Conquest of Avalon

Florette XIV: The Twilight Initiate

“It just doesn’t seem like it was necessary.” Florette kept her eyes alert, scanning the overgrown courtyard for any inconvenient onlookers. “Savian was cooperating, right? He did everything we asked him to do.”

Cordelia, shipmaster of the Seaward Folly, ignored the question, pulling off a glossy black ring with a line of green cutting across it. She frowned, scoffed, then slipped it back onto his finger, leaving slight smudges on the surface from her fingers. “Cheap aristo was using fakes already.”

“He was really deep in debt. I don’t think Captain Verrou even realized quite how much.” Even if he thought the Monfroy stuff was worth the risk, he would have warned about it beforehand. “That’s why you picked him in the first place.”

“Poor from keeping up appearances.” The shipmaster rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. “The silks, the jewels and gems, the weekly foxhunt, the tab a league long in half the taverns in Chaya... He really had it rough.” She pulled the bowl Florette was holding closer, exchanging a gold bracelet for a slightly paler fake. “Are you just going to stand there?”

“I... I don’t really feel comfortable with this.” It felt strange, voicing it aloud instead of projecting confidence and comfort, but—for once—there wasn’t a pirate on the crew that Florette felt any need to impress. “How would you like it if someone hired you for a job and then killed you instead of paying you?”

Cordelia shrugged, dropping a ring into the bucket. “A penny saved is a penny earned. And we all got to earn.”

“I’m going to go inside.” And count the minutes before I can go back to Cambria. Strange to think of it as any kind of home, but Florette had already spent longer there than anywhere else in her life, nulle village of Enquin aside. Having a certain freckled scientist waiting for her didn’t hurt.

Just try to ignore the part where I ran her best friend through with a sword because I had no idea what I was doing. “See you at the event, I guess.”

“Fine, suit yourself. You can do some poking around in the closed-off areas they’re prepping for Monfroy’s big event. Oh—but grab that helmet and clipboard. You stick out too much on your own.”

Florette looked at the table Cordelia had gestured towards, where a stiff wooden board with a metal bracket at the top sat next to a hard-shelled hat in bright yellow—something Florette imagined a mad seamstress might invent while trying to create armor from bumblebees. “That’s supposed to make me stick out less?”

“It’s what some laborers and inspectors wear, to keep their head from cracking like an egg if something falls on it. Monfroy and his guests have never and will never learn their names and faces. Shit, most of the time you can take those into any building and you’ll be invisible. Bosses assume their grunts are getting some maintenance done and grunts assume their bosses called you in.”

Good to know, I guess. It might even let her into the Undying Room, a sealed chamber which Monfroy insisted that no one enter on pain of death, assuming Cordelia wasn’t setting her up for failure. In theory, they were working towards the same ends... That was the plan and the agreement. But Srin Savian had made plans and agreements too, and Cordelia had found it more convenient not to honor them.

Florette put the hat on anyway. Since she actually had been invited here, it was a relatively low-stakes way to test it. And when four men and women in the same hats walked past the doorway towards the castle, it seemed a particularly safe bet.

“Where’d you learn that? Probably not at sea.”

She shook her head. “Seaworn. Back in the day, my cousin used to wear a customs inspector’s uniform to sneak onto the ships. The clothes were different, though. Big poofy red hats, because serving Avalon means humiliating yourself.”

“He got you into this business?”

Cordelia let out a dry laugh. “He got pinched before he turned sixteen. The putz never even stole anything, he just wanted to look around. Can you imagine?” She snorted, then took a breath. “Didn’t stop them from shipping him to Plantage though. I had my own problems, about as far from ‘in the business’ as it gets.”

“Yeah, that must have been so hard for you,” Florette couldn’t help but say, thinking of the sparkling, glamorous neighborhood where Toby Folsom’s party had been held, complete with its terrifying bird cage elevator. “Got bored of the easy life in Seaworn?”

“Ugh, children think they know everything,” the shipmaster muttered. “Seaworn was a total shithole until they built that fucking waterfront. Glitzy kids from Sunset Heights would piss themselves even setting foot in it. Harbor was too shallow for the big new steamships, so all the best stuff went up to the mechanized docks at the marina and we got stuck with the scraps. In 68, they laid off three stevedores in five, and by 83 it would have been too expensive for them to live there even with jobs.”

“Oh.” Sheepishly, Florette rubbed the back of her neck. “My village wasn’t too different. I get why you had to go with Captain Verrou.” If not why you had to kill Savian.

“I didn’t meet Robin for years after that. I left when the rent on our house doubled and we had to move so far into the sticks that you’d barely even call it Walston. Actually managed to make Seaworn look good by comparison. And I was too much of a sucker then to get into anything dirty, especially after Archie got nicked. Which left the navy.”

“You joined Avalon’s—” Florette tried to stop herself, allowing that she might be missing information again. “Did they conscript back then? I thought it had always been voluntary, but—”

“You thought right. What else was I going to do? No job, no prospects, had family to worry about... And it was miserable, if that helps your infantile need for moral purity. Ended up making ass pay, doing an ass job, serving an ass. One time he made me scrub the deck naked. And the humiliation was nothing next to the blisters and splinters.”

It does maybe help a bit? If Florette were honest with herself, she had to recognize that she could easily have ended up doing the same thing with the Imperial army if things had gone differently in Guerron, though Lucien Renart was certainly a lesser evil to serve than Magnifico.

“Then Robin Verrou shows, and I finally get to see the fear in his eyes. Robin gives the captain a trial all properlike, hanging on our every word, and then off the side the captain goes, thrashing and cursing as he watches us sail away. And my family gets by way better than they ever did when I was in the navy, grand-nieces and grand-nephews like you wouldn’t believe.

“So no, Florette, I don’t particularly care that some Count bit it. I mean, honestly, what did he expect? We’re pirates. If he was dumb enough to get in bed with us, that’s on him.”

Then what does that say about me? “You sound like Eloise.”

“Doesn’t sound like a compliment.” Cordelia’s lips tightened. “Eloise had her moments. Good quartermaster. But I wasn’t surprised when I heard about the mutiny. She wasn’t that different from my old captain in the end—didn’t realize that eventually, in this business or any other, it just comes down to ‘I don’t like you’.”

“People tend to forget that,” Florette agreed through grit teeth, looking at the cooperative Count on a slab in front of them. “I’m going.”

“Go.” Cordelia seemed to realize something, holding up a finger. “Wait, I won’t be at Monfroy’s event, so I might not see you again here.”

That’s great! “Why not?”

“The doctor that failed to save her patient doesn’t exactly make for an honored guest. So when you get back to Cambria, go to Gaylor’s Café and ask for a cricket coffee. I’ll have a few jobs ready for you by then. Then in six months or so, I’ll rotate out and leave you with a handler more suited to a delicate flower like yourself.”

I do not need to be ‘handled’. “More jobs, really? Shall I just squeeze it in between studying Avalon’s secrets and maintaining my cover doing other illicit jobs for Monfroy?”

“Sounds like you’ve got it figured out. Bye!”

Scowling, Florette grabbed the clipboard and stormed out of the building and into the courtyard, nearly tripping over a thorny tuft of purple flowers in the process.

Hard to tell whether that’s a real problem brewing or just her getting on my nerves... But if it did come to it, Florette wasn’t some overeager amateur anymore, wasn’t beholden to the path the pirates put in front of her. And doing Cordelia’s bidding wasn’t essential to her cover in the same way that this Monfroy business was, either. Easy enough to set it aside if need be.

“What are you doing out here?” Florette spun her head to see a dark-haired boy frowning beneath one of those yellow helmets. A small silver stud was set into his nose, as Florette had seen some other Cambrians sport. “They said they want everyone in the Hall of Light and Shadow for an orientation.” He swore quietly to himself. “I guess I’m not the only one who’ll be late, at least.”

“I got lost,” Florette lied in a sheepish tone, trying to sound similarly embarrassed. “This castle’s way too big. Do you know the way?”

The boy nodded, then began walking briskly, leading Florette towards the nearest entrance to the main castle building. Quickly, they were ascending a circular stone staircase, cramped enough that Florette had to duck to avoid hitting her head against the stairs above her, then through an ornately decorated hallway, narrow vertical windows peering down over the sunlit Chaya below.

“Just past here, I think,” the boy said as he opened a door to a massive room, twisted into blocky spirals of glass and mirrors, light shining through the ceiling at odd angles before ending in the shirts and vests of about a dozen workers, each wearing the same hat.

“...I don’t care what Harold Grimoire thinks he knows about construction, this is an historic building that needs restoration, not modernization. If you’re refusing to do the job I hired you for, then this conversation is over.”

“I didn’t say that, Lord Monfroy. It’s just that it’s against the building code. Government’ll come after you if they find out about it. Come after us too, for doing the work.”

“So this is a... shakedown, is it?” Monfroy hissed. “Very well. If this is truly an additional hazard to you, additional hazard pay may be... warranted. An increase of twelve percent should be sufficient, provided you’re also willing to dig a passage for me.”

“Twelve percent is very generous, Lord Monfroy, sir. We’ll take a vote, but I’m sure—Why are you just getting here now? I’m docking your pay for the hour, both of you.”

“Fuck,” the worker next to her said.

“It’s my fault,” Florette offered in a particularly high pitch to disguise her voice, suppressing a wince when Monfroy still glanced their way. “Got lost. He was just showing me the way.”

“Fine.” The foreman shrugged. “Just you then. Get with the others.”

Florette hurried into place as fast as she could manage casually, waiting for a word from Monfroy that never came. As the Lord turned back from a reflective wall towards the gathering, Monfroy’s eyes glanced off her with no recognition, no different from Camille forgetting her face in front of Clochaîne Candles.

I guess Cordelia was right.

“Good, we can finally begin,” Monfroy announced, his voice stronger and louder than Florette had ever heard it. “You’re here because I expect excellent work, done quickly, and I’m prepared to pay what it takes. You’re here to touch the face of history and ensure its preservation for centuries to come. The Hall of Light and Shadow must be ready by year’s end. The real year’s end, mind you. Sauine, not the final day of this 12-month year ridiculousness. The twenty-ninth day of the thirteenth month, of the nineteen-hundred and eighty-third year. That means you only have a few weeks to restore the Hall and rehabilitate Mahabali Hall. If you find that you are falling short, inform me, and I will supplement your labor, provided I observe the labor shortage you report. I expect this to be done in impeccable fashion, on time, no matter the cost. Do not disappoint me. Dismissed.”

≋

Florette tugged at the edge of her cloak into place, trying to hide as much as she could of the tears from Glaciel’s spear. Or were they burns from Flammare? Or the factory fire? I’m lucky this cloak isn’t in ruins after everything I’ve put it through.

It sat more comfortably on her shoulders after realizing that. Every scar and blemish was a record of what Florette had accomplished, assurance that she would get through this and come out on the other side a legend.

So what if the pirates were proving to be more Eloise Clochaîne and less Robin Verrou? The Fox-King and his knights had been worse, and they’d still been able to work together against Glaciel. So what if Monfroy was forcing her to do dirty jobs for his creepy cult? As soon as the need for Srin Sabine passed, so too would go any need to listen to Monfroy.

Or even keep him alive, for that matter.

Florette had spent the last few weeks gathering information, making the most of being forced to stay here, all the more effective once Cordelia sailed off into the night. Monfroy didn’t seem to care too much about what she did until they got back to Cambria—only encouraging her to study The End of Time and better familiarize herself with the Twilight Society before the New Year celebration—so it was easy enough to stay unsuspicious by taking a walk into town or posting up with a book somewhere to do reconnaissance.

Chaya was plenty interesting on its own, and going into town had the benefit of letting Florette let her guard down a bit, as long as none of Monfroy’s people were around. Around two weeks in, there’d even been another few sunny days in a row, making things warmer than a day in the twelfth month had any right to be.

But the more important work was at Mahabali Hall, and Florette had no intention of slacking on that—no matter how annoying Cordelia had been about it. She hadn’t managed to get into the Undying Room—Monfroy always had someone watching it, and no disguise was suitable to enter, since no one was allowed—but she’d still managed to piece together a fair bit about the Twilight Society just from the New Year’s event Monfroy was throwing for them.

Once the guests had begun to arrive, there was even more to learn.

From a man named Ernest Porterfield, Florette heard how the old calendar worked—thirteen months with twenty-eight days each, and one Day of Void considered to be between the years. Counting from the creation of the spirit Lunette, union of Khali and Soleil, the year was apparently 1983. But the whole reason they’d started the new calendar was because no one knew exactly how many days had passed under Khali’s darkness, and the Twilight Society’s insistence that they knew what no one else did seemed to be backed up by nothing more than guesswork. Even more ridiculous, at the time they’d used 26-hour days so they could have two sets of thirteen, though fortunately no one bothered with that anymore, even the most ardent traditionalists.

A woman named Lucretia Marbury added that, as prescribed by the Great Binder’s End of Time, that meant they were only seventeen years away from Khali’s return, rather than Florette’s initial assumption of two-thousand—assuming you believed that sort of thing, anyway. ‘Crete’ Marbury preferred to stick to what evidence could support, which was how Florette came to learn that she was already employed on Ortus Tower’s twelfth floor, with access to all but the most closely-guarded of its secrets. Definitely someone it could be useful to know in the future.

And from Kelsey Thorley, she learned that his father Celice was a decades-long member of the Twilight Society, here to initiate his son into the group and seek a way back up Avalon’s ladder, especially after a certain cunning bandit had made a fool of him in Malin.

Definitely explains why he had the book Monfroy insisted was so important. Probably the unassuming cover as well—most members didn’t seem particularly eager to make the depths of their affiliation known. Understandable enough, when Khali’s rampage was just barely beyond living memory, and they were siding with the spirit who’d condemned hundreds of thousands of people to death.

“I really didn’t expect to see you here, Sabine. Didn’t you only meet your father a couple years ago? My condolences, by the way.” He blinked. “Wait, isn’t this his castle? The Srins of Mahabali Hall?”

“Yes. But I’m here for the party, too. Monfroy insisted.”

“Who? Uh—Whatever. Look, you have nothing to worry about. Mostly, it’s a bunch of old people drinking, smoking, and playing cards. Sometimes they talk about their grandchildren.”

“And Khali, I’d assume. Have you heard their take on the Age of Darkness?” Florette had largely pieced it together once the Hall of Light and Shadow was finished, and the small allusions she’d dropped in conversation with certain party guests seemed to confirm it.

“I think they’re right about that part, but it’s not like Khali did nothing wrong. And I’ll jump off the Agada ridge if she returns from Nocturne in seventeen years. The Great Binder didn’t even say it’d be the year 2000, she just said two thousand years from ‘now’. And it’s barely been a hundred.” Kelsey shrugged. “Khali couldn’t even win then; in two-thousand years’ time, I doubt she’ll make it five minutes against us.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Florette remembered the passage pretty well after her efforts to learn the book, and the Great Binder’s ‘one-thousand years from now and then one thousand more’, couldn’t exactly be called efficiently worded, but it wasn’t particularly ambiguous either. The only thing unclear about it was where she got that number from, considering she’d apparently been viewing an abstract spirit vision at the time. If she’d picked two-thousand years because she’d seen a giant glowing sign reading “Year 2000”, she’d presumably have mentioned it.

“Did I just hear you say ‘Khali did nothing wrong’, Kelsey?” Grey hair slicked back with some kind of expensive Avaline oil Florette had seen at the alchemists, Celice Thorley seemed less impressive up close. Maybe that was because he wasn’t the head of the snake anymore, where he’d ruled the railyard in Malin. Or perhaps I did this to him.

“Uh, no.” Kelsey waved his hands apart. “That was—”

“You have to stop trying so hard. They have to like you, not think you’re a zealot. Your professional development is on the line here.” Thorley the elder grabbed Kelsey, then turned to Florette. “Have we met before, miss?”

Not up-close, but I’ve definitely seen you around the railyard. “I don’t believe so, Mr. Thorley. Welcome to Mahabali Hall.”

“What are you welcoming me for? This is Monfroy’s estate.”

“Well, I—”

“It doesn’t matter. We have to be going.”

Kelsey gave Florette an apologetic shrug as his father dragged him into a conversation with a wrinkled couple and their thirty-five-year-old-looking daughter.

For her part, Florette headed towards the Hall of Light and Shadow, finally refurbished to Lord Monfroy’s exacting standards.

Intricate panes of glass and mirrors spiralled inward from the walls, reflecting light and colors into thirteen projections all around the walls. As the sun touched the horizon and the daylight burned orange, each image settled into place.

The story of the Age of Darkness, and the truth about 118 years ago, according to the Twilight Society. Florette started with the first image, though she had in the past tried viewing it backwards to see if it illuminated anything new.

Bathed in the orange sunset light, the first one showed a scorpion-clawed, batlike spirit embedded in the earth—Terramonde, presumably—with verdant lands of hills and grass over his back. The World of Crepuscule, its inscription read.

The next three were portraits of Soleil, Khali, and Lunette—the last representing the union between them, the agreement to rule over the land on Terramonde’s back together, each with half the day to themselves. That made sense, as far as setting the stage of the narrative, but the next one—number five of thirteen, yet the last of the images to be completed due to having thrice the mirrors and reflections as the rest combined—had shocked Florette to see.

Miroirter, the enormous shimmering rabbit who’d voted for Lunette at the Convocation of the Spirits. Florette had needed to go all the way to Monfroy himself to get the answer to that one, which fortunately he seemed happy to provide: Miroirter, spirit of reflection, could bridge worlds that reflected each other.

Leading to the sixth picture: The World of Diurne. Celestial clouds were bathed in the sunset light, filled with tiny dots representing people and larger, swirling vortices of wings and discolored darkness that no one had been able to elaborate on. The Miroirter portrait was apparently supposed to represent Soleil and Miroirter working together to reach Diurne, though a simple portrait hardly confirmed that interpretation.

The next one was more obvious, an intricately crafted scene of light and shadow, with Soleil’s imposing image hovering menacingly at the edge of the frame: The War Between the Worlds. The one after, Soleil’s Capture, seemed to indicate how well that war had gone for him. The official position of the Twilight Society was that this—not any action from Khali—had been the reason for the darkness. But the Great Binder’s book that they held in such high esteem disagreed—it mentioned ‘Khali’s darkness’ about six times per chapter—so Florette saw no reason to humor that part.

The next was a circle tinted to the blue of the sky, with mottled patches of green and brown scattered across it. Shadows, tendrils, stretched across its surface. The World of Nocturne. It had been Khali’s source of power even before she’d been banished to it, tapped for its energy to fuel a rescue of Soleil. Then The Rescue of Soleil, as Khali’s newfound power led her to triumph against Diurne and unchain Soleil.

The eleventh image was split again, showing the conflict between Khali and Soleil. According to the Twilight Society, Soleil had demanded dominion over Diurne and all the other worlds they were set to conquer together, while Khali refused. The End of Time didn’t have much to say about her motives, so Florette supposed it was possible—that certainly sounded like Soleil—but it seemed awfully convenient to say that Khali wasn’t at fault at all.

The last two made for an interesting contrast: Khali’s Victory, the twelfth image triumphantly said beneath an image of the world bathed in shadows. Then, thirteenth, Khali’s Defeat, showing the Great Binder seal her inside Nocturne. After that, the idea was that you looped back to the start, the world, where Khali would one day return from her exile.

Honestly, Cretty was right about how disconnected it all was from reality. All the more so knowing the prophesied return seemed to mostly be based on a shoddy misremembering of the words the Great Binder wrote. Even setting that aside, the whole thing was overwrought apologism for a demonstrably malicious spirit, interpreted as favorably as possible even beyond the initial slant of the light images themselves. But it did look absolutely breathtaking.

When the orange light began to fade to purple, Florette returned to the main hall. In the surprise of a lifetime, it turned out that Twilight was a pretty important time for the Twilight Society, and that meant Florette had to get back for her—and, apparently, Kelsey’s—official initiation into it.

Florette’s Cloak of Nocturne began blowing across her shoulders, though there was hardly any wind in the air, and the thought occurred to her that now—with everyone gathered in the Great Hall—was the perfect time to see if she could get into the Undying Room. Aside from the construction workers, all of Monfroy’s people seemed to be Society members, which did speak to its networking potential if nothing else. That meant there was at least a chance he’d let them attend the celebration with everyone else. Worth a look, at least.

The massive blue stone slab in front of the door had it closed up tightly, but—sure enough—no one was guarding it.

It could be a trap, trying to assess the loyalty of her and his guests. Perhaps the penalty of death was just a result of whatever was in there—a bed of spikes, a fiery trap, a spirit-touched beast that could swallow you whole...

But I’m here to learn, and I can’t walk by this without at least taking a look. Holding her cloak tight, Florette descended deep into Nocturne, until the pull of the world behind her was weak enough that she could walk through the stone, gasping for air as she recomposed herself on the other side.

Nothing exploded or killed her, which was a good start, and no one was there, which was another good turn. But, lying on the ground...

Florette jumped straight back into Nocturne, practically flying through the stone and back out into the hallway. She descended the stairs so fast she could barely remember doing it moments later, slipping into the ceremony next to Kelsey as he whispered, “Where were you?”

“Lost...” Florette said hollowly, her eyes still wide from what she’d seen.

“Well, get ready, they’re calling you up soon.”

Florette nodded mutely, her eyes still stuck in that room, frozen looking at the skeletal figures she’d seen discarded on the ground, all lined up in a row. The skin on their faces was stretched so thin so you could see the shape of their skull through it, a fountain of white hair growing from the back of their heads. Their backs were shrunken and twisted, toes and fingers crumbling into dust.

It had taken a moment to realize who they were, to recognize the stud in the nose of what looked like the corpse of a hundred-year-old man. Somehow they’d all been... Whatever had happened to them seemed horrifying, even worse the sight of them all lined up withered and dead, set in a row like it was all some kind of game.

Monfroy had told them to build a passageway for him. And now no one but him would know of it.

A ‘Collector of people’, he said. Now Florette knew exactly what he meant.