Chapter Text
I. Mid-Election season – Campaign Offices, The Right Honourable Nicolas de Lenfent
Soho District,
London Governate (Formerly City of London)
Bishopric of England, The British Annexation
Nicolas: “Oh merde, I forgot to take out the rubbish. What are you doing here?”
Antonio: “Chinga tu madre, cabrón.”
Nicolas: “Díos mio, that mouth, Doctor Cuervo.”
Antonio: “Alors, your complete lack of shame, Monseigneur de Lenfent. ‘The Harlech Annexation’? I didn’t think I’d find you here, at least whole.”
Nicolas: “The public eye protects me. So do you have news for me?”
Antonio: “What makes you so sure I have news?”
Nicolas: “Why would you have made the journey if you did not have some urgent affair to report?”
Antonio: “We’ve intercepted disturbing intel.”
Nicolas: “Aha.”
Antonio: "Shut up and listen to me. The opposition is petitioning to have the records of your tribunal hearing unsealed. Francis Pink is going to be interviewed on Nation Tonight in two hours’ time and they are certainly going to ask him about his party’s motives.”
Nicolas: "So? Nini—”
Antonio: “For the last time, I am not Italian, you ignorant fuck! This is serious! This could torpedo your candidacy!”
Nicolas: “…Beg pardon. Antonio. My past holds no threat to me. I have spoken with my future constituents. They understand. These people, they know what it is like to lose yourself, and find salvation in the arms of your tormentor.”
Antonio: “Nicolas, you dumb motherfucker. You haven’t found sudden kinship with humanity at the eleventh hour. These people are still your prey. Look at me when I’m fucking talking to you!”
Nicolas: “What would you like me to say? So they’re a desperate, dying race, willing to claw onto any pitying hand from on high that gives them leave to scrabble for existence. What of it? I would not see the human spirit so defiled.”
Antonio: “You weren’t…coherent, for your trial, Nic. You were…”
Nicolas: “Monstrous?”
Antonio: “Yes.”
Nicolas: “A moment. Philippa?”
Philippa: “Yeah?”
Nicolas: “Can you get me on Nation Tonight in two hours? I would like to help a distinguished colleague answer some questions.”
Philippa: “You want me to get you, uncensored, on a live television show?”
Nicolas: “Oui.”
Philippa: “In the height of campaign season?”
Nicolas: “Yes?”
Philippa: “So you can yell at your opponent and make him feel bad for existing?”
Nicolas: “Ye–wait, what?”
Antonio: “Yes. He is going to make someone regret going into politics. Will there be a problem, my dear?”
Philippa: “You don’t trust me? Dr. Cuervo, you—”
Nicolas: “Merci, non.”
Philippa: “Mmpf that’s my face youfmh—”
Nicolas: “Just let me know when the car is ready, merci. Careful, the door.”
Antonio: “A case could be made for treating your human assistant with more care.”
Nicolas: “She knew what she was getting into when she signed up for this. Now, tell me all the horrid things I did in the war, so I can give Pink a white feather to shit on.”
Antonio: “What am I, your campaign advisor?”
Nicolas: “Yes, because nobody got me a new one.”
Antonio: “Oh that’s right, you ate the last one. Oh dear. That poor girl. Does Philippa know?”
Nicolas: “Who do you think got rid of the body?”
II. Recess – Summit for Initial Partition, White Cliffs of Dover
Bishopric of England, The British Annexation
Even the bleariest mortal eye would be able to spot it. In the pitch blackness of the Channel, his homeland beckoned across the water. Its grey outlines, the small distant cottages that only a vampire’s eye could detect, kept dark because a decade of war transformed any small beacon in the night into a glaring target.
“Cap Gris Nez.”
“Beg pardon?” He turned to greet the speaker and resisted the urge to scratch his nose. The idea of an eternity of maintaining that moustache made him itch. Bad enough that his own maker had not even given him the decency of shaving what youthful cast of stubble his mortal body had been able to produce. (The Dollar Shave Club had been a godsend.)
“That’s what the humans called that small spit of land. Cap Gris Nez.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Humans.”
“I thought it was called Dunkirk.”
“Ah, for that you’ll want somewhere, follow my finger, oh, thereabouts.”
“Are you here to educate me on how to anthropomorphize geographical features or are we going for the mercy killing instead tonight?”
“We are all taken aback. His books never portray you as…”
“Sane?”
“I was going to go with ‘articulate’ or quite possibly, ‘this much of a little bitch,’ but ‘sane’ is probably more charitable. ‘Reckless’ would not be too far from the truth.”
He turned his eyes away and looked back out across the water. As the Honourable Member for what was formerly the borough of Camden nattered away about Nicolas’ conduct on the House floor, he closed his eyes and tried to focus on the sound of his bones, dead and still and silent, shifting minutely inside his flesh. He imagined the waves travelling down his spine, running over his (perfectly-healed) left tibia, his calcaneus, the dusty chalk of old dead things from long ago. Would you have me with you, dearly departed algae? When my work is done, may I rest at last?
“Lenfent, are you listening?”
“What? Oh. Sorry.”
“How. Many. Votes.”
“There’s still Chassaigne, Krazinski, Buillard, Shiu, and O’Connell.”
“That’s it? Christ, do you sleep?”
“As much as you do.”
“I’ll take Shiu and O’Connell. We’re in the same bridge club.”
“Why does that not even surprise me?”
“Shut your face. We won’t get Chassaigne and Krazinski. You shot yourself in the foot with those two.”
“It’s not my fault I ate their mothers. How was I supposed to know someone would turn those little Ruthvens? And when did I become the face of this? Anyway, what about Buillard?”
“I didn’t think he’d even give you an appointment. At least Chassaigne and Krazinski would ask Armand before going after you.”
“I may owe Armand my life, but that does not give him any license to me! And do not concern yourself with Buillard. I know what he wants, and I can give it to him.”
“Oh Nicki, no. You can’t mean that.”
“What is the matter, mon cher Jérôme? Have I disturbed your disposition?” He cocked an eyebrow at his friend, but a sound in the soft grass turned both their heads. A slender figure was outlined beneath the half-moon, and she raised a hand to call them back inside.
“But you’d never see Paris again.”
“Soon it won’t matter.”
Jérôme gripped Nicolas’ arm with a sudden jerk, almost as if in protection.
“Don’t.”
The two looked upon one another in a tense silence as Nicolas’ assistant neared.
“Hey! Asshole! Recess is over. Move both your asses.”
“I can’t believe you let her talk to you like that.”
“Now who’s sounding speciesist?”
“Point taken, but you know as well as I do this wasn’t evolutionary.”
“I leave that to the acolytes of scientia (Latin for ‘science’). In the—”
“Lenfent, if you don’t get your ass in here right now and stop them from making me a fucking slave, I am gonna take a handsaw and chop off all’a your limbs!”
“Jesus.”
“Quite. Let’s go, shall we?”
“Nicolas! Hands!”
“Yes, Philippa!”
III. The Vote to Add Human (Homo sapiens) Enfranchisement As A Constitutional Right
Chamber of the House of Commons, Houses of Parliament
Westminster Special District, London Governate (formerly City of London)
Bishopric of England, The British Annexation
It was a pity, Nicolas thought, that the Commons had green cushions. Now that there was not a single Warm Member of Parliament in either House, people had started to bring snacks. Those members of his species with more of a ribald flair for the grand guignol would intentionally spill blood from time to time, on kerchief or flask, pantomiming at being human.
His ankles were crossed on the back of the bench in front of him, and at the angle of his slouch, his straightened legs rendered him a tidy cream-colored check mark against the green of the seat. The Member from Finsbury District was in the process of concluding her remaining reservations about a de facto outnumbering of the wolves by the sheep. Nicolas raised a hand, displaying a beautifully-embroidered unfurling of blood-red poppies trailing from his sleeve down his chest before wrapping around the back of his knee.
By now he had made a name for himself on the campaign trail, if not for his radical views on human abolition, then on the elaborate embroidery that featured in each one of his colourful and lush suits. As a vampire with the training of a draper’s son, Nicolas’ embroidery skills were unparalleled for their attention to the warp and weft of the fibres. No one could quite mimic the liveliness of his designs, the irreverence for convention pulled off so elegantly he would never be tossed out for inadequate dress.
He had Armand to thank, for saving him from Burning, for taking care of him all these years, for loving Nicolas even when he was being unloveable. It was Armand who had first inspired him to paint with thread.
“The Speaker recognizes Monseigneur de Lenfent. You have the floor, votre grandeur.”
Nicolas stood and gave a small bow others might deride as “fussy” at worst and describe as “tidy” at best. It was his way of making sure he didn’t get carried away before an audience. Armand had taught him that military rigor was best for keeping himself coherent and orderly. Order was the secret to Nicolas’ equanimity. It was the disorder of his own fate that had begun the vicious cycle that first doomed him. Armand had worked for decades to determine what kind of order Nicolas needed.
He had Armand to thank for so much.
“Thank you, Mister Speaker. I must applaud Christiane for her rousing demonstration of why her Finsbury constituents ought never relocate to the country, for fear of miscounting their livestock.
“Can any one of the respectable Members of Parliament in this room reasonably estimate how many humans would even be of voting age under the provisions before us tonight? How many coherent, active, presently-participating vampires are registered voters?
“Even if every single Warm vote went to one candidate or one cause, the outcome would be Cold. We live in a chilly world, my fellow demons, and we may rule it gracefully for ever more so long as we preserve the pre-existing conditions that so soothed the docile spirits of our unsuspecting prey.
“Should we rouse their ire, and waste all that blood on war and riots and irritating public transportation delays? Nobody wants to spend eternity waiting for them to clear a corpse from the rails or stop for weapon sweeps. What do you want? An eternity waiting for your train to arrive, or an eternity with your train of happily but inconsequentially voting humans to wait on you?”
He sat down to a subdued chorus of snapping fingers, clapping in the House of Commons having been considered gauche since 2103. There were only a few more minutes of debate left. The Member for Islington stood.
Nicolas caught Antonio’s eye across the way and gave a single solemn nod. His friend nodded back. The violinist scanned the full benches for their allies, vampires all. There was Jérôme, Angela, Jean-Charles, Haneen, and Sarah at the very top row. Jérôme was smiling, which most likely meant they had gotten the votes they needed. By hook or by crook, they had given humans as much mastery of their own destiny as they were able.
“We will reconvene tomorrow evening at 7 o’clock for a final vote tally. I declare this session adjourned.”