Chapter 41

Sir Furt never had much tolerance for alcohol, and under the constant praise and encouragement of his wife, he continued to consume more, and more, and more. He staggered towards his wife, his fingers drunkenly pawing at her dress. "Lesh doit, lesh make anudder… a betterun than your failed shlut…" He spat and touched the cheek Arche slapped, the mark from her final slap was covered with makeup, but it was there and so was the memory. 'After I get my title back, I'll disinherit her, ungrateful girl! I raised her all those years and what does she do?! Threaten to cut the family off?! What does she think a family is for?!' The mental curses were clearer than his fumbled words, but the anger made him more receptive to his wife's charm and to the alcohol she kept offering him.

"Yes, you're such a great man, you can have 'one' more, right?" She teased and showed a little skin to him, and the room began to get all spinny. "Oh not to worry, husband." His wife said with abundant charm and a tap on his cheek. "Let me get you to bed, we can do all kinds of things there."

He gave a slow nod and looked up with a lecherous smile on his face and a little drool slipped down into his blonde beard. "M'kay." he muttered and let her take him to bed. She flopped him into place on his back.

"I'll return in just a moment, I just have to get ready." She said in the sultry way she always did, and he promptly fell to snoring before the door shut behind her.

Madam Furt rushed to the main room and found the pile of coins still sitting where her husband left them. She went to the silk rope and began to yank it. This pull would ring almost every servant bell in the house, including every bedroom. They had few servants anymore, but the Madam Furt wanted them all.

She kept yanking on the bell while tears ran down her cheeks. It took quite some time, almost an hour, or so it felt, until they began to arrive, a few butlers, maids, and a single footman for the carriage they retained.

They were dressed in service clothing, the cause of their delay, and looked back and forth at one another, uncertain of why they had all been gathered, and even more profoundly confused about why the Madam of the house stood weeping shamelessly in front of them.

Madam Furt sniffed hard, wiped her nose violently and crudely with her sleeve, and then said what was as unthinkable as her actions, "This house is over."

"Madam…" Jaem said, taking a step forward, she stopped him dead, raising a hand up to call him to a halt.

"Arche will never give anything to this house again. And my husband has sold Kuuderika and Ureirika. They're gone, probably sold off already or being transported to wherever they will be… the House of Furt has no heirs now." She pointed to the coins on the table.

Her words were cold as ice and filled with hate that was rivaled in its thickness only by her sorrowful face. "Divide that among yourselves as your severance, it should be enough to live for a long, long time, until you can find employment somewhere else. In addition, you can take whatever you can carry out of this house in the morning, go sell it, call that a bonus, I ask for only three things from you all in return. My last requests as the Madam of the House of Furt."

The horror of learning that the little girls they'd watched grow up, had in fact been sold by the man they worked for, was sinking in, and more than one pathetic, pitying look was in place, two of the maids had teary eyes, and they were not alone. It was obvious why, the chance of finding two small girls in the auction system that spread out all over Baharuth was exceptionally low.

"The first thing I ask is that if any of you ever find my girls… please buy them, buy them and look after them like they were your daughters. They shouldn't have to suffer because of their stupid, stupid parents."

The madam swallowed a lump in her throat, then carried on, "The second thing I ask, is that you tell workers to pass on to Arche, when she returns I mean, that I had nothing to do with their sale, I didn't want that, I didn't know he'd done it. She'll hate me anyway, but for the right reasons at least."

"And, the third, Madam?" Jaem pressed, having a sinking feeling about what she wanted.

"Pour alcohol, pitch, and anything burnable all over this house. Spend all night getting ready, my husband won't wake up, he's very drunk. I want this place ready to turn into hell by morning. Take whatever you want, including the carriage. I'll even sign documents turning over anything you can carry, if only you'll also carry out my final wishes." Madam Furt said and sat at the table in front of the coins.

For a long time nobody said anything, until Jaem did. "Yes, Madam, we'll do what you want."

That galvanized the remaining servants to work, and all night long they worked, laying out papers and tearing down curtains to prepare to use for fuel, soaking them in alcohol and laying them in strips to better spread the flame. The only sheets that weren't in use were those on which Sir Furt lay sleeping.

And while he slept, Madam Furt filled out an inventory of taken items and signed them over to the servant who expressed a desire for them. Silver forks, spoons, knives, plates, all manner of easily portable materials were shoved into packs and then labeled and shoved into the carriage that would take the last servants of the House of Furt away.

Dawn was just breaking when the last of the preparations were made, and she looked over the few faces of the faithful servants, they were clearly tired from lack of sleep, but they also wore faces of pity, sorrow, or anger all their own. One by one, Madam Furt extended the signed paper over to each servant, and thanked them by name.

"Jaem," she said and embraced him, looking up into the careworn eyes of the middle aged servant, "I barely knew a life without you, I hope you find a good house to serve in again, and don't think too harshly of me, even if I do deserve it."

"Liyal," she embraced the maid and slipped the rolled paper into the young woman's hand, "You weren't with us as long as Jaem, but you worked hard, there's a good recommendation for you, just like for the rest, thank you for everything."

So it went, until it was all done. "Now, get going, all of you." Madam Furt commanded.

"Madam… what about you?" Jaem asked as they briefly hesitated to leave.'

"I'm leaving my husband, of course." She said, and pointed toward the door, "Just leave a candle lit for me so I can set the fire in a little while."

They vanished out the door, one by one, leaving the last click to be like the clap of thunderous doom to the woman who stood alone. On a whim, Madam Furt took the painting and hung it up on the wall, admiring it briefly. 'It really is a fantastic piece of artwork, a shame nobody will ever see it again.'

She then went back to her bedroom, her husband was still asleep and snoring in a drunken stupor. She went to the bedside table and yanked open the drawer. Every noblewoman kept a dagger at hand in her bedroom to spare herself from being disgraced if an invasion should threaten to overthrow them. Madam Furt was the same as any other in that respect, and like other women who took that seriously, she kept her dagger sharp.

She drew it from its simple leather sheath and went over to where her husband slept. Conveniently enough, he'd rolled over onto his belly at some point. She set the dagger down, pulled off the shoes and socks that covered his ankles, then took the knife up.

It took only a moment, 'I'm no warrior but… Maybe Arche would praise me for this.' She thought with savage pleasure as the bright blood spurted and her husband screamed when she slashed the tendons of his ankles.

That woke him up, the snores were gone and the screaming went on in earnest. He howled and howled like a stuck pig and turned desperate to see who attacked him.

Madam Furt looked down at him with disgust and hatred, and he stared up at her in turn with eyes empty of any understanding. Answering the question he couldn't ask through screams, she shrieked like a banshee at him. "You sold my children! You bastard! You took them! You took them away! They were our future! They were our future and you destroyed it all!" She shrieked it and slashed her knife down again as he flailed, sometimes she hit the tendons, sometimes not, but he wasn't going to be walking. He rolled away, desperately trying to escape her.

And fell with a thud that brought a whimper with it.

"Arche's wish will come true! You just wait there you unmitigated bastard!" She shrieked and kicked him hard in the gut, then brought her foot up when he hugged his belly, and brought her heel down on his kidney. He yowled again like the stuck pig she now saw him to be. She then strode toward the door, leaving him shaking in pain and briefly too paralyzed to move.

She took the candle left burning on the table, then lowered it to a soaked strip of cloth that lay on the floor and ran to other piles of burnable and alcohol soaked materials.

The flames roared to life and the heat and smoke began to fill the room.

She watched the line of flame rush down the long ropes once used to summon servants, she watched it catch torn curtains and watched it catch strips of blanket, cotton, torn up furniture bits, and watched it vanish. 'They probably couldn't get it to run everywhere in the manor, not even if they tore up every page of every book to use for fuel… but it'll get enough.' She thought, and returned to her room. There weren't burning materials laid to that place, and there weren't, for a reason.

Madam Furt flung open the door to find her husband scratching at the wood, trying to get it open, and without any hint of mercy, she planted a kick full into his face, shattering his nose and forcing several teeth down his throat.

He struggled further, gurgling out protests when she went behind him, grabbed the blonde hair she once found so attractive, and began to drag him back into the bedroom.

From where he lay, he could see beneath the door to the beginnings of fire. "Wha…" He tried to say, but she answered before he could finish.

"Fire. The house is on fire. I had the servants get the entire home ready to burn." She said, approaching her wardrobe.

"We've got a few minutes to go before it spreads here, but it won't be long." Madam Furt tore off her expensive clothing and tossed it over his body, concealing herself briefly while she changed into a simple riding outfit, long out of fashion with the rich, it had become very common clothing.

"The servants all think I'm going to be dying in here with you, I told them I was leaving you, and I think they simply assumed I was going to die a little later." Madam Furt said and spat in his direction.

"I gave it a lot of thought." She said to the writhing figure on the floor while she yanked up her pants and slid on a belt. "I was going to do that, at first, but Kuuderika and Ureirika are out there somewhere, hopefully not suffering, and I owe it to them to try to do what our daughter was doing the whole time. Protecting them. From you. You owe it to your daughters to do what Arche said." Madam Furt's words were as icy as the spreading flames were hot, and tendrils of smoke began to come through the crack in the door.

"Get. Get me out." He gasped. "You're. My wife." He whimpered, "You. Duty. Me." He couldn't form a proper sentence, but he began crawling toward his wife.

"Not anymore." Madam Furt said, and spat on him. "There, that glob of spit on your face will put out a little fire. That was my last duty. Now do what Arche said, and go die in a fire."

She sat on the bed and yanked on low boots suitable for walking.

"What you do? Without. My. Name." He seethed as he struggled to mouth simple words.

"Furt is a dead name. Worthless trash. I'll go to work. I don't care at what. I'll dig holes, I'll be a prostitute, I'll teach music, maybe even be a merchant. I'll do whatever I have to in order to find them again. I'll buy them back, and spend my life begging their forgiveness for letting them stay where you could use them, you unimaginable bastard." The smoke was beginning to billow thickly under the door, it hit the ceiling and began to fill the room from the top down, closing inch by inch on a man whose wounds kept him safe from the smoke for as long as possible.

She yanked a small traveling pack from out of her wardrobe and threw a few more small things into it that might be useful, then slung it on to her back. "Here, here is a bonus for all my years of faithful marriage to my noble husband!" Madam Furt said, and spat on his face twice more, the first flames were making their way rapidly under the door, the sound of crashing and cracking was becoming like a roar.

"Don't. Leave. Me!" He cried out, desperately clawing after the Madam Furt as she went toward the window.

"Go. Die. In a fire." She reiterated her words, and smashing the window open, she jumped out to land in the grass.

She remained long enough to hear the first horrific screams of her husband's still hungover, agonized body as the flames began to cover him and the smoke began to choke his lungs, and then stepped away to watch as the manor started to collapse. A crowd was gathering which she easily slipped into, and watched as the wing where the library was suddenly caved in, and the roaring red flames picked up high enough to be seen licking at the sky.

She watched until the wing where her husband lay dying gave way and covered his corpse or ended his life, then with that, the Madam Furt slipped away to disappear, never to return again.

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