Conquest of Avalon

Fernan II: The Guest

The Spirit Quartier was abuzz that night, the streets flooded with visitors and vendors, and a small crowd gathered around Ahava as she blasted intricate patterns of green fire into the sky. She was Mara’s youngest sister to have moved into the city, and her Imperial was still fairly rough, but the dancing figures of flame communicated far better than words could in any case.

The most fearsome of them was a towering human figure, crown blazing atop his head. He ripped the heart of fire from the image opposite him, a great winged lizard who recoiled, blasting flame as he fled. Not a pleasant story, but she’s absolutely right that it needs to be told.

Fernan couldn’t help but cringe when he saw his own likeness though, especially since his panicked scrabble to stop Jerome was here rendered as a dramatic duel of wills, with whooshing blasts of fire colliding in the air as the two sages lept and dodged each other’s strikes. The Jerome figure, when backed into a corner against the mountain, even conjured lightning, skillfully rendered using a zig-zagging arc of blue fire that crackled across the air.

She must be mixing it up with Magnifico’s duel with Lumière, after their collaboration to kill Soleil had ended. It did make for a better spectacle, Fernan supposed, even if it had little basis in truth.

One of the children watching followed a spark as if flew over Fernan’s head, pointing as she yelled at her friends to look at him. More soon followed, then began to chant his name, though Ahava thankfully pulled their attention back when the image of Fernan administered the final blow, roasting the Jerome image with a deluge of green fire from his mouth, melting the yellow crown on his head.

I have ten separate fingers, and I don’t think I could ever be that precise with my fire. The artistry was breathtaking, even if the subject matter was deeply uncomfortable. When Ahava continued on to Gézarde’s ascension, though, showing a caricatured Laura leading Flammare into the trap, Fernan couldn’t stand to look at it anymore.

“Found it!” Maxime called out once Fernan was in earshot of the shop. “I cannot help but find it absolutely bewildering that spirits of elderflower are so inexplicably scarce in this, our vaunted bastion of cosmopolitan modernity. And yon shopkeep claims that mine was the only bottle he was capable of selling all month!”

“Almost as if you’re the only one who likes it, so no one else bothers to import it.” Fernan didn’t bother asking him to read the label, since Maxime’s repeated insistence on arriving with the proper gift had practically recited the very dirt the flowers had to use for optimal growth. He’d heard it all already.

“I’ve yet to find environs unsuitable to elderflower cultivation; tis indeed a hardy shrub. Guerron is simply in need of an introduction.”

“Then even your lone shopkeep will stop importing it.” Fernan put ‘elderberry bush’ on his mental list of future gifts for Maxime, then began walking down the street towards the Merchant Quartier. The difference was subtler now, with the vacant old mansions divided into apartments and storefronts to ensure that enough housing remained for everyone in the city.

That was getting harder every day, with so many still pouring in from Micheltaigne and Lyrion, and the paltry housing stock left empty from the Fox-King’s army vacating the city long gone. But considering that Avalon’s Prince Regent had imposed famines and warfare that amounted to an order of extermination against their people, the only moral course was allowing them to stay. I still remember Guy Valvert ordering that first boat from Lyrion to turn around. What fate awaited them then? Fernan certainly felt conflicted enough about his own role in legitimizing the colonists’ league that had carried out those orders, his signature on the Treaty of Charenton right alongside President Nella’s.

But it was better than going to war. Every beating heart arriving from Micheltaigne was proof enough of that.

Despite the changes in the Spirit Quartier, the change was still noticeable as they made their way deeper into town, with narrower streets and taller buildings, including the seven-story limestone apartment building that had apparently been Guy Valvert’s single greatest accomplishment from his time in the ancien Bureau of Land. His primary purpose for constructing it, according to Félix, was to secure the luxurious penthouse atop it for himself, a suitable apartment for the nights he wished to stay in the city rather than return to the castle. In any case, he’d never once used it before Annette Debray had called him back to the castle to take her place as the ruler of Guerron, and Edith Costeau had won the auction for the penthouse, providing the Commune with a sorely-need infusion of funds. The rest of the residents had been chosen by lottery, at Fernan’s insistence.

Fernan knocked on the massive wooden doors when they arrived, waiting in the building’s shadow for a response.

“Quite a humble civil servant,” Maxime noted wryly, looking up at the towering building. “Back in Condorcet, Citoyen Aloutte’s corruption was so profound that she was voted out of the Thirteen at the end of her first term, and her accommodations were a hovel next to this. Were I to guess, Mme. Costeau has—”

He cut himself off as Costeau’s butler swung open the doors and ushered them inside. Reginald “Reggie” Jevons made no attempt to conceal his Avaline origins, revealing that he had been in service to M. Costeau for seven years before traveling to Guerron to serve his wife. “Meaning no offense, Messire, but the ‘liberated’ peoples here see service as a toil, a simple exchange of money for labor, rather than an honorable pursuit in its own right. Lady Alcock deserved better, and Sir spends little enough time in Cambria these days that it was only natural I be chosen for the task.”

“Your Imperial is impeccable,” Maxime noted, following him up the stairs. “I’d guess you learned it long before Mme Costeau’s marriage.”

“You guess correctly, messire. Sir often has business on the continent, including some of the thornier territorial entry rights, such that I would be remiss in my duties were I unable to conduct the appropriate arrangements in the native tongue.” Scant wonder Edith doesn’t talk about her husband much—he’s not merely some well-to-do Avaline professor, but a bona fide aristocrat. Remaining ‘Edith Costeau’ in lieu of ‘Lady Alcock’ also made sense in that light, though Fernan had always assumed it was primarily in the interest of maintaining continuity in her identity as an artist.

“How have you found Guerron, M. Jevons?” Fernan felt a fatigue in his legs as they crested the fifth floor, so he tried to moderate his pace enough to avoid showing up out-of-breath. “It must be quite a contrast after Cambria.”

Jevons let out a short laugh, gone as soon as it began, then answered more diplomatically. “There’s a wildness to your Commune that’s impossible to miss, the untamed defiance of a people who value freedom above honor. It’s not hard to see how Sir, scholar and adventurer that he is, could find the love of his life here.”

Nor is it hard to see why a wealthy merchant’s daughter with enough resentment over her lack of peerage to join the Montaignards would want to marry a famous Avaline knight. Perhaps Fernan was being unfair, but he’d seen enough of that resentment—especially on the right side of the Assembly—to know better than to dismiss the idea out of hand. Even now, many of them seemed to think the primary issues with the Duchy had been that they were denied the privileges and cachet of nobility, rather than the crushing inequalities and human suffering.

But would we have been able to overcome the Valverts without them on our side? Impossible to say for sure, but the victory had been narrow enough that it seemed foolish to thumb his nose at allies. That piece of common sense still seemed to elude Lantier and the left of the Assembly, who didn’t even hold back from sharply criticizing each other, let alone other Assembleymembers with more profound political disagreements.

To say nothing of what Paul Armand would drag us into if he got his way. The new Committee of Public Safety had forestalled that threat, but if it proved ineffective at addressing his concerns, he’d be right back to ranting at the podium before the month was out.

“A delicate balance to maintain, to be sure, but you’ve handled worse,” Maxime had told him after reviewing the transcripts. “And it seems indubitable that Guy Valvert would be the first to the noose, should the Assembly descend to such barbaric lethality. So long as he remains locked away, unable to provoke them further, justification for more expansive policing ought continue to elude them.”

It would have almost been easier if they had negotiated his release, as they had with several other aristocrats in the early days of the Treaty of Charenton. Camille hadn’t even bothered offering a pittance for Valvert, though, and Fernan could hardly blame her for that, even if it made his life more difficult.

Edith Costeau cut through his thoughts as the door to her penthouse opened, wavy orange lines emanating from the kitchen. “Ah, excellent to see that you made it, my dear. And Maxime! A pleasure as always. How long has it been?”

Maxime narrowed his eyes. “I believe we encountered each other less than a fortnight ago when I visited Fernan at the hôtel de ville. You said ‘Maxime, my dear! A pleasure as always. How long has it been?’ I’m delighted to see that it was as memorable an occasion for you as it was for me.”

“Stress has a way of making us forgetful,” Fernan said, jabbing Maxime with his elbow. “Thank you for inviting us.” He grabbed the elderflower liqueur from Maxime’s hands and passed it to Costeau, who immediately handed it off to her butler.

“You’re too kind, Fernan. Perhaps we’ll find suitable occasion to sample it tonight, after dinner.” Her voice was enthusiastic, but her unchanging aura suggested that it was more of a front than anything—hardly surprising, when the purpose of this dinner was to convince Fernan to kill the copy protection law soon to pass in the Assembly.

Another aura entered the foyer, tall, with crisply defined edges. Costeau pulled him close, then waved her hand between him and Fernan. “Dear, this is Fernan Montaigne and his companion, Maximilian de Condorcet. Fernan, Maxime, I present you my dear husband, Sir Thomas Alcock, freshly returned from his expedition in the Giton Desert.”

“Enchanté,” he said, offering his hand. “My lady has been insistent for quite some time that we ought to meet, and I’m pleased to grant her wish at last.”

Hardly seems like he was ‘dying to meet me’, then, but I suppose it cost her nothing to say it.

“Likewise,” Fernan answered. “I heard your research assistant is here as well?”

“Ah, yes. Jevons, if you would fetch Sabine?”

Kinda strange she didn’t come to greet us with you. Perhaps she had even more aristocratic arrogance than Sir Thomas, and didn’t want to sully herself eating dinner with a coal-miner’s son. “I heard she’s a countess in Avalon.”

Sir Thomas shrugged. “She inherited her father’s title when he passed, but Mahabali Hall was repossessed by the late Srin Savian’s creditors, and is now home to Lord Ernest Monfroy. Nor do I find that she has much the bearing of a peer, for all her excellent work. Still, a title is a title, I suppose.”

I heard stuff like that more times than I could count as ‘Sire’ Fernan Montaigne, so in a way that might be an encouraging sign. Although—

“What—How?” Fernan couldn’t help but yelp when he saw Florette walk casually into the foyer.

“Is something wrong?” Maxime asked, clearly not recognizing her. I suppose they only knew each other a couple days, and perhaps she’s wearing disguises my vision can’t see. “You look as if you’ve seen an apparition.”

“I hope I haven’t offended you, sir,” Florette said, dipping her head in a slight bow. “I offered to find other dinner arrangements in town, but the Professor insisted. My name is Srin Sabine.”

No it isn’t. “Fernan Montaigne,” he offered, trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice. I thought you might have died—you never wrote, never returned, never so much as hinted at the mission Robin Verrou was sending you on. “And this is Maxime.”

“A pleasure,” she said, her tone breezy enough that you’d never know she was lying. “Shall we retire to the drawing room? I’ve been helping Lady Alcock with a new song, but we’ve never performed it for an audience.”

“A splendid idea,” Alcock said, oblivious to the reunion. “It goes without saying that my wife is the superior talent, but I’m not without appreciation for the musical arts myself. Sabine here helped with the lyrics, inspired by her time at the Cambrian College.”

Ah, now it all makes sense. She’d mentioned how frustrating it was to pore over her stolen books back in Malin, not understanding enough of the science to tell what was valuable and what wasn’t. Maintaining cover was probably the reason she hadn’t kept in touch, either. And sauntering back in like nothing had changed certainly fit the Florette he remembered.

As soon as they entered the drawing room, Edith slid behind the piano and flipped a booklet into place with a ruffle of the paper, playing a bouncy tune wholly unlike her harp’s usual elegant melodies, with even less resemblance to the otherworldly tones of her pulsebox compositions.

“This here’s a tale about Barry the Bother

Son of an upper crust hotty-totter”

She stopped playing for a moment, face scrunching up. “I thought we settled on ‘born in a limestone manse with views of the water’, did we not, Sabine?” She turned to Fernan and Maxime. “Don’t worry, even I had to be educated on the meaning of hotty-totter. It’s—”

“An esoteric bit of vernacular from the youth culture in Cambria, denoting a wealthy upbringing without explicit aristocracy,” Maxime cut-in, somehow already versed in Cambrian slang. Probably picked it up from one of Luce’s people in Charenton. Most of them were hired directly out of the College, which according to Luce helped mitigate the calcification of methods and values that could come with age, in addition to falling behind on the latest scientific developments.

Fernan suspected it had more to do with Luce wanting to be taken seriously, hiring mostly scientists younger than he was who’d be less likely to question his direction. Considering what direction that was, especially compared to what the rest of Avalon was doing, Fernan supposed that was sensible enough, though he was even younger than Luce and still managed fine with an Assembly whose average member was at least double his age.

Edith frowned at Maxime’s interruption, then continued with the song.

“His daddy sent him off, said ‘Barry you must!’

‘If you wanna taste the good life it’s the College or bust.’

So he lived his little life!

Yes he lived his little life.

Standing ever in the way,

Always, always in the way.

From dawn to dusk a bother,

Then from dusk to dawn a bother.

For Barry had a hankering that none could deny.”

She continued playing the melody on a loop, but switched back to her normal speaking voice. “In a live setting, that would be a call-and-response chorus, hence the repetitive phrasing. It makes it easier to repeat.”

“But Barry weren’t no student, thought reading was a bother.

He passed the entrance test with help from his father.

He tried to focus, study up on the lies,

But Barry had a hankering that none could deny.”

“Don’t you work at the college, Mr. Alcock?” Fernan couldn’t help but ask, interrupting the song while Edith continued playing the melody on the piano. Is your wife really calling it a nepotistic distributor of lies right to your face? In song form, no less?

Alcock didn’t seem bothered, though. “Indeed I do, making me all the more aware of its limitations as an institution. The number of students I’ve seen with woefully narrow worldviews, too stubborn to broaden their horizons... And a distressing number of professors share their shortcomings. It’s shameful, really, and it’s only getting worse. Everyone’s chasing a career instead of learning, vying for spots at this or that tower while proclaiming history to be a useless waste of time.” He tsked several times, then Edith returned to the song.

“He messed around with a gal named Anna

She knew her way around a good banana

She took him round down Lyrion way,

Taught him how to take his wine under sunshine’s ray.”

“It’s a bit ribald, don’t you think?” Alcock muttered. “And the meter is formless, almost improvisational.”

“As is the fashion with the young folks, dear. Sabine assures me that this wouldn’t sound out-of-place in any trendy Mourningside establishment. If I can embrace the technology of the young and the foreign, why not their music too?” That felt like it was for Fernan’s benefit, somehow, but he wasn’t exactly sure what else it meant.

Alcock’s face wrinkled, but after a moment he reluctantly nodded. “I suppose this is only an early draft, and I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“What does it mean to take your wine ‘under sunshine’s ray’?” Fernan asked, since the interruption had been rather thorough anyway.

He was hoping Florette would answer, some way to hint to him what she was really doing here, but instead it was Maxime. “It’s euphemistic in nature, meant to allow discussion of the unsavory contraband produced from the poppies in somewhat more polite company than might otherwise be permissible.”

“Opium wine,” Florette further clarified. “It’s banned in Avalon unless a doctor gives it to you. But not in Lyrion. No idea where they get it without poppy fields of their own, though—Plagette would never sell to the likes of them.”

“Who’s to say?” Fernan hurriedly answered. “Why don’t you finish the song, Edith?”

“Very well.”

“He needed money or the sun would stop shining,

And Anna’d left him when he wouldn’t stop whining.

He took a boat across the Lyrion Sea

Where he asked the peddlers ‘have you got a job for me?’

So he lived his little life!

Yes he lived his little life.

Standing ever in the way,

Always, always in the way.

From dawn to dusk a bother,

Then from dusk to dawn a bother.

For Barry had a hankering that none could deny.”

He rose up fast, till he was merchant of merchants,

Still running sunshine in hopes that perchance,

He’d find redemption in his dear Anna’s eyes,

For Barry had a hankering that none could deny!”

She continued for another few minutes, leading up to Barry’s ignoble end slowly enough that the song felt a bit overlong, but apparently such poor pacing was a common pitfall for creative works in early stages of the editing process, and there was still some appeal in peeking behind the curtain at the latest from Edith Costeau, as yet unheard by the general public.

Especially when Florette of all fucking people apparently helped her write it. Somehow that felt stranger than the fact that she’d slain the sun with the King of Avalon’s sword, or posed as an Avaline Countess for the past four years just to attend their school.

“Quite a departure from your usual style,” Fernan noted once the applause died down. “I think it might be greater than when you started using the pulsebox.” It certainly sounded much better, considering it lacked the unbearably high-pitched chirps whose headache-inducing melodies held no appeal beyond the novelty of their existence.

“I enjoyed it as well,” Maxime praised. “Though I do wonder how your existing fanatics will take it.”

Edith waved her hand dismissively. “My older work will always be there for them. But someone told me once that I would die playing the same songs to the same withering fans, trapped in amber in the year 118 when my popularity was at its height. I confess, the thought scared me, for all that the woman who voiced it could best be described as unbearable. We all get older, but it’s incumbent upon us to change with the times, lest they leave us behind.”

“Well, unless you’re immortal,” Florette said, immediately calling to mind Magnifico. King Harold the Fourth... And Third, and Second... Jethro had said it was possible, if unlikely, that the curse stretched all the way back to the ancient Grimoires of Giton.

There had to be more that they could do besides trapping him in a padded cell and hoping he lived a long life, but if such a better course of action existed, they had yet to find it. And Jethro hadn’t expressed much hope.

Fernan had invited Jethro back to Guerron with them, but he’d declined, joking that he’d rather just drink himself to death after his every hope and purpose had crumbled to dust. Though if I had to guess what he’s really been up to, those stories about the Blue Bandit in Avalon definitely have his signature on them.

Edith, for obvious reasons, thought instead of a different example. “You mean like Camille Leclaire? That’s hardly an alternative.”

“Because you aren’t a sage?” Fernan asked, while at the same time Florette amusingly asked “Because she’s so awful?”

“No.” Edith shook her head. “I pity the poor girl. Spirits are born to immortality, their proches and kin expected to live eternally alongside them. Leclaire was not, and I can’t help but think she’ll regret her decision as the years wear on, the world changing around her faster and faster as the Maiden of Dawn becomes a relic of a bygone era. Her husband will perish, then her children, then everyone to ever draw a breath in the century since after her birth. She may yet die, for spirits have proven rather mortal of late, but not in the culmination of a full life; rather, she’ll fall to violent betrayal, perhaps bound into a weapon of her enemies.”

“The pages of history are a better sort of immortality,” her husband agreed, leaning in for a kiss. “And your art has inscribed you into them already, let alone the great works surely in your future.”

“I’m not so sure,” Fernan said. Say what you would of Camille Leclaire—as Fernan seldom hesitated to do—she had certainly made her mark on the world. “Queen Glaciel seemed pretty happy with her arrangement, and her children live much longer lives too.”

“Glaciel is the prime example in favor, my dear. Her power and insulation have rendered her hostile and delusional, unless you mean to tell me that her attack on Guerron was the product of astute geopolitical observation. And her flagrant self-indulgence cultivated a culture where reverence for her bloodline glorified nothing less than incest!”

“I could see Leclaire getting there,” Florette said, nodding reluctantly.

“Aristocrats already tend towards inbreeding as it is,” Maxime added, provoking a frown from Thomas Alcock, but unsurprisingly not ‘Countess Sabine’. “If you content yourself only to swim in that small, small pool of peers, what else ought one expect but repetitious liaisons, layering themselves upon each other like the folds of a Porte Lumière sword?”

Fernan couldn’t help but chuckle, especially once Alcock began reciting his entire family history by way of his rebuttal.

“I meant no offense, monsieur,” Maxime said, cutting off a diatribe about Lord Simon Alcock and his triumphant invasion of Naudion. “But, having never met Camille Leclaire, it does seem as if the line between her and the Queen of Winter is narrower than she might find it flattering to hear.”

Edith nodded. “I met her once or twice when I performed for the late Duke, but she was only sixteen or so, and I wouldn’t want to judge too harshly. I suppose it’s not inevitable, if the girl can learn sufficient humility. Fernan, I think you’ve seen the most of her. Do you think she’s capable of that?”

I still remember her throwing that purse of money at my face. She’d signed the treaty, and slain her patron spirit, so she was more adaptable than he’d given her credit for, and perhaps even more moral. But humble? “She won’t realize what she’s given up until it’s far too late.”

And if Magnifico is anything to go by, she might never realize.

“Well put,” Edith agreed, her aura brightening slightly in anticipation of her next words. “The Commune would fall prey to the same shortsightedness, should we pass the draconic copy protection law Montrouge wishes to.”

“I knew this moment would come.” Fernan accepted a drink from Jevons and took a sip, iced gin with lemon and elderflower, to take a guess from the taste.

“Ugh politics. But I suppose that duty calls upon us all,” Alcock said wearily. “Maxime, Edith said you were from Condorcet. I just returned from an ancient settlement not far north of Pointe Gasparde. What say you I walk you through some of my more interesting findings and leave the politicians to their politics? Based on the legend of Petit Nicolas, I think there’s a good chance the Collective’s history is wrapped up in Giton just as much as Avalon’s.”

“The spiritual aspect never interested me the most, but I suppose the folly of the modern Thirteen played no small part in that. A historical perspective should prove less aggravating.” Maxime shrugged, then followed Alcock out of the room.

Fernan leaned back in his chair once they were gone, addressing Edith’s proposal. “You’re an artist, aren’t you? Why leave the barn door open for anyone to profit from imitating you?”

“As you so correctly point out, we live without it now and the sky has not fallen onto our heads. Great works continue to be written, and I’m still able to profit from my music.”

“And your pulseboxes,” Fernan countered. “Just because you managed to grab Magnifico’s when he was captured. Or bought it from someone who did. You didn’t invent it. How would you feel if someone did the same with one of your songs?”

Edith laughed. “No one would care. I’m Edith Costeau, my dear. None of my imitators could ever escape my shadow. Any great artist can achieve the same.” She shook her head ruefully. “Moreover, how do you expect to enforce it? You just made a stirring speech against policing treason, but plan to have us monitor taverns to ensure that no one sings a song they enjoyed? Reading every book to ensure it isn’t similar enough to the last? All an unenforceable law like that would do is chill the ambitions of any artist inspired by the work of another, a category which, incidentally, includes every single artist in the world since the beginning of time.”

“But not every artist in the world is Edith Costeau. No one might care if someone copies you, but what if you stole the work of someone too unknown to put up a fight? What if one of our scientists claimed an invention as their own and left the true innovator to die penniless?”

Florette snorted. “If copy protection laws are the only thing stopping your best and brightest from dying in the street, that’s quite an indictment of your Commune.”

“This doesn’t concern you, Sabine,” Fernan hissed. “At least, not unless you’re a creator or a pirate who steals from those who do.” That shut her up, though it came off harsher than Fernan had intended. He was reasonably sure that Florette’s days of thoughtless grift and petty theft were probably behind her, even if what had followed was no less dangerous.

“But she has a point,” Edith said. “Art, innovation, knowledge... it belongs to everyone, not merely its creator. It yearns to be seen and heard, rather than trapped in a vault until its owner finds it profitable to release to the masses.”

Hard to imagine that coming out anyone else on the right of the chamber. “I think I heard something similar from an old friend of mine. She ran off to join Robin Verrou and become a pirate.”

“What an idiot.” Florette flashed a knowing grin. “But pirates are merely providing a service that people want to pay for. Avalon hoarded its knowledge for a century, and it left the rest of us to pick through the scraps. My friend Toby invented the pulsebox, as it happens, and I know for a fact that he’s just glad people are enjoying it over here, not clawing at every stray penny he might have earned through an official distribution.”

“And how much money do Toby’s parents send him every month to fund this enlightened, magnanimous stance?” Fernan asked, having met Tobias Folsom in Charenton. A nice enough fellow, he still fit better into the Edith Costeau mold of someone prominent and wealthy enough to be largely unharmed by any forgery.

“Well... He’s supported himself since graduating,” Florette limply tried to counter. “The point is, you can’t have a level playing field unless people are allowed to look at what’s out there and build on it without fearing some bureaucrat throwing them in a cell for it.”

“No one’s going to be jailed over this,” Fernan responded indignantly. “Fines, at most.”

“And who can best weather those fines?”

Fernan snorted flames from his nose, letting his annoyance show. “We could levy them based on the offender’s income, not as a flat fee. Use that to fund the bureau focused on it, so they’re incentivized to go after the most profitable offenders. And—”

“And given time, no one will want to create, for fear of that bureau’s reach. Do we not serve the people? Should the sum of human knowledge not be accessible and usable to those same people? The work of the public left in the domain of the public?”

Fernan couldn’t help but let out a scoff. “Why do you even sit on the right of the Assembly if you think like that?”

Edith shrugged. “I confess, I was nervous on the day of the first meeting, so I sat next to the faces I recognized. But there is a reason I haven’t moved: I don’t wish to toss the wheat out along with the chaff, my dear. The ancien arrangement had its issues, to be sure, but listening to Lantier and his ilk would have you believe we were all enslaved by the aristocracy, lives naught but suffering at every waking moment. There was a lot done right before the revolution, and we sprint away from it towards the unknown at our own peril.”

I’m sure it’s easy to appreciate the Duchy when you’re famed singer Edith Costeau. Still, it helped piece her motives together, conjuring a better portrait of how best to work with and around her in the Assembly. And her argument had some merit, even unintentionally undercut by Florette.

“I’ll consider it,” Fernan finally conceded. “If we held the vote this minute, I might even abstain. But I can’t just take your word for it. Find more small-time artists, writers, scientists, really make the case that this is serving creators as a whole instead of only the wealthiest few. And be prepared to compromise with enforcement of foreign copy rights, else we risk losing the scientific expertise Avalon’s granting us through the Treaty of Charenton.”

“Very well.” Edith dipped her head. “Jevons, is our dinner ready?”

“Five minutes, my lady.”

“Very well. Perhaps another song? I’ll fetch my pulsebox.” Anything but that, please.

“Why don’t I show you the balcony, Fernan?” Florette asked, obviously angling to get him somewhere more private. “We’ll come right back for dinner.”

“Good idea,” Fernan said, then followed her out.

A chill wind blew across the ‘balcony’, in truth a patio taking up nearly half the building’s footprint, complete with an outdoor bathhouse and a line of lemon trees.

“Hi,” Florette said as soon as they were surely out of earshot. “Sorry I didn’t write. When you’re undercover, it’s—”

“I understand.”

Silence lingered in the air for a moment, less tense than simply strained. Not a conversation I was expecting to have tonight, that’s for sure. “Welcome back?” Fernan tried, unsure what exactly to say.

“It’s great to see you again! I can’t lie, I’m a little jealous that you led a revolution without me. But I’m really proud of you, Fernan.”

“Thanks,” he said, honestly unsure how much hearing that meant to him. Florette had a habit of telling him to make his own decisions, but only so long as they happened to be exactly the decisions she would make. “It was pretty bold of you to come back here undercover when so many of the Montaignards know your face and are allies to Avalon .”

“Trust me, this was the safer option. The Professor wanted to send me to Charenton to meet the Prince of Darkness.”

“Really, even you? Luce is a fine ruler with a reputation wildly out of proportion to his actions. I’d like it if he pushed to implement more democratic reforms in Avalon, or at least in Charenton where he doesn’t have to contend with his brother, but he’s hardly the cackling villain that Camille’s journals make him out to be. Certainly less of a risk than showing your face in these environs.”

She answered with a non-sequitur. “You sure talk a lot fancier these days. Picked up some words from Maxime?” Florette’s aura dimmed as she sucked in air through her teeth. Now that Fernan looked at it more carefully, it was darker in general, as if it had been half dragged into the shadows, not unlike the look of Magnifico’s or Jethro’s. Something about Avalon, perhaps? Except Luce lacked it, as did most everyone else from there he’d met. Very strange.

“I’m not worried about the prince’s character, it’s just... He’s seen my face. I kinda... sorta... kidnapped him, a while ago. Remember when his ship got captured by pirates?” She let out a guilty chuckle. “Maybe he wouldn’t recognize me after all this time, but it’d be an insane risk to take when he’d hang me the second I was identified.”

“Since when are you cowed by insane risks?”

“Well...” Florette exhaled through her nose, shrugging. “I’m not me right now, am I? And I’ve taken bigger risks, the past four years, but always for a greater purpose. Saving lives, helping people, holding the powerful accountable. Not just dropping an artifact off at the lab.”

Saving lives, helping people, holding the powerful accountable... “You’re the Blue Bandit, aren’t you?”

Her aura brightened, for an instant the same as it ever had been, but she didn’t confirm it with words. “I’m Srin Sabine, for the moment. And in a few months, I’ll be a graduate of the College too, a full researcher in my own right, with less supervision and more time for... extracurriculars.”

“Well, Sabine, how do you plan to spend your first visit in Guerron?”

She brightened again, face stretched in what was certainly a smile. “Now that I’ve met the First Speaker of the Commune? It would be a waste not to do something big.”

Fernan felt himself smiling at Florette, not changed a bit by four years undercover, even as a pit of dread amassed in his stomach at exactly what she had in mind.