Chapter V

Florentine

Florentine had just started to doze off when the barrel bumped, thumped, bounced her head back against the weathered wood. The shock of sudden movement tensed her muscles, and pain exploded in her left leg. She’d managed to successfully ride the edge of a cramp for the last several hours only to be undone in the closing minutes. Teeth sank into her bottom lip, stifling a string of profanities, and with a final jolt, she figured she was grounded. Light sinking in through cracks and imperfections in the barrel blinked as two—she guessed—figures wandered around outside, a pair of voices confirming her estimation. She recognised the first to be Lena, but the second, however, spilled out from the early pages of her life story.

They talked for a few more minutes, exchanging introductions and a brief rundown of how it was that the driver and Florentine were associated, before a series of hard impacts landed on the lid until the side popped up and the end of a crowbar then fingers worked their way under the disk. Daylight sliced in and the lid was gone. She had to blink several times while her eyes readjusted.

“Well, well… Didn’t take long for you to turn back to a life of crime, did it?” Johnny Petit-Merlot looked down on her with an amused smirk, like a kjempe encountering a gnome for the first time. “Although, I have to say, this is a tad larger in scale than the jobs we used to pull.”

“How about you get back in the game a little quicker and hurry up and pull me out?” Florentine grumbled, her capacity to ignore the cascading pain throughout her body dwindling. “Now.”

Johnny intercepted her arms as she held them up and yanked her upright in one smooth motion. Florentine’s legs buckled, bringing her down to perch on the rim. She massaged her legs out the best she could under the circumstances. Lena sat on the back of the cart, water bottle in hand, sipping on the beverage within.

“I guess our history means nothing to you,” Florentine remarked wryly, nodding to Lena.

Johnny wagged his finger at her. “Tut, tut. Is it not chivalrous to help the lady first? Or are you a knight in name only?” he teased.

She simply grunted in reply, then, to Lena, asked, “are you okay, mila—” she bit off the now outdated formality. “Are you suffering cramps anywhere?”

Lena put the bottle down and popped to her feet. “I’m feeling fine,” she said. “I’m feeling ecstatic! Can you truly believe we eloped on the day of my wedding? Can you truly believe we made it? Can you truly believe there are thousands of people crammed into the throne room at this very moment becoming hysterical because the bride is absent?” Giggling spiralled into near maniacal laughter.

Florentine smiled; she was fine.

“And what about you?” Johnny wondered. “You’ve been working your thighs like they’re steaks that need tenderising.”

“Not exactly the smoothest driver, are you?”

A grin broke out onto his face and he slapped her back. “I’ve got—what has it been?—twenty years of teasing to catch up on.”

“Would’ve been less if you’d come to see me,” she said.

“Would’ve been less if you’d come to see me,” he returned.

Florentine, with some effort, swung her legs up out of the barrel, taking a handful of tentative steps up the road and back. The plan was never to ride in the barrels the whole way to Johnny’s farm, just long enough to be away from the city. She was thankful to be passing the rest of the journey sprawled out on the flatbed. Lena rode up front with Johnny and the pair spent the proceeding day entertaining themselves at Florentine’s expense. Just when she thought Johnny had run out of stories, Lena would start up, then Johnny again, and so on. She tried to ignore it, but some embarrassing stories were meant to stay in the past. Although, there was something profoundly wonderful seeing her partner and a dear, old friend getting on so well.

They spent the night under the canvas of a great big tree sitting out in the middle of a grassy plain and arrived at the farm late in the morning the next day.

The sonn sat high above the mountains in the distance, hazy grey clouds blew in from the south. Acres of farmland at the height of growing season surrounded them, plants and crops swaying in the breeze like drunks at a concert. A large three-story farmhouse sat to her left, a row of specialised equipment lay beneath a sturdy wooden gazebo on the right, the barn behind her, a well in the centre, and a gate to the dirt road beyond that. The air was heavy with the stench of manure. She could scarcely believe such peace and quiet existed anywhere in the Royal Kingdom of Dawn Stone after the building festivities of the prior weeks.

Florentine hopped off the cart, eyes wide and roaming. Johnny secured the horses, then came to stand with her. A decade and a half had been kinder to him than many others from her youth. He had a thick head of black hair failing to hold out against a receding hairline, the stocky build of a hard worker, faint wrinkles carved up his angular face, and the beard he’d spent so much of his time as a younger man bragging about having one day. Most noticeably of all, however, was the lack of tension in his body. Good for him.

“I see your brilliant plan is paying off,” she said.

“The more skills I acquire, the better a thief I’ll be,” he replied.

“That so?”

“Always playing the long game, I am.”

“Never doubted it.”

“You doubted it plenty and ended up in jail.”

“Joke’s on you. I successfully pulled the biggest score in history.”

“How about you wait until you’re over the border to brag?”

“Planning to meet me there?”

“Incredible… Your farm is so beautiful!” Lena appeared on the other side of Florentine. “I can’t ever remember coming out to this part of the country.” She struck a quizzical expression. “I…didn’t really get out much in general.” Her mood turned sombre. “I suppose there’s not much point in going out as a monarch when there’s not a state dinner to attend or an official function to suffer.”

“We’re definitely going to make up for that,” Florentine told her. “I guarantee it.”

Her unabashed enthusiasm returned. “You’re right! From this moment on, Lena Cavendish-Montagu-Wellesley-Beauclerk-Chicheley”—she paused to take a breath—“is a person of the world! No stone will remain unturned on our quest for Sapphos!”

Florentine hated to admit it, and so only admitted it privately to herself, but the musk of the country air, thrill of their escape, and making real her dream to be with Lena rendered her vulnerable to the infectious sense of childlike adventure being doused all over the landscape by the woman she loved. She smiled, then looked to Johnny.

“I see,” he said, having observed the way Florentine looked at Lena. Then, “I couldn’t get all the stuff you requested on such short notice. Most of it, yeah, and I’ve got the backpacks Elfriede sent along in advance, but some of it’s coming in tomorrow, so if you really need it, you’ll have to wait.”

“It’ll take a while to search the city, but I don’t want to push our luck.”

“Not a problem. We’ll get some lunch and you can meet Jaque when he gets back from the fields, then I’ll take you out later today.” He flashed a smile that turned Florentine’s stomach—trouble. “Don’t worry, I’ve arranged the perfect place for you to stay tonight.”

#

A haunted house.

Johnny gestured to the decrepit, crumbling building crammed into an ever-shrinking space amongst encroaching woodland. Wild crystal formations pierced its crumbling structure, like giant bayonets. The faint recollection of a long buried history class placed the manor in the seventh or eighth century. The architects of the day had a particular obsession with columns, and this was a particularly garish example of that long passed trend. The window frames were carved into columns, the door frames were carved into columns, and columns held the porch awning aloft. All of them were shaped into thick, throbbing phalluses. Florentine squinted at the structure; it almost reminded her of—

“A Diadochi bathhouse,” Lena said, a hand over her eyes to block out the sonn. “I remember the first time I visited Aceris we passed through a district of the city that had genitals everywhere: buildings, statues, murals, sculptures. It was quite the sight.”

“No-one knows much about the manor,” Johnny told them. “They reckon it was abandoned around the time your family took the throne back, but there are no records as to who lived here, what they did, where their descendants are—nothing.” He started towards the entrance, Florentine and Lena following. “I’ve not been up this way too often, and certainly not long enough to really pick through the remains. Seems to me anything not taken by the former legal owners has been stripped out by looters and squatters over the centuries. Most people I talked to in the area didn’t even know it existed.”

Florentine side-eyed him. “That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”

“No no no. I found it a couple of years after I moved out here and did all my enquiring back then. I’ve barely given it a thought since, and I doubt anyone else has, either.”

“Good.” Florentine hung back while Lena started towards the house, brandishing her staff like a walking pole, eyes darting around to take in their surroundings fully. She turned to Johnny. “Hey, uh, thanks for doing this,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be willing to help with something like this after so long.”

He looked at her as if the mere thought were preposterous. “If you’re going to break the law, make it big, right?”

She smiled. “Right.”

Johnny suddenly turned away, pacing a few steps as he rubbed the back of his head. “Look,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to bring this up or not, but…I’ve got something else for you.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a letter from Marianne.” His eyes settled on something off in the distance. “I got one just like it, and I can only assume Blaze and Blade did too. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going deliver it to you.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“None of us had heard much from you after you enlisted, then you got a medal and a Royal Guard assignment. We thought you’d moved on.”

Florentine sighed. She couldn’t blame him. “For a while I had. I tried so hard to be the most upstanding citizen I could be, the archetypical soldier for my parents. I’d gotten a second chance. You were probably right to not bother.”

“I thought so, too.” He turned back to face her, apologetic. “But, it wasn’t my decision to make. Marianne wrote it for you, regardless of how we all felt about each other. You deserve that much. I left it in your backpack.”

“Thank you.”

The pair embraced. Florentine clung to Johnny for a long, long time, painfully aware that this was their real goodbye. Sadness rose in her chest until tears spilled from her eyes, then fell away to leave only regret washed up on her cheeks. There was no excuse for leaving her childhood friends behind the way she did, believing she’d moved beyond them for the sake of a nobler goal. They were all fighting for survival, simple as that, and as she’d come to later learn, the path of societal conformity proved less and less noble over time.

They said their goodbyes, and Florentine walked towards the manor. She hadn’t noticed when, but Lena had stopped gawking at their surroundings to focus on the conversation between herself and Johnny. From that distance, she couldn’t have heard what they were saying—barring the use of arcane enhancement.

Lena cocked her head as she approached. “Would you be opposed to sharing?”

“I haven’t told you before?” Florentine replied, passing Lena and jogging up the steps to the decking; it flexed and crunched with every step.

“In spite of my best efforts.” Lena climbed the stairs and crossed to the door, pushing it open with an extended, echoing creak. “I expect you to tell a story worthy of a Diadochi amphitheatre.”

“It’s closer to a pulp paperback,” Florentine answered, joining her at the threshold. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

“In the absence of facts, it’s left to my imagination to fill in the blanks from your sordid childhood.”

“The truth is far less exciting.”

Burning orange Goddess rays beaming through cracks in the ceiling divided up the dank, dusty foyer. A million tiny nooks and crannies and crevasses whistled eerily in the buildings bones. The first spitting drops of rain pitter pattered on the exterior. Florentine and Lena’s voices alternated between echoing and not with every step. Whatever was left in terms of furniture and décor had accrued puffy jackets of dirt and moss, some home to permanent plant residents. Vines bulged from the walls like veins on a pensioner and almost all of the wallpaper had rotted, bleached, or lay in a crumbled heap beside the plaster it had previously occupied. The air tasted textured and Florentine tried to breath as little as possible for fear her throat turn into a dustpan. Above all else, it was deathly cold despite the climate outside being the picture of a lazy summer evening.

The interior aesthetic flowed in from the exterior: columns and abstract phalluses. Debris carpeted the flooring and stone podiums, chipped and vandalised, sat cold and alone under once opulently carved archways mirrored on each side of the foyer. Two sets of stairs curved up to a second floor as if the house were welcoming her with a hug. Although the left side had caved in, squinting at the layout of the room reminded her of a vagina.

Florentine picked her way through the room, scanning entrances, exits, and breaches for any sign that they’d been recently traversed. As far as she could tell, it had been decades since anyone had spent any significant time here. Only a pair of relatively new backpacks left beside the entrance betrayed otherwise. She had more faith in animal visitors as opposed to others, but the ingrained sense of heightened awareness a lifetime of experience had drilled into her made her paranoid of being out in the woods, in a compromised structure, with only her wits and Lena’s arcane ability to protect them. Having their throats slit by random bandits in the middle of the night so soon after escaping was not the way she wanted this journey to end. She settled on them picking one room and setting up there—ideally the most defensible.

The weather worsened considerably as they picked their way through the manor, and saturated grey clouds rained heavily upon them from the darkened sky. Florentine’s instincts plagued her throughout the search for a suitable place to sleep. Little sounds that didn’t fit the ambiance, mishappen shadows, loose fabric flapping around in the draft, music…faraway voices. She scolded herself for being so easily taken in by the atmosphere. Far more ominous places possessing greater dangers had failed to scare her. A haunted house; that’s all it was.

Lena came across a bedroom on the first floor that had four intact walls, a working door, and, somehow, an unbroken window. The bed was only a frame and one corner contained the remains of a small fire, but it was the best they could hope for given the circumstances. While Lena stashed their backpacks and her staff, and used some arcane dusted ingenuity to get a fire going in the corner, Florentine rigged both points of entry with simple traps designed to make a hel of a noise should anyone think to intrude.

She sat down on the wooden floor, leant back on her hands, staring up at the cracked plaster ceiling, thinking about how different her accommodations had been the previous that morning. The muffled jests from other members of the Royal Guard as they swapped shifts, spirited conversation, piercing thud of boots on hard wooden flooring, rattling and clanging of equipment, horses and carts outside, drunks—all gone. The soundtrack to her life had flipped to the B-side.

“Can you imagine how much history these walls have absorbed?” Lena’s voice was harsh against the relative quiet. “To see all this being forgotten feels…wrong.”

“Do you want to head back and let the Dawn Stone Historical Society know?” Florentine asked. “I can’t imagine His Majesty will be pleased to hear you sank the wedding because you just had to make sure people knew about this place.”

“Someone should.” She sat down beside Florentine. “Maybe they can track down the original owners somehow.”

“You’re lucky to have so many people invested in preserving your family history—most aren’t so lucky.” Florentine thought back to all the family homes she’d personally destroyed during her military career, to the longhouse at the centre of the village in the woods where she’d found the teddy bear. “And I’m not sure how much anyone wants to remember the architectural disaster that was this obsession with columns.”

“They are a bit much.” Lena reached forward to grab one of the backpacks and unzipped it. She gleefully produced a small metal tin. “Ah, Mama Priscilla’s homegrown hash teaffee! I can’t believe Elfi parted with such prized goods!” She twisted the lid off and held it under Florentine’s nose. “Go on. Take a sniff. Elfi’s mother grows the best teaffee on all Orbis.”

She did. The scent was earthy and fresh, and had a hint of that high hash was famous for. “It’s nice.”

“Nice?! It’s exquisite! Transcendent! Priceless in its rarity. Have you any idea how much it costs to import something like this fresh?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know about such things as that,” she answered in a mildly sarcastic tone.

Lena slapped Florentine’s shoulder. “It’s expensive and she doesn’t have much! For her to part with this is…” She sighed. “I miss her dearly already.”

Florentine put a hand round her shoulder and hugged her close. “I know you—” There it was again: that music. “Do you hear…something?”

“I hear a lot, you’re going to have to be more specific,” she replied wryly.

“Music.” Florentine strained to grasp it amongst the underlying tones of the manor. “And don’t tell me I’m paranoid or that it’s just the sounds of the house.”

“I would never presume to condescend you.” Lena got to her feet. “I was going to suggest we investigate.”

“You can’t be serious?”

“Why not? You are.”

“We aren’t going to find some housekeepers having an affair or some drunken noble rooting around in the rubbish. Unknown noises here could mean serious trouble.”

Lena puffed out her chest, putting on a brave face. “I-I can’t simply hide away in here cowering,” she said through an air of faux confidence. “We’re out in the wider world on our own and running into all sorts of ne’re-do-wells is a potential regularity. The sooner I learn to…negotiate with the shadier elements of common life, the better we’ll both feel.”

Florentine’s protective instincts flared as she levelled a hard glare at Lena, knowing she was right. “Stay behind me and do exactly what I say,” she said. “We’ll need to carve out some time to teach you survival skills.”

“Yes. Thank you!” Lena nodded vigorously, grinning. She ran to the door and pulled it open, somewhere on the threshold between thrill and fear. “Let’s go!”

Florentine joined her, smiling. “Did you ever think you’d spend your first nights as a married woman camping under a tree and squatting in a haunted house?”

“I always imagined I’d be”—her cheeks flushed as she tried to keep her cool—“exploring your haunted house on my wedding night.” And she lost it; her laughter avalanched through the corridors, Florentine’s joining it.

“You’re the worst.” Florentine drew the backs of her hands across her damp cheeks, gasping for air. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Shadows were darker, sharper, longer in the faint light of Lena’s arcane torch, the wind had picked up outside, jostling the rickety old structure with some ferocity, and Florentine still heard music—a piano. A delicate tinkling that now stood obviously apart from the soundscape of the house and the weather. They followed it back to the foyer and down the rickety set of stairs, looking towards the corridor directly opposite the entrance that stretched to the rear wing of the manor to a pair of doors that they cautiously approached. Beyond lay a dining or ball room of some sort. A likely location for a piano, and a large open space a band of troublemakers could use to set up camp.

Florentine insisted on going first, keeping Lena close behind, body primed for a fight in response to her mind beginning to acquiesce to their surroundings. They made their way down the corridor. The northern wing of the house had collapsed and was being pulled back into the dirt from which it came by wrapping, clinging roots. Music came to dominate the soundscape. Another surge in the weather; loose wooden panels rattled, lightning flashed through the room with a distant thunderclap seconds later, the frame of the manor itself seemed to strain, rain sloshed in through empty window frames that ran the length and breadth of the far wall. And the melody didn’t lose a beat, synchronising with the weather as if the pair were linked in some supernatural union.

Florentine and Lena exchange looks. There was indeed someone playing the piano at the far end of the cavernous room, indistinguishable from the shadow infecting the far corner. A lightning blink illuminated the mysterious musician—a skeleton. Lena grasped Florentine’s arm, going rigid for several seconds, then launched herself forward before Florentine could stop her.

“Excuse me,” she said, unheard over the volume. “Excuse me!”

Nothing. She puffed up her chest, went up behind the skeleton and tried again. It kept playing but looked up as if trying to decide whether it had heard anything out of the ordinary or not, then turned around and screamed. Lena screamed. It scrambled up over the top of the piano. She retreated back behind Florentine.

“I say, just what the fuck do you think you’re doing sneaking up on me like that?” Its voice sounded uncanny, as if there were still a full set of muscles, lips, and vocal cords in place instead of a hinging jaw. Its accent was so posh it bordered on parody. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

“What are you doing playing the piano in here?” Florentine returned.

“I always play piano in here—you’re intruding on me!”

“We’re intruding?” Lena emerged from cover a bit at a time. “Are you the original owner?”

“Who? Me? Oh, afterlife no!” It stood up from behind the piano, and dusted itself off as if it had an invisible body. “Why don’t we find somewhere we can talk that’s a little quieter?”

“Let’s,” Lena agreed.

Florentine had experienced her fair share of arcane oddities, but a walking, talking skeleton hadn’t been among them. She studied it when they got back through to the foyer and shut out the majority of the now howling wind and whipping rain. Its body clicked and clacked like wooden windchimes with every movement. Phantom discomfort tingled in Florentine’s joints. As for its, well, skeleton, it stood at odds with the setting in which it occupied, sporting the smooth, bleached white cleanliness of a biology class model.

“First thing’s first,” it said, straightening up, hands clasped behind its back, nose pointed firmly upwards so it could look down it at them. “Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing here?”

“I’m Lena,” she answered with a delicate curtsey, “and this is Florentine. We’re sheltering here overnight to evade a rather…tyrannical pursuer.”

Florentine grimaced, tensed, and failed to turn it into anything but a pained smile—why did she use their real names?

It looked—she assumed—them both over, then puffed out its chest, as it were, and said, “I’m Victor B. Marrow, former lieutenant colonel in Her Majesty’s Royal Armed Forces Artillery Corps.”

That last detail tugged at Florentine. “Her Majesty?”

“Her Majesty Lady of the Royal Kingdom of Dawn Stone High Queen Bauphette Montagu-Wellesley-Beauclerk-Chicheley the Descendant Vicomtesse de Dawn Stone,” he somehow rattled off in one unbroken breath. “I served her with honour and distinction, all the way to the…end.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, running off some quick calculations and recalling what she could of the convoluted history of Dawn Stone’s governance. “What was the last battle you fought?”

“The Battle of the Shallow Hill.”

“That”—and the pieces clicked into place—“makes you around four hundred years old.”

“Four hundred years?” Victor whistled, unsettling everyone in the room, and stroked his chin. “I…had no idea.”

“I remember that battle,” Lena said. “It was a couple of years after my—uhm, t-the Chicheley monarchy took back the throne, the final engagement between the Royalists and Pretenders.”

“Ah, a Royalist yourself,” Victor chortled. “May the Crystalline Goddess bless your soul.”

“I should’ve known it would be you!” A ghostly voice echoed through the hallways, sounding like someone was stood at the far end of the building with a speaking trumpet. “It’s always you when there’s a ruckus!”

A floating, semi-transparent figure diffused out of thin air at the top of the stairs, and descended the broken down side without missing a step, coming to a stop at the last step, which was still intact. He had arctic blue mist, like dry ice, cascading off his form and his ambient glow was enough to bath the whole room in cold tones. Lena shook her finger and the glow in its tip flickered out, as if she’d shaken away a match. The ghost wore a long-tailed tuxedo, as one might when partaking in an orchestra, his hair slicked over to one side, a needle-thin moustache sat atop his lip, curling up at the ends.

Victor made the motion of rolling his eyes. “And why is that a problem for you, you tone-deaf lug?”

The ghost scoffed.

“Oh, don’t take that attitude with me,” the skeleton snapped. “It got old decades ago.”

“You’re one to talk! There I was, out taking my evening stroll around the grounds before the weather turned, rather enjoying your latest composition, I must say, then screaming! It destroyed my mood! Tossed it to the ground and trampled on it! And I lost my line of thought, a masterpiece that will never be realised.”

Victor slapped a hand to his chest, chuckling condescendingly. “A masterpiece? Pft! You’re good, I’ll grant you that, but masterpiece is a stretch.”

“Come down off your high horse, Marrow, or do I have to pulverise you with a cannon for a second time?”

“Always with the threats!”

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” Lena stepped between them. “Can someone explain what’s going on here?”

Victor bowed his head. “Apologies, milady,” he said. “We were both bound to this place upon death, and neither of us has yet to deduce why it happened or what we need to do to gain access to the afterlife.”

“Except Rita,” the ghost said.

Florentine blinked, frowned. “Rita?”

“The third person haunting this manor.” He frowned at her. “You don’t catch on quick, do you?”

“We searched the place earlier and didn’t find anyone.”

“I doubt you even saw the half of it.”

“What my…socially challenged acquaintance here is trying to say,” Victor amended, “is that the manor has been so damaged over time, in addition to the many secret passages and tunnels, that you’re unlikely to have seen a fraction of it.”

The ghost pouted, folding his arms. “Yes, yes; that.”

“So,” Lena asked, “are you the original owner?”

“Maybe I…am!” He launched into an over-the-top maniacal laugh, punctuated by some nicely timed lightning, before cutting himself off abruptly and shrugging. “But I’m not, so I guess we’ll never know.”

“Who are you, then?” Florentine followed-up.

“Oh, I’m August Reno: smoothest sax in Iperon.” An arrogantly smug smirk crested his lips. “Not to mention industrial pioneer, philanthropist, revolutionary, poet”—he winked at Lena—“romantic.”

Victor shook his head, covering his face to protect himself from second-hand embarrassment.

“Surely you’ve heard of me? Or, at the very least, my company: RENOvations?”

Lena looked over her shoulder to Florentine, shrugging with her eyes. Florentine couldn’t place the name either, and she thought she could recognise all the big businesses in Dawn Stone. She briefly considered the possibility of it being a smaller business, but dismissed the idea based on August’s assumption that she’d just know about it.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Lena replied. “We haven’t heard of it.”

August choked out a laugh. “You must be joking.”

“I’m afraid not,” Florentine confirmed. “I’ve never heard of a business called RENOvations.”

“That’s impossible!” His smirk turned into a tight smile. “RENOvations is the leading brand in innovative solutions to everyday problems!”

The pair shrugged in sync.

Victor patted into Augusts back. “Don’t worry, old chum, I’m sure someone will remember.”

“Get your…hand off me!” The ghost attempted to slap his arm away and swiped straight through it. He puffed out a frustrated growl. “Why?! Why was I chosen to be stuck in this accursed pit of misery?!”

Lena went to put a hand on his shoulder, veering off at the last second. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“That last thing I… Oh.” He slapped a hand to his forehand, the impact echoing down the howling hallways. “I was… I was—where the fuck was I?”

“Poppycock!” Victor shook his head, pacing away a handful of steps. “You still can’t remember?”

August glared contempt at him. “Am I under any obligation to remember my death?” he shouted. “If it was so traumatic that I’ve suppressed all memories of it, why do you keep insisting I try to remember?”

“Suppressing such trauma—”

“—isn’t a health state of affairs to beholden to. I know!”

“What are you two shouting at?” A third, feminine voice pierced the wailing weather. “You idiots need to shut up and let me get some sleep!”

“Rita?” Florentine guessed.

Victor nodded.

“We should go and apologise,” Lena said.

August folded his arms, snorted. “Don’t bother.” He scoffed, muttering, “old shrew.”

She smacked him through the back of the head. “We’re going to apologise—all of us.”

Florentine watched Lena take control of the situation, observing the relaxed nature of her stance and twinkle of amusement in her eyes. Her earlier hesitations were gone, and Florentine couldn’t help but be taken by the confidence returning to her partners cadence. No-one could verbally slap sense into squabbling parties like Lena, nor command the Knight-Captain of the Royal Guard to surrender herself with such ease. Florentine cleared her throat, giving herself an excuse to cover the resultant blush.

“Where’s Rita?” Florentine asked.

“Over in the greenhouse,” Victor replied. “Although, we’ll have to think about moving her in a few decades; we’re not sure how much longer the structure will last.”

“She must have quite the set of lungs on her.”

“One of the, sometimes unfortunate, benefits to being dead. If only we could perform to a crowd, we’d never have to worry about projecting our voices. Alas…”

“Let me go first,” Florentine told Lena. “Just to be safe.”

“Just to be safe? Need I remind you that you broke into our house?” August said. “We’d be well within our rights to impale you on some sort of homemade trap.”

“Undead aren’t legally able to own property in Dawn Stone.”

“Fuckin’ xenophobes is what you are.”

“The implication is that you’re supposed to be buying up property in the afterlife.”

“I’d love to be buying up property in the afterlife, but I’m stuck here arguing with you about it!”

“Would you two stop?” Lena interjected, with a supporting nod from Victor. “The purpose here is to apologise to Rita, not antagonise her.”

Florentine levelled a brief, hard glare at August, then turned her eyes towards the corridor under the stairs. Going straight through led back to the dining room, off to the left had caved in, so she went right, traversing the length of the moss-covered corridor stretching out in front of her. The others followed a few paces behind.

All three doors on the left hand side opened into dining adjacent rooms: the kitchen, food storage, and servants quarters. They were basic and unflattering. Why put any design flourishes into rooms the owners were above thinking about? On the opposite side of the hallway were four doors leading to rooms Florentine couldn’t decipher; whatever had been contained within had long-since been removed, leaving behind lonely, empty spaces. And, finally, the door at the end: thick, heavy, and probably leading outside at one point.

Florentine went inside. Rain poured in all around her; droplets splashed and slapped against the dull green/brown foliage that had worked its way inside over the centuries, co-opting the shelves of differently shaped ceramic planters and vases as their own. The far corner had been run-through by a crystal bouquet of the size one could only find far from civilisation. She ran her eyes around the room. A flash of lightning granted her perfect clarity for but a second, and that’s when she saw it, sitting on the work bench across from her, the plants having been trimmed back from the area.

Florentine took one look at, presumably, Rita and sighed. Why would she be a flesh and blood person? That would be too easy.