Rapiers with rapier wits verseXbathymcbath

[bathymcbath]

“Who would believe that ridiculous --”

The momentum of her ire carried Zora through half a thoughtless sentence before the implications did finally shock her into stillness. Everyone. That’s who would believe it, not that it mattered. One opinion mattered and he was laughably easy to convince of traitors. The barons were moving against her father. They were setting it up to look like the Viscount was behind some kind of plot to capture or kill the king. They’d be executed for it if the story gained credibility.

Zora’s only hope would be to expose the barons before they sprung their trap. After the other night, though ... Realization dawned and all the blood drained out of Zora’s face. The carnage of bodies Sharlan had left behind guaranteed the conspirators would know they’d been there and whatever they had planned was likely already in motion now. She’d wasted any possible advantage wallowing in self-pity all day.

“You know it’s a lie. My father has no ambition for the crown, nor do I.” Did, her subconscious supplied hurtfully. Whatever personal ambition she’d possessed had been written out of the plan. Irrelevant. She could still try to save her family, though. The Viscount could have another child if he set his mind to it. She just needed to keep his head connected to his shoulders.

“Come with me to King Bellaforte and vouch for us,” she said, not quite asking. It also didn’t have the ring of command. Zora didn’t believe there was any point in clever word play with Sharlan. She didn’t think she could trick him into doing the honorable thing. Her only hope was to align their interests in some meaningful way.

“My father has no heir. If you do this for us and save our house, he would name you. Just ask him. You would make out better than you could hope to under the Sea Barons.”

 

[Verse]

Serious, but not grave, only almost painfully focused on her when she built the pieces he laid out for her, to make her world tumble. Zora was learning how much despair her heart was capable of, and Sharlan got to see the tides of it as it beset her aristocratic beauty, over and over. Hadn't she been formidable a moment ago, ready to serve him up poisons with this meal?

A demeaning tilt of his head as he listened to her defend her father. He wondered where this would go, where this upheaval would finds its port out of the little woman with her bird bones and swan skin. And she didn't disappoint. Zora imploded beautifully, like a flower sucked in on itself, wrung for its nectar, and bleeding that sweetness in her worst hour. Couldn't she see that he was only hurting her because she was so lovely when she broke? But she only ever did it, still afflicted with hope.

She understood the crushing power of gossip, of rumors. They were her sabers and hatchets. She knew them better than him. Even her father of high standing wasn't immune to it. Even her gilded life. He took the fork and knife and cut the bread so he could chew on something, now that his cigarette laid on the lip of his cup. She was paying with all she had. She wasn't being coy. All her riches right up front. Mr. Crowley was a good man not to be hated. His fortune was good too. Sharlan ate the mouthful and tapped his knife to her plate to remind her to have some, even in her whipped-up state. Caviar toast. The lemon juice was brilliant against the salt. Garcon would earn his tip.

"Crowley house was a quiet patron of Berrenger services, back when my father and my brothers were alive." he said. "But grew quieter still when Heath, George and Mason went." Named in descending age. Heath had been a far cry from Easley, but maybe that's why their political vines had bloomed in this generation, under Heath's leadership, before it all rotted. It was when Sharlan had returned from his travels in the orient, fed on the legend of their name, only to see it turn to dust when myriad challenges ate away at the males of his bloodline. Dead from unworthy blades. "Why should want him to name me? I know my name. And the bodies on the docks know it too. They rhyme it to the ferryman on their way over the river Styx."

But there was too much confectionary in this offering to decline. He licked his lips of crumbs and froth. "But tell your father I'll speak on your behalf. I'll take it, and sing like a bird, if I can get it in writing, which means you have to daughter his head in circles. You already tried to kill me before paying me last time." he said it with the fork pointed at her, smug.

 

[bathymcbath]

Zora was not remotely comforted by Sharlan’s easy agreement to help her. In fact, his levity gave her a powerful chill. He’d agreed to help her once before and while the letter of their agreement had been honored, the spirit of the thing had been left in tatters. She had no doubt he would do it again if she left him room to maneuver, but Sharlan himself had requested an agreement in writing. This was a good sign that he meant to negotiate in good faith, she thought wishfully.

As for Sharlan’s joking and bantering, Zora did not engage him. Not to look at him flatly and point out that he was destitute and her father rich. Not to remind him that honor demanded his death for how he’d treated her and that when she’d sought to stop his heart Zora was merely dancing the steps Sharlan had choreographed for her from the start. And not to tell him to shove his caviar toast someplace rude. She thought he might want her to say these things to him, to spit and hiss and show him how miserable she’d become, and that was precisely why she did not.

She did hear him, however. When he spoke of his fallen kin, framed within the context of how and when his house had enjoyed support from hers, Zora thought she might have glimpsed the heart of Sharlan’s hatred. It was grief. He was mad with it.

“No, you need to talk to him,” she argued. “I’m only a feckless woman and this is a serious matter for serious men.” She spoke these words flatly. They were obviously not hers, but her enthusiasm for arguing against such rhetoric had taken a steep decline recently. These were her father’s words. He would not tolerate Zora as a messenger between himself and the man who threatened their existence. He would find it ludicrous. He might even accuse her of making it all up.

“You must negotiate on your own behalf,” she finished softly, but resolutely.

 

[Verse]

He tended to the toast, mostly when she tried to make her case. It had a good point, and as old and current as the sea he tasted on the little fish kernels. All he had to go on when it came to children and their parents were the talks with his own father, and the dread on the faces of the fathers who's sons he put in the ground, or who's daughters he laid in other ways. It was not far to think that Zora did not command her father to give up their family coffers, or their name itself. Though she didn't seem as far from it as other women in other families. Suppose even headstrong girls are just girls to the men who raised them.

He clicked his tongue as though disappointed and reached for the napkin to touch his lips. "You're rather demanding for someone who's begging, Zora." he pointed out and nodded to her plate again. "And not as polite as beggars should be." He inhaled through his nose and leaned back, mostly on the upper edge of the chair. He must have been famished because his meal was gone when he put the cloth over the plate. He did not regret his first purchase being food.

Viscount Berrenger did have a ring to it.

Whether she humored him about the bread or not, he'd stand up and offer his arm to her. They were still playing a part at a social place, after all. And the chances of her finding a knife inside her dress and transferring it to his side while close was minimal, given what she needed him for. He left a coin in their wake. It felt good to tip again. If she had a carriage, he'd take it, and if not, he could afford to rent one all the way to the Crowley house. His prospects were looking up. On his way out, he'd nod at a confounded, opulently dressed man in one of the finer booths, Vinnie Fleur, often seen by King Bellaforte's side. "Look. The crown watches us. Smile." Sharlan said with some derision. "Now, I am dying to see the Crowley abode again." He'd been a boy, last time.

 

[bathymcbath]

Zora wished in that moment that she cared about anything enough to be done with this game. If she enjoyed painting or singing more she might slip away to Paris in the night and live the life of a belle insouciante. If she enjoyed dueling more she’d go find a house who would accept her as a nameless scullery. If she hated her father just a little bit more, she might let him die without a fight and escape to any or none of these futures. But she was a Crowley and she’d been raised to think that meant something dignified and eternal and worth fighting for.

So she let Sharlan call her a beggar and bully her into standing and accepting his arm. She knew they would be seen together when she had chosen the location for their meeting, although she hadn’t expected such lofty eyes as Fleur’s to find her that day. Simply because Sharlan told her to, Zora did not smile once while the doorman fetched her accessories. She was grim faced and leisurely about pulling on her gloves and tying the ribbons of her bonnet under her chin. She didn’t look at Sharlan while he waited, but took his arm again when she'd finished. Her parasol hung casually from her free hand as she floated out of the restaurant on Sharlan's arm as if she had no idea how far the man fell beneath her own station.

Outside the Regency, Zora dropped Sharlan’s arm. There were still society people around, so she was careful not to be nasty or rude about it. She put both her hands on the handle of her parasol and held it in front of her while Sharlan set to ordering a carriage.

Zora took a step back from the side of the street, from Sharlan and the concierge who listened to his request and then began signaling for a coach to go to Crowley House. She did not welcome the idea of sharing a carriage with Sharlan, and she wasn’t ready to see the Viscount. Zora felt she wore her ruination like a brand and he would see it immediately. She shuddered to think of his reaction to all she’d squandered and lost.

“You should send a note first,” she said plaintively as the carriage pulled up to the boardwalk. She took another backwards step. “You don’t just drop in on a Viscount.”

 

[Verse]

She had nuances to her anger towards him. Practiced like any doll on a track, he'd seen famous gear makers and clock people construct similar mechanical wonders, she used her training to follow him. Though, he supposed, she was creative about it in her own way, when she offered her unforgiving sour instead of any tenderness of a person on your arm. Here in Berna, Zora was in good company, being a woman who'd rather not hold on to the arm of the man she was with. If anyone looked for long, and some had more than their allotted glance, they might think Sharlan Berrenger must have something other than the dwindled fame of a house of swords, if he could make the Crowley daughter keep his company when she was obviously not charmed.

He relied on his black lacquered cane when she took to her parasol instead. He missed her a bit; that light weight on him as he strode. She may regret not having been prettier for Vinnie Fleur. Charlan was joyful, though, fed and humored, when he waved for their transportation. He even made a lighthearted joke about masters of horses and the horses mastering them, when the carriage came. The driver laughed politely. Of course The Regency Room would have such good carts at the ready. Expertly, dipping into the pocket where he kept her money now, he flicked a smaller valued coin to the helpers.

But his good mood switched a lot like the favor of the sea that her father made their family fortune off, when she mentioned the note. He slid close to her without giving her either of his eyes, and rested the cane tip on cobblestone near her. With a unseen flick of it, her skirts moved as though invaded by a soft gust, nothing unseemly, but in reality it had been a lighting touch from the cane to her ankle. Not much damage to the bone, but it'd sting horribly. A test to her composure.

"I will give you my time because you'll pay for it with all you have. But either you write the note and send it ahead, or I come to the Crowley estate and challenge your father instead. No more conditions." And then he did look at her, smiling politely and holding out a hand that had been inside her, to help her up into their carriage.

 

[bathymcbath]

The cane did not catch Zora by surprise. That didn’t mean she’d been expecting the strike exactly, but in her current state, twitching with paranoia over every small gesture that her companion made, she’d already steeled herself unwillingly against unknown dangers. She kicked, of course. The shock of it had to go somewhere, and it vibrated up through her leg. She jerked it away from Sharlan before she got control of it again and gingerly set her foot back down. With her skirts obscuring her feet, a casual observer might think she’d tripped and recovered, but this close Sharlan would see the press of her mouth and the wide flare of her eyelids and know he’d hit his mark. Her eyes glistened with the sting of it, but her cheeks were dry.

She chewed on her cheek and openly considered declining the offered hand. Her fear was fighting her reason for control of her. She hadn’t realized it until now, but there was something placating about Sharlan’s easy, charming manner. It was disturbing, too. Also insane. But it was less terrible than his naked displeasure, which he liked to repay with a double feint of pain and spite. He’d hurt her again if she provoked him, but she thought it just as likely that he’d hurt her if she didn’t. In the span of a few racing heartbeats she’d gone from asking Sharlan for his help to assisting him under threat of challenge to her father.

How had that happened?

The evidence strongly suggested that Zora would at least be alive when they reached Crowley House -- depressing that she set her ambitions so low and they still seemed fairly impossible -- so she took Sharlan’s hand and stepped up into the carriage. She wouldn’t be writing a note. Zora had never cared one iota about a note, she’d been looking for an exit. She arranged her skirts and sat, setting her parasol across her lap. She turned her face out the other side of the carriage and rode in tense silence.