prelude
Vast fields of corn and wheat.
A well-trodden path of gravel. Gravel quarried as stone, hammered, crushed, strewn about the ground. Deep enough that tire tracks and hoof marks had worn their way down.
Fuzzy, unripe bristles, covered in dried mud. They’d grow too close to the path, get tread on, pop back up. The dirty wheat and corn were covered in flies, who seemed content to hop and crawl, rather than fly. Was the summer heat so enervating? It was but an average summer day. Though, it had rained yesterday, scorched ereyesterday, stormed the day before; the bugs may be tired from the sky’s capriciousness.
“Penbarrow, 10km,” said the tall, wooden sign. It had been installed a year ago, and before most in the area were capable of reading at all.
Only the plants adjacent the path were dirt-covered. A few steps in, there were periods of tall, green stems, and the periods of uniform grass; both were vibrant. The wheat’s yellow-green and the corn’s green-green were cheerful, shockingly so. One could argue their cheerfulness was unearned, but one would be arguing with a plant. Most plants (though not all) tend against argumentation. They lend an ear regardless.
Alongside the plants, there were plenty of bones. A farmer would trip over a femur in the mud and find someone who socially outranks him to complain to. He didn’t care about the skeleton, but his lord might, and maybe he’d get rewarded. There were plenty of lost aunts and uncles and cousins unceremoniously squashed in fieldmud. It was usually just a cow, though. Or occasionally some manner of artificial skeleton, when the necromancer had reached a bone shortage. Or a lamb leg from a wolf. Or a lamb leg from a werewolf.
There tended to be too many possibilities for one to worry about all of them. A farmer walking along the gravel path shouldn’t concern themselves with wayward bones. Let the farmer worry about farming, the bone-ologist worry about bone-ology. Find the nearest literate person, have them write a letter to the academy of Northpoint, or of Felkner, or of Blisbane, and add to the ever-increasing backlog of false-positive sophont bones that need to be categorized.
There was a patch of blue wheat. It was wheat, but blue. Blue wheat didn’t tend to live very long after having been turned blue. The blue wheat was nonetheless cheerful. It was contributing to thaumology! It was proud!
Assuming this was a magical-experiment-induced blueness, rather than some manner of decay. Decaying wheat would probably agree with One-Who-Argues-With-Plants that it should not be cheerful.
One could spend their whole life asking questions of wheat, corn, gravel, flies and bones, and walk away feeling enriched. Maybe. Most didn’t. Most seemingly didn’t want to.
⁂
land
You
The land was an oligarchy pretending to be a monarchy, pretending to function. When asked if she was happy, the land said she “didn’t mind”. She thought “the government was better than what had come before”, despite the current system coming from erebefore.
Not all were satisfied with this. Raging at plants correlated with an argumentation fetish, and so also correlated with arguments with the fake king, the fake king’s advisors and friends, the tax man (especially when one was the tax man), the sky, the land, and every god one had listed in one’s dictionary.
Periodic impotent rage charmed some, but, after enough cycles, like a flower blossoming from a stem, the impotence would dominate: the implied structural ossification would depress.
𝄒Everyone pulls you toward their inertial soullessness, and you have to assert, no, I have a soul. “I am better than you,” you say to the world, as you stand at its cliff, and perhaps through narcissism, or through an inertial fear of death, you step back.
You’re inept, and foolish, tired and directionless. The sky opens, and you are wet, your shoes grow soggy in the damp, muddy grass. You grow annoyed at yourself for wearing such a nice shirt to stare across the loch, when you knew it’d get soupy. You laugh at your ineptitude, and cry. You are a microcosm of the world, and neither can improve the other. If they could, neither would’ve arrived where they now are.
Maybe you’d jump tomorrow. You suspected death wasn’t enough. But what did it matter.
⁂
woman
Anisa
There is a woman. The woman’s name is Anisa Day.
Most would recognize her by her black-black-blue hair, her thin limbs, her sullen face granting 15 more years than she’d accumulated. Anisa would fail to recognize her reflection, as she had never bothered to memorize it. She’d more often be recognized by the unadorned silver crown on her head. The people called her ‘princess’; she called herself ‘scion’. It was less elegant, but more accurate.
She floated 2cm off the ground. This conveniently agnostified shoe choice, but risked muscle atrophy. She was born weak; gravity magic had prevented her premature death.
𝄒She ruled the city of Felkner. The city had functioned without her and would, she believed, continue to function after she left. She’d simply consolidated law codification and enforcement, without ego. Executions sharply rose. The city was made safer.
She wasn’t concerned about assassination attempts. Reversing her advancements would require a lot more than killing her, they’d need to disassemble her infrastructure: the Felkner Guard, the mayor’s council, her branch of the Royal Bank of Brune. Perhaps she thought too highly of the intelligence of the remaining unexecuted would-be criminals, that they would realize killing her wouldn’t do anything.
She was trusted for her dispassion. She would gather data – ‘statistics’. She would measure the temperament of her citizens, their literacy, their employment status. She would make recommendations to her guard, to the mayor, to the bank, to the guilds: where to stake out for criminals, where a school should be built, how much interest to charge for loans, who should be considered for membership. She wasn’t always listened to, but she was listened to often enough, and her judgement led to an agreeable outcome often enough.
She was not happy. She was not sad. She was. She went for walks through the graveyard to break from her work, and on these walks she simply ceased to be.
There were some problems she could not solve on her own. Her clockwork needed another cog. And so,
Vast fields of corn and wheat.
Green-green, yellow-green. Blue. Green-green. Red-green. Black. Yellow-green. Blue.
“Why do you laugh, lady?” asked her driver.
“I was laughing? I didn’t realize I was…”
⁂
trip_down
Anisa
Two horses pulled a wagon to the front of a manor.
A manor curtain fluttered, a floor was (imagined to be) stomped, a girl threw open a door, a girl tripped on nothing, a girl threatened to face-plant down her stairs, a girl got saved by a maid yanking her hair.
Anisa was unconcerned. This was at least the third time she’d seen this, though the hair grab was new. The girl had allowed their maid to grow bold.
The maid made eye contact with Anisa, quickly flashed an exaggerated smile with scrunched eyes, then flattened her face back to neutral. She broke eyes. The flailing body got an arm wrapped around it and got pulled back in.
“Welcome! Hi!” said Miss Flailer, apparently as unconcerned as everyone else. She’d fallen and faceplanted on her gravel and stone path before, and her pain tolerance for such had grown impressive. More impressive, though, would’ve been avoiding unnecessary pain altogether.
Anisa hadn’t come for her elegance or wisdom.
Anisa caught her driver gaping. Someone was concerned. “You should be used to this by now,” muttered Anisa, to which Driver said nothing.
“Hello, Princess Samantha,” said Anisa. She stood up and hopped out of the wagon. Her thin blue shoes briefly dipped to dry mud, before her body pulled them back into the air.
⁂
manor
Anisa
The manor was a manor, unlike Anisa’s manor, which was a fort in a city. This manor had 2 floors, a flowerbed, another, worse flowerbed, another, worse flowerbed, a beautiful, cleanly-shingled roof, red curtains, black curtains, a post hoc path of flattened wheat to a stable, an empty patch of gravel where a large fountain had been, bundles of blue wheat, bundles of black wheat—
She caught herself before laughing this time. What a mess.
“Again, Anisa, Princess Anisa, I don’t wish to work for you,” said Samantha, straightening her hair with her hands. “But, I should have plenty of datas to make the trip worth your while.”
This trip could’ve been a letter, then. A productive day was instead 20km, 2 signs, and another 50 pages in the book of poetry she still hated.
“Data,” muttered Samantha, loudly, performatively self-admonishing. “Data is already plural. Unless it’s like ‘peoples’…”
“Thank you for the imminent datas,” stated Anisa.
“Peter! Hey, Peter!” screamed Samantha to a field, and again her maid grimaced.
“Yeah, what?” screamed a fielddot.
“Anisa is here, deal with the horses!”
“What?”
“Get over here!”
Anisa looked to the still gaping Driver. No, Driver was reacting correctly, it was Anisa who shouldn’t be calm. “Acknowledge?” Anisa asked her.
“Acknowledged, time is 10:32,” she said, and her mouth managed to lock shut.
“Were you and Quincy not expecting us to be on time, Samantha?” admonished Anisa.
“Oh, no no no, we’re merely busy. Always busy around here.” Maid’s dull exasperation seemed to agree.
That would be shocking, if it were true. There was nothing to be busy with. Penbarrow was a few farming villages, its most notable feature was its proximity to the city of Felkner.
“Here, come, come in, we’ll show you inside. Joan, you have her luggage?”
Maid nodded. “I have prepared for this.” And she walked down the stairs and reached into the carriage and struggled to carry a medium trunk, eventually gaining a sufficient handhold and speedwalking up the stairs. The assignment of a task had apparently corroded judgement.
“You’re good, you’re good,” said Samantha, holding the door open. And Peter was now a fieldhuman instead of a fielddot. “What is it,” he shouted, slightly quieter.
“Take the horses to the stable!”
“Ah, right, on it.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” said Driver.
“Are you coming in?” shouted Samantha, and Anisa realized she had been frozen just outside the wagon, hypnotized by nothing.
⁂
tea
Anisa
She paused her hovering to sit at an adorned table. Tea set. 3 cups with little plates. A bunch of doilies on a red tablecloth.
Doilies were for protecting wood from scratches, not for ornamental snowflakes. The maid poured tea before having been requested. Anisa attempted and failed to extract displeasure from her neutral expression.
“Green Carmella, yes?” said Samantha.
“I prefer Viscount Black, actually,” said Anisa. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, sorry about that!” said Samantha. “I blame Quincy. He said you liked it.”
“It’s fine.” She hadn’t been expecting tea at all. If she didn’t like it, she wouldn’t drink it. “If I don’t like it, I won’t drink it,” said Anisa.
“Have you not had it before? He swore you liked it.”
He always assumed he knew her… “I have not.”
“An opportunity, then!”
“‘An opportunity’…” she wafted, sniffed, sipped.
“And?”
“To be determined. I’ll require more samples, and an objective analysis.”
Samantha chuckled. “You’re allowed to have snap judgements, Anisa.”
“It is tea,” she snapped, softly.
Another laugh. “Fine, fine. How’s Felkner.”
“Agreeable. I have a cohort who follow commands faithfully and efficiently. The population respects law enforcement. We have preliminary plans to expand housing northward.”
“I suppose you don’t need me for housing planning anymore then, haha. That’s great to hear, great to hear. We’re doing a lot here, too, trying to find more efficient ways to grow food, trying to find what food is most efficient to grow.”
“Do your people not have enough edible crops, Samantha.”
“Oh no, we have plenty. I wanted to give you the statistics we’ve gathered on how all our different magics — magic? — affected crop growth. I personally haven’t cast any of it, and I’m sure it’s not as organized as—”
“If you have enough food, why are you so busy?” More aggressive than she was intending. Samantha frowned. “Isn’t this what a princess is supposed to do? Isn’t that what you do? Gather statistics, make theories, and change policy based on the results?”
“People die if I don’t, Samantha.”
“I suppose people probably won’t die if I don’t, but they might get more time to do things they enjoy. Make better crops, make crops grow quicker, less work. Maybe I can open schools and force them to read. Quincy’s census is ongoing — paused while he’s in Blisbane, thought he’d be back by now — but did you know we have a 32% literacy rate in Penbarrow? 32! How did we overthrow Casse if so few people could coordinate with writing?”
Her argument was flawed, but she respected the emotion. No, respected was the wrong word. She identified the emotion. A key to be inserted into a lock.
She sipped again. “I still need you, Samantha. Not for housing. Your temperament can be put to good use.”
She shook her head. “No. I am not going to Felkner to work for you, Princess Anisa Day. I like it here.”
Her and her delusions of necrotic wheat saving the world. They’d love her. “Not for me. With me. Over the Felkner Vanguard Guild. Their temperaments refuse to accept me as sovereign.”
“I never understood that nomenclature. How are they ‘vanguarding’? Aren’t they mercenaries?”
“No, and they refuse to change their name. Mercenary, according to them, implies they do the will of others. A ‘vanguardist’ seeks out problems themselves, rather than waiting to be asked. As you can imagine, it’s stepping on my toes.”
“Impressive.” Samantha slurped, growing self-conscious halfway through. “I’d think you’d be thrilled. They autovigilantize, less work for you.” “I don’t want less work, Samantha. I’m not Reimond.”
“I didn’t think I—”
“And no, having them around isn’t just more work. It’s a competing pole of legitimacy. I can’t eliminate it outright without serious repercussions. You would fit as a consul.”
“I would ‘fit’? I’m fine where I am. I’m not another one of your pawns, Anisa.” Anisa again sipped. She wouldn’t press it. “Okay.”
It’d be good for Samantha to get away from Quincy, to meet other creatives, to be forced to be busy with productive administration, but…
𝄒
What did it matter.
⁂
stupid
Samantha
There was once a man by the name of Reimond Day. He and the Day Vanguard had slain The Lichdragon, while the Brunian masses had torn apart The Necromancer. Having no leader, Reimond accepted the throne. He sat, and he sat, and he sat. Truly, a lifetime of minor idolatry was sufficient recompense for the dissolution of tyranny. Truly.
There is a woman by the name of Samantha Day. Samantha Day is sitting tied up in the back of a wagon, en route to Northpoint Academy, which is more central-east than north, and more of a rectangle than a point. She is being punished because she momentarily lost her composure after her brother Quincy killed himself. This was after 2 years of working away from him at the Vanguard Guild in Felkner, and 3 months of his being dead. Clearly, a malevolent spirit had apparated within her. Upon being depossessed, she had asserted that she didn’t care and wasn’t thinking about him and he didn’t matter and she’d dip her head in holy water and she’d pay for the damages and it was fine and it was fine and she was fine and and.
Everyone was stupid. Grampa. Holstram. Libri.
Quincy was stupid for killing himself, and everyone was stupid for thinking she was like him. He could’ve stayed in Penbarrow forever, doing nothing, or helping assemble ovens, or finding novel ways to use magic. He always enjoyed novel magic…
Lionel was stupid for overreacting to his wrecked home. For one, his house was bad. Natural causes were bound to destroy the entire neighbourhood, they were all so weak and flimsy. He could easily get something better. But no, it was close to the Felkner Vanguard Guild, and that was all he cared about. What an empty life.
Anisa was stupid for generally hating everything Samantha said. Yes Anisa, I get it, I’m a reckless, soulless, evil person, because I thought it was a bit funny when Quincy set the foyer on fire, or dropped rats from the ceiling on dad. Yes, I get it, you want the Vanguard under your thumb because some fraction of them are unhinged, destructive abominations, perhaps even moreso than I. Yes, you’d rather I kill myself too, so there’s no Samantha to get in the way of Weathers running the Guild, because Weathers is oh-so under-your-thumbable. But, you moron, you’re not judging Samantha’s suggestions, you’re judging her alleged character! My. A bridge in the north would allow for more crime from Blueadder to Stonegrove, yes, but that’s why we station more guards up there, to kill the crimedoers. Good idea! And you ignore it because it comes from Her Stupidity Princess Samantha Sarah Day, 20th in line to the throne, of Brune, give or take 20. Maybe 19th, now that Quincy Stupid-Stupid Day the Stupid was stupid dead and probably in stupid hell where all the stupid dead people go.
She had a list of others who were stupid — Weathers, Joan, Verris — but she found monologuing was depalpifying her anger. Strange, she’d think it’d invigorate it.
Oh, but there was Roe. Roe, the mute driver. Roe, the fake mute driver, who her two horses merely tolerated, for her stupid-stable-stink outstunk theirs, but they talked behind her back about how they would tear into her one day, when she’d given them their last subpar apple, they’d chew off her stupid pretty scarf and trample her to death in the hay. Her last straw.
Roe was stupid for driving tied-up Samantha — (tied up by Jerry and someone else, she forgot his name, but they were both stupid) — to Center-east-rectangle, wasting two weeks of Roe life going back and forth, ignoring the yelling and the crying and the screaming…
“Turn around, Roe, Roe, Roe, when I get back you’re out of the guild! Roe I can execute people Roe, I’m a princess, I have the power to do that, Roe, I don’t want to go to Northpoint, I want to stay in Felkner, I’m okay now Roe, I’m okay. You don’t have to listen to Anisa, Roe, Anisa is stupid, you’re not stupid, Roe, please. Please. I’ll be better, Roe, please believe me, please, please.”
Roe had been authorized to gag her. She was at that weird level of stupid where she was both too stupid to turn around and too stupid to gag her.
Based on a very, very rough estimate of the winter sun, it had been 20 minutes, so perhaps Roe’s patience would melt with time. Though, if Samantha had been Roe, Samantha knew Samantha-Roe would’ve given up and turned around after being subsumed by Samantha-Samantha’s righteous indignation after only 10 minutes. Which is saying something, because Samantha-Roe née Samantha had such high pain tolerance from all her burns and faceplants and accidental stabs…
…Oh, no, that was a cloud, not the sun. Sun was still where it was. She could still see Felkner. Maybe it’d been more like 7 minutes.
⁂
knee
Samantha
She felt peace out of necessity.
.
.
.
Roe untied her arms and legs to hand her food. She dove out the back, bloodied and graveled her knees and hands and face and tumbled tumbled and ran. Roe turned around.
It was more of a stumble for the first few dozen steps. There was pain, of course, O Shiron, O Shiron there was pain my stupid pulsating knees and the stupid gravel indents in my hands with its stupid loose skin everything stings ow, but as long as she kept moving, she could outrun even pain. Couldn’t outrun a horse-drawn wagon, though. Roe patronizingly caught up and had the horses trot behind Samantha.
“See you in Felkner, — knee, knee, ow, — Roe,” said Samantha, looking over her shoulder. The first expression she could actually steal from Roe: exhausted disappointment. Fool, she should be happy someone was standing up to Anisa’s tyranny!
“It’s been what, 3, 4 hours? So if I just run for a day straight, I’ll make it, yes?” Roe’s face didn’t bother answering, nor did the horses.
She kept it up for 10 minutes. Another cart drove past.
“Hey Princess,” said Chet.
“Hey Chet,” said Princess.
“Long way back to Felkner,” said Chet.
“That’s why I didn’t start running later,” said Princess.
“Later is later, you can’t have not started then yet,” said Chet, and he left ear-and-mouth-shot.
She kept it up for 5 minutes. She wanted to keep going but she hadn’t eaten and the blood trickling down her head was tricking her into thinking she was lightheaded so she collapsed and Roe swaddled her with rope again, all stupid and babylike.
⁂
y
You
There… is? Was? Will be? A man. A nothing. A shade. A trapped man. Prisoner. Martyr. Coward.
You wished you were a martyr. But still it continues, unchanging.
Was there ever a man? Could there be a man? You can’t continue until you can answer in the affirmative.
You’ll try again later.
⁂
books
Samantha
She got untied an hour later and limply bolted out the back, lamely slapping against the ground: more blunt force than a scrape. She got winded, pushed herself up, took two steps towards Felkner, then immediately gave up and stumbled back to the immobile wagon. Roe still held that same face she’d already seen from too many other women in her life.
The wagon was full of books. She’d ‘noticed’ this earlier, in the sense that her eyes had seen objects in the wagon, but she hadn’t bothered to follow that stimulus any further, until now. That’s something to do, one could think.
“You’re not dying here,” said something, maybe a horse (talking horses aren’t unheard of), and Roe offered a hand, which Samantha took. She declined to assign any moral valence to the choices being made by either of them, because neither of them were making a choice, they were simply acting out of necessity.
…But Quincy had made the choice to kill himself, killing yourself to escape a bad situation was always an option.
… But Quincy was stupid.
⁂
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.
⁂
trip_up
Samantha
Technically, it wasn’t a week. 6 days. But Grampa, Libri, Holstram, Shiron, Et-Cetera, was it boring. She almost admitted she actually read the books. Her hectic time at the Vanguard, with its Chets and Verrises and Joans had spoiled her, maybe. Penbarrow was slow, she’d survived that, she could survive barely ununbuttered bread. She was so bored, she almost thought about how she could be blamed for the predicament she was in, and how she could change her behaviour to avoid it in the future. But no. She was blameless, and this would never happen again.
“Hey Roe, what’s a linear operator?” “Hey Roe, what’s a hertzo?” “…a nolton?” “…a thaum?” “…an infinitesimal?” She already knew ‘ana’† and ‘kata’‡, though, she wasn’t completely ignorant.
Roe and her eye-catching scarf didn’t engage. She probably didn’t know, either.
And finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, they arrived.
𝄒
† /aˈna/
‡ /kaˈta/
⁂
busy
Agarma
One of her many brothers, Agarma Day, was in charge of the land, the city, and the academy. They hadn’t spoken for 4 months. From what she remembered, he was a genius, as much as her. She much preferred a genius dictatorship to a stupid lack of leadership. She expected to meet with him when they’d parked…
𝄒
…But, he is busy.
(There were typography stamps to approve for production, prophecies to obey, weddings to plan, humidifiers to fix, executives to hold empty conversations with, aides to… cherish, tarot to read, classes to plan, gods to follow, and kings to assassinate, again. Every plan carves a wound in him, and every wound spills blood. Vampiric enervation. As cute as she was, with his busy schedule, her impulsivity would kill him.
(It wasn’t a dictatorship. He had few (around two dozen) guards and aides loyal only to him. There was a council for the academy, and a council for the city, and an informal council for the land. Amazing the reputation that can develop when one simply executes.)
⁂
hector
Samantha
Northpoint, from what she could see, was a largish building of granite, grained halfway between brick and raw stone. There were polished stairs of a similar rock leading up to double doors. They reminded Samantha of Reimond’s dais.
Hector Whiteclaw was all too accommodating to the kidnapping.
“Anisa!” he proclaimed, walking down the steps of his manor. “How many years has it been?”
“Different daughter,” she loudly muttered.
“Ah! Well, I only just learned a princess was arriving a few hours ago. The details were sparse.”
“I’m sure,” said Samantha, agreeably. She was doubtful. He was trying to strike her ego, or Northpoint was disorganized. Regardless, no respect was deserved. “Was Anisa tied up like this when she arrived?”
He opened the side of the wagon. Bound legs and upper arms.
“Oh! Ha! No, no she wasn’t.”
And that was that.
She decided, first piece of scratch vellum she got, she’d list everyone who’d wronged her, and to what degree, and maybe a fitting punishment. Probably not in Saxle, though, she’d need to invent some kind of code so no one would learn about it. Something that wasn’t ‘easily invertible’. Regardless, with his jarring cavalierity, Magister Whiteclaw was quickly topping the list.
A thought occurred. Why didn’t she just put everyone else who could inherit the throne on the list. That would only be what, twenty, zero, forty people, and she was apathetic to most of them.
“I see you’re already getting started with your education!” he said, eyeing the physics book she had forgotten she was gripping (despite her (loose) binds), half-open. “Should expect nothing less from the Days! So brilliant, and so driven!”
“Sure. Uh, yes, thank you.”
“All those books should be for our library. I wouldn’t expect someone just entering our college to fully understand, so don’t feel bad if you didn’t understand some of it!”
Maybe if she’d burned the books, they’d have turned around. Oh, but the thought of doing so made her sad.
“I assume she can be untied?” he asked to the driver, who simply shrugged.
“Of course she can,” said Samantha, daintily folding the book with half-tied arms. “What’s she going to do? Run into the snow and die?” It had apparently started lightly snowing at some point in the last 6 days and 250 kilometers. Such is the wont of the world.
“For the more adventurous types, we like to do some conditioning first.”
She paused, frowned, then failed to catch her tongue. “I understand you’re attempting to be open-ended, with the intent that I think of the worst possible thing ‘conditioning’ could be, but in doing so, you necessarily reveal that the process isn’t as bad as that. Please be specific, so I can have an appropriate level of terror.”
He simply stared. She turned the book over, admiring its construction, avoiding his eyes.
How had that just tumbled out, that was at least two coherent thoughts, in service of making her life worse, to the man who could do so. Maybe all the reading and bread made her so smart her mouth generated a brain separate from her own. Maybe it had always been there, and was growing bigger.
“Who’s your mom, princess?”
“Carline Mallow.” If she were him, Samantha-Hector would’ve discarded any respect at that.
But he wasn’t. “Ah, yes.”
“I find I take more after my father, though.”
“Oh really?”
And then she managed to snare it. “Perhaps we could discuss this inside. I’d like to warm up, and remove the pins from my legs.”
She was untied, considered dashing into the snow, considered running for maybe a month back to Felkner, and followed Hector up the steps, as Roe followed her.
According to an absurdly shiny bronze plaque in the granite, Nikolai North founded the college in 3804 and bar bar bar. This conflicted with her understanding that Godquiet Holstram had founded it. She would’ve cared if she respected it but she didn’t so she didn’t.
Granite and wood. Granite had to be quarried and shipped, wood had to be chopped and shipped. The entrance room was grand, above her was a dome of curved, triangular stone, meeting at a point at the top and center, all outlined by wood.
Her architectural plans had focused purely on staticism, nondynamism, and non-leak-in-or-out-ism. This, this was an attempt at art. It could stand to have some variation in materials, maybe some of that plaquebronze, or perhaps an actual painting scrawled, traced on. To be noted on vellum.
⁂
name
Samantha
She could just lie about her name.
Wait, no, Roe couldn’t be illiterate, how would she be able to communicate at all? Was it only shrugging, nodding, flipping her bow-drawing finger? Presumably, then, she could just write out ‘her name is Samantha’ and hand it to him.
“My name is Samsara Day,” she said regardless.
“She would call her daughter that,” replied Hector.
Walking next to him, Roe nodded and tittered.
“Hey Roe, are you mute?” said Samantha.
“No,” said Roe.
She probably shouldn’t kill Roe, nor should she do anything that’s traceable to her. Maybe Roe’s awesome scarf will have accidentally flown off a cliff. Hopefully she had an emotional attachment to it.
Maybe she should kill her.
Maybe she should just kill everyone in the immediate vicinity, now, or at least bite them and gouge out their eyes, before she’s executed, and sent to some terrible afterlife, or her soul is just permanently destroyed. Eternal darkness. Seeing as to how everyone hates her. But what a waste of her non-stupidity, which seems to be lacked by oh-so-many. Why couldn’t it just be trivial, to tell everyone that they are all stupid, that they don’t know how to act, that they just need to be her slave and do everything she said, and it’d be alright.
“You’re a knave, Roe. A week.” Well, 6 days.
“I’ve spoken to you before. At the guild.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I thought we were joking.” She turned to Hector, walking down the hall. “She thought I was mute.”
⁂
graves
Anisa
To the east of the manor was a field, one minute away. Hilly. Sometimes well-groomed, green. Sometimes less-well-groomed, snow-white. Past the field, 5 walkminutes away from the manor, was the graveyard.
It was checked often, it was sanctified and prayed over, the corpses were tested, guards patrolled, zombies and skeletons and revenants weren’t an issue.
Anisa walks through it. Not for any sense of nostalgia or reverence. To have a location with solid ground upon which to move her legs.
The graves were all from before her time, when the manor was a fort. It was a graveyard. Then, it became an unholy base from which the dead were raised and commanded to enslave the living. Then a mass grave, when body parts had to be sorted but couldn’t be distinguished. And finally, it was a graveyard, expanded to accommodate all those who had died in the revolution.
It looked good to have her slowly walk through. The people could easily expect stability from someone who cared for the past.
She didn’t care. She hoped not caring would make her more stable. You often need to consider how the irrational attachments and whims of the people affect their perceptions of you, however.
Samantha and Quincy used to run through the yard, trip over mounds of dirt, play tag, hide and seek… they were scolded for it constantly, by everyone. Their caretaker would say, they’d catch a disease or twist their leg, it was disrespectful, they were being too noisy to the mourners. They would change one aspect of their play and pretend that resolved it, quieting or slowing down, or mocking looking around carefully. After a few minutes, they would conveniently forget their scolding and continue doing what they had done before, in the manner they had been doing it.
This was a prince and a princess? No, they were scions, as was she. But the people liked a monarchy, so we pretend it’s a monarchy. The underlying question, though, was “these were children deserving of respect? Deserving to lead?” No, so give them desolate Penbarrow.
They hadn’t changed, much, in the intervening years. They were still children.
Had been. Quincy was gone, now. Samantha, too.
Once, it was windy. Unusually warm for the time of year. The air was clean, the skies were clear. She moved her left leg, right leg, left, right. She closed her eyes, she could walk the route with them closed, anyone who could’ve been there knew to get out of her way. It took concentration to keep them from floating away.
The graveyard is a dull, reddish-pink phantasmagoria. If she opened her eyes, she’d again be Brune’s servile. She slept with her eyes open.
She thought about dogs, this time. Cute little puppies with curly black fur, or those guys with the straightish orangey tufts, or those Bythrusian breeds with their stupid crinkled faces, and how they were all so happy, would follow commands, and would just have those stupid, vacant, tonguey smiles.
She ran out of time. She stopped thinking about dogs. She opened her eyes. Like every time before, she floated back to the manor, 10 minutes before the end of her weekly break.
⁂
ticked
Samantha
Hector had gestured to a clock on the wall and told her that when the big hand moved from one thick line to the next thick line, he would be back. She said nothing.
She sat on a cushioned chair, then promptly stood up as she realized no, her legs were still numb, the hallway walk had helped, but wasn’t enough. Tick, tick, tick, tick…
Everyone should own a clock.
Well, no. There are those who don’t deserve a clock. They should be killed or enslaved or otherwise ‘conditioned’, as Hector so cavalierly put it. Really, Anisa was pretty good with that, though she should execute more. Perhaps it was one of the few things they agreed on: maintaining a functioning society required a firm hand, even if they disagreed on how the hand looked. But no, Casse had had a firm hand, and so reasonable law enforcement is tyranny.
Though, who can be expected to follow laws when so many are illiterate, ugh. And when no one actually cares to read. And when books are so expensive.
She had read. She liked words more than books. Tick, tick, tick…
As well as a clock, Hector had a bookshelf. For the books needed for a school, they’d likely gone from manually scribing to stamps. Or maybe there was some form of magic that allowed easy book duplication. If they had book duplication, she’d definitely need to bring it back to Felkner…
The desk was sufficient. It was the bread and bread and bread of desks. Doubtless Hector had a better desk somewhere else, for more important work. She slapped it. Yup, not a ghost desk. It wobbled. Yup, not sturdy.
The chair she’d unsaddled was of similar mindless make, though it at least had a cushion.
Shame. From the clocks, to the books, to the desks and chairs, so much time was spent recreating the same objects… Tick, tick…
⁂
electives
Samantha
Hector entered. He sat across from Samantha, laying out several pieces of paper, a stamp, an inkpad, and an inkwell with a pen.
“Samsara Day?”
“Yes.” Oh, maybe she could just exert arbitrary control over everyone and everything here, as is a princess’s right.
“Would you prefer that, or Samantha?”
“…Either is fine.” Dangit, now she looks weak and tolerant, why did she say that.
“Samantha Sarah Day. I’m assuming your father had it explained how things work here?”
Blink. “No, he didn’t.”
“Oh, no problem. At the Academy, we take the elite of all ages, and instill in them the precepts of the octovium. I expect a princess is already familiar?”
“Familiar, yes.” Logic, geometry, uh, rhetoric(?), astronomy…
“You’ll take placement tests to determine your class level for the mandatory subjects, then choose elective subjects. Or, you can skip the tests and be placed in the first grade classes…”
“I’ll take the tests.” She knew what a circle, a square, and 1 + 1 was. “What’s an ‘elective subject’?” Although, she might still run away in an hour…
“Optional classes for more specific subjects. Often shorter. Your father indicated you should be allowed to choose some to take, rather than be restricted to the mandatory only.”
“He really said that?”
Hector held a paper and apparently read it. “Yes.”
She was confident Anisa hadn’t taken any. Anisa generally seemed of the opinion that the most competent people were those in Felkner, and so if any extra education were to be had, it should be had there. Presumably, Reimond had allowed her that choice. Quincy, she wasn’t sure, he hadn’t spoken much of the classes he’d taken…
“Tests are in a week, if you choose to take them. My son Vincent can take any questions on particulars. He’s rather excited to meet a princess.”
She thought she should be flattered, but wasn’t. “We’re not exactly an uncommon breed.”
“Up here, you are.” No, we’re not.
She wandered, and talked to other students (
⁂
got_it
You
Got it.
Please, you’ve run out of imagination. There must be somebody who will spare some.
Some say there could’ve been a man named Quincy Day. Some would’ve spoken of him at his funeral.
It would’ve been a modest affair, for a prince. He could’ve been the one to bring the excitement, had he been not dead, and had he existed.
Of his family, only his sister Samantha and brother Agarma would’ve attended. No Reimond or Carline, no Lionel, Four, Anisa, Rose… the names don’t matter. Reimond had an excuse. The rest didn’t care.
Samantha had been catatonic and shaking. Joan held her tight.
You suspected Samantha didn’t exist, either, but it’s hard to prove a negative. Agarma had offered her some words which failed to speak life into her. You didn’t know what they were. Some said they could’ve come from his maid.
There had been a lot of evidence, and though it weighed heavy now, there had already been judgement. There was a baker who had been thrilled that this ‘Quincy’ and Samantha had organized the construction of a mill. Samantha would’ve known, it hadn’t been much work, it had simply been a matter of finding the right people to give the order to. There were farmers, Phillip and Monroe, who’d celebrated when the alleged Quincy rode into town, a great flowing cape behind him, further followed by a deadpan minstrel-maid ordered to blow a horn to regale his arrival. “I have come to fix your well!” they say he said, and though it took a week to diagnose the blockage as an upstream draught and another two weeks to circumvent it, he did it, and they’d felt heard, and proud to have such a prince, and happy there was someone who took such joy in helping them.
…
The same couldn’t be said for other lords or royals.
…
There was sadness, and there was uncertainty. Who would run Penbarrow now? Why had he jumped? But, in spite of questions, life would go on. The people had lived without him before, and they would live without. At least, until the inevitable civil war, and the inevitable invasion by Bythrusia which everyone would be too distracted by the civil war to think about. Ha ha. Or maybe you were wrong, in which case, good thing you’re out of the way, so the people who are right have one less obstacle. But you didn’t think you were.
And, well, that would’ve been it, then, had that been what had happened. But please, will you be spared a bit more?
It was a simplification which didn’t generalize. Anisa had attended the funeral, alongside her lycanthropic pyromaniac, her incurious dwarf brick, Wheels, and an insecure ego’s worth of uniformed swords. Unlike the other speeches, you’d managed to completely recover the contents of this one. To the mourning countrymen, with pale lips stained sanguine, she proclaimed:
⁂
proclamation_of_the_dead
You
“Quincy is dead. I will take over responsibilities until such time as a suitable replacement can be found.” She apparently glared at Samantha when she said this. “It will be difficult to live without him. He served a useful function where others could not. Do not let his death interfere with your lives. You each have worth beyond him. We will build a replacement for his function, and life will go on. I would expect the same for any of you, and any of us royalty. We… we’re just people, and people can be replaced. Thank you.”
Your face was mussed up. You were some traveling farmer who had come to learn of flashy but useless Penbarrian agrarian magic. You talked to a priest who you knew had never seen Quincy in person, and he told you of Anisa’s words. You talked to a blacksmith (who seemed to more want to be a glassblower, and you subtly referred him to a glassblower you knew who’d love to take an apprentice), and you forgot why you were there, oh yes, and the blacksmith confirmed the priest’s words of Anisa’s words. You talked to some crazy bum with a dogmange beard who mistook you for Quincy, and he vaguely confirmed the words, too, so you gave him your half-eaten bread and directions to a farm which required more farmers for his trouble. He said he preferred being a bum. You said the elements would kill him, and maybe the wild dogs. He said okay.
Her words, that was it. That was what I, you, wanted to get away from, and that justified what you’d done. She sought pure utility. Where was the joy, the comedy, the tragedy, the stupid ideas, the roaring waters against the cliffs, the wriggling maggots on the pig carcasses, thunder? Where was anything that sped up your heart, shook up your humours? Maybe she was born underweight because she was born without her sense of adventure. Maybe she had no liver to filter her blood after a humour imbalance.
You’d been depressed, but now you had decided. If Anisa, scion of Felkner, was going to act as if she had no liver to regulate the emotions in her blood, you’d act as if you had hepatitis. You would live!
If she seriously needed blood, she had more than enough subjects she could receive from. Maybe she could become a vampire, they seemed a more passionate lot…
⁂