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It isn't a fair fight.
Father would have been disappointed in them if they had tried to make it one. Lyney's duty has never been to exceed her in strength, but in conviction and understanding; Lynette's duty has never been to be his shield in the light, but his knife in the dark. Facades and trickery have always been their watchwords, and Father would want them to use those weapons against her.
They have no choice but to use those weapons against her, if they are to follow the Director's orders. If Lyney is to succeed her, and keep the House and its children as safe as can be when they are soldiers in a cold and distant archon's war. If they are to prove to that archon and her all-commanding right hand that Lyney can be trusted to put that war before their family's safety, when that is the choice he has to make.
So: poison in the tea.
Lynette has inherited several boxes of tea that the Marionette left in the Hotel Bouffes d'ete on her last visit. She chooses one, a heavy fermented flavor that she knows was only brewed upon occasion for the Captain, and for Father at his urging; its lingering earthiness will disguise any aftertaste.
"Interesting choice," Father says upon her first sip.
She sits easily in her chair, leaning back, one leg folded over the other, free hand on her knee. All unsuspecting, except for her piercing gaze upon Lynette. Lynette's eyes burn when she meets it; she holds it for several long, assessing beats, then drops her own gaze to the tea in front of her. As she always does in the face of Father's stare. Only Lyney can long withstand its eye-watering heat.
"No one else will drink it," Lynette tells her, "and I didn't want it to go to waste."
The rim of her own cup touches her lips. She drinks her tea because she has to, though her stomach may roil with fear at the risk she's running. It isn't the poison that poses a threat; Heloir's work is well-tested, and the antidote she took ahead of time will keep her safe. It's the possibility that the trick may be discovered, and she might face a fight she cannot win.
Lyney will help, but Father was right when she told him that his conviction outpaced his strength. Try though he has, that hasn't yet changed. Father believed that he would surpass her someday, and Lyney had hoped that would be what heralded his succession.
Lynette hoped for that too. For him, for Father, and for herself, who knows herself a part of his strength, the weapon that Father has taught her to be. But events outpaced their hopes, and this must be how the succession takes place. Must be. If they fail....
"I imagine the Captain would be pleased to know it wasn't wasted." Father raises her cup just a little, not enough for a proper toast, before drinking.
The poison is potent, but slow-acting enough not to give early warning. Not to most who drink it. A slight relaxation, at first, an easing of any aches and tensions they might feel--the sort of ease that might come with a pleasant cup of tea with a pleasant companion. Or a silent one, which is all Father ever asks of her once any business has been discussed. The tip of Lynette's tail tries to flick as she watches Father over the rim of her teacup, and she holds it still with tremendous effort.
Which itself must show, for Father is watching her closely. Too closely. Lynette sets her teacup down and meets her burning gaze again, even as it makes her eyes water. She folds her hands on the table and considers how much tea Father has drunk.
"What is it?" Father asks.
Lynette dares to look. Father has drunk most of the cup. For anyone else, that would certainly be enough. For Father, it might barely tip the scales.
"Nothing," Lynette tells her. "I'm thinking about how the audience will take our latest trick. That's all."
"Don't doubt yourself," Father tells her. "Caution and thoughtfulness are commendable, in moderation. Doubt will hold you back when you most need to strike."
"That's true," Lynette says, and stands, reaching for her sword.
At once Father is on her feet too, scythe appearing in her hand. Even as it appears, though, she wobbles, the weakness of the poison beginning to show, her step slowed and her muscles unresponsive. Lynette grabs her chair and shoves it between them, catching the first swing of the scythe--slower than normal, but still expertly aimed, and slicing halfway through the sturdy wood before it catches.
Only for a moment, but the moment is enough for Lynette to lunge forward with a slash of her own. It catches the tail of Father's jacket as Father turns, then is stopped as it strikes the haft of the scythe, twisting to throw her back. Lynette leaps away as the scythe continues its momentum, its wicked blade coming around. It nicks her, a shallow burning line along her upper arm, half the bow on her chest cut loose, ribbons floating to the ground.
Father stumbles, catching herself with the butt of her scythe on the ground and leaning on it for a moment like a staff. Her grip is weakening, too, hand sliding down it. But her eyes narrow, blazing-hot and almost blinding as for a second they meet Lynette's own, and she tightens her grip and spins around as Lynette tries to dart around her.
Again, Lynette's sword meets its haft rather than Father's own body. Father flings her back, the scythe spinning in her hand. Lynette hits the wall hard enough to nearly knock the breath out of her. She drags it back into her lungs by force with a pulse of Anemo and ducks the scythe's blade, just barely, before it can take her head off. She couldn't have dodged it at all if Father wasn't fighting her own weakening muscles.
Still, Lynette is trapped, pinned into a corner. She stays low and tries to dart out under Father's left arm, but Father spins about, slamming her into the wall with the back of the scytheblade, scorching Lynette's vest and burning into her skin.
"Well done," Father says, her breathing labored--the diaphragm weakens too, with this poison, though even a normal person would need more than one cup of tea to suffocate from it. "But you should have served me a second cup if you were going to do this alone."
"She isn't," Lyney calls from the doorway, perfectly on cue.
Father's head snaps around, but she ducks and spins the scythe about too late. Lyney's arrow takes her in the meat of the shoulder, and Lynette swings, hard, slicing through skin and muscle until she hits bone. Hamstrung, blood blossoming on her white jacket, Father falls.
That isn't the end of matters, of course. Lynette slices the tendons in her wrists and ankles, then her knees and elbows, while she's still seized with what weakness the poison has been able to instill. Lyney wrenches the Vision from between her shoulderblades and the Delusion from her throat, then binds her hands and ankles tight. The scythe fizzles away into a mere polearm to be set carefully at the far end of the room.
"So this is how you succeed me," Father says, between harsh wheezing breaths. "Are you sure you're truly ready to be 'king'?"
Lynette watches Lyney out of the corner of her eye, though most of her attention remains on Father. It's a good thing that Lyney doesn't have a tail like she does, because it would be betraying him. "I'll manage, with the support of the other Harbingers. At least I'll keep the House loyal to the Tsaritsa."
"Hmph. They'll have to move Tartaglia and Regrator up a few ranks. You might be the Knave, but you're... hah... far from ready to be the Fourth Harbinger."
She shouldn't be breathing so hard if she's able to sit up under her own power, which means that it isn't actually taking so much effort. Father does know how to play a part, if not with their expertise.
Red is continuing to spread slowly over her breast, a crimson blot widening around the arrow wound. More slowly than it should, just as at her thigh and wrists and ankles. Lynette knows that after the events in Nod-Krai, Father is no longer entirely human, if she ever truly was. As if to prove it, her wrists and elbows bubble with a thicker, darker red, a garnet sheen upon black flesh.
"I will be loyal to the Tsaritsa. For her, loyalty will be enough."
He draws himself up straighter as he says it, hand going just a moment to the brim of his hat. Lynette watches the elegant sweep of his arm, what no one else would ever imagine to be a nervous tic.
"And now," Lyney says, "a demonstration of what awaits any member of the House who turns traitor."
He gestures to the door, a flourishing wave as if he was introducing a new prop. The children come crowding in. Some wide-eyed, some impassive, some thoughtful--every one based here. Every witness.
The Operatives who enter with them are herded more than herding, carried along by the mass. One tries to take a stance in the doorway, as if to block escape, but Chapleau shoulders into the doorframe with her; the other tries to step before them as if she thinks they'll try to save Father, but Heloir hisses so indignantly at her about blocking the view that she steps startled aside.
Neither are children of the Hearth. The Rooster's insignia is affixed to the jacket of one, Regrator's to the other. Father's eyes move from to those, to Lynette--lingering so long that Lynette has to jerk her gaze away from her burning eyes--to Lyney.
"Some of you may know that Father has decided to undermine Project Stuzha," Lyney tells them. Cards appear in his hand; he spreads them out and plucks one from among them to let it vanish in a flare of flame. "That was a betrayal of the Tsaritsa. She has decided to spare the House her wrath, as long as Lynette and I can show you all how betrayal will be punished."
As if approving some suggested entertainment, Father nods. The children whisper among each other like an excited audience just before the curtain rises. Then Lyney gestures to Lynette, and the show begins.
***
The tea table, its contents cleared, serves as a stage. There's no need for them to carry Father down to the dim dark oubliette of the basement. Lyney had insisted they avoid that venue, and Lynette had agreed.
Blood continues to drip, crimson red and garnet-dark, as they bind Father to the table. Her breathing has steadied, or she's decided it's not a worthwhile pretense to carry on with, and though the poison should still be working its way through her, she has the strength to pull and test the ropes. Test them, but not strain them, not with her tendons cut and the poison still having some lessened effect upon her. She hisses when pulling with her shoulders only makes the gashes at her elbows gape wide.
Lynette has put her sword away. The knife she carries in her sleeve was a gift from Father; she sees Father's eyes narrow as it slides forth, and then the slightest jerk of her chin, another small approving nod. Lynette treasures the moment of satisfaction at that approval. Then, in a few quick strokes, she cuts Father's jacket and waistcoat away and bares her to that blade.
This is her duty to carry out. She has the necessary calm that Lyney doesn't. And she can take pride in that nod, in these circumstances, as Lyney never could.
"Are you gonna cut her open?" Foltz says, with the same gleeful excitement with which he'd greeted the prospect of Father executing Lyney all those months ago. "I want to see what her arms look like underneath."
"Lynette," Lyney says, with his showman's smile. "We should give the audience what they want, shouldn't we?"
"It would be interesting," Father adds.
Without bothering to answer any of them, Lynette sets her blade against the blackened skin of Father's right forearm. She's careful not to press too far. Just enough for that garnet blood to show in a red spot beneath the point. In one swift sweep, she slices down from the gash at the wrist to the gash in the inner elbow, then tilts the knife to slide the flat of the blade just under the skin on one side and peel it, slowly and gradually, away from the flesh beneath.
She doesn't peel it all the way off the arm, only enough to bare the muscle. If muscle is what it is. It bubbles as the garnet blood does, rising in ropy pulses, a purplish-red cast to the black stretch of meat. Heat rises from it too, the flames that Father carries pulsing hot.
"Neat," Foltz says, leaning forward eagerly.
The Operative nearer the front, Lynette notices, takes a step away from Foltz. Lyney is more tense than anyone but Lynette would be able to tell, but he doesn't move.
Father's breathing is beginning to come harsh again. This time Lynette knows that it's a facade. She hisses between her teeth too late, after the skin peels back. As Lynette moves to the other arm, she cranes her neck to try and catch a glimpse of her own black flesh. Lynette obligingly pulls the skin back further on this side so that she can see. The muscle is the same here, bubbling and viscous. The heat redoubles; Lynette's ears flatten.
"Be careful not to burn yourself," Father says softly.
Lynette meets her eyes, blinks hard to keep her own eyes from watering, and nods to her before taking a step back. "Freminet, I need ice," she says, hand outheld, never looking away from Father.
Cautiously circling the Operative, Freminet shuffles forward. Ice forms in his cupped hands, four icicles just long enough to grip. Lynette takes them and returns to the table.
Father's eyes follow her as she moves. It's easier to look at the bubbling muscle, eerie and unsettling as its movements are, a pulsing much like an incursion of the Abyss. It spasms violently as Lynette drives the first icicle in. Father spasms too, back arching on the slab, and chokes harshly on a still-audible cry.
That was real. Father looks again at her arm, at the ice driven into it, and her clenched teeth could be a grimace of pain or a feral grin. Lynette's gut tightens, though she knows Father helpless, and she's long since learned not to fear Father's curiosity more than a reasonable amount.
Garnet blood rises around each icicle like a wave as they're driven in, swamping it, steam hissing as it's sublimated away by the the sheer heat Father gives forth. Lynette's ears flick backward at the hisses and whispers of the other children, then forward again as she studies the result. The wounds left behind look cauterized, filled with black blisters. When she pierces one with the tip of the knife, it gives forth thick purple-red pus.
"Can I have some of that?" Heloir asks. "It looks like it might make a great poison!"
"Yes. I'll drain what's left out when we're finished."
Father looks amused, but makes no more sound. Lynette steps away at last from the heat, grateful to escape it, and comes around to Father's side. Her breathing is beginning to even out, though her chest still rises high, if slow.
"What are you gonna do next?" Foltz asks eagerly. "Are you gonna try Hydro next? Maybe it'd Vaporize!"
"It might, but that would wash away everything Heloir wanted," Lyney says. "And that would be a shame. Besides, do you really want to see Lynette repeat herself, or do you want to see something else?"
"Something else!" several small voices chorus.
There are a dozen things Lynette could do next. Most of them Father had taught her herself, though one or two had been learned in a nobleman's basement, in the marks upon other girls far less lucky than Lynette. She doesn't shudder any more at those memories. Father had taught her that, too. Those sights were lessons to be learned--to be put to use.
Most of them would be ineffective against Father, who burns herself willingly with every use of her flames and offers up her wounds and her blood to draw in the Balemoon's power. Most others would need more equipment than Lynette has at hand.
She does, however, have Hydro. The teapot had still been nearly full.
By now, the tea will have cooled. That's all to the better. It's a waste of good tea, but no one else would ever have been willing to drink it. Father may as well have the last pot brewed. As Lyney said, repetition would make for a boring show, but there's more than one way to douse a fire.
She isn't so foolish as to put her hand too near Father's mouth. Cutting away a tail of her jacket, Lynette presses it over Father's nose and waits until she can hold her breath no longer and has to open her mouth for air. Then another wad of fabric, shoved in with the point of her knife--it scrapes a tooth in the process and catches in the gum, coming away with a bloody tip--and before Father can work it out again, she tilts the teapot and pours.
Without her Vision on her, Father cannot breathe even the waters of Fontaine from which this was naturally brewed. Her throat works, swallowing what she can, but it was a large pot. Lynette hadn't known how many cups she might need for Father to show any effect of the poison. It flows generously, and with the fabric clogging her throat, only so much can be choked down.
Even Father convulses as the bitter tea floods her lungs, as she struggles against the unfamiliar sensation of drowning. She gags, the sound burbling, unable to free the cloth from her throat. Lynette lets her tail whisk behind her only slowly, like a cat considering prey it might pounce upon, and sets aside the teapot to thrust the knife into Father's mouth again. The tip presses the sodden fabric down and in to seal her throat.
Father's eyes widen as she strains for air. She convulses again, human instinct that all her inhuman stoicism cannot hold back. Lynette can feel her own throat closing, her chest tightening until she, too, wants to gulp for air, the memories of a long-ago near-drowning threatening to surge up in unwanted sympathy. Calling upon the Vision that had been that ordeal's reward, Lynette drags Anemo into her own lungs and steadies herself. Father wouldn't want her to betray such weakness.
Lynette holds the cloth in Father's throat until her lips begin to grey. She glances over her shoulder at Lyney; he tips his hat to her on cue.
"Don't end the show early. We still have to present the final act."
Fishing about with the tip of the knife, Lynette jerks the fabric up and out of Father's mouth. It's stained irretrievably brown by the tea; she sets it aside with the scrap she'd had over Father's nose, and the teapot carefully with the rest of the set on the side table. By the time she returns, Father has caught her breath enough for her lips to come merely pale again, though there's the rattle still of water in her lungs.
"No," she agrees hoarsely, "we wouldn't want to ruin that. What do you have in mind?"
Her gaze is on Lynette again, penetrating, assessing, the teacher studying her student. Intrigued, not judgemental, though Lynette knows that it could flip to that in an instant if she falters. She will not, with the curtain so close to falling, prove a lesson unlearned. Her tail waves slow and focused behind her.
"Are there any other requests?" Lyney asks the audience, flashing them all his showman's smile.
"Aren't you going to interrogate her?" the Operative at the back demands.
Several children giggle, not kindly. "You don't use torture for that," a small girl chides her. "It doesn't get you reliable information. You get that from subterfuge. You torture people to set an example."
Father smiles just a little. The tip of Lynette's tail twitches, but she has no reason to be jealous. They are all Father's students, in one way or another.
Lyney tips his hat in her direction. "You're exactly right. What example do you want to see before we move on to our finale?"
"Can you pull her toenails out? Katarina told me it really really hurts."
"And I wanna know if her feet are black too," Foltz adds, with Heloir's enthusiastic agreement--though likely she's just hoping for more blisters.
Lynette had already pulled Father's boots off when securing her, but to cut the tendons she had sliced straight through the stockings beneath. Now she folds back the flared hems of Father's pants. Their red ruffles obscure what color these wounds bleed, though they're wet through when Lynette touches them. Beneath Father's stockings, when she peels them away, her skin is as pale as that of her face, and streaked with steadily-seeping crimson instead of dripping garnet. Heloir sighs in disappointment.
At first, grasping Father's foot, she struggles with the angle. Father's leg twitches, but she can't flex her foot completely with her tendons cut any more than she could her hands. After a second's thought Lynette twists it sideways. It takes less force than she'd expected to make the joint crack with the strain. Father hisses between her teeth.
Sliding the tip of her knife under the nail of the big toe, Lynette presses in until it reaches the cuticle. The edges rise under the pressure, beginning to tear up on either side. Father hisses louder, the hoarseness of the near-drowning under it, and then grunts aloud as Lynette tips the knife to lever the whole nail upwards. She traps it between the blade of the knife and the thumb to pull it free entirely from the bed. More blood beads up along the tear and where her knifetip had pressed.
"It didn't sound like it hurt," the girl who'd asked says in disappointment. "Katarina made it sound like there'd be screaming."
"Some subjects respond differently to the same techniques," Lynette says before Father can, and resists the urge to look up for a nod or one of those small smiles. It's far too basic a fact for Father to be proud of her for knowing it. "Let me try another."
Twisting Father's foot further, which gets a choked groan as things continue to crack loud in her ankle, Lynette rests the tip of the knife against the callused sole. Her heart is beating fast in her chest, almost fluttering. Father hadn't taught her how sensitive the sole of the foot could be; that was one of those lessons she'd learned by example in that dark terrible basement, watching her noble owner destroy a would-be escapee's ability to walk.
Lynette digs her knife into the callused skin, seeking the softer flesh beneath. Father makes another sharp hissing noise. Lynette can't keep herself from looking up now; Father's head tilts too, enough to see the curiosity in her burning-hot gaze.
Determined to answer it, Lynette takes a deep breath and focuses her memory. Not on the dread, the terror, the darkness that would be broken by a burning scythe. Only on a narrow glimpse of flesh, the screams that had come with it shoved to the back of her mind. The nobleman had used a heated rod, but she will make her knife suffice.
She turns the knife sideways to slice the calluses off entirely, leaving raw tender skin and bloodied strips of flesh behind. Then she turns it again in her hand to strike hard with the flat. This time the groan Father grits halfway back is long enough to hear the gurgle of half-filled lungs in it. No terrified scream of a terrified girl, one who Lynette could so easily have been; only the sound Father has permitted herself to make, her response to pain kept under her own command.
Lynette strikes the raw flesh again with the flat of the knife, then turns it, just a little, so that the edge digs a bare few millimeters in on each blow as she runs up the length of the foot. She doesn't have either the tools or the leverage for the force she remembers seeing delivered, but it's hardly going to matter when they're done.
Once she reaches the heel, she turns her blade again, slicing a long line down across those already left. Then another and another, cross-hatching raw flesh and bared muscle alike. Father's foot twitches and spasms still unable to flex entirely away, the more so now that she's twisted it so, but still trying to curl out of her hand. Lynette's tail flips fast behind her, some atavistic part of her brain reading it as the panicky struggling of a small beast or bird. Her mouth waters.
Father's groans have grown harsher, though they still remain trapped behind her teeth. Lynette twitches an ear back to gauge the audience. Though she's tried to stand so that they have a good view, some of the children are starting to fidget and whisper, sure signs that they're growing bored.
At last, she draws the last line. She raises the knife, considering, running her thumb along the bloody bottom of Father's feet to feel out the exact shape of the bones. Then she drives her blade into it and straight through. The tip comes out through the top, the foot spasms and then goes still, and Father's noise is harsh and strangled but not trapped behind her teeth.
Deep within, animal instinct settles, satiated by the death-strike upon its trapped prey.
Lynette withdraws the blade and steps back, turning to look at Father and then Lyney. Father's gaze catches hers again, holding her a moment there. Her eyes are wide, and she's breathing hard, but she gives Lynette a respectful little nod. The satisfied feeling in Lynette's chest as her heartbeat starts to slow again feels almost like the urge to purr.
Breaking free of Father's hot gaze, she looks next to Lyney. He has an even better sense of their audience than she does, and his nod to her comes with a little twitch of his fingers before he turns back to them. "Now," he says, sweeping his hat from his head to flip it in the air, then adjusting it slightly as it lands back atop his head, "for the final act."
"I have been wondering," Father breathes, just low enough for Lynette to hear, as she circles around the tea table to stand again at the back of the display.
Setting the tip of her blade at the top of Father's sternum, Lynette draws it down. This time she digs deep, to bone and then past it, piercing through the muscle of the abdominal wall, all the way down to the pelvis. She's proud to see that she's dug just deep enough to avoid piercing through any organs. She's proud too of Father's choked and jagged cry, her back arching, her eyes wide again before they narrow.
A few more cuts crosswise, and she spreads the flesh outwards to fully bare the organs beneath. She can see the pulsing of Father's heart, the twitching of her intestines, and between the two, just beneath the lower tip of the sternum, something shining crimson. A curved quarter-moon shape, shimmering and only half-substantial. Substantial enough in power, though, for streaks of crimson to show on the fat and muscle and organs all around it.
"Ooooooh," Foltz and Heloir exclaim in perfect unison. Her own tail starts to twitch again.
This, too, radiates heat, if not as fiercely as do Father's blackened arms. "Ice," Lynette says again. This time, Lyney is the one to take it from Freminet and pass it to her. It's wetter and slicker where he'd touched it, though the heat he leaks in his anxiety is nothing to that which rises from Father merely by her own nature.
It's still sufficient: long enough spears to drive through the flaps of flesh and pin them back to Father's flanks. The tips are blunted enough by the heat of her to slide past organs rather than pierce them, which is for the best. Blood is pooling on the table to either side of her and leaking into the exposed cavity, but it still moves with inhuman sluggishness, and it won't kill her as quickly as a pierced-through liver would. Any good show relies on its pacing.
Lyney stays standing across from her, looking down at Father's opened torso, still with his showman's smile despite the tension she can feel running through him. Lynette simply continues not to have an expression. Neither of them will ruin this performance so close to its end. Father would be disappointed in them for that.
"So that's what you want," Father says, hoarse and pleased and satisfied. Her chuckle is a burbling sound. "You won't be able to keep it for long. It will burn you from the inside out... presuming that the Damselette doesn't come for it first."
"I won't try to to fight the Damselette, and the Tsaritsa doesn't expect me to," Lyney says easily. "She's welcome to come and collect it. I'll just hold on to it for her until she arrives."
He reaches down and wraps his hand around its curved shape. Its heat makes him wince; his fingers, at first, start to sink through it. Father makes a strangled sound.
Then it goes solid in his hand. Lynette can see the moment it does so, turning from a thing mostly of heat and red light to something like opaque crystal, still shining. Lyney wrenches it free and holds it up. Crimson light shines over all of them, illuminating Father's pale skin and the lines of his face in bloody red.
Father howls, a sound too guttural and too harsh to be a scream, her whole body rigid with the pain. The sound goes on and on until it cuts off in a gasp, and then comes again, softer, shorter. On the third she chokes it back, but her breathing afterwards comes wracked in a way that could almost sound like sobbing. Her eyes are fixed on Lyney.
Lyney meets those hot eyes without hesitation and presses the Iridescent Moon's marrow to his chest. It goes insubstantial again, sinking into him. Father, breath still thick with agony, blood-slick ribs rising and falling as her heart throbs fast and forceful beneath their cage, holds his gaze.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lynette can see his face whiten. His own chest heaves, his breath coming faster. He doesn't turn back to their audience as he'd intended when they blocked this out, instead concealing the strain of taking the moon marrow in. For a moment Lynette is cold all through with fear, her tail twitching faster. Then he takes a deep breath and lets it out, and his breath slows.
Father closes her eyes. Even as she chokes on air, a faint smile flashes across her lips, barely there, visible just long enough for them to catch. The fear runs out of Lynette like melted water; satisfaction warms her in its place.
Lynette now looks over at him more directly. "We're finished, aren't we?"
"That was the last trick." Lyney steps back, hand dropping from his chest to spread wide in a flourish as he gives her a half-bow. "I'll let you do the honors."
As Lynette picks up her knife, Father's eyes flick open again, slitted just far enough to glimpse her red-crossed pupils, just far enough to feel their heat. "Well done," she whispers, low and hoarse, meeting Lynette's eyes one last time.
Pride washes through Lynette. She doesn't smile, but she holds Father's gaze, much as it might burn, as she sinks the tip of her knife between her heaving ribs and into her hammering heart. The curtain falls without applause.
***
"Feel free to take a few photos, if the Rooster and Regrator want proof," Lyney says to the Operatives once the children have been sent from the room, Heloir proudly clutching several jars of purplish mucus and garnet blood. "But the Director wants her body."
He hadn't told them why. Or, if he'd told Lyney, Lyney hadn't told Lynette. Either is possible; Lyney does try to protect her, still, even though she's every bit as accustomed to the world's shadows as he. Which he knows, to some degree. He hadn't fought her long when she had told him that she would take on the duty of Father's death.
She's glad of that. It's what Father trained her for, after all.
The Operatives leave disgruntled but unable to argue, and Lyney summons Freminet back in. They don't know if Father's body will survive longer for her inhuman endurance, or if the fierceness of her flame will rot it away more swiftly. Best to pack it in ice. Chapleau comes to help too, and a few others of the older children who will pack it up and carry it away to the ship that awaits it in Romaritime Harbor.
Lynette doesn't help. She watches quietly, brewing another cup of tea. One of her own favorites this time. Not one of Father's, but she had drunk it time and time again nonetheless, encouraging Lynette to make it for herself. Father has always allowed her children to pursue their own pleasures, as long as they did not compromise the House.
It was vitally important to Father that no one compromise the House.
Project Stuzha will continue onward with the House at its helm, and the Rooster and Regrator will continue to try and cut them down to size. This was only another step in that pursuit. Lyney, visibly weaker than Father, will be more to their preferred measure. He lacks Father's fire. Even the moon marrow will be lost to him soon, for Lynette has no doubt that the Damselette will come for it before it burns him alive. Father never made idle promises.
Lynette's stomach may roil with fear at the thought of that future, but she sips her tea, tail held intently still, letting the pleasant flavor wash away the sour tang of bile in her throat.
Strength isn't what will be needed over the next few months, if Lyney and Lynette are to keep the House intact and their family safe. Facades and trickery have always been their watchwords. Father wanted them to use those weapons, in which they are far more well-versed than she. Lyney's conviction is what Father most valued, and Lynette will be the knife in the dark that helps drive that conviction home.
It won't be a fair fight. Father wouldn't have wanted it to be.