5-3
Two factors convened to make Blackpool’s garment district the single most vibrant and well-stocked in all of Scrapyard. First was that it was a port town, where travelers from every part of that despondent realm crossed through at some point or another. Second was that it was within Leedsrealm, whose tremendous factories, fed by local wool, Furati cotton, and vast supplies of Qinglong imported synthetics, were the source of nearly all of Scrapyard’s fresh clothing.
As this was where the cloth-merchants of Scrapyard went to gather their wares, clothing was available in every style. There was the local stuff, of course, stiff wool coats for men and elaborate piles of ruffling for women, but so too were there the lighter, more casual outfits worn in Occupied Topeka, and the even lighter, even more casual clothing worn in Furat. Then there were the stranger ones: Qinglong clothing and Kingdom Forest apparel were both fairly similar, possessing the same basic shapes as Furati clothing—shirts, trousers, skirts—but with a preponderance of decoration, odd strips of glowing or reflective material in the case of the former and large numbers of entirely-decorative belts in the case of the latter. The attire of the Halmahera Sea and the Gamrange, meanwhile, was mostly robe-based, squares of elaborately-decorated cloth that Vilena informed Gilead was meant to be held in place with pins and knots.
Only one small section resembled anything Gilead had known from his old life. A corner of one particular store was dedicated to what looked like mutated versions of the same dresses, tunics, and hosiery that had been Gilead’s habit during the few moments he was not in armor. When asked, Vilena explained it as such:
“Halmahera is a divided shard. What we’ve seen so far, that is how the natives dress, or at least those natives who have adapted the culture flowing in from Java; this is how the Dutch dress, those few VOC cutthroats left behind when the shard arrived here.”
“You wit much of these matters,” Gilead said, faintly awestruck.
Vilena’s shoulders rolled, a gesture whose implications made Gilead thank God that Juniper had repaired Vilena’s dress before leaving. “Politics has been my job for the last five years,” she said. “Which is why I can say that you are absolutely not wearing any of these.”
“I beg thy pardon, love? Why not?”
“Because dressing in Dutch fashion would be taking a side in the conflict,” Vilena’s voice was even, as hard as the surface of an anvil against which her lesson was being hammered. “There’s a decent chance that the ship we’re taking wouldn’t even let you on board, if the captain is anti-Dutch or trying to establish neutrality.”
Gilead’s disappointment momentarily overpowered his sense of reason. Ever since he had been given a new outfit by Ben Gibson, almost a month ago, he had had nothing but ill-fitting, unfashionable things to wear. And now he couldn’t be allowed to be dressed with anything that would remind of home?
He turned, storming off to the corner of the shop to stew for a while. Unfortunately, Vilena followed him, standing over him while he pressed his face into his knees.
“I’m very sorry,” she said. “But listen, Elaine, we can—”
“Callest me not by that name,” he hissed, glaring into Vilena’s dark eyes.
There was pity on her face. “Isn’t that what you chose for yourself, though? During the party.”
“Yes, and it was a choice made in error. ‘Elaine’ was my mother’s name.”
“Elaine Elevna,” Vilena said. “That’s a perfectly fine name.”
It was like Gilead had swallowed ice water, and now the cold was spreading out into his belly. He opened his mouth to explain who she was, but all that came out was halting, broken phrases.
He couldn’t bring himself to call his mother, she who had raised him in his father’s absence, an evil woman, though all the evidence pointed towards it. His father, after all, had never been the same after what she had done to him, an act so evil that even in his own thoughts Gilead dared not name it.
But so too had Elaine been the one to make him into a knight, to wring him of his childish weakness, to forge the unworked bloom of his youth into the greatest knight that Camelot had ever or would ever know. In the name of the Lord, was that not good? She was a good woman, but Gilead could hardly stomach to imagine her face, let alone to hear her name in reference to him.
“Then I shall not call you Elaine,” Vilena said, her voice tiptoeing around Gilead’s emotions.
“Thou might callest me Gilead. I’m a man, when all is said and done.”
At this, Vilena pouted. “What are we, coworkers? I may as well call you ‘comrade’. No, you deserve a pet name.” She bit at one of her knuckles, eyes narrowing as though coming up with such a pet name were the most challenging of puzzles.
“Lilya,” she finally said.
“Lilya?”
Hearing it from Gilead’s mouth must have been decisive, for Vilena seemed suddenly much more certain. “Lilya. You are my beloved Lilya.”
“That has the taste of a girl’s name about it,” Gilead muttered.
“No, no. Russian. These things do not translate; Alyosha, Fedya, Nika, these are all very manly names in my language.”
Vilena stuck out her arm and hefted Gilead back onto his feet. “Now, come, Lilya, I have an idea. If it is this style you want, then I think we can work with Kingdom attire; you talk like a Forester sometimes, so nobody will be asking questions!”
And so began an hour-long quest to put together an outfit, a quest which Vilena set herself to with incredible gusto. There was some kind of alchemy to it, a deep knowledge about which pieces went with which, what outcomes could be achieved with a given range of inputs.
“The basics came from when I was young,” Vilena explained when asked. “The girl who could do the best with what cloth we had supplied to us would be head and shoulders above the others in the games of social dominance. Then I became a whore, and making my bosom look as enticing as possible meant starvation or plenty. And when I found myself in money… every minute spent coordinating outfits was a minute I didn’t have to think about Ruthven’s other victims.”
Gilead also learned more about the Kingdom Forest, homeland of the angels that had overtaken Topeka, in that hour than he had in the whole of his time on Scrapyard up until then. Primarily he learned that panache was valued much over practicality. On a strict level, the strangely-cut fabrics and extraneous chains and belts did not actively hinder his movements, but they were quite inconvenient for rapid changes, as was necessary with Vilena wanting to try out every possible combination under the sun.
“It’s the same purpose as a slitted trouser or a heeled shoe,” Vilena explained. “It’s just for looking nice.”
Once or twice, Vilena found something that she claimed looked perfect, only for Gilead to strenuously object. Most notably was a pair of pants with heavy layers of belting around the thighs and hips, which Gilead could not stand, but Vilena said looked perfectly fine.
“There’s nothing unsightly in the front,” she proclaimed. “That’s what the belt is for, with the decorative armored piece, you see?”
“It gives the sensation of being halfway undressed,” Gilead moaned. “Is there anything here that resembles a proper doublet?”
On and on and on it went, to the point where Gilead was absolutely sure that Qi Zhen and Sara had finished their own business and retired to the hotel already. It felt faintly embarrassing, to be fretted over in such a manner. Not even Elaine had paid so much mind to his appearance. By the time Vilena was satisfied, a huge pile of clothes thrown over her shoulder, Gilead was mentally—and physically, to an extent—exhausted.
“There’s just one more thing I wanted you to take a look at,” Vilena said.
“Yes, buy it, whatever it is, I am sore fatigued and in an evil mood. If I could spend a fortnight as a damned toad just to stint to think of my own flesh and the accursed fabric that covers its shame, I would.”
Vilena grinned, baring her needle fangs. “Are you sure? They have it on a mannequin. I wouldn’t want to get you anything you disapproved of…”
“Very well,” Gilead said. “Take me, woman.”
The item in question was at the far end of that particular store, sitting atop a wire-frame, headless and limbless, yet perfectly shaped to convey the body intended to wear such an item. Gilead didn’t believe it, at first, but Vilena was quite clear about which one she spoke of.
Gilead had seen such an outfit before, though only in brief glimpses, at Ruthven’s estate. Clad in black and white, the women who kept it all clean, who made the food, who welcomed guests, were experts in the art of keeping out of sight. But Gilead had taken note of them regardless, and of their distinctive uniforms. The same uniform which Vilena now wished to purchase for him.
“Why such a low-class dress, though? If thou art to unman me.”
Vilena’s grin grew wider and wider, threatening to swallow Gilead whole. “Because, Lilya, we can’t have you getting too big of a head. Arrogance, the perception of oneself as better, leads only to cruelty. And we can’t have that.”
Gilead swallowed, his throat rapidly gumming up as he looked back at the maid’s dress. Its simplicity, only two colors. Its femininity, there in spite of its practical purpose. The high collar, the frilly lace.
There was no ambiguity to this: travesty was a sin, baeddelism of the highest caliber. To dress as a woman for the sake of an infiltration, that was in the service of a greater good, but this? For what end? Pleasure? Gilead’s own pleasure, a butterfly locked deep within the cocoon of his very marrow, sending shocks across his skin as it thrashed to be set free? Christ himself would look with pity and scorn upon so venial a decision.
“Yes,” Gilead whispered. “But speakest not of this.”
Vilena pulled Gilead tight, and kissed the nascent tears out of his downcast eyes. “Of course, Lilya. I would never.”
It was not, of course, the maid dress that Gilead was wearing as he and Vilena made their return to the hotel. Rather, he was wearing the Kingdom attire which she had selected for him, a combination of clothings that could not help but feel profoundly strange.
The trousers were almost hose-like in terms of the tightness, without any of the belting that Vilena had argued for so fervently (trying to add bulk to the hips, I would assume), though Gilead was dubious on how closely the material resembled leather. His largest sacrifice to her desires had been the jacket: with a ruff of white fur around the shoulders and several loose lengths of chain—not even having anything to wrap around, thus rendering them even more confusing—jingling off of where the rest of the fabric gave up, around waist-height. A trio of dagger-shapes, one on each sleeve and an enormous one on the back, raised some alarm, but Vilena had assured Gilead that this was the symbol of something called a “band”, nothing political.
At least Gilead finally had a shirt that was comfortably sized for a man of his stature. There was even some looseness to it, though not as much as in the jacket, meaning that it would not put him at risk in combat. This, Vilena explained, was a crucial part of Kingdom attire: thanks to something called “joinery”, much of it was meant to double as combat-wear. Somehow.
This was yet another in the growing list of sins in which Gilead had partaken. Vanity. To dress oneself in fineries and pretty things was to elevate oneself, to forget one’s fallen nature. True, King Arthur wore fineries, but he was a king, his performance for the sake of Camelot and Logres, peace through the loyalty that his handsome array might inspire! Who was Gilead dressing for?
Vilena, of course. The fact that it was she who had dressed him so was what gave Gilead the fortitude to continue to wear this strangeness. He allowed his thoughts to fade, to believe that he was a nameless man going for a stroll with his nameless wife. Gilead du Carbennic, the Knight of the Grail, needn’t get involved.
That blissful dissociation lasted right up until the two of them arrived at the hotel room, and Gilead was confronted by the expressions of Sara and Qi Zhen. The former looked as though he’d walked in the room bare naked and with obscenities scrawled on his loins. The latter did something odd with their arms. Only Zahra looked even a little bit pleased by this development, though she stayed quiet about it.
“You know, Vilena,” Qi Zhen said, their tone half accusatory and half dampened by the grinning comradery of being on the same side of an old joke, “you should have told us that you were planning on reinstating Gilead to his ancestral throne as Graf von Kuntserven.”
Sara finally decided on a reaction, which was to groan and threaten to tear her own hair out. “Vilena! How much of our money did you spend on—”
“It wasn’t all that much!” Vilena replied, immediately raising her voice. The two women spiraled together, rapidly descending into an all-out shouting match.
“Well no matter how much, it was too much! You couldn’t have bought something, I don’t know—?”
“It’s an investment! Now that we no longer have the services of a magic seamstress fairy, we need to be efficient with—”
“Efficient! You call dressing him up like a Kingdom guitaromancer efficient! God and all his Saints, I’m terrified to see what you consider extravagant!”
“He even told me last night that none of his normal clothes fit, he’s been here for less than a month and I thought it would be appropriate to—”
Gilead slipped off the jacket and collapsed onto one of the beds, embarrassment curdling in his chest. The worst part was, that wasn’t what he’d said to Vilena last night at all.
…
“So, I hadn’t thought to ask, but… you’re a Pretender now. One of us. How does it feel?”
It had been a day since Gilead had slain the three vampire brides, and the group was once more making camp along the trail to Blackpool. This time, at least, they had found a prepared campground, with some shelter against the increasingly-frequent rains. It was inside that hewn-together, wall-free hut that the group huddled, the conversation having shifted to the matter of Gilead’s Pretension.
No matter that he did not want to think about the poison in his blood. Sara was completely heedless.
“How does it feel?” he echoed. “Hollow. Gilead has died, and I am merely a shade, aping his memories.”
Nobody seemed to like him saying that.
“We touch something beyond ourselves when we become Pretenders,” Wesley said. “Did not Ezekiel avert his eyes before the Lord?”
“Thou thinkest that the Lord is fountainhead of this power?”
Wes’s attempt at a beatific expression fell instantly into a stony scowl. With a twitch of his eyes, he passed Vilena the baton of cheering Gilead up; she gladly took it.
“Have you tried turning back into a dragon since then? I’d love to see your other body, my dear.”
“I have not.”
With how strong his Pretension is,” Sara interjected, “I doubt he’ll have gathered the strength to be able to use it by now, especially after pushing the duration for as long as he did.”
“Perchance,” Gilead said, rolling his shoulders. “I feel its energy roiling at my edges, the tips of my fingers and the whites of my eyes.”
Sara was surprised, and she let it show.
“That’s… not impossible, but it would be exceptional. Then again, when have you ever been anything else...”
Gilead felt eyes like pinpricks on his body. “So it is,” he said, rising from his seat. “That I do not disrupt our lodgings, I shall test this supposition elsewhere.”
He walked out into the rain, letting his clothes be soaked through, and did not stop until he had reached a clearing well out of sight of the others. He knew it was the right place because Dindrane was there, her back leaning against a tree, clothing bone-dry.
He looked at her, and she looked at him. What she wanted was obvious; to turn what had been an excuse into reality. So Gilead went down onto one knee.
“First Pretense: I Am Subhuman.”
He burst, and when the last knight of Carbennic came back together, he was a dragon once more. Before, in the heat of battle, he had been forced to act on instinct, his whole attention focused on the vampires before him: but now he examined himself carefully, staring down at his talons, feeling the shape of his snout with his tongue. Suddenly, a gasp. He turned, heart racing, but immediately looked away: Vilena was there, and she was naked from head to toe.
“Vilena!”
“My dress is sheer enough that you’d be seeing the same if I had it on, with this rain. At least this way my clothes are spared.”
“It is not right. I should not see what I have seen until our wedding day.”
Vilena tisked at him. “We really do need to train you out of such old fashioned—are those grails?”
“What?”
“Down your sides.”
Gilead twisted over himself, an easy feat with his long neck and sinuous body, and was alarmed to discover that Vilena was right. Though most of him was a deep violet, down both flanks were twin rows of white markings, each one shaped for all the world like a profile of the grail.
“Is it comfortable, twisting over yourself?” Vilena said. She was coming closer, though Gilead still dared not look upon her.
“Quite,” he said.
“And how does it feel, in general?” Vilena was even closer, close enough that she could lower her voice and still be heard. “Wearing this new flesh, so distinct from what came before?”
No matter how much he wished for consistency, Gilead could not maintain his sour attitude. After much thought, he found the words for it.
“It has the sensation of… shedding an ill-fitting shirt, in favor of one made with good art.”
…
That, not any complaint about his literal shirts, had been what he had said. And the worst part was that he stood by it.