"There are those so wicked, so invariably corrupt that they are overcome by mad lusts and so lie with beasts. From these are born the many horrors of the world. Those men who sate their lusts upon pigs produce the orcs. Those foolish girls who dally with horned beasts or creatures with cloven hooves gestate demons. Those who consort with snakes and reptiles may spawn a dragon; while cats and dogs make goblins. And of course, woe betide any who has carnal relations with a toad or a frog, for they will produce a Gallian."
–
Mother Superior Blancmange of the Saint Michelle nunnery
…
"Oh, this is a sick
joke!" Louise nearly exploded. Her voice would have echoed around the grand hall, had they actually been in the grand hall rather than a rather cosier and more comfortable room with lush red wall hangings and chairs with comfy cushions. A couple of minions with fans were positioned as inconspicuously as minions could be to keep the air circulating.
In due respect to her elevated status and petite stature, Louise's chair was somewhat higher than everyone else's.
It was breakfast time in the overlady's citadel of uttermost blackhearted malevolence, or at least breakfast for everyone who wasn't Cattleya. Louise's older sister tended to emerge sometime in the late afternoon.
A quiet little routine had settled in. After a certain amount of violence and shouting directed at the minions in charge of the kitchen, Louise had established a mutually acceptable menu which did not, in any way, involve cockroaches. She had found a smaller room which was more convenient than the Great Hall, and there were now rugs which meant they didn't have to walk on the damnably cold stone floor. There were other creature comforts in here, including subscriptions to all the major journals, and it was the front page news on one of them which had produced that reaction.
Louise threw the journal down on the cluttered table. This incautious action was enough to knock over Jessica's drink, sending diluted-down wine spilling onto the floor.
"Hey!" Jessica protested, as a minion scampered in to dry up the wine by lapping it up. "Watch it!"
Louise jabbed her finger at the journal. "This! This is not possible! This… this is wrong! There… there is no way that
Guiche de Gramont is getting a headline in an Infernal journal when I didn't get one for
kidnapping a princess. Just because he stopped some minor villain who hasn't done anything
I've heard of!" She slumped down, pouting. "That is… this shouldn't be happening! It's wrong!"
Jessica's eyes widened. "Oh, really?" she asked, scooting over to stare at the headline. "Oh wow," Jessica said, grinning. "That
is a pretty wrong guy. He's cute. Plus, he has the advantage of a quiet news day." She frowned. "Kind of too pretty, though," she added critically. "Kind of a bit girly. Cattleya might like him… well, no, probably not. She's not the sort to take up with a man. Even a man as pretty as that."
"I should think not," Louise said, crossing her arms. "My sister is a proper young lady, apart from her little issue. Involving herself with a man at an unprofessional level would be quite inappropriate for someone of her status. And this is
Guiche de Gramont. He is a dreadful little… little oik!"
Jessica opened her mouth and closed it again.
"I'm not sure 'drinking the blood of the living' is a little issue, Louise Francoise," Henrietta pointed out.
"My family has a lot of very bad people in it," Louise said quietly. She cupped her drink in both hands, swirling it. "Catt is far from the worst, and she does try to keep herself under control."
"Well, true," Henrietta conceded. "Mine isn't perfect either, honestly."
They both looked at Jessica, who shrugged.
"Look, Dad's the prince of the Incubi, my aunt is the effective ruler of the Abyss, I have too many cousins who all fuck people to steal their souls and lifeforce, and my granddad is the prime force of Evil in existence," she said flatly, spreading her hands with a shrug. "What do you want me to say?" She reached out, giving them a hug. "But don't worry! Just because my family is worse than yours doesn't mean you can't be really, really bad yourselves!"
"Yes. Being the worst overlady ever is my goal in life," Louise said quickly. "My ancestors would hate to see how bad I am at it. Or love it. I'm still working on my vocabulary of wickedness."
"I'm a very bad princess and my mother said I was evil and wicked and sinful," Henrietta said, nodding rapidly in agreement. "I'm a naughty girl."
Jessica gave them a thumbs up. "That's the spirit!" she said cheerfully. "Every day in every way, we can be worse and worse!"
Louise squared her jaw. "Well, it is still… still completely unacceptable that Guiche de Gramont has managed to be front line news when I haven't!" she declared, putting her hands on her hips – such as they were. "It's just as well that my plans for Amstreldamme and that… that hussy, the Madame de Montespan, are nearly ready!"
"Yay!" Henrietta cheered. "I have utmost trust in you, Louise Françoise, that your punishment for that dreadful woman will be fully appropriate! And I will be very thankful."
Louise blushed. "Well… um, uh, thank you," she began, reaching out to refill her drink.
"Yeah, congrats," Jessica said.
Louise cleared her throat. "And," Louise said, trying to shake her fluster, "I expect you both in the preliminary planning session. That means
on time this time, Jessica."
Jessica's face fell.
"I even drew up an agenda this time," Louise added proudly. "We're going to have to think about the political ramifications of our forthcoming actions. There's a special entry on the agenda and everything."
"You and your agenda politics," Jessica muttered.
…
The Great Hall was dark, the burning braziers dimmed to almost nothing. A small stage had been set up at one end, with a slightly tattered curtain backing it.
"Beetles?" Gnarl said, offering his bowl to Henrietta.
The princess turned just a trifle pale. "One… one would not wish to deprive you of something you're so clearly and enthusiastically and… and loudly enjoying," she managed in her best regal tone.
"Unfair enough," Gnarl said, crunching loudly. "Beetle?" he asked Jessica.
"Nah, I got popcorn," she said, perched on her seat with her legs crossed.
"I'll take one!" Cattleya said happily, taking one. "I'll add him to my pet collection! Actually, no! I said 'him', but I was wrong! It's a girl beetle! You can tell from the differently shaped thorax!" she told Henrietta earnestly.
"I see. How interesting," Henrietta said faintly.
"I know!" Cattleya told her with a disturbingly enthusiastic smile. "Do you know how many different kinds of beetle there are? I have a quite extensive collection, and it's got much more extensive since I arrived here! Do you know, there are species of beetle living in this tower which I've never seen before? I'm going to need a new cabinet, because some of the insects are as large as my head, or even larger!"
"Giant beetles is very tasty," Scyl said dreamily. "Tastes like beetle. Like chicken. Chicken taste like beetle."
"Chicken eggs is yummier than beetle eggs, though," Maxy said, licking his lips.
Fettid snorted. "You is dumb," she told him sniffily, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
"Gosh," Henrietta said. "Oh, look, I do believe Louise is almost ready. We should all stop talking. Because it would be rude. Yes."
Fully clad in her steel plate, the overlady strode up to the front of the hall and onto the low stage, clanking as she went. Her flowing pink hair was artfully tossed, carefully spilling down onto her front, and the metal of her armour was polished to a sinister gleam. From the right angle, faint glowing runes could be seen beneath the surface of the metal, hinting at darker things. A long surcoat lay over the shining steel, dark enough red to seem almost black, trimmed in silver and with intricate and subtly malevolent designs woven into the flowing cloth.
Her aura of malevolent dignity was somewhat ruined when she produced a set of notes from an inner pocket and gave them an intense once-over.
"Oh, that new surcoat is awesome," Jessica said to herself in a self-congratulatory tone of voice. "I'm
so great. Look, the pockets don't disrupt the cut at all!"
Louise clasped her hands together. "E-everyone!" she announced, trying to conceal she was shaking. "We are now entering a new phase of str-strategic operations!" With those words, the great blackboard was wheeled behind her by a gaggle of minions. Some small readjustment of its position left it facing the right way, and Maggat saluted and then herded the other minions off stage.
Pointing at the map of Tristain drawn on the blackboard with her staff, Louise cleared her throat. "This is the n-nation of Tristain! Its Regency Council are our enemies! The comte de Mott is already dead! Now we… we begin work on overthrowing the Madame de Montespan! She is the de facto ruler of Amstreldamme, because the duke is senile, and via her influence the greatest magical university in Halkeginia – and it is the best, no matter what those idiots in Roma say! – she supports the Regency Council!
"This is a problem! We will r-resolve this problem in the way we solve all problems! By killing her! Especially because the Madame de Montespan is said to be the mistress of Viscount Wardes, who is an unfaithful treacherous dog who jumps off into another woman's bed less than a season after his fiancée went tragically missing! Can you believe that man!" Louise scowled, getting rather red in the face. "No shame at all! None! He's a treacherous dog… no, a weasel! A weasel dog! Some horrible blasphemous product of magical experimentation which h-has all the worst features of both animals, and none of the good ones! And more flaws on top of it!" She took a deep breath. "And that is why the death of his mistress, who is also a traitor, must happen! We shall kill her and take every last thing she values in the world! Um. And more!"
There was a round of thunderous applaud from the minions, who didn't understand most of the long words Louise had used, but did grasp that the end goals were murder and looting.
"So proud of her," Gnarl muttered, dabbing of the corner of his eye with a crusted old blackened handkerchief.
Louise gestured somewhat frantically at Maggat, until the minions flipped the blackboard over to display a more detailed map of the area around Amstreldamme, speckled with annotations. "If you… um, look here, you will see that there is an old relay tower just off the coast, which used to serve as a lighthouse, but now is occupied by p-pirates," she said curtly. "We will capture that, and then use that to allow us to attack the new foundries being built just outside the city. This will slow the Council's plans to expand the military, and by pillaging their resources, we can transport vital components back to the tower, for Jessica to repair and bring into operation. However, that step is less vital than taking them out of the hands of the Council. If we cannot capture the foundries intact, we will burn them to the ground! Once we have achieved that, I will re-examine the situation."
There was another round of thunderous applause from the minions.
"Any questions?" Louise concluded, ending on a high note.
Igni raised his hand enthusiastically. "Oooh! Oooh! Overlady!" he said, bouncing up and down.
"Yes?" Louise said a trifle dubiously.
"I is wanting to be knowing how much of this are going to be about the boomy and how much about the looting," Igni said. "What are for looting and so no boomy are allowed near it?"
That was a surprisingly intelligent and cogent point by the standards of minionkind, Louise was forced to concede. Yes, it might have addressed the two main interests of the red-skinned minions, but at least it showed an understanding that there were things which should not be blown up. This was behaviour she really needed to encourage in her underlings.
"Some things will allow more… ahem, 'boomy' than others," she answered, with an inward sigh at the fact that she was getting used to minion vernacular. "I need the relay tower intact. However, as I said, if it turns out we can't reclaim the foundry equipment, I want the entire works destroyed."
Igni nodded solidly, obviously pleased by the words 'entire works destroyed'.
Jessica raised a hand. "Oooh! Yeah, there was totally that thing about Amstreldamme," she said. "It's an… what's the word? Anychrome?"
"I beg your pardon?" Louise asked.
"Anycrom? Anagram? No, no… ah! Yes, anachronism! That's the thing. It's anachronistically advanced compared to the rest of your surface world. It's got gas lighting and flushing toilets and they do things with electricity. It's almost as advanced as some backwards areas of the Abyss in some ways."
"No doubt because of the many wicked souls which reside there," Louise said coldly. "The Infernal influence upon that city is well-documented. It does not surprise me that the Madame de Montespan centres her operations there. The entire city – and its university – is very lax when it comes to enforcement of Church law. Is it any surprise that Evil ideas from the Abyss come to dominate there?"
"Yeah," Jessica said, nodding. "Well, totally makes sense. If you're going to go spend time in a proper civilised place like the Abyss, ideas leak out and once you go back to your backwards home, you're going to want to bring the hallmarks of actual proper culture with you. You know, like demon summoning and iron horses and gas lighting and stuff."
Louise fumed at that remark. But on the inside. There was nothing civilised about demon summoning!
"Amstreldamme has been purged for heresy no fewer than four times, and they excommunicated the city once," Henrietta contributed. "In the reign of my… uh, possibly my great-great-aunt – there was some question of the parentage there – the entire city was consumed with a maelstrom of Evil energy and several sections had to be razed entirely to cleanse the taint. Fortunately, once they had set some flammable areas of the city on fire, the sin could be cleansed through penance and tithes, and it was de-excommunicated as per Church doctrine."
"Yeah, that was a partial summoning of my granddad," Jessica agreed. "It's a pretty rad place for a surface place. Great place. I'd love to spend more time there. It's way less boring than Bruxelles which – no offense meant – is totally the most boring city ever, apart from Genevois, which is just blurgh."
"I spent nine months stuffed in a tower. It was very boring," Henrietta said quietly. "Maybe I should move the capital to Amstreldamme when I take the throne. I don't like Bruxelles much anymore."
"Oh, that'd be kickass," Jessica said happily. "I tried to persuade Dad that he should open a franchise there, but he seems okay in quasi-retirement and has to stay close to the centre of power."
Louise cleared her throat. "Excuse me?" she said forcefully, tapping her foot and waiting for them to quieten down again. "Did you have a point, Jessica?"
"Well, I was just checking that you know 'bout that kinda stuff," Jessica said, shrugging. "Because, you know, there's a bunch of stuff you can get from crafters there which is better than anything else you'll get outside the Abyss or elven lands."
"I do know that," Louise said, putting her hands on her lips. "Believe me, I have… plans for the alchemy district."
There was more applause from the minions, who liked that kind of plan.
"Shut up! Stop applauding literally everything I say!"
…
In the dim of the library, Louise hid behind a protective fortress of books. She was just about over her stage fright, but she had skipped lunch because she didn't feel like eating.
She slumped forwards as a memory surfaced too late to be of any use. "I forgot to hand out the agenda," she muttered to herself. She'd prepared it and everything. And now Jessica was going to be smug about it.
She'd just had stage fright. And… Founder, she'd been going on and on about Viscount Wardes and even though he was a treacherous dog and he was a traitor and… and she hated him, she probably shouldn't have gone on about it like that?
It wasn't like she was jealous of the Madame de Montespan. She hated her. And Wardes, too. Stupid Wardes.
"Louise Françoise!" Henrietta called out from somewhere on the other side of her impenetrable literary walls. "Are you in here? The minions told me to look for you here!"
Louise considered not answering, but reluctantly decided she had to speak up. "I'm here," she said. "I'm… um, working."
Henrietta swept up to her, plonking herself down right next to Louise on her oversized chair. "Oh, Louise Françoise," she said, "you really don't like public speaking, do you?"
"You could tell?" Louise asked guiltily. Henrietta felt far, far too close, and very warm in her black dress which wasn't covering enough. She'd inhaled in surprise when the older girl had sat down, and the scent of her perfume had done an impressive job in making her completely forget what she'd been reading.
Henrietta laughed, giving Louise a hug. "You were shaking, I could see!" she said. She brushed a strand of hair away from Louise's face. "You were hiding behind your hair, too! And blushing! You're still blushing, in fact! It's very obvious when you get nervous!"
Louise blushed, and hated herself for it.
"It's actually really adorable!" Henrietta said. "It's cute!"
This only intensified the blush. "I am working at it," Louise said quickly. "I'm… I'm still not very good at public speaking. I never really practiced it before, and I wasn't very good at it at school."
Shaking out her hair, Henrietta let out a sigh. "They drilled me on it, over and over and over again," she said sadly. "It would have been nicer to go to the Academy, I think. At least I'd have been there with you."
Louise nodded. "It is nice having you around," she said politely, trying to keep her mind on… on something which wasn't Henrietta. It was a welcome relief when her friend rose and started poking around at the bookshelves. "What are you doing?" Louise asked curiously.
Henrietta shifted awkwardly. "I wanted to see what the books were like in here," she said. "The ones in my room… well, they all seem to be novels, which I suppose is good enough, but this place looked much larger."
Louise gave a self-effacing shrug. "They're mostly 'work' books," she said, letting her tongue click around the word 'work'. "Nothing very interesting. Books of geography, history, evil magic, politics, things like that." She sighed. "And a lot of them have wicked lies and mistruths in them," she added irritably. "I can't trust them half the time."
"Sorry, what was the third one you said?" Henrietta asked. "Evil magic?"
Louise turned pink. "Evil manipulation! Evil manipulation!" she said hastily. No, no, she didn't want Henrietta realising that she enjoyed researching new evil spells to aid her in her disguise – which was of course the only reason she read up on them and had spent quite a lot on expanding her collection of dread grimoires. She couldn't have Henrietta thinking ill of her. The thought of that made her heart feel like it was splitting in two.
"That didn't sound like 'manipulation'," Henrietta said dubiously.
"It was! It was!" she protested.
Henrietta smoothed down her dress and looked around. "Well, it is a bit cluttered in here," she said, clearly trying to move on.
The change in subject was welcome. "Ah. Well." Louise coughed into her hand. It wasn't that bad, really. She flinched slightly as a pile of books collapsed onto a minion. "I've bought a lot of books," she said. "I mean, a lot. No, really, a lot. Especially at first before anyone else moved in, it was the only thing to do. And… well, minions are the worst librarians ever."
"Oh? Even worse than Justin the Pyromaniac, last Custodian of the Great Library of Rhacotis?"
"… possibly not quite that bad," Louise admitted, "or at least not that bad since I banned reds from here. But almost all of them are illiterate! And the smarter ones don't really
get cataloguing. They tend to file all books under B, for 'book'. Or sometimes F, for 'fing what have squiggles in'." Louise said that with all the disgust of a housemaid picking up a dead rat with tongs. "Sometimes 'S' for 'Shiny', if it has a pretty cover."
"I was wondering why those sections were quite that large," Henrietta admitted. "Oh, Louise Françoise! You work so very hard, and so thanklessly. It's almost summer, isn't it? Your birthday should be soon. I should get you something nice! To show how much I appreciate you!"
"Y-your thanks are enough, your… um, highness," Louise managed.
Henrietta nodded. "Well, unless you let me go pillage some places – and that was a joke – I'm afraid thanks are all I can afford." Henrietta shook her head in mock sorrow. "It's dreadful being a poor royal, though I suppose at least I get room and board here." She paused. "That is the commoner term for such things, isn't it?"
"Uh. I… maybe?" Louise tried, having a similar lack of experience in how the underclasses lived. "Anyway!" Louise said, "returning to our previous topic, I'll be more than willing to help you find something interesting and not at all hazardous or evil. I wouldn't want you tarnished, your highness, by the things I must do."
Henrietta sighed. "I suppose you're right," she said, almost to herself, slumping down. She straightened up again, adjusting her hair. "You should probably show me which areas are fine for me to read, then, and which ones I should avoid. So I know not to go near them."
Louise was more than happy to show Henrietta to where the more acceptable books were kept, insofar as the library was organised at all. With a sigh, she got back to work, only disrupted by periodic crashes as minions had piles of heavy tomes fall on their heads. That was slightly alarming, actually. The minions' heads might damage the books. Founder damn it, why was her heart feeling so confused? Clearly she would have to arrange for another courting date with Emperor Lee so she wouldn't be missing male company and be having… um, thoughts about Henrietta she should only be having about men. Curse her wicked heritage that led her to getting confused feelings about the princess she had kidnapped.
Louise threw herself into her work to distract herself from the… the wrong thoughts she was having, and managed to cover a good hundred pages on the fortifications of Amstreldamme before Cattleya sat down on the table opposite to her, and started writing.
"Uh… Louise," Cattleya asked, after a while. "Sorry to bother you, but… question?"
"Mmm?"
"How do you spell 'inadequate'?"
"Uh… i-n-a-d-e-q-u-a-t-e."
"Okay, okay. And… um, rationalisations?"
"That's… rat-i-o-n-al-i-sat-i-o-n-s. I think. Cattleya?" Louise asked, frowning. "What are you doing, and why are you using words you normally never use?"
Her sister looked up. "Book report," she said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"A book report! For my cult! We all have to read books and report back on them," Cattleya said happily.
"Your… cult?"
Cattleya sighed. "Louise," she said chidingly. "Remember, silly? I joined a cult on the way back from Bruxelles! Now I have to do book reports because we discuss the books we've read since the last meeting and critique them!"
Louise put down her pen. "Catt," she asked, "what kind of book is it? Because if it's an evil book which will summon some kind of dark god, I really won't be happy with you. And neither will Mother or Father. I
expressly forbid you to summon any dark gods! Do I make myself clear?"
Her sister pouted. "Give me some credit," she said. "I made sure to check that the cult wasn't doing anything really super-bad! If they were doing that, I'd totally have killed them all and drank their blood and then cut the bodies into lots of itty bitty bits and thrown them in a lake just in case any of them were secretly vampires too! Although I probably would have tasted it if they were vampires because other vampires are like the jolly nicest-est tasting thing ever!" She paused. "Of course if it hadn't been so incredibly shockingly dreadfully bad that I had to do it
right now or else Evil would win forever I'd honestly have asked you first," she added hastily. "But it's not a very bad cult!"
Louise groaned. "Catt…" she said piteously.
"It's fine! I didn't kill anyone so you don't need to be angry at me, little sister!" Cattleya cleared her throat. "Anyway! It's not a really really bad cult! It's just young noblewomen with boring husbands – usually really old ones too! I'm so glad I didn't get married off like that! I'd hate to be married to some old
man! – who get together and talk about books…"
There was a lingering little bit of doubt, Louise felt, that her sister had actually joined a cult, rather than a reading club.
"… and then worship Femin-Anark and Athe a bit! But they're very respectable dark gods! None of them have any tentacles at all! And there's no slime or anything, and Athe only approves of animal sacrifice if you then eat it! Or if you're using the sacrificed animal to study anatomy!"
Louise did have to concede that no respectable gods had tentacles. "You still haven't told me what the book is," she said.
"Oh! Right!" Cattleya said. "It's A La Carte's 'Metaphysical Meditations - In which the existence of Good and Evil and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated'! Of course, it's not right, according to Jessica! She says that you can burn souls for fuel. But I have an immortal soul! It's trapped in my body. Which makes you think, doesn't it? Why is the soul indestructible when it's bound eternally in dead flesh, but so easy to burn when it's on its own? Jessica says burning souls releases lots and lots of magic which can be used, too!"
It didn't make Louise think. "Well, have fun," she said distractedly, getting back to work. She turned. "And don't summon any dark gods," she added.
"Oh, I am having fun!" Cattleya said gleefully, apparently ignoring the warning about dark gods. "It's wonderful! I get to meet people in the cult! People who aren't related to me and who like books and… and aren't servants!" She squared her jaw. "I can't believe I was missing out on all these things being stuck at home for years and years and years," she said. "It's great! Some of the girls are even my age! I'd have… I'd have known them as friends if I went to the Academy of Magic! Of course they don't know who I am because I keep my disguise on," she added hastily, "and I never take it off. No matter what. Trust me, I make sure to keep my mask on and! And and and! I wear hair dye, now! When I go there, I mean! Obviously I just make it go rot off when I'm bored! But everyone expects vampires to be all seductive and dark and pink hair doesn't work too well with all that.
"Well, that's something, at least," Louise said, feeling a little better about the state of affairs.
"You should probably dye your hair! Pink isn't a good choice for evil overladies either!"
Louise squared her jaw. "I am not about to do that," she told her sister.
"Why not?"
She blinked. "Because… because it's my
hair," Louise said, feeling greatly offended.
"Dye comes out."
"I don't care. It's mine. I'm not going to dye it."
Cattleya shook her head, running her hand along the bookshelf. "You're not getting
weird about your hair again, are you?" she asked, tilting her head.
"Catt. Stop bothering me," Louise said.
"Oh no, you can't drive me off by being grumpy! You are! You're getting weird about it again!"
"I don't know what you mean!" Louise snapped.
"Oh, you know very well," Cattleya said, with a feline and prominently incisored smile. "The same weird about your hair you got with Eleanor all the time when you were little."
"I am not listening to you."
"You used to rub it in her face that you had hair like Mother and she was blonde."
"Catt," Louise said warningly.
"Literally rub it in her face."
"Catt!"
"You got it in her eyes and then she'd chase you and then you'd come back and do it again when she didn't expect it."
"I'm warning you…" Louise began, beginning to blush.
"And then you started asking her if she was really Mother's child, rather than some bastard of Father's. And everyone was very surprised that you'd heard that word
and were using it correctly. Eleanor wasn't happy at all! She made the ceiling go soft and hung up there by your ankles! They had to get father to get you down because she refused to do so!"
Louise rose to her feet, clutching her papers protectively as if they could shield her from her sister's total inability to know when to shut up. "This conversation is over! I'm going to my room! I have a headache! I need peace and quiet!" she announced, as she stormed out.
But as she left, Cattleya's words trailed after her. "And it was in front of everyone at her thirteenth birthday party, too!"
…
"Yes," Gnarl said, stroking his goatee as he watched the scene through his crystal ball. "Her parents may have missed the signs, but to a trained eye like mine, they are very obvious."
"I no can see signpost," Fettid observed, dusting with a feather duster which had nails stuck into it in case she saw a rat she needed to splat.
Gnarl ignored the casual stupidity of his underlings. "The blossoming signs of such great Evil are plain to see! Such a wealth of depravity! The overlady, so careful to pick the point for maximum possible embarrassment for her elder sister – and she would have been only three at the time! No doubt she planned it for weeks in advance!" He frowned. "Though the Evil of the de la Vallière family is also present in her elder sister, it seems. Inventive and improvised cruelty, yes."
"Why she no hit overlady with club?" Fettid pointed out. "Better way of making her shut up."
"Ah," Gnarl said, "because that is the difference between your Evil, Fettid, which is stupid and brutal, and the Evil of a potential overlady. Her elder sister seems to be showing such signs, too." He popped a cockroach in his mouth, and chewed noisily. "My investigations have confirmed that her sister is indeed resident in Amstreldamme," he said. "I do believe that their reunion may well be… interesting."
"Are that the kind of long pause 'in-ter-est-ing' what you do when you smile all evil like and do that thingie with your handies?" Fettid asked, as she splatted a rat with her feather duster.
"Yes, it is," Gnarl said, rubbing his hands together with evil glee.
…
