Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [145]
His mind racing in search of a speech that would end up in fanfare and confetti, Brentford was suddenly startled when a door screeched from behind the guards. Though no orders had been given, their line gaped in the middle and Reginald and Geraldine appeared, dressed in burgundy velvet. Though they looked quite tiny amongst these well-built Scands and Finns, the guards simply stared at them as they walked majestically through their ranks. It was one of the twins’ most salient traits that their appearance usually provoked silence.
While Geraldine held her chin high and kept her eyes planted unflinchingly on the awestruck guards, Reginald handed their commanding officer a roll of parchment. Lieutenant Lemminkaïnen, as Brentford remembered he was called, unrolled it and read it silently, first frowning, then casting bewildered looks at the twins.
“This,” he announced to his men in heavily accented English, “bears the official seal of the Council. It announces that we should now pledge allegiance to the new rulers of New Venice, Geraldine and Reginald Elphinstone.”
“In other words, said Reginald, haughtily, “we are now paying you.”
The Varangians looked at each other and one by one took off their caps. Lemminkaïnen was the last one, but he went down on one knee with a chivalrous abandon, nonetheless remaining as tall as the twins.
Geraldine turned toward Brentford.
“Ah, Mr. Orsini,” she said, with the mock-tone (or so Brentford hoped) of a princess speaking to a servant, “we almost have been waiting for you.”
Shivering from that damned upward wind still blowing through the corridor, Brentford pushed open the heavy door of the Council Chamber and started in fright when he saw the Phantom Patrol standing around the table where the Councillors should have been.
“It’s always a pleasure to see an old friend,” said Doctor Phoenix with, Brentford was relieved to hear, a different, familiar voice, one with a slight German accent.
“Hardenberg, is that you?” Brentford asked in a cold sweat, his heart banging like a madman begging to be released from his padded cell. He wished he had been warned of that plan. You really had to wonder who was in charge, here.
“It is but me,” Hardenberg reassured him. “Not dead yet and with little desire to die today or ever. Your little adventure out in the wilderness gave us this idea for a disguise. A masked ball is a fairy tale in itself, after all. How is your revolution going?”
“The restoration, you mean. Well, you tell me,” said Brentford. “Did the Council escape?”
“Very much so. But not in very good shape. I am afraid that Baron Brainveil has gone through too many emotions today.”
The anarchists started to peel off their false flesh and tattered rags. This was almost as horrible to behold as the real Phantom Patrol had been. They had an atrocious smell, like rotten seal flesh, so strong as to make the Scavengers pass for white-robed virgins with baskets of rose petals.
“You mean you just … scared … them?”
“That was the point of our disguise. I have often noticed that people who detain some power are prone to superstition, as if they were afraid their little secret, which is nothing but luck, could be easily discovered and reversed.”
“You had no problems with the guards?”
“We never even saw them. The twins took us through a passage known only to the Seven Sleepers that passes beneath the canal and then straight up into this room. Needless to say that their knowledge of this shortcut greatly helped them to convince the Council of their identity.”
“You mean the twins were recognized as legitimate?”
“Certainly. They made quite an impression. It was as if the Councillors knew they had it coming. They knew the Calixte prophecy very well, as a matter of fact, and interpreted it exactly in the way that your friend Gabriel predicted. The Seven