Villainess [6]: Gavin’s Disappearance
Red Pill [0]: Staircases, Secrets
The second school week had seen a distraught Countess Patricia O’Neill visiting Duke Astor Bartleby’s estate and asking him to investigate Lord Gavin O’Neill’s whereabouts. When the young duke asked her why she had sought him out instead of Margrave Sydney or even Duke Woodberry, the countess said the Captain of the Royal Guard was King Blaise’s lapdog and the Duke would do nothing to compromise Lord Woodberry’s friendship with his Highness. When the young duke asked why that was, the countess said the Prince might have had something to do with Gavin’s disappearance after she heard rumors of her son confronting the Prince at school about his conduct against Lady Fleming. That piqued Astor’s interest, so he asked her for more details, and Countess O’Neill filled him in on the hearsay she had gained from her friend Viscountess Drevis in an afternoon tea party over the weekend.
Needless to say, after a lengthy session of questions and answers and confidences about extenuating circumstances, Duke Bartleby took up her son’s case. Then he had Miss Sonja pick out two subordinates of her choice to do a preliminary search of the school grounds, while the young duke went over to the estate of Viscountess Drevis to inquire further into the rumors of Lord Gavin O’Neill’s confrontation with the Prince. Turns out, the viscountess heard of it through her daughters (Lady Jean Drevis and Lady Saraya Drevis) via letters mentioning what they saw: the Prince beating up Lord O’Neill in the third-floor hallway for sticking up for Lady Fleming’s actions against a commoner girl named Miss Edgeworth.
With this intel in mind, Duke Bartleby had Miss Sonja and Miss Naomi and Miss Maya commence a search over the premises of the third-floor hallway, while he brought up the issue with their Majesties at their Royal Palace in the main antechamber. Their Majesties said to give them a day for them to ask their son about it and asked his Grace to return the next day, but when he did and asked about what his Highness had said, the King and Queen said that he had indeed roughed up Lord O’Neill in the hallway, for which they had his Highness go to Rhapsody Chapel over the weekend to reflect on his actions. When the young duke asked about the missing Lord O’Neill, their Majesties had Duke Bartleby follow them into a larger secondary antechamber, then into the main hallway adjacent to the dining room where Jeremy the butler and Corrine the Queen’s lady-in-waiting accompanied them. There he followed them towards the end of the corridor, where it turned into a side hall leading towards another set of double doors on the right-hand side.
At the last set of double doors, the King’s butler pushed them open into a private study, and their Majesties entered along with Duke Astor with instructions to Jeremy and Corrine to keep their lips sealed on Duke Astor’s second visit. With that done, their Majesties had him swear to keep the contents of this visit a secret, which he did. Thus, even when Duke Bartleby revealed his information concerning the disappearance of Lord O’Neill to Marquess Fleming, he said nothing about how he came across that information.
Then the King approached a bookcase beside the fireplace and counted a row of books at eye-level before placing his hand on one and pulling it out. Then something metallic clicked behind the bookshelf, and he shifted the whole case away from the wall on a hidden track and turned it like a hidden door from the wall face. Beyond it was a large picture frame surrounding the edges of an enchanted mirror, so he turned to his visitor and said, “I only ask that you not reveal this to Countess O’Neill, till you find out what happened to her son, got it?”
“Got it, your Majesty,” he said.
He then touched the reflection with his finger, rippling the image reflecting the private study, and said, “Dear mirror, show me what happened to Lord O’Neill when he confronted my son in the hallway last Thursday.”
The mirror then flashed, revealing a heated exchange between Lord O’Neill and the Prince over his treatment of Lady Fleming. The Prince said that Lady Fleming was bullying another classmate because of her lowly origins and that if he wasn’t looking after said classmate, Lady Fleming would do something even worse to her, but Lord O’Neill disputed this. He said Lady Fleming hadn’t caused any of it, adding that the culprit was the very classmate the Prince was protecting, and questioned his taste in women. That slight had the Prince yelling lèse-majesté, pushing Lord O’Neill over the edge and shoving the Prince and losing the argument right then and there.
The scuffle was a brief one, for it only took the Prince to throw his fists and connect with Lord O’Neill’s face to end it, knocking the smaller young man to the floor. Then the Prince left, leaving a roughed-up Lord O’Neill lying there with a bloody nose and some red discoloration over his right eye that would later turn into a bruise.
Queen Blaise grimaced at the sight, saying, “We’ll have to pay Countess O’Neill compensation for the trouble our son has caused Lord O’Neill.”
“As for what happened to him afterward,” the King added, “I can assure you that this next scene exonerates his Highness of any part of Countess O’Neill’s suspicions.”
“Is that so?” Astor said.
“Just keep watching,” the King said.
In the reflection, Lord O’Neill got to his feet and walked out of the mirror’s frame, so the King placed his finger over the shimmering surface and directed the image to follow Lord O’Neill wherever he went. There in the mirror, Astor saw Lord O’Neill walk down the central hallway towards the landing of the upper staircase, where he thought the boy would descend the steps, but the boy paused for a time.
“Why is he stopping?” Astor said.
With his finger still on the reflection, the King directed the image towards what Lord O’Neill was looking at and said, “He’s looking at that.”
Where the railing of the balustrade overlooked the gap between the upper and lower staircases (right where Prince Blaise stood over the same railing and leaped to his death) was another set of steps going up to God-knows-where. It was as if another staircase had been placed there without anyone noticing, and before Astor could ask another question, he saw Lord O’Neill go up those steps and leave the reflection.
Astor faced the King, saying, “You can’t follow?”
“I tried,” the King said, removing his finger from the mirror. “This family heirloom has served us well over the years, but it still has its limits.”
“I see what you mean,” Astor said.
“There you have it, your Grace,” the Queen added. “I hope this clears up whatever suspicions Countess O’Neill has about his Highness.”
“For now,” he said.
“What do you mean by that?” the King said.
“I mean that I won’t leave any stone unturned, your Majesty,” Duke Bartleby said, then to the Queen: “Even if his Highness had no direct involvement in this occurrence, the extenuating circumstances must be addressed.”
The Queen let out a sigh, and the King, “All right, we’ll do it your way.”
“Thank you, your Majesties,” he said. “By the way, if you’ll allow it, I want to talk with his High—”
“No,” the King said.
“And why not?” Duke Bartleby said.
“Because I said so,” the King said, looking Astor in the eye. “I won’t have my son dragged into anything that has nothing to do with him. Is that clear, your Grace?”
Astor nodded, saying, “Yes, your Majesty.”
“Then you may go,” King said.
Astor bowed and left the study, greeting Jeremy the butler and Corrine the lady-in-waiting and then following Jeremy through the main hallway, through the secondary antechamber, and out through the main antechamber, where his coach and coachman awaited him in the quad. After getting inside and directing his coachman, Astor mulled over the details of what he had seen and wondered where that weird staircase came from and, most vital of all, where it went.
At a predetermined spot within an alleyway somewhere off the main brick-paved boulevard that bisected the Town, his coachman dropped him off before going on again as if he had stopped to complete an errand for his employer. In reality, Astor had changed into another set of clothes, a three-piece lounge suit and a bowler hat, and went off into the teeming streets as one of the local dandies in the crowd.
There he spent the rest of his afternoon and early evening hours traipsing from pub to pub and saloon to saloon, spending the happy hours talking with the regulars about the goings-on at Lassen Academy without letting on that he was asking about Lord O’Neill. The snatches of hearsay about him amounted to this: after harassing a commoner student at school, the dashing Prince chased off the scoundrel. He knew rumors tended to spread fast in high society, but the one concerning Countess O’Neill’s son had become so ubiquitous in such a short time frame that he suspected it was planted.
After that, he doubled back over to the predetermined drop-off point in the alleyway a little ways from the main boulevard, went back to his estate, and dined on a light dinner before going to bed. In the morning after breakfast, the young duke briefed his three-familiar team of cat girls in maid uniforms and tall riding boots in his office. He revealed his concerns (without telling them about their Majesties’ family heirloom or the study housing it) about Lord Gavin O’Neill’s confrontation with his Highness in the third-floor hallway last Thursday and focused on his subsequent disappearance up the steps of a phantom staircase.
After that, he said, “Now on to what you’ll be doing tonight: Stake out the premises of the upper staircase landing on the third floor overnight. See if there’s anything unusual there. Work in shifts if you have to.”
“What kind of ‘unusual,’ your Grace?” Sonja said.
“Anything out of the ordinary,” Astor said. “We’re dealing with a phantom staircase, so whoever put it there must’ve done it overnight with nobody else present.”
“I see,” Sonja said.
“Then get to it,” Astor said.
“Yes, your Grace,” they all said, and the feline trio sat up from the sofa and exited his office.
What had been an overnight vigil in the third-floor hallway by the upper staircase landing, replete with the prospect of seeing a rare apparition, turned into the tedium of watching paint dry. The truth about stakeouts was that nothing happened ninety-nine times out of a hundred. After six weeks of seeing nothing night after night, in which they expanded their investigation into all the classrooms on the third floor without finding anything about Lord O’Neill’s whereabouts, Miss Sonja and her subordinates had asked Duke Bartleby for other duties on Tuesday morning. (Yet unbeknownst to them, that Tuesday night was the one hundredth time, in which DeeDee had set up her observation experiment with Janet and her friends and the other witnesses.) As such, Duke Bartleby had given Miss Naomi and Miss Maya the night off and assigned Miss Sonja the one-time assignment of spying on Prince Blaise in his dorm room. Hence, the subsequent meeting between Duke Bartleby and Marquess Fleming on Wednesday morning was Miss Sonja’s most interesting event after witnessing the overnight ‘nasty business’ in the Prince’s dorm.
After Miss Sonja assigned Miss Naomi to watch over Lady Fleming, as per Astor’s request, she and Miss Maya had supper at the Red Lion before resuming their overnight vigil at the school building. It was during supper that Sonja informed Maya about the details of Marquess Fleming’s conversation with the Duke earlier this morning, specifically about Janet’s little tryst in the third-floor hallway last night and what happened to her clone in Classroom 1-3C in particular. Of course, Maya asked questions, and Sonja answered them but asked her to keep those details to herself, to which Maya promised she would and crossed her heart and hoped to die otherwise.
But when they arrived after nightfall, clearing the top step of the upper staircase and entering the third floor, Sonja noticed a certain heaviness in the air around them and said, “Maya, do you feel that?”
“Yeah, I do,” the pink-haired Maya said.
“Can you find the source of it?” Miss Sonja said, keeping her ocean blue eyes peeled for anything in the empty hallway and kicking herself for asking her master for a change of duties. “Something’s changed here.”
Both cat girls approached the source of the heaviness, passing by the balustrade of the landing and entering the hallway along the Western half of the school building and pausing close to the double-door entrance of Classroom 1-3C. Goosebumps formed over Sonja’s forearms, and both she and Miss Maya faced the double doors (still exuding the residual haunting of DeeDee’s nighttime experiment). Something in that classroom beckoned them to enter, so Miss Sonja and Miss Maya closed their eyes, and Sonja imagined herself crossing an invisible threshold and stepping foot into the shadows of the room. After taking a deep breath, both cat girls stepped forward—
And appeared in a shadowed corner by one of the windows at the front of the classroom. Now inside they scanned the premises: the rows and columns of tables and chairs empty of students; the lectern at the front of the classroom without a teacher behind it; the double doors closed and still; the floating lanterns overhead without light; and the faint nocturnal gleam from the tall windows stretching across the tabletops and chairs and part of the opposite wall of the classroom.
Yet amidst the silence, this room sent chills down Sonja’s spine, her heart fluttering at the memory of her captors holding her down and violating her, binding her to a slave contract and forcing her to act in ways she’d rather forget. If Duke Astor Bartleby hadn’t intervened, she and Miss Maya and Miss Naomi would still be doing their masters’ bidding from assassination and prostitution to giving special services (anal sex) to their former masters. It was a curse shared amongst darkness affinity users: to be shunned; to be enslaved; to be used and abused. Because of this affinity, Sonja and her friends were shunned and exiled from the cat-man tribe and sold to their slave-trading captors, who abused them whenever they disobeyed orders or whenever their captors just wanted to get off. The atmosphere of this classroom reminded her of the illegal brothel she used to work at, where indentured women like her serviced the whims of their masters’ clientele.
She blinked and turned at the sound of Miss Maya’s voice, saying, “Wait, what did you say?”
“I said this place gives me the creeps,” Miss Maya said, her single tail moving from side to side.
“I know,” Sonja said.
“The students in this class,” Maya said. “Do you think they were enslaved?”
“I do,” Sonja said and followed the concentration of residual darkness energy to a spot in front of the last column of tables by the windows and paused there (where Lady Dorian’s followers held Janet the ex-suicide clone in place while Lady Kessler was forced to beat her up), “but some resisted or tried to resist. Two of them, actually. One was a lady that was forced to beat up another lady here. Find the other one.”
So Maya stood there for a moment, then strode off towards the double doors, where she stopped and said, “The other one was a young lord that stood by the doors.”
Then Sonja followed the remaining residual energy towards the front wall of the classroom and crouched on the floor and placed her hand over it, closing her eyes and sensing another person entering the room, so she said, “There was another young lord that came in here and . . .”
Sonja stopped, gaping at the stoppage of someone’s heartbeat, as her own heart fluttered at the fading atmosphere of darkness inside the classroom. She remembered Marquess Fleming’s account of Janet’s nighttime escapade, especially about the death of one of her clones, but something about the clone that was detained and beaten and restrained against this wall, something about her death at this spot, had somehow lifted the slave contract from the students in this very room. For much of this afternoon, Sonja couldn’t fathom how anyone could do that, for slave contracts couldn’t be broken: they could only change hands from one master to another.
“What is it?” Maya said, coming over.
But when it clicked in her mind, Sonja pulled away her hand and crossed herself, then kneeled before the spot and said, “Maya, kneel.”
“But why?” she said.
“This is holy ground, so kneel!”
So Maya did as she was told, crossing herself and taking a knee beside the lectern and facing the empty wall (where Janet the ex-suicide clone had died).
After a minute of silent prayer, both cat girls crossed themselves again before rising to their feet.
“One of Lady Fleming’s clones died in this room,” Sonja said, remembering Marquess Fleming’s summary of Janet’s nighttime escapade in this classroom. If the death of one of her past selves had broken multiple slave contracts at once, if that was even possible, then that could only mean one thing. “She broke their slave contracts in this room!”
Maya gaped and cupped her hands over her mouth, saying, “Do you mean the Black Saintess—”
“—is in this kingdom, yes!” Sonja said, crossing herself again and hugging her compatriot as tears trailed down her cheeks. “Oh Guardian RuRu, Blessed Jeong, Blessed Graves, Blessed Fleming, Blessed Diddly! We finally have our own saintess!”
Here they cried for a time, rejoicing, till a heavy aura fell around them and filled the entire classroom with its presence, so that both cat girls let go of each other and looked around. The aura was so thick and dense that Sonja couldn’t pinpoint where the presence was, only that it was here, so Sonja kneeled and had Maya do the same, and both girls cast down their gaze for fear of looking at a divine presence.
“Who are you, Spirit?” Sonja said.
“And why have you come here?” Maya added.
“You already know me, my children,” RuRu Marionette said in their minds, making their ears twitch and their mouths gape open in two inhalations of breath. “I’ve bestowed on Lady Fleming the title of Black Saintess last night, but only a few know that, including you two. I’ve also told your friend Naomi about it, but DeeDee and I want you three to keep Lady Fleming’s identity a secret for the time being. If you must refer to her, refer to her by the title I gave her and spread the good news about her presence in this kingdom. Got it?”
“Yes, your Guardianship,” they both said.
“Good,” RuRu said before dissipating her presence and lifting the dense and heavy aura from the room. “Let my people know, so that they need not fear anymore.”
Yet before RuRu’s presence dissipated from their midst, Miss Sonja added, “We’ve been looking for the whereabouts of Lord O’Neill for weeks now, but we haven’t found a clue. Will you help us, your Guardianship?”
Silence reigned for a time, making Sonja think that she had overstepped her bounds, but then RuRu said, “Fret not, my child. Lady Fleming will help. Anything else?”
“No, your Guardianship,” Miss Sonja said.
“Then go,” RuRu said before dissipating from the room.
Both cat girls stood up, and Sonja told her compatriot to go inform Duke Bartleby about Lady Fleming’s identity as the Black Saintess. Maya nodded and went back to the shadowed corner of the room and disappeared, leaving Sonja to stare at the empty wall that bore witness to a tragedy and then a miracle even in this lion’s den of Classroom 1-3C.
Miss Sonja crossed herself again, walked back to the shadowed corner, and disappeared from the classroom with a new mission: to spread the good news about the Black Saintess amongst the populace of this kingdom.
As Miss Sonja went to all the pubs and saloons in the Student Commons Town and pretended to get plastered while spreading word about a new saintess amongst the customers, the pink-haired Miss Maya had doubled back towards a predetermined drop-off point in the alleyway a little ways from the main boulevard, where the Duke’s coachman had dropped off the cat girls earlier. Now she took the coach back to the Bartleby duchy and directed the coachman to go back to the drop-off point to pick up Miss Sonja after she was done for tonight, then got off and headed inside to inform the Duke of what had transpired at the Academy. Yet as the butler Marcus led her through the hallways of glistening marble and red carpet towards the Duke’s office, he told her Duke Bartleby was talking with Countess O’Neill and advised her to wait before entering.
Miss Maya heard snatches of their voices through the double doors, but she pressed her luck, saying, “It’s about the missing Lord O’Neill: we know someone who can help us find him,” which was a half-truth: if her Guardianship said the Black Saintess can help them find the boy, then it was worth a slight breach of decorum.
“What do you mean by ‘someone?’” Marcus said.
“Someone who can help us,” she said.
“Then who is it?”
“The Black Saintess,” Maya whispered.
Marcus the butler stared at her, saying, “Are you serious?”
Maya nodded, adding, “We’ve found her presence at the school, and we know who she is.”
“Who?”
“Lady Fleming,” she whispered.
Marcus the butler just gaped at her, saying under his breath, “I see. No wonder she’s so reviled at school.”
“I know,” Maya said. “That’s why I need to tell him.”
Now wiping the sweat from his brow, Marcus knocked and opened the double doors, saying, “Pardon the interruption, but something came up, your Grace.”
In the office was the young Duke Bartleby and a buxom Countess Patricia O’Neill sitting across from each other on a pair of solan sofas, both setting their cups of tea on the saucers over the coffee table.
“Is it important?” Astor said.
“Yes, very much so,” Marcus the butler said, ushering Miss Maya inside in front of the pair in the office.
With the extra company, Maya couldn’t reveal anything in front of another guest even when said guest had become something of a regular visitor since her son’s disappearance, so she said, “It involves Lady Fleming, your Grace.”
“I see,” he said. “Then come in,” and then to the butler: “Marcus, take Countess O’Neill outside.”
Marcus was about to do so, but Maya said, “Actually, your Grace, she might be able to find Lord O’Neill,” but then she cupped her mouth in her hands.
“Really?” Countess O’Neill said, shifting a bit on the sofa to face her better, so that Maya got an eyeful of a raven-haired beauty whose youthful face and long wavy tresses and lithe figure beneath her bodice and her long dress belied her age. So much so, in fact, that had she been any other woman, and had this been a different occasion, Maya would’ve thought the Duke was having an affair with someone else’s wife. “We’ve been talking about what happened to Lady Fleming yesterday, but how is she going to find my son?”
Maya resisted the urge to grimace, mentally kicking herself for blurting it out like that, and said, “Um . . . Uh, I think I just misspoke.”
“Don’t waste my time,” the Duke said.
“I’m not, your Grace! It’s very important,” Maya said, looking at Countess O’Neill and looking away, “but it’s just . . . Ugh, this is awkward, but . . .”
“Am I in the way?” Countess O’Neill said.
“You’re not in the way, my Lady,” Duke Bartleby said, then to Miss Maya: “Out with it.”
“Uh . . . I misspoke,” she said.
Maya turned to Marcus the butler, who said, “Your Grace, I think she was referring to someone else.”
“Then who are you referring to?” the Duke said, his pale blue eyes piercing right through Maya.
“It’s a bit complicated,” Maya said, looking at Countess O’Neill once again.
“Am I in the way, Miss?” the countess said again, getting up from the sofa. “If I am, then I can just head out for a bit and then come back in after you’re done.”
“Don’t go, my Lady,” Duke Bartleby said. “If it has something to do with Lord O’Neill, then you have every right to hear what Miss Maya has to say.”
All was silent, but then Countess O’Neill sat back down and said, “If you say so, then let’s hear it.”
Then Duke Bartleby said, “If it’s too difficult to divulge all at once, then take it slow and tell us a little at a time. Can you do that?”
The cat girl nodded.
“Then go ahead,” the Duke said.
So Miss Maya turned to the guest and said, “My Lady Countess, do you promise to keep this a secret?”
“Yes, I promise,” Countess O’Neill said.
So Maya breathed out a sigh, saying, “Then that takes a lot off of my shoulders.”
“In that case,” the Duke said, “please shut the doors and stay inside to hear it, Marcus.”
“Will do,” the butler said, doing just that and then standing before the double doors like a sentry.
“Is that better?” Astor said.
The cat girl nodded.
“All right, tell us what you’ve got,” he said.
Now the cat girl took a deep breath and exhaled, then said, “Earlier this evening, Miss Sonja told me about what happened last night in the third-floor hallway at school, specifically about what happened to a certain ghost there.”
“I see. Keep going,” the Duke said.
“If I may be so bold, your Grace,” Countess O’Neill said, “what ‘ghost’ is she referring to? And what exactly happened last night at school?”
“It has nothing to do with Lord O’Neill, I assure you,” the Duke said, “but as it is, it’s a matter too delicate to share with just anyone, even with you.”
“Oh, pardon me then,” the countess said.
“It’s all right, my Lady,” the Duke said, then to Maya: “Come on, keep going.”
Maya took another deep breath and exhaled, then said, “After we entered the school and reached the third floor, we felt a heavy aura there and entered Classroom 1-3C, where the aura was heaviest, like the aura of many students under a slave contract. In that classroom, we found traces of the ghost who died there, but we also discovered that her death lifted the slave contracts off of the students in that classroom.”
Everyone was silent now.
The Duke and the Countess were staring at her, their mouths ajar and their eyes wide and at full attention.
“What’s more,” she continued, “we found out the ghost who died in that classroom was a saintess, not just a saintess candidate but a bonafide saintess, and not just any saintess: she’s the Black Saintess!”
Nobody spoke for a full minute.
Then the Duke said, “Are you sure of this?”
“I’m sure,” Miss Maya said. “I’ll stake my life on it.”
Now a pale-faced Countess O’Neil said, “I’ve never heard of that before. Is that a heretical title?”
“It’s not heretical,” Duke Bartleby said. “It was the second posthumous title granted to Lady Celeste Graves, the Protector of all saintess candidates, after the Church of the Holy Light canonized her. It’s just the Church won’t recognize that title, because so few people are ever born with the darkness affinity, but it’s common enough amongst monsters to connect them with monsters. That’s why darkness affinity users are so feared, and that’s why they’re persecuted to the point of enslavement just to keep them in check.”
“Not everyone’s like that, you Grace,” Countess O’Neill said. “I’m not like that, and neither is my son, and neither was my husband, may he rest in peace. I wouldn’t have come to you if I had thought otherwise.”
“Thank you, my Lady,” the Duke said, then to Maya the maid: “Keep going.”
Now came the moment when Miss Maya would have to broach the connection between the Black Saintess and Lady Fleming, so she took a third deep breath and exhaled, then said, “Your Grace, my Lady Countess, Lady Fleming is not just a saintess candidate: she’s the Black Saintess, and what’s more,” she added as both of her listeners started on their sofas, the Duke gaping at her and the Countess cupping her hands over her gaping mouth, “even her Guardianship, RuRu Marionette, had visited us in Classroom 1-3C tonight and asked us keep Lady Fleming’s identity a secret. So please, for Lady Fleming’s sake, don’t reveal this information to anyone else.”
Her listeners both said they wouldn’t tell.
“Furthermore,” Miss Maya added, “when Miss Sonja asked RuRu for help to find out Lord O’Neill’s whereabouts, she said she would have Lady Fleming help us.”
And so, Countess O’Neill, still with her hands cupped over her mouth, had tears shedding from her eyes and rolling down her cheeks, which she wiped away with her fingers and said, “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Duke Bartleby fished out a handkerchief from his waistcoat and handed it to the Countess, who took it and wiped her eyes and then her sniffling nose, before giving it back to him, who gave it to Miss Maya to wash up later.
“RuRu asked us one thing,” Maya added, placing the soiled item in the pocket of her apron, “and that’s to spread the word about the Black Saintess in this kingdom. RuRu wanted other darkness affinity users to know there’s hope for them, but just keep Lady Fleming’s name out of it for now.”
“For now?” the Duke said.
Maya nodded and said, “After that, Miss Sonja had me travel back here to tell you about it, and I think she’s spreading the good news as I speak.”
“Do you want us to help you spread it?”
“Yeah,” Maya said, nodding again. “It’ll make things easier.”
“I wish the Drevis Times was still in circulation,” Countess O’Neill said, “but I know the Memory Times is still up, so I’ll ask Countess Kessler to help spread the word.”
“That’s perfect,” Maya said.
Afterward Duke Astor Bartleby continued his talk with Countess O’Neill in Miss Maya’s presence about tonight’s slave auction held at the abandoned Waterloo Mansion in Deer Park a few miles away from his Bartleby estate and asked the Countess if she was willing to go there. When the Countess said she was, Astor gave the Countess a half-mask and an invitation to enter and had Miss Maya step into the Countess’s shadow (to sneak into the premises unseen), then had Marcus take the Countess (and the unseen Miss Maya) to her coach and coachman awaiting her outside. Now alone for the moment, Astor went over to his desk and pulled open a drawer and got out a sheet of paper and took up his pen to write a letter to Marquess Fleming. He kept his letter and postscript brief, which said,
‘Dear My Lord Marquess,
‘About Lady Fleming’s saintess candidacy: she is not just a candidate but a full-fledged saintess with her own title as the Black Saintess. I’ve just received this intel earlier tonight. Also, about the title confirmation this coming Friday: I doubt her Majesty will outright reveal Lady Fleming’s Black Saintess title before everyone at St. Calliope’s Abbey, but you and I must attend to see what happens. Last but not least, about the Black Saintess in particular: I’ve received further intel that the Guardian of the Darkness wants to spread word about the Black Saintess in this kingdom without revealing Lady Fleming’s identity. This way, we can redirect the rumors surrounding Lady Fleming onto something else we can manage for her benefit. So between now and Friday, we must do our part. As such, until I see you then and there,
‘I am sincerely yours,
‘(signed) Duke Astor Bartleby
‘P.S.: After receiving the intel and talking it over with Countess O’Neill about tonight’s auction, I beseech you to allow Lady Fleming to help us look for Lord O’Neill, for the Countess thinks her son might be there.
‘Yours,
‘Astor’
He had just finished his postscript when Marcus entered and informed him that Countess O’Neill was on her way to Waterloo Mansion. So Duke Bartleby asked his butler to retire for the evening, and after promising Marcus that he will go to sleep soon enough, he reread his letter to check for spelling errors and, finding none, pressed his finger over the bird-shaped seal on the letterhead and poured his intentions into it for about a minute. As one of the few forms of magic (talismanic magic) that anyone can perform, its use had become standardized in the Kaden Kingdom since its founding.
After Lady Avalon Jeong crossed the Charon Mountains at the behest of Duke Wilhelm Bartleby, still ensconced in the Schrader Kingdom as a double agent, she introduced her talismanic system to Duke Bartholomew Kaden and his allies. After seeing the potential in her system, Duke Bartholomew and Duke Wilhelm and their allies adopted it to send correspondences about allied and enemy movements and other intel amongst their ranks, slipping past the Schrader Kingdom’s detection for most of the Great War. The combined efforts of these two spymasters against King Lambert Schrader’s forces had earned an esteemed place for both individuals in the Kaden Kingdom: Duke Wilhelm Bartleby and his family formed the Black Guard knight division of the Kaden Kingdom’s main armed forces; and Lady Avalon Jeong formed and headed the first Postal Service in the Kaden Kingdom and then organized the first orphanages to care for children who had lost their parents during the Great War. For her services during and after the War, the newly crowned King Bartholomew Kaden decreed that St. Avalon’s Abbey and St. Avalon’s Orphanage be built to honor Lady Avalon Jeong, the first such abbey and orphanage in the kingdom.
When he lifted his finger from the seal, the letter glowed and transformed into a messenger bird standing on his desk, a small talisman given animate form.
The Duke then said, “Go on now.”
The bird fluttered its wings with glowing particles fluttering about it, then flew off through the walls of the Bartleby duchy and out across the night like a shooting star.
With a long day finished, Astor leaned back in his chair and hiked his up legs and crossed his ankles over the desktop and laced his fingers together over his stomach, indulging in one of his most cherished foibles: thinking about his younger cousin, Lady Janet Fleming.
The last time Astor had seen his cousin, he was fourteen years old, and Janet was nine, and it was during the last living moments of Duchess Bartleby’s life as she lay bedridden with her old maids and manservants and Marquess Fleming and Astor and Janet all by her side. When the dreadful moment came and went, as quick and silent as a single breath, Astor remembered Janet holding in her tears when they all left the late Duchess’s room, till she burst out bawling in the middle of the hallway. The maids and manservants of Marquess Fleming and the late Duchess all tried and failed to console her. When even Marquess Fleming couldn’t help her, Astor volunteered and led a sniffling Janet by the hand through the hallways of the Bartleby duchy for a time, thinking of a way to help, till he noticed the glistening marble walls and floors and vaulted ceilings and the red carpet guiding their steps and had an idea.
Astor asked Janet if she wanted to play a game, and she asked him what kind, and he told her it was something special. Janet calmed down, still sniffling but somewhat calmer, and asked him what was so special about it, and Astor said that it involved a secret door on the third floor of the Bartleby duchy building. Janet wanted to see it, so Astor led her up the second flight of stairs to the third floor and then to the end of the third-floor hallway with no double doors anywhere in sight, because the Bartleby estate had no such enchanted doors. Nevertheless, the crafty Astor had Janet close her eyes and imagine a pair of double doors in front of her as he counted down from ten to zero. On the last count, just before she opened her eyes, Astor guided her forward into a shadowed part of the wall and teleported out of the building—
And into the formal garden of the duchy’s courtyard before a fountain as its centerpiece. During the day, the front garden was like any other garden, and its fountain was like any other fountain, but now under a dark blanket of twinkling stars and the first bit of luminous crescent that was the new moon over the roofline of the duchy building, it had a different feel to it. Beneath a starry night, the cedars reached towards astral infinity, the pruned hedgerows sat slumbering in the chill of the air, the continuous splash of the fountain dappled the sheen of its basin like crystals, and Astor led a shivering Janet towards the fountain’s ledge, where they sat side by side with Janet leaning into him for warmth. He took off his overcoat and draped it over her shoulders, then warmed her little hands with his own, then pointed out the constellations above them, naming the stars that made them up, and when he forgot their names, he just made them up. But after a time, he started telling her ghost stories instead, because he knew the ghosts were out and about that night and that one of them was Duchess Bartleby watching over them.
In this heady mix of making stuff up to placate her cousin in the nostalgia of that besotted memory, tinged with such a loss, Duke Bartleby fell asleep in his chair with his legs still hiked up and his ankles crossed over the tabletop and his fingers laced together over his stomach.
