7 - then under arrest

For his part, it seemed as if Mr. Darby had finally come to terms with his situation.

He sighed, and seemed to deflate utterly.

“If it's a demand summons, then I have no choice,” he said. “I'll go to the Marchioness immediately, but before that, I must make sure that the young Lady Serraffield has been left in a secure location.”

“All right,” said the officer, after a brief glance at Demi. “I'll escort you to Count Serraffield’s petite demesne so you can verify that she is safe and secure there, and then I'll take you directly to the Marchioness.” She narrowed her eyes. “I hope you do understand that if you attempt to flee or further delay your meeting with the Marchioness, I will detain you.”

Clarence Darby gave a nervous little shiver, as if he might be allergic to the idea of incarceration.

“Agreed,” he said, fidgeting with the knot of his tie. “Lady Serraffield, I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but will you please follow me?”

Demi looked on impassively. She wasn't entirely sure of where she stood with Officer Flurry, but this was probably not the best place to make a scene. She had very little to gain, and quite a lot to lose. It was best to continue playing the part of the bored princess. That was the safest choice at the moment.

“Very well,” she said, daintily covering her mouth to conceal a yawn.

Demi hoped that wherever Clarence Darby ‘secured’ her, she would be left up to her own devices until his audience with the Marchioness was finished. If she were left alone, then she could get up to some exploration and investigation — without supervision.

It wasn’t as if she planned to go haplessly wandering around the whole of the Seat of Law. The tower was a dangerous place to investigate. She knew as much even given her scant experience with the Pinnacle, but she also knew that she would be safe if she remained in her father’s petite demesne. That was inviolable territory. The only person who might have harmed her in such a place was her father himself.

Which was not absolutely outside the realm of possibility, given —

Well, given everything.

But he had never done so, not once in her entire life, regardless of what he thought of her actions. Demi herself had never been physically hurt as a means of discipline, although she had been restrained and confined. The methods of control exercised on her were of a more subtle nature.

And she was used to them. She had already decided to accept whatever punishment might await her as a consequence of her investigation even before she had boarded the train to come to the City. That was the depth of her resolve.

And her words had an immediate effect on her situation.

Having received her (admittedly vague) blessing, Clarence Darby flew like an arrow through the halls of the Curia, his rapid steps nervously ringing against the floor. He was apparently taking the officer’s threats of permanent expulsion very seriously. That was probably wise.

Jill Flurry seemed like the sort of person who ought to be taken seriously.

Darby was now moving at such a clip that Demi and Jill Flurry had to practically jog to keep up with him as he raced along the labyrinthine hallways of the tower’s petite demesnes.

After a complex series of turns, the three of them arrived in an area that seemed slightly familiar to Demi. It was the sovereign territory of the Serraffields within the Seat of Law, their petite demesne. Demi had only been there twice before. Her father had not been particularly enthusiastic about having children underfoot at the seat of government.

She saw no one she knew.

To be true, she saw no one at all. Every member of her father’s staff seemed to be absent or cloistered behind closed doors. It was a little off-putting.

But then, she had never expected a grand welcome.

Clarence Darby seemed unperturbed by the relative desertion of the suite. His mind was perhaps on other matters.

He led her directly to a closed door and then fished out a key to unlock it.

“If you don't mind, please wait here until you're retrieved, Lady Serraffield,” he said. “I'm sure you’ll be very comfortable. If it turns out that the Marchioness requires my attendance for more that a few minutes, then I’ll dispatch someone to get you as soon as I have a free moment. Under no other circumstances should you leave this room.” He glanced sidelong at their escort, who looked ready to drag him off if he didn't get going on his own.

Demi sighed and then nodded.

“I’ll defer to your judgement on this issue,” she said blandly.

As she moved toward the room, she felt a light touch on her arm. It was Officer Flurry. She had put the official summons under her arm and was scribbling something onto a notepad. She handed it to Demi.

“That’s my phone number and contact information, Lady Serraffield,” she said seriously. “You can call on me at any time if you need assistance. Before I leave, I'm going to verify, it is by choice that you're entering this room, correct?”

Demi smiled wanly. It was a difficult question. She could not help but think back to the question the boy on the train had asked, during that strange, silent moment.

“Will you swear that all that you do, you do by your own choice? Will you take responsibility for your own fate?”

She hadn't done much of anything at all since leaving the train that had really been her own choice. Her father was an expert at coercing desired behavior out of her. She understood what the consequences were for perceived rebellion.

But to be fair, she knew that there was another choice. She could refuse to preform as expected and be disowned and expelled from the family. That always remained an option. But she had no place to go and no other way to be. Besides, she couldn't run from herself. She was a Serraffield, and she owed service to the world as compensation for her privileged upbringing.

So she nodded seriously.

“I am acting of my own free will,” she said.

Officer Flurry did not appear to be wholly satisfied, but she seemed willing to accept Demi’s word. Meanwhile, Darby nervously motioned her toward the open door.

Demi was an expert at following the rules and getting her way at the same time. She could jump through hoops, dot i’s, cross t’s and still end up doing what she wanted (mostly). Her intention was to promptly exit the room as soon as Mr. Darby was out of earshot. She had an even greater desire to explore now that her chaperone had expressly forbidden it.

(The council of Demi was in full agreement on this point.)

Besides, even if she was caught, she could always feign ignorance, flightiness, and innocent confusion. Acting as if she had no brain at all in her skull was one of the best cards she had to play, and along with eccentricity, allowed her a free pass for misbehavior that would otherwise be punished severely.

As she was contemplating her plans in the doorway, Clarence Darby apparently at last lost patience with her and practically shoved her into the room with a muffled “pardon me, my lady,” as he did.

As soon as Demi was through the door she heard it shut behind her, and then the rapid turn and click of the lock. She turned on her heel and tried the handle with a vague sort of resignation. It was indeed locked, as she had expected, and there was no apparent way to unlock it without a key. It was unfortunate that she had not yet learned to pick locks. She resolved to move that skill to the top of her list of priorities. Still, there would be no lock-picking today.

So much for investigation and exploration.

Outside the door, she could hear a muffled conversation. It sounded like Officer Flurry was having words with Clarence Darby. Still, after a moment, the voices faded, and it became clear that the officer had hauled him off, presumably to his nonconsensual appointment.

With the understanding that she was now on her own, Demi promptly opened her bag to retrieve her hair clip and clipped it back into her hair at its accustomed place.

Let’s hope Mr. Darby is so frazzled by his experience that he doesn’t notice, she thought to herself.

But then, could he really force her to take her hair clip off?

It might be a battle worth fighting.

Time would tell.

Demi turned her attention back to her surroundings.

As a waiting room, it left quite a bit to be desired. It was fortunate that she had brought her own reading material. The room felt as if it had been made for the express purpose of contemplating one’s sins — there was precious little else to contemplate, after all.

The room was small — more like a cell than anything else — plain, with no windows, not even the interior windows that were so common in megastructures. The door behind her opened outward, which made the small room feel even more closet-like. There was a single folding chair and nothing else of interest or substance other than a small painting that hung on the wall opposite the door.

The scale of the painting required her to move until she was standing directly in front of it to puzzle out the subject. It was a dark canvas with several vaguely menacing figures gathered in a circle around an open pit, which appeared to have large, misshapen teeth jutting out around the rim. Underneath the painting was a brass plate with one word: Urheimat.

As Demi stood with her hands folded behind her back, staring at the inscrutable painting, she heard the delicate sound of bells. The sound was regular, slow, and ritualistic, as if something strange was approaching from a long way off. It was a queer sound in the small, generally featureless room.

At the sound, Demi turned around, and that was when she saw the veiled lady.

It was a bizarre experience. Demi had not heard the lock turn nor the door open, but there was someone standing before the closed door, as still and lovely as water.

The woman was clad totally in white, in semi-transparent fabric that fluidly fell over the lines and curves of her body, and ultimately concealed very little of her shape. Even her face was covered by layers of a long diaphanous veil that nearly brushed the ground before her. The features of her face could be picked out under her veil, for the fabric had been drawn and fastened loosely over it, but they remained hazy and indistinct. Demi could not have said what the woman looked like under the veil, although what little exposed skin she did have at her extremities was a medium olive in tone. Demi guessed, but could not be certain, that her hair was dark. That was all she could determine about the veiled lady.

That and the fact that she was shockingly, arrestingly beautiful.

It was something that Demi understood, even having only seen her through the mist of her all-covering and yet barely concealing clothing.

It all felt fantastic, and a little unreal, or perhaps hyper real, as if this lady were the statuary of Antonio Corradini come to life.

There were anklets on the veiled lady’s bare feet which were the apparent source of the sound of tiny bells.

Demi was still reflecting on this woman’s entrancing and compelling beauty when she realized that the veiled lady was speaking.

She had a low, smooth voice that made Demi think of the sound of hushed call and response prayer in church.

“I have come to fetch you, Lady Serraffield,” was what she said.

“Ah!” Demi squeaked in a most undignified way, completely caught off guard that she was the object of interest for this genuine madonna. She flushed and struggled to recover herself.

“Mr. Darby isn't coming back?” she asked.

“Circumstances have caused him to be detained beyond his reckoning,” she said, and her manner was grave and stately. “He will not return for some time. I have been asked to escort you to a different room, where you may wait in comfort.”

Demi was honestly relieved to be deprived of Clarence Darby, even for an extended period of time. She needed a break from her father’s uptight equerry.

Besides that, the small room where she had been left was mind-numbingly boring. It was so hopelessly boring that Demi felt that she had totally exhausted its minimal charms in the six and a half minutes she had thus far been confined there. While Demi was a very inventive person and had prodigious scope for imagination, the undiscovered wonders hidden past the horizon of the closed door were too tantalizing for her to be content with the folding chair and urheimat.

She was in one of the most interesting locations in the entire world, but she felt as if she had been locked inside a nondescript broom closet (nondescript apart from an excessively weird painting — exactly whose homeland was that supposed to be?). Anywhere, even imminent doom, would be better than the locked closet. At least imminent doom was likely to be interesting.

Suffice it to say, Demi had never seen the veiled lady among her father’s entourage. The veiled lady was a person who could not be forgotten once she had been seen, regardless of the state of her dress or undress. Demi could not say beyond a reasonable doubt that the veiled lady represented her father's interests, although it was certain that she had at the very least the ability to unlock doors that Clarence Darby had locked behind him.

But Demi also recognized that her father’s interests were not necessarily her interests, no matter how often they naturally aligned due to their direct familial ties. Following this woman’s directions without outside confirmation that she was a member of Count Serraffield’s entourage could possibly be dangerous. Metropoly was not a kind City, and Demi knew that she had value primarily as a piece to be used by other people, at least until the time of her majority.

And yet.

Demi had a general idea of what awaited her with the return of Clarence Darby. She knew that she could not really avoid the future that was laid out before her. That future had been determined at the time of her birth, and possibly before it. She had very little freedom of choice and much of what appeared to offer her novelty and variety were illusions. She might choose small detours here or there, she might assert her will in the way she chose to walk down this singular path, but she could not change the path itself. She was unfortunately accustomed to having many things in her life decided for her, with no concern for her own wishes.

But she refused to passively accept the futility of her position, she refused to be slowly pushed forward by the inevitable tide of her predetermined life.

Besides, if things went very south, she could always call the police. She had Jill Flurry’s number in her pocket, and she had already memorized it.

And so, when the veiled lady asked, “Will you follow me?”

She did not even need to consult the council of Demi.

A short life and a merry one, Demi thought.

But she said, “Yes.”

She would follow whatever rabbits chanced to cross her path, regardless of their color.

Even if there were only one chance in the uncountable infinity that a genuinely new page might be read after this one was turned, she would take that chance.