18. FRANCOIS #2
There is far more manual labor than I’d accounted for in my temporary situation. “Are you not capable yourself?” I ask rhetorically, moving over to examine the rest of my quarters. I don’t need Aurora to see how affected I am by the tenderness she offers the man on the floor.
A tenderness I have waited a lifetime to extract.
I’d been biding my time, but her knife play with Father put paid to my agenda.
Impatient minx.
I sit, the chair creaks. Merde. This really will not do.
“Send someone to fetch me a chair that is more robust,” I tell Daniel. “Then await more orders.”
“Uh, yes, sir, but…”
“Is acquiring upgraded furniture so taxing? I don’t care if it is. Get it done.”
Daniel’s face fills with thankfully unspoken worries, then he leaves. As the footsteps fade, I rotate to take in the cage tableau.
Aurora has her hands hovering over Bevan’s chest, looking like an angel cast down into Hades.
That has always been my impression of her. A seraph surrounded by darkness, but always shining a light from within.
For years I’ve watched her, but never in such close quarters. This is joy indeed.
“What did you do to him?” she hisses. I want to applaud the intense glare.
“Relax, chérie. It is nothing that will kill him.” I think that’s true, but am not quite certain. Que Sera, Sera.
There are so many things about my new nature that I have not fully explored. But what better place to evaluate these strange abilities than in a container that is ignored by the outside and guarded by men I can control.
No longer scrutinized by ever-watching Conclave eyes. Finally, I can be master of my own experience.
She looks at me with a gaze full of loathing, seemingly oblivious to the heat, filth and stench around her. Who would have ever thought Aurora Drakeward would take such things in her stride?
She was born into a world of silks and servants.
It’s interesting but not fully surprising. Those rich trappings were exactly that. In her father’s house they were a trap.
But not in mine. When I set up our home the finest things will not be designed to contain her.
Her eyes flit constantly between the unconscious man, and me. I won’t hurt her, but she doesn’t know that yet.
“You have a choice, Aurora,” I say. “You can spend your days caged and weeping over the broken ex-boss, or you can accept that the time of his reign has passed, that the Digger collective now belongs to me. That will ensure your freedom from the box you are currently in. You can sit by my side and we can wait out your sentence together.”
“I’m staying exactly where I am,” she snaps. “You have no idea what you’ve got ahead of you, Francois, no idea at all.”
Of course, she is correct. None of my powers involve precognition.
“Very well, ma petite, as you wish.” I raise my voice slightly. “Daniel?”
I’m irritated that my lackey doesn’t immediately reappear.
Instead, I hear some scuffling, then two men and a woman step, uninvited, into my domain.
The cronies of our fallen wolf.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome. Do come in.” I nod to the wiry man who looks like he survives on his wits rather than his fists. “And you are?”
“Skid. I head up sanitation.” He isn’t looking at me directly. This man is weak. No challenge.
The dirty, stoop-shouldered man beside him steps forward. “Jensen.” This one does meet my eye, with a weariness far beyond his twenty years. “I run the incinerator crew.”
“And last, but obviously not least…” I smile, but it lands nowhere with the broad, scowling woman.
“Dot—Laundry.”
I’m assuming that is her work position, not her last name. “Charmed. Now, how may I be of assistance?”
The three look at me as though I’ve two heads.
“I presume you want something? Or have you come to offer me the same loyalty you afforded your previous… master?”
I study them. They smell of bleach, ash, and the acrid scent of the sewers. It’s a sensory assault. Jensen flicks his eyes to the cell where the aforementioned master is silent and unmoving.
When no one speaks, Daniel pushes himself into the space, carrying a chair and puffing out his chest like a pigeon in a gutter. He’s a hideous specimen of a man, morally bankrupt, but currently useful as a filter between me and these… laborers.
The three overseers look at Daniel and sneer in unison. A reaction I cannot fault them for. “You’ve got Danny on point?” the laundry-maid grunts. “You really have no idea how this block works, do you?”
“I know that like a clever rat, Daniel was the first to realize the current ship was sinking,” I reply, crossing one leg over the other and lacing my fingers. “I appreciate initiative.”
The wiry one—Skid—looks into the cage at the silent, poisoned man, and Aurora huddled beside him. He sighs, and runs a hand through his already thinning hair.
“Initiative, or whatever, is fine,” he says. “But we have people who need to eat, shit, and sleep. And they need the laundry quotas met so we can get our puny commissary rations. Danny doesn’t care about the block. He cares about what’s in it for him.”
“Watch it, Skid-Mark,” Daniel growls, getting annoyingly fired up.
“Calm down, everyone. Daniel is not ‘on-point’ as you put it, but I am happy to have him as my current eyes and ears. For now, just go about your business as you see fit. I’ll only become annoyed if a wheel comes off your operations, impacting my peace of mind.”
I make a shooing motion. “Run along now.”
I watch Jensen’s throat as he swallows. He is sensibly biting back any dissent. “We’ll do our jobs. Not for you. For the people.”
“A noble sentiment,” I reply. “Daniel, see our friends out.” My new manservant gives a yellow-toothed grin, clearly relishing the power.
As they file off into the dark, I turn to Aurora. She’s staring at me, eyes burning with a disdain I can taste.
Most would find it off-putting. I find it intoxicating.
It is the friction that makes the spark.
For years, I’ve watched her from the periphery of ballrooms and boardrooms, but this…
this version of her, stripped of the Elite gloss and fueled by a futile rage?
It is a sacrilege I find myself wanting to worship.
I cannot deny the thrill it gives me. Why her defiance has such a hold over me is something I’ve never understood.
I just…enjoy it.
“So ill-tempered, ma petite,” I murmur, deliberately pushing her buttons. “But do not fret, Francois is here now.”
She recoils, hand dropping to an extraordinary carved toothbrush. A new “digger” instinct, no doubt.
That’s fine for now.
Our future is assured; she just doesn’t know it yet.