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Gaspard Ulliel as Henri de Guise in La Princesse de Montpensier (2010)

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SERVANA :

He had a response for everything, didn’t he? And such effortlessly charming ones, at that! Servana fancied herself world-wise enough to know that glossy silver tongues did not exclusively belong to noblemen, but the application of them was still a prized trait in the Orlesian parlour. The bards trading their secrets, the ones she remained wary of, could not have elevated their profession to such heights of mystique and intrigue if it were otherwise.

This man might have been after secrets; no one would spurn the discovery of one, if it were to come spilling into their lap. Of course, the way he was leaning in once again to kiss her hand begged the question of whether it was secrets he was after, or … something else. The gesture brought him close enough that Servana could examine the material of his mask, accompanied by the trace scent of whichever powders and perfumes adorned him tonight, two details which felt intimate alongside the unfinished kiss to her fingers.

Dangereux, dangereux.

It took some effort, but Servana peeled her gaze away from the young man’s, giving a cursory sweep around the hall. Her expression found a little steel, too, hardening just enough even as it kept the smile so that she could deny the supposition that this conversation was anything but the same routine greeting she had given to every relative and stale acquaintance.

A motion of her hand indicated he should abandon the bow. If it was honor and pledges of service she wanted, any of the dozens of plumed chevaliers wandering the halls and parlours would suffice; her own cousin, Ser Clementis, might even have been a tolerable example of it. Étienne Gaspard was clearly no chevalier, however. Did it make all of his bowing and flattering facetious? Or  ——  worse  ——  did he expect that it would impress her?

The fact that she had still not folded her fan, and kept it poised near her collarbone, was rather beside the point. It was the assumption that would be objectionable, if it were truly his thought.

❝ Utterly? Will you not spare enough self interest to enjoy tonight’s gala, Étienne Gaspard? ❞  An excuse to try the name; it came with no recollection of any de Chevin worth noting, but that was no surprise. She had guessed his official irrelevance already.  ❝ I must ask, since … you must have come all the way from Val Chevin itself? ❞

Remi straightened with a swordsman’s grace, or a courtier’s. And in Orlais, the two were not always, nor even usually, separate entities, bien sûr. His sword was not at his hip, neither the flexible dueling rapier of the nobleman he so often affected to be nor the heavier and uglier weapon of the outlaw he more truly was beneath the polish; and yet he moved as if it were, a dangerous grace. But there were blades in his boots, at his back, beneath the layers of his carefully chosen clothing. Most of those in this room could boast the same, if they were smart. The Game was a battle fought upon many fields -- a mislaid glove here, or a silent dagger there, each could be as effective as the other, depending upon one’s desired result.

Tonight, however, he did not expect to need the bloodier weapons in his arsenal, and so he relied upon the sweetest one instead, the most entertaining, the most, dare he to use the word, fun -- his charm. 

She truly was a beautiful young thing, he mused, and that made it even easier to turn the force of his most dazzling smile upon her, the one which dimpled his cheek where an old scar sat, the one which made his eyes a blue as bright as the heart of a candle’s flame, and as cheering. 

“To be at your service is to be self interested, my Lady de Montfort,” he assured her, allowing a wicked gleam to touch his eyes for a moment. “For in the pursuit of your whim am I drawn into your orbit, a velvet-winged moth to the brightness of your turning moon.” All right, so perhaps that was a bit too far, but it was a reference, however paraphrased, to a great love sonnet from the Orlesian canon. Mayhap she would recognize it and think he made a show of his erudition and his refinement, despite the lowly stature proclaimed by his garb and mask.

“A long journey indeed,” he said then, “made longer by banditry upon the highway, of all things!” He put shock into his voice, but made it the scandalized sort, and the sort which promised a story of adventurous doings to thrill her maidenly heart. He would draw her in, and draw her out, perhaps gain entrée to the private hallways of their estate in her company. He would find the layout of the rooms, perhaps unlatch a window or pocket a key... and then return later that night to riffle de Montfort’s papers and uncover his secrets.

If Remi first managed to riffle sweet Servana’s petticoats, so much the better.

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cllgood:

“There must be a proverb about following a fox down his burrow, or a man down a hole, but it just doesn’t wanna come to me.” Is it much different than dancing on the tip of ka’s blade, I wonder? 

Was it much different than toppling into Todash, only to come out through some rent hole on the other side of that faceless darkling soup between realities?

Here, people believed the Prim pressed continuously against their world: closer still than in All-world that would become Mid-world after the world would have moved on yet again. That Todash blackness he had swum through––and even the Prim: so much closer, so much more One. One Fade, one realm. For what was worth, he had had the travel adventures of a lifetime, and should have stories galore to tell when he got back home (if he got back home, but that was not a conditional he allowed into his head). There was, however, one slight downside to mesmerizing dozens of avid listeners with his tales of falling out of time and space: Cuthbert’s memories of it had already begun to grow as murky and overcast as the world of Todash itself, and were getting more so day by day. Yesterday he had been able to remember the taste of copper on his tongue while passing through the darkness in a semi-awake state of mind; today, he had already lost the thought of Todash taste entirely.

He was very much lucid now, though: the surprise of good excitement had his blood surging, and the chase had him breathing hard, his chest heaving. He grinned at the Fox. “Still with you, O Great Reynard.” He just couldn’t let it pass; and laid on the accent extra thick, of course. Still grinning, he brushed a strand of hair out of his face and tucked it between ear and hat. Then, loud and booming––

“Ils sont ici! Là-bas!” 

Bert whipped around; saw a heavily armored guard standing in the bend of the corridor; wheeled around again, gave the Black Fox a push, and followed down the secret passage right on his heels–––not without a cackle. 

The walls were less smoothly hewn in here than out there. His hands grasped for purchase along his steps. The sound of Remi’s footsteps changed; so did the sound of his breathing. And still, Cuthbert stubbed a toe against the edge of the balustrade, inhaled sharply, and was glad for the feeling of a proper handrail under his fingers before he stumbled down the stairs. His balance was a well-trained thing and he was glad for it –– and reined it in again before it could throw him off. But it did give him an idea, that. Still trailing one hand on the rail, he loosened a few bullets from his cartridge belt and let them gently drop to the ground, one by one, like morsels of food in a faraway fairytale. Every dull plink that announced the inevitable farewell of yet another one of his last bullets in this world was a tug at his heartstrings; but he had made up his mind to repay the duke’s hospitality by not shooting at his soldiers while he and the Fox led them on this merry chase. And so lose his bullets he must, if a purpose they could serve. 

He was rewarded for it by an unsavory clatter of noise –– hollow steel and hard rock –– when he was a good way down the stairs, and he couldn’t help but chuckle happily under his breath. “My! It’s like they asked to have the wind taken out of their sails, so eager are they for it!”

“Actually,” Remi said as he leapt down the stairs, all but floating along them, “the Orlesian for ‘fox’ is renard. However,” and he dashed sidelong into a passageway which jutted off from one of the landings, still following the mental map in his mind that dear red-haired Jenny had given him, “Reynard was the name of a fox who appears in many folktales, always as a smooth-talking trickster.”

Pausing in front of a seeming bare wall, Remi examined it for a moment, then located the trigger mechanism. This time, a segment of the floor opened and he made a small sound of satisfaction to see it. A ladder, rusted but still solid, was bolted into the walls of the stone shaft and a dank, wet sort of odor wafted up through.

“Nice trick with those... ah, little metal boulettes, or whatever they are... by the by,” Remi said, gesturing that the fellow should precede him down the ladder. He’d meant to close the secret passage above so they’d not be able to be followed at all, but this fellow had spoilt that bit of plan by shoving Remi ahead of him, even if he’d then half-salvaged things by tripping their pursuit. But this time, he wasn’t going to watch his carefully laid plans be foiled by a man who barely spoke Orlesian!

He watched the man sharply, wondering just how far the stranger could be trusted, in the end. It wasn’t the first time a bounty hunter had been sent to bring down the Fox! Any  more incidental inconveniences like the one of leaving the secret passage open, and this fellow would find himself tied up tight as a pretty package, left for his employers to open!

“The modern Orlesian renard,” he added, returning without prologue to the topic, “is actually due to the popularity of the tales of Reynard the Fox. The older Ciriane word for fox was vulpil, which I’ve been told is similar to, or derived from, the Tevene.”

Remi wasn’t only an outlaw, after all. He’d been raised a noble! He was an educated rogue.

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servanademontfort:

The kiss was a dreadfully performative thing  ——  and as such, it fit as perfectly in the salon as the decorative garlands and gilded portraits. But let it be noted that he had more tact than half the chevaliers who had knelt and slobbered at her hand like dogs licking for treats! Perhaps the hair’s breath of a distance between his lips and her fingers was designed to make her wonder how they would have felt, had they met their mark. How wicked of him, if it was intentional. 

It might have been a faux pas to let any genuine emotion slip beneath the exquisite mask and make itself visible, but it was one thing to betray vexation or anger to an opponent, and quite another to smile at a pretty young man’s flirtations. True, someone watchful and calculating might oversee it, and so guess Lady Servana to be too readily bought by flattering words, or else men of a certain age; a part of her even worried that such a claim would not be so far from the truth, following her years of seclusion. But it was better that they should gossip about a perceived girlish naïveté than pick at the reasons that had isolated her in the first place. 

A slow batting of eyelashes mirrored the tiny fluttering of her fan as she found herself caught in the hold of those impossibly wide, jewel-like eyes. So earnest, they seemed, and yet she would have a hard time trusting anyone who let such honey-sweet words pour out of their mouth as easily as wine poured from a crystal decanter. Perhaps he was even a bard; they made their trade on placing the right words in the right ears, and Servana was constantly being warned about them. 

“A man might find himself blinded anyway,” she offered, after taking a moment to collect her breath, “if he failed to find a modest place to look.” Spoken with mock seriousness, the comment somehow managed to fall in time with the man’s nibble of glazed pear. That was a pity; she did not wish to be thinking about his almost-kiss again while trying to make a point about immodesty. “But we might let a single transgression go unpunished, just this once  ——  I won’t tell if you won’t tell.” 

Another grape. Servana bit it cleanly in half, held it there for a minute between her teeth, then savored each half in turn. “… I would only wish to know the name of the man whose reputation I am helping to guard?” Oh, the mask might have told her a surname  ——  but that was not her goal in asking. Half a dozen people might wear similar masks, but beneath each one was an individual. And this one happened to be one that interested her. 

“Ah,” Remi all but purred, delighted by the way her warm brown eyes clung to his, the way he could all but watch her catch her breath and could imagine her bosom expanding beneath the fluttering fan, “but if a man were to be blinded after meeting your eyes, he might count himself lucky that his last sight was one so rare and wonderful.”

There was of course a threat buried in her words, an edge which did not feel entirely genuine. Of course not; there was something of the performance about all of this, all the glitter and shine of the gala itself, the dresses and doublets, the buckles upon his heeled shoes, the flirting, the smiles, the masks. It was, of course, Orlais, that wonderful land, that brilliant and thrilling place. Remi never felt so alive as when he navigated its dangerous waters! 

He smiled at her again, letting his gaze drop to her painted lips and linger there a moment as she spoke. “But my lady, you are too kind!” He scooped up her hand again and bent over it, a gesture of effusive gratitude this time. His lips still did not touch her skin. As he straightened again, he murmured, just as his face was the closest to hers, “It shall be our little secret, yes?”

A few lightfooted steps, graceful and lithe, and he had successfully maneuvered the two of them just a little distance from the table with its burgeoning weight of canapés. Others were hungry, of course, or wished to overheard conversations being held by their betters. He would not seek to remove this young lady from the gala’s throngs entirely -- not yet -- but a modicum of privacy seemed warranted, and far from unusual at any Orlesian party. One might easily encounter any number of giggling couples pressed into little private nooks along the hallways, wrapped in one another with little regard to passing eyes.

“But I have been rude! I have the advantage of you, for who else could you be, your reputation having so boldly preceded you?” he answered. Striking a pose, he swept an elegant bow to her, precisely as was proper. “I have the humble honor of presenting myself to you, my Lady de Monfort. I am Étienne Gaspard de Chevin, and I am utterly at your service.”

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cllgood:

Grinning, Cuthbert left it at that. Palaver was ill digested when one was pressed for time; every child knew that. Incidentally, it was one of the reasons why it was time to take the bull by the horns: The Duke was all talk, no walk –– promising Cuthbert to help him find his homeward passage since the first day he had stepped foot into the ornamented hall, but having yet to act upon it. He was more busy, it seemed, with milking dry his villages. Harsh taxes and harsher penalties: the whiplashes of tyranny. 

The Affiliation had learned that lesson a long time ago. The whispers of injustice blew upon the embers of rebellion in the Northerly Baronies, caught fire, and swept across the heartland –– all the way to the Outer Arc and beyond. Indeed, what had lain in the Outies during Josephine Deschain’s ill-fated years of leadership was now long part of the Borderlands during Cuthbert’s lifetime. Revolts and uprisings ate away at the heart of civilization; a spark was thus better stomped out before it could catch on, and better yet – avoided to breathe air entirely. 

And the Good Man? The Good Man, unlike the people of Orlais, wore two masks: one for court, and one for the common people in whose name he claimed to fight. Of course, it was the common people who bled first. Of course, it was all soft words and hard actions. Hard, unforgivable actions –– a spark that had yet to be stomped out. 

“Lead the way, sai, and stop blabbing.” How wondrous, how droll, to switch the preternatural order of the roles, and be the one to say such words for a change! It had Bert chuckling softly as he followed in Remi’s wake, skidding along in the shadow of the walls. They were barely around two bends when the sharp clang and clatter of a room being turned upside down advanced from behind them.

“Ser Henri, il était ici! C’est la fenêtre!”

“Allez! Allez!”

What Orlesian Cuthbert had picked up in the weeks since his tumultous arrival was enough to decipher the muffled conversation –– the contextual urgency of it spoke for itself, any’ro. He flashed his eyebrows at the broad back of his new acquaintance. “On y va.”

Remi’s blue eyes widened behind their mask. “Never do that again,” he declared, pinning Cuthbert with a look as sharp as arrow’s points. “Your accent is appalling.”

At least the strange young man was indeed keeping up quite nicely. The rings on Remi’s hands hummed and shivered as he dashed through the hallways, sharpening his reflexes, improving his memory, his dexterity, his stamina. And yet the stranger with his bastardized Marcher -- probably? -- accent and his utterly bizarre pantaloons was keeping up. Maybe that odd-looking baldric with its capsules of metal was a sort of enchanted item like Remi’s rings, he mused.

A question for another time, regardless! As was the stranger’s background, as was just how the stranger had come to be a guest in the castle of the Duke of Lydes in the first place -- as was the stranger’s questionable fashion sense.

Ah, and there was the stair, just as the map had promised. Remi dashed up along it, taking the steps two at a time, counting the landings as he passed them. One, two, three... on the fourth he stopped, not even breathing hard.

“We’ve outdistanced them,” he said. “Fools in heavy armor ought to know better than to chase down the Fox!” He posed briefly as though expecting applause... but only briefly. They’d outdistanced their pursuit, maybe, but he could still hear it behind them, the shouts and clangor of those fools and their armor.

A tapestry hung in a niche in this landing, as it had in all of the others. Shoving the heavy fabric aside and blinking away the dust which billowed out, Remi pressed a hand to the stones behind, counting until he found the proper one. A light push and a twist....and a segment of the wall slid aside to reveal a yawning black passageway into darkness, a secondary and secret stair which twisted up and down behind this one.

Leaping through without hesitation, Remi cast a look back at the man. “Still with me, Cuthbert son of Robert?” he asked, half in challenge.

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cllgood:

“I may have brought the gallows into it, my friend, but you provided me the rope.” 

But there would be no hanging. There would be no attempt at a hanging. Unlike his friend and ka-brother, Cuthbert Allgood may wield no Touch for his foresight, but he had as healthy a hunch as any young man of station and confidence; if the dashing rogue lied, it would show soon enough. If or when it did, he would handle it like he did all things: with a dash of creativity, a penchant for improvisation. He grinned. 

“By now, the guard has alerted his superior about the dangling rogue on his master’s castle wall; they will regroup and swarm out. And the longer you…serenade me, the slimmer your chance of slipping away unseen. Fortunately for thee, I like being serenaded.” 

There weren’t many things he needed to gather up: What he owned, he wore on his back. There was a broad-rimmed hat thrown over a bedpost; Cuthbert picked it up and placed it back on his hat, pressing on the dents. Then he hooked a thumb through the belt hook on his jeans. He had a good amount of bullets left; but the fact that he had no means to make new ones here was another good reason to find his way home. Running around with an empty belt? He might as well run around naked.

So. The Black Fox of Orlais. Perhaps his burrow could bring Bert through the looking glass once more. 

“I propose: a helping hand in escape, in exchange for a guided tour through that pretty country you call home. Indulge me. It’d be the least you should do, barrelling through my window absent song or flowers.” 

“Ah, finding the Duke’s hospitality rather less than hospitable, I see!” Remi declared with a brazen laugh. In truth, he was relieved that his answer had been well-taken; he’d taken something of a liking to this fellow with his strange accent and stranger garb, and it would have been quite a shame to be made to fight a man with such a wicked sense of humor. 

It would also have taken up precious moments of time which Remi could not spare -- the conversation itself had too, of course, and a certain distant din of raised voices, so like the belling and baying of hounds at the hunt, told him he’d used up his lead already.

Which meant he didn’t have time to debate this fellow either, on the merits of joining an outlaw’s train when one might as easily stay secure in a Duke’s well-feathered nest. A discussion for another time, when time there was indeed for it.

“You’d best keep up then, if you’re set upon coming along!” was all he said in response. Checking that his slim rapier was loose in its sheath, Remi dashed to the door. He had a sense already for what part of the castle this was; it was but a moment’s work to orient himself to the map his man on the inside -- actually a woman, a saucy red-haired elf named Jenny -- had provided, and choose his direction.

“This way!” And he he was off, soft kidskin boots nearly noiseless on the corridor’s carpet.

[lereynardnoir-blog]

Gaspard Ulliel as Henri de Guise in La princesse de Montpensier. (2010)

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[lereynardnoir-blog]

cllgood:

…an outspoken outlaw, it seemed. Far more eloquent than your everyday harrier or cattle thief. Far more dashing, say true, while on the subject of compliments –– though Bert had no inclination to pay the Black Fox back with the same coin just yet. He bartered time with another candid gaze sizing up the man. “And I am called Cuthbert, son of Robert. A guest in this drafty abode that very same Duke calls home. And as a rule, my trysts with Outlaws end in the gallows.” 

Like children in a fairy tale, he had marked his way there with breadcrumbs as a child. To feed the birds, as Cort had wanted him to. To remember the way, as Cort had undoubtedly intended. He had been bred to the guns and the blood and the violence –– he had battled for it all long before he had found himself in the rain-soaked mud of the square yard, facing Cort and potential exile. 

The kind of outlaws that hanged on Gallows Hill threatened what was at the very core of that way of life. That kind of outlaws had multiplied. With them rode a savage itching for Gilead’s blood, and he rode over land sucked dry in a tug-of-war that made Cuthbert anxious to find his way home. Purveying barren pleasantries and etiquette at a Duke’s court in the Orlesian heartland brought him nowhere nearer to that goal.

“Let’s assume you had made off with that dear girl’s virtues. Would they have been a gift – or a plunder?” He was still smiling, still standing tall and calm, his arms crossed before his chest; and his tone was still conversational, playful.

Remi tsked his tongue reprovingly. “Ah, and here we were just exchanging pleasantries, making new friends in unexpected places.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded the man steadily, still trying to place that accent. Had he escaped the maelstrom only to crash on the rocks? If a fight was in the offing, Remi was confident in his own skills -- and the little array of pretty powders in vials at his hip. Not poisons, no, but sleeping powders, choking powders which would induce coughing and temporary blindness, that sort of thing. Nothing permanent, in other words. 

“And you have to bring the gallows into it?” He shook his head. “I certainly don’t have time to be hanging around, here or there.”

Another pause, during which he debated the merits of just dispensing with all of this and dashing past the man, out into the corridors to make his escape. But his pride had been pricked by the accusation buried in that playful tone.

“As to your question, however, Cuthbert son of Robert!” he declared, lifting his head as proudly as a wolf and not the fox his sobriquet named him. “Firstly, the young woman in question is known to make a gift of her attentions to any young buck who glances her way.” He shrugged, and grinned. “And I’ve no complaint of that, mind. Her attention is hers to dispose of as she sees fit. Which brings me to my second point. I only plunder things which do not rightfully belong to those who possess them. Such as the contents of that locked box, being the cruelly doubled taxes bled dry from the veins of a nearby village currently unable to afford food enough to make it through the coming winter.”

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cllgood:

“I’d rather win you over, to tell ya true; over to my side of the wall, that is.” 

A divining sentiment, that –– he pulled when Remi pushed, stepped aside and let the man find his bearings again now inside the castle. Cuthbert had a feeling it was not the first time he had been inside this particular castle. Orlesians wore their masks the way the ladies of Gilead wore their bonnets –– that is to say, frequently and extravagantly –– but he had a hunch that the kind of mask that this man wore gave off a vibe of an entirely different nature. It spoke rascal to him, and had done so even before the first guard had come a-shouting and a-shooting. There were more voices booming out from below, more clatter of guards in heavy armor. Cuthbert lifted both brows, arms crossed. The smile unfurled into a grin. “Next time, do. You ought to serenade me, at the very least. I’ve been told I’ve the looks for it.” How had that letter gone? Your eyes make the very stars burst out in song, something something let me be your starlight. He had made Roland read it out loud one evening. It could have only been better, had Roland been the author of those words. 

“So. Here we are, and a new chapter afoot! What’s your tale so far, mon sai? The guards looked none too pleased to see thee. Are you a dangerous fella?” 

“Aye, good serah, that you do,” he said brightly, running an appreciate glance over his erstwhile savior. Servana didn’t need to know; and anyway, he was only looking, wasn’t he?

Remi hopped to his feet with alacrity and a boundless sort of energetic enthusiasm, dusting off his hands and his doublet as he did so. Stone dust on black leather, not a good look. Once his garb had been restored to his satisfaction, Remi could not help but strike a bit of a pose, turning out his booted leg like any fine Orlesian courtier might to display a calf. His hands, in their gloves, went to rest upon his hips as his chin lifted a little proudly. All right, a lot proudly.

“I am the very definition of a dangerous fella,” he declared. “I am known to all and sundry as that most dashing of outlaws, the Black Fox of Orlais!”

A tiny glance half-way over his shoulder as the sounds from below rose to a bit of a pitch. “I shall be more than happy to serenade you another time,” he said. “I fear I’m in a bit of a hurry at the moment. Apparently, I’ve stolen both the Duke’s daughter’s virtue and the contents of a certain locked box in his study. Foulest slander, of course.” A beat. “I only took the latter. The former’s been missing for a least five years, never to be seen again, I fear.”

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cllgood:

“Well, you know what they say about good stories.” Having a far better view of what was going on far below, Cuthbert could anticipate the twang of the crossbow, followed by the swoosh of an arrow. It hissed by them, missing. Cuthbert tutted. Poor marksmanship. He smiled happily at Remi. “They’re full of suspension.” 

A story, indeed! And what a chapter! He must know how it goes on. 

He leans further out, extends an arm for Remi to grip. 

“Ah-HA!” Remi crowed triumphantly as the stranger reached out his arm. “I knew I’d win you over, good ser!” 

And none too soon, either; the crossbow bolt had missed, but not by nearly enough of a margin to leave Remi well-pleased; he’d been sprayed by shards and splinters of its wood when it had struck the stone and shattered. Ah, but that made for delightful sibilance; he made a mental note to himself to work it into a verse of his next song about himself.

(Some bards had to find heroes to follow about for song fodder. Remi had just... cut out the middleman, as it were.)

Grasping the man’s arm, Remi pushed off with his booted toes against the casement of the window below him and shinnied effortlessly up and through the window, landing almost gracefully in a black-leather heap on the floor of the stranger’s chambers.

“Terribly sorry about dropping in like this,” he said, grinning. “Normally I bring flowers when I climb through a pretty man’s bedchamber window.”

[lereynardnoir-blog]

cllgood:

“I don’t know,” Bert answered promptly with a grin that clearly spoke of how much he was enjoying himself. He rests comfortably on the windowsill, his arms crossed, his chin propped up on them. It was just so that he could peer down at the dangling man. “I haven’t made up my mind yet. But deducting from your own just spoken words, I must assume you already know what will happen next. ––– lest it really be the end of you, and you decide not be hanging around my humble quarters anymore.” He leaned further out the window, glancing past Remi. A fall the length of the castle wall. A landing bed of cobblestone – peppered, perchance, by a guard’s arrows. Bert looked back to Remi. 

“It would be quite the let-down.” 

Beneath his mask, Remi’s mouth curled into his characteristic rakish grin, dimpling his cheek deeply where an old scar cut it. Ah, the fellow had a sense of humor, how unexpected. How delightful. “Ah, not at all, my friend, not at all!” he protested almost merrily. “My story hasn’t ended yet; far from it! This is merely another chapter!”

As he’d said, he could work with either. Being assisted up would merely make things a little simpler and easier, but this wasn’t the first time he’d found himself in a delicate situation. Far from it! He had options. All right, increasingly few of those; in the distance he heard running boots on cobbles and presumed the bowman was approaching at speed. But options, regardless.

He glanced back down, and then back up at the man in the window. “Admittedly, this particular chapter is a bit of a cliffhanger.”

[lereynardnoir-blog]

“Ha! Quite right! I, for one, rest assured in knowing that I don’t know everything, but I doknow how to improvise. A marvelous thing, improvisation – lets you be the captain of your fate. So much for knowing where to tread next. Ah– a saying comes to me: ‘tis at wit’s end that a man finds the well of creativity.”

What ironic thing to talk about –– especially when initiated by a man who was introduced to him with a fanciful mask hiding half of his face from the world! “Tell me, mon sai, do the goodly people of Orlais hold the same fatalistic view when they don’t know whose face they’re talking to behind a mask? Is that, too, an end of sorts? Mayhap of dignity, mayhap of courtly pride?” Cuthbert scoffed, amused. “You cannot tell me you seriously wear them for pretension’s sake.”

“Oh, no, it's just they're terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future,” Remi answered archly, regarding the fellow with some amusement. The accent was unusual -- some manner of Marcher, no doubt, with their beastly dialects. 

He glanced down. Far, far below, the city guard stood gawping up at him. He was safe for the nonce, but someone had just called for a crossbow. Shifting his weight and feeling the edge of masonry to which he clung by his fingertips grit slightly as though considering letting go of itself and leaping to its -- and, not incidentally, his -- sorry death by cobblestone, Remi looked back up at the man leaning out of the window above him.

“Now. Were you planning to help me up, or merely to stand there philosophizing on the merits of improvisation, good ser?” he asked. “I can work with either, but time is rather of the essence here.”

@cllgood

[lereynardnoir-blog]

servanademontfort:

The secret, of course, was only partially Duke Cecil’s to bear; the true burden of it rested on his daughter’s shoulders, although Lady Servana had taken every precaution to ensure that no one would be able to guess it. Confident poise, shoulders relaxed and not hunched, chin held high  ——  an invaluable piece of advice had told her that the secret to maintaining social relevance in Orlais was to walk into any room as if you already owned it. It only helped her cause that as far as any of the guests knew, she would come to inherit her father’s estate. 

The reality was necessarily more complicated, as politics in Orlais often were. But that was an issue to worry about another time, for whispering about behind closed doors while the dutiful servants pretended they had heard nothing of the intrigues. 

Tonight’s aim was something rather different. At the root of it, any soirée was a lavish display of wealth and influence, from the ranks of important, gem-studded masks among the visiting crowds and down to the plainly enamelled ones worn by the servants, from the balustrades wrapped in floral garlands to the cabinets of curiosities imported from Antiva and Tevinter. The Duchy of Montfort had much to boast of, and more importantly, many people to boast to. Tonight was an exercise in that aspect of the Grand Game, under the pretense of a birthday celebration for one of Servana’s cousins.  

It was surprisingly exhausting work, extending all the necessary greetings and congratulations. No, she was determined to show no sign of weakness in front of guests who were legendary in their critical savagery! But it was past the time for a fortifying morsel and glass of champagne, in her opinion, which was how she found her way to the salon. She could not help to notice that the modestly dressed figure occupying the space in front of the decorative towers of hors d’oeuvres had a boyish grin peeking out from beneath his half-mask, and an appealing swath of dark hair framing his face. He had not been among those that Servana had introduced or been introduced to, which was sign enough that he was no one important; there were still masks that eluded her knowledge, too, and the simplicity of this one did no favors. 

Intéressant! And how tempting it would be to forgive the angle of his gaze as she approached. 

“Good evening,” she greeted mildly. In her left hand, Servana carried a folded fan; with a flick of her wrist, she opened it, and raised it to gently flutter above the daringly plunging neckline of her evening gown. The other hand delicately plucked a single spring-green grape from the display, which she spent a few thoughtful moments chewing while she scrutinized the young man from beneath her own ornate half-mask. “You seem confused about where to find a woman’s eyes. Shall I help you look?” 

The fan’s flutter interposed itself between Remi’s eyes and their object; nevertheless, his grin only widened. For a moment, he allowed himself to continue watching the delicate movements of the lace-edged fan, imagining things best not said aloud in mixed company; and then he lifted his eyes behind their mask in time to watch the smooth fruit slip between the lady’s pink lips. Ah, but she was a lovely one, with confidence and good humor in the set of her jaw and the angle of her dancing eyes! 

Her mask, proclaiming her a de Montfort, was not the last thing he looked at, of course. But it was not what he chose to make a show of looking at.

Remi struck a pose, made a leg. He reached for her hand, the very one which had so recently touched her lips, and he bowed over it with perfect extravagance and the exact degree of respect due from his supposed position to her own. His lips did not quite brush her hand, but made a soft sound in the air just above it.

“My Lady de Montfort,” he said warmly as he straightened. Ah, but this was perfect! He would charm the young heiress of the house -- who, it was said, had been kept in some seclusion from society in Chateau Haine during a prolonged illness, and was more than likely rather a naive creature now because of it. Surely she had seldom been flirted with so boldly and so charmingly as Remi knew he could muster! 

And once she was under his spell, discovering her father’s secret would be as a child’s game. Assignations with her would even provide good reason to sneak back into the manor by night and... do a bit of discreet reconnaissance. Snooping, in less prettified language.

“When the eyes in question are of such a striking warmth,” he said, gazing into them with an intensity that suggested (wrongly) that he had been distracted entirely from the lady’s other fine attributes, “such a glowing brilliance, perhaps a man can be forgiven for not meeting them at once, lest he be blinded.”

Not too much now, Remi, he chided himself mildly. Reaching aside, he plucked up a thin slice of sticky bourbon-glazed candied pear and slid it into his mouth.

[lereynardnoir-blog]

The mask he wore was the de Chevin design, though greatly simplified and without ostentation. Combined with his sober – though Remi himself would have preferred the word dashing – black silk and velvet with its slashes of silver, the garb proclaimed him to be someone’s by-blow. A bastard, just favored enough by his family to earn entrée to a soirée like this one and to wear fine clothing – but not legitimized, not in line to inherit.

It wasn’t true, but it was close enough. And it was safe. There were so many de Chevins, in the main line and the several cadet branches, that they didn’t even all know one another by name, let alone face.

The fact that Remi himself was a de Chevin and thus entitled to the mask he wore – or to its finer elder cousin, more precisely – was a delicious bit of icing sugar on the frilly little cake.

Thus cloaked in a sort of invisibility – the blacks made him beneath common notice, even as the mask proved his right to be there – Remi strolled the various salons and corridors and dining rooms through which the Duke’s party had sprawled. He held a glass of something of a delicate rosé tint in one hand; his other rested upon his hip in a casual way which any well-versed swordsman would recognize as the absence of a hilt. (Daggers, not his preferred weapon, were nevertheless secreted upon his person; Remi Vascal, dashing outlaw of Orlais, was no fool.)

He exchanged words here and there with those whom he passed. He paused beside the tables groaning under their weight of hors d'oeuvre and canapés and nibbled delicately at them; just because he was here to work did not by any means imply he could not enjoy himself, now could it? To that end, he also cast approving glances toward any number of the sparkling young women and strapping young men around him, favoring some few with a wink and his trademark rakish grin – the one which dimpled an old scar on his cheek most becomingly beneath the half-mask – and watching as delicious blushes spread across heaving bosoms and delicately bearded cheeks alike.

In the back of his mind, he could almost hear his mother’s voice chiding him to stay on task and not be distracted by a pretty face; his mother’s bardic training methods had been strict but effective, and Remi could perhaps admit that the version of her in his head had a point. After all, Duke Cecil de Montfort was hiding a secret. All the rumors Remi had been able to uncover pointed to it. And now, Remi had decided to find out just what that secret was.

After he’d spent a little while enjoying the particular expanse of creamy bosom currently occupying his attention, of course.

@servanademontfort​