BAD GRACE - quantum witch © 2005
see Prologue for warnings, rating, and summary
In which Hastur meets the next Deadly Sin, but doesn't realise it.
3:04 - FROM RAGE TO RICHEST
NEW YEAR'S EVE. The entire world was celebrating. But Kogane Kabutihan was sitting by the window in her bedroom, nursing her rice wine in silence and darkness. To her, it was merely another year of being without what was rightfully hers.
She sat there sighing over what should have been. All her deepest desires and fantasies were as cherry blossoms. Beautiful to see, fleeting, and quick to decay.
Kogane was twenty-one, of pure Oriental blood, and very beautiful in a pristine way. Her dark hair was long but tidy and often pinned aside. Her eyes were golden-brown windows to nothing, as she kept everything to herself. And for tonight's occasion she wore a brand new, personally tailored Chinese-style golden silk dress, sewn exquisitely with a dragon on front and back.
She was rich, young and beautiful, sitting in a thirty-room Wiltshire manor as a hundred drunken party guests whooped it up downstairs, so why was she feeling depressed? True, some of the rich and famous are so jaded they might sulk alone at a party, especially if prone to depression while also drunk. But this was not the case for Kogane.
She had only recently become rich and wasn't exactly famous. She'd grown up in a small drafty flat in Manchester with her mother. Poor and unhappy, shabbily dressed, and embarrassed to go out due to the taunts of children only slightly less poor than herself. Life had seemed like a tunnel where there with no light at the end, not even the typical train. It was an unfinished tunnel, dead-ending in a stone wall. Fairly often, it seemed someone was trying to brick up the single open end while she was still inside.
Growing up, her mother had fed her largely on stories, told under the influence of much alcohol, about her noble heritage and the shame and dishonour brought upon them by Kogane's father. Kogane soaked this information up but was sworn to secrecy, as there was no valid to be taken to the world. Kogane, being a child well-taught in the ways of silence, held her tongue and remained forever demure in all ways.
What her mother had told her was this: As a teenager she had been engaged to Kogane's father, who was brother to the king of Shimane-Sugana, a small island nation in the Philippine Sea. Shortly before their marriage, he managed to seduce her, and when she was discovered pregnant he disavowed any knowledge. She was sent away in disgrace to England to raise her child. Meanwhile, the current king's wife seemed to be infertile, and he himself was in increasingly poor health. By their laws, only a firstborn child, of either sex, was allowed the privilege of rule unless they died or abdicated. Kogane's mother had kept track of all this through the years, reading international papers. She prayed every day that her lover would come to his senses and return for his firstborn child before taking the throne, to restore their honour.
Kogane had grown up dreaming of her elusive father, both glorifying and despising him. One fantasy had her sailing to her native land and coming before her father, head held high as he granted her a rightful place beside him, declaring to the world it has all been a dreadful mistake, that Kogane's mother had been mentally ill and tragically kept their child from him all those years, but now everything would be fine. The other was envisioning herself wealthy and famous, buying an army to invade his country and bring him to his knees and, as he begged forgiveness, she would laughingly decline and strike his head from his pitiful body, then display the foul thing upon a spike outside her new palace. But alas, Kogane knew these only to be fantasies.
Then Kogane's mother had died a few months ago, and left her everything. Which turned out to be a very large amount of money, enough to successfully raise the well-plucked eyebrow of aristocrats. To Kogane's eyes, it was a fortune so huge it made the Queen Mum's look like a child's candy money.
She didn't know what to say. Her former life was gone, but the training of her mother to be polite and decorous in all things came to the forefront, and she schooled herself. The prim but poor young lady smiled at the trustees who presented her with her new fortune.
"Might I humbly request as to why it is only now that I become aware of this money? And from where the money came?" she asked softly.
"Oh, yes," replied the equally polite trustee, who thought he was getting an easy ride with the naïve girl. "There is a Swiss account, which was apparently set up a year before your birth. An arrangement was made for a certain monthly stipend to be sent along to your mother, for necessary expenses and so on. And upon your mother's demise, bless her, the full remaining amount would be released to you, her daughter."
"Ah, I see," Kogane nodded, continuing her façade of well-bred gentleness. "And the remaining sum is so very large that an entire family could live quite comfortably for the next forty years. So may I inquire as to why the monthly stipend we received was so very small, thus forcing my dearly departed mother and I to live so meagrely that we rarely had heat in the winter, and my clothes even now are frayed at the seams?"
The trustee began to sweat just a bit, sensing a piranha beneath the surface of the peaceful koi pond. "Er, well. There are of course expenses in hiring trustees for any account, and we were retained to follow instructions set up by the patron of that account. I'm sorry to say that expenses do keep rising over that many years, and of course taxes rise with them, and… well… the economy being what it is… darn that Maggie Thatcher…and…" He stopped talking altogether when the expression in his diffident client's eye swam up and tore the flesh off his face.
"You will please excuse me, won't you?" Kogane said with perfect aplomb. "Might I use your telephone?"
He fumblingly agreed, and listened in horror as she phoned the police to report a grand theft and embezzlement in one call, and went on to hire a lawyer in the next.
When she replaced the phone and stood up, smoothing her simple skirt down, she bowed her head smoothly and said, "I shall look forward to devouring you in court, sir. Have a pleasant afternoon."
She won a further £1,000,000 and the satisfaction that her former trustees were now shamed and dishonoured as she had been her entire life. Her new, and very reputable, solicitor helped her to put money into stocks, prime real estate, and technological research companies. Her fortune tripled within a month, and that doubled again in another. She bought her manor and reclused herself with a host of armed guards and attendants to cater to her every need.
Yes, the glass slipper was on the other foot now and she would crush underfoot whomever she needed to, with exceptional grace and propriety of course.
Since the former trustees weren't lying when they said they didn't know the source of the Swiss money, Kogane hired an investigator to track it down. Initially he found the name of an Italian company. He went to track that down, and was led further to another company in Colombia. When he finally found a connection in the Bahamas, she began to suspect he was less than sincere, and ceased funding him so that he had to find his own way back to England. After his return he was privately addressed by her guards, whereupon he coughed up the remaining funds, every scrap of information, and very nearly his spleen. Being very proper and genteel, she did not sue him over his misconduct, but she did successfully besmirch his name for the next three lifetimes.
And now she was bored. She wasn't used to living like this. It was almost worth thinking about giving all the money to charity, changing her name, and just moving away.
She had never truly believed what her mother told her about her father, which was a pity. Being the princess of an island kingdom was a very appealing fantasy. But her poor mother was very likely mad, having spent too long in the bottle that eventually ended her life. The trail leading to what might have been her father was cold, if it was even valid. And even if she'd had all the money in the Western Hemisphere, that would not buy his acceptance. She had no proof, and the pudding it lay in was nowhere to be found.
Now, the last night of the year, she looked out of the window of her third floor bedroom to see the party had spilled onto the law as everyone prepared for the fireworks show. They were all so drunk that they'd either blow themselves up or light her house on fire. It didn't matter. Her money would fix both people and homes, or buy new ones. It wasn't as though any of those people were her friends.
There came a flash of light outside and a boom as the night sky became a gold and green flower. She turned away and blinked back her tears, frustrated at herself for even being frustrated in the first place…
And jumped in alarm to see a figure by her fireplace. A tall, lanky man in dark overcoat and sunglasses stood there, smoking a cigarette. The tip glowed too brightly in the darkened room. He smiled slowly and from a distance, in the flashing lights of fireworks, his teeth seemed very sharp.
"Hallo, Meez Kabutihan," came the smarmy voice.
Kogane blinked in shock, and then spoke with most exquisitely cultured outrage. "Sir, I shall give you two seconds to remove yourself, though of course my guards are already on their way. Who are you?"
He smiled rakishly, not afraid. "I ahm Duke Rosz Eldughaz." His clearly affected accent was nothing that belonged anywhere on earthº. "Your guards are all dahnstairs, drunk as zhe rest. Don't vurry, dear lady. I undersztand your troubles. I too, ahm deposed and disregardedt."
Kogane's mental eyebrows were dancing in different directions, and her inward mouth twisted oddly as she tried to follow what the hell this strange man was saying with his unfathomable and atrocious accent. Outwardly, not a single muscle twitched. Until his last sentence.
"Wha-?" she inquired, almost losing composure. "My troubles? And you are…," she latched onto the key word, "deposed…?" Her eyes glinting strangely, she whispered, "Do please, tell me more."
"Ah, yes, a sadt sztory." He came closer and as he did he turned on a nearby lamp. He was very tall and thin. His face and nose were also thin and he was not precisely unattractive, but a bit unnatural. It was as though this wasn't his true face, but one that he'd decided was what a human ought to look like and had fashioned it to wear for the occasion ºº. There was wavy auburn hair on top, and a dark reddish-brown goatee and sideburns. And instead of sunglasses, as it had seemed when the room was dark, he wore pair of glasses with bright red lenses. One could see his eyes through the tinting, and they were narrow and sharp as a switchblade. "I vill tell you of my troubles. Please, let us szit."
They sat on the sofa before the fire, and he began. "My sztory is quite like your ahwn, in many vays. I vas born to a higher placze, then cast dahn into Hell, forgoetten. I crawledt und clawedt my vay to a poszition of power, vas a Duke for zo many years. Then trouble came und I hadt to flee my landt, Hastravania, for fear of death. It has szince passed to other hands, forhever out of my reach." He paused to sigh and take a deep drag on his cigarette, waiting to see her reaction. Which was interested but not yet convinced.
"And I alszo have… grand news for you. Grand news indeedt. News thot vill solve many of your current problems andt create zhem for others upon whom you vish revenge. I hafe watched you for szome time now, und I know… your szecret," he continued in a low and persuading voice. "You hafe a path to zhe throne in Shimane-Sugana, do you not? But no szolid proof, eh?"
Kogane's eyes flew wide. She had not told anyone, not ever, and knew that her mother had not spoken of it to anyone else. She knew that she would have been taken for mad, just as she had believed her mother to be mad. Until the money came. "How do you –"
The Duke smiled, and his teeth did seem just a bit on the sharp side. "My dear girl, I hafe my vays. I hope you do not mind thot my people investigahted your old home und found szomethink hidden avay by your mother, rest her szoul. Beneath zhe floor vas a small box, andt in zhat box were letters, szeveral years of correspondence between herszelf und your father. I hafe them in my pozzession." He reached into his coat's breast pocket and produced several sheets of paper.
Kogane grabbed them eagerly. They were in her mother's native language, which she had been taught to read from childhood. And she definitely recognized her mother's handwriting. The other was unknown, but the gist of the letters were all too clear. Her mother confessed undying love even though she had been tossed aside. Her father declared he was sorry that she felt there had been anything special between them, but he simply could not be responsible for the fact she had seduced him before their arranged marriage and thus dishonoured herself, and he could not be held accountable as it would endanger his entire country's honour as well. Thus, he said, she should be very glad indeed that he bothered to make sure she was cared for at all.
When she'd finished reading, Kogane was shaking with rage. Everything her mother had said was true. Her father was a complete bastard, shutting them out and denying them both, leaving them to suffer for twenty years. Kogane's father was recently married and had a very young son. Regardless of legitimacy, she knew that with real proof, given publicly, he would have to admit the truth. And she could pressure her way to be next in line for the throne.
Suddenly she wanted it as nothing before in her life. It was meant to be hers. She would have her deepest desires, and would make her father pay in ways that would become horror tales to frighten small children into the next century. And the letters were proof.
Except… now that she looked closely, there were merely photocopies. They could easily be fakes. And there were no envelopes.
She frowned at the Duke and said, "Where are the originals for these?"
He smiled that sharky smile again, and said, "My princess, ve are both in needt of our birthright. It shall take usz both szome time to achieve zhis goal. I suggest a joint effort. I hafe no money und you hafe no szolid proof…"
"You bloody charlatan! You fiendish fraud!" She lost her cultured composure and leapt to her feet, screaming in rage. "You will leave this minute or I'll –"
"Yoooou'll whaaaat?" he growled, rising. He seemed to have grown massively, his faked accent melted away like his polite demeanour into something all too real and unpleasant. "You'll do nothin' but what I say, human. I'm not what you think…" His eyes glowed brightly behind his red glasses, and when removed showed their colour to be the same as the lenses. His hands grew talons, his grin did not hide his fangs any longer. There were ripples underneath his skin that reminded one far too uncomfortably of maggots. And in one final burst of anger, wings burst from his back. They were smoky darkness hovering above, flickering ember red underneath.
Hastur continued speaking. "You want somethin' greater than you ever had, what you always deserved. Me, I only want what was mine anyway, what was taken away. And a little revenge on the side for both of us. Just work with me, chickie, and we'll get it all."
She was momentarily aghast at the vision of hell before her, but gradually realised it was just one more conman looking for a deal. "Why should somethi – someone like you care about working together?"
"Because unfortunately I can't use all my powers without givin' 'em a target Downstairs. Gotta lay low, ya see. Sucks. But I can also work for you, cheaper than all them guards I ate – whoops." He grinned so broadly it nearly cleaved his head in half. "So tell me, princess… what's it gonna be?"
In the midst of her fear, Kogane thought she felt something writhing inside her chest, like the maggots under the skin of the demon before her. No… more like silk worms that had spun and spun for years, staying cocooned and silent, and now were slowly peeling back the layers for a swarm of razor-winged butterflies to emerge.
Her mind was buried in the haze of desires. She wanted everyone who had cheated her and stolen from her to suffer. She wanted the country that would pass to her father. She wanted to enjoy her wealth, and she wanted more of it. She wanted to grind someone else into the dirt for a change.
She wanted the entire fucking world.
Kogane gasped in alarm, panting desperately, and for just a moment her eyes flashed a hot burning yellow, then closed. And Something Else opened them to look at the demonic Duke.
Hastur was staring at her with one brow raised and his lip lifted in a snarl. He was waiting to see if she would comply or become a midnight snack. Either way was fine with him, because he would just work on locating her cash and take his Plan to the next step. If he could just figure out this system of 'stocks and bonds'. He'd always thought it had to do with torture devices, but apparently things had changed in more ways that one.
The girl took a deep breath and smiled shakily up at him. And lied. "Goodness… I was a bit overwhelmed there. Such… big teeth you have." I was clear from his face that he didn't even get the joke. Oh my, she thought, he is a big dumb one, isn't he? That made things so much easier. "Anyway," she continued, making herself sound intimidated but calm, "I think we have a deal, my… friend. You can have all the money you need, if you can help me onto my throne. And, uh, leave me there. Alive."
Hastur sneered. "Fine. Not big on makin' deals, but I need a sort of guide to this bloody stinking planet. 'S all too…new."
Ah-hah, she thought. "Well, I think I can handle that, if you can handle replacing my guards… with yourself, perhaps? Though of course we'll just refer to you as the Duke of Hastravania. We can travel together as… wealthy eccentrics."
He grinned hugely then. "Yeah, I could just about do that. Should be all right, so long's I get to eat a few people here and there."
"Only those that won't be missed," Kogane-Greed assured him, thinking, Or those who piss me off. "But first things first… If we are to pass you off as being an Eastern European dignitary, might I suggest we hire a dialect coach for you?"
He had no idea type of carriage that was, so he shrugged in agreement.
º Or Below either, where they'd have been rather embarrassed to hear it.
ºº Pretty much the truth.