"Ian and I leave tomorrow night. Would you care to join us for a drink tonight? We like to drink brandy while our servants pack for us. It makes us feel useful."

     "Body language," William murmurs, his hand moving from his mouth. "Bricks do not know how to be subtle, cobblestone, shuttered windows. Those are the obvious markings that something is not right, mais oui. The body language of the people will show it far sooner than buildings, yes?"

     "Seventy-five years," William repeats. "Non non non, we will have to remedy this." He does not grin as he says it, though there is nothing in his expression or energy to say he is upset. It is merely something to be rectified.

     It is painfully honest. If he were holding anything now, it would have dropped again by this point. Hansl wears his confusion like the finest of clothes - askew to imply the nakedness beneath.

     "...It is as though you are trapped in marble, and I am here with the chisel and hammer," he grins again, "... trying to find you. Yes? Just as Michelangelo said. The body is in the marble. I am only trying to free it."

     "Stretta," William commands. His voice is quiet but it carries a command that resonates through both lovers. They halt their motions, their faces twisting with the pleasure and the agony that stillness brings. But they do not move. "There is your picture, yes?"

     "Bonsoir," Frederic de Champenois nods as you rise. He takes up his pad and his charcoal again, his cigarette lighting his way. And he returns to his sketching. In the foreground, a figure takes shape. A tourist approaches the statue of Voltaire, facing the past and the future in the same moment. Behind him, traffic moves in shadowed blurs, punctuated by sudden illumination...

     Who am I, to be here? What will I say? I must trust in myself. Trust in yourself, Hansl, I say, and I look in the mirror and I wonder, Hansl, I really wonder, how well can this possibly work out?

     But there is always talk. With him, as with you, there is always talk. Much of it without consequence.

     Here we are, two refugees from the old Axis of Evil, evil things ourselves. Or maybe you are not, Hansl Arnaul. But I am. And I am content with this, my lot. Which was not much more than a gutter from the time I was born. And now look at me! Dining with princes with my pinky raised as I sip from the neck of the world.

     "I'm telling you," Edward laments, plucking his bottom lip with two fingers, "...there's too many in London." Undead, that is. He sighs, shaking his head at the state and shape of things.

     He is honorable, and capable, and so what need have he to blush?...Perhaps the arrival of his mentor, a man of great faith, great will, who really isn't supposed to see him flirt.

     There's a nod from the Primogen, his hand adjusting the lapel of his dark suit. A kindness to the decorum of the court. "Saarbrucken," he says softly. That was the place. Lips purse and a slight noise escapes as attention's given back to Greydon. "Your problem, Trevelyan," Edmund says by way of acknowledgement. He doesn't want to hear anything about it.

     Eyes flicker down towards the note, so carefully laid. All this blushing, all these statements, they make his curiosity unbearable. The frown starts as he gazes down the first paragraph, and it only settles more firmly in place by the end.
     "William."

     "It was an ... interesting image. He burned as a dark sun. I ... would not trust him with my soul, I do not think, if I had one. But it made me wish to paint. Not him, perhaps. But to paint."

     There are eddies in the dancing throng of The Odeon, noticeable only to those who can feel as well as they can see. The charge on the air is tight, electric, openly sexual. And at the center of it is a golden Caligula.

     "I have known for some time that only a man would move me. You, Greydon, have moved me; to you, I respond. Your words hold me spellbound, and your touch enslaves me. As an individual, removed from my sense of self, I wish to study under you; with you, as the object of my study and as my instructor. I wish to work with you. As a man..."

     Relax...
     Relax, hell, you don't know...

     Al'alim taps away the brown and grey ash, "I do not think you sound foolish. Young," he grins at your call on that. "Not yet lacking hope in self or in others. If you can hold onto such feelings, then... who knows," another shrug, "...you may be the better philosopher..."

      "Plucked flowers die, unless transplanted," he murmurs, quoting something he once was told, when still in Saarbrucken.

     "He said that it was important to remember for whom the work is created. Render the glory unto God which is God's; let no hubris of the artist interfere with the art. He believed himself damned ... but chose to serve that Creator nonetheless, damned or not. He was ... a product of an age I have never understood."

     Lost. He is so very lost. In a maze not of his own creation, not even of his own recognition; this is nowhere that he has been before. Not even with Johannes Arnaul, Saint-Protector of Saarbrucken; not anywhere. Perhaps he is nowhere at all.

     But this December, where water was expected (and by one particular visitor, actually anticipated) there is instead snow. And not just a dusting of snow. Several inches of snow hide the stones of the Piazza San Marco and icicles hang from the open mouths of St. Mark's golden lions.

He has taken them and meticulously cut them from their frames, pasted them into new positions with his brushes and his pastels.

I wonder, father, what you would say if you saw me now. I do not fast. Boys come to me and I feed from them when I am hungry. I use the red pools of their life to satisfy myself even as I do not deny myself their flesh for my other ... appetites. I find temporary satisfaction, and then I turn it all into my art.

     "At least the circus has changed fabrics," he murmurs dryly, then smiles. "Nice to see them staying so seasonal," he nods, as if serious.

     The Hapsburg influence, perhaps - perhaps that is where Hansl ought stand in this court. He is as out of place as ever, here - as out of place as he makes himself. There is an aloofness to him as he stands, the military precision of his bearing back in his spine, hands tucked to his sides or behind his back as he walks here.

     I am thinking of you, Ian. Of course, always of you. But I am also thinking of this young artist. Of his blood in my mouth instead of this brandy. I am terrible, I know. Mais oui, so terrible.

     Ah, Paris. Is it ever lovelier than when it is an escape, as from some prison, even if of one's own creation?

     And soon the Toreador are on what talents one may or may not have. Guild, artistes, or poseurs. The world's so drawn along such lines.

     "You are close to Il Dignitaro. There are those who would use that - use you. Or they would try to harm you, to get to him, or out of jealousy, frau. That is the way of our existence. I have been... trained well to note such, and avoid it."

     One fingertip taps on the table absently, the lone drummer of a vanished army. "If Il Dignitaro will permit, I will examine - however, some materials for initial examination will be required."

     The look on the German's face is one of discomfort, insufficiently masked by politeness. It is the expression of why are you telling me this combined with exactly how much trouble am I going to be in for now knowing this.

     Pastoral delights, indeed. Why, sir, do you mean 'country matters'? Why now, all of the sudden, Shakespeare? You are too much like the Dane, perhaps. Yes, sad over the loss of a father. That's it. And no uncle, not even Villon, can pull you from your mourning.

     Yes. Well. Nothing makes a better first impression than a pratfall.

     I should not have been surprised, perhaps. This is an extraordinary event. A revelation, a gathering, an exclusive. A social remembering, as we see who is not with us.