3.7 How They Carried On
Arthur took the ferry to the continent, riding the second-level forward deck the whole way. Facing backwards, which would play merry havoc with his hair, but he could see that no one was approaching him, that way. Observation decks behind glass, and busy enough all around that any bodies dropping would result in anchors dropping and a captive pool of witnesses an assassin could not escape, either.
That blade cut both ways, though. If no one could risk getting close enough to end his life, he had no chance to catch a potential assailant for a little discreet questioning, either.
Too bad.
He guestimated halfway by the long low dark hint of land at the horizon, and oh-so-casually turned to lean over the railing, letting his hands dangle… and dropping the Weston he'd lifted from the vacated desk in the capital's CCI. Fall, and fall, and splash. No worries when he passed customs in Calais, then.
And reminded himself to contact CCI and let them know the disappearance of that particular firearm was due to Psych Ops necessity, rather than any negligence of one of their own.
When they maneuvered into their dock space at the quay, he remained where he was, watching the queues of passengers stream off and away. It was raining, just slightly, drops pattering down from a half-hearted gray sky, and that was in his favor. No one lingered. He waited to disembark til there weren't lines, exactly, but still used his rucksack to block his body from the hands of anyone near him, scanned upper windows and passersby.
Beyond that, he didn't waste time glancing about him like a first-timer. Or like an experienced scout trying to spot a tail.
Too big a crowd. Too narrow a passage, the ferry to the mainland – too likely that someone was keeping an eye out for him, given the murder that set up the assassination attempt in his sister's flat. Given the girl with the knife in the alley behind the bar.
Why do you want me dead, all of a sudden? Before psychic had joined him, there hadn't been any incidents like this. And it suggested that he was a target, as much as Merlin. Something I know? Something I don't know…
He shrugged his rucksack a little more comfortable – grad student backpacking across Europa – and fastened the clip connecting the shoulder-straps across his chest, to secure it a little more firmly.
Ready to run, always.
He followed the signs through customs – Rien a declarer, monsieur? – then veered away from the walkways to train and trolley stations, temporarily busy with ferry passengers. Instead he spotted a small blue sign – Gazon-Velo a Louer.
Turf-bikes for rent.
The attendant was glumly watching the rain through the show-windows, chin in hand in spite of the vibrant green and brilliant scarlet of the cheery planter-boxes outside. She brightened up when he pulled the door open – a little bell was rigged to jingle overhead – adjusting her glasses. Then adjusting the fit of her casual emerald-green blouse, and adding the pink of a blush to her welcoming smile.
"Bonjour, monsieur – welcome," she said.
"Bon-jeour," he said, grinning like the village idiot on a backpack tour of Europa – and the state of his hair helped the impression. "Parlay-voo… uh, I'm from Camelot?"
"Oui," she simpered. "Yes, of course."
"Oh, good." He exaggerated the relief. "So I'm on vacation and I've only got a certain number of days and a certain amount of cash… comprenday-voos?"
"Oui," she said, a little more dryly.
"Yeah – so, I can't afford to sit in my room and look at Calais through the rain on the window my whole vacation. A little rain never hurt anyone, right?" He leaned backward on the counter next to her, watching out the show-windows also. No tails showed – but if they were pros, they wouldn't. Surely there were places where someone – or more than one – could watch to see if he actually rented a turf-bike or ducked out the back.
"C'est vrai," she agreed. "Very true. So you wish to experience Calais in spite of a little rain, yes? To rent the grass-bike?"
"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking." He gestured at the artistically-embellished blackboard that formed the front face of the counter-area, times and prices chalked for potential customers. "I don't know… how much do I get for…" Funds were limited after a fortnight investigating Morgause Renard in Camelot, but he named a sum that wouldn't offend her – or make too large a hole in his wallet.
Slight disappointment on her face, at the relatively small amount – eclipsed by concentration on the math. "Forty-five – I can give you fifty minutes, for that?"
"Perfect." Arthur flashed a charming smile, digging in his pocket and laying down the cash in crumpled low-denomination bills and coins. "I drive fast – I'm impatient to get started-"
"Ah – just there." Hands full of his money to sort and count it, she indicated a rental form on a clipboard. "You fill that out? And I will get la cle."
"Thanks very much," he said, beginning to scrawl some barely-legible nonsense.
He'd finish before she did; she'd forget to ask him to verify the ID; she'd remember after they were already halfway across the floor, and then waive the need, red-faced at a bit of flirtatious begging to be allowed to tour her lovely city without delay.
Of course he had no intention of touring Calais. Not without a definite tail to lead into ambush and not without knowing and being able to set up a good location to conduct said interrogation. Maybe in Paris, though…
"Are the tanks full of fuel?" he asked, as she was still sorting the coins into their proper compartments in her register. He slid the paperwork over the counter, upside-down to her.
"Bien sur," she said, beaming. "Of course – they are ready to drive."
"Well," he drawled, pushing upright to move toward the rows of turf-bikes leaning on their stick-stands, crowded up to the show-window invitingly. "Al-on-zee…"
Because of course he had no intention of returning it, either.
…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
Merlin stood as close to the wire at the northwest corner of Camp George as he could, without making the internal patrol nervous about his intentions, and watched the light fade at the unfamiliar horizon. It was so very alien to him, how dry and bare and empty was the land here. How wide and pale the sky – how abrupt the hills, how jagged and… deceptive.
Arthur had left Camelot, to come to the mainland.
And, they only allowed soldiers ten minutes a day to make a comm-block connection with family or friends back home. The feet of the folding chair gritted sand on the plywood flooring of the communications tent, and he couldn't help bracing himself with a palm against the small ledge-desk that held three comm-blocks units in a row, with less privacy than a public-use unit in the middle of a train station.
His first day he'd connected to his mother. Guess where I am…
Wait, where?
You knew they were going to give me a mission…
Yes, but there?
It's not really any more dangerous than anywhere else. Not with this job.
Yes, but… that's not very reassuring.
Mom. I'm psychic. I'll see danger coming at least a league away.
Some of those missiles, though, traveled fast, hence the regular patrol through the countryside and the closest villages outside the wire, so the Isyad could not move missiles close enough for dangerous accuracy – and otherwise, Merlin understood, they didn't waste their ordnance. Usually.
Okay, well – make sure you're watching, then.
He knew what she meant. Yes, Mom, I will.
The second day he'd connected to Psych Ops, with no little trepidation. Fingers crossed they'd put him through to the Director…
"Gaius?" he said, so immediately the Old Man never had a chance to acknowledge the connection. "It's me. I'm in… Aravia." And hold the offensive adjective.
"Yes, I know." Said so mildly that alarms dinged through Merlin's mind. "It was my decision to send you."
Why?
Reasons.
"What about-" he ventured.
"I'll look after things here." As best I can, as long as possible.
Merlin breathed in dust and sweat and the tang of a particular mixture of local cooking spices he hadn't quite identified. The murmur of foreign voices trembled in his bones and lungs with the worry-worry-worry of the native refugee camp sheltering within the wire. Warmth leached from the air as the world rolled away from the sun.
Arthur wasn't in Camelot. Headed west… but the distance was still too great to determine whether he was headed here, or not.
"What do you see?" someone said, from behind his right shoulder.
The psychic neighborhood had been cleared to empty dessert sand to allow for other focus, but he didn't startle at all; he settled. Something about her and her nervousness made him react with a curiously instinctive calm.
"My eyes are closed," he said mildly.
Sand gritted under her boots as she moved around his elbow to see for herself, and the skin of his face warmed at her perceived regard as if the sun had peeked above the horizon to check, also. She was the only one except the second sergeant that believed – no, that knew – the rumors that followed him were false.
"What do you hear, then?" she said.
Her voice was velvet, soft and subtle and he was discovering that she didn't use it often. He wished she would just as often as he wished – irrationally and selfishly – that she would save it just for him.
"Noise," he said honestly.
She didn't respond – but she didn't leave, and he looked down at her, face shadowed from the warm retreating daylight by the bill of the softcap as her eyes were locked on the distant bare hills. For a moment he studied her; she knew he was doing it, and didn't indicate that his gaze was unwelcome.
Then he ventured, "What do you hear?"
Her lips pursed wryly, but she still didn't look away from the horizon. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."
Merlin breathed once, in and then out, and trusted her. "It's like walking through a neighborhood," he said – and was rewarded with the connection of her eyes throughout the rest of his description of how his gift usually worked. "Except, I have this rule about not looking at females without permission."
She blinked. Then her mouth dropped open and she inhaled a little half-breath in a gasp as she swayed back, eyes widening. He wanted to grip her shoulders, make sure she didn't lose her balance, but he had no right to touch her, so he just held still and let her discover whatever her gift was giving her.
"Bloody hells," she said abruptly. "I – what I just thought… mine, mine doesn't work like yours, it's such a pain in the neck, it makes me… blurt stuff out so people can hear what I'm thinking and it happens before I know it so I can't stop it, but you… you blocked me. Just now. How-"
"Sorry?" he said sheepishly.
"No!" she said immediately, reaching out to grip his arm lightly, just below the sleeve of his t-shirt where his skin was bare; he'd tied his jacket around his waist. "It's great – it's wonderful. It's such a relief – you're going to be my lucky charm from now on. You sit next to me."
She hadn't let go. He held still, so she wouldn't, because there were surprising and pleasant tingles rippling under his skin, outward from her touch.
"Are you sure?" he said. Because the second sergeant had told him enough to know that he had to be careful with her.
"Oh, absolutely," she said. "And someday when we go home, I want to meet your mother."
He smiled at her. "I wasn't thinking of my mother."
She frowned and cocked her head; the edges of her dark hair curled outward from under the softcap. "Your… brother."
I don't have a… Under her hand, his skin broke out in goosebumps. How did you know about…
"He's in trouble," she said, the statement carrying just enough rising inflection to be a question. "And you're here, otherwise you'd be with him…" She noticed her hand on his elbow, and shook her fingers free with a little sound of exasperation.
"That's the long and short of it," he told her lightly. "I can… tell where he is, generally speaking, and I'd know if something happened, but… yeah, I can't be there to do anything about it."
"But he hurt you," she said, puzzled.
It hurt all over again, at the reminder, but Merlin found that he didn't mind her picking up his pieces and fitting them together to discover a bigger picture, very much at all.
"That's the way it is with family," she concluded, folding her arms and looking away to the horizon again.
Yeah. I s'pose so.
…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
It took Arthur most of a week to motor to Paris, but he was certain he'd lost any possibility of a tail.
And needed to make sure he didn't pick up another, approaching the heart of the country as any enemy might expect him to do and be watching the main roads, just as they'd watch the sea-crossing.
At Sacados he stopped to stroll through a day-market and found a booth selling country-vet-style cross-body bags sewn from repurposed military fabric – tent or uniform, he wasn't certain, but he traded his grad-student backpack for one without having to dig in his pocket for hard currency.
At Paletot it was laundry day, and with judicious patience, he was able to raid an unattended clothes-line and leave his canvas jacket in place of an ancient threadbare peacoat. At the neighbor's place the back hall was unlocked, and as the two housewives stood gossiping from their dooryards, he sneaked it to lift a mud-colored soft-cap – and a pair of oversize rubbers that covered his boots and rose to his knees and wouldn't allow his jeans-legs to remain outside them, unprotected from mud splashed by turf-bike tires.
The first night he found a parking-lot for a freight business, and picked the padlock of the eight-foot fence easily. Letting himself in, he siphoned enough fuel from the row of trucks to refill the turf-bike's tank and an extra red-plastic fuel container he could strap down behind the saddle.
Plenty of sources for fuel, and taken in small enough amounts, no one would even notice. And if the chill and silence of the night and the smell of petroleum reminded him of a freight yard in a certain winter-sporting town over the northern border, well…
His French was almost as good as his Aravian. Psych-Ops classes, first year. Extreme-immersion training in the language, three months at a time for each language.
Pity Merlin didn't have to suffer those classes. Then again, would psychic help or hinder language absorption?
Arthur buzzed the back lanes of an oblique approach to the city, warm sunshine and cool breeze, and he no different than a dozen young men on errands or seeing to business or personal concerns. He passed old women dressed in the style of their youth – blocky shoes, shin-length dresses of delicate-looking yet hardy material, dark colors and subtle patterns. Mostly polka-dot, the ones Arthur noticed. Children played bare-legged, muddy hats and shoes; dairy cows placidly munched their meadows.
Over a fortnight now since he'd seen his friend.
He wanted very much to establish a comm-block connection with Director Gaius… otherwise how could he know how Merlin fared? Aravia wasn't safe…
But Merlin was psychic… He'd be fine. Probably.
…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
Merlin breathed in the damp heat of the shower tent, braced on the chest-high wooden wall of the stall he was in, second from the end. The water was about the same temperature as the air – warm – and he felt he was still sweating beneath the mild spray. He blew water from his face and shifted on the sodden grate beneath him, curling his toes a bit into the drainage holes, grateful that the first rash of blisters from the new boots had toughened, somewhat.
So that was that. First mission complete, and without incident.
Routine patrol. Load 'em up and move 'em out. Down the dirt track packed under canvas in the troop transport, every third soldier smoking cicalas, grime gathering in the sweat and sweat gathering in the creases of the uniform. Rocking and – every so often – thudding on the unpadded bench seat when the truck tire went over a large rock or down into a large rut.
And, at the villages, unloading to spread out and walk through on foot. Keep an eye out – be wary, and smile. Just people, living their lives. Hearts and minds.
Usually. Except for the fact that the Isyadi wouldn't look any different than any villager hanging laundry or selling goat cheese or measuring spices or weaving rugs. Drinking hot tea from thimble-sized cups, or frying flat-bread on the convex bottoms of their largest soup-kettles. Being wary of them, and sometimes smiling.
Unless the Isyadi were attacking. Then you wouldn't see them at all, because they'd shoot you from behind curtains in upper windows, or they'd stage an ambush from the dusty ditches.
You're with me, Second Sergeant Gwaine told him, waiting alongside the truck's rear fender as they jumped down, boots into dust and rifles swinging from straps.
And with me meant the two of them sauntered into town first, distant from the others by a dozen paces or more, and the crawling trucks, drivers white-knuckled because their only defense was to drive, and they couldn't do that easily down narrow town streets and with their precious cargo all afoot.
No clapboard siding, here. No picket fences, no window boxes, no dormer windows or front gardens. No tall brick flat-buildings…
In a way, it was easier, here.
Instinct kept him psychically as aware of the mental neighborhoods as all the soldiers were of the physical buildings. The privacy of strangers was a lesser concern than the safety of comrades. And though the buildings of the Aravian psychic neighborhood themselves remained stolidly unchanged – brick, stone, clay, tile – the glass and fabric were transparent. Undisguised curiosity, apathy, antagonism, jealousy, pity.
Not a whiff of intent, though, and he told Gwaine so. Knowing that the second sergeant was waiting and expecting some report, even if he sauntered like a man on vacation and chatted about the weather and the food as casually as a non-ranker.
Three villages. And the hours spent inside the troop transport – awkwardly trying not to hear conversation and banter which flowed around him without including him – were more tense than the hours of carrying a loaded weapon at the ready.
The looks. The suspicion, the condescension. Even those who paid little attention to gossip, had no respect for him as a choker. And the second sergeant rode in the cab with the driver, and Freya Douglas was assigned to the next transport along in the convoy, in spite of her stated intention of sitting next to him.
"Time's up, guys!" someone announced like he had the authority to do so, raising his voice to be heard above the still-running water in the shower tent. "Get dry, get dressed, get out…"
The water of Merlin's shower petered out, trickling down his body, dripping from his hair and elbows.
And, without warning, he was hit from behind by a soft solid – like a pillow? – that exploded, showering him all over with-
He inhaled in shock - nostrils prickling with fire, eyes immediately overflowing with reactive moisture – and sneezed, three times hard.
-Sand.
He blinked and scrubbed at one eye with the corner of his wrist, retreating defensively to the corner of the stall, barely able to make out – blurrily – two half-dressed soldiers swinging a bucket and-
"Ha-ha-ha – how's that for-"
Laughing uproariously. Everyone, snickering and catcalling and-
"Hey, choker - welcome to the-"
Sand particles clung to his wet skin from shoulder-blades to knees, totally ruining the effect of his allotted shower-time.
"Sand-box… Ah-ha-hahaha!"
His eyes stung, tearing and dripping in an effort to clear, while his hands were crumbly with sticking particles. Someone else moved forward to hang an arm over the front of his stall, offering a towel; he took it, trusting, and scrubbed his face.
"All right, fellows, bloody hilarious. Go put the bucket back where you found it – you're gonna be late for dinner. Officers's turn at the showers."
Gwaine. Merlin dabbed his eyes clear to watch the second sergeant – t-shirt and ID tags and a tattoo nearly to his elbow, lean on the front of his stall to watch the other soldiers pack up and leave the shower tent.
"Aw Gwaine, you ain't no officer…"
"Army says I am, time being."
"Yeah, just til they find out-"
"Shut up, JT."
Merlin clumsily slung the towel behind him, trying to rub the scratchy sand off.
"Here, gimme that," Gwaine said, reaching for Merlin to hand him the towel. "Go ahead and turn the water back on, rinse it off."
Merlin didn't know how to react. "But regulations-"
"It's an order," Gwaine said, as easily as he might have commented on the dinner menu. And he met Merlin's eyes with no hint of embarrassment or self-consciousness, or increased amusement at Merlin's expense.
Merlin pulled the cord, still uncertain in the face of inexplicable generosity, and backed into the spray again.
Gwaine grunted, shaking the towel out and draping it over the wall of the shower stall. "And you call yourself psychic," he said, slow and teasing. "How does that work, then? You had no idea they were coming."
And maybe Gwaine did, and allowed it. Testing him?
"I've got to block all that out," Merlin said defensively. And at Gwaine's skeptically raised eyebrow, added meaningfully – "In here? And us coming right after the females?"
The sergeant glanced around the shower tent, realization dawning. "Oh – yeah. Yeah, I'd guess you'd have to…" Quick bright glance of dark eyes, and the gleam of a grin in his almost-beard. "Some guys wouldn't, though, especially if no one else knew. They could get away with it."
Merlin allowed half of a wry smile, decided the half-hearted water pressure had done its best, and loosed the cord. Lifting the towel again, he scrubbed his skin - sand particles still gritted uncomfortably where he didn't expect or want them, but after all… sandbox. He'd heard enough about others' deployments to know he wouldn't be sand-free in his clothes and belongings and person til at least a week back in-country, even if no one deliberately dusted him again.
"You block it all the way out?" Gwaine went on, propping one boot on the bench and beginning to unlace it, as Merlin emerged to claim his clothes. Other officers were beginning to trickle in, as the last of the soldiers left the tent. "We had some mortar attacks a few months ago. Retaliation for some-damn-thing. Isyadi marksmanship is for shit, lucky enough. But would you see something like that coming, even if you were in here and blocking?"
"Oh yeah," Merlin said unhesitatingly, shimmying into underpants and then trousers. "You might not get much of a warning, but yeah."
"So," Gwaine said, toeing the boot off and lifting the other to unlace. "Non-lethal attacks by your fellows, no. Lethal attacks by genuine enemies-"
"Definitely," Merlin told him, stretching his arms into the sleeves of his t-shirt, and pausing with the soft material bunched around his biceps, thumbs keeping the neckline open. "My mother told me to be careful while I'm here."
Gwaine met his eyes with a flash of surprise – then tossed back his head with a laugh that included Merlin just as surely as Arthur bringing him to the Sunrise with Percival and Leon, and Gwen and her friends.
Well, he wasn't glad he was here. But maybe… he wasn't sorry that he came, anymore.
…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
Gwen sat on the waiting bench for the Rue-de-Trale trolley, one leg crossed over the other and kicking gently in the pantsuit she'd paired with shoes that were more combat-boot than fashion-pump. Two trolleys had been and gone, but she had the paper open over her knee, and instincts that kept her from approaching the dead-drop at the public fountain across the street.
The End of an Era. Page 4 of World Events section of Les Parisiennes. Camelot celebrating the well-earned retirement of a beloved icon, Direction-in-Chief of Psychological Operations Richard Gaius. Who could not be reached for official comment. Junior Director Jon Gregory rumored to be thrilled to receive the promotion to the prestigious post left empty.
So suddenly.
And JD Gregory had never been thrilled a day in his life, Gwen believed. Not even for his own wedding.
She turned the page blindly over her knee, lifting her gaze to circle the open square before her. Jeans with torn knees, black leather jackets, bared midriffs, a variety of self-expressive hats. An older man in a checkered suit walking arm-in-arm with a younger woman – flowing blonde locks, flowing flowery dress, strappy clogs. Two young men in their twenties carrying sodas and sipping from the straws, three teens in baggy black and indeterminate gender, a gray-haired lady with a tiny mop-shaped dog moving its tiny legs frantically and not achieving a corresponding speed.
Nothing definite.
But still…
She tried yet again to relax her posture, certain that if anyone was watching, she'd give herself away with the tension that tightened muscles down her neck and through her shoulders. Times like these made her miss a partner; she didn't usually indulge the regret because it made her think of the best partner she'd ever had…
How would today be different if Arthur Pendragon was here?
Of course he'd know how to make her relax. Or he'd provoke more tension, and use that for their cover. And he'd see all the things she missed, and he'd need to know everything she saw, because he'd admit to missing some of that, and… He was good, at this. He was a natural, all that casual confidence carrying him right on through, and genuinely dangerous skill making up for any lack – and still offering to depend on her as an equal partner.
But he wasn't here. Three hundred and forty kilometers away. Maybe exercising his leg – how was the healing process going? All finished? Or maybe he'd needed a third surgery to deal with scar tissue?
Maybe he was on a date. Maybe he and Merlin were training for a mission…
Comm-block connections were limited when a scout was on-mission for necessities. And that sort of gossip wasn't necessity… But maybe an update on whatever caused Director Gaius' retirement was necessary? Would that just indulge curiosity, or was there something there that might impact her mission?
As Gwen continued to watch the unfamiliar pedestrians, one of the young men swerved away from the other – casual cotton button-down open over some t-shirt, the graphic indistinguishable from the distance – to approach the fountain. He held his drink cup gingerly – it was clearly dripping a spill of its liquid. Setting the cup down on the edge of the fountain, he dipped his hand in the sparkling water to rinse it, laughing and splashing a handful at his companion who'd sauntered closer to wait.
And his other hand slipped down into the low thick shrubbery that separated one seating-bench ringing the fountain from the next.
Gwen folded the paper inexactly, and laid it on the seat next to her.
The young man drew his hand back in a fist, shaking water droplets from the other and picking up the leaky drink. Heading for the public-use garbage bin to throw the cup away, he casually shoved the closed fist in his jeans pocket.
Psych Ops didn't have anything like a battalion-building headquarters, in Paris. Didn't have a small office, or a rented apartment upstairs from a disguising shopfront. Reality was more transient than that – this wasn't a Charles Gates novel, after all. An ad in the paper, an ever-changing encryption, meant to make it impossible for an enemy psychic to discover anything. Links could be followed.
But that was the dead-drop coded in yesterday's paper, there by the fountain, the one Gwen was avoiding because instincts.
Because Gaius was going to have a heart attack someday several decades from now and quietly slip away in-hospital. Not retire.
Another trolley pulled up, with a huff and the squeaking of brakes, and Gwen debated walking away for another day. Waiting for another ad, or posting one herself… Except that she really did need to meet with Mason sooner rather than later, and she didn't know him by sight – was the young man in the button-down Mason? – and that wouldn't help her in a city this size, anyway. But if she followed the two young men, then she could be compromised…
"Montez-vous a bord?" the driver called down to her as she hesitated-
-Then shook her head to convey Non, merci. Waiting another half an hour wouldn't give her away to any watchers she couldn't pick out, hopefully.
But as the trolley pulled forward, her attention shot across the square to the opposite corner, where agitated pedestrians were congregating – and the plain-dressed companion of the young man at the fountain was doing a very accurate impression of someone traumatized by loss, in the most shocking manner possible. Right there on the sidewalk. The other in the button-down wasn't visible, but everyone was ogling downward…
Someone bolted for the public comm-block, snatching it – gesticulating emphatic emergency…
Gwen stood, because of course she would, and watched, because it was also obvious that everyone else would, and was - but didn't venture to approach for more rubber-necking and gossip because instincts.
She watched emergency personnel arrive – colors and sirens slightly different than in Camelot, the words different but the reactions and routines essentially unchanged. They didn't exude urgency for very long.
Gwen watched without gaining any more useful information til the next trolley came. She boarded it as nonchalantly as she could manage; the driver was craning to see what the fuss the other side of the park was about-
"Ce qui s'est passe?"
"Je ne sais pas," Gwen answered truthfully, and took her seat.
Now, what?
A/N: I apologize profusely! It wasn't my intention to leave another chapter for another month… All I can say is, the next chapter is about 85% done and shouldn't take nearly as long to post… Here's Paris, though! And more real action/danger/drama in the next chapter…