psychomancy

Samantha

The food was fine. Bread and bread and some butter and bread and a bit of pork and bread. She wasn’t sure if this was some psychological game she was inadvertently winning. Maybe they expected the princess would have higher expectations for food. She did, she preferred beef, but she wouldn’t let herself think that, lest they win.

Everything was a damn psychological game with everyone and everyone was constantly losing. Or maybe that’s just what they wanted you to think. And the term ‘psychology’ didn’t even make sense, it was only tangentially related to psychomancy. ‘Telology’ or ‘animology’ fit better.

Maybe they had an actual reason to ship her up. Usually if someone injured 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 houses in an explosion slash cry for help Anisa just killed them. Except for that one weird case where she got them to work for her afterwards. Maybe there was an imminent coup Anisa didn’t want her to get in the way of, but which Samantha would somehow play a critical part. Maybe she’d return in 3 years, and the map would be completely redrawn. Felkner would be split in 2, and 1 of them would be the new capital, and Princess Samantha Sarah Day would be made puppet queen of the other. Strings go both ways Anisa, haha…

She was going stupid.

The books Roe had brought were boring and made no sense, nor could she deduce on whose authority they’d been provided. ‘Kinematics’, ‘induction’, ‘dissolution’, ‘transmutation’, ‘thaumodynamics’, ‘calculus’, ‘finite automata and prophecy machines’. She liked words in concept, but words needed context, which the books failed to provide. Everything was all arrows and circles, numbers were letters and letters were numbers. The books at least gave something to pretend to do while imagining fake scenarios of kicking Roe out of the front of the wagon, trampling her, turning the wagon around, and forcing an apology from all the supposed friends back home.

But even in her hypothetical, Roe limply stood back up, and her stupid pretty scarf was stupid pretty unscathed.

She’d been staring at a book on spell circle primitives for five minutes. The index had repeatedly told her there was a ‘Merl interpretation’ and an ‘Animist interpretation’ and an ‘Atomos interpretation’ and then she’d forgotten and the index had told her again ‘Merl Animist Atomos’ and she remembered the last book’s index that told her ‘axioms predicates sets functions’ and the book before that that told her ‘fire bellows ore cast’ and she decided to stop reading and stop thinking and drop her book to the wagon’s floor.

“Roe,” said Samantha’s paranoid mouth, to the driver’s back, “Putting aside your fake muteness, do you have telepathy?”

No response. Not even a turn.