"We will wait here and keep an eye on the Grand Duke," Marceline explained. After the dancing had wound down and they had all split off to accomplish their respective tasks, Marceline found a spot within eyeshot of Gaspard in order to monitor him. Fortunately, it appeared he had not been notified yet of the attempted framing, as he wore the same sour disposition Cyrus and she had first found him in. It was not any worse, at least. She had picked a location that would give them a good line of sight to the Duke, but also keep them out of his notice, unless he knew to specifically look for them, which, soon enough, he would have more pressing matters to attend to than looking in their general direction.
It did not take long. "Marcy, over there," Michaël said quietly and gestured with his eyes. Following his gaze, Marceline saw who most likely was an attendant of Gaspard's bearing making a beeline toward the Grand Duke with a purpose in his gait and an urgency in his shoulders. "Must have waited until the dancing concluded," Michaël surmised and Marceline agreed. They watched as Gaspard's bodyguard, Henri, let the man pass by without issue, and then as the attendant leaned over to whisper the news into the Duke's ear. Even beneath the mask, Gaspard's outrage was easily noticed. Marceline frowned and quietly sighed, disappointed in the Duke for being so easy to read.
His lack of tact made their part easier though, and she was thankful enough for that. Gaspard ordered something tersely to both the attendant and Henri, before making his way across the ballroom and toward the exit, bodyguard in tow. "Now's our chance," she said, glancing between them.
“Oh yes. Very inconspicuous, the lot of us." Cyrus glanced at Vesryn on his left and Khari on his right, then back at Marceline and Michaël, sighing slightly. “Let's follow at a distance, perhaps."
Khari shrugged. “I mean, we're okay for now. They foyer's still a public location." Albeit one with many fewer people in it now that the ballroom proper had become more crowded. They stuck to the edges of the room, keeping their pace unhurried so as to avoid looking too obviously like they had somewhere in particular to be. There just wasn't anything unobtrusive about any of them, though, so how well they went beneath notice was debatable at best.
The foyer had significantly fewer occupants; they were able to use the massive lion statues and other architectural flourishes to mask their presences to some degree, though the hope was to go unnoticed more than to be truly hidden. Unfortunately, Gaspard hung a right, which led into one of the guest wings. If they followed him in there, even he was bound to notice—those weren't exactly large hallways.
In the front, Khari paused at the threshold, then grimaced. “That's gonna be a pain to fight in. Narrow and cramped, and nowhere to hide either." To say nothing of the lack of armor and preferred weaponry on all fronts. Still, it was clear enough that they had no choice. She leaned sideways to glance into the hallway one more time, then moved in, apparently expecting that the others would follow.
“I'll... watch the back, then." Cyrus gestured for the others to precede him.
By the time Marceline rounded the corner, Gaspard was already disappearing around the next. At a guess, he was headed for his own room in the Winter Palace, though why there instead of to the scene of the frame-up was unclear. If he'd wanted to see the scene for himself, he should have taken a left from the foyer, but that was clearly not his intent, or at least not yet.
Moving carefully and as quietly as they could manage, they maintained a safe following distance. Or what had seemed like one. Unfortunately, no sooner had they turned the third time than they came face-to-face with Gaspard. He'd drawn a knife from somewhere, the tip of it now resting only a few inches from Khari's nose. She didn't move, though she looked like she was trying to decide if she wanted to chance it.
"So it was you, then. I should have known something was off when the lot of you appeared here. What interest could you possibly have in the governance of this country, save to place your ally on a throne he does not have a right to?" He spoke low, words heavy with disgust. It thickened his accent considerably.
"None, save that our country finally sees a swift end to this war you and the Empress forced upon us," Marceline said, throwing his disgust back into his face. Her lips were turned into a deep frown as she silently cursed themselves for getting caught, though there was not much they could do about it now. "You only weaken yourselves while allowing Corypheus's position to grow stronger. He would see us all dead, and our country in ruins."
"And what is your point?" Gaspard scowled at them, but his hand was steady. "I have nothing to do with that. But you, oh you are willing to frame me for murder just to have your way? I would march against Corypheus just as soon as a lily-hearted boy raised with the silverest of spoons."
Whatever the best response to that might have been, there turned out to be no time for it. A soft whistle reached Marceline's ears; a moment later, Gaspard jerked forward, taking half a step to steady himself. The way he turned slightly made it clear that he'd just been shot, but the arrow seemed to have missed its mark by a few inches: it was embedded in the meat of his deltoid muscle rather than the spinal column at the nape of his neck less than a hand-span away.
The inches made a lot of difference, however. Whatever Marceline or anyone else thought of him, Gaspard was a chevalier, and he dealt with pain like one, sucking in a sharp breath and turning. Apparently he'd decided he was mistaken, or at least that the unseen threat was the one to face first, though he did not put his back to them. Instead, he reached back with his free arm and snapped the arrow off halfway down the shaft, leaving the front part in his body for the moment, then strafed sideways along the wall.
"Merde," he hissed, scanning the hallway for the assassin's likely location. "My cousin is as much a coward as ever. Show yourself, rat!"
"The rat is fleeing, I'm afraid," Vesryn said, taking off down the hall. Apparently he'd caught sight of movement, at least before it took off around a corner and out of sight. The elf looked back briefly as he ran. "Make sure no one else shoots him!"
He shortened his steps into little chops as he reached the corner, drawing a small knife from his bracer and flipping the blade around in his hand. Pulling up at the corner, he hurled it end over end down the hall. Vesryn had never been known to utilize any number of small-weapon attacks like that in any previous engagements, but despite that it seemed the blade flew more or less truly. A thud followed; it sounded more like someone crashing into the wall than losing their feet, like an impact with plaster instead of carpet or stone.
“Not to add to the excitement here, but we have more company." From behind the rest of them, Cyrus drew a knife from each of his boots, taking an ordinary grip on one of them and a reverse on the other. He was still near the corner they'd just turned, and put his back to the wall on their side just in time for a glistening ice dagger to whistle past. “They seem to be Venatori."
“Finally. Something to do." Khari only drew one knife, but apparently the word Venatori was more than enough incentive to send her charging around the corner and towards them. She disappeared from sight, but a few more bits of spellwork collided with the wall immediately after. At least that meant they hadn't collided with her.
Michaël sighed loudly and tossed his head back to Marceline. "Keep the Grand Duke safe, I'll go help her," he stated before rolling his shoulders and taking off after her. He didn't need daggers in order to be dangerous, though he was certainly no Leon. He stutter-stepped to dodge a spell before he too slipped around the corner behind it, adding even more chaos in the hall. She followed him to the corner, and pressed up against the wall beside Cyrus and drew a dagger from one of her sleeves.
Marceline shook her head before glancing back to Gaspard. "I think more people than just the Empress want you dead, your Highness," she stated.
"As always," he replied flatly. He started around the corner, clearly not inclined to wait around for his would-be killers to come to him. He brushed off Marceline's attempt to stop him, and so she was forced to follow instead.
The hallway was more or less chaos. Khari had made it about halfway down, to the main part of the Venatori line, but others had swarmed behind her, some of them engaging Michaël. Several broke off to make a run for Gaspard upon spotting him. He met the first one with his knife, stabbing the woman in the eye before her shortsword could do any more than graze his arm. He swiftly picked it up, throwing the knife into another's chest cavity and shifting the sturdier shortsword to his right hand. He seemed to be having trouble moving his left too much, probably because of the arrow.
Further up, Khari had found herself surrounded. Her knife was already red with Venatori blood, but there were quite a lot of them crowding her into a small space, against the far wall. Baring her teeth, she lunged sideways, her hands closing over what looked like a Towers Age Nevarran urn. When it cracked over the head of the nearest mage, it no longer looked like anything but shards of ceramic and a pathetic bit of dust drifting towards the ground.
The mage reeled, giving Khari enough room to plant her back against the wall and shove him away from her with both legs, dress and all. He slammed against the wall opposite, his head snapping back onto the corner of an elaborate picture frame, and fell to the ground, leaving a red smear behind. She cut down the next with a pivot and a slash, spattering the entire front of her bodice with more red, dull against the garment's forest-green.
Cyrus's first and second knives both found the back of a rogue trying to flank Michaël. With a heave, he swung the still-alive Venatori around to intercept a hastily-thrown fireball, ducking down behind his living shield and then casting the charred corpse off his blades with a foot. “Fireballs in a hallway." His voice was an irritated mutter, just loud enough for Marceline to catch the gist over the general noise. “Going to kill everyone with aim like that, never mind Gaspard."
Marceline noticed the sluggishness Gaspard moved with his left, and chose to shore up that side of his defense, plastering herself to his weaker side. She needn't wait long before a Venatori attempted to exploit it. She took a step away from his side to intercept, her thin dagger streaking forward to embed in his chest. Instead of that, however, he was quick enough to brush the dagger aside with his shortsword. As planned, however, as she had used the attack as a distraction to draw a second knife from inside her corset, and that one saw no resistance as it punched through his chest. With the threat dealt with, she took a step backward and retook her position on Gaspard's weakened flank.
She glanced up ahead to see Michaël forcibly snatch a Venatori by the throat, and slam him against the nearest wall before delivering a pair of heavy punches to the midsection. He glanced up to see a mage preparing a spell, but managed to drag the one in his hand to the front to take a ice spike to the back, before bodily throwing him down the hall. "I think that works for them too," he answered Cyrus, dodging the next individual.
The tight quarters made things tricky, but it was quite clear that the Venatori were no more accustomed to it than they were, and had indeed likely met a much more powerful resistance than they were expecting. Though a few more wounds went around, it didn't take more than five minutes of pitched battle in the hallway before the assailants were dead and the Inquisition—as well as Gaspard—were still standing.
The Grand Duke sheathed his knife, sliding the whole thing into his belt. Apparently, he was no longer concerned with the prohibition on such things. Maybe that made sense. "The assassin. Where is he?" His tone suggested restraint, but how long it would hold was hard to say. The bodies and blood stains in the hall certainly didn't faze him. No doubt he'd seen much worse before, and likely quite recently.
"She... is right here," Vesryn appeared from around the corner, breathing heavily and carrying with him the smaller form of the bard that had loosed the arrow still remaining in Gaspard's back. He carried her bow in hand, the other carrying the unmoving form of the assassin. "Out cold, but alive for the moment." It appeared as though his knife had found her lower left side on her back, a wound which bled freely now since Vesryn had removed it. She also bled from a head wound, where he had presumably struck her in order to incapacitate her.
Dumping the body at Gaspard's feet, Vesryn took a few seconds to catch his breath, surveying the destruction and violence covering the hallway. "It seems... I missed the dance here."
Gaspard grunted, crouching and patting down the Bard's pockets. "Of course," he muttered. "Aurelie's not stupid enough to let them take their masks with them." Apparently that had been what he was looking for. Clearly deciding it didn't matter, he spared the lot of them a nod, almost but not quite begrudgingly. "I apologize for accusing you," he said. But that was all he said—at least to them—before he turned, making his way back down the hall in the direction he'd come from.
"My cousin is going to pay for this."
Marceline spared one last glance behind them to the corpses of the Venatori still warm on the ground. She sighed and shook her head before she turned toward her husband. "Micky, can you please help Vesryn carry the bard? We should follow the Grand Duke with haste," she explained, before following her own advice.
It did not take long. "Marcy, over there," Michaël said quietly and gestured with his eyes. Following his gaze, Marceline saw who most likely was an attendant of Gaspard's bearing making a beeline toward the Grand Duke with a purpose in his gait and an urgency in his shoulders. "Must have waited until the dancing concluded," Michaël surmised and Marceline agreed. They watched as Gaspard's bodyguard, Henri, let the man pass by without issue, and then as the attendant leaned over to whisper the news into the Duke's ear. Even beneath the mask, Gaspard's outrage was easily noticed. Marceline frowned and quietly sighed, disappointed in the Duke for being so easy to read.
His lack of tact made their part easier though, and she was thankful enough for that. Gaspard ordered something tersely to both the attendant and Henri, before making his way across the ballroom and toward the exit, bodyguard in tow. "Now's our chance," she said, glancing between them.
“Oh yes. Very inconspicuous, the lot of us." Cyrus glanced at Vesryn on his left and Khari on his right, then back at Marceline and Michaël, sighing slightly. “Let's follow at a distance, perhaps."
Khari shrugged. “I mean, we're okay for now. They foyer's still a public location." Albeit one with many fewer people in it now that the ballroom proper had become more crowded. They stuck to the edges of the room, keeping their pace unhurried so as to avoid looking too obviously like they had somewhere in particular to be. There just wasn't anything unobtrusive about any of them, though, so how well they went beneath notice was debatable at best.
The foyer had significantly fewer occupants; they were able to use the massive lion statues and other architectural flourishes to mask their presences to some degree, though the hope was to go unnoticed more than to be truly hidden. Unfortunately, Gaspard hung a right, which led into one of the guest wings. If they followed him in there, even he was bound to notice—those weren't exactly large hallways.
In the front, Khari paused at the threshold, then grimaced. “That's gonna be a pain to fight in. Narrow and cramped, and nowhere to hide either." To say nothing of the lack of armor and preferred weaponry on all fronts. Still, it was clear enough that they had no choice. She leaned sideways to glance into the hallway one more time, then moved in, apparently expecting that the others would follow.
“I'll... watch the back, then." Cyrus gestured for the others to precede him.
By the time Marceline rounded the corner, Gaspard was already disappearing around the next. At a guess, he was headed for his own room in the Winter Palace, though why there instead of to the scene of the frame-up was unclear. If he'd wanted to see the scene for himself, he should have taken a left from the foyer, but that was clearly not his intent, or at least not yet.
Moving carefully and as quietly as they could manage, they maintained a safe following distance. Or what had seemed like one. Unfortunately, no sooner had they turned the third time than they came face-to-face with Gaspard. He'd drawn a knife from somewhere, the tip of it now resting only a few inches from Khari's nose. She didn't move, though she looked like she was trying to decide if she wanted to chance it.
"So it was you, then. I should have known something was off when the lot of you appeared here. What interest could you possibly have in the governance of this country, save to place your ally on a throne he does not have a right to?" He spoke low, words heavy with disgust. It thickened his accent considerably.
"None, save that our country finally sees a swift end to this war you and the Empress forced upon us," Marceline said, throwing his disgust back into his face. Her lips were turned into a deep frown as she silently cursed themselves for getting caught, though there was not much they could do about it now. "You only weaken yourselves while allowing Corypheus's position to grow stronger. He would see us all dead, and our country in ruins."
"And what is your point?" Gaspard scowled at them, but his hand was steady. "I have nothing to do with that. But you, oh you are willing to frame me for murder just to have your way? I would march against Corypheus just as soon as a lily-hearted boy raised with the silverest of spoons."
Whatever the best response to that might have been, there turned out to be no time for it. A soft whistle reached Marceline's ears; a moment later, Gaspard jerked forward, taking half a step to steady himself. The way he turned slightly made it clear that he'd just been shot, but the arrow seemed to have missed its mark by a few inches: it was embedded in the meat of his deltoid muscle rather than the spinal column at the nape of his neck less than a hand-span away.
The inches made a lot of difference, however. Whatever Marceline or anyone else thought of him, Gaspard was a chevalier, and he dealt with pain like one, sucking in a sharp breath and turning. Apparently he'd decided he was mistaken, or at least that the unseen threat was the one to face first, though he did not put his back to them. Instead, he reached back with his free arm and snapped the arrow off halfway down the shaft, leaving the front part in his body for the moment, then strafed sideways along the wall.
"Merde," he hissed, scanning the hallway for the assassin's likely location. "My cousin is as much a coward as ever. Show yourself, rat!"
"The rat is fleeing, I'm afraid," Vesryn said, taking off down the hall. Apparently he'd caught sight of movement, at least before it took off around a corner and out of sight. The elf looked back briefly as he ran. "Make sure no one else shoots him!"
He shortened his steps into little chops as he reached the corner, drawing a small knife from his bracer and flipping the blade around in his hand. Pulling up at the corner, he hurled it end over end down the hall. Vesryn had never been known to utilize any number of small-weapon attacks like that in any previous engagements, but despite that it seemed the blade flew more or less truly. A thud followed; it sounded more like someone crashing into the wall than losing their feet, like an impact with plaster instead of carpet or stone.
“Not to add to the excitement here, but we have more company." From behind the rest of them, Cyrus drew a knife from each of his boots, taking an ordinary grip on one of them and a reverse on the other. He was still near the corner they'd just turned, and put his back to the wall on their side just in time for a glistening ice dagger to whistle past. “They seem to be Venatori."
“Finally. Something to do." Khari only drew one knife, but apparently the word Venatori was more than enough incentive to send her charging around the corner and towards them. She disappeared from sight, but a few more bits of spellwork collided with the wall immediately after. At least that meant they hadn't collided with her.
Michaël sighed loudly and tossed his head back to Marceline. "Keep the Grand Duke safe, I'll go help her," he stated before rolling his shoulders and taking off after her. He didn't need daggers in order to be dangerous, though he was certainly no Leon. He stutter-stepped to dodge a spell before he too slipped around the corner behind it, adding even more chaos in the hall. She followed him to the corner, and pressed up against the wall beside Cyrus and drew a dagger from one of her sleeves.
Marceline shook her head before glancing back to Gaspard. "I think more people than just the Empress want you dead, your Highness," she stated.
"As always," he replied flatly. He started around the corner, clearly not inclined to wait around for his would-be killers to come to him. He brushed off Marceline's attempt to stop him, and so she was forced to follow instead.
The hallway was more or less chaos. Khari had made it about halfway down, to the main part of the Venatori line, but others had swarmed behind her, some of them engaging Michaël. Several broke off to make a run for Gaspard upon spotting him. He met the first one with his knife, stabbing the woman in the eye before her shortsword could do any more than graze his arm. He swiftly picked it up, throwing the knife into another's chest cavity and shifting the sturdier shortsword to his right hand. He seemed to be having trouble moving his left too much, probably because of the arrow.
Further up, Khari had found herself surrounded. Her knife was already red with Venatori blood, but there were quite a lot of them crowding her into a small space, against the far wall. Baring her teeth, she lunged sideways, her hands closing over what looked like a Towers Age Nevarran urn. When it cracked over the head of the nearest mage, it no longer looked like anything but shards of ceramic and a pathetic bit of dust drifting towards the ground.
The mage reeled, giving Khari enough room to plant her back against the wall and shove him away from her with both legs, dress and all. He slammed against the wall opposite, his head snapping back onto the corner of an elaborate picture frame, and fell to the ground, leaving a red smear behind. She cut down the next with a pivot and a slash, spattering the entire front of her bodice with more red, dull against the garment's forest-green.
Cyrus's first and second knives both found the back of a rogue trying to flank Michaël. With a heave, he swung the still-alive Venatori around to intercept a hastily-thrown fireball, ducking down behind his living shield and then casting the charred corpse off his blades with a foot. “Fireballs in a hallway." His voice was an irritated mutter, just loud enough for Marceline to catch the gist over the general noise. “Going to kill everyone with aim like that, never mind Gaspard."
Marceline noticed the sluggishness Gaspard moved with his left, and chose to shore up that side of his defense, plastering herself to his weaker side. She needn't wait long before a Venatori attempted to exploit it. She took a step away from his side to intercept, her thin dagger streaking forward to embed in his chest. Instead of that, however, he was quick enough to brush the dagger aside with his shortsword. As planned, however, as she had used the attack as a distraction to draw a second knife from inside her corset, and that one saw no resistance as it punched through his chest. With the threat dealt with, she took a step backward and retook her position on Gaspard's weakened flank.
She glanced up ahead to see Michaël forcibly snatch a Venatori by the throat, and slam him against the nearest wall before delivering a pair of heavy punches to the midsection. He glanced up to see a mage preparing a spell, but managed to drag the one in his hand to the front to take a ice spike to the back, before bodily throwing him down the hall. "I think that works for them too," he answered Cyrus, dodging the next individual.
The tight quarters made things tricky, but it was quite clear that the Venatori were no more accustomed to it than they were, and had indeed likely met a much more powerful resistance than they were expecting. Though a few more wounds went around, it didn't take more than five minutes of pitched battle in the hallway before the assailants were dead and the Inquisition—as well as Gaspard—were still standing.
The Grand Duke sheathed his knife, sliding the whole thing into his belt. Apparently, he was no longer concerned with the prohibition on such things. Maybe that made sense. "The assassin. Where is he?" His tone suggested restraint, but how long it would hold was hard to say. The bodies and blood stains in the hall certainly didn't faze him. No doubt he'd seen much worse before, and likely quite recently.
"She... is right here," Vesryn appeared from around the corner, breathing heavily and carrying with him the smaller form of the bard that had loosed the arrow still remaining in Gaspard's back. He carried her bow in hand, the other carrying the unmoving form of the assassin. "Out cold, but alive for the moment." It appeared as though his knife had found her lower left side on her back, a wound which bled freely now since Vesryn had removed it. She also bled from a head wound, where he had presumably struck her in order to incapacitate her.
Dumping the body at Gaspard's feet, Vesryn took a few seconds to catch his breath, surveying the destruction and violence covering the hallway. "It seems... I missed the dance here."
Gaspard grunted, crouching and patting down the Bard's pockets. "Of course," he muttered. "Aurelie's not stupid enough to let them take their masks with them." Apparently that had been what he was looking for. Clearly deciding it didn't matter, he spared the lot of them a nod, almost but not quite begrudgingly. "I apologize for accusing you," he said. But that was all he said—at least to them—before he turned, making his way back down the hall in the direction he'd come from.
"My cousin is going to pay for this."
Marceline spared one last glance behind them to the corpses of the Venatori still warm on the ground. She sighed and shook her head before she turned toward her husband. "Micky, can you please help Vesryn carry the bard? We should follow the Grand Duke with haste," she explained, before following her own advice.