Post by No Face on Mar 16, 2024 18:45:32 GMT -5
For once London was not the usual picture that it was trademarked to be. The mix of cobble stone and concrete walkways were a dull, bone-dry grey that were scuffed by the hundreds that walked upon them daily. Street carriages kicked dust into the air, letting it twirl and mix with the smog that pumped from its industrial facilities. Newspaper hawkers on every corner were screaming the latest headlines.
CORONATION CEREMONY COMPLETED AFTER STRANGE HAPPENINGS IN LONDON.
“And yet you couldn’t believe a story about a dragon.” Adeline muttered beneath her breath while she weaved past the paper pusher for the Times. She was navigating through the busier part of London, the Market District, in hopes of discovering a new shortcut that would take her closer to Trevor Square. While the streets were certainly crowded, there was a cleanliness that transitioned when she passed the Modiste and the iced flavors shop. Less garbage thrown out onto the street, she suspected.
Adeline didn’t quite fit into the area as she should have. Her hair was kept in an updo that fit the latest style and fashion of London. But the navy walking dress she was wearing looked a little worn around the hem and the cuffing of her sleeves and the white flowers embroidered along the bodice were not as white as they could have been. The blue sparkles not as sparkly.
There was an alleyway, and sticking out from it without jutting into the street was the butt-end of a Gaunt-Schraber 1900 Gemini, black. Leaning against the boot, with a copy of the very issue of the Times that Adeline had spotted, was Eddie Fletcher, cap pulled low but reading at his leisure. The pedestrians didn't bat an eye at him, though they certainly eyed the alien motorcar, and some craned their necks to see who might be farther in the alley--
--which was not even a special alley.
Eddie, today, looked just as he had in Harroway, as if no part of him took easily to camouflage. He wore his shirtsleeves rolled up, a waistcoat buttoned only at the top, and respectable but unremarkable trousers and shoes. He could have been at home in any part of London that needed handymen, servants, dockworkers, runners, spotters, drivers, shopkeeps....
A glint of light bouncing off black caught Adeline's eye at just the right moment. She stopped, felt her shoulder bump into someone who was unprepared for her to stop and her shoed feet dig into the street to keep from losing her balance.
"Oye! You should-. Oh. My apologies miss." The gentleman who collided into Adeline apologized, dipping his top hat head in her direction.
"Ugh. Save your pleasantries for someone else." Adeline scoffed as she quickly weaved through the crowd - effectively leaving the confused man behind.
In a busy place such as London, it was quite easy to loose track of something even as remarkable as a Gaunt-Schraber. But Adeline hadn't gone far up the street and soon she found herself coming to an alley way where --
"Oh. Mister Fletcher." She greeted upon recognizing the Flynn's man. "What a surprise. I don't know if you remember me but..."
At the sound of his name, his paper lowered with a slight rustle and he blinked at Adeline.
I don't know if you remember me but....
That made him look past her, around her on the sidewalk, as if he thought she might be acting for someone. A consequence of working for Flynn & Flynn & Associates. Zeroing back in on her, he said, "I didn't think I looked that coal-brained. Good afternoon, Miss Webber." He had to fold the Times to free a hand to tip his hat to her. "I'd say 'small world,' but this one is feeling downright enormous to me after Harroway."
"I apologize." She said with a little smile. "There was much happening back in Harroway that I wasn't sure how memorable I may or may not have been." To his comment about London...
"I'm very happy to be home." Adeline said while stepping further into the alley and away from the noisy streets. "But I cannot help but feel the same as well. Harroway really was a different world."
They'd talked at the Dead Regiment--and before that Eddie had seen her in Kings Orchard (and then at the Garden after he'd woken up, though his memories of that was a little illogical)--but Eddie just pushed off from the back of the car to stand up properly and nodded heartily. "I thought the people there were strange. But I suppose they would be. What brings you out this way?"
A door further down the alley squeaked open. Nice door, but unoiled hinge. A conversation spilled out, low, into the alleyway, rhythm and a tone that certainly belonged to one of the brothers.
Eddie glanced over his shoulder at the sound, but did not break off from Adeline, turn away, or look like this signaled the end of their hellos.
"Wandering the city mostly." She said, her own ears twitching in response to the noise of a tinkling door bell and the familiar cadence of a Flynn brother.
"Trying to see if this path is a more effective one at reaching the Knightsbridge house. After the meeting with Father McKellen, I've become determined to find a better way. What about you and the Flynns?"
"Felix," Eddie told her, indicating behind him with his head. "He's picking up something. --And I believe he intends to go to Trevor Square when he's finished here. If that's still the plan, would you like to drive your experimental path with us?"
Adeline glanced back at the street, biting her lower lip in thought.
"Yes." She determined then. "It will get me there much quicker. Though, I should to walk the whole way home so that I will have a proper gague of time should I decide to take this route." Adeline smiled.
"Thank you, Mister Fletcher."
By the tones of the conversation up the alley, Felix Flynn was not being thrown out, or wished out. Or if he was, the aproned, heavyset man bidding him off, was doing one or both of those things extremely prettily.
Whatever the score, Felix seemed content with it, and distracted by a large bound paper box that looked like the sort of block that might contain a book manuscript or a collection of files. He wore his cap--a near match for Eddie's newsboy--but also a lightweight pale summer suit... almost. He'd stuffed the trousers down his lace-fronted riding boots, as he did at nearly any time of year. It was apparent that this did not preoccupy him nearly as much as what he held in his hands.
"Got it," he called ahead to Eddie, before he seemed to realize to whom Eddie spoke. "Ah. Intercepted. Hello."
"Intercepted?" Adeline questioned after giving him a quick once over at his attire.
He did not look as she was used to seeing him, for however little that she'd known him, in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves and lead stains on his fingertips. But the suit worked for him.
"Where-" She broke off, looking up and over at the shop in search of a sign. "Hello, Felix."
There was a quick, almost stuttering pause. "You are Felix, right?"
Eddie had said so but with twins... it never hurt to ask.
Felix blinked at her, but, being a twin, this was not a confusion that was at all from out of left field. "Good guess. Yes. What are you doing here?"
Eddie quickly answered: "She's on her way to Knightsbridge. I offered her a ride."
Felix looked at Eddie. It was not Eddie's car. But he peered at Adeline again, took in the state of her, and asked her directly: "Did you accept?"
"Surprisingly," Adeline drawled, "this time I did." Her head bobbed in a half nod with the words, though it was still tilted upwards skimming the buildings in search of a sign.
Felix nodded back to her once and seemed to switch gears to fit into that other reality through the motion of it. "No time to waste, then. You might find this interesting anyway. Eddie?"
Eddie threw Adeline a different sort of nod--a quietly conspiratorial one--and then broke off to open the side door for her while Felix went to the far side.
The clicking latch of the door was what made her level a look back to the Felix and Eddie. "Find what interesting?" She asked. Her eyes jutted a glance to the drivers side before taking in a heavy breath and sliding into the strange car.
"Thank you." She said to Eddie along the way.
She'd driven this motorcar, of course--and another one, that had belonged to Anna Gaunt. This one was less stuffed with Kings and unconscious government employees than that other one had been, and despite its front-end, knight-shaped dent was in far better shape. Sliding in the back with her while Eddie shut her door, Felix held up the heavy bound box slightly. "Before everything turned on its head and shot us to Harroway, we put out some feelers regarding the Aerofleet's flash towers. First batch of reports, right here."
Adeline had been about to make a remark about the state of the front end of the Gaunt but switched gears. It was not as efficient as what Felix was able to do, however it was manageable.
"You did?" She asked, eyes widening just a hair before looking at the box. "Have you looked at them yet?"
He shook his head, but was already flicking open a penknife to cut the string that held the boxed papers together. "First stab at it," he said, snapping the knife closed again before he glanced at her. "My hopes aren't high. We only asked where they are. We figure no foreign government would let us put up military towers in their territory, so they're in the isles here. Avery put the word out that we were interested in anything that had been erected in the countryside, but obviously country eyewitnesses aren't cartographers, so we'll have to wade through these."
"Where they are is still something more than nothing at all." Adeline replied.
It was a fight to keep from reaching for the pages. Patience was an important skill, something that she certainly lacked from time to time.
"Have you heard anything about the Golden ship?"
"Eddie's been collecting the papers for us," Felix told her, lifting the lid.
As Eddie got in in front of them, what was revealed in the box was a wide variety of sizes and kinds of paper, of handwriting and postmarks. Felix shifted the box to rest it on the seat between himself and Adeline, but held up a finger for a moment. "Take care not to get them out of order. I believe they're in the order in which they were received, which is data I want for a different project. But, please." He took his hand out of her way.
The Gaunt-Schraber rumbled to life, the entire car vibrating with the power of the engine, the thunderous low purr of it worlds different from the tapping, rattling, belching sounds of most of the other extant motorcars.
There was a minute that Adeline simply listened to the sounds of the Gaunt-Schraber. She loved this car. She loved the sounds and feel as it moved through the street - like gliding on ice. She loved driving this car.
But that love was not meant to last and soon she was reaching for the pages.
"Have you ever heard of a small press called the Watchful Citizen?"
Felix shook his head, but looked interested merely from the name. "Is it new?"
"No." She shook her head. "But it isn't very well known. I've heard a former colleague of the Times writes for them. A man named Tilmund Thackard."
"What brought it to mind?"
Eddie backed the car out and got them turned in the right direction. As they passed the front of the shop that had the alley exit, the sign read simply Copper & Tin. The front windows showed not products of those metals, but huge barrels lining the floor toward the back where the light disappeared, and more barrels hanging in rows inside, above waist-height.
As for the pages Adeline would find, they were letters and short notes from what must have been hundreds of people. The first one was a very long one that complained of the construction of a tower, and how it marred a beloved old hill, and how two men were seen working it at a time. There were many shorter ones, that described towers near towns, along named roads, and that was all. The thicker ones tended to be conversational or rueful like the first: the tower is ugly; no one asked for it; what is it for; etc. There were many requests for further information about the things. None were addressed to Avery or Felix.
"Thackard was investigating an incident regarding an airship called Edinburgh and a young girl by the name of Mary Rollins. Knowing what I do now, I believe she was one of the first - if not the first - in project OLYMPUS."
She skimmed over the pages, trying to see if any of the roads or locations were familiar.
"Thackhard quit his job at the Times and went to join Watchful Citizen. I've heard that the paper centers on exposing our government to things it does not wish to be exposed. Particularly in the exact areas we are investigating."
She paused.
"I think it’s worth trying to locate the home base of this paper and talk to the people there. They might know something that we don't."
That jogged Felix's distracted memory. Vahan's situation, and Marnie's, had been grains in the mountain of issues they'd been left buried under after Esteban's mess, but at last he nodded. "We need to keep our information gathering on this low key for now. And maybe forever. Avery put out a vague call for this, and it hasn't got his name on it. We want to know how many there are, where we can find them, how they operate, and maybe how we can make use of them ourselves. From what you showed us from the Drake's captain's log, they're how the Aerofleet gets orders to airships in the air. At the very least. Which is useful."
"Well," she said thoughtfully. "I could look into a job at the paper. I'm not exactly working for the Times anymore and with Thackard's history, perhaps it might be motivation to let me in the door. Not as a reporter though." Her brows furrowed.
"I'd need to stay out of the spotlight, so to say, and just hover nearby so I could listen to what was happening."
She was taking that deeper than he'd thought, and Felix eyed her askance for a moment. "If not as a reporter, then as what?"
"A typist, perhaps. I don't know what their scale of budget is but I know the Times has a few on hand. Either way, I can just see what it is they may need and offer to fill the position."
Seeing the way he looked at her, made her ask, "Do you think it's a bad idea?"
"I don't know enough to think anything one way or another," Felix said, blinking at her. "Do you know where this paper is printed?"
"I don't. I'm hoping maybe Avery might know someone who knows someone who knows someone that could point us in that direction."
The Gaunt-Schraber carved a path into Knightsbridge and Eddie made a left.
Felix was nodding, but that was capped with a shrug. "We do love our cousin snoops in the news business. Some of the time."
"Aye." She nodded. "I don't think it could hurt. It's just finding the papers hub could be difficult. For all we know, it's being published in the basement of someone's flat."
Cocking his head slowly, Felix said, "You sound as if you believe it's in London. --But if you like, we can get some eyes on this." He paused. "We're soon to be out of the country, so word will be directed to Kings Orchard... unless, on this topic, you want it directed to you."
"Maybe it is." She replied. "I don't know for sure. I've yet to get my hands on a paper to begin with."
She looked back at him.
"I'd forgotten that you were leaving for a holiday. When will you be going?"
"Saturday," Felix told her, and slowed down in some internal, indescribable way that nevertheless changed some hidden rhythm within the car. "Avery needs it. I think Aurelia might need it, but maybe for him. I intend to go book hunting." A smile crept in for a second, anticipatory, but Felix briskly added: "So there's time to set this up."
"I believe you." She replied, however hooked by something else he said.
"Avery usually isn't so... stretched, then?"
"Oh, he is," Felix said, and that was the first reflexive response. The next took a second longer, and a little more thought. "He likes it. I think. Only in the past, the stakes weren't so high as they have been recently. The scale smaller."
In the driver's seat, Eddie's head turned slightly, but he kept his eyes on the road.
Felix glanced at Adeline and shrugged. "He went at the larger problems the same way he goes at more personal ones. They took more out of him."
And then there was the Garden, and not one but a few moments there, but Felix wasn't sure Adeline was here for this topic, so he studied her reaction to that.
Adeline wanted to ask where they would be going. She wanted to know about the books Felix was searching for and what other interest they planned to pursue while on holiday. But those questions felt cheap and short especially in comparison to a much deeper layer of the Flynns.
"I can see how he would do that." She replied thoughtfully. "Especially if it's been effective in the past. When you say 'larger problems', I believe you mean more than what happened in London and then in Harroway? How recent have the larger problems been outweighing the smaller ones?"
"Since shortly after we met Liessel and Aurelia came back into the country." Felix had a date; the night Seth tried to murder Aurelia. Unbeknownst to them at the time, but plain as day to him in retrospect, that had marked the start of a snowballing of the stakes. Was there anything in the windows of respite that could have been done differently to offer better restoration? Felix had no idea. But going south into the waters of Marcus Antonius and Pompey the Great felt like it offered real promise.
Even if he was reluctant to offer that exact date, he knew the number of months, and so he gave Adeline that one.
"That's a short span of time." Adeline said after the date was given. "The dragon was my only major incident and it's still keeping my world off centered."
Felix thought about that, but he was keeping an eye on Adeline. That did seem to help him stay focused in more personal talk, and to not wander back to his own preoccupations.
The Gaunt hit a pothole and the backseat jumped, forcing Felix to brace a hand against the underside of the roof, but just after he asked, "Do you ever wish you could be like all those people who saw it with their own eyes and still bought into the gas main coverup?"
Adeline bounced, her own hand reaching out to the back of seat to keep from spilling pages and getting them out of order.
"No." She took a quick breath. "I feel foolish that I never saw it sooner."
"To be fair, dragons don't interrupt sermons very often these days...."
A laugh barked out of her. "That is a very good point." Letting the laugh die naturally, she glanced over at Felix. "You're going on holiday with them. Are you feeling the same stressors that Avery and Aurelia are?"
Felix shook his head, but it ended in a frown. "I don't like seeing him like this, but I'm fit."
The Gaunt-Schraber slowed down and stopped. Out either window were tall stone walls; this street cut between tall properties before widening into Trevor Square, but Eddie was stuck behind a coach, and there were signs of a jam ahead of them, cause unknown.
Glancing forward, but focused in the back seat, Felix said, "I want to ask how you're doing after Harroway, and after tea with Father McKellen, but I give up on being smooth about it. So tell me."
She thought about an acceptable front. She thought about a convincing lie. But Adeline could see the state of her clothes and she knew her financial situation was not as secretive as she hoped it would remain.
Settling with, "I'm managing." seemed the best approach for now. "There are loose ends that I desperately need to tie up. My family is growing restless and are ready to return to what's left of their lives. They left willingly only because they understood the gravity of the situation however... time and distance does make a threat feel less threatened."
Felix nodded, but seemed stuck on those points for the moment. Or he was waiting to see if she added anything. Both options, in him just now, looked identical.
Felix's silence hung for a moment as Adeline waited for a reply. When it felt as though none was starting to come, she shifted and continued on.
"Other than that, I think things are well. The world looks different from what I used to know it as." She smiled a little ruefully. "Sometimes I think I should be walking around with the lenses that I've seen you and Avery wear as if it will expose more hidden truths."
"We should probably put together a kit for you, too," Felix said, shifting slightly to dig into his jacket. He pulled out his notepad and flicked it open with his thumb and a soft rattle of brittle paper.
"Those are the bags that Aurelia and Liessel wear." Adeline quickly asked, feeling a surge of excitement in getting one of her own. "What all is in them?"
"They--" Where had that word come from? "Aurelia adds elements of her own, but what we gave them was a version of what we carry. Salt, herbs--not always the same for every job, holy water, a knife, mirror, a magnifying lens, ink...." There was only one reason why Felix Flynn hesitated over this answer, and that was that he always tailored the contents of his own kit to suit the task before him when he could, and right now, in the back of the motorcar with Adeline Webber, he was thinking ahead to what a dragon-hunted, fae-brushed reporter might find handy. "I might give you gaming stones, and stock you up on iron shavings like those you put together before...."
She nodded along, thinking of what she knew now versus what might be handy. "My grandmother always said to carry rosemary. A small jar of that could come in handy, I think."
"Aye. --The thing about such herbs in small amounts is that they have to be deployed cleverly, precisely. I can loan you our Hiram, but the thing about books like that is that they cast everything as absolute and universal. Rosemary is for THIS; willow bark will deter THAT-- Not bad for the basics, but there are reasons why the magical uses for our herbs don't make them essential in places such as, for example, Malaysia, or Kenya, and it's not always a matter of geography."
"Does belief play into the usage of the herbs - and maybe even other things. I've always thought that giving power to a name is what makes the name great. Could the same logic be applied to something like a salt circle or a sprinkle of rosemary over the threshold of a door?"
Brow pinching, Felix opened his mouth.
"I'll see what the delay is," Eddie said, popping his door and getting out to stroll up the clogged lane.
When his door was open, fresh summer air blew in, and sound with it, all the subdued sounds of this little part of London, and when the door closed they were sealed in again, and in their own sound bubble. However, that tiny moment reminded Felix that there was an outside world, and he rolled down his window a little by the crank while he said, "It sounds like you said two different things there. Yes, belief plays into the use of herbs and any element, but in my opinion it is never a fully deterministic role. When we told you that, in the end, it nearly did not matter what elements were in use, the point was to show that it can be a highly flexible array of tools. What I don't think I'm understanding here and now is your example of the name. Explain that to me."
Her brows furrowed a little as she tried to think through her own understanding.
"I think what I meant to say was that giving a significance to something alone could be enough to make that object significant. Regarding magic, I believe something is powerful and therefore it becomes it. So, for instance, I believe that sprinkling rosemary over the threshold of my door protects my home from faeries entering so therefore they cannot enter."
"Ah." Felix squinted a little, but nodded slowly. "So yes, but no. The yes is that we are in agreement that belief is powerful--though we might need to have a discussion about why it makes any difference at all, because that's the important part, that why. The no is that... to take your example... If you woke up one morning, picked up a carrot, and believed with all your might that the carrot would ward off a dragon, you might be disappointed to find that the dragon might just consider it to go well with you as a side dish."
"So there's more to it than just belief - something deeper that is specific to the item itself?"
"Yes," Felix told her. "But to get to your example--the rosemary--that's not just your belief, is it?"
"No. It was something my grandmother always said." She confirmed.
"And where did she get it?" Felix sat back a little.
"She said her grandmother passed that down to her when she was my age."
"And probably, we're not just talking about one lengthening thread of belief, but a fabric, with lateral ties, and, somewhere in the past, a dense weave of people participating in it. So when you utilize it, or when I do, we're taking for our use something enormous, even ancient, woven by everyone who did the same thing previously." He thought about it for a second. "The Kingsboon was described similarly. Rolling forward with the gravity of ages."
"So it's more than just the belief in one but the belief in all over a span of time." Adeline surmised. "Or something like that."
Felix's head spun with all the exceptions he could think of, but survival instinct had him nodding a tiny bit anyway. "Yes. Or anyone would do it. --Maybe not adults. But children play games all the time, and their belief could be said to be total when they're immersed in play--don't you think? And they believe things they're told. Even by bratty older kids. 'Hold this feather and you can jump off a wall and fly.' 'Spin three times and you'll get your wish.' Only those things either don't happen, don't happen with a proveable line of cause and effect, or they only work in a single person's disengaged reality, where it effects nothing and no one else."
"I didn't consider that." She said thoughtfully. After a breath, Adeline laughed a little and shook her head. "Every time I think I get a grasp on what I know, I learn something new that makes me think of it from a different perspective."
Felix looked out the windshield of the car and didn't see Eddie, but Adeline had his attention still. "When you consider magic," he said, "you need to remember that it does not work all the time, and ask why that is. Don't let it deter you, because there are principles you can learn, but don't stop asking that. Does it not work... because it's not natural? Does it not work... because something was done incorrectly, and it requires the perfect key to turn the lock of it? Does it not work... because some force does not wish for it to? Because I don't need to tell you: there is reason for some skepticism if a random person tells you the powder they're selling will make you successful. Or if you're old, younger. Or if you're blind, sighted... and so on."
"You can't be much older than me." Adeline's head shook even as the knowledge was stores away.
"How long have you and Avery studied?"
Felix remembered the last time he was around when this question was asked, and decided to go Avery's route. "Six and a half years."
"Six and a half years." She slumped back into the seat of the Gaunt. "I've got a long way to go."
Her eyes flickered out the window before turning her head in Felix's direction.
"This car is like nothing I've ever seen before. It's magnificent. How did it come to be?"
He blinked at the topic switch. "You mean... where does my father have these made?"
Eddie came into view from up the street, and stopped to exchange a word with the coachman ahead of them.
"There's more of them!" She exclaimed. Quickly recovering, Adeline shook her head.
"No. I mean - who designed it?"
"There are a few--" She went on, so Felix cut off his half-wry response to say, "A man named Deiderich Schraber and a team of designers."
"Ah." Adeline nodded a little. "I thought there were only the two. Yours and the one I stole from Anna Gaunt. I wonder what happened to that one." She said as an afterthought.
"I've never seen anything like it before."
"When we get back, I'm going to take off that hood and customize the engine," Felix said, looking down at the box of notes about flash towers and how they marred the country atmosphere, and sliding the lid back on. "So soon you won't have seen anything like this, again."
Eddie got back in just as the coach ahead of them started rolling at last. "Collision up there--no one hurt. We're clear now." He started the Gaunt-Schraber, which eagerly lept to life once more.
She watched him slide the lid back onto the box. Shifting in her seat as the Gaunt began to purr again, Adeline looked at the small stack of papers still in her hand.
"I've gone and derailed the whole start of this conversation, haven't I?"
Felix smiled slightly. "I'd have just spent the drive reading notes otherwise. --Why are you going to Knightsbridge, anyway?"
"I thought it would be good to pay a visit. I haven't been around much since we've returned. I went to the Bells the day we got back, and I wanted to share some updates of when we were gone." She replied.
"I took this route because I wanted to see if it was more effective than my normal one. After the tea with Father McKellen... well..." Her small smile was a little sheepish
"We did--" Felix teetered on the cliff. Decided to just jump. "We did catch on to a certain--frequency--of hostility, at tea."
"I encountered something similar. Did they tell you of the, uh, proposal that was brought to them?"
"I meant with Liessel, but I take it you don't...." Felix was frowning again, but Eddie was right then pulling up in front of Aurelia's house.
"Oh! For some reason I thought you meant the Bells." Adeline shook her head. "My apologies."
As for Liessel...
"We had a conversation that I believe she did not take kindly too - the very same thing we continue having issue with. I can spare you the details if you want."
Felix would have preferred if he'd realized enough to have meant the Bells. Too late now. --Or not. Carefully, he said, "I'll consider myself spared. What is the proposal in question?"
"Our old friend Major Chisolm, now Captain, arrived at the Bells on a golden airship." Adeline explained. "The move was made in a show of power against the Bells - at least that's how those at the Table read it."
At the name Chisolm, Felix frowned and broke in with, "The one Aurelia drugged?"
There wasn't really a need for acknowledgement; Felix's memory was working to dredge up the details of a segment of that trying day that he had not personally witnessed, but there had been enough chewing on the details afterward that he was not coming in empty-handed. "Wait. This happened while you were visiting?"
"Yes. It seems he received a promotion for sleeping so well." Adeline said in response to the first comment. For the second...
"No. I heard about it when I went to the Bells the day we returned home. There was a whole table of faerie and human alike debating on what they should do."
Felix nodded his apology for diverting her story. Eddie got out again. They were at the house. He opened Adeline's door for her without interrupting, and Felix got out on his side, lugging the box of flash tower locations with him.
"Thank you." She said to Eddie while sliding out of the seat. Stretching her legs, Adeline glanced back at the sleek black of the Gaunt-Schreiber and Felix as he also exited out of the car.
"Some suggested going into hiding in the Fae world. Others simply want to know what the new agreements mean and where Blackthorn has been all this time."
"Was that what was proposed, then? Hiding out with the brownies and pixies?" Felix had, of course, seen the destroyed Raleigh, looking like a shipwreck crashed up against the Bells guildhall and its hill. Seen it, and walked it. He was imagining Pharos, as he had come to understand it best through its schematics stolen from Whitehall, cruising on up to the place. He knew just what sight of the ship would do. He wished he'd gotten a close-up experience of it himself, of course, but that was different.
"More or less." Adeline replied, trying not to think about how tempting that offer felt. Trying her best to remember that romanizing the dangers of the fae world would bring her only more trouble, she pushed onward.
"Chisolm went to the Bells to retrieve the remains of the Raleigh along with some demonstration on how those at the Bells could be useful for the good of the country."
Felix winced. "It's not as if I don't understand them wanting to recruit, to bring the mysteries close so that they can understand them. It's that even if there was one officer or aide I could trust--and I can't think of one--the next one up the chain might be another Halwell."
Adeline Webber stood in the unusually sunny day surrounded by well kept flowers and an enormous home even for London standards. Here, the streets were clean. People moved freely without the worry of being run over by a street carriage, without hawkers and swindlers trying to steal a pocket watch, and without the worry of someone's dingy grey water being deposited on the street three floors up.
It was a beautiful part of town and that made it easy to forget.
But she couldn't even if she tried.
"After the Dragon," She began. "after seeing how easy it was to cover the whole thing up, if things had been different, I would have jumped at the chance to be recruited by someone like Slake. Someone who knew and understood. Someone who could give answers and direction. Sometimes I wonder where I'd be if things happened differently in those following days."
In the company of Felix Flynn, Adeline's admission was not met with condemnation, or even confusion. He did look at her with a flare of surprise in that first moment, though, and stood there with his eyebrows raised. Then he nodded and seemed to settle uneasily in with the notion. "Instead, not knowing about Slake, you tracked down the knight. Someone who knew and understood. --A solid plan, in my opinion."
Caught off guard, Adeline looked back at Felix. The surprise was there. Perhaps a counterbalance to his own.
Slowly she nodded while she settled into his statement. 'Thank you, Felix."
"Follow the known points," he said, thinking it over. His focus slid to the side while he pondered the scenario she'd pitched. The hypothetical universe in which she might have been part of the hunt for Esteban from a different angle than she had been. "Circumstances might have looked different, colored through the perspective of the people putting together those files we read."
She nodded. "Follow the known parts and mind your clearances while you do." To the second part of his statement, Adeline almost laughed. "I wonder what it might have looked like through someone like Mandy's perspective. She wasn't unaware of what was happening and yet... the events in Whitehall certainly were a shock."
"It's one thing to speculate about evil fairies," Felix muttered with a tiny little half-smile that came with a wicked knowing. "... and quite another to have your tidy day at work turn into a high-speed flight from an angry tree because of one. --though I suppose she wasn't awake for that?" He tsked. Then perked up. "Let's go inside. Wards, wards, wards."
CORONATION CEREMONY COMPLETED AFTER STRANGE HAPPENINGS IN LONDON.
“And yet you couldn’t believe a story about a dragon.” Adeline muttered beneath her breath while she weaved past the paper pusher for the Times. She was navigating through the busier part of London, the Market District, in hopes of discovering a new shortcut that would take her closer to Trevor Square. While the streets were certainly crowded, there was a cleanliness that transitioned when she passed the Modiste and the iced flavors shop. Less garbage thrown out onto the street, she suspected.
Adeline didn’t quite fit into the area as she should have. Her hair was kept in an updo that fit the latest style and fashion of London. But the navy walking dress she was wearing looked a little worn around the hem and the cuffing of her sleeves and the white flowers embroidered along the bodice were not as white as they could have been. The blue sparkles not as sparkly.
There was an alleyway, and sticking out from it without jutting into the street was the butt-end of a Gaunt-Schraber 1900 Gemini, black. Leaning against the boot, with a copy of the very issue of the Times that Adeline had spotted, was Eddie Fletcher, cap pulled low but reading at his leisure. The pedestrians didn't bat an eye at him, though they certainly eyed the alien motorcar, and some craned their necks to see who might be farther in the alley--
--which was not even a special alley.
Eddie, today, looked just as he had in Harroway, as if no part of him took easily to camouflage. He wore his shirtsleeves rolled up, a waistcoat buttoned only at the top, and respectable but unremarkable trousers and shoes. He could have been at home in any part of London that needed handymen, servants, dockworkers, runners, spotters, drivers, shopkeeps....
A glint of light bouncing off black caught Adeline's eye at just the right moment. She stopped, felt her shoulder bump into someone who was unprepared for her to stop and her shoed feet dig into the street to keep from losing her balance.
"Oye! You should-. Oh. My apologies miss." The gentleman who collided into Adeline apologized, dipping his top hat head in her direction.
"Ugh. Save your pleasantries for someone else." Adeline scoffed as she quickly weaved through the crowd - effectively leaving the confused man behind.
In a busy place such as London, it was quite easy to loose track of something even as remarkable as a Gaunt-Schraber. But Adeline hadn't gone far up the street and soon she found herself coming to an alley way where --
"Oh. Mister Fletcher." She greeted upon recognizing the Flynn's man. "What a surprise. I don't know if you remember me but..."
At the sound of his name, his paper lowered with a slight rustle and he blinked at Adeline.
I don't know if you remember me but....
That made him look past her, around her on the sidewalk, as if he thought she might be acting for someone. A consequence of working for Flynn & Flynn & Associates. Zeroing back in on her, he said, "I didn't think I looked that coal-brained. Good afternoon, Miss Webber." He had to fold the Times to free a hand to tip his hat to her. "I'd say 'small world,' but this one is feeling downright enormous to me after Harroway."
"I apologize." She said with a little smile. "There was much happening back in Harroway that I wasn't sure how memorable I may or may not have been." To his comment about London...
"I'm very happy to be home." Adeline said while stepping further into the alley and away from the noisy streets. "But I cannot help but feel the same as well. Harroway really was a different world."
They'd talked at the Dead Regiment--and before that Eddie had seen her in Kings Orchard (and then at the Garden after he'd woken up, though his memories of that was a little illogical)--but Eddie just pushed off from the back of the car to stand up properly and nodded heartily. "I thought the people there were strange. But I suppose they would be. What brings you out this way?"
A door further down the alley squeaked open. Nice door, but unoiled hinge. A conversation spilled out, low, into the alleyway, rhythm and a tone that certainly belonged to one of the brothers.
Eddie glanced over his shoulder at the sound, but did not break off from Adeline, turn away, or look like this signaled the end of their hellos.
"Wandering the city mostly." She said, her own ears twitching in response to the noise of a tinkling door bell and the familiar cadence of a Flynn brother.
"Trying to see if this path is a more effective one at reaching the Knightsbridge house. After the meeting with Father McKellen, I've become determined to find a better way. What about you and the Flynns?"
"Felix," Eddie told her, indicating behind him with his head. "He's picking up something. --And I believe he intends to go to Trevor Square when he's finished here. If that's still the plan, would you like to drive your experimental path with us?"
Adeline glanced back at the street, biting her lower lip in thought.
"Yes." She determined then. "It will get me there much quicker. Though, I should to walk the whole way home so that I will have a proper gague of time should I decide to take this route." Adeline smiled.
"Thank you, Mister Fletcher."
By the tones of the conversation up the alley, Felix Flynn was not being thrown out, or wished out. Or if he was, the aproned, heavyset man bidding him off, was doing one or both of those things extremely prettily.
Whatever the score, Felix seemed content with it, and distracted by a large bound paper box that looked like the sort of block that might contain a book manuscript or a collection of files. He wore his cap--a near match for Eddie's newsboy--but also a lightweight pale summer suit... almost. He'd stuffed the trousers down his lace-fronted riding boots, as he did at nearly any time of year. It was apparent that this did not preoccupy him nearly as much as what he held in his hands.
"Got it," he called ahead to Eddie, before he seemed to realize to whom Eddie spoke. "Ah. Intercepted. Hello."
"Intercepted?" Adeline questioned after giving him a quick once over at his attire.
He did not look as she was used to seeing him, for however little that she'd known him, in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves and lead stains on his fingertips. But the suit worked for him.
"Where-" She broke off, looking up and over at the shop in search of a sign. "Hello, Felix."
There was a quick, almost stuttering pause. "You are Felix, right?"
Eddie had said so but with twins... it never hurt to ask.
Felix blinked at her, but, being a twin, this was not a confusion that was at all from out of left field. "Good guess. Yes. What are you doing here?"
Eddie quickly answered: "She's on her way to Knightsbridge. I offered her a ride."
Felix looked at Eddie. It was not Eddie's car. But he peered at Adeline again, took in the state of her, and asked her directly: "Did you accept?"
"Surprisingly," Adeline drawled, "this time I did." Her head bobbed in a half nod with the words, though it was still tilted upwards skimming the buildings in search of a sign.
Felix nodded back to her once and seemed to switch gears to fit into that other reality through the motion of it. "No time to waste, then. You might find this interesting anyway. Eddie?"
Eddie threw Adeline a different sort of nod--a quietly conspiratorial one--and then broke off to open the side door for her while Felix went to the far side.
The clicking latch of the door was what made her level a look back to the Felix and Eddie. "Find what interesting?" She asked. Her eyes jutted a glance to the drivers side before taking in a heavy breath and sliding into the strange car.
"Thank you." She said to Eddie along the way.
She'd driven this motorcar, of course--and another one, that had belonged to Anna Gaunt. This one was less stuffed with Kings and unconscious government employees than that other one had been, and despite its front-end, knight-shaped dent was in far better shape. Sliding in the back with her while Eddie shut her door, Felix held up the heavy bound box slightly. "Before everything turned on its head and shot us to Harroway, we put out some feelers regarding the Aerofleet's flash towers. First batch of reports, right here."
Adeline had been about to make a remark about the state of the front end of the Gaunt but switched gears. It was not as efficient as what Felix was able to do, however it was manageable.
"You did?" She asked, eyes widening just a hair before looking at the box. "Have you looked at them yet?"
He shook his head, but was already flicking open a penknife to cut the string that held the boxed papers together. "First stab at it," he said, snapping the knife closed again before he glanced at her. "My hopes aren't high. We only asked where they are. We figure no foreign government would let us put up military towers in their territory, so they're in the isles here. Avery put the word out that we were interested in anything that had been erected in the countryside, but obviously country eyewitnesses aren't cartographers, so we'll have to wade through these."
"Where they are is still something more than nothing at all." Adeline replied.
It was a fight to keep from reaching for the pages. Patience was an important skill, something that she certainly lacked from time to time.
"Have you heard anything about the Golden ship?"
"Eddie's been collecting the papers for us," Felix told her, lifting the lid.
As Eddie got in in front of them, what was revealed in the box was a wide variety of sizes and kinds of paper, of handwriting and postmarks. Felix shifted the box to rest it on the seat between himself and Adeline, but held up a finger for a moment. "Take care not to get them out of order. I believe they're in the order in which they were received, which is data I want for a different project. But, please." He took his hand out of her way.
The Gaunt-Schraber rumbled to life, the entire car vibrating with the power of the engine, the thunderous low purr of it worlds different from the tapping, rattling, belching sounds of most of the other extant motorcars.
There was a minute that Adeline simply listened to the sounds of the Gaunt-Schraber. She loved this car. She loved the sounds and feel as it moved through the street - like gliding on ice. She loved driving this car.
But that love was not meant to last and soon she was reaching for the pages.
"Have you ever heard of a small press called the Watchful Citizen?"
Felix shook his head, but looked interested merely from the name. "Is it new?"
"No." She shook her head. "But it isn't very well known. I've heard a former colleague of the Times writes for them. A man named Tilmund Thackard."
"What brought it to mind?"
Eddie backed the car out and got them turned in the right direction. As they passed the front of the shop that had the alley exit, the sign read simply Copper & Tin. The front windows showed not products of those metals, but huge barrels lining the floor toward the back where the light disappeared, and more barrels hanging in rows inside, above waist-height.
As for the pages Adeline would find, they were letters and short notes from what must have been hundreds of people. The first one was a very long one that complained of the construction of a tower, and how it marred a beloved old hill, and how two men were seen working it at a time. There were many shorter ones, that described towers near towns, along named roads, and that was all. The thicker ones tended to be conversational or rueful like the first: the tower is ugly; no one asked for it; what is it for; etc. There were many requests for further information about the things. None were addressed to Avery or Felix.
"Thackard was investigating an incident regarding an airship called Edinburgh and a young girl by the name of Mary Rollins. Knowing what I do now, I believe she was one of the first - if not the first - in project OLYMPUS."
She skimmed over the pages, trying to see if any of the roads or locations were familiar.
"Thackhard quit his job at the Times and went to join Watchful Citizen. I've heard that the paper centers on exposing our government to things it does not wish to be exposed. Particularly in the exact areas we are investigating."
She paused.
"I think it’s worth trying to locate the home base of this paper and talk to the people there. They might know something that we don't."
That jogged Felix's distracted memory. Vahan's situation, and Marnie's, had been grains in the mountain of issues they'd been left buried under after Esteban's mess, but at last he nodded. "We need to keep our information gathering on this low key for now. And maybe forever. Avery put out a vague call for this, and it hasn't got his name on it. We want to know how many there are, where we can find them, how they operate, and maybe how we can make use of them ourselves. From what you showed us from the Drake's captain's log, they're how the Aerofleet gets orders to airships in the air. At the very least. Which is useful."
"Well," she said thoughtfully. "I could look into a job at the paper. I'm not exactly working for the Times anymore and with Thackard's history, perhaps it might be motivation to let me in the door. Not as a reporter though." Her brows furrowed.
"I'd need to stay out of the spotlight, so to say, and just hover nearby so I could listen to what was happening."
She was taking that deeper than he'd thought, and Felix eyed her askance for a moment. "If not as a reporter, then as what?"
"A typist, perhaps. I don't know what their scale of budget is but I know the Times has a few on hand. Either way, I can just see what it is they may need and offer to fill the position."
Seeing the way he looked at her, made her ask, "Do you think it's a bad idea?"
"I don't know enough to think anything one way or another," Felix said, blinking at her. "Do you know where this paper is printed?"
"I don't. I'm hoping maybe Avery might know someone who knows someone who knows someone that could point us in that direction."
The Gaunt-Schraber carved a path into Knightsbridge and Eddie made a left.
Felix was nodding, but that was capped with a shrug. "We do love our cousin snoops in the news business. Some of the time."
"Aye." She nodded. "I don't think it could hurt. It's just finding the papers hub could be difficult. For all we know, it's being published in the basement of someone's flat."
Cocking his head slowly, Felix said, "You sound as if you believe it's in London. --But if you like, we can get some eyes on this." He paused. "We're soon to be out of the country, so word will be directed to Kings Orchard... unless, on this topic, you want it directed to you."
"Maybe it is." She replied. "I don't know for sure. I've yet to get my hands on a paper to begin with."
She looked back at him.
"I'd forgotten that you were leaving for a holiday. When will you be going?"
"Saturday," Felix told her, and slowed down in some internal, indescribable way that nevertheless changed some hidden rhythm within the car. "Avery needs it. I think Aurelia might need it, but maybe for him. I intend to go book hunting." A smile crept in for a second, anticipatory, but Felix briskly added: "So there's time to set this up."
"I believe you." She replied, however hooked by something else he said.
"Avery usually isn't so... stretched, then?"
"Oh, he is," Felix said, and that was the first reflexive response. The next took a second longer, and a little more thought. "He likes it. I think. Only in the past, the stakes weren't so high as they have been recently. The scale smaller."
In the driver's seat, Eddie's head turned slightly, but he kept his eyes on the road.
Felix glanced at Adeline and shrugged. "He went at the larger problems the same way he goes at more personal ones. They took more out of him."
And then there was the Garden, and not one but a few moments there, but Felix wasn't sure Adeline was here for this topic, so he studied her reaction to that.
Adeline wanted to ask where they would be going. She wanted to know about the books Felix was searching for and what other interest they planned to pursue while on holiday. But those questions felt cheap and short especially in comparison to a much deeper layer of the Flynns.
"I can see how he would do that." She replied thoughtfully. "Especially if it's been effective in the past. When you say 'larger problems', I believe you mean more than what happened in London and then in Harroway? How recent have the larger problems been outweighing the smaller ones?"
"Since shortly after we met Liessel and Aurelia came back into the country." Felix had a date; the night Seth tried to murder Aurelia. Unbeknownst to them at the time, but plain as day to him in retrospect, that had marked the start of a snowballing of the stakes. Was there anything in the windows of respite that could have been done differently to offer better restoration? Felix had no idea. But going south into the waters of Marcus Antonius and Pompey the Great felt like it offered real promise.
Even if he was reluctant to offer that exact date, he knew the number of months, and so he gave Adeline that one.
"That's a short span of time." Adeline said after the date was given. "The dragon was my only major incident and it's still keeping my world off centered."
Felix thought about that, but he was keeping an eye on Adeline. That did seem to help him stay focused in more personal talk, and to not wander back to his own preoccupations.
The Gaunt hit a pothole and the backseat jumped, forcing Felix to brace a hand against the underside of the roof, but just after he asked, "Do you ever wish you could be like all those people who saw it with their own eyes and still bought into the gas main coverup?"
Adeline bounced, her own hand reaching out to the back of seat to keep from spilling pages and getting them out of order.
"No." She took a quick breath. "I feel foolish that I never saw it sooner."
"To be fair, dragons don't interrupt sermons very often these days...."
A laugh barked out of her. "That is a very good point." Letting the laugh die naturally, she glanced over at Felix. "You're going on holiday with them. Are you feeling the same stressors that Avery and Aurelia are?"
Felix shook his head, but it ended in a frown. "I don't like seeing him like this, but I'm fit."
The Gaunt-Schraber slowed down and stopped. Out either window were tall stone walls; this street cut between tall properties before widening into Trevor Square, but Eddie was stuck behind a coach, and there were signs of a jam ahead of them, cause unknown.
Glancing forward, but focused in the back seat, Felix said, "I want to ask how you're doing after Harroway, and after tea with Father McKellen, but I give up on being smooth about it. So tell me."
She thought about an acceptable front. She thought about a convincing lie. But Adeline could see the state of her clothes and she knew her financial situation was not as secretive as she hoped it would remain.
Settling with, "I'm managing." seemed the best approach for now. "There are loose ends that I desperately need to tie up. My family is growing restless and are ready to return to what's left of their lives. They left willingly only because they understood the gravity of the situation however... time and distance does make a threat feel less threatened."
Felix nodded, but seemed stuck on those points for the moment. Or he was waiting to see if she added anything. Both options, in him just now, looked identical.
Felix's silence hung for a moment as Adeline waited for a reply. When it felt as though none was starting to come, she shifted and continued on.
"Other than that, I think things are well. The world looks different from what I used to know it as." She smiled a little ruefully. "Sometimes I think I should be walking around with the lenses that I've seen you and Avery wear as if it will expose more hidden truths."
"We should probably put together a kit for you, too," Felix said, shifting slightly to dig into his jacket. He pulled out his notepad and flicked it open with his thumb and a soft rattle of brittle paper.
"Those are the bags that Aurelia and Liessel wear." Adeline quickly asked, feeling a surge of excitement in getting one of her own. "What all is in them?"
"They--" Where had that word come from? "Aurelia adds elements of her own, but what we gave them was a version of what we carry. Salt, herbs--not always the same for every job, holy water, a knife, mirror, a magnifying lens, ink...." There was only one reason why Felix Flynn hesitated over this answer, and that was that he always tailored the contents of his own kit to suit the task before him when he could, and right now, in the back of the motorcar with Adeline Webber, he was thinking ahead to what a dragon-hunted, fae-brushed reporter might find handy. "I might give you gaming stones, and stock you up on iron shavings like those you put together before...."
She nodded along, thinking of what she knew now versus what might be handy. "My grandmother always said to carry rosemary. A small jar of that could come in handy, I think."
"Aye. --The thing about such herbs in small amounts is that they have to be deployed cleverly, precisely. I can loan you our Hiram, but the thing about books like that is that they cast everything as absolute and universal. Rosemary is for THIS; willow bark will deter THAT-- Not bad for the basics, but there are reasons why the magical uses for our herbs don't make them essential in places such as, for example, Malaysia, or Kenya, and it's not always a matter of geography."
"Does belief play into the usage of the herbs - and maybe even other things. I've always thought that giving power to a name is what makes the name great. Could the same logic be applied to something like a salt circle or a sprinkle of rosemary over the threshold of a door?"
Brow pinching, Felix opened his mouth.
"I'll see what the delay is," Eddie said, popping his door and getting out to stroll up the clogged lane.
When his door was open, fresh summer air blew in, and sound with it, all the subdued sounds of this little part of London, and when the door closed they were sealed in again, and in their own sound bubble. However, that tiny moment reminded Felix that there was an outside world, and he rolled down his window a little by the crank while he said, "It sounds like you said two different things there. Yes, belief plays into the use of herbs and any element, but in my opinion it is never a fully deterministic role. When we told you that, in the end, it nearly did not matter what elements were in use, the point was to show that it can be a highly flexible array of tools. What I don't think I'm understanding here and now is your example of the name. Explain that to me."
Her brows furrowed a little as she tried to think through her own understanding.
"I think what I meant to say was that giving a significance to something alone could be enough to make that object significant. Regarding magic, I believe something is powerful and therefore it becomes it. So, for instance, I believe that sprinkling rosemary over the threshold of my door protects my home from faeries entering so therefore they cannot enter."
"Ah." Felix squinted a little, but nodded slowly. "So yes, but no. The yes is that we are in agreement that belief is powerful--though we might need to have a discussion about why it makes any difference at all, because that's the important part, that why. The no is that... to take your example... If you woke up one morning, picked up a carrot, and believed with all your might that the carrot would ward off a dragon, you might be disappointed to find that the dragon might just consider it to go well with you as a side dish."
"So there's more to it than just belief - something deeper that is specific to the item itself?"
"Yes," Felix told her. "But to get to your example--the rosemary--that's not just your belief, is it?"
"No. It was something my grandmother always said." She confirmed.
"And where did she get it?" Felix sat back a little.
"She said her grandmother passed that down to her when she was my age."
"And probably, we're not just talking about one lengthening thread of belief, but a fabric, with lateral ties, and, somewhere in the past, a dense weave of people participating in it. So when you utilize it, or when I do, we're taking for our use something enormous, even ancient, woven by everyone who did the same thing previously." He thought about it for a second. "The Kingsboon was described similarly. Rolling forward with the gravity of ages."
"So it's more than just the belief in one but the belief in all over a span of time." Adeline surmised. "Or something like that."
Felix's head spun with all the exceptions he could think of, but survival instinct had him nodding a tiny bit anyway. "Yes. Or anyone would do it. --Maybe not adults. But children play games all the time, and their belief could be said to be total when they're immersed in play--don't you think? And they believe things they're told. Even by bratty older kids. 'Hold this feather and you can jump off a wall and fly.' 'Spin three times and you'll get your wish.' Only those things either don't happen, don't happen with a proveable line of cause and effect, or they only work in a single person's disengaged reality, where it effects nothing and no one else."
"I didn't consider that." She said thoughtfully. After a breath, Adeline laughed a little and shook her head. "Every time I think I get a grasp on what I know, I learn something new that makes me think of it from a different perspective."
Felix looked out the windshield of the car and didn't see Eddie, but Adeline had his attention still. "When you consider magic," he said, "you need to remember that it does not work all the time, and ask why that is. Don't let it deter you, because there are principles you can learn, but don't stop asking that. Does it not work... because it's not natural? Does it not work... because something was done incorrectly, and it requires the perfect key to turn the lock of it? Does it not work... because some force does not wish for it to? Because I don't need to tell you: there is reason for some skepticism if a random person tells you the powder they're selling will make you successful. Or if you're old, younger. Or if you're blind, sighted... and so on."
"You can't be much older than me." Adeline's head shook even as the knowledge was stores away.
"How long have you and Avery studied?"
Felix remembered the last time he was around when this question was asked, and decided to go Avery's route. "Six and a half years."
"Six and a half years." She slumped back into the seat of the Gaunt. "I've got a long way to go."
Her eyes flickered out the window before turning her head in Felix's direction.
"This car is like nothing I've ever seen before. It's magnificent. How did it come to be?"
He blinked at the topic switch. "You mean... where does my father have these made?"
Eddie came into view from up the street, and stopped to exchange a word with the coachman ahead of them.
"There's more of them!" She exclaimed. Quickly recovering, Adeline shook her head.
"No. I mean - who designed it?"
"There are a few--" She went on, so Felix cut off his half-wry response to say, "A man named Deiderich Schraber and a team of designers."
"Ah." Adeline nodded a little. "I thought there were only the two. Yours and the one I stole from Anna Gaunt. I wonder what happened to that one." She said as an afterthought.
"I've never seen anything like it before."
"When we get back, I'm going to take off that hood and customize the engine," Felix said, looking down at the box of notes about flash towers and how they marred the country atmosphere, and sliding the lid back on. "So soon you won't have seen anything like this, again."
Eddie got back in just as the coach ahead of them started rolling at last. "Collision up there--no one hurt. We're clear now." He started the Gaunt-Schraber, which eagerly lept to life once more.
She watched him slide the lid back onto the box. Shifting in her seat as the Gaunt began to purr again, Adeline looked at the small stack of papers still in her hand.
"I've gone and derailed the whole start of this conversation, haven't I?"
Felix smiled slightly. "I'd have just spent the drive reading notes otherwise. --Why are you going to Knightsbridge, anyway?"
"I thought it would be good to pay a visit. I haven't been around much since we've returned. I went to the Bells the day we got back, and I wanted to share some updates of when we were gone." She replied.
"I took this route because I wanted to see if it was more effective than my normal one. After the tea with Father McKellen... well..." Her small smile was a little sheepish
"We did--" Felix teetered on the cliff. Decided to just jump. "We did catch on to a certain--frequency--of hostility, at tea."
"I encountered something similar. Did they tell you of the, uh, proposal that was brought to them?"
"I meant with Liessel, but I take it you don't...." Felix was frowning again, but Eddie was right then pulling up in front of Aurelia's house.
"Oh! For some reason I thought you meant the Bells." Adeline shook her head. "My apologies."
As for Liessel...
"We had a conversation that I believe she did not take kindly too - the very same thing we continue having issue with. I can spare you the details if you want."
Felix would have preferred if he'd realized enough to have meant the Bells. Too late now. --Or not. Carefully, he said, "I'll consider myself spared. What is the proposal in question?"
"Our old friend Major Chisolm, now Captain, arrived at the Bells on a golden airship." Adeline explained. "The move was made in a show of power against the Bells - at least that's how those at the Table read it."
At the name Chisolm, Felix frowned and broke in with, "The one Aurelia drugged?"
There wasn't really a need for acknowledgement; Felix's memory was working to dredge up the details of a segment of that trying day that he had not personally witnessed, but there had been enough chewing on the details afterward that he was not coming in empty-handed. "Wait. This happened while you were visiting?"
"Yes. It seems he received a promotion for sleeping so well." Adeline said in response to the first comment. For the second...
"No. I heard about it when I went to the Bells the day we returned home. There was a whole table of faerie and human alike debating on what they should do."
Felix nodded his apology for diverting her story. Eddie got out again. They were at the house. He opened Adeline's door for her without interrupting, and Felix got out on his side, lugging the box of flash tower locations with him.
"Thank you." She said to Eddie while sliding out of the seat. Stretching her legs, Adeline glanced back at the sleek black of the Gaunt-Schreiber and Felix as he also exited out of the car.
"Some suggested going into hiding in the Fae world. Others simply want to know what the new agreements mean and where Blackthorn has been all this time."
"Was that what was proposed, then? Hiding out with the brownies and pixies?" Felix had, of course, seen the destroyed Raleigh, looking like a shipwreck crashed up against the Bells guildhall and its hill. Seen it, and walked it. He was imagining Pharos, as he had come to understand it best through its schematics stolen from Whitehall, cruising on up to the place. He knew just what sight of the ship would do. He wished he'd gotten a close-up experience of it himself, of course, but that was different.
"More or less." Adeline replied, trying not to think about how tempting that offer felt. Trying her best to remember that romanizing the dangers of the fae world would bring her only more trouble, she pushed onward.
"Chisolm went to the Bells to retrieve the remains of the Raleigh along with some demonstration on how those at the Bells could be useful for the good of the country."
Felix winced. "It's not as if I don't understand them wanting to recruit, to bring the mysteries close so that they can understand them. It's that even if there was one officer or aide I could trust--and I can't think of one--the next one up the chain might be another Halwell."
Adeline Webber stood in the unusually sunny day surrounded by well kept flowers and an enormous home even for London standards. Here, the streets were clean. People moved freely without the worry of being run over by a street carriage, without hawkers and swindlers trying to steal a pocket watch, and without the worry of someone's dingy grey water being deposited on the street three floors up.
It was a beautiful part of town and that made it easy to forget.
But she couldn't even if she tried.
"After the Dragon," She began. "after seeing how easy it was to cover the whole thing up, if things had been different, I would have jumped at the chance to be recruited by someone like Slake. Someone who knew and understood. Someone who could give answers and direction. Sometimes I wonder where I'd be if things happened differently in those following days."
In the company of Felix Flynn, Adeline's admission was not met with condemnation, or even confusion. He did look at her with a flare of surprise in that first moment, though, and stood there with his eyebrows raised. Then he nodded and seemed to settle uneasily in with the notion. "Instead, not knowing about Slake, you tracked down the knight. Someone who knew and understood. --A solid plan, in my opinion."
Caught off guard, Adeline looked back at Felix. The surprise was there. Perhaps a counterbalance to his own.
Slowly she nodded while she settled into his statement. 'Thank you, Felix."
"Follow the known points," he said, thinking it over. His focus slid to the side while he pondered the scenario she'd pitched. The hypothetical universe in which she might have been part of the hunt for Esteban from a different angle than she had been. "Circumstances might have looked different, colored through the perspective of the people putting together those files we read."
She nodded. "Follow the known parts and mind your clearances while you do." To the second part of his statement, Adeline almost laughed. "I wonder what it might have looked like through someone like Mandy's perspective. She wasn't unaware of what was happening and yet... the events in Whitehall certainly were a shock."
"It's one thing to speculate about evil fairies," Felix muttered with a tiny little half-smile that came with a wicked knowing. "... and quite another to have your tidy day at work turn into a high-speed flight from an angry tree because of one. --though I suppose she wasn't awake for that?" He tsked. Then perked up. "Let's go inside. Wards, wards, wards."