scrivespinster (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scrivespinster) wrote2020-08-17 11:52 am
scrivespinster) wrote2020-08-17 11:52 am
WIP: Valkyrie Bags a Legend, Excerpt 1
A planned scene from later on in the WIP.
.
I was not long in London when I turned at the sound of light footsteps coming up behind me, and a boy who was no longer an urchin pressed a note into my hands. The writing was elegant, fluid, familiar. It said: The White Rose Cafe, an hour after noon. Ladybones Road. Do not be followed.
I stared for a moment at the sheet of paper, struck motionless as the crowd jostled around me; I’m not sure if it was fear or joy that gripped me tightest, but both of them felt, in that instant, like a cage door opening and like a spear to the heart. A moment only, though. Fear, at least, I had practice in shaking off, and the messenger had left no time for hesitation. I owned no watch, but the cathedral bells had struck the hour not long ago. I could get there, if I hurried, on time.
The White Rose is still there, if I’m not mistaken, catering to the poorer sort of gentry and the more discerning sort of spy. It would be an understatement to say that it was not so rough an establishment as the kind I was accustomed to – no sawdust on the floor or bounties posted on the walls, no mushroom ale and no fights. The floor was polished mahogany; the walls held art of Surface scenes, sunlight aglow on gentle waters. Conversation rose and fell as I stepped through the doors, muted and sedate.
A waiter ushered me to a private booth, set a little ways off from the main dining hall and lit by amber lamplight. He was there, of course, seated near the wall and facing the door, with a glass of port before him. My brother. I had wondered what it would be like, seeing him again after years without speaking, and now I knew, and found myself struggling to reconcile memory with life. He looked elegant as a lord, but there were shadows beneath his eyes that I didn’t remember, and lines at the corners of his mouth that seemed too deep for his age. I didn’t know what to say to him that would make things right, so I said the only thing that came to mind.
“I got your letters. Kept ‘em all.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “I mean that. I – I’m glad.” He sounded like he looked: quiet, genteel, tired.
He ordered a steak, as rare as they could make it, and I did my best not to let on that I had noticed. And we talked, for a while, of small things: Shroom-hopping predictions, monsters sighted off the coast, the changing fashions of court and the latest opera. He asked me how the others were doing – the Trickster and The Wolf-Hide, The Unbending Bodyguard, all of them and their lives and ways. I’d kept in touch, as I could. I was gladdened that he still remembered them, and then ashamed at my own surprise. Of course he wouldn’t forget. They were his friends too.
But though we circled ‘round it as long as we could, the day’s business could not be avoided forever. He leaned forward across the table and looked at me intently, and it was no longer possible to pretend that all could be as it had been.
“I’ve heard you’re hunting something impossible. I’ve come to warn you away.”
I didn’t ask how he knew. I assumed spies must have their ways. I simply nodded, and let him say what he would.
“The Vake will slaughter you. Your life can’t be worth the chance of four million echoes.”
“You think I’m after the reward?” I said.
“Why not? You could do a good deal of good with all that money. You’d be rich by now, if you didn’t do the same with all your bounties.”
I’m doing it for you is a cruel thing to say to someone, especially someone who doesn’t want to be rescued, or doesn’t think they can be. I didn’t want to be cruel to anyone, and especially not to him. But I was – I am someone who hunts things that hunt people, and looking at him across the table in that quiet cafe, with a bit of steak juice still smeared at the corner of his mouth, I felt very keenly aware of the spear slung across my back and the ratwork pistol at my hip. I wasn’t sure whether I could forgive myself for that. I also wondered what he was thinking, looking at me.
I’m sorry, I wanted to say, but that would have meant telling him what I was sorry for. I leaned across the table instead, met his eyes, and said, “D’you know how many lives could be saved, if I find a way to do this?”
“A lot,” he said quietly.
“Hundreds?”
“More,” he said. “Enough to balance any debt, if only debts were simple enough to work that way.”
“Then you know why I can’t give this up.”
He said nothing at first, just looked down at his empty plate, or past it, to something only he was seeing. His hands clenched on the table, and I thought for a moment that he was going to leave. Maybe there was a moment when he was. But he stayed where he was, and when he finally moved, it was to lift his head and look me in the eye. He didn’t look like a man of the Foreign Office then. He looked like he had in the old days, when we were Nobodies both and there was a mission before us.
“I can give you something better than a mandrake,” he said.
“What?”
“Me.”
Excerpt 2 (final battle) here.
Index page here.
.
I was not long in London when I turned at the sound of light footsteps coming up behind me, and a boy who was no longer an urchin pressed a note into my hands. The writing was elegant, fluid, familiar. It said: The White Rose Cafe, an hour after noon. Ladybones Road. Do not be followed.
I stared for a moment at the sheet of paper, struck motionless as the crowd jostled around me; I’m not sure if it was fear or joy that gripped me tightest, but both of them felt, in that instant, like a cage door opening and like a spear to the heart. A moment only, though. Fear, at least, I had practice in shaking off, and the messenger had left no time for hesitation. I owned no watch, but the cathedral bells had struck the hour not long ago. I could get there, if I hurried, on time.
The White Rose is still there, if I’m not mistaken, catering to the poorer sort of gentry and the more discerning sort of spy. It would be an understatement to say that it was not so rough an establishment as the kind I was accustomed to – no sawdust on the floor or bounties posted on the walls, no mushroom ale and no fights. The floor was polished mahogany; the walls held art of Surface scenes, sunlight aglow on gentle waters. Conversation rose and fell as I stepped through the doors, muted and sedate.
A waiter ushered me to a private booth, set a little ways off from the main dining hall and lit by amber lamplight. He was there, of course, seated near the wall and facing the door, with a glass of port before him. My brother. I had wondered what it would be like, seeing him again after years without speaking, and now I knew, and found myself struggling to reconcile memory with life. He looked elegant as a lord, but there were shadows beneath his eyes that I didn’t remember, and lines at the corners of his mouth that seemed too deep for his age. I didn’t know what to say to him that would make things right, so I said the only thing that came to mind.
“I got your letters. Kept ‘em all.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “I mean that. I – I’m glad.” He sounded like he looked: quiet, genteel, tired.
He ordered a steak, as rare as they could make it, and I did my best not to let on that I had noticed. And we talked, for a while, of small things: Shroom-hopping predictions, monsters sighted off the coast, the changing fashions of court and the latest opera. He asked me how the others were doing – the Trickster and The Wolf-Hide, The Unbending Bodyguard, all of them and their lives and ways. I’d kept in touch, as I could. I was gladdened that he still remembered them, and then ashamed at my own surprise. Of course he wouldn’t forget. They were his friends too.
But though we circled ‘round it as long as we could, the day’s business could not be avoided forever. He leaned forward across the table and looked at me intently, and it was no longer possible to pretend that all could be as it had been.
“I’ve heard you’re hunting something impossible. I’ve come to warn you away.”
I didn’t ask how he knew. I assumed spies must have their ways. I simply nodded, and let him say what he would.
“The Vake will slaughter you. Your life can’t be worth the chance of four million echoes.”
“You think I’m after the reward?” I said.
“Why not? You could do a good deal of good with all that money. You’d be rich by now, if you didn’t do the same with all your bounties.”
I’m doing it for you is a cruel thing to say to someone, especially someone who doesn’t want to be rescued, or doesn’t think they can be. I didn’t want to be cruel to anyone, and especially not to him. But I was – I am someone who hunts things that hunt people, and looking at him across the table in that quiet cafe, with a bit of steak juice still smeared at the corner of his mouth, I felt very keenly aware of the spear slung across my back and the ratwork pistol at my hip. I wasn’t sure whether I could forgive myself for that. I also wondered what he was thinking, looking at me.
I’m sorry, I wanted to say, but that would have meant telling him what I was sorry for. I leaned across the table instead, met his eyes, and said, “D’you know how many lives could be saved, if I find a way to do this?”
“A lot,” he said quietly.
“Hundreds?”
“More,” he said. “Enough to balance any debt, if only debts were simple enough to work that way.”
“Then you know why I can’t give this up.”
He said nothing at first, just looked down at his empty plate, or past it, to something only he was seeing. His hands clenched on the table, and I thought for a moment that he was going to leave. Maybe there was a moment when he was. But he stayed where he was, and when he finally moved, it was to lift his head and look me in the eye. He didn’t look like a man of the Foreign Office then. He looked like he had in the old days, when we were Nobodies both and there was a mission before us.
“I can give you something better than a mandrake,” he said.
“What?”
“Me.”
Excerpt 2 (final battle) here.
Index page here.