Viva (cantplaydead) wrote in shadowlands_ic, @ 2017-11-02 10:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | bertie eden, biddie, gabriel allen |
Who: Bertie Eden & Biddie & Gabriel Allen
What: The Masquerade’s final Russian guest arrives. He’s rather late.
Where: Hotel Imperial
When: October 21, 1888: Olympian Masquerade (The Midnight Waltz) [backdated]
Rating: PG
All in all, Biddie thought the masquerade was going quite well. Suitably useful people had said suitably complimentary things. The music was lovely, the food exorbitant, and a seventy year-old countess wearing double her weight in silver bullion (either in the guise as Aphrodite or Amphitrite) had called the ballroom "agreeable, perfectly agreeable ". That was as much a stamp of approval as one could expect at a social "trade event" in London.
With the MPC's social success credibly assured, Biddie could indulge in more…personal business.
"Mr. Eden, you came after all. Wonderful!" One bright glove settled very briefly on the young man's shoulder. "How better to secure the night's success than with a visit from Orpheus."
Bertie smiled automatically, glancing down at his costume as if to reassure himself he was still dressed for the part. "It seemed appropriate," he admitted, "although I keep having to leave my lute lying around. I'm glad you recognized it." He bowed from the waist, greeting her properly as he would any lady. "Thank you for the invitation, Mrs Linden. It's an unexpected honour. I didn't think I'd see a masquerade like this one."
Her mask was unsettling, and the only reason Bertie knew her at all was that she'd been pointed out to him by another guest when he'd asked, looking to pay his respects to the hostess. He hadn't caught her then, nor for the rest of the evening, but she seemed to have found him instead.
"Everything I've seen has been excellent," Bertie continued. "Although I might have missed something somewhere. It's easy to overlook something, it seems, when there's such grandeur everywhere you turn."
"You have poet's gift for flattery, Mr. Eden," Biddie said in a laughing tone. "But thank you for the accolades nonetheless. Although I must admit to having a very light hand in most of the pageantry; the company people took care of nearly everything."
She leaned in slightly, the painted mask coming close. A flutter of scent came off the gauzy butterfly on her headdress: an odd scent, like yew berries and cypress. "Will you keep my secret, Mr. Eden?”
There was no reason for Bertie's heart to stutter so, and he tried to tell himself it was only the mask, the frozen, expressionless porcelain face, that filled him with unease. It had nothing to do with Benson St. Crane, or Kathleen O'Wells, or the shrewd expression he'd seen on Mrs Linden's face when she negotiated with her former foreman over his burial. Nothing to do with the references he didn't understand, the Russians, the monarch, the helium that shouldn't have ignited.
Only the mask. That was all.
"Secret?" Bertie asked, a little breathless and dazed, mind blank of what that could be. Was she about to reveal something to him? Did she know what he suspected, even without any evidence of misdeed?
"Oh," he answered himself a scant moment later. "Oh, the decorating? No, no, I won't tell a soul, of course. I shall give you all credit. I'm sure your hand guided them throughout, after all."
"You are most kind," Biddie said warmly. She held out her hands to him, a notably friendly gesture of invitation—and one that was hard to turn down without being disobliging. Mr. Eden, Biddie was beginning to understand, had something of a weakness for obligations. Or maybe he simply was that kind.
It didn't matter; in the end, one made him as convenient as the other.
There was a ripple of activity across the room. Myriad gazes turned to the gilded clock by the ballroom’s entrance, while other checked their pocket watches and, in the case of MPC personnel, their wristwatches. The musicians rearranged themselves in readiness.
Midnight was almost here.
“Will you join me for the main event, Mr. Eden?” The first strains, not quite the tune itself, began. “I can think of no finer partner.”
Bertie's lips parted in astonishment, but he'd taken the hands offered to him before he found his voice. "I...you're too kind, Mrs Linden, but I would be honoured." He only hoped that he'd make less of a fool of himself in dancing with her than he had for most of the evening.
Bertie escorted the lady onto the floor, subtly tuning in to her so that Mrs Linden could guide him to wherever they ought to be, while looking as though he led her. She moved with grace beneath the elaborate costume, and he took care not to tread on any part of her ensemble.
"Do you know the collective name for butterflies? It’s not a swarm, is it? That’s what I first thought, but it’s something lovelier--a kaleidoscope, I think." Inane conversation, but that was what was expected at a ball, and Bertie had been raised to convey small talk as well as poetic fancies. "An infinite pattern of ornamental arts. It seems quite suited to you this evening. I'm certain they must be beautiful indeed, under the lights."
They reached the center of the floor, and Bertie bowed, as was customary, and offered his hands to take Mrs Linden into his arms. They were not so different in height, and though he wouldn't stare, it was a slight relief to see her eyes behind the mask, even if the rest of her face was hidden from view.
Biddie didn’t much like dancing. Music, oh, music she liked. There was a discipline and order to well-crafted composition that appealed to her sensibilities. An abacus and a piano had more than little blood in common, in Biddie’s eyes. If pressed, she could admit some respect for the powerful clean cut lines of ballet. Sometimes.
But the casual capering in music halls and ballrooms - no, that she wouldn’t admire. Couldn’t. Where was the order, the purpose of such antics? Where was the profit of the energetic expense? What, Biddie asked each time a “gay evening” loomed ominously ahead, was the blasted point?
So it was with a keen sense of irony that Biddie allowed Bertram Eden to lead her out onto the ballroom floor. And it was with a much keener sense of purpose that she rested her hand in his while the first tendril of her spell, cooler and lighter than the firstborn snowflake, settle upon the boy.
The lights began to dim.
Across the sea surface of ruffled silks, velvet shoulders, and bejeweled throats, strangely carved shadows began to stretch - then dance. Coverings around the room came off to reveal a platoon of “magic lanterns”, those cunning little toys of light and shadow. They cut up the dim room into a storm of candlelight butterflies and threw lighted constellations down beneath the dancers’ feet. The music sped up into a “leaping” waltz. Some people laughed in surprise, some swore and pretended they hadn’t as they struggled to keep up. Some had no breath to spare for either.
Biddie didn’t laugh or huff. She had breath enough to spare, and she let it go in a long luxuriously silent exhale that carried a command into the invisible patterns of the room. From within the confines of her mask, she felt the coldness of it.
Come.
A shadow butterfly the size of a kite passed over them. The pattern of the waltz turned them about and Biddie leaned into, momentarily pulled close enough to press against Bertie’s heart. Her magic pressed closer still.
Come.
No magic came easily to Biddie (of the ones that came at all.) In the great gardens of Powers That Were, she wasn't a practitioner - she was a bag bones buried out of sight. The rotting carcase under the peat. Fertilizer.
But while enchantments were reluctant, hexes tricky, and healing impossible, there was one branch on the tree of Power that reached out to her always. One path that was never hidden from Biddie’s view, one door that never locked to her hand. It was from that cold, quiet plot of land from which Biddie’s spell now pushed to the surface - dragging its prize behind it.
Necromancy traveled through Biddie’s hard bones like an iron train on its way out of her into her young partner. The spell’s thin, black needle pierced Bertie gently, almost sweetly, pulling its thread through him and letting it exit stained in the essence of the lad.
Come, Biddie ordered and felt the spell go taunt when it hit its final target.
“Bozhe moy!”
The last dance turn put Biddie’s back to most of the dancers, but left young Mr. Eden with a clear view of the floor’s majority. She could feel the confusion and curiosity - so much blasted curiosity in this one - tense up the man.
Biddie herself didn’t need to see the floor to know what was there: a man in a soot-stained coat and trousers of a laborer, trudging forward like each step broke his bones. A short man made shorter by the absence of a head. The pale flicker of fire in his raised hands, a dead and harmless blaze now. Biddie pictures those pleading hands reach out towards his Russian compatriots and knew that the shade was moving obediently in life.
Well. In reality, anyway.
It had been the stalwart Captain Petrotavich who’d screamed; she recognized the voice. Biddie felt that was an excellent sign. She released the spell.
She felt even better when the light came back on and she could see the Russian captain’s face. He looked a breath away from dropping to the floor. Three of his charming companions were already there. A generous and kindly imagination would compare them to brightly dressed dolls abandoned by a playmate. Because Biddie was feeling neither generous nor kind, she thought they looked like corpses.
Coincidentally her “partner” was no better; the poor boy was now dead weight in her arms. He had fainted the very moment the spell broke. Biddie applauded the exactness of his timing; clearly the spell had synchronized with Bertie much better than she predicted.
Really, she might actually begin liking the little pest.
First, however, she had to get him - and herself- out of the spotlight. All around the room people were looking either dazed or bemused. A quicker few looked worried, moving towards the fainted Russians. Biddie was pleased to note that Archie was ahead of the herd, calling for damp hankies and smelling salts. He was being loud enough about it to distract the majority of onlookers.
Hopefully he was distracting his special guest as well. Biddie was in no mood for renewed interference from Miss Bakst. Indeed she planned to to evaluate that little development at length later. But for now…
“Come right this way, Mr. Eden,” she said solicitously (and loudly enough to be overhead.) “Gotten overheated, my lad. A cool drink in a quieter room and you’ll be right as rain, just follow me now.”
With one hand helpfully clasped around the man’s shoulders, Biddie made very a credible performance of Bertie “shuffling” off with her. Whatever awkwardness someone might notice in their exit would easily be attributed to Mr. Eden’s unsteady gait. It was certainly more believable than a woman half a head shorter carrying him off with one arm.
Even if the wretched fellow was skinny as an alleycat.
She’s actually gotten them out of the ballroom and into a small drawing room with a divan to hold the lad’s limp limbs, before interference barged in.
Gabriel could smell magical energy -- for lack of a better word, magical discharge -- like a bloodhound scented blood. He was pulled to it, he noticed it, he was a virtual connoisseur. That, and he’d already been keeping half an eye on Biddie -- a touch of leftover caution (rightly so), and a prickle of concern at her being so solicitous of his lover.
That, naturally, roared into full bloom the second there was a sudden spike in the room -- there was a shout, some confusion, but his attention was honed in on Mrs Bedelia Linden, hauling a slumping Bertie across the floor, and he moved after them quickly, his heart in his throat, praying to whoever would listen that he was still among the living and trying his damndest to not see too much red.
Temper wouldn’t improve matters.
Not with Biddie.
The woman had ice in her veins.
He barely managed to wrestle open the door before she shut and locked it, and shut it behind him with slightly more force than he’d planned, slightly out of breath, very nearly collapsing with relief to see her mask on, Bertie’s limbs whole, the steady rise and fall of his chest as he lay on the divan.
The look he shot Biddie was a mix of frustration, anger, and a tight resignation. He pointed at Bertie. “When I said ‘hands off,’ I meant it,” he said, in a quiet hiss. “What on earth are you up to? What did you do to him?”
Biddie had a great deal of things to say to Gabriel’s unwelcome arrival. They ran the gamut from what are you doing here to go away to go away, you damn nuisance to didn’t I lock that? At seeing the expression on his face, the first thing that came out was;
“I’m not going to eat him.”
It was the sort of greeting that said a lot about their relationship.
There was a sound of unadulterated exasperation behind the mask before Biddie turned away, digging her fingers into the complicated knots keeping the her collective headgear in place. “Is the door locked? Double check.”
He rolled his eyes, but checked the door readily enough -- this was not the sort of conversation one wanted others to be privy to. It was nerve-wracking enough that Bertie was laying there, even though he appeared to be out cold.
His first impulse was to rush to his side, to pat his cheeks and check his pulse and fuss.
He kept his eyes on Biddie instead.
“That would be preferable, yes,” he said, tightly. “Good Lord, woman. Will he need a physician? Is he in immediate danger?” He sighed. “… Do you need a hand with those knots?”
“Thank you but I have two,” Biddie said dryly, just as the knots finally loosened in agreement. She pulled the whole citadel of fabric off her head. The scent of perfume spiked: the resinous scent of yew, green cypress, sweet powder - and blood.
Starkly fresh red lines ran down Biddie’s face, thin rivulets going in perfect tear-trails from her eyes. She didn’t seem particularly bothered by any of it.
“He’s fine, Gabriel.” Damned if she was going to start calling him Mr. Allen again, not when he was being this bothersome. “He’s neither wounded nor hexed, I assure you. The spell shook his nerves a little, it’s hardly fatal.”
There was a pretty, little closed basket of toiletries sitting on the room’s bureau table. It had vaguely ostentatious look that would’ve been recognisable to many MPC travelers, even if the silly thing hadn’t been done up in green silk and bronze. Biddie untwisted its queer wiry lock, taking out a pale linen handkerchief and a small dark bottle. The bottle smelled of medicinal alcohol when first uncorked, then suddenly of nothing at all. Biddie applied a few drops to the linen and began to wipe the blood of her face with the same brusque efficiency with which some would scrub a sheet.
“Are you always this dramatic?” Biddie said, still rubbing the blood off her face. Her skin barely reddened at the fierce scouring. “Is this something I’m just going to have to get used to? Because you’ll wear out your own nerves.”
“I told you he was off-limits,” Gabriel replied, frowning, his voice a touch less sharp, but his eyes darting to Bertie all the same at the sight of the blood on her face. He paused. “I’ve kept my tongue, but I can’t help you if I don’t know what the lay is. And you keep pulling him in, and making him complicit -- getting a ghost to flam to him for Chrissakes -- and I’m left sitting and nodding politely going ‘oh, well, isn’t that interesting,’ yes he told me in confidence,” he added, a little testily, “we’re close. And if I don’t know the lay, I’m left in the dark, and, heaven forgive me, worried about what your plans are for my lover. I believe it’s warranted, given I have no bloody idea what you are attempting to accomplish, or why, and why him, given our agreement.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled, looking over at her with a touch more calm. “You know he’ll investigate the cover-up,” he added. “You know he’s suspicious of you. Why do you keep reeling him in? Why are you covering for the Russians? Badly, I might add.”
“Off limits to eat,” Biddie said, teeth closing hard on the last word. “And thus he remains whole and unblemished.”
Her gaze sharpened at Gabriel’s mention of the lying ghost; the blood still lingering at the rims of her eyes, made that gaze an uncomfortable expression to behold. Luckily Bertie was still uncon--asleep when Biddie fixed the expression on him.
Why were the useful ones so often so blasted inconvenient?
Biddie folded the stained linen with a little sigh and turned to Gabriel. “Did I get it all?” She didn’t way for a reply. “Our deal, Gabriel, was that we both keep our mouths shut. You don’t talk, I don’t bite. Mr. Eden retains all his bits and toes. Feel free to count them.”
“Do you think he’s the first little lawman to be suspicious? Do you think I can’t recognize the type?” She began unbuttoning her gloves. “It was only a matter of time before he came sniffing around the fire. His make always does. I merely made sure he did so on my terms.”
The first glove was jerked off, followed roughly by the second. Free of fabric, Biddie’s hands were that same unnervingly white. Now however there was a fine web of lines laid over the skin. They were like cracks in porcelain, but paler, white scars that spanned her hands with the precision of stitches.
Which, to be fair, they were.
“The Russians are not his to catch,” Biddie said. “They lost the protection of the law the moment they burned my people. My now very much dead people, Gabriel. Is your bonbon’s comfort worth a dozen lives?”
She touched her fingertips to Bertie’s slack cheek. The room cooled. “It’ll all be over soon. Sooner than that even for him.” Realizing how that may sound to Gabriel, Biddie tried a nicer tone. “Tonight was what I needed from him.”
His expression shifted from alarmed to a slow resignation.
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said, quietly. “And if he digs deeper than you’d like? If he becomes a burr in your side? What then?”
He looked down at her, touching the back of the sofa. “I know you’ve your vendetta, and it’s a righteous one, and Godspeed, but if you’d rather I kept well away, you went about it wrong. My bruises have hardly had chance to fade, and you’ve used him ill twice since we’ve returned,” he added, “so yes, I’m taking it a touch personally.”
He frowned, a slightly bitter twist to his mouth. “Do you need anything at the moment? Should I fetch Archie for you?”
An odd touch of doubt alit on Biddie’s expression. She pressed her scarred palm to Bertie’s forehead as if checking his temperature. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“Archie is doing his part,” Biddie said, removing her hand from Bertie. Her godson’s name brought another face to mind. “There’s a witch out there - Bakst. Do you know her?”
She almost asked if he’d bedded her too, but didn’t. It was a petty barb even in her current state. Besides considering their mutual talent for meddling they were probably related.
And Archie seemed determined to befriend them both, Biddie thought tiredly. How marvelous.
“Yes,” Gabriel replied, carefully, the set in his jaw relaxing some at her admission. “I was thinking of fetching her as well.” He looked over at her. “Would you care to move him to a separate location to give you and he some respective privacy? Or are you planning on rejoining the party? Your eyes are a touch pink at the rims, but not alarmingly so,” he added, absently, in answer to a question she’d asked earlier.
“Better me than the boy,” Biddie said, knuckling a spec of red from the corner of her eye. She frowned idly at blood on her finger then licked it off with a quick dart of tongue. If she’d been a “real” witch, the spell would’ve probably left her half-blind for a week.
“He’ll be awake in a tick. Miss Bakst can look him over for bites and bruises,” Biddie said. She raked another look over young man. The backlash hadn’t bled him.
Which was rather the point, but still.
“They’ve a room ready nearby,” Biddie said. “If you can walk near us, I can carry him without anybody making comment.” She picked up her mask and turban, reassembling the ludicrous assortment on her head. “Hell, the lad weighs less than a chicken; you could carry him in a picnic basket.”
Food for thought, she added to herself.