Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Four - La Vogue de la Résistance

Normally I wouldn’t be smug. Really, I hardly deserved the level up. All I’d done so far was make lots of tea and try to make sure my friends were happy while tinkering on our new ship.

But Amaryllis looked so put out that I’d levelled up my second class faster than she did that I couldn’t help but be just a little teensy bit smug as all heck. “Maybe you’re not practicing enough?” I asked.

“Oh shut up,” she said. “I couldn’t practice well until now. I don’t know how you managed to get such a boring, peasant skill like Teamaking to grind with. Some of us have to work hard to level up even once you know.”

“Awa, I leveled once already,” Awen said.

Amaryllis turned to her, then huffed the most envious huff I ever heard her huff. “You’re probably following this idiot’s example,” she said.

“N-no? I just worked hard to make stuff with Glass magic,” Awen said.

I giggled, a hand pressed over my mouth. “She’s just not as lazy,” I said, turning the last word into a sing-song taunt.

Amaryllis pouted and crossed her wings. “I’m not lazy,” she said.

Still smiling, I reached over the table with the remains of our lunch and patted her on the shoulder. “No, you’re not. We’re all going to need to work really hard to be the strongest there ever was! We’ll be a crew together, the three musketeers of... airshipping!”

She gave me a birdy glare. With a sigh, she picked a sandwich off her plate--cut in little triangles to taste better!--and stuffed it in her mouth. “I suppose I’ve been too lax since returning home. I’ll have to increase my training time. So will you. You can’t let your main class skills wallow or else you’ll be stuck once your second class hits its evolution.”

I nodded, remembering her many lessons on the subject. “You got it,” I said. “I’ll have to find a way to practice my Gardening and Dancing skills. They’re both really close to ranking up. Oh, and my Archeology skill is still super weak even though I’ve had it forever. There’s got to be a way to improve that too.”

“M-maybe you can read about it?” Awen suggested. “They have a nice library here.”

I nodded along. I was about to say that it would be kind of neat to visit some ancient ruins aboard the Beaver Cleaver when I noticed a familiar face bouncing over to us. “Rose!” I called out.

“Hello!” Rosaline said before she crashed into Awen’s back and wrapped her up in a big feathery hug. “Are you guys ready for shopping?”

“Awa,” Awen agreed. She was going red, but to my and Rosaline’s surprise, she actually pushed back into the hug.

“Brilliant!” Rosaline said with a growing grin. “I just ran away from work, we should go now before one of the secretaries they set as my babysitters finds me.”

“World damn it Rose,” Amaryllis grumbled. “I’m supposed to be the youngest, why can’t you act your age?”

“I do act my age, that’s the problem,” Rosaline said. She unhugged Awen and moved over to glomp me from the side. “Now, are you girls all ready? I have a carriage waiting out front.”

I returned the hug as best I could from my seated position, then climbed to my feet when she moved on to hug Amaryllis. “I’m ready!” I said. A wash of cleaning magic across my battle dress took off all the little yellow speckles and stains. It was almost too bad, they added a bright splash of colour to my gear.

Rosaline let go of a grumpy-but-secretly-happy Amaryllis and rushed back to us. In no time, she had one of my hands in her talons and grabbed onto Awen’s with the other. “Let’s go!”

Soon enough we were climbing into a neat little horse-drawn carriage with some pretty woodwork and a big crest on the doors with a logo that I assumed belonged to the Albatross family.

With a ‘yah!’ from the driver, we were off and rattling along across the cobbled roads.

“What kind of shops are we visiting?” I asked.

Rosaline settled down on one side and was soon joined by a very timid Awen who sat next to her. Amaryllis and I took the seats across from them. “Well, there’re a lot of shops where you can buy nice clothes, but if you want to be on the bleeding edge of fashion there’s only one shop for that,” Rosaline said.

“Oh no,” Amaryllis said.

“Which shop?” I asked.

“It’s owned by the marvelous harpy who only goes by the name... Patrice,” Rosaline said, as if she was telling us the greatest gossip. She even whispered the name. “He’s from the Chicken clan, which makes it a wonder that he’s grown so prominent.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, the Chicken clan has a bad reputation with the other clans. They’re very populous, but politically very weak,” Rosaline explained. “They’ve been at the bottom of the pecking order a few times too many. Patrice had to hide his identity because none of the nobles would want to do business with his shop otherwise, but his fashion is so good that now everyone who’s anyone knows that he’s the best.”

“Oh,” I oohed.

“Yup! I was one of the first harpies to take one of his dresses to a social,” Rosaline said, her chest puffing out with pride.

“It caused a scandal,” Amaryllis said.

“It caused a scandal!” Rosaline cheered. “Now we can cause another.”

I clapped along, eager to see what kind of clothes we’d get to try. I was never one for the whole clothes-shopping and fashion stuff. I always just wore more or less the same thing. A nice conservative dress never made anyone uncomfortable and was the optimal clothes for making friends with anyone. But Rosaline was so excited that it was turning contagious, even Awen was smiling under all the blushing.

The carriage rolled on while Rosaline prattled on about different cuts and styles of dress and who wore what at the last big ball. I was lost within a few sentences, there were just too many names for me to keep track of, but Awen, who was probably a lot more used to the sort of talk, kept track, nodding and gasping at all the right times to keep Rosaline going.

Finally we came to a stop and the driver knocked twice on the roof.

“We’re here!” Rosaline said as she bustled out of the carriage. I hopped out after her, then stepped to the side to let Rosaline help Awen out with a hand.

The place where we stopped wasn’t as I expected. I’d made this mental image of a big shopping district with a bunch of stores, kind of like Port Royal but made a bit fancier.

Instead, we’d stopped by the mouth of an alley next to two tall but humble apartment buildings. There were some blankets left out to dry in the sunlight and a few young harpies were bouncing along from porch to porch above as if the roads below were made of lava.

“I do hope you don’t intend to join the children,” Amaryllis said.

“Nah. With my practice jumping it wouldn’t be fair,” I said. “Is this really where the shop is at?” I asked.

Rosaline nodded and pointed down the alley. “It’s over there this week. Patrice moves his store every so often. It keeps him inspired and the competition guessing.”

“Neat,” I said.

Rosaline guided us down a narrow alleyway that smelled a bit like wastewater, but then, so did most of the city. The alley opened up to a small square surrounded on all sides by steel-walled warehouses with big sliding doors. The ground here was caked in mud, as if large machines had been passing through recently.

“This one,” she said as she moved over to one of the small, normal-sized doors with a big red feather painted on its middle. Rosaline rapped a talon against it and stepped back to wait.

The door opened, revealing a young harpy boy in overalls and a cap, his pale face covered in grease and grime. “Yeah?” he said.

“I come for the grains,” Rosaline said.

The boy nodded. “Just the four of ya?” he asked.

“Yup.”

“C’mon in.” He backed away from the door and let us into a warehouse that was just barely lit by a pair of rune-powered lamps hanging from the ceiling.

There weren’t mannequins or bolts of cloth around. Instead the place was filled with grimey machines, some of them chugging along and doing... something that I couldn’t quite figure out. I didn’t have much time for snooping as the boy led us deeper into the building and down a rickety wooden staircase at the very back.

“Down that tunnel, ma’ams,” he said with a gesture down a sort of corridor with natural stone walls that had a few lanterns hanging from them. The boy reached up and pulled at a cord and I could just barely make out a distant gonging sound from down the corridor.

It would have been a bit spooky if the entire thing wasn’t so well lit.

Rosaline took the lead, letting go of my hand--but not Awen’s!--to slip ahead in the tunnel. I had to fold my ears back else the tips would rub against the ceiling.

A knock at the door at the end later, and a bunch of heavy locks began to clunk apart. After the third heavy ‘clunk’ of a bolt sliding out of place, a small opening appeared in the door and an eye stared out at us. “Rosaline!”

The door swung open, revealing a clean white room that had more in common with a lounge than the bunker I was expecting. Standing in the door frame with his arms held wide before him was the biggest harpy I had ever seen.

“Patrice!” Rosaline cheered as she crashed into the hug.

Patrice was a big guy, without an ounce of fat showing on his well-toned body. He was wearing a white outfit. Tight britches, a button up shirt and a vest with silvery trim. All very fancy, and so pale that it made the bright red of his feathers stand out. “Who are your little friends?” he asked as he pulled out of the hug. “Three of them at that!”

Rosaline stepped in with a quick nod. “Yep! This is Awen, that’s Broccoli, and that over there is my cute little sister Amaryllis. You can’t call her Amy, it annoys her a lot.”

Patrice bobbed his head up and down. “The beautiful Awen, the ravishing Broccoli, and the cute Amy, I see, I see. And which one is your newest girlfriend?”

Rosaline had the good graces to blush. “None of them. But I’ll be asking Awen out later.”

“Awa-what?!”

“I see! How wonderful!” He clapped his wings together. “I don’t suppose you’ll allow me to work on the humans? I don’t often get to make dresses for non-harpy physiologies. It would be an interesting test.”

Rosaline nodded. “That’s exactly what we’re here for. There’s this big diplomatic thingie going down in a few days. They’re sending all of their best out west to kiss the sylph’s behinds. We figure it’s going to end in disaster, so we’re sending our own diplomatic mission to show them up.”

“Rose, that was a family secret,” Amaryllis hissed.

“Bah, Patrice is trustworthy.”

“Oh-hoh, when it comes to showing up the nobles, you’ll find none more willing than I,” the rooster harpy said. “So these two cuties need to look their best, I take it?” he asked.

I looked over to Awen and quickly placed an arm over her shoulder. I don’t think she had caught the last bit of the conversation, not judging by the way she was swaying on the spot.

Maybe I’d need to tell Rosaline to calm down a bit. Awen was a very delicate girl, she needed to take things nice and slow.

***