KINGSMAN

II

MS. WEBB'S EXTRAVAGANZA COULD BE DESCRIBED IN THREE WORDS:

Lavish. Decadent. Unearthly.

Only the best attended. Every hall was full of people crafted from marble and ivory, glittering underneath crystal chandeliers and drinking flutes of ambrosia. Draped in silver and gold and statuesquely perfect. Gracious smiles full of pearly teeth and bright, gemstone eyes. Gods descended from the heavens, stepping out of sleek luxury cars, to grace lowly mortals with their mere presence.

Sylvi caught snatches of it as she wove amongst the divine, spinning and twisting as if she too were a piece of the music box. Though while they danced, she and those like her made up the parts that weren't meant to be seen. For fairytales are not meant to be manufactured. 

Staff bustled though all made no sound as they moved around the house. Messages were conveyed by a tap on the shoulder when they passed or a note slipped into the cuff of a dress shirt while the guests laughed and picked cocktail shrimp off of floating platters. The faces of the servers were unimportant and blurred. Sylvi was one such faceless, nameless being, carrying tiny glass-like like hors de'oeuvres with a French-sounding name she hadn't bothered to fully learn. It wasn't like she was eating them.

One man dressed in a suit with an Armani logo raised an arm and stopped her in her tracks. He looked down at the food and then, he looked through her, and picked up one of the glass-like desserts. He peered at it, turning it over so it glittered, caught in the occasional knife of gracious light, sugary and delicate.

"What are these?"

She kept her polite eye contact while simultaneously being careful to never meet his eyes fully. "Sugar Glass, sir. Imported by Ms. Webb." A lie, they'd been made days before, the kitchen staff had whispered about the work put into it and how ungrateful Ms. Webb had been but it wasn't like the man would fact check. She'd wager he wouldn't even remember what color her eyes were.

But the second she mentioned Webb's name, he brightened and took another desert to hand to his companion. "Oh yes, I thought of having a few of these at my anniversary but found them to be lacking. Good Webb enjoys them though, somebody has to." And just like that, she was dismissed.

Sylvi ducked underneath his arm and found herself in the middle of the floor again, holding a heavy platter of sugar-glass, melt-in-your-mouth, airy desserts she couldn't eat, that were heavier than they looked. When a blonde-woman in a shimmery champagne dress laughed, throwing her head back and smiling with movie-star like quality, Sylvi ducked again and popped one of the deserts in her mouth. She was right. They did melt in your mouth.

The Webb estate didn't have an official name though it seemed the kind of place that should've had one. Three, sprawling stories of ridiculous opulence. Marble floors that refracted light into the eye. Chandeliers in every room. A private library. A study. A ballroom. Any and all foreign staff were only allowed on the first floor, not including the basement.

Sylvi slipped through the eternally open kitchen door, staff rushing in and out of it like ants marching back the hill with their prizes: empty platters, split champagne flutes, stained shirts, and disgruntled staff with venomous teeth poised to kill their patrons. Inside the anthill, the rush worsened. Though she supposed it was more like a bee hive. Worker bees dressed up in their ironed black slacks, grey socks, and collared white shirts courtesy of the Queen's strict dress code. Hair tied back. Talking kept to a minimum. The kitchen was hushed in a strange way. People ran but their footfalls were muffled and their voices rode the tidal wave of sound that came from the actual party. An extension of the party, never allowed space or time to rest unless it was in relation to the people they served.