Despite the relatively cold winters that would occasionally wash over Cordelia, snowfall was practically unheard of. More northern regions of Aurora like Greater Luin, New Ontario, and Gordias experienced heavy snow every local winter season, but Camlann lay only a few hundred kilometres north of the equator, making it exceedingly rare. But somehow, big flakes were coming down in droves, and Adea stuck out her tongue to taste one of the cold specks as they slowly drifted to the ground. She ended up getting one in her left eye instead, and had to blink away the uninvited moisture. Tutting under her breath, Adea’s faithful lady’s maid Charlotte Busby walked up and made sure her lady’s makeup was still unblemished.
“Thank you, Charlie,” Adea said with a big smile on her face, “shall we continue on then?”
“If Milady could slow down to at a mere Mach 3, that would be most appreciated. You’re running past shop windows without even giving them a chance, Milady, and that’s no way to get any gifts done.”
“Nonsense, we’re not even at the Saints yet, we’re still in the Lower Strand. I want to get to the good stores before they get too congested by shoppers.”
Without waiting for her maid, Adea turned back around on the crowded piedway, the coattails of her long black woollen frock swishing over her legs in her wake, mahogany long-heeled boots crunching the soft snow underneath. Charlotte managed, not without significant effort, to subdue a groan and followed her lady charge through the throngs of Christmas shoppers in central Cordelia, pulling her own onyx and ruby topcoat tighter around her torso to protect against the chill winds that wafted upriver from the Goneril.
The redhead apparently didn’t pay attention to the cold, continuing her brisk pace down St. Lucy Street, dodging through the dense crowds that filled the piedway. That morning, Charlotte had woken before her alarm at eight, had had a nice breakfast and a big mug of tea, chatted excitedly with her fellow handmaids Yasmine and Clara about the coming holidays, ordered one of those new Beatrice Gault-designed, raven-coloured maid uniforms, along with a Dioscuria crystal neckband on her handcom while waiting for Adea to send for her.
Auroran maid uniforms didn’t look anything like the French-style most non-Aurorans depicted in their mind. The tunic was double layered, with a white inner “shirt” that had a long neck and long sleeves that tapered towards the ends, and an outer “tunica” of varying colour depending on the household, which featured high, slightly puffy shoulders and were decorated with white details around the neck and chest that was to imitate the frills and lace of more traditional maid dresses. Legwear was optionally regular female suit trousers, or skirts of generally medium length. Level of decoration was also widely varying; some households had a very specific uniform code, and maids and servants dressed accordingly, or they were allowed to choose as they wished as long as the overall colour scheme was adhered to. In Ars Gallante House the colour for staff was onyx and red, the rest (apart from the footmen’s livery) was up to the individual.
With Lord Sélincourt gone to Amaranth and Lady Darkmoor off to Lucidia, the vast majority of House Ars Gallante staff had been given paid furlough, with only a skeleton staff of one chef, two kitchen assistants, five maids, a chauffeur, three footmen and a butler to tend to Lady Adea. Now, that was in actuality quite an absurd amount of employees looking after a single teenager in such a huge mansion as Ars Gallante House, but there was a social caveat. Now that Adea was the only senior member of her family left on Aurora (and more importantly in Cordelia), she would have to play the host to the usual get-togethers her parents’ normally would have done. The responsibility of maintaining the Sélincourt-St. Eiron social network fell to their daughter now that they were gone, and the servants were an instrumental part of that. Hosting dinners and cocktail parties were not Adea’s favourite activity, but it came with the territory of being an adult noblewoman.
Anyway, Charlotte had been positivity herself as she brought Lady Adea her breakfast in her huge canopy bed, the girl still groggily coming to, despite it being ten in the morning. The exams period before the holidays had worn her out (or more likely the varsity sports tournaments that fell just after the exams; she’d made fine form during the Great Eight swimming competitions). She would probably have slept through half the day had it not been for Lord Alistair before leaving for Amaranth making it perfectly clear that she needed to maintain something approaching a normal circadian rhythm. Charlotte had placed the tray of scrambled eggs, toast, fried fruit-yam, streaky bacon, and a large cup of black coffee in her charge’s lap, before pulling aside the curtains to let the bright “winter” sun in. Adea had grunted, brushed aside her long red hair that desperate called out for the attention of a brush, sipped some coffee, and mumbled something before turning to Charlotte.
“Charlie,” she’d said, voice sounding like she was rolling rocks in the back of her throat.
“What day is it?”
Charlotte had started to pick up the clothing that Adea had discarded haphazardly on the floor the night before and was mostly just tutting to herself, not really paying much attention.
“Friday, Milady,” she said as she picked up a black Dionysian silk embrassé, shaking her head in exasperation at the notion that someone could feel so inclined as to simply fling such fine garments to the floor.
“No Charlie, I mean, what date is it?” Adea asked before sipping some more of the resuscitating coffee.
“The 23rd of December, Milady,” the maid replied as she put the used clothes in a basket to take them to be cleaned, before entering the huge walk-in closet that adjoined the extravagant bedroom. She had barely started to pick out some appropriate day clothes before she heard a choked cry followed by a stream of coughs from the other room, and she hurried back to find Adea looking at her ‘com with a horrified expression on her face, ice-blue eyes staring in dismay on the small plate of electronics.
“The 23rd?!” she’d managed between fits of coughing, putting her coffee cup back on the tray, and moving the entire thing aside as she veritably vaulted out of bed. “You mean that today’s the last shopping day before Christmas? I thought it was the 20th or something, My God, I can’t be arsing around in bed, I haven’t gotten a single gift yet!”
Adea had stomped around her large bedroom simultaneously looking for the clothes Charlotte had already put away, attempting to jot down notes on her ‘com, while also nibbling on some bacon. The multitasking would have been almost impressive, had it not been so panicked. She stomped a toe against her work desk chair and yowled out in pain, before calming down a bit.
“Charlie, get me the Valerianese coat-suit, and a pair of heavy flats. No, wait, the Bonhomme wool dress, or, ah, no, shit, where am I going to go shopping? I could go to Sanderson, but that’s on Lysander, and they won’t have… There’s the Strand though, that’s a good option. Charlie, the garnet… No, nononono, I need something special for Sandy and Brey. Think girl, think!”
Charlotte barely remembered the next forty-five minutes, but somehow she’d been “volunteered” into assisting Lady Adea’s in her frantic campaign to get presents for her entire circle of friends and family in a single day. She’d landed on going to Quayside and then onto the Saints in the Inner City, the poshest shopping districts in Cordelia, and she’d had to dress the part. Desperately looking for help, Charlotte had popped back into the servants’ common rooms to recruit Yasmine or Violet to help their lady, but they’d absconded once they’d heard from one of the footmen that Adea was running around like a headless chicken before ordering out a skycar. It was all Charlotte could do to put her uniform coat on and hurry back up to her impatient charge. One relatively brief skycar ride through the tightly orchestrated aerial lanes of Cordelia’s airspace later, and that’s how they found themselves hastening down the piedways of St. Lucy Street, bobbing and weaving through throngs of shoppers, lunch-goers, and merry bands of children out from school.
“Oh, Charlie, take a look at this!” Adea cried from somewhere on the other side of a bunch of giggling teenage girls with paper cups of steaming cocoa, and Charlotte had to carefully navigate past them to avoid spilling any on her coat. The Saints was a quaint and old part of the city. The entire district was made in the Neo-Georgian style, which meant cobblestoned piedways, bricked facades, columned terraces and windows, all of which clashed visually with the huge hightowers in other parts of town that stretched into the sky, dominating the horizon. The stores and artisans' workshops in the Saints were (in-)famous for their high prices, though for the high quality of their products as well, and also for their street cafés, antique stores, and old-fashioned craftsman’s shops like tailors and jewellers. It was one of the favourite shopping districts for the upper middle classes and above, both Auroran and foreign, and Charlotte was pretty sure she’d already spotted the Marquess of New Grenadine and the daughters of the Duke of Lance Riding, with their attending servants, plus a bunch of web celebrities and stream notables.
Turning her attention back to her own lady, she found her pointing excitedly at a mannequin in the window of a tailor’s workshop.
“Oh,” she exclaimed excitedly, “don’t you think that silk waistcoat would be perfect for Brey?”
“I’m, humph¸ not sure, Milady,” Charlotte said breathlessly as she caught up to her, “just give me a moment to take a gander at it.” Running on cobblestones with high heel boots was not easy at the best of time, the snow made it harder. The lady’s maid had no idea how Adea hadn’t slipped yet.
“Ah, no time,” Adea impatiently huffed as she suddenly sprinted across the piedway, bounding around a family of five carrying a mindbogglingly large number of bags.
Charlotte rolled her eyes so hard they physically hurt as she darted across the same street to follow her lady charge, apologising to the family Adea had just bolted past. This storefront belonged to an antiques shop which promised genuine articles from pre-interstellar Earth, and Adea popped inside before Charlotte could catch up. Swallowing her frustration, the maid followed.
The interior was a pretty stereotypical set-up for an antique store; the small locale was filled with seemingly old wooden cupboards and shelves filled with what at first glance looked like knick-knacks or minutiae that didn’t seem to have any apparent or intrinsic value apart from being old. Charlotte ran her eyes along some the aisles, but nothing really impressed her. There were old book covers filling a few of the shelves, but she recognised most of the titles from e-library services and regular book stores, and they still had Christmas tree ornaments today as well, even though some of those on display were a bit cruder in make and had seen a few centuries. She picked up a porcelain plate decorated with blue art and considered it dismissively, more for the show of partaking in the act of shopping than out of any real interest. Adea had stopped by a shelf of hardcover folders, and was carefully shifting through a few of them, picking out the ones which had some sort of engraving on them.
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“Don’t you think,” she said while turning over her shoulder to look at Charlotte, “that one of these sheet music folders would be a nice gift for him?”
Charlotte blinked in confusion a couple of times.
“Him? I’m not sure who you’re referring to, Milady. If it’s your brother, I fail to see…”
She shut her mouth with a click as something in her brain clicked as well, and she had to concentrate hard to suppress the smirk which threatened to bubble to the surface of her face.
“Oh, apologies Milady, I think he would be thrilled to get a music folder specifically picked by you, especially an antique one. As I understand it from what you’ve told me, he is a bit of a history aficionado, so a trink- I mean a carefully selected gift from pre-interstellar Earth would be just the thing.”
Charlotte couldn’t help her voice taking on a gloating tone, and watching Adea’s cheeks turn pink made her feel all fuzzy inside.
“I think you might be right,” the young noblewoman said at length, picking out a tome with ivy-like golden embroidery along the spine, and on the front “Royal College of Music, 2064” was written in golden letters. She absentmindedly ran a gloved finger over the letters, before dashing with her previous energy to the register. The register was actually manned by the owner and not a drone, a rarity in the 29th century, but again, Charlotte mused slightly cynically, that was part of creating the charm of an antiques shop; it had to really feel like stepping into a bubble where time was indeterminate. The clerk bowed politely to Adea as she paid with her ‘com, and wrapped it in a sheet of red-and-white plastafilm for her. Adea accepted it gingerly, and clutching it to her chest she bounded back to where Charlotte stood by the exit.
“You know,” she said with a full-toothed smile that Charlotte rarely saw on the nineteen year-old, “2064 CE was the year the first orbital elevator was officially opened on Earth, the first real permanent step for humanity as a true space faring race. I just hope he remembers that and appreciates it just a bit more for that.”
“A lucky find then, Milady,” Charlotte said, holding the door open for Adea and they stepped back out into the snowy street, “and a thoughtful gift. I had no idea you were at the stage that you’d be exchanging gifts, you’ve told me you’d met the gentleman only a couple of times outside the classroom. And you’ve certainly never brought him to Ars Gallante.”
Adea blushed again, though it would have been easy for her to blame the cold weather if someone had made a point of her pink cheeks. She stopped in her tracks and as Charlotte caught up, she snaked a hand into the crook of Charlotte’s arm, a gesture that was extremely at odds with the professional relationship between the two, but very natural considering that Charlotte was the closest thing Adea had to a big sister; there was only a five year gap between them.
“Ah, do you think,” she asked quietly, her cheeks still reddening, “that I’m presuming too much? That I’m taking things a bit too far?”
Charlotte shook her head, smiling.
“Any man would be ecstatic receiving a Christmas present from you, Milady. I would maybe suggest that it is quite bold, and perhaps not quite the done thing in your social strata, but as I understand it, this gentleman is a commoner like me, so then it would be no harm in it. Had you given one to young Lord Howeland unannounced however… I can only imagine the web rumour sites having a field day if that became public.”
The redhead half-laughed, half-snorted, her breath misting in the Cordelia winter air.
“Fat chance of that, Horace is in an awkward three-way with Lady Wraith and Lady Nimue, and he’s way too… Howeland for my taste anyway, too prim and proper. Goes with the territory I suppose, doesn’t help that they’re related to the Sutherlands. I heard both he and Evelyn Delafontaine have recovered well from their ordeal at Goldbrook Commons.”
“What an absolute tragedy,” Charlotte said wistfully, genuine sorrow tingeing her tone, the Galactic relative six weeks that had passed had done little to improve mood of the capital’s population. There was still a huge vigil kept by the large Parliament Palace stairs with tens of thousands of flower bouquets and memorial lanterns, and hundreds more added daily. The political fallout had been quick and ruthless. The Home Secretary, Sir Thomas Tedenby, had sacked over half of the Royal Cordelia Metropolitan Police upper leadership, and cross-aisle Parliamentary inquiries had convened to scrutinise the conduct of both the police and the Royal Army units involved. A lieutenant in the Royal Army Provost Corps’ 30th Field Battalion had committed suicide. The Royalist and Social Liberal popular opinion in the polls had nosedived, and the Royal Navy was under immense pressure in the systems bordering the ISA. The Holiday Season on Aurora was undeniably coloured by what had happened, both in Cordelia and in the Lorelei Region. There were noticeably more uniformed troops walking the streets these days, the soldiers opting to wear their Day Dress uniforms instead of civilian clothes even when not on duty, and the usual Christmas festive cheer was more muted; there were less frivolous parties, and many more sermons and prayer sessions in the capital’s churches, mosques, shrines, and temples.
“Apropos nothing, Milady,” Charlotte said, desperate to not delve into a conversation about that horrid subject, “are you hosting a Christmas Day dinner or party? If so, I know that the chef and the rest of the staff will be more than happy to help out if you want to arrange something?”
That had obviously been the wrong thing to ask, as the teenager’s smile disappeared and was replaced with a stiff mask of civility that Charlotte saw through at once.
“Alas, no, Charlie. I’m giving every one of the staff the next few days off, I’ve been invited to celebrate Christmas Eve and Day, plus Boxing Day with the Barhams out in New Devon, so I’ll just take a shuttle over to the country manor tomorrow morning I think.”
Poor lass, Charlotte thought, feeling a pang of regret and sympathy for her young charge, both her parents are away for the Holidays, and most of her friends are celebrating with their own families. No one deserves to be alone on Christmas.
It wasn’t as if Charlotte didn’t have a family of her own to celebrate the Holidays with, but she felt a deep sense of responsibility for Adea, both as her lady’s maid but also as her friend. But she was her employer, and if she wanted to go away for the duration and give the staff furlough, that was her decision, no matter Charlotte’s opinion on the subject.
“Oh, look at that!” the young lady suddenly shouted out and pointed in the direction of a chocolate patisserie shop. “I bet they’ll have something that Sandy would like in there! Come along, Charlie, let’s check it out. Oh, and there’s a book store on the first floor, there might be some classics there that Aubrey might enjoy!”
Unable to stop it from bursting forth this time, Charlotte Busby audibly groaned as she was dragged by Lady Adea across the piedway into yet another store.
----------------------------------------
“Someone’s ready for Christmas,” Arvind said with a sly smile on his face and sipped his cognac-fortified glühwein, before popping another kaneelknäcker into his mouth.
“Hey, what can I say, I’ve always been a fan of the Festive Season,” David Lee replied with a shrug, “and I just felt like showing it off a bit more this year. You know, if I can spread some more holiday cheer in these depressive times, then so much the better.”
“You look like the next best thing to a walking, talking, drinking Tannenbaum,” Peter Townshend commented with a laugh after a sip of his own drink.
David shook his head, grinning widely, his snow-crystal ear rings in silver dashing back and forth on their chains, his usually cobalt-dyed hair now coloured in shades of red, green, and white. The trio laughed at his silly getup, sitting as they were at a street-level café in upper St. Lucy. A bit pricier than the usual joints they frequented in Albany Square and Pendragon, but Peter had received a much larger than usual Holiday allowance from his parents after his mother sold a manor to some esquire or another at a huge premium, and he’d insisted on treating his friends.
“I don’t celebrate Christmas, as you know,” Arvind said, solemnly sitting up in his chair and buttoning his winter coat, “but damn me if you Christians don’t know how to invent a good-ass celebratory period. Remind me to host Diwali for you all next year.”
He lifted his cups in a toast, and to the shout of sláinte the trio emptied their drinks. David, grinning from ear to ear, hailed down a waiter-drone and ordered three more, as Arvind suddenly recognised a face in the large mass of people that crowded the piedway.
“Shoulders back lads,” he said in a tone that was simultaneously both serious and slightly flippant, “lady coming through at five o’clock.”
“What, where?” David started as he sat up in his chair, the swishing of his head not helping with the erratic movement of his ear rings. “Is she coming this way? Is she pretty? Do I look okay?”
He managed to look in the direction that Arvind had mentioned and caught sight of a tall red-haired girl dressed in a long black frock walking briskly in their general direction, a shorter blonde woman in a ruby and onyx coat trying her best to follow up, though laden with several bulging paper bags. David and Peter did as Arvind instructed and sat up straighter in their chairs, trying their best not to look like complete loungers, expecting the obviously well-off lady (noble or gentry, it was impossible to tell) to simply huff on past at her rapid gait. Instead, the two saw Arvind’s eyes widen as an obvious pang of recognition washed over him. And the feeling was somehow reciprocated. The tall girl, long red hair tied in a ponytail with a black ribbon, stopped just by their table, only a two-foot tall rope-fence separating them.
“Say,” she said, her accent dripping with the vowel-heavy drawl of the Auroran upper classes –quite different to the Cymran, Angevin, and Nova Caledonian aristocratic speech–, “don’t I know you from somewhere?”
Arvind had to swallow twice before he managed to produce an answer, feeling her piercing ice-blue eyes boring into his own dark brown ones. Not in animosity but coming from a genuine place of curiosity, but the intense sensation was there regardless.
“I- as in, I think, we haven’t met, Lady Sélincourt…” Her eyes narrowed a bit at the mention of her title and Arvind’s shoulders almost visibly hiked up. “If you’ll pardon Milady, it’s just that you’re quite famous around the QMMU campus, and I’ve seen you compete in the past swimming and fencing varsity tournaments, and you’re a pretty well-known figure, if you don’t mind me saying…”
He was perfectly aware he was rambling at this point, he knew it, David and Peter knew it, and it was becoming increasingly clear on Lady Sélincourt’s face that she knew it as well.
“And, if you don’t mind me saying Milady, we have a mutual friend in Edward Heatherland.”
That last mention thawed Adea’s progressively stiffening face-mask, and the other shoe dropped in her mind.
“Oh right!” she exclaimed, clapping her gloved hands together. “You were the one stuck with the rotten and temperamental fortepiano during the Mitradate re di Ponto rendition at this past Year End Performance! I remember now, I kept feeling so bad for you to be stuck with such a grouchy instrument. My apologies, Mr…?”
“Ah-Arvind, Milady,” he managed, after choking back the grin bubbling in his chest that would have threatened to take over his whole face, “Arvind Dahon is my name. I’m a third-year classical piano student at Countess Montroy’s Conservatoire alongside Edward. If you’ll allow me, these are our roommates, David Lee of Compiegne Hall as a French Major, and Peter Townshend of Lavatte Hall, specialised-course architect.”
The other two males, when introduced, rose from their chairs and bowed politely, to which Adea reciprocated with a polite nod. The maid behind didn’t deign to even politely move her body, laden as she was with bags, and her whole aura screamed she wanted to go home. Not that any of the lads cared.
“So you all share apartment with Edward then?” Adea said after the brief formalities ended, her eyes in Arvind’s mind practically shining with a very particular icy glint.
“Would you mind bringing this…” She half-way handed over a plastafilm-wrapped something to Arvind but seemed to catch herself in the act.
“I mean, if it’s not too much of a bother, sirs, could you avoid telling him from where this came from. I would really appreciate it if you gentlemen would keep this as a secret, but hand it over regardless.”
Arvind accepted the thin, wrapped gift gingerly with both hands, afraid it was something frail that might snap if handled too roughly, but assured when he felt the weight of it in his own hands. Then his smile sobered.
“I’m sorry, Milady, but I have some bad news for you.” Hadn’t Arvind known any better, he might have determined that the already slightly wistful expression on Lady Adea’s face might have fallen further, but that was nonsense in the context of this conversation.
“But Edward has gone back to Amaranth to celebrate the Holidays with his family there. But have no fear, I will deliver this gift to him as soon as practicable. Oh, ah, Merry Christmas to you as well My La- ah she’s gone.”