The Grand Capital (Part I)

The streets of Artigny feel a lot smaller than I remember them. I cannot tell you why; perhaps there have been more families to move here, or maybe I've just begun to outgrow the city itself.

I am an orphan on the street, looking through the window of a rustic tavern packed with the smell of spices, a warm hand meeting me outside in the alley and handing me a bowl of leftover bone broth. Today I become that orphan again, and the window is the magazine in my hands, letting me peer into all of the most current metropolitan fashions — an explosion of colour contained within boutiques and theatres and private salons. When a small bump in the cobblestones sends Arthur startling from his seat opposite me, the mounting wind nearly launches his hat into my face. I catch it and slip it again under his newspaper, resting it on his jittery knee, without taking my eyes off my magazine.

Anneliese glances back from her seat beside the coachman. "Is everything alr—?"

"Yes!" Arthur says, a flush creeping up his neck. "Everything is fine, thank you!"

"Rue—? I mean, Madame?"

"I am well."

Anneliese continues to stare at the back of Arthur's head for longer than is probably polite, before returning to her whispered exchange with the coachman, which only makes Arthur recoil further into himself. I fold my magazine with a sigh. "Is everything quite alright with you?" I ask him. "You've been jumpier than usual."

"Jumpy— ah, pardon my— I'm sorry, Madame, I shall endeavour to be less obtrusive—!"

"I don't say it to admonish you."

"You are gracious, Madame!"

I purse my lips as he continues to avert his eyes and ramble out apologies, pointing at the broadsheet in his own hands and asking, "Any interesting news? You seem quite fixated on—"

"Just politics, nothing to concern yourself about!"

"I am a Comtesse now, Monsieur."

"A-ah, yes, um…" He shoves the newspaper forward and nearly flings my magazine into the winds.

"Monsieur—"

"See for yourself, Madame!"

I scowl down at the page and squint at the headline: Tsaritsa Vitalina Ozonov not to attend Reconciliation Gala! The architect of the Comprehensive Peace to be absent from the celebration of her own milestone achievement, usurped by her brother, Prince Tikhon Ozonov!

I roll my eyes and push it away again. "Typical sensationalist Imprimerie. Tikhon's not usurping anyone."

"Are…" Arthur gulps. "Does this not upset you, Madame?"

"Why would some Volkhovsky family drama upset me?"

"Well, it is, erm… how do I say? She is another woman whose contributions have been cast aside upon the war's end, and—"

"I don't like being compared to her, Monsieur."

"I— I'm sorry!"

The ensuing silence between us is impossibly awkward, broken only by an amused chuckle from Anneliese, and before long I am at a loss for what else to do, resigning myself again to my frivolous reading. I note the name of the society section's columnist, "M. Hibra," and wordlessly reach past Arthur to hand the magazine to Anneliese. She takes it from me and almost crumples it up, before I smack her and point at the bottom line, "Miriam," I say.

"Of course she'd be writing for society magazines now…" Anneliese mumbles. "Does it say her address?"

"Courbillon somewhere."

"Then we'll head there next."

The coachman turns to us with a concerned frown. "We are headed to the hotel, not Courbillon—"

"I know, Horace," Anneliese says.

"And should you be conversing so casually with the Madame with so many onlookers—?"

"It's fine, Horace," both Anneliese and I say, to his seeming exasperation. Arthur too shifts uncomfortably away in that moment and I realise that I have been pressing my chest far too close to his to be proper, and that the onlookers Horace mentioned are in fact quite many. I return to my seat with a self-conscious blush.

It has been a trying day for travel.

We disembark at the hotel to a crowd unlike I have seen since my days making speeches for the College d'Armes. Arthur cannot help but sneak glances at the stark gown which covers my prosthetics as he helps me off the carriage. Anneliese catches my elbow as I take the last hesitant step onto the carpet, muttering into my ear, "Are you sure you can't get him to drop you off at Lavigne's with me? I think Horace over there might hate my guts, and I don't fancy turning up at her shop alone, so…"

"He wants the press to see me with Arthur," I remind her. "Might as well get used to his company if I'm to marry him someday."

"These people are giving me a bad feeling, Rue…" She steps away as the Mayor of Brandgraven parts the crowd with a grand sweep of his arm. "Just hurry up and meet me there before he pulls you into another dumb scheme."

"Get some rest while you can."

"Wish it was that easy." She double-checks our luggage behind the carriage before hopping back into her seat with a stiff wave. I resist the urge to make more of a spectacle and turn instead to face the approaching Mayor.

He doesn't spare much greeting as he ushers me and his son through the sea of colourful onlookers with his chest puffed out and his lips curled into a catlike smile, presenting us before an elderly photographer holding a pair of… coat racks, I think? The old man gives me a deferent bow and a grin too wide to be genuine. "Dame Blanche, an honour to meet you."

I barely have the chance to acknowledge him before he rushes to position one of the coat racks behind me, and soon enough I'm hearing the sound of a clamp screwing shut, and I almost fling myself into Arthur in my haste to get away.

"Madame—?" Arthur squeaks.

"What is that thing?" I demand.

Both the photographer and the Mayor look at me strangely. "A brace, Madame, to keep you still for the photograph? The sky is slightly overcast, so we require you to be still for some ten seconds to take your picture, and—"

A memory from my childhood makes me taste iron at the back of my tongue, and when I find my voice again it is trembling: "I'll do without one."

"… Of course, Madame."

It's surprisingly difficult to maintain parade rest even with Doctor Zakharov's magical prosthetics, and I am told that my face moves too much, but we finish up and enter the hotel without much fuss — or perhaps the photographer simply wished not to waste another expensive glass plate on me. Arthur has a look of glee about his face as we claim a seat in the lobby. "You were like a statue," he tells me.

"They would make us scrub latrines if we were not like statues," I say, taking stock of the false smiles around us and ensuring my own remains in place.

"I suppose you would never need braces for photographs," he says.

"I just don't like clamps — even soft ones."

Arthur's face scrunches at that, and he looks about to ask more when his father finds us with a different gentleman attached to his side. Unlike the Mayor, this new person is all smiles and soft edges, and he doesn't wait for his host to introduce us before stepping forward to shake my hand. I reach out to grasp it on instinct, and only realise my mistake when I draw a number of disapproving stares from around me.

"Ah, she is an assertive one!" the new man says, as the heat of shame crawls up my ears. "I would expect nothing less of the Dame Blanche!"

The Mayor shoots him a look of annoyance as he clears his throat. "Comtesse Desvaux, this is Jean-Guillaume Kaplan of Kaplan Manufacturing fame. You have asked me to introduce you to a number of businessmen and he was kind enough to leave his townhouse to answer my call. You might have read about his recent spell of acquisitions in the broadsheets?"

"You flatter me, Emond." The businessman looks unreasonably happy with himself. "It is only the smaller part of my investment portfolio, of course. Val-des-Courbes has always been a region of great personal interest to me — as it no doubt has been to you, good Madame? It is a false patriot that hasn't heard of your triumph over the Zaslonow over those very same valleys."

"It wasn't so great as the press made it out to be," I say through my practiced smile. "I mistook their battle damage for a payload of bombs. They would not have done much damage even if they had managed to slip by us."

"Of course, of course, we must be diplomatic when we are now making peace with the Volkhovtsy, don't we?" Jean-Guillaume shakes his head dramatically. "Yet we all know that Artigny would not be hosting us today had you not stopped them in their tracks."

I tamp down my brewing discomfort and give him a modest nod. Mayor Emond clears his throat even louder this time, rapping his cane against the carpet and shooting his companion a pointed glare. "You must forgive this talk of the war, Madame. Jean-Guillaume is of the rather… ill-advised opinion that we should not have agreed to the Tsaritsa's terms for peace, as he seems eager to share with you."

"Alas, my candid heart has burdened me with many an unpopular opinion, Emond." The businessman scans the lobby with a grimace. "I have to watch my back more than is healthy these days, but it is a foolish man who toes the line on issues so close to his nation's interest."

"Which is why you have no true friends but me." Emond's venomous grin implies anything but.

"I continue to have your interests at heart as well— and your son's too, of course." Jean-Guillaume turns to the boy sitting beside me as if just noticing him for the first time, sending the poor thing shrivelling further beneath the folds of his suit. "Arthur, it is always a pleasure to see you grow skinnier every summer! Architecture would not have been my first choice for an eldest son, but you are talented enough at the subject, yes?"

Arthur's smile is even more strained than my own, and Jean-Guillaume's attention rebounds to his father in a matter of seconds while I take the opportunity to check in with the boy. He does not answer me for a long, charged moment.