Aries Villa, June, a.t.b. 2010
For all that she liked to say, even to herself, that she had indeed managed to put her past behind her, the petulant little girl who resented her elder sister for being everything she was not—and for all that that was certainly true—there were times, certain isolated moments of profound weakness, in which Juliette vi Britannia thought unfairly ill of Justine, the simplicity of hatred undergoing metastasis to beget the white-hot ember that was Resentment, wrapped all up in the coiled brambles and thorny vines that themselves constituted Envy.
The one cardinal sin that brings no pleasure, Juliette lamented, and indeed it was true; yet she could not help but envy her sister's strength, her strength of will and of mind and of presence, all of which she could spend her entire life pursuing or trying to emulate, only to have it all avail her naught. The crux of it was this: that Juliette was about to do something for the sake of her family that even the vultures of the court would consider heinous; and though their appalled shock and horror was solely performative, there were so many sins to which Britannian nobles would not pay even a shadow of a thought, even as performance art, that the knowledge served a cold comfort to Juliette. Doubly so because she knew that had this been Justine's call to make, had this been her endeavour, her decision, her finger on the trigger, her elder sister would execute without hesitation, and would not lose a moment of sleep thereafter, without lament or doubt or even the scantest hint of regret.
She had not seen Justine during her audience with the emperor, but she had seen how she commanded Cornelia, someone for whom Justine held no enmity; and even in those eyes that had been turned upon a potential ally rather than an assured enemy, Juliette had known, in that one moment, that Justine was fully capable of doing anything, no matter how unpleasant, without hesitation, provided it was a necessity. Justine balanced kindness with ruthlessness in an equilibrium that should have been uneasy and fraught, but was instead harmonious, as if the two aspects were only in opposition on the flimsiest of technicalities. It was as baffling to Juliette as it was utterly enthralling, for all that she knew that that wasn't her, and could never be.
The library in which Juliette and Justine had once taken their lessons—education, she recalled, something she really should be seeing to providing for herself—was pitch-dark, without a single source of artificial light active to intrude upon her small sanctuary. The room featured a massive window with an attached alcove, and through that window, one could behold the moon as it waxed and waned on its monthly journey through the shadow of the sun, and on this day, when the moon was waxing to its zenith, full and gravid in the night sky, its pale and ephemeral light poured through the glass, setting Juliette's surroundings into a melancholic chiaroscuro that best suited the sorts of dark thoughts upon which the princess ruminated.
It was done. The die was cast. Even if she had second thoughts about it—and try as she might, she couldn't muster a single one beyond a vague sense of wickedness and unease—there was nothing to be done to halt the wheels already in motion. She had checked and checked again to see that her intelligence was valid and useful, and the Shinozaki woman had taken care of the execution of the finer points of her plan that required walking in places a princess of Britannia would not and perhaps never would be welcome. She was a useful servant, and a very pleasant woman, Shinozaki Sayoko; but for the life of her, she could not get around the stumbling block that was the woman's very particular set of skills, as necessary as she believed their employment to be. This, too, was something for which she envied Justine, who had been able to stare down and sway into service a man who could not die. Taliesin was in many ways an enigma, but his steadfast allegiance to Justine was plain, at least to her, and as was the truth of his statements regarding his own skills and aptitudes. To stare such dealers of death in the face, and to extend a hand to them without fear, to enthral them into your service—this was Justine, once again.
But these were, of course, digressions so that she could manage to drift herself further afield of the point of the evening.
Because tonight, Cassiopeia Ashford would die.
And suddenly there came a tapping.
Juliette nearly fell from her perch, but she gathered herself after a moment of shock, leaving the slashed remains of her reverie to the side for a moment as she assessed. A second tapping came, as of someone gently rapping, a polite yet insistent entreaty at her chamber door. The princess cleared her throat, and then called out, "Enter."
The door opened smoothly with a gentle push, and over the threshold stepped none other than the immortal butler himself, immaculate as ever and without even a hair out of place, to the point where Juliette for a moment doubted the evidence of her senses, having seen the man out and about in tending to the grounds and gardens earlier that very day. She thought of the former groundskeeper, a kindly old man by the name of Thomas, and how he always seemed smeared with dirt no matter how much he washed it off, as if the soil was leaving its earthy stains upon his august complexion—though, perhaps she was being silly, since Taliesin clearly knew how to best remove far more stubborn stains. The words of Lady Macbeth echoed through her mind, the play one of Justine's favourites to do a dramatic reading of, during those days when the Emperor visited Aries Villa, and Marianne was nowhere to be found, occupied wholly and solely with the 'needs' of her husband. She winced at the weakness of the euphemism, and then chastised herself for once again letting her mind wander. Becoming distracted during a tense operation was a bad, and potentially fatal, habit to get into.
"Ah, your highness. You seemed in a most melancholy humour earlier, and so I took the liberty of preparing your favourite meal," Taliesin greeted, a kindly twinkle shimmering in his blood-red eyes, so out of place that it was actually somewhat unsettling. The man swept into the chamber, a silver tray with a covered plate and a full tea set balanced expertly in his grasp. He placed the silver tray on a small end table he had placed before her, and she caught her reflection distorted in the polished metal of the cloche for a moment before it was pulled away. The scent of it, of butter and sugar and fruit preserves, hit her with a jolt she felt in her bones, and the sight wicked away even her deepest of existential fatigues, if only for a few moments. "Doughnuts filled with elderberry jelly, and tea, vanilla chai. Your sister told me that, in the past, when you were in the grip of such moods as you are now, she would take it upon herself to bake a dozen of them herself, and while I am most assuredly not her, I hope that my meagre efforts are at least sufficient. Tea, on the other hand, is something of a hobby of mine, and so I am confident that, at least, will be to your liking."
So stunned was Juliette at the sight of it that she stared wide-eyed at the plate before her, heaped high with a dozen confectionaries, fresh out of the frying pan and laden with powdered cane sugar, as Taliesin moved to pour the milky light-brown tea from the porcelain serving-pot and into a prepared cup on a saucer—and in the process, forgot to be mortified at the fact that one more person, one she personally didn't entirely trust, knew her shameful secret, which had been kept even from the late Empress Marianne. Finally remembering herself with a light flush across her cheeks, she coughed lightly and primly, before trying to look anywhere but the plate in front of her. Justine she might well not be, but she wanted to think herself capable of maintaining at least some level of decorum in situations like this. Taliesin eyed her curiously, before his lips quirked upwards in a fond smirk, and he shook his head with a kindly chortle. "Your highness, you need not stand on ceremony. I am bound to your sister, and therefore to you; and any who would seek to bribe your secrets out of me will find themselves in the midst of the greatest error they have ever thought to make. Come, enjoy yourself. I daresay you could use a bit of levity."
Duly chastised, Juliette reddened further, and, consciously abandoning her manners, she lunged for the first doughnut on the pile and bit into it, moaning as the taste of sugar and fried dough and sweet, tangy jelly played warm, blissful havoc on her tongue. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Taliesin's smile grow indulgent, but he did not comment. Instead, he walked into the darkness and returned with a chair, upon which he alighted with an enviable degree of poise. "If this is not too bold, your highness, I should also like to offer my companionship, if you would be amenable to such. You may also have my ear, and if you require it, my advice."
Juliette's mood became dour once again, and not even the smooth, soothing taste of the chai could bring her back to the bliss of a moment prior. She lifted the cup to give herself time to consider and to hide her flush, before putting it back to the tray and reaching to fill it again. "It's most kind of you to offer, but I think I'd best not. You'll think it's silly."
"Young lady, I would kindly thank you not to put words into my mouth," the butler said, his tone good-natured, but also firm. "I may understand far more than you think. For instance, I know full well what it is to feel somewhat inadequate in the company of one's siblings."
Juliette paused, quirking a brow. "You have siblings?"
"Oh yes," Taliesin replied, his eyes twinkling in memory for all that his expression sobered, becoming somehow less unsettling in so doing. "I have two, to be precise, and a greater pair of sisters a man could never ask for. And how marvellous they were! So much so that I found myself wondering how I could ever hope to rise to their heights. Why, even my other sister bowed in awe of our eldest sibling, who stood head and shoulders well above even our combined efforts. She was a legend, immaculate…and, as I later discovered, deeply, horribly alone as a result. You and I both know how awful it is to be separated from our siblings by virtue of the disparity in our aptitudes—though we obviously never had cause to consider that such a divide is every bit as awful from the other side, if not more so. At least we, the lesser siblings, may find companionship amongst our peers of similar mediocrity. For those who stand on such heights, in becoming separated from their siblings, they are likewise stripped of peers. And a Blackwood alone in the world is a terrible thing."
"I know that," Juliette sighed. She reached up, running a hand through her long hair—her father's hair, which she wanted to find a way to style that was not reminiscent of him and his youth but had yet to find the time or resources to do so—as she prepared to give her confession of weakness. "I've known that for some time now. It's just…I ordered a woman's death. She is a dangerous, ambitious, evil woman, to be sure, and above all an obstacle on the road to our own ambitions; most assuredly, she would not hesitate to do this same thing to us, so she is deserving of no pity, and only a standard level of consideration…but my hands… My hands were shaking for an hour after I gave the order. I…I can't be like this. Justine needs me. I can't be weak."
Taliesin considered her with a measured, assessing look, seemingly weighing the worth of each word he might say, before discarding it to weigh a new one. At last, he spoke. "Is that such a terrible thing, then? To be weak?"
"I can't hesitate. Not even for a moment."
"I disagree," Taliesin countered, sweeping a hand out in a gesture that was equal parts dismissive and didactic. "Your sister cannot hesitate, not even for a moment, and it is good that such a thing is so deeply contrary to her nature. My eldest sister was, I can safely say, much the same—powerful, decisive, radiant, would insist that the world warp to her whims with a single command, and watch expectantly as it rushed to do so. But that which they exhibit, which we in our ignorance might consider strength, can easily become a fault—they do not notice that which they leave behind in their dogged pursuit of their lofty goals and grand ambitions, not until they can no longer take a single step, and look back to behold the long and winding road, upon which they have strewn all the pieces of themselves they sacrificed without so much as a thought, to the point where only ashes remain of all that they once were. And by then, it is far, far too late.
"In my youth, I thought much the same as you do now, you know—that I absolutely had to chase the shadow of my eldest sister's peerless ability. It seemed so important then, so crucial, that I could not be myself, live and die and fight as myself, until I had achieved all that she was," the immortal continued, folding one leg over the other and weaving his hands together on his lap, the very image of an aged grandfather imparting some life lesson—or so Juliette surmised; she didn't exactly have much in the way of grandparents. "And so I lied. I pretended. I decided that I did not need my siblings, did not need the Blackwood name, and struck out on my own. I chased at echoes of my sister's deeds, walked in the shade of the things she'd done, upheld all of her virtues and embodied her every vice. With those lies, I projected strength, and in time I grew so deft at deception that I eventually convinced even myself.
"And when I realised that, I knew at that moment that my sister's strength would forever remain beyond my grasp. I realised, too, that that was for the best."
"…I'm afraid I don't understand."
"Weakness exists to temper strength, your highness. I knew a man some time ago by the name of Jack Lewis, an author who perished in the Emblem of Blood and most assuredly had his writings lost to time in the process. He said to me once, among other things, that when he became a man, he put away all childish things, including the fear of childishness and his desire to be very grown-up. And to be sure, I have learned through my many long years of life that the greatest and most awful weakness is none other than the fear of being weak," Taliesin explained. "I say this to you because I see myself in you, much as I see my eldest sister in Princess Justine. There are some who are suited to getting their own hands dirty, and there are others who are best suited to orchestrating the dirtying of hands from the shadows—whose sacrifice is none other than the sanctity of their souls. Hear me now when I say there is no shame in your anxiety, in feeling on edge regarding a situation you have placed beyond the scope of your direct control. You will learn to deal with it, as must we all. And I have faith in you, as your sister does."
Juliette took a deep breath, digesting all that had been said, and nodded. "Thank you for your advice, Taliesin. I don't know if I'll be able to make use of all of it, but…"
"Words are wind, your highness. If the long, winding speech of an old soldier far past his prime brought you any comfort, I shall count that a victory. I only hope that the success of your endeavours will allay the remainder of your misgivings, understandable though they are," said the butler, making a gesture of commiseration as he stood. "Enjoy the confectionaries, your highness. And please do drink the tea before it grows cold. When you wish the tray taken away, summon me at any time, and I shall tidy up. Until then, take your time. And please, do put some of your trust in Miss Shinzaki. She's quite a capable woman, and this is her trade."
Juliette attempted a smile, but all that came was a grim, strained twist of her lips. "I shall keep that in mind, Taliesin."
The immortal swept into a bow. "As you say, your highness."
"I had occasion to speak with your governess of late, Carmilla."
Milly stiffened at the sound of the woman she could most charitably refer to as her dam, Cassiopeia Ashford; within the confines of her own mind, and certainly not for the first time in her life, she cursed the fact that the manor that was technically her residence—for all that she far preferred to refer to the Aries Villa or the main Ashford Estate as her home—had all its hinges painstakingly oiled, at Cassiopeia's behest. When she was younger, she had hoped in vain that the faintest squeak would allow her to understand her tyrannical dam's movements, and prepare herself accordingly; but now she understood. Cassiopeia, for all that she did not seem the type, was a woman as vain and petty as she was ruthless, and running her own home like a panopticon was but one of a myriad of small, insidious exercises of power and impunity in which the woman regularly indulged. And as a result, she had long since learned to compose herself on a moment's notice, turning to face the woman who had birthed her with an immaculate 'highborn' face, a mask of a face that was equal parts boredom, superiority, condescension, and cruelty.
Cassiopeia, only child of Reuben Ashford, was an example of just how far an apple could fall from its tree. For all that the true head of House Ashford was kindly and lived up to every storybook stereotype one could conceive of regarding the subject of a grandfather, Cassiopeia was the platonic ideal of a wicked stepmother—though, of course, Milly was her blood. She was famed for her heartlessness, and in hushed whispers she was referred to as the Imperial Court's very own Lady Scorpion. In her youth, she had been beautiful, and Milly supposed she still very much was, but her demeanour had begun to peer its face through the visage with which she had charmed the Imperial Court in the final days of the Emblem of Blood. Her hair, once auburn, had become streaked with grey, and her blue eyes were piercing and decidedly aquiline—which was somewhat fitting, given the sigil of their house—while her face possessed a cruel, dangerous sort of beauty, which only the most foolish would ever think to woo.
Among the number of those most foolish was Milly's sire, Elend, Marquess Tremaine. The third son of his family, he stood to inherit little if anything, and so a matrilineal marriage to the only daughter of Reuben, Grand Duke Ashford, a man who had most notably yet to name an heir, had seemed politically advantageous at the time. The Tremaines were fabulously wealthy; yet to openly purchase one's way higher in the peerage was seen as unseemly, and worthy of ridicule. In the Holy Britannian Empire, one could only rise by way of conquest in the name of the crown, or by way of marrying upwards, and as the Emblem of Blood's ending seemed to usher in an almost unprecedented age of peace, House Tremaine, whose head at the time had been the old yet shrewd Marquess Strahd, had chosen the latter course. Elend, whose only remarkable trait besides his family name was his beauty, had thus been married off to Cassiopeia, and no sooner had she fallen pregnant than did House Tremaine suffer a number of unfortunate 'accidents' that left Elend the sole inheritor of their vast fortunes—so vast that not even the foppish man's notorious inclination to wastrelry could manage to deplete them by any considerable margin.
The death of the Tremaines amongst noble circles had been jokingly referred to as 'one last hurrah' for the Emblem of Blood, but the peerage regarded Cassiopeia with no shortage of wariness thereafter, and their thinly veiled distrust resulted not only in a total stagnation of the woman's political aspirations, but also a resulting situation that had seen Milly named the grand duke's heir when she was no higher than the man's knee. Knowing all of this, and taking into account that the woman was using her true voice, and not the shrill, airheaded facade she adopted to deceive all and sundry, Milly was under no illusions as to what Cassiopeia was here to 'discuss' with her. Still, it would hardly be to her advantage not to play along, at least for the time being. "Oh? I do hope she spoke well of me."
Frankly, Milly didn't care one jot what Cassandra Lohmeyer, or her insufferable daughter Alicia, had to say about her, but it was much simpler in the long run to give her dam the in, lest she start probing and find an opening that Milly could not curate nearly as well. Cassiopeia, as predictable as ever, saw the opening she was given, but mistook that for compliance on Milly's part, however reluctant. "In a sense. Cassandra has always been quite dour, you know, and as such, she is generally quite reticent on all things praiseworthy. She has informed me, however, of something quite interesting: that you have been spending quite a bit of time at the Aries Villa as of late."
"You find that curious, then?" Milly asked rhetorically.
"Nothing of the sort. If anything, I'm pleased," said Cassiopeia, and the smile that settled on her face was twisted in its austerity. "You know, I must confess—I had been quite concerned that your specific inclinations would cause us some degree of trouble in the advancing of the family…that you would struggle to find an advantageous match. But, as it turns out, Her Royal Highness Princess Justine is, to put it bluntly, every bit a worthy rival to Her Royal Highness Princess Friederike. Why, the two of them are most assured to constitute quite the powerful bloc in one or the other's eventual bid for the throne! And so I am grateful, in a way, that you have not only found a way to make yourself useful to the family, but also spared me the indignity of attempting to have another child."
Cassiopeia's lips curled with revulsion as she spat the words like they were a curse. This, too, had been a staple of her more distant youth—some of her earliest memories had featured the open disdain with which Cassiopeia regarded her lord husband quite prominently. Milly barely paid it any attention, however; it took every ounce of restraint she could muster to not leap across the room, over the table to the shelves where the woman was lurking, and tear open the bitch's throat with her teeth.
No one spoke that way about that which was hers alone. And if Cassiopeia sought to use Justine for her own ends, it didn't matter whatever schemes Juliette had concocted to deal with her—Milly would personally see the woman buried alive, if not in pieces.
"Now, Carmilla, dear, I shall not comment on the means by which you may pursue your, to put it delicately, unique courtship," Cassiopeia continued, heedless of the vehemence of her daughter's fury, or perhaps delighted by the perceived impotence of it, reaching into a nearby cabinet to pull forth a lowball and a crystal decanter of Scotch whiskey with a slight 'ah' before pouring herself a glass. The woman leaned against a nearby settee, her high-necked nightgown and long housecoat some small consolations to the lateness of the hour, and took a sip. "Quite frankly, it does not matter to me, so long as it advances the family. Men are mortal, my girl, and when they die, their wealth is left behind, their glories won are left to gather dust, their reputations fade, and even the greatest of their legends are themselves forgotten, in time. It is only their line that survives them, only their line which has a chance of enduring in perpetuity—and so, their line is their legacy."
"You've told me this before," Milly remarked, and in that moment, it was all she could do to keep her rage, her seething, murderous hatred, contained behind the mask she had presented the woman before her for as long as she could remember.
"Yes, I have," Cassiopeia replied with a bit more reservation, her cold eyes glancing up and down Milly in open appraisal. "And I am glad to find that you have heeded it. You have the makings of a fine young lady, Carmilla. That you have yet to squander that potential is a sign that I have underestimated you. Perhaps you won't be quite so dismal of a disappointment as I had thought you might be. Though, that, of course, remains to be seen."
"Is there anything else, Mother?"
Cassiopeia paused, her gaze narrowing—if Milly had been any less consumed by violent hatred, she might have given consideration to the obvious misstep she had just made. "I suppose not. But take care, Carmilla. I may not be so generous the next time you see fit to brandish your tongue at me."
The tension between the two was as electric as it was volatile, and in suppressing her urge to kill, to maim, to rip and tear and gouge this shrew who would think to threaten what was hers, even obliquely, Milly was struck with the impression of restraining a slavering, rabid hound that leapt and snapped in senseless, mad fury, with naught but an old, fraying rope; the rope frayed further with every deafening tick of the nearby clock, and with each second that passed, Milly's composure came that much closer to fracturing and shattering entirely.
When a chambermaid knocked, entering the parlour—Milly's personal sitting room, the first chamber of her apartments in the manor—the spell shattered with all the sudden grace of a pane of glass. The poor girl swept in, her cheeks ruddy from the flight she had no doubt taken through the long halls of the manor. "Lady Carmilla, Her Royal Highness Princess Euphemia's just arrived! Oh, Lady Cassiopeia."
The maid noted the presence of the older woman at the last moment, almost as if her presence in the room was an afterthought, and favoured her with a hurried curtsey once she remembered her civilities. Despite herself, Milly found herself relaxing; it was so easy, when in Cassiopeia's presence, to get swept up in the stature of her, and blind herself to the fact that Milly had the servants jumping and hoping it was high enough at her command, both by virtue of her grandfather's directive and true loyalty she had managed to win from them over the years. She was the lady of the house, not the woman who had birthed her.
Cassiopeia's face visibly registered surprise, before she schooled it into something more decorous, and this was what she favoured Milly with. "I had not been informed we were to expect a guest."
"We aren't," Milly replied, not even gratifying the veiled expression of disapproval with an acknowledgement. That murderous rage had, for the moment, cooled, and been replaced with the coy smugness with which she had once terrorised Aries Villa. "I am. Do take care, Mother."
Cassiopeia's brow creased with rancour at Milly's glib tone, but as a rule, she never let the staff see her as anything but calm, and so there was little she could do, especially given the presence of a princess of the empire. Instead, she slammed the tumbler down with a bit more force than was strictly necessary, and hissed, "We will have words."
With that, she swept out of the room, her dressing-gown snapping in her wake.
Milly let loose a long, slow breath, composing herself once more before regarding the maid who had interceded with a kind smile. The name came to her after a moment. "Thank you, Marie."
"At your service, ma'am, as always," the young serving-woman replied, giving her a far less fearful and far more genuine curtsey. "Shall I go down to the kitchens, have the refreshments brought up? The chef's got a batch of pastries for the occasion, calls them 'mach-a-rawns?'"
"Macarons, Marie, and that would be lovely, thank you," Milly replied, letting even more tension slip out of her. What was to come in the following minutes would be made no easier by Euphy seeing her unsettled. "And some tea, if you please."
"It'll be Earl Grey, then," Marie acknowledged with a perfunctory nod.
Milly chuckled, even as she made her way over to the settee closest to the door to her bedroom, a position that demonstrated her dominion, to sit there with one leg folded atop the other. "Dependable as ever."
If one of my relatives were to perish, would I truly mourn them? Milly thought errantly, as Marie swept away to see to her duties. She shook her head minutely. No, I think not.
Then she considered again. Reuben, Grand Duke Ashford had been nothing but gracious to her for all the days of her life to this point, and while one could argue that the fact that he was the only blood relation she considered 'family' disqualified him by default, Milly was of no mind to split too many hairs on the issue. And so she had to concede the point: Probably Grandfather. I'd mourn him, perhaps, but that's it.
There was a palpable sense, Euphemia li Britannia could not help but feel, of taking a brazen step headlong into the belly of the beast as she stood outside of the chestnut wood door that separated her from the apartments Milly Ashford kept in this residence. She was at the very precipice of the lions' den, and the menace of the moment was as unmistakable as it was wholly and utterly inescapable. Standing beside her on one side was First Lieutenant Andreas Darlton, one of Cornelia's friends and the escort her sister had insisted upon; and beside her on the other side was none other than the same Japanese woman she had seen when she and Cornelia had last visited Aries Villa, around three weeks prior—she had assumed that the maid was Justine's, but the fact that she was Milly's servant made her wonder why and how a woman like Cassiopeia Ashford had come to allow a foreign woman into such a high position in a noble Britannian household that seemed, in most other regards, incredibly typical.
Then again, the late Lady Marianne had been a French immigrant…
She was dragged out of her contemplation when the Japanese woman ushered her across the threshold and into the parlour, and she realised that she had become so preoccupied that she had allowed herself to miss the servant announcing her. Euphemia quickly brushed back an errant lock of vibrant pink hair, and smoothed out her pastel-hued skirts as she rushed as swiftly into the settee across the table from her host as she could manage, while still maintaining at least some level of decorum. As Darlton strode in silently in his wake, setting himself up against the far corner of the room to be seen and not heard, she settled herself, primped just a bit further, and then folded her hands in her lap, turning her most winning smile onto the older girl and making a conscious effort to make her indigo eyes as 'adorable' as possible. In the ordinary course, she despised being infantilised, but as much as she loathed being seen as a child wrought from blown glass, her fear, no, her absolute terror of Carmilla "Milly" Ashford overwhelmed it by far—so she resorted to the one tactic that she felt had a hope of throwing her off-balance.
Milly was…stunning. There was no word more apt for it. Justine was dazzling, dark and almost ethereal, the platonic ideal of a pre-Raphaelite subject, unspeakably beautiful and by virtue of that beauty utterly terrifying; but Milly had the sort of beauty that was as much an omen of danger as it was all but irresistible. Her blonde hair, inherited from her father, hung unbound, though from its shimmer in the light of the parlour, Euphemia could tell it was painstakingly maintained; and it framed a face that possessed in its curves and lines and contours a certain sanguine quality, a peculiar roguish charm that was so at odds with Justine's unsettlingly calm demeanour that at once she could understand how the two could, and most likely did, complement one another. She might have despaired at this realisation, had the open display of impropriety at Aries Villa not already robbed her of her last hope on the matter.
Of course, that roguish charm was most easily visible when she was smirking, which looked positively Cheshire; at the moment, however, her vivid blue eyes, like glittering gemstones, were as serious as they were critical, sweeping over Euphemia's attire and her posture like she was seeking something specific. The scrutiny gradually made Euphemia feel more and more self-conscious, until she was struggling against the impulse to fidget under the exacting weight those eyes carried, and the gaze lingered for a few moments more before Milly finally spoke. "First Lieutenant Darlton, I hear congratulations are in order for your upcoming promotion. Come, you're quite welcome to join us. And Princess Euphemia, always a pleasure. I suppose you're wondering why, precisely, I extended an open invitation for you to visit this place, in light of what happened at Aries Villa?"
As Darlton nodded and drew closer, sitting on the settee far enough away from her to continue to be all but ignored, Euphemia redoubled her efforts to maintain her composure; at least she was finally no longer under direct scrutiny. She took a deep breath, steeling herself. "In so many words, yes. Your display with my sister—"
"Half-sister," Milly interjected, holding up a finger.
Euphemia didn't even make an attempt to withhold the wince—she didn't have the will to pursue such a lost cause at the moment, even in front of one of her sister's 'most dependable' friends. "…Your display with my half-sister seemed to me as well as Cornelia to be an open statement of enmity. You will forgive me, I trust, if I confess that I am a bit…perplexed as to the meaning of this."
"Hmph…" Milly smirked, and there was that sanguine candour, that roguish charm. "You are forgiven. You are also, however, quite thoroughly mistaken."
The younger girl cocked her brow, openly expressing her incredulity. "I beg pardon?"
"Well, I must admit, I'm not exactly inclined to forbid you from begging," Milly jibed.
"Do you not intend to sue for Justine's hand?"
"No—on that point, your suppositions are almost entirely accurate. When she is of age, I fully intend to wed Justine vi Britannia," Milly clarified, relaxing back into the settee with her sanguine demeanour escalating into a deeply cocksure, devil-may-care audacity. "Where you are mistaken, your highness, is a much simpler matter: I hold no enmity towards you."
"Really?" Euphemia all but gawked."Surely you are not ignorant of my own sentiments on the matter of the Fourth Princess. You cannot be."
"Oh, I am fully aware of your infatuation with my intended," Milly replied, gesturing airily with one hand while propping her chin up with the other. "And I can hardly blame you, truth be told. As I'm sure you're aware, my Justine is, in many ways, singular. I think one could more easily put a number to every star in the sky, and travel to each and every world that orbits them, than they could find another woman quite like her. In fact, one could almost say that I sympathise with you. But to hold enmity towards you? Hardly. That would require you to be an actual threat first."
"What exactly was the purpose of your display, then?" Euphemia asked, swallowing the white-hot coal of humiliation that lodged itself in her throat.
Milly considered her for a pregnant moment, and though her smirk was still every bit as insufferably confident, it was softer somehow—sympathetic, almost. "Is it so difficult to believe that I simply take immense joy in holding her to me?"
"In front of visitors?" Euphemia's tone communicated her scepticism better than a direct response could have.
A glint sparked to life in Milly's eyes, and Euphemia stiffened at the sight of it. That glint was volatile, dangerous, and she sensed that her life depended on how carefully she could step here. "Whyever should I allow such trifling things as 'propriety' to keep me from what is mine, your highness?
"Though you are, ultimately, correct. Though I do immensely enjoy expressing affection for her physically, there was an ulterior motive. You see, Euphy, you are not a threat to me, not even slightly. But Juliette pointed out that you are fully capable of making yourself troublesome in other ways, were I to allow you to cling to false hope, and I agreed. Thus, I saw fit to snuff out that particular ember, as it were, before it could kindle itself into a flame," Milly explained, that same dangerous glint glaring out of her otherwise beautiful eyes—like the violent tempest that surrounded the eye of a hurricane. "You are not, and never have been, a threat to me, and it was high time that you were made aware of that. I apologise if the demonstration of such caused you undue anguish."
Left unspoken was the fact that there was clearly a level of anguish that Milly very much believed was due her, Euphemia supposed.
"Regardless, it is in neither of our best interests to be at odds with each other," Milly continued, the airy quality of her tone belying the weight of its matter. "With the truth of all that I've just said, there is also the truth of the fact that my Justine does still love you. And whyever should she not? Absent Juliette, you're the sibling to which she is closest."
"Me?! Not Friede?" Euphemia interjected, taken aback by the statement.
Milly seemed to consider for a moment longer, the look in her eye distinctly calculating. "Her Royal Highness Princess Friederike is something of a unique case. Suffice it to say that she and my Justine are not as close as you and she seem to be—or at the very least, they are not close in quite the same way."
A knock on the door startled Euphemia, and it was only then that she realised she had been wringing her hands with such fervour that her knuckles were white. Milly, in contrast, was completely and totally unmoved. "Enter."
The door swung open, and in came the Japanese maid, wheeling along a trolley of sweet, pastel-hued sandwich confections she immediately recognised as French macaroons—a favourite of the late Empress Marianne's—and a relatively simple tea set. "Macarons, Lady Ashford, fresh from the kitchens, and loose-leaf Earl Grey tea, for yourself and your honoured guests."
Euphemia swung her attention back to Milly, whose fond smile seemed entirely genuine. The noblewoman swung her attention back to the princess, who struggled not to wilt under the sudden and overwhelming intensity of her penetrating blue gaze, even as the maid quietly began to unload the trolley in their periphery. She barely noticed the woman's curtsey as she stepped back into a distant corner of the room, where a more haughty royal or highborn scion might think it safe to ignore her existence—but Euphemia found that, to her senses, the woman did not seem at all benign by her nature, and her instincts, honed by virtue of her sister being a military woman and so being surrounded at all times by trained professional killers, shrieked the danger this woman radiated into the dark recesses of the mind everyone presumed to be wholly innocent and quintessentially un-Britannian. In spite of where her gaze was, the Fourth Princess started when Milly spoke again, so consumed with the subtle yet insistent presence of the foreign maid, like the soft caress of a dagger poised to slip smoothly between her ribs at a moment's notice.
"In most countries, it is customary for the youngest to pour the tea. However, as a host to a visiting member of the Imperial Family, perhaps it would be insolent of me to expect such a thing of you, Euphy," said Milly, and for all that the diminutive had an obvious emphasis behind it this time, she knew at once that malice was not its motivation, for all that she might wish it was not so; it would have been so much easier had her 'rival' not stated each and every thing she had to say with such pure and benevolent intentions. Malice would have made each word a barb, a threat, as easily shrugged off as any of the cruel jibes whispered behind the fans of noblewomen, or even her own half-siblings, when they believed she could not hear them.
But Milly did not mean her ill, truly it seemed, and that turned what would have been an insult into a bitter truth, something infinitely more difficult to dismiss as a simple matter of course. Milly stood from her perch and began to fill the cup in front of Euphemia, nestled in a saucer, with the translucent maroon liquid and scent of citrus that even someone with as bare-bones a knowledge of tea as she had could recognise it within an instant, before filling her own cup and snatching a macaron off of the top of the pile. The princess followed suit much more tentatively, folding one into her grasp; and in taking a first cautious bite, her mouth flooded with the delicious taste of fresh vanilla.
"There must be more you wished to discuss than the fruitlessness of my ambition to win Justine's heart," Euphemia remarked with surprising confidence. "You would not provide tea and confections for a conversation that might consume a third of an hour at the absolute most."
"Perceptive." Milly nodded, taking a drink of her tea. "And ultimately, correct. You see, your highness, I—"
A sudden, sharp shriek of horror jerked Euphemia's attention away from Milly. On an impulse that was something akin to instinct, she leapt to her feet, gathering her skirts, and rushed as swiftly as she could to the closed door of Milly's apartments. Darlton rushed past her, however, pressing his imposing, muscled frame up against the threshold with his service pistol drawn, held at the ready. The scarred man, notable in that he was a commoner promoted from the ranks and by the ranks ennobled, which was something of a rare occurrence, turned and regarded them both, his square jaw tight and his steel-grey eyes alert, before speaking for the first time since their arrival. "Princess, Lady Carmilla, you'd best stay here."
"With all due respect, Flight Officer, this is my residence, and I should like to see what has become of it," Milly replied with all the poise Guinevere and the rest pretended to possess, rising from her seat and drawing closer with measured strides.
"Someone must stay with the princess," Darlton countered.
"That is, if the princess desires to stay behind," Milly remarked.
"I do not," Euphemia assented, quite firmly.
"There you have it." Milly sighed, drawing herself up and seeming to enlarge in a way similar to how Justine could, with only her slight frame, appear to completely engulf a room at a moment's notice. "And besides, Flight Officer, I have my own security measures in place. I would be loath to place a favoured future in-law in harm's way."
Darlton's eyes swept across both of them, and finding each to be resolute, relented. "Very well. Then at least stay behind me."
Milly nodded easily, and Euphemia followed her lead. With that, Darlton opened the door of the apartments very slowly and with great care, until the gap was wide enough for the broad man to slip through, into the dark, lavish corridors of the Ashford manor beyond. Euphemia, her skirts balled in a white-knuckled grip, rushed to follow, and Milly, for all that she seemed oddly unhurried, easily kept pace with her. They rushed through the corridors in Darlton's wake, and in so doing drew closer to the source of the scream together with the rising clamour.
Then the Imperial Air Force officer drew up short, and Euphemia found herself paralysed beside him.
There, crumpled on the ground in a pool of blood, was the unmistakable form of the Lady Scorpion herself, Cassiopeia Ashford, her glassy eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling and her mouth open in one last muted scream of alarm.
Milly brushed past her onto the scene, and regarded the gathering crowd of staff evenly. "We have an intruder. All members of the staff, line up. Unlike the vast majority of the peerage, I know each of you by name and face. The interloper likely disguised themselves as a servant, and in that, they have made a grave error—"
From the eaves burst a furtive streak of living shadow with such surpassing swiftness that if Euphemia had at that very moment chosen to blink, she would have missed the movement entirely. It lurched for Milly, who regarded it almost expectantly, and without so much as a flinch; with a clash of metal and a dull thud, that same shadow was knocked off-course in a shower of sparks to land harshly against the wall of the corridor.
Darlton at once moved to cover Euphemia, but the shadow was not prone for long, and leapt to a crouch before palming something from their waist that they dashed against the floor.
Euphemia's eyes burned as the sudden rush of smoke blinded her, flooding her lungs with sweet scent as she, Darlton, and the servants all began to cough, echoed with cries of alarm.
Yet above the rising din, Milly's voice called out, clear as day, "Sayoko!"
A sharp, almost screaming whistle cut through the swirling cloud of grey-white smoke, and with a muted, wet thunk, the projectile—whatever it was—found its mark.
The smoke cleared in a few moments, and at the far end of the corridor was a crumpled form, attired from head to toe in dark blue garb that was just baggy enough to obscure the figure beneath, as well as their identity. From the back of the figure's neck, at exactly the base of what looked to be their skull, was embedded a strange dagger, possessed of clear Britannian origin and yet distinctly un-Britannian design.
"Excellent aim as always, Sayoko," Milly remarked, and Euphemia turned in shock to regard the Japanese maid, standing at Milly's shoulder as if she had always been there. Her eyes, normally light brown, were dark and cold, and her nodded acceptance of her lady's praise was brief, perfunctory, almost curt.
Darlton rushed forth to check on the corpse of the unknown assassin, and shortly after he knelt to examine the body in more detail, he whistled. "Excellent aim is right. You managed to pith the poor sod."
Euphemia did not look at her escort, however, did not see the surprise and grudging awe in his gaze as he looked upon the Japanese woman. She was transfixed by Milly, by the clear and subtly lachrymose displeasure in every line and curve of her face, and most of all, by the bright glimmer of vicious triumph in her eyes.
It was clear to her, then, what had happened. And while Euphemia could venture a guess that no one, not even the most traditionalist of the nobility could truly blame her (for all that they might certainly pretend to), one fact was abundantly clear:
Carmilla Ashford was a matricide.
"I thank you for your company, your highness, but there is suddenly so much to do. Shall I be keeping you on the guest list, then?"
When John Dee first conceived of the Office of Secret Intelligence in the latter half of the sixteenth century, he had famously likened its workings to the myriad natural machinations of an octopus—many amorphous and writhing limbs coordinated by a single brain, a single will, bent wholly towards a single purpose, namely the advancement of the ambitions of Elizabeth I, who was ironically the last of the Tudor monarchs. The organisation was short-lived, suffering from a litany of mistakes and chronic mismanagement by the kings and queens of the Stuart dynasty that followed, and by the time that Queen Anne lay dead and the Hanovers took the Britannian throne, it was less than a memory, a myth whispered on the lips of errant spymasters and gossiping informants.
In the wake of the Humiliation of Edinburgh, however, with the swift end of the Hanover dynasty upon the death of Elizabeth III and the subsequent ascension of Ricardo von Britannia, the first of the ninety-eight monarchs to lead the Empire, there arose the need for a new league of brilliant minds who worked in the shadows. The rebirth of the Office of Secret Intelligence then had been the accomplishment of William James Moriarty, a young prodigy, who was at the time a professor of mathematics at the Imperial Colchester Institute and swiftly gaining fame for his work in revolutionising the field of astronomy. This iteration began its resurgence as a criminal organisation that operated primarily within the borders of Europia United; and in time, Moriarty approached the second Holy Britannian Emperor, Julius, in secret. It was a fruitful meeting, and thereafter, the criminal organisation had officially been deputised as an arm of the crown, with Professor Moriarty succeeding Dee in becoming the unofficial spymaster of the Empire.
Though the OSI was still feared throughout the imperial aristocracy, some said that the Emblem of Blood had done more damage to the life's work of the legendary mathematician than anyone involved in the current regime wanted to admit; and as Justine took the elevator down into the bowels of Pendragon, within which rested the hidden base of the OSI, with Jeremiah at her flank and the stock of a rifle pressed up against his shoulder, she noted to herself that there was much more truth to those half-heard rumours than she had initially given them credit for.
This was not the sewers, this labyrinthine subterrane to which they descended. Those rested ten or fifteen metres above their heads, accessible to practically all and sundry. This place was as immaculate as its appearance was industrial, steel and glass and spools of copper thread spanning miles upon miles of interlocking tunnels, oriented in a manner that was meant to make an intruder feel the sensation of being a fly trapped in a grand spider's web, concocted from the sadistic and magnificent brain of the late Professor Moriarty himself.
And yet, even the grandest and most clever of spiders might find the visage of a dragon gives them pause, and brings ruin to their elaborate webs, Justine mused as she stepped off of the open lift after it shuddered to a stop. Jeremiah swiftly moved to keep a close distance with her, the red dot of his sight sweeping over the dark, foreboding corridors of the compound that was the lair of their foe. He stepped forward, sweeping ahead of her, and in his combat armour, he looked for once every inch the promising young soldier that had graduated from the Officer's Academy at Imperial Colchester at the very top of his class—efficient, disciplined, and deadly.
Justine swept into his wake, dressed in form-fitting trousers, high-heeled boots, and an airy blouse that was light on her slim frame, all of them black. Gloved hands curled into fists at her side, and one went to the hilt of the weapon she carried specifically for this operation, on her back and secured to the harness that crossed her chest over the blouse. She'd practised with it to the point where her fingers slipped easily into the grooves of the grip, a variation on a rapier's pistol grip that took elements from the stock of a musket to beget something of a unique hybrid. In a single smooth motion, she drew the weapon from her back, and it was the full length of an old longsword, though the profile of the blade rested between a sabre and a cutlass; its guard was a basket hilt, something reminiscent of a flintlock mechanism, and a trigger all in one, while a rifled barrel, gunmetal-black, ran along almost two thirds of the blade's spine.
The princess was familiar with the concept of the weapon; Cornelia herself wore one at her hip, and Justine, who, in all her adolescent gangliness, could record her height as being just over ten centimetres shorter than Cornelia, hoped to one day be able to do something similar. It was called a gunsabre, constituting equal parts firearm and sword, and when Taliesin had gifted it to her in preparation for this exact excursion, he told her it was called Heirsbane. Not precisely an auspicious name, given her circumstances, but she could not deny the compelling nature of the sound of it.
Near the base of the blade was a cylinder, and it held eight rounds in its rotation; not for the first time that night, she rolled it open with a soft, whirring click, and double-checked that all eight bullets placed into the cylinder were both undisturbed and live. After all, tonight she made to kill a man in Hadrian Deusericus, and pulling the trigger only to discover her ammunition was a dud would be quite the embarrassing show of negligence on her part. Just as it was when they began, each round was immaculate, and hadn't been jostled in the slightest; satisfied with what she saw, she gave the cylinder a flick of her wrist and sent it spinning back into the chamber. She looked up to see that Jeremiah had advanced to the end of the corridor, checking both sides as the path before them forked. From a distance, it seemed as though the paths that rested before them were completely identical—yet at that moment, Jeremiah seemed to scrounge in his kit amidst the loaded clips of 5.56 ammunition he brought for his rifle, and pulled forth a small silver nub, which he then held out to her as she approached.
"It's an earpiece," Jeremiah explained as she drew close, and it was; she took the silver nub from him, setting it into her ear, and a harsh crackle made her flinch for a moment before the signal stabilised, and a familiar voice cut through the sonic detritus.
"Ah! 'Tis good to speak with you again, my lady. You shall be most pleased to hear that your dear sister's mood has improved, and in the meanwhile, I shall fulfil my end of the bargain and direct you all from here."
Justine gave something between a sigh and a chuckle. "Taliesin."
"Just so, my lady, and none other," replied the immortal majordomo. "Now, shall we now to brass tacks, eh? The fork to your right will take you closer to your goal."
Justine nodded, and Jeremiah struck out down the selected tunnel, the boot-falls of the two armed intruders echoing throughout the deceptively large expanse of the complex as they rushed along the way. There was no need for either of them to exchange words anymore; Taliesin chattered enough for the both of them, though of course, all of his information was pertinent.
"Video surveillance is shut down, as are the sentry turrets. There are, of course, human guards between you and your goal, but I should not think disposing of them is a challenge that is in any way beyond your formidable ability, yes?" the man inquired rhetorically. "They should be coming your way fairly soon. While you dispose of them, I shall take the liberty of wiping their records of the past, oh, six hours, let's say, from here. Oh, and do make sure that you leave no survivors. Cheerio!"
Justine thought to wonder what the point of hunting down this one man to kill was, if she was going to have to fight her way through anyways. She dismissed it a moment later; it was the intimacy of it, she surmised—to stand before a beaten man, to hear his desperate pleas for mercy, and to, in a single moment, silence them, staring into his eyes as the last sparks of life leave their dormant corpse. It was the sort of sentiment Taliesin might himself present to her, knowing that she would understand. Yet, such abstractions were shunted off to the back of her head as calls, frantic and unintelligible, echoed throughout the tunnels up ahead.
Jeremiah stood still as a statue for a few moments, listening to the chatter, before rushing forward, Justine hot on his heels. She understood his motive immediately—they were exposed where they were, and it was worth advancing into danger if there was a chance they could find cover up ahead. Twenty metres they ran, and then he grabbed her shoulder, shoving her roughly into a service alcove and ducking in himself, without a moment to spare; bullets slammed into the corner of the wall a moment later, chipping off concrete and metal in a fine mist of sand and rust. In the low light, their enemy's night vision lenses gave them a considerable advantage for as long as they were able to stay at range. The solution to Justine seemed incredibly simple—she could level the proverbial playing field, and perhaps even turn the situation to her benefit, if she could find a way to close the distance between them. This in mind, she looked up at her escort, and with a softer version of her 'command' voice, she said, "They'll have us pinned soon enough. We need to close the distance, and quickly. What do you have on hand?"
Jeremiah, ever-faithful, grabbed a tube-like implement with what looked to be a trigger, which he immediately depressed. Then, he threw it around the corner and down the hall. "Cover your eyes, your highness!"
Justine blocked her own eyes with her gloved hand, and though some of the brilliance of the flashbang grenade's detonation penetrated her flesh, she didn't hesitate, charging out of the alcove and directly towards the assembled squadron of armed and clearly severely disoriented guards bearing the odd uniforms of the OSI behind their cover, bulkheads raised from the ground. A hail of bullets came from behind her a moment later, Jeremiah providing her with suppressing fire, and she vaulted the bulkhead with one hand, falling upon the first agent and using her weight to drive her blade through his throat. It was a fascinating sound, how wet it sounded when the tempered metal of her weapon slipped smoothly into the soft flesh of his neck, but she didn't have much time to think on it, storing the memory away for later as she leapt off of him to drag her weapon out. She slashed next from shoulder to hip of the soldier in front of her, even as her mind whirled with adrenaline, and at the end of her follow-through, she pulled the trigger, a .308 round tearing down the rifled barrel to ricochet off the ceiling and into the face of another who had torn the night vision gear from himself to better adjust. She rotated her grip and lunged forth, skewering another man through his mouth and out of the back of his head, and smirked as a single volley of shots rang out, followed by the hard thud of the man who had thought to sneak up behind her.
She plucked the standard-issue cravat from the man who had been her second kill upon finding it reasonably free of blood, and ran it along the metal of the gunsabre. It was, admittedly, a poor substitute for proper weapon maintenance, but that could wait for the moment. Jeremiah drew up to her, shifting the muzzle of his rifle to each of the corpses in sequence to check that they were truly dead, before putting a bullet into each of their heads, just to be certain. That duty done, he nodded his approval to Justine, who felt a tension she had not noticed until then unwind from within her. Part of her had been gearing up to rebuff his fretting over her safety, only to find itself nonplussed as she discovered she had underestimated Jeremiah. This man shall one day be my Knight of Honour. I'll make damned sure of that.
"Right, then. Now that that bit of business is all taken care of…" came Taliesin's voice as they continued down the twisting tunnel. "There is a four-way intersection coming up just ahead of you, and at that intersection, you'll want to be hanging left. The tunnel will be on a decline, so do watch your footing. I would hate for either of you to get seriously injured."
"Can you control the bulkheads they raise for cover?" asked Justine.
"Now now, my lady, we don't want to make this too easy, now do we?" he replied, and Justine felt her lip twist up in a cruel smirk at the jibe. "Which reminds me for whatever reason—what will you like to wear to the late Lady Cassiopeia's funeral?"
"Black, of course," Justine replied, and then asked herself, what would Juliette counsel me to do in this sort of situation? "But not the same one I wore to my audience with the emperor. Inform Milly that she is to have carte blanche with arranging my garments, so long as the caveats of 'black' and 'lace, no frills' are followed."
"I'll see it done, my lady," promised Taliesin, and she could practically hear his curt grin. Then came, "Ah! It seems your dear sister is finished at last. Pardon me—I'll be back well before you need me again, my lady, never you fear."
No more than a few breaths passed following Taliesin's departure, before a further clamour was heard up ahead. It seemed the firefight from earlier had not gone unnoticed—which Justine supposed only made sense, that the sound would carry down the corridors in such a way, for operational security if nothing else—and what sounded like a few guard patrols were closing in from the tunnels and intersections up ahead, hidden from her view. Perhaps it might have been prudent to purchase night vision gear…
A moment later, she discarded the idea. No, that would too easily link us to what's about to happen here. We'll have to rely on normal vision and Taliesin's guidance in breaching this place to get the job done, it seems.
"Why aren't the automated defences working?!" came a clear, shrill cry from up ahead. Justine threw a signal to Jeremiah, and they both lowered their stances and clung to the wall, doing their level best to dampen their footfalls in the process. Justine, already a light stepper, and even more so since Taliesin took it upon himself to train her, found no difficulty in it, and her future knight seemed to take it upon himself to demonstrate the quality of Imperial Colchester's ambush training. If they could get the drop on these men, not only could they grab an advantage, but also intelligence that might be useful in verifying that they'd successfully cut the head off of the snake.
"We're not sure, my lord. The sensors have gone completely dark, the traps are disarmed, the turrets have somehow inexplicably gone offline," replied a more professional, yet still frantic, voice. Justine crept closer, and finally came in sight of the corner behind which her quarry were positioned. An idea sparking to igneous life in her mind, she brought her gunsabre to the fore, steadying the barrel on the back of her hand as she lined up the shot. Even assuming her estimate on the location of the commanding officer—the shrill voice—was accurate, this had to be just perfect; else, they'd give away their position, and all would be lost. "All that's working are the bulkheads for cover."
"Then split up and find the intruders! I don't care what it takes! Find them—!"
She squeezed the trigger.
A harsh crack and a muzzle flash.
A sharp twang as the bullet ricocheted off of the wall.
And finally, a strangled, wet cry of shock as the ammunition slammed home.
She didn't even need to signal Jeremiah; in the commotion that followed, he rushed forth into the breach, spraying the hall down with suppressing fire. Following much the same tactic as before, Justine spun the cylinder with a harsh flick of her wrist and surged towards the fray, strafing to avoid the returning fire that threw up dust and concrete at her feet, and then up the wall to vault over the patrol. The cylinder slowed to rest with a small click, easily missed, and with a few dazzling flashes of her gunsabre, the shell came to light in a bright, flaming cross.
She alighted daintily on the balls of her feet, and then sprung forth, cutting a bloody path through the flaming, panicked crowd of OSI agents. With its keen edge, she emerged from the brutal swathe, and waved Jeremiah onward to sweep through the aftermath—there could be no witnesses to what was transpiring here.
The clamour escalated in the adjacent corridors off of the main hall, and Justine knew then that they had to turn and make a stand. No witnesses meant no survivors, either. Not one person who had not come in with her could ever be allowed to leave it again, save in a body bag.
Her hands were trembling, and for a single dawning, dreadful moment, she thought that perhaps she couldn't cut it; but then her heart thudded harshly in her ears, and she knew the trembling for what it was—adrenaline. Reassured, she turned and gestured a signal for Jeremiah to return to the previous corridor, and as she cocked the chamber again, she knew she had four bullets left in the cylinder before she'd need to reload. When she looked up, Jeremiah had just finished ejecting his spent magazine and slotting in a new one, using the slide to shunt the first 5.56 round of the new magazine into the chamber. Her future knight nodded to her, and swiftly made his way ahead of her, even as she slipped another cravat from the commanding officer she had killed first—your typical silver-spoon blue-blood, whom, she noted with some satisfaction, she had managed to hit directly between the eyes. A moment of further examination showed that she was perhaps a centimetre and a half off of her target, which was unacceptable. She had failed to account for the momentum lost upon hitting the wall off of which the round ricocheted. She'd have to learn to do better. Sliding the cravat down the blade brought the lion's share of the blood off of the weapon; yet, she knew that it would be bloodied further ere long.
The corridor they had just cleared split to the left off of the main tunnel; yet to the extensions that split right and the one that went straight ahead—a three-way fork, the junction was far from perpendicular—there came further clamorous voices, as though the loud echoes of the extermination of their fellows gave them cause for haste. She could only hope they had friends among the men she had just slaughtered, if only for the thought that they would be much sloppier in their attempts to kill Jeremiah and her. She moved out to meet him, only to see tracer rounds flashing bright as they tore their way through the air, forcing her knight to seek refuge against the corner.
"Ah! My lady! You seem to have gotten yourself into something of a spot of bother! Never fear~! My lady, there is an exposed line of gasoline running above the path straight ahead, resting precisely between two and three o'clock. It is concealed, so you should not be able to see it, but it is exposed—"
Justine tuned out Taliesin's explanation beyond the position of the gas line, and used the back of her hand to once again line up her shot. The angle of hitting it from where she was, however, was flatly impossible if she attempted it directly. Remember this time, Justine, that the bullet will lose momentum with each point of ricochet… And account for that. Precision, Justine, precision… Let your aim be true…
In a moment, the barrel of the gunsabre swung down, and with a muzzle flash and a loud crack, her weapon fired once again.
The harsh twang of ricochet sounded out once, twice, thrice…
PING!
There was a moment's hiss, and then one of the tracers sparked in just the wrong way.
Justine grabbed Jeremiah by the arm and insistently hauled him down the way they had cleared first, vaulting over a bulkhead and ducking for cover as the fireball roared to deafening, concussive life in their wake.
The flames were scorching, the sound left her ears ringing, and it was like a desert as the heat seared over and around their crouched position. In a few moments, it was over, and Justine uncurled herself, turning her gaze upon Jeremiah, and sighing with relief to find him slightly rattled, but entirely hale. She accepted the help he then offered in standing to her feet, the ringing in her ears temporarily deafening out the rest of the complex and profoundly distorting her sense of equilibrium. The vertigo alone was sickening, and the disorientation brought with it an ironic sense of disquiet, but in time, Jeremiah managed to guide them both according to the instructions Taliesin continued to cheerily feed them. Justine rested Heirsbane upon her shoulder, unwilling to drop the weapon in her wake in an inattentive moment, and in time, the world, and her balance began to filter back into her perception.
Taking stock of their surroundings, it seemed clear that their trek down into the belly of the beast was not yet over. And yet, it seemed ambling onwards towards their goal was all that remained of the challenges they faced, for dull, muted thuds and the shuddering of the ceiling resonated from distant caverns and corridors, the initial explosion seeming to have set off a chain reaction. It occurred to her to ask Taliesin whether or not that had been the plan, but abandoned it shortly thereafter; it was a fundamentally useless question, for reasons so numerous and obvious that they almost didn't bear consideration in the first place. She looked down to check how many rounds she still had in the cylinder, and counted one, two, three; she had burned through just over half of the cylinder, and had to remember to make sure to keep at least one round ready, in case the weapon was meant to be her means of execution.
For long minutes, their silent journey continued through darkened corridors, and shifting, lengthening shadows. So great was the relative time they had gone without enemy contact that, upon taking what seemed to be one of the final turns towards the main base itself, Justine and Jeremiah jerked themselves back behind the wall, alerting the guards with the haste of their motion—though given the fact that bullets had yet to slam into the corner, they hadn't actually been seen yet.
"Who goes there!" demanded a commanding voice from the end of the last corridor, in its totality distinct from that of the blue-blooded commanding officer she had killed. She could almost sense the orders he'd give in this position—use this command, and a few others, to drown out whatever noise his underlings might make and draw her attention, giving the guards time to flush them out and surround them. Justine and Jeremiah didn't have the element of surprise necessary to pin them down, and at this point, they could ill-afford a pitched battle that could and would give their quarry, her prey, all the time he needed to slip the noose that had so carefully been draped about his neck. She needed a means to clear out the corridor at almost the same time, while also leaving the structure itself intact—and then it struck her, unceremoniously and abruptly.
Three rounds in the cylinder, fifteen seconds at most before they manage to close in on us fully. At the low end, anywhere between five and seven, depending on several factors. Justine slid the cylinder out of alignment, spun it harshly, and slammed it back into the chamber even as it spun still. All current means are insufficient; improvisation is required. Conceive of the door as just another surface, like the ground itself—same concept, different result. Adjust for changes of alignment. Travel will require a commensurate amount of force to avoid dissipation. One shot at this. Here goes.
Whirling out from cover in a rush of movement, she took a moment to note the momentary shock on the faces of the soldiers that looked back at her, nearly having come upon their alcove, even as her body moved to put her plan into action. In a blur of glinting, gleaming motion, she brought a flaming cross into being, screaming down the hallway with hellish vigour as its azure radiance ripped through them. It had cooled to orange by the time it splashed against the great metal contraption that served as a secure threshold to the sanctum of this place, and the commanding officer, a square-jawed man with short, thick dark hair and a prominent moustache, brought his arms up across his body to try and protect himself even slightly.
When the flame cleared, however, there was Justine, looking into the man's brown eyes with riveted focus as she forced the red-hot, cooling metal of Heirsbane just that much further through his combat armour, and into his heart.
Jeremiah swept through the corridor behind her, each harsh, barking retort of his rifle signalling a newly confirmed kill, but Justine did not look away, did not dare. She made sure to stare, unflinching, and without hesitation, into this man's eyes as they slowly clouded, until finally, he could see—and know—no more. She stepped back with a grunt of satisfaction, and as his body slid to its knees bonelessly, she pinned the fresh corpse against the door with the heel of her boot, as she quickly drew the weapon out of his body. Her only thought: It's good that I was so precise. If it had gotten lodged in any more difficult tissue, like cartilage or bone, I could be here for a good quarter of an hour trying to pry it free.
Finally, Jeremiah drew up to her, and asked her a question she, much to her intermingled shame and chagrin, hadn't yet considered asking: "How, precisely, are we meant to gain entry to what lies beyond this door, your highness?"
"Like so."
Taliesin's voice startled both of them; Justine, at least, had almost forgotten he was there. More startling was the way the metal of the door groaned, its gears grinding against each other as it pried itself open, shrieking its protest all the while. Beyond the threshold laid an office space that was equal parts lavish and functional, its decor befitting the chamber's status as the seat of power of they who would deem themselves the successor of the legendary Moriarty. A broad, and very old, mahogany table dominated the initial view, and the walls hosted as much bookshelf space as it did monitors, screens, and consoles, for controlling every limb of the allegorical (and zoologically inaccurate) octopus. At the desk itself was a high-backed black leather chair, the sort that a man might seek to make himself appear dominating, only to appear dominated by the furniture in turn, and thus all the more diminutive for it; and its back was very firmly to them. Then, in a single, shocking moment, Justine heard the voice that had guided her this far in her ear and from the room at once, as the chair began to turn.
"Pardon the cliche, my lady," said Taliesin, as the seat revealed none other than his languid pose draped upon it. "But this is simply something I've always wanted to do, I'm afraid I must confess."
"You bloody traitor…!"
"Jeremiah!" Justine called, the command in her tone provoking his immediate silence. She studied the smirking man, her butler, in the chair for a few pregnant moments as the pieces shifted and fit themselves together. "So, Taliesin, I have to ask: why have us infiltrate this place by the chosen method of ingress, when you had a back way in the entire time?"
Taliesin's scarlet eyes flashed behind his pince-nez; he was transparently impressed. "My sister once told me that while a straight line may well be the shortest and most expedient distance betwixt two points, it is by no means the most interesting. Though I am curious: dear Jeremiah's conclusion that I have been a traitor this entire time was only to be expected! It was, I shall admit, a part of this ruse I was anticipating quite highly. What gave me away?"
"Charles zi Britannia," Justine replied, her voice strong and her tone certain. "He is a man too prideful and too volatile on account of that pride to be manipulated or controlled. It is by no doing of whatever merit he might have, but rather his many vices. He would not brook you as a collaborator; he has allowed precisely one into that role. And you, Taliesin, would never suffer to be under his power."
"And what makes you think that?"
"It is not something I think. I know it to be true. It is not for any reluctance on your part to swallow your pride or do away with your dignity; it is that Charles zi Britannia represents a dead end," Justine elaborated. "And that much is your antithesis."
Taliesin favoured her with a smile instead of a smirk, but it held something of a wan edge to it, and there was no mirth to be found in any of the muscles responsible for its expression. With a small inhale, he pressed his gloved hands against the arms of the chair and lifted himself out of it. "Your words are more true than you know, my lady. Indeed, they are more true than you can know, at least for the moment. Very well. I shall concede the point."
"There is also the fact that were you to betray us, it would most certainly not be in this manner," Justine clarified, relaxing her stance and taking a step forwards towards the desk itself, holding her fatigue within herself, shackled and bound. It would not serve her here, and definitely not now. "But that conclusion is far more difficult to substantiate, much less articulate. It is something of an instinctive understanding on my part."
"True on all counts, my lady," Taliesin attested. "Yet we came here to sever the head of the serpent, did we not? Needless to say, you may rest assured that your prey has been secured.
"I bid you bear witness…" Taliesin reached out, and swept away the chair with dramatic flourish, to expose a portly man crowned with a scraggly nest of mousy brown hair, his features that were crafted precisely for the sole purpose of conveying supercilious condescension twisted in a rictus of terror. The man set to squirming and wriggling impotently, bound, double-bound, and triple-bound, in leather, hemp, and iron, as he was. "…To Hadrian, Earl Deusericus, sole and chief director of none other than the Britannian Office of Secret Intelligence."
Approaching the bound body and crouching to meet him eye to eye, Justine studied the man pitilessly for a long moment, her violet eyes cold in a way that was so distinctly unlike that of her sire that at the moment, in spite of the similarity of their positions, they had never resembled each other less than in that instant. Then, at last, she turned to Taliesin. "My blood is cooled. Ungag him. I would have him know his end."
Taliesin bowed without a word, and moved to see her will done. With a gesture from her, Jeremiah parted from her side and walked along the perimeter of the room, until he came upon a point from which he could spy into the subterranean labyrinth from out the open door of what minotaur of metaphor lumbered in its heart. The moment the iron bit and strap that served as the director's gag was removed from between his jaws, his jowls quivered as he mustered up enough blustering bravado to adopt a sense of indignity about him. "Princess Justine. I should have known—to have the audacity to go before His Majesty and…"
CRACK!
The man's head whipped to the side with such abrupt force that ribbons of blood fluttered from his mouth, and Justine waited patiently, her hand in the follow-through, for his attention to be back on her. "I did not come here to listen to you as you insist on spending these, your final moments, engaged in worthless prattle. I wish only for you to understand this: that this is not the result of a personal vendetta, against you or against Charles zi Britannia. You are beneath my hatred, and it would be the height of insolence for you to believe, even for a moment, that you are worthy of even my loathing. You are merely an obstacle between me and my goals, and for that unconscionable act of high treason, the sentence is death.
"With your demise, the threat the OSI poses to me, mine, and my ambitions is ended. It is the beginning of a new era, both for the royal family, and indeed, for Britannia itself. But, here I have come now, to grant you but a single immaculate mercy: that you shall not live to see it," Justine continued, her voice calm, her tone even, but the menace so clear despite that that she got a rush of satisfaction seeing this creature she knew only as an abstraction, a great barrier between herself and her goals, shrink and wither away from her, cowed and debased—unwilling to kneel, and thus knelt, by her voice alone. She reached out, and with a single finger propped upon the ageing man's quivering chin—and at this distance, she could see quite clearly the emerging grey, like the march of time itself, that encroached upon his scalp—she lifted his limpid blue gaze to her own vivid violet stare, heavy and hard like fine-cut gems, and piercing as a comet through the slow dancing march of the firmament. "This really is for the best, you know. Why, you might even thank me for it. Not that I care one way or the other."
With that, she rose from her crouch, took a step back, and brought Heirsbane to bear upon the back of her hand. She cocked the hammer, and the last bullet whirred towards the chamber, where it settled with a soft click, so easily missed, and yet as good as deafening in the silence of the room. The other two, Justine could sense, watched her with bated breath, wanting to see what she would do, whether she would have the strength to follow through.
Yet, now that the moment was upon her in truth, Justine could only think of how silly she had been, to doubt herself for even a moment. Perhaps it was wisdom to temper her possible bravado, true enough; yet, the fact remained that in that moment, staring this man in the eyes, with a cool head and not an ounce of hatred in her heart, taking that final step was suddenly the easiest thing in the world.
She would kill this man because he needed to die. She required no other reason.
And so, with a precise, unhurried squeeze of the trigger, the Gordian knot was sundered.
With a single bullet, the Office of Secret Intelligence was undone.