Lucky Rabbit

Pandy stared at the woman Augustus was holding in place on her doorstep. This was Empress Glory? Admittedly, the woman hadn’t been in good shape after being held by probably-Shadow-Exchange-minions in an abandoned warehouse for an unspecified period of time, but Pandy was certain she hadn’t had long, fire-red hair and eyelashes that would make a llama envious.

“Um, come in,” she said, stepping back and to the side. As she did, she caught sight of Nox, still in his guise of butler, with an expression so devoid of emotion that it could only be interpreted as Disapproving. “If that’s… okay?”

A flicker of startlement passed over the elemental’s face, but he said nothing as Augustus hustled Empress Glory through the door, kicking it closed behind him with unusual haste. For her part, Glory seemed to be realising she no longer hurt, and twisted sharply down and under, attempting to break the chancellor’s hold. She failed, but in the process part of her wig pulled loose, sliding down over one ear and revealing slicked-back brown hair on the other side.

“Lemme go,” she growled fiercely, baring her teeth at Augustus, then Pandy. For some reason, she skimmed over Nox at first, but then her eyes slid back to him, widening beneath what Pandy now saw were false lashes of some kind.

“I will if you’ll stop trying to run,” Augustus growled back. He, too, looked better than he had, which was reasonable, because he had to have been running on his last dregs of energy. As far as Pandy could tell, fifty health was a lot for a living person to lose. They’d have to have a chat about him taking better care of himself, because she would definitely be Very Unhappy if he died, and he should really care about her feelings more if they were dat- Yes, chat. Later.

Notifications about Corruption Points were still trickling across Pandy’s field of vision, but she ignored them as she trailed along after Nyssa. The elemental servant looked as pleased to have these two bedraggled visitors turn up on their doorstep as she had the elegant queen. Pandy was beginning to wonder if Nyssa was perhaps… not the sharpest knife in the drawer, or if her simplistic way of viewing the world should tell Pandy something else about her. Was it possible that Nyssa was younger than Nox? Maybe by quite a bit? Was that enough to make the difference, in and of itself?

At the entrance to the sitting room, Nyssa stopped, gesturing for the humans to go ahead. Then she froze, and for the briefest moment, her eyes went entirely black before returning to their ‘normal’ dark iris and pale sclera. Turning to Pandy, she said, “I’m sorry, my lady, I have nothing to offer your guests. I… I don’t know what-”

Pandy smiled at her as gently as she could. “It’s all right. I don’t think they’re here for tea and cookies anyway.”

Empress Glory’s stomach chose that moment to give a rumbling growl, but Nyssa didn’t seem to notice, just smiling gratefully at Pandy. “Is there anything else you need then, m’lady?”

Shaking her head, Pandy crossed into the room and took hold of the doorknob. Not that closing the door would keep out either of the Dark elementals, but it might at least slow down Empress Glory if the woman decided to make a break for it, and keep their words from drifting to wherever Isidor and Eleanor were hiding. “Thank you, Nyssa. I’ll call for you if we think of something.”

Nyssa gave a curtsey, her skirt almost hanging like actual fabric, and her slightly hazy lower appendages barely hovering above the floor at all. Pandy closed the door, gesturing for Augustus and the Empress to take a seat. They did so, with the chancellor even releasing Glory, though he watched her with narrowed gray eyes that said it would be best for all of them if she made no attempt to flee.

Pandy sat on a relatively lump-free ottoman, entirely ignoring the remaining empty chairs. She had no interest in taking a spring to the kidney. With a meaningful look at Augustus, she said, “I have twenty-three minutes. What do you need?”

Augustus’s brows went up, and he grimaced. Apparently he either hadn’t thought about the fact that Pandy still very much had a time limit, or else he’d assumed she’d still have more of it left. If he didn’t want her to transform in front of Empress Glory, he needed to make this fast.

“No more than twenty minutes, I promise,” he said before nodding to Empress Glory. “Eurydice, I’d like to introduce you to Lady Gloria, who happens to be a second cousin of Prince Kaden and Princess Eleanor, though she’s currently working under the stage name of Empress Glory. She also happens to owe me her life, because I just saved her from being filleted while attempting to infiltrate the Shadow Exchange.”

While Pandy’s brain locked up, Empress Glory glared at Augustus as if he’d just vomited a hairball into her favorite shoes. He gave her a bland smile as he continued, “Gloria, this is Eurydice Haupe, the new Lady Avington. She will be Princess Eleanor’s guardian for the next few weeks or months. The princess is in need of a live-in tutor, and you will be filling that position.”

Pandy and Glory yelped protest at the same time, gave each other thoughtful looks, then turned matching glares on the chancellor. “I don’t have anywhere to put a live-in tutor,” Pandy said. “I thought the tutor would, um, come over in the morning before I went to work, and leave when I got home. Like a babysitter. Or something.”

And though Pandy would never say so, Empress Glory – with her red wig and full face of garish, albeit smeared, makeup – wasn’t what Pandy had been expecting when Queen Louisa said she’d find a tutor for her daughter. Honestly, Pandy had assumed it would be someone like Lady Frances, Augustus’s formidable great aunt.

“Everything would have been fine if you hadn’t decided to stick your oversized nose into my business. And I have other things to be doing,” Glory added, glossy red lips pressing together. “I can’t be here, teaching a princess things I’ve spent the last decade trying to forget.”

Now that was both rude and interesting, so Pandy waited, hoping the Empress would elaborate, but Augustus raised a brow at her and said, “If you don’t, I’ll be forced to let your family know you refused.”

That made Glory slump in her seat, clearly defeated. She crossed her arms, glaring at Augustus. “You still have to tell me what’s happening in your investigation, and I can help.”

“It’s the Knights’ investigation, not mine,” Augustus said, but it was obvious even he didn’t expect his listeners to believe him. With a sigh, he looked between the two of them. “And yes, you can help. Both of you can help, but,” his jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth, “it would be entirely voluntary, and dangerous.”

Leaning back, he rubbed his face tiredly, reminding Pandy he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He took them off so often, she really was beginning to wonder if he actually even needed them, or if they were just part of his persona as Chancellor Blackwood. 

“We have discovered that there are two groups attempting to bring down the current royal family,” he told them, lowering his voice so both women had to lean forward to hear him. “Both have hired the Shadow Exchange, and both wish to end Queen Louisa’s regency, but otherwise they have little in common. The second is almost certainly aware of the first, and has been using its activities to cover its own, though we’re not at all certain the reverse is true.”

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a book, almost too large for the size of the cache Pandy knew was stashed in the wall of his rooms. Opening it, he pointed to what looked like a finely detailed family tree. “If the parentage of Kaden and Eleanor were called into doubt, it would begin a series of tests and trials that would likely end with King Oliver’s brother’s son becoming king.”

Glory sat up sharply. “That would only happen if-”

Augustus gave her a Look, and she clapped her hands over her mouth. Pandy very much wished Glory had finished that sentence, because to her, the obvious conclusion was that Kaden and Eleanor weren’t King Fergus’s children, but Louisa didn’t strike Pandy as a cheater, and Augustus wasn’t acting like he thought his friend had been cheated on. So what did that leave?

“What?” Pandy burst out, tired of the way people in this world assumed she understood their implications. Or maybe they didn’t expect her to, and she just wasn’t meant to know? Though she didn’t think Augustus would do that to her, given everything else he’d told her that he wasn’t supposed to.

He sighed, glanced at Empress Glory, and said, “Someone failed to notify the Registry.”

Pandy looked between the two of them, utterly baffled. “What registry?”

“The Registry,” Glory said, equally baffled by Pandy’s failure to comprehend. “Look, things happen. All the time. Someone is unable to have children, someone else has children with someone they shouldn’t, but any noble child’s true parentage has to be reported to the Registry.”

Augustus nodded. “Failing to do so is punishable by having the child – and possibly the parents – declared ineligible to inherit. It’s not fair to the children, but it was the only consequence that forced people to obey the law.”

Pandy blinked. “So the problem isn’t that Kaden and Eleanor might not be King Fergus’s kids, but that Fergus and Louisa didn’t tell anyone?”

“Not just anyone,” Glory said impatiently. “The Registry. Very few people, including the king or queen, even have access to the Registry, but in order for people with noble blood to marry, one of those people has to check to make sure that they aren’t too closely related to do so.”

“That’s… weird,” Pandy said, but was it? And even if it was, was it really any odder than some of the laws in her world? It seemed a bit draconian, but with entire estates at stake and no genetic testing available, they had to do something to make sure people’s dirty laundry didn’t result in the Habsburg chin. Throw in magic and the importance of having certain elemental affinities, and there was no doubt things could get a little hinky.

“In any case,” Augustus said, bringing them back to the matter at hand, “one of the groups we’re dealing with is trying to force Eleanor to reveal that she doesn’t have Air magic, preferably in some very public way. I think that was what Ms. Wellington was supposed to do… convince Eleanor to voluntarily reveal her magic at some large event. Since the Registry shows that both Louisa and Fergus’ families have been entirely Air mages for two generations, and there’s no way to show where the, ah, ‘error’ was introduced, Louisa, Fergus, and their children would be disinherited.”

“So one group supports Duke Benedict as king?” Glory demanded, face twisting with clear distaste, edging into bitterness. That complex emotion shifted to confusion as she said, “But why would they be kidnapping or infecting people in order to achieve that?”

The chancellor shook his head. “We don’t think they are, or not exactly. Some of the deaths we’ve been able to link to this have been people who would have been on the side of Fergus and Louisa, for one reason or another. For example, one was a popular and outspoken advocate of the idea that the law should be changed so the children aren’t punished for their predecessor’s misdeeds. But then there’s the long-term effects of the illness, specifically on Dark mages.”

Turning to Pandy, he said, “Does Gloria have an aura?” Pandy nodded, and he went on, ignoring Glory’s raised brows. “So, the second group is using the activities of the first to hide a far more insidious goal. We’re not even entirely certain yet what that goal is, but it seems clear that it involves strengthening, or perhaps contracting, certain Dark elementals.”

Demons, he meant. Dark mages who had been infected by the magical or manufactured illness spread by the bite of Duskin-possessed spiders developed what Pandy’s System interpreted as a Dark Aura. She had no idea why, but for Pandy, at least, it resulted in the flow of Corruption Points she was currently gaining just from being near Empress Glory. If that held true for other Demons, they probably also gained some kind of power from being around previously-infected mages – though presumably in a less gamified way.

Glory looked back and forth between the two of them. “I don’t understand half of what you said, but this second group, and whatever they’re trying to do, was behind my kidnapping?”

Augustus nodded. “We think they were after your… friend, Anthony. They probably didn’t realize you’re a Dark mage as well.”

Paling beneath her bright makeup, Glory half-stood, then sank back into her seat. “I heard the Knights talking. After we were rescued. They thought we were all asleep, but I felt fine. Better than fine. So I was awake, and they said… we were all just a way to get to other, more important people. They asked us all if we knew any nobles, worked with any nobles, had family who would be around nobility, and I realized whoever did this had to be after Tony. He’s the only… And I’m not… not important. Not anymore. But how did you know-?”

“That you’re a Dark mage? I know a great deal about you, actually. But right now, what matters is that you have an aura Dark mages produce after being infected with this illness,” Augustus said.

Pandy frowned. “But she didn’t. When we-” first met her, but how would Pandy know that? Eurydice certainly wasn’t there, in that dark warehouse hidden in an abandoned port, swarming with spiders. “She does now, but she didn’t.”

Augustus leaned back, eyes narrowing. “So it’s not immediate. It’s not infection that causes it.”

“Recovery?” Pandy asked. How was she supposed to talk about this without revealing she was the rabbit who’d helped them escape?

“Maybe,” Augustus said. He drummed his fingers on his thigh, a habit Pandy had noticed he had when he was thinking about something particularly complex. Then, standing abruptly, he turned to the door. “My time is up. I promise, I’ll let you both know as soon as we figure out who these second, more elusive enemies are. And Glory, your talent for disguise may well come in handy.”

Empress Glory stood as well, seeming to be taken off guard by the off-hand compliment. “Then you just want me to… stay here? But what about my things? My room?”

“We’ll take care of it,” Augustus said. “It may take a few days before we can get your belongings to you, but we will.” Turning to Pandy, he added, “In the meantime, I’ll make sure some local people discover Avington House has a new owner who will be needing supplies. I’m sure you’ll start having visitors soon. Gloria can help you figure out who’s making an honest offer, and who’s attempting to take advantage of your inexperience.”

Empress Glory smirked. “That I can do. Though I’ll expect-”

“Do a good job, and your efforts will be rewarded,” Augustus said dryly. He crossed to the door and set his hand on the knob, then hesitated, meeting Pandy’s gaze. “And, ah, my aunts may have gotten… a certain idea about our relationship, Eurydice. I expect they’ll also be visiting. Soon.”

Pandy felt her cheeks start to burn. “Oh. You meant… You really… How soon?” Her voice went up noticeably at the end, and Empress Glory turned to look at her, a speculative gleam in her dark eyes.

Augustus looked almost as uncomfortable as she felt, but there was also a sort of satisfaction in his voice as he said, “Tomorrow.”