Work Text:
The basement laboratory was an unexpected mess of clutter.
There were three workbenches – one each for the north and east walls, and one in the very centre of the room – and not an inch left uncovered by notes and samples and metal instruments. A chalkboard covered with mathematical equations blocked the aisle. Icy blue elements sparkled, encasing a metal rack upon which sat petri dishes filled with bacterial and fungal cultures, right next to a half-eaten flatbread sandwich and a cup of Orcha’s famous rice pudding, sprinkled with cardamom. A whole wall was filled with draconian-looking torture devices, and another half-wall with cages.
Riddel bent down in front of a stack of cages in the southwest corner of the room and tripped her fingers up the metal bars. In the one second from the top was a beast like a very large squirrel, fluffy and white.
Its eyes widened when it beheld Riddel, and it at once seemed to cower away and puff itself up.
Please don’t eat me, Snake Lady, Riddel could have sworn she heard it say. Please don’t eat me… And let me out of this cage. I want to see the world! I want to be free!
Riddel’s eyes flitted between the beast and the lock on the cage – perhaps in the same way as a predator trying to decide whether it was worth the energy to strike – when the door opened, and a voice interrupted.
“Do not free it, please.” The newcomer spoke in a sharp and superior tone. “That is an evolving monster. It vill change its form as it battles. But it is too early to test it out.”
The woman set her briefcase on the workbench, over the piles of notes. She shrugged out of a black travel coat, and replaced it with the bright white labcoat hanging off the side of the chalkboard. And when she turned to face the intruder, Riddel noticed her dark hair was pulled back into such a tight and severe ponytail, that her widow’s peak was a sharp and vivid line against her pale skin.
“General Viper’s daughter,” she acknowledged. “Vot brings you to my laboratory?”
Riddel took a moment to straighten her posture, smoothing the front of her gown and rolling her shoulders back before speaking.
“I wanted to talk,” she said, quite truthfully. “I don’t think we’ve ever been formally introduced.” She made sure not to blink even once. “I didn’t expect to find the lab empty.”
The woman shrugged.
“Marcy has been causing trouble,” she said, so as to explain her absence.
Riddel nodded considerately. It was a simple fact of life that little Miss Marcella was always causing trouble.
“Have a seat.”
It was a great to-do to clear seating space, but eventually Riddel and the woman sat, eye-to-eye, diagonally across the bench. The woman offered Riddel coffee, and Riddel declined.
“My father has been generous with you,” Riddel pointed out. “But what is it you do here?”
“Oh-ho!” The woman snorted. “Votever your father asks. And votever else catches my interest.”
“Luccia of Porre…” Riddel said. And was that woman really okay with making bio-weapons to throw at invading squadrons of her own countrymen?
Luccia snorted again.
“Vot is this? An interview?” she asked. “Your father asked me all the necessary questions, ven I first came here. Vhy do I have to do it again for you?”
Riddel let her lips purse into the most minute of frowns.
“I would have been in attendance to ask you at the time,” she began sharply.
“But you vere in mourning,” Luccia finished for her.
Luccia let out a sigh and, for some reason, the weary yet resigned petulance of the gesture made Riddel’s heart stir.
Riddel hadn’t been Dario’s wife – hadn’t had cause or excuse to wear the black veil over her eyes – but even this newcomer to the manor had known she was in mourning.
Riddel tilted her head higher, fixed Luccia with her most austere expression.
“I am the Lady of the Manor,” she asserted. “I might yet inherit my father’s mantle as the leader of the Acacia Dragoons. Is it so unusual that I’d like to know more about who we employ, and why?”
Riddel’s eyes held Luccia in their firm, unblinking grip for a moment. But when Riddel saw an involuntary twitch of the woman’s brow, against an otherwise impassive face, she felt suddenly ashamed. Inclining her head, she dropped her eyes to her hands, folded primly on her lap.
“The truth is I don’t know if I’ll take over Daddy’s position,” Riddel admitted. “Perhaps it will pass to Glenn. Or Karsh, if he finds someone suitable to marry.”
It was difficult imagining brash and carefree Karsh leading them all, at least not without someone more keen and level-headed to complement his strengths and cover his deficits.
“The truth is,” Riddel continued, “I haven’t really– Since Dario died–”
Since Dario died, she hadn’t really imagined much of a future for herself. It had all seemed so obvious, for years, that Dario would be the one leading the Dragoons, the Einlanzer extending from hand to point the way. It had seemed so obvious what Riddel’s own role in that was to be. And in the wake of Dario’s death…
It was only now that Riddel was starting to wonder what the rest of her life might look like, without him.
“–I suppose I haven’t really thought anything through,” Riddel admitted bitterly.
She was feeling a bit ashamed that she had said so much, when it was Luccia she’d come here to question. And she glanced at the hem of Luccia’s the white labcoat, stretched tightly over Luccia’s knees, unwilling to look higher.
As focussed as Riddel was at not meeting Luccia’s eyes, she was a little startled when the woman leaned back in her seat, legs sliding smoothly over one another, as they crossed under the labcoat.
“I vorked for the Porre military, until my brother died – an explosion in one of their facilities. I took some time off to grieve and travel, and never vent back.”
When Riddel raised her head, Luccia was looking away. Her profile was sharp, glasses resting on her nose. Her dark curls bounced off her shoulders.
Luccia continued. “I became close to other people – Marcy’s mother. I reconnected vith an old mentor and colleague on the mainland. But there vas a fire – arson – her laboratory and orphanage burned. Marcy’s mother vas killed in a naval collision.”
Luccia shrugged, like it didn’t even hurt her to talk about. Would talking about Dario someday hurt Riddel so little?
“I needed some vay to raise Marcy, and your father offered me shelter for my vork.” Luccia turned, dark eyes narrowing sharply on Riddel. “I have no one back in Porre to vorry about. So vot difference does it make – this militia or that military? I vill make this veapon or that. The other side vill copy it. It goes on.”
She flexed her wrist and rotated her hand in a circle, like time folding in on itself.
Riddel raised a palm to her mouth and coughed. A proper heh-hem, to show her displeasure.
“I don’t see how that’s meant to convince me you can be trusted, if it matters so little to you whether your works go to the Dragoons or to Porre.”
Luccia smiled wide and leaned in, propping her elbows against her knees.
“You and I– Fair or no– Ve act according to our own personal motives, hmm?”
Riddel felt her lips twist into a frown. She pulled back, trying to shake the accusation away.
But what else had she been doing when she’d ignored her father’s warnings, and gone alone to Fossil Valley to pick bellflowers? And when she’d told Dario to stop delaying and propose? When she’d refused to hear Karsh’s confession about whatever happened on the Isle of the Damned – denied him the catharsis of her absolution and punishment both? Or today, when she had–?
Riddel was distracted suddenly.
Had she noticed the lapels of Luccia’s labcoat before? The sharp triangle of skin they revealed? Her eyes traced a prominent collarbone and dipped down into the small indented crevice that would have led between Luccia’s breasts.
Luccia laughed again and sat herself back up straight in her seat. Riddel raised a hand to bat the heat out of her own cheeks.
“Science should be used for the betterment of mankind, no?” Luccia was saying now. “But vot difference can that make, if the only ones who vill pay for my services are armies?”
“Maybe you should be more discerning about who you sell your services to,” Riddel suggested, more waspishly than she’d intended.
“But then vho vould pay for Marcy?” Luccia said carelessly, as she hopped off her stool. “Maybe if you inherit the manor, you can do avay vith these Dragoons. Maybe you vill open an orphanage – an orphanage with employment opportunities for a scientist, yes~?”
“You’re mocking me,” Riddel accused. Either that or Luccia was flirting with her.
“Maybe,” Luccia allowed, before turning to the board of equations. She picked up a stick of chalk in an already powder-white glove. “But now I have entertained you enough for today. I am very busy vith these calculations. Please leave.”
Riddel pursed her lips, but remained silent. She supposed she had learned about as much as she ought to for one day. She got to her own feet and smoothed the skirt of her dress once more.
But Riddel paused and, glancing to make sure Luccia was still looking away, took a delicate step back towards the cage where she’d been examining the white squirrel.
Luccia had said not to free it, but what did that matter. Fair or no, they acted according to their own motives. And maybe Riddel, of her own thoughts and accord and ideals, believed it wrong to keep a sentient creature captive.
She turned her red eyes on the beast in the cage.
Oh, please, Snake Lady! it seemed to say. Unlatch the lock quietly! I can make my escape later!
It looked so cute and desperate. And Riddel reached out, almost touching the metal of the lock, before drawing her hand back.
Ignoring the beast’s pealing whine, she walked away. Fair or no– she knew it was exactly the excuse she needed for herself, if she was going to come back to Luccia’s lab later.