S Stirling - The Council of Shadows

A little informal family tete-a-tete with the masters of the universe. Or the chief ranchers of humans.

The Shadowspawn touched fingertips, evidently their equivalent of shaking hands; she'd seen it before, and then exchanged the air kiss on the cheek.

And I don't feel in the least slighted by not being included. I'd rather tongue-kiss a tarantula.

Adrian made the introductions, calmly naming her as "Ellen Breze," and "my wife." Both the Shadowspawn looked at her…

Uh-oh. There's that chocolate-coconut-macaroon look again. Why do these people…things…whatever…find me so attractive, or appetizing, or both? They all want to eat me, metaphorically and then literally. I dont mind it with Adrian, except when I get the flashbacks about his lovely sister and her winning ways, but he doesn't want to kill me as as part of the peak experience.

But they nodded acknowledgment and murmured polite words. Adrian held her chair, and put her purse on the handbag stool; it was all very Old World. Etienne sighed.

"You always were the most willful boy," he said, in a smooth, rich voice that vibrated with undertones of power. "Willfully eccentric, as well."

"It is a Breze characteristic, Great-grandfather," Adrian said lightly. "After all, belonging to the Order of the Black Dawn was an eccentricity in its day, is it not so?"

"And your parents?"

"Well, the last time I saw them. Though that was rather under false pretenses, as I was infiltrating their house with a view to a kill."

Both the older Brezes laughed indulgently; rather as if listening to a child describing a prank.

Which, to them, is pretty much the truth.

"Ah, yes, your father has written an amusing letter about how you deceived him and killed Hajime," Etienne said.

The sommelier came and popped the cork from a bottle of champagne, holding it expertly tilted to keep the noise and foam to a minimum. Then he filled their flutes; it was a Reserve Blanc de Blancs d'Ay Brut Millesime 2000 Grand Cru, tickling her palate with citrus and honey.

Etienne sipped, nodded approval, and continued: "It was about time that someone put the little yellow monkey in his place. We did not reveal the secrets of Power to the swine so that they could raise their hands against their betters."

Ellen choked, then coughed to cover it as the pair looked at her.

Okay, gotta remember this guy was born when Ulysses S. Grant was president and the Eiffel Tower was daring modern architecture. He was my age when Wilbur and Orville were making plans for a flying machine. Plus he's just plain evil, of course.

Gold and beige tableware was set out, and the amuse-bouche bites arrived: langoustine arranged in a little pyramid, an almost liquid mozzarella cheese, miniature samosas, beetroot as well as cheese and olive chips, with a choice of four types of bread: cereal, baguette, shrimp and bacon bits.

"Still, it's good to see family now and then," Etienne said. "Particularly your children, one imagines."

Adrian's hands didn't even pause as he broke a piece of bread, but his nostrils flared slightly.

"I did not have that pleasure. I was under an assumed identity, after all."

Seraphine made a tsk sound. "Ah, well, your parents…our grandchildren, after all…will take excellent care of them. Perhaps better than Adrienne would have, not being either as busy or as ambitious. They much valued their time with you two when you were young, despite having to maintain the pretense that they were your aunt and uncle."

"No more fosterage?" Adrian said.

Ouch, Ellen thought. Adrian really loved his foster parents, even though they were renfields. He still blames himself for their deaths. I don't think he killed them, and Harvey doesn't think so either and he was there, but Adrian still feels responsible.

"No," Etienne said. "That has fallen out of fashion in the past generation. The gap between the powers of child and parent is no longer what it was in our generation, so there is less need for precautions."

Seraphine nodded. "We killed our own parents, of course, as soon as we were adults, the tiresome creatures, but that would be much more difficult now."

Ellen knew a moment's vicious satisfaction. The parents of the…things…she was talking to had been human beings. Very bad human beings, with a lot of Shadowspawn in them, but still not really the ancient predators reborn. They'd used what Power they had to make those genes meet and match…and they'd paid an exquisitely appropriate price for it at the hands of those offspring. The hands, not to mention the teeth.

What did they expect? she thought.

"I am sure they will ensure…forgive me, my descendant…that your little ones have a more conventional attitude to things than you did," Etienne said.

Like, conventional for a sadistic monster. Of course, he is a sadistic monster. Normalcy's all in the point of view, I suppose.

Whatever their moral state or age or background, the Brezes certainly ate in the grand old French manner, in fact almost in the antique French manner-religiously, and with only light conversation so as not to distract. That left her thankful for the chance to observe without offering more than the occasional commonplace.

She'd had a little trouble following the talk at first. Adrian's French was slightly but noticeably old-fashioned. His great-grandparents' version was extremely so, and not only in the way they used contractions. There was a hint of a rolled harshness to the vowels, occasionally words like moe instead of moi, as if they were a considerable way back towards the Middle Ages. Or at least towards the world between the Revolution and the fall of the Second Empire, before the accent of the Parisian bourgeoisie completely triumphed as the standard form.

"How did madame come to meet the duc?" Ellen said at last.

Seraphine raised one elegant eyebrow. "We are cousins, of course…"

Wait a minute, there were black Brezes in Belle Epoque Paris?

At Ellen's look of incomprehension: "Ah, you mean my outfit! Beautiful, is it not?"

We are definitely talking at cross purposes here.

"It's a beautiful dress," she said.

"Oh, no, I mean Ayan," she said, and touched one finger to the opposite arm. "Gorgeous, n'est-ce pas?"

For a moment the gesture itself distracted Ellen's attention from its meaning; the way Seraphine held her wrist and moved the finger was…

Exaggeratedly feminine. Effeminate, in fact; sort of like a drag queen or a really old silent film of Sarah Bernhardt…Why would she…Oh, that's it. It's Edwardian body language, or even Victorian. It's what drag queens imitate these days, passed on down by generations of convention while the way actual women hold themselves and gesture changed. That's the sort of posture that she picked up from her mother as a little girl, before she grew up and tortured her mom to death. She's the real article in more ways than one.

Seraphine went on: "We acquired her near Djibouti shortly before the Great War, when I was still corporeal. Actually bought her as a slave from some nomads, a strange experience but intriguing. Beautiful, and of a fierceness…She lasted an entire year and died exquisitely, such defiance mingled with the pain and despair."

Ellen paused with her fork halfway to her mouth, looked down at the little samosa on it, and doggedly chewed and swallowed.

She's wearing one of her victims like a dress, she thought. Oh, new vistas of ick-ness open at every turn!

Then: Adrienne could have been wearing me for the next thousand years when she felt in the mood, calling up my body's DNA from the memory bank; she certainly drank enough of my blood…and whatnot. God, but I'm glad she's dead. Actually all-the-way dead.

Seraphine turned to Adrian for a moment. "Your Ellen has the most intriguing mind, but what have you been doing with it? The surface is like the armor of an ironclad, there are so many wards and blocks and traps!"