Chapter IV: The Ball

At this point I have to admit that I was ready for anything. If Lady Halflance had looked me in the eyes and told me that we were going off to win the big baseball game and save the farm, I would have looked right back and asked what position I was in. That doesn’t mean that I don’t hate parties. Lady Halflance rushed me out of the study and into the waiting arms of a pack of roving maidservants, who proceeded to brush and paint and spread and poke and generally irritate me into cosmetic perfection, before giving me a crash course on how to not make a complete idiot of myself in front of wealthier people. I remembered essentially none of it. From there, I was rapidly and politely shoved back out the front door and into…wonder.

Despite my initial impression, the city of Amrinval bore only a loose resemblance to Earth’s past. The city’s architecture was darker, the primary building material being steel or perhaps blackish grey stone, like a gothic cathedral. Here, at Lady Halflance’s townhouse in the outskirts, most of the buildings faintly resembled something that might exist, being squat and rectangular with rounded windows and strange cosmetic ridges of iron running up the walls. Others, though, were of a much different style, all red wood or brick, sometimes elaborately decorated and generally taller than the black buildings. The two architectural styles definitely clashed, and yet blended together off into the distance into a dark crimson mire. In the farthest distance, the buildings grew taller and taller, growing connected by vast gothic buttresses and bridges, forming something that resembled an elevated hive in the sky. I stopped to simply stare at it once it caught my gaze. I really was in another world.

“Are you going to get in the carriage or not?” shouted Lady Halflance, leaning out of the door of the carriage.

“Oh come now Sarah, give her time to take it all in! After all, from her perspective it is as if she has never seen any of this before, not even a single lamppost or doorframe!” said Sir Margaret. While I was getting “prepared” she had changed clothes, putting on a ruffled black dress, covering her down to the ankles. I wondered, were ankles considered obscene here, too?

I tore my eyes away from the distant towers, and looked at the carriage itself. It looked generally like what one would expect from a carriage except made out of metal and with a weird cone-shaped part at the front and also no horses. So not much like a carriage, really. Seeing my confusion, Sir Margaret continued:

“Oh, you’re wondering what this is?” She knocked on the ceiling of the carriage. “It’s a Fleischer C-18. Quintuple-expansion liquid-coal self-propelling steam engine. This baby can travel a hundred miles in three hours before running out of fuel. Impressive, eh?”

“Oh yes, absolutely incredible, never seen anything like it, ever… Let’s just get this over with,” I said, putting as much resolved depression into my voice as possible. Given that my voice sounds like I’ve been huffing helium, I don’t know if it worked. I stepped into the carriage, with Lady Halflance extending her arm to help me up the steps, because apparently I had in fact been reincarnated into the body of some sort of gnome.

Once I was in, Lady Halflance shut the door of the carriage, and we were off. Sitting next to me was yet another person who I was apparently going to be living with, an older teenage girl wearing a similar black dress to Sir Margaret. I was informed that this was, in fact, Felicia Halflance, the middle daughter of the Halflance family. She did resemble her mothers, though more so Sir Margaret than Lady Halflance, with her wavy hair running down to the nape of her neck, and light brown skin.

While the Halflance family made idle conversation about Felicia’s schoolwork and Sir Margaret’s newest hobby, I stared out the window. It had been a hell of a few hours. I had awoken in a new world, in a new body, with no clear way back. And yet, I didn’t seem to care all that much. I should have been distraught, terrified, lonely…but I wasn’t. Mostly I was just overwhelmed by the new world, the new people, instead of thinking about the world I had left behind. I had never had many friends before, and the ones I had were never all that close. Being alone with my thoughts was always more natural than interacting with other people. So that’s what I did; I thought about the world, myself and I watched as the streets and homes and shops and spiderlike machines passed by…

Spiderlike machines?

Off in the distance, working on a construction site, was an enormous assemblage of iron and brass, formed into a six-limbed shape, slung low to the ground. It moved slowly but with purpose, gigantic hydraulics and gears shifting and spinning and the surprisingly spindly limbs of the thing stepped forwards one at a time. In one claw, it picked up a gigantic beam, lifting it into the air as if it was nothing. I also noticed that the thing’s body, which I had previously thought was just an undifferentiated blob of steel, did actually have a separate head, large and blocky, which turned back and forth to survey its surroundings. On the rear end of the machine’s enormous back, as well, was a cluster of tall thin pipes, all spewing forth smoke and embers into the afternoon sky.

“What the hell is that?!” I said, face pressed against the glass of the carriage.

“The… what?” asked Lady Halflance, sitting across from me.

“The giant metal spider thing, over there.”

“Ahh, yes. That would be one of the Archopolids. They are… creatures, with brains made out of gears and fed by liquid coal,” said Halflance, not looking anywhere in particular.

“We learned about them in history, actually,” said Felicia. “They’re as old as the city, at least, with the first ones found as wrecks when the early settlers arrived. Nobody’s ever figured out how they work, or even how to make more, so we just sort of repair them over and over again. I think there’s a metaphor somewhere in there.” I was only half paying attention to what she was saying, of course. I was too busy being hit square in the jaw by the realization that this fifteen year old was taller than me. Dammit.

From there, the carriage ride was rather short, fifteen minutes at most. Apparently, wherever this party was, it was on the opposite end of Amrinval from the Halflance’s townhouse. Which now that I thought about it was kind of my home now, as well.

When the carriage finally came to a stop, it was in front of a large manor similar in architecture to the Halflance’s: a grand rectangular thing build out of wooden planks reinforced with steel ribbing. There were at least a dozen other carriages idling in the courtyard in front of the manor, some of which even had horses on them! The driver of the carriage, a small and spry young woman who still beat me out in height by a couple of inches, leapt out to lead the rest of us out of the carriage. From there, we walked across the courtyard up to the intimidating metal doors of the building.

“So, what exactly is this party about, again?” I asked.

“It’s a wedding anniversary. Lady Fanshawe and Sir Veronica Grace were married three years ago today. Mostly, however, it is an excuse for conversation, eating, and catching up on gossip.” said Lady Halflance, keeping her eyes straight ahead.

“Now remember all of the things that the servants taught you, all of that etiquette and politeness talk,” said Sir Margaret, not understanding that I had essentially blanked that entire period out of my memory.

And with that, we went in. Once we were inside the manor, it was absolute chaos. There were people everywhere, in groups of two or three or more, and it was apparently the Halflances’ god-given mission to introduce me to every single one of them. After about half an hour I was officially sick of hearing the “poor woman afflicted by brain fever” backstory they had for me, and questions about how I felt, and shows of faux-admiration for the kindness of Lady Halflance. I tried talking as little as possible, which was mostly chalked up to the aftereffects of the “brain fever”, but I still had to answer a few questions, and that was exhausting.

I also noticed that people seemed to not like the Halflances all that much. In general, people tried to avoid them, couples subtly leaving the area whenever we arrived. Even when complementing the two of them for their kindness in taking care of me, it was forced, compulsory. Now certainly Lady Halflance hadn’t made the best impression on me in the time since I had met her, but this was unusual.

Regardless, I was about to hit the end of my rope with regards to being shown around like a prized pony. So, making use of my small and boring nature, I slipped away. From there, I wandered through the hallways of the house, until I arrived at the enormous ballroom. It was a huge space, with a ceiling so high I struggled to believe that it could even fit inside a building. The walls were decorated with mirrors, countless portraits of long-dead women or paintings of old battles, and over it all was a colossal crystal chandelier, easily the size of a pickup truck. On one side of the room were set up the dining tables, prepared for a late dinner, while the latter half of the room was set up for dancing. Many women had already taken up the offer for that part, I could see.

Nearer to me, however, was a strange cluster of ladies, all listening to one of them telling some sort of story. I figured I could spend some time listening, and headed in that direction. Then I saw the woman telling the tale, and stopped dead in my tracks.

Her style was, in a word, eclectic. Her hair, a light red, was shorn close, and yet her face was expertly made up, with perfect winged eyeliner and a bright red lipstick, like an ancient Egyptian goddess with high cheekbones and thin lips. She was rather skinny and flat-chested, though the extravagant lace and ruffles on her shirt served to distract from that. She was also wearing rather tight pants, that served to…accentuate certain parts of the anatomy that I had not expected to see on a woman at all, let alone accentuated.

“There were three armed Cassandran soldiers between myself and the exit,” she was saying, as her audience looked on enraptured. “At this point I thought that there was no way out, but a soldier never lets her mind relax in the heat of the fight. I quickly realized that I could use the lantern on the table nearby to…” I could begin to see why there were so many other women gathered around to listen to the storyteller. In spite of her eccentricities, she was really good at putting the listener in the scene, carrying across the drama with her voice and dramatic gestures. A few minutes later, the story came to an end, with our heroine having escaped from captivity by the dastardly Cassandran army, with the book of military plans and the poor rescued slave girl to boot! As the other listeners scattered into various other conversations, the speaker herself walked up to me.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen you before. My name is Lady Joyce Alonhall, Baron of Crossel, at your service!” Lady Alonhall said, with a bow. “What is your name?”

“Ma…” I realized that ‘Marcus’ wasn’t exactly a normal name around here. Not to mention that, well, I was a woman now, right? So, in that case, having a woman’s name would make more sense. But what name to take? “Uh, Ma…” Then, inspiration struck. “Emma! My name is Emma. Sorry, I’m still recovering from a bit of a brain fever, you know how that can be.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what that is like, I’m sorry. Although I will say that you look quite good for a lady still recovering from fever,” said Joyce. I felt the blood flow to my face, as I realized I couldn’t remember ever having been complemented by an attractive woman before.

“Thank you, I don’t know what to say…”

“Perhaps you would like to dance? You seem to have been enjoying my story. Not to mention what’s happening to your face,” she said, smirking. She was completely wrong of course. My heart rate was perfectly normal at the moment, and I had not once in the entire course of the conversation looked down. Joyce took my hand in hers, and started leading me towards the dance floor. Suddenly, another hand grabbed me by the shoulder and yanked me out of Lady Alonhall’s grasp. I whirled around and found myself looking up into the eyes of Lady Halflance once again.

“There you are,” she said.

“What are you doing?” I whispered, loudly. “I was about to get to dance with a hot chick! It was going to be amazing.” Lady Halflance raised an eyebrow, probably because I had forgotten to not use slang that wouldn’t be invented for another hundred years.

“You mean Lady Alonhall?” she asked me. I nodded. Fortunately, this world had already invented nodding.

“Lady Alonhall is a rake, a seducer, and a philanderer. She charms young women like yourself, has some fun with them, and then leaves them behind. No matter the magnitude of her wit, I am not going to allow my ward to fall in with a salacious woman like that. Am I clear?”

“Extremely.” Just then, shouting burst out from the near end of the ballroom.

“How dare you speak about my wife in such a manner!” shouted Sir Margaret, drawing her sword. I had not realized that Sir Margaret was carrying a sword before then, which was a pretty big lapse in attention on my part. Lady Halflance proceeded to set off in that direction, and I followed.

“I am merely suggesting that perhaps a lady with as little a sense of propriety as Count Halflance, might have less than pure motives for taking in a young woman with no money to her name,” said another person, a noblewoman in a blue bustled dress and with a long black braid.

“‘Merely suggesting’?” said Sir Margaret. “Merely suggesting that my wife is attempting to have an affair with a woman fifteen years her junior? I could kill you for such an offense!” Just then, Lady Halflance arrived at the altercation, putting a hand on her wife’s outstretched sword.

“Put the sword down, Margaret,” Lady Halflance growled. Then, turning to the person who had apparently started this whole thing, she said “Now then, Ginger, what was it you were saying?” Lady Halflance stretched out to her full height, glaring down at Ginger. Ginger laughed.

“Are you trying to intimidate me?” she said. “I know you, sister, and as history tells us, you don’t really care who you get it from as long as you get wet. You haven’t changed one bit.” Lady Halflace snarled, baring her teeth like an angry wolf.

“You—“

It was about then, I think, when the front wall of the ballroom exploded in a blast of wood shrapnel, belching flames, twisted metal, and bullets.