Someone's in the garden, and there shouldn't be. "You shouldn't be here," she tells him, to his face, like she has the right to be here and he does not. She comes striding over to him, her hands holding her skirts so that each step can be longer.
He looks up at her face before he accidentally catches a glimpse of her ankles. He doesn't think he recognises her, but he's never been good with faces. "Well, I came out here to get some air. It was getting stuffy in there." Too many women with cloying perfume and powdered faces and pressing close to try to dance with him. Too many advisors staring him down like he was on the verge of making the wrong choice. Too many people just... there. "What about you?" He challenges the stranger. "This is a private garden."
"Someone's planning to kill the prince tonight."
He feels his heart leap into his throat. The world fades away at the sudden terror.
She's continuing, "I'm here to stop that from happening," and she isn't even looking at him. She's scanning the dark gardens and letting her eyes raise to the castle parapets and windows. A slow economy of movement, like he'd seen the stable mousers and that owl that roosted in the chapel do. A predatory glance, patient and certain that prey will appear. (And she isn't bowing to him, does she not know who he is?)
He swallows, and folds his hands behind his back. "Well, the guards surely--"
"They won't," she interrupts, her eyes snapping to him, and he flinches as though she might peck him or something. She takes a breath, lets it out through her nose, then tries in a more diplomatic tone. "I tried telling the guards. I wrote letters to every administrator. I sought audience with noble families. I tried," she insists, "But no-one believed me. So, here I am, in this..." She looks down at her dress, and her lips twisted sourly, "Outfit." Like there is no term more insulting that she can call to mind right now that would be appropriate to use in company. "Blending in." Her gaze scans the gardens again, then flick briefly towards the ballroom windows.
"So..." He's still reeling, still trying to recover. "You weren't... invited?"
She stops, and looks at him, and she gives him the most withering look anyone has ever given him.
"S-sorry, I didn't mean..." He winces. "Are you sure?"
"I'm positive. I have the evidence." She looks back to the ballroom, her hands kneading at fistfuls of her skirt, like a cat planning to use its claws. "No-one believed me. So either they're overconfident in their security, they don't like the lower class challenging them, or they're involved in the plot."
The idea that there could be threats nearby has been drilled into him since he was young. He has a food taster, he has bodyguards, he has rules and regulations that keep people from getting too close. But it's a shock to hear it said by someone else, so bluntly and confidently. Someone's trying to kill him, tonight. And they could be someone close to him? Someone he trusts to keep him safe?
"Complacency, pride, or complicity." She frowns. She has very strong eyebrows. "I'm not sure which is worse." She looks back at him. "So you shouldn't be here, in case someone is sneaking in through the gap in security here."
"There's a gap in security?"
She tenses. Her eyes are very bright, all of a sudden. "You should go inside, sir. Now."
"I --" Why is she looking at him like that? Why is she suddenly picking up her skirts and running, running at him, like that? He brings up both hands to shield himself from her, and feels himself losing his balance and stumbling back to the gravel and sprawling.
The woman's wig, impaled by a thrown blade, plops down on the ground beside him. Just past the wig, he sees the woman's ankles. The latter feels more terrifying, because he knows he shouldn't be looking at them, but they're right there and they're very nice and --
"Gods fucking dammit!" She reaches down to her ankles, grabbing one of her fine and gleaming shoes, and lobs it into the garden. Someone's rapid footsteps are moving away from them. The gleaming shoe lodges itself ineffectually in a topiary, missing the fleeing figure. "Fuck!"
He's never heard anyone curse like that in his presence before. He looks up at her in wonder - and then panics, because it looks like she's bleeding.
It isn't until she bends down to pick up her wig and the dagger that he can see it isn't blood cascading down her shoulders: its her hair. She makes eye contact with him, fierce and terrible, yet her voice is very calm and very polite. "Go inside, and raise the alarm. Where there's one assassin, there's always more." She scoops the other shoe off her other foot, picks up her skirts, and runs into the dark.
He scrambles his way up the stairs and back into the ballroom. At least people take a disheveled, screaming prince seriously. The guests are sequestered, guards fill every hallway and block every door, and two more assassins are chased off the property.
The next day, the castle is on lockdown. The king, old as he is, is still capable of tearing the advisors a new one. Security hadn't been enough. Multiple assassins after his son. Why hadn't there been any preparation for this?
"There was a woman," the prince says, speaking up for the first time in a meeting since... well, since ever. "She said she had evidence. She tried to warn us, but no-one listened. She saved my life."
"And who is this woman, exactly?"
"I don't know," the prince admits. She'd had red hair and strong eyebrows and bright eyes, and reminded him of an owl or a cat, but he had no idea what she looked like. He was terrible with faces. But... "But she left this behind."
He brings his hands out from behind his back, to the gleaming shoe that he'd picked out of the topiary. A single shoe, too sturdy to be a dancing shoe, and stitched with impatience and glass rather than silk or pearls.
"She wasn't invited," the prince says, with a faint smile, turning the shoe over in his hands. Then he looks up at the room. Everyone is staring at him. But he's not scared, not anymore. Maybe this strong woman's shoe is imparting some kind of power to him. He'd like to thank her. He'd like to borrow a bit more of that strength for later. "We should find her. I need to thank her. And you," he tilts his chin at the room, at the advisors and councilmen, "Owe her an apology."
49 notes
·
View notes
In September 2022, I started writing a new comic about Dundee. I ended up producing an entire script and the majority of thumbnails for a 200 page comic. Unfortunately, I'll probably never make it. 200 pages is a lot; I have a job and other projects I'm working on. I made a fair amount of concept art for it though, so I thought I might share some of it.
The story takes place when Irwin was young, shortly before Darren walked out of his life. It is both a prequel and sequel to Jackaroo Dundee and was going to be called Paper House. I'm going to leave the rest of the story a mystery in the hopes that I'll eventually do something with this script.
^This is Darren! Everything was written and drawn before we knew what Darren looked like, and I'd always imagined Irwin was the spitting image of his dad. It was thematically important to the story for them to look alike, so I'd planned to keep it like this even after we met Darren.
The dialogue is blurred in the first two panels because Irwin is deaf in his left ear and couldn't hear Darren until he was behind him. At the start of the story, Irwin uses a hearing aid, but it's later broken.
Windows and door frames are significant! There's nothing behind them. Ever.
I designed an outfit for each character for every scene they were in, paying close attention to fashion trends of the era and items of clothing that they might wear frequently with different outfits.
Sheila's clothes in particular were fun to design. She starts getting more adventurous with her style after Darren walks out.
I realised very quickly that the tone of the story demanded a more realistic style, so it was fun to adapt my pre-existing design for Irwin to this.
The core idea behind Paper House was a young Irwin who hates his dad, but feels powerless to stop himself from becoming just like him. I put a lot of work into this comic and would love for it to see the light of day at some point, even if it ends up in a different form.
23 notes
·
View notes