LTSV - Lost & Found 58 (Patreon)

The sudden duel had drawn attention from all over the Palace Complex as word spread from guard to guard. In the middle of the noise and confusion, a ghostly shimmer slipped past the two men watching the detention chambers that were holding several of the less critical prisoners who had been involved in the recent coup. Technically, these people were allowed visitors and there was little concern about them trying to escape so the security was relaxed in this area. 

The shimmer turned into a girl with pink hair as soon as she reached the inside of the building. She looked around with annoyance when she realized her camouflage spell had shorted out. Though this was no real prison, there was still a permanent null field cast on these rooms. The residents could cast no spells and were reliant on whatever the building’s insulation could do for climate control. That meant the inside of the building was a little muggy and smelled faintly of sweat, despite being otherwise clean and dry. 

Of all the recent residents, only one woman was left; the soon-to-be Former Madame Coventry, Valeriane nee Sheppard. All the other prisoners had been removed as soon as they were sentenced, but Valeriane was in the middle of a divorce and they would need her to sign papers that couldn’t wait for a courier to deliver them from the hinterlands she was about to be exiled to.

“Mama!” Viola darted to Valeriane’s cell door. She’d changed her clothing to a bland shirtwaist and skirt that made up the uniform of every working city girl in the city. She had a heavy-laden bag on one shoulder. “I have bad news. The fourth prince has ruined himself. Princess Millica is certain to turn him out on his ear now. We won’t be able to use him as planned. We’ll need to retreat.”

“What?” Valeriane stood, outraged. “What has he done now?”

“I’ll explain once we’re underway,” Viola insisted. “There isn’t much time. Our contact may have died when the Princess’s Monster killed Hurandel’s reserve forces. I haven’t been contacted by anyone since the coup.”

“We’ll be on our own until we reach the border, then,” Valeriane replied in a sour tone. “Good girl, Mama is pleased with your initiative. Were you able to find the dead drop?”

Viola nodded. “Yes, Mama. We’ll have enough money for our needs. Now, take this cloak…” she froze as Mira deliberately ground her shoe onto a stray stone that had made its way into the hallway from outside. 

Mira hadn’t bothered with sneaking in. She’d just followed Viola from a safe distance and had had Penny teleport her past the guards. She was alone, to her surprise. Penny’s teleportation had left Adra’s shadow matter behind, so she probably only had a minute or two to vent whatever was left of Violet’s grievances. 

She loved her man and had missed him beyond all measure when they were apart, but the last few days had reminded her that he did have a way of stealing her kills.

Viola whipped around and stiffened when she saw Mira standing behind her, arms crossed and leaning casually against the wall. “What are you doing here?” she growled. 

“Listening to evidence of treason,” Mira replied with a beatific smile. “I thought you two had come out of the coup looking a little too clean, but I was saving you for dessert once I was done dealing with Andrei. Honestly, I don’t know why I even bothered. You delivered yourself right into my open palm. Your type always does, in the end.” 

Mira pushed off the wall and addressed Viola directly. “Go face the wall, hold your arms over your head until I tell you that you can put them down. When the guards come, I’ll…”

Viola made a show of beginning to obey. Her hands disappeared under her cloak as she turned, seemingly to face the wall as directed, but actually she was just using the motion to hide her movements as she drew a single-action revolver from the braces she wore under her cloak. She took aim and fired in a single fluid movement. Her aim was true, but the bullet stopped in the air a foot or so away from Mira’s face.

“W–what?” Viola gasped as she stared at the floating bullet. “How?”

“Someone wasn’t paying attention in her magical theorem classes,” Mira observed as she flicked the bullet out of the air and it clattered harmlessly to the ground. “I’m certain I saw the Null Field being discussed when I reviewed my first year readings so I won’t bother to explain it to you, if you’ve already forgotten once.”

“Viola, shoot her again!” Valeriane snapped. “She can’t do that repeatedly.”

Viola obeyed and fired off two more rounds of the five she had left. Mira stopped them just the same way as the first shot. The gun jammed on the third round. She yelped and threw it to one side, reaching into her cloak for (presumably) another weapon.

“I take it you haven’t been cleaning your gun,” Mira observed as she continued to approach. The bullets clattered harmlessly to the groun when she released them. Their momentum was spent. “Revolvers aren’t supposed to jam that easily. Oh, don’t bother with the other one. That trick is only amusing the first time.”

Viola yelped as the iron pistol grip turned red hot in her hand and she dropped that one too.

“This is lucky,” Mira continued to close in on Viola, pausing only to kick the pistols backwards down the hallway. “I’ve been wanting to have a private word with you about a little theory of mine. No time like the present, hm?”

“Get away,” Viola whispered, finally scared. She backed up against the wall and her knees cut out from under her. She slid down to land on her rump. “Stay away!”

“You little beast!” Valeriane hissed. She’d gotten up from the stool where she’d been sitting when Viola arrived. She grabbed the bars and shook them. Nothing happened, obviously, but she still tried. “Leave her alone!

“No, I don’t think I will,” Mira told her before turning back to her quarry. “Now, I’m assuming that you were the one who forged that letter to the Fenby family ordering them to stand down and who leaked my location to the Duvalls?”

Viola froze. She couldn’t have looked more guilty if she tried. “I–I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied, badly.

“Yes, you do,” Mira corrected her. 

She crouched down in front of her ‘sister.’ “I’ve been thinking about that whole mess since it happened. My first thought was that Madame was the one responsible, but that theory didn’t really hold up once I understood that she was Hurandel’s agent—even if she did want me out of the way in order to make way for you, and I think she did. Andrei is such a malleable boy, isn’t he? You can wind him up and turn him loose in any direction you like, once you have his trust. If you secured him as your husband then the position of Crown Princess would be yours, once all that messy insurrection business was over and Hurandel couldn’t live forever. It makes sense. Women always live longer than men. Once he was gone, you’d be the ones left holding Andrei’s reins.” 

Mira clapped her hands and looked back and forth between the two women before she added, “Be that as it may, letting Vesper get away with funneling me into the Fenby’s house would have already served her purpose. I was out of the way. She had no reason to interfere. That marriage was arranged in such a way that it could be called off at any time; no harm, no foul. Hurandel could have done that just as easily as Vesper planned to, once he was fully in control of the country. There was no need to bring the Duvalls into it.”

Mira smiled gently down at Viola. “Everything I’ve learned tells me that the Duvalls are amoral, greedy, cash-strapped idiots. What’s more, everyone knows it. That’s a fatal combination. I can’t imagine why an otherwise intelligent woman would risk involving them in her schemes when she was already getting what she wanted and I am the only lady of royal lineage who can’t be replaced. Hurandel seemed determined to recreate Avenon’s current dynasty under his own name. Why risk opening yourself up to extortion? Reginald Duvall is certainly daring and stupid enough to try it if he ever had cause to think you might get access to the Royal Treasury. He forced his way into my hotel room, did you know? There’s no logical reason why Madame would do business with such a stupid opportunist. That leaves emotional reasons.”

Viola whimpered as Mira placed a hand against the wall behind her head and leaned in so they were eye-to-eye. “The only emotional reason to do that to me would be if someone thought I wasn’t wretched enough yet. Having to marry the so-called ‘ugliest man in the Capitol’ wouldn't have been so bad when I would have gone into that marriage as an independently wealthy woman and said man would have treated me with every courtesy.” 

She brushed Viola’s bangs out of her eyes, where they’d begun to cling to her sweat. “What do you think about that, Viola?”

“I–I…” Viola couldn't seem to form a response. 

“Now, there is the question of how this person would have chosen the man to divert me towards,” Mira continued. “I seem to recall that Andrei once warned Cecily to stay away from the Duvalls. She told me about it when Reginald Duvall first appeared at my door. Andrei would have said that to her back when you were all in school; well before she realized what a two-faced little witch you are. I seem to recall that she used to tell you everything.”

“Get away from her,” Madame seemed to have found her voice. “She’s a child! Whatever grievance you have with me, let it remain with me!”

It was to her credit that Madame still thought of the daughter she’d raised and wanted to protect her—shame that she’d already doomed Viola with her own hands by dragging the girl into this web of treason and deceit.

“Oh, I’ll get to you in a moment,” Mira agreed, still smiling. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the acid attack. Your turn is coming.”

Madame’s stricken hiss was music to Mira’s ears, but Madame wasn’t a teenage girl and rallied without giving herself away. “You’re confused. That was the fourth prince’s valet. I had nothing to do with it.”

“Didn’t you?” Mira asked. She trailed a finger down Viola’s cheek. “How interesting. Viola, do you know that Vesper said something very interesting to me the other day?”

This time, Viola wasn’t looking at Mira. She was looking at Madame with wide eyes. Interesting. Had Viola not been privy to that part of Madame’s planning?

“She said that the valet, whose name no one ever bothered to learn, had been confined earlier that day and that ‘somebody’ let him out and enabled him to find that container of vitriol. She seemed to think that person was Andrei, but he was in the room when she explained it and I happened to notice that this seemed to be entirely new information to him.”

Granted, he’d been more focused on the fact that Vesper was the one who ordered the valet’s execution, but they didn’t need to now that. 

“I have seen him lie a few times since and he is very, very good at it, but only when he’s calm. I’ve noticed that he has trouble containing his emotions. He was very emotional that day, so I don’t imagine his control was at its best,” Mira said, enjoying the exposition. There was a reason monologuing was so difficult to resist. “I was also in the garden with you at the time of the attack, Madame, which is interesting since I don’t recall that we spent much time with each other, just as a general rule. You and Papa raised your children separately. You weren’t involved in my schooling or any other part of my life. What was different about that day? Was it because you needed to be sure that I was in a certain place at a certain time?”

Madame’s grip on the bars slackened in shock.

“That part about the valet finding a supposedly ‘poorly secured supply of vitriol’ is questionable too,” Mira kept going. “Fort Nightfall is a military installation and guests would hardly be allowed anywhere there might be weapons or other critical materiel stored. Short of that acid being left out in the open in a clearly labeled vial or someone showing him where to get it, I can’t imagine that he just ‘stumbled’ across some—now, who do you think would have a reason to ruin my face, Viola? Whose way have I been in, since the timing of your birth—oh, forgive me, since the timing of Cecily’s birth meant that Madame didn’t have an obedient daughter that she could plausibly insert into the position of Lord Warden’s heir? The timing of her birth meant that she missed out on being eligible to become Andrei’s bride too, but that problem is more easily fixed. Isn’t it, Madame?”

Madame had begun to back away from the bars. “You’re mad,” she whispered, but it wasn’t convincing.

“Oh, furious,” Mira agreed, deliberately misunderstanding. “That can’t come as a surprise to you, can it?” She turned her attention back to Viola, but was still addressing Madame. “What do you think would balance the scales between us, Madame?”

All she heard was Madame’s sharp intake of breath. “No!” 

“Recovering from an acid burn is a long process,” Mira continued talking as she admired Viola’s fresh, unblemished complexion. “It’s agonizing and humiliating all at the same time. Depending on how it hits, you can’t even ask for help. Moving your mouth pulls at the healing tissue and the delicate new skin graft can tear if it's disturbed before the graft is fully established. Your face will never feel right, ever again. Parts of it will feel like a clay mask stretched directly over your bone and this will go on for the rest of your life. You can’t escape the feeling, not even in your sleep. You’ll have nightmares about it and wake up still in the nightmare. Doesn’t that sound terrible?”

“No!” Viola squeezed her eyes shut and a fat tear rolled down her cheek. “Please!”

“You have no proof,” Madame snapped, finding a bit of backbone once more. It really was a shame they were on opposite sides. She had gumption. “It would be your word against mine and no one will listen to you if you destroy an innocent young girl’s face. You only just barely clawed back some credibility in the eyes of the public. It’ll be gone in the flash of an eye if you hurt my child.”

“No?” Mira ignored what Madame had said and made a show of thinking about Viola’s refusal. She could sense Adra closing in on her location like a hot wind. 

It was time to stop playing with her food.