"Fear is the only ethical method of social control. Take this village. Because I executed every man and woman over the age of thirty by impaling them on giant spikes, made the survivors drink the blood of their parents, and forbade anyone from taking down the corpses on pain of pain followed by eventual death, they fear me and fear for their souls. Hence, they will not rise up against me, because they know I will do worse things to them if they ignore my gentle warning. It's kinder like that, because if they rebelled I'd have to execute them all, slowly and painfully over the course of several weeks. But I do sometimes think I am a trifle soft-hearted.

Louis de la Vallière, the Bloody Duke



"It all began two months ago," Scarron said, settling down in an extremely plush chair in one of the private rooms. Louise perched on the edge of her chair; she did not feel quite comfortable on it. It was warm, and she was fairly sure that it was breathing. The man crossed one leg over the other at an angle which would have had a human male talking in a high pitched voice, and propped his chin on his hands. Unfolding behind him was a pair of wings, blue-black, which Louise tried to pretend was just shadows on the wall.

"Wait a moment, let me just..." there was a thump, and Gnarl's image, wavery and coloured in shades of blue appeared beside Louise, floating slightly above the ground. "See! Good as new once you wiped the mould off the old crystal ball. Can you see me?"

Scarron beamed. "Oh, oui, you old sheep-botherer," he beamed. "You haven't aged a day! Well, maybe a few days; the beard looks a little longer." The incubi became more serious. "You know about the Albionese Civil War, of course?" he asked rhetorically.

"Of course," Louise said, answering anyway. "I was only… only out of contact for three months, after all."

"Ah, good, good! Well, the Republicans were victorious. The king of Albion and the Prince Wales are dead; the Princess Hibernia is said to have fled to Germania, but since she's only nine not much will come of that for a while. But that is not what matters. For shock! Scandal! Infamy!"

"What?" Louise asked, getting slightly annoyed.

"Well, it emerged that Princess Henrietta had already pledged herself to the Prince Wales, and had sent men to recover her lover to safety in Tristain! Promised him her hand, and sworn sacred oaths to God and the Founder to that end! Scandal and infamy indeed, for that fact emerged after a marriage treaty had already been signed with Germania!"

Oh.

"Um," said Louise, blushing faintly. Oh. Oh. Um. If that had been… so that had… and then that… add up the dates… yes. Um. Oh dear. She was a little bit responsible for all of this happening because she had been the one who had been covering for Henrietta at that grand party to let her friend sneak away for some… kind of secret meeting. Multiple times. At night. And the princess had come back rather mussed and once with her dress on back to front and soaking wet. She had said she had been swimming, but...

Oh dear.

"Henrietta," she whispered sadly, already seeing where this was going.

"Hmm," Gnarl mused, "she is precocious. Two husbands by that age already. Mind you, she's descended from Queen Isabelle III, who would be her… what, her great-great-great grandmother? Or possibly great-great-great-great. I lose track of the years, sometimes. Either way, she used to entertain guests while in her bath of mare's milk and dabbled in demonology. Remember her, S'kareryeon?"

The incubus smirked. "Oh yes, she was a precocious little girl. Why, she first summoned me when she was only fifteen, and was very disappointed to find that I wasn't interested in women. She was sixteen when she had succubi murder her older sister and parents. It was très disappointing when her son locked her up and exorcised her magic, but those were a good twenty years for us. Good times, good times; didn't your overlord manage to conquer a fair amount of the north then?"

"Yes, those were the days," Gnarl agreed.

The conversation was briefly interrupted as a busty woman with horns and wings and about three handkerchief's worth of fabric on delivered the drinks. "Here you are, mi mademoiselle," she said, bowing, before walking back out, swinging her hips.

Louise took a sip, and spluttered at the mouth-burningly strong alcohol. She tried to conceal the fact that she spat it back into the mug, because she was fairly sure she could get tipsy from a few mouthfuls of this thing served in pints. "I don't care about those days!" she declared, to conceal. "Stop reminiscing and tell me what's actually happening!"

"Oooh, listen to the temper on her!" Scarron said approvingly. "She's a fierce one, Gnarl, though I suppose that is to be expected of a de la Vallière. Oh well." Scarron smoothed back his moustache. "Well, once that news was out, things were all a mess. The Germanians were furious, of course. They'd been made into fools. And the Church wasn't happy either. So one thing led to another, and they tried and convicted the crown princess of the venal crimes of bigamy and adultery."

Louise swallowed. "They… they can't and… no."

"Oh, but they can!" Scarron said gleefully. "She is merely the crown princess, not the queen, and her mother did not act to stop it; tales in the palace say that she is both furious and distraught. She was guilty, after all, by her own confession of pacta sunt servanda bigamy for she was promised by sacred oaths to two men at once. And as for the adultery… well, she could not prove that she had not consummated her relationship with the Prince Wales, and the presumption exists and has always existed that a marriage is consumed unless the bride can prove otherwise, and thus – since she and the Prince Wales are known to have met at least once when the Germanian marriage negotiations were in progress – adultery was added to her sins." The incubus sniffed. "It's very silly, of course," he added.

"Of course it is!" Louise exploded.

"I know! Adultery is barely a sin, and I should know. Sometimes, if it's done with permission it doesn't tarnish the soul at all, which makes it worthless for vice and damnation."

Louise stared for a moment, and mentally recalibrated to what manner of being she was dealing with. Well, not dealing-dealing, because it was not allowed to consort with demons, but which she was… yes, merely getting information from and then Gnarl would do the actual dealing. Yes. That was it. The circuitous mental logic took the wind from her sails and stopped her from exploding at Scarron, and she took a deep breath, and forced herself to be calm. Settling back down, she crossed her arms on her lap. "So… so they convicted her of bigamy and adultery," she said, softly, the tension in her voice forced down. "But didn't Cardinal Mazarin have something to say about that?"

Scarron shifted slightly on his seat, his breaches squeaking. "Cardinal Mazarin has been thrown into the deepest darkest dungeons for treason, when it came to light that he had been trying to marry the princess to the emperor of Germania for personal gain – they say he had been getting thousands of ecús in bribes! Which," the incubus added darkly, "pleases me greatly. That old fool deserves to rot in there, for what he did to me and the many times he thwarted me, oh oui. Queen Marienne wasn't exactly the most capable ruler before, if you excuse me saying so…"

It was true, Louise did have to admit; the queen had fallen apart at the prince consort's death. Everyone said that.

"… but now they're saying that she's gone mad from the stress; that she spends all the days talking to her husband and berating her 'useless feckless daughter'. So the Council collectively has the regency, ruling in the Queen's name until she recovers. Apparently they are trying to find a new husband for her, anyone who could sire a child on her, because with this shadow over her it is inconceivable that the princess take the throne and... well, the succession is unclear, but it is possible that King Joseph of Gallia might be the next-in-line by some reckonings. They have made peace with the Albionese new government, and have raised taxes to pay compensation to Germania for the deeds of the princess."

"The Council," said Louise, voice low and flat. "Who is on it?"

The man rose, and recovered four sketches from a drawer. Shuffling them in his hands, he laid them out before her. "Un. Alexander Nicholas de Mott, the comte de Mott. He is… an amusing man," Scarron said with a devilish grin. "He and I have had certain dealings in the past, although he thought I was merely a man. He is a man of great appetites, great passions, and really great parties. I do believe the other members of the Council hold him in contempt, but he is popular among the nobility, and his fetes, pageants, and other little indulgences also win him support among the populace. He is confident, gregarious, and a wonderful lover."

Louise blanched at the images that Scarron was bringing to mind, and tried not to gag. "I see," she said. "I think… yes, mother commented that she thought he was a useless fop who couldn't… couldn't tie his own breeches without help," she corrected. That hadn't been precisely what her mother had said about him, and if she had known her daughter was listening she probably would not have used the language she had used.

"Fop? Why, certainly. Fops, as you put it, have the best fashion sense. But useless?" Scarron's hand went to his mouth. "Oh my, no. He is a skilled mage, and he is more than anything else likeable. That much is needed to counter some of the others; for example, deux. Françoise Athénaïs de Mortemart, marquise of Montespan. She…"

"I vaguely know her," Louise said. "My oldest sister is a friend of hers. Well, they go to the same readings, and once fought a duel over a theory. Well, more than one duel, actually. That's about as close as Eleanore gets to 'friend'."

"Mmm, oui, oui. She is a great beauty of the realm, but more than anything she is clever… perhaps too clever. They call her 'the Alabaster', and that describes how she looks and how she acts, too. She has taken over the treasury and has begun to rework the tax code; she is calm, logical, precise and cold. They say she makes those people who do not do as she orders to her standards into a living hell. Which is ridiculous," the incubus said, leaning back, "because living hells are not a bad thing." He shrugged. "She controls the money, and through it she controls the bureaucracy. And many other things too."

"Oh, I like her," commented Gnarl. "Beautiful, and a love for the bureaucratic arts? I think I might rather like to reform her tax code and extend a mandate for major infrastructural projects which ease the delivery of goods to urban populations with her. And cover her in melted chocolate."

Louise opened her mouth. Louise closed her mouth. Louise opened her mouth. Louise closed her mouth. "Moving on," she managed hastily, "… really, really far on, who's the third?"

Scarron leaned back. "Trois? That would be Armand Jean du Plessis, duke de Richelieu."

Realisation dawned. "Oh, of course," said Louise bitterly. "The Chief Justice of the courts. Of course he would have to be in on this. No doubt he was the one who issued the charges against Henri… against the princess. Which means that any judge he's personally appointed since… Founder, he's been serving for decades, most of the judges and magistrates in the kingdom are probably in his pocket, or at the very least are loyal to him. He gives everything a nice clean shine of legality," she said, sneering. "All nice and… Good."

Beside her, the flickering blue image of Gnarl smirked. "Oh, indeed," he said, smiling like a cat who had just got not only the cream, but everyone's else's cream as well. "That is what Good does, no?"

"Well, I can't feel too ill-inclined towards him," Scarron said idly, "because he did throw Cardinal Mazarin in the deepest, darkest jail he could find."

"Ambitious, domineering, pushy, energetic," the pink-haired girl said darkly, ignoring the other two. "Yes, it all fits. I wonder if he even had to be bribed to do this, or whether he did it all on his own?" Shaking her head, she looked down at the sketches for the first time, paying proper attention in the dim light of the Charming Fairies Inn. And the fourth was… oh no.

"Oui, the last is quatre. And that is Jean-Jacques de Wardes, viscount de Vajours."

"My fiancé," Louise said, her world crumbling around her.

Scarron coughed. "Well, I do believe that the engagement was called off after you were thought to be dead," he pointed out. "Your horse was found, exhausted and injured, wandering in the wilds of the north. There was no sign of you." He shrugged. "Ah, well. Oui, yes, the knight-captain of the Griffin Knights, and now the knight-general of all three orders. He says that he was so overcome by the discovery that he had been duped into aiding the princess in her adultery and bigamy that he had to, in the name of his honour, take the information straight to the duke de Richelieu. As an honourable man, you understand." The dark-haired man had a twist of amused sarcasm in his voice. "Well, this 'honourable man' is proud, lonesome, and self-occupied. In some ways, he is the one I cannot get a handle on; all the others have things that they want. I cannot discover what he wants, though he diverts men of the military towards some goal that I know not."

"This can't be true," Louise whispered. "And… I'm dead." She bit her lip. "Cattleya must feel terrible," she said, sadly. "I should let her know… but no, I… argh." She thumped her chair, and it yelped in pain, prompting her to squeak in surprise. "Maybe it is a question of honour for him," she said, "but… that doesn't make it acceptable! Even if it was, he should not be helping such… such terrible people!"

"They say he shares the bed of the Madame de Montespan," Scarron added helpfully.

"How dare he!" Louise screamed, prompting the incubus to flinch and his wings to instinctively go to block. "How dare he! He should still be mourning me! His fiancé is dead in tragic circumstances… he shouldn't be jumping into some cheap tart's bed! How very dare he! And… that, outside of marriage, when he's just had Henrietta arrested for… that lying, hypocritical, cowardly, dishonourable, ill-bred, piggish, insensitive, cheating, unfaithful, terrible, horrible, mean, stupid dog!" Eyes ablaze, her hair blowing in an unseen gale, she panted with her hands held in front of her as if she was throttling a man seen only in her mind's eye – which happened to be true. "He is going to pay for this! And so is she!"



In the streets of Bruxelles, the band of five perfectly normal human children were doing perfectly normal things like casually stealing laundry, picking pockets, and picking up dog excrement off the floor and throwing it at passing carriages. The latter activity proved so popular that actually-real-human children joined in, and in the resulting chaos the disguised minions got bored and continued on their mission, following the path of the green among their number who sniffed constantly.

"Here!" it announced, pointing up at a large stone waterfront building.

Maggat shot a doubtful look at Fettid; a look shared by the other minions apart from Igni, who was picking bird muck off a windowsill and carefully putting it in a pouch on his belt. "Is it just because place is next to river?" he asked. "Because Scyl not want to have to need to bring you back to life again. Think there some blue life force in green that make you. You no can swim, Fettid."

"Yeah," Maximilian agreed. "Fettid pretty dumb sometimes. Not as dumb as goblin, but pretty close."

"Listen, I smells it," the beleaguered green hissed. He jabbed a finger at his nose. "You wanna argue with this nose? Nose better at smelling than you."

"You is pretty smelly," Scyl commented, adjusting his wimple. "Maybes we should try it, Maggat. What's the worst that can happen?"

Maggat glared at the blue. "We all get killed by angry humans, and you not able to get away to sneak back and bring us back from dead place and so we have to be dead forever? Also, Overlady or Gnarl give us bollocking when they find out. 'Specially Gnarl."

"Well, yes," Scyl admitted, "but what else bad?"

"Listens," Fettid said, sniffing again, "I can smells it clear as nose on face. Building stinks of Evil, just like Igni stinks of burny things. Evil and Abyss and humie sweaty and drinkies and hornies and hair and fire and smoke and…"

Maximilian groaned, slapping a four-digitted hand into his forehead. "Stupid! Why you not say it smells of hornies! Hornies are what we is looking for, because Gnarl's friend is a hornie! Argh! You as dumb as humie who cannot speak!"

"Are humies what cannot speak stupid?" Igni asked.

The brown shook his head. "No, see-see, because word 'dumb' actually mean…"

He was slapped over the back of the head by Maggat. "You is getting all poet-ical on us again, Maxy," the larger minion said threateningly, "so I think it be time for you to be shutting up again. And for us to be going into building and having drinkies, while Fettid sees where the hornies and the Overlady be."



"Does this usually go on long?" Scarron whispered to Gnarl, both eyes locked on the furious overlady who was building increasingly long chains of bowdlerised profanity to describe her former fiancé. "You say she's only been doing this for a few months? Oh my, she has a good grasp on the basics of ranting! I haven't heard something like this in years."

"Oh, she usually rants for a while, and then goes to sulk," Gnarl observed. "She has so much Evil in her heritage that it's not much of a surprise that she has a natural flair. Now, anyway, S'kareryeon, perhaps we should get back to business."

The incubus settled back down, being careful to try to keep away from Louise's line of sight. "Oh, certainly mon ami," he said. "I suppose it is information you will be wanting to buy, at the usual rates. Because we are old friends and because I expect repeat custom from you, I will give those basic facts about the recent events for free; it would not do me well to sour you by making you pay for things you could have picked up off the street."

"You're a temporarily useful ally, S'kareryeon," Gnarl said.

"Oh, you. You charmer."

"Mmm. Well, there are several things. There are some missing artefacts from the tower, and I suspect they have passed through your fingers, but they are lower priority. There are two important things. Firstly, that disgusting vampire managed to damage the tower heart, and bits have been chipped from it."

Scarron's hand went to his mouth. "Zut ahors! Is it…"

"It's stable," Gnarl reassured him, "and not about to explode. Just. But it is damaged, and cannot do many of the things it should be able to. I estimate that perhaps three to four separate fragments have been chipped off. It is barely stable."

The man pursed his lips. "For this, I will give you a discount if I hear of such things," he declared. "An explosion of raw magic wiping out northern Tristain if some idiotic Hero decides to attack the heart with a pick-axe and damages it further is not something which will serve my interests, so if I tell you of such things, I will expect you to act quickly to recover it."

Gnarl grinned. "I can promise you that much," he agreed. "And the other thing? That bloody vampire pawned pretty much all the armour for the overlady. She cannot rampage across the land like she is – at best, she can sneak around and be a sinister presence on the land in that robe. And that is not enough. Especially when she so clearly wants to be the rampaging kind of overlady, not the subtle corrupter type. We therefore need to commission a new set of armour, based to be compatible with the gauntlet."

"Which gauntlet is she using?" Scarron asked. "The Xcythine Talon? The Oasaka Claw? The…"

"The Gauntlet."

"The… oh my." Scarron shot a glance at Louise, who by now had stopped shouting and was instead rhythmically balling and unballing her fists, muttering to herself. "There is a person I know," he said, quickly, "and she would be overjoyed to work on such a project. She has always wanted something grand to work on with her hobby, but alas, the most she has been able to get in commissions is a breastplate or so, most of the rest being jewellery."

"I expect you'll want a commission," Gnarl said cynically.

"I think I'll waive this, just this once," Scarron said, rising and unfolding his wings. "For one, I'll see whatever you pay myself. And for two, I do like to keep my little girl happy." He paused. "But don't expect this treatment normally," he added. "We can take your overlady to be fitted, and then you and I… well, we can get reacquainted properly, eh?"

"And you might even explain what you're doing here, running a bar and trading in information rather than ruling over vast domains of the Abyss."

The man pouted. "Don't push your luck that hard," he warned. "At least buy me a drink first."