(Thank you to
Aminta Defender,
Sunny,
MetalDragon,
Adronio,
Larc,
Rakkis157,
Mitch H., and Aemon for their editing, beta-reading, and suggestions.)
MAY 10, 2016 ATB
STUDENT COUNCIL CLUBHOUSE, ASHFORD ACADEMY, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
2300
"Hello, Nunnally," the warm presence she knew to be her brother said, lowering himself into the chair beside her bed, which creaked under the familiar weight, just as it had for years now. "I apologize for keeping you up so late."
"I expected you back an hour ago at the latest, Brother," said Nunnally Lamperouge, once Nunnally vi Britannia, daughter of Marianne the Flash and the man who had remade Britannia in his own image, and now nothing, clasping her big brother's offered hand. "I was beginning to worry."
It was cool and dry, that hand, with skin that had roughened ever so slightly over the last few weeks. Long-fingered and as clever as the mind of its master, the hand turned over in hers to wrap its fingers around her own thin digits.
His welcoming squeeze was soft, gentle; she returned the squeeze with all of her strength, built up on the rare occasions she practiced with the manual wheelchair reserved for emergencies. Despite mustering up every scrap of pressure that she could, Nunnally could barely equal her famously unathletic brother's grip strength.
Weak.
"I'm sorry," Brother repeated, and Nunnally knew that he was sorry, both by the way the air currents shifted as he ducked his head slightly and by the way his voice trailed off into the breathy sigh that only emerged when he apologized sincerely. She believed him; he was always sorry when he left her behind. At least, once he realized that he had left her behind.
Not that it ever stopped him.
Nothing ever stopped him. Unlike her.
Broken.
"I forgive you," she said, just as she always did. What other choice did she have? "Sayoko said that she would save some dinner for you. You can make up for keeping me from my beauty sleep by eating it; no skipping meals, Lelouch! Sayoko and Milly say you're not eating enough and are getting too thin."
Orienting her face toward the direction of his voice, Nunnally frowned ferociously and, when he chuckled, tried to smile at his amusement.
Pathetic.
"Why were you out so late?" she asked, channeling into that question some of the ever-present frustration that always threatened to swallow her whole. "It's one thing for you to spend your Fridays and weekends gambling, Lelouch, but this is a school night!"
"I had special dispensation from the highest of authorities," Brother said, and Nunnally could hear in his voice the smile she hadn't seen in years. "After all, Madame President herself accompanied me, so surely I could do no wrong."
"You went out with Milly?" Curiosity flooded Nunnally, along with a hunger to hear more. In her bubble of carefully guarded peace, invigorating stimulation was a rarity. "I hope you were every inch the gentleman, Brother."
"Of course I was!" Brother replied, before adding a moment later, "after all, I was out taking in a trivia night with my fiance on my arm; how could I be on anything but my best behavior?"
Lost time. Losing time. A central theme of the recurring nightmare that had plagued Nunnally for years. In her dream, she woke up old and gray in her bed, still blind, still broken. Sometimes her brother was still there, sitting by her side, his hand in hers, telling her sweet lies as he had when they were children. Sometimes he was still there, still holding her hand, but his flesh was cold and clammy, and she was too frail to push his corpse away as it collapsed forwards onto her, pinning her against the bed that had been her prison for years.
Worst of all were the dreams when she woke in darkness, old and gray, and found that her beloved brother wasn't there. When she dreamed that he had left her long ago, as he should have done long ago, to live his own life. To find a woman to love and another few to bear his children, just like their father had done, and had left her behind like a forgotten childhood toy. A ragdoll, button eyes gone and legs shredded, left to gather dust.
Nunnally had never told her brother about those dreams, first because she feared putting the idea in his head, then because she realized that she only wanted to tell him about her fears because it would bind him to her ever tighter.
The fact that she knew as much made the temptation all the sweeter, but Nunnally loved her brother. She would never do anything to hurt him, most especially not anything that would convince him to throw away his whole life just to burden himself with her pathetic simulacrum of living.
Still, it was easy to make a commitment to suffer in silence when Nunnally knew,
knew with a childlike certainty that had long since outlived her childhood, that her brother was still there, would always still be there. Actually hearing him refer to another woman, a woman that he would always be there for, sent ice water racing through her veins.
"I…" She swallowed her panic and ignored the cold dread that gripped her heart. "I didn't know you had proposed at last, Brother! Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials!"
"Thank you, dear sister," Brother replied jovially, and Nunnally relaxed as she heard the joke in his voice. "Honestly," he sighed, "remind me to never again grant Milly free reign to invent her backstory. And no, you don't need to worry about her virtue, or mine; we found God, you see."
"What?" Nunnally couldn't even muster a witty response to that apparent non sequitur; her heart was still beating rabbit-quick after the fright Brother had inadvertently tossed her way. "I am sorry, Brother, could you kindly elaborate?"
"Well, perhaps not God," her brother conceded, "but perhaps the next best thing. It started with a strange piece of street art I saw a few days back, you see…"
So Nunnally lay in silence, a captive audience in her own bed. Though she would have happily listened to her brother tell stories of a world she could barely remember seeing all the same, had she any choice in the matter. She cooed appreciatively in all the right spots and gasped appropriately when he revealed the identity of the strange group of heretics.
Providing an attentive and appreciative audience was the least she could do for her brother, the only thanks she could afford to give him for allowing her to vicariously experience a side of the world her infirmities and his love would never allow her to see through his stories.
It's so unfair, an ungrateful, resentful part of her moaned, and Nunnally couldn't help but agree.
All Brother has to do is walk down an alleyway to find a mysterious society of hidden heretics! All he has to do is listen to an old man ramble and murmur a few platitudes to become a leader in their midst! I listen all the time and murmur platitudes, but nobody gives me anything but condescending headpats!
If I had his luck, his life… I would put it to far better use than Brother ever could… That thought Nunnally pushed back into the dark, along with all of the other evil, useless thoughts. It was crowded, in that darkness, but there would be time enough in the long hours of the night for those shameful and shamefully satisfying thoughts. For now, her brother wanted his sweet Nunnally, all innocent and pure and forgiving.
If he knew the least part of what I thought to myself, Brother would never hold my hand again.
Speaking of Brother, he had fallen silent, and Nunnally realized he was waiting for her to say something.
"Well, Brother," she said, rewinding through the last moments of half-heard story as she beamed brilliantly at the place she knew her brother filled in the endless dark, "it truly is a treat to hear that you have found some new friends. Good for you!"
"They aren't friends, Nunnally!" Brother protested, "they're a means to an end!"
Which is almost certainly how my own friends see me, Nunnally thought. It was just a suspicion, one she had pointedly chosen not to confirm by never taking their hands in hers, but it was difficult to see any other reason for their interest in her.
Perhaps they wish to get closer to Brother, perhaps they are simply displaying a most un-Britannian pity for a cripple. Either way, they serve their purpose well enough, I suppose, by providing me with some company other than Sayoko while Brother is occupied… So what are friends, Brother, if not a means to an end?
She patted his hand in teasing congratulations, enjoying his spluttering denials as she felt the truth behind his words through his grip. He was always so well-spoken around others; it was nice to know that he still allowed himself sufficient vulnerability around her to react like a child. It was even nicer to know that, try as he might, Brother still had far too much empathy for others.
After all, if he had already bonded so quickly with these True Anglicans, it surely meant that his bond with her was in no danger of fraying.
Unless he decides to invest his time in those with actual value, Nunnally worried.
He still has time for me, even with his friends on the Student Council, but Rivalz and Shirley never afforded much use for a prince, even a prince pretending to be a student. If he actually bonds with people willing to follow him, willing to help him, willing to kill for him… Will he still have time to hold my hand?
"You are correct, Brother," the words came blurting out, almost before Nunnally could think them. "They are not your friends. You are wise to keep that in mind."
"Nunnally?" His grip on her hand tightened, painful for a moment before Brother remembered her frailty and regained control of himself with an apologetic murmur. The surprise lingered in his voice as he continued, though. "I… You are correct, of course, but… I am surprised to hear you agree with me…? I mean," he forced a chuckle and Nunnally read the uneasy truth behind the joviality, "I had honestly expected you to scold me for being too risky or too callous toward them…"
Weak.
"Do you want me to, Brother?" Nunnally asked, hating her useless eyes again as she always did when she wondered what expression her brother's face bore while he measured her words. "I will happily chide you for taking the risk of fraternizing with proscribed heretics, should you wish, but…" she sighed, knowing that the plaintive sound would tug on her brother's heartstrings and soften his discomfort, and hating herself for knowing as much and doing so anyway, "I know you, Brother. You thrive on risks. Telling you to stay safe is foolishness…"
"Nunnally…"
The guilt in his voice was familiar. To Nunnally, it always sounded like old wood, the surfaces worn down and polished over the years for all the use it had borne. She had used that guilt time and time again, sometimes for small things and sometimes for important matters and sometimes just to prove to herself that she could make a difference, if only by the proxy of altering her brother's actions.
Those last occasions made her feel guilty as well, although not guilty enough to stop laying hands on that familiar old lever.
"I know you, Brother," Nunnally continued, lowering her already damnably frail voice to a coo, hearing the rustle as Brother stooped to get closer. "You are reckless and relentless, but you are also caring. I know that you like to think of yourself as aloof and cool as you pretend to be at school, but I also know how easily the distance you place between yourself and others shrinks when you allow them to get close. Do not allow yourself to get too close to these True Anglicans, Brother."
Don't leave me behind, was the first of her unspoken messages;
use them, don't allow yourself to be used by them was the second.
Honestly, she thought, concealing her scowl at the mingled confusion and compassion she felt in his hand,
Brother is far too soft for this, far too weak… If only… If only I had his eyes, his legs, his luck…
How fortunate that I already have a hand upon his heart.
"Use them, Brother," Nunnally encouraged, levering herself up as best she could in her bed, her shoulders barely lifting from the sheets. "Remember your goals, Brother, and remember yourself."
And remember me when you come into your kingdom, Brother. Remember me when you avenge Mother and claim your birthright. Please… just remember me.
JULY 5, 2016 ATB
ALBERT'S TAPHOUSE, KITA WARD, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
1830
Above the empty cellar-turned-secret sanctuary, the celebration raged on in the streets and in the taphouse as it had for hours now, ever since the news had broken. Ever since the Viceregal-Governor had declared, in a very special broadcast, a half-day general holiday to mark the occasion.
The Yokohama Sniper was dead, her reign of terror brought to a sudden and cinematic end.
As good of a reason to celebrate as any, Lelouch reflected as he grabbed a pair of kneeling pillows from the communal pile, one for himself and one for Milly.
Besides, a holiday is a holiday. To bastardize a line, "the celebration will feed itself".
Smirking quietly at the irreverent thought, Lelouch turned back to the knot of True Anglicans, milling around as they awaited Father Timothy's arrival.
Although, perhaps "knot" no longer does the congregation justice…
Their numbers had expanded over the two months Lelouch had spent in the company of the underground church, in no small part due to his efforts and Milly's. The first clandestine service he had attended had a mere twenty-seven ragged souls, the majority of them elderly, in attendance. Twenty-nine, with the addition of Father Timothy and himself. Now, more than twice that number crowded the basement, several still in uniform and others in the garb of professional tradesmen or well-heeled clerks.
We've doubled our numbers, Lelouch thought with justifiable satisfaction,
and not just at this congregation either.
Working his way back through the crowd to the "front" oriented toward the old church banner, where he had left Milly, Lelouch shook hands and exchanged nods and smiles of recognition with familiar faces. Havelock was there, the excitable poet from that long-ago trivia night, along with Hilda and her husband Charles, who stood tall and proud with a dogeared copy of the Book of Common Prayer in his hands. Closer to the front stood Color Sergeant Coffin, now a full month distant from the bottle and already looking years younger for it.
Would that they were all so willing to follow my suggestions… Lelouch hid a sigh behind a smile as he shook another hand.
There's power in the scraps of authority I've acquired, but a pulpit it is not.
Waiting for him in the very first "row" of imaginary pews was Milly, fully costumed in the long skirt and high neckline preferred by "Milly Ashland". She had made a concession to the heat of the season, and perhaps to her own particular tastes; gone was the shawl she had previously worn draped about her shoulders, instead her sleeves had been rolled up so high past her elbows that her blouse almost resembled a casual shirt, save for the garment's cut.
The seemingly effortless charm that Lelouch knew she assembled each morning and wore like a mantle still followed her though, modest and understated clothes be damned. She still stood out in the congregation like gold among straw.
Of course, Lelouch thought with a slightly guilty pang,
Nunnally would stand out even more.
Not that his darling sister was content to remain on the sidelines; not in the slightest. After Lelouch had brought Nunnally in on his latest plan two months ago, she had taken to her advisory role like a fish to water. Each time he returned from some quiet trip to the fringes of the Settlement or slipped back into the quiet apartment over the Clubhouse after meeting with Father Timothy for private lessons on the True Anglican creed, Nunnally had been up and waiting for him to return, eager to go over his latest experiences and mine for ideas or angles.
Nunnally's incredible enthusiasm and willingness to help him brainstorm new recruitment schemes as well as possible solutions to various issues bedeviling existing members had been a happy surprise. Milly's understandable reserve regarding his involvement in a church of hidden heretics had been much less surprising, though entirely understandable.
At least, Milly had been reserved toward the idea of joining a heretical fringe movement initially. When she learned that Charles, Hilda, and Havelock, their trivia playing partners, were also members of the church, she warmed up to the idea, presumably on the basis that the former two were sensible enough to not get involved in anything too crazy.
And both have been instrumental in helping me become instrumental to Father Timothy and his congregation, Lelouch thought, returning Milly's smile.
Not that they aren't essential too. Honestly, considering how much the congregation adores the first of my confederates, it is almost a pity that they will likely never learn about the second.
"Thanks~" the incognito heiress chirped as he handed over a cushion, casting a critical eye over the foam bulging through the tattered seams. "Man, I really should bring my sewing kit one of these days…"
"You can sew?" Lelouch asked, curious despite himself. "I don't think I've ever seen you with a needle and thread."
"Duh, Brother Alexander." The dramatic eye roll following that exasperated reply was entirely Milly Ashford, but thankfully sass was part of her disguise's persona as well; Lelouch doubted even Milly's considerable talents as an actress could have fully concealed that. "Who do you think makes all those costumes you love
ever so much?"
Before Lelouch could rebut and clarify his opinion on the costumes his friend had foisted on him in the past, he noticed the poorly concealed stares from the other church members standing around. Several grannies looked a hairsbreadth from laughing at his expense, while at least two of the new soldier converts looked like they were busy imagining what costumes he had "loved" on Milly.
As always, there seemed like no point in protesting. Judging by the twinkle in Milly's eyes, it would only make the teasing worse.
"Well," he lamely replied instead, beating an inelegant retreat instead of fighting a losing battle, "I'll remind you next time, Sister Jane."
Before "Sister Jane" could respond, Lelouch had turned back to make his way back through the crowd again, this time unencumbered by pillows and with his hat quite literally in his hands. One hand held the second-hand bowler out, upturned and pointedly empty, while the other remained free to shake hands and slap backs.
A few crumpled banknotes disappeared into the faded lining as "Brother Alexander" made his way down the first line of parishioners, old ladies and gentlemen reaching into handbags and wallets to find what they could give up. The next row, day laborers mixed with skilled tradesmen, yielded a hail of pound coins and, from one man in the starched-collar uniform of an accountant, a brown envelope firmly taped shut.
"Thank you, Brother Jackson," Lelouch murmured to the last man, appropriately discreet. "Your contributions are appreciated. How's Teresa?"
"Doing well, Brother Alexander," replied the first-generation Britannian, the son of a Seven Honorary and a Britannian mother. He had been one of Lelouch's first recruits. Lelouch had managed to snag his loyalty with Milly's connections, putting him in contact with a physician willing to provide discreet surgical corrections to certain clientele. The man's daughter had the misfortune to be born with a facial deformity that would have otherwise forever marked her as inferior in Britannian society, but with the right funds and the right friends, it was an issue of the past. "The bandages will be coming off next week. Thank you again for-"
"No need for that, Brother," Lelouch smoothly interrupted, patting the man's arm. "Just remember who your Brothers and Sisters are when the time comes."
He continued on like that, shuttling through the congregation with a word here, a smile there, the bowler getting progressively heavier in his hand. Eventually, Lelouch turned back around and returned back to the first "row", where Milly was holding court. As she saw him approach, she waved a dismissal and the two young soldiers who'd been hanging off her every word stepped back.
Nodding a greeting, Lelouch retook his place next to her, discreetly nudging the hat full of donations out in front of his pillow so he wouldn't accidentally upset the collection when it came time to pray. As he stood up, a ripple passed through the crowd as conversations fell silent and people fell into their ordered rows, leaving a neat aisle from the entrance to the basement on up to the front of the hidden church.
Up the cleared aisle, an old man limped; Father Timothy had arrived at last. Perhaps fittingly, the priest who had summoned his congregation for this impromptu and unscheduled meeting was the last to arrive. He had forsaken his vestments, Lelouch noticed, save for the faded stole hanging from his shoulders.
Some might have chalked that up to this being a Tuesday and thus not the designated meeting time for the weekly mass. Better informed about Old Tim's flagging health, Lelouch knew that the old man could no longer don the Roman collar that was the sign of his office; he no longer had the strength to breathe with even the collar's mild constriction banded about his neck.
Pneumonic or not, Father Timothy still had the necessary strength to raise his voice in greeting as he turned to face his congregation from below the banner that had once decorated his pulpit. "The Lord be with you!"
"And also with you," the congregation replied in a dull rumble, the old words falling neatly into place, following tracks worn smooth with repetition.
"Let us give thanks to the Lord our God," Father Timothy intoned, raising a trembling hand high.
"It is right to give him thanks and praise," agreed the congregation, speaking with one voice.
"Ah, but what shall we thank Him for this day?" The question, a break from the typical ritual call and response that initiated the mass, seemed to throw the congregation into a moment of confusion, swiftly ended by Father Timothy answering his own question. "I myself shall thank Him for bringing all of us together today. But for us all? Why, let us give thanks that He has seen fit to bring a final end to the reign of terror perpetrated by the Yokohama Sniper! Let us give thanks, brothers and sisters, for His grace!"
"Thanks be to you, Lord Christ," came the fervent response from every other tongue present, Lelouch's included.
Although the thanks would probably be best directed to the IBI, he considered,
not that they would be happy to accept such remarks from the likes of us.
"But," Father Timothy's hands fell to his side, "while it is meet and right to thank the Lord for His mercy in ridding us of the vile Eleven scourge, it is equally proper to take the opportunity to mourn for our fallen."
As one, the congregation bowed their heads, the motion smoothly automatic even among the new converts. While the dogma of the state church had changed, the trappings of the rituals had remained all but the same.
Which, Lelouch thought as he angled his face toward the floor,
provides a convenient point of familiarity for newcomers to cling onto even as the substance shifts below their feet.
"While the Sniper is felled, the shadow cast by her acts lingers on in absent faces and lives cut short."
Father Timothy paused to cough, the wet hacking forcing its way out of his chest and into the crook of his elbow. But as the coughing fit passed, he raised his hands anew.
"Blood cannot wipe away blood," he intoned, "nor can death wipe away death. We cannot bring back our lost, for that is solely the Lord's domain, instead we must wait until our judgment day to see them again. And so, we mourn the loss of thirty four Britannians, avenged yet still lost to us nonetheless."
"Sixty four," a voice from the congregation interrupted. "Not to contradict you, Father, but we lost sixty four of our own."
That voice… Lelouch turned toward the source of the interruption, eyes widening with surprise.
Sergeant Coffin?
And it was Sergeant Coffin whom all in attendance now stared, the burly noncom standing tall and meeting the weight of their gazes squarely, showing no sign of backing down.
This is… unexpected. The man's initial wave of almost drunken zealotry had cooled and hardened into a firm loyalty that had already served Lelouch in good stead as he expanded his efforts to find converts among the garrison forces, but Coffin only rarely ventured an independent opinion, and generally only when directly asked.
For him to interrupt the service like this…
"Forgive me," Father Timothy replied, peering through tired eyes at the soldier, "but all of the reports I have seen placed the final death toll at thirty four. Where are you getting your number from, Brother Roger?"
"Yessah," confirmed Sergeant Coffin, bobbing his head in a brief nod. "That is what all of the talking heads are saying. But what about the Honorary Citizens, eh? That bitch nailed thirty of them; are we not going to remember them as well?"
"Ah yes," Father Timothy replied, his lip wrinkling in clear distaste. "The… Honoraries." The disdain in the old priest's voice was almost palpable.
"The Honoraries, ayup," replied Coffin, his Mainer accent thickening as he glared back at the cleric, seeming not to notice the silent pressure for him to fall back into line. "They're just as much of us as the poor dead Britannians, aren't they now? They took up the Oath, didn't they? Swore to serve in return for citizenship, didn't they? And they were Britannian enough to put a bullet through the Sniper's lousy head, weren't they?"
That last point sent a ripple of murmuring through the crowd. The statement put out by the Bureau of Investigation informing the public of the Sniper's death had been quite clear in the composition of the unit that had hunted her down. Honorary constables had killed the Yokohama Sniper, not Britannian regulars.
Suzaku… It was vanishingly unlikely that his old friend had been involved in the IBI's operation; as far as Lelouch knew, Corporal Kururugi was still serving with the 32nd Honorary Legion.
The same formation that Sergeant Coffin serves in…
Lelouch hadn't pursued that connection, despite personal desire. There was, after all, no reason for either "Leland Gelt" or "Brother Alexander" to have any interest in a random Honorary noncom; if Suzaku hadn't brought himself to Sergeant Coffin's attention on his own, then Lelouch had no intention of drawing unwanted attention to his friend.
But for Coffin to feel sufficiently attached to his men that he speaks up on the behalf of their comrades in arms… The knot in Lelouch's chest loosened slightly.
"Be that as it may," Father Timothy replied, just as hard-headed as Sergeant Coffin, "they are not of us, Brother Roger. They swore their Oaths, yes, but they swore them to a usurper emperor and his handmaiden of a church! And what oaths can be held as consecrated and true when sworn by false names and in the honor of perversion? Any oath sworn to Charles, the Man of Blood, cannot be binding, any more than an oath sworn to a foreigner could be. They are not of us."
"But how were they to know as much when they took up the Oath?" Lelouch stepped out from his row and into the cleared "aisle" running between the two blocks of standing worshippers.
Far from coincidentally, his chosen place to stand placed him squarely between Father Timothy and Sergeant Coffin. He looked from one to the other as he extended an arm toward each.
"How were they to know," he repeated, looking at Coffin and the small sea of faces around him, "when they swore their Oath that the ruler they swore to was an evil, twisted mockery of all that is good and right about Britannia? How were they to know that the priest who anointed him as Emperor of Britannia and Head of its Church was a heretic determined to pervert the holy ways with corrupt doctrine?
"How were they to know," Lelouch continued, turning to face Father Timothy, allowing his arms to fall to his sides as he firmly turned his back toward Sergeant Coffin, "when there were none to teach them the correct doctrine, to show them the true way forward? Is ignorance a sin, even in light of such service as killing a foul wolf who preyed upon the innocent fold of our misguided brothers and sisters?"
Milly's gaze was like a brand on his cheek, burning a hole through his face with its intense focus. He kept his eyes focused on Father Timothy, ignoring her stare and the consideration and worry he knew he would see if he turned to meet it. Alone among those present, she knew about Suzaku, knew about his friend in the service, who had sworn his Oath to That Man, and had turned his back on Lelouch and on Japan in the process.
Lelouch fought off the urge to cringe in embarrassment. He'd done it again, dammit! He had seen a golden opportunity and had impulsively seized it, just as he had sworn to himself he would not do. Yes, Milly knew of his motives for seeking reconciliation with the Honorary Britannians; she, alone among those in attendance, also knew his real identity, knew the name nested below Brother Alexander, Leland Gelt, and Lelouch Lamperouge. She certainly knew the kind of risk he was running by publicly drawing attention to himself like this, and by proxy the risk he was posing to her and her family.
I'm sorry, Milly… But I must help Suzaku, and if this Church can pose a safe haven for him… Perhaps I can smuggle him out of the Legion before the worst comes to pass.
So it was with mixed feelings that Lelouch raised his hands again, imploring Father Timothy to hear the sensibility of his words and their weight on his tongue. "I say that, so long as they swore loyalty to Britannia in their hearts, then surely God will know his own! For better or for worse, he will surely acknowledge their pledge and know them by the works of their hands to be true servants of Britannia!"
An unwanted image of Corporal Kururugi glaring at a line of hungry Honoraries queueing up for food served by Japanese hands forced itself into Lelouch's mind.
A true servant of Britannia indeed…
There was a rustle of motion to his side and Lelouch knew without looking away from Father Timothy that Milly had stepped up beside him.
"Britannian or Honorary…" the Ashford heiress mused, slipping her hand into his as she spoke. In his mind's eye, Lelouch could imagine what it must look like: The young lovers, standing steadfast in their convictions in the face of convention. It was an admittedly powerful visual narrative, instantly relatable to all and sympathetic to most.
Count on Milly to seize on an opportunity for drama, Lelouch thought wryly, keeping his amusement firmly contained.
And, his thoughts continued as her fingers slid between his own,
count on Milly to take full advantage of the moment.
"...surely all are equal in death?" Milly paused, giving her audience a moment to consider the matter. "Surely a Britannian soldier and an Honorary soldier, both sworn to the same empire's service, will be counted as equals in the regiments of the Most High? Just as we are all equals, brothers and sisters all, in His earthly service? And," Milly lightly squeezed his hand, "adding the Honoraries to our list of prayers surely costs us little, right? Some of them did manage to put down the Sniper, after all."
Lelouch returned the gentle squeeze, touched by the unspoken message and the implicit understanding of his motives Milly displayed. Clearly, she hadn't forgotten his plea for help for Suzaku. With that in mind, he couldn't begrudge her forwarding their false relationship at all. Not for now, at least.
For his part, Father Timothy looked thoughtful. His distaste still lingered, but clearly he was listening to what they were saying. A traditionalist at heart, the old cleric wouldn't have survived so long if he was too stubborn to notice when the winds of change began to blow. Objections from the senior-most military man recruited so far, from the only recruit with sufficient education and energy to act as a minister as his health flagged, and from the most successful recruiter the church had found so far were enough combined to represent a veritable gust.
"Very well then," he said at last, bowing to the inevitable. "We will remember our Honorary brothers and sisters as well in our prayers. Now," Timothy cleared his throat, "please kneel as we pray."
A murmur of movement coursed through the congregation as men and women, impoverished and merely poor, knelt on ratty cushions. Still out in the aisle between the two blocks of attendees, Lelouch knelt directly on the stained concrete floor of the old basement, Milly joining him a moment later with a pained hiss as her knees met the unyielding and grainy surface.
For his part, as he bowed his head in an empty gesture of reverence to an existence he was agnostic at best toward, Lelouch found himself reveling in the uncomfortable pressure against his kneecaps. It was a welcome distraction from both the hand still firmly wrapped around his own, and from the sure knowledge of what was soon to come for Yokohama.
"Oh God," Father Timothy began, raising his hands in supplication, "whose mercies cannot be numbered, accept our prayers on behalf of your servants, both those born to the Church and those who came to it later, and grant them an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord who liveth and reigneth with a rod of iron with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever."
"Amen," chorused the congregation, Lelouch allowing the word to slip limply from between his lips and Milly with surprising vigor.
"For Christ is risen from the dead," Father Timothy continued, painfully lowering himself down to his waiting kneeling cushion, "and with the sword and the rod he laid waste to Hell and conquered it for his own. With the sword he cut the chains of the grave and rose in glory and triumph. He trampled down the Adversary and gave death unto Death, and restored life to the entombed righteous. He will come again in the company of his legions and his saints to judge and to rule again, as he did in the days before the Fall. Amen."
"Amen," replied the assembled people. From behind him, Lelouch heard Coffin's voice, rough from a life of barking orders, brimming with righteous fervor. "Amen."
"Oh Lord God Most Hol-" Timothy stopped, wrapping an arm about his chest as he coughed, his shoulders heaving at the violence of the action. "Oh Lord," he rasped, beginning again, "in the midst of life we are in death, and from whom shall we seek succor, oh Lord, save yourself, who for our sins is greatly angered? Truly, Lord, from you no secrets are hid and to you all sins are known. Spare us, oh God, and deliver us not into the bitterest of death and the scourge everlasting, but let us march beside you and Saint George and Saint Sebastian and all of your martyrs in glory. For this, we pray."
"Amen."
"Speak with me," Father Timothy commanded, "oh brothers and sisters, the affirmation of our faith:"
"Christ has died in suffering," the congregation spoke as one, Father Timothy's thin reed of a voice wavering like a flag over the dull monotone chant, "Christ is risen in glory. Christ will come again in conquest."
"Yea, he shall!" Father Timothy confirmed, spreading out his arms again in reassurance, "and so in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to life eternal through the passion and might of Lord Jesus Christ, we commend all of his martyred servants to Almighty God, Britannian-born and Britannian by Honor alike, and we commit their bodies to the ground or to the flame. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
"Amen."
"Let us now take a moment, brothers and sisters," Father Timothy wheezed, his shoulders jerking as he fought down another coughing fit, "to remember in silence those who have perished. Britannian and Honorary Britannian alike."
And Japanese, Lelouch added silently, closing his eyes.
Proclamation Nine proclaimed that each Britannian death would be repaid a thousandfold. Whether he ever intended to execute the proclamation in earnest or not is irrelevant now; the Purists will demand it, as will the bulk of the rank and file of the commons. After the media whipped them up in the fear of death by sniper for weeks, they'll be hungry for blood, and Clovis is far too cowardly to deny them their wish. And so… the Japanese will pay the price, at least for now…
I know what is coming, and I can do nothing to stop it. Lelouch realized his teeth were grinding, that he was squeezing down far too tightly on Milly's hand. He forced himself to relax, to breathe out his tension. After a moment, she lightly squeezed his hand again, silently asking if he was alright. He squeezed back in reassurance and fell back into his thoughts.
More blood on the hands of Clovis… And by extension, more blood on the hands of That Man, more blood that I was too weak to stop from being spilled.
"And now, brothers and sisters," Father Timothy said, breaking the basement's silence, "we make bold to say:"
"Our Father, who art in heaven…"
"...Go now in the faith and unity of Christ the King, the only true emperor, and know that his triumph is only an inevitability," Lelouch bid, arms raised to the exact angle used earlier in the service by Father Timothy. "Go forth knowing that your deeds and dedication are heeded, that your faith shall be rewarded, and that one day all will curse by the foul name of the Man of Blood. Amen."
"Amen," came the resounding echo, full of both hope for the future and relief that the service was finally over.
Lelouch lowered his arms and shot a sideways look to Father Timothy, who nodded his thanks and approval. "Brother Leland" had been invited up to conduct the remainder of the service after the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer, a measure both practical and keenly symbolic. Practical, because the old priest's cough had continued to worsen as he struggled through the prayer, and symbolic, as the parting benediction was generally administered by the ranking cleric in attendance. By waving "Leland" up from the crowd to end the service and to dismiss the congregation, Father Timothy had signaled his rising status yet again. Now, "Leland" stood between the congregation and the pulpit, not quite a priest but certainly not a layman any longer.
With the ritual of the service concluded, the structure of the crowd disintegrated, the illusory rows vanishing as congregants turned to chat with their neighbors, stooped to pick up knee pillows, or began the process of stowing their personal copies of the Book of Common Prayer within jackets, purses, or in one case, in a hollow concealed in the sole of a boot.
Lelouch joined the milling throng and easily fell into a succession of casual conversations, shaking hands and catching up on the daily happenings of various acquaintances as, one by one, the hidden church slipped out through the bar or the basement entrance and into the still busy streets. As he gladhanded and chatted, Lelouch felt Father Timothy's eyes linger upon him, weighing his every action and word.
Slowly, the crowd dispersed, until the basement was empty of all save Milly, Father Timothy, and Lelouch. Sensing that the priest had something he wanted to say as clearly as Lelouch, Milly made eye contact with Lelouch and nodded toward the old man before jerking her head up toward the bar. Her message was clear:
"Hear him out, and then come tell me what's up. I'll be waiting."
With a confirming nod from Lelouch, Milly vanished up the stairs. Lelouch waited, listening to the old slats creak under her weight, hearing the slight pause as she stooped under the dangling HVAC duct, and then the slight jingle of the bell above signaling that the door into the common room of the taphouse had opened.
Then, he turned to Father Timothy and waited, expectant, as the frail and sickly elder picked his way across the bare concrete floor.
"Good work with the benediction, Brother Alexander," the priest said, coming to a halt in front of Lelouch. "Always send them out on a high note, that's what I was taught all the way back in seminary. You have a natural gift for the pulpit, it seems."
"Thank you, Father," Lelouch replied politely.
"Yes," the old man mused, as if he hadn't heard the response, "you were certainly born for leadership, Brother Alexander… You chose your worship name well, Leland… Chose it well indeed."
Under his thick, bushy gray eyebrows and behind the yellow rheum lining his ancient eyes, a keen and watchful intelligence glittered.
"Thank you, Father," Lelouch repeated, suddenly wary of the man who had served as his introduction to the disparate True Anglican cells scattered around the Tokyo Settlement, the man in whose stead he had acted for months now. "I appreciate your confidence."
"I believe it to be well-placed, Leland." A weary smile crossed Father Timothy's face. "Spending almost two decades on the run teaches a man a thing or two about human character, and how to judge it… And I find myself placing more and more faith in your abilities, Leland… Born to the grandson of a third son, was it? Before you left the Homeland…"
He knows! The thought sent a shock through Lelouch's arms, down to his hands, utterly absurd yet somehow certainly true.
Somehow, he knows!
"Yes, Father," Lelouch replied, drawing on his long-ago lessons from court to keep his cool. "A family dispute that led to my pursuit of other opportunities across the Pacific from old Pendragon."
"I see…" Father Timothy seemed to consider something, his eyes boring through Lelouch. "You have done sterling service, ministering to my flock all around the Settlement… You know all of their names now, their problems, and details about each… They come to you, always eager to speak, because they believe that you will lighten their load…"
"They believe the same thing about you," Lelouch pointed out, attempting to deflect the probe. "I noticed as much when I first came here. They all believe in you, believe in your witness and your word."
"And it took long years for me to build that faith," Father Timothy remarked mildly. "Years of hard work and long suffering. Years that you have made up in weeks. I'm not jealous," he said, holding up a staying hand, "not at all… Quite the opposite, in fact. I am…" A tired smile pulled itself across the worn face as Father Timothy paused as if savoring the word. "Relieved."
"Relieved, Father?" Lelouch tilted his head inquiringly, doing his best to involve himself in the conversation as fully as possible to ignore the way his nerves were singing with anxiety. "About what?"
"That though I will die without seeing the True Prince sit the throne in Pendragon, I shall pass on like Moses, content that my successor shall bring an end to the long journey I began eighteen years ago," explained Father Timothy, his voice serene despite its exhaustion. Years fell away for a brief moment, as if the pure relief was burning through the accumulated weight of old age and hard living. "I have devoted my life to this cause, and as the candle of my life began to flicker, I allowed doubt to enter my heart. I see now that I was wrong to do so. Perhaps that is why that candle has begun to gutter."
"You still have years left in you, Father," Lelouch reassured, not believing a word of it. There was, he was certain, nobody worthy of sitting the Britannian throne; anybody with sufficient moral fiber to be proclaimed as such would burn that wretched old chair to ashes before so much as squatting above it.
"I told you at our first meeting," Father Timothy replied, shaking his head, "death is in my bones. I said then that I will not see Christmas; I say now that I will not see August."
"I… I see, Father," said Lelouch, blinking as the thought entered his mind. The timeline would have to be moved up, of course, and he would have to consult with Milly and Sergeant Coffin about their next moves, and perhaps bring Brother Phillip in…
"Yes," Father Timothy nodded approvingly, clearly reading Lelouch's thoughts on his face, "do not let the moment go to waste, my Joshua. Strike while the iron is hot, and let none stand in your way. Within the month, my bones will be cold and my people yours, although they are in truth yours already, are they not? Purple eyes… Fitting for a man born to the purple…"
The comment, delivered so casually, was a whip slashing down on Lelouch's back once again, startling him with the blow. His whole world stopped, the corners of his vision growing dark as his balance shifted and quaked around him. Before him, Father Timothy, Old Tim, stood placidly, not making any attempt to run, to defend himself…
Miraculously, Lelouch held his control firm, keeping his hands flat by his sides. Even more miraculously, he managed to hold his tongue, matching the old man's silent stare with his own stillness.
"I will not live to see the True Prince sit his throne," murmured Father Timothy, eyes distant, his voice growing rough again. "After years of hiding from long knives and running from corner to desolate corner, it won't be the Inquisition that gets me, nor the Bureau, nor even the Army… Just a pair of worn out lungs, drowning in their own phlegm… I will not live to see the True Prince upon his throne, but I have lived long enough to know that the end has come for the Man of Blood. The reign of Charles the Usurper has ended, and he doesn't even know it yet…"
"That seems… premature," Lelouch ventured, doing his best again to ignore the stubborn old priest's talk of thrones as he slowly pushed the clanging anxiety the risky line of conversation invoked back down.
The man hates the Emperor, hates the Britannic Church, Lelouch reassured himself.
He's not going to turn anybody over to them now that he's at death's door. Besides, who would believe a sick old man when he claimed he'd found a secret Britannian prince who was a heretic to boot? Especially not if he admitted to being a recalcitrant priest in the same breath.
"Have faith," Father Timothy chided, his smile growing by an extra tooth. "It's a great solace, my son. I have faith. I feared before what would become of my church, once I was no longer around to lead it, but now… Now I know what the future will bring for my church, for the Church, and for the Empire and the world. I know, Brother Alexander, that you are that future, that you will bring the sword and the rod and will guide my people unto the Promised Land. Keep the faith, when I am gone."
JULY 14, 2016 ATB
STUDENT COUNCIL ROOM, ASHFORD ACADEMY
1215
It was a beautiful day outside, a rare summer day where a skimming of high altitude clouds and a favorable breeze from Tokyo Bay conspired to reduce the heat and humidity down to balmy perfection. Regrettably, Lelouch was in no position to enjoy the glories of summer.
For multiple reasons. It had been a
stressful two weeks. Ever since that damned priest had…
With a quiet growl, Lelouch wrenched his attention back to the teetering stack of printouts, envelopes, and notarized documents towering above his desk, the better part of a month's paperwork come due at last.
And all of it for me. Huzzah. Despite himself, Lelouch found the heap a perverse sanctuary, a balm numbing his frenzied thoughts. No matter how many times he woke in a cold sweat, belly clenched with anxiety, at the end of the day the janitorial staff still needed their payroll run.
Most students of Ashford Academy would, if pressed, admit to an understanding that the Student Council had functions other than acting as Milly Ashford's personal toy. Lelouch suspected that most of the student body would be shocked to learn just how much time and energy serving on the Student Council demanded, and how little of it was spent either playing along with or refusing Milly's various whims.
For some reason best known to himself, Reuben Ashford, once Lord Ashford, had endowed significant administerial responsibilities upon the Student Council some two summers ago in commemoration of his heiress's sixteenth birthday. At the stroke of a pen, the Student Council had become responsible for the entirety of the Academy's discretionary fund, as well as for running the payroll for the janitorial and gardening staff. Perhaps the former aristocrat had seen it as a way of replicating in miniature the old tradition of entrusting an estate to the heir presumptive to give them some managerial experience in advance of their inheritance, perhaps it had been an attempt to occupy some of Milly's boundless energy. Either way, by the time Milly had turned seventeen the previous year, the Student Council had become intimately familiar with the processes of budgetary formation, labor arbitration, and contract remediation.
Excellent stewardship training for the heir to a fairly sizable estate, Lelouch conceded, initialing a request from the Equestrian Club for a replacement track as their previous training ground had been requisitioned by the ROTC.
Or it would be, if Milly actually handled a tenth of the paperwork. Then again, delegation is a valuable skill in a leader as well. Theoretically, anyway.
Always the moneychanger of favors, Milly had cashed in all the evenings she had spent covering for Lelouch's activities at last. She had, as she put it, tolerated being a walking smokescreen for all of her free evenings, so now he could handle her share of the backlogged paperwork.
"And here I thought you'd finally brought me in on your illicit gambling operation, Lulu! Instead, all you did was take me to church!" had been her pouting comment on the matter, before dropping her faux annoyance in favor of a devilish grin. "You owe me big, Mister Vice President!"
So here he was, wasting away and trying to find some room in the discretionary budget to pay stabling and track fees for the Equestrian Club's mounts at some estate outside of the Tokyo Settlement instead of enjoying the summer's day with Nunnally.
His sister had uncharacteristically left Ashford for the day, venturing forth for a day of shopping and fun in the Concession in the company of a few of her friends, the ever dutiful Sayoko standing ready at his darling sister's elbow. The presence of the secret bodyguard, keen awareness of the ever accumulating stack of paperwork waiting for his attention, and his sister's clear eagerness for a moment of freedom from the confines of the Academy had conspired against Lelouch, and he hadn't offered even token resistance to Nunnally's plan.
I do hope she remembered her sunscreen, though… Lelouch sighed, the anxiety he always felt whenever Nunnally left Ashford's protective embrace heightened by a week's worth of nights haunted by dreams of thrones and ermine robes.
Sayoko will handle it, he told himself, crushing the anxious thoughts down.
She is a professional and highly skilled. Nunnally is safe. All is well.
For a moment, Lelouch sat still in his chair, fingers poised above the keyboard. He strained, trying to resist the temptation, trying to hold the line… His traitor mind served up an image of Nunnally with sunburns on her poor sweet face, skin peeling from her delicate nose. In moments his phone was unlocked and in his hand. Thirty seconds later, a text reminding Sayoko to remind Nunnally that the SPF 70 was in the kitchen drawer right by the refrigerator was sent.
A minute and a half after sending his text, Lelouch felt incredibly silly as a reply definitely not written by Sayoko arrived, the slight grammatical errors betraying the aid of a speech-to-text program.
Nunnally, as was so often the case, kindly thanked her dear big brother for his concern but assured him that she was only blind and not braindead. Her wish for him to butt out and allow her to enjoy her afternoon of freedom undisturbed was as loud as it was unspoken.
Not that Lelouch was at all upset by this. She was a teenager now, he reminded himself, in the midst of her rebellious phase. Such disregard for pseudo-parental worry was only to be expected, at least in private.
With perhaps slightly more force than was required, Lelouch rubbed the approval ink-stamp on its pad and brought it down on the Equestrian Club's proposal, tossing the document into his
Out Tray. Whenever Rivalz finished fiddling around with his motorcycle, the Student Council's secretary would enter the outlay from the proposal into the budgetary software and then file the document away. Shirley would finally approve the amended budget item and the Equestrian Club would receive permission to start hunting for a new stable.
Bully for them, he thought with knee-jerk resentment toward anybody not stuck inside handling paperwork.
But perhaps that would be an opportunity…? Moving all of the horses would require several trips in large vehicles, all with appropriate paperwork and probably reeking of manure…
Shelving the idea for later reflection, Lelouch reached for the next item in his overflowing
In Tray. Before he could snag the next proposal, complaint, or memo from the stack, the door to the Student Council room swung open.
Did Rivalz finish tuning up his bike already, Lelouch wondered as he looked up from his paper-strewn desk,
or maybe Milly "let it slip" to Shirley that I'm alone in the Council Room? Either way, they just volunteered to help with the backlog.
Instead of the Student Council's Secretary or its Treasurer, Lelouch's number one source of heartburn short of That Man's continued existence slipped into the room and pulled the door firmly shut behind her.
By the time the latch clicked in the frame, all thoughts of budgets and paperwork had slipped from Lelouch's mind. He was in danger, he knew; any moment he was alone with Kallen Stadtfeld represented a significant risk to his well-being. While the detente he had forged between them still held, strengthened by Milly's sincere apology to Kallen and her good behavior toward the Stadtfeld heiress over the last two months, Lelouch had not forgotten the peril the probable rebel posed.
Nor had he forgotten the potential she represented.
A natural-born prodigy pilot is worth a bit of risk on her own, but a plug into the heart of the Japanese Underground and a potential connection to the weapons and resources flowing from Chinese and European hands into Area 11 would be worth a great deal.
That had been his decision two months ago; every time they met, Lelouch recalculated that risk, weighing up the stakes. So far, his initial decision held.
"Ah, Kallen," greeted Lelouch, nodding a friendly welcome and taking care to rest his hands on the desk in clear view of his guest. "I thought you weren't going to be here today? Major Pitt has you marked down as excused absent, you know."
"Oh?" Kallen blinked, disinterested. "Good to know, I guess. But, no, I'm not here today, not officially. I'm just here to drop this off." She glanced down at his desk and blinked again, this time surprised. "The… custodial payroll?"
Following her eyes, Lelouch looked down at the document he had retrieved from his
In Tray just as Kallen entered the room and saw those exact words printed across the top.
"What of it?" he blandly asked, meeting her eyes once again and lifting an inquisitive eyebrow.
"Isn't that women's work, balancing the accounts?" Kallen asked, her slight smirk tugging at her lips. "I mean," she continued, her voice dripping with faux innocence, "that's what my st… my mother always insists during our lessons."
"What of it?" Lelouch repeated, the second eyebrow rising to join its predecessor. "It's all Milly's work, if it makes you feel any better. She called in a favor," he hastily added, noticing how Kallen's gaze began to heat at the implication that Milly was abusing her power over someone else. "I asked for her help with something and agreed to her price of assistance with the paperwork."
"Alright," said Kallen, subsiding slightly. "But really, Lelouch… the payroll? Are… Are you sure you don't find it demeaning or whatever…?"
She sounds almost intrigued, Lelouch noted, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.
I wonder how angry she would be if I pointed out how similarly the majority of Ashford's female population reacted when I was introduced as the belle of the Crossdresser's Ball last autumn?
"Not in the slightest," he replied, completely sincere. "Honestly, I think I lost my capacity for shame in this specific context after the fourth time she crammed me into a dress. Didn't you have something to drop off, Kallen?"
"Oh, yeah," Kallen tore her fascinated gaze away from the hour sheet on his desk. "One second…"
As she reached into the purse dangling from her shoulder, Lelouch clenched his teeth, forcing his smile to remain in place, his eyes to stay interested and guileless, his hands to keep loose and still. To his great relief, she retrieved only an envelope, which she deposited neatly on top of the summit of his
In Tray.
Waiting until she'd finished and after it was clear that her addition had not triggered a paperwork avalanche, Lelouch slowly reached out across the desk toward the envelope, keeping his eyes locked on Kallen's face, searching for any warnings that the crimson viper on the other side of the table was about to strike. Her eyes narrowed slightly as he touched the envelope, but she relaxed again as his hand retreated, letter in tow.
She really needs to work on governing her microexpressions, Lelouch reflected as he carefully reached for a letter opener, and then rethought his course of action as he noticed a slight tightening of the muscles around her jaw.
She's still far too easily read. Which I suppose I should be thankful for, at least for now.
The envelope, stamped with the Stadtfeld coat of arms, contained a single, tersely worded page. Between the usual salutations and the formulaic farewell, the letter announced that Lady Kallen Stadtfeld would be taking a sabbatical from Ashford Academy and her obligations as a member of the Student Council for the remainder of the summer. Interestingly, the letter also stated that the Lady Kallen would also be discharging her duties as a Cadet "under special supervision" for that same period of time.
The letter was signed by Alvin, Baron New Leicester and Lord Stadtfeld, Patriarch of House Stadtfeld, and co-signed by the noble staring cooly down at Lelouch from across his desk.
I wonder what the chances are that the good Lord Stadtfeld actually signed this? Lelouch turned the idea around in his head, pretending to reread the letter as he thought.
If the signature is authentic, that implies Kallen's father has come to Area 11, which is… interesting, I suppose, but not really important. If she forged his signature and is taking a vacation on her own recognizance, though… I wonder where she could be going?
"So," Lelouch began, breaking the silence as he refolded the letter, "a summer-long sabbatical, is it? Sounds like an excellent idea!"
He attempted a gormless smile, aiming for a jolly note.
Kallen didn't return it.
Lelouch's eyes narrowed. Something wasn't right. Something had changed.
Why is she being so prickly all of a sudden? She was more than content to join Milly and me for lunch yesterday, and she even unbent far enough to be the fourth so Rivalz, Milly, and I could play a hand of Bridge the day before. It is as if she regressed a month overnight.
The idea that Kallen could be trying to get away from the Academy suddenly seemed much more likely. She was certainly hiding something.
"Do you have any plans for your sabbatical?" The question was meant to sound innocuous, a puff question that blanketed his first gentle probe. Under Kallen's blank stare, it hung impotently in the air. Patience abruptly departing, Lelouch rammed the probe home. "With your father, I mean. It
is his signature on the letter, is it not?" Lelouch asked, shifting to a pointed, rudely direct, inquiry.
Again the itching in his palms as a Pacific gaze, cold and dark, sized him up, searching for something Lelouch couldn't guess. Lelouch met Kallen's eyes directly, refusing to back down. It was stupid, pointlessly risky, but it had been a trying fortnight, and he had work to do.
Fortunately, whatever Kallen had been searching for, she had apparently found. Her hands stayed in the open as well, blissfully knife-free.
"We will be going on a tour," the young noble replied, the delay between question and answer just slightly too long to be comfortable or natural, "of Area 11."
"A tour of Area 11," Lelouch repeated, rolling the Britannian name, no, name was giving too much credit, the Britannian
designation, over his tongue and noting the flash of distaste that crossed Kallen's face at the sound. In her mouth, the official name for the conquered archipelago had sounded almost natural. Perhaps she was learning.
A point toward this vacation not being her idea, he noted, adding a mental tally to the appropriate imaginary column.
That or she still has yet to realize just how subpar her acting skills are. Perhaps both.
"That sounds like an excellent idea," Lelouch smoothly continued, smiling broadly as he leaned back in his chair, feigning relaxation while carefully keeping his hands in sight. "The Sapporo Settlement must be splendid this time of year, certainly less humid than Tokyo. Perhaps Karafuto would be even better?"
"Probably," Kallen shrugged, the gesture comparatively unguarded. "I've never been further north than Sendai. Ah," she corrected herself, a muscle twitching minutely in her cheek, "the Sendai Settlement, I mean."
A swing and a miss, Lelouch considered, noting how the stress had ebbed completely from Kallen's voice.
It seemed like the option most obvious to a radical part-time journalist with access to the internet, though. If I wanted support for an anti-Britannian insurgent group in Japan, and especially if I had sympathy for an empire purporting to hold the freedom of the press as sacred, I would reach out to the European-aligned groups operating out of Vladivostok long before I went south to find an agent of the Chinese-backed government in exile.
Which, he concluded,
likely means that this isn't connected to her actions as a rebel, and so the signature on the letter is presumably authentic.
"Well, in any case," Lelouch levered himself back upright in his chair and flipped the ink pad open again, reaching for his stamp, "kindly pass on my regards to Baron New Leicester and a welcome on behalf of the Ashford Academy Student Council to Area 11."
He brought the stamp down on first the letter, then its envelope with a muted
thump-thump before slipping the former back into the latter and tossing the result into his
Out Tray where it ceased to be his problem.
"Now," Lelouch continued, his anxiety ebbing minutely at the sensation of completing something in his ever mounting pile of responsibilities, "was there anything else I could help you with, Kallen? If not, well…" he motioned vaguely toward his mountain of paperwork and then the door she had entered from. "I wish you a thoroughly enjoyable and informative sabbatical."
Kallen followed his hand enough to glance at the door, but she remained firmly rooted in place across his desk. "Actually," she said, turning to look back at the door again, "there was one other thing I wanted to ask you about, Lelouch…?"
"Oh?" Palms itching once more,
and damn Kallen and her hot-and-cold attitude, Lelouch forced a smile equal parts welcoming and helpful. "What would that be?"
"A few months back, when I was first 'invited' to join the Student Council," Kallen grimaced slightly, presumably at the memory of what had preceded that invitation, "you mentioned that you'd edited my files?"
Lelouch very carefully didn't let his eyes narrow or his smile stiffen.
Of all the things she could have asked about… why this one?
"On the Ashford Academy server, yes," he confirmed, nodding authoritatively. "As I explained, the Ministry of Education's database updates automatically, drawing from the databases of each constituent educational institute in the Area."
"Right," Kallen nodded, "I remember that. And… that's as far as you went when you were 'correcting' my files, right? Just using Milly's credentials to get into the Academy's servers and letting the Ministry's own automatic update handle the rest?"
She's trying to maneuver me into admitting something, Lelouch realized.
Quite audacious of her. But why? Blackmailing me over the database tampering is a losing proposition for her; doing so would expose the edits I made, drawing undue attention to her heritage and activities in Shinjuku. Even if her father's connections are enough to protect her, it would gain her nothing and cost a great deal to hush the matter up.
"More or less," Lelouch admitted, smiling ruefully. "Honestly, it was pretty easy to do. For all that people like to think of hacking as something magical or whatnot, mostly it just involves exploiting flaws in a system's security. That or finding shortcuts some lazy user already made for their own use."
"That's it?" Kallen looked crestfallen. "Just a simple trick like that? That's…" She tilted her head to the side, clearly considering something. "...Less impressive than I'd expected, I guess."
Immediately, Lelouch was forced to wrestle with his pride for control over his tongue.
A simple trick? He raged in the security of his skull.
You, as an insurgent and a rebel hiding herself behind the mask of a schoolgirl, should understand the advantage of securing a key piece of intelligence to exploit a systemic weakness!
Then he saw the smile. It was only barely noticeable, just a slight upward bowing of her lips, but it was there on Lady Kallen Stadtfeld's face. And it was smug.
She's trying to bait me again. The thought splashed over his inflamed pride like ice water, permitting him control over his faculties once more.
Perhaps bait is the wrong word, or at least it might be more adversarial than what she has in mind. I myself noted that Kallen's skills represent a significant enough value that recruitment is worth pursuing. Perhaps she's reciprocating to some degree or is considering what value I could provide?
"As I said," Lelouch began, a patently guileless smile spread across his face, "it certainly isn't magic by any stretch. Just a relatively simple process. That said, I did a bit… more. Just to maintain consistency, you see. It wouldn't have done for some clerk at the Ministry of Education to one day realize your medical records on file diverged significantly from those kept by the Ministry of Health. To that end, a bit of clean up was necessary. A file here or there… Nothing too major."
"I see…" Kallen nodded, mulling that over. "That was a good move, Lelouch. Good thinking."
"Oh, you know," Lelouch said, allowing a touch of well-deserved pride to touch his voice, "I am capable of a bit of foresight every now and again. Not that you would know it, looking at my
In Tray!" He forced a laugh at the ritually humorous observation, joined briefly by a pity chuckle from Kallen.
"But seriously," he continued, "you can rest easy about your digital profile. It is entirely consistent with what you and I understand to be your history, Kallen. Your chronic health issues, your biography, everything's been handled. You can rest easy on that score, and," Lelouch smiled, hoping it came off as warmly sympathetic, "you can rest knowing that not a single mention of Shinjuku is present in connection to any file with your name on it. Nor on any of the backups; consistency, after all, must be maintained."
"Ah," Kallen sighed, and for the first time since she'd entered the room, an entirely natural smile found its way to her. To Lelouch, it looked like a knot of tension had eased in the perpetually on-edge Stadtfeld. "That's… a relief. Thanks, I guess… Lelouch."
"It was my pleasure, Kallen," Lelouch replied with complete sincerity. Throwing grit into the gears of the Administration was its own reward. "Now, if there isn't anything else…"
"So," she interrupted, and though the smile was still there, it looked decidedly sharper now. Hungry. And this time, it wasn't his palms that itched; no, this time it was his ankles, as if he had just set his foot into a bear trap and felt the triggering pan under his foot tremble. "Can you enter the Ministry of Justice's servers and edit the contents of their database as well, Lelouch?
"After all," Kallen pressed on relentlessly, raising her voice over his silence, "you did just admit to infiltrating the Ministry of Health as well as the Ministry of Education. So what's one more scalp for your belt, Mister Vice-President?"
Lelouch instantly clamped down on the kneejerk panic flooding his system.
Keep calm, he told himself, ice water running through his veins, feeling the steel jaws trembling with tension, eager to snap shut on the leg he had shoved down his throat.
She's fishing. She has no evidence.
More likely than not, this is her paranoia speaking. She must think that I have set her up for failure when someone notices that the Ministry of Justice files are different from every other governmental file pertaining to her. Which would be a reasonable fear if I had not, in fact, edited the Ministry of Justice's files. After copying them for myself, of course. They were both extensive and overly protected for the daughter of a mere baron…
"It would be extremely difficult to infiltrate the Ministry of Justice," Lelouch said, resorting to the truth. "They maintain a rigorous cybersecurity regime, at least for a governmental institution. Why do you ask, Kallen?"
"Just recently, I was interrogated in regards to unauthorized changes made to my Ministry file," Kallen revealed, no trace of a smile on her face, only a razor-edged intensity and a terrifying coldness behind her eyes. Lelouch's gaze darted to her hands again and found them still thankfully empty of weapons. "Naturally, as soon as someone started asking about recent updates to my files, I thought of you."
"Hopefully you kept those thoughts to yourself," snapped Lelouch, the sudden terror at the prospect that "Lelouch Lamperouge" had come to the attention of the security services entirely overwhelming his rational fear of the insurgent before him. "Whoever it was who interrogated you was lying. I was not joking in the slightest when I said that the Ministry of Justice takes cybersecurity seriously. The only people who have full access to the edit history and the metadata of a biographic file are the members of the Technical Services Division and high ranking ministerial personnel. I doubt any would have the time or interest to interrogate a baron's daughter sneaking out to the ghetto, Kallen."
For a moment, the air between them thrummed with tension. Lelouch couldn't help but curse himself for his slip-up; he was trying to build rapport with Kallen, to convince her of his utility.
If he could join forces with her and her mysterious Japanese connections…!
Snapping at her served none of his goals.
But apologizing now will convey weakness. The training he had received at court was quite clear on that point. The only thing worse than making a mistake was publicly admitting to your error.
Weakness be damned, screamed another corner of his mind.
What do you think you're doing here? She's dangerous! What, would you go back on your promise and leave Nunnally all alone over a point of pride?
And yet, his tongue was leaden, the apology choked behind his lips.
Thankfully, it proved unnecessary. Just as Kallen began to grudgingly nod her acceptance of the point, the door to the Student Council room banged open, shocking Lelouch to his feet and sending Kallen spinning around into a combat stance, center of gravity low and arms spread wide.
"Milly?" Lelouch and Kallen chorused, identifying the panting intruder. "What are you doing here?" both said as one, before exchanging surprised looks at the momentary synchronization.
"...You know, I was about to ask that," said Milly, looking from one face to the other, "I didn't expect to find anybody here but Lulu. Hello Kallen," she continued, turning fully toward Kallen and bobbing a brief curtsey. "It's good to see you again. Are we still on for tea tomorrow?"
True to the promise she had made via Lelouch, Milly had remained almost painfully respectful and courteous in all of her interactions with Kallen since the other girl had joined the Student Council as the ROTC's representative. Privately, Milly had confessed that the self-censoring this policy required remained something of a strain on her willpower, but to Lelouch it seemed like the effort was already paying off. Kallen had remained true to her word as well and had met Milly halfway, allowing the President to address her by name instead of Lady Kallen after a week.
Now the two of them are practically friends, Lelouch thought, almost smiling,
or as close to friends as Kallen's circumstances allow. Which means that she might hesitate for a few heartbeats before knifing Milly. Joy.
"Sorry Milly, but I'll have to cancel," replied Kallen, pairing the remark with a regretful smile as she drew herself up from her stance, brushing her bangs back out of her eyes. "You can ask Lelouch for the details, but I'll be elsewhere for the remainder of the summer. Actually," she looked down at her wristwatch, "I should be heading out; I need to pack my bags."
"Oh." Milly blinked. "Well, in that case, have a… good trip?"
"Meh," Kallen grunted in a distinctly unlady-like, if not unkind, fashion. "Bye Milly, Lelouch. I'll see you in the fall."
"Goodbye," Milly replied to Kallen's retreating back, with Lelouch repeating her farewell a heartbeat later, adding "enjoy your tour!" for good measure.
Just as Kallen's hand fell on the handle of the still-open door, she paused and turned back. "Oh, that reminds me, do either of you know where Rivalz is? I've got one last goodbye to say before I leave."
"Probably still in the Automotive Club's garage," Lelouch said, helpfully adding, "he said something about tuning up his bike for a ride this afternoon. Not that I'm letting him get out of his filing duties that easily."
"I see," Kallen replied. "Thanks, Lelouch… You've been
quite helpful."
And then she was gone, the door swinging quietly shut in her wake.
With the click of the latch, Lelouch sank back down into his chair, sparing his still-crowded
In Tray a gloomy look before glancing up at Milly, who was still eying the door, worrying at her lip with her teeth.
"Apparently Kallen's father has come to visit," Lelouch said, answering the unspoken question as Milly turned to face him. "He apparently wants to spend the summer touring Japan with his daughter."
"Kallen's dad is here?" Milly asked, surprise writ large across her face. "The Baron of New Leicester? That's… honestly not as out of character as I first thought." At Lelouch's inquisitive look, she elaborated. "I mean, he recognized Kallen as his heiress, despite her heritage, long before anybody could have guessed that she'd be a genius in a Knightmare simulator. He must care for her as his child; if he didn't, he could have taken a few fertile wives and made some trueborn scions. It's not like there's any doubt that Kallen's his daughter, not unless her mother was sleeping with his brothers or something. The family resemblance is
far too strong for it to be anything else."
"Which he presumably would have noticed," Lelouch replied lightly, ignoring the way his gut seized halfway through Milly's explanation. "So him flying halfway across the world is not out of character on the grounds that… he actually wanted to spend quality time with his daughter?"
"Sometimes the simplest answer makes the most sense," Milly replied, "no matter how strange to us the concepts might be."
Lelouch carefully didn't acknowledge the way Milly's face had tightened as she spoke, nor how hollow her familiar laughing smile, returned once Kallen had left, had grown. Though it wasn't his business, he knew that some tension had entered the lives of the Ashford family once Reuban had proclaimed his granddaughter as his heiress, rather than his son. It wasn't his business how Milly's relationship with her parents had developed in the wake of that announcement, and he doubted she would appreciate him involving himself in the matter.
He also carefully didn't notice how she had included him in her last statement. Some things were left best unsaid, and some scars weren't to be picked at.
"Putting Kallen and her fascinating dynamic with her father aside," he said instead, "what was it you wanted? Surely you almost rushed face-first into Kallen for a reason."
"Eh?" Milly blinked again, shook her head, and smiled again, returning to the track of comfortable conversation. "Oh, right!" She pointed an accusing finger across the desk. "You haven't been answering your phone, Lulu!"
"I…" he hesitated, glancing guiltily at the drawer he had crammed his phone into after he'd read Nunnally's text. "I wanted to minimize distractions," he extemporized, waving at his burdened desk. "There is a great deal that requires our attention, and I for one want to catch up on the paperwork as soon as is feasible."
"Liar," Milly replied, offhandedly dismissive. "You were nagging Nunnally again, weren't you?"
"I…" Lelouch gritted his teeth, feeling his upset stomach churn at the mention of his sister's name.
If there is even a trace of a burn on her face, Sayoko had best prepare to give an account of herself!
Unable to defend himself against Milly's knowing smirk, Lelouch opted for an offensive instead. "Did you come here for a purpose or not?" he asked irritably. "If you just came here to disrupt Council business,
Madame President, then I'm sure you wouldn't mind reviewing the latest outlays filed by the landscapers! Who could have guessed that constructing a Knightmare maneuver course on short notice and maintaining the blasted thing would cost extra?"
"Sounds important!" Milly cheerfully replied with an impudent smile. "I sure am lucky to have such a capable and dedicated fiance to handle it all, aren't I,
Leland?"
"Not here, Milly," Lelouch chided, eyes darting instinctually towards the closed door. "Look, you surely had a reason to come disturb my work; out with it."
"Ah." And suddenly, Lelouch noted, Milly's smile didn't look quite as vivacious as usual, nor as sincere. "Lelouch… you really should pay more attention to your phone."
The hairs on the back of Lelouch's neck rose as Milly's smile faded rapidly away.
Seeing the wet pearls beading in the corners of her eyes, Lelouch kept his voice gentle and soft as he asked, "What did I miss, Milly?"
"Phillip's been trying to get ahold of you for half an hour," Milly replied, her voice brittle with checked emotion threatening to slip her control. "When you didn't answer, he called me instead."
"Phillip?" Lelouch frowned at the name of his first acquaintance among the True Anglicans, the one who had shared his book of rituals with him the night of the first post-trivia service. "What was he looking for?"
"It's…" Milly drew in a breath, hands curling into fists by her side. "It's time, Lelouch. Old Tim… He couldn't get out of bed this morning, and according to Phillip, he's having trouble breathing. He's barely awake, but… He asked for you. He…" She looked away, licked her lips, and forced her eyes back onto Lelouch's. "He wants you to say the words over him."
Once again, the old man was right, Lelouch marveled.
It looks like he will not be seeing August after all, just as he said.
And just as he said, he is passing his mantle over to me. This time for keeps, this time in the eyes of the congregation. By saying the words over his body at his request, my leadership over the Church will be set in stone.
My time has come. The thought was supposed to have been triumphant. Finally he would achieve a place of power. This was to be the moment where he tasted victory.
Instead all he tasted was ash.
"I see," he said out loud, feeling a weight hanging from his back as he climbed to his feet, the same weight he had carried since he walked through a dead city six years back. "Call Phillip back, please, Milly. Let him know…" he hesitated, then committed. "Let him know that I'm on my way."
"Will do," Milly nodded. "Some reason you're not calling him yourself?"
"Yes," Lelouch smiled thinly back, opening the desk drawer and retrieving his phone. "I doubt Sayoko will accept a call from another number and, before I do this, I need to let Nunnally know. She has demanded updates on any major developments." His smile tightened. "I would say this counts."
"Ah," said Milly, instant understanding flooding her eyes as she nodded again, clearly in favor of anything that saved her from another velvet-soft, razor-edged dressing down, courtesy of the younger vi Britannia. "I'll just step out to let Phillip know, then, shall I?"
Lelouch nodded absently, scarcely noticing when she left the Council room.
This is not a final victory, he knew,
not even as the undisputed master of the True Anglicans. But Father Timothy has set the stage for me to cement their loyalty to me, first as Brother Alexander, and perhaps eventually as their True Prince. Not my final victory… But at last, I have a weapon I can use against That Man. At last, I have found people who hate him just as much as I. All I have to do now is turn that discontentment and rage into a dagger to drive right through his rotten spine!
As Lelouch thumbed Sayoko's number into his phone, raising the device to his ear just in time to hear Nunnally's protector pick up on the first ring; he didn't realize that he was grinning until he heard the smile in his own voice.
JULY 31, 2016 ATB
ALBERT'S TAPHOUSE, KITA WARD, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
2000
Curtains drawn, the dingy room over the taphouse was stiflingly hot in the absence of any stray breezes that might break up the sultry evening air. Turning impotently, an ancient rotary fan oscillated from side to side, the decrepit motor barely strong enough to move its blades. From the corner of the room, an equally old standing lamp shed just enough light to qualify the impromptu office as "dimly lit".
All of this was immaterial to Lelouch. He was, at the moment, entirely fixated on his laptop and the evening's operation, already well-underway.
Compared to playing cat and mouse with the Ministry of Justice's anti-infiltration measures, cracking the servers of the Diocese of Tokyo had been child's play. Almost before the operation began, Lelouch had spread their contents wide open, ready for his perusal. The security measures guarding the database of the Britannic Church in Area 11 were adequate at best, their limited effectiveness degraded by diocesan staff who took digital security guidelines as suggestions and who updated their security software on a schedule best described as haphazard.
After all, why wouldn't they be smugly complacent? Lelouch grinned to himself, watching as his rootkit finished installing itself and began loading a prepared list of account numbers.
Who would steal from the Church, after all? If not for the risk of their eternal soul, surely fear of Lazaro Pulst's vengeance would cower any would-be thieves.
Sadly for them, His Eminence will soon be beyond such petty mortal disputes.
Almost before Father Timothy's body had time to cool in its grave, unmarked by the side of a Chiba road save for an unpainted cross, Lelouch had put the first steps of his new plan into motion. For the moment, he had momentum on his side; Father Timothy's last request had passed the mantle of leadership to him in as smooth of a succession as any underground group could hope for. Lelouch had spent every available minute of the last two weeks taking merciless advantage of the old man's legacy, traveling to every fractured cell and clandestine congregation in the Tokyo region to re-introduce himself as the new head of the True Anglican congregation.
For the most part, this announcement had been met with acquiescence. Lelouch had met most of the congregation before and formed personal connections with as many leading figures in the disparate fragments as he could. Now, he drew upon those connections and upon the work he had done on behalf of each congregation, pointing out when he had sourced funds for new clothes or anticongestants during hay fever season or when he had helped write a letter to the electric company clarifying the matter of an unpaid bill after the power to a congregant's apartment had been shut off.
And for now, his inherited authority was holding. For now. The dual flaws in the foundation of his inherited priestly authority were blatant to Lelouch and, he was certain, to his followers. Well spoken and intelligent though he was, he was both not a priest and still only sixteen. This later fact wasn't known to his followers, but they all knew that he was young, far younger than most of them.
He was, in short, riding toward an authority shortfall. Short of somehow becoming ordained in the defunct pre-Archbishop Warren Britannic Church, drastic measures were necessary.
Besides, Lelouch admitted to himself, toying with a pen as white text scrolled faster than the eye could follow across his console,
there is only so long a revolutionary movement, or really a reactionary movement, can squat in a basement before it loses any vigor it may have once possessed. Better to burn the powder now than wait for it to degrade entirely.
From that seed, Lelouch's plan had sprung. He had no priestly credentials to fall back upon, nor the appearance of wisdom and temperance that Father Timothy's advanced age and years on the run had brought the old man. He would have to manufacture his own authority through actions, through victories, through giving the double-handful of people who were his now fresh hope. Hope not only of survival, but hope that their long-awaited triumph would soon stoop upon the earth.
There was really only one target suitable to deliver all of that.
And by happy coincidence, that target is perhaps the only man holding Clovis's entire rotten Administration together. Only to advance his own graft, but the sheer power vacuum his absence would open is guaranteed to prompt infighting.
By not-so-sheer coincidence, that same target had been the subject of Lelouch's thankfully forgotten abortive poster campaign.
Lazaro Pulst, Bishop of Tokyo and Minister of Economic Development. The Viceregal-Governor's economic advisor and the widely hated "Fattest Man in Area 11" made for a natural target, but one too well-protected for his legion of malcontents to do anything but mutter about.
Or that had been the case until Lelouch had brought organization and planning to the members of his congregation most willing to risk direct action.
The first stage of his plan to topple the Fattest Man from his episcopal throne had been inspired by Kallen. Her curiosity regarding his hacks into the Administration's various databases had lit the spark. Almost on an impulse, Lelouch had tried his hand at cracking into the Diocese's financial database. The dummy donation he made to the "widows and orphans fund" complete with an almost unnoticeable worm piggybacking on the entry had, to his muted surprise, led to the discovery of a veritable world of graft.
And the embezzlement of donations and smudged lines between the Diocesian coffers and the Bishop's personal accounts had only been the start of what Lelouch had found in his first dive into the thoroughly cooked Church books. Over a fevered, sleepless night, he traced accounts, cross-referenced names against recent news items from the society page, and, later, checked for some of those same entries in digitized police blotters and Army incident records.
"The scale of it is shocking," he had told Nunnally and Milly over coffee, "though the content is sadly typically exploitative. Trafficking in 'conscripted' Elevens, buying up debts owed by poor citizens and immediately declaring the markers due, operating multiple brothels…
"None of that is particularly shocking, not really, not to anybody with even the most cursory of windows into the sleaze oozing below the Settlement's gilded facade. Rather, the sheer
scope of the operation is the surprise here, and how hollowed out the Diocese has truly become. Truthfully, I think that Pulst and his ilk simply grew too greedy in their efforts to skim the fat and now the Church here in Area 11 is little but a carcass. Only the bloat of its own rot gives it any substance, held in check only by a thin skin of propriety." Lelouch had shook his head, almost dismayed by his own findings. "Pulst is sitting on a bomb, and I doubt he has even the slightest of clues."
"So… what're you going to do?" Milly had asked curiously. "Gonna leak it to the press or something? Prick the skin and pop the bubble all over the Fattest Man in Tokyo's face?"
"Why bother?" Lelouch had snorted. "Viceregal-Governor la Britannia effectively owns all the press in the Area, so I doubt any would be interested in running the story. Sending it back across the Pacific would be equally pointless; the entire story is local to Area 11, so nobody who matters in the Homeland will care."
"The news is always quite complimentary of brother Clovis," Nunnally had sighed, gently replacing her teacup on its saucer. "Still though, Brother, I am sure you have no intention of giving up and allowing this abuse to continue, do you?"
His darling sister's comment had only technically been a question. The implicit command had been as clear as it was already unnecessary.
After all, Lelouch thought, mentally patting himself on the back as he typed in the next string in his prepared list into the prompt,
when a man as important as His Rotundity offers up such a plum opportunity, it would be rude to refuse.
The real question, he had found, was what to do with the remaining funds in the Diocese's coffers and slush funds. His initial knee-jerk response had been to divert them into one of his own illicit accounts. Stolen Church money could cover his and Nunnally's expenses for a very long time, to say nothing of improving the lots of his parishioners. His second thought had been on how easily traceable such digital diversions of funds were, especially if the Exchequer smelled an opportunity to appropriate untaxed and dirty money for their own ends.
As Nunnally had provided the question, she likewise also provided the answer.
"Give it away," his darling sister had said after he laid out his predicament, looking up from her muesli to smile at him from long habit, her forever closed eyes oriented just to his right. "It was donated to the Church in the name of protecting the helpless and needy, was it not? Send it where it was meant to go."
"What makes you think that the Administration would allow whichever lucky charities benefit from the surprise donation to keep their new wealth?" Lelouch had inquired, mildly incredulous at the suggestion.
"Absolutely nothing, dear brother," Nunnally had replied with a sharper smile. "Other than how much our dear brother Clovis wishes to be seen as a kind and benevolent prince. As you mentioned, he
owns the Area's media, and they cannot cease singing the praises of his humanitarian deeds. No doubt at his prompting. A kind and benevolent prince does not snatch bread from the mouths of poor veterans and orphans, at least not where there is any chance someone might find out."
And with that, the next piece of the plan had clicked into place.
Dirty laundry aired, funds distributed to the poor, and the third, all important, leg of the plan. Which, Lelouch glanced down to the corner of the screen, checking the time,
should be reaching its crescendo any minute now.
Somewhere in the massive pile of steel, glass, and concrete that enjoyed the name of the Bishop's Palace, built adjacent to the equally ugly Tokyo Cathedral and only a stone's throw from the Viceregal Palace in the heart of the Britannian Concession, the last stages of that third leg would be unfolding. Havelock, his old trivia partner, had shaved his easily identifiable sideburns and donned a carefully crafted replica of the uniform worn by Diocesan stewards. Even now, he would be padding through the no doubt decadently decorated hallways of the bishop's private apartments, pushing a cart laden with freshly laundered bedding.
Wrapped around his narrow waist below the steward's tailcoat was a sedated Western Taipan, straight from Area 9 and freshly liberated from the Clovisland Zoo Reptile House.
In just under two hours, the sedatives will wear off. Lelouch was quite certain of that point; he had been the one to calculate the dosage necessary to incapacitate the incredibly deadly reptile and had been in the room when the snake had been very carefully injected with the pilfered drug.
By which point Havelock should have long since made the bishop's bed and continued on with his rounds, just another servant among hundreds. Assuming Pulst's nighttime entertainments conclude before midnight, he'll be leaving the Concession just as Pulst is slipping between the sheets…
It was not the most practical of plans; Lelouch could freely admit as much. It would have been much simpler to rig a grenade below the bishop's official vehicle or, if push came to shove, to simply shoot the cleric in mid-sermon.
But in such matters, optics are everything. Blowing Pulst up would be a mere political
act, while desecrating a chapel, even a state church chapel, with bloodshed would elevate Pulst's name posthumously on the wings of martyrdom.
Being bit by a snake, however, the archetypal symbol of evil and corruption… Lips quirked in a cruel smile, gone in a flash.
Well, that's just the devil taking his due, isn't it?
In Lelouch's opinion, it was an easy narrative to follow and to understand, with undeniable symbolism and a clear message. It was also a clear attack on the legitimacy of the Britannic Church, and thus would certainly be covered up by the official media to the greatest extent possible.
Which was why Lelouch had no intention of conceding control over the narrative to the Viceregal-Governor's lickspittles.
The door to the sweltering apartment over the bar creaked open and Milly slipped inside, closing the door behind her.
And speaking of narrative control…
"Ah, Milly," Lelouch said, glancing up from his laptop to greet his confederate. "Is it ready?"
Wordlessly, the Ashford heiress placed a small drive down on his temporary desk, the aluminum casing clicking against scored wood. "It's here," she confirmed, her voice uncharacteristically toneless. "Just as you asked."
Frowning, Lelouch looked back up from his computer and gave Milly a critical once-over. In the room's poor lighting, she scarcely looked herself.
Beyond her guise as Milly Ashland, she looks… tired. Tired and anxious.
Lelouch couldn't blame her; it was only natural for a young lady shielded from the fullness of court life to blanch at premeditated murder.
"It will be alright, Milly," he said reassuringly, standing from his chair and pacing around the desk to stand beside her, half to convey his support and half to massage life back into his cramped legs after too long behind his screen. "I am certain you did an excellent job with the credit and denunciation video. You really do have a knack for this kind of work; you'll definitely be a wonderful anchorwoman some day."
"I…" Milly forced a tremulous smile. "...Thanks, Lulu. But…" the smile cracked. "That's… not really why I'm concerned."
"Oh?" Lelouch quirked an eyebrow, remaining confident though he felt a sudden wave of concern at the prospect that he had overlooked something. "What's the matter then, Milly? Everything's going smoothly so far." He paused, then added more gently, "Having second thoughts, Pres?"
"Yeah…" Milly sighed at the admission and turned slightly so she could rest against the edge of the desk.
A moment later, Lelouch joined her, holding his tongue in companionable silence.
"...It's not Pulst that's making me worry," she said after a quiet minute had passed. "As a man, he's absolute garbage. What he's done, the abuses he's committed, facilitated, and covered up…" She pulled a face, a grotesque expression of theatrical disgust. "We should be applauded for killing him! It's a public service, really!"
"The prospect of becoming accessory to a murder doesn't trouble you?" Lelouch asked, gently prodding as Milly fell silent again. "Make no mistake, I would not hold it against you if it did."
After all, he reflected,
it's also my first time being directly responsible for the death of another human being… I wonder if my lack of feeling about that should be a cause for concern? Pulst has a family, presumably; even corrupt, bloviating bastards have those. Perhaps they will miss him, but I simply cannot bring myself to feel any regret for their loss…
"Well, I'm not thrilled about it," Milly admitted, grimacing slightly. "But… No, at the end of the day, there's just some people the world could do without, and I think he's one of them."
Lelouch nodded carefully, keeping quiet. Something was clearly weighing down on Milly, and if it wasn't the murder, then she had yet to mention what the real source of her concerns was.
"Hell, the only one I'm worried for tonight, like, right at this moment is Havelock," Milly continued, looking up at the water-stained ceiling as she spoke. "Assuming the snake doesn't bite him or nobody realizes that he's not actually on the staff, he should be alright… It would be really unlucky if a random police patrol picked him up on the way home, but he should be okay…"
"Havelock knows what he's doing," Lelouch said soothingly. "All of his papers are in order, he's got more than enough cash on hand to handle any shakedowns, and I even made sure he knows how to apply the false sideburns he'll be wearing for the next few days."
He also knows exactly what is expected of him in the event that some unforeseen factor complicates his escape beyond recovery. Even knowing full well what would have to be done, he still volunteered… And all he requested was that I say the last words with him before he left this afternoon.
"Yeah," Milly agreed, "he'll be fine. For today at least, probably. But," she looked back toward Lelouch, meeting his eyes squarely, "what about tomorrow? Or a month from now? What about everybody else?"
"Impossible to say," Lelouch conceded. "The Church already has plenty of experience keeping a low profile and relying on codes and signs to pass messages, but if the security services actually take an interest in us, who knows how effective those will be. The Bureau setting up a permanent field office down in Hiroshima is undeniably worrying, but the other option is just to continue hiding until we dwindle into irrelevancy. Ultimately," he shrugged, "I can plan as much as I like, but I cannot see the future, Milly."
"...I'm not really saying this right," Milly mumbled, then sighed with exasperation. "I get all that. I know all that. I heard you say as much to Nunnally, remember? Look, I'm not… worried… about our physical safety. Well," she caveated, "I am, but that's not… Ugh!"
She shook her head vigorously, carefully pinned blonde tresses escaping their bindings, and turned back to fix Lelouch with a skewering focus. "Look, Lulu, I just gotta ask… Do you think what we're doing here is right?"
"You said it yourself, didn't you? Killing Pulst would be a public service. But…" Lelouch frowned, peering into Milly's cornflower blue eyes, "this isn't about Pulst, is it?"
"Who cares about that tub of lard?" Milly snorted dismissively, before quickly sobering up once more. "No, Lelouch, I'm talking about how you… we… are manipulating the members of the church. I mean…" she took a breath, held it, and exhaled. "I mean, do you really… believe all of this? Not just the God stuff, but that the True Anglicans will ever return to power? 'True Prince' or not,
Leland, you've gotta admit that an actual victory like that is a very long shot, but you're selling it as an inevitability. Selling them hope is what you're doing, and… and I don't know if you have any intention of ever delivering."
And that's Milly Ashford right there, Lelouch thought, calmly meeting his friend's imploring eyes.
She likes to have fun, likes to tease and play jokes, but at the end of the day she's an intensely caring person. Moreover, she's an intensely responsible person; once she moves past her jokes and recognizes her responsibility. It seems like she's taken responsibility for the welfare of the congregation, and… probably because she helped recruit some of them, a sense of responsibility for my promises.
If not handled delicately, this could be an issue.
"Big questions indeed, Milly," he said at last, unflinchingly meeting her gaze. "Truthfully, I have been struggling with some of them myself."
Pushing off of the desk, Lelouch rose to his full height and stretched, rolling his shoulders back as he tried to loosen his back after hours hunching over his laptop, buying time in the process.
"Starting from the easiest question… I'd say I'm ambivalent on the 'God stuff' as you put it. Whether or not there is a god or an afterlife matters very little when Britannia is free to do as it wishes in this life. I won't lie, the prospect of That Man spending the remainder of eternity burning in Hell is pleasing, but ultimately it matters very little. God, I assume," Lelouch added, "will presumably tend to that while leaving the small matter of sending That Man to his just reward up to me."
"I don't think there is a God," Milly admitted, almost offhandedly, and then looked shocked at her own words. "Er, I mean-! I-it's just… If there is, He doesn't really seem to do very much, does He? And if that's the case… Well… isn't that basically the same as there not being one at all?"
"I will admit that it is difficult to argue that point," Lelouch chuckled, before continuing. "As for the real meat of your questions, about whether or not I am deceiving the True Anglicans… I do not believe that I am."
"You think you can win." Milly's voice was incredulously flat.
"How can I believe otherwise and still function?" Lelouch asked, an old weight hanging on his back, his stomach knotting with a hunger long since sated and nostrils full of the remembered scent of corpses sweltering in the summer's heat. "If I cannot win, if the world truly is immovable and cruel, if there is no chance of ever tearing down Britannia and building a world worthy of Nunnally from the ashes, then why bother getting up each morning?"
"That's not an answer," Milly accused. "It's inspirational, sure, but an affirmation isn't an answer."
"True," Lelouch nodded, "it isn't. But like you said, a final triumph is a long shot. We have to have hope, and hope is built from the belief that there is a chance of victory. Do I believe that triumph is inevitable? No, but that does not mean that I am any less dedicated to doing all in my power to pave a road toward that glorious conclusion. Do I think it is probable that the True Anglicans shall again preach from the pulpit of Rochester Cathedral? It is not probable, but it
is possible.
"You are right, Milly, in your silent but pertinent point: I
am manipulating the True Anglicans. But I ask you, do you think that they don't know this? Don't accept this? They know just as well as you or I how many they number, how scarce their resources are. They know that victory is a dream, at least for now. But that hope I sell them is the same hope I feel, the same hope I sell myself. I know how great and terrible That Man is, Milly, and I know how cold, uncaring, and
awful the world can be.
"But," Lelouch continued, his voice quieting, losing none of its vigor as volume bled away, "I will not give up. One way or another, either I will die or I will be victorious. Britannia will burn, Milly, or I will burn myself up. Too much has happened. Too much cannot be undone. If I am selling hope to the True Anglicans, then it is only because I am hooked on that same hope already. Call me a liar for telling them that they will be the winners when this all shakes out, but then I am a liar twice-over because that is the same lie I tell myself whenever I gaze into a mirror.
Pausing, Lelouch looked away from Milly, giving himself some time to collect himself as the previous silence returned to the room. It thickened in the sultry air as Lelouch waited for his co-conspirator's reply, seeming to condense into some dreadful unseen fog as the long seconds ticked by. When he could stand it no longer, Lelouch mustered up his courage and, dragging his eyes back down to hers, asked:
"Does that answer your question?"
"Y-" Milly stopped, her voice quavering and her eyes wide and staring, as if she had never seen him before, and coughed. "Yeah," she tried again, "it does… Whew…"
A hint of a smile, a touch of a blush, and something like her usual mischievous sparkle returned to Milly as she took a deep, heaving breath. "You sure do talk fancy, Mister Leland…" Her lips parted into a devil-may-care grin. "You always have dreamt big, haven't you? Jeez… Well, there's worse ambitions for a son of Britannia, I suppose? After all, isn't it the most Britannian ambition of all to destroy Britannia once and for all?"
Lelouch stifled the flinch that last comment evoked. The idea that everything he was doing was only playing into the lies That Man spread about the nature of humanity, the nature of Britannia… He pushed the disconcerting thought away entirely and focused back on Milly. At least Milly saw he wanted to destroy the throne instead of claiming it for himself, that was something.
"All that aside," he said, "are you still with me, Milly? You asked if I was certain that I can deliver victory, and I have admitted that I am not. Does that shake your confidence? If you want out, I will not hold it against you."
"Oh, you're not escaping our engagement
that easily,
Leland~" Milly sang back, Ashford peeping through Ashland even as she clung to her disguise's backstory. "Sorry, but you're stuck with me. From now until… Until the end, I guess."
"Keep up with the jokes," Lelouch replied with a smile, stepping back and away from Milly to return to his computer, checking on his program's progress. "It's good for morale. But, Milly?" He looked back up, catching her eyes once again. "Thank you. You and your family have done… so much, so very much, for us. It will not be forgotten, I promise you."
"You make a lot of promises," Milly mused, rising from the desk. "But… I'll take your word on it." A smile touched her lips as she turned toward the door, Lelouch only catching a glimpse of the expression. "Lord Lelouch… Remember me when you come into your kingdom."
A joke, Lelouch knew, and knew that it wasn't.
Several minutes after Milly left, Lelouch's phone pulsed against the side of his leg.
"Havelock?" he said, recognizing the number. "How was your shift?"
"Complete dogshit," came the reassuring counter-phrase, affirming that, paradoxically, all was well. "Just another day on deck, you know how it goes. Having to deal with another smug pig in a suit work'n us boys to the bone. Just stepped out for a smoke break to see how the kiddos are."
"Polly's well," Lelouch replied, informing him that the first prong of the offensive, the hack, was already well underway. "Megan's just gone to bed." The second prong was ready for deployment.
"Well at least there's that," Havelock said, relieved, and Lelouch heard the sound of a lighter clicking in the background as Havelock made good on his cover. "Ahh, hits the spot, that. Long shift tonight. Miguel was shifty as hell tonight, but I saw him off just fine. Hopefully that holds."
The snake was in the bishop's bed and the sedation had already been wearing off when Havelock had put it there. Nobody had noticed that anything was amiss yet.
"That's good," Lelouch said, feeling quite relieved himself. So far, everything was going splendidly. "Well, hang in there. You don't have much longer left on the clock, so just keep your head down and stay away from that guy. He's a troublemaker." He hesitated, then asked, "do you need a ride home?"
Stay in place for the remainder of your scheduled shift, and leave with the rest of the evening shift when they clock out. Do nothing to draw attention to yourself. Are you on track for exfiltration?
"Nah," Havelock demurred, "I'll be taking the train home. Smells like piss, but it gets the job done, dunnit?"
"Alright," Lelouch nodded, "hang in there. See you back at the bar; first round's on me."
Hanging up, Lelouch turned back to the computer and busied himself preparing Milly's video for distribution, giving it a quick viewing himself. It was short, only a few minutes long, but it was quite punchy. It aped the ritual of excommunication, listing Pulst's many and varied sins while flashing between photos of news items, shots of the crooked ledgers, and numbers and names of those wronged by Pulst, before building to a thundering climax, first declaring Pulst defrocked and expelled from the company of the Saved, then levying a forced penance upon him. "Blood shall pay for blood, and only blood shall wipe away your sin, Lazaro Pulst!"
Milly really does good work, Lelouch thought, uploading the video to a blind server located in Australia before mirroring the video to a number of servers distributed across the EU and the Britannian Heartland Areas.
And of course, so does Nunnally. Nobody would think that the thundering voice came from a wheelchair-bound thirteen year old girl with a voice changer. Maybe she's got a career in voice acting?
As the computer
dinged a merry notification that the uploads were complete, Lelouch pulled the virtual machine he was running the hack from back onto his screen. A quick check proved that all was ready. A single keystroke would lock the Diocese's servers, giving Lelouch's manufactured credentials administrator privileges and stripping access from all other accounts. Another keystroke would initiate millions of involuntary micro-donations from the Diocese of Tokyo to thirty selected charities, each transferring between one and ten pounds. Each donation would be made out "in honor of Timothy Hamilton, late of Bainbridge."
And with the tap of Enter, Lelouch thought, smiling as he pressed that key,
I have eviscerated the Bishopric of Tokyo. Now, he thought, minimizing the window as he began uploading his collection of evidence of the crimes of Lazaro Pulst to a number of file sharing sites,
to salt the wound.
The door to the office swung back open, and to Lelouch's surprise, Milly re-entered the room, pushing a rolling office chair laden with a light blanket ahead of her.
"Milly?" Lelouch asked, blinking at the intrusion. "I thought you had left."
"Why would you think something as silly as that, Leland?" came the arch reply. "What kind of fiance would I be if I left my man all alone in the office, slaving over a hot computer?"
"...A perfectly ordinary person with her own life to lead?" Lelouch tried, before sighing. "You know, it's just us here. Even Fred's gone home for the night. You can let the joke rest for now."
"Mmm…" Milly put a finger to her lips and made a production of looking upwards, miming contemplation. "Nah!" she said at last, scooting her chair up beside Lelouch's. "You're already too serious, Lulu, and if I can't force you into a dress for a crossdresser's ball, I'll have to resort to the next best option!"
"Pretending that we're together?" Lelouch asked wryly as Milly shook the blanket out. "Tame by your standards, Milly."
"Who said I'm pretending?" she rejoined, dropping down into her chair. Somehow, she had maneuvered it behind the desk so it directly abutted Lelouch's own tired swivel chair, and Lelouch couldn't help but notice that her knee was pressing up against his own. As was her thigh. "But if you want to let it rest for now, Lelouch… That's fine. Be a party pooper. I'll just take a nap instead of putting up with your no-fun anti-antics."
Killing a bishop doesn't count as an antic? Lelouch thought incredulously, but held his tongue even as Milly spread the blanket over them both and leaned into his shoulder. After all she had done to help him, well…
I'll let her have her fun for now.
And she had provided an abundance of help over the last few months. While Lelouch could travel freely through the Settlement and the Concession, a Britannian among Britannians, a lone man was suspicious, especially if he kept stopping in bars, coffee shops, and churches. A man roaming with a pretty girl on his arm, however, was a man about town, taking his lover out on a date. That said date had a handbag full of True Anglican literature that she slipped under placemats and between the leaves of hymnals and library books was lost completely on whatever eyes might have noticed her.
And that doesn't even touch on her efficacy as a recruiter.
As it turned out, soldiers, clerks, and workers were all eager to open their hearts to a pretty and attentive girl who seemed not only receptive but happy to listen to their gripes and concerns. The knowledge of which she always passed to Lelouch, who tailored his recruitment pitch to each prospective recruit individually.
For all of that… She can have my shoulder for an hour, he decided, looking down at the apparently already sleeping Milly. She had been up late the night before, he knew, working hard editing the video that would announce the death of Lazaro Pulst and the resurrection of the True Church from the graveyard of history.
With that in mind… It's the least I can do.
An hour passed, and then another. Just as the clock ticked toward midnight and Lelouch's swelling unease grew almost uncontrollable, the phone rang again. This time, the phone number was Sergeant Coffin's.
"Alexander," the noncom said as soon as Lelouch picked up, sirens wailing in the background, "headquarters has declared a state of lockdown across all installations manned by the 32nd. Scuttlebutt has it that it's just the Honorary barracks going into lockdown for now, but that might change. No explanations given so far. I'll get back to you if that changes."
The line went dead before Lelouch could reply. "Best of luck, Roger," he said to the empty room anyway, putting the phone back down on the desk. "Best of luck to us all."
Ironically enough, determining whether or not the assassination attempt had been successful was perhaps the greatest blind spot in Lelouch's entire plan. Havelock would be long gone from the scene by the time the bishop slipped between the sheets, and any stranger lingering outside the Bishop's Palace to monitor traffic would soon have cause to regret it from within their new holding cell.
Ultimately, "Father Alexander" had commanded the soldiers and low-ranking bureaucrats of his congregation to alert him of any unusual developments. Coffin's heads-up about an entire Honorary Legion being placed into lockdown was just an example of just such an unusual development that could mark the successful assassination of Bishop Lazaro.
But it could also mark the failed assassination of that same worthy, Lelouch considered, drumming his fingers against the desk.
Or it could be in regards to something entirely independent of our operation. Putting out the announcement claiming responsibility without certain proof of success is a gamble, both because the True Anglican cause would look foolish if Pulst takes to the pulpit at Tokyo Cathedral tomorrow, alive and healthy, and because it would spoil the element of surprise.
On the other hand, the attempt has already been made and the Diocese's coffers are rapidly being emptied. It's a little late to hedge my bets.
As Milly's artfully assembled video announcing the excommunication of Bishop Lazaro from both the company of the faithful and the mortal coil went live on half a dozen sites simultaneously, with multiple download links to the trove of evidence Lelouch had retrieved posted in the comments, Lelouch wondered how Viceregal-Governor la Britannia, the Third Prince Clovis, would respond to the death of one of his closest advisors.
Whatever he decides, Lelouch knew,
it's all but guaranteed that Clovis will find some new and innovative way to fuck it all up.
Content with the night's work, Lelouch allowed himself to lean back into Milly, his eyes slipping shut. They'd have to wake early, he knew, to sneak back to Ashford's campus before they were missed, but for now…
For now, let us rest, content that the fruits of our labor are coming to fruition at last.
AUGUST 1, 2016 ATB
PRINCE CLOVIS'S PERSONAL STUDY, VICEREGAL PALACE, BRITANNIAN CONCESSION, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
0455
"-And thankfully one of the maids managed to behead the serpent before it could bite anyone else or escape," said the Agent, flipping his notebook shut. "As soon as the snake, a Western Taipan, we believe, was killed, paramedics evacuated His Eminence to the Nunnally vi Britannia Memorial Hospital where the receiving doctors declared him dead on arrival."
The Viceregal-Governor, hollow-eyed despite four cups of coffee after a sleepless night and slumped so far over that he was practically sliding out of his chair, nodded jerkily and beckoned the Agent to continue.
The contrast to the ramrod straight posture of the Royal Guard standing vigilantly at a stiff parade rest directly behind the prince's armchair drove the pathetic display up to the very line of farce.
"Investigations are of course still underway," reported the Agent, smothering his momentary amusement at the state of his "natural superior", "both in regards to the exact circumstances leading up to His Eminence's unfortunate demise and the… video released in the wake of his passing."
Which had been, in the Agent's opinion, a brilliant move. Not only had the brief video been extremely memorable, but the soundtrack that played over the opening and closing moments had been simple enough that anybody could hum it and incredibly catchy. Paired with the continued lack of success in scrubbing the thing from the internet, half of the Area's population had likely watched the video at least once already.
Even if we somehow managed to remove it from the public's view entirely, the horse has already fled the stable. The narrative has been set.
"Heretics…" Clovis snarled, outrage breathing temporary vitality into his fatigued, hungover frame. "Heretics here, in my Area!" He glared balefully at the Agent, who met the prince's eyes with bland equanimity. "Why didn't the Inquisitors know about this infestation?"
Because, as intelligence operatives, they are entirely worthless, the Agent silently answered, sure that similar thoughts were passing through the mute Guard's mind as well.
Because their methods, rewarding false accusations and pursuing confessions through whatever means necessary, are best used to terrorize a population back into line rather than to actually identify and disrupt organized opposition.
"The Holy Office has assured the Directorate that the heretic population is quite negligible and entirely confined to the lower orders," the Agent replied smoothly, neatly deflecting the blame. "The Purges were, of course, quite thorough, and the benefits the reformed creed endowed upon the nobility obvious. As such, the ranking inquisitor for the Area decided that the Holy Office's resources were best devoted to hunting crypto-Papists hiding amongst the commoner populations hailing from the Old Areas."
"Well, that certainly was a wonderful choice, wasn't it?" The Viceregal-Governor said with biting sarcasm, throwing up his hands with a touch of his usual theatricality. "First they couldn't find anything on that jumped up Honorary, and now they dropped the ball so hard their own bishop got killed!"
"I cannot speak to the efficacy of my colleagues in the Holy Office," said the Agent, pausing pointedly to convey his unspoken opinion about that efficacy, "but I can assure you that the Directorate has already begun our analysis of the alleged evidence released, presumably by the perpetrators of the murder, in concert with the propaganda video."
And what a damning packet it is, that evidence. Every sin of the Church, every blemish on her face, all laid bare in the microcosm of the actions of a single bishop. The secret Leveller shook his head, amazed despite himself.
Lunatic zealots they might be, this "True Church of Britannia" has just released the single greatest argument against canon law and canon courts we could hope for. Clerical hands, rich with stolen lucre, dismissing their own crimes from the judge's chair with prejudice and tasking the in-house enforcers with harassing those who would stand against them… Absurd.
"Regrettably," the Agent continued at Clovis's irate prompting gestures, "none of the material seems to be falsified in any way we can distinguish. Our analysts have yet to complete the process of cross-checking names and numbers, of course, but from what progress they have achieved thus far, the Diocese of Tokyo was almost certainly responsible for one of the largest money laundering operations I have ever heard of in the service of tax evasion. Beyond laundering the money of others, the Diocese and Bishop Lazaro appear to have misappropriated tens of millions of pounds, both from donations and from Bishop Lazaro's ministerial budget."
"Bah," Clovis waved dismissively, still frowning though the Agent noticed how he relaxed in his chair. "All money problems. Nobody will care about something so grimey and base. Everybody will have forgotten about all of this nastiness within a week."
"Unfortunately, Your Highness, I doubt we will be so lucky," the Agent said, shaking his head regretfully. "It also seems like the Bishopric of Tokyo was deeply involved in the misappropriation and unlicensed trafficking of conscripted Numbers as well. While the bulk of the conscripted labor was put on the usual tasks, it seems like a fair number were assigned to a number of companies that do not, in fact, exist."
"And?" Clovis blinked, his near-stupor resuming as his interest in the conversation waned again. "Who cares? There's no end to the Numbers. If we want more, we can find them. A handful going missing here or there doesn't matter."
"Generally, you would be correct, Your Highness," the Agent conceded, bowing his head. "However, one of those shell companies was also the listed purchaser for a large consignment of medical and surgical supplies. The Directorate noted this in the context of a different investigation, so the company's name is flagged. This combination of medical supplies and disposable bodies in a single entity raises worrying questions."
And now, the Agent noted,
His Ineptness has gone quite still in his chair; he isn't bored now, nor half-asleep. Interesting…
"Hmph," Clovis snorted condescendingly a moment late, his usual impeccable stage timing notably off. "Sounds like nothing more outlandish than a simple harvesting operation. But… oh, fine. I suppose if the rabble got wind of this detail, they might raise a fuss. So many weeds in my garden… It's so difficult to stay on top of them all!" His eyes flashed to the Agent, intense and fearful despite the bravado. "I will be expecting another briefing on this… shell company… no later than this afternoon! Instruct the analysts that discovering the extent of this rot is a priority! Understood?"
"Yes, Your Highness," the Agent replied, raising fist to chest. "It will be done. Every available analyst will be tasked with following this lead."
"Good, good…" Clovis sank back into his chair, his hand questing toward a steaming cup of coffee waiting on a table nearby, where another soldier from the Guard had left the carafe before taking up a station outside the door. Clovis, it seemed, wasn't feeling particularly trusting toward his household staff at the moment. "Be off with you, then. I have… Much to attend to."
"By your leave, Your Highness," murmured the Agent, backing out of the room and closing the door behind him. He was eager to carry out the Viceregal-Governor's instructions, though not for reasons Clovis was likely to appreciate.
Unlike most of my interactions with the man, the Agent thought, nodding to the brace of Royal Guards stationed in front of the door, who didn't return the gesture,
that conversation lacked an audience beyond his bodyguard. As we are both his sworn and trusty servants, it's unlikely that Clovis was manufacturing his reactions; why would he bother, after all? So his reactions were likely sincere, most especially his sudden interest in the company purchasing human meat and medical supplies.
Now, Clovis could be correct about its nature as an organ harvesting operation, the Agent conceded as he made his way through the Viceroy's Palace, returning to the sub-basement domain of the Directorate.
It would explain both of the purchases, but the reaction from the Royal Pain doesn't match something so pedestrian.
And, the Agent thought, turning his mind back toward a meeting months in the past, all the way back in the April springtime,
Clovis is always talking to General Aspirus of the Special Weapons Corps, isn't he? They are good friends… Perhaps good enough friends that Aspirus was able to convince Clovis to sign off on some special project sufficiently secret or grotesque that it had to be kept off even the Corps' official books? If Clovis didn't know about Pulst's operation or didn't know the full expanse of that operation, he could have simply told his most trusted advisor to handle the matter. But if he was fully aware of Pulst's operation, a conspirator rather than a dupe… Perhaps he used the machine Pulst had built to launder both money and responsibility?
But why? What could possibly justify such secrecy?
The mind boggled at the implications.
If it is something that the prince wants to hide, the Leveller resolved,
then it is something that the people must learn about. To protect the common welfare, this investigation must proceed, and as soon as the prince tells us to stop… That's when the real work shall begin.
