Aurorarama

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  “Sorry. I was so thrilled by the sheer virility of your tone of voice, that I did not pay attention to what you said,” explained Lilian with a smile. He could see her little canine tooth, slightly but charmingly unaligned.

  Brentford hemmed and corrected himself.

  “Ms. Lenton. Would you please be so kind as to make sure the rear of the building is safe from any intrusion?”

  “Be sure I’ll gladly see to that,” she said, with some obscure irony that totally eluded Brentford. “Ladies, if you want to follow me. One half with me this way, the other half with Ms. Lovelace to the other side of the building, if you please.”

  Brentford watched them go, in a colourful and determined rustle, almost losing his train of thought at the spectacle.

  “We should go,” Blankbate said.

  “Yes.” said Brentford, nodding. “Yes. Of course.” He had, he discovered, a slight case of stage fright.

  Brentford and the Scavengers passed through the gate to find the gigantic Varangian Guards silently lined up in a row, their barbed halberds pointed at the intruders, and quite impressive in their shining armour plates and morion helms. Of course, the Scavengers fanned out around Brentford were armed with guns, but he could well sense their own hesitation. Under fire or not, the guards were close enough to charge and, should they go berserk, to make a carnage out of it. Brentford did not feel like taking the risk: besides the fact that he was on the front line again, he had seen enough blood for today.

  His mind racing in search of a speech that would end up in fanfare and confetti, Brentford was suddenly startled when a door screeched from behind the guards. Though no orders had been given, their line gaped in the middle and Reginald and Geraldine appeared, dressed in burgundy velvet. Though they looked quite tiny amongst these well-built Scands and Finns, the guards simply stared at them as they walked majestically through their ranks. It was one of the twins’ most salient traits that their appearance usually provoked silence.

  While Geraldine held her chin high and kept her eyes planted unflinchingly on the awestruck guards, Reginald handed their commanding officer a roll of parchment. Lieutenant Lemminkaïnen, as Brentford remembered he was called, unrolled it and read it silently, first frowning, then casting bewildered looks at the twins.

  “This,” he announced to his men in heavily accented English, “bears the official seal of the Council. It announces that we should now pledge allegiance to the new rulers of New Venice, Geraldine and Reginald Elphinstone.”

  “In other words, said Reginald, haughtily, “we are now paying you.”

  The Varangians looked at each other and one by one took off their caps. Lemminkaïnen was the last one, but he went down on one knee with a chivalrous abandon, nonetheless remaining as tall as the twins.

  Geraldine turned toward Brentford.

  “Ah, Mr. Orsini,” she said, with the mock-tone (or so Brentford hoped) of a princess speaking to a servant, “we almost have been waiting for you.”

  Shivering from that damned upward wind still blowing through the corridor, Brentford pushed open the heavy door of the Council Chamber and started in fright when he saw the Phantom Patrol standing around the table where the Councillors should have been.

  “It’s always a pleasure to see an old friend,” said Doctor Phoenix with, Brentford was relieved to hear, a different, familiar voice, one with a slight German accent.

  “Hardenberg, is that you?” Brentford asked in a cold sweat, his heart banging like a madman begging to be released from his padded cell. He wished he had been warned of that plan. You really had to wonder who was in charge, here.

  “It is but me,” Hardenberg reassured him. “Not dead yet and with little desire to die today or ever. Your little adventure out in the wilderness gave us this idea for a disguise. A masked ball is a fairy tale in itself, after all. How is your revolution going?”

  “The restoration, you mean. Well, you tell me,” said Brentford. “Did the Council escape?”

  “Very much so. But not in very good shape. I am afraid that Baron Brainveil has gone through too many emotions today.”

  The anarchists started to peel off their false flesh and tattered rags. This was almost as horrible to behold as the real Phantom Patrol had been. They had an atrocious smell, like rotten seal flesh, so strong as to make the Scavengers pass for white-robed virgins with baskets of rose petals.

  “You mean you just … scared … them?”

  “That was the point of our disguise. I have often noticed that people who detain some power are prone to superstition, as if they were afraid their little secret, which is nothing but luck, could be easily discovered and reversed.”

  “You had no problems with the guards?”

  “We never even saw them. The twins took us through a passage known only to the Seven Sleepers that passes beneath the canal and then straight up into this room. Needless to say that their knowledge of this shortcut greatly helped them to convince the Council of their identity.”

  “You mean the twins were recognized as legitimate?”

  “Certainly. They made quite an impression. It was as if the Councillors knew they had it coming. They knew the Calixte prophecy very well, as a matter of fact, and interpreted it exactly in the way that your friend Gabriel predicted. The Seven did not question for a single moment that the twins were d’Ussonville reincarnate, protesting against the desecration of the Seven Sleepers’ coffins, nor that the Phantom Patrol were the instruments of Nixon-Knox’s revenge for their having had him expelled from the Council and for “prostituting the Pole.” It was a huge spoonful of a bitter medicine, but they swallowed it in one gulp. They were, anyhow, in such a hurry to get away that they signed their surrender without reading the small print that establishes you as Regent-Doge of the city until the twins’ majority.”

  “I never asked for that,” protested Brentford.

  “This is our little surprise for you. We added it ourselves. You know, the last minute inspiration, just to make it more formal. But you can very well go back to your plough, if that is what you prefer.”

  Brentford looked around him, at the marble and the jasper. Hardenberg, the anarchist kingmaker, had truly offered him the keys of the city.

  “Where are the Seven now?”

  “Trying to save their wrinkled skins, I would say. Tiptoeing away like Old Man Winter. Gnawing at each other’s skulls in some icy circle of hell. Why, you wanted them to kneel in front of you?”

  Brentford sighed. He felt light-headed and burdened, happy and prostrated. Things had gotten out of hand, and yet they were in hand—in his hands.

  It was only later that he would learn what had happened to the Councillors, when Lilian told him the story, or at least some of it.

  Passing in a flurry of silk and steel through the curved colonnades that extended on each side of the Blazing Building, the Sophragettes had soon reached its rear. There, a narrow embankment with a semicircular landing stage led directly to a discreet canal, hidden from public view by the surrounding livestock farms on the opposite bank.

  Lilian and the Sophragettes stumbled on the Councillors huddled there, hastily dressed for the great outdoors, while some servants and ushers still in livery were loading steamer trunks onto a few reindeer-drawn brougham sleighs bearing the arms of the Council members. Lilian noticed that no Gentlemen of the Night or Varangian Guards were there to protect them, nor was there anyone from her own side, it seemed, to watch over this evacuation. Were they attempting to escape unnoticed? Had they just been kicked out? Should she arrest them and tow them back to the Building? Should she make sure that they would be banished for good? She was unsure of what she should do, but knew that whatever had to be done, had to be done now or never. This was the moment she had been waiting for, true, but in panoramic way, and she found it hard to step forward and tear down the picture her own imagination had drawn so often, for fear of making a bloody mess of it.

  “Do not move!” she improvised, as the Sophragett
es advanced cautiously from both sides of the pier, their guns aimed at the men. With the little training they had, she hoped none of them would fire without her order, or the situation would be totally out of her velvet-gloved hand.

  Thus the scene froze before her, looking like a bas-relief. The Councillors, not knowing what to do, kept their hands up or stuck in mid-motion. She approached their dazed hebdomad and their startled servants, stiffening her backbone, cocking the hammers of her eyes. She had not the slightest idea of what she was going to say.

  “What is it you want from the Council?” asked a dishevelled Surville, stepping in front of her as if he were ready to get himself cut to pieces for his masters. “They have been forced into resignation by the vilest imaginable means, with no respect for their age or their service to the city.”

  “I am certainly glad to hear that,” said Lilian icily. “I just want to make sure that this is where we say good-bye.”

  “We have been granted free passage and we expect you to respect at least this,” said a sturdy fat bald man, who she supposed was De Witt. He tried to assert his authority, but she could sense that it was more to reassure himself after whatever had happened in the Blazing Building. The Councillors, indeed, looked rather crestfallen and ghastly, more eager to get away than dwell on recent events. She could not resist knocking one more nail into their coffin.

  “You’re right. There is at least something to respect here.”

  A livid and trembling Brainveil, whom some ushers were propping up as best they could, cast her a venomous look.

  “Lake,” he hissed, “Will nothing be spared us? First those monsters and now you, little ungrateful trollop. You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  His imprecation ended in a fit of throaty coughs that shook his frame. A drop of saliva that he was too weak to wipe off slowly rolled down his chin.

  Softly but firmly, Lilian pushed Surville aside and took a step closer to Brainveil, planting her eyes in his.

  “Please, Mr. Brainveil, what is it that gives that you the right to tell me what I should be ashamed of? Is it the dazzling intellect that has led you to the position in which I’m seeing you right now? Is it the moral integrity that you have demonstrated these past few weeks? Shhh …!” she said, with a commanding gesture, as Surville tried to silence her.

  She could feel the anger seething in her, and how helpless she was to control it.

  “Is it the fear you have of me? You who cannot bear the sight of a woman except in bondage?” she kept on, looking straight into Brainveil’s narrow, malevolent eyes. Weak as he was, he held her look with a strength that surprised and further enraged her. His body may have been a wreck, but something in his soul still refused to yield; there burned some stubborn fire that would rather set the whole world aflame than let itself die out. Suddenly, it occurred to her that she knew this gaze, had known it, in fact, for longer that she could remember. And she could see that he, too, slowly recognized something in her eyes, as his stare had got lost in hers and seemed to contemplate not her person but a distant, infinite horizon. Her fury turned into something different, something she was fearing herself: the light suddenly changed, becoming brighter all around; she could hear a buzzing in the air, as a cold sweat broke out on her palms and her neck. A thrill ran along her spine. The Councillors stared at Lilian in disbelief as if her face had undergone some metamorphosis she wasn’t aware of. Then she heard herself speak with a different voice, huskier and deep, and she felt scared as words that were not hers forced their way out of her mouth.

  “A trollop, you poor old fool Is that any way to talk to your mother? Have you forgot where you came from? Will I have to watch over you again, or will you put an end to your pranks for good, you and your repulsive associates, whose very name blackens the universe? Look where your arrogance and stupidity have brought you, you who think yourself a lion when you are the vilest snake, unworthy to even creep at my feet. Oh, you, shameless tyrannical child, see how this world that you deemed your plaything has been wrenched away from you in a single moment. The day will come when you will have to think of your own end. Before I think of it myself.”

  At her first words, the anger in Brainveil’s stare had died down. He now looked at her with an awe that bordered on terror, searching around him for a proof that he had not dreamed it all, that he was not going mad. He felt his mind slide away from him. She had known him. She had seen through him. “Forgive me … mother,” he babbled, grasping the arms of his servants. The Councillors ran toward him, as he slumped down to the ground.

  Lilian progressively came back to her senses, still a little dizzy, trying to make sense of the scene in front of her. Embarrassment seized her, and, God knows why, some pity for the fallen old man. Helen … you old bitch … doing this to me … she muttered to herself, while a distant peal of laughter echoed somewhere in her head. She cleared her throat, and resetting her feathered hat, said to Surville, who trembled at her side, “No man calls me a trollop unless I ask him to do so.”

  Leaving him gaping, she took a deep breath and turned toward the Sophragettes:

  “Let us not delay these gentlemen any longer.”

  The day had darkened, and the cold had become stinging. As if working under some invisible whip, and without so much as a word, the servants of the Seven hurried, passing luggage from hand to hand, cramming it and piling it into the carriages. The Councillors themselves stepped down to lend a hand, except Brainveil, who, reduced to some sort of puppet with tangled strings, was carried into the leading sleigh and wrapped inside a fur blanket.

  “What is your destination?” Lilian asked Surville, who still avoided her eyes.

  “It is a secret. The farthest away from here we can get, I hope.”

  “This at last is a hope we have in common.”

  Eventually the sleighs were loaded and the Councillors installed. They did not seem to care that their equipment or clothes were not quite fit for a ride in the wilderness, or for the cold night that was about to fall. Lilian almost felt like asking the girls to fetch some extra blankets, but renounced the idea for some reason. This ain’t the time to go maudlin, she said to herself, clasping her hands behind her back. The Sophragettes weren’t at their service, were they?

  “Well” said Guinevere de Nudd, watching at her side, “you certainly got carried away.”

  “Did I? Oh yes. Very far away,” she answered pensively, “or maybe a little too close.”

  The sleighs started to move, vanishing one by one into the dusk with a ghastly jangle of bells. However much she hated the Councillors, Lilian could not help feeling their departure was sad, lacking in dignity. She felt, with a distant pang, the cruelty of the situation. So what? She had not made this world, had she? Brainveil had. Or people like him. And she was not like them, or, well, she had been just a little today, to beat them at their own game. But not tomorrow, she promised herself, as the last sleigh disappeared into the night, not tomorrow.

  “The aurora, the aurora,” Gabriel muttered.

  EPILOGUE

  The Not So Serene Republic

  … The old impossible Haven ‘mid the Auroral Fires Fiona McLeod, The Dirge of the Four Cities, 1901

  It was around midnight, and the city was quiet. The cold, the uncertainty, and the Scavengers had sent people home with little resistance, and the Navy Cadets had done the rest. Brentford could be sure that Venustown was well under their control tonight.

  News had come that in the afternoon and evening the Inuit had looted some of the arcades, but Blankbate and Hardenberg had advised him to forget about it. Brentford did not mind the poetic justice. He merely worried about how he would make it up to the looted shopkeepers. Now, at any rate, only a few people prowled the streets and the canals, out of curiosity and excitation—some of them, Brentford had heard, wearing carnival outfits. This, too, seemed apt.

  A kind of celebration had broken out in one of the reception rooms of the Blazing Building. Maybe Hardenberg was right: a city
was just a petrified party. But this “feast of all firsts” was a portent of the difficulties to come. Brentford had never seen such a motley community, if it could even be called that. It looked like some mirage that would vanish with the dawn. Scavengers were flirting with Sophragettes in a hall-of-mirrors staging of Beauty and the Beast. The Inughuit were trying to joke with Varangian guards twice their size, playing around with their halberds as if they were harpoons. Anarchists clinked (many) glasses with Navy Cadets. He could even see the Ghost Lady walking among the living, who did not perceive her as she glided past them, but still they shivered and hushed, and looked about with a worried frown at some empty space in the room.

  And then the kaleidoscope rotated again, showing new scenes Brentford found equally unlikely.

  The sight, which had at first gutted him, of Sybil following Tiblit everywhere with amorous eyes, her slender jewelled arms around his fur-clad muscles, was now starting to make a little more sense, if only as an allegory of the days to come. It was better than poor Phoebe, who had fallen in love with a masked Scavenger, and not knowing which one, made advances to all. Here, the allegory escaped him. It couldn’t be Love, could it?

  One Sophragette came up to him, the one he had seemed to know from before, and, red-cheeked with glittering eyes, introduced herself as Daria Norton, Lilian Lake’s protégée, and Douglas Norton’s daughter. Brentford smiled at the coincidence. He always liked it when things clicked together. As a young girl she had been in direct telepathic contact with the Polar Kangaroo, which was, if he had got it right, the very companion pet her father had offered to Isabella Nixon-Knox. Daria had fled to England after the Blue Wild and Lilian had found her there, a boarding-school rebel known as Lucy Lightning in the thriving suffragette scene, and had brought her home. He had no doubt that the Polar Kangaroo would be glad to have her back.