the vauquelin house · uptown
Constable Inspector Monica Delacore,
My husband and I would be truly honored if you would join our household for dinner, should your duties permit, on some evening in this extraordinarily cold Ophus. I am hopeful that we can find some time and date which is convenient for all of us.
I will preface this invitation by admitting that we do not know one another; it is chance – or perhaps fate, or the hand of Alioe – that has given us some association by proxy. Although it must be strange to receive such a missive from a relative stranger, you will, if you remember him, know my husband, Anatole Estienne Vauquelin, who has sat for many years now on the Vyrdag and, until recently, cooperated with his peers in leading the galdori (and subordinate races) with gods-honoring wisdom and a love for his nation and for the Six Kingdoms. It was with great distress that we lost him in the summer of this year, but now he is returned to us and is recovering from what we all know now to be a particularly traumatic and mind-altering backlash of the Perceptive Conversation.
My husband has told me that your most recent encounter with him was less than friendly, and, if you would permit it, we are determined to mend relations and to clarify any strange behavior you may have observed. This is largely at my husband’s urging; now that he is somewhat recovered, Anatole is deeply troubled by his treatment of you and others during his darkest hour, and he hopes that in the coming months he can begin to repair what has been damaged or broken. I will leave it to him to explain himself more thoroughly, should you accept our invitation.
Regardless of your decision, you have the Vauquelin household’s best wishes for the remainder of this year and the beginning of the one to come. Benea light your path.
Diana Elise Alarin Vauquelin
The fourteenth of Ophus already. Much as it felt wrong, Tom was glad he wasn’t in the Dives.
He’d just about gotten used to this. It wasn’t a surprise anymore, at least, when he woke up in a four-poster bed, swaddled like a babe in blankets and silk; when he went to sleep, it wasn’t with the expectation of waking up in the dingy tenements, trembling and ready to hurl, going through cheap cigarettes by the pack. The world turned: the leaves had long fallen off of the trees, and now their boughs were freezing, growing brittle and petrified like the veins of a corpse. Now Tom woke up to fine glass windows crusted with frost. The heavy brocade drapes didn’t keep the chill from crawling into his joints, but at least he wasn’t out in it, blue and black and numb like so many humans and wicks.
If he’d still been in the Dives, he might’ve been dead by now. Being realistic, it was a wonder he wasn’t dead – dead again, that was – well, disembodied. Whatever counted as “dead” now, in this bang moony life of his. (At least he wouldn’t have to be Anatole. Still, he preferred being Anatole to being whatever the hell he was between hosts, and he wasn’t in a rush to murder some other poor sod.)
Diana had had to remind him about five times that tonight was indeed when the Constable Inspector was coming to dinner, and he couldn’t say he was looking forward to it. They had started sleeping in separate beds shortly after he’d come back – his request, but she happily complied – and he’d slept scandalously late, alone in the Incumbent’s bedroom and paralyzed with dread; he was still nursing a whole hell of a lot of confusion, and more than a little resentment. Going through the motions had gotten a lot tougher when “the motions” started constituting galdori high society. For the latter half of Achtus and Ophus so far, he hadn’t had a lot to do, thankfully: he’d been injured, he’d had a break, he’d had to take a break, and right now everybody wanted him about as far away from a podium or an official document as Tom Cooke had ever been. But it was a looming specter, this recovery. They did expect him to get better.
(And then – when would Hawke’s business come a-calling? What was expected of him here? Not to cut any throats, that was for sure. He suddenly had a little more respect for a certain Wynngate.)
It didn’t help that he looked so… clean. He was thinking about that now, standing in front of the mirror in the Incumbent’s study, locked into place. If he hadn’t recognized himself before, he certainly didn’t now. An Anaxi politician’s distinguished browns and severe blacks, the well-polished shoes, the silk scarf. A barber had given him one of the neatest haircuts and closest shaves he’d ever had, and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it; looking a little disheveled, a little rough around the edges, was all he’d had of who he used to be.
He knew he ought to go downstairs, but he just couldn’t bring himself to move his legs. Every inch of him rebelled, tightly-wound and ready to collapse. He kept swallowing dryly, swallowing bile, trying to look anywhere but the mirror, trying to get his eye to stop twitching. This was why he avoided mirrors: it was easy to get caught, get startled. See somebody else following your motions, looking at you exactly like you looked at him. Then the panic would start to rise, then the bile, then his stomach would flip and his jaw would start tingling and –
“Sir,” somebody was saying. A soft voice. “Sir? Sir. I’m sorry – sir?”
“What?”
“I am sorry for – for the disrespect, but –”
“What?” He glanced away, blinked about a dozen times. His vision came into focus on a little slip of a girl, dark-haired and dark-eyed, in blue. Cecile. “I’m – sorry, what –”
“The Constable is here, sir. She’s just arrived. I’m sorry, sir.”
“No, I’m s—” No fuckin’ use in that, thought Tom wryly, stopping himself and taking a deep breath. We’ll be apologizing to each other ‘til the Resistance burns this house down. “Any – er – well, that’s good. That’s fine.”
“Sir?”
“I mean – I’ll be right down, eh? Let Di know? I’m coming.”
Cecile bowed her head and curtsied deeply. Then she was gone into the darkness of the hall, and Tom could hear soft steps pattering down the stairwell. He didn’t dare look in the mirror again before he left to join them.
“Constable Inspector!” he said, a little out of breath, stepping into the foyer.
It was quiet, other than the tick, tick, tick of the grandfather clock – an expensive piece, well-polished and with a little mechanism that showed you what phase each moon was in, if you set it right. (Of course, it was always set and wound. So many invisible hands in this house.) It was just getting dark outside, and the big front windows showed an Uptown street slick with sleet that glistened in the low lamplight. Inside, the Vauquelin house was warm, although this year’s Ophus was determined to penetrate even the strongest and golliest of brick houses.
Diana had her hair pinned up on her head in an elaborate pile; Tom couldn’t make sense of where one braid ended and another started, but he reckoned it was pretty. She was wearing a white dress in a fashionable asymmetrical style, one side covered in embroidered roses, high-collared but slit to show a length of leg covered in patterned black hose. Fetching, Tom imagined, if you were into womenfolk. She turned to greet him with a well-practiced smile; her field was equally well-practiced, unsurprising for a Perceptive Conversationalist of her skill. It was smooth and stable and strong, but subtle, like an expensive perfume.
Tom couldn’t get his field to do jack shit. The closest thing he could think of to what it felt like was being surrounded by peevish gnats. Least it wasn’t itchy, but sometimes it made his skin crawl.
A servant offered to take the Constable’s coat.
“Good to see you again, Inspector Delacore,” he started, then paused. He’d made a lot of progress with his speech over the past month; he didn’t sound like himself anymore, but he reckoned he didn’t quite sound like Anatole ought to, either. “Well – good, and – strange. For both of us, I think.”
Diana smiled. “I believe the two of you have met.”
“Sadly.” Tom forced what he imagined was a friendly smile, moving to extend his hand for a shake. “I’d better reintroduce myself. Anatole Vauquelin. At your service, this time.”