Four guns, powder, and ordinary bullets for reloading each up to three times. Salt pellets and iron; not much, as they don't expect spirits (but one never knows if one of these smuggled artifacts might have ghosts attached). These are the basic items Ciel is sent to the weapons room for, bringing them, with Ran-Mao's help, to the main table, where everyone is making last-minute preparations for the bust. Lau, Undertaker, Druitt, and Vanel each take a gun; Undertaker is, in addition, stuffing several whirring, ticking contraptions up his voluminous sleeves. Vanel is carrying an iron cane, Druitt is filling a pouch with gas-filled pellets and is wearing a plethora of pure silver jewelry. Lau checks his gun absentmindedly, then picks up a long, curved sword from the chair beside him.
Despite insisting that Ciel isn't ready to be in the field, he won't be in the chapter house for this mission; with the amount they expect to confiscate, someone will need to fill the back of the funeral carriage they are taking for the occasion. Ciel only hopes none of the artifacts will be particularly heavy.
Undertaker drives the funeral carriage, with Ciel and Trancy riding inside, where the coffin ought to be. Trancy is quiet all the way there, but opens his heavy-lidded eyes to peer at Ciel with an unsettling expression. At last the carriage stops, and Ciel can hear the others leaving. The quiet redoubles.
"Poor boy," Trancy says. "You want to be where the action is, don't you?"
Ciel has already expressed as much; in return to Trancy's inquiry he just shrugs.
"You want to prove yourself, of course. Youth is…" Trancy chuckles a little, though something in his eyes is harder than ever; they reflect oddly the light from the lantern between them, the shadows that glance this way and that with the flames give his face an eerie cragged quality. "…So impatient. Everything needs to happen now. The others see a pup waiting by the door, yapping at every passers-by. They don't see your potential," Trancy says. He smiles, the broad, gap-toothed grin unsettling. He hasn't moved, but something in Ciel's instincts are screaming at him, making his skin crawl.
"I do," Trancy continues, meditatively. "There's something about you… more than the shy little child tottering in his father's shoes. You have talent, arrogance. The qualities that could make you the best of us, if you learned how to use it. You need a mentor, and—yes, I know I'm not much to look at anymore," Trancy says, in a lighthearted, jesting tone, but too pointed, too brittle, at odds with the languid motion of his pudgy fingers making their way through the air, cutting their way through the lantern light and sending spiked shadows into the carriage walls. "My days are nearing their end. But the network I have is a web where every whisper, every piece of blackmail that might darken the Queen's name makes itself known. Knowledge that could be invaluable to you." He leans forward, presses a hand to Ciel's knee, brushing his thumb against the fabric of his trousers. "An unofficial, ah, partnership between us, shall we say—"
Ciel sits very still and feels Trancy's eyes crawling over him. Whether Trancy really could help him or not—and Ciel is now convinced that he arranged for them to be the only ones in this carriage so that he could bring up this proposition—there's no way Ciel would ever consider it. The old man's very presence makes him feel sick. Ciel imagines Sebastian sitting beside him so that the butler can lunge forward and rend the man limb from limb, painting the inside of the carriage red. I'll kill him, he thinks. This bastard—I'll kill him—
He feels like he can hear, far-off beyond the enclosing walls, the sounds of a pitched battle. He wishes sickly that they could be done with it now, but no one comes forward to open the door, to let him out of the suffocating chamber.
He intends to speak, but somehow his words are caught in his throat, and Trancy's horrible mouth stretches into a conspiratorial grin. "Think on it."
The door jostles open, and Trancy leans back.
"I think," Ciel says, very carefully, "it might be too soon to make such decisions. As you say, I've only just joined the Men of Letters."
Ciel scrambles out into the night air, taking breaths of the cold and trying to stop his sudden shivering. Vanel has six or so crates next to him. He's lit a cigar, the end glowing in the dark, and he takes it from his mouth, breathing out smoke. "Here, kid," he says. He looks from Ciel to the crates doubtfully. "Think you can handle these?"
"Uh…" Ciel says.
Trancy heaves himself out of the carriage. "We'll manage," he says.
"Sure," Vanel replies. Trancy leans down and heaves one crate into the funeral carriage.
"Push it to the back, boy, would you?" he says. Ciel tries, and mostly fails, to do so, jumping out of the way onto the bench at the side as Trancy heaves in the next crate. When the whole thing is loaded, Ciel walks off without a word before Trancy can try to call him back; he can take inventory at the bunker. And he's not getting into a carriage alone with this man again… at least not without a weapon in his hands.
Vanel watches Ciel leave, but does nothing to stop him. He's lit a cigar, the end glowing in the dark, and he takes it from his mouth, breathing out smoke.
There are still a few muffled screams and the crashes of breaking bone; Ciel hears one or two gunshots go off, and navigates toward the noise. At the dock, he sits himself down in an out-of-the-way spot and watches the Men of Letters take down the rest of the smugglers. Most are alive, unconscious or tied up in a big pile; but there are dead bodies, too, with pools of blood around them, bullet holes in their sides or smashed skulls. There's an eerie purple haze in the air that has taken down some of the men, something that smells faintly sweet even as it dissipates; other men are running from what look like miniature animatronic monkeys with bladed teeth and claws.
"Now, what are you doing here?" Undertaker says, appearing next to him so soundlessly that Ciel almost starts. He picks up one of the feral clockwork monkeys and holds it like a pet while it tries to bite down on his arm. "You're supposed to be safe in the carriage."
"It's loaded," Ciel says shortly. "And I'm not going back with Trancy."
Undertaker stops cradling the monkey and it gives him a confused look from its glass-marble eyes before hissing at Ciel and scurrying away.
"May I ask why?" Undertaker says, in a low voice, sounding for once deadly serious.
"No," Ciel says.
He waits for Undertaker's reaction.
"All right," Undertaker says at last. He has no smile on his face, and whatever his expression, it is hidden behind his tangle of hair. "That can be arranged."
Then he is leaping back into the fray with a cackle of glee. Ciel crosses his legs, leans back, and waits. Two men are crawling by, in obvious fear, trying to keep out of sight; they don't notice Ciel in their effort to get away until he says calmly, "hello there. Going somewhere?"
They start, and stare at him. "What? It's a kid?" one of them says, with obvious bafflement; a moment later his head rolls on the ground, cut through by one swing of Lau's blade. The other one falls to the ground and goes still; Lau looks at him with a bemused expression before poking at him with his toe. He's about to stab this man, too, when someone else engages him. With everyone else distracted, only Ciel notices when the man gets up again and runs. He assumes the man will be caught trying to make it out of the docks, and puts it out of his mind.
Somehow Undertaker manages to arrange things such that Druitt and Vanel come back in the funeral carriage with Trancy, while Ciel, Lau, and Ran-Mao take the other carriage. Ciel nods off as it starts to rattle over the streets, finally curling up on the bench. Unlike the other, this one is cushioned. He isn't sure, but he thinks he can almost hear Ran-Mao singing a song, eerie and quiet, as he falls asleep; he doesn't recognize the words.
.
.
.