Florian Leffoy (prince_florian) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2009-01-07 10:20:00 |
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Current mood: | worried |
Thursday afternoon, 17 September 1942, on the grounds of the Royal Academy of Wizardry...
Florian Leffoy had never felt so stupid in his life. Never. He wondered if this was how Jennie Mablin felt when he and Theo were discussing Machiavelli, but he was still confused, because he didn’t want to be nasty to his cousin Liane or her Professor; he just wanted to be able to understand them. Of course he had known it was a sixth-form lecture when he and his friends had all decided to ditch Hebrew and sneak in, along with Mercuria’s older brother and Callista’s too, but Mercuria and Callista had actually been able to follow a little of the maths, and Theo and Fiammetta had been able to follow the parts about ciphers. He had been completely at a loss, and had come out of the lecture sure of only one thing: that there was probably only one person in the world who was smart enough for his cousin Liane, and thank God she had found him.
He hoped they weren’t in trouble for ditching Hebrew. It was the only language class he actually needed to take; he worked on his Euskara during Latin and Greek, and he suspected that ‘I needed to see what the man my cousin will probably marry is like’ would not get him far as an excuse for ditching a lesson, especially since none of the rest of them were Liane’s cousins. It would be just his luck to get a stripe for doing the one thing in his life that had actually made him feel stupid. He was just glad that stripes you got in Avalon were not discussed outside the College. He was not about to let Jennie Mablin have the satisfaction of knowing he’d been birched for ditching Hebrew to sneak into an advanced maths class that he hadn’t understood the first bit of.
Of course, he had had other things on his mind, and it had been apparent that Kat did too. She’d passed him a note to the effect that they needed to ditch the rest of their friends and talk later that afternoon.
Fortunately, Jonathan had been dragged off by his older brother Endymion to meet some other visitors, and Theo and Fiammetta and Callista and Mercuria were so deeply engaged in conversation with Martial and Ambrose, the aforementioned older brothers of Mercuria and Callista respectively. Jenica Popescu wasn’t taking people on runs today, either, as she had gone off in the same direction as Jon and Endymion.
So there they were, alone, sitting on a wall after an unusually quiet walk round the grounds. Florian had thought to go down to the graveyard, but Hadrian Kyteler’s sister was sitting down there with Moruith, which would have been funny if Florian hadn’t been so worried. They probably weren’t supposed to be sitting on the wall, but it wasn’t as though they didn’t know how to fall, and they weren’t in the forest or out of sight of the castle.
“Kat,” said Florian, softly, looking out toward the graveyard; he could hear the sound of Moruith playing in the distance. “Kat, I’ve had a letter from my Mum. Did you have one from…well, did you get one from home?”
“My Mum wrote,” Kat said flatly. She thought about breaking the wards and just handing Leffoy the letter, but realised that he’d hardly like it.
“Do you want to look at each other’s letters?” Florian swallowed. “You might not like what she says at the end, though. My Mum is afraid that I’ll scare you, she gets like that.” He turned to glance at her, with an expression that he hoped betrayed less fear than he really felt.
“No…” Kat said hesitantly. “I don’t think my Mum would like that.” She looked him in the eye. “Does yours say…we have to get married?”
“She says we have to think about it,” Florian said quietly. “She says she knows I like you, but not to say yes too quickly, because there’s a lot to think about, and she cares how you feel about it, even if she says so badly.”
“Oh,” Kat said very quietly. That was very different from what her mother had said, and not exactly what she would have expected from Leffoy’s mum, even if Leffoy’s mum was unusual and nothing at all like her father had said. “My Mum says we have to get betrothed right away, because…something might happen to Bill again.”
“It probably won’t be Bill, actually,” said Florian after a moment. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be betrothed to Kat. He rather liked the idea, in and of itself. But not if it was because she was afraid that Bill was going to die. Not even if he had liked Bill. “It moves around, you know. It’s already been Yvon and Bill. They think…well, Nico had to go to the hospital, too, but he’s fine now. It could be anyone next. It could be me or you. So.” He shrugged. “Kat, I’ve thought about it, and I’m going to say whatever you tell me to say. If you tell me to say yes, I’ll say yes. If you tell me to say no, I’ll say no. That’s the only fair thing.”
When he said it like that, it didn’t sound terribly fair. It sounded like he was making Kat responsible for everything, which was the same thing Kat’s mother had done. And Florian didn’t like that: it wasn’t fair at all. But, at the same time…it was Kat who had the most to lose. “I’d be very honoured if you wanted to be my wife, some day,” he said, and sucked on his lip for a moment. So this was what it was like to have something you really wanted put out on a plate in front of you, but in a way that made you wish you’d never hoped for it at all. “But not if you don’t want to; I can’t imagine anything more awful.”
Kat looked at her feet, dangling over the edge of the wall. “I don’t know,” she said. “I want to race broomsticks and…and learn to win duels…and. You know. Everything! I don’t really want to be like my Mum.” Kat loved her mother. But everyone knew her mother was unhappy. Even when she pretended she wasn’t. Sometimes especially then. And she never, ever wanted to have the same kind of relationship with Leffoy that her parents had had. She had loved her father, and wanted him to like her just as much as he liked Bill. But at the same time, she never wanted to live the way her mother had.
“Good,” said Florian vehemently, so much so that he almost scared himself; some birds that had been perched a few feet down the wall flew away. “I would hate to marry your Mum!” Then he swallowed, and realised how insulting that sounded. “No offence, I’m sure she’s an excellent mum. But my mum does all those things that you want to do!” He smiled at her, shakily, and then he realised that most of what his mother did right now was paperwork. Her expression was unreadable, and he’d forgotten that Kat didn’t know what his mother did all day, so he corrected himself, hastily. “Well, not right now. But she’s pregnant right now, and she’s being a diplomat, too. Kat.”
Florian took a deep breath. He was conscious that he was probably talking too much, but he didn’t really know what else to do. “Mum said something else. She said it would be a contract, and the marriage, if there was one, would happen when we were older. And that even if we get betrothed, if we grow up and we decide we can’t do it, she won’t make us. And I know she means it, because when she found out that Bella loved Jamie, she let her out of the contract that we had, before.” He sighed, searching Kat’s face, hoping she understood what he was saying. “She’s afraid we might like each other a lot because of cricket and flying, and I am going to tell her that’s part of it, but there are lots of people who like those things?”
Kat laughed shakily. “Like Bill,” she said. “And Dougie Marvell. When his broom can stay in the air!” There were a lot of people who were good at sport at school, and it was true she didn’t like any of them quite as much as she and Leffoy liked each other. But still. She wasn’t sure she wanted to marry anyone.
“Well, you know, it’s got so much to work against,” said Florian, trying to grin at her. Charis’ cousin still hated him—all the more for getting him kicked out of the house of milk and honey, which was really all he valued about the Manor, more fool him—and it was hilarious watching the fat boy struggle with the school brooms, even though it wasn’t really his fault that they couldn’t manage his weight—Florian knew that a real broom had to be matched to your skill, mass and speed, and he could still do those equations, even if he didn’t do them as well as Nico did or Liane would have done. “I’m sure Liane’s boyfriend that she doesn’t have could help us work that out, but we could use his help with numbers that big! He needs a broom that’s made for him. Which I probably couldn’t control, to be honest, and it’s a mean thing for me to say…but he laughs at me.”
“He cut off your hair,” Kat reminded him. “You can laugh at him.” Leffoy was awfully funny sometimes about being fair, although not in the way that some of the Caerleon students were.
Florian chuckled. “He did. So I will. But I think I look better like this, and he didn’t keep any, so I’m only going to laugh.” He looked at her sidewise, because the thing he wanted to say was harder if he looked right at her. “Kat, I only want to marry you if you like me at least as much as my cousin Liane likes Professor Rosenthal, only, you know, we can talk about flying, not maths, because I’ve never felt so stupid in my life.”
Kat turned bright red. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe…” She pictured Liane’s shining face and thought about how hard it had been to stop smiling when Leffoy came back to school. But she really didn’t want to tell him about it.
“Well, of course you don’t yet,” Florian said, gently. “We’re eleven. She’s seventeen and he’s…even older than that. He might even be thirty.” For all that Florian knew his parents were older than that, thirty seemed to be so far away. Much further than seventeen. He hoped Rosenthal wouldn’t get old before Liane grew all the way up, but it was Kat he was concerned about right now.
“But I meant, when we’re older,” he continued. “I’ll do the contract if you will, but only if you want to, because it isn’t fair, you’re the one who’s most affected by it. You’d be cutting yourself off from looking at other boys, and I’d be protected, you see, from other girls’ families, who want alliances with Mamma…Mum.” He flushed a little. “Really awful girls, sometimes. Ximena’s not, but Mireille Thibault is horrid beyond belief, at least in her letters. So I have a lot to gain. And you have more to lose.” He swallowed. A slightly evil part of him hoped she would want to protect him from girls like the awful Mireille Thibault. Even though the only really awful thing about Mireille, aside from the fact that she was his birth-mother’s cousin, was that she was so vapid.
“It might be nice…” Kat said thoughtfully. It would mean she would have an excuse to spend time with Leffoy all the time, and it would probably stop Jennie Mablin and some of the Avalon girls from being so mean about their friendship. Of course, they would still be mean, but it would be out of jealousy. “Can we really get out of it? If we want to?” Her blush had only just started to fade, but immediately returned. “I don’t mean that we would of course,” she muttered.
“Yes,” Florian said firmly, and reached for her hand. “Yes, if we grow up and don’t want to, I will cry off, and I will make sure that everyone blames me for it.” He swallowed. “Because that’s the only way to make it fair, for you.”
Kat squeezed his hand hesitantly. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Tell everyone you were no good at…um. Um.” She bit her lip and looked at him, her face now about the same colour as her hair.
Florian grinned, although he didn’t especially like that particular lie. “Or that I did it with your best friend.” He flushed as well. “Well, she’d have to be in on the joke. Or he would. But Jon and Meric would play along. Or Fia would.” As long as it wasn’t Jennie Mablin!
Kat nodded and dropped his hand gently. “I want to think about it,” she said. “I only just got this letter, and it’s from Mum, and you know, I love my Mum, but she doesn’t know a lot of things. I don’t even know what this curse is and I need to talk to Ed or Uncle Isaac or your Mum or…I don’t know.” She looked at her feet and whispered: “I want to know if this is why my Dad was crazy.”
Florian nodded. “I’ll tell her we need more time to think, and that you want more information. I don’t know if she can get away to come here this weekend, but she might be able to send Vonnie, and he knows a lot about curses, especially this one.” He winced; what he was about to say might change her mind for the wrong reasons, but she had a right to know as much as he did. “It is my understanding that this is why your father was crazy. But I’d like to hear what the adults have to say about it myself.”
“And why they think we can fix it,” Kat added, nodding.
“I have a theory about it,” said Florian. “I want to hear what they have to say, but I do.”
“What is it?” Kat asked eagerly.
Florian shrugged. “When I was very little, we moved from Italia to here. And then Bella and Marco were taken away, and I was very lonely, because we had to leave Mercutio and Aelia back in Italy, and we didn’t know where Charis was, so I used to talk to the ghosts in the Manor. There are a lot of them, you know. There’s one in particular who lives in the other part of the bat tower, the part where there aren’t so many bats, just rickety stairs and old rooms. She was locked up there for a long long time, and then somebody cut her head off.”
Kat made a face. It was the sort of story that was fun to tell, and to hear, in the dark, except that in this case it wasn’t just a story.
Florian continued. “We talked about it. I think there was somebody in your family who was supposed to marry someone in mine, back when your family was powerful too. Only it didn’t happen. Morielle was already dead then, but she was glad it didn’t happen.” He shrugged. “They didn’t like each other at all, so it shouldn’t have happened. But there was someone else she liked—Lady Justine, that is—and there was someone else from your family involved as well, and there were duels, and it was bad.”
“Why wouldn’t they duel this time too?” Kat asked.
“My mother, and your Uncle Isaac?” Florian frowned; he didn’t want his mother to be in any serious duels. “I’m not sure your Uncle Isaac would count, and my mother is pregnant! And if duelling had solved things then we wouldn’t have this problem. With the curses, someone would probably die, even in a duel that wasn’t meant to be mortal, and my mother is Regina Sacrorum, too.” He shrugged. “And she might have to duel Bill, actually.”
“The ghosts, I meant,” Kat said. She looked at him with wide eyes. “To the death?” she asked. It was like living in a fairy tale. Except that it was her life, and it wasn’t exciting, it was terrifying.
“People do,” said Florian, “over serious things, though I think it’s a rather stupid way to solve problems, since it doesn’t actually prove who is right.” He sighed. “And I don’t think the ghosts can duel. They don’t have bodies, they can’t do much magic.”
“I don’t think Bill would win,” Kat said softly. “Not that I would want him to kill your Mum, even if he could…”
“I don’t want either of them to die, either, though I love my mother and I can’t say the same about Bill,” Florian said, as gently as he could. “I know you love him, and I wish he didn’t hate us so.”
“I don’t know how to stop it,” Kat said in frustration. “With my Dad, trying to stop him was like trying to stop a storm. I used to just climb out the tree and go down to the river instead. Guess I can’t now.”
Florian hugged her impulsively. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I wish I knew, too.”
“That would make things easier,” Kat agreed, and she stepped on his foot lightly. “Do you want to get married, Leffoy?”
Florian laughed, and let her go. “Only if you do, Kat.”
“If I did,” she said.
“Then yes,” said Florian. “I think it would be fun to be betrothed to you. Mother wouldn’t bother so about me giving you presents, and they’d have to let us visit each other a lot.” He grinned at her.
“And,” Kat said smugly, “Maeve Pritchard and Patty Rosier would probably both die on the spot. And maybe Cori too.” She pulled on the chain around her neck and held the bat charm dangling from it out. “There’s only so much jewellery I can wear and still fly better than Marvell you know. Is that your plan?”
Florian laughed. “You aren’t supposed to wear it all at the same time,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And we’ll all have to watch out when Marvell gets a proper broom. He’ll never be as fast as us, but…” He shook his head. “So no. That’s not my plan. We just…have lots of things. Some of them, I think you’d like, and I like you.” He shrugged. “Cori and Maeve dropping dead is a brilliant argument in favour, you know.”
Kat nodded. “I just want to know what the arguments against are too,” she said uneasily. It was so hard to know what she wanted, when so much was riding on everything.
“I don’t blame you a bit,” Florian said, nodding along. “I rather want to know everything, and none of this not telling us things because they don’t think we can understand them.” His Mum didn’t do that, but he thought maybe Mr Bradbury did, because Edmund hadn’t trusted him. And his Maman—no, Gabrielle—did that. “We have to live with it, so they just have to explain themselves until we do understand it. Agreed?”
Kat smiled at him. “Agreed,” she said, and jumped down from the wall—it wasn’t that high, after all.
Florian jumped down after her, and held out his hand. They shook hands, as though they were making a business deal. Maybe they were. “We’d better go back,” he said. “I don’t fancy having to give Pettigrew Minor or Dougie Marvell a bloody nose for saying we’re kissing, or something.”
Kat made a face. It was the sort of rumour she hated, and things like that just made people say it more. “You could ignore them.”
Florian grinned at her. “I could. But I’d like to have an excuse to give Dougie Marvell a bloody nose. After all, he did cut my hair you know.” He shrugged. “All right. I’ll find something else that won’t make them talk about you.” It occurred to him that if she was his fiancée he’d be obliged to defend her against insults. It also occurred to him that Kat was the sort of person who would greatly prefer to do that herself, and that he had better not say this if he wanted her to agree. Or do it, if he wanted to keep her. This was going to be more complicated than he had thought.
Almost everything was, lately.
practicalkat and luxserpentis