LTSV - Lost & Found 54 (Patreon)

Mira looked at the three boys, standing in a row before her in her sitting room, and took a sip of her tea. “Gentlemen, I’m sure that my ladies told you that Cecily is not available today.”

The Templars had come early in the morning to collect her for a day trip to visit the sacred blacksmith who made their armor so she could have the Pure Heart Sword fitted for a scabbard. She’d been having to haul it around by the hilt since her investiture. The blade passed through anything it touched, including the floor. Fortunately, the hilt didn’t share the blade’s unique qualities and so Cecily was able to use a tall table to store her weapon when not in use, but it wasn’t dignified solution; to say nothing of the time it had fallen off the table in her bedroom and the blade ended up poking through the downstairs ceiling. Visiting the sacred smith was their last ditch effect to circumvent the issue so Cecily could keep the Pure Heart Sword close to hand.

“I came to check on you today, Senior,” Randall said as he took a seat on the sofa opposite her. He set a wrapped pile of what appeared to be small paper-bound books. “Also, my mother sent you some books she’d like your opinion about. She received review copies from the University Press and she wanted to know if you’d be willing to look over the sections on Summoning for her. She thinks there’s something wrong with the methodology, but doesn’t have the background to say exactly what.”

“Oh,” Mira set her teacup down, interested despite herself. She did like pointing out when other people were wrong. “I don’t mind. My mentor decided to push my university start back a semester, given everything that’s happened, so I do have some time for spare reading. When does she need it back by?”

“The review isn’t due until the beginning of Autumn,” Randall said, with a smile. “Mother would be very grateful for anything you can tell her. Anyway, that’s my business. I’m not sure what their excuses are.” He gestured to William Noir and Alan Greenwood.

William gave Mira a respectful half-bow. He looked a little uncomfortable and shot Randall a sideways glare. “I came to apologize to Senior Priestly,” his teeth flashed a bit as he said it, but it wasn’t directed at Mira. He turned back to Mira, “I am sorry for letting the fourth prince influence my opinion of you during our time at school. I should not have believed his accusations without evidence.”

Alan had his arms folded behind his head and grinned, like he was enjoying the show. “The Gazette has been running a whole series of special editions about you and the Saintess,” he explained. “Today, the led with a front page story about how the Usurper used your engagement to indefinitely postpone the Crown Princess’s coronation.”

“Is that what the protesting at the compound gates is about?” Mira asked. The chanting and shouting had started some time after breakfast, which would have been enough time for the papers to have been delivered, read, and then for a ticked-off mob to form. Rosepark was just deep enough into Hadleigh Palace Complex that she couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, just that there were angry people on the Palace’s doorstep.

“They want the Usurper’s trial to be opened to the public,” Alan explained. “It doesn’t look like anyone is worried that her Highness will pardon him or that his guilt is in question. I think they just want a chance to throw things at him.”

“You haven’t said why you came,” Randall asked, giving Alan a sidelong look of his own. 

“I came to support him,” Alan said, clapping William on the shoulder hard enough to make him lean forward a little. “I never believed the rumors. For one, I always thought the prince was a little too pleased to remind us how obsessed she supposedly was with him. Especially when Senior Priestly always looked like she was seriously considering escaping out a window whenever he did talk to her instead of just yelling in her general direction. I like to think I’m good at spotting it when someone is fattening their own ego at someone else’s table and he seemed the type. I was more annoyed that he was preventing the school from finding the real bully—although, now I wonder if it was him, all along.”

“I thought the same, but some of it was happening in the girls’ dormitory,” Randall pointed out. “Not enough of the other girls liked him well enough to help him do something like that. Even his fanclub only lasted partway through his first year in Breckenridge. They were gone by the time Cece started school.”

“I accept your apology,” Mira told William as Alan and Randall got into the finer points of whether or not a boy could circumvent the wards that restricted access to the girls’ dorm. Alan seemed to think that Andrei had access to tools that a normal student wouldn’t, but Randall was of the opinion that the school administration would notice the wards were being tampered with. 

William bowed again, this time from the waist. “It is as Alan said. In hindsight, it was clear that the fourth prince was flattering himself at your expense and I am sorry to have believed him when he had no evidence of your guilt aside from his own pointed finger. I wish I had had the opportunity to know you better.”

“I think, so long as we both are associating with Cecily, there will be plenty of time for that,” Mira told him.

Having a friendly conversation with the male lead candidates felt less weird now that she’d been around them a little bit more. Mira even found that she liked their company. The conversation ended up flowing until Cecily came home with her new scabbard.

Adra had, obviously, been hiding in the room ever since the boys arrived, but he used Cecily’s arrival as an excuse to let his physical body into the room by way of announcing her return. Cecily clearly knew what he was up to, going from the wry look in her eye as she darted around him to greet her friends.  

“Randall! Will! Alan!” she greeted them happily. “I’m so glad you were able to visit!”

“The papers weren’t lying about your hair, Cece,” Alan commented as he walked a slow circle around her. “It’s down to the floor. I thought that was the illustrator taking artistic liberty.”

“It grows right back when I cut it, too,” Cecily groaned and set her sword against the arm rest of the sofa so she could sit. For once, it stayed put. Apparently, the sacred smith had been able to help. “Mira, tell them!”

“It does,” Mira said, obediently. 

Ginger had agreed to put Cecily’s hair back to order, when it had become clear that the length was just annoying her. Ginger had given Cecily an elegant Ina Claire style bob that had made Cecily look like a silent film star—so imagine everyone’s shock and dismay when she woke up the next morning with her hair grown out again and a few sad clips clinging to the ends that had been setting her fingerwaves overnight.

“I was going to cut it short again, but now I can’t,” Cecily complained and Mira did not miss the way her gaze darted towards Randall and then away again. Had Cecily’s ears gone pink? Yes, yes they had! 

Come to think of it, Randall had complimented her new hairstyle when they met again in Mira’s townhouse. 

‘Oh, I think we still have a contender for the end game love interest!’ Mira thought to herself and shot Adra a conspiratorial smile. 

It was always nice to see your Ship set sail.

000

The boys ended up staying for lunch until Cecily was called away for sword practice with Sir Hansford, who invited the boys to attend. Mira had the sense he was getting them out of her hair and thanked him in the privacy of her heart. 

Adra stayed behind with her. “I came to see if you were interested in having a walk,” he said, once they were alone. “Princess Millica has relaxed security within the Royal Compound, now that the Saintess has finished examining all the staff and courtiers.”

“Really?” Mira brightened. She’d been kept inside almost since the moment she woke up, barring that one attempt at a picnic with Cecily and Adra that had been interrupted by the Rousseau Brats. She didn’t have cabin fever yet, but it was a near thing. “I’ve never been to the Garden Complex and have wanted to see it for ages.”

“Then we shall go,” Adra promised.

Getting out of Rosepark was a complicated affair, though. Anna had been promoted to her Lady Companion, which was what they called the maid in charge of scheduling a princess’s movements. Nanny Byrde had been given dominion over the inner workings of Rosepark, which turned out to have been Nanny’s original position with Violet’s mother before Nanny followed her to her marital home, so she was well equipped to take the building in hand.

Mira did not move without Anna and at least two additional attendants, both of whom were carrying actual guns; small derringer pistols with roses engraved into their mother-of-pearl handles that were almost more a badge of office than a weapon. Violet’s mother would have had additional bodyguards, but Princess Millica seemed to think that Adra was plenty of guardian by himself, to say nothing of Penny, and had given her permission to forgo additional protection so long as she was within the Palace Complex. 

The Royal Garden Complex was as impressive as any national botanical garden that Mira had ever visited. There were specific gardens for each natural biome that occurred in Avenon, including a temperate rainforest garden contained within an enormous geodesic dome greenhouse. Rosepark was so named because of the rose garden butted up against its grounds. Likewise, Lindenpark and Oakpark were located near the woodland gardens, which took up a large part of the Garden Complex. 

There was a soft, sand-lined walking path that meandered its way in loops and turns through the gardens, punctuated by small private grottos where one could sit in the shade for a moment. 

Anna and the other two attendants could read the room when Adra offered her his elbow and Mira leaned into the touch, and walked a bit behind them as they set off. 

There were other people in the gardens, obviously. Mira hadn’t expected to have the whole complex to herself, but it still came as a rude surprise when, about halfway through their outing, Mira heard a familiar voice coming from one of the rest areas.

“...could have been so mistaken about her character,” Andrei was saying to someone. He sounded ticked off and a bit like he was pacing. Mira could hear gravel crunching underfoot.

“I was fooled too,” a softer, feminine voice said. “I really, truly thought she was my friend before the Temple summoned us to the Capitol, so you shouldn’t blame yourself either.”

Through the hedge, Mira could see two figures standing next to an ornamental water fountain. One was clearly Andrei and he was pacing like a caged animal. There was another figure standing next to him with pink hair and—that was Viola.

“I don’t want to believe that it's either of our faults for believing in people who didn’t end up deserving our faith,” she continued and Mira saw the pink haired figure drift a little closer to Andrei. He didn’t move away. “Don’t you agree?”

“I…” Andrei’s tone dropped. “...yes. Yes, you’re right.”

Adra stopped and held up a hand to Mira’s attendants, warning them to back up. A small lance of shadow matter shot out from under his feet and slipped under the box hedge that separated them from the rest area. He nodded back towards the way they’d come and Mira kept her mouth shut tight until they were well out of earshot.

“I thought Viola and Andrei were still under house arrest,” she said as soon as they’d cleared the garden complex gates. “How are they having a clandestine meeting in the middle of the palace complex?”

“They’re allowed to have a walk twice a day, so long as they wear a tracking bracelet,” Adra explained in a clipped tone that told Mira someone was going to get an earful about this. “I thought it went without saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to walk at the same time.”

Mira grimaced because she wasn’t sure she agreed. Viola and Andrei weren’t, technically, guilty of anything except being inconvenient. 

The only reason Viola was still in the Palace Complex was because there was nowhere safe to send her and she was still nominally Bertram’s ward. Sir Rousseau had taken the news that he wasn’t Viola’s legal guardian to heart. He wasn’t about to let anyone reverse that decision, now that Madame Coventry was no longer able to care for her, and no one had been able to get ahold of Viola’s grandparents. They’d apparently taken whatever payout they got from Madame Coventry to rubber stamp her custody of Viola and left for an extended island tour off the coast of Moqui. They’d left no word about when, or if, they planned to return.  

Adra had a distant look as they returned to Rosepark, as he listened in on Andrei’s conversation with Viola. Mira dismissed her attendants and dragged him up to her private sitting room, where she pushed him into a chair and stood in front of him with her arms crossed. 

“What’s happening? What are they saying?” she asked. “You must share. The suspense might actually kill me.”

He blinked as he brought himself back into the present moment. “It’s about what you might expect,” he told her. “That girl is trying to arrange an exit for herself. She hasn’t given up on marrying the fourth prince and she is telling him everything he wants to hear; it’s not his fault, he’s truly a good person, et cetera. Viola hasn’t quite come out and said that his father’s charges are overblown, she's just spoken at length about the virtues of mercy and forgiveness and intimated that certain people in power clearly don’t have those virtues.”

Mira sat down, surprised. “I had heard he was going to be demoted to the rank of a commoner,” she said. “He’ll have no title or prestige. Vesper said they were going to give him a house out in the North; practically in exile. What does he even have to offer her, anymore?”

“He will have money,” Adra pointed out. “Princess Millica has to be seen to reward his loyalty in refusing to support his father’s coup. She will be settling good income properties on him when he is divested of his title, including a coal mine. The North runs on coal. Salamanders can’t keep up during the deepest part of winter, which is most of the year in some parts there and so they must have alternative heat sources and the land there will not support serious logging without the risk of avalanches.”

“You said that the Princess had decided what to do with Violet,” Mira said as she started to pace, thoughtfully. “Is it bad?”

“She will be un-enrolled from Breckenridge, to start,” Adra told her. “Lord Bertram has not forgotten how the Sheppards behaved when he introduced them to Cecily, or her part in it. He will no longer be supporting her education and the Sheppards can no longer afford to pay her tuition. The fines the Sheppards are paying will wipe out all but a fraction of their annual income for the foreseeable future. Madame Coventry has some private income that was exempt from the fines, but she has been sentenced to five years imprisonment and has elected to serve her term at a penitence convent, where the prisoners are expected to purchase their own food and necessities, so I expect her money will be tied up in that until she is released.”

Mira had a vague idea that the convent was preferable to a proper gaol, where conditions were far worse. The poor ventilation and crowded conditions in Avenon’s gaols led to frequent outbreaks of tuberculosis and influenza among prisoners, who were also at risk of developing malnutrition-related illnesses like scurvy from their monotonous diet. The penitent cloisters weren’t comfortable places and they shaved your head when you were admitted, but the penitent sisters were allowed to purchase and cook their own food and they had their own small cells with doors that could lock from the inside. Mira knew which one she would have chosen.

“As it stands, Viola will be remanded to Sir Rousseau’s custody whether he wants her or not,” Adra continued. “She is still a minor and he is now her only available guardian. Princess Millica has made it clear that he will have to submit to regular welfare checks by her office and a failure to comply will not end well for him.”

“I don’t like that,” Mira murmured.

She did not want to see Viola go to Rousseau House. That feeling had little to do with Viola at this point and more to do with the fact that no young woman should ever be put into Sir Rousseau’s power ever again. He didn’t have the right to hit and hurt people however he pleased and he shouldn’t be rewarded with a brand new victim. 

“As you can see, she has motivation to look for an alternative. The North isn’t an easy place to live, but any setting is comfortable when you have enough money and the North is far away from all of us, ” Adra finished. “She’s been talking very sweetly to the fourth prince, commiserating with him about how they were both misled by Cecily.”

Mira stopped her pacing. She’d thought that Viola was talking about the Crown Princess behind her back with all that ‘certain people in power’ business, but she’d been talking about Cecily? Whyever for?

“What’s Cecily done to either of them?” she wanted to know. “Andrei’s father planned the coup all on his own and Cecily never wanted confirmation that Madame was her biological mother, not when it came at the risk of being legally excluded from Lady Carolina’s care. What has she done to either of them?”

Adra ‘listened’ for a while. “The fourth prince seems to have expected the Saintess to advocate for his father to be imprisoned rather than executed—that isn’t legally possible, by the way. The National Charter is very clear on that point when it comes to high treason. The Sheppards were able to show evidence that they were being illegally coerced by a member of the Royal Family, which is only grounds on which the Princess could mitigate their sentence and, even then, it was a near thing. That defense won’t save the Usurper since he can hardly claim that he coerced himself.”

“Well, I can imagine what sins Viola thinks Cecily is guilty of,” Mira muttered. Hadn’t she had plenty to say about that during the altercation at Sheppard House? “She has always seemed to think all good opportunities belong to her, to begin with, and if someone else gets one then they clearly stole it from her. I’m not sure she’s capable of cutting her losses and leaving Cecily be.”

“Or you,” Adra added. “You were her original opposition for the fourth prince.”

“Perhaps,” Mira allowed, although she still thought that Viola was below her sightline. 

After all, Viola hadn’t even had the gumption to confront Cecily face-to-face before she became the Saintess, when she was at her weakest and least challenging. Mira, meanwhile, was an Archmage-in-Training and Cecily was a Saintess now. What did Viola have, aside from a venomous mouth?

Ridiculous.

Then she chided herself for getting cocky. After all, nothing bites as hard as a cornered dog.

“Ah…?” Adra sat upright. “Well, that’s not good.”

Mira turned to look at him in alarm. “What’s not good?”

“Cecily and the other boys ran into Andrei and Viola,” he said, already standing up and holding his hand out for her to take. “We should go there now. I think there’s about to be violence.”