Chương 28: Payment

I can't believe it. I did it! I really did it! I was out of the palace, with a workbag full of treasure, which I absolutely robbed from the palace vault! I didn't think much of myself, I truly didn't, but maybe I wasn't that dumb, and maybe I do have a hidden talent. I was a thief! A great, mysterious, cunning, devious thief! Just like Fifi was! And as I happen to be a time looper, this talent was the absolute best skill for the job. Maybe… maybe I could do really big things. Be incredibly wealthy and important.

And marry a prince. Not that prince, another one. Or just Bastien is fine, too. He does have a hell of a jawline, after all. Just thinking about how much wealth was currently in my workbag made my head spin. I took a peek into my bag, and another, and another. Oh… I wanted a quiet place to go through all that stuff, but that would have to wait. First, I skirted the palace's outer wall until I reached the massive oak tree I had climbed earlier.

There, hidden among the roots, I found the day dress I'd left behind and quickly changed back into it. Then I caught a carriage to give Suzy and me a ride back. Not to the chateau, but straight to the north gate, to Widow Clair's house. I needed to ring that bell and have a meeting with Juliette and her lackeys. After all, I did finish the job and wanted my payment, which was, of course, the Journal. Inside the carriage, we finally had privacy.

Suzy climbed out of my pocket, and I emptied all the treasures we had stolen from the vault onto the small carriage table. There was the real tiara, the stunning diamond and ruby necklace, the heavy golden bracelet studded with emeralds, a pair of matching golden earrings, and a cute, decorated hairpin. I took them all and shoved them to my face, rubbing them and smelling them. Oh! I loved them all!

"Stop that!" squeaked Suzy.

"That's disgusting, you're drooling on them! Let me see, let me see them too." I let go a little.

"It's not like any of them will fit your rather… petite figure," I smiled at her.

"Will too," she said. She took both golden earrings and used them as tiny bracelets, then took the hairpin, held it like a scepter, and gave me a smug smile.

"Oh, a thousand pardons, your august majesty," I laughed and made a deep bow. Suzy smiled at that.

"Come on, try them on!" she squeaked. I didn't need a second invitation. I eagerly donned the tiara, the bracelet, and the necklace. I looked at my reflection in the darkened glass of the carriage window. Yes! Given the throne, I wouldn't have known how to believe it, but looking at myself now, I was the queen that I was meant to be. We spent the rest of the ride playing at being royals.

I issued grand decrees as the Queen of the Carriage, while Suzy, twirling her hairpin scepter, played the role of my demanding fairy princess. We giggled and laughed until my sides hurt. Then I saw the glass slipper sparkle from inside my bag. I pulled it out and looked it over. Yes, I would recognize it anywhere. It was definitely Cinderella's; I remembered making a show of trying to force it onto my huge foot.

"What is this?" asked Suzy.

"It's nice, but it doesn't look like a treasure. Why did you take it?" I told Suzy about Cinderella's fairy godmother, and how she made her a dress, a pumpkin carriage, and glass slippers. Of course, Suzy didn't find anything strange about it.

"And after all her magical things disappeared at midnight, the glass slipper remained," I said.

"But the fairy didn't appear in the last few cycles. And there were four more glass slippers in the vault! So I really don't understand it!"

"Maybe," started Suzy, "It's similar. The time loop magic and the fairy godmother magic…"

"How come?"

"In both, things return to how they were at midnight," she squeaked, nodding to herself.

"And since the glass slipper is special, and didn't disappear after the fairy spell ended… so maybe…"

"It is not affected by the time loop…" I finished for her. But the whole world was affected by the time loop magic, even the stars in the sky—that's what Juliette said. So how come only the shoe remained? It was weird and didn't make sense. But still, I knew these glass shoes were special. I decided it was best not to show them to Juliette or the other time loopers. If they recognized the slipper as Cinderella's, they might try harder to uncover her identity, which could put her at risk.

The carriage arrived at Widow Clair's house, and we went inside. Inside, the magic bell lay on the table. I took it and rang it exactly twice. This would magically tell Juliette and the time looper group that I wanted a meeting. They would come to their now not-so-secret base, and send Roger to ride me like a horse with my face covered. He would steer me using my fingers and get my head bumped on every occasion, all the while cursing me in his horrid foreign language. No. I was not doing that again.

"Let's go, Suzy," I said.

"You know where their secret base is?" she asked.

"As it happens," I said smoothly, "during the last cycle, while that vile mouse Roger was riding me around blindfolded, you peeked out from my pocket and later told me the way!"

"Oh, I did, did I?" Suzy puffed out her chest in pride.

"I see, I'm soooo smart!"

"That you are!" I remembered her explanation clearly. We walked down the narrow town streets, slipping into a dark, winding alleyway that branched off from the main thoroughfare. We navigated through a small, hidden courtyard until we reached a modest, unassuming house tucked entirely out of sight from the bustling main street. The door wasn't locked. Good. I quickly located the entrance to the basement, hurried down the stairs, and saw… no one. What is this? Didn't I summon them with the bell? Oh, they are late!

With nothing else to do, I decided to make myself at home. Wearing the tiara, the necklace, and the bracelets, I found a plush pillow, placed it on a sturdy crate, and sat down with a dramatic sigh, propping my legs up on another crate. Suzy and I spent the time chattering and laughing about the great heist we had pulled off just hours ago, reliving every thrilling moment of our palace robbery. Then we heard the basement door open. Suzy jumped inside my pocket, and I…

just kept sitting comfortably, wearing my jewelry like a queen.

"I'll throttle her!" I heard Juliette's angry voice coming down the creaky stairs.

"Maybe she…" started Victor.

"Amm amm," said James.

"Nothing!" barked Juliette.

"A noble brat, that one, wasting our time like…" Then she saw me. She stared and gaped.

"How could you already be here?" she asked in surprise, looking around the room.

"Wait, where is Roger… and…" She then took in my tiara and squinted her eyes.

"Is this… it couldn't be!"

"You seem a bit confused, Juliette," I said to her, smiling smugly.

"Here, sit down, calm yourself."

"Where is Roger!?" she asked again, her lips pursed thin with anger now.

"I do not fancy being ridden around like a show pony," I said with a haughty sniff, "mounted by a mouse, no less. So, I rang the bell to summon you, but made my own way here. That being said, you are awfully late, and I have been kept waiting an exceedingly long time."

"Why, you… lousy brat!" Juliette spat. But then Victor laughed.

"You really should calm down," he told Juliette, then turned to me.

"Well, how did you find our little base?"

"Oh, well, it's rather simple…" I thought of an answer.

"The head cover—that old cloth full of holes—that was it," I lied.

"The tiara," Juliette said, calmer now, reaching out her hand.

"Let me see." Oh, but it fit my head so well! Reluctantly, I handed it to her. Juliette pulled out an eyeglass trinket and started checking the various gems and diamonds. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"It's the real deal," she said quietly.

"How did you manage to…?"

"Manage to what?" Now I smiled really smugly.

"Infiltrate the palace? Find the key? Steal it? Distract the guards? Rob the vault? And all this on only my first attempt? Well… I can tell you how I did it."

"How?" she asked, her arms crossed.

"That is because…" I grinned wide, unable to hold it in.

"I am simply a splendid time looper!" Juliette kept staring at me suspiciously for a long moment.

"Fine," she finally said.

"You are good at it. You have your methods, I suppose. But let me remind you, the jewelry itself is merely a feasibility proof. The actual job was the B. M. P. manuscript. Let's see it." She held out her hand expectantly. I looked at her hand and blinked.

"You didn't write it…" Juliette pressed her lips thinner than ever and took a long breath as if to calm herself down.

"Alright, we'll do it now." Juliette walked into the other room and came back shortly with some paper, pen, and her silly lorgnette eyeglasses.

"Let's start. What tools were required for the job?" she asked, her pen poised and ready to write.

"Oh, a lot of things," I thought about it.

"I guess what is really necessary for the job is a pistol, a mouse, and some jam."

"A mouse and some jam?" she repeated slowly.

"I… guess you can do without the mouse," I said. I hoped Suzy didn't take offense.

"Forget it," she said.

"Just tell me exactly what you did."

"First of all, I went to…" I started, but then I thought about something.

"Wait, I brought you the jewelry—that is the feas… feas ability yes? If I tell you everything now, you won't need me anymore. First, you give me the Journal!"

"That is not how things work here," Juliette informed me, her tone turning icy.

"So start speaking already." But I knew a thing or two about hard bargaining. Mother wasn't particularly good at many things, but since we were always short on funds, Mother knew exactly how to viciously bargain, threaten, and intimidate shopkeepers and creditors. I had learned a thing or two from watching her. I knew that it was all about intimidation, and that I needed to always show calmness. And anyway, Juliette actually didn't scare me that much.

"You've got the bald man with the musket," I explained.

"So you know I won't just try to bolt."

"But having the bald man with the musket," Juliette replied with a smile, "also means I can just take the Journal back after you've told me anyway."

"Yes, maybe," I said.

"But you wouldn't be able to pull some rubbish like telling me my B. M. P. is not good enough. Sure, you can shoot me, or rob me—do that if you fancy being a jerk!" Juliette smiled at me then.

"Okay, you got it. We need to build our trust after all. But if your B. M. P. turns out to be, well, rubbish, be sure I'll use the bald man with the musket to rob my Journal back."

"Hey! I have a name, you know," called Victor, rubbing his head.

"And… well, I'm not entirely bald."

"Bald, bald, bald," supplied James. Then I heard some high-pitched shouting in a foreign language. I looked, and it was Roger, jumping down from stair to stair. He pointed at me and apparently cursed me in English. Oh, I guess I should have left a note when I decided to head here on my own. I would have apologized, but since he cursed at me, I just stuck my tongue out at him.

"Yes, Roger," Juliette said to him.

"She somehow got here on her own, and brought the jewelry, no less. Now I will get her the Journal, and she will kindly honor us and share her, no doubt, quality B. M. P."

"Did she? Did she do it?" Roger squeaked. He looked around and saw the treasure lying on the table.

"Lookie here! Shiny!" He jumped and hurried to inspect the stolen goods. Juliette shook her head in sheer embarrassment and went into the other room. After a short moment, she returned carrying a large, heavy book. It was a gruesome thing, bound in strange leather and pierced with small, sharp shards of bone jutting through the cover. Even worse, it was covered in dark, unmistakable stains of dried blood. She then put it on my lap.

"Eww!" I said, holding it far away from my body.

"And there is special ink too," Juliette said, shoving a glass bottle of ink into my other hand.

"Is that demon blood?" I asked. Juliette gave a short chuckle.

"Maybe? I didn't ask. As long as it works, I don't really care."

"Okay then," I said. It was undeniably gross, yes, but it was what I was after, and I was satisfied.

"Now, if you will," Juliette sat close to me, prepared her paper and pen, and poised herself to record my grand quest. Victor came closer too; he was probably curious. Then James grabbed Roger rudely, plopped him on his shoulder, and came close to me as well. Oh, I guess he wanted the English mouse to translate for him. Yes. They were all curious and eager. So I told them my scandalous adventure, chest high, smile wide—awfully proud of myself I was. But their reaction was weird.

Juliette's eyes turned into slits, much like her lips. Victor smiled, giving a short chuckle from time to time. And James would burst into hysterical laughter every time Roger translated a line for him. I told them everything exactly as it happened—well, except for Cinderella's glass slipper. And, well, the wild prince encounter.

"That's quite a story, I'll give you that," said Juliette, crossing her arms.

"But that is not a quality B. M. P. It's complicated, risky, and… weird."

"It is simple," I said.

"And as an amazing assassin such as yourself, you could simply chloroform the vault guard, or seduce him, or… well, both. Could you not?"

"Well, I…" Juliette tried to hide a small smile.

"I guess I could." She then sighed.

"Well, I guess it's passable. But remember, before the loop ends, we will send someone to validate your B. M. P., as in robbing the vault. And if something is off about it…"

"Yes, yes," I said.

"You will blow my head off and the demons will take my soul."

"Exactly." I felt a sudden tap on my shoulder. It was James. I looked at him. He smiled smugly at me. What did he want now? He reached behind my ear and pulled out a pretty daisy flower. Ah, pretty! I smiled and clapped my hands in delight. Then he raised his finger as if to show me something more, like last time. He stared at the flower in my hand with intense concentration. Suddenly, the petals began to brown and curl.

In mere seconds, the beautiful daisy withered, decayed, and crumbled into dry dust right against my palm!

"Why, you insolent scoundrel!" I lashed out at him.

"You potato-spitting, roast beef-eating islander! Have you lost your bloody mind?" I stepped forward aggressively, backing him into a corner with my fists clenched until his smug smile finally vanished.

"And if you ever pull that… creepiness on me again—by Jove, I will hit you upside the head with my shoe!"

"And when you do," Juliette added dryly, "he will entirely deserve it. Honestly, he's had a thrashing coming for quite some time." Oh, that Englishman annoyed me so! If they are all like him, it is no wonder we are at war. I took a few slow breaths to calm myself down. So that's it? I thought. I actually can go? Oh, wait—there was still something I didn't understand.

"Why did you give me the Journal?" I asked Juliette.

"Won't it just disappear at the start of each cycle? Won't you need to tell me where to find it, like the gold coin in Widow Clair's house?"

"If it were to disappear at each cycle," said Juliette, "returning to how it was and all, it wouldn't be much of a time looper's Journal, would it?" Oh, right.

"So…?"

"The Journal is a stationary object," Juliette explained.

"This type of object does not return like everything else. At the start of the cycle, they remain in the exact same place, fixed in position relative to the center of our planet. Only for the course of this specific loop, of course."

"Planet what?" I concentrated, trying to understand.

"The stars return too, remember?" Juliette said to me.

"If the object remained truly fixed in place, it would end up in the ether of space when the cycle starts. That's why it needs to be fixed to a position relative to planet Earth."

"Oh, I see," I said and nodded. I didn't get what she said at all.

"Look," Juliette instructed, pointing a firm finger at me.

"This is the important bit. Don't leave the Journal on the bed you will wake up in at the start of the cycle. If you do, you will wake up with a book inside of you, and you can imagine, it is, er… not pleasant. Some time loopers actually use that technique for assassination."

"Oh…" This I understood.

"Gross."

"And oh, one last thing," Juliette told me.

"The ink is stationary too, but the glass ink bottle is not. So if you keep the ink in the bottle, at the end of the cycle, the bottle will return to this storeroom, but the ink will remain in your place, meaning it will spill."

"Oh, what do I do then?"

"Find some forgotten glass container in some storeroom or basement of your house. It's important that no one moves it by mistake. Then spill it there, but mark the exact spot. When you take the bottle for use, you have to return it to the exact same spot by the end of the cycle."

"Or else…" I started, "the bottle returns to the basement, and the ink will spill."

"Yes… you got it," Juliette smiled at me.

"Not entirely dumb, I suppose." That's right, not entirely dumb! Oh! So the glass slipper is such a stationary object… interesting. What likely happens at the end of each cycle is that Cinderella reverts just like everything else, but her right glass slipper remains behind at the palace. The palace staff finds it and stores it in the vault. However, if this isn't the first cycle that happened, they would be baffled to find more glass slippers in the vault with no memory of putting them there. But...

why would there only be five if there had already been fifty cycles in the loop? Oh, It was all way too weird for me! Anyway, I thought my business here was done.

"Well," I said, looking at the silly bunch of them, "It was highly pleasant doing business with you. I hope to do more lucrative business in the future." Actually, not seeing each other ever again will be perfectly fine too. They bid me farewell, and I was heading to the stairs.

"Wait!" called Juliette.

"I know," I said.

"Not to tell anyone about this place. If I do, blow head off, demons, blah blah blah."

"Yes, that, but also something else." Juliette smiled… it was a weird, suspicious smile.

"Wait here for a moment. Let me show you something." And she went, again, into the other room, returning after a moment with a large sack in her hand. It looked heavy, too.

"Juliette!" called Victor.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm just showing off," she smiled brightly at Victor, then at me.

"I have something pretty in the sack. Want to take a peek?" I narrowed my eyes in suspicion, but took the sack from her. When I looked inside, I paled. Gold coins. Lots and lots of them—a whole pile. I gaped, utterly unable to utter a vowel. There were hundreds of them here… this… this was a fortune, even more so than the treasure I stole.

"You like it, don't you?" Juliette said.

"Think it's pretty too?"

"Juliette, what are you doing?" Victor asked again, irritably.

"What?" she said to Victor.

"She has a knack for this, you can't deny it. Would you have us waste her talent?"

"But this…" I mumbled, unable to avert my eyes from the shine, not really.

"I mean, whatever you give me will disappear…"

"No," said Juliette slowly.

"If we make a contract, we will give you the gold at the last cycle. Whatever you get will be really, truly yours."

"How… how much?" I asked, swallowing hard to keep myself from visibly drooling.

"One thousand Louis gold coins…"

"I'll do it!" I said.

"Drizella," Victor turned to me, seriousness in his voice.

"You got that Journal; it's what you wanted. Why would you risk your life? What part of 'don't get involved with us' didn't you understand?"

"I'll do it," I nodded seriously.

"Good," Juliette smiled and offered her hand, and we shook on it. Yes, I knew I shouldn't get involved with them. I knew I had already gotten what I wanted. But I wanted to do it. And it wasn't just that I was blinded by all that shiny, beautiful gold. All my life, I hadn't possessed any real talent. I felt stupid and bad at everything I did or practiced. Now, for the first time in my life, I had the feeling that I was really good at something, that I had a true talent.

And it wasn't like singing or dancing, either; it was so much more. A talent that could actually make me a queen. And besides, just thinking about the heist at the palace—the acting, the stealth, the clever sneaking, and the thrill of deceiving the guards—made my heart race. It was all so incredibly exciting! It was unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life, and I wanted to feel that rush again. Juliette took the gold sack out of my hands and walked me toward the stairs.

"Listen," she said to me quietly.

"You maybe have a real talent for it, and that means you can be as rich as the Grand Duke. But as we told you numerous times, this is a risky life. So at least take the day to think it over." I nodded.

"Take this," she said, handing me a small, finely crafted silver handbell.

"I have the pair on me. Ring it, and I'll meet you in Widow Clair's house. It will be much simpler."

"Sure," I said. I went up the stairs and was on my way home. There was nothing to think about, really. I had already decided. I would make this work and get the 1000 coins. Besides, how hard could it be to… Wait. What did she say the job was again?