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“So,” said Clarence the new apprentice, who placed his hands on his hips and looked up and down at the scrawny redhead standing on his pedestal. He wore a moue of distaste on his lips and shook his head. No wonder the Prelate had him installed to keep an eye on the monster’s habits.
In the beginning of his career, Agent Albert Clarence Hounswright had served as a royalist army scout, installed with the East Albion regiment responsible for putting down rebel uprisings. He had witnessed on the field firsthand what Nicolas de Lenfent was still capable of, and why they had called him the “Moment Musical”. He could turn the tide of a battle so much that he treated pure outright destruction like an amusing ditty. To think of all that dormant in one man was fearsome indeed, and for months afterwards, young Albert had had flashbacks to the absolute carnage left in the bloody creature’s wake.
That this long-term mission, rotated out from Agent Mathieu Faitmonde’s long 8-year run in the same position, had even been offered as one of several choices was a fait accompli. Of courseHounswright would choose this assignment! A royal sinecure, even one that exploited the monster’s self-consuming musical obsessions, could not hope to contain a creature capable of such horror. He was satisfied with this opportunity to surveil it, but this tame young man, this urbane cosmopolitan, this curt gentleman had upended his expectations.
“Twins,” he huffed under his breath, a tad disgusted with the Royal Concertmaster’s absent-mindedness. He maneuvered his fellow mortal without even addressing him, as if embarrassed to be touching him or even possessing a resemblance. He had not appreciated the tailor’s outright obeisances to the Royal Concertmaster, the enabling of undesirable behaviors such as his appalling insistence on being called by his Christian name.
“How does it feel to be a spare, shortie?” he asked, cruelly cuffing the back of the mortal’s head as he circled him, then ducking underneath to grab him in the crotch, steadying him in place while he measured the inseam. Then it occurred to him that his surveillance target’s many oversights might prove useful, and these gutter rats—according to the dossier update from the bills of sale—might be exploited for additional information, if they survived for long enough.
“He’s never had a slave before, you know. Do you think he’ll use your organs to patch the other one up or just toss your brother entirely once he’s been broken?” he added as he danced back from the angry twin, all the while scrawling measurements down on his notepad.
In the other room, Nicolas and the tailor were standing around Jeffrey, pondering different fabrics and weaves and colors. The tailor held up several swatches against Jeffrey’s left shoulder, and then draped two rectangles over Jeffrey’s right shoulder.
“No, I think, summer, winter, autumn, pre-autumn…is that still a thing?” Nicolas asked, only partly to himself, lost in thought at the array of colors against the mortal’s pale skin and the soft weaves of viola as the mortal tried to stay still.
“Certainly, but I insist that for London weather and everynight wear, you try a more somber late winter attire?
“I don’t know, Bartholomew, I killed your mother for the same suggestion!” Nicolas replied with obscene mirth, and the tailor laughed enthusiastically, wagging a chiding finger at the pale vampire. A buzzing sounded, barely detectable, but Nicolas pulled out his phone.
“My pardons, I’ll only be a moment,” he said, hand to his lips as if begging forgiveness. “Allô? Oui. Oui. Ah, mon petit loup, quelle dommage!” The door closed behind him as he stepped out into the street.
“He’ll be awhile, no doubt, if it’s the Crown Prince.”
The tailor smiled kindly at Jeffrey and asked, “which one would you prefer, young man?”, as he held up a swatch of charcoal and a swatch of deep jewel-tone violet.