June 2nd, 2013
While the outer ring of defenses for Prudence’s county palace was just a wrought-iron gate and a force-field, the middle ring of defense consisted of gardens, which were filled with strange and exciting plants, fantastic examples of self-grooming topiary, pit traps, homunculi ogres, Mercy, and Catherine.
“You really should’ve come by sooner, Catherine,” said Mercy.
Catherine smiled and shrugged. The disconnect from everything that she’d felt when she’d come home was just growing stronger. Somewhere, she’d made a wrong step…
“I just couldn’t think of anything to talk about,” she offered. “Or do.”
“Catherine,” said Mercy, “you’re practically my sister. Just come over! Hang out! Do things! I haven’t seen you for years and it’s good to get the chance.”
“It is,” said Catherine. That much was true, at least. They’d Skyped while she was off at college, and Mercy was always a refreshing anchor of home. Now they were just walking around Prudence’s gardens, wondering which of the plants Mercy’s mother had planted were tinker-engineered and which were just very foreign.
“Yeah, well, Mom was talking about how it’s been a while since you’ve been over.”
“Oh, she’s going to want to talk?”
“She told me to distract you long enough so that you couldn’t escape an invitation to dinner.”
“Does a distraction work if you tell the target about it?”
Mercy pointed just past Catherine, and her head whipped to follow it. “RUN! It’s a distraction!” They both laughed. “Yeah, I think so,” said Mercy. “Don’t know if this one will, but then, I’m not Mom’s goon.”
“You’re your goon.”
“I know I am!”
There was a brief lull in the conversation.
“The garden’s doing well,” Catherine said.
“A lot more rain and a lot less sun than we normally get,” said Mercy, as they completed their circuit. “We should get a great harvest from our peaches of immortality.”
“Longevity.”
“Same dif.”
It was as they finished a circuit of the gardens that they spotted the army marching along the street. Snappy black uniforms with green accents, men with rifles marching in step behind a bitter-looking old woman with an even fancier uniform.
“They look Napoleonic,” said Catherine.
“I was going to say, ‘they look like Star Wars villains’, actually, but same dif.” said Mercy. “What are Countess Livia’s troops doing outside her county? They never go anywhere.”
“Other than guarding her?” Catherine suggested.
“Yes, obviously. Aside from that.”
When Livia halted in front of the gate, the rest of them halted precisely behind her. Livia scanned the house motto on the plaque outside the gate. The original version was in French - Apres moi, le deluge - but it came with a helpful (if not very accurate) translation as If I Die, Everyone Dies. Observing it was no use to her current plans, she turned to the giant homunculus that stood guard on the right side of the gate.
“Tell your mistress I am looking for her.”
It did not speak, because it could not speak; instead it pressed a button, and the gate opened.
Catherine hung back, and Mercy walked up to Countess Livia and waved as fifty rifles pointed at her.
“You can fire those, if you want,” she said conversationally. “They look like pretty good guns. I’ll bet they fire pretty good bullets.”
The soldier in the fanciest uniform, despite the fact that he looked even older than Livia, was visibly trying not to smirk.
“Temperance, I am here to speak to your mother,” said Livia, ignoring Catherine and the officer both.
“Mercy,” she corrected. “Temperance was the last one. You should remember, Universal Solvent Lass?”
“Ah, yes. The idiot. You are the child.”
“No, Patience is the child. I’m the teenager.”
“Fetch your mother, ‘teenager’. I am here to speak with her.”
Mercy smirked at her. Catherine raised her eyes to heaven. Even Mercy was getting infected by the macho supervillain nonsense? Couldn’t there be someone in the world who had more important things to do?
“I’ll take care of it,” Catherine volunteered and headed for the door.
Livia looked down her nose at Mercy. Mercy looked down her nose at Livia. (Neither were particularly tall, but Livia had a good deal of experience and Mercy combined this with natural talent.) Catherine strolled past the garden defenses without particularly worrying about them, went through the retinal scan, patted the fingerprint scanner, and opened the door with her key before keeping going. The front hall led directly to the spiral staircase that lead up to the higher floors and down to Prudence’s laboratory, and it was from the spiral staircase that Patience was watching the situation.
“Catherine!” said the youngest of the three Cartwrights, vaulting off the railway to launch herself into a tackle-hug into Catherine, who wasn’t quite knocked over.
“You’re taller,” Catherine offered.
“I ought to be half an inch taller than Mercy, in a few years,” said Patience. “Fresh air and good food. Can’t wait.”
“I was looking for your mother -”
“She’ll be out in a minute. The doorbell went off. I just wanted to look for myself!”
“That might not be safe.”
“Don’t worry,” said Patience. “Getting shot will just give me superpowers.” Her eyes lit up. “Anyway, that’s Livia’s people out there; don’t some of her guys have that entropic energy thing as well as bullets? I’d get double superpowers!”
Catherine sighed. “Please don’t try it,” she said.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry. I wouldn’t want to make Mom or Mercy angry. But I still want to look.” She gave Catherine a concerned look. “Are you in danger out there? If they shoot you, will you get superpowers?”
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Catherine was saved from having to come up with an answer by the arrival of Prudence, sweeping past with two homunculi bodyguards - these ones tall, skeletal-looking creatures with pyrite eyes. She supposed Prudence had a few knights somewhere, but not inside her house.
“Thank you, Catherine,” she said, before Catherine could say anything. “I will speak with her.”
Out the door she went, and out the door they followed her, bodyguards and Patience and Catherine.
Mercy was smirking at Livia, and whistling off-key. She stopped guiltily when her mother arrived.
“Livia,” Prudence said. “How good to see you.”
“Prudence,” said Livia. “You should discipline your daughter better.”
“I will no doubt take advice from such an expert,” Prudence said. “Patience, would you please show Catherine the library? I believe there are some interesting historical volumes she might want to look at. Mercy, pattern twelve.”
Mercy nodded, her face going the blank of someone trying to show no emotions, and stepped behind her mother, hands clasped behind her back.
“You can leave your guards here,” said Prudence, “and I can leave mine. But it would be educational for Mercy to observe our meeting. Will you permit it.”
“If you wish,” Livia said, jerking her head towards Prudence’s house. “Resta qui, centurione.”
“Sì, signora.”
Catherine looked at Patience.
“I’ll take you to the library,” said Patience with a sigh. “I’m sure you can find some interesting books while we wait for them to finish plotting.”
“Probably, yes,” said Catherine, following.
- - -
“Tea?”
“No.”
Prudence poured for herself anyway, Mercy quietly listening by the wall.
“I’m here about the politics,” said Livia. “You know the brats better than I do.”
“I do.” Livia rarely left her district.
“Are we going to have a war?”
“Or a coup,” Prudence said. “The Duchess and Duke dislike each other greatly.”
“And what do you think about it?”
Prudence sipped her tea. “I am content with any government that maintains peace.”
Livia’s eyes narrowed. “They’re both fools.”
“Mmm.”
“Which of them is going to win, do you think?”
“If I said Catherine was going to be the next queen, would you laugh?”
“Why would anyone care about the fool bastard enough to support her claim?”
Mercy’s fists tensed, and the urge to annihilate Livia with a wave of lead increased. With great difficulty, she resisted.
“She is neither a fool nor a bastard,” said Prudence calmly. “And I would like to know how you heard that slanderous rumor.”
“Everyone knows it,” said Livia. “Nine months before she was born, her father was in prison, and she has no powers.”
“The genetic testing?”
“Faked.”
“My personal genetic testing?”
“You’d lie to protect Balog.”
Prudence sipped her tea. “I probably would, yes. But you don’t think I’d lie to protect his children?”
“I don’t think you’d protect Bloody Lizzy or Steelmind.”
“Also true.” She frowned. “I have no interest in politics. I have the duties of a godmother to Catherine, but my sole interest is in living a peaceful life here in my home, pursuing a life of science, untroubled by danger.”
Livia shook her head. “If she’s in your house, she’ll bring you trouble.”
“I can take care of it when it comes. If it comes.”
“I expect you can,” said Livia. “Thank you for your time. May you live through this.”
“You are most welcome,” said Prudence, rising to shake her departing guest’s hand.
Only after she left did Mercy take her seat.
“What was that all about?”
Prudence smiled. “She was sounding me out for her plan to pull a coup once the war between Steelmind and Lizzy has neared its end. I was informing her that Catherine was under my protection, but that I had no objections to her plan other than that. She expressed the opinion that this was acceptable.”
Mercy nodded. “So we’ll need to kill Livia?”
“That depends on Catherine, doesn’t it? Call her and Patience, would you? It’s time for dinner.”
- - -
The four of them sat around the table, eating Prudence’s homegrown chef’s gnocchi. Prudence had never had the taste for triumphal architecture that so many of the other counts did; outside Mercy and Patience’s suites, her home was spartan, elegant but unsparing in its focus on simplicity and defense.
“I don’t suppose you want me to tell you about your father,” said Prudence. “But by this point you’re an adult.”
She gave Catherine an appraising look as Catherine tasted the food. It was delicious, because it usually was.
“You only knew him in his decline,” she said, “after he’d lost what made him best. He rather reminds one of Napoleon, in that way. When he cast defiance in the teeth of the heroes of the world, he was already an old man. Everyone says that the Legacy Forge was his highest moment, but only because he could reach no further.”
She paused.
“There was a time before he was the King of Crime, before he was the Second Nightmare, long before he met your mother and founded the Court, when the Titanium Tyrant was a truly likable man. He traded it for the ability to command supervillains, in the end. Free men won’t follow a king, only a god, so he had to make himself more than even the normal level of superhumans, but he lost something by doing so.”
Catherine murmured something noncommittal. Mercy was a good friend, but Prudence was slightly terrifying.
Prudence sipped her tea.
“That’s where you get your weaknesses from, and that is why you cannot do what your siblings can do. You inherited his simplicity, humility, and kindness. It seems strange to say, but it is true - that a man who would call himself the Titanium Tyrant, Monarch of Crime, didn’t realize just how extraordinary he was. When his powers awakened - and you must realize that he didn’t know that he had powers yet, that was long before the science was understood - he realized he had a talent for gambling, and then when he was caught and thrown out and banned from every casino in the city, that obviously proved he didn’t have as much of a talent as he thought.
“Sandor’s secret was that he would look at you as though you really were a wise and learned elder, and then he’d make some suggestion that made perfect sense but that you never would have realized was true without his help, and he wouldn’t even realize that he was extraordinary, and that’s how he made his first reputation. Nearly everyone wants the respect of a genius, and he gave it, and so nearly everyone he met, man or woman, loved him.”
“You loved him?”
Prudence chuckled softly. “I was old when Napoleon’s great-grandfather was young. Not like that, no. But I knew him, and I regretted what happened to him. Some... fifty years ago? It must be, mustn’t it? Before he married your mother, he told me that he wished he’d never turned to crime. He only started planning robberies so he could make money for engineering, and within a few years he only engineered devices so he could steal. His ambition consumed him. Your mother didn’t help, of course.” She took a bite. “The first time Sandor Balog was sure he’d found a mind that was the equal of his, she told him that they had no other equals. It always was his most tragic moment.”
Catherine felt obscurely offended, but couldn’t think of anything to say.
“And you are his daughter. I knew him when he was younger than you are. And you are also the daughter of the Gorgon Queen, who was Bloody Lizzy’s mother, and that is why you had best flee Novapest.”
“What?” That came from two throats, Mercy’s and Catherine’s.
“I thought you’d be asking me to take the throne,” said Catherine.
“You’ve told yourself that already. You could do the work,” Prudence said, taking a bite, “if you wanted to, if you let the Tyrant’s half of your soul fly free and suppressed Sandor’s. But I hope you understand that if you have no intention of being a queen you had better escape to the Continent as quickly as possible. I would recommend Canada; the United States are too obvious a destination. You can run, or you can die; you cannot remain here and in peace. Every fool who would like to be king, but needs a puppet to act through, will look to you. You can expect to be kidnapped within a week, and then you will die.”
“That’s what Elgolian is for.”
“Your driver. Who took you to my house and then stayed with the car, because obviously my security systems were sufficient. Dear, do you realize that I could have kidnapped you? A single iron bullet would kill Elgolian; Idealists are fools. I have homunculi who are trained with firearms and they could take care of him easily.”
“They tried seven times at college, aunt. Every attempt failed.”
“Dear, that was America and you were the Tyrant’s daughter. You were surrounded by superheroes. This will be different. There will be no problems so long as your father is alive, so you do have time to set your affairs in order before you disappear. I expect you can transfer most of your wealth to accounts you could still access. But when he dies, the claimants will come, your sister will want you dead, and your brother will decide that you are a regrettable liability, and, just as your father had to be a king not to be arrested, you will need to be a queen not to be killed. Unless you disappear completely.”
“Unless. Unless. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”
Prudence tilted her head.
“You’re trying to get me to take the throne by making the alternative as bad as possible. Well, I’d be sorry to leave behind my friends, and I’ll miss you dearly, Mercy, but getting away from my family is all I’ve ever wanted.”
“Not ever,” said Prudence, smiling. “Well, you’ve seen through me. But understand that you will have my support for your escape, if you want it.” She took another bite. “You should talk to your accountant about your plans to leave.”
“I think I should talk to my father, first,” she pointed out. “And I need to stay for my mother’s funeral.”
“You need to stay for your mother’s funeral, certainly. Do you know what your father thinks about you leaving?”
“I don’t think he’ll mind,” Catherine said carefully.
Patience reached over and hugged her.
“Well,” said Prudence, “if you ever change your mind, come talk to me.”