Title:The Ante
Chapter 28: Mistigris – Part I
Fandom: X-Men: Evolution
Author:Lucia de’Medici
Summary:When Remy LeBeau left Rogue on the shore of the Ripper’s bayou hideout, he slipped a solitary playing card into the palm of her hand. It was a conciliatory gesture — an offer for friendship, an unspoken apology, and the beginning of a less-than-friendly game between rivals. A year has passed. The stakes have been raised, and Remy is not a person who enjoys entertaining the idea of folding before the bluff gets called.
Rating:Teen/Mature
Pairing: Rogue/Remy
Secondary Pairings: Gambit/Belladonna
Warnings:Language, violence, scenes of a sexual nature, minors engaged in sexual situations
Author’s Notes: My New Orleans lust: let me show you it. (Extensive) notes are at the bottom. This chapter goes out to my home slices on LJ, who frequently inspire me, frequently get me screaming about Emil like a ridiculous fangirl, and frequently remind me why I started writing this ridiculously long, never-ending piece of fanfiction. I loffs you. (Long live the Cult of the White Rabbit. Now accepting minion hoards to worship at the altar of Emil. Or something.) A note regarding this sequence in particular (and the following “Parts” to come: this chapter has been broken down into several smaller chunks. The whole of Chapter 28: Mistigris is going to hit a page count of some hundred and fifty pages or so, and to accommodate both your schedule and mine, I broke the chapter into smaller parts… such as what you’re seeing here. The rest of it will be posted as each part is completed and polished, and life will carry on as usual as soon as this “interlude” of sorts wraps up.)
Disclaimer: All characters and situations remain the property of their respective owners, included, but not limited to Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Kids WB. Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and Goomba are the intellectual property of Nintendo. Original characters and situations created for the purposes of this story are the brainchildren of the author, and if you intend to yoink them, or unsure if what you’re yoinking has been birthed from Luce’s creative headspace, please send an e-mail to the author in advance of perfecting your online thievery skills. Due credit for creative property is a kickass thing.

---
The Ante
Chapter XXVIII: Mistigris
Part I
---

The scene dropped away beneath her – descending like a curtain and crashing into the floor. Dazedly, Rogue blinked at the thick runner beneath bare toes, a mix of blood red and pale ivory that looked grey with the sudden shift in perspective. Reality seemed less like itself, and more like the dreamscape set to loop in her mind.

Her fingers were trembling, she noticed too slowly. Her lungs felt tight, her breathing shallow, and her hands wouldn’t stop their nervous quaver. Suddenly, Rogue understood. Below her gloves, like an itch, a dull, hot sensation spread like her marrow had turned molten in a matter of seconds. It would be so easy to press her palms to a wall and bring down Jean Luc’s house – this mansion built on lies and bribery and the hard work of others.

Seconds. She flinched. The door to the server room clicked shut behind her. Seconds, she thought, comprehending fully before the thought had even fully congealed into coherency. The reaction time was staggering. Seconds. Tick. Tick. Tick. With a blink, she’d assessed the surrounding halls and empty rooms – finding the grandfather clock three doors down, its solemn pendulum metering her heartbeat where everything else slowly shivered around the edges, threatening to break. Remy’s memories trembled at the periphery of her awareness, seeking refuge in her own mind and finding none. Instead, the onslaught was content to replay itself.

It made her feel like the unwilling spectator at a carnival sideshow.

Tick tick tick tick tick.

Remy exhaled behind her, and she could no longer ignore the silence – perfect in its artless caricature of composure.

Seconds.

Rogue shuddered, her stomach unsettled, ready to heave with the weight of it all as Remy’s memories edged closer, threatening a replay. Opening her eyes wide, as if the millisecond of darkness would bring them on again, she stared at the carpet with fixed determination to hold them back. She didn’t want to see it again. She didn’t want to see it again. She didn’t want to relive it…

Tick tick ticktickticktick.

Straining at the edges of her mental control, Rogue lifted a quavering hand to her temple, her satin-clad fingers vibrating against her skin as she struggled to hold it together for a few moments longer.

“Rogue?”

His voice was bourbon-broken, beating down her defenses.

Rogue blinked, and the curtain rose again with its promise of tragedy.

Such was the intimacy of her powers.

---

Like the other rats running the gutters, making their homes of the shadows and the back alleys, Remy’s a lean scrap of a child. His fingers twist into the slats beneath the riverfront wharves, knuckles locked into the joinery as tourists pass overhead, treading within inches of his digits. He grins over his shoulder at Laurent and Maurice, his feet dangling over the muddy brown water below.

Neither of the boys can match his acrobatics. Neither of them can gall themselves into such a precarious and lucrative location, but neither of them are marked like he is – and neither of them let him forget it.

“Where y’at, Diable?” Laurent croaks, smearing the grime deeper into the tatters of his clothing as he wipes his fingers across his shirt. It’s stained river water brown and snot green; unsurprising, since Laurent has a nervous habit of swiping at his runny nose with the heel of his hand. The clarity of these details are as marked along with the stale scent of waterlogged rot in Remy’s nostrils.

“Awrite,” he returns, trying not to show how much the splinters from the worn wood hurts.

His breath hitches at the moniker, hesitation and hurt masked over with a flash of bravado and something Fagan calls ‘feckless’ in his guttural brogue. Remy doesn’t even wince at the nickname anymore. The rest of the boys don’t say it to his face – not since Fagan boxed one of the Channel kids so soundly that he couldn’t work for a week. Le Diable Blanc – the White Devil of New Orleans – half a slur against his pedigree, he imagines. Since he doesn’t know who his papa is, anything is possible. For some reason, Remy feels the need to apologize for it, hence the reason he’s clinging to the underside of the docks on this particular occasion – the respect and temporary camaraderie of his so-called friends dangling along with his dirty, bare feet. ‘Diable’ better than ‘freak’, he tells himself.

He’s been called both in spades – and worse.

“Gon’ hurry up?” Laurent calls, elbowing skinny, bare-chested Maurice in the ribs, like what Remy’s doing is some grand jest, and not the means by which they’ll all get their supper.

His presence in Fagan’s Mob has made the Irish wary, playing on their superstitions with his red-on-black eyes, but the Creoles – especially Maurice and Laurent – they’ve been baptized with sewer water, just like him, and they don’t seem to care so long as Remy keeps acting like their meal ticket. That’s the only reason they’ve come out to the riverfront with him today – it’s been at least three days since they’ve eaten, and like the rats they are, they’ll scavenge whatever Remy lets fall. That’s how it’s always been; Remy thinks its been two years, and he thinks he’s about four years old – but there’s no real way to be sure. Fagan says it doesn’t matter. Fagan says the only numbers his boys oughta be able to count are those marked on the green bills that keep them from a sound beating.

Below him, the Mississippi burbles with plaintive insistence, demanding attention as it laps at the pilings with its murky brown tongue, leaving behind bobbing bits of things that seemed out of place under the shaded boardwalk. A child’s ball ebbs against a nearby bollard, tangled by a partly submerged protrusion that could be an arm, or a tree branch. Beneath the docks where the Cajun Queen berths, and farther downriver where the levees wall in the Upper 9th Ward, the boys are likely to find either.

“Wager m’ supper that th’ Diable kills hisself ‘fore Fagan gets hold of ‘im,” Maurice chortles, grinning broadly enough that Remy can see the white-yellow of his teeth despite the perpetual gloom where the sunlight doesn’t touch. With Maurice’s two front teeth recently knocked out in a scrap with another of Fagan’s boys, he looks more rodent-like than ever. The gleam in his eyes, Remy notes, isn’t too far off either.

Maurice betting something he doesn’t have? That’s galling.

“I’ll take that bet,” he declares, before paste-faced Laurent can make up his mind. “Five wallets ‘fore sundown, an’ I’ll make it back t’ Fagan widdem before y’ even hear th’ zippers open.”

It’s a bad idea, he thinks a second after opening his mouth. The look Laurent gives him could melt steel, but it’s too late to worry about the consequences. Maurice is already jeering him onwards with a look in his eye that says he hopes that Remy’s hold will slip… if only to see if he’ll sink once he hits the water. Remy pauses, his bravado snagging on Laurent’s cold appraisal.

The older boy can’t control his facial expression fast enough. He doesn’t have the same sort of grace as Remy, and the expression he wears is hurtful.

Remy’s too young to know just then what he sees in Laurent’s sneer: it makes his insides squirm funnily, his jovial smile fading with hesitation when he realizes that Laurent isn’t sharing in Maurice’s bellowing laughter. He wants so much, for one moment, for them to like him that Remy considers dropping the ten feet to the dirty water, soaking himself and losing the bet.

He’s Fagan’s favorite, and maybe that has something to do with the hardness to Laurent’s grin, or Maurice’s urging to move quicker, move farther out...

Because he is faster, smaller, and smarter than the other boys, he is set apart in ways that make him feel ashamed that he can do the things they can’t. He doesn’t yet understand why they treat him differently, and he doesn’t want to tell them to stop. He doesn’t know how they’ll react if he does.

Sooner than a child should, he will learn that that their fuel is envy.

What he wants is acceptance; he yearns to be considered one of the gang, to share in their laughter; but their sport is at his expense, and Remy can’t help but hope that maybe today will be the day that everything changes.

He imagines that the grating tone of Maurice’s laughter is meant to encourage him as he swings his feet upwards, planting dirty, hardened soles against the wood so that he crawls spider-like, upside-down, to the edge of the boardwalk and as far out over the water as he can go, where no one above would expect him to be lying in wait.

Locking his knees around the nearest piling, Remy recites to himself what he’s been taught by Fagan: keep the hands free, the legs moving, the eyes alert. It’s not a lot to go by… but it’s better than what the others get (a cuff in the ear or a smack across the jaw if they return with empty pockets.)

He’s let go of the docks and swinging free before he can even process the quickening to his pulse, or how sweaty his grip has become in the few short seconds its taken him to register that Maurice and Laurent’s laughter has turned into dead silence.

Remy doesn’t have the foresight to see they’ve left him. Betrayal is not a concept he’s familiar with just yet.

Spryly, he hauls himself hand over hand, up and over the rail and onto the metal struts banking the pier. He slides through the metal fittings easily, a scruff of a boy with sooty features and filthy clothes amidst the thickening crowds out at midday in the spring warmth. Keeping his eyes down as to not attract attention to himself, Remy hunches his shoulders, and imagines himself invisible.

Je suis un fantôme.

He is, truly, a ghost. No one notices poverty of his caliber. Most people choose to be blind to street people. Though he is young, the baby fat still keeping the apples of his cheeks round, Remy slips by them undetected.

Then, he spots his target.

She’s overweight, wearing a white tee shirt and cut-off shorts that inch up her inner thighs. Pristine white tennis shoes, rolled socks, sunglasses, a large, flopping straw hat and an enormous canvas purse slung over her left shoulder complete the ensemble. Tourist.

The bag slips off her shoulder as she tries to snap a photo of some far-off landmark, hanging by the crook of her arm, and then Remy’s moving. The lightest brush of his tiny fingers go unnoticed; it’s as if he were passing right through the underside of her arm as he slips past her, his fingers making a quick dip into her purse.

It’s only once he begins moving away, slowly, placing one foot in front of the other with careful balance that his heart stammers to catch up with the excited rush of accomplishment in his head. It comes at him in something he can only describe as a tidal wave, flooding his senses with each step he takes, even as he unclasps the tiny wallet to see his pickings.

To his right, a shout slashes though his immediate disappointment at finding the pocketbook crammed with receipts, a few mangled dollar bills and some loose change.

“Stop! Thief!”

It sounds suspiciously like Laurent… but that isn’t possible.

Laurent wouldn’t do that to him, he thinks – the thought falling like a sinking bit of spider web as he turns to see the sticky mess he’s gotten into: Laurent at the other side of the boardwalk, yelling at uneven, pre-pubescent top volume; the tourist opening her mouth in a shriek as she finds herself robbed, and a policeman blundering through the crowds towards him. Maurice, at Laurent’s side, is cackling like a hyena.

Panicking, Remy drops the wallet, spilling coins between the wooden slats below his feet. He runs. It is the first time he’s been forced to, and the lack of choice makes him feel powerless.

Pounding down the Riverwalk, Remy swears that he will never be made to flee again with fear in his throat.

This is also the first time he lies to himself.

---

There’s a spattering of blood across stained cement that swims into view.

Distantly, Remy remembers that it’s his blood he’s looking at, surprised that it looks more brown than red – how quickly it cools where it drips from his jaw to puddle below his chin. His cheek is pressed into the stinging concrete. It creates an electric tingle where the skin has been shredded open.

Fagan wears a heavy signet ring on his left hand. It’s left its mark on every face in his mob, and now, Remy is no longer the exception.

“Stop.”

The command echoes, godlike, to silence the muted noise of the hoard as they cheer Fagan on from the shadows. Faceless allies turned enemies, the voices of the mob are condemning only as long as they see that Fagan’s favorite has fallen from grace.

Remy thinks vaguely that hate has the astringent flavor of copper pennies.

He licks at his split lip, and can’t find himself able to savor it, although it burns deeply.

“Have you forgotten our agreement? You were t’ spare this child y’ cruelty while you trained him.”

Fagan’s heavy, whiskey-sodden brogue is defiant as he replies, “He’s no better than th’ other whelps. Boy needs a lesson in humility – parading, the way he does – it’s likely t’ get the lot of my brood picked off by the Folks, the way he carries on. I’ve half a mind t’ turn his arse inside out, Jean Luc –”

“Were he th’ child of Marius’ ilk, you’d not set a hand to him.”

Fagan sniffs, trying to steer the conversation in another direction. “Fetch yourself another if this one dies. Boy’s bad luck. Seen his eyes? Brand of the Devil, that is. Mark me – there’s not a spot of good ’innim. He’ll bring about your ruin –”

“His importance to my family is none of y’ concern. Since your excommunication from th’ Guild, your opinion is of little value. Do not bring any more shame t’ your family name than necessary.”

The stranger pauses when Fagan has no reply. In a lower tone, he continues, “I entrusted th’ boy to you, despite your misdeeds, and this is how you repay me?”

Remy shifts, trying to see through a swollen eye, and unable to twist around to see the curious stranger who’s miraculously saved his life. There’s a dull ringing in his ears that impairs the conversation, though he thinks what’s next said has something to do with the billfold that’s dropped to the ground inches before Fagan’s toes.

“…will have Marius himself settle th’ matter, should you again lay a hand on this child while he remains under y’ tutelage. We are not prepared t’ receive him, yet, but I assure you, once the time is right, Remy will be delivered to us whole and unimpeded by your desire to exploit his unique talents.”

Fagan snorts derisively, but there’s a wheedle to his voice as he shoots back, “As if you won’t do the same –”

“Surely y’ still have some understanding of precious commodity. This boy will fulfill the prophecy. That alone makes his life’s worth a thousand times your own.”

“Now, just a minute! That barmy wives tale’s not excuse enough t’ waltz in here, actin’ like I owe you somethin’ –”

“I’m certain that Marius and his kin will agree with me on the matter.” Despite his disorientation, Remy can hear the veiled threat in the man’s tone. “Have you heard, by any chance, of Belladonna’s progress? I’ve been told she’s growing into quite the weapons protégé.” Another Pause. “Mattie? S’il-vous-plait, tend to the child. It would be a shame to see him scarred at such a tender age. Belladonna might find such a deformation unsightly once he grows older.”

Remy can’t hear the rest of Fagan’s protests. The world is blotted out by swift black spots as a soft, warm, herb-scented hand covers his eyes, and sleep overtakes him.

He will not recall the stranger, his conversation with Fagan, or the kindly woman who heals his broken skin; though in the future, he will look to his adoptive father and wonder of Jean Luc’s vested interests.

---

He’s humming the “Macarena” under his breath. It’s an awful song, but damn, if it isn’t catchy. Remy thinks for a second that the vendors have lightened up on the zydeco pumped from every second sound system on Bourbon Street just so they can blast the greater of two evils.

Inspecting a small slice in his palm made by shaving too close to the wrought iron spikes guarding a street-facing balcony – the balcony in question that he used like a jungle gym only moments ago to propel himself three stories to the rooftop – Remy prods at the cut with his thumb, watching the well of blood between the chafed calluses on his palms with bored fascination. It’s mid-June, and the air is thick with humidity that chokes the lungs, stuffs the sinuses, and makes the water run down everything. At present, with his grubby jeans sticking to the backs of his thighs, the backs of his thighs sticking to the jutting gable on which he’s perched, and everything else feeling sluggish and droopy, Remy thinks that even the Big Easy’s feeling just a little too easy today – he hasn’t pinched a nickel since Fagan sent him on this run. There just isn’t anything worth the effort down below.

He yawns. It’s hotter than hell, and they’re playing the “Macarena” on repeat at the bar on the street below. He ponders the relation with waning interest.

Rubbing at the film of sweat that curls the lank hair brushing his collar of his tee shirt, Remy kicks an errant rhythm over his gable, his shoelaces flopping listlessly against his sneakers while the cypress shingling below his bottom rattles with each jerking movement. He’s claimed the rooftop with the hope of spotting a mark and taking them by surprise.

This is part of Fagan’s new regimen, and while it’s helped teach him that eating pavement isn’t a great way to spend a roasting summer afternoon, it’s much better than working with the rest of the mob. Fagan doesn’t even try to force them into getting along anymore. Remy’s become more than self-sufficient – the stitches Maurice got two months back for trying to nick his noontime haul was the last ounce of fair warning he’d given them.

Still, it’s a strange and exhilarating sensation, this newfound freedom, though once in a while, Remy gets the distinct feeling that he’s being tailed. This is stupid, he realizes. None of the other boys can climb higher than a city dumpster, and Fagan’s too bloated with his own ego to even try, so there’s no reason to think that any of them could follow him up to his beloved haunts. Yet… sometimes, Remy can’t help shake the idea that he’s being watched.

“…Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena, Ehhhh, Macarena…” Remy thrusts his pelvis, snickering to himself under his breath. “Ahai!”

A dab of paranoia suits him just fine, so long as it means he has the run of the city for himself. He likes New Orleans’ topside; the blanketing golden fog of pollution, the mess of clotheslines, the white and black patterns of pigeon poop painting the flat rooftops, and the secret, cloistered garden courtyards that no one down on the banquette even images. These gardens are his favorite; mysterious in their own right, they are patches of verdurous refuge reserved only for their owners, and his covetous eyes.

He makes a playground of alleyways and avenues, his days taking on a hazy fairytale cast, and Remy, bounded only by his imagination, finds that he is a pirate, a vampire, an astronaut, a magician, a superhero… and the city keeps his secrets safe when he tumbles, laughing, off New Orleans’ steep inclines and rusting ladders. In two years, the city has taught him how to run, leap, climb, cling, soar.

Up here, no one can touch him. Up here, Remy rules his twilit world.

He is the Prince of an angular, sun-bleached, chimney-spotted empire and today; just then, he imagines he has found his princess.

Remy blinks, pausing with his hands on his hips; half-rolled to the left mid-dance. He thinks for a second that the heat’s made him hallucinate the blond confection of a girl across the street from where he’s perched. She’s dressed in pastels, with a soft pink ribbon holding her hair back in a high ponytail. There’s an ice cream cone in her fist, leaking vanilla rivers between her knuckles. She follows the trail of one of these bright white streams with a glistening tongue, over her knuckle, into her palm and down her wrist.

“Ehhhh, Macarena,” he trails off.

Something shifts inside him, a tightening deep in his belly that is unfamiliar to him, but strangely pleasant.

All Remy can do is watch her mouth. Vaguely, he understands that he’s hungering for something, but it’s not her ice cream that he craves. The girl’s attention is fixed on her sweet even as she stands, absently brushing her skirt off, and Remy doesn’t stop to think that in this heat, it’s damned strange that the girl has on a light cotton jacket over her blouse. It’s the sort of thing the Uptown kids wear to Church, but it’s not Sunday, and the bells of St. Louis Cathedral have been silent since seven.

He’s already on his feet, waiting to see where she’ll go. Remy’s never seen her in these parts before. Heck, he doesn’t think he’s seen anyone that clean in his life. She practically sparkles.

From the steps of a battered Creole cottage, the girl saunters across the street, her shining ponytail bouncing, unmindful of the meandering traffic and utterly unconcerned with anything other than the melting treat in her hand. She reaches the banquette below Remy’s building, disappearing beneath the overhang of the mezzanine, and Remy takes off at a brisk clip – springing from one roof to the next with practiced ease. He should let her go, he thinks, hesitating with the knowledge that she’s not his responsibility, and he’s likely to scare her off if he tries to introduce himself. The though is brushed off a second later as he discovers that she casts two shadows: two men in Italian suits that ought to be far too warm for summer weather, step from beneath the cover of a nearby bar, and follow her with deliberate nonchalance when she crosses the thoroughfare.

There are too many things wrong with this picture, he decides: they could be bodyguards, but bodyguards would confer between themselves over headsets or earpieces. These two linger too far back, and for all intents and purposes, their attentions are fixed firmly on her, and not her surroundings. Moreover, there’s a glint in the falling twilight – a flash of gaudy jewelry, a heavy gold crucifix around the neck of the first, three gold rings on the hand of the other.

Definitely muscle, but not local.

She doesn’t see them. Obviously. Either the ice cream is damned good, or she is, as Remy suspects, too innocent to take note of the observable predators.

Lamb plus wolves equals slaughter.

He harrumphs.

She reappears – a glimmer of blond far below, and Remy sees where she’s headed at last: there’s construction up ahead. Part of the ongoing renovations made to the decrepit street-front properties needing reviving from the perpetual, eternal, elegantly decaying environs.

“Damn, girl,” he mutters to himself. “Ain’t no way t’ end an evenin’, inviting ol’ Grim after ya like that.”

Only the façade of the building she enters remains; the interior appears to him as a fleshless skeleton made of pine planks and half-erected drywall. Workman’s tools litter the three levels of the unfinished work, though the men themselves as nowhere to be found on the site… not in this heat when there are perfectly good, air-conditioned bars littering Bourbon Street’s every corner. As he nears the structure, it’s as if Remy is looking through the cracked ribs of a giant, gutted fish.

He whistles to himself, mentally marking a clear, swooping path to the ground through a path of tarps and scaffolding.

The two wolves pause on the street, sniffing out their surroundings to see if anyone takes note of them. They step into the building, utterly unaware of the ten-year-old standing three stories above them, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes narrowed, and his mouth twisting into a cocky grin.

“Hey, little girl!” one of them calls out, his unctuous tones sloughing off the battered walls as he inches deeper into the building. His voice is made richer by a gritty foreign accent. Italian. The accent falls heavily on the tail end of each word, making it sounds more like, “Heya, little girla.”

“Bellissima, where you goin’? This is not a good place to play.” (Notta gouda place to playa.)

His companion joins in with a jeer, “…Could be dangerous for little girls gotten lost. Lost your way, little girl?”

Remy falls several feet silently to the nearest bit of half-finished flooring; he drops to a crouch, and crawls on hands and knees to see where she’s gotten to.

“Who are you?” she asks, her voice a powdered sugar sweet lilt.

Following the sound, Remy finds her through a blistered bit of floor; a swath of pastel blue on the ground level below.

“I was just explorin’,” she explains. “Didn’t mean no harm by it. The door was open and all. It’s such a pretty building, don’t you think? Is it yours?”

Shucks, Remy thinks, changing his mind about the breathy, wonder-struck buttercup below him. Sure, she was pretty – but damn. To hear her talking made his teeth hurt, like he’d eaten too many pralines and was now suffering a comedown off the sugar coma.

“This is Mario,” the first one snivels, introducing his friend, who snorts under his breath angrily, “Eh! Does that make you Luigi? Vaffanculo fessacchione.”

“And you, tesoro, are the daughter of a very important man, yes?” he says, ignoring the curse.

At that, the girl takes a hesitant step backwards. “Y-you know my daddy?”

Like the glint off their showy jewelry, Remy sees the muted charm of the pistol as Mario pulls the weapon from the inside of his jacket. Luigi seems to have caught his cue, and as Princess Peach falters, a syringe filled with amber liquid is drawn from a pocket.

“Now, we don’t want no trouble, little girl,” Mario mutters, though Remy decides that these two goombas are out for just that. “All you gotta do is come with Uncle Mario and his brother Luigi like a good little girl, and no one’ll get hurt… least of all your papa when he finds his daughter missing.”

“Don’t look so upset, cara,” Luigi coos. “You’re just a little business insurance.”

“What kinda business?” the girl asks, her tone quavering.

Annoyed that such a delicate thing could sound so afraid, Remy scans the space around him – his eyes alighting on a stack of scattered tools that seem to be scattered around a patch of exposed plumbing work. Silently, Remy pads around the splintered maw of hardwood, picks up two mallets, one for each hand and one for each goon, and he pauses, peering down through the hole in the floor. Neither the girl or the men have seen him, though he can guess easily what Luigi intends to do with that syringe.

“There, now – that’s not something you need to be worrying about. In a few seconds, you’re gonna be sound asleep, and what papa Boudreaux’s done to offend the Corporazione di Roma will be settled.”

Something prickles along the back of Remy’s neck, like awareness, or a warning to look around himself. He shrugs it off, ignoring the urge to take his eyes off the girl. Stupid impulses, he tells himself. That irritating feeling of being followed again. Remy shakes it off, but it doesn’t wholly disappear.

The mallets aren’t that heavy, though it does takes a hearty heave to bring them up over his head. They’re hard rubber. They won’t do too much damage, he thinks, though Remy grunts with the effort, but soon finds he can wield them without strain. The sound snatches at their attention. Luigi cocks his head like a dog.

Vaguely, Remy wonders if he lands on the man’s head, will Mario spit up a coin? He doesn’t have the time to grin at his own joke.

“Don’t think so, mon ami,” he declares.

Neither have the chance to look up as Remy launches himself bodily into the hole in the floor, sailing with both mallets arcing downwards in a vicious swing.

There’s a thud of a body hitting the floor before he even makes contact, though the second of two mallets come down on Mario’s head with a hollow, meaty sound. He crumples to the ground, and Remy opens his arms wide as he spins on the spot to find a surprising sight indeed:

Vanilla ice cream melts on the ground by the girl’s feet, dripping in glops between the splintered heart pine floorboards, delight curving her mouth up. Two slim, glinting blades are gripped in her delicate fists. He’s almost amazed to see their handles aren’t pink.

“Name’s Remy,” he says by way of introduction, flashing a broad grin as he takes in how pretty she is up close. “Please t’ make your acquaintance, miss…?”

“Duck!” she yells, the syrupy sweetness of her voice replaced with a commanding edge.

Remy drops, his legs folding beneath him as he spins downwards into a seated position – the mallet following its course through the air and connecting with a crunch into the nearby drywall – but not before clipping Luigi behind the ear and bringing him to his knees with a sound that reminds Remy of biting into a dill pickle.

“Good thing I showed up,” he says, puffing himself up. “But mebbe y’ shouldn’t be playin’ with knives, girl,” he cautions her. “Not that I’m one t’ tell you what’s ladylike and what’s not, but still – you could hurt yourself. Get tetanus, or somethin’…”

Ponytail swinging, she turns to purse her lips at him. It pushes the apples of her cheeks up, but it can’t hide her blush.

He stands, hefting his mallet aloft, finding he can balance it on two fingers jauntily. It’s an idle thought, a completely selfish one at that, but Remy wants to see her smile again.

“So… did I earn myself a proper ‘thank you’?” He’s half-tempted to present her with a cheek, hinting at a nice little kiss from a sweet little girl…

There’s a singing sound as the blade slivers across the room like an arrow. The mallet wobbles precariously on his fingers, and glancing at it in surprise, Remy finds that one of the girl’s knives has lodged squarely into the handle; its steel tip glints out the other end. Mentally measuring the blade’s proximity to his vital organs, he decides he’d rather not think about how precise her throw is.

He raises an eyebrow, clearly impressed by the quivering, stuck knife.

The girl giggles.

“What were y’ askin’ before?” she asks, all traces of the nervous, fluffy, frilly show she put on for the Italians wiped clean. There’s a wicked glint in her eye when she takes him in, from top to toe, and rolls his name off her tongue. “Remy?”

He forgets to be suspicious, the feeling of being watched vanishing as the girl beams at him – flashing a set of braces fit with electric pink elastics.

“Belladonna,” she lisps, jutting her chin knowingly, and Remy thinks that’s one helluva nice name for a girl who just about skewered him through the lung.

---

“Hey, mister! Mister, mister!”

“Throw me something, mister!”

“Beads, baby! Baby, please! Look at these and gimme some beads!”

The cries are the same, the sound deadened by the buffer of the knees and backsides in his way as Remy threads through the crowd at waist-height, his belly full of crab cake po’boy and his sneakers blackened by the filth on the street. The gutters are littered with brightly colored strands of plastic beads, fake gold doubloons, empty go cups, sodden confetti, garbage, and the odd, magically unclaimed Zulu coconut. It’s the sixth Fat Tuesday that Remy can remember, and he’s relishing the fervor the parade brings with it down the thoroughfare as Magazine street bleeds into Decatur; much like he enjoys the haggard, stupefied expressions of folks as they twist around in confusion – finding their wallets replaced in the wrong pockets, devoid of cash.

Cheap thrills, he thinks, sensing the beginnings of ennui. Idly, he wonders if he can hit the back alley behind Ugly’s and make an attempt at finessing a cold beer from the cute hostess on her break. He’s ten, but acting like he’s sixteen hasn’t hurt him at all. The girls appreciate the attention, even if he’s just a freak kid with weird eyes – besides, Remy’s learned a new trick: if you look at them just right, for just long enough, thinking just the right thoughts, eventually, they do what he asks – whatever he asks.

Maurice says its just because they don’t want to see such a pathetic, grubby gutter rat hanging around, but secretly, Remy thinks he’s got something more going for him than the other boys do – like Superman’s x-ray vision, kinda. At least, Laurent said it was x-ray vision, but Laurent can read just about as well as Remy himself, so he doesn’t really trust him. Mostly, they just look at the pictures.

Whatever Fagan can’t beat out of him when Maurice is done talking shit, Remy ought to use to his own benefit.

It’s February and a little on the cool side, but the pavement’s been warmed by constant pounding of tourists’ feet, and the swarm does not disappoint: there’s a wad of bills crammed down the front of his dingy underpants; the safest place he can keep them short of being strip-searched. It keeps him feeling smug in ways that not even the most suspicious N.O.P.D. pig can figure.

It is not, however, a trophy. Remy thinks that at the end of such a prosperous holiday, he ought to have a souvenir of his very own – something that the other don’t have, something the others couldn’t hope to hold onto for their lack of skill.

That’s Remy’s problem: he’s better than them all.

More importantly, he wants tangible proof of his superior skill to dangle in Maurice’s ugly face.

With work done, and with a few hours to kill before Fagan will really tear into him for dawdling, Remy heads to the back of town where the parade floats avoid the narrow streets, making a beeline for the Iberville Projects before dusk sets. Maybe he’ll find a spot and catch the tail end of the Mardi Gras Indians, he thinks, not at all sorry that most of the Krewes have passed already. Their gaudy entourage has afforded him more than enough distraction for the day, so much so that it feels almost too easy.

There’s no challenge picking pockets around Mardi Gras.

Turning the corner, Remy idles his way beneath the flaming wooden heart decorating the sign for the House of Blues – blaring Jazz spilling onto the darkening streets in waves, keeping the line up of college jocks and tourists tethered to the side of the building. The carriageway leading to the inner courtyard is lit up from within, blue and green gels painting the walls, giving glimpses of people carousing; still easier pickings.

He moves through them like a ghost – the unseen specter of the city, his fingers working their wallets, creating fewer disturbances than a breeze off the Canal St. Fry.

It smells of last night’s stale beer and cigarette smoke, and Remy’s attention slides off the crowds with the soaring notes of the saxophone. He drops his hands into his pockets casually, flashing a cherubic grin at the bouncer, who pays him about as much attention as he would a stray dog. Against Remy’s legs, the leather backs of Calvin Klein and Hugo Boss feel right at home.

A limousine pulls against the curb; it’s an old fashioned thing that looks more like a hearse than a luxury vehicle, and Remy pauses, curious. In this town, he wouldn’t put it past anyone to chauffeur the dead around for sport. Heck, some local author had recently showed up to one of her book signings in a coffin.

What steps out onto the banquette isn’t a shambling corpse, though. Rather, a well-dressed man stands to full height; he’s wearing a suit so fine it must have been minted to hang perfectly off his shoulders. It’s a classic cut that speaks of tradition. Old money, he guesses. This guy’s a local, and Remy regards him with a mixture of instant envy and scornful derision.

No one who looks like that ought to be spared the Diable Blanc’s skills.

The gleam of the man’s leathers catches the streetlight, and with one fluid movement, he pulls from his pocket something that glints gold when he flicks it open.

A pocket watch. A trophy.

Shiny, Remy thinks.

He’s moving before he even processes the fleet tread of his feet, his muscles responding instinctively to the call of the antiquity. The challenge is in the chain; he’ll need to release it from the man’s belt, probably; exchange the weight in favor of something equally measured so there’s nothing to alert the mark. Tricky, he thinks, shimmying between the people in line, using their height as a cover as the man drops the watch into his front left pocket, the fob disappearing beneath the hem of his jacket. It’s light material; a silk-linen combo, probably, given the weather and the slight wrinkling to the fabric. There’s no lining to the pants, though they’re probably thicker in the pockets, which doesn’t mean much since if Remy works his fingers in there for a pull, the mark will surely feel the warmth through the suit. There won’t be a swap, he decides. It’s too risky.

He’ll have to fish for the watch – offer a quick distraction and draw the watch out by the chain. A jostle will do it, with a little bit of method acting as a last resort, though Remy thinks playing the fool is tacky. He bows, pretending to tie his shoe, but in actuality, he’s examining the looping bit of metal that hangs below the mark’s coat.

“Oh, excuse, M’sieur,” should satisfy, with a bump to the hip and a pinch to the clasp. Two movements, in and out, like ballet, except that Remy doesn’t fancy himself a ballerina. He doesn’t like the idea of tights… Too confining, too... Robin Hood.

Swaggering out of the line, he looks back over his shoulder, keeping the mark in his peripheral vision. The man is a cream-beige blur, casually turning on the spot, ready to bypass the line and stroll into the shaded blue grotto of the House of Blues with his companion. Remy notes the second is a burlier, shorter gentleman with white-blond hair. Remy slaps a winsome smile on his face, forcing conviction into his feigned jealousy-cum-amazement as he saunters forward. He pretends to ignore them both as he sidles past, his hand snaking from his pocket, the tips of his fingers grazing the end of the chain below the man’s coat, and he levers the pocket watch in the same breath as his shoulder makes contact with the man’s hip.

Keeping his eyes downcast, he doesn’t look up, playing the unmindful street rat. That in itself is dangerous; he is the unseen, the dirt below their polished leather shoes, and it doesn’t bode well to disrupt those lording power. His red on black eyes make anonymity difficult, but on occasion, they serve to disarm the unsuspecting and the naïve. The mythology of New Orleans’ Diable Blanc is ubiquitous. It’s all the distraction Remy needs.

His wrist catches. The chain is sticking. Merde. He is determined not to let this one go. It’s too good a pull. The clasp is open. It’s his. Opting for the thrill, and instead of forcing a false apology for knocking into the guy and letting the pull slide, he snaps his eyes up to the man just to give him a shock before making his getaway.

“Bonsoir, Remy.”

His name off the stranger’s lips stops him cold, and suddenly, his arm is yanked into the air, hoisting him bodily a foot from the ground. His fingers are still wrapped around the clasp of the pocket watch, now free from the mark’s trousers and dangling freely.

It slaps against his forearm, opening to reveal a pristine glass face and delicate gold mechanisms, ticking evenly.

He can’t shout. He’s too dumbfounded at the fact that he’s been caught, and blind terror is quickly threatening to overtake his sensible kick-the-guy-in-the-crotch-and-bolt escape plan.

Instead, he slaps on a crooked grin, and retorts, “M’ reputation precedes me.”

I’m done for, Remy thinks.

“Charmant,” the man says, not letting him go, though he allows for Remy’s toes to brush the cement. He fixes him with a sly grin of his own. “Though perhaps not as smooth in all areas, hein? Your technique could use some work, son. I felt y’ eyes on m’ pocket before I’d even stepped out of th’ car.”

Dismayed and a little more than insulted at this revelation, Remy twists his wrist around in the attempt to break free.

“Tu m’emerdes!” he manages, his childhood Yat accent thickening the curse so its barely decipherable, as the man tightens his grip and Remy feels the bones in his wrist protest. “Ow! Leggo!”

I’m doomed, he decides. He doesn’t rightly know what kind of sentence he’ll get; without a weapon, conviction for a minor can’t be too terrible. They’ll stick him in juvey; maybe some militaristic corrective facility. Worse that can happen, he’ll be the laughing stock of the gutter rats in Fagan’s Mob when he gets out – laughed out of town for getting tripped up on his own ego. What kills him is the possibility that they’ll keep him locked up in a cell somewhere, that he won’t be able to run or jump or push his limbs to burning; that he’ll forget the taste of his city on his tongue in favor of disinfectants and stone walls; that he won’t be able to say goodbye to Belladonna Boudreaux. Tears threaten. He hates the burning behind his eyes something fierce. It’s humiliating.

“Very well, Remy,” the man says, and promptly releases his arm.

Falling to the pavement, Remy staggers backwards out of sheer shock. He let me go, he thinks – the thought blots out every other, and like a drowning man breaking the surface, Remy gulps in the sudden freedom.

The man stares at him, a bemused smirk curving his mouth upwards, but his eyes are calculating. His companion chuckles deeply, shaking his head at some inside joke, but the mark merely drops his hands into his pockets and waits to see what Remy will do.

He doesn’t need another invitation. Remy puts his feet to the hard-worn streets and runs for dear, sweet life. He forgets that he’s still clutching the man’s pocket watch, and only comes to realize the fact after the tiny gold thing has been slapping against his knee for the better part of five minutes and he’s near hysteria from the rush of it all.

By this point, he’s found himself before the stretching spires of St. Louis cathedral, and breathing hard, he tosses himself onto the first free bench he can find in Jackson Square.

“Mon dieu,” he laughs to himself, flinging an arm over his eyes and mopping the sweat away with his shirtsleeve. His heart is slamming against his rib cage, but the air is sweet in his mouth, despite the fact that he’s within yards of the mule-drawn carriages lining the park, and there’s an overflowing garbage can not two feet from his head.

He dangles his prize over his face, and his nervous snickering subsides. The face is closed. That isn’t right. It had been open not minutes ago, and he hadn’t made the effort to click the latch shut. The milled cover ought to have broken off in his mad bid for freedom. The pocket watch is etched with the initials J.L.L., and curious, he clicks it open.

Something falls from the face of a watch to land squarely on his chest, and frowning, Remy realizes that it is a folded piece of paper. Dropping the watch, he opens it up to find an elegantly scrawled note in royal blue ink. It reads:

“Good technique, but I can show you better. Meet me before the doors of St. Louis. Ten minutes.”

Sitting up sharply, Remy snaps his attention to the bell tower of the cathedral at his back. The central spire spears the night sky, and directly below, bisecting the pedestrian traffic, is the same sleek, black limousine from the House of Blues – the door open and waiting.

---

Twilight in the south is an unhurried event.

They’ve spread themselves across the mezzanine, the second floor gallery that wraps around the entirety of the plantation house that serves as the Thieves Guild Mansion. The French doors have been thrown open wide to allow a cross-draft to spindle its way through the rooms, billowing the summer curtains outwards, shroud-like and ghostly in the descending darkness.

The lonely chinaberry tree on the property is dwarfed by the stoic cypresses and stooped oaks; shrouded by the haze collected from the swamp like gnarled old men, too preoccupied with their own eternal contemplation to notice or to care what the LeBeau clan and its extended family does beneath their protective cover.

Twilight is made of sighs, Remy thinks, sipping on a “virgin” mint julep that Lapin has carefully spiked with enough bourbon to loosen his philosophic muscle and make Henri giggly. They’ve since lost the bottle to a red-faced Theoren, who went as far as putting his nose into Etienne’s mouth to ensure his kid brother had yet to be corrupted. At least, that’s what it looked like – though Et vehemently denies it.

Feet are propped up on the balcony railing, bodies slouch into the wicker furniture, and the youngest of the Guild children do their best to amuse themselves when the eldest have their backs turned. This means that Theoren has been invited to sit with Belize, Jean Luc, and Zoe Ichihara, who is a delegate from the Tokyo Guild, here to visit for a few weeks. Genard and Claude are lounging nearby under the pretence of keeping first watch. The booming laughter from their corner suggests otherwise, but Remy can’t fault them for it. It’s a perfect evening.

Remy, Emil, Henri and Etienne, however, have set up occupancy as far away as humanly possible from the men… and Zoe, who Henri has been sneaking obvious glances in a manner that he must think is surreptitious.

“I think,” Emil declares, toeing at Henri’s ankle, trying to set him off balance as he climbs onto the balcony railing next to Etienne, “that when I grow up, I’m gonna try f’ Genard’s job.”

“I think that when you grow up, it’ll be a miracle,” Remy retorts, snickering.

“Seconded,” Henri agrees, locking his feet around the wrought iron fencing to keep from tipping backwards. He flashes a bright grin that pinks his round cheeks. It’s a secretive smile shared between brothers, one that only Remy really understands for the mischief Henri uses it to conceal.

“What’s he do?” Etienne asks, levering himself into a cautious crouch, using Henri’s shoulder for support as he inches to full height.

Remy slides from his seat nonchalantly, one eye on Et as he passes the drink off to Lapin, who is only too happy to slurp around the mint sprig at the foggy liquid. Placing both hands onto the railing, he lifts himself effortlessly.

“Harvest Disseminator,” Henri supplies, as Remy settles next to Etienne, his arms loose in case Et needs to grab on to something so he doesn’t fall. “Means that when Belize is done organizing th’ payment from a job as Harvest Master –”

“Or th’ job itself,” Emil supplies. “Sometimes y’ get artwork or jewelry. Remember th’ Goya?”

Etienne pauses in his toe-to-heel inching progress down the balcony railing, arms held out at his sides to keep his balance. Remy looks on critically.

“That ugly brown thing that Oncle kept on display in th’ hallway last month?” Etienne asks, scrunching his nose.

“Pay attention,” says Henri, giving Et a pointed look.

“Bend y’ knees,” Remy instructs.

Etienne’s brow crinkles, only more annoyed when Henri lifts himself onto his hands, extends his legs before him, and curls inwards, pulling his legs beneath and behind him, and fluidly extending into a handstand on the railing. Henri’s ankles are at least three feet above Etienne’s head, so Et is forced to scowl at Henri’s knees.

“Nice,” Emil says appreciatively.

“S’ all in the balance, boy-o,” Henri says, grinning at Etienne upside down, dark hair falling out of his eyes. It’s not yet long enough to tie into a ponytail, though Remy thinks that’s what Henri’s aiming at; trying to look just like Père. Remy fingers his own clumped knot, tied haphazardly at the base of his neck with a rubber elastic. He stops before anyone can take note of the self-conscious gesture, though his attention flicks briefly to Jean Luc’s profile at the far end of the gallery.

It doesn’t look like the men have taken any mind of him, but instinct tells Remy to be patient; nothing is ever as it seems, and just like that, Jean Luc inclines his head slightly to the right, aware the entire time of Remy’s covert consideration, and winks at him.

Though he turns away abruptly, Remy doesn’t bother masking his smile.

“Concentrate on where y’ put your feet, and how y’ weight shifts when y’ move,” Henri is explaining to Etienne.

The younger boy casts a sidelong look in Remy’s direction, and blinks innocently. “Like this?” he asks, wobbling with deliberate awkwardness.

The boy can back flip on a piece of dental floss. Only eight years old, and nearly as agile as Remy was himself at that age, not that anyone really plays it up. Etienne is still the baby of the family, and Theoren ensures that no one forgets it. Their training doesn’t end just because someone galls them into doing something stupid… like pitching themselves off the second-floor balcony because of some smartass remark.

“Lapin faints at th’ sight of blood,” Remy says, ignoring the display and nodding to the ground below.

“Do not!” Emil croaks, inhaling too sharply and spluttering mint julep. He’s forced to pinch his nose shut to keep his drink from spurting out both nostrils.

Tossing him a smirk, he continues telling Etienne, “You fall, he’s gonna be more useless than you with y’ skull cracked open like a watermelon down there.”

Etienne smothers a grin. No one knows that he and Remy have been practicing together. It’s one part deception that makes the trick a sale, so Etienne nods fervently, letting Henri and Lapin see his exposed nerves at the potential danger.

“Anyway,” Henri says, “th’ Disseminator distributes th’ yield. The Disseminator screws up, the client gets pissed off, the whole Guild gets in trouble.”

“Th’ whole Guild gets in trouble f’ a lot of things. One mistake, we all pay for it,” Emil adds darkly, standing up and setting down the glass. “S’ why we’re at war.”

Henri rolls his eyes as his legs crane over, cartwheeling down the railing. “A thousand years, and nothing’s changed there,” he says, coming to rest against a pillar and allowing Lapin enough room to join him.

“A thousand years, and they’re still tellin’ th’ stories,” Emil shoots back. Not wanting to be left out, he hops up between Henri and Etienne, barefooted and confident as he begins a duck-walk down the beam, dipping a toe with each step, and alternately touching his nose with opposite fingers. He looks like a drunken eleven year old trying to walk a straight line on the highway.

Lapin is one breathalyzer away from pulling Theo from his seat too, by the looks of it…

Maybe because he is a drunken eleven year old trying to walk a straight line, Remy thinks to himself wryly.

“Not a thousand years,” he argues. “Th’ Guilds can’t be that old.”

“Are too,” Emil says. “Every time Tante Mattie gets upset with me, it’s th’ same thing: ‘Y’ gon’ bring shame t’ this household, Emil Lapin. Not since th’ times of Jacques an’ Henriette did I see such bold disrespect f’ the laws of y’ forebears. Why, if Pawpaw LeBeau could see what y’ done t’ yourself – he’d beat y’ so soundly y’ ancestors from Port Royal t’ Paris’d be feelin’ it. A thousand years of time honoured tradition an’ y’ gone an’ mucked it up as sure as y’ just tracked mud in on m’ clean kitchen floor!’” he wheedles in a tone that sounds strikingly like the Guild’s Traiteur herself.

“Don’t start on those traditions,” Remy mutters. “I’ve had just ‘bout all I can take of those stories.”

Henri chuckles. “Papa’s been tellin’ you th’ legends again, Remy?”

“He’s convinced that m’ being here’s a blessin’,” Remy replies guardedly. In reality, Jean Luc had been a bit more emphatic about it than that.

“Oooh, th’ Legacy!” Lapin chortles, waggling his fingers. He points at Remy, narrowing his eyes. “That’d be you, cous. Hope that don’t make y’ too nervous.” Henri swats at him, and Lapin dissolves into giggles.

“Tell it, Remy!” Etienne says, his eyes lighting up. Inwardly, Remy grimaces. The stories make him uncomfortable for reasons he can’t explain, but Etienne, being the age he is, is difficult to outright deny when he gets excited about something. When Et realizes that talking about the Guild lore is the last thing he wants to suffer through, he rocks back on his heels, as if readying to sling himself off the edge of the house. “Pleeeeease?”

“Etienne Louis Marceaux!” Theoren bellows.

“He’s fine!” Remy calls back through grit teeth.

Etienne is radiant.

Remy screws up his face, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes until he sees spots in the darkness.

Thankfully, Lapin takes pity on him… that, or, his cousin just can’t contain himself any longer. Fine by him, Remy thinks.

“There’s a story,” he begins imperiously, “a tale that goes so far back, not no one knows who was th’ first t’ tell it, and there ain’t nobody t’ say they seen it with their own eyes still living.”

“Oh, here we go,” Henri groans. “Remy, please, don’t let Lapin tell th’ story, we’ll be here all night.”

Etienne hisses at them to be quiet, and Lapin puffs himself up even more. Funny, Remy hadn’t thought it was possible that he could begin resembling a blowfish with the right motivation.

“Back then, th’ poor couldn’t read, much less pick up a pen t’ inscribe th’ story of their origins. The only literate people back then were th’ monks, and th’ only thing they were copyin’ off was the Bible.”

“That’s why we call it a legend,” supplies Henri.

“’Cause it’s spurious,” Remy appends.

“What’s that mean?” Etienne asks.

“Not completely a hundred percent authentic,” Henri replies. “But that isn’t exactly true…”

Remy snorts, and Henri flushes a bright shade of pink.

“Not that I believe it,” he amends hastily. With an uneasy look at Lapin, who merely grins at his discomfort, Henri explains, “The story’s been passed on orally.” With a shrug, he adds, “Means that it might’ve been embellished along th’ way.”

“Ah-hem. Can I continue?” Lapin demands.

When Remy rolls his eyes, Emil ploughs onwards.

“Th’ First musta come from Paris, somewhere, down in th’ dirt an’ fresh out from under the thumb of feudal lords, no better than filth and vermin, livin’ as they could in the streets, livin’ off what they could in the streets... Can you imagine it?” he asks them all, a light to Emil’s eyes as he looks past them, turning to the fading glow of the sunset.

“No,” Remy says blandly. “They didn’t have streets. They had dirt.”

Henri grins. Etienne glares. Lapin doesn’t seem to hear him.

“The second crusade has failed, the Notre Dame Cathedral has just begun construction, they say th’ Second Coming is coming, and then it doesn’t… Nothin’ is certain: Their faith has failed them, the King has failed them, and they are sufferin’ – dying and sickly and miserable.”

“The first Guilds were real organizations – corps de métiers – professional associations, y’ know? Hommes who built furniture or painted portraits,” Henri murmurs, smiling demurely. “Tradespeople. Craftsmen.”

“Most of ‘em were just tryin’ t’ establish standards for their work,” Lapin continues. “Y’ put the best of the best together, and they all benefit when someone hires them out.”

“Guilds established a measure of security,” Henri adds.

“An’ a lively spirit of competition,” Lapin continues brightly, clapping Henri on the shoulder. “Same as us.”

“There’s no competition here, Lapin. You suck.” Remy laughs.

Sticking out his tongue, Lapin blows a raspberry at Remy. “Lemme finish.”

Waving him on, Remy turns away, slinking off down the railing, his hands in his pockets.

“The First Guild passed their trade among only those who were worthy of their secrets; the black arts. They were th’ shadows of every wealthy and pious man come t’ the city.”

Remy barks a laugh, calling over his shoulder, “You sure y’ were meant t’ be a Thief, Lapin? I could swear you’d fare better on a stage somewhere.”

Lapin ignores him.

“Back then, they’d string you up in th’ gallows if you got caught. In th’ East, they cut of your hands if you were a thief, but in Paris? They put your neck between th’ blades of the guillotine –” He makes a violent slashing motion across his throat. “For stealing a bread crust of the table of th’ well-to-do.”

Etienne gulps audibly. Remy buries a smirk under his fist as he pivots, taking Lapin’s measure. There’s nothing he can find in his cousin’s countenance that complicates the delight he’s taking in retelling the story. Remy decides that Emil ought to get out more.

“But this is all too simple,” Lapin says gravely, eyeing each of them. “The First Guild realized something as they grew in power an’ in skill: they had something that th’ aristocracy didn’t. The authorities couldn’t contain them; what good were laws that couldn’t keep them safe, that couldn’t keep them fed and healthy? What good were laws that robbed them of their dignity, their right to ownership of themselves? They made the first rule: they would no longer live within th’ rules of a society that feared them, shunned them, and slaughtered them for th’ very thing that set them apart.”

“Why should they?” Henri agrees in a respectful murmur.

“They would no longer live like vermin, to suit the social structure of those who kept from them all th’ power,” Lapin continues, punching his fist into his palm. “They had found something that the lords couldn’t take from them: true freedom.”

Henri is nodding to himself.

Finding his audience captivated, Lapin stretches himself to full height. He looks a little like Peter Pan, with his hands on his hips and his chest puffed out like that. One thing’s for sure, Remy knows Emil can’t fly, so knocking him off the railing before he can get to the part about him is out of the question. More’s the pity.

“The First Guild grew in size an’ in skill. There were rules, traditions, rites of passage to ensure that the men admitted kept their standards high, and kept the first families’ secrets safe –”

“Only men?” Etienne interrupts.

“Only men,” Henri confirms. “Obviously,” he says, looking to Zoe Ichihara almost wistfully, “the other Guilds adapted sooner.”

“I think that’s one rule we could do without, hein?” Remy voices his thought aloud.

Lapin shushes them both. “This is where things get a lil’ strange,” he warns Etienne. “’Parently, one of the initiates got his hands on something valuable.”

“Real valuable,” Remy snickers.

“Stole it from the Church,” Lapin continues, undaunted. “And don’t look so shocked, brah – back then, everyone was stealing everyone else’s reliquaries. You didn’t have t’ be part of a Guild t’ be in on the trade. Supposedly, they took is straight from under the cornerstone of Notre Dame.”

“Why’d they put it there?” asks Etienne.

“Keep it safe?” Henri volunteers.

“More like it was something th’ Church was tryin’ t’ keep hidden,” Lapin says. “Some say it was a relic; a piece of finger or a tooth from some saint. Others say it was th’ Grail itself,” he whispers fervently. “Whatever it was, it was a thing of power.”

“What did it do?” Etienne persists.

At this question, Lapin looks fit to burst.

“It gave them access to things they could only dream of – wealth and power beyond th’ scope of human imagination,” he hurries to explain. “It was a doorway, a portal, a bridge to serendipity –”

“Magic beans for a magic beanstalk!” Remy laughs outright. It’s Henri who shushes him this time.

“Call it Elysium, call it Heaven, call it whatever you can think of – but it was better. The First Guild made it their solemn vow t’ protect it at all costs, lest it be lost or squandered or destroyed. It was what every Thief hoped t’ attain, and for a time, it was shared equally among all members of the First Guild. Because of th’ treasure they’d taken for themselves, they created the Laws to keep it safe –”

“Oh, mon Dieu, que c’est fatiguant,” Remy groans.

“Laws,” Lapin repeats, holding up a finger. “Strict codes of conduct that bound th’ Thieves by something stronger than even blood. A dream of a world apart, where we wouldn’t see our brothers fall beneath th’ tyranny of a society that didn’t understand our manifesto. Honor to their Guild, to their family, and to les Mystères.”

Lapin raises a second finger to join the first. “And rituals. The secrets of th’ First Guild, arcane wisdom that foretold of their ascendancy and bestowed upon them these gifts.” Lowering his hand, Emil turns squarely to face Remy. “Most of th’ ceremonies they performed to keep the bonds strong have been forgotten. But not all of ‘em. We remember the Time Before.”

“We remember the Time Before,” Henri repeats, like it’s a mantra.

“We remember the Things Foreseen,” Lapin hums. “It will come again.”

Henri echoes him, crossing himself and making the chant sacrosanct.

Raising an eyebrow, Remy asks with mock surprise, “When did y’ learn t’ remember a word as big as ‘ascendancy’?”

This time, none of them turn to quiet him for the quip. Rounding his shoulders, Remy digs his hands further into his pockets, no longer bothering to hide his glower. The urge to make fun of what he doesn’t completely believe has been replaced by a strong desire to sulk. At least, he doesn’t think he believes it. Not really.

“To be a Thief is to live both above and beneath th’ Law,” Henri recites solemnly, as if he’s repeated the same creed hundreds of times before. “Above the laws of those who seek t’ declare power over us, and beneath the Laws built on honor, skill and loyalty to our kin.”

“To be a Thief is to live in remembrance of the Old Kingdom,” Lapin says.

It’s as if a hush has fallen over the grounds, the old trees of the Guild estate stilling their groaning, shifting conversation with the falling night. The words stir something around them, and silently, the youngest pledges to the Thieves Guild of New Orleans look into the distance, as if they themselves can see the lines that lead back to the mythical ideal that keeps their solidarity strong despite the passing of a millennia.

“It was a time of prosperity; of peace,” Lapin whispers. “The greatest wealth at their fingertips, waiting to be claimed. Nothing stood in their way.”

“They were untouchable,” Henri responds.

“They lived like royalty.” Lapin sighs, hands loose at his sides, fingers trailing through the light breeze. His smile has a faraway quality that is all too rare to see on the boy’s face. That Lapin can still show that sort of youthful vulnerability makes Remy’s insides prickle. It’s the exact thing that Jean Luc is training them against: being present and aware is much more advantageous than daydreaming.

“Hocus pocus.” Remy clears his throat, breaking the spell.

Lapin’s footing doesn’t so much slip as he stutters back into full functionality.

Blinking at each other, both Lapin and Henri seem to return to themselves, their gazes sharper than before.

“Heh,” Lapin chuckles, scrubbing the back of his head and stretching. There’s a glance thrown in Remy’s direction; sharp as a pinprick.

“Hocus pocus,” he repeats, but it lacks conviction. With an embarrassed wag of his head, Emil resumes his bounding gait down the gallery railing towards Etienne, who is forced to backtrack with each step. Henri follows, throwing an awkward grin at Remy over the heads of the shorter boys.

“But like anything real good,” Lapin says, “anything worth keeping safe and secret and close t’ heart, there’s always someone who has t’ go and screw it up.” He exhales heavily. “As th’ story was told t’ me by Pawpaw LeBeau ‘fore he passed, some cooyon went and got th’ idea in their head that the Kingdom was reserved f’ only th’ most worthy in the Guild, and that what they had wasn’t enough. There was a… ah… difference of opinion, I think. This guy decided that wealth oughta be gained by any means necessary.”

“He means murder,” Remy whispers with sinister fervor into Et’s ear, eliciting a defensive lurch and a surprised, “Hey!” from Etienne. It seems as if Lapin had managed to catch the younger boy in the spell woven by the old Guild magic after all.

Lapin is forced to steady him with both hands to keep his attention.

“A cooyon by the name of Boudreaux,” he says sagely, with a hint of menace making the name sound like a curse. “That’s how th’ war started, y’ know. That’s how the Old Kingdom was lost –”

War, shmore. Everyone keeps talking about it, but no one’s ever really lived through anything more than a scuffle when crossing the territories. Not while he’s been around, at least.

“That’s how th’ families were split, and one Guild became two,” Henri supplies.

“Was a LeBeau who followed Boudreaux and his supporters t’ Port Royal t’ try and keep the First Guild from breaking up, y’ know?” Henri interjects.

“Didn’t do a whole lot, y’ ask me,” Remy mumbles, thinking briefly of Belladonna, who’s not bad at all, despite the extracurricular activities she participates in.

“Hell, no,” Lapin chimes in. “Not unless y’ think that getting gutted and strung up by y’ entrails is a good way t’ settle a dispute.”

Both Lapin and Henri spit over the rail simultaneously and in disgust.

Not all bad, Remy thinks to himself uneasily, twisting the phrasing to better suit the revelation.

“An’ naturally, when the Grand Dérangement happened, where do y’ think both families just happened t’ end up, hmm?” Lapin asks, folding his arms across his chest.

“Wasn’t that a slap in th’ face?” Henri chuckles darkly.

“But – but that’s just part of the story, innit?” Etienne asks.

Lapin is grinning. “Think so?” The look on his face says anything but. The entrails are probably just another variation to illustrate the Boudreaux’s betrayal: the bottom line is that whatever happened, it was bloody enough to warrant a footnote in the Guild’s history. Truthfully, none of them really know how it went down; all they do know is that it did, and the blood feud between the families has never ended… And all over some lost mythic ideal. Like Atlantis or Lemuria or Troy, the Old Kingdom belongs to another world, another time. Now, it can only be a dream woven through with stories of knights defeating dragons and faeries tricking the living into realms beyond the pale. Such things don’t exist. They’re stories you tell children to make them sleep better; promises of a better life in greener fields.

“Fairy tales,” Remy says blandly. “Can’t be nothin’ but. There’s no proof. No written record, and you know what Père says: no documents, then it doesn’t exist.”

“Dunno,” Henri replies, clearly dubious. “Always seemed pretty convincing t’ me.”

“You’re only sayin’ that because the key to bringing back the Old Kingdom belongs to the only remaining prophecy anyone remembers, Remy,” says Lapin in lofty tones.

“An’ I suppose it’s dumb luck that the Legacy is the responsibility of –”

“A homme with eyes th’ color of fire?” Lapin presses, smirking.

Steeling his expression, Remy glares at Lapin. He purses his lips, his tongue twisting on the outright denial that he is not the one to fit the bill. Remy holds it in. Manages to count to seven before lifting a shoulder in a shrug, brushing off the similarity between the requirements of the prophecy and the colour of his eyes: red on black.

Like Hellfire burning inside him.

With a daub of petulance mixed in to cover over the thin patina of hope he feels when contemplating the possibility that he is destined for something greater than what everyone since Fagan ever expected of him, Remy asks defiantly:

“So?”

Lapin gawps at him, dumbfounded. “So?” he repeats. “So?”

Henri peers around Lapin at Etienne. “What do you think, Et?”

“SO,” Lapin nearly shouts. “That means you’re like… like… a hero in waiting, Rem!”

“It’s just a coincidence,” he mutters. “It’s prolly got nothing t’ do with me, at all.”

“That means you’ll end th’ war!” Lapin continues, his voice rising. “Don’t you know that’s how Pawpaw and Mawmaw LeBeau died? Fighting Marius? Mawmaw Henriette was outright killed ‘cause she was in th’ wrong place at th’ wrong time. It wasn’t two days ‘fore Pawpaw Jacques went after Marius and his père t’ settle up.” Lapin’s expression darkens, his face smeared with the elongating shadows as the sun dips finally beneath the horizon line.

“Don’t you know that’s how Henri’s ma was killed?” he asks, quieter now. “Weren’t no accident that put her in th’ hospital for six weeks ‘fore Oncle Jean Luc had t’ let her go. Said she was brain dead, Rem. Everythin’ else was still workin’, ‘cept her soul wasn’t comin’ back from where Auntie Emeline was gone.”

“Emil,” Henri says quietly. “Y’ getting’ y’self worked up.”

“Non!” Lapin says firmly, then thinks the better of it. “Je m’excuse, Henri, Etienne. But I’m not finished. He has to know. He has to understand what it means t’ us – what it oughta mean t’ him.” Lapin turns back to him, the pair of boys stalk still where they stand on the railing, muscles tense from the growing effort. “Emeline Lapin was ma Tante. My Auntie,” he says, jabbing himself in the chest. “Th’ Assassins Guild put her in th’ ground the same way they did my parents, God rest ‘em,” he hisses, his jaw clenching. “And that means that your Auntie Lillian Lapin and your Oncle Fernand Lapin were taken too ‘fore it was right f’ them t’ go – and what kinda justice is it that y’ never even had th’ chance t’ meet them, Remy?”

It hits him hard: a sucker punch straight to the heart that Lapin could even think of him like that. Dieu, Remy thinks, the well of grief is shared among the family. His family. He swallows down the revelation thickly before he can choke on it. They’ve made a place for him in their ranks, a true place.

He’s one of them.

Remy’s never been a part of anything before. Not like this.

“I was five,” Lapin spits, letting it hang between them. It’s the beginning of an idea: a reminder that both he and Emil are in the same boat when it comes to knowing their parents. The difference is in the way the grimy handprint of time leaves its mark: Five years is an eon. Five years is a second. Five years he’s missed.

With Emil’s shoulders heaving, the shine to his glare, Remy knows he’s gone too far. He’d tried to undercut his own hopes, and in doing so, he’s snagged Lapin’s on the way down.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he whispers.

“I might be th’ last person who oughta be tellin’ y’ this, Remy, but you best think ‘fore you open y’ mouth.”

Lapin turns away then; a quick, shaky pivot executed with the intention of storming away. It’s cut short abruptly upon realizing that he’s still standing on a half-foot of wooden rail, and Henri is bookending him on the other side.

Lapin seems to pause.

“Move,” he mutters to Henri, but Henri, bless him, says something in an undertone to Lapin that gets him thinking it over. The exchange is conducted with a nervous glance at his brother over the top of Emil’s short-down crew cut.

“Non,” Lapin murmurs a moment later, dejected.

Henri whispers something else, and Emil glances over his shoulder warily.

To Henri, he shakes his head.

Then he spins on the spot again to stare Remy down.

“It’s a tall order,” he says decisively, folding his arms across his chest. Jutting his chin in acknowledgement, Remy can’t meet Lapin’s stare, though he seems to uncoil a little, if albeit uncomfortably.

“Emil,” Henri urges, accompanied by a poke to his shoulder.

“For whoever gets th’ job, I mean – th’ dude with th’ red eyes, and all. Guild Savior.” He shrugs. “You know.”

He knows.

“I know.”

Lapin is squinting at an inscrutable spot in the distance that is anywhere but Remy’s face.

“An’ I’m not sayin’ it’s you, exactly…” he trails off, and for the second time ever that Remy can remember, Lapin looks uncomfortable.

Etienne crouches carefully, turning on his toes to face Henri before standing back to full height. “But it’d be cool if it were,” Etienne supplies for Lapin, offering Remy a reluctant smile.

Lapin is peeking at him out of the corner of his eye to catch Remy’s response. Uncertain what to say to that, Remy blows out a breath.

“It’s just a story?” Henri reminds them all, trying to diffuse the situation. He too is watching Remy. Remy is beginning to feel slightly more like something amoebic and squirming on a Petri dish.

“If Lapin gets that pissed off about somethin’ that’s ‘just a story’, what’s he do when th’ handsome Prince sleeps through th’ dragon-slaying and the princess gets eaten by angry trolls?”

“Ask him what happens when his team loses th’ Superbowl, more like,” Henri says.

Etienne laughs, wobbling enough to bring Remy skittering forwards to yank him upright by the collar of his shirt. Etienne, his arms hoisted by his shirtsleeves, doesn’t seem to mind. He’s still at an age where the concept of his own mortality can’t quite take root. It makes the immediate dangers seem about as threatening as the things the boys are talking about. Legacies. Legends. War.

When his giggling subsides, Etienne makes one last ditch effort. “Papa tells me th’ story ‘bout the Old Kingdom sometimes?” he volunteers in attempt to rekindle the conversation. “He says th’ rituals every Thief must go through t’ prove himself to his Guild h – har – hark –. Shee-it, Remy, what’s that word?”

“Don’t cuss, Etienne!” Theoren bellows. The boys pause, eyebrows raised. The adults have fallen silent at the other end of the gallery, but Theoren hasn’t moved any closer.

“How’d he hear that?” Lapin whispers feverishly.

Etienne shakes his head, his eyes wide. “Sorry?” he calls back.

“Did they hear everything?” Remy asks, though instinctively, he thinks he already knows the answer. Jean Luc is staring off into the distance, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he puffs away on a freshly lit cigar.

Lapin mutters something about the appalling lack of privacy afforded to anyone living at the mansion, carefully examining Theoren’s facial expression as he throws in several bold expletives that he thinks best describes an eavesdropper.

He pauses, a glance flicking to Remy, who flashes a quick, ready smile. It doubles as an apology, and an agreement.

“He really is a ‘big-eared, trombone-nosed, crawdad-sucking Mother Tucker,’” Remy agrees loudly.

The shit-eating grin Lapin wears could hatch flies.

“What did y’ just say about my nose, Lapin?” Theoren threatens, standing with just enough menace to get Emil somersaulting from the gallery railing.

Just like that, the tension between them breaks.

“Nothin’!” he calls back, dragging several large pieces of wicker furniture between him and the larger boy as he backs away at a trot.

“Hearken,” Remy tells Etienne, releasing his cousin and taking a step away. “C’mon,” he says, leaping to the mid-mezzanine and vaulting over a chair. “This is gonna be fun t’ watch.”

“Yeah, that… Th’ rituals hearken back to th’ Old Kingdom,” Etienne finishes, proud that he can remember his father’s turn of phrase. “Right?” he asks, dropping to the floor next to Remy.

“Y’ won’t like ‘em so much when it’s your turn for y’ Tilling,” Emil scoffs, pausing long enough to jump up on the seat of a chair and taunt Theoren with a rude gesture. “Right, Henri?” The jibe is all for Remy’s benefit. He’s already laughing. Emil’s going to get himself in a world of hurt someday for teasing people twice his size.

“Ferme ta bouche, Emil,” Henri shoots back, but he’s grinning too. Henri’s Tilling Harvest, his coming of age ritual, is set for a week before his thirteenth birthday, as is customary. He will become a fully-fledged member of the Thieves Guild within the month, if he is successful in the task set to him. What Henri will steal under the watchful eye of his Registrar, Theoren, is as much a point of interest to the boys as it is a secret among the adult members of the Guild. Accordingly, no one’s even hinted at what it might be.

If Henri’s frustrated by the close-lipped attitude of Père and the others, he doesn’t show it. It seems to be the last thought on his mind as he springs from the railing to join in the chase.

Theoren is stalking down the gallery towards them at a brisk clip.

Remy rolls his eyes, breaking into a light jog past Emil, who inches around in a circle to follow him. “Th’ Tilling. Th’ Tracts of Passage. Th’ Tithing. Whoever thought this stuff up spent a little too much time thinkin’ up tiring tropes.”

“True,” Emil supplies, grinning. “One moment please,” he says formally, a barely restrained grin hitching the corners of his mouth up.

“Hey, Theoren! Can y’ hear this?” he yells over his shoulder.

Lapin yanks his shorts to his ankles, bends over, and flashes Theo a full, paste-white moon.

“Touché,” Remy says, and then, the four of them are running, laughing, into the cover of night draped around the Guild House.

---

Lapin brushes a thumb against the left side of his nose and sniffs.

Remy blinks once, then twice.

Etienne looks between them, his hands wrapped around his elbows where he leans on the countertop, grinning openly. Behind him, wiping a dull spot into the stainless steel drip pan under the grill, Tante Mattie hums to herself and occasionally casts a withering glance at the clock on the microwave.

Remy shakes his head, pinches his earlobe, brushes the side of his nose on the right, blinks once, twice, and looks at Lapin expectantly across the island counter, the bowl of fruit between them.

Lapin pouts, his lower lip jutting in irritation.

Remy pinches his earlobe again, blinks once, twice, grits his teeth, waits for Emil to get the signal, and when it takes more than a half a second, he rolls his eyes and flips him off.

Recognition dawns on Lapin’s face.

“Y’ want that I should double back, use th’ drain t’ get to the roof, and create a distraction by droppin’ the explosive down the chimney!” he says proudly.

“Homme, you suck!” Etienne laughs.

If Père had expected any better of the three youngest Guild children, left to their own devices on a Saturday night when Henri was on his first run, his Tilling Harvest, Père was sorely mistaken. It was probably the reason why they’d wound up cemented to the island in the kitchen with Tante Mattie as a babysitter, their studies spread about them and still mostly neglected. Lapin is using his art history textbook as a coaster. A can of pop sits on the glaring head of Holofernes while Judith looks on above him, her triumph speckled with Grape Crush.

Remy shakes his head, exasperated. Picking up an orange from the fruit bowl, his thumbnail bites into the skin as he angles it at Emil just so, so that when the skin breaks, a small spurt of juice catches his cousin just below the eye.

Lapin swipes at it, temporarily distracted.

“One blink for yes, two for no, an earlobe pull for ‘you’re some kinda stupid’,” Remy instructs, repeating the same modifications they’d devised to their in-field working codes out of sheer boredom. “The nose brush on th’ left is for ‘the explosives have been set’, the nose brush on th’ right is for ‘the explosives have been set, and I just blew off an appendage by accident an’ I can’t scream because security’s ‘round th’ corner, please come save m’ sorry ass, Remy’.”

“Don’t cuss,” Tante Mattie chides absently.

“’Scuze,” they all respond, not at all chastised.

Eyebrows furrowing, Lapin asks, “What’s th’ middle finger stand for, then?”

Etienne barks outright. It takes a second for Lapin to get it, and he punches him in the arm.

“Ow!”

Etienne hits him back.

“OW! You do not have your big brother here t’ protect you right now,” Lapin warns, rubbing his shoulder and threatening with his free fist.

Etienne fixes him with an impish grin, a spark in his eyes making them glitter, and rolls his head around to nod at Tante. “Don’t I know it?”

“Clever,” Lapin mutters. It’s clear that he doesn’t think much of Etienne using Mattie’s presence as a safety net. “But she’s not gonna be there in th’ dead of the night when y’ sleeping, is she?” he whispers with mock menace. “She’s not gonna be there when y’ go to the bathroom one day when y’ find the toilet seat’s been covered over with Saran Wrap, is she? Huh? Huh!”

“They’re back,” Mattie says suddenly, turning to the boys in a twirl of heavy linen skirts and rattling jewellery. “Henri and Theoren are back!” she calls after them, but the three are already sprinting from the kitchen with the clatter of toppled stools and dropped, half-peeled fruit. Barrelling down the corridors to the back rooms of the massive plantation house, skidding across the carpets and avoiding the jutting, expensive antiques that decorate the corridors, Remy gets there first. But just barely.

Two shapes are moving around in the murky shadows below, lingering around the foot of the path that disappears into the swamp.

Remy can only grin as his brother emerges from the darkness, gripping something rectangular-shaped between his fists. He brandishes his prize over his head, all traces of decorum, modesty and tact usurped by the excited look he wears. He looks like a soot-stained splotch against the night, only his eyes and teeth shining brightly.

“You shoulda seen it!” he chirps, his voice cracking.

“Mon Dieu,” Lapin breathes, “He actually did it.”

“What’s with th’ makeup?” Etienne asks in distaste.

“Chimney,” Henri answers breathily, stopping before them, his package still gripped in both hands. “Someone hadn’t cleaned it out in a while.”

“You went down th’ chimney?” Lapin asks, peering at him speculatively. “What are you, Santa Claus?”

“No, I hid in th’ chimney. Got a surprise visit from th’ Rippers. Julien near tore things up f’ me, didn’t he Theo?”

At his side now, Theoren merely waves in acknowledgement to Jean Luc, who’s stepped out on the porch behind the boys. Remy glances over his shoulder, not surprised to see his father materialize out of thin air. The trick doesn’t surprise him, anymore. Rather, Remy seeks to emulate his stealth and silence. Jean Luc blends in perfectly with the shades on the porch. He commands the wood to creak only when he wants it to. Remy smirks to himself, envy smothered by admiration.

“He performed well,” Theoren says.

“Julien was there?” Etienne presses.

“Yeah,” Henri replies, his eyes so wide that the irises are ringed with white. “And Belladonna and Fifolet and Questa. Tried t’ intercept us on th’ way out. Dunno why. Didn’t stop t’ think about it, really.” Remy notices Henri’s knuckles are losing circulation from gripping his parcel.

“Y’ don’t really think about much when there’s a crossbow pointed at y’ head,” he offers for his brother, who barks a dry laugh that sounds more like a rasp of panic-induced hysteria. It draws Henri’s attention to him, and as if seeing him for the first time, Henri reaches out, gripping his shoulder bracingly.

“Yeah.” He nods emphatically. “Yeah.”

Remy slaps his back in reassurance, slinging an arm around Henri’s shoulders in support as the group walks towards the shelter of the portico.

“If it was Lapin,” Remy offers with a grin, “there wouldn’t be any thinking before or after. I’d say y’ did good, homme.”

“What is this? ‘Pick on Emil Day’?” Lapin asks, affronted. They ignore him.

“Near took my arm out of its socket tryin’ t’ get away without raising an alarm,” Henri continues. “You shoulda seen it! Remy! The system this place had!” Henri shakes his head. “Quadruple bypass: gate, cameras, locks and motion sensors. Had to overload th’ hardware from a block away before I could even step onto to the curb.”

“Down the rabbit hole?” Lapin asks enviously, the insult forgotten as he zips to Henri’s front and walks backwards to continue the conversation.

Henri nods, high-strung and vibrating with pride. He can’t seem to focus on any one person for long. “You’d have wet y’self to see how it was rigged up. Had to kick out the power totally before th’ generator could reset the alarms. The place was pitch, homme – exactly the sort of dark that keeps y’ covered and makes y’ shins hurt from knocking into everything. Wasn’t a light on in th’ place f’ me to see where I was going.”

“Means there was a whole lotta things t’ trip over,” Remy explains for Etienne’s benefit.

Et gives him a wry look. “I know that.”

The tone earns him a smirk and a cuff to the shoulder.

“Was cool?” Lapin asks, disbelief written across his face in the way he stares pointedly at Henri’s legs, as if the thin nylon cover will reveal how poorly he performed.

“Took him five minutes, tops,” Theoren informs them. There’s a challenge in the statement that says, “See if you can beat that.”

“Way t’ go, Alice!” Lapin laughs, impressed only temporarily. “Let’s see y’ knees.”

Henri grins, shifting his package to roll back his leggings. Remy releases him to see for himself if their constant, rigorous training has helped Henri at all. Below the fine sprouting of hair, there isn’t a bruise to be found. He made it through utterly unscathed. Bonus points, right there.

“…Was residential. Just off First Street. Huge place,” Henri is saying, slipping into French as he and Lapin start up an excited exchange about the house’s hardware, and how he established a ubiquitous window of exactly twenty eight point three seconds to get inside without alerting anyone. The conversation rapidly degenerates as Lapin decides a congratulatory tackle is in order, and the two boys find themselves in a heap on the garden path, laughing.

Remy, Etienne and Theoren pause long enough to assess the flailing limbs.

“The Garden District?” Etienne asks his brother, disappointed. “I thought Tilling Harvests had t’ be done on foreign soil?”

“That depends,” Jean Luc says finally, settling a hand on Remy’s shoulder.

Henri and Lapin stop thrashing momentarily. It’s long enough for Emil to tumble off him, and Henri to spring to his feet, at attention.

“Papa!” he says in greeting, elated. He has yet to release his prize, even with Lapin trying to pinch it from between his arm and his side.

Jean Luc’s attention flits to the package under Henri’s arm, but withholds any remarks about it. Remy sees the slight tightening around Henri’s eyes, the worried expression that appears quickly, and vanishes with a swallow. Henri clears his throat, squares his shoulders, and holds his breath. His tension is visible.

“If what th’ Guild desires is on foreign soil, then the Tilling serves the initiate the first purpose of serving his family by acquiring it,” Theoren explains.

“It’s a rare opportunity that something of such value can be found so close t’ home,” Jean Luc concedes with a sly half-shrug.

“He was lucky?” Lapin demands.

“In a fashion.”

Remy looks up at the cryptic return. Jean Luc is looking past him, however, though he can feel the momentary increase in pressure on his shoulder. It’s a reassurance of sorts, a “Don’t trouble yourself over the details, mon fils.”

It unsettles him.

“Would you call it luck, Emil, if the outcome of this evening had been decided the moment Henri stepped out the front door?” Jean Luc asks.

Lapin frowns, and both he and Remy exchange a quick glance. Remy blinks twice. Lapin responds tentatively, “No?”

“Fate,” Henri responds promptly. “I’d call it fate.”

“It’s something t’ do with the Guild prophecies, doesn’t it, Oncle?” Etienne asks immediately.

Remy turns to survey the package under Henri’s arm, then back to his father, sensing that whatever it is that Henri had collected to admit him officially into the Thieves Guild carries a much larger price than their Patriarch is willing to let on. Jean Luc’s hand turns into an uncomfortable weight on his shoulder, and suddenly, Remy wants to duck out from beneath that constant pressure to see the look on his father’s face; he wants to know if it matches the tone in his voice that he’s never heard used when Jean Luc speaks to him before. It sets him away and apart from the group, and for a moment, Remy knows a flicker of otherness that the other boys are blind to.

What is he to them, he wonders, if Père truly believes that fate brought Henri to the crossroads tonight?

Henri was born to this life, and having fulfilled his rite of passage, he’s suddenly gone from Henri the boy to Henri the man. That much is clear in Jean Luc’s tone. It’s woven in there with the pride and the satisfaction, and it smacks of a certain type of elitism that Remy’s only known once before… when he was a child in Fagan’s mob, and Fagan had preferred him to all the other gutter runners.

Jean Luc takes the opportunity to direct the conversation down a different path, the book under Henri’s arm temporarily forgotten with a bit of misdirection. Remy doesn’t forget it, though. It draws his gaze like firelight in the fullest darkness.

The sensation that something important has transpired to pull Henri away from him does not lift, however, and though Remy tries to catch Henri’s attention, Henri can only look on in anticipation at Père. He’s waiting for the acknowledgement; that warming validation that only Jean Luc can bestow upon them.

It sickens him that he wants it too. He’s a moth with wings waiting to be singed.

“It’s difficult t’ attribute luck t’ the skill Henri must have displayed this evening,n’est ce pas, Theoren?” he asks.

Henri straightens, raising his chin proudly. Theoren murmurs in agreement, asking of his father, Belize, and excuses himself quietly to prepare for the long night ahead.

“Come, mon fils,” Jean Luc says, releasing Remy’s shoulder and beckoning to Henri. “The Guild waits t’ relieve you of your burden.”

Extending a hand, Henri’s package is transferred to Jean Luc’s waiting palm, and as Remy looks on intently, confused by the sudden chill he feels as the father leads the biological son away from their little group, he sees the glint of a gold-foiled numeral on the spine of the old, leather bound book.

Lapin and Etienne are already racing through the doorway, prepared to rush Tante Mattie for a late night snack; to cajole, coerce and badger something deep-fried out of her at this late hour. Theo has already disappeared to prepare for whatever ceremony awaits Remy’s brother in exchange for his success.

“I did it, papa,” Henri is saying, his voice fading the further away the family moves.

No one notices that Remy’s not fast on their heels.

From where Henri’s gone tonight, Remy cannot follow. Not by will or by right. Not yet.

---

Remy’s never been to a funeral before, never seen them shut the casket on anyone before. He thinks that in some ways, while death settles its bony grip over the city of New Orleans and the surrounding swamps, it ought to feel more familiar than this. They ought to feel some sort of connection with Belize, laid out the way he is for all to see, but instead, Remy finds that the air is too choked with mourning silence to do much else other than whisper condolences. It won’t disturb Oncle Belize, that’s for sure – but he’s not the one left without a father.

Remy’s had twelve years to come to terms with his own losses.

The grey casket is set out in the mansion’s front room, mountains of white flowers laid out around it, and Theoren and Etienne grip each other, trying to hold the last vestiges of their world together.

The silence isn’t for the dead. It’s maintained for those who are left behind, and to help everyone else when they can’t find the words to express how deeply the loss injures them.

They’re going to parade him to the cemetery, like they do on occasion for the kings of Jazz who’ve die on their native soil. It puts Belize on par with royalty.

“He doesn’t smell like papa anymore,” Etienne whispers, his voice tremulous. The boy can’t tear his eyes away from the coffin, from the man lying inside it. Theoren can’t respond, though Remy can see his eldest cousin’s shoulders shaking, the weight of his father’s death a load that’s too heavy for him to bear alongside his brother’s grief.

Etienne is right, though. It doesn’t smell like Oncle Belize. It smells like the cloying, choking perfume of the funeral bower overlaying the first signs of decay – stoppered briefly by the toxic hand of embalming chemicals. They shouldn’t have to remember him like this, he thinks.

Wanting to keep Etienne’s innocence free of death’s taint, he steps abreast of Theoren. “Theo?” he murmurs, not wanting to splinter the fragile moment any further, but hoping that he can urge him out of the room and away from the overly sweet smell of sorrow. “Th’ band’s starting.”

Theoren acknowledges him, but only just. There’s a wavering sheen to his gaze that Remy recognizes as fresh tears, almost ready to spill over, but held back by the concern of showing weakness in front of his younger brother. Beyond that, Remy almost sees Theoren’s control – it’s held together by the understanding that now, both he and Remy share something in common: they are both orphans.

Wordlessly, he pleads with him, just as Etienne sobs openly. His tie pops off when Etienne tries to wipe his nose with his jacket sleeve, his starched collar buckling the clips, and automatically, Remy snatches it from the air and pockets it before it can flick against the hermetic seals.

Still looking at Theoren, he nods and takes the weight of the boy against his side. Theoren’s face crumples as he looks to the ceiling, tries to escape it on his own, and Remy can do nothing but try and help him.

“Be strong, Et,” Remy murmurs into Etienne’s ear, though he says it for both of them. He knows Theoren can hear him.

It’s Theoren who nods. Strength will come later, Remy thinks. Right now, Theo just needs to say goodbye to his dad. Beneath the immediate pain, he is happy for them, in some ways; they, at least, knew and loved their father.

---

“Bree beep beep bree neep neep neep wee twee twee snee!”

Remy’s laughing so hard he thinks he’s snorted powdered sugar up his nose. The pair of them, both he and Emil, sitting curbside in front of the old French Market, are covered in the stuff.

They look like cocaine junkies, there’s so much powder decorating their faces. It gets everywhere, in the nose, down the chin, smearing into their clothes and clotting beneath their nails where they suck the sweetness from their fingers.

“Bree neep neep neep wee!” Emil continues in his off-pitch falsetto, hacking when he inhales too near his beignet. The wad of fried dough, the sugar, but most importantly, the Styrofoam cups sucked dry of their iced café au lait, are responsible for his singing.

The shrill calliope of the Steamboat Natchez paces his facial expressions.

Remy’s eyes are watering, and between gasps, he manages, “Tante Mattie… gonna… kill us.”

“Bree bwee bwee neee deet deet!” Emil screeches, screwing his face up with the effort to reach notes only the organ and maybe a fat lady could hit. “She said ‘no caffeine,’ brah. She didn’t say ‘no café au lait’!”

“Naw,” he laughs, “what she said was, ‘Remy, y’ cousin might be older then you by a year, but that don’t mean he’s any smarter.’”

“But I can feel my hair growin’!” Emil says emphatically, sucking his straw until the cup makes an empty, rattling sound. “It’s all tingly an’ stuff!”

Remy snickers, not that he really cares that Lapin can’t handle sugar and coffee in combination. It’s the first time they’ve been out of the house and out from under Tante Mattie’s watchful eye in weeks. So what if Lapin’s pupils are dilated?

“Start droolin’ on me, and I’ll dump y’ in the river,” he jokes.

“Bree neep neep wee beep beep!” Emil chants back, his tongue lolling.

It sends Remy into another breathless peal.

It feels good, this temporary insanity; better than trying to work through the pall settled about the Guild mansion. Theoren won’t indulge anymore, having taken to his duties to earn his title in their ranks to the extreme since his father’s passing.

They can’t fault him, really, though he’s certain Etienne would’ve liked an invitation to come out for a bit. That isn’t likely to happen either, not the way Theoren’s been watching over the kid. It’s likely that there are bells attached to the boy’s windows and doors to announce a clandestine escape. If not bells, than trip-switches, or something else Etienne hasn’t been trained in yet.

Remy’s giving Theo the temporary respect and abiding his wishes… but if this breed of overprotective crazy keeps up another month? All bets are off. It’ll be a jailbreak, he’s sure.

And Henri… Henri had bluntly said “no” when Remy tried to haul him out of his third story bedroom window. Lapin suspects that Henri might be doing some sneaking on his own. Last week, he swears that he saw Henri come back in at five in the morning with the pirogue. All the knots that anchored the boat to the docks were slipped and retied sloppily enough to make Theoren complain to Jean Luc.

Apparently, he’s met some charmant from uptown, and he’s been doing his best to court her without the rest of the boys’ knowing. Probably safer, Remy figures.

Hell, he wouldn’t want Lapin knowing about Belladonna. The teasing’d never end...

It takes a second for Remy to remember why not even his brother knows about the girl from the other side of Canal Street.

She’s the daughter of a known enemy.

She’s the daughter of a known enemy with whom they are at war.

She’s the daughter of a known enemy with whom they are at war who has been trained in the killing arts, and, incidentally, has a cold streak bigger than a Greenland glacier. Remy learned as much the last time they faced off and Belle showed him no quarter. He still has a scar stretching from hip to rib to prove it. (“A flesh wound”, she called it. There had been a hell of a lot of blood for a “flesh wound” by his warrant.)

Also, her brother Julien is the biggest little shit Remy has ever had the misfortune of meeting. The whole family knows as much. It probably wouldn’t go over so well with him that Belle’s a damned fine kisser. Not even Lapin’s teasing would forgive him of that indiscretion: make out with your enemy one day, fight ‘em the next when they waltz through your territory… Mon dieu…

“What’s that look on y’ face?” Lapin demands, shoving him playfully in the shoulder.

The styrofoam cup is now pancake-flat on the sidewalk between his flip-flops.

Remy stares vacantly ahead, giving Lapin his best doe-eyed, love-struck sucker look, complete with batting eyelashes and a trickle of drool.

“Stop it!” Lapin says. “That’s creeping me out. All dreamy-like an’ shit…”

Remy tries to put his cheek on Lapin’s shoulder, making kissy-faces, but enough’s enough, apparently.

Lapin exhales into his white paper beignet bag, knocks him in the side before Remy can snatch the makeshift bomb from him, and holds it out over his head.

With a clap that echoes like a gunshot, he pops the bag. It explodes, raining sweet snow and covering his hair and shoulders, sending up a billowing cloud of perfect white. He can hear passers-by laughing; the wind-and-click of cameras as a few tourists stop to memorialize the moment.

“Lapin!” Remy shouts, hacking as he sucks in a lungful of the miasma.

Lapin sniggers, the slap of his flip-flops against the cement his calling card as he cackles over his shoulder in the evilest tone he can muster, “Moo hoo ha ha!”

Not bothering to pause and wipe his eyes, Remy springs from the curb, running at full-tilt across the cross-walk and through the arches into the clustered, busy French Market where Emil has sought a distraction.

All he has to do is follow the shouts as his cousin dives and weaves between the stalls, upending tables of over-priced, out-of-season Mardi Gras jewelry, Spanish moss-stuffed voodoo dolls, masks, spices, and hot sauce.

Remy swipes at his eyes, deciding that over is a better approach than under, and he leaps onto the first wire-rack of decorative sun hats that gets in his way. Emil is within two yards, and it doesn’t really matter what Remy will do when he catches up with him, all he knows is that it will involve a much more painful embarrassment than the one he’s just suffered. The display heaves with his weight, and like a tree monkey on a bowing branch, Remy uses the momentum to fling himself skyward, arms outstretched for Lapin’s midsection as Emil propels himself across three tables of varying heights, scattering their contents into the surprised crowd.

With a startled, strangled “Yip!”, Lapin announces his surprise.

“Ah ha!” Remy yells, triumph within his reach as his fingers snag Lapin’s tee-shirt and he crashes into him mid-air, shoulder first.

Next thing Remy knows as he tries to brace for impact, the dusty floor is flying upwards at his face. Emil’s gone down hard, little more than a clatter and a spectacular oath to his left, but Remy’s stopped rolling – his butt the break against a stall of some sort, his sneakers untied and dangling over his head.

He’s flat on his back when he starts laughing.

“Robert,” Lapin cackles, using an alias so that no one will track them. It’s short-lived, however, as Emil drops all pretence a moment later and asks, almost quizzically, “Remy?”

But he’s still laughing too hard to think long on the slip.

Then Emil says again, with increasing urgency, “Remy!”

Merde, he thinks. His cover’s totally shot now. “Thanks, Lapin –”

“Shit! REMY! Look!”

Remy rolls onto his shoulder, legs following as he twists onto his front, and sees for the first time what has Lapin so concerned. Beneath his hands, his knees, his shins – anyplace where his skin comes into contact with the asphalt, and soon spreading to a large pool beneath him – ebbing outwards as confusion breaks way into fear – a large, glowing pool of pink light is growing around him.

He doesn’t understand. He looks at Lapin to see that he’s joking, that his shouting is part of the prank, but the colour has bled from Emil’s face, and rather than the jovial expression he’s used to, Lapin is shaking his head. He’s terrified. This is real.

That’s when Remy feels the pull. It starts low, a heady, insistent pulse emanating from his joints and pushing outwards through his hands. It stings a little, hot like an electric current when you touch a piece of metal conducting electricity; like a spark plug with a pent up charge still skittering around, all too ready to leap beneath the flesh and contract the muscles in your finger tips. It hurts, in that bone-knowing way.

“Lapin?” he croaks, scared now. But it only gets stronger.

The pool of bright pink light only gets brighter, and the feeling – that itching, sizzling, ten thousand volt crackle beneath his skin only gets stronger.

“Don’t move, Remy!” Lapin yells over a deafening whine that seems to have come from nowhere. “Don’t move!” Distantly, he realizes the sound is coming from the glowing concrete.

There must be a puddle below him, Remy thinks distantly, illogically. He must’ve landed in a puddle and there’s a live wire dropped into it, and now he’s part of the circuit. But that can’t be it. In one disconnected, pure, shining second of insanity, he thinks he can feel the asphalt vibrating below his palms. He thinks he can feel the charge catching, passed off in a viral spread as each molecule reverberates and brushes its neighbor.

Logic doesn’t make the decision for him to run – it’s something purely primitive that tells him he must flee. Now. Before something bad happens.

A smaller voice, an older, bigger, wiser voice speaks up then from the depths of his subconscious. It tells him that is impossible. He cannot run from himself.

He doesn’t listen. As Remy’s hands lift from the ground and his survival instincts overcome him, he realizes he should have listened to Lapin. Beneath him, the ground seems to burst open, a volcanic eruption that lifts him bodily and sends him soaring skywards into the tarpaulin that covers the old French Market.

Remy sees fuchsia – that brilliant, blinding crackle of energy trailed by a scream that he doesn’t realize is pouring out of him.

And then darkness.

---

Across the dimly lit room, Belladonna stares openly between him and the rising plume of smoke between them.

The old swamp-swallowed plantation groans around them; fern and buddleia sprouting from the crevices in the walls, already stained broth-brown by the frequent rainfalls that make an effort at drowning southern Louisiana each August.

He chose this wreck of a place in case something went wrong. No one’d miss it. It’s been abandoned for years and left for the bayou to reclaim. Now, Remy’s second-guessing coming out here at all: It’s too isolated, and if Belladonna decides it’d be best to put him out of his misery, no one’ll find his body before the gators get to him.

“Remy?” she breathes, uncertain.

His hands are still tingling from the charge.

“Still me, here, Belle,” he confirms, though his inflection is broken mid-sentence. Quite frankly, he’s not too sure if it really is him anymore. The old Remy LeBeau didn’t spark up his duvet in the middle of the night each time he had a nightmare. The old Remy LeBeau didn’t singe Tante Mattie’s oven mitts because he thought the asbestos might douse the fire in his bones when he sparked up if he got angry. Hell, the old Remy LeBeau wasn’t afraid of touching Belladonna. Now, he wasn’t sure if he could even hold her damned hand without blowing off her arm.

Theoren said puberty would suck, but Remy hadn’t expected it to be this bad.

“How did you –?” she begins, shaking her head. “Is it a trick?” She laughs nervously, rubbing her palms down her sides in a fretful gesture that isn’t like Belladonna at all. The surety’s misplaced.

He can’t answer. He doesn’t know how to account for what he can do, and it feels like distrust to say otherwise; like something more sinister has passed between them.

“That’s some damned fine juju if it is, boy. I wouldn’t do that ‘round Tante Mattie, though – she’ll skin ya. Stop her heart right straight, I swear it.” She chuckles again, pressing her fingers to her heart. It’s a gesture that seems too old for her, somehow. Eyes gleaming, she juts her chin at him, though she doesn’t move closer from across the room. “Show me how y’ did it.” It’s a demand, not a request.

“It’s not a trick, Belle,” he says around the robin’s egg in his throat.

“Why, sure it is Remy,” she says, that old Belladonna pluck sounding increasingly like stubbornness. “Papa says he’s gonna have me train explosives when I turn thirteen. That looked just like a car bomb, but smaller. Same scorch pattern, see?” She points. Remy notes that she still hasn’t made an effort to come any closer.

It’s as if Belle’s struck at the kernel of truth in what he’s trying to explain to her, but her mind’s trying to shelter itself from the stark reality of the warped flooring, and the large, smoking welt that was, moments ago, a plastic packing crate – he’s a freak, just like everyone’s ever told him, ‘cept that he can make things blow up with just a touch.

Jean Luc’ll kick him out for sure, but he had to tell her. If he’s forced to leave, he wants this one last chance to explain himself to Belle. She’ll never forgive him otherwise.

“I dunno what t’ do,” he says quietly.

“Remy –” she says warningly, and stops. Bella shuts her mouth with an audible clack of her teeth. “Do it again, then. If you’re so sure of y’self, do it again.”

“I can’t control it,” he replies. “I needed t’ show you at least once, so you’d know that – if I couldn’t –” he hesitates, hating his inability to get the words out.

Bella’s mouth is turned down, and there’s now a stormy cast to her expression that hadn’t been there moments ago. Remy’s seen her like this before; it’s the same expression she wears when training. Bella trains a lot. Remy would know: he has a favorite spot that Julien hasn’t found out about yet where he can watch Bella’s sparring sessions with her père.

There’s nothing finer than a girl who can use her body as good as she uses her weapons.

“If I couldn’t –” he tries again, shaking himself from the thought.

Irritated, Bella stalks across the room, through the scorch mark on the floor, and stops just before him, her hands on her hips and her mouth pinched into a firm line.

“Remy LeBeau, if you don’t tell me this instant what in hell kinda stupidity is running through y’ head, I’m gonna pull th’ blade m’ daddy gave me f’ my birthday, and use it t’ torture it outta ya. You hear me?” Something softens in her expression, and just as quickly, Bella smiles shyly up at him. “I’m sorry, Remy. You know I’d never… Aw, hell. I didn’t mean it like that. I could never use my Guild training against you.” Blushing, she moves, inclining her head as if to give him a tender, featherbreath of a kiss. It’s sweet, and while Remy wouldn’t like anything more than to know if Belle’s lips taste like the strawberries she’d eaten earlier, he jerks back sharply.

“I’m sorry.” He swallows, surprised to find his mouth drought dry and unpleasant tasting.

“I see.”

At Bella’s darkening expression, he hastens to explain.

“If I couldn’t touch you it wasn’t because I didn’t lo–” he stalls on the word, correcting himself. “That I didn’t care for you any less.”

Belladonna softens. It changes her entire countenance, but Remy knows Belle’s moods can turn just like the weather.

“You’re afraid of hurtin’ me, Remy?” she asks, though there’s a playful undercurrent masked by her words. She’s teasing him. Cat on a hot tin roof, sort of teasing. It settles in his belly, warming him from the base of his spine upwards and tightening the front of his blue jeans unexpectedly.

Mon dieu, Remy thinks. That’s about all he can manage as Bella gazes up at him through half-lidded eyes. She toys with her collar, exposing the smooth column of her throat, a flash of collarbone, and a thin chain on which a crucifix hangs. He catches a glimpse of white cotton, sliding off her shoulder, and the telltale tingle in his fingers starts up afresh.

“Don’t wanna be doing that, Belle,” he warns her urgently. “That’s why it’s best if… you know. We don’t.” Not like they have. Not yet. God help him, surely the lord would have seen fit to punish him for his transgressions after he’d lost his virginity. Apparently not. Apparently, Remy’s sins are too great to pass torturing him before his coming of age. He groans inwardly at the turn of phrase. Bella seems to enjoy seeing him flustered.

“Don’t what, cher?” she says as she shakes her hair off her shoulders, flashes him a teasing grin, and plucks deliberately at the hem of her tee-shirt. She wants him to say it.

“Live dangerously,” he responds instead, not willing to give her the satisfaction of seeing what she does to him.

It’s short-lived, however, as Belladonna takes the opportunity to rid herself of her tee-shirt.

“So, you set a fire in anything y’ come in contact with?” she breathes, her eyes glinting mischievously.

Don’t look down, Remy tells himself. Don’t do it, man. The burn in his veins kicks up a notch, a prelude to his heart slamming against his ribcage. Remy can’t help himself. He looks down, though his fingertips burn with a combination of longing and combustible energy.

“You haven’t even touched me yet, Remy, and already I’m burning up,” she whispers.

Belladonna stands before him, arms hanging easily at her sides, lightly freckled in the shoulders and across her chest where Remy can see her tan lines below a simple, white training bra. Her curves are only starting to bloom, but that doesn’t deter the thought he has as Remy takes an involuntary step forward, reaching for the slipping strap falling down her arm. He stops just short. His marrow is molten, turning pain into pleasure the longer he holds back; the longer he resists her.

It scares him witless to find how easy it is to lose himself at Bella’s beck and call.

Dieu, but she’s beautiful. Belladonna’s all but panting as she notices his hand.

“Do it, Remy,” she says fiercely. “Let’s see if this puts us on even footing, cher.”

It gives him momentary pause, and Remy looks up to find that Bella’s mouth is only inches from his own. He doesn’t stop to think about how her demands sound less than innocent; nor how Belladonna only quickens to him now that he has the potential to do her harm. The lack of blood to his brain seems to have cut off his reason, and Bella, willing and ready, pushes herself into his hand.

Something snaps. Reason fails. Logic crumbles. He’s touching her… there. A rosebud between his thumb and forefinger, and its soft and warm, and the cotton separating his palm from her flesh is so thin.

Belladonna’s mouth, hot and wet, consumes his, and Remy doesn’t even have time to process the rushing charge of heat that pours outwards from his palms as he wraps his other arm around her. It catches them both by surprise, the fabric lighting up with a crackle of bright fuchsia flame under his hand.

“Remy!” Bella gasps, and perversely, Remy has to admit to himself that his name in that breathy tone sounds damned good.

The cloth of Bella’s bra singes away in a flash, leaving his bare palm against her bare breast and both of them utterly dumbfounded. The heat in his bones pulses, and quizzically, he raises an eyebrow. She’s unharmed, but he can’t say the same for her training bra. There’s nothing left of it now.

Letting out a rush of air, Bella giggles. “That tickles.”

Well, damn. “You feel that?” Remy asks, wonderingly. He brushes his thumb lightly against her smooth skin, and she shivers with the lingering charge. The skin stays unlit, however – the fire doesn’t want to catch. He can’t hurt her just by putting his hands on her body. Gingerly, he tries her hair, her ears, her lips – fingers running a shivering course on whatever Remy can put his hands on. He avoids the crucifix, though he mutters a quick, fervent prayer of thanks to whomsoever above decided to listen in on his mental recitation.

“I guess it doesn’t work on people,” she murmurs, speaking into his mouth as she stretches for his lower lip again.

“Guess not.”

Remy grins, his bare palms lingering over the seat of her shorts, contemplating just how quickly polyester can be turned to cinders at his touch.

He might be a freak, but he is only human.

---

Henri’s carrying an armload of mason jars, the contents of which slosh precariously, smelling strongly of dragon’s blood resin and vinegar. He suspects that the sediment in the bottom of the third jar is red brick dust and not blood, but the liquid is so opaque, its hard to tell if the thing floating in it is a beet root or a heart.

They don’t make a sound; not a tinkle or clink of glass can be heard as Henri pads down the hall at his side.

“…Gonna go with Tante t’ drop these off,” he’s saying. “There’s a few folk along th’ Bayou St. John who came into rough times recently, so we’re gonna make a few house calls. Be back f’ dinner, at the latest, so you can tell Lapin not t’ get his panties in a knot if there isn’t a crawfish boil on th’ stove waiting f’ his highness.”

“Uh huh,” he responds. Remy’s only half-paying attention, his focus continuously scouring his surroundings. All the while, there’s a prickle at the back of his skull – an awareness, of sorts, coupled by the desire to let loose and scratch the itch in his palms against the nearest Lalique vase or Etruscan death mask. With his hands hanging loosely at his sides, he’s more careful than ever not to brush the valuable antiquities lining the halls.

“You okay?” Henri asks, his silent steps halting a few paces before the ominous room where Remy’s to spend the next few hours; where his fate will be decided.

Stubborn courage marshaled already, Remy looks past his brother at the door to Jean Luc’s office.

“Merveilleux,” he replies dryly. “Never been better, what with this ache in m’ bones and th’ fire in m’ head; eye sockets might melt out by th’ time y’ get back, homme. Best hurry.” He figures if he’s careful, if he keeps his emotions in check long enough, he’ll be able to pack whatever he can fit into a duffle, hotwire the Benz, and drive clear to Canada before anyone even realizes he’s missing, and without leaving a smoldering hole in the side of the plantation house. Staying in New Orleans would be insane. The word is already on the street: the Diable Blanc has an explosive personality. Ha.

If Jean Luc didn’t find him and put a contract on his head to be rid of him, then surely Marius would pick him up first. Then what? It’d be easy enough to leave the Rippers in a great big crater. Problem solved. Game over. Martyrdom by suicide.

Merde. At least he’ll make a pretty corpse… whatever is left of him, that is.

“Henri,” he says, desperation wanting to stake its claim on him. He turns to his brother finally, an unconcerned young man of fourteen with dark hair and deep brown eyes that have the same sharp shine as Père’s. Ever the loyal sibling, Henri only looks at him questioningly, his concern not so well hidden that Remy can’t see the fine, premature stress line carving a wrinkle into his forehead.

Remy tries to say goodbye, but the words won’t come.

“You know,” Henri says carefully, “There are worse things that coulda happened to us, Rem.”

Unable to stop himself, Remy blurts out, “Us?”

Henri offers him no more than a closed-lipped smile and a dip of his head. “Gotta go, Rem. Jean Luc’s waitin’ for ya.”

Before he can protest, Henri is off at a brisk clip. Henri’s turning a corner. Henri’s gone.

The door to Jean Luc’s office is standing ajar, but Remy fears for a moment that putting the pads of his fingers to the wood would be disastrous. It’s still too soon – he doesn’t know what’s safe, and what will alight and explode beneath his touch.

It stops him cold and the sudden, stark uncertainty makes his chest constrict. He feels trapped for a moment, imprisoned by his own flesh.

“I know you’re out there, Remy.”

Jean Luc’s harmonious tones, laced in his elegant old world accent, carry out into the hall. Rather than helping him relax, Remy’s certain that this is it. He’s done for, despite Henri’s confidence and Belladonna’s enthusiasm. He’s been cursed, there’s no way to uncross himself, and Jean Luc can’t suffer the taint on the family. Funny, really. He’s never believed in Hoodoo.

“Won’t y’ come in?”

The door opens. Remy realizes he’s been staring at the brass handle, and the small, decorative skeleton key sitting in the keyhole – a lock has never given him such pain in his chest before.

The room is as it ever was: the pedestal desk flanked by the French doors on either side, while every other inch of wall is covered in floor-to-ceiling shelves, filled with books. They blur to a mottle of browns, burgundies and red leathers in the background.

Something is different today. It feels unfamiliar, somehow; like something’s been taken away or added or misplaced or…

“Sit. Stay f’ a spell.” Jean Luc gestures to the chair across from him.

Or maybe his imagination is just playing tricks on him. He hasn’t even noticed Jean Luc move to take his seat. Not good.

Hesitating, Remy stays rooted to his spot beneath the lintel. If he blows up the room, he thinks, like an earthquake, the best place to be ought to be in the doorframe. It’s also the one non-committal spot in the space: neither fully accepting of the invitation, nor out of the way. Prime place to bolt, if need be.

“Remy,” Jean Luc beckons patiently. “Th’ best a father can offer his son is forgiveness. So if it happens that y’ singe that chair’s armrests, I won’t hold it against you.”

A trickle of amusement bubbles like champagne in his tone, though Jean Luc reigns in his smile with admirable restraint.

“It’s only late 19th century, Victorian.”

“That’s comforting,” he replies wryly.

Jean Luc offers him an indulgent, elegant shrug, settling back into his own chair, the leather sighing audibly.

“If it was Baroque…” he trails off, amused, in his own way.

“Then there’d be cause t’ worry. Je sais.” Remy grins a little into his chest. A touch of sadness allows him to accept the invitation, and Remy sinks into the seat, his bare hands an ever-present burden that he dangles over his thighs, his forearms on the arms of the chair, forcing his shoulders into an uncomfortable shrug.

This is where Jean Luc will apologize in his demure manner, he thinks. Admit that its regrettable that things have come to this, and that he’s made a mistake. There is certainly no way that a man of his profession, and the family being what it is, can take into its fold a twelve year old monster who destroys everything he touches with just a thought.

Remy waits for it, and through the walls, he can hear the Grandfather clock counting away the last seconds of his life in the Guild.

He doesn’t apologize.

He will not apologize, if that’s what it comes to.

“Remy,” Jean Luc begins, his gaze a weighted veil of solemn scrutiny that settles on his head and doesn’t lift.

He can’t bear it.

“Merci, Monsier LeBeau,” he says, though his mouth his dry and the sound rasps in his throat. When Remy lifts his head to meet his father’s gaze evenly, he is not at all surprised to find the expression Jean Luc wears as diplomatic as they come. It’s a fine, porcelain mask of attentiveness without emotional involvement – a look that’s taken years to perfect; one that Remy envies outright for the thoughts it conceals. He can’t read him at all, and so he swallows the lump in his throat. “I’m grateful that y’ gave me this opportunity at all,” he forces out, though each syllable seems to crackle its way out of him, slivering his tongue. It hurts. “An’ I understand that y’ can’t have liabilities like me around… jeopardizing th’ safety of the Guild and its operations.”

Jean Luc seems to look through him with that same unconcerned neutrality, to the point where Remy feels like its time to leave, even though he doesn’t want to.

“…And I swear that I won’t say a thing about what y’ do here, or that there even is a here t’ speak of…”

“Sometimes I forget,” Jean Luc murmurs, lips barely moving, though they seem to quirk upwards in increments as he smiles. “For that I am sorry, m’ boy.”

Then, Jean Luc is laughing. It starts slow; a thick, rich rumble in his chest that gathers in fortitude until he is bellowing, his fist coming down hard on the desk. Oddly enough, there is power still in the way that Jean Luc holds himself – even as he’s howling at the ceiling, Jean Luc LeBeau commands attention.

“You are young,” he gasps, leaning forwards onto his elbows. “Oh, my boy, mon fils…”

That stops Remy cold. He’s still thought of as Jean Luc’s son?

“Ah, oui, mon brave,” Jean Luc chuckles. “Y’ won’t be rid of this old man so easy, I’m afraid. As th’ sayin’ goes, you’re stuck with us… powers or no.”

“Powers?” Remy repeats.

“Mmm.” Jean Luc waves it off. “There is a very long explanation that an acquaintance I have will be glad t’ give you, Remy. I’ll be sure t’ call the good Dr. Essex when such revelations are less startlin’ for a growin’ boy such as yourself – a week or two, at th’ most; when you’re ready t’ ask the right questions without leapin’ t’ conclusions and plummeting f’ the effort. One thing at a time, hein?” He grins to himself. “‘M’sieur LeBeau’,” he repeats. “Belize always said y’ were a smartass. God rest him.”

When Remy doesn’t respond immediately, Jean Luc sighs. “This is a gift, Remy. A true blessin’ for th’ family, and don’t you mistake it. The things you can do now... The things you will be able t’ do once y’ understand how t’ control it – Don’t look so surprised, boy. I trained y’ better than t’ show everything in your eyes like th’ way you’re doing.”

“Pardon, Père,” he replies automatically, checking himself. Looking away to find some composure, his gaze flits instinctively to his curled fingers.

Powers: so it wasn’t a curse. Could have fooled him, he thinks.

“There have been signs…” Jean Luc says, haltingly.

The Prophecy, Remy thinks, his fingers suddenly burning. Wincing, he waits to see if the pain will become worse. Calm down, he instructs himself, forced to breathe evenly until the bright fuchsia glow around his knuckles fades to pink, and then to nothing.

“Mark me, this is no augury,” Jean Luc says, more to himself than to Remy, but before he can ruminate further on it, Jean Luc’s piercing scrutiny brings him back to himself; pulling his spine straight from his slouch, as if nothing potentially life-threatening had happened just then.

Remy then realizes what’s different about the room:

Between them on the desk, a chess set perched atop spindly, marble legs occupies the better part of Jean Luc’s blotter.

Jean Luc pauses, all-too readily able to read him. He asks, his tone deceptively light, “Have y’ played chess, ever, Remy? With y’ brother? Y’ cousins?”

Remy nods, though he’s never really taken to the game – mostly because Emil can’t sit still long enough to play, Etienne would rather read his comics, and Henri rarely has the time. He’s thrown by the sudden change in subject, but recovering quicker than expected.

“It takes a great strategist and a strong tactician t’ play the game and succeed,” Jean Luc explains, gesturing for Remy to draw closer. “You m’ boy, like me, are both. I’d be a fool t’ let y’ carry on broodin’ without knowing at least part of what makes y’ so special. Viens.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jean Luc grins, his shrewd inspection unrelenting. “We’re all playing pieces, boy. This board? This is a battlefield. It doesn’t matter who’s who, doesn’t matter who falls into th’ role of good or bad, white or black. How the game is played is irrelevant – that’s the grey, boy – the actions taken by the players t’ get what they want. What matters is who wins… and to win? You gotta be ten steps ahead. Always. You have to be ready t’ let your strongest do their thing…however they do their thing.”

His fingers flex of their own volition, and considering this new approach to a familiar philosophy, Remy tips his head to the side.

“Who am I, then, Père?” Smiling wryly, he corrects himself. “Or should I say, what am I? A knight, or a pawn?”

Calm as anything, Jean Luc asks, “Who do you want t’ be, Remy? It’s certainly within your power t’ decide f’ yourself whether you want t’ fit perfectly within the lines of this board, or be th’ shadow between the lines – the abstract and the incentive that encourages th’ other players into action.”

Remy can find no answer to that, though when he looks to his hands, he’s startled to find himself gripping the wooden arms of his chair. Though his fingers are glowing, the arm rests have yet to catch the charge. Like Belladonna. Funny. Some things seem to be impervious to his touch. Maybe there’s some merit to these “powers” after all.

Curious, he reaches for a pawn and upon touching the tip of his finger to the marble, it flashes pink and shatters – sending shards of veined grey stone across the chess board. Remy winces apologetically.

Jean Luc raises an amused eyebrow. “Blow up as many pieces as y’ like, Remy. Just don’t kill off y’ Queen.”

“Père?” he asks.

Jean Luc explains: “The King can’t do a damned thing without her. It’s the Queen’s gambit that frequently wins th’ game.”

---
To Be Continued…
in
Chapter 28: Mistigris – Part II
---

Post Script:
Banquette: It’s not a “sidewalk” in New Orleans. It’s a “banquette”.
Cajun Queen: A Steamboat. It moors near the Steamboat Natchez, right near Riverwalk (which is a shopping area… and, obviously, docks to walk along the riverfront.)
Channel/Channel Kids: The Irish Channel… though it hasn’t been very Irish since the 60’s. It still retains the name, regardless.
Coffin/Hearse: Regarding the ‘local author in a coffin’ comment, this scene, by my calculations (or at least according to the timeline I drew up for this story) happens in 1996, right around the time when Anne Rice started showing up to her book signings in a coffin. It made the news quite a few times, apparently. Remy was ten at the time of being caught and adopted by Jean Luc.
Go Cups: Plastic cups they pour your beer into so you can keep “going.” (It’s legal to drink in public on the streets of New Orleans… and in Taxi cabs, which I found most helpful the last time I got a “Big Damned Daiquiri” that I couldn’t finish in one shot and I had to get back to my hotel.)
Grand Dérangement/Port Royal: “Great Disturbance” (ca. 1755-1809 C.E.) The Acadians were deported from Nova Scotia by the British and were forced to settle in various parts of North America, including Louisiana. (Acadian is later shortened to Cajun in this part of the world.)
The Folks: A term used (albeit rarely) in Southern Louisiana to refer to the police.
Iberville Projects: Formerly Storyville, “The District.” The buildings of these projects loom over St. Louis Cemetery no. 1 and no. 2, located on Basin and Clairborne streets, respectively. The projects are bordered by St. Louis, Clairborne and Iberville streets. The Iberville Projects are also referenced in Ch. 13 (Henri and Remy used to go Freerunning here during their training sessions… which we will see for ourselves in the next part of this chapter.)
Natchez’s Calliope: Bree neep neep wee! The calliope, which is a musical instrument, is a steam-powered organ. It’s been my experience that it sounds exactly like the way Lapin sings it. It’s also really bloody loud. (Actually it’s more like a doo deet deet. Ha. Look at that: when the English language fails you, resort to phonetic pronunciation to get your meaning across. Badum dum tsch.)
N.O.P.D.: New Orleans Police Department
Macarena: References the song popularized in the summer of 1996 by Los Del Rio (originally by Los Del Mar). Inasmuch as the timeline here is concerned, this would mean Remy’s ten years old when he meets Belladonna for the first time. In comic canon, he’s actually eight (or supposedly he’s eight, since 616 canon has always been a bit wobbly in regards to Remy’s origins and early history.) If you are too young to remember this godforsaken song, consider yourself lucky. (I would also like to apologize to anyone who is, in fact, old enough to remember it… and may have subsequently had it lodged into their heads after reading that scene. Ehhhhh, Macarena!)
Po’Boy: It’s a sandwich. A very, very big, yummy sandwich… not to be mistaken with a muffaletta (also spelled “muffuletta”)… which is also… a very, very big, yummy sandwich.
Ugly’s: A local variation on the name, “Uglesich’s”. The restaurant closed in 2005.
Upper 9th Ward: The “Dirty D”, the Desire Projects.
Zulu/Zulu Coconut: Zulu is a Mardi Gras Krewe, specially known for launching their coveted gold coconuts into the crowds.

- Claude Poitier, Genard Alouette and Zoe Ichihara: All legitimate canon Guild Members, all strictly limited to cameos (unless something drastic changes in the near future).
- Goya: Francesco de Goya. Painter.
- Jacques and Henriette LeBeau: Jacques (Pawpaw LeBeau) is grandfather to Henri, father to Jean Luc. Henriette isn’t canon. Mawmaw (that’s another New Orleanism for “grandma”) LeBeau is actually named Rochelle (I found that out rather belatedly.) Henriette is, for all purposes, an OC that can be considered one of Carmine LaCroix’s creations. (Heh. Some people ought to get that, I hope. To those who do, this is carry-over. If I ever have to work with the LeBeau women, it’s Carmine’s family tree that I’ll be working with. If you’re really curious about this, ask me. I’d happily elaborate via PM.) Other members of the extended Thieves Guild family who belong to Carmine are Therese Marceaux (nee LeBeau), Emeline LeBeau (nee Lapin), Lillian Lapin (nee Crowley), and Fernand Lapin. In her system, Henriette LeBeau was born a Beaubier, which connects the LeBeau clan to Jean-Paul and Jeanne-Marie Beaubier (who you might know as Northstar and Aurora, respectively).
- Robert (Robert Lord): canonically, an alias Remy uses.
- Tilling/Tracts of Passage/Tithing: What a pain in the ass the Guild rituals of passage are. Oh ehm gee. So, as it is, you get the stories of two of these rituals. I am not, if I can help it, ever going to deal directly with Candra, the Benefactress. (I think the whole mystical bullcrap reasoning behind the Elixir of Life storyline and Tithing is just too much, and frankly, I just don’t like Candra. She makes me want to screech, “OMG h0r!”. Unless you’re a vampire, immortality totally does not appeal to me.)

Turns of Phrase: Cajun
Awrite: Alright
Where y’at?: How are you?

Translations: French
C'est une blague, ou quoi?: Is this a joke, or what?
Charmant: Charming
Dieu: God
Ferme ta bouche: Shut your mouth
Je suis un fantôme: I am a ghost.
Merde! Shit!
Merveilleux: Brilliant
Mes amis: My friends
Oh, mon Dieu, que c’est fatiguant: Oh, my God, is this ever tiring.

Translations: Italian
Bellissima:Beautiful
Corporazione di Roma:Rome’s Guild
Vaffanculo fessacchione:Go fuck yourself, fucking idiot.
Tesoro: Treasure