loch lemach gives zero fucks (cutandthrust) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-02-16 18:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !log, !playerplot: a building of rooks, aisling wilde, loch lemach |
your life ain't as long as you think...
Who: Loch Lemach, Aisling Wilde & NPC Count Niccolo Sforza.
What: The end of the chase.
Where: Lady Farquaad's manor (NPC)
When: 2/14, Namorados Day.
Rating: R → Warning: graphic depictions of violence, foul language, murder.
Status: Complete
Ofelia’s information was nothing more than that. There’s this ball. Your guy will be there. If you want to pay him a visit. Had Loch dug around some and maybe pulled a few strings, she may have been able to obtain an invitation. Make the visit official. And it isn’t like she would have a hard time pretending to be a noble. She’s played the part before, for a couple of odd jobs alongside Miles. Lord Basil Norwood’s Love Affairs, parts I & II. A nice twist at the end, too, which meant no encore performances. Had she arrived at Lady Farquaad’s Namorados ball in the guise of a minor, relatively unknown noble, she may have fooled the majority of the guest list. It seems doubtful that any single person in the city can keep track of every single noble. All the counts, dukes, earls and barons. By virtue of their numbers alone, nobles qualify as a plague. Masquerading as one of them could have been an interesting exercise to pick back up. She’s no professional actress, but there’s something in mimicry that is intimately tied to survival, and that is an art she excels at. She respects the trade of false-facing, the beauty of deceiving everybody in a room, the art of hiding in plain sight. But Sforza, she’s confident, knows her face, and will scurry away as soon as he spots her. And in any case, camouflage is irrelevant when you can simply choose not to be seen at all. Sneaking into the manor poses little challenge. Guards will not engage a threat they are unable to perceive. The Lady’s security systems mean only brief stops along the way. Hers is a standard model, a system favored by the wealthy because to the untrained eye it looks complex and imposing, hopefully intimidating to any potential takers. Loch has installed a few systems like this one, many years ago. Bypassing it means less than a minute’s delay. Under the cover of Vanish, she crashes the party and surveys the guests as they file in. Ten minutes after her arrival, the man of the hour appears. Fashionably late, a gorgeous woman chained to his arm. Her hair reaching down to her waist. Cascading curls of pale gold. Neil, as it turns out, is her savior. A friend of his husband’s knows a girl who knows a man who works with someone that has a son who is married to a woman who works for Sforza and is complaining about the count’s utterly ridiculous wardrobe requests for Lady Farquaad’s ball. It isn’t hard to get an invite to the part; one of her clients has been begging her to attend with him, and so when she finally says she’d go, he’s thrilled. The lead up is too easy, and she begins to prepare for the worse, picking a suitable dress that allows her free, unrestricted movement while still having enough coverage to hide a knife. She would bring the gun, but she knows that it would be too obvious; she simply wants to talk to Sforza - not run him off. But when Lord Dilan arrives, he shakes his head and informs her that he has taken the liberty of preparing an outfit for her. He snaps his fingers and a footman appears, laden down with a large garment bag and a box with what she assumes are shoes. Behind him is a woman with a bag overflowing with face paints and pins; her simple plan no longer seems so simple. “You see,” Dilan says, only slightly apologetic, “I cannot have people know that I’ve been to see a whore, let alone have resorted to taking one to such an event.” She wants to call him out and say that practically every fucking noble goes to one of the gems, but they are already running late and she does not wish to arrive so with so little time that she is unable to achieve her objective. Instead, she glares at him but follow his retainers into the next room, where she undoes the clasp holding her dress - a gorgeous silk number that drapes in all the right places - and lets it fall to the floor. By the time they leave, it is nearly half past. Count Niccolo Sforza goes nowhere alone. His trophy date is permanently glued to his side, and when she is not, some other guest steps up to fill the vacancy. Out of nowhere, the man who moved through his social circles like a ghost seems to have friends all around. He knows everybody, but Loch has to wonder if anybody knows him. Ofelia’s search turned up little about the man’s social habits, and as far as Loch is able to overhear, he is a master at conversation. He can speak eloquently about a million different topics without even hinting at his opinions about them. He gives no information about himself, but those around him laugh and nod and whisper to each other about how charming and well-educated he is. He is an artist. Not even during his visits to the restroom is he by himself. He has constructed an entourage of people inconsequential to him who act as his shield without their knowing it. Loch can hardly slit his throat in the middle of the ballroom. But she’s confident that he is unaware of her presence. It is much easier for him to focus his attention on the more obvious threat. Aisling Wilde, in an expensive dress, twirling and waltzing across the floor with any willing partners, her eyes following him around the room when she thinks he does not see. To the Count, her movements must look like the circling of vultures above those near death. And he is a walking corpse. Ash might not intend to do anything permanent—and there is the problem. Curiosity. That Ash might ask questions. Worse, that Sforza might answer them. It’s late into the evening when the chance appears. Ash is dancing with somebody, perhaps still hoping to blend in and appear innocuous, and the most illustrious Count Sforza, arm-in-arm with his blonde beauty, takes advantage of the other guests’ increasing inebriation and the Lady Farquaad’s preoccupation with a young noble barely out of puberty to sneak upstairs. The guards ignore them; it seems clear to them what the purpose of the excursion is. Loch follows. She’s been watching him since the moment she arrived, and so she sees the exact moment he leans forward to whisper into his ingenue’s ear. There is a giggle and suddenly they are headed towards the staircase, taking the steps no more quickly than what is considered polite in such a situation. Aisling’s dance partner doesn’t seem to notice her desire to pull away and follow, instead pulling her tighter and gracing her with a smile that would be unsettling if she hadn’t been exposed to worse for years. “I have to freshen up,” she tells her partner,pulling back, but he instead holds tighter, leans in. Sforza and his blonde are already out of sight, having disappeared around the corner. Ash steps on her partner’s instep and he yelps, jumping back. “How clumsy of me,” she says, the picture of innocence. “I’ll be right back.” She quickly climbs the staircase and turns left, running right into Viscount Lamond. His hands come to her shoulders automatically to steady her, and she curses in her head while apologies spill from her lips. “It is quite all right, m’dear,” he says genially. “It is quite honestly my fault. A distracted old man is something I am sure you’ve experience with.” Ash nods and tries to excuse herself, but Lamond continues on and on, until finally he extracts a promise of a dance with her before excusing himself. She bows and does her best to hurry past without seeming rushed. A pity to interrupt when they seem to be getting into it, Loch supposes. But she prefers Sforza’s hands unzippping the blonde’s dress, rather than pulling out any weapons he may be carrying on his person. The woman breaks away to step out of the dress, and Loch appears behind her, knife at her throat. “Either of you make any sound,” she whispers, her voice carrying in the sudden silence, “and she’s dead.” They’re quiet. The woman starts sobbing. But Sforza is cool as ice. Loch imagines she can see through his forehead, the cogs turning as he searches for his way out. “Lemach,” he says after a moment. “I believe our business was concluded a few days ago. To what do I owe the pleasure?” He knows who she was, but she expected no less. He will try to buy himself time, long enough perhaps for somebody to pass by. He could yell for help then, summon the guards. The woman’s death is no concern of his. Loch knows, because it is what she would do in his place. There is something in the way his eyes seem to be taking in every single detail, accounting for every possible escape route, every chance to get his back away from the proverbial wall, that feels like looking at a mirror image of herself. By now, Ash will surely have noticed his absence. Time is of the essence. “Hands where I can see them.” Up in the air they go, palms facing Loch. And she spares a fond thought for Serendipity, Little Bitch and Fat Lord, her partners-in-crime who’ve had to stay home, too easily traceable for her comfort. And cut. “Bitch,” he hisses. The woman’s blood is on the front of his shirt, on the floor. He has to blink it out of his eyes. Loch holds her, almost tenderly, as the life seeps out of her and she sags against her killer. “You said you’d kill her if we made a sound, but we made no fucking sound.” The rage in his voice is not a result of grief at the woman’s death, Loch knows. It is fear at the recognition that he has become the lone remaining target. “I never said what would happen if you did not make a sound,” she points out. It’s over in a flash. Sforza’s hand darts down to pull something from the inside of his jacket, his eyes screaming murder straight ahead. To the dead woman. Folding over herself and sinking to the floor like a falling house of cards, because there is no longer anybody there to support her. “Ought to have picked your battles,” Loch whispers in his ear, and her left knife slices across his throat, infecting him instants before death. Not Serendipity’s venom, but something far more common and accessible. So common and accessible, anybody could obtain it with relative ease. Sforza’s business rivals included. There is no gentleness for him; when she cuts, she releases him and he falls, on his knees and then on his face, and the strength goes out of him. A matching set, and one problem less. As the echo of approaching footsteps reaches Loch’s ears, she is already melting back into nothingness and climbing out through the open window, into the darkness outside. By the time she finds the room Sforza had disappeared in to, it is too late. His body is on the floor in a pool of his blood, the blonde woman lying not far from him. “Fuck,” Ash hisses with feeling. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” There wasn’t anyone that she noticed following him, aside from herself. Someone had gotten by her, and she is not pleased. Quickly, she backs out of the room and closes the door. There is no one around and when she returns to the party below, no one is any wiser. She leaves the party shortly after. |