When Ari arrived at La Petite Mort with news that she’d gained them support for their mage menu certification to be upgraded to silver, Rose was the one who came to greet her, wheeling down the slope with a tray of gingerbreads. Though heavy on the saffron and honey, they were instantly recognisable by smell, but didn’t lie in their usual man-shapes. Instead, they’d been cut into squares, each topped with a clove.
‘I’m afraid Madame Lucretia and Bleuet are away, discussing important matters with the captain of Sabline II, but I will pass on the news, my lady! You have still come at a good time. These have just come out of the oven. I think they’re good for wind mages. They’re spiced with ginger, cinnamon and saffron. Mmm… They definitely make me feel even readier for the Midwinter Festival!’
What if the cloves were dried daphne berries in disguise? A name that wouldn’t be out of place among Rose and Bleuet; a poison that couldn’t be destroyed by the heat of the oven. Thos’s grey, cracked lips: a different poison; an inevitable end of a human life. What of Children? Did Children also meet mortal endings?
Before she could turn down the gingerbread, Natty spun to the front with a hop and a grin and popped one in her mouth. ‘Mmm. These are divine, and deserve their own rhyme.
‘Ginger, ginger, in my bread,
Ate it and I’m still not dead;
When anointed with this cinnamon,
Who wouldn’t admire your brick oven?’
One of Claribel’s old comments played on her mind. Had Natty always been so fond of rhyming? Granted, she’d always been an inhaler of books and enjoyed her etymology, but this? This wasn’t Natty. But then again, Natty was a White, valued for their infiltration skills. Of course she’d play Fabia to perfection.
‘That’s… very kind, Mistress… Fabia?’ said Rose.
‘At your service. Shall I sing you a second verse, or shall we find a seat where we can eat a second gingerbread? I am still trying to think of a good play-on-words for La Petite Mort – death or a good time – that kind of thing.’
Rose’s blank stare met Natty’s playful wink. Claribel had drawn a blank too when she’d asked about a deeper meaning to the name of the brothel-turned-tavern, but if Natty knew an answer, then was it trivia from her world?
If she had any doubt about staying or simply leaving Rose with a message to pass on, she pressed them aside to grasp onto the latest lead that might lead to her world, because… because her mission was to find Miri, above all else?
Because an opportunity to talk to Rose, who’d once come from the tanner’s quarters, who might have come across Tamaren, wasn’t enough to sway her? Because did Tamaren really feature in the boundaries that she was clutching on to define her story, her being?
‘If I may, I’d be partial to waiting for Madame Lucretia while tasting one of those gingerbreads too.’
~Don’t say ‘if I may’ again. There is no one present you need ask permission from.~
~But you must not make me sound like a timid attendant.~ Claribel tore her gaze from the distance – a look that Ari hoped didn’t reach as far as another world, another time, into another part of her own past – and stared straight into Ari’s eyes. ~You shouldn’t sound like you need permission to sit in one of those empty seats.~ True enough. The place was half empty at this time of day. ~This is how you speak.~
‘I’d like to sit in the same room as last time. It had a nice view of the pond.’ True too. And a nice view of the suspicious building at the back. ‘It had goldfish in it from a prince of Jumont, did it not? They are fascinating to watch.’
‘If you like goldfish, would you like to feed them, my lady?’ Rose beamed up at her, then gasped in horror. ‘I… I don’t mean to say someone of your station should learn how to feed fish or have to touch such vile-smelling… vile-smelling…’
‘I’d love to,’ said Ari before the poor attendant could sink down any further into her chair.
Her smile bloomed again.
As Rose waved them past the mask-lined walls, up the ramp that led to the bead-curtained room, Ari sharpened the questions that she must ask, until they felt as pointed as the head of Rose’s lance.
*
The same view; a different day. Was that why the words ‘déjà vu’ refused to leave her mind? There she sat, waiting for Rose to return. Natty took up the spot where Hesperus had once frowned, wearing his crown of mistletoe.
The squat brick building lurked behind the line of yew trees, as it had done before, feeling inexplicably important.
~It’s a weapon storage room.~
~No. I remember someone telling me so, but I can’t quite remember who it was.~
Another question with no answers to throw into the pile, landing, thud, among the others, stacking up like the people she’d turned into bodies.
Speaking of which, there was one she could drag out for a spot of resuscitation.
‘What does La Petite Mort mean?’ she asked Natty.
‘To me?’ Natty looked up from her third gingerbread. ‘Come on. Are you seriously asking?’
‘Very seriously.’
‘Let’s just say it’s a moment that Master Keating has never been able to grant his wife, but that carpenter probably has, on the regular. Shame I can’t look it up, but I’m pretty sure it’s meant that for two hundred years now, which means it probably doesn’t here yet, so to that Rose girl, it seemed to mean nothing more than a near-death situation.’
That would make a fitting name for an ex-brothel that could now threaten death to anyone who didn’t pay back their loans.
They rose to their feet upon the sound of Rose’s wheels outside, and joined her at the edge of the pond. The goldfish drifted across each other, dappled in sunlight. Ari counted one, two… and three more from behind the foot of a statue that looked oddly like the Statue of Liberty, still bronze.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
‘Is that one of the Children?’ she asked Rose.
‘Hmm? I’m not sure. It must be Levia, Child of the Sun, I suppose, considering the sun behind her head. Bleuet pooled our donations to commission it for Madame Lucretia’s Midwinter present last year. We weren’t sure about the design, but Bleuet’s been the closest to Madame Lucretia for a while now, and she was right! Madame Lucretia laughed when she got it, and asked us to put it on a little island in our pond.
‘Here,’ Rose proffered her a small bag of dried shrimp, crinkling her nose at the stench. ‘Try throwing it at them. They’ll come up quickish!’
The goldfish gulped at the shrimp with an urgency that Ari felt inside her own head, but her sluggish thoughts refused to keep up. She took a handful of the feed and tossed it towards the statue, watching the fish snap at fake Liberty’s feet. Closest to Madame Lucretia for a while now.
‘How long?’ she asked, with too much urgency.
‘Huh? The feed the fish? Until the bag runs out, my lady. They will keep eating if you keep feeding them. Bleuet says we keep them in ponds because they are colourful, and we think they won’t survive in the wild because they are pretty, but in truth, they are hardier than most of the grey-scaled fishes in our rivers, and they can grow as big as a salmon. If they are to be released among other fishes, away from the confines of this pond, we’d see the truth: that they aren’t here for their protection, but everything else’s.’
~If you want to know how long La Petite Mort has been a tavern, then I can tell you. They remodelled the place about a year ago, but it has been becoming a different sort of business since the end of the Battle of Eirene, so that’d be around three years.~
But that was only half her question. How long had Bleuet been the closest to Madame Lucretia? Was there a way to ask that without sounding like a prying mad woman?
‘Here, Ennie! Here, Hawkins! Goodness! Leave some for Vickers, Sten and Bren!’
‘Wait…’ Was she imagining it? Ennie, for the Lee-Enfield; Hawkins for the anti-tank grenade; Sten for the submachine gun; Bren was an LMG and the infantry’s friend, while Vickers could take down planes. She’d nicknamed Claribel’s guards two of the very same. There was one common thread among them: they were weapons that the British Army used in WWII. ‘Who named them…?’
‘Bleuet, of course! She said they deserve strong-sounding names, for goldfish are stronger than they look.’
The answer had been right in front of her all along. Bleuet. Bleuet? Did that mean something in French, like La Petite Mort?
‘The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month,’ whispered Natty. ‘The bleuet de France is a cornflower. It’s their version of the remembrance poppy.’
‘Did you say poppy? They aren’t in bloom at the moment, of course, but we plant more every year around our pond. Bleuet is very fond of them. She also says the goldfish from the prince are closer to a poppy-red than gold.’
The picture that Rose painted made no sense. Who was this pointing at? One of Miri’s schoolgirl friends with a WWII obsession? No obsession could make a girl adopt the discipline to mould a group of brothel-workers into a private army. One of the nameless grunts she’d sent to the grave, like Percy? She couldn’t remember taking aim at someone old enough to be a war vet from back then, but then again, she’d hardly ask an enemy grunt to hold up their ID and tell them, ‘You’re too old to shoot. Just wait it out, grandma. You don’t need me to get you. Time would do it soon enough.’
~Who’s Great Gran Mildred?~
A name from that unknown vision. A memory of a past that never was. A memory that showed both her and Natty sat around a table with Miri. If her and Natty had come from no one, then the great grandmother must have been Miri’s.
Wouldn’t that make her the great grandmother whom Natty had described as a war hero, the one who’d passed away two years ago? Two years ago. Did it mean something when two timelines lined up? Just because you had two dots didn’t mean they had to connect. But it did for the six months of Agent Temple’s entry into this world and the six months since Lord Selvan and Lady Mona’s disappearance, didn’t it? This time, two years called for the time when Miri had sent the girls into this world permanently, claiming that they were running out of time. That was when her great grandmother’s time ran out.
Her previously crafted questions to Rose felt more overwhelming now, but she had to know. ‘So… you came from the tanner’s quarters?’
‘Mmm, have you ever visited, my lady? Not that there’s much to see. And the smell… No one likes the smell. That’s why we’re so far out of the city.’
‘I haven’t, but I should. Speaking of Midwinter gifts, there must be wishes to grant among the tanners’ children.’
‘Oh, we’d love it! Winter does tend to curb the smell too, just a little.’
‘And…’ Ari tossed in the last of the dried shrimp. There was no natural way to segue into the questions she had to ask. She’d rather spend the day asking about the children and what presents they’d like, but there was a sinking feeling in her heart and another set of murders to solve. ‘…were you there on the day that Hesperus defended the tanner’s quarters? That must have been terrifying.’
‘It was… It really was. We thought we were all going to die, but we weren’t going to give up… give up the fight! Yes. The fight!’ Rose threw in a nervous laugh, enough to make it clear that it wasn’t the fight that they didn’t want to give up. So chances were, Tamaren hadn’t just been passing through; the tanners had been hiding her.
‘Did you start working at La Petite Mort after the Battle then?’
‘I…’ If she’d been nervous before, now Rose was on full lip-chew mode. She crumpled the empty bag of fish feed and smoothed it out again.
Ari left it a moment too long, and said, ‘Sorry, it was rude of me to ask.’
‘Oh no, no, it’s just… Tanning’s hard work, my lady. I was born with bad legs. It’s not like I can help drag the hides out of the pits. I did help with the scraping – always good with a knife – though look at the hands that left me.’ Her callused hands looked just like Ari’s real hands that she’d left behind in the other world. ‘My Pa and my cousins looked after me, but they… After the Battle… Anyway, it was about my turn to do the looking after, and I knead a mean dough, but my legs were only good at getting nos. Madame Lucretia found me outside and took me in, said she’d love to have me here. She built me this chair, taught me how to speak proper and how to use a lance. I owe my life to her and to Hesperus of the blue flames. Really, I do.’
No more. No more stories to make her think of either as good people. Her missions were always simple at their core. All she had to worry about was the execution.
‘And Hesperus? You mentioned you’d seen him visit before?’ she asked as they made their way back to the beaded curtains. Ari made the most of the weight of Claribel’s gown, pretending that it slowed down her steps, enough to study the walls, the trees and their shadows.
‘Twice, but there just wasn’t a good time to disturb him, you know? So thank you for letting me thank him yesterday, my lady! When he came with Tristram, may the Fated One savour him, I tried to greet them after delivering their orders to their table, but Tristram gave me such a frightful glare that I nearly dropped his drink. By the time I went around again, only Tristram was left at the table. I said, “Can I help you, my lord?”, and he just laughed at me and said, “What do you know about the North Sea Scrolls?” Not that I’d speak ill of the dead, my lady, but at the time, I was a little disappointed in the company that Hesperus kept, and may have said, “I know they’re made from parchment, my lord.” Sadly, Hesperus’s second companion wasn’t much better. He didn’t look like a kind man, and lived up to his looks. Who knew you could be so rude in so few words.’
Ari was parsing through Rose’s words, and nearly followed up with a question about the North Sea Scrolls, or worse, ask Rose to confirm whether the rooms that mirrored where she sat on the other side of the pond was where the attendants slept, when she realised there was too much to parse. Yes, people liked to talk about themselves, but the volume of details that Rose wove together, unprompted, felt unnatural. Rose smiled back at her, almost expectant, ready to regurgitate rehearsed lines that’d make Ari walk a predetermined path. She looked down at the three leftover gingerbread squares and shook her head. There was nothing in the smile but sunshine. It was only the stories taking shape in her head casting shadows over her thoughts.
Still, she said, ‘I’m afraid I must be rude now and take my leave. I just remembered that there are Midwinter letters from children I must reply to, and they have been languishing in my study. Please tell Madame Lucretia that I will call again in the afternoon on the morrow.’
‘Of course, my lady! I will bake a fresh tray of gingerbread just for you.’
The smile that she returned to Rose held no sunshine at all, because of course she wouldn’t be there, but the message would go to Madame Lucretia, and make them believe that they still had time to prepare a trap for her, until tomorrow.