chirped.
"That was us, too," Sylphiel said. "And look what happened to us." At their host's questioning expression, she warned him with awful portent, "We had to marry each other. Two professors without a cent to rub between us!"
"So you'd better be a good little boy, and eat your blood pudding," Lina admonished him.
After regarding them with an expression that was oddly affectionate for someone who'd just been introduced, Xellos swung his legs down off the couch and invited, "Sit down, won't you?"
"Thank you," Sylphiel said sedately. "It's good to be home again."
"You would not -believe- what a long walk we had!" Lina added with emphasis.
Xellos sighed. "It's a shame," he announced vigorously. "I was going to give a party tonight. A real one. It was all planned out and everything. I was going to--well," he finished ruefully, "it was a good idea. It might have been fun."
"Is your brother anything like you?" Sylphiel asked hopefully.
Horrified, Xellos started waving his hands around, his eyes shut on an embarrassed grin as he protested, "Oh, no, no, no! Don't worry, Val's -nothing- like me!" He stopped waving his hands and peeked out of one eye through splayed fingers as a thought struck him. "Do you mean to tell me you haven't met him yet? Your friend is appallingly negligent. You'd better go down right now and--"
"NO!" Lina yelled.
Sylphiel shook her vigorously. "Oh, no. -Definitely- no."
"Definitely no," Xellos nodded ruefully, tapping his ear to make sure it still worked, and sprawled backwards onto the couch, letting his head fall back with a satisfied sigh.
"Nope," agreed Lina, and Sylphiel put in a negative noise.
"Nope," Xellos echoed, and a silence purring with decided inaction settled over the room
It was broken by a jaunty little tune and a series of disgruntled yips. Zelas marched in with a measured stride. She was tootling on her fife, and she'd put her dom boots on over her elegant sandals. Padding behind her was the enormous Fenris, growling and muttering to himself around the handle of a picnic basket full of ice and bottles of champagne. Padding behind him was the creepy butler, carrying a tray with pieces of cheese and fruit impaled by brightly cellophaned toothpicks and surrounded by three kinds of crackers.
"Zelly!" Xellos exclaimed gleefully, sitting bolt upright, and coughed as his guests gave him funny looks. "My sister, Zelas." The looks didn't go away, although the butler did.
"Thought you could use a little Long Night cheer," she drawled, uncorking two of the bottles and leaning on Fenris.
"What a considerate big sister!" he squealed, jumping up to attack her and Fenris with a double bearhug. When he pulled away and sat back down, the looks had gotten worse.
"Yup. Sweet kid, that's me," his sister agreed smugly, and mentioned, "Your shirt's open."
"Is it?" he asked without concern, slipping the errant buttons back into place without bothering to look down. "These are Lina and Sylphiel. They're friends of Zel's."
"He used to live with us," Sylphiel explained, looking regretfully at the shirt.
"We came to warn his future husband about him," Lina said virtuously. "He always leaves the bathtub all gritty with stone dust."
"A toast to Greyweir," Zelas proposed, pouring them all glasses of champagne and snagging a second bottle for herself. "He needs it. I stand corrected," she said inaccurately, no one else having spoken and she herself at a seventy-degree angle to the ground. "He doesn't need it. He's doing juuuuuuuuuuuust fine."
"What do you mean?" Xellos asked sharply.
She grinned cruelly down at him. "I mean he's doing aaaall right. Having the time of his life. Got his hair tied down and Father's seeing he meets all the important entities."
"Are there important entities downstairs?" Lina asked excitedly.
Calmly, Sylphiel punched her in the arm.
"Hey!" she yelled. "What was that for?"
"We are -finished- with the prince scam, aren't we, Lina dear?" she said sweetly.
"Eheh," Lina coughed, embarrassed, and looked away.
"Devastatingly important," Xellos said, after he'd decided against wanting to understand that. "That's why I wanted to give a party down here."
Lina lifted her glass. "Mr. Xellos Rubyeye, on Long Night, entertained a small group of very unimportant people."
The girls drained their vessels (Zelas got about halfway down her bottle before she elected to breathe), and Xellos asked, with a plaintive little smile, "May I drink, too?"
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[end part ten]
Kaeru Shisho: Your reviews make my days! Yes, the HE was Gaav. You're talking about Silk&Stone, right? I dunno... I used to visit the site a lot, but they haven't updated in about six months. Is it still a live list? Because I'm not enough of an egoist to think that I could jump-start it, yaknow?
Kalis Deleira and Fragile Reflection--sorry about the wait. There was that thing where DICTIONARY GOT YANKED (oh no, I'm not still bitter about that at all at all), so I've been spending most of my energy formatting stuff for the site I'm putting together.
Thanks for sticking with me, guys. It means a lot.
Notes: A longer chapter this time--sorry about the hiatus. Review responses below, as per usual.
w w w w
Holiday
by Nightfall Rising
part ten
w w w w
Zel tugged uneasily at his cloak. He'd looked in a mirror as they passed it (and what kind of house had mirrors at the top of the staircase, anyway?), and had confirmed with dismal resignation that his blue skin clashed horribly with the scarlet lining and the whole effect was emphasized by the shiny black exterior. Also, the butler had done something terrifyingly prim to his hair, which was making whiny metal groans in protest.
He hadn't even been allowed to wear a white shirt. The blue suit he'd been bribed into had looked snazzy on the hanger, with its sparring black zebra stripes, but as he'd known it would, it made him look like he was wearing nothing but a few strategic straps, a pair of dress boots, and a tan. Indigo. Something.
Val owed him big time for this.
The mazoku in question (who, he grudgingly admitted, was dressed even more tastelessly than he was and was dealing with it with much better grace) flipped the front half of Zel's cape back over his shoulder, exposing the lining and the suit again. "Stop fussing. You look stunning."
Since they were in public, Zel repressed all eighteen of the remarks which came into his mind in answer to this nonsense, and asked instead, "Where's your brother?"
"Oh, he'll be down," Val said airily. As these were the words Zel had been expecting, he was surprised at how rehearsed and automatic they sounded. More naturally, and more anxiously, Val went on, "Of course he will. I'm sure he will." Zel looked at him funny, and he explained, "He hates big parties."
"Not this one, though," Zel smiled, thinking of his biggest supporter.
He was surprised to see Val's face freeze into a sort of rictus smile, and then his betrothed cried out, "Oh, look at Daddy. Look how happy he is. He's so excited." On hearing his name, Gaav, who did look marginally less grumpy than usual, turned and lifted a hand in greeting. Val draped himself over the banister and blew him a kiss. Having grown accustomed to this sort of filial affection of late, Zel didn't so much as widen his eyes. "He really likes you, you know. You've completely won him over."
"He's been surprisingly decent to me," Zel admitted.
"He put this party together all by himself," Val said proudly.
Somehow, looking over the regimented slow dance of badly dressed demons, Zel wasn't surprised.
Two of the badly dressed demons were looking back at him out of the corners of their eyes as they walked towards the stairs. Unabashedly, he stared at the large, frozen-faced ice-blond and the youth with the acid-green eyes sitting on his shoulders, and strained his long, elvin ears to tune them in.
"Is that it?" Blond was asking.
"At least it's ornamental," Acid-eyes leered, and then broke into a terrifyingly broad grin as they reached Gaav.
"Those are our cousins," Val told Zel as greetings were exchanged. "The one who looks like Daddy fell into a vat of bleach is Dynast, and the twirp is Phibrizzo."
"Quiet," Zel ordered, goosing him to make him shut up. "I'm eavesdropping."
"When are you going to announce the thrilling news about little Valgaav?" Phibrizzo was asking with an innocently eager expression. His calling Val 'little' was ridiculous.
"In my own good time," Gaav rumbled smugly. "It is to be a surprise."
"Well," the little demon said with a tinge of doubt in his voice, sneaking a look upwards, "Valgaav -seems- infernally happy... I haven't seen Xellos all evening."
"Oh," Gaav said, pretending not to look uncomfortable, "Xellos has asked me to explain his unfortunate bone-shattering migraine."
"Oh, yes," Phibrizzo agreed, pretending not to sneer, "Xellos's little headaches. We understand perfectly."
A little alarmed at this, Gaav hastened to assure them, "He'll come down before the announcement, of course."
"Of course," Dynast echoed emptily. "Whose bones is he shattering? Are we having gelatin later?"
"Er..."
"Just leave it to us," Phibrizzo rescued him sunnily, and they turned away and started upstairs. "What's the matter with that boy--Oh, Mazenda, you look mind-bending! --I wonder where she found those hideous jodhpurs..."
"Gaav's worried," Dynast uttered.
The shorter one snorted. "I'd be worried, if I'd spawned Zelas and Xellos."
"I disapprove of bringing an outsider in."
"I'd expect it of Xellos," Phibrizzo agreed, "but Valgaav? Bringing a common chimera--a mere shamanist, too--into the family without even any real name!"
"He has family in the White community," Dynast said with heavy condemnation, and Zel bit his lips to keep his face straight as the two hit the top of the stairs and Phibrizzo burst into another smile half the size of his head.
"Oh, Vally, how lovely!" the youth said without specifying. He turned to Zel and said, with a definite note of patronization, "I'm Cousin Phibby, and I'm -so- happy about it. Oh, Vally, he is pretty, isn't he?"
"Dynast," the other announced, putting out a hand.
"Greyweir," Zel returned with equal brevity, taking it.
"A good family to marry into, Greyweir," Dynast proclaimed. "You're to be congratulated."
Fortunately, Zel had no eyebrows to raise at him.
Noting the slight purse of blue lips, Val hastened to say, "We all grew up together."
Zel bit down on the 'that's no excuse' that he really, really wanted to say.
Equally hastily, Phibrizzo gushed, "We've heard such -wonderful- things about you."
"Have you?" he asked with great courtesy and some interest. "From whom?"
Flustered, the youth stammered, "Er... uh... everybody," and hastened to change the subject. "It's a pity about Xellos."
"Frightful luck with those headaches," Dynast said, and Zel looked at him with more respect. He was clearly out of some loop here, but he could recognize a dig when he heard one, and he hadn't expected it from the icicle.
"Oh, there's Zelas!" Valgaav said, and almost made it look natural. "We've been looking for her. 'Scuze us." He dragged Zel over to where Zelas was leaning on a potted plant with a flute of champagne in one hand and an enormous black cigar in the other. She was better dressed than almost anyone there, with a sleeveless ivory shirt on over a silkily heavy thigh- length skirt of the same color, and sandals that laced all the way up to her knees. "Zelly, did you talk to Xel?"
"How do you find Dynast and Phibby, Greyweir?" Zelas drawled. "Are you honored to meet them?"
"What did Xel say?" Val pressed.
"Cheer up," Zelas urged lazily, with an elegant flick of one hand that sent smoke skittering into her brother's eyes. "If you find them bloody-minded and dull, wait 'till you meet the rest of the relatives. More you know about us, more impressively we rise. In your estimation. Father wanted a family, so Mother had me straight off to oblige him. But I was a girl, so Mother had Xellos, who took after her, so it seemed hopeless. Then Mother had Valgaav, and there was great joy resounding from the mountains. It was an obedient and devoted son, and the armies could be safely passed on. It must have been a great relief to Father. He must have been very grateful to Mother. Drink to Mother, Greyweir. She tried to be a Rubyeye for a while, and then gave up and died."
"Nonsense," Zel said, almost gently.
Gravely shaking her glass at him, Zelas uttered, "But it's ...not."
"What did Xellos say?" Val asked again, impatiently. "He's coming down, isn't he?"
Zelas choked on a mouthful of champagne and, recovering, said sharply, "Don't make me laugh, Brother."
"What is all this about Xellos, Val?" Zel asked, torn between anxiety and exasperation.
"Nothing," Val muttered.
"Thaaaaat's right," Zelas agreed expansively, sloshing, "it's nothing at all, just one of Xellos's whims. The silly little puppy wanted to give his kind of a party." Honing her voice to a katana-edge, she went on, "Between you and Father, you've managed to turn his celebration into a first-class funeral."
"He should've realized I couldn't announce my engagement quietly," Val snapped.
"Should have?" Zelas asked in that slow, deliberate way. "Sure. But unlike me, Xellos always hopes. Mud in your eye," she said to Zel, "To Xellos."
"Zelly," Val whined as she drained her glass, "You've been drinking since eight."
"So I have," Zelas grinned broadly. "On Long Night, too. Tsk."
"Make her stop," Val appealed to Zel.
"I will drink," Zelas said sharply, suddenly looking much less drunk, "exactly what I please at any party I condescend to attend." Relaxing back against the plant again and letting her long lids droop back to half-mask, she mentioned, "It's my protection against Father's and your tediou-- devoted and obedient friends," she corrected herself with another, satisfied, grin. "Mourn for my baby brother, Greyweir," she commanded, waving a manicured talon in his face. "He doesn't have any protection." She snapped her fingers, and a wisp of smoke appeared with a tray of glasses.
Val growled, and stalked off. Zel watched him go, then studied Zelas and suggested with friendly concern, "Take it easy, will you?"
Zelas studied him back, then put her empty glass down and saluted lazily.
w w w w
Downstairs, the butler was standing in the way of two young women, as garishly dressed as everyone else, but in an entirely different style.
"Professors Inverse and Nels Rada," the redhead in the white dress and gloves and black flying helmet and galoshes said, annoyed at the fisheye he was giving her.
"We were invited," added the taller one in the violet blouse with the oversized gold-accented tie, a little defensively. She reached into the pocket of her miniskort and pulled out an engraved card that went clang on the floor when the waiter, trying not to touch her gold nail polish, fumbled it.
"If I may take your outer gear," the butler said, carefully without reluctance. He took Lina's helmet, and the goggles Sylphiel had been carrying, and Sylphiel's swamp-green galoshes, and then Lina's black ones, and turned to the amphibious demon behind them.
Lina put her foot down and yiped as it came in contact with a puddle. "My shoe!"
As the butler conversed politely with the demon, Sylphiel tried to get his attention. Finally, as the other guest departed to join the part, he turned to them. "The elevator is to the rear and to the right."
"Yeah, great, fine," Lina said, hopping wildly, "but you've got my shoe!" She pointed at her galoshes.
He looked at her feet. One of them had a neat white boot on, but the other displayed only a black-stockinged calf. "I'm terribly sorry," he said, and fished the other boot out of it's galosh. She braced on his shoulder and tugged it on, with one or two unladylike grunts that made a few of the guests turn and stare.
When the boot was finally on, Sylphiel clutched her shoulder and whispered, "Don't tell anyone, but I think I've got a run in my stocking."
"That's it, you're wolf chow," Lina said regretfully, and looked sternly at the butler. "Tell anyone about this and I fireball your... um..." She craned her neck, trying to see whether the butler had a posterior to roast.
"No, miss. The elevator is--"
"To the rear," she said airily, giving up her attempts to see his.
"And the right," Sylphiel finished with great dignity. They bowed each other away, leaving the butler attempting to hide an interested perk behind an a long-suffering expression.
"I told you not to wear the blue stockings," Lina reminded her.
"I like this pair."
"I know. You've been wearing them at every party we've gone to for the last five years."
"The students like them..."
"Well, of course they do. My taste is impeccable. My point is, they're old."
"You'll have to get me a new pair. Lina, maybe we should just go home."
"We promised Zel we'd come. No wimping out. You know, this place reminds me of that nutjob, Halciform. I told you about Halciform; you remember him?"
"Oh, yes, the one with the poor little Snow White girl. Rubia, wasn't it? Whatever happened to him?"
But she wasn't destined to be reminded. Just then, they ran up against the fancy grillwork of the elevator. "To the rear," Lina informed Sylphiel.
"And the right," Sylphiel agreed as they stepped inside, and closed the doors. "Now where?"
Lina studied the panel of buttons, then clapped one hand over her eyes and slapped out randomly with the other. They waited. "Maybe I should try another button," she said dubiously. "Are we moving?"
In answer, the doors sprang open on a dismal greyness with torches. "Ooh!" Lina exclaimed, cheering up immediately, and propelled herself out of the elevator with anticipatory greed. "Cellars!"
Sylphiel followed more slowly, and caught up as she skidded to a halt in front of a shaggy pink carpet with enormous neon flowers all over it. "It seems to have been some sort of residence at one time," she commented.
"Shut up," Lina ordered. "Do you hear that?"
Sylphiel listened. The terrifying but unmistakable sound of 'Lorelie' tamed and whipped into submission and tethered to a music box drifted over the personality-laden shag carpet. Once it had been jazz. It tinkled. "We could dance to it?" she suggested.
After a moment, Lina decided, "No, we couldn't." She grabbed Sylphiel's hand and dragged her along, seeking out the source of the music, and came to the simple doorframe among the torches and black iron grilling.
When they peeked in, Xellos looked up from where he'd been morosely winding the music box up again. It had waddling mechanical penguins in various articles of clothing trying to dance on the top of it. "The party's upstairs," he informed them curtly.
"Well, excuse us for living!" Lina snapped, insulted, and wheeled around.
Sylphiel, less hasty, got to see the sulky expression under the purple-grey hair self-correct into hesitant interest. "No, wait," he said, putting the music box down on the table and half-getting up. His long, unfashionably soft dove-grey vest with its deliberate, lacy pattern of holes was undone over his crisp white shirt, whose buttonholes looked a little frayed, and he'd been sitting on his jacket. "You're Lina Inverse. You ran the Big Bangs workshop at Thaumverd Camp and never came into the nature area. I'm Xellos Rubyeye."
"Uh-uh," Lina objected. "Zel said his name was Valgaav."
"Val's my baby brother. Do you know Zel?"
"We've known him for years," Lina groaned expressively.
Cheering right up and moving to the door, Xellos beamed, "Well, then, pleased to meet you!" He plucked her hand up with a graceful turn of the wrist, kissed the air above her knuckles with a cheery flair, and nearly closed the door on Sylphiel. "What's that?" he asked Lina, eyeing Sylphiel with mild disfavor.
"Oh, that's my partner, Sylphiel Nels Rada," Lina explained unenthusiastically.
"Oh," Xellos grimaced, and moved away from the door with reluctant politeness. "You'd better come in, too, then. Close the door."
Giggling softly, Sylphiel complied, and got her revenge by sitting down on the white sofa in a ladylike manner while Lina zoomed across the room to drool over the bookcases. "Valgaav lives here?" she demanded approvingly, fingering a copy of -Magic for Maniacs- like she wanted to run away with it.
"I live here," Xellos corrected, and paused, and explained, "I live -here.- If you know what I mean."
"I see," Sylphiel said warmly.
Lina teased, "But you wouldn't eat your sweetbread this morning, so they won't let you go to the party, is that it?"
Xellos flopped down on the sofa next to Sylphiel, taking up all of it, and pulled a sad face. "I'm the mad brother," he whispered conspiratorially in her ear, "the one they don't talk about."
"The third brother in the fairy tales?" she asked. "The one who's too simple to chop down the oldest tree in the forest for firewood?"
"The one who wraps all-colored rags around his knees and sits on the mantel above the fireplace and gossips with the cats?" Lina added, coming to lean her elbows on Sylphiel's shoulders.
"That's me!" he chirped.
"That was us, too," Sylphiel said. "And look what happened to us." At their host's questioning expression, she warned him with awful portent, "We had to marry each other. Two professors without a cent to rub between us!"
"So you'd better be a good little boy, and eat your blood pudding," Lina admonished him.
After regarding them with an expression that was oddly affectionate for someone who'd just been introduced, Xellos swung his legs down off the couch and invited, "Sit down, won't you?"
"Thank you," Sylphiel said sedately. "It's good to be home again."
"You would not -believe- what a long walk we had!" Lina added with emphasis.
Xellos sighed. "It's a shame," he announced vigorously. "I was going to give a party tonight. A real one. It was all planned out and everything. I was going to--well," he finished ruefully, "it was a good idea. It might have been fun."
"Is your brother anything like you?" Sylphiel asked hopefully.
Horrified, Xellos started waving his hands around, his eyes shut on an embarrassed grin as he protested, "Oh, no, no, no! Don't worry, Val's -nothing- like me!" He stopped waving his hands and peeked out of one eye through splayed fingers as a thought struck him. "Do you mean to tell me you haven't met him yet? Your friend is appallingly negligent. You'd better go down right now and--"
"NO!" Lina yelled.
Sylphiel shook her vigorously. "Oh, no. -Definitely- no."
"Definitely no," Xellos nodded ruefully, tapping his ear to make sure it still worked, and sprawled backwards onto the couch, letting his head fall back with a satisfied sigh.
"Nope," agreed Lina, and Sylphiel put in a negative noise.
"Nope," Xellos echoed, and a silence purring with decided inaction settled over the room
It was broken by a jaunty little tune and a series of disgruntled yips. Zelas marched in with a measured stride. She was tootling on her fife, and she'd put her dom boots on over her elegant sandals. Padding behind her was the enormous Fenris, growling and muttering to himself around the handle of a picnic basket full of ice and bottles of champagne. Padding behind him was the creepy butler, carrying a tray with pieces of cheese and fruit impaled by brightly cellophaned toothpicks and surrounded by three kinds of crackers.
"Zelly!" Xellos exclaimed gleefully, sitting bolt upright, and coughed as his guests gave him funny looks. "My sister, Zelas." The looks didn't go away, although the butler did.
"Thought you could use a little Long Night cheer," she drawled, uncorking two of the bottles and leaning on Fenris.
"What a considerate big sister!" he squealed, jumping up to attack her and Fenris with a double bearhug. When he pulled away and sat back down, the looks had gotten worse.
"Yup. Sweet kid, that's me," his sister agreed smugly, and mentioned, "Your shirt's open."
"Is it?" he asked without concern, slipping the errant buttons back into place without bothering to look down. "These are Lina and Sylphiel. They're friends of Zel's."
"He used to live with us," Sylphiel explained, looking regretfully at the shirt.
"We came to warn his future husband about him," Lina said virtuously. "He always leaves the bathtub all gritty with stone dust."
"A toast to Greyweir," Zelas proposed, pouring them all glasses of champagne and snagging a second bottle for herself. "He needs it. I stand corrected," she said inaccurately, no one else having spoken and she herself at a seventy-degree angle to the ground. "He doesn't need it. He's doing juuuuuuuuuuuust fine."
"What do you mean?" Xellos asked sharply.
She grinned cruelly down at him. "I mean he's doing aaaall right. Having the time of his life. Got his hair tied down and Father's seeing he meets all the important entities."
"Are there important entities downstairs?" Lina asked excitedly.
Calmly, Sylphiel punched her in the arm.
"Hey!" she yelled. "What was that for?"
"We are -finished- with the prince scam, aren't we, Lina dear?" she said sweetly.
"Eheh," Lina coughed, embarrassed, and looked away.
"Devastatingly important," Xellos said, after he'd decided against wanting to understand that. "That's why I wanted to give a party down here."
Lina lifted her glass. "Mr. Xellos Rubyeye, on Long Night, entertained a small group of very unimportant people."
The girls drained their vessels (Zelas got about halfway down her bottle before she elected to breathe), and Xellos asked, with a plaintive little smile, "May I drink, too?"
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[end part ten]
Kaeru Shisho: Your reviews make my days! Yes, the HE was Gaav. You're talking about Silk&Stone, right? I dunno... I used to visit the site a lot, but they haven't updated in about six months. Is it still a live list? Because I'm not enough of an egoist to think that I could jump-start it, yaknow?
Kalis Deleira and Fragile Reflection--sorry about the wait. There was that thing where DICTIONARY GOT YANKED (oh no, I'm not still bitter about that at all at all), so I've been spending most of my energy formatting stuff for the site I'm putting together.
Thanks for sticking with me, guys. It means a lot.