Midnight. The witching hour, when the shadows of the soul grew longest and fear slunk in, concealed by that darkness. But for Jaune and Ruby, the tolling of a clock's chime that filtered through the halls of Seven Oaks marked the fourth hour of their vigil. The tension that they'd started with, the eager anticipation and the nervousness over what might happen had steadily drained away with the monotony of standing watch, of waiting while nothing happened.
Despite his best efforts to stifle it, Jaune yawned, making Ruby giggle.
"Excuse me," he murmured, embarrassed.
"It's okay. It's harder to just sit and do nothing than it would be if we were actually working on something."
"Yeah, but...I don't know; it just seems like a police detective on guard ought to be able to at least stay awake. You're even younger than me, Ruby; why aren't you having trouble?"
"Don't forget, up until the Schnee ball I was having a London Season. That means most nights I was out until two and three in the morning at balls and parties."
"I guess I shouldn't overlook the skills of society girls."
"Perhaps this might help you to better focus, Inspector?" Jaune and Ruby looked up as the cook set two mugs of steaming hot coffee down on the table.
"Thank you, ma'am; we appreciate it."
The plump, middle-aged woman was as distant as the other servants, but the kindness of the gesture and the fact that she'd stayed awake to make it felt warming.
"It's the least I can do, seeing what you're doing for Sir Reginald. Now, how do your take your coffee?"
"Black's fine with me," Jaune said, reaching for his mug.
"And you, miss?"
"Um...cream and five sugars?"
Jaune had heard her say that a few times, and she always seemed so embarrassed about it. The reasons were simple enough: Ruby wasn't really a coffee drinker and essentially was trying to make it as much like a cup of chocolate as she could.
Her request didn't draw any strange comments from the cook, though. She just brought over a sugar bowl and a small pitcher, allowing Ruby to doctor her coffee. Jaune didn't wait on ceremony, but started to take sips from his mug right away. The heat and the bitterness seemed to sink into him, pushing the weariness out of his body.
He didn't get a chance to enjoy more than that, though. Ruby hadn't even tasted hers yet when a sharp ring cut through the homey quiet like a hot blade.
"The morning-room is in the south wing," Ruby identified the bell even as she jumped to her feet.
"I knew that terrace was trouble," Jaune said. As a policeman, he hated French doors, which combined all the security weaknesses of a door with those of a window. He found almost at once, though, that while he had a good memory of the place and its location, he was more than a little fuzzy on the directions.
Thankfully, that did not seem to apply to Ruby, who raced pell-mell through twisting halls, up and down staircases set in strange places, passing through rooms and doors at full speed. Jaune pounded along after her; he was a fast runner and in fit shape, but even so more than once the scarlet cape would vanish around a corner when she got too far out ahead of him.
It couldn't have taken more than a minute for them to cover the ground, and they burst into the last hall leading to the morning-room at the same time as the door at the far end swung open and two figures emerged from their destination.
"The Phantom Gentleman is a girl?" Ruby said in bewilderment. "Or two girls?"
"Witnesses have seen him," Jaune said. "These two must be his henchmen. Women."
"Henchwomen!" huffed one of the two. "Miltia, did you hear what he called us?"
"What a rude person. But then, you can't expect manners from the police, Melanie."
The two women were remarkably similar in appearance, Jaune thought. On a second look, he realized that they were virtually identical: the same height, the same ivory complexion, the same almond-shaped eyes and inky black hair, the same facial features. Twins, they've got to be twins. Unlike some identical twins, they were easy to tell apart: Melanie wore white and had long, straight hair, while Miltia wore red and had her hair cut shorter and curled. Their weapons were different, too: the red one carried two punch daggers fitted with curving blades like claws, while the white one was empty-handed but her boots were fitted with blades along the outer edges.
"Manners?" Ruby said. "What would you two know about manners? I like the combat skirts, but really, all those feathers and fur trim make you look like a couple of actresses, and not the good kind."
"Oooh, you little—"
"We just gave that footman a little tap on the head," Melanie cut off her sister, "but I think the two of you need to be taught a real lesson."
"This isn't a game," Jaune snapped, reaching into his coat for his revolver. "You two are under arrest for breaking and entering, assault—"
As he was bringing the gun out, Melanie's hand snapped towards him, one of her bracelets dropping into her palm and flicking off her fingers at him. The small but heavy quoit struck the barrel of his gun and knocked it out of his hand.
"Please, guns are such nasty, noisy things," Miltia said, stepping past her sister to start advancing towards them. They were too close for Jaune to try to retrieve the weapon, so instead he tugged out a regulation police truncheon.
"Really? Oh, this will be funny. And what about you? Do you have a stick, too?" she asked Ruby.
"As a matter of fact, I do." Ruby brought out a baton of her own from where she wore it at the small of her back. The sisters broke out laughing.
"At least the other one tried," Melanie cackled. "But you went for your little stick first!"
"I like my stick," Ruby pouted. Then she snapped her wrist and the collapsible sections slid out, locking into place so she was holding a six-foot fighting staff. "But it's not little. And the stick part?" She brought her second hand onto the staff and twisted. A steel spike snicked into place at one end, and from the other slid a segmented, accordion-folded blade which with another flick unfurled and locked open. "It's really more of a handle." She spun the short-shafted voulge in her hands and smirked.
In the next instant, Ruby charged, taking three quick steps down the hall, then planted the butt-spike in the floor and used it to vault herself over Miltia, who reacted late, swiping at the air with her claws. Ruby's boots planted into Melanie's chest, knocking the white twin sprawling.
"Melanie!"
"I have her. You get him," her sister snapped, springing to her feet.
Ruby spun her voulge in a low arc, but Melanie kicked out, parrying the cleaver-like blade with her boot, then as soon as the foot hit down sent another razor-edged kick up at Ruby's head with her other foot. Ruby spun her own weapon around to parry, though, and steel clashed off steel. That first exchange was enough to tell Jaune why Ruby had picked the white twin to fight: the kick-artist's style was like nothing he'd ever encountered before and he'd have been hard-pressed to read it and anticipate her attacks. Not that Jaune had ever fought someone with claws before, either, but there was at least some basic similarity there with knife-fighting.
Miltia hesitated, looking back at her sister, but Jaune made the decision for her, darting forward and swinging his truncheon down at her. She whirled, knocking it aside and slashing at his belly; he pulled back but her claws tore at his jacket.
"Trying to club a girl from behind? Not very chivalrous," she sneered as she came after him.
"You were going to go after my partner two-on-one if I didn't. That cost you any chivalry I might have thought to offer." Ah! Why am I defending myself to her? he yelped mentally as her claws narrowly missed ripping through his left bicep. He felt the sting of pain and realized that her cut had drawn blood. She's just trying to distract me!
Not that she needed all that much of a distraction. The red twin was fast, a lot faster than the average street tough and a lot more precise in her strikes. Jaune was forced to give ground, backing towards the end of the hall as the blades came at him, stabbing, slicing, their rhythm broken up now and again by a snapping kick that seemed designed not so much to do damage as to break up his recognition of any pattern she might be falling into.
It could have been worse, though. It wasn't just that Melanie's combat style was unusual but she was also a better fighter than her sister. Ruby found herself hard-pressed to keep up; the slashing, stabbing kicks came faster than she could manage with her voulge, and while she had the advantage of reach the hall wasn't the best place to use it, as she couldn't go full extension to either side without hitting a wall. She also had to be careful in blocking Melanie's kicks, wanting to deflect them off to the side; if she blocked a kick straight on with the voulge's shaft her precious Steel Thorn would be broken in two!
Melanie jumped in, snapping a high kick at Ruby's left shoulder, then pulling back as Ruby brought her weapon around to parry. The instant her foot hit the ground the other one was coming up with lightning speed, her toe connecting with Ruby's ribs under the arm that had been raised to move Steel Thorn. Melanie's leg pulled back at the knee, then flicked out again, ankle turning to slash. Ruby swung her body aside so that it only sliced her cape, then whipped the voulge around and down at her opponent's extended leg. Melanie pulled her leg back in time, so the cleaver blade thunked into the floorboards, but Ruby extended her left arm and smacked Steel Thorn's haft into Melanie's face. the white twin yelped in pain and reeled away, hand going to her cheek.
"Ah! You dirty—"
"Geez, my sister got her face run into a post in a fight the other day and you don't hear her whining about her stolen beauty."
With a growl of rage that might have been over the injury or the insult or both, Melanie launched herself at Ruby, going low and high alike in a flurry of kicks. Put on the defensive, Ruby blocked as well as she could, turning aside a flurry of strikes at her knees and ankles that turned into a spinning wheel kick that looked for all the world like an attempt to decapitate Ruby.
There was no chance for Ruby to block the attack and she didn't try. Melanie had made the mistake of confusing the speed of Ruby's large, slightly cumbersome weapon with the speed of the girl herself. Before her opponent could react, Ruby dropped into a crouch, letting Melanie's foot whistle by over her head. She then swept Steel Thorn around in an arc, crashing the shaft into the back of Melanie's support leg. The white twin went over onto her back.
Even as Melanie crashed to the floor, Ruby popped back upright, spinning her voulge around and spearing the butt down. Remembering that she was working with the police, she twisted her left hand's grip as she struck, and the spike withdrew into the shaft so that the metal-capped tip rammed into Melanie's solar plexus, driving the wind out of her.
She then turned back to look at Jaune. The sounds of battle had kept coming from behind her while she'd been occupied with Melanie, so she'd known her friend was at least holding Miltia off, but now she saw that it was just barely that. Only a last-moment dodge made the red twin's claw hammer into the doorframe, ripping out chunks of wood instead of bits of flesh and bone.
"Hey, leave him alone!" Ruby snapped. She extended the spike again, raised Steel Thorn, and sharply squeezed two spots on the shaft simultaneously. The spike shot out of the voulge's staff like a dagger, driven by a charge of compressed air.
Her shout had warned Miltia of the coming attack, and the red twin snapped her right hand back, parrying the missile with her claws, metal ringing on metal. Ruby prepared to charge in, but the momentary distraction was enough for Jaune to strike. The young Inspector's left hand shot out, grabbing Miltia's right wrist, while at the same time he whipped his truncheon up against the base of her left-hand claws. The blades dug into the wood as he pushed the claw back and away. Miltia might have been faster and more skilled, but Jaune had a substantial edge in size and strength, and he'd managed to control her arms. Before she had a chance to wriggle free or use her feet, he snapped his head forward, driving his forehead squarely into her face. She went down hard, as if she'd been bashed with a mace.
"Now that was a heady maneuver."
Jaune groaned.
"Ruby, my head hurts enough as it is."
"Still, we won. Though, honestly? I think it's kind of silly the Phantom Gentleman turned out to be two women. I mean, a female master thief is pretty neat, but I wish they didn't have to pretend to be a man. Or are we still going with the idea that they're henchmen, in which case..."
Jaune looked up from where he was handcuffing Miltia. His eyes met Ruby's.
"Distraction."
~X X X~
Sir Reginald crouched in the darkness, hunched over within the metal framework of his chair, the cage of rods and wires that imprisoned him. He had retreated to the studio-like library, where he spent the vast majority of his waking hours these days, poring over the obscure texts that had originally led him to Burma and forever changed his fate. Even so many years later, it still clawed at him. Had he missed something that led to the disaster? Or—as he sometimes thought when he took out the ruby and let himself sink into its hidden fires—had he instead achieved a stunning success despite the odds?
He wished that he could remember. Only snatches of it came to him in dreams, now, bitter nightmares that left only hazy ghosts when he was torn awake by his own screams. It was clear that his mind was trying to protect itself through forgetfulness, and still he wanted to know, to learn once and for all why, how his life had been sacrificed. Better the horror of truth than this creeping, crawling unknown that absorbed him and everyone around him.
And now he found himself hiding, like some small, scuttling thing in the depths of a burrow, cowering and hoping that nothing would happen. The police were in his house! Ironic, that their "protection" in ways made him more vulnerable, a dragon with its fangs pulled, waiting old and toothless.
A soft breeze of cool air struck him, making him shiver and then there came a kind of slithering whisper. The serpentine sound sent cold fear sliding up and down his spine; it was a foreign sound, an alien intrusion in the shadow-wrapped studio.
His eyes went to the bell-pull. Should he ring? Call for the Inspector's aid? He now wished that he had not sent away his manservant. Human presence would be comforting now.
A soft thud caught his attention; he wheeled his head around, and there he had his explanation. The breeze had come from the opened skylight. The whisper had been the movement of something snakelike—a rope descending from the opening. The room was so drear that he might have missed those things alone. But it was impossible to miss the source of the final sound, which had been caused by a man's boots hitting the floor, the threadbare rug muffling but not silencing the sound of the impact.
"Well, well, Sir Reginald himself, I believe."
~X X X~
"We've got to get to the museum," Ruby cried. She was pulling ahead again; she'd have run completely away from Jaune if she hadn't deliberately held her pace. "The Gentleman's probably there already, and if those two were an example of the kind of force he can bring, your two constables and that footman don't stand a chance." Ruby's words could have been taken as arrogant, but Jaune knew that they were just a frank assessment of the facts. He didn't know about Newton, but he was sure Burns and Heyman would have been no match for Melanie and Miltia.
They burst into the room and were greeted with shouts of alarm and raised weapons until a second look told the three guards who it was who'd made such a violent entry.
"Sir, you nearly took a year off my life," Burns said. All three men took several looks at Ruby, taking in the pole cleaver she was carrying.
"Is something wrong?" Heyman spoke up.
"We were called to the south wing by an alarm. Two of the Gentleman's lackeys had broken in and subdued Edwin the footman. We think they were meant as a distraction to tie up security while the Gentleman himself goes after the jewel."
"But we haven't seen any sign of him. You're the only one who's tried to get in here tonight."
Ruby and Jaune glanced at one another.
"We were pretty fast," she mused. "A distraction only works if you give it time to distract."
"Yeah, but getting into a safe isn't easy. The Gentleman would have to know there'd be someone here at all times, besides. So he'd have to deal with the guard here, then the actual work of safebreaking, all while those twins had us chasing our tails."
"Maybe the plan was for the twins to beat us in the fight so he wouldn't have to deal with anyone coming back?"
"Yeah, I know they were good enough to take out the average guard, but...if the plan was to use force, why not just attack with force?"
"I suppose so," Ruby admitted. "And it really doesn't seem like a Gentleman Thief's plan, to break in, beat up everyone, and loot the house at his leisure. That's just common burglary."
"Begging your pardon, Miss Rose, but the man is a burglar," Constable Burns spoke up.
"But not a common one."
"She's right," Jaune said. "He does things in a certain way. The attention, the notoriety, they're important to him. A gang assaulting a house by force wouldn't entertain people, wouldn't make him a folk hero. He'd just be a low-class thug attacking police, a young woman of good family, innocent servants, and an old man who used to be a bit of a folk hero of his own and who..."
"Jaune?"
"Of course!"
"Jaune, what is it?"
"Ruby, we've got to get to the library! It isn't the safe the Phantom Gentleman wants. He's after Sir Reginald!"