05/19/2025 Snippet, IN THE HALLS OF THE LILY KING.

Still trying to get into the rhythm.

…

It was easy to cause a distraction in Holy Quebec. All you had to do was be loud in any other language besides French. The trick lay in being loud in the right way. Waylon had seen the inside of this city’s holding cells a time or too, and while they weren’t awful he was far too sober to overlook their drawbacks. So doing anything illegal was, as New Californians would put it, Right Out.

Luckily, the Lost Tourist wheeze was an old reliable.

“Please, Notre-Dame, see-voo play?” he asked the closest gendarme, mangling the French with malice aforethought. “La mee-zoom dew papa? On rude bee-ad? Is this the right way?” He wished he’d an actual map to wave around, but calling the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec ‘the Pope’s house’ would probably be enough to roil the waters without boiling them.

And didn’t it, just? The gendarme gave him the sourest of looks, barking out “C’est une affaire de police. Je ne suis pas guide touristique. Allez-vous-en!” far too quickly for someone who didn’t speak Imperial French well to follow. Luckily, his muttered “Imbécile!” afterward was loud enough for Waylon to hear.