Darren Craske - The Eleventh Plague

'Ah! What a remarkable coincidence,' Nadir said cheerily. 'If it is not Madame Destine and Mister…um…I am terribly sorry, sir, I do not recall hearing you introduce yourself.'

'That's because I didn't,' Quaint replied, taking a great deal of pleasure watching the flicker of discontent blossom in the German's eyes.

'Monsieur Nadir, do forgive my companion once again,' said Destine, jumping to Nadir's aid. 'I am afraid that he has a somewhat unique sense of humour.'

Quaint grinned shamelessly as he loaded some partridge breast onto his fork.

Nadir shuffled his feet in quiet disgust. 'Well, Madame, should your companion not provide suitable stimulation later this evening, I shall be located in the Fountain Room on the floor below this one, starboard side. I do hope that you will consider gracing me with your pleasant company. Until then, I bid you au revoir.' Nadir made a point of sneering towards the conjuror. 'Enjoy your meal, sir.'

'I will…once the audience has gone,' muttered Quaint, his forkful of partridge heading towards his open mouth.

Madame Destine waited until Nadir had left the dining hall before kicking Quaint as hard as she could under the table.

'Ow! What was that for?' he hissed, clattering the fork against his plate.

'Honestly, Cornelius, you are behaving like a juvenile!' Destine raised her glass into the air, beckoning Quaint to join her. 'Come, let us enjoy our meal and try to put a smile back on that miserable old face of yours.'

'You do love a challenge, don't you?' said Quaint, chinking his glass against hers.

'Why do you think I have stayed with you all these years?' said Destine.

'My unique sense of humour?' teased Quaint.

'Hardly!' said Destine. 'I stay with you to keep you out of trouble!'

'You're wasting your time. Trouble seems to find me no matter where I go.'

Madame Destine smiled. 'The story of your life, n'est-ce pas?'

'It's a page-turner, Destine, what can I say?' Quaint said cockily. 'Although of late, I have to admit that the tale seems to have become a trifle far-fetched.'

'Even for you?' enquired Destine.

'Even for me,' confirmed Quaint.

Destine rested her elbows upon the table and focused her stare at him. 'And here I thought that I was supposed to be the cryptic one. Would you care to elaborate before our main course gets cold? What is it that plagues your mind? More guilt?'

'Not this time,' Quaint replied. He half considered a lie, but he knew Destine better than that. She was too used to his techniques to fall for any bluff. 'I just don't know what to believe any more. About what happened to us, I mean. Ever since I drank that elixir, I seem to have found myself with far more questions than answers. I can feel it trickling through my veins sometimes. Especially at night. I know it's there…that it's real…but I mean, think about it, Destine. Eternal life? Immortality? It's the stuff of a penny dreadful, surely. Can it really be true?'

Madame Destine took a brief sip of her wine before answering. 'Are you asking me if the concept of immortality can be true, or merely our recent exposure to it?'

'Both,' answered Quaint.

'Well, one answer cannot be true without the other. I am afraid that I am not the all-knowing oracle that you often paint me to be, my sweet. Since my clairvoyance left me, I can only give you my personal opinion rather than a resolution based upon fact. True, immortality is a subject that belongs in the realms of the fantastic…but that does not necessarily preclude it from being impossible.'

Quaint pushed the food around his plate, toying with the vegetables absentmindedly. 'So there's no way of knowing for sure if that's what really happened to us?'

Destine smiled. 'Only one, my sweet, but knowing how impatient you are, I do not think you will be content to wait until the end of time to see if we are still drawing breath.'

'Destine, I need to know now!' said Quaint. 'I don't know about you, but I'm not comfortable with the thought of unknown chemicals rushing around my veins. They could be doing anything to our insides. They turned my bloody hair white for starters!'

'And healed your bullet wound and repaired all your cuts and abrasions too. Cornelius, your point is?' enquired Destine.

'My point is that the stuff could be dangerous! What if we both dropped down dead tomorrow?' asked Quaint.

The Frenchwoman raised an eyebrow. 'Then you would have received your answer, non? And know that your fears were well founded. But what if we are not dead tomorrow? It is pointless to worry about something that you cannot influence, Cornelius.'

'That's easy for an optimist like you to say,' said Quaint, taking his frustrations out on the partridge, reloading his fork once more. 'I need more proof than that!'

'Ah! And perhaps therein lies your quandary, my sweet,' said Madame Destine, circling her fingertip around the rim of her glass. 'What is proof for one is not necessarily proof for another.' She cocked her head to the side. 'Let me put it to you this way: I can feel the change inside my body just as well as you can. I choose to accept that the elixir was genuine, and the antidote that we consumed somehow awakened the essence that had remained dormant for so long. But that is only what I choose to believe. You may choose to believe that it is nothing of the sort. You may choose to believe that the antidote was just that…an antidote that quelled the ravages of the poison just as it was intended to do. That is the simple answer. The one that requires no faith.'

'So I'm expected to have faith now?' quizzed Quaint, his fork halting in mid-air, inches from his mouth. 'Don't get all pious on me, Madame. That's your answer to everything. That everything has some sort of cosmic meaning, even if mere humans aren't supposed to know what it is. I'm not talking about a quest for faith…I'm talking about a quest for the truth!'

'Is that why you are running around the docks night after night? Seeking a fight with the truth? Or is that merely your way of trying to put the theory of immortality to the test?' asked Destine, a definite barb to her voice.

'I never even entertained the thought!' Quaint slammed his fists upon the table and partridge, vegetables and potatoes flew into the air as the plate flipped up, landing with a smash upon the floor. 'But even if I were, where's the risk if I can live for ever?'

Although she was positively incensed by his temper, and even more embarrassed by it, Destine reached across the table and took hold of Quaint's shaking hands.

'Be careful, my sweet,' she whispered. 'Immortality is a very dissimilar beast to invulnerability. You may not be able to die, but you can still be killed…and that is a very big difference – especially to one as reckless as you. Anger is never the answer to anything, Cornelius, have I not always taught you that? Together we shall find the answers; together we shall discover the truth…in time.'

'A coincidental choice of words for an immortal, Madame.'

'It was?' enquired Destine, innocently. 'I had not noticed.'

Quaint's eyes fell to the mess on the floor. As the waiter rushed over, he gave the conjuror a decidedly distasteful glower. It was not the mess he was worried about – it was the fact that he had tipped a whole bottle of poison onto Quaint's plate and the man had not even taken a mouthful.

'It just…slipped,' Quaint mumbled.

'Accidents happen; it's quite all right, sir,' the waiter said, his expression saying exactly the opposite, as he set to work mopping up the steaming mess. 'Perhaps I can fetch sir a replacement?'

Quaint waved the man away. 'I seem to have lost my appetite all of a sudden.'

'Oh, but really it's no trouble!'

'I said no!' snapped Quaint, to the astonishment of the waiter, who scooped the food onto a plate and hurried from the conjuror's table as quickly as his bony legs could carry him.