He doesn’t have friends apart from Aramis and Porthos and now me. The others have wider social circles, but I think sometimes Athos would prefer to have no one at all.
He has, however, been teaching me to use a pilot’s slice for recreational fencing, which is not the same AT ALL as illegal duelling, so don’t freak out. I’m getting good.
Porthos, or Pol to her other friends, is the polar opposite to Athos. She has a large apartment somewhere over in Gilles Section – was it as trendy in your time as it is now? Popular civilian sector, all fashion emporiums and cafes. Her rooms are lush, and she never stints when it comes to food, drink or treating her friends. I have no idea where the money comes from.
She has at least four casual boyfriends that I know of, and I’m not entirely sure if any of them knows about each other. I can’t bring myself to ask.
Porthos rooms with her engie, Bonnie – it’s still traditional for pilots to provide board for engineers because accommodation up here is bloody expensive, and engies get paid so much less than pilots. That goes double for the Musketeers. Can you have double of less?
Bonnie is a dab hand at cooking as well as patching up spaceships, and she has Porthos’ rooms smelling and looking like heaven. She’s happy to do all the cooking and cleaning as long as she has the freedom to dip in and out of the treasure trove that is the Wardrobe of Porthos. Apparently if you’re a lady of short stature and large bosom, regular access to designer outfits that fit you is more useful than actual currency.
Whenever I crash with Porthos, it’s on a comfortable sofa bed with the promise of croissants in the morning. The only reason I don’t do it more often is because Bonnie disapproves of me. Not sure if it’s personal or if she feels I make the place untidy.
Still, when picking which of my friends to stay with, it’s hard not to lean towards the option that means warm cinnamon milk at bedtime, and a pillow that feels like a marshmallow dream made by silkworms.
Finally, Aramis. I’m still figuring Aramis out. When we’re out in public she’s all about wine, women and general debauchery, but at home she’s a lot more quiet, introspective and – yeah, religious.
Her rooms are stark apart from a collection of antique theology texts, a brilliant selection of herbal teas, and virtual windows dedicated to the weirdly green and storybook-pleasant country scenery of the planet Valour.
The main view in her salon is a rolling hillside with an old-style Church of All.
“I like to be able to see the church from my home town,” she said once. “Someday I’ll have one of my own.” She really does seem to believe that she’ll do it one day – leave the Musketeers to join the Church. Why would anyone want to be anything but a Musketeer?
The weirdest thing about Aramis’ rooms is Bazin. He’s a church android that she picked up in payment for a gambling debt, and reprogrammed with engie functions. His original program remains, and serving a human who isn’t part of the priesthood is a constant cause of distress to him.
Which makes him the most passive aggressive android I’ve ever met. He delays all but the most necessary functions, except those involving religious activity, and he pointedly hates all of Aramis’ friends, especially those who stay over. I always half expect to find that I’ve been neatly moved out into the corridor during my sleep, bedroll and all.
Aramis writes, all the time. Letters and articles on theology or the state of the soul, which she gets published in journals. Some of the letters are private, ongoing debates with other theorists. Some of them are elaborate flirtations, others are foundations of future essays. If she could only give up her habit of seducing unavailable women, she would do fine in the Church.
But there’s that pesky morality contract thing, you know.
“I am moral,” Aramis insists, when challenged on this point. “Who am I to seduce if not women who are attached elsewhere? If I sleep with someone who has expectations of a future with me, I’d be bound to disappoint them when I leave Paris to become a priest.”
She suggested once that if/when she leaves the Fleet, I could have her spot. We were worse for wine at the time, and I confessed that I didn’t want to be a Musketeer without her. We hugged and there might have been a few tears. Athos and Porthos laughed at us.
(Yes, in case it wasn’t obvious, I have a slight crush on her, it’s fine, I’ll get over it)
I’ve never had a group of friends like this before. I understand now, what you used to say about being a Musketeer and the friends you had at your back. I have this, and it’s good.
I wouldn’t sacrifice any of them to reach my dream, not one.
(Perhaps, someday, the Regence suggested to me. A tease, not a promise.) It’s easier to return to the dull grind of Mecha Squad Essart, knowing that I have friends like these waiting for me when my shift is done.
Love, Dana in Paris
9
Madame Su’s Bed and Board
Two months after her arrival on Paris Satellite, Dana could finally acquit herself with a minimum of embarrassment when it came to her duties for Mecha Squad Essart. She almost never blew things up unintentionally. She had made a few mates here and there, amiable chaps you could chat to while you checked your gear and ran through safety drills, or shared a long shift of guard duty in the dodgier areas of the Luna Palais dome.
Home was still Paris Satellite, and despite Porthos, Aramis and Athos’ mostly successful attempts to draw her into their gambling-drinking-screwing-around habits, Dana had managed her credit well enough to afford digs of her own.
It would be nice to have a berth where she could sleep without worrying that she was getting in the way of Grimaud or Bonnie, or risking the state of Bazin’s soul. Not to mention that she preferred not to wear out her welcome with her friends.
Quite by accident, while searching for somewhere to live, Dana also found herself an engie.
After flooding her brain with unnecessary ads for luxury accommodation she could never afford, Dana’s info stud finally locked in the filters she needed. Unfortunately, all the other temporary vagrants on Paris Satellite were better at this than she was. Every time she made her way to an address she thought she could afford, it was only to discover that someone else had got there first.
At least Dana was learning her way around – or so she thought until she set out to locate a boarding suite on level thirty eight, only to find herself in a small warehouse full of machinery for hire – games devices, clothes printers, art tablets and transporter cubes. Everything looked second hand and well maintained but it still wasn’t what she was looking for.
“Damn,” she said aloud.
A teenager with pigtails slid out from under a small air skimmer. “Hello!” she said cheerily. “Can I help you?”
“I’m in the wrong place,” Dana said, consulting the map in her stud. “Or this is glitching again.”
“That depends what you’re looking for.” The girl, who had improbably red hair, light skin and freckles, leaped to her feet and wiped oil on to her coverall.
“This isn’t Madame Su’s Bed and Board, is it?” Dana asked. Tiredness washed over her. This was almost enough for her to give up and return to the rent-free bunk waiting for her on the moon. Almost, but not quite. She’d still never managed to sleep through the night Down There.
“Of course it is,” said the girl with a cheery smile. “Madame Su is out looking for her husband. I’m her assistant.” She stuck out a hand that was still slightly oily. “I’m Planchet. Hey, you’re not a Pigeon, are you?” Her eyes lit up at the realisation that Dana wore the Royal Grey uniform. “Do you have a mecha? That’s beyond extreme. Do you need an engie? I qualified all my certs last year, but I can’t get a spot.”
“We’re not the Musketeers,” Dana said, as if she needed a further reminder. “We don’t hire our own engies.”
“Oh,” said Planchet, her face falling. “I knew that. I applied to the Pigeon pit crew last year, but they want more experience. It’s hard to get experien
ce on mecha up here, you know.”
“Yes, I can imagine.” Dana looked around the messy warehouse. “You said this is a boarding house?”
“Not a house exactly,” said Planchet. “There’s a spare room over the workshop, though, and Madame Su doesn’t charge much.” She looked a little embarrassed. “I work my board. But that won’t be necessary for you. You have a real job!”
“You’d think,” Dana muttered. Her credit was only creeping very slowly into the black. While she had gained many benefits from her friendship with the Musketeers, she found their excessive socialising quite expensive to keep up with.
This did not look like a place that would charge through the roof but the workshop noise might cancel out any orbital benefit to her sleep patterns.
“I suppose you can tell Madame Su I was here,” she started to say doubtfully, when the landlady herself appeared.
Madame Su was a stocky woman, perhaps fifty years old, with shiny black hair entirely lacking in grey. She wore a fashionable suit of orange silk and eye-blindingly green embroidery, and had several pearl studs running up both arms from wrist to elbow.
“Planchet, it’s worse than I thought!” she declared, then stopped and looked Dana over. “Can I help you, pilot?”
Pilot, Dana thought, warming to the woman straight away. “I was hoping to see the room?”
Madame Su sniffed at her. “Got many things? What’s your job? You’d better have pay coming in regularly or I’m not going to let you in at all. Valuable stuff here, you know.”
Dana touched the collar of her grey uniform. Did the woman think this was a fashion statement? “I work for Mecha Squad Essart. Royal guard and ferry duty, out of Luna Palais. I need a berth here in the city for occasional shift sleeping. But I’ll pay full rent, of course…” She stopped.
It was when she said ‘Royal guard,’ she decided later, that Madame Su’s face had taken on that odd, stricken expression. After that… well, Dana had barely managed to inspect the clean but bare room above the workshop before she had a clamshell tablet shoved into her hand with a contract ready to sign, and a rent that was suspiciously low.
There was a catch. There had to be a catch. But Dana could not afford not to take advantage of whatever it is made the old lady so very anxious.
Now all she had to do was buy a bed, a pillow and a food printer, and wait to discover why Madame Su was so keen on having a Royal guard living above her warehouse.
It took three days, which suggested the landlady was in less trouble than Dana had imagined, or else was so suspicious and paranoid that it took her that long to build up her courage.
In any case, three days after Dana took on the little room above the warehouse, her landlady decided to call in the favour for the exceedingly cheap rent. Madame Su invited her new tenant to take tea with her in her own sitting room, featuring the same combination of lavish fabrics and gaudy fashions as her own clothes.
Today’s suit was pink and striped, with a pattern of lilies on the lining of her sleeves and hems. It clashed with the orange and red Space Deco wallprint.
“Madame Su,” said Dana over a cup of rather weak green tea. “Are you in trouble?”
At this, her landlady burst into messy and noisy tears.
Horrified, Dana stared at her cup, wishing she had invited Aramis along. Aramis had a soothing voice and the ability to pat people comfortingly on the shoulder in just the right way. In fact, Aramis was less than ten minutes away if she took the express walkways and the turbo shuttle, and Dana was overwhelmed by the compulsion to call her instantly and claim an emergency. Even Porthos would be more use right now than Dana herself.
Dana did not know how to be comforting. She could barely manage polite, most days.
“It’s my husband,” Madame Su howled. “My darling little Conrad.”
“Is he dead?” was the first thing that Dana thought to say, and this led to more noisy tears, then some horrific snorting. “Sorry. Not dead. Is he –” All the things she could think of to suggest were … perhaps not things that should be said out loud. She took a deep breath, instead. What would Aramis say? “What’s wrong?” she tried, and patted Madame Su’s hand awkwardly.
“That woman,” said Madame Su, hiccupping now. “That awful woman has him.”
Wonderful. And now it was down to Dana to dispense advice on how to be dumped? She sent a silent curse in the direction of Conrad Su, wherever he was. “Maybe you’re better off without him?” she tried.
Madame Su’s back straightened, and she gave Dana a murderous look. “How can you say that? How does that help me? He might be dead. Or worse.”
Dana found herself surreptitiously glancing around the room to see if there was any booze on display. Anything would do. Her friendship with Athos, Porthos and Aramis had taught her that cheap wine had as much to offer a thirsty pilot as the fancy stuff.
“I knew that spoiled Palace brat would be the death of him,” Madame Su muttered. “Prince my freckled arse. Never let your husband play sports, it all ends in tears and treachery.”
“Can we start at the beginning?” Dana asked. The sooner her landlady explained what was going on, the sooner she could get to that lovely bed that had cost her the last of her financial buffer.
Tomorrow’s dinner would take her into the red, unless she could scab dinner off one of her friends, but that was tomorrow’s problem.
Madame Su gave a hoarse, raspy breath. “You have a kind, sympathetic face, D’Artagnan.”
No I don’t. Get on with it.
“My husband Conrad works at the Palace down on Luna Palais. He’s a tailor. Quite the best of tailors.”
Dana resisted the urge to ask if Conrad made Madame Su’s suits. They were something else.
“He works for that selfish Prince Consort,” said the landlady, her face twisting up as bitterness came through in her words. “That’s why he married me, of course, you’re not allowed to work in at the Palace without a marriage or priesthood contract to prove your morality.” She sniffed at Dana. “Different for guards and pilots; they prefer you not to be hampered with spouses and families. I sponsored Conrad through his final years of apprenticeship,” she added, with a spark of something like pride. “Three years I’ve put into him, and now I’m finally recouping on my investment, though they don’t pay him nearly what he’s worth, it’s tantamount to slavery, and look at him now, not appreciating what he has, not thinking about me for a second. Intriguing with his master and that Chevreuse bitch. Whispering in corridors. Getting into trouble. He’s going to ruin everything for us!”
Dana was utterly lost in this sea of accusations and panic. “What kind of trouble?” she ventured.
“He’s been abducted,” Madame Su hissed conspiratorially, after first glancing around to check no one was listening at the door. “I knew he would come to no good, but I hoped for more than twelve months of Palace pay checks before it all came crashing down!”
Dana was starting to feel sorry for darling little Conrad. “Abducted by a woman?” she ventured.
“Not for lust,” Madame Su hissed. “He would never do that, he’s a good boy, he knows better than to break a contract with me, another seven years and he’ll be free of all obligation.”
Dana wondered if she would be able to cope with ten years married to a Madame Su in exchange for her dream job. Conrad was made of stern stuff. “Who abducted him, and why?”
Madame Su patted her hand. “I knew when I saw you, that you’d be useful to have around the place,” she said happily. “You’re tough, everyone says so. D’Artagnan can look after herself. You did agree to help me out around the place when anything came up suited to your skillset,” she added.
Yes, Dana had been well aware of that clause, and had signed the rental contract anyway, because a year of good sleep for a fraction of her pay seemed like a good deal whatever the hidden costs turned out to be.
Hello, hidden costs.
“Are you saying you want me to find your
husband?” she asked finally.
“Yes, before he makes everything worse.”
“Worse than being abducted?”
“He knows secrets!” Madame Su said, too loudly, then shushed herself “Palace secrets. He’s been there among them, and I think he knows too much about…” and there she pressed her lips together.
“You have to tell me everything or I really can’t help you,” Dana groaned.
“Someone has eyes for someone else,” Madame Su said, barely above a whisper now. “At the very highest level. Where a broken marriage contract could – be very damaging. You understand?”
Oh, Dana did not want to know about this. Adventure, yes, intrigue, all very well. But marital scandals in the Palace? No, thank you.
“The Prince was approached recently,” Madame Su said in a dark voice, confirming Dana’s worst fears. “By someone digging for dirt on his marriage. My Conrad swears the Prince is innocent, but there must be something in it, mustn’t there, or he’d just tell the Regence that the Cardinal’s out to get him.”
All this and the Cardinal too. Dana groaned inwardly. She had thus far managed to avoid the attention of the powerful leader of the Church of All.
“If her Eminence can prove the wrongdoing of one, then she could take the solar system from the other,” Madame Su whispered loudly. “Her Majesty, may sunlight fall upon her moon, came to power on that speech, that wonderful speech.”
On the Sanctity of Contracts: the speech that was heard across the solar system. Lalla-Louise Renard Royal had stepped across the fallen reputations of her older brothers to take the throne on the promise that the moral centre of the planetary alliance could be found in the royal family, as well as the Church of All.
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