Perilous Partnership (20 page)

“Why would you?” Luc asked. “He‟s as much a part of this as you are.”

“Having someone firmly on my side, someone Céline will know how to relate to, could tip the balance of the meeting in favor of l‟Institut, both in a physical sense and in terms of recruiting vampires from the region.”

“When is the meeting?” Luc asked.

“Saturday night, and of course your partner is welcome as well.”

Luc laughed. “Something else to make Céline and Renaud uncomfortable?”

Something to take the focus off Raymond and the other vampires‟ need to pigeonhole him when Jean was not ready to apply a label to their relationship.

He could not say that with Raymond sitting right there, however, so he simply smiled and let the other two men draw their own conclusions.

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“I see no reason why we can‟t cause a little trouble in Burgundy this weekend. Shall Magali and I meet you here on Saturday?”

“It might be better to meet us at l‟ANS,” Raymond said. “Since we‟ll travel magically to get to the meeting, it might be easier to leave from there with the locator map. The meeting is at ten, so if you‟re there about quarter ‟til, that gives us plenty of time to get there.”

“We‟ll see you around nine forty-five on Saturday,” Luc said.

After he had left, Raymond smiled at his lover. “For having a home without an open-door policy, we‟ve had quite a few visitors in the past few weeks.”

“I wouldn‟t exactly call them visitors,” Jean said. “The chefs de la Cour may „visit‟, but it‟s never just a social call. Our lives are too wrapped up in le Jeu des Cours for that.”

“All the more reason for them to come to the office during office hours,”

Raymond said. “You shouldn‟t have to deal with them at home.”

“That would go over like a lead balloon,” Jean sighed. “One does not make a chef de la Cour wait, even if one is another chef de la Cour. If I went to Amiens or Dijon or Autun, I would approach them the same way they approached me. It‟s the nature of the game.”

Raymond rolled his eyes, annoyed once again at the sense of le Jeu des Cours running their lives. “I‟m more concerned about Saturday anyway. What‟s going to happen?”

“I have no idea,” Jean replied honestly. “We‟ll meet at St. Bénigne and listen to Renaud‟s demands. If they‟re within the bounds of reason, we‟ll negotiate. If they aren‟t, we‟ll be back to the stalemate we have now, because he has very little legitimacy in any of the claims he‟s made so far, and we already have a legal investment in the property, so there‟s not much he can do except try to challenge me.”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“Not on Saturday. He won‟t violate Céline‟s hospitality that way because he can‟t afford to lose the goodwill of the one chef de la Cour who is still speaking to him,” Jean explained. “If he decides to challenge me, it will be in a more public setting where his relationship with Céline is not at stake. He‟ll either come directly to Paris or he‟ll come to Dommartin.”

“Adèle‟s wards will keep him out of the abbey,” Raymond said.

“I know, but that would be perceived as hiding behind you if I used that as a way to refuse to meet his challenge,” Jean said, “and I can‟t allow that perception any more than you can allow the perception that you‟re at the beck and call of a vampire. If he comes to Dommartin to challenge me, I‟ll face him

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the same way I would face anyone who challenged me on my own territory, because Dommartin
is
my territory now, just as it is yours.”

THE phone in their apartment rang as they were getting dressed the next morning, surprising both men. Jean answered it, face growing serious as he listened to the conversation on the other end. “We‟ll be there as soon as we can.”

“What happened?” Raymond asked when Jean replaced the handset on the cradle and closed the dumbwaiter that kept the modern appliance from marring the historic perfection of their home.

“Thierry says a wall fell at l‟Institut. It was one he‟d labeled as being extremely dangerous, but it was in an area we weren‟t going to use right away.

He wants us to come take stock so we can decide if we need to cordon it off or try to stabilize what‟s left or look at our other options,” Jean said. “Nobody was there, so nobody‟s hurt, but I got the impression he‟s worried about the walls around the collapse being destabilized and causing more damage.”

“I‟ll call Marcel and Vincent,” Raymond said, picking up his phone. “Can you check with Luc and Magali to see if they‟ll come if we send someone to effect the displacement?”

Jean nodded. “He didn‟t seemed panicked, like there was any immediate danger, so I think we can afford to all meet at l‟ANS rather than you rushing there now.”

“The others can go directly to l‟Institut,” Raymond reminded him. “It‟s only you and me and Luc and Magali who have to make arrangements for our displacement spells.”

“They won‟t make any decisions until you get there,” Jean countered.

“Short of stopping another collapse, they‟ll defer to your authority, so there‟s no particular reason for them to rush out there either.”

Raymond realized Jean was right. It was still a shock to him sometimes, even after a year, that people waited on his decisions to act, particularly in something like this, where he was certain Thierry could make a more informed decision than he could. They made the phone calls and finished getting dressed quickly, Raymond eschewing his usual morning coffee in light of the urgency of Thierry‟s call. By the time they arrived at l‟ANS, everyone but Luc and Magali were already there. Fabienne announced that Mathieu, her partner, had gone to Amiens and would be back momentarily. She had barely finished speaking when first Magali, then Luc and Mathieu appeared next to them.

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“Thank you all for disrupting your schedules to be here,” Raymond said. “I don‟t know all the details of the collapse, but you‟re the best people to deal with whatever needs to be done. Shall we go down to Dommartin and see what we find? Magali, will our magical signatures be enough for you to follow, or would you like one of us to take you the first time?”

“I haven‟t lost my skills simply because we‟re no longer fighting a war,”

Magali replied.

Raymond smiled. “I didn‟t think you had, but I felt it polite to ask. Luc, will you do me the honor of traveling with me?”

The other chef de la Cour nodded, moving to Raymond‟s side as Jean took his place next to Marcel. The four wizards who were familiar with Dommartin cast their displacement spells, Magali following seconds later. They arrived in the center of the cloister. Thierry and Sebastien waited at the entrance to the main building.

“So what happened?” Raymond asked, leading the group over to the two men.

“We got here this morning to start working before the workmen arrived because it‟s easier to concentrate without the noise of their tools and found a section of the exterior wall had collapsed during the night,” Thierry explained.

“It was a bad section, but I didn‟t realize it was this bad. I went into town and talked to one of the men at the café, and he said there was a strong storm in the area last night. The wind may have caused it, especially if the rain weakened the foundation. Or it might have just reached the point of not holding together.”

“So what needs to happen now?” Raymond asked.

“Minimally or best-case?”

“Both,” Raymond replied.

“Minimally, the walls on either side of the collapse have to be stabilized so it doesn‟t continue to crumble on us,” Thierry said. “I don‟t know how Adèle did the wards, so I don‟t know if those will need to be redone or strengthened. I was more concerned about the safety of people working on site than about the overall security of the building, since at this point we don‟t have anyone or anything of value here.”

“And ideally?”

“Ideally we‟d repair the wall completely now. If we can‟t do that, we‟re limited to propping up the walls on either side, because with that kind of hole in the middle, all we could really do on the walls that remain would be a containment spell rather than a repair spell,” Thierry explained.

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“Can you actually do a complete repair on the wall with this kind of damage?” Eric asked. “I mean, that‟s not a minor repair. That‟s rebuilding the wall.”

“It would mean rebuilding the wall,” Thierry agreed, “which would require more wizards than we have here because we can‟t hold the stones in place and do the repairs at the same time, but ultimately it‟s what needs to be done, whether by magical or physical means.”

“So it becomes a question of priorities,” Raymond said. “Do we do it now before the wall collapses any more, or do we wait until we‟re ready to start the repairs on this section of the abbey?”

“I‟d vote for doing it now,” Thierry said, “but you knew that already.”

“If we get enough wizards to hold the stones in place, can the four of you, supplemented by the rest of us here, complete the repair portion of the undertaking all at once, or would this have to be a multi-stage project?”

Raymond asked.

Thierry looked at the hole and the surrounding wall critically. “It will be close. Sebastien and Luc will add quite a bit of power to my spells and to Magali‟s, but channeling magic through a wizard—even vampire-boosted magic—from outside isn‟t as effective for boosting power. If Marcel and Vincent had vampire partners, I wouldn‟t hesitate to say yes, but I‟m not sure we can supplement them enough to make it possible.”

“We could ask monsieur Lombard if—” Raymond began.

“He won‟t come,” Jean and Marcel interrupted at the same time.

“He came out of seclusion to help Orlando, but he‟s made it very clear since then that he has no intention of being dragged into the affairs of the wider world,” Marcel continued. “It would be disrespectful even to ask. Whatever I can do to help, I will, but I will do it on my own.”

“All right, the first thing to do is check the wards,” Raymond decided, “and then to make this area as safe as possible, since there will be workmen arriving to work on the interior renovations. Once we‟ve accomplished that, we‟ll see what we can do about getting enough wizards out here to work on more serious repairs in this area. I think we should also strengthen the wards around other areas that are dangerous to make sure no one stumbles into those sections by accident.”

“I can check the wards,” Eric offered. “Adèle did them, right?” Raymond nodded. “Good. She and I worked together fairly extensively before the war. I should still be able to tinker with them without disrupting the magical signature too much, at least until she can come and reinforce them herself.”

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“If you‟ll do that, Marcel, Magali, and Vincent can work on securing things here while Thierry and I take care of things inside, since we‟re most familiar with the layout of the abbey,” Raymond proposed. “Once that‟s done, we‟ll see where we are and decide if we‟re going to try to repair this completely today or wait a few days.”

“If it makes a difference,” Luc interrupted, “Magali and I were free today, but I have Cour business to attend to over most of the next week, so it would be the middle of next week or even the following weekend before we would be free to return. I‟m trying to rearrange my schedule so we‟ll be free to come and stay for a block of time.”

“Then we will do our best to finish today,” Raymond decided. “Let‟s get started so we can get finished.”

“MAKE a note in my schedule, please,” Raymond asked Fabienne when they returned to l‟ANS later that evening. “I‟ll be in a meeting on Saturday evening from nine thirty for an unspecified length of time.”

“What meeting are you attending at that time on a Saturday night?”

Fabienne asked, opening Raymond‟s calendar and marking the time slot as occupied.

“I‟m going with Jean to a meeting with several other chefs de la Cour in Dijon,” Raymond replied.

“You‟re doing what?” Fabienne asked, the pen clattering to the desk as she spun her chair around to gape at Raymond.

“I‟m going with Jean to Dijon while he meets with the chefs de la Cour from Dijon and Autun,” Raymond repeated, not at all sure how to explain Fabienne‟s reaction. “Luc Cabalet from Amiens is going as well, and his partner, I believe.”

Fabienne shook his head. “You can‟t go a meeting like that. You aren‟t a vampire!”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Raymond asked. “They‟re meeting because of l‟Institut. It involves me.”

“It doesn‟t involve you,” Fabienne disagreed. “Nothing involving the chefs de la Cour involves anyone but them, unless maybe if one of them has a Consort.
I
wouldn‟t belong there. Orlando wouldn‟t. No one but the chefs de la Cour and their Consorts. The last time I checked, Jean hadn‟t summoned the Cour to declare you his Consort.”

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“Of course he hasn‟t,” Raymond said. “I‟m president of l‟ANS. I wouldn‟t be able to do my job here if that were public knowledge. I‟d have no credibility.”

“Which is why you can‟t go with him on Saturday,” Fabienne said. “You‟re a complete wild card. The moment you walk into that meeting, you put Jean at a disadvantage.”

“Then why did he tell Luc to bring Magali to the meeting as well?”