Florette V: The Feckless
“Then what was the fucking of point of all this?” Ciq Prashant, Jay candidate for the Carringdon seat on Avalon’s Great Council snarled. “You told me there was a real chance of getting somewhere. You gathered all these people around me and it doesn’t even matter.”
“I told you the odds were long,” Florette insisted. Bordering on impossible. “As long as Astor and Delbrook stayed close enough in the vote count, you had a shot at squeezing out both by surprise.” Technically. “Besides, you’re looking at this the wrong way. A year ago, the Jays had nothing. They weren’t even competing. Now this new system allows us to try. We’ve done the outreach that could get us there in the future.”
That didn’t seem to bring much comfort to Prashant. “That’s all very well for the Jays, but I’ll still be the one who lost. It’s only going to hurt me that I tried and failed. Especially if people keep calling me a latecomer, a stranger to Carringdon.”
“Well, you sort of are though. You were born and raised in Nymphell, then spent most of your adult life following Robin Verrou all over the world with Anya Stewart.” If the Jays weren’t so thin on the ground here, I’d never have picked you at all. Florette had done her best to seek out the real people in Charenton, of the sort a Delbrook or an Astor would never deign to speak with, to court support for her Jay candidate, but without any expectation that they might succeed.
This entire election scheme had been engineered from the top down to consolidate more power in royal hands; democracy had nothing to do with it. They do love their self-righteousness in Avalon, their veneration of liberal values, but only up to the moment they need to back those beliefs with action.
That was why Florette hadn’t tapped the experienced Vijay or the charismatic Ciaran to run for the office—they deserved better than being the figurehead for this failure as a reward for stepping up. This ‘democracy’ business made the appearance of weakness even more devastating than conventional politics, and had a common-born candidate been chosen, their life might well have turned worse than it started once they lost. In that respect, a knight who’d served Avalon’s foremost pirate catcher was the perfect one to burn on this hollow show.
Due to whatever unknown disputes had led to Ciq Prashant taking up residence in Carringdon, fractures which Florette’s old roommate, Opal, had hinted at without ever elaborating on, Prashant’s failure would be unlikely to create issues with Sarah or the others, either.
Lady Astor would lose a few votes from people angry at the status quo, enough to put her out of the running against the man whom Lord Monfroy could crush like a bug with a single letter to a journal. And with it, hand over half of Avalon’s government to Monfroy.
That had been the plan.
Instead, Charlotte de Malin had dug up the compromising document and distributed it to the world, rendering any leverage derived from it wholly pointless. And Monfroy himself now had his position imperiled. And he’d be likely to blame Sabine, whom he’d sent to the area and provided just enough information to believe she could do it.
But not enough to tell me what I already know of your monstrosity. A seventeen-year-old was a new low for Monfroy. Fernan had only been seventeen back on that fateful day when both their journeys had begun, when Mara burned away his eyes and Florette had charged her to try to save him. They’d all come to an understanding in the time since, but Fernan was still dealing with that damage today. That boy from Carringdon would never even get that chance.
Florette had met his cousin at one of the Jay meetings and heard her talk about his disappearance before the news had broken, but it was another thing entirely to learn that Monfroy had stolen his life. Ciq Prashant and Lady Astor had both paid her a visit after the news had broken, providing her generous offers of support, but Delbrook remained at large.
Since he had no title with Carringdon any longer, there was no position to be stripped from him, and Charlotte had apparently refrained from making arrests in the interest of avoiding the appearance that she was there to tilt things in Luce’s favor. As if anyone would ever believe that. The Carringdon City Guardians had followed her lead, but it wouldn’t be long before Delbrook was denied that defense.
I suppose I should count myself lucky that Charlotte focused on that instead of me, at least. Srin Sabine was a robust and well-connected identity with little in the way of holes or inconsistencies that could be pressed to the breaking point, but none of that would matter if someone recognized her.
“I’ve lived in Carringdon for two years! It’s home now.” Prashant scowled. “This lot could use an outside perspective, anyway. Maddie Astor’s just going to hand the Great Council over to the Prince of Darkness, no different from her father.”
And you’re no different from a hundred other aristocrats. “Probably. There’s nothing to be done about it now aside from conceding. Maybe you can wheedle an office out of Astor in exchange for your endorsement, though I wouldn’t bet on it. She doesn’t need you anymore.”
Prashant scratched his chin, taking her words under serious consideration. “But there’s a chance. It’s all about approaching her the right way. Don’t you think I could do it?”
I don’t care. Florette shrugged.
“It would be something, at least! A voice for us in their halls of power is a potent thing on its own.”
“Sure,” Florette said, rather than her true opinion, in the interest of staying polite.
The particular people in the government didn’t matter at all when their whole system was set up to exploit and brutalize. Malin was the easiest example to point to, where assassinating Gordon Perimont had cleared the way for the soft spoken Prince Luce to take his best shot at reforming Avalon’s occupation, apparently sincere in the regret he’d expressed in captivity.
He hadn’t been able to turn such a massive ship around on its own without tearing it apart, so Camille Leclaire had used the fracture to bury him under the waves as it capsized. Luce’s next attempt had seen him roll up to Charenton at the head of a small army, seizing power without even the pretense of legitimacy and seeing all opposition crushed after an attack by Levian.
You bend to the system or you let it break you, but either way it’s still there to weigh down everyone else. Florette hadn’t expected it at first, but she shouldn’t have been surprised that it was no different within Avalon. The Harpies might be more committed to conquest and naked imperialism, but the ostensibly better Owls delighted in exploitation of another sort. They championed all sorts of freedoms, but none of them ever seemed to be quite so important to them as the economic freedom of a Great Councillor to enrich themselves, the freedom of a factory owner to lock people inside a building coated in grease.
The Carringdon Astors were the perfect example, ostentatiously performing their nobility of character while staying rich off the backs of thousands of farmers and laborers who toiled from dawn to dusk without ever seeing any benefit from their own labor. Florette was willing to give Luce credit for forgiving the debt that tenant farmers had owed to their overlord, hanging the Delbrook who thought collecting was more important than keeping the city from starving, but he hadn’t actually addressed the root of the issue. Every farmer around Carringdon was still just one bad harvest away from crippling debt, and they couldn’t count on a softer-hearted prince being around every time they needed saving.
The narrative around the Princess Lizzie’s fire made even more sense in that light, especially once you knew how many Councilors were financially invested in the business. The Blue Bandit made it easy to pin it on someone in particular, but they were never going to hold Princess Lizzie’s responsible anyway.
Even the Jays had Monfroy as a notable black mark, either ignorant of his crimes or willing to sweep them under the rug so long as they remained private. Not that I’ve been any different. Killing him wasn’t simple, and doing it without breaking her cover would be a thousand times harder, but...
But how many times have I told myself that this is the last job? That he’s dead as soon as I’m done? There was always something else to do: another ancient ruin to explore, crucial to making the Srin Sabine identity successful enough to be useful; another planset to discreetly retrieve from the College library for Blaise and the pirates; another vault to rob, to keep the neighbors fed through the latest indignity their bosses foisted upon them...
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Another reason to hesitate, when that was never my problem before. In that sense, it was hard not to feel like Florette had spent too long in Avalon, that she had hidden vital parts of herself so thoroughly that they risked atrophy from disuse.
If I faced myself at nineteen and had to convince her why I was in Avalon, doing the bidding of a man who drained so much life that he reduced healthy children to wizened, desiccated corpses, what could I possibly say?
Win or lose, that Florette would have stood in his way years ago, cover identity or no cover identity. Killing one person might not fix the real problem, but some people were really asking for it anyway, and it could still help a little at the margins. Like with Gordon Perimont, or Ernest Monfroy.
But she also would have stolen from a tavern just because the barkeep pissed her off, dragged Fernan into the starring role of a lie he wanted no part in, and followed the first girl to give her a shred of attention onto her pirate ship to set sail for slaughter without a second thought. She’d have stabbed Cassia Arion without the slightest hesitation.
Florette left Prashant to his scheming and returned to her room so she could pack. Now that Delbrook was finished, there wasn’t much reason to stay.
Though I must be careful before returning to Cambria. Monfroy won’t just let me walk back into class. His pale coach would be waiting at the harbor the moment her ship landed; Florette was absolutely certain of that. How he would want to deal with her, Florette was less sure about. She didn’t trust him for a second, obviously, and the Delbrook news breaking out would do him no favors, but it wasn’t impossible to imagine him being rational enough to realize Florette had no part in it. He had to know this was his own fault, though that gave about even odds between him taking responsibility and projecting all the blame onto her.
And I don’t think it’d be wise to pay him a visit and flip that particular coin. But staying out of Cambria wasn’t an option either, not with final exams fast approaching and an urgent letter from Professor Alcock telling her to visit the archaeology lab at the College to verify something sensitive for him. Running away would be devastatingly deleterious to Srin Sabine, and waste everything that had gone into getting her this far.
And all the people who died to make it possible.
That sort of reasoning was usually what pulled Florette back from the threshold when a potential opportunity arose, whether it made for a good decision or a bad one, but considering the damage Monfroy could do with the information he knew, pouncing now might genuinely be the safest option.
Florette was so immersed in her rare moment of introspection that she almost missed Rebecca lurking in the hallway, tapping her foot nervously. “What are you doing here?” were the first words out of Florette’s mouth, for all that they weren’t the most tactful way to pose the question.
“I was worried about you,” Rebecca admitted, following Florette into the room once she unlocked the door. “Monfroy’s dangerous, you said. He could ruin your life. Then I read that he was exposed buying people from one of the Carringdon candidates you were sent here to help the Jays contest. I’m probably overreacting, but I wanted to see you, and I wasn’t sure Cambria would be safe for you.”
It’s like you read my mind. “I’m not worried about it. But thank you. It’s good to see you.”
Surprisingly, Rebecca frowned at that, creases forming on her soft face. “You don’t have to pretend with me, Sabine.”
“Pretend?” asked Florette, who’d built an entire relationship with her by stacking deception atop deception.
“You think you always need to be strong and alert and ready with a plan, but none can do that all the time for everything. I know how impecunious your father was by the time he died, the debts he took on. There’s no point in acting like this is a trivial issue.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I want to help you, Sabine.”
“I’m not letting you pay the debt. It’s too much, and Monfroy wants me under his thumb more than he wants the money anyway. It would only draw you into—”
Rebecca shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” Because it’s sweet that you came, but Monfroy isn’t your problem. After everything I’ve done to you, surely you don’t need to entangle yourself in my mess.
Standing there in the fading light of the Carringdon Inn, her red-orange sweater nearly perfectly matching the sunset behind her, Rebecca managed to look at once radiant and endearing as she falteringly grasped for an answer. Before long, it was clear that she’d had no idea what exactly she meant. “The details aren’t the point. You have a better head for that stuff than I do anyway. My point is that we can lean on each other. I want to help you, and I bet if you actually thought about it instead of dismissing me, you’d agree that I can help.”
I already tried that, planting the desiccation bomb idea as a weapon against Monfroy. Only Monfroy had just moved to the top of her list before Florette even had the chance to get one. If Rebecca could get her hands on one—
“See, you just thought of something! What are you thinking?”
Florette sighed, cornered, and began to explain her plan.
≋
They landed directly at Harvet Point, heading directly into Ortus Tower without any need to worry about Monfroy lurking at the harbor. Prince Luce was apparently away, visiting his brother at the palace, but Florette didn’t feel inclined to take any chances.
She stayed on the ground as Rebecca went up, taking a walk through the experimental gardens until she found a spot where she was hidden enough to avoid Luce coming if he returned.
It felt selfish sitting here to smell the flowers, plotting a way out of her own problems, while hundreds of workers were striking for their life. Christophe had already had to step in once to frighten off a Guardian who’d been getting too aggressive, naturally framed in the Avalon journals as a savage spiritual beast rising up from nowhere to support the immoral, lazy strikers. At least it hadn’t come to violence.
Making contact would risk dragging Monfroy into that whole mess, and Florette honestly believed Christophe and the others would understand her need to take another day or two before stepping in to help, but it still was hard not to feel guilty about it.
Fortunately, Rebecca returned just in time to pull Florette out of her wallowing. She emerged back out of the black stone tower with a slightly red cast to her face, panting, as if she’d run up and down twelve flights of stairs herself. “Elevator was being used,” she explained. “I think they’re loading up all those DV bombs from Charenton, though I’m not sure why Prince Luce would want something so dangerous kept on this side of the Lyrion Sea.”
“Did you get it?” Florette asked, her nerves feeling steadier.
“Of course! It’s my project from my lab. All I had to do was squeeze by the haulers on the stairs.” Rebecca paused, reflecting carefully on her words as she shifted her grip on the bundled object. “Are you really sure this is the only way to keep you safe? I could talk to Prince Luce, or Lieutenant Charlotte. Monfroy’s on the back foot now. He’s cornered.”
“That only makes him more dangerous.” Florette examined the bundle, flipping the cloth up to reveal a nest of copper thread and metal plating which clearly had yet to be sealed up. “If you get your boss involved, I’d have to explain myself. I’m not sure I could.”
“You were grieving! Deeply in debt! You could tell them the truth, like you did with me.” If only. A frown traced its way across Rebecca’s face. “Killing someone is a big step to take. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
It’s a step I took long ago, Rebecca. That’s the reason I can’t be honest with you—you might blow everything up the second I tell you. Nothing would really be stopping her, at any rate.
“You’re unsure of his guilt? I guess I can understand that. You didn’t see his inner sanctum like I did, all those withered corpses that had been strong and vibrant mere hours ago.” There was certainly more to it than that, not least of which was Rebecca’s in-her-context-sensible desire to involve the Prince of Darkness and his authorities.
And if I really were Srin Sabine and I could withstand Charlotte’s detailed scrutiny, maybe that would even be the right choice. As it was, though, it wasn’t even an option. “Try to listen closely to what he says, then. I’ll see if I can’t make him confess before he dies.”
“It’s not just that.” Rebecca thumped her hand against the bomb, causing Florette to flinch slightly as she made contact. “Crete might have done most of the design work, but I built this one. I had to crunch for weeks getting the size of the blast to condense like Prince Luce wanted. Spiritual energy works on completely different rules, and until five years ago no one was even studying it. It’s... I don’t like the thought of such a beautiful masterwork getting someone killed.”
Then I may have some bad news for you about your profession. Florette held back the glib comment, though. With her body count, she was living in a château made from glass when it came to death. And working for Luce Grimoire meant that none of Rebecca’s bombs had actually been used to kill anyone yet, though adding them to Avalon’s arsenal practically guaranteed their eventual misuse.
“I don’t like the thought of you killing anyone,” Rebecca continued, shedding considerable light on her prior reluctance. “I want to help, but I can’t... I just don’t think...”
“Say no more.” Florette pushed the bomb back towards Rebecca, then jerked her head up towards her lab up in the Tower. “I’ll handle this myself.”
“No.” Rebecca shook her head, then set the bomb down on the grassy ground. “If you think this is the right thing to do, if you think you can pull it off, I trust you.”
And you know just the perfect words to send a dagger of guilt right through my heart. Florette forced a smile, pecked Rebecca with a quick kiss, then grabbed the bomb.