New Year's was a day of revelry and celebration throughout the kingdom. While Christmas was equally festive, that holiday was more focused on the family, and with its added religious importance the pageantry and feasting were generally kept within agreed-upon bounds. But for New Year's Eve, the wassail-bowl was kept well-filled and the revels often lasted well into the morning, whether one was a peasant farmer, a rural merchant, or a noble lord.
In the capital, Court Society gathered to the annual New Year's masquerade. The nobility jockeyed for the royal appointment to host the ball throughout the year, and the chance to outdo the previous year in wild spectacle was one that would convey prestige and approbation if successful. No house could encompass the scope, so the Valentian Gardens and their assembly-rooms were pressed into service for a night which became like unto an Illyrian Carnival, with the full week compressed into a single night.
Generally, Lillet Blan liked masquerades. The eighteen-year-old Royal Magician was not comfortable with Court Society manners, having become part of the elite circle solely by virtue of her position in the Royal House of Magic and having no training from childhood in the way of the noble classes. The anonymity offered by a mask helped greatly; not only could she smooth over any faux pas by simply not being associated with it, but a masquerade itself was a place for added license, where the strict codes of behavior and manners that governed the nobility were loosened.
Her enjoyment of any party, though, was drastically reduced when she was forced to be separated from her beloved, Amoretta Virgine. In this case, it wasn't even the social round of dancing and circulating that caused the problem, but a professional matter: the party's host had commissioned a series of very exotic and dramatic fireworks and lighting displays and the manager of the Gardens had whispered in Royal ears that that was all well and good but he'd be deeply obliged if someone could take measures to insure that the displays weren't going to burn down the Gardens with the gathered nobility of the kingdom inside. Thus, half an hour before midnight, Lillet had been responsible for triple-checking the Runes used to craft the display. She was actually rather impressed with the artistry involved, though the underlying magic was technically sloppy in places. Having made certain that any impending disasters could not, at least, be blamed on magic, Lillet made her way back to the cluster of hanging lanterns that marked where she'd arranged to reunite with Amoretta.
Unfortunately, the homunculus wasn't there.
That was the problem, she supposed, with the fact that neither of their costumes included a pocket-watch, so they couldn't arrange to meet at a fixed time. Lillet's work had taken nearly twenty minutes, more including the time to walk to and from the display area, and it wasn't fair to Amoretta to expect her to just stand around and wait for her. Their only arrangement was that they'd meet back up at this spot before the fireworks started, which still wasn't for another five minutes.
"This is a nice place to watch the fireworks from," a husky voice purred from behind Lillet's right ear, nearly making her yelp in surprise. It was an older woman's voice, probably somewhere around thirty or thirty-five, and definitely not Amoretta's. "Though, if you ask me, it'd be more fun for us to make some fireworks of our own."
With that leading remark, Lillet found herself caught from behind, a taller woman's body pressed up against her own, hands sliding up from her waist across her belly and rising. While Lillet had sensibly protected her body with a series of defensive wards, magical protections that would deflect attacks by blasting the attacking weapon, hand, or fangs with magical lightning, those wards did not trigger; the sudden touch was unwanted, but not harmful.
She therefore had to pull free just as the woman's hands reached her breasts, spinning around and stepping back.
"H-hey, stop that!"
"Come on, now, don't be coy," the woman said, her purring voice appropriate as she wore an elaborate gold-edged cat mask over the upper half of her face to accent a costume that appeared to consist of a fake tail and strategically placed strips of fur. She reached for Lillet again, apparently not stopping at one rejection.
The traditional response of the well-bred lady when subjected to offensive advances, physical or verbal, was a sharp slap delivered to the face of the offender. This not only provided direct physical chastisement, but further implied the moral rightness of the one delivering the slap.
Lillet was not a well-bred lady. She had, in fact, grown up on a farm, and her arms and shoulders had spent her childhood years swinging a hoe and carrying milk pails before they'd turned to supporting the weight of magic books. Thus, when her fist cracked into the woman's cheek, it planted her squarely on her bottom on the ground.
"Try keeping your hands to yourself!" she snapped, somewhat redundantly.
"Lillet!" That was Amoretta's voice, high with worry. Lillet turned her head to see her lover approaching quickly, another girl at her side. This second woman looked, from what Lillet could tell, to be about Lillet's age…and Lillet's height…with Lillet's honey-blonde hair…wearing a blue-and-black doublet with black hose, a rapier at her waist, a feather-adorned black tricorn, and blue-and-black face-paint for a mask, meaning that she had dressed as famed Lusatian highwaywoman Elfride Grüner…just like Lillet.
"Adeline!" Lillet's double yelped, springing to the side of the fallen lady, who groaned and looked back and forth between the two of them.
"Did you hit me so hard I'm seeing double?" she murmured.
"I guess we were too late," Amoretta said.
"Miss Virgine mistook me for Miss Blan," the second highwaywoman said, helping the fallen lady back to her feet. "They were supposed to meet up here, too, so we wanted to get back before any misunderstandings happened."
"You expected something like this to happen?" Lillet caught on to the significance of their haste.
"Miss Margeaux apparently does not like to let the fine points of social discretion slow her down when she has made an assignation," Amoretta said, not without sympathy. The homunculus herself tended to be honest to the point of being blunt, and found the need for tact and discretion generally irritating.
"So I noticed," remarked Lillet, who liked that quality…in Amoretta.
"But it got Cassie's arms around me," Adeline Margeaux put in, "so who am I to complain?" Her companion giggled, while Lillet rolled her eyes.
"Are you all right, though, Lillet?" Amoretta asked.
"I'm fine, just annoyed." Though she could see how she herself might have made the same mistake if someone who looked like Amoretta had been wearing the same costume, especially if she'd had a glass or two from the wassail-bowl the way Margeaux's color suggested she had. "I just don't like getting pawed by a stranger, even if it was a reasonable mistake. Maybe, to be on the safe side, you'd better make sure to cover over the feeling of her hands with your own?"
Amoretta chuckled at that, but it was Margeaux who laughed the loudest.
"You'd better hang on to this one, Miss Virgine; I like her. She's got a real knack with a punchline."
Amoretta's arms immediately closed around Lillet just in case she was inclined to hit the woman again.