Reticence

by Gail Carriger

  Percy let his sister have it. This visit was her idea, after all. It occurred to him that hair-muffs would make excellent indoor croquet arches and his mother had quite the collection, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself again.

  “If you’re going to interrogate me, Mother, may I at least have tea?”

  “Oh! Of course, darling, how rude of me. One forgets, you know, with no need for human sustenance – except humans themselves, of course.” Mother gave a girlish titter quite unsuited to a woman of her advanced years.

  She summoned the lurking butler with an imperious gesture. “Tea, please, Korpin, and cakes or crumpets or something scrummy like that. We do have such a thing in stock?”

  “Yes, my queen. You have human drones, remember? They require tea and crumpets regularly.”

  “Of course they do.” Mother whirled back around. “Anything else, darlings? Treacle tart or something significantly more sticky?”

  Primrose rolled her eyes at their mother’s antics and said over her head to the butler, “Whatever is easily to hand, Korpin, will suit us well enough. Frankly, the tea is the important part.”

  “Yes of course, miss.”

  Mother waved at the three vampires and assorted drones who were still skulking about in silent fascinated horror at the mother-meets-twins reunion performance. “My charming hive, you are dismissed for the time being. Practice your form, do, please? We shall resume this game tomorrow night. Let me dwell for now in the welcoming embrace of my portentous progeny. I’ll be perfectly safe, I assure you.”

  Knowing she would be, the hive left with alacrity.

  “Portentous?” mouthed Primrose at him.

  Percy shrugged. No idea what word Mother really meant. Most of the time a conversation with Baroness Tunstell was an exercise in interpretation by association. Ivy Tunstell had a loose relationship with vocabulary. So far as Percy could tell, it involved groping about for a word and having about as much success as one would locating a bar of soap in the bathtub. Whatever came out of her mouth as a result was squeezed forth and landed with a splash, surprising everyone around, except her.

  With no little apprehension, Percy followed his mother and sister to the sitting area. He took the chaise across from them reluctantly.

  “Percy dear, where is your hat?”

  Percy, who’d elected to stop wearing hats unless absolutely ordered to by his valet, gestured mildly back towards the front entrance. “Left it with the footman.”

  Primrose gave him a look that said, You’re a liar and I’m keeping that as ammunition in case this conversation goes pear shaped. It was fair, as Percy had made the decision to leave his hat behind knowing it could be a point of serious contention. He shrugged at his sister in a do your damnedest kind of way.

  “Tiddles, dearest, I know it is the custom for modish young ladies to have at least one failed engagement to look back upon wistfully – I myself have one I recall with great satisfaction. And I do realize that there is something pleasant in the certain knowledge of having left a gentleman heartsore and pining for all his days. Which is, indeed, right and proper. But three, dear. Three. Don’t you find that’s a touch excessive?” She lowered her voice. “You might even be thought” – a pause while she glanced around significantly, although perfectly well aware that they were not to be disturbed – “loose.”

  Primrose sighed. “He broke it off with me, Mother.”

  Prim’s hand was instantly clasped by strong cool white fingers. “Oh, my darling, dearest child! How could he? Did he break your heart? Horrible man. Should I have him killed? I could, you know. Well, sweetheart, plenty more dishes in the sea than that nasty captain fellow. If you’ll recall, I did say his knees were knobby. As a matter of interest, I did meet this charming young lordling just the other evening. Of course, he was interested in becoming undead, but surely you can overlook that small character flaw? I turned him away, as it were, I’ve enough drones at the moment. But he’d make an eminently serviceable husband. He seemed malleable. You’d like that, my bossy darling.”

  “Mother!” Primrose extracted her hand and shook it to return sensation.

  “Lovely eyes he had too, and a full head of hair, and all his teeth!”

  “Really, Mother. I don’t need another—”

  “Moneyed as well, I believe. Which, frankly, you can’t be certain of with the aristocracy these days. They keep losing their income or selling off their estates, terribly foolhardy. Then they must marry Americans. Really the whole blue-blooded institution is going south. Or, more precisely, west. The colonies have a lot to answer for. Have you seen the new sportswear they’re, well, sporting these days? The hats are practically bare of decoration. It really can’t be conflagranced, naked hats. And then, well, he…” She trailed off, losing her thought, if she could be said to have had a thought to start with. “Oh lovely, here’s Korpin with the tea.”

  Korpin duly put down the tray and scuttled back out of the sitting room as quick as may be. Percy envied him.

  “I’ll pour, Mother,” insisted Prim.

  “Of course you will, dear, I hardly remember how. Now, where was I?”

  Primrose said hurriedly, to prevent Mother from offering up any other young men for spousal consumption, “There is someone, Mother. For me, I mean.”

  “Oh, dear me yes? Already? Another engagement?” If it were possible for a hedgehog to look doubtful, she did.

  As if their mother had not just been trying to arrange that precise thing herself. Percy glowered into his cup of excellent tea and relaxed back cautiously into the spindly chaise.

  “Percy dear, don’t slouch. Tiddles, my sweet, is he a gentleman of position? Rank? Oh dear me, you’ve been overseas, haven’t you? Not foreign, is he? Please, tell me it’s not someone you met while floating!”

  Primrose clasped her hands together and looked up at the ceiling as if for support or divine aid.

  She took a deep breath. “It’s not a he at all, Mother. It’s a she. Her name is Tasherit Sekhmet. She’s an ancient werelioness, from the Sudan. And I’m in love with her.”

  Baroness Ivy Tunstell, Queen of the Wimbledon Hive, fainted.

  Percy set down his tea and appreciated the silence for a long moment.

  Finally he said, feeling genuinely rummy, “I didn’t know vampires could faint. Isn’t fainting to do with blood pressure? How would that even work in an undead body? I say! Is vampire blood pressure borrowed along with the blood? Or do you think it is regulated by some nascent unaffected post-death biological system?”

  “I don’t know, Percy. Why not ask the new doctor? Oh wait, you’re unable to form a coherent sentence around her, aren’t you?”

  Mother steamed herself back up and set up wailing. “Percy’s in love too? With a doctor? With a man? Oh good lord what have I done? How could it have all gone so profundently wrong? Both of you bent! It’s because your father died while you were still young, isn’t it? Primrose had no proper mortal masculine influence so she seeks the company of supernatural feline temptresses! And you, Percy, well, I always thought you might lean that direction. But really couldn’t one of you have pretended and given me grandchildren?” She started fretting, her hand pressed to her forehead, eyes closed. “I’ve ruined you both. This is all my fault. If I had not taken the bite… Not that it was by choice, of course. But oh, if you had not been with me… If I’d never gone to Egypt… If your father hadn’t taken that last dramatic role… If only…”

  Percy exchanged glances with Prim. No words needed, they sat and sipped their tea while their mother wound herself up. There was no reasoning with her when she got into this state. It was like watching a kettle boil over. It would put itself out eventually.

  After several long incomprehensible monologues, she quieted, cracked an eyelid, and noted that her children were calmly drinking tea and staring at her.

  “You two will drive me to an early grave.” Mother glared at them.

  “You’re a vampire, Mother
. So obviously not.” Percy curled his lip at her and put down his teacup with a clatter.

  “Our new doctor is a female, Mother,” said Primrose.

  “The one who has Percy in an un-verbal state? Oh well.” Mother slid her eyes over to Percy.

  “And I’m not in love. I’m simply slightly” – he paused, struggling – “confused.”

  “Then you aren’t of the Lord Akeldama persuasion?” Ivy perked up, feathers quivering.

  Percy sighed audibly. “Why does everyone think that?”

  “Well, because you’re, you know, you, darling.”

  “Thank you, Mother. I’m of a misanthropic, not homogenic disposition. I can’t understand the confusion.”

  “Perhaps, brother dear, if you ever showed any interest in any of the young ladies paraded before you over the years…”

  “They’re all so silly!” objected Percy, which was true. The last thing, the very last thing, he ever wanted in his life was to fall in love with a female akin to either his mother or his sister. In his experience that ruled out the majority of the respectable females in England. With the possible exception of the good doctor. Although to be fair, she’d been hiding in Scotland.

  “Well, Mother, the new doctor drives Percy into fits of terrified silence.”

  As do you two, thought Percy, but he wasn’t dumb enough to say it. Perhaps Arsenic shared traits with his female relations after all.

  “Does she really?”

  “Like that lady friend of Gahiji’s who visited from Tunisia. Do you remember?”

  “Oh yes, Tiddles, what was her name?”

  “Malinda,” said Primrose firmly.

  “Nadia,” Percy corrected, equally firmly. He’d been sixteen and Nadia a smart and savvy businesswoman with whom Gahiji worked to import spices from Africa into England. At first, this was to fill the desires of the Arabic staff and drones who’d accompanied them back from Egypt when Percy was still a baby. Later, because the business proved fruitful, Nadia had come to visit, spices in tow. Percy had never met a woman more beautiful, with her brilliant mind and her calm accented voice.

  He’d been sixteen and unable to speak the entire week she stayed with them.

  “Of course, Nadia.” Primrose gave him one of her knowing looks.

  Percy hated those looks.

  Ivy Tunstell looked back and forth between her children, appearing even more the bewildered hedgehog than ever.

  “Percy, really?”

  Percy smiled at the memory. “Oh yes. She was awfully smart.”

  “So this doctor?”

  Primrose smirked. “Really, Mother, don’t get your hopes up. You know he’ll bungle everything. He always does.”

  Percy privately agreed with her.

  Mother whirled on Prim. “At least I stand a chance of grandchildren out of your brother! You are a traitor to your line! What would your father say? And with a form-shifter supernatural no less! You couldn’t choose a vampire?”

  “Oh, Mother, really. I can’t very well fall in love with a vampire, that would mean a queen. And frankly there aren’t enough of you. And I’d have to share. You know I’ve never been very good at sharing.”

  “But sweetness, darling… she’s a woman.”

  “A large part of the appeal, I assure you,” said Percy, with his own smirk.

  “I love her, Mother!” Prim’s eyes flashed and her voice took on something akin to their mother’s patented dramatic tones.

  Percy winced. Here we go …

  “I love her with my whole heart. I’m utterly lost to her. She is the beach upon which I have cast my weary self after being adrift in a sea of masculinity that did nothing but starve me for real affection, and buffet me with unwelcome attention, and make me sticky with salt.”

  Percy snorted.

  Primrose glared at him, as much as to say, I’m attempting to communicate with her in her native tongue.

  Percy gestured with his hand for her to go on, and poured himself more tea in order to survive the inevitable monologue.

  “She is my meal after years of starvation. She is flavours I have never tasted before but always craved. I resisted her precisely because I wanted children, wanted family.”

  “Well yes, Tiddles. Exactly. You want a family. So you must give over this foolishness and marry a nice understanding young man and have your werecat on the side, like a corner dish, or the occasional overindulgent pudding. No one would fault such an arrangement.”

  “I’d fault it! I have integrity, Mother. And I love her. I want to be with her. I am going to be with her. I’d marry her except, well, that doesn’t work outside of Shakespeare, but she’s mine and I’m hers and it’s a done thing.”

  “But, Tiddles, sweetheart—”

  “No, Mother. You’ll have to get grandchildren out of Percy. Good luck with that.”

  Percy reeled.

  Fortunately, Ivy Tunstell barely even considered it a suggestion, let alone a likely possibility.

  “Oh, Tiddles, but surely every young lady wants a nice husband and her own adorable little babies. I mean to say, you two and your dear departed father were the most cherished blossoms in the garden of my mortal existence.”

  “Well, this particular young lady wants herself a nice werecat wife, so there! Besides, Rue is going to loan me hers as much as I like.”

  “Loan you her husband?” Mother blinked.

  Percy snorted tea.

  Prim glared at him. “Fat lot of good you are.”

  Percy wisely buried his nose in his cup to hide his smile.

  “No, Mother, loan me her child. You know she’ll make a terrible mother.”

  The baroness nodded wisely. “Too much like Alexia.”

  “Whatever that means. No, she’s simply easily distracted by constantly saving the world and similar endeavours, and not particularly interested in children. But I would make an excellent mother. So we’ve generally agreed that I’ll have primary care for the baby, while Rue rushes about and does captain things, and Quesnel pokes at his engines. And we’ll float around as this odd sort of family. I shall have my werecat and a baby, too.”

  Ivy threw her head back and moaned. “Oh, where did I go so pedultuously wrong?”

  Primrose sighed and reached for her own tea, waved Percy forward, passing the conversation off to him.

  Percy stayed silent.

  So Prim went on the attack. “Meanwhile, Mother, did you know Percy has given up wearing hats entirely?”

  Baroness Ivy Tunstell, Queen of the Wimbledon Hive, fainted again.

  “That went well.” Percy finished his tea.

  Primrose stood. “I believe we’d better leave now. Before she recovers her senses.”

  “I think any recovering of senses is highly unlikely with our mother.”

  “Percy, don’t be droll. It doesn’t suit.”

  Arsenic had a lovely night shopping for medical supplies.

  General consensus was that they were off to Egypt soon, and from there to parts unknown. It appeared that the captain needed to consult with her parents, who ran a tea export business out of Cairo.

  This seemed rather odd to Arsenic. Why Egypt? Why parents? And why tea? Also, why had the former head of BUR, werewolf peer of the realm, and his lady wife descended into such depths as trade? Given their familial relationship to her new captain, Arsenic dared not ask directly – it might be perceived as impertinent. Delicate enquiry, among those not directly related to the tea vendors in question, revealed that it had to do with Lord Maccon’s feeble condition. Which was not a euphemism she’d heard applied to a werewolf before. Surely he couldn’t be pregnant. Could he?

  She wished she’d taken a course of study in werewolf physiology, but her focus had always been on the fragility of mortals. While all the money was in understanding immortality, Arsenic hadn’t taken up medicine for the pecuniary advancements. Not like some doctors she could name.

  She was rather pleased they were headed to Egypt, as she’d been thro
ugh Alexandria several times before. She’d a good idea of their probable needs, not to mention the supplies afforded locally. She wouldn’t make a fool of herself.

  She did corner Rue before the captain left the Custard to pay a departure call on Lord Akeldama.

  “May I have a quick word, Captain?”

  “Of course, Doctor. What can I do for you?”

  “’Tis about your condition. Six months along, aye?”

  Rue shrugged. “Best guess, yes.”

  “Verra weel. It seems likely that we will na return to London in time for the birth.” Arsenic tried to find the best avenue of approach. “I ken something about preternaturals, that they can cancel out supernatural abilities with a touch.”

  “That is true, but you might talk to Rodrigo if you—”

  “No please, hear me out. But you are a metanatural, which means what, exactly?”

  “My mother is a preternatural and my father a werewolf.”

  “Nay. I mean what does it mean for you physically?”

  “Oh! If I touch a supernatural creature, at night and outside of the aetherosphere, I turn into that creature for the space of that night.”

  “Can preternatural contact cancel you out too?”

  “Yes, Rodrigo can touch me back to human.”

  “If Tasherit is in human form and you touch her?”

  “I turn into a lioness.”

  “You always take the bestial state?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you voluntarily change back to human yourself?”

  “No, I’m only the beast.”

  Arsenic took a breath. “This concerns me, Captain. Since we dinna know what the bairn is, exactly. My guess is na preternatural, or the act of carrying the bairn would cause you to be unable to shift.”

  “Unless, of course, the water around the baby acts as a buffer?”

  “Water affects metanatural abilities?”

  “Yes, indeed. And preternatural.”

  “Hum, then ’tis possible. Still, the bairn could be damaged if you shift into a creature whose body shape is significantly dissimilar to a human. That is to say, as the bairn gets bigger inside you, it will be less and less resilient to your body re-forming around it.”