Seven Days of Joyeux Part 1

“Seven Days of Joyeux” is a Musketeer Space prequel novella by Tansy Rayner Roberts. For more Musketeer hijinks, check out the Musketeer Space Table of Contents. This festive novella is brought to you by my generous Patreon supporters.

Pollina du Vallon, known to her friends and colleagues as the Musketeer Porthos, awoke in one Musketeer’s bed, with another Musketeer sprawled beside her.

For a moment she could not remember the circumstances that had led her here. Aramis, who owned the bed, was nowhere in sight. The Musketeer sleeping beside her was Athos. This was the more immediate concern.

Her head hurt.

Discreetly, without dislodging Athos’ arm which was at least partly slung across her hip, Porthos reached down to check whether she was clothed. She found a soft t-shirt and the shorts that she usually wore as underwear, which was a very good sign.

“Don’t worry,” said a low voice beside her. Athos, now awake, was looking at her with amusement in his bright blue eyes. “Your virtue is as intact as ever.”

“I wasn’t worried,” she lied. Then, a moment later. “You’re sure?”

He stretched and rolled away from her, taking half the covers with him. “Drink rarely has an effect on my powers of recall. I never forget what happened the night before.”

This was new information about her friend, and Porthos stored it away as she did every rare fragment he chose to share. “That must be horrible.”

“It’s a curse,” he agreed. “But in this instance…”

“Ugh.” Porthos sat up, burying her head in her hands. “We fly spaceships. We have actual jetpacks, not to mention sobriety patches. Why is there still no real cure for the hangover?”

“Because we’re getting old,” said Athos unsympathetically. His eyes drifted shut again. He was a more hardened drinker than Porthos and Aramis put together, but he rarely allowed the damage to show. “The important thing here, is that we still haven’t lost the bet. Seven days to go.”

“The bet?” Porthos had no idea what he was talking about, but then a memory stirred. “Last Joyeux, you mean?” Realisation hit her. “That wench! Did she do this on purpose?”

Athos yawned gently. “Would not surprise me. She’s devious, our Aramis.”

Joyeux was a festival of misrule and devotion, of laughter and stupidity and even a little religious contemplation along the way, for those who were into that sort of thing. Last year, on the final night of Joyeux, fuelled by the heady combination of caramel popcorn and tequila shots, Aramis had declared that Athos and Porthos would have sex (with each other) within a year.

They were both so genuinely horrified by the idea that they pledged fifty credits each against the possibility.

What followed was what Porthos had dubbed ‘the shipping war,’ in which Aramis spent several months setting up elaborate situations to encourage romance or attraction between her two friends.

It was amusing to start with, then became annoying, then turned funny again, and finally was all but forgotten. Or so they had thought. Porthos sighed now. “I thought she’d dropped it.”

“On the bright side, it will all be over in seven days,” Athos said sleepily. “And we’ll have won fifty credits each. So get lost before I succumb to my natural desire to ravish you. I want first shower.”

Porthos kicked him as she got out of bed, because she felt like it. She wandered out to Aramis’ living space, still in her t-shirt and sleeping shorts as apparently none of them had any shame any more.

The place was a wreck. Like, actually a wreck. The sparse furnishings had been turned over and several chairs were bent and twisted. The comfortable couch had taken some serious damage and what looked like burn from an arc-ray, bursting one arm of it entirely open. Worst of all, Aramis’ books, her precious books of theology, were scattered across the floor as if they had been used as missiles.

“What the actual fuck?” exclaimed Porthos.

Aramis was sprawled out on her couch, naked beneath a sheet. She looked exhausted, and miserable. Her girlfriend Minister Marie Chevreuse was there too, golden and pale against the warmer brown tones of Aramis’ skin and hair. Their limbs were tangled together, but they were faced away from each other.

Oh. Now Porthos remembered why she and Athos had retreated to the bedroom. Damn it. Aramis and Chev were fighting again, and from the look on their faces even in sleep, they were making each other miserable.

Happy bloody Joyeux to everyone.

“Good morning, Captain-Lieutenant Porthos,” said the android Bazin, right by her ear. “May your Devotions be deep.”

She jumped with surprise. He must have been charging overnight, powered down against the wall while Aramis and Chevreuse tore the apartment and each other apart. “Oh, Bazin. Okay if I help myself to tea?”

There was something about Aramis’ devoutly religious engie/android that made them all extra polite around him – except Athos who avoided eye contact and stepped around him as if he were a piece of furniture.

A relentlessly pious piece of furniture who was constantly trying to push his pilot out of the Musketeers and into a career in the Church, but furniture nonetheless.

“I will make it for you, Captain-Lieutenant,” said the android now, unplugging his connection to the wall and then swiftly overtaking Porthos on the way to the kitchen bar. “I have your tea preferences programmed into the food printer.”

So much for having something to do with her hands to make this morning less awkward. “Fine,” Porthos said, sliding on to the one stool that remained undamaged. “Cheers.”

Chevreuse woke up next, with a groan and a shake of her shoulder-length blonde hair. “Ugh,” she moaned. “What hit me?”

“The apartment, I think,” said Porthos with a vague wave around the wreck of a room.

Chevreuse slid naked out from under the sheet and staggered off in the direction of the bedroom. “Shower. Ugh.”

“Athos is in there!” Porthos called after her, but that was apparently no deterrent. There was a crashing sound from the bedroom, and then raised voices as Athos defended his right to not be kicked out of the sonic shower by a cranky Minister. It was no contest.

Two minutes later, he stormed out wearing nothing but a towel. “Aramis, can we break up with your girlfriend yet? I wish to register some complaints.”

“She has a meeting this morning,” said Aramis in a low voice, from where she lay on the couch, her dark eyes alert. “It’s stressing her out.”

Porthos looked over in surprise – she hadn’t even realised that Aramis was awake. “What kind of meeting?”

“With Montbazon. Their marriage contract is nearly up, and they need to make – I don’t know. Arrangements. Decisions about the future.”

Porthos saw a very specific expression cross Athos’ face. It basically meant: ‘how can I steer this conversation away from any reference to feelings and relationships until after I have consumed half my body mass in coffee and ideally left the apartment?’ He used it a lot.

In traditional Athos fashion, he then pretended that the rest of them were not there. He went to the kitchen bar, and Bazin passed him a double espresso without a word.

Porthos still didn’t have her cup of tea. If she didn’t know better, she would suspect Athos of messing with Bazin’s circuitry to prioritise the needs of the hardened coffee drinker. Either that, or the android liked him best, which made no sense at all.

“Will the Captains-Lieutenant be attending church services before the meeting with Amiral Treville?” the android asked politely.

“No,” Athos and Porthos muttered in unison.

“Yes,” said Aramis automatically. “Wait, what meeting?”

Bazin looked as shifty as was possible for an android with no proper facial expressions. “As requested, all early morning communications were muted because of the late hour at which the Captains-Lieutenant and Minister Chevreuse-Montbazon retired…”

“Unmute,” Athos commanded. All at once, alerts chimed from the wrist-studs of all three Musketeers, as well as Aramis’ home system. Aramis and Porthos turned theirs off again immediately. “An emergency meeting, it seems,” Athos said as he scanned the notifications. “All Musketeers within the vicinity of Paris Satellite, including those off duty. In twenty minutes.”

“No time for church,” Aramis said, raising her eyebrows at her android. “Musketeer duty comes first, Bazin, you know that. I’ll attend to my soul later.”

Chevreuse hurled herself out of the bedroom, now clad in a formal black suit, with pearl studs implanted against the line of her collar bone. Her hair had been combed to a creamy sheen, and bleached white to match her pearls. “Here I go. Don’t wait up.”

“Chev,” Aramis said awkwardly.

Her girlfriend leaned in, brushing her lips to Aramis’ forehead as if the room around them didn’t bear witness to the screaming, damaging fight of the night before. “See you later, babe. We’ll talk.”

This uptight, businesslike version of Chevreuse was unsettling. To Porthos’ relief, Bazin had finally produced a proper cup of tea. It was some consolation for the awkwardness.

As if to prove she was still the same person despite dressing like a grownup, Chev openly checked out Athos and his towel before leaving the apartment. “You could do worse, Porthos!”

Simultaneously, Athos and Porthos flipped their fingers up at her.

In the second before the door zipped shut, they saw Chev falter on her expensive heeled shoes. Then she screamed “I don’t have time for this bullshit,” and kept going.

The three Musketeers exchanged glances. Porthos, as the only one of them who was halfway to decently clothed, went to the door and swiped it open. “Whoa.”

This was new. New and alarming and probably the reason for the emergency meeting they now had to attend.

Outside Aramis’ apartment was a corridor, functional and basic like nearly every other corridor on Paris Satellite. Today, it was covered from floor to ceiling with a bristling green tangle of, well. Leaves. Green creepers, a tangle of ivy and other spiky plants which most definitely did not belong on a space station. Not outside the horticulture banks, anyway.

Athos sucked in a breath, standing close behind Porthos. “What date is it?” he asked.

“The 12th, of course,” said Aramis, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders and a sheet vaguely wrapped around her body as she joined them in the doorway. “It’s the first day of Joyeux. Devotions.”

“Bringing in the green,” Athos said in a hiss between his teeth. “Someone’s taking the holiday a little too far, and I’m not talking about Joyeux.”

“Clothes,” Porthos decided, since her friends were too busy staring at the intrusive greenery to think about the important things. “This will be easier to cope with if we’re all wearing actual clothes.”

Amiral Treville rarely called them all together like this. She preferred to manage the Royal Fleet of Musketeers in twos and threes, which gave her the opportunity to intimidate them on a more personal level. It also meant they were less likely to gang up on her, unless the three Musketeers in question were Porthos, Athos and Aramis in which case all bets were off.

There were nearly thirty of them available for this crisis meeting, and the Musketeers filled Treville’s plexi-glass office. Almost no furniture, as the Amiral spent most of her time on her feet, so they sprawled over each other and the floor like a heap of cats in bright blue flight jackets.

Aramis sat mostly on Porthos, though her feet had found their way to Athos’ lap. Being used as furniture on a regular basis was just one of those things that went hand in hand with being a friend of Aramis.

Treville was a thick-set, dark-skinned woman in her early fifties, with shoulders so muscled and mighty that she looked like the blueprint for a mecha suit. It was possible that she was less terrifying when her face was not pissed off, but Porthos had been working under her for a long time and could not remember a day when her face looked otherwise.

“So this is the situation,” Treville rapped out. “Green leaves have been growing out of the walls of the station since 0:00 last night. The labs think it’s some kind of nano-virus, though the leaves aren’t being created out of the molecules of the bloody walls at least, or we’d all be sucking open space right now. A quarter of Paris Satellite has been infested, and we’re on track for the whole station to be covered with leaves by the end of the day. What we don’t know is why this is happening.”

“Obviously it’s political,” Athos said in the posh drawl he only used around authority figures, or people he wanted to annoy. Which, Porthos had to admit, was most people. “That is to say, religious.”

Aramis nudged him in the knee with her boot. “Today is Devotions, Athos. What’s that got to do with greenery? There’s nothing in the Book of Devotions about eating more salad.”

“Wrong religion, sweetness,” said Athos with a sharp smile. “The Church of All might pride itself on representing everyone in the solar system, but there’s a lot of planetborn citizens that don’t feel the same way. The northern hemisphere of Valour has its own celebrations at this time of year.”

Porthos frowned. She grew up on Lucretia, one of the orbital cities of the ocean world of Peace, and ran away to Paris Satellite when she was barely of age. She didn’t know much about dirtside traditions. “Elementals, you mean?”

Athos’ lips were tight beneath the bushy blond beard he had been growing to annoy Amiral Treville. “That’s what I mean,” he agreed. “Right now, in the northern hemisphere of Valour, the Elemental community are celebrating Winterlight. People cut evergreen boughs and wreaths from the wild and decorate their living quarters with them. It’s called bringing in the green. I believe they do something similar on Honour, though their winters aren’t nearly as cold.”

Porthos glanced around. There were a few slight nods as some of the other pilots acknowledged what Athos was saying, though most looked as baffled as she felt. The Elemental religion was common for dirtsiders – and was growing in popularity across the planets of Valour and Honour, especially in the countries governed by the New Aristocrats. Since the Regent’s marriage to the Prince Consort, it had become almost socially acceptable in some corners to be ‘out’ as an Elemental, though it was considered rare for them to make a life for themselves in space.

On Paris Satellite it wasn’t exactly politic to admit that you were not a follower of the Church of All. The Church was the reason that humanity had survived the expansion of society into space, and would thrive into the future. Even the Prince Consort attended Church of All ceremonies and observed his wife’s traditions in public.

Porthos felt an odd, uncomfortable twist in her stomach. She knew Athos had a history back on the planet Valour, and that he came from New Aristocracy. But she had never quite put it together, that he might be an Elemental himself. By the shell-shocked expression on Aramis’ face, it had not occurred to her either.

Amiral Treville, who came from a tiny space station so far out that even the tourists refused to bother with it, looked blank. “Why would they do that?” she said finally. “The green. What’s the point?”

Athos shrugged. “Why does Repast come before Misrule, why are there seven days of Joyeux? Rituals get repeated because people like repeating rituals. In this case, winters on Valour can be long and cold, and people like a reminder that there’s something alive in the world apart from themselves. So, they bring in the green.”

“Does the bringing in of the green usually involve nano-viruses?” Treville barked.

Athos laughed at that, a rare and genuine sound from his throat. “Well, no. But Paris is such a forward-thinking city, she does rather love to go one better than everyone else.”

The look on Treville’s face suggested that she was postponing further interrogation on the subject, not dropping it altogether. She pulled up a pre-determined roster and started calling out assignments. “We’re sharing clean up duty with the Red Guard, including the Sabres. Please do not start any fights, or involve yourself in fights that you will later claim they started. And yes, before any of you whingers speak up, I know that dissolving rogue plants doesn’t count as piloting, royal bodyguard work or acts of war. Today’s mission is in no way within the remit of the Musketeers. You’re still going to pitch in without complaint or I will schedule extra hours in the day specifically to shout at you.”

“Stop looking at me like I have two heads,” Athos complained to his two friends after they had shuffled out of Treville’s office. “You know I’m not religious. Why does it matter which religion I specifically don’t bother with?”

Porthos said nothing because he was right, it wasn’t important.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Aramis in a voice which made it clear that yes, it mattered to her. “But you never said.”

“I never say anything about anything,” Athos sighed. “I’m not even having this conversation with you right now.”

“But it’s fascinating,” Aramis said, squeezing his arm. “We should talk about this. You have a whole different perspective on theology…”

“I have never desired a conversation about theology ever, Aramis, what makes you think I will start now?”

“It can be my Joyeux present,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him.

“No. I’m buying you wine. I always buy you wine. Shut up.”

“But – is there a connection between the decoration of Joyeux trees, and the Winterlight tradition of bringing in the green?”

“I would rather eat a Joyeux tree than have this conversation with you.”

Porthos sighed, and tuned them both out to the best of her ability.

For once, Porthos wished that Treville had given her an assignment as far from Athos and Aramis as possible. She knew why they were so often given shared duty – they worked well as a unit, and for all the trouble they got into as a trio, they got into far worse when they were separated.

Today, there was nothing that could make it worse.

The three of them were assigned to the Promenade (properly Napoleon Bonaparte Promenade though no one in the Fleet ever called it that because there was a dodgy strip joint near Space Dock B on Lunar Palais that had been known only as Bonaparte’s for a decade before the Promenade had been given its fancy title and statue.

You couldn’t even see the statue when the Musketeers first began work, as the Promenade was so choked with holly, ivy and mistletoe that sprouted directly out of the walls and ducts. They had been given sonic disintegrators to deal with the mess, but it was still a slow and methodical grind.

Aramis was trying to prove she wasn’t bothered about Athos’ refusal to have jolly chats about religious differences by returning to her joke about Athos and Porthos hooking up. It wasn’t funny even before she started trying to throw mistletoe at their heads because some idiot had informed her it was connected to a kissing tradition on Valour.

It was even less funny because Aramis, as a born and bred spacer, had no idea what mistletoe even looked like. Porthos got pretty sick of dodging random branches of greenery in the name of mock-romance, and Athos was about ready to punch the next person who asked him to identify which spiky green plant was being shoved in his face.

To make it worse, Captain Claudine Jussac was in command of the Red Guard unit who had been assigned to this area, and she did everything in her power to irritate all three Musketeers beyond the range of human endeavour.

An hour into the shift, Athos and Aramis had formulated a complex plan to murder Jussac and dispose of her body without anyone suspecting a thing.

“As the only one of us who can claim the moral high ground of never having shagged her,” Porthos muttered at one point. “I reserve the right to wield the spade.”

Athos and Aramis exchanged a brief glance. “Fair call,” they both agreed.

It only took a few hours before Porthos decided she never wanted to see another leafy green plant in her life. She didn’t care about the difference between holly and mistletoe, she really didn’t care whether the trees sticking sideways out of the privacy booths were firs or pines, and if Aramis consulted that Flora of Valour app one more time, Porthos was going to scream or break something.

Then, to top it all off, she rounded a corner and found Chef Coquenard picking holly out of an air vent. “Oh,” said Porthos, feeling like an idiot. Of course, she would run into him when she was scratched up and exhausted and grumpy.

“Pollina,” said the large, beautiful man in that deep accent of his that made everything that came out of his mouth sound like a song, or a sultry dessert recipe. “How unexpected. Will we see you at the hotel for Repast this year?”

“I expect so, I’m on Regent duty,” Porthos said, trying not to stare at his shoulders. He had really nice shoulders.

Hotel Coquenard was the most exclusive and expensive hotel on Paris Satellite, and they hosted a formal Repast dinner for the royal family every year. Flirting with Chef Coquenard with no intention of ever taking it further was one of Porthos’ favourite Joyeux traditions, but they were two days early, and she wasn’t properly braced for the impact of that warm smile of his, and her fierce desire to climb him like a tree.

“You’re not planning to cook with this, are you?” she managed, reclaiming some of her usual sarcasm as she jabbed a finger at his armful of spiky free leaves.

Coquenard laughed, oh God of All, that laugh of his should be illegal. “Table decorations. Why should I not make the most of this unexpected bounty?”

Porthos rolled her eyes. “You realise that these leaves have been created by a possibly malign nano-virus?”

Chef Coquenard smiled that gorgeous smile of his again, and blew her a kiss as he carried his armful of holly and ivy away with him. “But it is so lovely to look at,” he said. “And style is important.”

She stayed standing there for a moment, then shook her head to clear it of the daze that he always inspired in her. She heard a throat clearing nearby and spun around to find Athos looking at her as if she was hilarious.

Porthos glared at him. “If you can hook up with Jussac of all people, and almost get us killed in the duel that followed your exciting weekend of hate sex, then I can have a crush.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t have a crush,” Athos said mildly. “But I can still find it funny.”

“Keep this up, and I’ll tell Aramis that I have a crush on you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Mutually assured destruction? I don’t believe you would do that to either of us.”

Damn it, he had called her bluff.

“Just don’t talk,” she huffed. “That not talking thing you do most of the time. Let’s have some more of that.”

“As you wish, Pollina.”

By the time their double shift ended, they had cleared the Promenade for business, though much of Paris Satellite was still thick with “festive” greenery.

Aramis headed off to church for Devotions services. She didn’t say so, but she obviously had plans to meet privately with Chevreuse after that. Athos disappeared without a word, which meant most likely that he wanted to drink alone. Any attempt to inflict friendly company on him would be met with his impersonation of an emotionally-repressed statue, and Porthos was too tired to be bothered.

She shared a meal with her engie Bonnie, and collapsed in bed some time around 22:00.

She was awoken by her comm chiming, a few minutes after midnight. It was a text message from Athos, and it took her a moment to focus on the glowing words along her wrist before she could read them properly.

LOOK OUTSIDE YOUR DOOR.

When Porthos had arrived home to her apartment a few hours earlier, the greenery was so thick in the corridor outside that she had needed to employ her Pilot’s Slice to free the main entry from weeds and tangled vine. That at least partly explained the dream she half-remembered, of being smothered by trees and flowers.

Now, as she padded barefoot to the door and swiped it open, there was no green.

The corridor was clean and empty, as if the leaves had never been there. There was, however, an odd kind of feeling as if the whole of Paris Satellite was breathing more easily than before. Porthos could smell the green on the air, though there was no trace of it left.

It made her smile.

MERRY WINTERLIGHT, she texted back to Athos, before returning to her bed.

He replied a moment later. HAPPY FUCKING JOYEUX.

This time, when Porthos slept, she dreamed of flight and stars and all the usual shit. So that was all right.

Come back tomorrow for Day Two: Restraint [the burying of past sins]