The Three Ouellets

[The International]

A long moment of silence passed in which the far off percussion of operating factories echoed throughout the city and served as ambient noise. Passing pedestrians only saw a kaleidoscope of multicolored rays coming from the streetlights. The two stealth ladies dwelled in the dark vacuum just beyond them. Lillian awaited her answer. “… Ludivine?”

“I’m thinking. “ She blurted out just as a local passed them. He jumped at the sound of a voice that had no body to it. His skin could have turned Raiaeran white. Ludivine poked her face into the light. Her eyebrows wrinkled as she attempted to find a sign. “Where’s Mom? We need to tell Vespasian. Come on.”

“Who was that man?” Lillian said as she followed Ludivine across the street. “I don’t remember seeing him before, and he looked weak, as though he’d been through something. Do you think he was-“

“Listen, bite size,” Ludivine abruptly halted in the street. She made sure to keep her voice down. “I’m an assassin, a seductress, and sometimes a thief. I’m not an information broker like my sister or a mastermind like my brother. When I have information I don’t try to make anything of it. I just relay it to someone like them. So when we go in there all we do is tell them exactly what we saw and heard. Nothing else. Got that?”

Lillian nodded bashfully and they started for the carriage once more. They entered through the black veil and sat across from a slouching Vespasian, who was cracking the curtain open to look through with his left hand, and holding up an orb of light with his right. He was supplying light to Maelle, who had a small sketchbook in her lap, in which she was inscribing an abstract design of feminine curves and floral shapes.

“That was quick.” Vespasian glanced at the two of them with a troubled look upon his face. “Maybe a little too quick.”

Lillian was surprisingly the first to speak up as she quoted the conversation between Esme and Ilyat word for word. Ludivine added what she could, but added that their mother wasn’t seen with them.

“You know what that sounds like?” Vespasian said as he looked to Maelle. “It sounds like this Ilyat knows about the transformation. ‘I look at picture, and next morning I am still self. I not change.’ Doesn’t that sound like someone who expects the benefits to you?”

“Yea, but it’s obvious he was Valinthe.” Maelle mumbled as she was mostly focused on her inscription. “Everything Dad was saying indicates that Ilyat has been gone somewhere for a long time and they had been working a long time to get him back.”

“Lu.” Vespasian sat up and practically stuck his head out of the opening. Even thought the townhome was dark, there was still movement inside. He could see where the light of the ever more dominating cerulean moon met the shadows of a moving figure. “You didn’t mention Mom. As far as we know she’s still in the safe house, right?”

“Right.”

“How about we go in there and ask her how old she is?” Vespasian said. Maelle dropped her pen, and Ludivine straightened up. Lillian was a smart girl. Stumbling across a plot to bring down Alerar wasn’t a coincidence, including her in the effort to stop it was risky, telling her that they were spies was pushing it, but what Vespasian just said was a roundabout way of informing Lillian of the most private family secret of them all. He glanced at the girls and rolled his eyes. “Oh please. We might as well tell her. She’s probably going to figure it all out by the time this is all over anyways.”

“Wonderful.” Ludivine said with a scowl. “Within a few hours a mere asset is induced as a friend worthy of such information by the baby of the family.”

“If you don’t feel comfortable relaying this information to me, I’ll gladly look the other way,” Lillian said from her corner of the carriage.

“You’re too intelligent. You couldn’t look the other way if you wanted to.” Vespasian glanced at his sisters, who were both staring him down with a razor sharp eye. “How else are we going to continue?”

A moment of silence dominated once again. Ludivine crossed her arms and dropped her head, allowing her sable locks to hide her face. That was her silent resignation from the situation. That way when the wrong decision was made she could at least escape partial blame. Maelle rubbed her temple and released a sigh of stress. Vespasian was right. There was no way of getting around it anymore. If Lillian was going to be an effective ally in this case, she needed to know more than what she knew.

As the eldest of the siblings, she decided to speak. “Our mother makes sketches for us that have transformative powers. They’re images of different races and ethnic groups throughout Althanas. All we have to do is look at them before we go to sleep, and when we wake up the next morning we are the person in the sketch. These transformations are not just skin deep. We change all the way to our core, and with that being said we take on the age of the person. One can fend off aging using these sketches to take them back to the age of the person in the sketch, thus allowing them to live longer than the oldest elves.”

“You ran into us at Ankhas while we were looking into the origins of our parents.” Vespasian took it from there. “Now if we look into the context of that conversation between Ilyat and our father, we could say that she was alive back when the Valinthe were around. Ilyat may have desired to be the beneficiary of her ability, which is limited to our mother’s loved ones. That’s a strong stipulation, because a person doesn’t have full control over whom they have love for, whether it be romantic or brotherly.

“So…” Lillian took a moment to process the information, probably not in a logical sense but in an emotional sense. “Your mother is more than seven thousand years old?”

The possibility wasn’t real until it was said. Ludivine emerged from her sable security blanket of hair, Maelle covered her mouth as her jaw dropped, and Vespasian dropped his head on the wall beside him. They all looked at Lillian, the purveyor of reality, no matter how unreal it felt.

“Seven thousand two hundred and forty three to be exact.” A familiar feminine voice came from outside the carriage. Alix Villeneuve was leaning against Vespasian’s side. She still managed to find a sarcastic twist to the epic situation. “I age fantastically well, don’t I? And you should guess your father’s age. Hint: I bagged me a younger man.”

“Ves!” Maelle hit his little brother in the shoulder. “You were supposed to be on the lookout. What the Hell?”

“You had him on the lookout? That was a mistake.” Ludivine said with the closest thing to a smirk on her face. “She was probably watching him while he was watching her. When he stopped watching, she moved. I do it to you guys all the time. I get it from her, even though I’m better at it.”

“My snot nose of a middle daughter is right, I’m afraid,” Alix budged her way into the dark carriage. “But we have more pressing matters. I need you three… you… four.”

“And here we thought you had everything under control.” Ludivine said with a sarcastic tone. She was learning from her mother.

“We did.”

“So you’re the government’s sleeper cell?” Vespasian said as he made room for his mother.

“We are, but there’s been an unforeseen turn of events. The enchanted diamonds were taken to several locations in the city where they’ve been used to bring back Ilyat’s clique.” The carriage was silent, a cue for her to elaborate. “The Valinthe built their lives around the unique ability of each individual, and often formed small teams of people who complimented each other called cliques. When applied to combat, a clique can be quite formidable. Ilyat, the man you watched leave with your father is Chieftain of all the Valinthe because his clique was the most dangerous of them all. They could easily take down a modern Aleraran unit, guns and all. The plan was to get all the Valinthe revolutionaries in one spot and plow them down with firearms, but that’s not going to happen now.”

“Let me guess.” Vespasian said as he slouched back. Almost immediately Alix grabbed him by his collar and forced him to sit up like a dutiful mother. He was twenty four years old and still felt like a child. “You gave your government contact the go and now there’s a scout following Ilyat wherever he goes, and since you’re a lowly Human, they’re not likely to hold off on the attack if you told them to.” Alix nodded. “So what are we going to do?”

“We need to intercept the rituals.” Lillian said with the utmost alarm. “Or at least stop the clique from reuniting.”

“That would be close to impossible, Ludivine Junior. Although the effort would be noble,” Alix made the effort to reach across the carriage to pat the librarian on the head. “I have no knowledge of the locations, and they’re probably complete already. Ilyat will be reunited with his clique within the hour.” The matriarch puckered her lips in contemplation. “I have one better though. The revolutionaries aren’t all heading to the ritual site until tomorrow. I say we head to the ritual site and face him with our own clique.”

“So that confirms it.” Lillian said with a confident bass in her voice that had never been heard before. “You’re Valinthe. How else would you know the location of the ritual site?”

“Smart.” Alix narrowed her hazel eyes as she nodded her head and folded her arms. “Are you sure you’re not one of my daughters? I’d be less motivated to kill you once this is all over if you were.”

Lillian straightened up in paranoia. Vespasian quickly alleviated the situation.

“She’s joking. She’s joking.” Vespasian said as he squeezed through. “I’ll drive. Mom, give me directions. In fact, why don’t you join me?”

“Why?” Alix said with an innocent look on her face. Vespasian shot a nasty look at her. She laughed as she began to move. “I was joking, wasn’t I?”