stupid

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 had 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 flimsy and flammable. 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 be invigourated.

Oh, but there was Roe. Roe, the mute driver. Roe, the fake mute driver, who her two horses merely tolerated, with a stupid-stable-stink which outstunk theirs, so they talked behind her back about how they would tear into her one day, how 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, one of which necessitated 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.” She almost believed herself.

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

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, decaying from a dash to a jog to a speedwalk. Another cart drove past.

“Hey Princess,” said Chet, freelance scribe.

“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 more 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.

books

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 Samantha had 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.

trip_up

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 this trip’s 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.

hector

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.

Upon the stairs stood Hector Whiteclaw, 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 shut. “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 Norþ founded the college of Norþpoint in ω+774” and bar bar bar. This conflicted with her understanding that Quietdei 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

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 Samanþa’ 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.”

synonyms

She had a (double-half-)brother named Agarma. He had told her ‘better him than you’ at Quincy’s funeral. He was in charge of Northpoint, or something. She expected it wasn’t as vaguely defined as she thought, but she didn’t care enough to ask.

Oh thank Shiron he had another person in the room with him, she wouldn’t have to deal with him on his own. Oh, no, it’s a statue, convincingly dressed as a woman, with painted stone skin. Damn those mammaries are too big. Dammit that wouldn’t be a statue, then, there’s no way he’d put something so gauche in his study. Heh, her right arm is in oh this was the woman at the funeral.

“You can’t set buildings on fire, Samantha.”

“Is that your wife?” The statue remained stonefaced.

“You’re a princess, you have an example to set. You’re lucky no one was hurt.”

“Because I mean, great pull, Agarma. She’s picturesque. Solid. Elegant.” The statue was staring straight ahead, but Samantha was pretty sure it was struggling not to smile. He was right, of course, but that wasn’t enough of a reason to listen.

Agarma had always been messy when they’d lived together at Blisbane castle. This room was deceptively clean, as it was large enough to diffuse the mess aro

“I pray you’re doing okay, now?”

She ignored. “I have to assume she’s got a brain as big as, well,” gesture, “if you’re allowing her to stand next to you.” A glass cup on his desk, filled with water. It was ill-formed. The lip w

He stared at Samantha, and Samantha’s eyes became locked with his. He side-eyed the statue, who was definitely stifling her mouth, and who side-eyed him back. He looked back to Samantha. “Conflagrate.” he said.

“What?” said Samantha.

“Conflagragate. Holocaust. Phlogistate. Pyrize.”

“Those aren’t real.”

“Their roots are.”

“I’m going to open a dictionary, and if those words aren’t in there, you owe me a trip back home.” This was a stupid suggestion, as she knew he was one of the primary contributors to the dictionaries Northpoint published.

“Samantha, for one, you’re only going to find two of them in there. For another, you set four houses on fire, this was the alternative to execution.”

“John worked for Anisa after he burned houses down.”

“Who’s John.”

“Former Vanguardist. Helped some of my experiments. He lost his body stomach down, once.”

“No he didn’t.”

“I swear he did.”

“Well then, he’s probably a god, and Anisa was wise enough to make an exception for him.”

“No there was some wizard guy who made it grow back.”

“No there wasn’t.”

“The point is,” said Samantha, “actually I forget, wait no it was that setting houses on fire means you work for Anisa, also death isn’t that bad.”

Samantha only caught the statue nodding after Agarma swung his head. Which part was she agreeing with? “Do you have anything you want to say, Claire?”

She stared at him.

“You may speak,” he said.

“Firstly—” she said.

“And stop looking for my permission,” he said.

“So you are married, right,” said Samantha.

“No,” said Agarma. “Stop asking.”

“Is she like your bodyguard, then? With that awesome metal arm?” (And indeed, her right arm was metal, from the shoulder down, a crumpled tin(?) with no seams.)

“No, she is my aide,” said Agarma. “And that’s a cast.”

“What does she aide,” said Samantha.

“You set four houses on fire,” said Agarma.

“No, no, I set one house on fire. The wind set house two on fire, and then houses three and four were barely touched.”

“And you did it to get a job with Anisa.”

“No, I tried hanging myself, but I didn’t know how knots work, and I was playing with my tinderbox in my pocket, so I jump off Lionel’s bed, the rope snaps, I’m smacking rocks in my pocket together, and it must be oily or something since my pants set on fire, so I tear them off and throw them at the fireplace, but it just lands on the wood pile next to it, and I’m thinking, why is Lionel storing a wood pile inside. Maybe it was a cry for help but also it was an accident.” And again, they all stared.

“How does one accidentally light a fire in their pocket?” asked Claire.

“Don’t… don’t bother, Claire. You know, Samantha, when I heard you set Lionel’s house ablaze, my first thought was, ‘oh god, she blew herself up’.”

“Why would you think that.”

He seemingly considered engaging that question, then decided against it. “Then, when I learned you were alive, I thought, ‘oh god, Anisa is going to execute her’.”

He waited for her to produce a remark. Her eyes had wandered.

Ink. He had a damn ink vat next to his desk. Or, well, a bottled vat, made of glass. Cauldron? “Would you call that a cauldron?”

“Glass carboy. So the dean and I talk, and we—”

“Did you say you thought Anisa would execute me?”

Frown. “I thought it a possibility. Didn’t you?”

Blink.

“Didn’t you just… Claire, didn’t she just…?”

“No, sir, she said ‘death isn’t that bad’, which carries the implication that she wouldn’t care if Anisa were to execute her, but it doesn’t imply that she thought that that would happen.” She smiled at Samantha, seemingly without malice…

“But she said she was trying to hang herself,” said Agarma, completely disengaged from Samantha’s eyes, now looking to his aide. “So, she fails, sets the house on fire—”

“Accidentally,” said Samantha.

“—and apparently, her first thought is, ‘this one man, who’s probably a god, got a job with Anisa by doing this, so now I’m going to work for Anisa.’ Whereas if her mind was in the place of seeking work with Anisa, she’d just set a building on fire without hanging herself. Or just ask.”

“You make a compelling case, sir, my belief in her story is beggared.”

“Well, to be fair,” said Samantha’s mouth, feeling left out, “women are stupid and emotional, and often don’t think things through.”

Agarma slammed a pen on his desk, cacophonously. “So I say to the dean, ’Callister, Samantha is a brilliant girl, she just needs to learn some foundations and get away from Felkner for a while. She never had a chance in Blisbane, Penbarrow or Felkner. So we petitioned Anisa and father to send you here, instead of executing you.”

What kind of pen was that? It was black, must’ve had some ink reservoir inside. Metal?

He had some large, metal stamp on his desk, facing out. It was one of those old runes, jera or wynn or something. The one that looked like a ‘P’. She had no idea what that could

“Agarma could do with some thanks, Samsara,” said Claire. Now Agarma averted his eyes.

“Oh. Ah,” said Samantha. She was aware of her body, again, rather than the room, with its stiff legs and ever-rumbling stomach. “Yes. Thank you, Garmie, for looking out for my life, more than I was.” She had fingers and toes and a tongue and a heartbeat. “It’s, uh, good to know I have people, family, watching out for me. Thanks.” She did a tiny curtsy, deep enough that it wouldn’t be seen as sarcastic. She was relieved that she believed herself.

He didn’t exactly smile, but he looked back at her, and seemed satisfied. “Good to hear. Shall we go to lunch?”

“I kinda want to look around this office some more, actually, you have some cool stuff here.”

“12:54,” said Claire, looking at the watch on her sinister, untinned hand.

“Aren’t clocks amazing?” said Samantha.

“Yes,” said Claire, flatly.

“You can look around later, Samantha, we’ll be late.”

They were 2 minutes early, and according to the 3 empty chairs around their table, 3 others would be late.

They sat in ‘Lab Zero’, the lunchroom, but it was actually three rooms, and they were in one of the smaller, side ones for private events. Two wooden tables were pushed together. Claire sat to Samantha’s immediate left, and Agarma across from Claire.

“One of them,” Agarma gestured to his left, across from Samantha, “is for Vincent, the man who’s to show you how things work around here. Apparently, his math lesson ran late. That one,” he gestured to the head of the table, to his right and rotated 90 degrees, “was for Dean Callister, who had a serious spell malfunction earlier, and had to attend to it immediately. And that one,” he gestured to the far end of the table, to Samantha’s right and 90 degrees, “I forget. Claire, who was that for?”

“Roe Strongmane, sir. The driver.”

“Right. Strongmane. Strongmane?”

“Strong,” started Samantha, mouth full of spaghetti, “as in ‘strang’, as in tight, and ‘mane’, as in—”

“No, Samantha, I mean, what kind of name is that? Strongmane.”

“She probably picked it herself.” Chew, chew, swallow. Ah, food. “You show up at the guild, we let you pick an ‘Adventurer Name’. Ticks Anisa off — harder to track people — but it’s good for morale. Lotta people there are wanting to start a new life. Or maybe her grampa had huge sideburns. Where is she?”

“We’re still early,” said Claire, glancing at her wristwatch. “It’s 12:58.”

“You know, we have a lot more than clocks here, Samantha,” said Agarma.

“If you had stuff that was going to impress me, you should’ve sent it back to Felkner,” said Samantha.

“Well, that’s part of why you’re here now, no? To learn what to bring back?” said Agarma.

“Bar bar bar I had a life back there which I plan to get back to post-haste,” said Samantha.

“59,” said Claire, to no one except her watch.

“If by haste, you mean two years, sure,” said Agarma.

“Sorry I’m late,” said some guy with thin black hair, glasses, large ears.

“Two years, Garmie?” said Samantha.

“Don’t call me that. No, no, Callister, you’re early, so great to see you.”

“Dean I want to leave and this whole situation is stupid,” said Samantha.

He paused midseating. “Has Vincent already given you the, ‘you’re here now, so you may as well take advantage of it’?”

“Who? Oh. No.”

He sat. “I’ll spare you that, then, because doubtless it’s coming. I’ve heard about you, Samantha. Your experiments, your industriousness. How you tried redirecting magic into crops using mirrors to make them grow quicker. How you learned to interpret laws to better manage your Vanguardists.”

She was flattered, and a bit vindicated, both on behalf of the title of ‘princess’ she so valued — princesses should have notoriety — and on behalf of herself, getting some recognition. Blind Quincy. Stupid blind Quincy.

“Yeah,” she said. “Gotta show up the dad.” Agarma frowned.

Callister smacked his lips. “Uncouth to put down your father, girl,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said.

He waited 2 seconds, long enough for her to feel shame at acting unprincessly, but not long enough for her mouth to speak again. “But regardless, your sister and brother got their start here, and your father did not. Your sister rules a city, your brother effectively rules an academy. Though you may discover new insights through stumbling about, thousands of others have stumbled about in the same way that you have, and have never gotten anywhere. It’s better to rely on random chance when you’re where no one’s been. You’ll be surrounded by people who think similarly. They may not respect you, but they’ll respect the title of princess, which you are very much capable of growing into. We have a lot of tasty food up here. You’ll see a lot of magic you wouldn’t otherwise. You’ll learn how to be independent and take revenge, if that so entices you. I have several more reasons, but I don’t have the time to list everything. I gave Hector a written list, which he should give Vincent, who should give it to you. Do you have any questions?”

No. “Okay.” That wasn’t really a valid response, but he seemed to take it as one. Anything previously in her head had fallen out, as Callister had somehow hollowed it and filled it with his own complete structure, but which had yet to latch onto anything pre-existing. Like placing a sapling in a hole before its roots can grow. But, Shiron, despite her stupor, she didn’t like being told what to do, even if it was perfectly reasonable and benevolent.

Agarma was smiling wide.

The following discussion was hollow. Samantha was occasionally assailed by bouts of guilt, requiring her to acknowledge that indeed, she was thankful for the opportunity, she was glad she was not currently headless, and her actions in her half-brother Lionel’s house were poorly thought out and she would strive to avoid such incidents in the future.

She didn’t particularly believe anything she said, not for lack of trying. Dean Callister’s monologue had seemingly tricked her energy stores into thinking they were empty. Easier to agree and placate, she could think later.

They discussed many subjects briefly. Callister enjoyed playing the fortepiano. In the… 7? 7. 7? 7±2? Years since she’d lived with Agarma, he’d apparently taken up the violoncello. She wasn’t one for music, but she’d sometimes listened to Joan play her harp.

Callister said Vincent was taking an intro to music class, while glaring at a still-empty chair. Samantha said Roe something something music and also looked at an empty chair. Claire suggested they wrap up. Samantha said she was good, which was too vague for anyone to commit to a new course of action.

The school was large. Per Callister, there was a portion which was always hot (whatever that meant), a portion for paper manufacture, a portion for metalworking, a museum, libraries and libraries… She verbally questioned how much of it was Nikolai North, how much was Quietdei Holstram, and how much was built later.

“You have a good understanding of our history,” said Callister.

“I read a plaque,” she said. Well, half a plaque.

“I don’t believe we have any plaques mentioning Holstram,” said Callister, to which Agarma inexplicably clattered his fork into his spaghetti bowl.

“I thought the Holstram involvement was common knowledge,” she said. “Is he still around? It scares me, being near a god. Capricious busybodies, I think.” This was self-evidently not polite meal conversation and she was again reminded of what she’d said to Hector, but, well… No, no ‘but well’. “Sorry. Impolite.”

Claire turned, weirdly emphatic. “You absolutely do not need to worry about Holstram,” she said, which just further disconcerted Samantha. This line also appeared to frustrate Agarma, but he had the countenance of someone who was always vaguely frustrated.

“‘God’ is just a label,” said Callister, to which Agarma pushed his chair back and stood up. Callister’s expression seemed to lightly chide this.

“Hey G— Agarma, I like Holstram,” said Samantha. “God of what, knowledge? Learning? That’s cool.” She preferred Shiron, with her bloody crow feathers and passion, but eh, learning is good. Great, even.

“Computational complexity,” said Agarma, exasperated, which meant absolutely nothing to Samantha, but presumably didn’t justify his sudden discourtesy.

“Yes, and he of course deserves the utmost respect,” said Callister, weirdly. Cheeky? It was flippant. “But, we become so limited if we view anything in life as beyond reproach. Wouldn’t you say, Samantha?”

“I’mma be honest I don’t really know what’s happening at this point and I kinda want to lie down, but this h—”

“Sorry I’m late,” said Vincent, and Claire looked at her watch and quietly mouthed something up to Agarma, who didn’t seem to hear.

“Where the hell have you been?” said Agarma, spinning to face him.

“Redrafting the notes for my next topology lecture,” he said, smiling, innocently.

“You’re not a student?” asked Samantha.

“Redrafting for an hour and twenty minutes,” said Claire.

“I am. And a teacher. You must be the princess. Welcome!” He bowed. He was short, wore blue, and had a thin, red piece of fabric dangling down from his neck.

“The princess, and the prince, whom you blew off for an hour and twenty minutes,” said Agarma, still standing.

Callister seemed amused and satiated. May have been from the meal.

“Yes, well, I was engrossed, and lost track of time,” said Vincent. “I meant no offense, but thought it in the best interest of the school that I do everything I can to ensure my students have the highest quality education. Which required not breaking concentration, and, well, here I am, in the future! If you think my actions wrong, Prince Agarma, please inform me, and I shall update my axioms posthaste.” He again bowed.

“Uh. Yeah. Don’t blow off royalty,” said Agarma, and he pulled Vincent’s chair out, then sat back down.

“I see you’ve already had appetizers,” he said, gesturing to the empty dishes. No one corrected him, though Claire appeared on the verge.

“I was about to fall asleep,” said Samantha. She made eye contact with Agarma, who also looked exhausted. Why the hell was he so tired?

Niceties were probably exchanged after that point, but Samantha, and seemingly Agarma, had properly checked out. Claire and Callister kept Vincent occupied with discussions of “vector spaces” (from Callister) and “baizure curves” (from Claire) and bar bar bar abstract nonsense bar bar bar…

ticked

Samantha somehow got led to a room, probably by Vincent, and then fell asleep, and then was woken back up too early (she had fallen asleep at 3 PM, it was now 6 PM), and was led to another room for more administrative stuff by Hector Whiteclaw. She considered the previous evening, wait, no, previous 3 hours, and concluded that indeed, Hector was still topping her kill list.

He led her to a room and made her wait, because she hadn’t done enough waiting yet.

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 somehow still numb. Maybe they would be numb forever… 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 people more. Perhaps it was one of the few things they agreed on: maintaining a functioning society required a firm hand. 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… Callister had mentioned some kind of paper mill, but she hadn’t paid enough attention.

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

Hector entered. He sat across from Samantha, laying out several pieces of paper, a stamp, an inkpad, and an inkwell with a pen. A pale imitation of Agarma’s setup.

“Samsara Day?”

“Yes.” Oh, maybe she could just exert arbitrary control over everyone and everything here, as is a princess’s right. ‘I am Sam-sara, peasant.’

“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 into the snow after some more sleep…

“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. Not excited enough to show up to a meal on time. Clearly, deservedly, Hector was very out of the loop.

“Princesses aren’t exactly an uncommon breed.”

“Up here, you are.” No, we’re not.

She wandered, and talked to other students (

(scala)

Samantha went to a lab. It was a large room with bland tables, a wooden floor with scorch marks, and another domed ceiling, but only immediately above the entrance. There was a girl looking in a telescope, except it was small and pointed downwards.

“Hello,” said Samantha to the woman staring into the telescope.

“Hello,” said the woman without looking up.

“What are you doing,” said Samantha.

The woman pinched a tiny metal clamp between her pointer and thumb on each hand. She was compressing and decompressing them, and moving her hands back and forth under the telescope. Like a tiny crab crushing peppercorn. “Scala is extracting atomos,” she said.

“A what?”

“Are… you… Anisa?”

“No, I’m her half sister.”

“Oh. Scala thought it would be Anisa. Is not-Anisa related to Anisa matrilineally or patrilineally?”

“Paternal. Uh, patrilineal.” As far as she knew, at least. It was possible they weren’t related at all. Damnable Day Vanguard.

“How unfortunate for not-Anisa.”

Blink. “Please be more specific.”

She looked up. “Scala is pulling apart bark into the smallest pieces possible. Every material has a different unit size. Sophonts can better make small pieces than magic can.” Samantha appreciated even misdirected specificity.

“I will accept dodging the question as admission of submission.”

“Does not-Anisa have the authority to behead Scala?”

“Yes.” No.

The woman looked into Samantha’s eyes briefly before bending back to the telescope. “Does not-Anisa understand that, by dint of attending this school, sophont is intelligent enough to not intentionally say things that will get not-Anisa beheaded?”

“Yeah yeah calm down. Just understand that neither Anisa nor I are Reimond.”

She was silent. She clipped together her clamps.

“Ohhhh,” said Samantha, “‘atomos’. Why are you using an adjective in place of a noun?”

“Scala is not. Scala is using a noun in noun’s proper place,” she said.

“‘Atomos’ is an adjective,” said Samantha. “The small bits are atomos.”

“Yes, Scala can see that the small bits are atomos,” the woman repeated. She tweezed a grain into a paper bag. “Noun.”

“No, as in, that is an atomos bit.”

“Noun phrase,” said the woman. “Noun noun. Wagon driver, magic wand, atomos bit. Scala cautions against debating Saxle with Scala.”

“Oh, joy,” said Samantha, with less enthusiasm than intended. “Well, putting aside that ‘magic’ is an adjective there, Samantha questions why Scala is repeating Scala’s name and not-Anisa’s not-name rather than normal pronouns.”

“She… I… can speak normally, but it takes effort. Saxle is not… her… my… first language, and… I struggle to casually use pronouns. Scala… I… find eliding the place of the pronoun altogether to be more gauche than simply speaking the name.”

“I don’t get it, if you know the language well enough to speak it as you do, shouldn’t using ‘you’ and ‘she’ and ‘I’ be just as easy?”

“Scala doesn’t get it either, half-princess, Scala thinks Scala has malnourishment-induced brain damage. Scala would prefer Samantha(?) stop talking about it.”

Really, ‘atomos’ was probably one of those words that could be used as both a noun and an adjective, but it was too late to acknowledge that.

Scala placed down her tweezers and turned to her. “Why are… you here, half-princess, what can fetid little Scala offer the sagacious half-princess.”

The woman was not fetid and therefore did not smell, and though she appeared short, Samantha was tall. Samantha expected ‘fetid’ and ‘little’ were the first two words she found when she waved for ‘negative adjective’. Wasn’t that what school was for? Learning words? Good job on sagacious, though. Samantha — I — certainly was sagacious.

“Good job on sagacious.”

“…Yeah.” She looked back down into the telescope, hands untweezered, doing nothing.

The lack of respect was fascinating; on its face, annoying, but relieving that there existed someone detached enough to be lucid as to the actual kingdom dynamics, rather than the projected.

“I’m simply new, and seek to learn more about this place before my term begins.” ‘Simply’. ‘Just’. ‘Actual’. ‘Really’. They should both talk slower, the world wasn’t going anywhere.

“Yeah. Go find Vincent. Vincent is a teacher, or a student, or an administrator, or otherwise of the ilk. Vincent deals with people like Samantha.”

“Is he a linguist?”

“Probably. Some kind of magister. No, Scala thinks Vincent did math. But Vincent does everything.”

“Okay.”

Samantha stood.

“Sorry about your brain damage.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay.” And Samantha walked away.

buttered_bed

The bed was buttered bread.

Roe gave Samantha a crate, which had formerly apparently been buried under books in the wagon. “Do not open in a small area.”

“What is this, a bomb?”

“A special backpack. From Anisa.”

“Did she take Quincy’s hyperspace chest and turn it into a bag?”

“I don’t know. Bye.” And Roe walked away.

She was irritated her irritation towards Roe seemed to be fading. Part of that may have been respect for her somehow dodging the luncheon. “You missed lunch,” she shouted after her.

Indeed, inside the crate was a ‘backpack’, a pink bag with arm straps and buckles. Fine material, mediocre craftsmanship. She pulled it out — it was quite heavy — and turned it upside down, onto her bed in her small room.

Out poured three letters, several clothes, paper, poorly bound books, more clothes, a knife, a few fine books, a brush, and coin. One letter was from Anisa labelled ‘Read 1st’, one was a letter from Lionel…

So they had all colluded, her father and her sister and her brother and Roe and probably the guild. Great. Was nice of Lionel to pack her clothes, though. She’d read later, when she was less angry at them. She swapped to a dress and scooped the excess clothes back in. It wasn’t hyperspace, so turning it upside down probably would affect the gravity inside… and it was definitely larger on the inside than the outside… and, it seemed to weigh less than it should…. Some kind of stipo.

All she could think was, how annoying would it be to need to take into account objects like this at security checkpoints. Could one make a cloak that was bigger on the inside, and fill it with weapons, volatile chemicals, monsters? At least this came from Anisa, presumably she had started to take that into account…

Letter from Hendrik. Ah, that explained it. Though, she’d generally expect better craftsmanship from him…

She wasn’t angry at him, so she opened it.

She put the letter down. He was playing the game, too. He should know better. No one cared to know Quincy enough to understand exactly why he would’ve killed himself, and instead used the lack of understanding to justify paranoia, blame, and perhaps treason.

Not that she was opposed to any of that, in principle. It was just annoying they couldn’t be upfront about it.

knot_theory

A man appeared in her open door. “You look busy.”

Had she left the door open when she was changing? For her sake, she needed to get out of her head. “Not particularly,” she said. “In fact, I feel profoundly un-busy at the moment.”

“I suspect you have yet to be given the placement test schedule.” He was shorter than her, though she was unfortunately lanky. He wore an unadorned, blue suit and a red oh, Vincent. Had she put on her red dress? Yes, good. It was her favourite.

“Your assumption is correct, but your conclusion is not,” she said. “Do you know the phrase, ‘you can lead a horse to water’?”

“No.”

“You can stab a princess in the back and drag her, tied up, away from her supposed friends, but you can’t force her to be a… puritan student.”

“You plan to spurn your education out of spite, then?”

“Maybe. I haven’t—”

“I heard about the constriction, that’s terrible! I’d hate everyone involved for doing that, too.”

Blink. “Thank y—”

“Well, no, hate may be a bit far, but I would need to re-evaluate my relationships.”

Blink. Was he telling her that she was overreacting? How would he know? What did Roe tell him? “Are you trying to get inside my head?”

“What? No. Sorry, I’m a bit nervous. You’re a princess! It’s mad.”

“Yeah, uh, what part?”

“All of it! So undignified, being tied up, dragged up here! It’s a good place to be, and you’re going to get a great education, and the magisters are all so friendly and smart, but you should be guided by a whole procession, and there should be those instrument things people blow into, and you should have a ton of guards!”

“…Horns?”

“Yeah, those long blowy things. You should have those!”

“You, uh.” Maybe only talking to herself and a mimic mute for a week had numbed her social skills. Or maybe it was just him. “Why are you here?”

He bowed slightly. “Vincent Whiteclaw. Here to help with whatever you may need while at the Academy! I’ve been a student for 6 years, and I gotta say, it’s extremely fun and rewarding!”

Instant concern. “6 years? Is that normal?”

“Oh no, most finish in 2.”

Blink. “Am I most?”

“I don’t know?” He smiled.

“Has anyone finished in 1?”

“Oh, yes, but they usually have prior education.”

“Has anyone finished in less than 1?”

“Well, yes, but it’s v—”

“Could someone conceivably finish by doing so good on the initial exams that there’s no class to place them in?”

His eyes widened, as did his smile. “Do you want to try?”

“Only if I know it’s an option, first.”

He left her to hang her clothes and read letters.

She began reading Anisa’s ‘Read First’ second.

About what she expected. Unfortunate that Anisa, too, was being eaten by paranoia.

She knew he had killed himself because he had told her, verbatim, that he was going to do so. He had given her a letter (as he was wont to do). Being a Day is too restrictive. Penbarrow is empty and worthless. It would be better that the ruler of Penbarrow be someone different.

She had run to the hill and missed him. She had considered jumping off herself.

And everyone seemed to accept it. But now there were baseless whisperings about assassins…

Maybe that made her feel better? Maybe her friends (not that Anisa was a friend) were just stupid, and not also malicious. Trying to protect her from an assassin who didn’t exist. One would think they’d send more than just Roe, then.

…Oh, maybe they sent a wagon of guards ahead and behind them.

She twiddled the knife from the bag and idly poked herself with it. Blood.

Shiron’s blood, she needs to get out of her head. She found a bandage and wrapped her hand.

“Yes, it’s possible!” said Vincent, “though there have only been 3 cases of it, and in 2 of those, they instantly went on to teach.”

“And case 3?”

“Don’t worry about that one.”

She closed her eyes. “What do you know about rope spells?”

“What?”

“Rope spells. Spells to manipulate rope. I was tied up on the way here, I don’t want that to happen again.”

Vincent smiled. “Maybe this should wait for after the tests?”

“Nope.”

“Ah… okay…” he, too, closed his eyes. “Are you wanting to target a specific composition of material, or the general class of items which tie you up?”

“The latter.”

“I don’t know about ‘rope spells’ in particular, but there are a few different schools of thought with this sort of thing. If you knew the particular material, the easiest thing would be to target its phlogiston specifically. Are there particular knots you’d want to target?”

“All knots.”

“Uh, okay. You’d probably want a more animist approach then, to grant the rope some sapience to untie itself. You’d need to learn how to undo all the knots, though, and give that knowledge to the rope, and doing so will be really exhausting, and if the knot gets hurt, you’ll get hurt too. If you knew the exact amount and location of force you’d need to impart, though, then you’d—”

“Why can’t I just turn my body into knives?”

“Pardon?”

“Or just, phase Four-Dee and move forward.”

“4D travel is inconsistent, so—”

“Or make the space inside the rope bigger than the space outside, and fall out of them.”

“Those aren’t really ‘rope spells’, those are more general purpose.”

“Alright then.” Sitting on the bed, she leaned forward. “Take all the general purpose spells you know, weigh them by versatility and speed of learning, and give me a list to start learning.”

His eyes gleamed. He laughed, smiled, bowed, and walked away.

spells

“Have you ever cast a spell before?” he handed her a wand.

“Not directly, no. I’ve seen people do it, and I may have helped channel energy into runes, but I haven’t used a wand.”

“Oh, channelling is the simplest spell!” He crossed off a line on the slate he held. “Casting spells is just turning magical energy into some other form of energy.”

“Or turning yourself into knives, or bringing a rope to life.”

“All different forms of energy.”

“No it isn’t. Energy has a precise definition, it’s force across a distance. How does that translate into turning yourself into knives?”

“…Uh. Well. Huh. Did you read the books you were delivering?”

“A bit.”

“Well, you’re right, magic is a bit more complicated than that. And energy is a bit more complicated than force-distance. A lot of it is visualization.”

“No, I know someone who doesn’t see any images in her head, but does gravitational manipulation purely geometrically. 12 noltons, 45 degrees downward.”

“I’m not a magic expert, but the way I had it described to me, you’re speaking some language to the universe, and as long as it understands you, you’re probably okay. And wands help cut down on the noise.”

“So, the ‘universe’ has some sense of ‘being’, then.”

“Well… yes. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”

“But there’s a difference between me throwing a rock and me willing a rock to be thrown.”

“Well, one is more direct, and energy efficient.”

“No, more than that. We learn we can throw a rock, because we see a rock,” she picked up her knife, “we feel an arm,” she bent her arm, “and we impart force over a distance.” She halfheartedly lobbed it at the floor. Vincent cowered. It landed on its hilt and skittered to a stop. “But, say, there was a blind man, he’d learn to identify a rock by its feel. Or, maybe someone loses one of their arms and has to learn how to throw with their sinister hand. Would the universe consider all of these to be ‘throwing’?”

“Probably?”

“So there’s a god god, then, and they’re who decides what counts as a throw, and decides whether someone is correctly doing a throw spell.”

“Uh… well, not necessarily. There are some who believe each spell primitive is based on the effects of each action. If one throws a rock with a left or right hand, even if you’re blind, it still results in a rock flying through the air and hitting something. Because each of these actions had the same result, they’re grouped together as a ‘spell’ which can be discovered.”

“Do more physical instances of an action cause a spell cast in that way to be easier to do? If I were to repeatedly throw something over my shoulder, would casting the throw spell in an over the shoulder manner become easier?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. Most people who study magic just grab a book, a wand, and start visualizing and waving. And if it works for them, it works, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”

And the list went:

“I notice there’re a lot of missing numbers between the primitives,” said Samantha. “You go P₂₋₁ to P₅.”

“Yeah. Those are ones that are a lot more expensive, and not really beginner-friendly.”

“Such as…?”

“Uh, P₃₋₁ would be stretching space. P₄ is lightning… P₈₋₁ and P₈₋₂ are time dilation… P₁₁ is an animism bridge… P₁₂ is conditional…”

“Conditional? What’s a conditional?”

“A different sound will play in your head based on something in the world. P₁₂₋₃.₈ says ‘Yes’ in your head if your eyes are closed, ‘No’ otherwise.”

The phrase ‘prophecy machine’ came to mind. “…Huh…”

“It goes up to 22 in the Merl interpretation. We get golems using P₁₂₋₇, P₁₄₋₂, and P₁₉. That is, Condition Zero, Loop Do, and Chain. Though, again, it’s super expensive.”

Blink. Blink. Blink.

“Uh.”

Blink.

“Samantha?”

Blink. Blink.

“I have a class to teach in 20 minutes, I’ll leave you to your thinking.”

“Vincent.”

“Yes?”

“Granted, this is expensive. Maybe it takes years of study to get good at, maybe it uses so many thaums it can’t be done very often before recharging. Maybe few people have interest. Maybe few people are actually literate enough to understand this, maybe they don’t have the ability to think abstractly about this.” She paused. That was Quincy talking. His conclusion would’ve been, ‘but, it’s doable, so it would’ve been done.’

“Okay?” Smile.

“I’m from Penbarrow. They excavate stone by hand and chop trees by hand. They grow wheat and corn and harvest by hand. And they bring these to Felkner, by horse, and sell it, and then head back and do it again. And people build buildings by hand and enforce the law by hand and collect taxes by hand.”

“Oh. Why aren’t they using golems?”

Blink. Blink. “You go to your lecture.”

“Okay!”

She sat in silence for a few minutes, glanced to her remaining letter(s), and decided to follow him.

lecture

“…previous lecture, a topological space T is ‘Hauwitzer’ if each distinct point has a disjoint neighbourhood around it. If you can pick 2 distinct points, but can’t give them nonoverlapping neighbourhoods, they’re not. A few examples: the empty topology is vacuously Hauwitzer; the real number line, with standard topology, is Hauwitzer, as is N, Q, products thereof…”

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Abstract nonsense. These academics, playing with their letter numbers and number letters, having the means to make things better but wasting their time. And they wanted to waste her time with this.

“Saw you watching. You have intense eyes,” said Vincent, upon completion.

“Yeah. They’re my mother’s.” That was a lie, they were her father’s. There wasn’t even a reason to lie. Maybe she misspoke. Maybe she’s a bad person.

“What’d you think?” said Vincent.

“What’s a set?”

“Uh… a mathematical primitive. An object such that one can ask if another set is contained in it.”

“Oh, that explains everything, then. I didn’t understand anything, but with that, it all slots into place.”

“I’m glad. I try to be clear.” Pause. “Sarcasm. You are a very weird princess.”

“I’m the daughter of a king. You shouldn’t have any expectations from that.”

“But I do! That’s what being the daughter of a king means! You learn how to rule, and curtsy, and direct troops, and tell the people to build buildings!”

“I can curtsy.”

“Can I see?”

“No. And no, that’s not what being the daughter of a king means. It means they assign you an empty sliver of land to manage, inconsistently send you a stipend, and gradually forget your existence. I agree that being a princess should be more than that. That’s another thing, actually, do you have an explanation why we haven’t been invaded when we don’t have a standing army?”

“We?”

“…Yes. Brune.”

“Is Northpoint Brune?”

“Oh my god… forget it, forget it.”

Blink.

“I can flip 4D,” said Vincent, as if that made up for his not knowing basic geography (yes, Northpoint was Brune).

“Oh, cool, one of my brothers can do that, too.” Well, if he stepped into the hyperspace chest he had. And if he wasn’t dead.

“Is he a topologist?”

“No.”

Did he mean topography? Was that what the whole lecture was about? At a stretch, maybe, Quincy was a topographist. ‘Topology’ and ‘topography’ felt like another ‘psychology’ and ‘psychomancy’.

The conversation had petered out and neither of them particularly wanted to be the one to start it back up so they left.

civics

It was a piece of paper, printed and placed on each desk. They could afford to print disposable itineraries! Joan had manually transcribed orders in Penbarrow! The Vanguard Guild had full-time, dedicated scribes!

“Welcome to th—”

“Hi, Samantha Day, princess, I see your list doesn’t include some important functions of government, such as technological innovation and infrastructure development. Is there a reason these are elided?” ‘Elided’ was also a good word, thanks Scala.

“Another Day, huh?” said the lecturer, bemused. Weird reaction if it had only been Anisa, wonder who else took his class…

“It often is,” muttered a man in Samantha’s periphery, with a black suit, black pants, a black wizard hat, and an itinerary-white complexion. “Sun and all.” Samantha was still awing at the itinerary (though she was paying enough attention to be irritated at the uncreative remark).

“Please act your station, Your Highness. In my class, speak only after raising a hand, or you may be disciplined. However, to your question, these are only some of the functions of government, and in fact are the primary functions of the Brunian federal government.”

“Yeah I saw that. I suppose you’ll avoid normative statements here?”

“Yes, now quiet.”

She was quiet. The rest of the lecture barely elucidated beyond what was printed. She learned nothing that she didn’t already know, besides that Brune wasn’t really a monarchy, it was an oligarchy (she more or less knew that already), that she wasn’t really a princess (shut up! (she didn’t say that, but she thought it)) and that the guy in black thought he was really clever whenever he muttered a snarky comment under his breath.

Why bother having a lecture if you’re just going to have it all printed out!? Just skip to the first lecture! And why print this out? This was worthless! Organize better! Is this what happens when the proles think they know better? They waste time and resources? Shiron. O Shiron…

centigrade

Having expressed interest in the spell primitives, Vincent took Samantha to a small museum. Surely she’d agree this was a good use of time…

“I remembered you asking about how the universe groups certain actions together as spells. This is one way it can be done.” He gestured to a display. Centigrade, the magical compiler. “It’s believed to come from Holstram himself. Magister Gordian determined a grammar that could be carved into tablets and given to golems, which is able to do many kinds of magic. Though, to be clear, I’m not a magic specialist. I’m a mathematician.”

She stared. She stared. She fell to her knees.

The room was so big, even though it wasn’t. It should’ve been. It was claustrophobic. The world was so small. She was suffocating. It was like a reverse stipospace backpack, a bag smaller on the inside than the outside, where the exhibit was stealing the very fabric of space from her lungs. She breathed in, out, in, out.

“Princess? Are you alright?”

“Fine, fine, yes,” she panted.

The building was tiny. Wooden roof only a foot higher than she was. Small display cases of books, ink, fragments of stone. And this. This, shoved off to the side.

“Well, if you want to learn more, you should read Gordian’s old notes. No one’s really worked on it since him, and that would’ve been before I was born. Well, besides the prince, I think.”

She attempted to stand to her feet, but gave up very quickly.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes. Yes.” Yes. “Vincent?”

“Yes?”

“I think we should get to know each other better. I propose we create 2 lists: 1, items we would absolutely wish to take with us should we go on a vacation, and 2, books which one found indispensable for their education. As many as you can think of for each. I shall do the same.”

“Perhaps after the tests?”

She breathed in. “Fine.”

son

Apparently, some fugitive had resurfaced who was of interest to the dean, so he and several others left the academy to pursue. Convenient timing.

backpack

Vincent woke to a bag over his head. His arms pressed against the sides, but the sides were too far away. And then someone tried pushing his legs up, so he kicked them, and shouted “Get away from me! Guards, guards!” But his voice echoed inside the bag. And the person who pushed his legs pushed his legs again, and got kicked again. Then he pulled the bag up with his arms that were too far away, and found his blanket was being tied around his chest, and it was dark, and Samantha said “shut up, you want this,” and he kicked her again, and she shoved his legs again and he slid back in the bag, and the bag was pulled up and he fell down several meters before hitting a thin cloth above his mattress.

“Release me! Samantha! Samantha, you scoundrel! You unprincess!” And several clothes fell in, and several books, and eventually, Centigrade the magical compiler.

the_plan

She had no idea how she’d performed on the tests. She didn’t particularly care. Many of the questions were open-ended, and she’d answered them with what she knew. She hadn’t studied. She only barely knew astronomy, knew nothing of music (besides that Joan liked it), but knew math, and geometry, and rhetoric, probably. And enough about magic to pretend she knew more.

It was missing a lot of what she thought would be practical information, though. For instance, she knew how to ride a horse, and it didn’t test her on that. She didn’t know how to pick a lock, nor was she tested on that, but it would’ve been useful. The book she read on picking locks failed to help. Eventually, she just said “Ugh” and tried cutting the chains off the stable door, and when that didn’t work she just sat outside and waited an hour for the stablehand to show up.

The geometry was helpful, though. Inside the bag, she had constructed a bellows with a large tube, so she could circulate new air to prevent Vincent from suffocating. When she had first asked him to pass it up, he had tried smacking her with it, but after explaining that he would suffocate and die and that he should obey his princess who knows better than everyone and that both her and Vincent are being wasted at Northpoint, he tried smacking her harder. He eventually collapsed, and at that point she was able to grab it and begin squeezing.

She was decently confident he wouldn’t suffocate. Though, he might get banged up from everything bouncing around in there. She made sure to toss in his helmet, which was one of the items on his list.

Actually, the air might just pass through the fabric itself. …Actually, he’d totally be able to just cut his way out. Huh.

So she waited for the stablehand to show up (astronomy assisted in telling how close to dawn it was), failing to read a book on Vincent’s list, and when the stablehand did, she explained that Vincent had said she could ride a horse to relax after her tests. And when the stablehand said he hadn’t heard that from Vincent, she said “Uh.” And Vincent screamed “help” inside the bag and Samantha cringed and smacked the stablehand with the backpack and he hit the door and his head hit the lock and he fell to the ground and the bag clanked and Vincent screamed.

“Shiron…” she said. “Are you alive?” she asked the air.

“Ugh…” said the bleeding stablehand leaning against the door.

“I’m going to kill you! Samantha! Samantha!” shouted her bag.

“Okay,” she said, and she reached into an outer pouch on the bag (which was a normal pouch, and was the same size on the inside as the outside) and placed a few pennies on the stablehand as recompense, then ran in and failed to hop on a horse then failed to hop on a horse then realized the horse’s door was still locked then unlocked the door then failed to no wait she got it wait it needs a saddle oh there’s a saddle and then the stablehand got up and started stumbling away from the building and then a saddle got placed on the horse but it got placed backwards and she had to remember if a saddle had a backwards or forwards then she remembered no force over distance is ‘work’ and she didn’t actually learn the definition of energy and the horse started complaining and she put the things on it and the stablehand shouted “help, I’m hit,” and Vincent complained and Samantha failed to get on the horse and Samantha got on the horse and the horse complained and she started moving and she left the stable and Vincent screamed and screamed and screamed.

And then things were uneventful for the next few hours.

Exactly as planned.

The pennies should’ve been enough for the stablehand’s medical expenses. Probably. ‘Healing magic’ was a thing. She didn’t really know how it worked, but she knew the fraction of the Vanguard membership fee that went towards health insurance. Though counting the coins later, she realized she gave him 2 fewer than she should’ve.

Though, did he even grab them? Did he even notice she threw them on him?

“Hey Vincent, are you still alive?”

“I shouldn’t have been so nice to you. So naive. So stupid.” Less angry, more resigned.

“You’re not stupid, Vincent.” Her arms were positioned awkwardly, so as to hold the bellows with both hands (she wasn’t sure if the fabric was airtight or not), tube going over her shoulder into the bag, while her hands were also holding the reins. “If you were stupid, I wouldn’t have abducted you.”

“You came here tied up, why did I think that just because you were a princess, you’d be refined.”

She considered claiming she was refined. Her mouth failed to form the words.

“And now I’m going to die. I’m being kidnapped by a maniac and I’m going to die.”

“You’re not going to die.”

fool

“We should talk,” said Samantha. “Like, really talk.”

“I’m going to piss in your princess bag.”

“Is it light enough down there? Can you see anything?”

“No.”

“The antigravity crystal should be emitting some light, should be enough to light the lantern.”

“Well, it isn’t.”

“It’s probably covered in clothes. Try moving the clothes around.”

“I vomited, too, it’s all over the clothes.”

“Why’d you do that?”

No response.

“Okay, yeah, this isn’t sustainable. Hang on to something. Woah, horse.” She hopped off and tied the horse around a shrub. She took the bag off her back. She increased her bellows’ squeeze speed. “Do you know tarot?”

“What? No.”

“Okay, well, it’s got all these different cards — the ‘major arcana’ — that represent different aspects of reality. The magician, the stars, death, that sort of stuff. The first one — zero — is The Fool. You are a fool, Vincent.”

Blink.

“Are you alive in there?”

“Yes.”

“Being a fool isn’t a bad thing. The fool goes on a journey and becomes more than a fool. I think that’s a recent development, the journey bit, but it’s true. The fool is potential, unrealized. Innocence. Harmlessness. You following me?”

“Unwillingly. I think that’s all fake.”

“Good enough. See, you have all this potential, Vincent. You’re a magician, you have the will and the ability. You’re a hierophant, with the respect for the institution. You’re the star, with the faith you have in princesses. But it’s all chained up in the middle of nowhere. It’s all potential.”

“So that gives you the right to kidnap me? So my ‘potential’ can be ‘realized’?”

“Oh, no, what gives me the right to do that is because I’m a princess. Wait, no, you’re right, yeah. Er, no, wait, I have a right to call myself a princess because I’m realizing potential. Or, rather, that’s how it should be. I’m a fool too, Vincent.”

“Yup.”

“But that changes now, because I have the means to make things better.”

“And those means are?”

“You! And your books! And your magic compiler!”

“All covered in vomit.”

“You and your brilliant, stupid mind. We’re going to make thousands of spells, Vincent, and thousands of golems! And we’ll send them all across the country, and they’ll make everything easier! And we’ll be heroes! We’ll meet up with artificer-prince Hendrik in Dianthus, and the mage Verris in Felkner, and they’ll help! We’ll teach the engineer’s guild, and go to Blisbane for the miners! I see the path in my mind, Vincent, it’s beautiful!”

“Felkner? You expect me to survive in here for 5 days?”

“6. And, uh, no.” She did, initially, but this was obviously intractable, and she could only speak over his guilt-inducing words for so long. Exactly as planned, of course. “No, I thought, you wouldn’t leave Northpoint on your own, but once you were pulled away for a bit, you’d be convinced to come along of your own free will.”

“I see.”

“Do you see the vision?”

“I see it.”

“Do you want to come and make people’s lives better?”

“Samantha…”

“Yes?”

“Does there exist someone with your passion and vision, who isn’t completely insane?”

Her smile melted. “Yes. And honestly, getting her on board is the first step.”

“Getting me on board is the first step.”

“Zeroth. Fool.”

“You’re just making things up as you go to protect your ego.”

“No I’m not! Yes, I’m making things up, that’s true, but someone has to, and no one else does! Everyone is content to just have the world as it is! They don’t care that they spend all day picking up wheat, or that they’re illiterate, or that their house doesn’t have a clock! They’re all blind! They don’t know how things could be! Imagine being born blind, and not knowing what a sunset is. Or being born without a tongue, and not knowing that you could share stories! These people, these static, impotent peasants, they need their souls wrenched out of their skeletons to be bathed in enlightenment. God. And think me crazy, fine, and think me stupid, and think me, I don’t know, evil, or amoral, or broken, or a failure of a princess, fine. But I’m trying. Or maybe I just tell myself that. If everyone else tried, too, then criticize me, call me a failure. But they don’t. Quincy didn’t…

“Real plan: we go to my sister, Anisa. She is sane, she is stable, she should recognize this potential. And then we all work together for something better. Please.” Tears came at some point.

No response.

“Vincent?”

No response. Distant hooves.

“Oh god damn it.” And she failed to untie the horse and failed to untie the horse and turned the bag upside down to pour everything out, and she held her hands up to be arrested.

stale_bed

The bed was stale. As was the air.

There were no windows. There was a single torch. Occasionally, it went out, and she was in complete darkness.

It was a holding cell. There were three more like it in the room, but only hers was occupied. Every few hours, she’d be brought some oats, and some water, and her waste bin would be emptied and cleaned, and the torch may be relit. She worried about ventilation.

She was also menstruating, which was annoying and painful. If she’d just left before taking the tests she didn’t care about, she could’ve been arrested without half-sitting on the jailbench, grabbing at nothing on the wall to steady herself and pissing blood. But then Vincent wouldn’t’ve written the list of things she should grab with him…

It wasn’t stupid. It was smart, and considerate. She wasn’t stupid.

She had been given her grades. She’d done fine. Not good enough to justify immediate graduation. Though, given the circumstances, it was moot.

They had given her no books. They had taken her clothes, she wore grey rags. There was a bed, and a waste bucket, and a bench, and bars. 34 bars for her cell. It was in a corner, so there were 2 walls of bars, 2 walls of bricks.

Agarma would release her, it’d be fine.

printing_press

“Samantha,” entered Agarma.

“Hey Garmie. It’s been a while. Glad to see you. Learn any new words? Sorry about the mess. If I need to pay anything back, I have the pennies, though they’re probably back in Lionel’s safe. Anyways. Ha. I don’t know, ever since Quincy jumped off that cliff and killed himself I guess I’ve been rather demented. Not that I wasn’t demented before. I mean, I’m not demented, rather, I’m opinionated, and I can be wrong. But I’m human! Yeah. Learn any new words? Did I already ask that? I already asked that. Feck, hey have you killed dad yet?”

“Samantha,” he repeated.

“Yes,” said Samantha.

“Samantha,” he said. “A decade ago, I used Centigrade to automate the printing press, and traded it for the life of my retainer.”

Blink. “We’re… not so different,” said Samantha. “I wanted to bring Centigrade to Felkner, to get more use from it.”

“It took 2 months of development for the spell,” he said. “Half of that was just learning its interface. That spell is why I’m at Northpoint today. Do you know how a printing press works, Samantha?”

“Uh. You make a metal stamp, cover it with ink, align it over paper, and press it down?”

“Close. The stamp doesn’t have the letters on it. You use the stamp to press the paper down on the letters. My initial improvement was the ability to draw a template on a regular piece of paper, and have that read in to select and arrange the letters. Writing this way tends to be quicker than manually arranging the letters, and it allows you to easily pull out a template you’ve already created, if you find you need more of a particular page. It requires some setup, you need to have your characters pre-organized. My second improvement was to have the letters sort themselves, putting themselves back in preparation for the next page. My third and fourth were to have them apply ink to themselves, and to clean themselves afterward. After that, it became a collaborative effort. The primary issue with this was it was all sequential; every letter had to wait for the previous before it could position itself. Gordian wrote the algorithm to allow them to work in parallel, and I implemented it. There’s work underway to take pre-existing pages and convert them to templates, and to dictate to a page and have a template be written, but thus far, those have proven far more difficult problems.”

She forgot where she was. “How many characters do you generally use? 27, times 2, plus 10, plus, what, another 20 or so?”

“More or less. We have a total of 696 different stamps, but many of these are quite particular. Musical notation, for instance. Linguistics, too. And math. I review proposals for additional characters every 2 months.”

“I’m sorry for stealing Centigrade. I didn’t realize it was that important. I was under the impression its potential was being wasted.”

“Yes, Vincent seemed to think that too, which is troubling. But no matter, it is a sturdy piece of metal.”

“Oh. Okay, good.”

“Samantha,” he again said. She couldn’t blame him, her name was fun to say. “You are an unpredictable nuisance.”

“I’m more than that,” she said, remembering where she was and feeling drained. “And, being unpredictable isn’t bad.”

“For me it is, Samantha, for me it is.”

“Well, why don’t we work together, then? You can work out who has access to Centigrade and when, I can work out who could benefit from using it. Keep things predictable.”

He stared at her in silence. Considering? Considering? He walked out.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and she scowled. Her words were never convincing, not even to herself, even when she meant them.

bars

She forgot how many times she had counted 35 bars (she had mistakenly counted 34 several times earlier).

“Bup… bup… bup…”

She’d asked the people who had delivered the food what happens next, they hadn’t responded.

Vincent entered.

“I’m sorry.” she said.

He held a bottle and two cups.

“I acted rashly, and it caused pain, and it wasn’t justified. So, sorry.”

He poured into both cups. “I don’t care, Samantha.”

“Oh. Is the stablehand alright?”

“His name is Bernard, and he’s fine, if a bit banged up.”

“And Centigrade?”

“Fine, it’s back on display.”

Vincent drank from his cup.

“So, now what,” said Samantha, “do I just apologize to your dad, or…”

“They’re going to execute you.”

“What? Why?” She shot up.

“I don’t know.”

“That literally doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t cause any lasting harm, right?”

“…I wouldn’t be so definitive.”

“Nothing that would justify execution, though?”

“No.”

“You understand, I ran a Vanguard Guild, right? They won’t stand for this. Anisa wouldn’t stand for this. Hendrik wouldn’t. I… if you combine all the manpower in the country who wouldn’t stand for this, you’d have a force who’d be capable of destroying anything.”

“I don’t know, Samantha.”

Blink.

“So now what?” said Samantha.

Vincent slid the cup through the bars. “I told you a lot of stuff, about magic. Why don’t you tell me how that bag works?”

“Really? That’s the most important information you can extract out of a doomed princess?”

“Yes. I’d think it only fair.”

“…Well, it’s a stipospace backpack with an antigravity crystal in it. The crystal probably came from Anisa, she’s the antigravity specialist, and the backpack itself came from Hendrik. It compresses space, so it’s bigger on the inside than the outside. The crystal reduces weight, because what’s the point in being able to hold more if it’s still just as heavy.”

“How is the space reduced inside of it? Can it be flattened out with stuff inside?”

“I think so, but I think there’s a minimum. If you put a book in there, from the outside, you could get the bag thinner than the book was.”

“I see.”

“I’m not sure I can drink this. My stomach is quite empty.”

“Try. And don’t do anything stupid until I come back.” And he picked back up his cup, and the bottle, and walked for the door.

“What, that’s it?”

And he left.

magician

“You’re so stupid,” said Agarma. Samantha didn’t react. “You could’ve been well-positioned after Reimond died. You could’ve been an aspiration! An unruly princess who tempered herself in study, in service of creating new technologies to improve everyone’s lives.” He glanced to Claire, holding a paper. “Acknowledge?”

She fumbled with her sleeve. “Acknowledged. Time is, uh, 8:56. No, 8:57, sir. It incremented as I was speaking.”

Samantha sat simply on the floor, leaning against the wall, legs out. “Are you really going to execute me?” she whimpered.

“Yes.”

Her heart fell into the abyss. She slumped. “Why?”

“Besides your unruly behaviour? Besides the awful example you set? Besides that your behaviour landed one of our best pupils in a cell?”

“What was that last one?”

“Say yes.”

“Yes what.”

“‘Yes, besides all that.’”

She slowly cast her gaze up. “Yes, besides all that.”

“For Anisa. She’s wanted an excuse to permanently get rid of you for a long time.”

Adrenaline swelled. “That’s not true. Ask her. We’re a team! I know, I may be impulsive, but I make people’s lives better! I do paperwork! I discuss bylaws! I run pancake breakfasts! I figure out what needs improving in Felkner, and I find people who can do it! And I just found a way that everything can be improved, and I was trying to bring someone who could do it back with me! You know that! Please, please, I’m useful, I’m trying.”

His wife(?) side-eyed him. “Yes, I know,” he said. “I almost admire your impulsiveness. I love you too, Samantha.” He paced. “You’re cute, too. God, everyone is so cute.” He paused. “Your brain is worth at least 10 peasants.”

“More like 50,” muttered Samantha.

“Granted, 50. You don’t see farmers being so secure in their delusions that they’d kidnap and brainwash a teacher.”

“Dad was.”

He grit his teeth. “Granted, father was delusional. But he was more than that. He was kind. He would listen when his compatriots told him he had bad ideas. Samantha. Sa-man-tha. Do you know the word ‘co-operation’?”

Blink.

“…‘Co’, as in ‘together’, and ‘operari’, as in—”

“Yes, you have a dictionary in your head. Give it a rest. You thought the impropriety was worth it. Assault, robbery, kidnapping, all in service of a better world. Samantha, if, through those means, you get a world that’s ‘better’, it’ll still be worse than the one with ‘co-operation’. A world founded on force, on assertions that you’re better than everyone else, even if it’s true, is fragile. You don’t have anyone, Samantha. They all hate you. Because you’re awful.”

“Anisa doesn’t hate me. Woah, wait, this is rich, coming from—”

“Awful! She does! And so does your guild, who sent a letter—” his assistant handed him a piece of paper “—ahem, ‘request[ing] the execution be delayed until [their] arrival’.”

“Oh. Will you?”

“No. I might give them your heart, when they arrive. I’m keeping your head. And that stupid, cute, smile. Point is, they didn’t ask for it to be stopped, or claim I’m unreasonable. They want it just as much as I do, just as much as Anisa does.”

“You really should wait for them. I know, uh, they may offer you something in return if you let them watch.” Maybe someone would get her out of this still.

“I’d like to give you an offer. We execute someone in your place, and I keep you alive in my dungeon, forever. I’ve done the calculus, Samantha. The world can keep your wondrous (albeit redundant) ideas, but it can lose you.”

Blink.

“What does dad think?”

“Nothing. I can’t imagine the restraint Anisa needed to not rip father’s head off when he declared me heir, ha. If I were her, I would’ve killed him.”

“You keep talking about her as if you know her…” He was probably just lying…

“I intend to propose,” he said, ignoring her.

“Propose what. Aren’t you married.”

“A partnership. Prior to your execution. The future of Brune is guaranteed, then. I can’t wait to hear of her tax policies.” His assistant glared and glared.

“Policies which I helped create.”

“And I thank you for your contributions.”

“I feel like you’re not listening to me.”

“Not really. You’re a net negative, and your voice is annoying.”

“So what was the point in seeing me, then. What was the point in any of this, if you just wanted to hear yourself talk. I know a good glassblower, if you need more mirrors to speak to. Too bad that information would die with me.”

“Shut up. Ah, yes. Just before this, I was reading Vincent Whiteclaw’s arrest testimony.”

“Why was he arrested?” Though she was annoyed, she continued to deflate.

“Took evidence without proper authorization. A certain stipospace backpack. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“…I mean, it’s my backpack, I don’t know why he’d do it.”

“Shame, we might have to execute him, too.”

“Don’t… don’t do that. He’s good. He’s smart. It’d be a waste.” Grey and passionless.

“Anyways, I saw you talking about being a fool, and him being a fool, and I thought, no you’re not. I thought I’d give you a tarot reading, myself.”

“Okay.”

“The deck, Claire.” And his assistant handed him a deck.

He drew a card. “Ah, inverted magician. How fitting.” He placed it on the floor in front of her.

“That’s not inverted, you idiot, that’s upright.”

“I’m the one doing the reading, so it’s from my perspective.”

“Your perspective is stupid and wrong. Also it’s all fake.” She’d heard of cartomancy for the first time a few years ago, from him. He’d probably made it all up. She’d memorized it, though…

“Inverted magician represents restlessness and manipulation.”

“I know what it means,” said Samantha.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if I actually drew a fool? What are the odds of that?”

“With minor, modal and major, 1 in 86, minus 1,” said Samantha.

“Ah, close, it’s 1 in 85. 1 in 86 minus 1 is negative 85 out of 86. You should’ve stayed in school.”

Samantha had long since broken eye contact, eyes unfocussing. She didn’t bother moving her head or glaring.

He drew another. “Ah, wheel of fortune. Wheel of fortune…” he looked up, but Samantha was checked out. “You know, Penrose was a big proponent of Fortuna. He got executed, too.”

Blink.

“Ask me who Penrose is.”

“Nah.”

“Unfortunate. Okay, inverted magician, wheel of fortune, and…” he drew a third card. He frowned. He frowned.

His assistant glanced over. “Oh, we must’ve shuffled a second deck in. Sorry about that.”

Samantha brought her eyes up. “What is it.”

“Invalid,” said Agarma. He crumpled it up and threw it back. He drew another. “There. Seven of Swords. That makes more sense.”

“Did you kill Quincy?”

Blink.

“Yes.”

dream

I was headless. Bloody. The audience cheered. My sister smiled. My brother kicked my head across the stage. Bounce, bounce. And it was good. The guild was happy, too. A better world isn’t worth the bother of cooperating with the antisocial. In fact, it’s a better world by merit of my no longer being in it. There were multiple ways to get a better world. I’m fading, fading…

What a waste of a dream.

4d_countermeasures

John pulled Agarma out from the chest and threw him off the wagon.

A teapot fell up from the chest, narrowly missing Agarma, hitting the top canvas and falling back into the wagon.

Blink.

Blink.

“All I can think about is how we need to develop countermeasures for Four-Dee rotations,” said Samantha.

“Yeah,” said Anisa.

shocked

“You got any food?” asked Samantha.

They had bread, and she consumed voraciously. Big improvement.

Anisa was still out.

“Prithee, what is our state?” said Concord.

“Agarma didn’t follow procedure, so we took Samantha,” said John.

Concord looked back. Samantha was sitting, eating, tears streaming from her eyes, staring ahead. She looked to Anisa, who was sitting slumped to the side. “Anisa?”

“We’re engaged, now,” muttered Anisa.

“No you’re not,” said John. “She’s okay. Rattled from the guillotine.”

“I’ve seen guillotines before,” said Anisa.

“We’re going back to Felkner now, right Anisa?” said John.

Anisa was quiet.

“We’re going to Felkner,” said John.

“Straight to Felkner?” said Concord.

“Through Gelmton,” said John.

They sat in silence for a minute. “Doesn’t look like we’re being pursued,” said John. “Agarma is probably as shocked as you. He wouldn’t try arresting you, anyways.”

“Maybe,” said Anisa.

thanks_john

“Thank you. For my life.” Samantha said to John.

“Me? Oh, no. I just brought the dead man. It was all him.”

“And he’s just in the chest? He’s not actually a ghost, right?”

“No, he’s alive, and yeah, he’s in the chest.”

“Well. Regardless. Ha. Ha! I hope you realize the gravity of what you’ve done. Of the future you’ve preserved for Brune. Ha! Ha!” She looked to the box. “I’m going to be very angry at him in a few hours.”

“He knows.”

under_my_nose

“Gelmton is in 20 minutes, are we going through?” said Concord.

“Samantha do you want to go on a vacation?” said Anisa.

“Yes,” said Samantha.

“Okay,” said Anisa. “How do we do that?”

“I don’t know,” said Samantha.

“Okay,” said Anisa.

John had gone in the chest and brought the teapot with him.

“I don’t get it,” said Samantha. “The hug. The rescue.”

“I didn’t rescue you,” said Anisa.

“You did. I’d be dead. Samantha No-head. Maybe my soul would evaporate. Maybe I’d be in hell. But now I’m not.”

“It happened under my nose. John is to be let go.”

“What!”

She grit her teeth. “He…” she exhaled. “He is to officially be let go.”

“He could join the Vanguard Guild again,” said Samantha.

“No, he— no, Samantha.”

“It’d be a cover.”

“No.”

“Okay. Where are the Vanguard, anyways? I’d expect more people to be coming to save me.”

“I don’t know.”

“I see,” (she didn’t). “What about the Blisbane Vanguard Guild?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hmm.”

She rubbed her hands. Binds had been undone. More knots, there. She still didn’t know how to untie them, with magic or otherwise.

“I don’t get it,” she repeated. “You sent me up here to get me away from you.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did! And now I’m not going to school for the two years you thought I deserved. And you’re rescuing me from a brother who you thought wouldn’t try killing me.”

Blink.

“Did you read my letter?” asked Anisa.

“I read the first half. I spaced out after you started talking about an assassin.”

“That was the start! You… it wasn’t my call, Samantha, it was dad’s. Dad wanted to send you.”

“Oh. Huh.”

“Yeah. ‘Huh’.”

“But you did, too, you wanted me up there.”

“Yes, I did. I didn’t think that would happen. Let’s talk about it later.”

“Okay. I don’t hate you as much as Quincy but I still hate you a bit.” Hate was her baseline. Anisa knew that.

“Okay.”

the_plan_two

“You said you care about me. Why?”

“Don’t ask me to explain,” said Anisa. “Stop thinking. Spend an hour being happy you’re alive.”

“Yeah,” said Samantha. “Yeah.”

Blusters. She hadn’t paid mind to the terrain on the way up. Piles of snow. Some pine trees. A few trails snaking off from the main paths, probably sled dogs.

She had to thank their horses, who probably weren’t happy pulling them in this weather. Concord, for driving. Quincy and John. Whoever had approved Quincy getting the chest. Whoever had made the trail they were now on. Whatever force prevented monsters and bandits from showing up on this trail. Air. Whoever had made the bread she’d eaten. Time and space. Whatever Anisa had contributed.

A few of those bricks probably could’ve been removed, and she’d still be alive, but not many.

What the hell were they doing. Standing on so many bricks, and lamenting that they weren’t at the top.

Why weren’t they? Reimond was 66.

“Anisa, what’s the Brunian life expectancy?”

“Bourrienne would— Concord, where’s Bourrienne?”

“John said he was meeting us in Gelmton, that’s why I—”

“Yes, we’re stopping in Gelmton, then.”

“Acknowledged. Time is… I seem to have misplaced my watch.”

Someone had been maintaining the roads enough that, despite the snow that had been piling for weeks, there was still a clear path. Maybe the same people who had directed a conspiracy to not free a tied up, occasionally-screaming princess in a wagon. Would Agarma be employing them? Possibly… a clear road was predictable, and useful.

“Anisa, what the hell are we doing?”

“Samantha, don’t make me regret this.”

“Why don’t we use golems?”

“Lack of resources, mostly. They’re very expensive.”

“That’s a stupid answer, when they can pay for themselves.”

“Maybe when we know what things look like years in the future, we can start considering it. Maybe when father dies.”

“Huh. Yeah. Ah. That makes sense.” No it didn’t, but surely Anisa had something in mind.

“I should marry Agarma.”

“No! No! Do you want to?”

Anisa was silent.

“Exactly!” said Samantha. “He wants me dead, you want me alive, that should be enough! That’s why a vacation is a great idea! Spend some time figuring out what you want!”

Yeah, it wasn’t over, of course. Ugh. They were probably actively being pursued. No wonder nothing got done, everyone worrying about the psychological game.

“We will need to write,” said Anisa. “Write to Agarma, and Calhoun. Formalize our position. Hendrik, too, he’s a loose end.”

“The position of ‘Samantha is better alive’?” pleaded Samantha.

“In part.”

“Write to the Felkner Vanguard as well, Agarma said they wanted him to wait for them to show up before executing me. Make sure they haven’t stabbed me in the back, assholes. Also, if you’re writing to Agarma, tell him to not kill Vincent Whiteclaw, or we do something.”

“They did not stab you in the back, Samantha.”

Logistics, logistics. Boring.

That’s probably all that being a king or queen is about, though. Slaying dragons is at most, what, 1% of that?

Ugh! She didn’t want to have to understand everyone!

Was this all some convoluted plan to make her gain perspective? Shove a semester of curriculum into 4 weeks! Well, 3 weeks and 3 days. Plus about 20 minutes, per Anisa’s watch. No, dad would be too stupid to do that, and it’d require everyone acting exactly as he’d anticipated, when everyone hated him and would react in ways he’d be unable to predict. And it’d require knowing Quincy was alive, and knowing whatever kind of magic he used to rescue her, and either having Agarma follow a script, or knowing that he wouldn’t plan for that kind of magic, and…

For the sake of stability, Reimond needed to be ousted immediately. Agarma can’t be allowed to be king, though…

Samantha laughed, so Anisa glanced over, worried. “We have Quincy,” said Samantha. “That asshole. That asshole! That asshole who saved me! Are we making him king?”

“‘Making him king’, Samantha?”

“It’s dad’s fault Samantha got sent to Northpoint, and dad didn’t interfere when Agarma wanted to kill her,” said Samantha. “So we need to oust him immediately, so no more Samanthas get sent to Northpoints. And we have a good puppet prince, unless he just ran away again.” She looked to the box with no lid. She got up, leaned over it and shouted, “hey, are you in there?” She only saw a short ladder down to blackness. Fog leaked through.

“Yeah!” shouted John, “Yeah, we’re down here! Do, do you want a drink? He brought beer, we, we’ve got beer down here!”

“Kata, we’re kata here,” said Quincy.

“Quincy, are you going to be king?” shouted Samantha.

“No,” shouted Quincy.

“You’re a pathetic bastard,” shouted Samantha.

“We’re all bastards,” said Anisa.

“For one, we’re all bastards,” shouted Quincy, not hearing Anisa. “For another, I’m a pathetic bastard who saved you.”

“Granted, you’re a pathetic bastard who saved me, but think, if you’re not king, Agarma is, and then he kills me, so just, I don’t know, kill dad, say you’re king, and put Anisa in charge.”

There was a long silence.

“Does that work,” said Quincy.

“Yeah,” said John.

“We’re not killing father,” said Anisa.

“Shut up Anisa, we’re killing dad,” said Samantha. “If you want to plug your ears and play innocent, fine. Or we find some crime to accuse him of, if that makes you feel better. And then Quincy is king and he makes you empress, or something, and you put me in charge of, I don’t know, all the Vanguardists in the country, and then we work with the engineers to make golems and we automate farming and mining. There. Now we have a plan, and now I never have to worry about logistics again.”

“Why would Agarma be… why… what… What if I make you — Samantha — queen, and then step down,” said Quincy.

Her eyes unfocused, unblinking. Putting aside that she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with the logistics; “Why didn’t you do that in the first place?”

There was a pause, then, meekly, he said, “Now we have Anisa, who can kingmake.”

Samantha could not tell if her suggestions had any relation to reality, but she was glad people were willing to engage.

“We do not and she cannot,” said Anisa.

“Yes we do and she can” said Samantha. “If we don’t and she can’t, she should start suggesting some better alternatives.”

“She needs a break,” said Anisa.

“…Right. Fair. Sorry.” Samantha climbed in the chest. “I’m flipping kata and getting drunk,” said Samantha.

“We’re arriving in,” Anisa looked to her watch, “10 minutes.”

“I’m flipping kata and getting drunk and you should too,” said Samantha, and she climbed down the ladder and flipped kata.

The ladder led through a thin film of water and snow down to another chest, with another wagon, except this one was smaller, and held a table and a few crates. Samantha was briefly disoriented by the gravity flip; but, managed to rotate herself around and climb up.

“What the hell is this?” she said. Quincy and John sat on crates, playing cards at the table, drinking from mugs. The wagon was tiny, and was completely exposed. It was a flat wooden square, with a piece of wood along each side so objects wouldn’t roll out.

“Oh, oh,” said John. “Something about physics, and a house being too heavy to drag around.”

“Antigravity?” said Samantha.

“The crystals have weight limits,” said Quincy. “If I’d attached anything more, the chest would’ve prevented the Midworld wagon from moving.”

“What’s this about antigravity?” said Anisa, peeking in.

“We’re all so drunk it feels like we’re weightless,” said Samantha.

“What she said,” said John.

“I couldn’t attach a house to the wagon because it was too heavy,” said Quincy.

“Is it safe down there?” said Anisa.

“Yes,” said Quincy.

“Concord, ensure the chest does not fall out,” said Anisa. As if the driver would do anything different.