Writing oneself into a corner.

[matt_doyle]

Apparently some authors do this deliberately, because it inspires them.

Man, am I not one of those guys.

So, in the following semi-spoilery excerpt for Chapter Ten of Hellion Prince, Damarhis offends one of his fellow partygoers in the process of trying to make a friendly gesture -- and then, being Damarhis, is determined into tricking them into accepting said gesture -- a seat at the table where a seance is about to be performed, when only a few free seats are available.  How would you go about tricking someone into volunteering/being 'randomly selected' for such a thing?  Damarhis and Ansira are obviously better at social engineering than I am.

 

 

“You're in my way,” a voice said from behind him, and Damarhis spun in surprise to see a small, dark figure uncurl from her perch on the window seat. Imadria, Baroneta of Wisps' End was nearly invisible in both movement and dress – a narrow-sleeved riding coat in black crinoline, trimmed with marten fur, over a damask-silk chemisette and skirt, alternating a dark, steely grey with a pale frost blue. The pattern was a common one – overlapping feathers, fabric ribbed to give them depth and texture, a design that implied piety and dedication to the Winged Ones. The collar and shoulders were embroidered with seed pearls, and the buttons on both coat and chemisette were hematite with a milled edge and a spiky tracery of starburst-lines – wisps, maybe, or mage-lanterns. Black leather boots and gloves – again, fur-trimmed – and a black cap and veil maintained the dark tone of the ensemble, while a muslin stock with frost-blue borders wrapped around her neck completed the look. For a party like this, the combination of formal sobriety and the rustic implications of the riding coat made it an unfortunate choice, for all that it looked very striking on her. Then, too, for a warm summer evening it had to be damnably hot, but she wasn't sweating. She was cool, composed, and, of course, irritated with him.

 

“Sorry,” he murmured, baffled into passivity while he contemplated the puzzle her appearance presented. The grey and blue were Lastlantern's colors, he thought, and maybe at a séance a funerary sentiment was appropriate – and it was natural enough that she was invited – everyone was – and that, given her unstylish dress, she'd find a corner where she could stay clear of Ansira's little court and their barbed tongues. None of that, though, explained the air of solemnity around her, the eager way she looked past him, or the apparent dampening of her spirits – from the girl who had come to berate him and threaten him when he was awaiting trial, he expected more fire. Certainly she didn't seem the type to shrink into hiding if her sartorial choices were ridiculed – so his explanation for why she was curled away in a window-seat wouldn't hold water after all. Nor why a fierce standoffish thing like her would even be interested in a party like this.

 

“What are you doing here?” he asked, finally, not certain in which sense he meant the question – but then, since he didn't think he had any of the answers, it didn't really matter which nuance she caught on and replied to. She looked at him sideways, wary and wide-eyed, but even so he could tell her attention was aimed elsewhere – the center of the room, where Vitiane swirled her spidery black skirts with impossible melodrama as she placed the candelabra and the bowl of wine that Ansira's cobbled-together seance ritual demanded.

 

“I was invited,” she said, in a tone that made it plain she was speaking to a child. The way she cocked her head as she spoke, though, bespoke caution, evasiveness. Did she know about her father's allegiance? Did she know about his? There was absolutely no way to ask her. “Everyone was invited,” he said instead. “I made sure of that. Why are you here?”

 

“Is this all about you, then?” she asked, one hand on her hip and turning to face him directly, broadsiding him with a sudden intent glare and a quiet, clipped voice that left no space for a reply. “I didn't realize. I'm sorry.” The set of her jaw was utterly unapologetic, and the words steely and flat, restraining something. “Congratulations on your acquittal. Good to see you participating in the Season. May I go now?” She took a step toward him, intending to brush past and foray back into the crowd, where she'd vanish almost immediately.

 

She might have made him feel like an idiot, Damarhis thought, but he wasn't one. He glanced at the window seat again. She was short enough that standing in the crowd she wouldn't be able to get a glimpse of the séance table, but back here, standing or maybe even kneeling up on the window seat, she should be over to see through the forest of formalwear and artfully twisted braids. She'd been upset that he was in her way. She was wearing sober, pious clothing and her family's heraldry, both in colors and symbols... Baron Lastlantern was a notorious rake, but if he hadn't always been unmarried...

 

“Are you hoping Ansira will call up your mother? Or did you just want a good look at the ritual so you could try it yourself?”

 

Imadria froze in mid-step, but she didn't look back at him. A pair of lordlings at the fringe of the crowd – untitled Cits, by their dress and manner, several generations removed from anyone who held land and more like merchants with magery – glanced over as Damarhis called after her, and seeing his glower, turned away again in an ostentatious hurry, still standing close enough to listen in. Damarhis grimaced, briefly, and walked over to Imadria, offering her his hand and drawing her back to the corner. He should just let her go. It wasn't as though he owed her any favors... but he owed her father, maybe, and at any rate she was the only person he knew who he might be able to discuss the service of the King with.

 

“I can get you a seat at the table if you like,” he told her, keeping his voice low. “And Ansira would see the appeal of calling up a shade who someone knew, rather than some long-dead legend who might well have ascended to the Winged Ones and have a complaint about their rest being disturbed.” Imadria remained utterly still, not looking at him. “Not that I'm expecting to actually hear from the Reaches of Glory or the Misty Hells once we call into them, but if you don't mind the spectacle and you'd like to speak to your mother-- “

 

“Not her,” Imadria said, and pulled back from him, glaring again, her lips pressed flat together and her cheeks utterly bloodless and drawn. “My brother. Avinmar. The crown doesn't owe my father any favors, Count Thrornrose – I'm Baroneta because my father used to have another heir. I'm not too young to inherit, either – I was invested on my majority, the same as you, but Turan law counts that as fifteen.” She was answering questions he'd asked her over a month ago. “There. Now you know all sorts of things that have nothing to do with you, just like the reason I'm here. Do you have any more insulting questions you'd like me to answer? Or would you like to condescend to me some more before you have me thrown out?”

 

Damarhis gaped. Imadria turned on her heel, a neat and economical motion, and he held out a hand to forestall her before she could stalk away – and found that hand gripped by another, tan and callused and bending his thumb back painfully so that he was maneuvered backward to the wall. Baronet Heatherdown, as unstylish as his escort in grey and violet, his coat brocaded and braided like a guardsman's rather than a noble's, stepped between Damarhis and Imadria, giving her the opportunity she needed to disappear.

 

“Baronet,” Damarhis grated, trying unsuccessfully to pull his hand free. He'd felt worse pain many a time, and pain alone without shame was unlikely to break his composure, but that was hardly a reason to resent it less. “The Regent isn't here to save you from your foolishness this time. Unhand me.”

 

He let magic spill recklessly into his last words, and ghastly echoes came from all around Heatherdown. It was a paltry, simple trick, but he'd expected it to have some effect at least, and it had none. The boy's face was pale under his tan, but implacable.

 

“Leave Imadria alone,” Heatherdown said, too loudly, so that faces in the crowd around them began to turn, realizing there was another spectacle for the evening. Damarhis gritted his teeth. He didn't need this right now. His reputation didn't need this. But it certainly didn't need to see him back down before this arrogant Centrist stripling, who had humiliated him once already. He could, he supposed, challenge him to a duel – but that would be a damnable distraction right now, when his attention needed to be focused on Chrysinthe's introduction. He needed to be rid of this before she saw, before Ansira saw him balked in her own house, surrounded by friends and admirers and everyone who he'd shocked and impressed at Court not two hours ago.

 

Damarhis reached out with his other hand and clamped it, in turn, on Heatherdown's wrist, squeezing the bones together as tightly as he could to try and make the boy's hand open. He leaned in so he could hiss in his ear. “Do you really want to waste your time with me, and leave her alone and upset here?”

 

Heatherdown let him go immediately, tried to pull his wrist free from Damarhis, and stumbled clumsily back when he was released without a tug-of-war. Typical, Damarhis thought, that someone who would resort to physical force so immediately would lack the subtlety to expect that. As the Baronet plunged into the crowd to look for Imadria, Damarhis allowed himself a small, pleased smile. He hadn't truly backed the boy down or done anything to deserve the opportunity to preen – but the people who were staring curiously at the end of this little scene certainly didn't know that. And disarming crude behavior with a quiet word no-one else could hear would look even more clever. The evening was going exactly as it should. As it had to.

 

When he was certain that no-one was staring curiously any longer, he slid back into the crowd, making his way toward the still-empty seance-table, and jostled a gauchely dressed lordling who was looking the other way, passing along the pain and soreness of his twisted thumb discreetly

 

“Ansira!” he called, as he passed the nervous front rank of the crowd, a moment too late to catch the last words of Belasen's introduction of Chrysinthe to the rest of the circle. Ansira turned to look at him, a minimalist gesture, all neck and no shoulder, chin tilted down and eyebrow raised in her best superior manner, as if he was an unwanted interruption of some sort and not the reason for the party. He grinned. “Brilliant as always, and I could almost blame you for upstaging me. Who's the scandal-monger, here, anyway?”

 

“I wouldn't dream of competing, darling Damarhis,” she said in a sardonic purr. “I may summon spirits from the Misty Hells, but you're a full-fledged demon, a veritable prince of hellions.”

 

Damarhis swept a bow. “At last,” he said, “I can renounce my aliases and claim my true title.” It was a common line in bad street theater productions, and not entirely without historical precedent. Belasen laughed, and Ansira spun Chrysinthe's light-crown back to hover over his head, and for a moment he felt that he was, indeed, a prince. First among equals of the rakes, the debutantes, the daring set of the Capitol; the Marginalists who would not be marginalized any more. He had the weight and complexity of his father's plans behind him, and the unthinkable magic and power of the Unfallen King, and, for the moment, the attention of Crown and Capitol fixed firmly upon him. The Hellion Prince.

 

“So,” he said, loud enough for the near fringes of the crowd to turn and face him. “Do we have a full table yet? Who else do we want to join us? M'lady Goldenlily?”

 

 

Chrysinthe demurred, smoothly and convincingly, and took a seat away from the table, on a stiff-backed couch where she would have a clear view, and a good opportunity to talk quietly with any of the more curious lords and ladies – at a safe remove from the scandal of necromancy. Damarhis exchanged a quick, amused glance with her, and thought with some satisfaction that he had not needed to coach her to that response in the least. They played off one another well, the same way he and Belasen or Vitiane sometimes could when they were in accord.

 

“We'll need two volunteers to fill the table,” Ansira said, turning away from Damarhis and raising her voice enough to cut through the chatter of the crowd.

 

“Just one,” Damarhis said, keeping his voice low and thinking quickly. The fierce little hawk-baroneta deserved her chance, whatever she thought of him personally.

 

“Whose party?” Ansira asked, sweetly, without moving her lips.

 

“I'll fall to my knees and beg,” he promised, rashly, knowing there was a decent chance she might make him do it – and that if she did, she'd all but certainly deny him anyway. It was Ansira's game, remaining just barely beyond the reach of any hopeful suitor or supplicant, teasing and promising and withholding.

 

“I've always wanted a Prince at my beck and call,” she answered, tilting her head consideringly. “Damn it all, Damarhis, will you just once ask me a question like I might deny it to you, and explain yourself when I play coy?”

 

He started a little at the vexation in her tone, and to hide his expression from the crowd, swept her a bow. She denied him all the time. What did she mean by saying...

 

“Your pardon, milady,” he said, glancing back up at her and hoping his face was properly, endearingly, mock-obsequious. “If you'd be kind enough to entertain my whims yet again? I ran afoul of an excellent candidate to fill one of our empty seats, but I fear she'll have to be lured into volunteering, and the less it has to do with me, the easier it will be to coax her.”

 

Ansira sighed. “Another problem you've set me? Another maiden who's failed to succumb to your charms? Tell me you have an idea how to bait the trap, at least, and I'll assent.”

 

“You wound me,” Damarhis said, so she wouldn't believe that she had. He opened his mouth again, prepared to claim that of course he had an idea... but if he did that, then Ansira would quite naturally ask him what it was. “No idea,” he said, making certain his voice was clear and innocent as he made the claim. “It was my intent to rely on your native genius as a temptress. I hadn't thought it through further than that.”

 

She frowned at him, and raised her eyebrows in an expression of finely-honed social paranoia. “You mean you have an idea, but I won't like it,” she corrected, flatly, and Damarhis admitted to himself that that certainly sounded plausible.