Pascale Auber & the Ruritanian Riddle

LIX Confusion

Heretofore, this tale has dealt exclusively with what I myself witnessed; things I did, things I saw, things I heard. I was not present for the episode I will now relate, and while I have undertaken the necessary research, I cannot vouch for all the particulars. I am  however, reasonably confident of my descriptions; my principal source – my twin brother - is not known for indulging in airy persiflage for its own sake.

The first thing Blaise was aware of was darkness, followed immediately by the sensation of immense, pounding pressure in his right temple. This shortly sharpened and blossomed into pain. At about the same time, Blaise became conscious of light, reddish through his gummy eyelids, and of discomfort in the rest of his body. He realised that he was seated in a chair with his hands bound behind him, tight enough that the muscles of his lower arms strained with every breath. He felt nauseated and vaguely dizzy, as though the room were swaying.

Blaise remained still, his eyes closed, for a long moment, listening intensely. The space around him was quiet, but not silent. A variety of rustles and creaks hovered at the edge of Blaise's consciousness, familiar but unplaceable, and underlaid by the basso profondo thrum of a pulsing engine. When he forced his eyelids to open, Blaise found himself in a small room, surrounded by wood crates and cardboard boxes.

The floor beneath his feet and the walls around him were also wooden, made of narrow, smooth planks. It took him a moment to realise that the wooden walls curved, closer together at the floor, father apart at the ceiling, as if in the hold of a ship. With a jolt and a distant splash, he found himself moving upwards and realised that this was a ship, but he was not on the ocean; the thrumming engine and strangely-familiar creaks were the sounds of an airship – he was being flown somewhere, by a person or persons unknown.

His head aching, and his mind still fuzzy, Blaise tried to figure out what had happened. This was not, he was fairly certain, a debauched prank undertaken by a group of drunken undergraduates – it was too early in the school year for the degree of organization it would take to kidnap an assistant professor. Besides, his last class of the day had been mid-afternoon, and he had then done . . .something? His addled brain did not immediately supply the something, and Blaise closed his eyes again, trying to remember. It was Thursday – was it still Thursday? No matter, it had been Thursday, the last time he was awake.

Blaise  remembered, fractured by the throbs of pain that repeatedly ricochetted through his brain, that he had been at the Aosta Theatre. The performance had been  - it had been fine, maybe? It had ended, at any rate. He remembered standing in the corridor outside of Miss Silverstar's dressing room, after the performance.  She had smiled at him, and his heart had rushed into his chest, making him feel like a songbird about to burst into a lusty musicale.

She had asked him to walk her to the nearest aerocab stand, and he had acquiesced - of course he had acquiesced! He had had only silently loved Cartimandua Silverstar from the first moment he had seen her. Blaise could no more turn down an opportunity to be her escort than he could turn down an opportunity to breathe oxygen. Unfortunately, everything after stepping out into the dim, cool, evening air was gone. Blaise attempted to wrack his brain, but in response he got nothing, except for the dull throb.

Was I hit over the head?  Blaise wondered. He'd had a concussion once as a child, having fallen out of a tree while attempting to view the planet Venus, though he had not lost consciousness . This felt very much the same. But if he had been hit over the head, what had become of Miss Silverstar?

Blaise looked around the strange room anxiously, hoping to see his melodious coworker, but all there was to see were boxes and the room's wood-plank walls.  He heard a door creak open behind him, letting in a flood of light that caused Blaise to squint.

"Ten minutes," an unfamiliar, oily voice said. "Good. Any longer and I might have been concerned."