Penny #19
Title: “Different Influences”
Author/Artist: Scriptator
Fandom: Concarnadine (original)
Rating: Probably PG
Prompt: #002 “Sway”
Warnings: Involves things
Disclaimer: Everyone in here is an Original Character. Please ask before borrowing.
It was getting to be a cliché, this waking up after a collapse.
Penny Mortenson recovered her senses and looked round her. Yes, she was on the sofa in Concarnadine’s Chelsea house lounge. And, from the light levels, it looked to be early evening.
Then her memory caught up, replaying, on her internal cinema, the events immediately before the loss of her consciousness. Most pointedly, getting involved with the warded circle in the not-Chelsea courtyard - and then …
“You awake ? Good. Cup of tea ?”
It was Borin.
“How long … ?”
“Two hours thirty-six - pity: if you’d stayed asleep another twenty-five minutes, I’d have won the pool. I don’t suppose I could persuade you … ? No. All right. Tea, then ?”
Penny nodded and let her head fall back.
Before the tea, however, came Elizabeth.
“How do you feel, Penny ? Borin said you were awake - “
“How long did you have, in the betting pool ?”
“Who ? What ?” There was a pause. “Thirty-five minutes - though that was before I knew just what had happened to you.”
“Oh. And that was … ?” Penny asked.
“Ah … “ Elizabeth held her breath.
The moment was broken as Borin bustled in with the tea. “Here we are. Hello, Elizabeth: yours is in the kitchen, because I didn’t know - “ He broke off, and put Penny’s cup where she could reach it, and then left the room again.
Penny twisted round on the sofa and looked straight at Elizabeth; “You were going to say -- ?”
“Was I ?”
“About what had happened to me.”
“Oh. That.”
“Let me put it another way - what is it that you aren’t telling me ?”
Elizabeth smiled: “You have a way of putting things.” She drew breath, but Concarnadine took up the conversation, as he entered the room.
“All right - since you could touch it safely, the … whatever it is … is presently in the workshop, being tested. And since you say it isn’t just an accidental happenstance, we want to know what it does, why, and how ?
He looked at Penny, a little sideways: “You shocked Mortimer, you know. You’re supposed to be non-magical, but you calmly penetrate his wards, and take little or no harm, and you show him no comprehension of how … significant … that is.”
“I need to get home,” Penny said. “And I have a headache again.”
“We need a healer on staff,” Concarnadine commented aside to Elizabeth, as Penny tried to lever herself upright.
“I’d send Borin, but - “
“Ring the company - have Kenneth or one of the other drivers come.”
The Caribbean who drove Penny back to Shadwell managed, at the same time, to be pleasantly conversational, and also suitably discreet. He even went into the take-away for her, and brought her out what proved, when she got it indoors, to be a very palatable meat and fruit curry, neither too strong, nor too exotically spiced.
Relaxing and getting to sleep proved a little harder, however. For one thing, Tiger wanted to express his resentment at the fact that she had been so late home, and that thereby he had been deprived of his evening strokings and cuddlings; and for another, there was the business about the wards.
It would have been a truism to say that she had never had a situation like that before. Equally, in cold blood, Penny simply could not see how it all fitted into her world, into the Adrian/Hallie/research business-as-usual lifestyle that she had been trying to maintain.
For a second she felt the frustrations rise and, alongside them, there was the impulse to let the flames out, but she restrained it - she was in her own home, with her own kitten-cat: there was nothing threatening her there. She put it aside - and immediately the face of the journalist, Dee Rosenorth floated up into her mind’s eye again. She could see, in her mind’s eye, the expression on Dee’s face when she’d seen Penny’s, could, she found, almost imagine the questions that would come if Dee knew that she had been in the Park. She turned over (feeling Tiger adjust his position by her feet), and tried to relax. Her mind went back to the warded circle and to the strange thing inside it, and to the tingle she had felt when she had touched it. Obviously that had just been whatever it was that she had reacting with whatever power it was that resided in the metal lump but Penny had no recall of anything like it ever having happened before. Somewhere, in the middle of that train of thought, there was a derailment, and she fell asleep.
She woke in the wasted-magnolia of a chilly morning. The sky was clouded over, and the weather forecast was talking about the risk if scattered showers throughout the day.
There was a message on her cell-phone, from Elizabeth.
“Penny - there’s no need for you to come to the theatre or to Chelsea today. In fact, it might be as well if you didn’t try - Rayner Mortimer heard something worrying last night and we’re trying to looking into it. I’ll ring you tonight to let you know how things have been going on. Talk to you later - bye !!”
Penny thought about the business while she got up. She needed to go in to the Frencham but …
She didn’t often do it, but she felt the need for unconditional support. So she went to her wardrobe and got down the “special” handbag she had there. As soon as Tiger saw it, he showed interest, purring and rubbing his head against the outside of the bag. Penny put his favourite blanket into the bottom of the bag, and filled a bottle with a sipping tube with water, and put that in as well. Immediately Tiger jumped in and made himself comfortable.
She took a small bag of kitty-snacks with her, and went to get the LR into the City.
“Good to see you, miss,” Marina commented, from behind their reception desk, as Penny walked in. Penny thanked her, and walked through to Hallie’s office.
“How are things ?” she asked. Hallie looked up at her, with a strained expression, and Penny closed the door, opened her bag so that Tiger could look out, and went to see what she could do.
Thirty minutes later, and with 3 sides of A4 paper covered in notes, Penny breathed out and finally felt that they were on top of things again. Which was when Nanesha knocked on the door, came in, spent two minutes adoring Tiger, who purrily reciprocated, and then unburdened herself of her own uncertainties.
By the time they had finished, they had got through five mugs of coffee (Nanesha had already had one before she’d come in) plus a saucer of water for Tiger, another eight sheets of A4, five telephone conversations (as well as telling Ione to tell Eleanor Copressley that they would get back to her once they had finished), half a dozen major Internet searches (and around sixty smaller ones), and most of the morning.
“And we have the answers to three client enquiries, and further questions for two more,” Penny summarised. “All right - I’ll go and ring Ms Copressley, and you two will get on with the real work.”
“Penny - sorry to trouble you, but you need to visit Solme Mens again.”
“I was only there yesterday - shares can’t have moved that much - “
“You would be surprised. But, no: they haven’t, but you still need to go. There will be an e-mail when you get there, explaining.”
“Hallie: I have to go out. Can you cat-sit Tiger for half an hour ? Thanks.”
Walking down to Mark Lane, Penny wondered what was going on. When she read the e-mail, she understood half of it, and that was enough to tell her that she probably didn’t need to know the rest at that moment.
“Is everything all right ?”
“Yes, thank you, Mis-that is, Solly.”
The little man bobbed his head, pleased that he’d got her to use his real name.
“So, what can I do for you ?”
“Another four thousand Imperial Greek, please, on my account.”
He nodded.
“And - ” Whatever else he’d had to say went by the board as Penny’s phone went off, with a text calling her back urgently.
Her immediate concern was that something had happened to Tiger, but the crisis proved work-related: Augham McIlvinnie had issued a writ against the School for deliberately mis-advising him.
However, with it had come a fax from Eleanor Copressley - Adrian and Max Levin were both aware of the situation. No comment should be made by the School (and arrangements were in hand to see that they could leave the Frencham Building without difficulty at the end of the day); in the meantime they could order whatever they wanted for lunch, and Adrian LeGrange would see that it was delivered to them. Business would continue as usual, and the entire business was expected to be wrapped up within a day or two.
All of which left Penny with a very nasty feeling in her stomach, and a reduced appetite, even for the excellent food that Adrian arranged to be sent in to them. At the end of the day, to avoid the cordon of journalists waiting outside the Frencham Building, the building’s security escorted them to a freight entrance round the back, and they made their way through back lanes until they reached St.Mary Axe, and could get buses to go home.
Penny herself saw the others off and then used some more side lanes, to get back to Adrian’s LeGrange’s offices.
“Penny - were we expecting you today ?” Maisie McLennan asked.
“I don’t know,” Penny replied: “But I need to see Mr. LeGrange - and Mr. Levin, if he’s in.”
“I’ll check for you,” Maisie answered. “How are things going ? We don’t see you, of course but - “
“I’m fine, thank you, Maisie - I’ve just had a bit of worrying news, and I wanted to get advice.”
Maisie nodded, and looked up from her phone: “Mr Levin’s still here - Mr. LeGrange is, of course - which one did you want to see first ?”
“Max Levin,” Penny decided. It made sense to see her “adversary” first, to get a critical analysis of her situation.
“It’s not your fault,” was the immediate response - which hadn’t exactly been what Penny had been expecting.
“McIlvinnie is simply trying it on,” Max Levin continued: “I don’t imagine you’ve actually seen the case he’s pleading - no, I thought not … not that you needed to - but basically he’s trying to turn things around so that the corrupt motives he had for trying to get you to leak information get swept under the legal carpet, and instead it’s made to look as though you were deliberately trying to get him to invest in Adrian’s top-tips.”
“And where do Hallie and I stand, while all of this is going on ?” Pepny enquired.
“Adrian and I will stand by you,” Max Levin replied. “In fact, Mr. McIlvinnie may need to secure his own standing - we have taken certified copies of the contemp-oraneous notes you took when first you met with him. We intend to file those with the court, together with an application for summary judgement, on the basis that the entire contretemps was his fault, and that you and Miss Indiset were acting responsibly in restricting his access to confidential data.”
Something Adrian confirmed to her when he had Penny and Levin in to his own office.
“This will be gone in a week or so. In the meantime, Miss Ganduaine will handle matters at the Frencham - I am sending Bella Kugelmann and two of Mr. Mongomerie’s agency staff to assist her. Miss Indiset and Ms. Bhaskar will be relocating to an office in Croydon for the moment, and you, Penny, will be coming back here: I want you available if Georgia Bathanna needs to consult, and I also want you to work with Eleanor Copressley on a paradigm for filtering out applications for the Schools’ help which are overt attempts to spy on me.”
He looked at her, assessing how much she had been affected by what had happened.
“I also think that we may need to move you into a hotel for a night or two, over this weekend, in case your flat has been besieged by the press.”
“Tiger !” Penny exclaimed. “My kitten,” she explained, a second or two later.
Adrian LeGrange’s lips quirked, even while Max Levin was looking a little irritated.
“I’ll see if - ”
“If I could phone Sandy Miniver, she can look after him,” Penny offered.
“Tell her that she will be paid well - “
“Oh, we don’t work like that - ” Then a thought occurred to her: Concarnadine (or Elizabeth) could get her into the flat. And possibly out again the next day. Which would be easier than a hotel …
“Actually,” she said: “If it’s money, then I can arrange something. There’s nothing wrong with it, only I think that it’s something that you gentlemen would rather not know about … “
Author/Artist: Scriptator
Fandom: Concarnadine (original)
Rating: Probably PG
Prompt: #002 “Sway”
Warnings: Involves things
Disclaimer: Everyone in here is an Original Character. Please ask before borrowing.
It was getting to be a cliché, this waking up after a collapse.
Penny Mortenson recovered her senses and looked round her. Yes, she was on the sofa in Concarnadine’s Chelsea house lounge. And, from the light levels, it looked to be early evening.
Then her memory caught up, replaying, on her internal cinema, the events immediately before the loss of her consciousness. Most pointedly, getting involved with the warded circle in the not-Chelsea courtyard - and then …
“You awake ? Good. Cup of tea ?”
It was Borin.
“How long … ?”
“Two hours thirty-six - pity: if you’d stayed asleep another twenty-five minutes, I’d have won the pool. I don’t suppose I could persuade you … ? No. All right. Tea, then ?”
Penny nodded and let her head fall back.
Before the tea, however, came Elizabeth.
“How do you feel, Penny ? Borin said you were awake - “
“How long did you have, in the betting pool ?”
“Who ? What ?” There was a pause. “Thirty-five minutes - though that was before I knew just what had happened to you.”
“Oh. And that was … ?” Penny asked.
“Ah … “ Elizabeth held her breath.
The moment was broken as Borin bustled in with the tea. “Here we are. Hello, Elizabeth: yours is in the kitchen, because I didn’t know - “ He broke off, and put Penny’s cup where she could reach it, and then left the room again.
Penny twisted round on the sofa and looked straight at Elizabeth; “You were going to say -- ?”
“Was I ?”
“About what had happened to me.”
“Oh. That.”
“Let me put it another way - what is it that you aren’t telling me ?”
Elizabeth smiled: “You have a way of putting things.” She drew breath, but Concarnadine took up the conversation, as he entered the room.
“All right - since you could touch it safely, the … whatever it is … is presently in the workshop, being tested. And since you say it isn’t just an accidental happenstance, we want to know what it does, why, and how ?
He looked at Penny, a little sideways: “You shocked Mortimer, you know. You’re supposed to be non-magical, but you calmly penetrate his wards, and take little or no harm, and you show him no comprehension of how … significant … that is.”
“I need to get home,” Penny said. “And I have a headache again.”
“We need a healer on staff,” Concarnadine commented aside to Elizabeth, as Penny tried to lever herself upright.
“I’d send Borin, but - “
“Ring the company - have Kenneth or one of the other drivers come.”
The Caribbean who drove Penny back to Shadwell managed, at the same time, to be pleasantly conversational, and also suitably discreet. He even went into the take-away for her, and brought her out what proved, when she got it indoors, to be a very palatable meat and fruit curry, neither too strong, nor too exotically spiced.
Relaxing and getting to sleep proved a little harder, however. For one thing, Tiger wanted to express his resentment at the fact that she had been so late home, and that thereby he had been deprived of his evening strokings and cuddlings; and for another, there was the business about the wards.
It would have been a truism to say that she had never had a situation like that before. Equally, in cold blood, Penny simply could not see how it all fitted into her world, into the Adrian/Hallie/research business-as-usual lifestyle that she had been trying to maintain.
For a second she felt the frustrations rise and, alongside them, there was the impulse to let the flames out, but she restrained it - she was in her own home, with her own kitten-cat: there was nothing threatening her there. She put it aside - and immediately the face of the journalist, Dee Rosenorth floated up into her mind’s eye again. She could see, in her mind’s eye, the expression on Dee’s face when she’d seen Penny’s, could, she found, almost imagine the questions that would come if Dee knew that she had been in the Park. She turned over (feeling Tiger adjust his position by her feet), and tried to relax. Her mind went back to the warded circle and to the strange thing inside it, and to the tingle she had felt when she had touched it. Obviously that had just been whatever it was that she had reacting with whatever power it was that resided in the metal lump but Penny had no recall of anything like it ever having happened before. Somewhere, in the middle of that train of thought, there was a derailment, and she fell asleep.
She woke in the wasted-magnolia of a chilly morning. The sky was clouded over, and the weather forecast was talking about the risk if scattered showers throughout the day.
There was a message on her cell-phone, from Elizabeth.
“Penny - there’s no need for you to come to the theatre or to Chelsea today. In fact, it might be as well if you didn’t try - Rayner Mortimer heard something worrying last night and we’re trying to looking into it. I’ll ring you tonight to let you know how things have been going on. Talk to you later - bye !!”
Penny thought about the business while she got up. She needed to go in to the Frencham but …
She didn’t often do it, but she felt the need for unconditional support. So she went to her wardrobe and got down the “special” handbag she had there. As soon as Tiger saw it, he showed interest, purring and rubbing his head against the outside of the bag. Penny put his favourite blanket into the bottom of the bag, and filled a bottle with a sipping tube with water, and put that in as well. Immediately Tiger jumped in and made himself comfortable.
She took a small bag of kitty-snacks with her, and went to get the LR into the City.
“Good to see you, miss,” Marina commented, from behind their reception desk, as Penny walked in. Penny thanked her, and walked through to Hallie’s office.
“How are things ?” she asked. Hallie looked up at her, with a strained expression, and Penny closed the door, opened her bag so that Tiger could look out, and went to see what she could do.
Thirty minutes later, and with 3 sides of A4 paper covered in notes, Penny breathed out and finally felt that they were on top of things again. Which was when Nanesha knocked on the door, came in, spent two minutes adoring Tiger, who purrily reciprocated, and then unburdened herself of her own uncertainties.
By the time they had finished, they had got through five mugs of coffee (Nanesha had already had one before she’d come in) plus a saucer of water for Tiger, another eight sheets of A4, five telephone conversations (as well as telling Ione to tell Eleanor Copressley that they would get back to her once they had finished), half a dozen major Internet searches (and around sixty smaller ones), and most of the morning.
“And we have the answers to three client enquiries, and further questions for two more,” Penny summarised. “All right - I’ll go and ring Ms Copressley, and you two will get on with the real work.”
“Penny - sorry to trouble you, but you need to visit Solme Mens again.”
“I was only there yesterday - shares can’t have moved that much - “
“You would be surprised. But, no: they haven’t, but you still need to go. There will be an e-mail when you get there, explaining.”
“Hallie: I have to go out. Can you cat-sit Tiger for half an hour ? Thanks.”
Walking down to Mark Lane, Penny wondered what was going on. When she read the e-mail, she understood half of it, and that was enough to tell her that she probably didn’t need to know the rest at that moment.
“Is everything all right ?”
“Yes, thank you, Mis-that is, Solly.”
The little man bobbed his head, pleased that he’d got her to use his real name.
“So, what can I do for you ?”
“Another four thousand Imperial Greek, please, on my account.”
He nodded.
“And - ” Whatever else he’d had to say went by the board as Penny’s phone went off, with a text calling her back urgently.
Her immediate concern was that something had happened to Tiger, but the crisis proved work-related: Augham McIlvinnie had issued a writ against the School for deliberately mis-advising him.
However, with it had come a fax from Eleanor Copressley - Adrian and Max Levin were both aware of the situation. No comment should be made by the School (and arrangements were in hand to see that they could leave the Frencham Building without difficulty at the end of the day); in the meantime they could order whatever they wanted for lunch, and Adrian LeGrange would see that it was delivered to them. Business would continue as usual, and the entire business was expected to be wrapped up within a day or two.
All of which left Penny with a very nasty feeling in her stomach, and a reduced appetite, even for the excellent food that Adrian arranged to be sent in to them. At the end of the day, to avoid the cordon of journalists waiting outside the Frencham Building, the building’s security escorted them to a freight entrance round the back, and they made their way through back lanes until they reached St.Mary Axe, and could get buses to go home.
Penny herself saw the others off and then used some more side lanes, to get back to Adrian’s LeGrange’s offices.
“Penny - were we expecting you today ?” Maisie McLennan asked.
“I don’t know,” Penny replied: “But I need to see Mr. LeGrange - and Mr. Levin, if he’s in.”
“I’ll check for you,” Maisie answered. “How are things going ? We don’t see you, of course but - “
“I’m fine, thank you, Maisie - I’ve just had a bit of worrying news, and I wanted to get advice.”
Maisie nodded, and looked up from her phone: “Mr Levin’s still here - Mr. LeGrange is, of course - which one did you want to see first ?”
“Max Levin,” Penny decided. It made sense to see her “adversary” first, to get a critical analysis of her situation.
“It’s not your fault,” was the immediate response - which hadn’t exactly been what Penny had been expecting.
“McIlvinnie is simply trying it on,” Max Levin continued: “I don’t imagine you’ve actually seen the case he’s pleading - no, I thought not … not that you needed to - but basically he’s trying to turn things around so that the corrupt motives he had for trying to get you to leak information get swept under the legal carpet, and instead it’s made to look as though you were deliberately trying to get him to invest in Adrian’s top-tips.”
“And where do Hallie and I stand, while all of this is going on ?” Pepny enquired.
“Adrian and I will stand by you,” Max Levin replied. “In fact, Mr. McIlvinnie may need to secure his own standing - we have taken certified copies of the contemp-oraneous notes you took when first you met with him. We intend to file those with the court, together with an application for summary judgement, on the basis that the entire contretemps was his fault, and that you and Miss Indiset were acting responsibly in restricting his access to confidential data.”
Something Adrian confirmed to her when he had Penny and Levin in to his own office.
“This will be gone in a week or so. In the meantime, Miss Ganduaine will handle matters at the Frencham - I am sending Bella Kugelmann and two of Mr. Mongomerie’s agency staff to assist her. Miss Indiset and Ms. Bhaskar will be relocating to an office in Croydon for the moment, and you, Penny, will be coming back here: I want you available if Georgia Bathanna needs to consult, and I also want you to work with Eleanor Copressley on a paradigm for filtering out applications for the Schools’ help which are overt attempts to spy on me.”
He looked at her, assessing how much she had been affected by what had happened.
“I also think that we may need to move you into a hotel for a night or two, over this weekend, in case your flat has been besieged by the press.”
“Tiger !” Penny exclaimed. “My kitten,” she explained, a second or two later.
Adrian LeGrange’s lips quirked, even while Max Levin was looking a little irritated.
“I’ll see if - ”
“If I could phone Sandy Miniver, she can look after him,” Penny offered.
“Tell her that she will be paid well - “
“Oh, we don’t work like that - ” Then a thought occurred to her: Concarnadine (or Elizabeth) could get her into the flat. And possibly out again the next day. Which would be easier than a hotel …
“Actually,” she said: “If it’s money, then I can arrange something. There’s nothing wrong with it, only I think that it’s something that you gentlemen would rather not know about … “