Alvaro Benedetto (fascio_littorio) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2008-09-22 10:55:00 |
|
|||
Current mood: | cynical |
Late Tuesday afternoon, 15 September 1942, somewhere in the port of Calais...
Alvaro Benedetto was sitting in his room, cleaning his gun, which was lying in parts on the table, when he first heard someone else breathing behind him, slow and calm and unhurried. He did not make any sudden movements; he simply set down the barrel of the gun and the cloth, which had been in his hands, and cocked his head to one side, listening. If the person behind him had wanted to kill him, she would have done so by now. He was fairly sure, by the sound of the breath, that it was a woman. “Perhaps,” he said conversationally, “you shouldn’t wear so much perfume.”
“I’m not.” He felt something cold at the nape of his neck. The barrel of a gun, round and hard. “I know who you are. You took Sharolt Halász. You tried to take my cousin Liane.”
“And how do you know Mlle Halász?” Alvaro replied, feeling rather let down; whoever she was, she shouldn’t have been able to do this to him. He remembered Liane de Marigny, of course, because she had been Nicolas’ cousin and he had wanted to bring her into the programme himself, so he could protect her personally. He had not remembered any of the other cousins. He had not wanted to. He had always despised the de Marigny family generally; they had done very poorly by Nicolas, and poorly by little Liane as well; when he had met her, she had been living in Albrecht von Grindelwald’s flat in Lutetia, sharing a bed with him and presumably also his Russian friend.
“I was training to be a professor at Beauxbatons. She corresponded with my thesis advisor. Liane knew her too; it’s why she didn’t go along with you.”
“Are you going to shoot me or not?” Alvaro asked softly.
“I want to know why you are here,” said the woman. Maybe she wasn’t wearing perfume but he could still smell it. Most people couldn’t have. But he didn’t think she was most people, either.
“I am going to Britannia. Same as you,” said Alvaro.
“Where’s Sforza?” She pressed the cold metal into the bone at the nape of his neck. Alvaro didn’t think she would kill him on purpose now, but he wished she would put the gun away before she did it by accident. She was much too angry for this.
“I don’t know,” said Alvaro. “We’re not partners any more. I never liked him much, you know. I didn’t approve of the way he treated his daughter.”
The woman laughed sharply. “And I don’t approve of what you did to Sharolt.”
Alvaro sighed heavily. “Actually,” he said after a moment’s thought, “I don’t approve of it, either.”
“You let it happen,” the woman hissed through her teeth.
“I didn’t know about that programme,” Alvaro protested. It was almost even true. He had never believed they would do it to one of his. It was dangerous enough to do it to normal people. It had apparently changed a great deal since he had gone through it himself.
“I don’t believe you!” the woman snapped back, leaning forward a little. “Animals!”
Alvaro laughed softly. “Fine,” he said. “Believe this. It was not our invention. It came from Britannia. Septimus Snape brought Ficino the information.”
The woman had to catch her breath. In the split second she faltered, Alvaro brought her down and disarmed her smoothly, taking first her gun and then her wand. Dispassionately, he noticed the speed of her reflexes. Training, his first thought; but she was too young to have been so well trained, and he recognised some of her blind spots. They were too like his own.
“I’m not your enemy,” he said, looking down at her slumped in his chair. “I don’t want to kill you. I don’t even want to hurt you. I just want out of here. You’re travelling with the vampire, aren’t you? I remember him.”
She nodded.
“What was done to Sharolt went far beyond the parameters,” Alvaro said quietly. “Piccard confirmed that for me. She had exceptional resistances and tolerances. I am fairly sure that Piccard had something to do with her disappearance; otherwise I would have to believe that her brother and that band of unwashed condottieri managed to release her by themselves. Which I do not.”
“May God bless Piccard then, whoever he is,” the dark girl said through her teeth. She looked nothing like Nicolas, nothing at all like Liane.
“I doubt God has much to do with Piccard,” said Alvaro, shrugging. “Any of them, really.” He owed the gods a bird or five. Maybe if he made his sacrifices they would be able to pass tonight. “But certainly not that one. You’re Séverine Malfoy, are you not?”
The girl nodded, frowning, and pulled herself up off the desk and the pieces of gun.
“You don’t look much like your brother,” Alvaro observed.
“I should imagine not.” She didn’t look at him.
Alvaro smiled. “Snape,” he said, “had the same training I had. I understand that in some instances it passes to the offspring, even though it shouldn’t. Or do all Armorican mathematicians have what it takes to sneak up on me?”
The dark girl rubbed her wrist and stared at him like a caged bird. “It may be so,” she said quietly. “I am actually a harmonic astrologer. And a Tantrika, not that you will ever know that personally.”
Alvaro laughed. “I wouldn’t be interested even if you were,” he told her. “Not that you aren’t pretty, but I prefer women who don’t want to kill me.”
“You knew my brother in Italia?” Her eyes were still wary.
“No. But I wanted to know him. Him and his little friend. Alessio Zabini.”
“I’ve heard about them,” Séverine replied. “I am the reason you did not take Liane, you know. She knew what you did to Sharolt. Even Albrecht was preferable.”
Alvaro nodded. “None of you really knows what happened to Sharolt. Even I don’t, and that was the truth. I know what Ficino claims to have done, and I know what Piccard accused him of doing. Claims and accusations are not truth.”
Séverine snorted. “Dissociated arrayed intelligence,” she said, shaking her head. “It was a model for non-human qliphotic intelligences. Like the faerie courts, without queens and princes. Like insects. I had been working on it for quite some time. I never thought to see it in the real world, let alone in only one body. But Liane and Michel knew it instantly. They’d seen my equations. How the fuck did you do it?”
“I could tell you if I did it, but I didn’t.” Alvaro nodded thoughtfully. “Pattern recognition. There is some debate as to whether or not that qualifies as a Persuasion. It can be just as powerful.” He was amused that she described herself as a harmonic astrologer. She knew rather a lot more about goetia than any astrologer of any stripe had any reason to, if she’d been doing that. One of de Valois’ better students, no doubt.
Séverine rolled her eyes. “Liane was a genius. Maybe she still is. I hope she is safe. But as much as I don’t trust Charteris, I knew that he wouldn’t do that to her. Better that she’s with Michel than that, even if they’ve passed beyond the abyss.”
“And Charteris wasn’t Albrecht Grindelwald either. I imagine that had something to do with it.” Alvaro shrugged. “I wouldn’t trust Charteris any further than I could throw him. But I may yet have to.”
Séverine stared at him. “You broke faith with them, then?” She swallowed. “How long before you draw them to us, conard? They will take Gabriel and stake him out in the sun…I will kill myself before I am taken, but I can do nothing for him if they come by day—”
Alvaro sighed heavily. “There’s no need for that,” he said softly. “We’re leaving tonight. One way or another. I promise.”
severine and fascio_littorio