Chelen City: Chapter Eleven, Part Two

 Notes: About to get plotty! yay, I love plot. Enjoy the warm-up ;)

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Eleven, Part Two

***

Chapter Eleven, Part Two

 

They were barely three steps into the ballroom before Kieron said, “Hell, how many of these people have you slept with?”

“What?” Odd question, but…Elanus let his eyes rove over the nearest members of the crowd. “Oh, maybe…ten of them?”

“Out of?”

“The closest fifty or so? Why?” He arched an eyebrow at Kieron. “Are you slutshaming me?”

“No, but I do wonder if I’m going to have to test everything I eat or drink tonight for poison.” Aw, he thought people were jealous of him. How sweet. “Not to mention, I can barely see anything in this crowd.”

“Mm, good point.” Ganians were a cosmopolitan people, but this was definitely a party dominated by locals. Elanus couldn’t see more than two other people of average human height in the whole room. “I would say don’t worry too much about being poisoned, there aren’t many assassins who would try something like that in a crowd of rich people who’d react badly to a mix-up, and as for seeing…” He grinned. “You could get up on my shoulders.”

“No way.”

“Then you’ve just got to suffer through it, ba—”

“Elanus Desfontaines!” And there was Fritz, cutting through the crowd like a fish through water, all his magnificence on display in a tight-fitting red suit with crushed velvet accent pieces in black and gold. He looked like a raceship driver. “At last! I was beginning to think you’d ignored the invitation completely.”

“No, I only wanted to.” They shook hands, but Fritz’s eyes were already fixed on Kieron, who looked nonplussed to be the object of so much focused attention.

“The man in the flesh. What a delight to meet you at last.” When he shook Kieron’s hand, Fritz’s touch was much lighter, almost delicate. What, was he afraid of crushing the poor little guy’s fingers? Elanus stifled a smile. “I’ve heard as much as I could about you, which wasn’t nearly enough. I’d love to join you at the bar for a drink, darling.”

“Thank you, but I’ve got Elanus for fetching me drinks,” Kieron said, settling into his “customer service” tone of voice. It was a tone Elanus loved—patient but curt, with an edge like Kieron would rather be doing almost anything else.

“Yes, but Elanus is going to be quite busy in a moment, whereas I—” Fritz beamed at him and spread his hands wide “—am all yours.”

Kieron glanced up at Elanus, who had just caught sight of a swirling windstorm in the distance. Shit. She was headed this way, fast. Fritz was bad enough—he didn’t need to subject Kieron to Caria before he knew what his own reception was going to be. “Maybe you could bring me something instead,” he said, hoping Kieron would take the hint.

He did, and a moment later Kieron slid his hand into the crux of a very startled Fritz’s elbow. “All right. Show me to the drinks.”

“I’d be delighted to…” They were barely past the first layer of buffering guests when Caria arrived. If Fritz was a fish, then Caria somehow moved like the water itself—she didn’t sidle her way through a crowd, people moved around her instead. The grande old dame of Gania, and Chelen City in particular, came to a stop in front of Elanus.

Even with a hundred years on him she was still half a head taller. Her hair was pure white, pulled into spikes to look like an ancient depiction of a sun or a halo. Her dress was layers and layers of silvery gray tulle, edged with an antigravitational threading device that made them float and bounce in a way that was mesmerizing. Her skin was dyed dark gray, her eyes bore silver lenses to make them shine, and the whites had been polished up to such an extent that Elanus could practically see his reflection in them.

And she was carrying a cane, too. One that probably doubled as four different types of weapons—or seventeen if you were Kieron.

“Elanus.” She tilted her head, scrutinizing him ruthlessly. “What, you couldn’t be bothered to dress up for me tonight?”

“You don’t think I have?” He might be wearing more subdued colors, but this suit was the cutting edge of fashion. The transparent panels were a particularly daring touch, he thought, and matched the pattern in his beard.

“I think you look ready for a funeral, my dear.”

“At least if it’s mine, I’ll be pretty for it,” he quipped back. Caria laughed and put an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in to a hug.

“Not as pretty as your strange little lover,” she whispered in his ear.

Ah, there was the venom, the implicit threat. “Do you really want to do this here?” he asked her in an equally soft tone of voice.

“Do what, Elanus?”

“Talk about what happened on the station?”

Caria stared at him, unblinking for a long moment. Her eyes were truly uncanny like this. If Elanus hadn’t felt so utterly justified in everything he did to Deysan, he might have been unnerved. “We should talk, shouldn’t we?” she said at last, and began to lead him through the crowd.

Elanus wasn’t concerned about Kieron for his own sake—the man was tougher than everyone who saw him gave him credit for. But he would be concerned if he came back and couldn’t find Elanus. He activated his implant and pulled up his positional software, just to give Kieron a map if he needed one, as well as his biometric data.

“Bit of a nanny, is he?” Caria tugged him closer. “I can see your linkage in your eyes.”

“It’s considered rude to abandon your date at a party,” Elanus replied.

“Oh what, and you’d never be caught dead being rude?”

“I’m plenty rude,” Elanus said. “But I don’t want Kieron to start killing people, either.”

“I heard he was quite proficient at stopping a few…unsavory attempts on your life.”

Oh, is that what you heard? Even her phrasing gave him more clues about what she did and didn’t know. “Don’t worry about him, he’ll be all right.” They stopped at a cocktail table encased in a beam of blue light where, miraculously, no one else seemed willing to approach them. Elanus smiled. “A mobile throne of sorts?”

“No less than I deserve,” she replied. “And also resistant to invasive technologies, so it will be hard for someone to eavesdrop on our conversation.”

“They could still read lips.”

“I’m not interested in hiding behind closed doors to speak to you,” Caria said crisply. “I will never give you the pleasure of my undivided attention like that again. What I do want from you is the truth of Deysan’s death. Unalloyed, no softening it, no trying to be kind to me out of some misplaced sentiment. I know how you felt about him and I wouldn’t believe it anyway.”

Elanus’s hackles rose. “And you think you’re entitled to my version of the truth because you invited me to a fancy party and cornered me?”

“I think I have the capacity to be quite illuminating to you,” she replied. “I know many things of interest, to many different people. I promise to share some of that knowledge with you in exchange for Deysan’s final days.”

“You won’t like it.”

“I dislike my ignorance even more.”

Elanus sighed. “If you try to kill me because of what I’m about to say, Kieron will take it badly.”

“Consider me warned.”

All right, then. She was asking for it, and he was going to provide—as quickly and concisely as possible. He wasn’t a monster, after all.

Even if remembering Deysan Moritz and the things he’d considered doing to him made Elanus feel that way sometimes.