Aurélien Jeannot (aurelien) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2008-12-23 14:10:00 |
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Current mood: | numb |
Early Thursday afternoon, 17 September 1942, in the basement of Avalon College somewhere...
“Ianthe.” Aurélien Jeannot blinked and stared at Ianthe Pritchard, who was not supposed to have been able to get into this storeroom. After a moment, he sighed, because there were only two ways that could have happened, and neither one was very implausible. “Dashwood or Saint-Germain?”
Ianthe shrugged. “Saint-Germain gave me his key, Dashwood knows I’m here.”
Aurélien groaned and leaned back against the wall. “So it’s both of them.” He wanted to be surprised. But he wasn’t.
“All of us,” Ianthe replied. “Because I’m not here to tell you that I think you’re being really smart about things lately.”
“And you’re always the smart one,” Aurélien said, nodding glumly. “Everyone fall in line behind the Leffoys.”
Ianthe rolled her eyes at him. “I sure feel like the fucking smart one,” she said. “Not choosing a side over lunch against someone I’ve never met before. Taking Colette’s word for it over her brother’s. Nat wrote to me about her, by the way, and if you’d kept your mouth shut over lunch I could have told you that.”
Aurélien shrugged. “So what did he say?”
“That people would say she was a collaborator,” Ianthe replied. “And that he knows she isn’t. So.”
“What is she then?” Aurélien shrugged again. The stories Colette had told him were all mixed up in his mind with the things he’d heard from Martin about the Leffoy girls, the cold little blonde and the dark one, who wasn’t precisely cold but was ruthless as plague. “Apparently Rosenthal doesn’t mind where she’s been.”
“Since when have you minded where someone’s been?” Ianthe glared at him. This wasn’t like him, and she didn’t like this new attitude much. “There’s fucking someone, and there’s fucking them voluntarily, and there’s going in the same direction as them and you haven’t worked out that those are three different things?”
Aurélien swallowed. “Martin’s not one of the von Thorwalds. And Martin had all of us, one way or another.”
Ianthe flushed red. “And you think von Thorwald’s son doesn’t get what he wants? When he wants it and whether or not it wants him?” She didn’t like to think about things like that too much, but she knew about them. She knew he knew, too, when he wasn’t being so stupid.
“Do you think she so much as objected? Colette says she…” Aurélien shook his head. He wanted to go on, but it was Colette’s story and it didn’t matter. “They had friends, you know, in common. Who are dead.”
“Yeah, and Nat’s worked undercover too,” Ianthe reminded him. “And maybe I will someday too. And you know what? Sometimes it means standing by while your friends die. You don’t trust me on this? You ought to check what Jen thinks about it.”
“Jen doesn’t like me a lot,” said Aurélien. “But maybe I’ll talk to her.” He took a deep breath. “Nat told you she worked undercover. She said she was reporting to the Resistance. Mablin beat the shite out of Rasputin and told him she was a spy. She has some kind of secret project no-one is allowed to know about with Rosenthal. She’s done more against the invaders in the last two years than my parents have ever done…and her aunt, Séverine, got my uncle killed in some idiot scheme. What is she, some comic book heroine? She’s seventeen!” He couldn’t decide what he hated more. That the girl had done so much, or that his uncle, Thierry—the only member of the family worth claiming—was dead because of Séverine Leffoy.
“What?” Ianthe said, confused by all this unloading. “So what’s your fucking problem believing in all of this then? You and Colette want to attack collaborators, be my guest. Invite me to watch even. But it doesn’t seem like she is one, does it?”
“Well, I didn’t know that yesterday!” Aurélien snapped back.
“Yeah,” Ianthe said, her voice getting louder. “But you could have if you’d held your fire for half an hour. So what the hell’s going on? Rookwood seems to think you’re doing it because you’re with Colette now.”
Aurélien laughed hollowly. “Colette’s not with me. Colette’s not with Ducas, either. Colette’s…” He shook his head. “We’ve been having some fun. She’s with Rookwood. If she’s really with anyone.” He wasn’t sure sometimes if Colette loved anyone. But Rookwood loved her and she knew it.
Ianthe threw up her hands. “At least true love would have made some sense,” she cried. “What the fuck is wrong with you? That is what I want to know.”
“I don’t know,” said Aurélien. “Except that nothing in my life really matters a lot, except…” He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. He was so tired. How long had it been since he’d slept, really slept? He didn’t know. They’d drugged him in the infirmary, too.
“Except what?” Ianthe snapped. “This?” she indicated the stores. “Because you haven’t half been fucking that up as well.”
He shook his head. “No, you, I think,” he said, and there it was, that admission, a weight gone. “Because you know. But you’re like her, you rise above everything, effortless.”
“I rise above it because I have a brain in my head,” Ianthe said, covering her eyes. She didn’t want this declaration and she didn’t know what to do with it if she got it. “Who am I like? I’d like to think there’s more than two of us.”
“Her. Miss Leffoy, Mrs Rosenthal soon I suppose, she’s already left school and he’s teaching the fucking class and she’s right there to hand him the chalk. He fought with Scalara about it!” Aurélien shrugged; he’d had to leave, he hadn’t been able to stand it, watching those two, and there had been so many people come into the class that it hadn’t been any trouble to get out. “I’ve never done anything, Ianthe. This was Martin’s business. I don’t know what I want to do. You always know. She knows.”
Ianthe sighed. “Yeah,” she said. “You’ve cocked it right up. That would be why Dashwood spent so much time trying to save it for you. That’s why he wants me to finish saving it for you. Jesus, Auré, none of us would do that if you were this kind of fuck up permanently.”
Aurélien rubbed his face with his hands. “I don’t…I know.” He swallowed. “You’re right. I’ve done well with this in the past but what is it? It’s not mine. Is this what I want to be? I want to be better than Martin was I suppose, I want to be better than they are…” He couldn’t find the words to explain to her; she made it all seem so stupid. But he did want to be better than Martin and Nathaniel were. Better than his parents were.
“It’s just money, isn’t it?” Ianthe asked, and raised her eyebrows. “Look, it’s a good thing you have going here isn’t it? Sell it to someone else when you leave school and buy something else. That’s what I’m going to do. If you want me in, that is.”
“Sure,” said Aurélien, and shrugged again. Better her than some of the people Dashwood might have chosen. At least she wasn’t Saint-Germain’s officious fat girlfriend. No, that wasn’t right. He did want her in. Maybe he always had. “You can be in. Dashwood wants an agent too, he can’t be selling any more, he’s the Dux Bellorum’s son-in-law and Nicodemo Malaspina told him he was going to be the perfect political spouse or something like that.”
Ianthe snorted. “It’ll be charming,” she said, in something more like her usual tone with him. “I look forward to attending their balls. So, fine. Can you dig yourself out of this shit?”
“Which pile?” Aurélien asked her, and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. “Mrs Rosenthal will be leaving us first thing in the morning. Charis is telling anyone who will listen about it.”
“Can I have one?” Ianthe asked him. “That’s the big one, I guess. Staying out of that wolf’s way shouldn’t be too hard.”
Aurélien lit a second cigarette from the end of his and passed it to Ianthe. “She’ll be gone.”
“All right,” Ianthe said, nodding. “Someone should probably work out what the fuck is up with Colette, if you know, fill Rookwood in. And don’t jump off any cliffs with her. I guess that’s everything?”
Aurélien shrugged. “A lot of her friends died. The Leffoy girl was one of her friends once too, or her brother’s friend rather, his little petite-amie for a while. I think Reynard had her first, unless Rosenthal did. So, Colette and Reynard are alive because one of her cousins was married to Ozzer Wilkes’ nephew once a long time ago. And so this woman, Monvoisin, she got them out, and I think that aunt of Miss Leffoy’s who got my uncle Thierry killed had something to do with it too. Colette saw a lot. She saw the Leffoy girl right in the middle of everything, too.”
“Maybe she should talk to Jen,” Ianthe said. “That cousin isn’t Séverine, is it? Nat knows her too. And by knows, I mean more than the usual. Even for him.” Ianthe’s opinion of Nat’s ability to remain emotionally uninvolved was a little lower than it had been; much like her opinion of Aurélien.
“I think that’s her name.” Aurélien rolled his head back, stretching his neck, and took another drag off his cigarette. He knew it was her name. He just didn’t like thinking about it. He’d met her some years ago, when he’d been a lot younger and she had been, too, only then she’d been a lesbian with spectacles who smoked a lot and wore tweed and made fun of people at parties. Apparently she’d learned to like parties.
“Sounds like someone worth knowing,” said Ianthe. “I thought Thierry was pretty good at what he did?”
Aurélien nodded. The past and the present were all jumbled up in his head, but he remembered Thierry as someone who’d been good at almost everything, a war hero. There was a black girl, too. Maybe he thought of her when he thought of Colette sometimes. Though she was really more like Melina Ducas. Malaspina now. And Monvoisin had also been a black woman. Well, he supposed there were probably more than five of them out in the world. “Martin said, he’s dead because of her. Of course she dropped Nat because of Martin. So maybe. I should ask Jenica.”
Ianthe nodded back and took another drag of her own cigarette. “I want to ask Martin some things too, but I don’t know that I’d listen to the answers.”
“Some guy she was fucking, some stupid Hungarian healer. Thierry went hunting wild geese with him, or something like that,” said Aurélien, and wondered what the point of asking was if you didn’t want to listen to the answers. Not that Ianthe cared how Thierry’d got himself killed. Ianthe didn’t care about much.
“Wasn’t that what he always did?” Ianthe said, who had heard some stories, although she had the strong impression that Thierry Jeannot wasn’t a name that her own parents were keen to hear regularly. “Lots of ways to get killed in Europe at the moment.” She sat down on the floor and grimaced at the temperature. “Want anything stronger?” she asked. “This is a deal we are cutting here and you haven’t even broken open any of your finest.”
Aurélien grinned at her; she was making sense again now. “I thought I was supposed to stay sober more. It’s one o’clock in the afternoon. Or thereabouts.”
“Did I say that?” Ianthe asked. “I thought it was ‘be less stupid’. If you want to do that sober, you can.”
“Dashwood was the one who told me to sober up,” said Aurélien. “Before Enochian last night, when he told me that the Leffoy girl is his friend and he doesn’t care what I think about that and a whole lot of other things.” He shrugged again, and handed her a bottle. “He said he didn’t get as rich as he’d got by drinking his own product starting at dawn.”
“It’s one in the afternoon,” Ianthe reminded him, but she didn’t take a large amount. “I suppose he has a point.”
“I think,” said Aurélien, “that he thinks I’ve been a little drunk whenever he’s seen me. Since Claire.” It was probably true, but who was Dashwood to criticise that in him?
“You have been when I’ve seen you,” Ianthe said. “Just, I’m not such a fine one to talk.”
Aurélien chuckled. “Neither is he, but he thinks he is. Since Kyteler.” He sighed. “Welcome to the business, such that it is. Don’t be surprised if I delegate a lot for a while.”
“Cheers,” Ianthe said. “Whatever you like, as long as I get my share for the hours I put in.”
Aurélien nodded. “Once we figure out what that is.” He sighed, and took a drink himself. “Coca wine.” He snorted. “I wonder where he got that.”
“Kyteler had better be compensating him well for this political wife plan,” Ianthe said. “I know, I know, you don’t need to say it, I can draw the picture already.”
Aurélien chuckled. “I think, you know, he really wants to find the Philosopher’s Stone. He likes making the stuff. He is better at making than selling.”
“It can be fun,” said Ianthe, whose classes were usually too easy for her to be fun, but who wasn’t often tempted to extend them for enjoyment alone. She shrugged. “Selling is my thing, and yours is getting them to pay up.”
Aurélien grinned broadly. “There is that,” he said with a grin, and laced his fingers through each other and stretched his arms, grinning when he heard his knuckles crack. “There is that.”
notforfree and aurelien