Post by Liessel on Mar 2, 2024 15:22:53 GMT -5
The call had gone out immediately. Liessel had wasted no time getting on the phone and calling Flynn and Flynn. The unusual visitor had come and gone, and in his wake Liessel had secured the house. Her message, over the phone, had been "Slake was here. He asked for a meeting." And any questions that had come after were answered as clearly as she could manage. Standing still was difficult, though, as was keeping her voice even enough.
Once off the phone, Liessel had started pacing the foyer, ignoring Cog's questions and comments with swift turns made on her heels. She kept running over it, every word he said and how he looked while he said it. Every inflection that she could remember, and how his eyes took her in just as sharply as she had him. Briefly, she wondered if he knew she had been watching him as well. But that didn't matter, and so that wondering came and went as her feet traveled across the floorboards.
Once the Flynns had arrived, Liessel carefully peeked out of the window beside the door, barely moving the curtain aside to make sure those familiar silhouettes were, indeed, familiar before throwing the latch and opening the door for them.
Cog had tea ready. Liessel had insisted on it despite the automations protests that he had already prepared some and it was still fine. It just needed a little warming. But that tea she held in reserve, as she had the teacups.
By the time the Flynns had come back inside from checking over the house, Liessel was standing at the dining room table, pouring herself a fresh cup with hands she had to work at to keep steady.
They came back in with their specs on. Each set had a green lens over the left eye, and a blue one over the right.
"I'll take a cup," Felix said immediately, not in the tone of The Lord knows I could use a cup, but in the everyday tone of The Lord knows I like tea.
Avery eyed Liessel's hand and said, "Everything's clear as far as we could tell. I'm satisfied that we can speak freely."
Though they had squared away much of the situation with the police, the Flynns had, with Eddie's help, employed some subtlety in getting here. Even so, they'd done it fast and with a new appreciation of the nimbleness of roof-hopping thieves.
Coming up the basement stairs, skits gathered in her hand to keep from tripping, was Aurelia.
"Everything is as it should be down there." She announced loud enough for her voice to carry from the kitchen and into the dining room even as she traveled in that very direction.
That news from Avery was a relief. The pot that Liessel was handling was set down for a moment beside the cup she'd just filled so she could turn and give Avery a small nod, and then a look up and toward the kitchen before she was turning back and filling the remaining three cups. One for each of the Flynns and one for Aurelia who had come with them. Her hand was a little steadier, her pour a little more even.
"He said it was our neighbors who told him that it was Aurelia and I who live here and confirmed our acquaintance. Yours, too." She picked her voice up just a little bit, giving it as much rise as she could in hopes that Aurelia would hear her as she traveled from the kitching to the dining room.
Avery heard her coming, and moved around the table to greet Aurelia when she came in with an arm slipped behind her so that he could kiss her cheek hello. The topic was a pressing one, and he was quick to say, "So normal means. Not invisible men, today. Are you all right, Liessel?"
Felix, who had zoned out a little, snapped back in with little regard for his brother's question to the ex-priestess. It was that question, regardless, that had focused him. He asked, "By which name did he call you?"
"His story makes sense." Aurelia said after leaning into Avery for ease. "There's been no reason for us to hide. Our neighbors know us as Miss Wickham and Miss Dumitru."
In-vis-ible -- man. Avery had to be joking! Invisible men! There could be no such thing, right?! On deciding that it was a joke Liessel's head was bobbing in answer to Avery's question while Felix asked a question of his own and Aurelia spoke. "Just a little shaken yet, but I'm alright." The last cup of tea was filled, the last cube of sugar placed, and she looked back up again at her friends, "But he didn't use my name, not right away. When prompted for it, though, I gave him Wickham as that is what I've been known as since I moved in with Aurelia."
"He didn't so much as outwardly confirm that he knew who I was, before asking for my name, but the implication was there when he said that it was our neighbors who pointed him our way."
Felix nodded, saying, "He might be playing a clever game, but we often refer to you as Liessel in the house and in the yard. At our flat, too. It's possible he hasn't yet had anyone try to come inside."
Avery pondered that as he pulled out a chair for Aurelia. He didn't move, with her leaning on him, but the gesture was there, unannounced. "We never investigated that invisibility. I wonder if it would set off our wards." He licked his lips, though, and almost immediately asked, "What things stood out to you the most about the visit, Liessel?"
"It wouldn't hurt to speak with some of the neighbors to see who he's been talking to." Aurelia said as she took the offered seat with a thankful smile to Avery. Her forearms stretched out along the cool wood of the dining table while her hands overlapped one another.
"We'll send Eddie, maybe," Avery agreed softly, thinking it over. "He's good at those sorts of inquiries and keeping them natural-feeling."
"I had the same thought," Liessel gave a nod toward Aurelia before picking up the teacup she had filled for the red head with one hand, while the other picked up Felix's cup. She turned, offering Felix his cup while saying, "He was -- unremarkable in action. If I hadn't heard the name before, if I wasn't wary of him, I'd have thought him to be an absolute gentleman. But his eyes were sharp. He watched everything that I did from how I held myself to what I did with my hands and how I breathed. That it was me here, alone, also stood out. If he wanted a meeting why not try for a moment when he knew that everyone he wanted to talk to was under the same roof?"
"Did he say that he knew you were alone?" Aurelia asked with a quick glance around her home. Each little item was inspected from the placement of their dining chairs to the little figurines that lined one of the fireplaces. She looked at each little piece of her home as if trying to see what Slake saw when he was here.
Felix took his cup, nodded his thank-you because Liessel was talking, and circled around to take a chair next to where she stood.
Avery knew the look on Aurelia's face, and looked too before he gave up for the moment and sat down beside her.
Once Felix had his cup, Liessel was coming around the table to give Aurelia hers, "No," She answered her friend, setting the teacup down lightly within reach of Aurelia, "But he did say that he knew we had been away, and that is what prompted him to ask of us to our neighbors. So, he knew we were away, and then shows up unexpectedly after we return -- that couldn't be chance, could it?" She looked from face to face before slipping back around the table for Avery's cup.
It was a floral tea, not Liessel's usual choice, made from sweet smelling blossoms and herbs that had a calming effect. This was a tea that she had been using sparingly since she got it. It hadn't come from a garden in Harroway. The Garden that this tea came from was much closer.
"We would know if our house was being watched." Aurelia said with a furrowed brow. "I do not think we've become so comfortable that we wouldn't notice. Where has everyone gone since our return to London?"
"Us? I was down talking with the police for some time," Avery told her--for Liessel's benefit, since Aurelia and Felix already knew that. The Flynns had returned home to find a notice from the authorities. "We've been shopping and looking into sourcing materials for fixing the motorcar's hood."
"We went down into the Fens," Felix added, "and Eddie and I drove over to Westminster."
"And of course we've been to the Bells," Avery reminded them. Which was where Horran still recovered.
"As much as I hate to remember, John Slake is apart of the - I don't even know what to call it yet." Aurelia said with a pinched brow. "My guesses are that someone at the Bells told him of our return or the police station."
Liessel delivered Avery's cup, having placed while he answered Aurelia before she was moving back to pick up her own and find a seat at the table with them, "If we ask at The Bells if anyone's been talking to him, do you think we'd get an answer to that? I haven't been much of anywhere myself, just between there and here and to see Father McKellen once or twice."
"Was it once or twice?" Felix asked curiously.
Avery said: "I don't like the idea that anyone at the Bells might be tricked, or working for him, or that they might sell us out for their own gain or safety. It's possible, though. It's also possible that they had one man on a street corner here in the Square, and nobody noticed." He took a breath, thinking about that. "The good thing is that these are all possibilities we can look into. These are right in the heart of our talents."
Lisa Marshall, Feb 19, 9:12 PM
Aurelia glanced over at Liessel to hear her answer.
Beneath Avery, while he spoke, Liessel looked toward Felix and held up two fingers, keeping her hand close to the table.
Was it once or twice?
Twice.
Once her unspoken answer was given, Liessel wrapped her hands around the warmth of her teacup. "But what does he want? Why go through all this effort? He said a meeting. But there are far more conventional ways of achieving that in this city, so I don't believe it. The way he was speaking, some of the things he said, it sounded less like a meeting and more like veiled strong-arming."
"More conventional than knocking on a door and requesting one?" Avery took a sip from his cup. "Whatever he wants, he at least also appears to want us to think he's civilized."
"A wolf in sheep's clothing." Aurelia agreed. "He was very eager to help in Bournemouth but he watched everything." She sighed. "They already have a file on me. We've seen it. There's no doubt one of each of you has been added to that list - if it didn't already exist to begin with."
Avery got a little tip of Liessel's head. He had her there. What was more conventional than that, indeed.
She lifted her cup, readying to take a tentative sip, when she felt her mouth tug into a frown. Her teacup was left hovering between its destination and the table, held between her hands, as she sook her head toward what Aurelia was saying, "He certainly has. You, Aurelia and your 'interesting friends', Avery and Felix and their father -- the Frontiersmen -- and he even pointed out that he is aware that I am -- 'no bystander' is how he phrased it."
"What do we know about him? Right now. We'll get more, but for now... What have we seen for ourselves? I saw him denounce Halwell in the Garden--he testified that the King had been kidnapped essentially at the man's orders." Avery kicked it off, thinking back. All those files had come out of Slake's territory. He and Adeline had gone through them painstakingly on a day when time had been precious.
"We know he had an operation at Whitehall." Aurelia added. "There, he kept files such as OLYMPUS which detailed another division's work connecting magical users to airships."
Her teacup never made it to her lips. Liessel had set it quietly back down. "OLYMPUS, that was the project that the men from the Parry had suffered under, right, and -- Miss Marnie?" As for what she knew of Slake, "I saw Adeline fighting when we were sworn in by Mother Blackthorn to get him and his people rejected. The king seemed to trust him, too. But if he works for the government, then that isn't too surprising I think."
The presence of Aurelia's file--plucked up by Cyrus Singh, it seemed, and added to the rest--had raised questions for Avery ever since he'd gone through it and all the rest. One of the things that he'd thought when he and Adeline had been surrounded by little stacks of the records and transcripts and sketches did not pertain directly to Aurelia, but rather to Marnie. As soon as Liessel mentioned her, he looked up and waited, gnawing on the bitter thought. "We know," he said into the quiet when it came, "that Slake and his department knew about Marnie and the others--because you're right, Liessel--and apparently did nothing to stop any of it."
"But Gerold worked with him in Bournemouth," Felix threw in, perhaps not reading the moment very well.
Avery flicked a look his way. There was an aspect to that that he'd heard, and Avery arched a brow. "To hear Gerold tell it, Slake and his men saved him and Seth from going around in enchanted circles."
"With automatons."
"We know that they move throughout the city in disguise. That day - they were milk deliveries."
"Maybe," she followed Aurelia's statement with some quiet fidgeting of her teacup, shifting her fingers against the cup's warmth, "We should ask Adeline about her experiences with him, and see what she can tell us about him. And maybe talk to Gerold again, too. If he can't offer anything new, then at least we can warn him that Slake his eyes on him and the other Frontiersmen."
Felix had gotten a sly little snake-smile, and was toying with the tip of his tongue against one of his teeth. "I'd like to catch one."
Avery glanced at him.
"One of his eyes. One of those invisible men." Felix perked up at the idea and smiled. "It could be fun."
"They -- are -- real, then?" She dreaded asking that question, but it had formed and rolled around inside her head since the notion came that, perhaps, it hadn't been a joke after all. Measured movements brought her teacup up once more, and a small sip was taken in hopes of fending off not only her dread, but disbelief and horror at the very thought.
"They were with him when he paid me a visit," Felix told Liessel. "By the river." Which he thought made it plain that he'd been followed, as "the river" was not one of the usual places where a person would think he could be found. "I didn't let on that I could see them, with my specs. I think they were very proud of themselves, and I'd like to see how they manage that trick, and turn the tables on them."
"If they don't know we can track them," Avery noted, "we could use them."
She had been working on drumming up the courage to ask, and now she was working on fighting the urge to rush the liquor cabinet in the parlor for some whiskey to add to her tea. She'd never taken her tea like that before, but the option of it seemed like it might be a good deal better than trying to swallow the idea of men who could make themselves invisible. She took another sip of her tea, and let it turn into a swallow before she set her teacup down and said, "He did say that you already had a card of his." She said, giving a nod toward Felix before looking toward Avery and Aurelia as she continued, "How -- likely -- would it be that we might be able to find one of his invisible men?," Before she was looking toward Felix again, "And, why were they following you?"
Avery followed, point to point, the evolving look on Liessel's face and was by this time openly fascinated. She'd seen rocks that imprisoned gods, vampires, crossed thresholds of worlds that were pure white, or mimics of this one; she'd seen fae and talking trees; she'd seen vines grow out of living people and she'd seen people talking to ghosts. He wondered that she'd ever grow used to the possibilities! He laughed a little and said, "I'm sure I have no idea," to the first quesiton.
And Felix, to whom both questions were likely actually pointed, shrugged. "I think Slake wanted some bodyguards. Or witnesses."
Her brow drew in, crinkling the mark on her forehead as she contemplated Avery's I'm sure I have no idea. How would she catch something that couldn't be seen, not knowing where they would be or when they might be there? And then she was blinking, the pull of her brow relaxing. Those wonderings didn't go away, but they did fade a little bit as she asked, "Bodyguards, witnesses? He expected you to be hostile? It was just him and another man, here, he was at the door while the other man waited at the gate."
But, then again, if invisible men were involved she wouldn't have known. Her brow furrowed again at that thought.
"Or planned for the possibility," Avery said, considering this. He wondered what they could put in place that might net them information over time that they could use. On that front, there were several possible moves.
Her teacup was lifted just high enough off of its saucer so that she could turn it between her fingers while she let her thoughts have their way without the scraping of fine tableware against fine tableware. "Did he say that he wanted when he came upon you?" She could not say that she could never imagine anyone thinking the Flynns could be hostile. She could see it, but only in the sense that they were protective but that was different than the type of hostile that might require bodyguards and witnesses. They were not brutes, nor the types to go looking for fights of their own makings. She found herself looking at one brother, and then the other as those thoughts came to her. She knew them as gentle, kind, compassionate people who were dedicated to their work and their friends. Hostile was the very last word she would have ever thought to associate with either of them.
"He offered me a job," Felix told her readily.
"A job?" That pulled her from the depths her thoughts were spiraling to. Her cup was set back down, and her hands were let to fall against her lap beneath the table as she sat back and let her chair take her weight. It could not take much of it, though. Her corset did well at preventing her from slouching.
"What -- was it, that job?" Liessel ventured, pushing those thoughts away just in time to feel like she was asking too many questions. That was the cause of her hesitation, it was also the cause of her quietly adding, "If you do not mind me asking, that is."
A glance went toward Avery and Aurelia, then her eyes settled back on Felix. Liessel knew how they felt about the asking of questions. There was very little that was off the table, she had gathered that from Avery and Aurelia's encouragement. And she had promised that she would start, hesitation be damned. Reservations be damned.
"He didn't specify," Felix told her. "I suppose as one of his little 'Merlins' or some such tiresome thing."
"We thought, too, that he might have been hoping for a connection to our father," Avery put in, "but again: We don't know."
She felt her next breath push against the confines of her corset as she pulled herself back up in her chair and looked between the brothers as they answered. "When he was here, he said that it was a desire to see us in alignment, all of us. That there is confusion that exists, and that to rectify it there could be no more activity that exists beyond sight of the law, and the Empire. I do not know what, exactly, he meant by that but he said that times are changing, and so must we change with it. --How dangerous are he and his men? Do -- I need to worry about him the same way that I had to with Septimius?"
The brothers were still for a moment.
Some of the answer seemed, to them, self-evident. Slake ran around with invisible men, for starters. He'd been in cahoots with Esteban at some point, and they seemed to have fallen out only when Esteban had decided it was time for him to wear a crown. How much else did he have his hands in?
At least one part of the answer was important to say aloud: "I think his visit with you proves that he's interested, to some degree, in being civilized about whatever has caught his attention. How far that goes--I don't know." Avery gnawed on it a few seconds more before he added: "So no: I'd say not at all the way you did Septimius, who was aimed specifically at you. We'll look into this, Liessel."
Once off the phone, Liessel had started pacing the foyer, ignoring Cog's questions and comments with swift turns made on her heels. She kept running over it, every word he said and how he looked while he said it. Every inflection that she could remember, and how his eyes took her in just as sharply as she had him. Briefly, she wondered if he knew she had been watching him as well. But that didn't matter, and so that wondering came and went as her feet traveled across the floorboards.
Once the Flynns had arrived, Liessel carefully peeked out of the window beside the door, barely moving the curtain aside to make sure those familiar silhouettes were, indeed, familiar before throwing the latch and opening the door for them.
Cog had tea ready. Liessel had insisted on it despite the automations protests that he had already prepared some and it was still fine. It just needed a little warming. But that tea she held in reserve, as she had the teacups.
By the time the Flynns had come back inside from checking over the house, Liessel was standing at the dining room table, pouring herself a fresh cup with hands she had to work at to keep steady.
They came back in with their specs on. Each set had a green lens over the left eye, and a blue one over the right.
"I'll take a cup," Felix said immediately, not in the tone of The Lord knows I could use a cup, but in the everyday tone of The Lord knows I like tea.
Avery eyed Liessel's hand and said, "Everything's clear as far as we could tell. I'm satisfied that we can speak freely."
Though they had squared away much of the situation with the police, the Flynns had, with Eddie's help, employed some subtlety in getting here. Even so, they'd done it fast and with a new appreciation of the nimbleness of roof-hopping thieves.
Coming up the basement stairs, skits gathered in her hand to keep from tripping, was Aurelia.
"Everything is as it should be down there." She announced loud enough for her voice to carry from the kitchen and into the dining room even as she traveled in that very direction.
That news from Avery was a relief. The pot that Liessel was handling was set down for a moment beside the cup she'd just filled so she could turn and give Avery a small nod, and then a look up and toward the kitchen before she was turning back and filling the remaining three cups. One for each of the Flynns and one for Aurelia who had come with them. Her hand was a little steadier, her pour a little more even.
"He said it was our neighbors who told him that it was Aurelia and I who live here and confirmed our acquaintance. Yours, too." She picked her voice up just a little bit, giving it as much rise as she could in hopes that Aurelia would hear her as she traveled from the kitching to the dining room.
Avery heard her coming, and moved around the table to greet Aurelia when she came in with an arm slipped behind her so that he could kiss her cheek hello. The topic was a pressing one, and he was quick to say, "So normal means. Not invisible men, today. Are you all right, Liessel?"
Felix, who had zoned out a little, snapped back in with little regard for his brother's question to the ex-priestess. It was that question, regardless, that had focused him. He asked, "By which name did he call you?"
"His story makes sense." Aurelia said after leaning into Avery for ease. "There's been no reason for us to hide. Our neighbors know us as Miss Wickham and Miss Dumitru."
In-vis-ible -- man. Avery had to be joking! Invisible men! There could be no such thing, right?! On deciding that it was a joke Liessel's head was bobbing in answer to Avery's question while Felix asked a question of his own and Aurelia spoke. "Just a little shaken yet, but I'm alright." The last cup of tea was filled, the last cube of sugar placed, and she looked back up again at her friends, "But he didn't use my name, not right away. When prompted for it, though, I gave him Wickham as that is what I've been known as since I moved in with Aurelia."
"He didn't so much as outwardly confirm that he knew who I was, before asking for my name, but the implication was there when he said that it was our neighbors who pointed him our way."
Felix nodded, saying, "He might be playing a clever game, but we often refer to you as Liessel in the house and in the yard. At our flat, too. It's possible he hasn't yet had anyone try to come inside."
Avery pondered that as he pulled out a chair for Aurelia. He didn't move, with her leaning on him, but the gesture was there, unannounced. "We never investigated that invisibility. I wonder if it would set off our wards." He licked his lips, though, and almost immediately asked, "What things stood out to you the most about the visit, Liessel?"
"It wouldn't hurt to speak with some of the neighbors to see who he's been talking to." Aurelia said as she took the offered seat with a thankful smile to Avery. Her forearms stretched out along the cool wood of the dining table while her hands overlapped one another.
"We'll send Eddie, maybe," Avery agreed softly, thinking it over. "He's good at those sorts of inquiries and keeping them natural-feeling."
"I had the same thought," Liessel gave a nod toward Aurelia before picking up the teacup she had filled for the red head with one hand, while the other picked up Felix's cup. She turned, offering Felix his cup while saying, "He was -- unremarkable in action. If I hadn't heard the name before, if I wasn't wary of him, I'd have thought him to be an absolute gentleman. But his eyes were sharp. He watched everything that I did from how I held myself to what I did with my hands and how I breathed. That it was me here, alone, also stood out. If he wanted a meeting why not try for a moment when he knew that everyone he wanted to talk to was under the same roof?"
"Did he say that he knew you were alone?" Aurelia asked with a quick glance around her home. Each little item was inspected from the placement of their dining chairs to the little figurines that lined one of the fireplaces. She looked at each little piece of her home as if trying to see what Slake saw when he was here.
Felix took his cup, nodded his thank-you because Liessel was talking, and circled around to take a chair next to where she stood.
Avery knew the look on Aurelia's face, and looked too before he gave up for the moment and sat down beside her.
Once Felix had his cup, Liessel was coming around the table to give Aurelia hers, "No," She answered her friend, setting the teacup down lightly within reach of Aurelia, "But he did say that he knew we had been away, and that is what prompted him to ask of us to our neighbors. So, he knew we were away, and then shows up unexpectedly after we return -- that couldn't be chance, could it?" She looked from face to face before slipping back around the table for Avery's cup.
It was a floral tea, not Liessel's usual choice, made from sweet smelling blossoms and herbs that had a calming effect. This was a tea that she had been using sparingly since she got it. It hadn't come from a garden in Harroway. The Garden that this tea came from was much closer.
"We would know if our house was being watched." Aurelia said with a furrowed brow. "I do not think we've become so comfortable that we wouldn't notice. Where has everyone gone since our return to London?"
"Us? I was down talking with the police for some time," Avery told her--for Liessel's benefit, since Aurelia and Felix already knew that. The Flynns had returned home to find a notice from the authorities. "We've been shopping and looking into sourcing materials for fixing the motorcar's hood."
"We went down into the Fens," Felix added, "and Eddie and I drove over to Westminster."
"And of course we've been to the Bells," Avery reminded them. Which was where Horran still recovered.
"As much as I hate to remember, John Slake is apart of the - I don't even know what to call it yet." Aurelia said with a pinched brow. "My guesses are that someone at the Bells told him of our return or the police station."
Liessel delivered Avery's cup, having placed while he answered Aurelia before she was moving back to pick up her own and find a seat at the table with them, "If we ask at The Bells if anyone's been talking to him, do you think we'd get an answer to that? I haven't been much of anywhere myself, just between there and here and to see Father McKellen once or twice."
"Was it once or twice?" Felix asked curiously.
Avery said: "I don't like the idea that anyone at the Bells might be tricked, or working for him, or that they might sell us out for their own gain or safety. It's possible, though. It's also possible that they had one man on a street corner here in the Square, and nobody noticed." He took a breath, thinking about that. "The good thing is that these are all possibilities we can look into. These are right in the heart of our talents."
Lisa Marshall, Feb 19, 9:12 PM
Aurelia glanced over at Liessel to hear her answer.
Beneath Avery, while he spoke, Liessel looked toward Felix and held up two fingers, keeping her hand close to the table.
Was it once or twice?
Twice.
Once her unspoken answer was given, Liessel wrapped her hands around the warmth of her teacup. "But what does he want? Why go through all this effort? He said a meeting. But there are far more conventional ways of achieving that in this city, so I don't believe it. The way he was speaking, some of the things he said, it sounded less like a meeting and more like veiled strong-arming."
"More conventional than knocking on a door and requesting one?" Avery took a sip from his cup. "Whatever he wants, he at least also appears to want us to think he's civilized."
"A wolf in sheep's clothing." Aurelia agreed. "He was very eager to help in Bournemouth but he watched everything." She sighed. "They already have a file on me. We've seen it. There's no doubt one of each of you has been added to that list - if it didn't already exist to begin with."
Avery got a little tip of Liessel's head. He had her there. What was more conventional than that, indeed.
She lifted her cup, readying to take a tentative sip, when she felt her mouth tug into a frown. Her teacup was left hovering between its destination and the table, held between her hands, as she sook her head toward what Aurelia was saying, "He certainly has. You, Aurelia and your 'interesting friends', Avery and Felix and their father -- the Frontiersmen -- and he even pointed out that he is aware that I am -- 'no bystander' is how he phrased it."
"What do we know about him? Right now. We'll get more, but for now... What have we seen for ourselves? I saw him denounce Halwell in the Garden--he testified that the King had been kidnapped essentially at the man's orders." Avery kicked it off, thinking back. All those files had come out of Slake's territory. He and Adeline had gone through them painstakingly on a day when time had been precious.
"We know he had an operation at Whitehall." Aurelia added. "There, he kept files such as OLYMPUS which detailed another division's work connecting magical users to airships."
Her teacup never made it to her lips. Liessel had set it quietly back down. "OLYMPUS, that was the project that the men from the Parry had suffered under, right, and -- Miss Marnie?" As for what she knew of Slake, "I saw Adeline fighting when we were sworn in by Mother Blackthorn to get him and his people rejected. The king seemed to trust him, too. But if he works for the government, then that isn't too surprising I think."
The presence of Aurelia's file--plucked up by Cyrus Singh, it seemed, and added to the rest--had raised questions for Avery ever since he'd gone through it and all the rest. One of the things that he'd thought when he and Adeline had been surrounded by little stacks of the records and transcripts and sketches did not pertain directly to Aurelia, but rather to Marnie. As soon as Liessel mentioned her, he looked up and waited, gnawing on the bitter thought. "We know," he said into the quiet when it came, "that Slake and his department knew about Marnie and the others--because you're right, Liessel--and apparently did nothing to stop any of it."
"But Gerold worked with him in Bournemouth," Felix threw in, perhaps not reading the moment very well.
Avery flicked a look his way. There was an aspect to that that he'd heard, and Avery arched a brow. "To hear Gerold tell it, Slake and his men saved him and Seth from going around in enchanted circles."
"With automatons."
"We know that they move throughout the city in disguise. That day - they were milk deliveries."
"Maybe," she followed Aurelia's statement with some quiet fidgeting of her teacup, shifting her fingers against the cup's warmth, "We should ask Adeline about her experiences with him, and see what she can tell us about him. And maybe talk to Gerold again, too. If he can't offer anything new, then at least we can warn him that Slake his eyes on him and the other Frontiersmen."
Felix had gotten a sly little snake-smile, and was toying with the tip of his tongue against one of his teeth. "I'd like to catch one."
Avery glanced at him.
"One of his eyes. One of those invisible men." Felix perked up at the idea and smiled. "It could be fun."
"They -- are -- real, then?" She dreaded asking that question, but it had formed and rolled around inside her head since the notion came that, perhaps, it hadn't been a joke after all. Measured movements brought her teacup up once more, and a small sip was taken in hopes of fending off not only her dread, but disbelief and horror at the very thought.
"They were with him when he paid me a visit," Felix told Liessel. "By the river." Which he thought made it plain that he'd been followed, as "the river" was not one of the usual places where a person would think he could be found. "I didn't let on that I could see them, with my specs. I think they were very proud of themselves, and I'd like to see how they manage that trick, and turn the tables on them."
"If they don't know we can track them," Avery noted, "we could use them."
She had been working on drumming up the courage to ask, and now she was working on fighting the urge to rush the liquor cabinet in the parlor for some whiskey to add to her tea. She'd never taken her tea like that before, but the option of it seemed like it might be a good deal better than trying to swallow the idea of men who could make themselves invisible. She took another sip of her tea, and let it turn into a swallow before she set her teacup down and said, "He did say that you already had a card of his." She said, giving a nod toward Felix before looking toward Avery and Aurelia as she continued, "How -- likely -- would it be that we might be able to find one of his invisible men?," Before she was looking toward Felix again, "And, why were they following you?"
Avery followed, point to point, the evolving look on Liessel's face and was by this time openly fascinated. She'd seen rocks that imprisoned gods, vampires, crossed thresholds of worlds that were pure white, or mimics of this one; she'd seen fae and talking trees; she'd seen vines grow out of living people and she'd seen people talking to ghosts. He wondered that she'd ever grow used to the possibilities! He laughed a little and said, "I'm sure I have no idea," to the first quesiton.
And Felix, to whom both questions were likely actually pointed, shrugged. "I think Slake wanted some bodyguards. Or witnesses."
Her brow drew in, crinkling the mark on her forehead as she contemplated Avery's I'm sure I have no idea. How would she catch something that couldn't be seen, not knowing where they would be or when they might be there? And then she was blinking, the pull of her brow relaxing. Those wonderings didn't go away, but they did fade a little bit as she asked, "Bodyguards, witnesses? He expected you to be hostile? It was just him and another man, here, he was at the door while the other man waited at the gate."
But, then again, if invisible men were involved she wouldn't have known. Her brow furrowed again at that thought.
"Or planned for the possibility," Avery said, considering this. He wondered what they could put in place that might net them information over time that they could use. On that front, there were several possible moves.
Her teacup was lifted just high enough off of its saucer so that she could turn it between her fingers while she let her thoughts have their way without the scraping of fine tableware against fine tableware. "Did he say that he wanted when he came upon you?" She could not say that she could never imagine anyone thinking the Flynns could be hostile. She could see it, but only in the sense that they were protective but that was different than the type of hostile that might require bodyguards and witnesses. They were not brutes, nor the types to go looking for fights of their own makings. She found herself looking at one brother, and then the other as those thoughts came to her. She knew them as gentle, kind, compassionate people who were dedicated to their work and their friends. Hostile was the very last word she would have ever thought to associate with either of them.
"He offered me a job," Felix told her readily.
"A job?" That pulled her from the depths her thoughts were spiraling to. Her cup was set back down, and her hands were let to fall against her lap beneath the table as she sat back and let her chair take her weight. It could not take much of it, though. Her corset did well at preventing her from slouching.
"What -- was it, that job?" Liessel ventured, pushing those thoughts away just in time to feel like she was asking too many questions. That was the cause of her hesitation, it was also the cause of her quietly adding, "If you do not mind me asking, that is."
A glance went toward Avery and Aurelia, then her eyes settled back on Felix. Liessel knew how they felt about the asking of questions. There was very little that was off the table, she had gathered that from Avery and Aurelia's encouragement. And she had promised that she would start, hesitation be damned. Reservations be damned.
"He didn't specify," Felix told her. "I suppose as one of his little 'Merlins' or some such tiresome thing."
"We thought, too, that he might have been hoping for a connection to our father," Avery put in, "but again: We don't know."
She felt her next breath push against the confines of her corset as she pulled herself back up in her chair and looked between the brothers as they answered. "When he was here, he said that it was a desire to see us in alignment, all of us. That there is confusion that exists, and that to rectify it there could be no more activity that exists beyond sight of the law, and the Empire. I do not know what, exactly, he meant by that but he said that times are changing, and so must we change with it. --How dangerous are he and his men? Do -- I need to worry about him the same way that I had to with Septimius?"
The brothers were still for a moment.
Some of the answer seemed, to them, self-evident. Slake ran around with invisible men, for starters. He'd been in cahoots with Esteban at some point, and they seemed to have fallen out only when Esteban had decided it was time for him to wear a crown. How much else did he have his hands in?
At least one part of the answer was important to say aloud: "I think his visit with you proves that he's interested, to some degree, in being civilized about whatever has caught his attention. How far that goes--I don't know." Avery gnawed on it a few seconds more before he added: "So no: I'd say not at all the way you did Septimius, who was aimed specifically at you. We'll look into this, Liessel."