The party started towards the kitchen, led by a formally dressed butler who seemed to materialize out of nowhere. The French dilettantes were so excited that they almost skipped as they walked. “What a delicious morning exercise! Ah, mes chers amis, I feel like the famous detective Marc, Le Marquis de la Pour.”

“Looking at you and your eh … sibling, one has a different famous marquis in mind,” the Princess said.

“I see the Princess knows her classics. But my dear, it’s too early in the day to dabble in forbidden depravities. One should attend to one’s base desires before proceeding to the satisfaction of one’s more exquisite needs.”

“It’s good to know that at least some order of depravity exists in France. I was under the impression that the only vices forbidden in your country were honesty and courage.”

“These are not forbidden, merely frowned upon. Now in your A—”

Von Schmidt audibly cleared his throat. “If you could show a modicum of respect by stopping this flag measuring contest at least until the body is removed from the premises, I’d be most obliged. I believe this would fall under the jurisdiction of human decency, which is frowned upon by all states, but is highly recommended on this planetoid.”

“What do you know of human decency?!” the Princess snapped scornfully.

“I know that most nouns ending with the suffix ‘cide’ are outside of it. Wouldn’t you agree?” The Princess opened and closed her mouth, not sure about the correct reply to this statement. As her father had taught her, murder was a terrible thing to do. However, there were a few caveats to this rule. As she grew older, the list of these caveats increased in length until occasions upon which murder was wrong became the exception rather than the rule. However, in theory, everyone still agreed that murder was a terrible thing indeed, especially when practiced on their own person.

Presently, all attention was directed at the subject of the investigation, who was until recently ignored due to philosophical differences. The subject, a maid, lay prone, surrounded by broken china and an indistinguishable but pleasant-smelling jumble of foodstuffs. The Princess examined the dead woman’s face for any signs she could recognize, but found none. There were no visible marks of violence either. It seemed as if she slipped and just hadn’t bothered to get up.

“I see no signs of violence. Perhaps the young woman was the victim of some manner of heart defect?” Jean suggested.

“Impossible!” Von Schmidt countered indignantly. “I am a connoisseur of the highest order. Everything I commission is impeccable! Do not bother with a toxic hypothesis either as my servants are immune to most poisons and my security system can detect even single molecules of other dangerous substances.”

“Quelle dommage, seems the poor young thing will not be able to satisfy the Princess’s last caprice,” the other Jean said, looking bored already.

“What?!” the Princess asked, sounding much more hysterical than she’d intended.

“Do you not recognize her?” Jean asked, smiling playfully.

“I … eh …” the Princess mumbled, feeling her entrails starting the dance of their people.

“You have caused a princess to lose her glow, dear Jean,” Jean said. “It is most uncivil.”

“Stop torturing the poor thing!” Von Schmidt barked. “It’s far too early in the morning for women’s tears.”

“Explain yourself this very instant!” the Princess commanded. “I do not care at all for these games.”

“Very well,” Jean said. “This is the maid whom you asked to make you tea before embarking on your heroic quest with brave Tanaka and poor Ivanov. I am afraid she will never serve you the beverage now.”

“Although,” the other Jean chimed in, “it might be that the puddle you’re standing in is this very tea and so in death her mission is complete. I am sure Tanaka would appreciate the symbolism.”

Tanaka stared at the spilled breakfast. “Death in the emperor’s kitchen—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, would you shut up already!” The Princess turned and stomped back to the breakfast hall.

“Can I be of assistance?” asked the butler, startling the Princess with the suddenness of his appearance. Give the man credit, he could blend into the walls to the envy of any chameleon, an enviable trait for a servant or an assassin.

“You may,” she said after swiftly composing herself. “Do you know of the whereabouts of the maid who waited on me last night?”

“Ah, Martina. She is at the dormitory. Would you like me to call her?”

“No, no,” the Princess said, feeling her entrails untangle into their normal state. “Let the old girl sleep. She earned it most diligently. If you see her, however, please deliver her my sincerest compliments for her excellent service.”

“One should never be complimented for excellent service,” Von Schmidt said, stepping into the room at the head of two footmen carrying a dead Martina and two Jeans giggling at a live Tanaka. “Rather, one should be punished for performing merely satisfactorily.”

Without waiting for the others, he’d taken a seat at the head of the table. “If we’re done with amateur detectives and immature dramatics, two capacities at which, I’m sorry to say, no one here particularly excels, I’m happy to inform you that breakfast will be served in precisely seven minutes. Meanwhile, my dear guests, perhaps you’d care to present your current bids for the auction. I feel that with recent events, the stakes, pardon the colloquialism, have never been higher.”

“So we’re going to ignore the fact that a woman was just murdered not ten meters away from us?” the Princess asked as she and the others took their old seats around the table.

“Expand the radius enough and there’s always someone being murdered,” Von Schmidt said. “There will be a proficient enquiry later on, but this need not concern my honored guests since any toxic agent would have been detected by my sensors or your sniffer. Thus, it’s a matter of either poor maintenance or poor discipline, nothing more.”

The Princess exhaled slowly and angrily through her nostrils, forcing herself to assume yet again the poise of the outraged heiress rather than of the indignant humanist. When she was positive she had fully regained her composure, she said, “Very well. Let us hear what I’m worth this morning. It’s not every morning that a Princess may receive a fair evaluation of her value.”

“Indeed,” Von Schmidt said. “Acquisition is the sincerest form of flattery. So, who would like to present their bid first?”

Jean stood up. “It may shock you to know that Jean and I have not been entirely honest with you,” Jean began.

“Being shocked about dishonesty from a Frenchman is like being shocked about jumping into a pool and finding oneself wet—a testimony of severe retardation of the mind,” the Princess said.

Jean gave her a sour look, but went on without addressing the slight. “Some deals have been made in the shadier parts of France.”

“I hear all parts of France are shady. Keeping the light low is considerably cheaper than actually keeping the place clean,” the Princess confided in an empty glass in front of her.

“These childish interruptions really do sour the atmosphere,” Jean complained.

“Providing bad company for his captors is the duty of any good captive, don’t you agree?” the Princess asked.

“Viz all mine heart,” an annoyingly familiar voice sounded from a formerly unoccupied seat at the table. By all the crowns of Terra, the Princess thought, the man is like a mosquito you can’t kill. He’s like all mosquitoes combined. No matter how many times you squash him, he comes back to buzz by your ear when you least expect him.

“Ah, Herr Von Ludendorf!” Von Schmidt beamed. “How good of you to join us for breakfast.”

“Yes,” the Princess said, playing with a napkin on top of an empty plate, “the levels of obnoxiousness in the room were getting dangerously low.”

“Messieurs!” Jean shouted. “Please. Let us maintain some semblance of civility.”

All eyes were on the Jeans.

“As my dear partner-in-crime was saying,” Jean started, “we were not entirely honest with you. It was our design to create false competition with our beloved Count Ivanov to increase the chances of either party winning the auction.” At the mention of the slain Russian, both Jeans wept very briefly and very theatrically.

“However, now that he has been martyred in the noblest and bravest tradition of the Old Brigade, we’re going to present his bid alongside our own. It’s what he would have wanted and we have it in written form.”

Written during or after his death? the Princess wondered silently. She suspected that she had just about reached the limit of the lip she could afford before sanctions were taken. Any more and she’d be sent back to her room without breakfast or, given that she was no longer a child and these people not her family, something considerably more sinister.

“It will come as no surprise to the esteemed guests gathered here this morning, indeed, one might claim it borders on a sociological cliché, that Count Ivanov’s bid would be a technique of uplifting animals to the legal definition of sentience in the Russian Empire.”

“Indeed,” Von Schmidt said, looking unimpressed. “We’ve all heard of the Russian police dogs, including the celebrated dog hero #1, Zver, who gave his life to save the Tsar from an attack by Vigorous Kazakh Student Warriors and Revolutionary Revisionist … something or other. Even the simplest of simpletons knows of Russia’s parliamentary bears, who successfully replaced the human members of the Duma, though one has to admit, a gathering of ordinary bears could fulfill the role just as well.”

Jean nodded. “I should also like to mention a sloth, whose name escapes me at the moment, who had escaped the St. Petersburg Academic Zoo and was later discovered to be employed as a consultant in a multinational corporation on the subject of time management.”

“Fascinating anecdotes, no doubt, but how are they to sway my opinion in your favor, my dear Jean?”

“Since the earliest experiments of Professor Preobrazhensky, who succeeded in turning a perfectly fine dog named Sharik into a perfectly terrible person named Sharikov and back again, uplifting has been a traumatic and invasive procedure that often led to the mutilation and even death of the subject and, even in the best of cases, took years to complete.”

“All true,” Von Schmidt confirmed.

“Poor departed Ivanov”—Jean wiped another tear before proceeding—“has acquired a formula that allows any animal to be safely and painlessly uplifted in a matter of days through inoculation.”

“Marvelous!” Von Schmidt shouted. “Truly, it is a wonder!”

The Jeans brightened and Tanaka and Von Ludendorf darkened.

“Could you arrange for a demonstration?” Von Schmidt asked.

The Princess had a sudden vision of her ferret speaking with foreign agents or, worse, reporters for scandalous French tabloids. Why, one of the traits she valued the most about the toothy sniffer was his inability to speak. It made him the best interlocutor in the universe as far as she was concerned. Deciding that she didn’t care one bit for Audric becoming the subject of the demonstration, the Princess leaned on the ferret, which was dozing on her knees, and tightly clenched his muzzle. He was not happy about the whole affair, but what could he possibly do? He was, after all, only a mute ferret.

“Mais oui, monsieur!” Jean said. “Perhaps we should start with Tanaka. Right now, he’s a terrible oriental murderer, but with our help, he could make a half-decent human being in just a matter of days.”

“I could make Jeans dead frogs in matter of microseconds,” Tanaka said darkly. After a moment he added, “Perhaps inoculation of noble frogs would produce better Frenchmen.”

“You could,” Von Schmidt agreed. “But this will bring you no closer to your goal than your earlier non-offer of shamanistic delights. Perhaps you’ve come up with something more appealing?”

“Contact with court is still impossible. However, I make personal offer now.” Tanaka made a dramatic pause. “A blank sheet in a black notebook at the shrine of my ancestors.”

“A weasel’s last fart?” Von Schmidt asked thoughtfully.

The Jeans started to laugh, but stopped when they noticed that Von Schmidt was neither amused nor dismissive. If anything, the man seemed awed. Von Ludendorf was gone, though the Princess suspected it had more to do with reception and cosmic radiation than black notebooks and farting weasels.

“A careful man does not put legs on a snake,” Tanaka said.

“It is a grave honor and will be considered gravely,” Von Schmidt said.

The Princess looked back and forth, bemused. The two were speaking English and yet for all intents and purposes they could have been speaking Japanese. They reminded her of young aristocrats whose speech consisted mostly of quotes and references that changed on an almost hourly basis according to the latest dictates of fashion. An uninformed listener, one that had been offline for several hours, would understand every single word even as he missed every single idea.

She did not care for being the uninformed party. Even the Jeans seemed to have an inkling of understanding that she did not possess, as was evident from their rapid hissing at each other. How could she compete with an offer that she couldn’t even begin to comprehend? In fact, having nothing but the cloth on her back and a struggling ferret in her hands, how could she compete with any offer at all? There was that English dinosaur she’d trapped for Von Schmidt, but he’d get him regardless of the auction’s outcome. Somehow, relying on the honor system did not seem appropriate in this situation.

After a long consideration Von Schmidt looked the samurai straight in the eye and asked, “Anyone?”

Tanaka sucked on his teeth for a bit and then sighed with resignation. “Anyone.”

The Princess was still at a loss, but there was one thing she was certain about. She did not envy anyone at the moment.