Madam. (ex_sovereign447) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-04-13 00:27:00 |
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The New Year, as humes had assigned it, was but a few hours away, and she was watching the sun slip from the sky through a beautiful bank of glass windows. If she hadn’t been surrounded by fellow Very Important Persons demanding of conversation and attention, she might have been tempted to introspect. Lena didn't mind these sorts of gatherings nearly as much as the other obligatory dinners and prim celebrations that peppered the holiday calendar for people in her particular bracket of society. No, this occasion was a singular (and singularly exclusive) one, even within the thieving circle they called their own. Invitees included Guildists eminent even among their elite band of associates, and in Lena’s experience, they were never dry as party guests, no matter how prudish their accomplishments and the intervening years had rendered them. Half the attendees had devastating secrets on the other half, and that half in turn had safeguards against ruin so elaborate that they extended to half the city. This tense, overlapping safety in sureties (gentility by way of mutually-assured destruction) gave way to a certain strange openness of manner amongst their ranks, an openness that was hastened and amplified by drink. It was as if the rotating spheres of the heavens (and some extraordinarily qualified hired security staff) had given them all a night off from their various illicit, conflicting life-and-death concerns. In short: suffused with propriety though it was, the event was always a rollicking good time. A scant half-hour into the party, Lena found herself holding court at the edge of the sleek high-rise apartment that was the latest venue for their annual soirée. The Mime acting as their host was so elderly that no one knew exactly how he’d gotten his money in the first place (a sure sign of well-planned ill deeds, they all agreed). Thick prisms of warm light angled in through floor to ceiling windows, triangulating the remnants of sunset from over Emillion’s uneven horizon and warming her shoulders, bare beneath a diaphanous silk shawl. Faces cast before her in a shifting, clear sea; hands alternately callused and smooth pressed hers. After her lengthy travels, it was like watching dear friends (and enemies, it must be said), frozen in the melancholy amber of memory, step surreally into her world again. The bell was just ringing for additional apéritifs when the butler announced the arrival of a few final guests. They breezed in like a gust of warm air, all colour and laughter and billowing fabric, tailored tuxedos and slinky dresses. Amongst them was one Miles Baines, actor: for once, he wasn’t disguised as his noble alias, but evidently his star had risen enough that no one batted an eye at his presence here. Other bards nodded to him, gushing enthusiasm about the upcoming Founders Festival. An exchange of chatter and greetings, then the new group osmosed into the rest of the party, drifting in and disappearing into the social waves. Miles’ pale eyes assessed the rest of the room, and immediately spotted someone he knew well—and hadn’t seen for a while—looking imperial and majestic as always. The corner of his mouth twitched into a half-smile. He maneuvered his way through the crowd, a shark coasting in busy waters. A shark with little interest in small fish, she might have said. Lena only caught sight of him when he was a mere arm’s length away: a cruelly abbreviated space in which to reconcile his sudden proximity with the amount of time it had been since they’d exchanged anything, much less pleasantries. “St. Laurent. What a pleasant surprise,” he said once he reached her, pausing for the requisite air-kisses, Lena’s lips ghosting across his cheek and the woman leaving behind a whiff of perfume. The scent was faintly floral and woody, sambac jasmine and almonds. A wintry spring, appropriately enough. “Mr. Baines,” she said, his true name foreign on her tongue, only the tiniest elevation of her eyebrows indicating anything resembling surprise (and perhaps that too was courtly play). Her manicured hand rested on his forearm for a moment and she felt his palm on her shoulder through her ephemeral shawl before they retreated back to their respective spheres. “My word. How long has it been?” Of course, she knew precisely. “Must be about a year,” he said. They stood just the right distance apart, intimate but not suspiciously so—gossip had linked the actor and the madame before, but those particular stars had never aligned properly. Instead, the pair occupied the safe space of close friendship, business, and a knowing glance exchanged when she saw him with Aisling. His hand lingered longer than it strictly needed to, however. “One hears a dear friend of yours is due congratulations.” A safe space, indeed. “Ah. Alys?” Miles’ use of the girl’s noble name came smoothly, without missing a beat. “Indeed. The whole guild’s very excited. I can only hope the poor sod knows what he’s getting into.” A crooked grin; her favorite sort. Her return smile was tight-lipped, and yet somehow full of such knowing warmth it made some toothsome grins in the room seem positively uncouth. The first champagne cork popped with a thock just past the kitchen wall; premature celebrations. "Poor sod indeed." She thought it just a hair short of playful to suggest, but the thought crossed her mind and danced in her eyes for a sliver of a second--I've an invitation; care to join? It was different for some in their line of work, but Lena’s philosophy had never taken joy in threatening the schemes of her thieving compatriots. Even cracking the smallest joke, she knew, could tap out a hairline fracture to threaten the eggshell of the whole endeavor. If her interests were not at stake, let laissez-faire rule the day, non? Miles, she'd not forgotten, played off most lightly what he valued most dear, the rare true artist dancing on vapors and turning them to waves. And what could a true thief value more than success, snatched from the very jaws of the elite? "I'm expecting to attend, actually. The save the date was so very dear, how could I deny?" “Oh, excellent. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to attend the affair myself—perhaps I’ll be in a drunken stupor after the rigours of the Founders Festival—but if I manage, I do hope to see you there.” Their conversation was breezy, the perfect example of socially-adroit bards skimming over topics of little substance (or so it seemed). And after wrangling so much resentment and so many threats over this Faram-damned wedding, the easiness of this conversation was an indescribable relief. “Where have you been?” Miles asked suddenly, now giving Lena another look and drinking in the details of the older woman, who looked as at home here as if she’d never left. “Your attentive public demands a riveting tale to cover the period of your absence. You don’t call, you don’t write…” He sounded exaggeratedly wistful and forlorn, and she laughed briefly, a low sound as quiet and inevitable as the tide. Her fingertips touched the back of his hand as though to pacify the lugubrious figure he’d summoned up. Champagne arranged in constellations of delicate glass flutes began leaving the cavernous kitchen by the platter, suspended smoothly in the air like small spacecraft by a silent troupe of waitstaff all in black. A platter wafted their way, and Lena selected a slim glass with a wedge of strawberry suspended in the cold, sunshiney bubbles--about as whimsical as she was bound to get, even this time of year. Part of her wanted to wave away the cobwebs and humor, to tell him about the real nature of her travels, the business of the road and the ganglands of home, and the odd, glacial fear of death that had haunted her these many intervening months, a fear she’d thought long buried. Lena noted this impulse with mild interest, the way one might examine a mole or a birthmark one hadn’t realized one had: with distant curiosity at an unknown body, both unknown and yet irremediably part of oneself. "Well," she said, finally, eyes meeting his with a steadiness that might have been unnerving, "I suppose you aren't the only one who's been busy. And,” she added, beacon of deflection, inclining her golden head at the collection of actors who’d pressed Miles’ flesh upon entry, “you’re the Bard with the devoted public these days, it would seem.” “Nonsense,” Miles said, but the man’s pride still obviously flared, delivering a smugness in his humble (and false) dismissal even as he snared a glass of champagne. “I haven’t been bombarded with bouquets like our mutual friend Arielle. Though admittedly, the Founders Festival gig is a very prestigious casting—it’s quite the feather in my cap, and an official milestone for my career.” Along with certain other feathers, one being a distinctively pink ruby. His star was ascendant in more ways than one. “We’ll have to catch up properly, I think,” he said thoughtfully, as other party-goers (not in the know, not thieves) streamed past them bearing their own delicate glasses. “Some other time, with more privacy. You can tell me all about the business abroad, hm?” “Hm,” she replied obscurely, tapping her glass against his with a faint clink. Miles was busy, and so was she, and Lena had long since become adept at letting people reflect whatever it was they wanted to hear. They were a matching set of mirrors, each gleaming quietly at the other. “I’ll throw a rose on stage at the end of your big day. Or hire someone to do it for me. I’m sure you’ll appreciate the gesture either way, non?” Lena leaned toward him only to slip past in one fluid movement, her shawl pooling at her elbows. Cheek to cheek for an instant, offering another airy and impermanent kiss, she was startled by the reminder of their difference in height, even in her stately heels. Her parting words in his ear were a few polite degrees above a whisper (skimming over a topic of little substance - or so it seemed), and then she was gone, into the arms of another luminary, another notable, her voice as full of warmth and reserve as before. “Break a leg.” |