Beauties of the Beast (The Yellow Hoods, #4): Steampunk meets Fairy Tale

by Adam Dreece

  “Excuse me?”

  Angelina stared at some of the faces in the room, many of them already not fans of hers. “I wouldn’t be here if it was not critically important.”

  “I can’t. I can’t be pulled once again. We have to—”

  “Christina. You have to come up. Trust me,” said Angelina.

  “She planned this,” said a voice.

  Canny’s brother shook his head. “Typical.”

  Christina put her back to the crowd and whispered to Remi, “How about you go?”

  He shook his head. “You know she wouldn’t be here asking for you if it wasn’t supremely important.”

  “Any ideas what it could be?” asked Christina.

  “None. Sorry,” he replied.

  As she took her first step off the platform. The look in Canny’s eyes had spread.

  “Christina, I need you to come with me,” insisted Angelina, stepping in and taking Christina by the elbow.

  “Remi?” she said, looking back.

  “I’ve got it, Christina,” he said emphasizing his size and pulling on his red chin-beard.

  “You didn’t have it before she walked in, Silskin,” barked a voice from the crowd.

  Tee finished the trek up the forested hill and glanced back at Kar’m. There was too much activity going on. People were rushing, some packing up, few saying anything. It reminded her of how Elly’s dog, Chichi, would whimper before a storm rolled in.

  “Hello, Tee,” said Alex, looking up as he pulled the camouflage tarps off the two rocket-pack prototypes.

  “You know, I’m still surprised no one has found this,” said Elly, putting her backpack down.

  Mounira shrugged. “No one’s looking for it, isn’t that how Anciano Klaus hides things?”

  Tee smiled and looked back at her friends. “Yeah, he did.”

  “Does. We’ll get him back,” said Mounira with complete confidence.

  Tee nodded. “Grandpapa says that people are often most blind there.” She returned her gaze to Kar’m.

  Elly looked at Tee’s raised shoulders. Putting a hand on her shoulder, she whispered, “Go and work on your armband. It’s nearly done, anyway. We’re okay here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Now go, we’ll be good. I’ll let you know what happened, if Mounira doesn’t beat me to it,” said Elly.

  Glancing at the supportive faces, Tee took her cue and left.

  “She is okay, is she not?” asked Alex, his voice extra stiff.

  Elly had hung around him enough to know that he cared, and she liked that. “She’s almost all Tee again, just a couple of things left.”

  “Christina still doesn’t know anything about this, does she?” Elly asked the other two.

  “No… but she suspects something. I was almost forced to tell her,” answered Mounira.

  “Just lie to her,” said Alex, frowning. The girls looked at him. “What?”

  “You haven’t known Mounira long,” said Elly.

  “I can’t lie to Christina.” Mounira gazed at Tee as she walked down the hill. “It’s like lying to my mother.”

  “Why?” asked Alex. “You have no relation to her.”

  “Let’s just focus on getting this working,” said Elly, flexing her leadership muscles.

  Mounira pulled out her notebook and a pencil. “What test is this?”

  “Propellant,” said Elly.

  “Wing changes,” insisted Alex.

  “Wings on one of the prototypes, and then propellant,” offered Mounira.

  “We never have enough time, it’s going to get us into trouble,” said Elly, shaking her head.

  “You worry too much,” said Alex with a wink.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Red Hooded Plans

  Ron-Paul Silskin sat quietly, brooding. He’d hoped that Caterina would dash, not confirm, the rumors that Simon St. Malo was under investigation for treason. “The Fare’s High Council isn’t going to be pleased with this, not at all. He has supporters,” he said, reaching for a pear from the ornate bowl that sat between him and Caterina.

  They were sitting in a large gazebo high up above the royal gardens. Caterina often sat there when she needed to think. She enjoyed the panoramic floral beauty. It also kept everyone at such a distance as to keep civil conversations private.

  “I’m less concerned with the council,” replied Caterina, taking a bite out of a pear. “I’m not saying he did anything criminal, however as Regent I need to send a message that no one is above the law. I was well within my right to order him beheaded. Instead, he’s just being kept in the guest house. One thing is clear to me, he’s been up to something.”

  Silskin eyed her suspiciously. The sudden silence of the council and Simon being under lock and key made him nervous. He decided it best to press her on another front all together, at least to buy himself some time to think. “What about DeBoeuf? Weren’t you supposed to double-cross her after freeing her as payment?”

  Caterina dumped the core of her pear on a plate with a clang. She glared at Silskin. “Whose responsibility was it to ensure that all of the inventors were taken alive from Pieman’s palace? And whose responsibility was it to also ensure that the morning after DeBoeuf was free, she was to be retaken?”

  Silskin thought of the bungled affair, and how they’d lost nearly half of the inventors. He put his hands up. “I’m just saying I don’t understand why we even had to let DeBoeuf out of her room.”

  Rolling her eyes, Caterina repeated herself as she had many times before, “Because that woman has many sympathizers. Had she not been allowed to be free long enough to make contact with the fringe parts of her spy network, they would have known we double-crossed her. Now, if she’d been recaptured the next day, there were any number of ways we could have handled it. But instead you lost her. A fact I have not shared with the council.”

  “And I’m grateful,” replied Silskin, uncomfortably. He squinted as the late afternoon sun peeked under the gazebo’s roof. “All this has to do with your plan to execute Marcus, doesn't it?”

  “Ah, there’s the Ron-Paul who earned his place at my side,” said Caterina, taking an apple from the bowl. “Once we have an agreement from the dignitaries of the four regions to strip Marcus of his Head of Country title, we can behead him. It should be easy, what with the things he’s done over the years, plus his recent airship attacks.” She stared intensely at the sweating Silskin. “Is there any question that those attacks of ours were attributed to the Piemans?”

  “Not that I’ve heard, your highness,” replied Silskin. “But what of Kar’m? Won’t this be another Bodear?”

  “The world knew there was a village in Bodear, so there were people to mourn it. Kar’m is a place of ruins, nothing is there as far as the world is concerned. This is purely for us. We will show our enemies we know their secrets, and that nothing is sacred.”

  Silskin glanced at the gardens and attendants. He was even more certain than before that Caterina’s spies were watching his every move. He needed to talk with the council to make sure they were okay with her plans. She was venturing through a room full of powder keg kingdoms with a torch.

  “Destiny is about taking,” said Caterina, taking a bite of her apple. She wondered what would have happened if her father had married off her eldest sister instead of her, as he was supposed to. The very thought of the man curdled her blood.

  “Oh, you’re home,” said a surprised seventeen-year-old Caterina to her father. She’d been surprised to see his study door open and had peeked inside.

  Gaston Maurice turned from the window, and stared at his daughter. “Come in, Caterina. We need to have a conversation.” He forced a fleeting smile.

  She hesitated. He’d been strange lately. Even the way he’d ask her to come in seemed laced in something worrisome. For most of the past year, he’d been away more than he’d been home, leaving her to the torturous mercies of her two older sisters. Even when he’d been home, she�
��d been eclipsed from his attention by their constant wants. He was always tired and annoyed by the time she got to him.

  She crept into the tomb-like office and pulled her well-worn shawl around her tightly. The wall-candles flickered. She followed her father’s gaze to the frost lined window, and at the moon in the clear winter sky. The fireplace was dormant, the wood having run out earlier in the day. Like many things, while they had the means to buy more, her father had no interest in doing so.

  He gestured absent-mindedly to the threadbare, low-backed chair opposite him.

  Caterina shuffled her bare feet and placed herself gingerly in the uncomfortable seat. She loathed being in that room. Nothing good had ever happened there. Sitting in that chair years before, she’d been told of her little brother’s drowning death, and before that, their mother’s death from fever.

  With a mutter and grumble, Gaston pulled his gaze away from the moon and looked at his youngest daughter. He was in his late fifties and had a bloated belly that didn’t sit well on the otherwise thin man. His crown of thick white hair was longer than it should’ve been for a man of his station. His beady eyes were as cold as the winter outside.

  Groaning, he got up and closed the door. He wandered over to the bookcase and searched for a book. Finding it, he pulled it and returned to his chair, laying the book on his lap. He stared at his daughter, his fingers playing with his lips.

  “Papa?” asked Caterina, the tension getting to her.

  “Do you know what I’ve been doing these past several months, Caterina?”

  She shook her head. “I just know it’s important.”

  “It is.” He leaned forward and scratched his grey stubble. He handed the book to her.

  Its familiar feel told her she didn’t even need to look at the title. The few threads that held the book together were a reminder of how much they’d been made to study it. “The Ways of Wisdom by John Fare. What does this have to do with me being here?”

  “What is the book?” he asked.

  “It’s a treatise from the dawn of the Era of Innovation.”

  Gaston stroked the side of his head. It was late, and he would have preferred to have the conversation in the morning, but there wouldn’t be time. “From those words came a philosophy, and then a special society; the Fare. The Fare was focused on making the world right—ending the constant wars and the social genocide that always picked some foolish trait, be it blue eyes or birthmarks on the right arm or some such nonsense, as a reason to kill people. That philosophy understood that you had to have masters behind the royal rulers, keeping them in check and giving them something real to fear. I know you know all of this, you’ve always been good at study,” he said, paying a rare complement. “Tell me, what are people’s souls made of?”

  Without a second thought, she answered, knowing exactly on what page the idea was first introduced in the book. “Gold, silver, copper and wood. Each denoting the person’s intended station and purpose in life.”

  Gaston smiled. “Now, tell me, what happens if you give the duties of a gold to a wood?” he asked, chewing on a finger.

  Caterina didn’t blink at the trivial questions. “They will fail horribly. Even the strongest of woods cannot serve as long as a gold, and they will bring infections to those around them. The infections are madness, corruption, pain and hunger.”

  He smiled again. “Unlike your sisters, you know this, you know it as I’d always intended. They are many things, your sisters, but clever is not one of them. That’s what makes you precious, Caterina, that’s why I don’t need to worry about you.

  “Now, what if I told you there was a man out there, a powerful man, who was undoing everything the Fare has tried to do? A man who has taken most of the Fare and replaced its soul with something completely the opposite.”

  “That… would be a danger to civilization,” replied Caterina, worried. “The world needs the Fare, doesn’t it? That’s what you’ve always taught us.”

  “Indeed, it does,” he replied, leaning forward and patting her knee. “The good news is that the world will not end tonight. But tomorrow is a different matter. I’m glad you feel as I do."

  “Years ago, when the Fare was at its weakest, a charismatic and brilliant man came along, by the name of Marcus Pieman. He took the reins of power and gave the Fare a new sense of purpose. But that purpose, over time, was revealed to be less and less what the Fare had always stood for. For a while, none said a word. The day came, as some had expected, that he ignored the Council of the Fare altogether. He wielded so much power that even they now feared him. And so it was for many years, with only some measures of protest here and there. Each time the Pieman would crush them, or else find a way to bring them to his side."

  “As his sons have come into their own in recent years, those protests have become a bit of a rebellion. Now it isn’t one Pieman we face, but three. There’s a rumor that he’s even grooming his granddaughter to stand as a fourth pillar of their empire.”

  Caterina’s eyes told Gaston everything.

  “I’d started traveling, in search of support to fight him, but instead it’s become something of a different mission. I’ve learned that Marcus Pieman has no desire to keep our squabbles going, it drains his resources and it consumes all of ours. An offer has been made that might allow us to work together.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair.

  “What does this have to do with me?” asked Caterina timidly.

  He smiled at her, like the spider does the fly. “You said we cannot let this happen, and you’re right. That is why you will marry Lennart Pieman, the younger of the two brothers. I believe—”

  “What? You can’t!”

  Gaston slapped her. “Know your place,” he barked. As she cried, he continued. “Sometimes who you were has to die so you can become who you need to be. I’ve certainly learned that many times, and now it’s time you should. The Piemans are sending a coach for you in the morning.” He stood up, his deed done. “I expect you to have some sense about this and know that it is your duty. You’ve been given the opportunity at a great destiny. Take it.”

  As her father left, she curled up in the chair and fell asleep, sobbing. A knock at the door awakened her, it was her two older sisters.

  “I hear congratulations are in order,” said Katherine, the eldest.

  “Yes, to us. We’re finally rid of you,” replied Kamille, laughing.

  “And all it took was us forgetting that stupid book, right Kamille?”

  “There’s a book? Gosh, I hadn’t noticed there was a book. Gee, all those Saturdays and Sundays, for fifteen years, and you’d think I’d remember something about it, Kath.”

  “What?” said Caterina sitting up. “Wait, isn’t the eldest daughter supposed to marry first?”

  The sisters smiled. “Good luck. And enjoy being the new eldest, Catherine,” they said laughing as they left.

  Caterina took another bite of her apple. She’d been staring at the garden in silence, lost in thought. She could feel the disease within Silskin radiating. “Still worried about Kar’m, or simply enjoying the view?”

  “Just enjoying the view,” said Silskin, offering a flinching smile.

  “So, tell me, what about Richelle Pieman?”she asked. “You told me she was dead.”

  “She… is.”

  “Simon seemed absolutely certain that the hand writing was hers.” She sat up in her chair. “I’m concerned, Ron-Paul. I’m concerned that you aren’t upholding your end of our bargain, that you’re playing games behind my back or feeding me information you want me to hear, without it being true or verified.”

  Silskin turned away and wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead carefully. “Nothing of the sort.”

  Caterina glared at him. She watched as his shoulders melted and his gaze lowered. She hated it when he cowered. “Fine. You spoke with Marcus Pieman recently, how did he seem?”

  Silskin squirmed, trying to find the right words. “He was distraugh
t. A… a ghost of a man. His world has crumbled, and his secret game with Nikolas Klaus yielded nothing. And what is worse, the man has been reduced to a yammering idiot. Klaus, not Pieman. You’ve broken him.”

  Caterina had resisted the urge to strike Marcus for so long, she’d found herself wondering if she would ever do it. Was it out of fear that she waited, or her desire to grow her forces and allies before doing so? She’d found herself dropping hints, the most audacious of which was having Pieman’s presidential gardens reshaped into the symbol of the Fare. She knew her impatience was leaking into her actions, and finally decided to act. But with Pieman’s world smashed, she felt no different inside. She hoped that, with his death, she’d find the peace that had eluded her at her father’s death.

  “There is still the matter of Abeland,” she said, looking for holes in their plans. “His little act of sabotage, casting Simon in a bad light, means we cannot let our guard down.”

  “Agreed,” said Silskin.

  “Excuse me, your highness,” said a military man from the foot of the steps with a protesting attendant. “May I approach you and Lord Silskin? I have urgent news.”

  The white clothed attendant beside him gazed up nervously at the shaded gazebo, fearing a possible punishment for allowing the breach of protocol.

  “Approach, Captain.”

  “Sorry to disturb you, but I was given this message to hand you, personally,” he said handing her an envelope.

  “The regent doesn’t have time to read everything. What is it?” asked Silskin, impatient and nervous he wouldn’t be told.

  The captain waited for Caterina’s approval before speaking. “The four royal dignitaries held a secret meeting with Marcus Pieman two nights ago. I was given that letter, which I was told but have not seen, is signed by all four of them. It is, as they said, the decision of the Southern, Eastern, Lower and Independent Kingdoms speaking with one voice.”

  “What?!” said Caterina, ripping open the seal on the letter.