La Chanson est Claire
Based on the story told in
Unlawful Disorder: A Twist of Fate
Chapter 1
Alexa leaned into the wind, hearing it whistle past her ears, chilling the tips, eyes closed. She'd stood this way for most of the journey. If not here, then below decks in her cabin, thinking. Listening. Listening. La Chanson hadn't said anything, but she certainly had. Too much, in fact. She was unsure why she'd told Lucas what she had, but what was done was done. It had been a surprise to hear that he'd hoped (even the smallest amount) that Tallman had escaped. It had been his decisiveness that confirmed she would be handed over. To hear that his upbringing and training had dictated his belief (at the time) that she must hang disquieted Alexa. It was that sensation which reminded her to watch her tongue around Edgewaters, and beware what trust she put in them.
​
For days she'd tried to talk to Chevalier about what had happened in Breezy Point Bay, but every time she opened her mouth to speak, something stopped her. Speaking with Lucas...it wasn't that she didn't care what he made of her thoughts, but that...the emotions were not so charged between them. Lucas was a straightforward individual, when it came down to it. Chevalier? Not so much. Especially not when it involved her and her family. She sighed, pushing a whipping lock of hair away from her face. When she spoke with him, he would know exactly what she intended. He always did. The curse of observing three generations of a single matriarchal line...she would wager he could guess what she was about to say before she said it, sometimes.
​
The next stop, the next step of the journey. Alexa could have kicked herself the first time someone had referred to her as "m'lady" and she hadn't corrected them. She wasn't made for this, wasn't deceptive like Spider. She never had been. Of course she could beg papa to sneak her sweets, or sneak into the kitchens and steal a fingerful or two of icing from the cake prepared for a banquet the next night (it had been one time, and Marshall had been so severely punished she had resolved never to do it again). But she wasn't skilled in deception. What good did it do to lie? She was...too honest.
​
And really, that's what it came down to. She knew that if asked questions directly, she would more than likely answer them truthfully - particularly if Vee were the interrogator - and so the best way to avoid the issue was simply to avoid speaking to anyone. Especially Vee.
​
But Lucas had broken that attempt. And now she wanted to speak with Vee, but didn't know how. Still. It had been days and they hadn't talked about the aftermath. They hadn't discussed why some people deserved to die and others didn't, and how to do the right thing without causing harm. The longer Alexa considered the last few weeks, the less she ever wanted to hurt people again...but La Chanson was becoming like a drug - a powerful drug, one that kept making suggestions of ways to use it to protect others. And she knew, as she leaned into that wind, the cool air battering her face, that not everything it suggested would protect the way she wanted to.
​
In short, as she glanced around to see Vee unobtrusively watching her, she would have to speak with the one who really mattered soon, because the young half-elf had a lot of power at her fingertips and didn't know what to do with it.
​
***
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The Song Whispers
The Sound of Mist
Alexandrie Aerith Vanessa Elamys Normaer Donadieu was stubborn. In any other place, at any other time, if Vee had poured water on her face, she would have used words that could turn the tips of Papa’s ears pink all the way back in Shining Capital. But she was here, near Glitter Delta Cove, further from home than she’d ever been, with Vee et La Chanson and two of Edgewater’s children. Alexandrie was stubborn in every possible way. But she was also outmatched and had missed (embarrassingly) the pirate’s unmentionables with her knee. So as Vee caught an attack aimed at her on his shield, she dove behind some fallen debris and looked around the ship in confusion, rubbing her face with one arm.
What did they want? Was this another group after her? How long had they been following? How was their ship going to reach dock now?
​
Alexa’s eyebrows raised slightly as Lucas shoved a gaggle of surprised pirates overboard, eyes closed briefly as she watched Spider run one through. Seeing the glint of plate mail, she called on the Song to blind them with its decadence, darken the area that they might be better hear the music that lovingly haunted her. Her eyes flickered back to Lucas: five pirates - six - crowded around him, and she saw him wipe his face between strikes. As it came away crimson, she closed her eyes again, heard that music tempt her attention.
‘He was reckless,’ she thought, ‘a reckless fool. Probably got himself into that mess.’ Then he stumbled and the words, the melody, the music was out of her mouth, floating from her fingertips, drifting into his ear like a whisper. She saw him shiver and her eyes narrowed - what he experienced when she asked La Chanson to help him, she didn’t know. What she did know, as she peeked over the fallen mast, was that he was experiencing something, and she didn’t know what. To date, he was the only person she’d helped that she could potentially ask about the effect of La Chanson, and even that seemed…strange.
“Excusez-moi,” she imagined herself saying, “what exactly are you feeling when something that I sometimes think is entirely in my head seems to affect you?”
No, the idea was absurd. Yet as pirates began to close in on him again, the teenager didn’t hesitate. Reaching out to La Chanson, she asked it to help her help him and found that despite the time that had passed, despite her own distraction with other things happening on the ship’s tilting deck, the Song had not left him.
The music Alexa heard - had heard for a year - was with her as it always had been. It lilted and drifted around her like a mist. To a certain degree it reached out to Chevalier, as though acknowledging him, or even simply following her own awareness of his presence at all times. To others, yes, Chevalier looked like a strange metal man. Imagine if they could see him as she did, wisps of sound clinging to him like an embrace.
And now she saw it, heard it, felt it faintly on Lucas. As if someone were playing the same music, the same Song with a different, separate instrument, across the deck.
Shaking her head faintly, she imagined pushing the pirates away. The Song, across the deck as it was, heard her as it always did and grew, almost like a fed flame. Nudging gently at first to feel that connection, she exhaled sharply and threw the full force of the Song at them.
With Lucas at its centre, presumably unaware of what was happening, she saw the pirates drop their weapons and clasp their heads, fleeing the young man. She didn’t think she’d hurt them, but she couldn’t entirely be sure what La Chanson did, or how it treated those she turned it against. Her head tilting to one side slightly as she watched, she began to drift into the music -
Before turning to look behind her at the loud crack of a warhammer meeting the side of another man’s head. Meeting Vee’s eye, she returned to the present.
They would definitely need to talk when this was over.
​
***
Seductive Thoughts
Alexa cinched her belt tighter, emphasising her waist and shifted her balance on her hips, tilting slightly to one side. She lifted her chin and freed her hair from the leather thong she habitually wore, braids falling loosely across a shoulder. Widening her eyes slightly and adopting a confused air, she approached the dockmaster.
Nobility, grandmère had once said, was its own form of warfare. Where Spider used a crossbow, she bestowed glances. Where Lucas used his sword, she smiled. Where Vee shielded, she sighed and looked demurely away. There were different strategies of course, but with the few years she had been in court and the advice she received from grandmère, Alexandrie Donadieu was a master tactician.
As she spoke, Alexa raised her voice slightly above what was necessary while keeping her gaze firmly on the person in front of her. This - this was her forte. Some were trained to be perceptive - Spider, or Vee, perhaps. Some were trained to fight, like Lucas. She was trained to be seen.
From the corner of her eye she saw a few heads turn and internally smiled, shifting her body language to draw them closer. Glancing around, she could see Vee taking note of what was being said, could see Spider trying to talk to a captain. Her eyes lingered there a moment, before turning to the next person to seek her attention. As she sighed in feigned disappointment, she almost felt bad for them. The skills she used were learned in a larger city with much greater competition - in fact, as she pulled the corner of a lip into her mouth and looked up from beneath lowered lashes, she realised these people must know nothing of the tactics of women in court. She drew inspiration from friends and enemies alike, and revelled (for the first time in what felt like forever) in the nostalgia it brought. This was as much Alexa as La Chanson, as much Alexandrie as the concern, as much Donadieu as uncertainty. As long as she achieved her goal for now, the young woman didn’t have to think about the one they approached.
Standing in the centre of a throng of people falling over themselves to please her, she’d have given anything for a sound of encouragement. Not words - she didn’t really want or need words of praise - all she wanted to know was whether she was doing what La Chanson wished. It was several-fold, really: the words of praise she wished for were those she could, on optimistic days, imagine coming from grandmère. To be able to go home and tell grandmère that she had completed the task on her behalf - that she had listened and taken what teachings she could to finish what her grandmère had so wanted to do.
Chevalier was right, really: right decision, wrong decision, it was about living with the consequences. She knew she shouldn’t be worried - they were still very far from the Sky Anvil Plains, and by all accounts it looked as though they would still be in the Confederacy for a few weeks, but…
But the girl couldn’t help but feel she was already being tested. What if it weren’t just one decision, but a whole chain of them?
She received a compliment and blushed prettily, dipping her eyes to the ground. As they came up, they rested on Chevalier briefly. She hadn’t verbalised the thought, but…the further they got from home, the closer they became to where grandmère had found Vee. He’d said several times that he didn’t really care where he’d come from, beyond curiosity. She knew she would never lose her best friend, but…she couldn’t help but selfishly hope they never found anything anyway so it was never a problem.
Feeling a hard knot of discomfort in her gut, she looked at the faces of the attendees and gave a deep curtsy, turning to leave. She had been seen enough, and she was sure they had gathered enough information to make a good decision on where to book passage.
Catching sight of Lucas, she gestured subtly to her chin: the man’s jaw was loose. Internally rolling her eyes, she walked past Vee, who followed her, a very clear barrier between she and the crowd. An audience with Alexandrie Donadieu was at a close for the day.
Retying her hair in the quiet of a side street, she loosened the belt and pulled up the hood of her cloak. If she was learning anything, it was that word could spread quickly in smaller spaces, and she had just broadly announced their…her presence to the entire city. Though that Ebon elf had already…
Her lips thinned in thought as Edgewater’s sons entered the alley.
Two members of nobility in the group. Why was one of them always surprised at the other’s ability to adhere to stereotype?
She tapped her chin again and looked elsewhere.
“Lucas, you’re drooling.”
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***
Actions and Consequences
The city was abuzz with light, sound and colour. Alexa’s eyes flitted from place to place, a smile on her face as bright as her surrounds. Braiding light into her hair, she wondered idly if this was what the world would be like if everyone could hear La Chanson. Watching Vee watch a vendor flip some kind of dough, she felt a bittersweet pang of homesickness. She wondered what Maman was doing…whether Papa was happy, whether grandmère had ever been to this city and what it became at night…wondered if she was still walking in those footsteps.
​
Spider had disappeared - again. Eyes narrowing to pry through the crowd, she didn’t know where, but - her head snapped around. Was that one of the Ebon elves they had just seen? Jezz’ina? She leaned forward to peer through the throng, trying to look across the way. If she had seen someone, they were gone. And of course they were entitled to a good time too…weren’t they? She filed the information away to tell Vee later as she reached up to string lights around his neck. When he leaned down to help her, her lips met his cheek. “This…this is fun!” She whispered.
How could she have travelled so far, lived so long without this feeling? The crowd, the people, everyone felt the same. She looked across to see Lucas, who was watching a joust intently, and frowned.
His decision to stop drinking had thrown her. He’d been drinking everywhere they’d gone up to now - it had been his first impulse. Then a social occasion occurred where it was actually expected and…why not now? He had been happy to drink at the bar - 'but he said he does not want to be un alcoolique,' she thought, still watching him, brows furrowed. Suspicion had her questioning him (internally, mind you) the same way she had questioned Aquideion:
‘Why now?’
He’d been drinking the whole way - had been proud of it up until midday that same day. Why the change of heart?
And how long would it last?
And why did she even care?
With a flick of light laced hair, she could justify it easily: She cared about his physical wellbeing, of course. They were travelling companions, and they needed to keep each other safe.
Beneath that, as Vee had awkwardly mentioned, Alexandrie knew she was worried about her friend, whether she verbalised it or not.
Deeper still was something else, but that feeling was far away and very small, and she didn’t feel the need to disturb it with such trivial concern.
​
She thought back to the docks, back to how she had behaved. Spider said to be careful: the people on the docks would want to sleep with her.
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Why hadn’t grandmère warned her? It seemed there was so much she didn’t understand about the intricacies of…of seduction, as Spider said. In her world, it was a dance - one she knew the steps to very well…better than most here. It led to all sorts of things - power, knowledge, understanding...And she wasn’t afraid of sex - not really, but…she hadn’t considered that her behaviour could genuinely lead there so quickly. Thinking back, this was a similar situation to the one she had experienced with Byron. Maman had left her to flounder there too. She hadn't meant anything by it - she didn't...she was just herself, and people seemed to like that.
Were people so easily manipulated?
Realising she was still staring at Lucas, she looked at the jousters. Watching a point scored, she applauded. She could see the skill needed, could see the physical prowess they had to show. She could see why Lucas would enjoy this.
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Why was Spider so quick to agree to steal something for someone they didn’t know? Especially someone who…she didn’t know what wasn’t right with Aquideion, but something wasn’t, La Chanson and her own intuition had told her so. Spider’s willingness to show how good he was at doing things was going to get them in trouble.
“And on deck, Engwyr Lucas Edgewater!”
Eyes meeting Chevalier’s in horror, the two turned to Lucas, who was already pushing his way through the crowd. Following, Alexandrie looked up toward a ring just in time to hear Spider - Spider - declaring how incredible his brother was.
“Merde.”
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***
Nature
Alexandrie was furious. For so many reasons. Some of them confusing and related, somehow, to that odd feeling she was trying to ignore. As Spider appeared behind Lucas, her eyes flicked over the tired young man and her mind flashed back to the moment she realised that La Chanson had responded to not just her intention, but her emotion. Realising that she hadn’t just silenced the young man but could have killed him made her shiver as though the chilled water in the glass before her were trickling down her spine. Once more, she looked at her hands in... fear? Concern? Either way, she consciously unclenched them.
The more she learned about what she could do, the more afraid she became. It had not occurred to her that La Chanson would hurt her allies - ‘though,’ she thought, reaching for the glass, ‘I never expected my allies to do anything so stupid!’ Before she’d even really thought about it, she’d hurled the water in the sleepy man’s face. Not her proudest moment. Not the most mature thing she’d ever done, but she was still angry, and she couldn’t trust La Chanson or her own body at this moment, so she was grateful that was all she’d done.
It was hard to pinpoint exactly why she was so angry. They had been revealed, yes, in a very public place, but she had done that herself earlier that same day. Spider had interfered in the bout, but it really shouldn’t have happened anyway, so the rapid conclusion was good. Right?
The method of conclusion, however, was awful. He had managed to insult an entire population of people who clearly liked their fighters…and he had insulted the meritocracy in the Gavyirnoi’s yard.
This was a sticking point for the young meritocrat or Sinrou, but he’d shown contempt for the Progress Confederacy before. He hated the political structure they lived in. That was obvious. She was even beginning to understand a little of why. And how could Spider have known Gatberg was actually a bastard? She knew all this, yet the fact remained that his behaviour stung. Did he truly think so little of the world she and Lucas came from? So little that as a drunkard he threw himself wholeheartedly into that contempt? Was that how he thought of her? Anger bubbled up as she saw him beginning to come to his senses, but she pushed it down as Lucas stood and went to the bar. She watched him assessing the various bottles and sighed. Not even a day. A strange lump caught in her sternum. Lucas had been put in the middle of something he shouldn’t have been today. He didn’t deserve to be spoken to the way Trulmak had, didn’t deserve to have such an angry man attacking him, didn’t deserve to have that victory stolen from him…
Ah. That was part of it. As Alexa watched his eyes travel the length of the bar, she realised a large part of why she was angry. She believed, truly believed, that Lucas could have won that fight. He had been so excited when it all started, and she’d become wrapped up in that. It was infectious, despite her concern. But Spider had been gone for the start of the second bout, so she, Alexa had needed to step into a world of oration she didn’t know when Lucas’ brother would have been a much more natural choice. Then when the fight started, Spider returned and tried to influence it, rather than trusting his brother’s abilities.
Speaking of trusting abilities, she watched Lucas cross to the end of the bar. He’d made his decision and -
“Oh.” She said it under her breath, but she said it aloud, loudly enough to catch Vee’s attention. She didn’t notice, though - she was still watching Lucas, who returned and sat, pouring himself a glass of water. Her eyes remained there for a moment before returning to Spider.
How could he not remember anything of what he’d done? It wasn’t that much alcohol, not really. More - did he remember what she’d done to him? She would have to apologise - she knew that. Her own sense of morality said it was something she needed to address - whether she had been right to do it or not, angry or not, whether he remembered or not.
And then there was La Chanson. She wished, not for the first time, but perhaps most intensely, that she could actually have a conversation with it. Such an intrinsic part of her life, such an important part of who she was and she didn’t understand it. The incident had frightened her. Angry as she’d been at the entire situation, about them being revealed so publicly, about how Spider had handled the situation as it continued to unfold. She hadn’t even realised, with the two large men standing over her, what she was actually doing. She had just…reacted.
A pattern was beginning to form, and it troubled the young half-elf. Every time she simply reacted, she was much more likely to harm than heal. That presented a problem for the emotional teenager. Was this the intended outcome? Did La Chanson want her to reach out and take from others the way she had stolen Spider’s breath?
“You know what happens when you seduce people? They get seduced.”
Spider had said that earlier. Could she pay for the power she’d been given over others? For the first time, she felt a trickle of sweat down her spine as she wondered whether she, herself, wanted to. What did La Chanson want of her? She looked down at her hands again. She could do wondrous things. She could help people and protect her friends, and stop dangerous people from doing awful things. Her grandmère had begun a task years before and she felt so honoured to have been chosen to complete it. But she could also bring such suffering. And that wasn’t just La Chanson’s doing - or at least, she didn’t think so. Her upbringing and her own innate ability had shown on the docks that if she tried, she had the ability to manipulate more than with the notes that came from her fingertips. She could manipulate hearts and minds to get what she wanted, once she figured out what that was.
She hadn’t been lying when she’d told Vee she couldn’t help it. Yes, she’d honed the skills and techniques she’d learned in court, but the laser focus she directed at individuals, the ability to become what they desired in that moment, to give what would get her what she wanted, or say what would get her where she needed to be…that was just who she was. She’d been able to wrap people around her finger since she was a child. It wasn’t conscious, or deliberate. It simply was. Like breathing, or singing. Must she stop singing because others enjoyed the sound? No, she continued to sing. It pleased her the same way it pleased others. So what was different with La Chanson? Rubbing her thumb and forefingers together, she felt the soft invitation to draw notes - a feeling that was constantly there. It was an extension of her. A potent, dangerous extension. Her natural words and movements couldn’t kill. The notes of the Song? They could.
And so she returned to the beginning of the thought cycle. Should she try to control her emotions and behaviours more? Could she? She poured water, her fingers itching to do something, affect something. She’d started to tap at her knees, a rhythm that threw out tiny sparks. She was still agitated, annoyed that she was thinking so deeply about her own behaviour when Spider had no idea what he’d done and Lucas’ most intense concern seemed to be that Spider had interrupted, rather than how intense the focus had been on his name - a name that would draw attention from more than just admirers. There had been a vast number of people watching tonight, and they would not quickly forget the Edgewater name. Two weeks in the city lay ahead - perhaps she would be forced back into veils after all.
She looked at Vee in time to hear him saying they should get some rest and nodded. He looked so different these days compared to back and home. Not at all like the Praetorian she had grown up with. Out here, in the world, he was more dangerous, more…unforgiving? That wasn’t the right word, but she couldn’t think of a better one. How did he handle his abilities here? Or…how had he suppressed it at home? Did it feel then like she felt now - as though to stop would be less him? Or was that change a part of him too? She would need to ask.
​
Suddenly the events of the day tugged at Alexa’s shoulders and she sighed, exhausted. She was furious, yes. But so much of that fury came from concern that she couldn’t pry the two apart.
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***
Significant Comfort
Looking over her shoulder, Alexa felt a moment of panic when it hit her - Vee wasn’t behind her. Lucas was already talking about something - he always managed to find something to talk about. Frankly, she wasn’t sure how he did it. Eyes still on Vee looking back at her, she remembered a conversation they’d had only a few months back. He’d said he wouldn’t leave her with the brothers - they wouldn’t split the group this way unless she felt comfortable. And while she didn’t feel comfortable, she also didn’t feel as afraid as she would have a short time before. The young Sinrou wondered what had led to him making this decision: what had occurred between the three of them that he thought she would be safe with Lucas? Particularly after the night before…or did he think she, Alexandrie, was comfortable?
The moment passed, as did the panic. Alexandrie raised a hand and produced a small smile in farewell. Turning to face their destination, Alexa realised Lucas had in fact fallen silent. She wondered, then (but didn’t ask) how he’d slept. Had he been as angry as she? Had he struggled to fall asleep? Had he and Spider lay in the dark in silence as she had, knowing Vee knew she was awake, thinking about the events of the day and afraid to say anything lest every thought in her head simply fall out of her mouth?
Sometimes, just sometimes, Alexandrie was sharp with her words because the alternative was to feel younger than (or perhaps, exactly all of) her eighteen years. So many thoughts swam constantly through her mind that she dismissed as childish and unimportant. Despite her sharp tongue, she was still young and in in awe of Edgewater’s sons, feared looking foolish in front of them.
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“A true Sinrou-Mirroturcret is more than just money,” their sister had said, along with unsavoury things about grandmère that had led to Chevalier needing to intervene before Alexa had struck Ellinora Edgewater in her stupid face. Alexa’s later insinuation that Vee didn’t care about grandmère was the closest she had ever seen him to angry with her, and while she hadn’t meant it, she still blamed Ellinora for the words she had uttered, and partly for the hurt Alexandrie herself had caused. Thinking over what Spider had said at breakfast, Alexa had to concede that in one way, Ellinora was right. She was fast learning that to be a Sinrou-Merroturcret was to care for others as much as yourself and to do things for the greater good. Such bitter irony that this concept should be solidified in her mind by another of Edgewater’s children - one who had only seen selfishness in those of her status.
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This thought continued to play through her mind as the two poured over books and made notes. Aquidion had said there was a fire - Alexa wondered how many had lost their homes and homesteads. How many had lost their names to the new. To Progress. Had grandmère passed through here? What had it looked like? How different it would have been from Shining Capital - lights at night, joy in congregation, pride in family…Alexandrie had always been fiercely proud of the Donadieu name, and the fact that she hailed from Shining Capital, but how different would her life have been if she had been born and raised here in Glitter Delta Cove instead? What if the joy last night could be felt throughout Lanogiianes?
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As it often did when her thoughts wandered, La Chanson danced through her mind. Spider had most certainly heard the Song that morning - had cried, in fact. She hadn’t been able to maintain the anger she’d held the previous night. As Vee had left the room (to speak to the brothers, she supposed), she’d awoken. Fully roused by his lack of presence, Alexa had risen to do something she hadn’t done since she’d been at home: She’d played with music. Pulling sheet music from her pack, she’d poured over the familiar notes, fingers tracing their pattern on the page. Lifting her fingers away, she’d traced the notes in the air, then, and watched as the music hung, dancing as if from an invisible line. Frowning at it for a moment, she’d paced, eyes never leaving the visual representation of the thing she most believed in.
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“Why do you like to hurt people?” She had asked the music. The music, being music, did not respond. “I’m trying to use what you give me correctly, but…” she’d thrown herself, frustrated, on the bed, staring up at it. Hearing a door close and Vee’s unmistakable footfall, she’d waved the music away. But he hadn’t come back. Looking at her hands, she saw the notes clinging to her fingertips still. They hadn’t gone. She never wanted them to. She addressed her hands, more gently this time.
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“I’m not Tallman, or a pirate. I’m not an assassin, and you can’t make me one. You won’t make me one.” Even as she spoke, she knew it was untrue, and it just made things worse. She knew she would do as La Chanson directed, no matter the cost. She just didn’t want the cost to be her friends or innocent lives.
​
But who counted as innocent? She wouldn’t have called Spider innocent, and yet he had been so forthright at the breakfast table any residual anger had fizzled and she’d found herself apologising and almost telling the two why she’d left Shining Capital in the first place. She’d been both grateful and somewhat frustrated that they hadn’t pried, which confused the half-elf even more. Only three people, as far as she knew, were aware of why she’d left, and two of them had been at the table that morning.
Watching a gaggle of fans surround Lucas, she raised her eyebrows but said nothing. Her better judgement was telling her not to trust him, but Chevalier wouldn’t have left her side if he didn’t trust them to some degree, and La Chanson was…it seemed to be extending itself to him too. Deep in contemplation, she wasn’t too helpful when it came to the research they were there to do. Watching Lucas systematically comb through books and make notes, she wondered whether he’d teach her how if she asked, wondered whether he’d enjoyed studying, given how much he knew about such obscure topics. Lost in thought, she didn’t consider what was happening when they left. She hadn’t realised the vague sense of unease had disappeared. But she definitely felt relief when she saw Vee walking with Spider toward them.
So was she comfortable with them? Reaching out to take Vee’s hand for reassurance, she shook her head slightly. Not entirely, but it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be.
​
***
Familial Softness
As she brushed her teeth, Sanjuio Donadieu thought. As she looked over her sheet music, Sanjuio Donadieu thought - not about the notes on the page but about family. Family and pride and nobility and meritocracy and justice and… she sighed and put the music away. Slipping under warm but still too rough blankets, she curled up, still thinking, into the foetal position. Feeling Vee’s eyes on her, she opened her mouth to speak but closed it abruptly. Instead, she pulled the blankets over her head.
“Prends la bougie, Viellard,” came a muffled voice a few seconds later. Candle snuffed, shadows gave way to thought-images. Momentarily, she wiggled her cold toes in frustration and rubbed her arms, hugging herself. Torso and arms warmed, her half elven eyes tracked across the stitching of the blanket.
She was thinking so loudly Vee could probably hear her thoughts. Or so she imagined. And what were they anyway? Stupid thoughts, really, like what it was like to have siblings…or what it would be like to be disowned, or…or what it was like to think so poorly of your own family that you chose the streets, or to think so poorly of the entire system you grew up in that you could never see what was beautiful about it - that it could never be good enough.
In short, she was thinking about Spider. She’d noticed the look on Lucas’ face when she’d asked Spider whether he hated the Progress. He’d had an expression she’d seen on Papa’s face when she’d said something embarrassing as a child. That awkwardness. The wish the words hadn’t been spoken, despite wanting to know the answer. But there had been something else there, too.
Hurt?
And she’d somewhat taken Spider’s point about wanting the Progress to be better, but he hadn’t said how he was making it any better, or eased the feeling of discomfort she’d felt at his refusal to…to what, really? Apologise for something he didn’t remember saying? Apologise for justifying his disavowal of everything she’d been raised to believe and everything she was? A strange twisting feeling in the pit of her stomach had her curling a little tighter in the blankets.
“Vee?” She whispered suddenly, pulling her head out. She knew he was listening, but just as suddenly she wasn’t ready to talk. She rolled over, facing away. “Excusez-moi,” she muttered.
Didn’t Spider feel any pride in where he’d come from? None at all? He’d said the people at the table were the best he’d met, but what about his family? What about friends? Ellinora was awful, true, but he had to have met other kind people - normal people, humans with beating hearts were everywhere. After all, even she was beginning to concede that perhaps not the entire Edgewater family was toxic scum…
From what she could tell, these Edgewater men were trying to do their best to be good people.
Why, then, would he disown his family? Lucas had said Spider was his brother. Their mother missed him. Their father? Their father. Why run from home? Was he aware of how hurt Lucas looked as a result of his decisions? Did he care?
“If I had a brother,” she whispered fiercely to herself, “I would not treat him that way!” And yet she saw how they cared for each other in their own, strange way. Was it because they were boys? Boys could be very strange…
Her mind flipped and her thoughts turned to Grandmère. Perhaps she had been here in Glitter Delta Cove. If she had, had she enjoyed it? Alexa couldn’t imagine she wouldn’t have. Had she snuck into the city the way they had tried to? There hadn’t been any overt mentions of her in the judicial notes, and La Chanson had been fairly silent on the matter…perhaps she was looking in the wrong places. If she, Alexandrie, could associate with anyone, given what they’d learned, she would want to know more about the glowing eyed Ebon Elves…their memories seemed more enduring - if they wanted to reclaim the urn for the right reasons. If someone looking like she had passed through, he’d likely know - especially if his practice of having spies watch for arrivals and departures was a long term quirk. It would explain why he’d acknowledged Alexa specifically as he’d come into the bar, and if she’d passed through on her way to wherever the source La Chanson was leading her to, it would stand to reason he may not have recognised Vee. Vee commented frequently on the resemblance between Alexa and her grandmère, so that wasn’t impossible.
Her mind returning to other concerns (there were so many these days), Alexa frowned. Did Vee et grandmère ever disagree? What kind of disagreement would it have taken for him to have wanted to leave his family?
She rolled over, blanket pulled up to cover her nose as if she slept. Peering at him over the edge, she curled her toes again (still too cold) and wondered what could be so bad about ones (Spider’s) own family that one (Spider) would decide they were better off abandoning the whole thing?
As the fabric grazed her skin and the night grew heavier about her, she realised how much she missed her own room, her own bed, the sweet scents of the flowers that whispered din through the windows like a song, the crackle of a dwindling fireplace, the expectation of the next day, knowing what tasks there were to complete, knowing they didn’t require fraud or deception or cruelty or harm or hiding.
She missed Maman et grandmère - Maman braiding her hair a little too tight, grandmère watching or reading or telling stories to keep her from getting bored or twitching at pulled hair. She missed the softness of these moments, the gentleness with which people of her family treated each other and tried to treat others. Grandmère had not been born wealthy, she had become wealthy, and she knew that people were often trying their best. Maman et Papa could be a little more harsh, but not by much, and never in earnest. There were obviously staff members who could braid hair, but the time the three generations (perhaps four - no one knew how old Vee was, but he was ever-present) spent together in this simple manual task was their time. They rarely spoke of politics or expectation or propriety in this room once a week before bed. Instead they spoke of pretty things. Maman didn’t like to hear about grandmère in dangerous situations…instead grandmère would talk about plants she had seen, about people she’d met, animals she’d spoken with. She’d tell outrageous stories of negotiation with guards and sneaking around with Chevalier or time spent around campfires with her namesake, Aerith.
Occasionally she would turn to her best friend placidly sitting beside her and rest a hand on his arm, asking for clarification or aid in remembering details. Grandmère’s mind frequently dwelt on the importance of tiny details and broad brushstrokes, stretching them (the way Alexa herself did) into extraordinary shapes. Alexa could always tell if grandmère misremembered something from the time after she’d met Vee - he’d tilt his head just so. Grandmère would see it too and chide him for allowing her to make up tales when the truth was so fantastical in its own right.
Did Jasper miss these things? Did he have memories he quashed, preferring instead to think of a perfect world? Sighing, Alexa realised she missed the simplicity of a time before she had to consider whether the meritocracy she’d grown up in was a meritocracy at all, and whether what had been here before could have been better - unless they’d been people who set fires in spite. And yet, who did the fires hurt more? Those who had come before or those who had inherited? Didn’t both lose when neither was willing to learn from the other?
Eyes still on Vee, almost out of habit, Alexa could somewhat understand why the Progress might be seen as problematic. They had wanted to take the metallic man from the Donadieu family - had tried several times, as far as she knew. But here he was instead, unharmed and whole to care for her.
For all their lights and parties, how happy were the people of Glitter Delta Cove? Did they think soft thoughts, or gnash their teeth in bitterness? It wasn’t possible to halt Progress after all…was it?
​
***
L'Importance du Temps
Alexandrie dug a hand into her pocket and took a step back into the trees to distance herself from Edgewater’s sons and shake the feeling that she was being watched. She couldn’t help but think that this kind of foolish behaviour didn’t happen when one had enough sleep, and it certainly didn’t happen when one took the appropriate amount of time to comport oneself.
The hand slipped out of her pocket and she found herself examining it, critically.
“Take care of your hands,” Maman had once said, “and they will take care of you. We wash our faces and apply makeup to be seen for who we are and who we wish to be. Think of your hands the same way, but for touch. A gentleman will be able to read the story you tell with your hands.”
‘But how, Maman?’ She lamented internally, frowning at chipped nail colour, ‘when Lucas keeps waking me at ridiculous hours and we never stay anywhere with appropriate facilities?’
She could almost hear Marie Donadieu’s no nonsense tone behind her. "Make time then, Alexa. Pull your head from the clouds and look at the world around you. There are things to be learned and things to be seen, and you won’t learn to see them if you don’t gain access to the right circles."
At the time, Alexa had known she would need to leave eventually: La Chanson was becoming more insistent, and it had taken everything she had as the Song grew louder not to bite her nails to the quick with worry - if she had, Maman would have been able to pull a story from her mouth as deftly as Aquideon had from her fingers. She’d worried that social circles in Shining Capital would be just as important (if not more important) outside the city, worried that she wouldn’t be able to maintain her courtly style…that one had only somewhat come true. For all her complaining, her clothes were well tailored and ensured she could move easily. The single dress she’d carefully folded and placed in her pack was basic, a summer gown more than anything. Yes, it had been cold when they left, but it couldn’t be cold forever, and Alexa knew she would miss gowns (or need one) eventually.
And now they would be staying in a house befitting the Sinrou, perhaps she would get to wear it…feel at home, just for a little while. That Aquideon had known from a hand that she was Sinrou suggested a few things: he hadn’t been certain before (or he had and wanted to show off)… Either his movements were telling the truth about his own social circles, or he had a great deal of experience with hers. Both those thoughts begged more questions than they answered, especially with the way others treated him. Frankly, it was almost enough to bite her nails in thought.
She hadn’t bitten her nails since she was twelve. Six months before her first appearance in court, Maman had been firm but kind: No more roughspun breeches, no more adventures in the mud, no more biting nails or loose shifts, no more sneaking away from bodyguards. No, now it was fitted bodices in the colours of the house and silk gowns that broken nails would pull. Just to make a point, Maman would often hold a hand out to her much the way Aquideon had that morning, and check her hands for softness, nail shape and shine.
The worst part was that Alexandrie knew she’d become complacent in her time away from home. She hadn’t needed to follow courtly rules, and she had been beginning to enjoy the return to her childhood. Then the Ebon elf had caught her off guard, and Lucas had embarrassed her further. She glared at him and looked at the flower in her hands, an attempt at distraction. It was his fault she didn’t have time to do what she needed to, and he wasn’t worth the concern.
Taking a healthy step away from the wall, she spun the rose between her fingers, eyeing it suspiciously. She’d never seen one like it - but Grandmère had. Despite the morning sun, it almost glittered with darkness, stars on velveteen petals glinting at her. Almost magical. Certainly alive. Most definitely beautiful. A rare gift.
La Chanson du Monde.
Thinking of it felt…it felt fuller. Rounder. More whole. A little more complete. Not just La Chanson, but she herself. Despite how early it was, despite how she felt about her nails…
La Chanson du Monde filled her.
Like a flower drinking sunlight, she tilted her face back and let the sun warm her. Two flowers they were. Did the rose between her fingers bloom by moonlight? Would it wilt in the sun? She opened her eyes regretfully and stared at the wall. What she could see of it stared back. For a girl so used to being watched, it made her very uncomfortable. As though she needed to justify her existence. Not something she was used to. Not really.
La Chanson du Monde. Why was Lucas suddenly so interested in it - in Chevalier’s abilities? Questions she’d never asked of him, or at least, not in that way. And certainly questions she’d never asked La Chanson. She was not in the habit of questioning the music she heard…though perhaps she should a little more.
The last few months had been so much about learning - learning how to do things, learning her own limits, learning about friendship, justice, equality - she hadn’t questioned things that were much closer to home. Like Chevalier. And Grandmère. And La Chanson. She had always been so grateful to hear it - to have the chance to finish what Grandmère could not - that she hadn’t questioned its origin, or its life cycle, or whether it was good, or even the idea that music was guiding her. It seemed obvious now, but when she’d first heard La Chanson it had not felt obvious at all. Maman knew Grandmère had heard a song. But it was one thing to know something was true and quite another to experience sentient music and simply accept that what it told you must be true.
Was La Chanson the same song as the feeling of the sun on her face? Was it what made this rose bloom? Was it the smiles on faces and the sound of rain on cobblestones or the smell of fresh bread or the last exhale of the dying? It was certainly entrancing and distracting and filling.
For everything she knew of La Chanson, she also knew she hadn’t heard all of it. It drove her to distraction - she knew more about it now, but not enough. Never enough. Was it possible to know the song of the whole world? And what did it need of someone as small as her?
​
***
Shakey Ground
Alexa trembled.
Unable to stay in her room, she sat beneath a tree in the afternoon light, both roses clutched tight in her hands, arms clasped around her knees. Periodically (unnecessarily, perhaps) she checked La Chanson was definitely present, creating the image of exactly what this tree she leaned upon looked like without her there. Curled up, hidden from the world, Alexa trembled.
‘It wouldn’t help to cry,’ she told herself. Besides, if she cried, she didn’t think she could maintain the barrier. She would suddenly look like a stupid Sinrou teenager crying in the street. So she trembled and listened and trembled. It had been so loud - so so loud. Deafening - then
Nothing.
That they were in a river barely registered. That Spider disappeared beneath the water was a fleeting thought. The girl’s heart pounded, her breath grew shallow, her eyes distant, her jaw slack because of one sensation:
Silence.
Louder than the loudest inferno, more powerful than a waterfall in spring, louder than the Song as it prepared her for what was to come was the silence that followed. A minute became a century as her worst fear came to pass. For a year - more, now - La Chanson had been a constant companion. Not far - never far. And yet, it felt as though the river washed it away, as if it had never existed to anyone except she.
In that moment, Alexandrie had been alone with her thoughts. And that terrified her.
“Alexandrie, you terrify me.”
Her body jerked and she heaved a choked sob. The image of the tree lost, she became visible. Shaking, she took a deep breath and glanced around. Waiting until a somewhat startled passer-by passed by, she re-placed the barrier.
And trembled.
What else could she expect, really?
Somehow, she (or La Chanson using her as a conduit) had thrown them all into a river. Somewhere Lucas and Spider knew, somewhere significant, and somewhere that had hurt them both. Why did La Chanson keep trying, or want Spider hurt? She hadn’t felt anything before it happened - just excitement at using La Chanson to create - learning her limitations. Perhaps she’d pushed them too far too quickly, but it had been fun, new, valuable.
Laying the roses, family but not twins, across her knees, she covered her face with her hands.
“I am an idiot,” she whispered. When she’d first heard La Chanson, she hadn’t told anyone but Maman, Grandmère and Chevalier. Maman had dismissed it as not possible - that had been grandmère’s domain and it was over, finished. Gone. Vee et Grandmère, however, had obviously known what was happening. After Maman’s response, she hadn’t told anyone what she heard or what it meant. She was astute enough to know that hearing things other people couldn’t hear and talking broadly about that could easily be misconstrued. So she hadn’t. But then La Chanson had made itself known to Spider and Lucas, and she couldn’t hide it. And then she hadn’t wanted to. And then Lucas had asked. He’d asked…so she’d told him. And now she regretted it.
She’d never told anyone what it felt like to experience La Chanson. Not…not like that. Then again, La Chanson had never placed her inside someone’s memory before…
He was right to be terrified. It didn’t hurt less, though.
Alexandrie trembled.
Was this how La Chanson treated her friends? Were they missing something? What did they need to know? What was the learning from this? Don’t trust people? Don’t tell them…
And yet, La Chanson said she hadn’t done anything wrong.
Had they?
This had been for their benefit, whatever that might mean. Lucas and Spider had been there before. That much was obvious. Why had they gone back? Why had La Chanson done that? Had she been the only one to hear the Song that time? They’d all heard it the last time but this…
No wonder she was terrifying. La Chanson could pull from their memories to put them there, and she - all she cared about was whether she’d displeased it, not whether they were alright.
Why leave Spider covered in mud? Why did La Chanson keep hurting him? Was it even La Chanson? Vee had a theory that it was whatever might be against La Chanson du Monde, but Alexandrie couldn’t even conceive of something that might want to do La Chanson harm. She couldn’t conceive of what the opposite of La Chanson du Monde would be. Was there another teenager out there as confused as she? As in love with the touch of the magic she felt? Would it feel the same? Would they feel as lost as she without it?
Tapping on that power again, Alexa heard the music swell a little, as it did sometimes. The barrier, which had begun to fade, strengthened once more, and she tried for a smile in gratitude. Sometimes she wasn’t sure if she was hearing La Chanson or imagining she was hearing it. In the river, there had been no hearing it, or imagining she could hear it. It was gone.
Just gone.
It kept coming back to that. Grandmère had failed and La Chanson had left her. Not as suddenly, and only when she was safe, but it had left her. And that was Alexandrie Donadieu’s biggest fear.
That she would fail and it would leave.
Or that she would succeed and it would leave.
Alexandrie had space and time for both fears. All the social graces and self-awareness and self-esteem and family pride she exuded couldn’t erase that one fear:
​
What would she be when La Chanson was finished with her?
Grandmère had picked up her life. She’d met Grandpère and they’d had a life. The Anvil Heart Company had, for the most part, gone their separate ways, but they’d visited and Alexa had loved to sit in the parlour as a child, silently watching them interact and discuss the past. But there had been so many of them, and the way Grandmère and Chevalier discussed them, they’d always been friends.
But Grandmère had never made walls melt, or forced her friends to face frightening memories.
This was new, and of course Lucas was terrified. She would be too.
She just wished he wasn’t.
As she took the roses between neatly manicured fingers, behind a barrier through which no one could see, she sighed and admitted the truth to herself and no one else:
The three she travelled with were the best friends she’d ever had. And one (at least) was afraid of her.
Alexandrie’s lip trembled, but finally she stood, dropping the barrier and immediately beginning to weave another spell from the Song. She needed it close today. As she walked back into the Inn, the outline of a third rose began to glitter in her hand.
​
***
​
Trust?
Alexandrie listened to Lucas speak as they walked. She’d been listening and watching him think for some time, her dark eyes peripherally locked on his face as he asked questions no one had ever asked, questions she hadn’t felt comfortable answering before now. Chevalier, urn in hand, walked slightly behind them. She didn’t know if he was listening but, for the first time where she was concerned, she didn’t really care. So intent was her focus that Ellinora Edgewater could have been standing behind her and she wouldn’t have noticed.
The last time Lucas had approached her to ask about La Chanson had been the bow of the ship on the journey here. She had been surprised then, and hesitant to say anything about an experience so sacred. She’d been afraid he would mock her experience, tell her she was foolish, or dismiss her words as the words of a mad woman. She had said as little as possible and even that felt like too much, especially to tell an Edgewater. This time… he deserved fuller answers. She didn’t control La Chanson, but it worked through her, and had shown her something of the brothers. It had shown how Lucas had lost his leg, and it had shown Spider panicked…lost…with none of the certain cocksureness he showed her. This time, when Lucas asked questions, she answered.
She had only verbalised the pull and direction of La Chanson to Chevalier. Grandmère had known - had been the one to warn her, in fact - that when the pull became too strong she would have to leave. She rarely verbalised her complete trust in La Chanson - a trust that existed despite the fact that it did not tell her everything. She believed - entirely - that La Chanson would keep her safe. She believed every instinct that told her to step here instead of there, every nudge toward or away from people was guided by the music.
Though as she thought of it, she hadn’t consistently shown that. For good or ill, as she watched Lucas grapple with a sound that had melded with the core of her being consciously over a year, she had to acknowledge she had not been paying close enough attention. Her hatred of Ellinora had blinded her to the trust that La Chanson was placing in Lucas. And that opened up a mine of conflict in the teen. Ellinora Edgewater had called Grandmère a crazy old woman. A cheat. A charlatan, and someone unworthy of the title with which she had been bestowed. Somehow, somewhere, despite the family’s privacy, there were rumours that Grandmère Alaina heard or influenced people through sound.
If there was anything neither she nor Grandmère would ever do, it was use La Chanson to control the minds or thoughts of others. Just the mention of it - the suggestion of using pure musical energy to do this - was so heinous, so vile, so wrong, that she had lashed out. And if Vee hadn’t stopped her, she’d have shown Ellinora that no Donadieu needed magic to influence others when a hand would do. That had been her - not La Chanson, and there were things that did not require magic to achieve.
Which was why she didn’t understand Lucas’ concern. If La Chanson was the engineer of this…vision, experience, reminder…honestly she still didn’t know why it had happened - it wasn’t to influence him. If it wanted something done, she would do it. That was not a question. She would do what it asked and she would do it gladly. It was to offer him something. Alexa was coming to understand that she had been born to this - she might not always have ended up in this exact spot, but she would always have heard La Chanson. Tendrils of music were reaching out to Lucas. Almost as if he were being given a choice. La Chanson didn’t do things carelessly. It had deemed him capable, or worthy by whatever metric it made decisions on, but it wanted him to choose.
She had likely made a choice too - had likely chosen when she was very young. She fiddled with the locket around her neck. Grandmère had given it to her. As a child she had (to her mother’s chagrin) hung from Vee like a monkey, or crawled into his lap when he sat, reaching up with a small hand to touch the sigil on his forehead until she fell asleep. Her locket was engraved with that same sigil. Though there had been a few times in her early teens where she’d removed it - as a young adolescent she’d at times had a turbulent relationship with the automaton (and everyone else) and thrown it at him - she had always ended up putting it back on. It was a testament to Chevalier’s catching abilities that he’d not once been hit with the thing, and a testament to his understanding of her that when she did (finally) apologise, he would hand it back, undented and shining.
Though he didn’t hear La Chanson, Chevalier was as close as she could get to the physical embodiment of the music she believed had protected her for her whole life. Her trust in Chevalier, like her trust in La Chanson, was absolute. So why, she queried, her eyes sliding from Lucas’ face to look at the hills of the dead, had she not placed trust in the young man beside her?
La Chanson trusted him. That much was clear. Chevalier trusted him. That much was clear.
Perhaps it was time to trust. If not him, then those she placed her faith in.
So she told him, hesitantly, as she hadn’t told anyone, that she wasn’t entirely certain whether she always heard La Chanson or if she imagined she could hear it.
And felt something she hadn’t expected to feel:
Relief.
She hadn’t spoken of this feeling to Chevalier - though he certainly must know - and she hadn’t wanted to discuss the feeling with Grandmère, who no longer heard it, and excruciating silence was not something she wanted to remind Grandmère of, regardless of the calm acceptance the woman exuded in all things. So when she told Lucas, when she uttered those words, they’d been the first time she’s said them to someone who might one day understand. Someone who might one day feel the same. And the only person outside her family she could confess those thoughts to, knowing they might be believed at face value.
Was this trust?
​
***
Free Will
As Lucas ducked and slipped out from beneath the swing of Chevalier’s warhammer, Alexandrie smiled placidly. She sat upon a stone wall at the edge of the opulent Dash’am’ali estate, feeling for changes to the music in her mind, listening to the rush and eddying of the water behind her. This hadn’t been how she’d learned to use La Chanson, but Chevalier was right: Lucas was a soldier. Perhaps the Song wanted him to make use of that. And as she watched, she could see what the young man had meant: the way he leaned one way but stepped another, the shapes he made on the ground, the patterns…they did look a lot like dance. She’d never looked at combat that way before - had only seen the pain and suffering it could bring. Without his weapons, Lucas may as well have been dancing with Chevalier. There was a rhythm to it, one that the automaton would allow the young man to fall into, before almost counterpointing with another step of his own.
Even as she smiled, though, she inwardly frowned and sighed in resignation. La Chanson said he was to use it. So use it he would. Whether he wanted to or not, he would inevitably use the music to do what he thought was best. And La Chanson trusted that. And she trusted La Chanson. So she trusted him.
She understood that what she was doing wasn’t strictly fair. She knew that he wouldn’t be able to go back once he’d tasted that connection. She’d heard his concerns about Free Will, about how he wanted to make his own decisions. She’d definitely heard how important they were to him. She simply didn’t care. Once he heard La Chanson, once he’d used the power it was offering, some if not all of those objections would fall away. He would do what La Chanson asked. She would make sure of it.
Free Will, to the half-elf, didn’t truly exist. He would enjoy doing what La Chanson asked, because La Chanson rewarded those who did. She was living proof of that - had been raised in a beautiful world because of Grandmère’s service, even if she had been unable to do everything it asked. Free will, if it existed, wasn’t important. Lucas said that he had chosen his occupation. But he’d left, hadn’t he? Had crossed paths with her and La Chanson. Was that his own decision? How could he tell?
If she had stayed home, she would have been married and engaged in business or community work or children. What was free will? The illusion of choice? How far did it go? Everyone worked a job - as part of a meritocracy, everyone had to give to the whole. Those who worked hardest would be promoted if they were good enough…not that Maman wasn’t good enough for La Chanson, of course, just that she wasn’t right for the task La Chanson needed to fulfil. And that was important too.
Even thinking of Maman in her position made her smile broader. Maman was careful and savvy and had an eye for precise detail, but the idea of Maman walking through mud was more outrageous than Alexa herself doing it. When Grandmère threw parties, Maman’s eye had ensured everything was just so. Just…perfect. By comparison, Alexa spent less time looking for perfection. Instead, Alexa…dreamed. She daydreamed. She nightdreamed. She loved Grandmère and Vee’s stories and…truthfully, she was grateful she had heard La Chanson. The dreams, the stories, the music…she was bred to wander. She was coming to realise that seeing the world was exactly what she’d wanted - needed to do. Or at least, that was the illusion.
And that’s what it returned to. She had been raised on music and stories and people clutching at her, afraid she would leave. She hadn’t really any close friends her own age in Shining Capital, and Maman et Papa were restrictive of her movements, afraid (she could see now) that she would do exactly what she had. But were they scared of her choice? Or that La Chanson might make the choice to take her? What would have happened if she had told Maman et Papa in earnest that she heard La Chanson? That it wanted her to leave and that she would? Would they have restricted her more? Confined her? Would telling them have been an act of Free Will? Would it have worked?
For the hundredth or thousandth time, Alexa wished Grandmère were present. She had so many Questions.
Lucas had wanted to know why he’d been chosen. Why she had been. What difference would that knowledge make? Now - now that the act was done, what difference could it make? Surely now was the time to use what was given, not question the vast and difficult “why”. Why didn’t help people. Why didn’t accomplish anything. Why, to her, was like the concept of free will - it didn’t change her actions, and it was too late to go back and choose something different. The best thing for Lucas to do, in her opinion, was to make do with what he had been given.
And it started here. With Chevalier’s hammer rushing toward Lucas’ back, then side, then chest, then head, each movement faster, requiring the sweating young man to weave around the automaton faster and faster. She knew Chevalier wouldn’t hurt him. She knew how much control Chevalier had over himself and the hammer. More to the point, though, she knew that if there was an accident, she was there to heal. Before they’d left home, Chevalier had tried to persuade her to hit him with the power of La Chanson. After the incident with the rabbit, however, she had refused. She couldn’t control herself or La Chanson enough at the time to feel comfortable with deliberately hurting him, and had recoiled at even the suggestion.
Now, however, she could depend on La Chanson, just as she could depend on her own ability to manage that power - for the most part. In the end, she was still a teenager - one guided by the sentient Song of the World, perhaps - but teenagers got things wrong sometimes. Healing was something she knew she could do now, so she was there, hands poised, watching. In case Lucas moved in a way Chevalier didn’t expect and Chevalier did more than knock him with the hammer.
Nothing of the sort happened, of course, and as her mind wandered, her fingers twitched, and Alexandrie began to gently weave the magical essence of the world together. Motes of light began to form and she almost felt the velveteen delicacy of a petal before she realised what she was doing and dropped her hands back to her lap.
Ever since Aquideon had handed her that rose, she had been creating flowers of different shapes and sizes, but all with standard (as she knew it) rose colouring. The rose she had created the night before, the one in her house colours, was the first she created with no reference.
​
Why keep creating roses?
They were beautiful and dangerous and simple enough to create on the move. There was no use creating beds, or candles. Well, candles had a use, but they became very heavy. Roses she could tuck into the top of the scroll case she kept her sheet music in. Roses smelled and looked beautiful, and Alexandrie was growing a great appreciation for the way they grew in her hands, as well as the wilting, destructive process that would inevitably ensue. Destruction could be as beautiful as growth. The bloom of beginning and the frailty of ending were equally alluring, and something she could use to mark the passage of time as they travelled and acted at all hours of day and night.
But the four of them were going to be here for a while, and they were safe. She had some experimenting to do. And that made the teenager’s smile broader. Daydreaming and nightdreaming were all well and good, but the Song had granted her the ability to create the things she dreamed about. Aquideon and the Dash’am’ali family had granted her the safety to experiment. She would be very careful - as careful as she could be - not to destroy things in the house. She would be careful not to reveal too much about La Chanson, or the extent to which she could -
Inward focus broken, Alexa laughed in surprise and shock as Lucas threw his hands up and music exploded in her mind, beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. Chevalier’s hammer hung, suspended as if by a barrier, above the soldier. For the first time, Alexandrie saw the majesty of La Chanson from the outside. Tears welled in her eyes as she laughed.
​
He had done it.
​
***
The Welcoming Cold
Sanjuio Alexandrie Aerith Vanessa Elamys Normaer Sylvaris Donadieu…didn’t understand people. She didn’t need magic to divine that. Half the time, she didn’t even really like people. As she left the ballroom, her cheeks began to burn. Walking calmly, head held high, she glanced at Chevalier and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her. Nodding and waving away the assistance of the house staff, she quickly made her way outside.
Walking became running. Or as well as she could in a gown. Lifting skirts, she ran fast and she ran hard, trying to get away from thoughts that followed. Not knowing where she was running, she found herself sprinting, running, then jogging toward the orchard before coming to a stop by an old, gnarled olive tree where she leaned, breath steaming in the moonlight. Grimacing, she looked up at the sky and wished she could have run further. She just…
Needed space. Space and apparently to change her perspective - two things everyone had told her to give Lucas time to achieve.
Zut.
Panting, she reached for hidden lacing, pulling the heavy overgarment off. Folding it as carefully as she could, she left the corset and undershirt and removed all but the woollen leggings she wore beneath the skirts. She’d borrowed the ensemble after all, and Maman had forced her to watch how a gown was made from start to finish when she’d ruined three in a week.
Trees stood in somewhat ordered rows around her, silent.
Judging? Welcoming. Skimming her fingers along the trunk, she felt for hand and footholds in the dark.
“You’re half elf,” Emily would say with amusement, tapping her own pointed ears from higher up, not a smudge on her dark, simple clothes. “Surely your fingers can find handholds.”
Find handholds, perhaps, but there was only so much breeding took care of. The rest was training. Training and practice. She got less time to practice, these days - she couldn’t exactly climb trees in dresses, and on the road she had to stay safe - which meant staying by Chevalier.
Now…now they were as close to safe as they would be for some time, so she could indulge in a habit she’d had since she was young. She disappeared to do what she wanted to do. For the moment, what she wanted was to get away from discomfort and climb trees. What she wanted was to go home, and this was the closest she could get.
“Surely you can find a way if you really want it.” And she always could. Hers was not the supernatural ability Jasper had shown them, but the feline grace of a gymnast. Slipping her feet from dark ballroom heels, toes of one foot found a divot in the tree as fingers hooked into small spaces. Ignoring the protest of her lungs as she crouched, not fully recovered from the run in a corset, she used the hand and footholds to spring up and grab the first branch. Briefly amused at the sight she would make if anyone had seen (a sinrou in her undergarments hanging from a branch in an orchard could not be all that common), she stretched her arms on the branch for a moment before swinging up and grasping another. Monkey-like, she swung, never putting all her weight on a branch for long until she was sitting on top of a stronger bough and leaned against the trunk to catch her breath. Looking over the side, deep within the leaves of the tree, she could feel lost here. Lost to the world. A safe house in a safe house, if you could ignore the clothes on the ground beneath. If you could assume no one would look here and drag you back to reality.
Sitting on that bough, she pulled a leaf from the tree. A thought, a dream, a whisper, a prayer and a leaf mouse ran up and down her arm before curling up in her hand and falling asleep, little snores like a breeze through trees.
​
Never alone.
She was never alone. Pulling an early season bloom from the tree, she gave the mouse a friend, and the two curled up together.
The existence of magic in her - that she could use - ask to use - thank for using…
It never left her.
She could remember being young and being told of it, but she no longer remembered the silence unless it happened.
People were upset with her for…what, exactly? For being focused? For wanting…for doing what she needed to do? Lucas had to learn how to use the Song. He knew that. She knew that. And he would. Ultimately, he would do what La Chanson asked and that was the important point - but it wasn’t all she cared about. And right now, sitting in the tree, she hated herself for it. Everyone kept telling her he didn’t have the same experience of La Chanson that she did. She wasn’t stupid. Of course he didn’t. He couldn’t. No one could. At this point, she wondered whether even Grandmère had. What she wanted to know was how it was different, not to be told repeatedly that it was. She hadn’t expected all this to go so far, but it had and she’d tried to apologise but the words never came out right and she just couldn’t think and then others were talking and changing the topic and pulling her away from what she was trying to do to make it better and -
Angry tears springing to her eyes, she held her hands up to her mouth, lips pursed, prepared to drop the spell as she peered into cupped hands to see sleeping mice curled up together.
One was a delicate pink, tail made of braided stamen, fur of softest olivebud-fuzzy petals. The other a pale, hardy green, tough, tail a thick barky brown. Inhaling, she pursed her lips more, preparing to blow them away - and stopped.
Even self-created magical mice seemed better at interacting than she. Que c’est embarrassant.
She leaned her head on her cupped hands. The mice kissed her forehead, noses cold.
Of the things in Alexa’s short life so far, she’d only really had to worry and care about two things: Her family and La Chanson. The only two things that consistently and constantly drew her focus. And now she was being asked to split that focus by people who didn’t seem to understand how all encompassing that attention was. And the only question they could ask about the object of her attention was “what does it want?”
“Ask it yourself if it’s so important to you!” she wanted to scream. The same question over and over and over. Boring and pointless and unhelpful for someone who would do what it wanted regardless. Short sighted - or else too longsighted. Did they not think it would tell her when she needed to know? Perhaps that was not enough for them, but it was enough for her.
For all the difficulty she had in trusting the Edgewaters, they had more difficulty trusting La Chanson. “Why,” she whispered to the mice, “should I trust people who refuse to respect something so beloved to me?”
There were so many better questions to be asking. Spider had come closest - why did it show them the river? Why had it left Spider coated in mud? Why did she need this much power or this level of connection to it? Why had it chosen her, sure, but how could something so powerful need her? What could she and Lucas give it that it couldn’t do alone? What was against it? What was the problem it was trying to solve? Would it be with her always?
That last was a dichotomous question, and one she very very specifically did not ask.
Trust did not come easily to Alexandrie. The small amount of trust she had thus far extended to the Edgewaters was prompted in large part by La Chanson, and by Chevalier. Court had taught Alexa that what people said was rarely what they meant, so she simply didn’t pay attention to what people said. Why listen and put energy into understanding words spoken through masks of politeness? Look instead at what they did, her instinct told her. Actions told her more than words. People lied with their words. Most people, anyway.
‘Even Lucas,’ she thought, resting the mice on the bough before her.
‘Even he hid behind the mask.’ He always had. A face for the public and a face for the private. Which was it? Which should she listen and seek to understand? And what was the point when such faces changed with the season?
Frustrated, she stood and looked down at the clothes beneath her. The gown, the beauty (or appreciation of it) was as much Alexandrie as the girl in the tree. Ask one a question and you would get much the same answer as the other. Ignoring it and gauging the distance between herself and a nearby branch, she took a couple of steps back and leaped to it, hanging above the ground. Curling into herself, she wrapped her legs around it and hung upside down. Blood and La Chanson pounded in her head as she hung, looking at the mice in the other bough as they stood on hind legs, trying to find a way to get to her. She half-smiled, half-grimaced and dropped the spell. Petals and leaves floated away on the breeze.
Pulling herself up onto this new, higher branch, she could see the majesty of the house, but could no longer see the clothes below through the leaves. Good.
She wore the clothes. They didn’t wear her. Put her in veils or rags and she was still the same person with the same face. Change his clothes, and Lucas Edgewater was an entirely different person. That rankled, whatever the reason.
Maman was the same person at home that she was in public. Grandmère (despite Maman’s objections) was the same person at home that she was in public. Papa was the same. Chevalier didn’t have the choice of more than one face. He was ever Chevalier.
She couldn’t say that of Edgewaters. Of the two she travelled with, at least Spider was honest about it. At least she could count on Spider to be honest about his deceptions. It was why she had been willing to trust that Tallman would do as she said.
So. Lucas wasn’t stupid enough not to use La Chanson. Et La Chanson was not stupid - it would not give someone abilities they would mismanage. She trusted La Chanson’s judgement as far as those it empowered - if it believed he could do what it wanted, he would be able to, and maybe she didn’t need to make it happen. But a strange itch of distrust in him had plagued her since they started this journey, and while it had shrunk, it had not disappeared. Searching her own feelings, she didn’t feel jealousy, or pain. She felt frustration and…betrayal?
Everything was conflicting. She hated that she felt this way, and she hated that anyone or anything could make her distrust any part of La Chanson or Chevalier. But it was there, and trying to ignore the feeling only made things worse.
If only they knew how hard it already was to trust them with this much of her affection - eugh - attention. It was on the scale of being “cousins” to the Dash’em’ali, and she didn’t even know how to verbalise that in any meaningful way that she couldn’t help but feel would be undermined somehow.
So why try?
The sinrou folded her legs beneath her to warm her toes and tucked her hands under her arms. She’d never spent so long thinking about people who were not family - especially people who openly admitted to lying to her.
Cold as it was, Alexa felt safe here. Here she could think, could curl up and watch the world, watch light flicker through the window of people who would still be dancing, talking, lying to each other for hours more. Here, in this tree, she didn’t need to watch her tongue, or her manners, or her graces.
Conflicted as she was, cold as it was becoming, she leaned against the trunk of the tree, broad - welcoming - closed her eyes and listened to the Song of the World. There were no time pressures here - no need to be more.
Eventually, the lilting lullaby of the World set her mind to rest, and her heart to dreaming.
​
***
​
Fun, I promise
It had been a long time. Alexandrie guessed months, at least, maybe a year since she had had so much fun. But she’d promised Lucas she would at least put La Chanson to the back of her mind and try. If there was one thing Alexa Donadieu (petite fille d’Alaina Donadieu) could do, it was keep her promises. So it was, buoyed by the smile on Lucas’ face as she relayed what she’d learned from La Chanson, Alexandrie danced. She danced with all who would spend time with her and exchanged light words with all who did not wish to dance. Seeing Eshi’nani leading people around the floor, she was hit with a sharp and painful pang of homesickness, but she pushed that to the side as well, choosing instead to feel the joy of the evening. Everything here was so very almost-not-quite-but-close-enough to home that it was easy (when she allowed herself) to get swept up. She felt...safe. And comfortable in a way she hadn’t felt in a long time. And now…now she relaxed in bed, feet stinging, muscles aching from all the new dance steps she had learned, all the new movement styles she had accommodated and shared.
To be a good dancer meant Alexandrie needed to anticipate every movement, tensing and releasing the right muscles at the right moment, keeping time with the music and her partner, and preparing for every step while being supported and guided around the floor by her leader. In reverse. In borrowed heels. In public. The intimacy of the dance in public was too understated, in Alexandrie’s mind. There was a level of synchronicity required in true dance that counting steps and muttering beat numbers could not hope to meet. A good dancer could move without thinking of the steps.
A great dancer realised there was more to dance than steps.
Pulling loose hair to one side the next morning, she stared at the darkly ornate ceiling in thought. As she lay in the dark, her mind’s eye travelled home to another party. A friend, sort of. As much a friend as Sinrou-Mirroturcretez ever truly became. Maman had wanted her to attend, so attend she had. Alexa loved to dance, so dance she had, rarely lacking in dance partners. Dance was more engaging to Alexandrie than the chatter that occurred from those watching - though she was an accomplished enough dancer even then not to need to consider steps, and so was able to consider what was being said to her instead. There weren’t many dancers of her caliber at this gathering, however, and so she was just about to announce she was bored and ask Chevalier to help her escape when Byron appeared.
She could say a lot of things about Byron, but he was un merveilleux danseur.
La Chanson had been far away in those days, quiet, so when he’d pulled her closer than decorum suggested, her breathing quickened. When he whispered his desire to spend time alone with her, she’d glanced at Vee (Chevalier, then) and slipped out the door a moment after Byron, something she often wondered about now. At the time she thought she’d escaped Vee’s attention. Now she knew better.
They hadn’t gone far before a dark hall and hormones made suggestions. They didn’t get far into those suggestions before the Sanjuio of the house had called for none other than Maman to claim her daughter before (to put it delicately) Byron did.
What had followed was a discussion - oh, she had been soundly punished, yes, but a discussion had followed about public perception, children, marriage and emotions. She’d listened to most of it, and had heard Chevalier berated by Maman through the door for his carelessness. Though she liked to think that she became a well-behaved Sanjuio after that, in reality La Chanson had drawn closer and commanded more of her attention, much like the fingertips lazily, sleepily skimming her cheek.
Returned almost to the present, she thought back a few hours. Meeting eyes across the dance floor, dancing with someone new who (thankfully) rescued her from Em’mat’to. Not long after, they had spoken, already on their way from the ballroom. Then they had spoken no more. As the lacing of her dress had loosened, the fabric allowed to fall, she hadn’t folded it. There was a time for neatness. This was most certainly not one of them. She’d turned, her own hands reaching for lacing, fastenings, fumbling at the newness of the angle, lips pressed against hers, a tongue seeking entry. Touch - intimate touch - a welcome novelty.
“Fun,” she sighed, smiling at the newness that was not entirely new.
The party had been beautiful - perfect. She’d danced with Chevalier for the first time in a long time. He had, after all, been one of her dance tutors. It had been a soothing, wondrous return to her childhood to dance with her best friend, and know that between the two of them they could easily command the attention of the room. She had enough of Maman’s mannerism that a curtsy took her gracefully, demurely, to the ground in a show of exquisite gentility, yet enough of Grandmère that her movements at times shifted from the stately to the sensuous.
Lucas was right, Alexandrie was smiling. She hadn’t taken the time - hadn’t perceived she had the time - for fun. So intent on following Grandmère’s footsteps, so intent on doing what La Chanson asked that in the year and a half since she’d first heard it, she had pushed fun to the side in favour of responsibility. The teenager had done her very best to grow up, because (of course) only adults went on adventures and undertook important tasks. La Chanson had no need of a child.
On the face of it, Lucas was really the better choice for La Chanson. He was older, trained for a purpose. He didn’t need protecting. Alexa knew that without La Chanson she would be almost helpless - she was young, not stupid. Even Spider might make better use of La Chanson, if she were truly honest with herself. But she meant what she’d said to Lucas. The conclusion she was rapidly coming to was that La Chanson itself needed help, and that perhaps it needed someone young and good to help fulfil whatever task it needed help with.
Alexandrie had no doubt she was good. She knew she was young. She knew - or thought she knew - herself. That Lucas was unsure discomforted and soothed her in turns. He had taken the time to think about it, and seemed to be telling the truth. At any rate, he knew what she wanted to hear, and he hadn’t said it just to placate her. She appreciated that. And his desire to protect Spider was valiant, but…she hoped that in time he might care a little more about La Chanson. It pleased her that following the Song had led him to her, though she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it spoke of the Song’s faith in her, or her faith in it, or their connection. She wasn’t sure, but it felt good.
Like telling Lucas his Grandpère lived.
Watching Lucas grow genuinely happy was, she concluded, a powerful thing when he wore the right face - the one that allowed her to see it. It made her want to make it happen more. Like the music of the Song made physical, she could, in those moments, imagine that he had indeed broken all the hearts he claimed. It was a dangerous power, one that La Chanson had nothing to do with.
She was brought back to the present by that same hand, which had moved from her cheek to her shoulder, and begun to trace the curve of her breast. Less sleepy now, definitely. The person attached to that hand wanted her, and wanted her attention. She smiled and turned to look at the sapphire eyes that glowed quietly in the dark room. It was morning, she knew, though she couldn’t tell how far into the morning it was. How long she had been watched she didn’t really know. Rolling to face the elf beside her, she took in what she knew to be deep grey skin, the colour of roiling clouds, heavy before a storm. She took in the choppy blue hair, mussed and sticking up in places.
It had been a busy morning already.
“Good morning,” she whispered, reaching a hand out to lightly stroke the cheek of a woman she knew only as the confusing (particularly at this moment) title “Cousin”. The woman, with no hesitation or seeming bashfulness on her part, drew her close and kissed her deeply. Fun indeed.
“Good night, cousin Alexandrie,” she said as they came up for air.
“Cousin…” she repeated, somewhat lost. The woman laughed suddenly.
“Ah…we didn’t formally…” Alexandrie shook her head, cheeks flaming. “Cousin Ny’ana.”
“Ny’ana,” Alexandrie replied. “Your name is beautiful.”
“My name is unimportant.” Glowing eyes narrowed. “I have to ask. Had you ever -"
“No. That was my first…” she floundered.
“Ah.” Ny’ana laughed again. “With a woman or -"
“Anyone.”
“Hm.” Ny’ana’s face grew speculative. She raised an eyebrow, and Alexandrie’s face grew (if possible) redder, but she said nothing and waited for Ny’ana’s assessment. Goose pimples broke out on her skin as the Ebon elf grazed nails down her side.
“You dance well,” she said at length, hand slipping beneath the covers. A slow smile spread on the half-elf’s face, though her eyes looked anywhere but at the sapphire orbs fixed on her.
“There’s no point in being timid now, not after what you’ve been doing.” Alexandrie released the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding as the hand moved beneath the sheets. She met Ny’ana’s gaze to find the elf had tilted her head to expose her neck. Running from neck to breast were dark bruises.
“Did I do that?”
“You did.”
Alexandrie began to think about the events of the last few weeks and immediately dismissed them in favour of the present sensation growing in her core. Her lip quivered and she nudged closer to Ny’ana, close enough that the elf could just hear her light gasp.
“I would like to do that more.”
​
***
Revelations
She still deserves to know.
Alexandrie hadn’t hesitated when she’d found out Grandmère Eshi’nani was awake and available in the rose garden. It had seemed appropriate - homely. Reminiscent of time spent with her own Grandmère back home.
Would Papa do what Aquideon seems to have done?
An easily answered, if uncomfortable question. To protect his family and take what he believed they were owed - most certainly.
Would Grandmère allow it?
As she approached the Ebon elf, she knew the answer to that, too: If it were truly what the family deserved, and it served the greater good - she would do that and more. She would encourage him to do whatever needed to be done. And if the halfling who had given her a manicure were correct, La Progrès was the reason for the charcoal and destruction of the city and many deaths besides. Was Progress the greater good? Or the world that was here before? Child of Progress, Granddaughter of Rebellion - Alexa couldn’t decide where she stood.
Searching Eshi’nani’s face, Alexa wondered whether the older elf knew what Aquideon was doing, and found it difficult to believe she didn’t know. Whether she knew the collateral damage his actions had been causing - or whether she cared about it at all…that was the difference between Eshi’nani and Grandmère Alaina. She could only guess. Cousin or not, she could not ask this grandmère.
Damn Spider. The day had started so well. Well…as well as getting lost on a foreign estate in your undergarments could be. Though that had been a small price to pay for the experiences she’d had, and an even smaller price for the day that had followed. Icy swim aside, it felt good to climb trees and run through their boughs, to stretch and contract her body into handstands and rolls, to hang upside down and see the world through the eyes of a child.
It was then, blood rushing to fill her ears, that she’d had time to think of how angry Eshi’nani had been about the world’s lack of faith in Lucas’ grandpère - an expression she had seen on Grandmère’s face as a small child. She didn’t remember much of Grandpère - just that he had scooped her up more than once as she tried to run past on stubby legs before tickling her and holding her to him. She remembered confusion as his beard hair tickled her face and he called her by her mother’s name. The confusion was short-lived, though. He was corrected, and it changed nothing. Grandpère loved her - that much was true. He’d loved her and he had been magnificent and then he had been gone. She had rarely seen Grandmère furious but before he was gone she remembered fury. Never in his presence, but she remembered that expression. One of love and hurt and loss before he’d gone.
And so this Grandmère deserved to know, too. The man she loved was still magnificent. He lived and his magnificence had not changed. She thought so highly of him. Alexandrie had heard similar stories, but she had heard them from her own Grandmère’s mouth.
As she left, she was unsure whether what she had done had soothed or hurt the elf more - he’d known he would not return, and she had seen it. However: she’d fixed a door earlier. Perhaps now she had opened another.
She’d lied to Maman the night before she’d left, and Maman likely knew, but had finished braiding her hair anyway, with no indication that anything was different - that anything would change. Had she known? Had Papa? He hadn’t asked. That didn’t mean he didn’t know - Papa indulged her, but he knew his daughter.
As a child, when Papa would come to check Alexa was asleep, she would blow out the candle and pretend she was already sleeping. The sound of his booted feet approaching down the hall were as much a signal for bed as the gathering night; the only difference between childhood and womanhood the inclusion of a quiet, almost inaudible knock. He knew she heard his steps. If she were awake, she replied. Even if they’d argued and she had been silent at dinner, she would reply and they would make up before sleeping. Papa didn’t like to leave bad feelings hanging between them. Every night she knew Papa would visit, no matter how busy he and Maman were with other things, and they could discuss the day - discuss whatever was on her mind before bed. Then she would kiss his cheek, he would kiss her forehead and she would fall asleep to the percussive tap of retreating steps.
Hearing booted feet crunch on the grass near her, Alexandrie opened her eyes to see a member of staff standing before her, upside down. No, she was upside down. She swung to sit on the tree bough to regard him solemnly.
“Lunch, m’lady,” he said, placing a tray gently on the ground.
“Thank you,” she replied awkwardly. He nodded passively and left as quietly as he’d arrived. Sighing, Alexa descended from the tree. “Everybody grows up eventually,” she muttered, leaning unceremoniously against the trunk.
Had Grandmère known when she was leaving - for sure? Had Maman et Papa? She hadn’t really thought about it and later, sitting on the boat, watching a bird float on the wind in the wake of their passage, she crafted flowers to destroy by hand and braid into her hair rather than think of the answer. She’d already given the answer to Eshi’nani: Those who loved her knew she’d been unsure if they would see her again. It still hurt to know she’d hurt those she loved.
Eshi’nani and the Ebon elves clearly cared a great deal about family. Enough to do whatever it took to make things the way they were before... While she didn’t agree with their methods, and she didn’t understand why they would hire an assassin’s guild, and she didn’t know whether they were aware of the effect their decisions were having on people far from them…she could understand care for family. Which ultimately was what politics were, when she thought hard about it. Families at polite war. Aquideon simply wanted to make it more…impolite.
The night before she’d left, there had been little to discuss with Papa. He’d just come home from a trip to another city, and he’d been home for only a few days. She’d ignored La Chanson, refusing to leave home until she could say goodbye to Papa, and now she half-wished she’d left while he was away. There was little she could say, knowing she was going to leave when the house was quiet and still. She’d hugged him, though, knowing it would be a long time until she got to hug him again - if she ever got to hug him again.
“Papa, I don’t think I’m ready to grow up yet. Not properly.” She’d murmured it in his ear as she hugged him - the closest she’d come to telling her parents what she was about to do.
“Everybody grows up eventually, Alexa,” he’d replied, kissing her forehead.
“Everybody grows up eventually. You’ll learn.”
​
***
Silver and Steel
Alexa lay the luxurious blue gown on her bed and sat beside it. Removing first one boot, then the other, she held it to the light to see the strange thin coating of charcoal and dirt that had gathered like frosting across the surface. The half-elf asked so many questions every day. Inconsequential questions, ones that ultimately only involved her, or the party, or their current situation - but this?
​
She ran a finger through the fine black dust and rubbed it between her fingers.
This…
Was this Progress?
Another question she kept asking that had no good, no satisfying answer. She was coming to terms with the complexity of the world, with the difficulty involved in making rules that could not be adhered to. She’d spoken to Vee about killing before they left home and had categorically stated she never would and yet…not a month into their journey and she had broken that rule. Of course, she hadn’t intended to, but the rule was a rule and as much as she showed her displeasure when they did not work in her favour, Alexandrie appreciated their simplicity and the intent behind them. Many of them, anyway.
“If you’re going to murder someone, do it intentionally.”
​
‘Rachel Grey’s’ words had cut through her reverie like an axe through wood. She didn’t know much about Lounkon, and to have the lionine woman state her view on life and death so simply both frightened and intrigued the teenager. She’d never outwardly discussed these things with anyone but Chevalier and despite the jarring experience of hearing Rachel’s words, she understood (wasn’t sure she agreed with, not quite, but understood) the point of view: It was not possible to please everyone, so make a choice about who you were willing to hurt and do it. There was an element of honesty and self-respect in such a view which Alexandrie appreciated, but she didn’t agree with the idea that it was necessary to hurt someone because they disagreed with you. She was coming to realise that many lived under the opposite assumption, however. Nothing (to her) was that simple.
Staring at the remains of a destroyed culture, she wondered how far Rachel’s point of view could extend: La Chanson had told her The Progress was the reason for her charred fingers, the reason a halfling was without family, the reason Aquideon sought to buy a mill and an army, the reason the Lizardfolk were in danger the reason people near Breezy Point Bay had died, the reason they’d been hired, the reason they could get here at all…how much - really - was The Progress responsible for?
She was well acquainted with the concept of Silver and Steel. The Progress Confederacy was built on it. Buy, destroy or take, either way, the Progress would get what it wanted. It was about expediency. Progress marched on. For those of existing cultures, she’d been taught that it was simpler (less destructive) to give; and the rules their new society followed - the ones she had been steeped in and shaped by - extolled the promise that one would receive what they deserved and give them the time to let go of what they’d believed before. The Progress wanted a world where every person got the chance to prove themselves. Where they and they alone held their destiny, rather than depending on generational privilege. Nobles were entitled, handed what they lived on through luck of birth. Sinrou-Mirrotoucretez earned what they had. They earned, they shared and they gave for the greater good.
Adjusting the evening gown, she looked in the mirror, appraising what she saw. Opera - a beautiful, controlled form of creativity. She had heard Remiki sing before - had appreciated the music, though there had been a lot of gossip about the Ebon Elf (as there was about anything, really). Despite her beautiful voice, the Sinrou of Shining Capital had seen her words, her beliefs, her use of the form (her existence it seemed) as an affront to the values the Capital held. Her phrasing was deliberately (so some said) subversive to the genre. Some questioned whether it was opera at all. At the time, Alexa hadn’t considered all this…she’d been a young teen and getting to hear someone with such colourful rumours sing had been, in itself, exciting.
​
Tiny gold plate, rippling across the bodice of the gown, glittered in the candlelight as she sighed. She was well acquainted with rumours, too. Despite the philosophy she had been raised on, Grandmère was as alien to Shining Capital as Remiki. She hadn’t “shared” Chevalier and so she hadn’t shared all the riches she’d returned to the Capital with. And that had resulted in rumours, extensively cruel ones about both she and he that had softened over time, but still carried weight. Grandmère’s reasoning was obvious to Alexandrie: Chevalier to some was a “thing”, not a person, a friend, a family member - cousin - and they’d wanted to tear him apart. They probably still did. They didn’t see what the Donadieu family saw; they didn’t want to. They simply wanted to destroy what existed to build something new, learn something new. No matter the cost. Even if the cost was family.
And that, perhaps, was the point here. The entire New Town of Glitter Delta Cove was built on the graveyard of existing families, existing friends, beliefs, traditions, hopes, dreams, possibilities. The festivals and culture of Glitter Delta Cove was like nothing Alexandrie had ever experienced. The people had long memories and the Confederacy had razed their home and installed the culture she knew (and loved?) on the ruins of what existed.
Worse: The Progress Confederacy had tried to snuff the culture itself out completely.
For what? Why? Rachel had said it wasn’t the killing but what came after that defined a person.
What had The Progress left behind? What had it done next?
And how responsible were its people to make sure it was held to the ideals Progress proceeded on?
Placing her boots neatly in a corner, more of the fine black residue caught on her fingertips. As she wiped clean her fingers upon a white handkerchief, a black smudge darkened the pale fabric. It didn’t help. Her fingers still felt the grit, and in her mind’s eye she saw down through the floor, out the window, in the air she breathed: the fog of death.
Shaking her head, she dropped her hands to her sides and looked in the mirror once more. The dress was beautiful and sat well. She refused to embarrass the Ebon elf she was about to meet: part of her hoped to match the operatic presence Remiki clearly brought to the city with her own. The dress had been expensive, but she hadn’t really thought about it as she’d handed over the money.
As she looked, she frowned, rubbing her fingers together, imagining the grit of death. Here in Glitter Delta Cove, was she Sinrou or nobility? Were they just as bad as each other? Was she both?
The Progress destroys culture…
The Dash’em’ali try to take it back…
A cycle of ash and pain that she knew the bulk of Shining Capital didn’t see - or didn’t want to.
Alexandrie grimaced slightly and turned to collect her purse for the evening.
No, this was not Progress.
​
***
Obligation
Scuffing the ash uncomfortably with a formally booted toe, she watched the chaos unfolding before her and thought of those parts of the story she’d listened to as Re’mik’ki performed. The love story and it’s conundrum of the first half - she had every intention of watching the entirety of the second half for what it was. A love story of obligation and fate. As the shimmering peacock swam lazily through the sky, she realised she had a grudging respect for the diva.
Not in how she performed - well, yes, in how she performed - Alexa had learned a lot just watching how she wove a story and moved her audience - but in how she managed it all. Not effortlessly. There was a lot of effort involved, but with practiced chaos. Despite the horror stories the backstage staff seemed to have, Re’mik’ki was perfectly clear whenever she spoke - it was what she was asking for that caused concern. There was an attitude of briskness that reminded her of Grandmère, an air of rebelliousness that Maman could not replicate.
Alexa wondered sometimes if Maman would have been more bold, more passionate, whether she'd have heard La Chanson rather than Alexandrie, or if she had been so until La Chanson had failed to appear when she was younger, or if she had needed to be more passionate for La Chanson to choose her. She rarely spoke to Maman of La Chanson. It seemed to make her uncomfortable. Alexa hadn’t needed to speak with Maman about it, in truth - Grandmère and Vieillard were always there to answer questions if she had them, to tell stories if she craved them. Deep down, Alexandrie knew Maman was resentful of La Chanson - might hate it now - and perhaps that was enough reason for it not to choose her. It had disappeared - simply disappeared - and a year after Alexandrie saying she’d heard something that Maman believed was gone, Alexa had disappeared too.
A slight shiver ran down Alexandrie’s spine as La Chanson wove its way through her mind. She looked around - the evening hadn't been breezy to now. She dismissed the feeling as a result of stress. She was not used to this kind of work.
Not only had La Chanson passed Maman over, it had pushed the two of them apart and set Alexandrie on a quest to complete what Grandmère could not. To a great degree, Alexa understood the star-crossed lovers of the story, and pondered her own situation: was she doing what she did out of obligation or love?
Could it not be both? Could she not love La Chanson, and love Grandmère and so want to do what La Chanson required? And if La Chanson were satisfied and ceased to interfere in Maman’s life once the goal was completed, perhaps so much the better…
​
Rolling her shoulders against the feeling of discomfort, the unease nudged by the music in her mind, Alexa sighed, thinking of how unhappy Maman must have been not to hear La Chanson, and how unhappy she must be now, knowing she had been intentionally passed over. Though perhaps it was relief? Grandmère was a living legend to Alexa, her existence an intrigue to so many in Shining Capital. The family’s safety (physical and political) hinged in part on the mysterious rumours that floated through court, unsatisfied by clarification.
La Chanson was as insistent in its aims as the magic Re’mik’ki wove over the crowd before her - more - for it took all that power and poured its need in her ears. No wonder the half-elf hadn’t entirely focused on the live music. La Chanson had used the performance as an opportunity to teach her of it. To remind her of her task. Encourage her onward with just a few bars.
Taking a few steps out of the way as a large piece of furniture passed by on the backs of two halflings, she watched the chaos intensify. Were things usually this busy halfway through a performance? She couldn’t remember whether Re’mik’ki’s performance in the Capital had changed so much so quickly; and she wasn’t sure why, if things were in hand, everyone was moving with more urgency than they had been before. She dismissed it, though, as she did the nagging feeling at her temple, almost a key change from La Chanson, as if it were trying to get her attention.
Obligation.
She hadn’t considered the possibility that La Chanson might be an obligation before, and the thought made her somewhat uneasy. The obligations La Chanson laid upon her must be different to those of her family to dress and act appropriately, different to the obligations of society to contribute in the boring ways everyone else did.
It didn’t want her to be normal - if it had wanted someone normal, it would have chosen a different family. It didn’t want her to fit in - if it had wanted that, Maman would have been a perfect choice. It didn’t want her to be lonely - it had sent Chevalier with her. It didn’t want anyone strong or powerful or perfect - much as she might try, she was none of those things. That Lucas heard it now challenged that belief, but it had known her before it had settled in her mind.
​
Though she often feigned ignorance or affront, she knew how people spoke of her - many of the words Jasper used to describe Re’mik’ki (brat...diva...) he had certainly used to describe her, as had others. And as others likely would. That didn't stop Re'mik'ki doing what she felt was right in the way she thought it should be done. Like the costumes and makeup and sorcery and fireworks and props holding the performance together, few knew Alexandrie Donadieu for what she was or how she would go about things. In some cases, until she acted, even she didn’t know. The only one who did, for sure, was La Chanson. Her constant companion. It wove its way through her thoughts and perused her memories, perceptions and perspectives. It knew her.
If there was obligation, it was mutual.
Perhaps, she thought, the lovers should take that into account in their decision-making. Perhaps they would.
​
As the royal blue peacock found its creator, Alexandrie was taking another sip of wine and beginning to head back to the makeshift dressing room. The look of concern on Lucas and Jasper’s faces - the sharp snap of Chevalier’s face toward her - something was wrong.
​
La Chanson hadn't been trying to distract her.
It had tried to warn her.
Something was very wrong.
​
***
La Quatrième Chanson
Pulling the hood of the dark cloak over her head, Alexandrie bit her tongue and looked at Re’mik’ki, the elf already hiding deep in travelling clothes. The fire of that fourth song was still in her belly - in truth Alexandrie had held her tongue the entire time she watched the Minstrel Laureate dress down from her role as the Voice of the World, returning quickly to relative normality as a tall Ebon elf. Alexa had watched the second half of the opera with a mixture of horror, rage and wonder: as the audience had become restless, so had she. It was the first time La Chanson had shown her a little of itself and she had revelled in it. The beauty of it. The ugliness of what it meant to see the world. The rage it must feel at not being able to change anything, stop anything without those who would give of themselves to its melody. Re’mik’ki was such a one. Whether she was aware of that or not was inconsequential.
If she knew, Alexa would have someone to speak to about La Chanson. Someone who understood. If not, it was another situation like that with Lucas, and Alexa was not prepared to go through that again. So she bit her lip as Re’mik’ki hurriedly dressed in silence. Why had she done it? She had been so determined. Everything had been set up to stop her: she endured the anger of put out staff, would certainly draw the ire of the Sinrou sooner or later. She had to know there would be consequences. The four of them were only to protect her within the city. How could she return here in future? Was she exiled from everywhere else? How did she feel now? What was she thinking? Was it very difficult to be so bold and so disliked?
Alexandrie racked her brain trying to remember if the performance Re’mik’ki had given in Shining Capital had been so outrageous. It had raised eyebrows, but no one had left. If they had, she didn’t remember it. Or perhaps she hadn’t understood the extent of the situation.
She wished, as always, that Grandmère were here. Grandmère knew what the Song wanted – would know exactly why Re’mik’ki had to sing that fourth song. Was it for the people? She was quickly coming to realise that Glitter Delta Cove was a divided populous. At once so joyous and so lost. Both desperate to cling to tradition while also seeming to loathe it. A city at silent war. A city smouldering - awaiting a spark to complete half-finished destruction. If Re’mik’ki was native to the city - or nearby, beneath - of course she would want to sing about it. How could one love their country and not want to tell its story?
Was all of the Progress like this? Would it be this way everywhere they went – everywhere the Progress went? Not progress but… erasure? Attempted erasure, at least. Would people be afraid to tell their story - to speak the truth?
Tucking her hair into the cloak (once they were on horseback one female form looked much like another and despite her fear, Alexandrie was certain it would be better if she drew attack than the Voice) she scuffed a foot on the ground. A small puff of ash rose from the ground, scarring her boot black. Dead tradition, erased history. Until tonight.
Alexandrie had known full well she’d had at her command the ability to silence the singer, but she hadn’t. La Chanson had said not to. Had it been a test? With the uproar the Opera had caused, had it been a test? Did La Chanson still question her loyalty? Her trust?
Was the test ongoing?
Protect Re’mik’ki. That was the task they were given by Aquideon - the elf who, as far as they were aware, had provided the funding for the mill that could have destroyed the Lizardfolk. Irony, as she thought of it - to destroy the home of others to create the resources to take back his own frayed culture from those who had tried to destroy it. Destruction upon destruction. Where would it end? And La Chanson watched it all - watched the World as it tore itself apart.
For the first time, things began to make sense to Alexandrie - she began to understand what Jasper meant, and wondered what it was like in the Empire of the Burning Lash - what it was like in the Deliverance of the Dawn. Was everyone the same? More importantly, was La Chanson watching over all of them just the same? Were there other teenagers leaving home, called to an unknown location to…she didn’t know what.
Perhaps. For now, though, there was only one thing everyone was asking her to do: Protect Re’mik’ki.
This was not entirely accurate, though. To Alexandrie, as she walked in step with the elf, eyes scanning as they made their way to the horses, the task was not only to protect Re’mik’ki.
It was to protect the Voice of the World. Something she would do with her life.
Mounting a horse, she closed her eyes for just a moment. Fingers interlaced, she hummed the few bars she knew of the Song of the World. Large in her mind, the Voice of the World close by and – she frowned and opened her eyes as Lucas appeared behind her, grunting as if mounting a horse were difficult. Shifting in the saddle behind her as though he could not get comfortable. She sighed and rolled her eyes. Let’s get this over with.
Taking the reins, she nudged the horse forward. It huffed as it danced to one side in the movement. She knew what was wrong immediately. Lucas had done something.
“This is not the time to be stupide”, she muttered as Lucas encouraged the horse forward with his legs. Releasing her grip on the reins, she allowed the horse the space to move, then took control of it again. Again it danced in place.
Biting her tongue in frustration, she returned her attention to Re’mik’ki. A few bars hummed and golden notes flew out like stars around the singer in all directions for 10 feet. They would need to stay close, but the Voice was safe for as long as Alexa could maintain the music.
Behind her, she could feel Lucas’ warmth – more - she could feel La Chanson reaching back to him in greeting. Unsure how she felt about that, she took the reins again, this time more forcefully. They would need to keep up, and Re’mik’ki rode as she seemed to do all things - passionately.
Her attention on Re’mik’ki as it was, when they turned the corner to find the Minstrel and Chevalier facing the interlopers, there wasn’t time to think clearly.
In the centre of the bandits, with Lucas nearby raising uncertainty and the possibility of harm to her charge, there was no hesitation, no question in her mind what was needed - what she needed to do to protect La Chanson and its Voice. With five bandits to the four of them (where was Spider?), her eyes met Re’mik’ki’s and hardened slightly.
This – this was the test.
In unison, the women flung back their hoods as they sat astride their horses and screamed in discordant harmony.
One word: Run.
Run from the power and majesty they brought to bear as a gift from that in which Alexandrie placed her trust.
Run.
Foes of La Chanson: Run.
In that scream was all the emotional energy she’d held tight, the uncertainty, the discomfort. All the fear of a young woman unsure of whether the wrongs she wished to right could be righted, unsure of where she would be at the end, what she would be or who.
In that scream she burned away the fear that she might not be worthy – for how could she not be worthy when this was the power given to her?
In that scream – in that moment, the fear rippled out of her and she sat tall and proud in the saddle, Alexandrie Aerith Vanessa Elamys Normaer Sylvaris Donadieu: Herald of La Chanson du Monde.
She now knew exactly how Re’mik’ki felt as the Voice of the World.
Victorious.
And then the ground cracked.
​
***
Time Slows
18
As Alexa’s eyes met the red haired woman’s, her mouth fell open. Her… From the barn. When they just left. They’d barely left Shining Capital when they been attacked. By werekin. Other bandits. This woman…
The shock of remembered pain ran through Alexa’s mind as her stomach clenched in reflex. This woman had tried to kill Alexandrie before. She’d tried to kill… or capture. Kill or capture. Alexandrie’s eyes widened and her face paled slightly at the portal. No. No, she would not be going anywhere.
One question, only one, crept into her mind and begged a response of La Chanson. Just one.
1 - 2
Her eyes slipping from Re’mik’ki to the wound in reality, she felt the moment - the blissful moment of true synchronicity with Remiki, with La Chanson du Monde. The disconnection as Re’mik’ki sagged in the saddle pulled at the strings of her soul. Now though – now she had to survive whatever emerged. She couldn’t bear to feel such triumph only once.
3
“Kill them all.”
The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t imagine where – especially coming, as it was, from such a magical space. What came through looked familiar too, but hazy, different to what she saw originally. What was happening? Aquideon hadn’t warned them of this but Alexa sensed this wasn’t to do with Re’mik’ki. Not exclusively. If the voice of the world knew anything about this it was certainly nothing to do with Aquideon.
4
Turning away from the werekin eating a bandit, Alexandra stared in shock as it leapt at Chevalier, claws spread wide. They collided, and Vee’s armour usually a porcelain white, gained hairline cracks, before dulling slightly. Her eyes widened: she had never seen Chevalier wounded, nor was she certain she could heal him the way she could Lucas, or the rabbit, or the man at the mill. She raised her hands to try anyway -
5
Crack. Heads, all heads, snapped around to see Spider land on a werekin. Where had he been? Why had he fallen?
6
Unanswered questions on her lips, she turned in time to see a thickly muscled, furred creature dive at Lucas and try to tear at his neck.
No. No.
The werekin. Bandits. It was happening again. It was happening again. Was this part of the test? The same test? This could not be a test? Had she failed the previous time? She tightened her grip on the reins - holding back, barely, the impulse to flee.
Not for herself – she didn’t want to die – no. Decidedly not. But if this were a test, she had to pass it. To pass she had to live. To do what La Chanson wanted, she had to live. How could she complete the task if she died?
But Lucas needed help, Chevalier was protecting Re’mik’ki who swayed distantly and Spider was scrambling to his feet.
Lucas needed help.
Her mind flashed back, lightning quick, to a conversation she had with Vee just days earlier.
“I think I’m going to kill again.”
And even earlier to a conversation with Chevalier before they left, when she asked what it was like to kill.
“There may come a time when you find something – it could be a cause, it could be a person – something more important to you than life… Even your own.”
Her fingers, still weaving the notes to heal Chevalier, shifted toward Lucas.
​
What if you found both?
7
The softness of the notes became sharp, jerking movements as she turned them on the werekin.
“All life is precious”
​
Hands reached out clawlike toward the werekin. Atop her steed, the golden strands of music which normally glittered softly, took on a sharp metallic hue.
​
“and beautiful.”
​
Where was the beauty in any of this? Where was the beauty in this creature that wanted to destroy – only destroy?
No.
Releasing a breath she released the magic. It closed in on the werekin, slicing at exposed points of life.
Perhaps this is a mercy.
Or so she would pretend. She wasn’t sure, and it formed a pit of cold in the bottom of her stomach.
Lucas needs help.
And that was more important.
8 - 9
So distracted was she that she didn’t see the werekin pouncing for her throat until the last moment. Too late to move the horse or slip from it, she braced – only for Vee to intervene with his shield. Not one had attacked Re’mik’ki, whose eyes were beginning to refocus.
This was them. This was whoever was searching for them. Whoever was searching for her.
Pausing only for the briefest of moments, she caught Vee’s eye and guided the horse so she was between Re’mik’ki and Lucas, just as he remained between Re’mik’ki and she. A hum remained on her lips to keep her steady while she waited as –
There.
Re’mik’ki’s eyes wandered the street and she backed up, looking as if she were about to take the warhorse and run. Alexa didn’t know whether to groan or heave a side of relief.
Keep the Voice safe.
​
But no, she pulled out a bow, aimed, and shot.
As the crossbow bolt went wide, the half elf frowned. Why did she not use magic?
​
“What magic?”
​
Alexa opened her mouth to reply but was cut off by time slowing, the world slowing, everything moving through treacle. She knew this feeling, calling to her, and a smile at her face even as the warm musical energy rushed through her hair, into her ears and filled her with calm.
10
Lucas using La Chanson. No – allowing La Chanson to help. As he completed the swing, their eyes met and she beamed at him, her fingers already weaving through the air once more in musical response.
Since their falling out days earlier, she had been careful with her use of La Chanson. If he was going to learn how to use its power, she was not going to be the teacher unless he requested it. She was not going to use her abilities mindlessly.
But this?
This was glorious. And demanded reply.
Eyes still on his, her hands released the music she sang at him, nestled on his sword, the golden light caressing where his hands met it. He may not need it, but Alexandrie would help.
11-17
The werekin Lucas fought, as if by unheard command, snapped its head toward her. Another howled and grated at her skin, but she held firm and glared at it.
Too late she realised she was between not two, but all three werekin.
Two leapt for her and she screamed as first one, then the other, was cut down by first Lucas, then Vee and fell silent.
In the briefest of silence she heard Spider shout something about a summoner and her breath caught as time slowed again and she hurled furious music at the enraged werekin.
As Spider ran away from the past that stepped out of the still open portal.
As the red haired woman stepped out, eyes fixed on Alexandrie.
​
No.
She didn’t want this.
But here it was. The question she needed to ask.
​
***
Restraint
Alexandrie Aerith Donadieu whimpered, curled up on the ground - on a horse? On the ground. No, mounted on a horse, surely. She felt La Chanson with her as always, but this woman… just being around Genofeva and the way she used her magic was discordant. Distracting. Wrong. Why was it so wrong? How could something be so wrong? With each strike at Lucas, Alexandrie shook more. And as she shook, she was unsure whether it was in rage, or fear or pain.
“They’re all going to die.”
She’d tried to heal Lucas, but whatever the sorceress had done was beyond what Alexa could heal then, there, when he needed it. And her attempt to hurt the werekin had been weak, too weak, too hesitant, too afraid to hurt - she was too weak, why so weak - and Genofeva was strong.
“They’re all going to die.”
She didn’t need magic. She didn’t need anything more than words to see the slaughter that would come if Chevalier abandoned her - if Chevalier ran. She was too weak - needed protecting. Grandmère sent a protector because she couldn’t do what needed to be done alone. Why La Chanson gave her the ability to do things when she was so weak…She saw Vee take half a step, transfer his weight from one foot to the other. She could not see the mask of his face, and it would not show expression if she could, but she could see the fear in Lucas’ eyes - familiar… she’d seen him afraid before - and she saw Chevalier’s body shift slightly, from its upright strength to a softer, submissive hunch, almost - almost like an animal. If Chevalier ran, she would be alone. There would be no one between Genofeva and she, for La Chanson said not to run. It said not to run, to hold. It said to hold. And so she would. She would hold and do what she could. Eyes never leaving Genofeva, through the screeching discordance trying to interrupt La Chanson, her Chanson, her mind screamed, though it came out in smooth, lyrical giantkin. Layers of calm she did not have.
“Chevalier, please don’t leave me.”
Good. Sounded strong. Music bound her to the saddle, love bound her to him - for good or ill. And he stood firm, stood and protected - no, not protected. He wasn’t a protector anymore. He stood and attacked. He attacked with no concern for her survival and she bore witness to this Praetorian from another time. He stayed and fought, and she watched him try to kill. “Combat restrictions Level 0” could be nothing more. Not with what followed. Steps in front of her, her best friend. Best friend. Fifty years and nothing changed: A praetorian and his friend.
“My mistress revels in the moment.”
So much blood. Alexandrie screwed her eyes shut then opened them wide on the hard, ashen ground. So much blood. Her hands moved from the ash to her face to her mouth in shock, the gritty taste of death. No. On a horse. So much blood. And yet Alexa remained mounted. La Chanson whispered to her to stay put. Not to move. Stay mounted. She’d done what she could - not once had her hands stopped conducting the music streaming from her, one hand on the scroll she kept by her, reading as if with braille, roses tucked inside. He could stand - oh gods, Lucas stood, broken, bleeding, strong. He stood with Chevalier against Genofeva. Both stood before her in defiance. Defiance of what? What did she want? No time to think, only protect however she could.
“Run!”
The Voice of the World was clearly not the target. There was no need for her to be here. Genofeva had not moved. She wanted what sat, powerlessly before her, doing nothing more than meeting her gaze. A lamb to be slaughtered. A sacrifice? Did she want Alexa to run? Was she waiting for Alexa to bolt?
“Be quiet and run.”
Do what I cannot.
She could have run. She was mounted. But she was also the target. In order for Chevalier to look after me, I have to be somewhat consistent. Somewhat. It was she Genofeva wanted dead. Why, if it was supposed to be this way, couldn’t La Chanson break through properly? Or rather - what was powerful enough to disrupt it and was it worth trying to escape that? Was it possible? Still it whispered through her mind, soothing, binding her with golden chains. Hold.
No. If she ran, who else might become ash beneath her feet? On her hands. In her mouth… One thing the Sinrou knew by now was that when fate arrived, running would likely do little to help. All she could do was trust La Chanson in its whispered refrain of hold.
As the electricity arced from Chevalier through her, La Chanson held her firm. To run, run far away, was her impulse, but then Vee had looked at her and…he had not abandoned her. She would not - could not - abandon him. Her best friend. Her muscles, all of them, tensed. Contorted by electricity for just an instant she heard and felt everything. The crackles of electricity, the cackles of the woman, the rearing of a terrified horse held by her locked fingers… and resolve.
She was going to kill this woman. Not now. She could not now. But she would not be weak anymore. She refused. La Chanson chose her for a reason, and she would prove it right.
La Chanson du Monde.
The Song of the World.
Song of Life.
And Death.
“Run.”
When Lucas and Spider had run, she’d nodded and smiled imperceptibly. Good. Good. Better that way.
They knew Maman. They could tell her what happened.
Grandmère, though… better she not know. Elle ne devrait pas savoir. Si Alexa l’a ratée…non. If Alexa failed here, at the first hurdle, better for Maman never to tell Grandmère. And yet, was she brave to stay here, or stupid? Still she sat her horse, waiting, now. Daring Genofeva to kill her.
Irony, then, that the only harm she endured was from her best friend.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“Everything.”
What did that mean? Did Alexandrie have something she wanted? Chevalier? Did she want Chevalier? La Chanson?
What was everything?
And who was her mistress?
“I have no intention of going anywhere.”
All was still. Quiet. Dark. A moment ago - perhaps an hour, perhaps it was her imagination altogether - she’d heard Genofeva run into the night, and the deep thud of a heavy crossbow.
She couldn’t see, so it didn’t matter that tears streamed down her face thick with sweat and singed hair. She pried aching, tense fingers from reins and slipped from the horse. Free. Hands on the ashen ground, she pulled them to her face as she curled up by the horrifying, nauseating sickle - so much blood - it took a moment for her to realise Chevalier was prowling nearby. Not safe. Protect. Live. Unable to be hide from rage or fear or pain, clawlike fingers reached into her satchel to push aside the roses - was the opera that night? - brushing the sheet music with the side of a hand and dig out a dagger. Hands tightly wrapped around the hilt she sat, curled up in the dark, gown torn, boots missing - over there - at some point she’d torn them off - sat quietly, listening to the quiet inquisitive melody playing through her mind. The one that said it was safe now, the one that said she would need to learn, that this was a good way to learn, that it would never have let her come to harm, not really, that there were things to be done and she could do them. Unsure if she was hearing a story or creating one, she sat, the comfortable weight of a dagger in her hand, poised, until she realised Spider was on the ground nearby - where had he been? - and Lucas…Lucas she could tell by the smell of him - blood and sweat and viscera. Her lip trembled but she said nothing until
“No. Nononononononononono”
As he rolled to standing she found herself dropping the dagger to press her hands to his chest.
No - he would not fight Genofeva - no matter how hurt the sorceress was. For all his strength, she was sure that in this moment she could push him over herself.
And in the haze of confusion - When had the fighting stopped? When had she dismounted? - she heard The Voice.
“I found help.”
A slow blink, a shuddering breath and Alexandrie stepped so she was standing between Lucas and the Engwyr he’d insulted, fingers already tracing notes.
D’accord. Encore.
​
***
One Task
“Can you be taken from me?”
Alexandrie rubbed her temples where a dull headache had settled that morning. She was getting better at keeping the constant need for movement in check, but since the conversation they’d had that morning, since the silent one she’d had with La Chanson, she hadn’t been able to stand still, much less sit still. As the others continued to talk, she focused on resisting the urge to run. Not out of fear or anger, but out of urgency. Out of need. Her feet tapped at the floor, her hands clenched and unclenched, a low buzz of adrenaline it was hard to ignore.
She was very aware that the easiest way La Chanson could be taken from her was through death, and no, she did not want to die, but she wasn’t afraid of death. There were worse things. She suspected that it was a little more complicated than that. Genofeva hadn’t thrown her sickle at Alexa’s throat, or tried to obliterate her with fire, or ice. Learning how to wield magic as she was, with the power the sorceress held (most certainly greater than Alexa’s own), if she had simply wanted Alexa dead she could have done any number of things before Vee or Lucas or Spider or she could respond. Sanjuio Donadieu was a lot of things, but a fool was not one of them. If all Genefever had needed was Alexandrie dead, Alexandrie would be dead.
She chose to take comfort from the fact that her existence was more than a mild inconvenience, small comfort though it was.
No, it wasn’t fear. Ultimately, she had little intention of running from Genofeva and her mistress. Just as she had when face to face with the sorceress, she wouldn’t (couldn’t?) run.
However, whatever La Chanson wanted - needed - must come first.
Of everything, she hated that the Edgewaters had been dragged into this - that Lucas was now, thanks to her recklessness in encouraging him, likely a target. But it was too late, and she had little say in the decisions of La Chanson.
As she sat quietly amongst the pews in the house of the God of Knowledge, La Chanson settled distantly at the edge of her mind, granting her a slender lick of candlelight in cupped hands.
Eighteen years and a handful of months…knowledge weighed heavily on the teenager.
There was no use in parting ways now - Vee would advise against it, and it wouldn’t protect Lucas anyway. Besides, even being this far from them gave her a sense of unease - she knew he was in a lot more pain than he was showing. She rolled her eyes at the cheerfully dancing candlelight. Why were men so silly?
Rem’mi’ki was safe. The Voice of the World had completed her performance. Would change come? Over time, perhaps. Releasing the light spell, she leaned back and rubbed her temples again. The ebon elf really had no magical ability… so what had happened? One day she would get more than binary answers to the constant barrage of questions she held herself from hurling at La Chanson. One day there would be answers.
Restless, she began to pace again, feet travelling across marbled floors. It had not been a good time for this she knew, just walking from the inn with Lucas so injured. She had spent a lot of time that morning humming with her fingers on his chest, searing dead tissue inside his body as she searched for healthy fragments of his organs to encourage to knit together or grow anew. La Chanson was encouraging as she took more time to listen to new growth - like hearing a warm breeze blow through after a harsh winter. When the Engwyr began to cough, she knew what was causing it and nudged food and water closer. Constantly hungry…now he had another reason. Growing new organs took time and energy, it seemed.
New abilities… La Chanson was teaching her more every day. So was the enemy. Genofeva had taught her more than one thing she feared to be true: Not only could La Chanson be taken from her, but Vee as well. He was not invincible, and he was not incorruptible. Alexandrie would never leave him, but…what if his body betrayed his mind and he left her?
As she watched him speak to the Scholar, she thought back to the change in his movement, the way he’d looked back at her after shocking her. She was certain she’d never seen him do something like that before, just as certain as she was that he wouldn’t have done something like that if it had the potential to hurt her.
Merde. She’d wanted to help Vee find out about his past, what a Praetorian was and where he’d come from, but she’d feared he would leave if he knew. She’d never imagined he might not have the choice.
This was much worse.
Standing before the altar and looking up at cool light streaming through windows, she silently asked Atil what it was that made everything so complicated.
Why? Why could La Chanson not be with her here? What differences were there between La Chanson du Monde and Atil, the God of Knowledge? What difference between La Chanson et all of the rest? Why did it stay outside? Was it safe there? Was it really further away or did it just sound further away? Did these gods offend it? Was she upsetting it, leaving it in the street? She could hear it from where she was, but if she crossed to the other side of the grounds, would it sound further away still?
Was this how it could be taken? Was it more vulnerable there? Was she more vulnerable here?
She felt as though the bars of a cage were slowly becoming visible at the edge of her awareness, but as to who or what held the key to it, she didn’t know. All she knew was that she was in this vast temple of knowledge and La Chanson did not belong here. People from all over the continent were searching for something she had - something that was hers. Something that was her. She looked around to see if anyone was watching, the edges of panic as close (closer) as the bars of that cage. About to keep moving (perhaps if she kept moving she would get out of it), she saw Chevalier had finished speaking to the Scholar and couldn’t remain silent about her concerns.
There had been a resistance to its power, not strong, but definitely something. Scholar Sapner said that there was likely a philosophical difference between La Chanson and the gods as they were found here. Would it be different in the Empire of the Burning Lash? In the Deliverance of the Dawn? Alexandrie had never left the Progress Confederacy - had never really wanted to. Now she did, if only to learn where La Chanson felt comfortable. Vous venez du même endoit que Vee? Vous manquez votre terre? The pull to move returned and she nodded and thanked the Scholar.
Whether she had ever been scryed, she didn’t know. But right now, at this moment, nothing watched her.
It would have to do. She needed to talk to Vee.
​
***
The Gift
Alexa stared into the mirror, frowning at the face that frowned back at her. People were hard work. As easily sociable and social as the half elf had been raised to be, the finer details of people sometimes eluded her. As it had been far too frequently recently, she was thinking about the Edgewaters again.
It wasn’t that Alexandrie was uncomplicated. Far from it, in fact. It was that the Edgewaters somehow managed to compete with that complexity. The result? Frowning in the mirror after inviting a lukon to her room and wondering whether she would actually visit - and what Alexa would do if that actually happened.
“You know what happens when you seduce people? They get seduced.” If nobility were a form of warfare, and movement could be described as noble, Alexandrie was furiously waving a flag of surrender. She wasn’t sure what it was about Glitter Delta Cove, but she couldn’t say she hadn’t enjoyed her time here.
They would hopefully be getting a guide and going into the Uondeerveld soon. Perhaps the dark and quiet would give her some perspective. Time to get her mind (and apparently body) in check. She was somewhat sad to be leaving (despite the fact that Genofeva knew they were here), but La Chanson tugged at her mind. She’d already been restless most of the day. Perhaps Maman was right. Keep your mind busy or it will wander to places you don’t intend.
Le problème, Maman, c’est que je pense trop.
Milkshake? Despite the fact that he’d chosen entirely the wrong flavour, she’d been surprised when Spider said he’d brought one for her - that he’d thought of her - even if Lucas had drunk it. Simple gifts back home had come from Maman et Papa…family (which, of course, included Vee), sometimes even Emily…but friends? Gifts were a display of status, of ability and proof of wealth or strength. Was a milkshake a gift? And if so, in what way did he mean it to be construed? Spider, to now, had been quiet - focused (it seemed) on what they were doing, where they were going, looking everywhere but where they were. There were times he looked at her that she wondered whether he was looking at her as a person or a liability.
It was hard to blame him.
But something as innocuous as a milkshake…
Many a boy had offered Alexa expensive, rare, beautiful things - many a girl had done the same. All had motives, all had intentions. What was the intention here?
Byron had given her a gold embroidered kerchief, but it had been embroidered with both their initials, and Maman had said the intention was that she cherish it, not use it. It sat (unless someone had moved it) upon her dressing table back home. They’d never been formally engaged, so she hadn’t formally written to tell him she did not reciprocate his affections… and besides, was he affectionate, lustful or was it her status he wanted? Maman had warned her about him, but before she’d truly wanted to do anything about the situation (it was fun to be wanted), La Chanson became more important and crowded thoughts of him from her mind.
The frown in the mirror grew deeper. It had been weeks - possibly months - since she’d thought of him, and now he kept appearing in her mind seemingly at random. Why now?
Spider’s behaviour…after the awful night they’d just had, seemed softer, kinder. Thought it was difficult to know why, his questions about La Chanson felt less accusatory, more…curious. In fact, besides Lucas (who simply seemed excited) they all seemed pensive today. There was something about almost dying that reminded one how very alive they were, and how fragile that life was. Should she live it to its fullest or try to extend it? Was that her decision to make? Maybe it was the only decision she could make.
Alexandrie meant what she said to Vee: She didn’t want to kill the sorceress, but she would. Spider had asked the same sort of question, she mused, as she sat on the bed unbraiding and rebraiding her hair distractedly.
“What if it said: Kill your friends?”
As if death were the worst thing she could do to someone. As if death were the thing she was most afraid of. As if she hadn’t already considered that La Chanson might be leading her to be exactly the sacrifice Genofeva wanted but in a different place entirely. Or not - perhaps she would do that thing worse than death. Or be asked to. Told to. Asked.
Whatever it was, Grandmère hadn’t told her what she’d known, even when she knew Alexa was hearing La Chanson. She hadn’t told Alexa what she knew, despite the fact that the inability to complete the task almost broke her.
And now Alexandrie had a task. The same one? Perhaps.
Perhaps.
And for all that she knew of Grandmère, the idea that she could do what Grandmère could not concerned, confused and pleased her by turns. To have been chosen as someone who could do a task for so beautiful an entity was a wondrous thing. The excitement on Lucas’ face when he was talking about La Chanson was exactly how she felt when she gave in to the magic it offered, when it sang her to sleep, when it greeted her as she came to consciousness. If it didn’t feel so close, so much a part of her, she would call it divine. That Grandmère had refused it…whatever it was must have been worse than death, or she could not understand why Grandmère would refuse. Alexandrie did not think herself better than Grandmère - didn’t think she ever could be. Grandmère was brave, daring, shocking, powerful, magical - all without the help of La Chanson.
Alexa was Alexa: Granddaughter of Alaina Donadieu.
Expected to make a choice.
And she wouldn’t know if the decision was the right one until she’d made it.
Weary, she curled up on the bed, wishing she were still small enough to climb into Chevalier’s lap and plead for a story. To know that there, curled up and sleepy, she was perfectly protected. She slept poorly most nights now - thoughts circled and circled - soft beds felt somewhat uncomfortable after so much time on the ground - or maybe it was the knowledge that the journey was not over.
Her fingers absently tapped to the rhythm of La Chanson. Lucas’ excitement had almost broken her heart. All this time and care to bring him to understand how powerful La Chanson was and maybe even to begin to trust it - only for Genofeva to sour that victory with fear. She’d wanted to be happy for him, had wanted it so much - to be happy for him, and for her, but…
And why? Why? Why Lucas? She’d spent a lot of time wondering why she had been chosen and not Maman - why one brother and not the other? Had she influenced it in some way, or was it like Chevalier said, that Lucas was Lucas and he had his own task to fulfil? Had he considered that? They were the same now, with things that must be done. Did he know what it was he should be doing? Did he know more than she?
He wanted it. He had been given the power La Chanson had to offer and he wasn’t running from it anymore. Spider said he didn’t want to. He finally wanted to learn more.
She rolled to face the ceiling.
It was powerful, the allure and attention of La Chanson. It was powerful to feel so…powerful. That was what he said. It had a “kick to it”. Just what a soldier needed, after all. More power. Enough to beat their foes.
Not yet.
Her mind’s eye skimmed the damage to his organs that she hadn’t been able to heal. She would protect him until he was fully healed. As long as he would allow her to. If that meant staying close and giving of her abilities to make sure he was alright, she would.
For all her mockery of Spider’s abilities, she cared for him. Protecting Lucas meant protecting the stoic Araignée, who stood and watched and said little. Whatever had happened to Spider, Alexa didn’t want to bring more grief upon him.
Perhaps the milkshake was a joke. Perhaps it was an initiation of friendship.
Regardless of what they thought of her, Alexandrie cared for the Edgewaters more than she ever thought she could in such a short time.
​
***
Darkness Settles In
As the floor dropped out from beneath her, Alexandrie Donadieu considered the city above and what it was they were leaving to do. The industrial part of Glitter Data Cove had been dark and loud (quietly loud?) and smelled of iron and smoke and blood. Spider looked at home. Re’ne’mala looked nonchalant. Re’ne’shi looked grateful. Only she and Lucas looked out of place - and Chevalier, though Chevalier seemed to have a way of looking so much out of place that he fit in wherever he went. The half elf edged closer to Chevalier even as Re’ne’mala glanced around from where she led them, the wheels of her chair gliding silently through the streets. They’d been halfway to the mine shaft before she realised she hadn’t been able to say goodbye to Rachel Grey. Further thought about why led her eyes back to Re’ne’shi, the unknown member of the party. Alexandrie didn’t quite know what to make of them, but Lucas had made his stance quite clear, almost falling over himself to get her a chair and compliment her…Shi... and Mala...
Mala hadn’t liked Alexandrie when they’d first met because Mala thought Alexandrie was trying to hurt Lucas…and now Mala was their guide. Was Shi like Mala?
My tongue is not awkward.
Something about the situation made her uncomfortable, and she didn’t know what. As she often did, she’d asked La Chanson whether the most immediate threat was still a concern.
For all its presence in her - her mind, her body - it was still unready to tell her everything she thought she needed to know to do what it would ask of her. There was a deeper part that suggested if she really wanted to know, all she needed to do was ask the right question, but what would be the right question? Was there a wrong one? The certainty she felt when she was given an answer was comforting, but not enough, and for all the power Lucas felt running through him, Alexandrie could feel more - more varied, more rich, more delectable, more…just out of reach. More.
​
La Chanson du Monde could draw on the world, and so could she.
Or so she felt.
​
And that was the problem - because when it came down to it, if she could be, could have, could do so much more, would she be the next Genofeva? Would she someday decide to take Shining Capital for herself? Silver or Steel…for now she was silver. Easy to look at, welcome, plentiful. But would she become steel?
Seated on her pack, she pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Genofeva would still be able to find them, but maybe not so easily? She could hope.
Despite hope, she knew it was not that simple. She’d asked Vee whether he thought Genofeva had heard La Chanson. He said it was unlikely, but if the Sorceress hadn’t, why did La Chanson respond to her? How did she know about Vee? What had she done to become so powerful?
And if she had heard La Chanson and had become what she was, what would stop Alexa becoming the same?
Sitting in the dark as the floor fell and the world closed in, for the first time in a long time she considered what might come after. They’d left their second major stop now - they were moving - moving forward. Onward. Closer. La Chanson was happy - she was happy. Glad to be closer. Closer to what?
Crossroads.
Would Lucas and Spider leave when they got to Cliffspider? Would it just be she and Viellard for the last part of the journey? Would the Edgewaters find their grandfather? La Chanson said he lived…she was glad for them. Very glad. They didn’t have a task - just whim. They followed their passion - felt desire and tracked it across the country.
Would she? When this was over, would she be able to just go back home and pretend nothing had ever happened? Get married, have children, do as society demanded of a girl like her.
Even the thought felt lonely.
Some time ago, Spider had told her that those of court had dalliances to keep boredom at bay. Now that she knew exactly what he was talking about, she could understand how that might be, but…was that all there was to life? Sex, babies, die?
When did people in Shining Capital braid light through their hair? When did they watch burritos being prepared or hear strange jars murmur ominously? When did they see a village of lizard folk and learn about a society? When did they dance with rarely seen elves…When did they fight pirates of flirt with an entire dock of ship captains or see in the ashes of a city the ghosts of Progress?
How could Grandmère bear to come home? How could she bear to return to such a…
How could she choose to live in one city after everything she had seen?
Unless it was what she saw that made her crave the familiar, even though she rebelled, in part, against it.
Alexandrie couldn’t imagine Grandmère loving life in Shining Capital. Not anymore. Not with what she had see - with what she had experienced. Chevalier had said several times that she and Grandmère were strikingly similar. If they were similar in so much else, they must be similar in this. So why return to Shining Capita? Why not do…whatever needed to be done - even without La Chanson…
Ah.
That was the point though, wasn’t it? She and Grandmère were strikingly similar. If Alexa feared how useful she would be without La Chanson, wouldn’t Grandmère?
The dark closed in just a little more and she hugged her knees tighter.
Without La Chanson, without doing what she was asked, without…something that made her different to Grandmère, the most logical thing was to return to Shining Capital, get married and have children. What else did she know? She wasn’t a soldier, or a spy or a secret trader. She was a Sanjuio, raised to be envied in court, to cause a stir.
So what would happen when she completed her task? Probably the same thing as if she didn’t.
Considering she hadn’t wanted to leave home in the first place, the prospect of going back there was…
Well…
“Do you mind if I create some light?”
She did not want to think about this anymore.
Please, some light. Bright light to chase away these thoughts.
Two heavy sighs.
“Blue or violet or red, not yellow.”
Two late she processed the request and she blazed white before settling into a soft neon blue, as if her skin glowed from within.
Close. The magic was close, and she could ignore those thoughts.
For now, La Chanson was a part of her.
She would cherish every moment.
​
***