TVisTV Book 3: Chapter 48 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 48 - The Way to the North

Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery—courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.

- James Harvey Robinson.

The Palace had very much fallen into chaos. A house of cards that collapsed then set on fire.

Seraphina used the ensuing confusion as a way to ease her passage through the corridors of the estate, threading themselves through the general helter-skelter.

They hit the stables at a run. The familiar smell of hay and horse wrapped around them, thick and animal warmth. A stablemaster stepped into their path with both hands raised, mouth already forming a “My lord, my lady, you can’t…”

Frest did not slow. He smiled even as his gauntleted fist came down hard, a short, brutal motion. A gauntlet thudded against bone. The man’s protest turned into a wet choke as he crumpled sideways into the straw.

Seraphina flinched at the sound. Not the moral shock of it. The physics of it. The way the body folded wrong. The little, helpless twitch of a hand as if I were clinging on to life, if not consciousness.

In stories, men got knocked out and woke up politely later, rubbing their heads. Here, in the real world, a blow like that could steal a life or cause trauma thereafter. There was nothing clean about knocking a man unconscious with force.

Frest was already reaching for tack. “Better this,” he muttered, as if reading her thoughts, “than a clean slit and quiet forever.”

Temporary. Ugly. Survivable. A sort of mercy that fit this world.

They “borrowed” a chestnut destrier from the King’s own line for Ibn and collected several spare horses besides. The chestnut’s coat shone, muscles shifting beneath the skin with impatient power. In this world, a warhorse was not a luxury. It was an investment, the kind of thing a lesser noble could ruin himself buying. Like a high-end sports car, only it breathed and kicked and could decide it hated you.

Seraphina swung into the saddle as if she had been born there. Her hands found the reins with practiced certainty. Her heart, however, refused to be civil. It hammered against her ribs with the lingering violence of what they had just done, what they had just become.

And nearly all of her long held plans, gone, burnt to the ground with a mad King’s decree. Or at least, greatly delayed.

So they rode. Out through side gates and service lanes, hooves snapping against stone, sparks spitting from iron shoes. People in the streets were forced to make way. A man yanked a child back by the collar. A drunk stumbled from an alley, blinked at the rush of horseflesh, and wisely decided to go back to the relative safety of the shadows.

There was no pursuit, at least not yet.

At the gates, there was no resistance at all. The guards had been warned to watch who entered Aran, not who fled or exited it. They were paid only so much to care, and followed orders with a religious dogma. They glanced at Seraphina’s armor, at the hard faces around her, at the way even the horses carried themselves like a threat, and they chose the safer option: ignorance.

There were no radios. No phones. No instantaneous orders crackling through wires to close roads and throw nets over fugitives. Word still traveled at the pace of the fastest runner or messenger bird. Seraphina could not outpace a hawk, but she could outpace a man on foot with a message, and for the moment that was enough.

As they cleared the last arch and the city finally dropped away behind them, she turned in the saddle and lifted a hand.

She gave the city a dazzling smile, bright as a blade in the sun.

“Farewell,” she called lightly, forcing bitterness down where it belonged.

She was free, and in that small victory, one could find a certain joy and victory. That joy now surged through her was sharp, almost painful. Fresh air flooded her lungs, cold, crisp, and clean. The King’s road opened like a promise.  And for a time, there was only the rhythm of pounding hooves and the creak of leather and clatter of mail. The adrenaline kept her mind cruelly clear. It lit every detail: the worry in her companion’s faces, the ache in her shoulders, the way Ibn’s borrowed destrier tossed its head as if he objected to being ridden by one of the Hazagadam.

Then the rush began to thin, causing thoughts like errant cows to return.

Seraphina’s gaze drifted over the road ahead, but her mind walked backward through the Palace, through doors and faces and timing that was too clean to be chance. Her mouth went dry. She had been played. Not by Elidion, no, oh no. By her mother.

Duchess Anaselena had sent her daughter into a lion’s den as a “peace offering.” A hostage in all but name and guarantee of good behavior, made true with the fruit of her own flesh. Her mother with her Sight could have foreseen what would happen. 

Anaselena had urged her husband into hard decisions “for Seraphina’s sake,” had spoken to him, no doubt about answering the insult to their daughter. In offering the injured party as compensation for their own action, it seemed that they answered to the insult to the “idea” of their daughter, rather than the daughter herself. The irony burned. 

And Ibn, well, his appearance was too convenient. Too sudden. Too perfectly timed. Of course her mother had known about him too. Anaselena always knew. She read the future like farmers read the clouds, and she tugged at fate as if it were thread.

The package. The one Anaelena had foisted on Desdemona without much thought in the rush of everything. The thought of it now sat in her mind like a stone in a shoe.

She turned her head, breaking the long, tense silence. “Desdemona,” she called, voice steady, as if her stomach were not twisting. “What, precisely, did my mother, Lady Anaselena, you bring?”

Desdemona kept her eyes forward. Even battered, she held her posture like armor. “The book,” she answered simply. “The Realm of the Four Gods. A gift for the King, or so your…” she hesitated, then forced the words through, “...your good mother said. Is that really Ibn?”

Seraphina’s fingers tightened on the reins until the leather creaked. Her instincts kept biting at her, insisting there was more. She needed to see in the same way her mother did. 

“Ibn, are you Ibn?” she asked, enjoying the inane question.

The swordsman nodded. He still had Ibn’s eyes, at least. Haunted though they were by Heaven's knew not.

“Enough,” Seraphina commanded, and pulled them down from the road. “We’ve gone far enough. We rest. The horses drink. We breathe. Then we move again.”

No one argued. Relief passed through the group like a fever breaking.

Frest found an out-of-the-way grove where the trees grew close and the ground dipped, hiding them from the road. They tied and hobbled the horses, hands moving fast and practiced. The animals blew, flared their nostrils, stamped. One of the spares shivered, sweat darkening its flanks.

Frest straightened and wiped his brow with the back of his wrist, leaving a smear of grime. He glanced at Seraphina, curt and sharp. “We can’t stay long, milady. The Royal Guard and their like will soon come after us after our little fracas in the capital…” His mouth twisted. “Looks like I’m back to being a fugitive.”

“A fugitive,” she echoed softly, as if tasting the disgusting word. A criminal.

The men and boys dropped where they could, exhaustion finally claiming them now that they were not actively outrunning consequence. They rubbed down their horses with trembling hands, then collapsed onto leaf litter and roots. Sir Gravens sat with his face pale, wincing as he leaned back against a tree. He looked to Seraphina as if he were a man still trying to decide whether he was alive.

The young girl should have been tired. Instead, she felt too awake, like a wire pulled tight. There was something about the trees, and the way they loomed. She shook her head to clear them away from such fanciful thoughts and took the brief quiet to look upon her Status, to retreat to the familiar, cold comfort of numbers and progress.

Fifty-seven. A paltry fifty-seven points of experience for the harrowing exchange that burned her long-held ideas and plans to the ground. All cast into the winds of chaos. She stared at her experience bar on her Status as if it were an insult. All that risk. All that precision. All that blood and near-death and fury… and the world rewarded her with only scraps.

Group fighting, she thought bitterly. It lowered the difficulty of encounters, the rate of skill gain, and the flow of sweet experience. Or perhaps she was plateauing. Perhaps the world had decided she would not level easily anymore. Perhaps it wanted her to suffer for each inch. Damn her former design team for following her instructions to the letter to create a “balanced” experience, with “balanced” being centered around a normal person’s idea of “very difficult”.

Hard work. Earn it, even in the pleasure that you take, was one of the design philosophies she had hammered into her creative team. And now, she was beginning to regret single one of her impassioned words.

The blonde shut her eyes, anger simmering in her chest like banked coals. She truly had lost everything, well, almost everything.

Her place in the kingdom. Velens, though admittedly she had lost him long ago. The illusion that anyone here would ever let her rule without paying for it in sacrifice and tears. And then there was the sour, creeping suspicion that her own mother had arranged this whole mess with a smile. A betrayal heaped up on another betrayal.

Anaselena was still, no doubt, stinging over Seraphina’s indirect hand in the death of her unborn brother, she thought. 

It was not like I held a gun to her head; I simply offered her a choice. A woman’s choice, right?

Some women, and more than a few men, could act positively irrationally. She had seen it in her last life, on top of the rank hypocrisy they wore like the new spring fashion collection.

A familiar feathery weight settled on her shoulder. Absently, she petted Kiwi. The bird was unnervingly calm for a creature that usually announced itself with obnoxious caws. He had learned, after a few sharp flicks to the beak, that such obnoxious behavior came with consequences.

Her familiar, Cornelia, quiet and still, had sunk into torpor between her breasts, her smooth scales a calming presence as the young noblewoman lined up her thoughts and bitterness. She marshaled them into some sort of semblance of order.

Time blurred. Minutes or hours, it hardly mattered. The forest breathed around them, leaves whispering, branches. All very annoying countryside noises.

Then a shadow fell across her eyelids.

Green eyes opened to see Desdemona standing over her, looking both furious and faintly scandalous. Her dress was torn in several places, fabric ripped at the seam to reveal a hint of her underclothes. Mud streaked her hem. Her hair had escaped its careful arrangement, falling in wild strands that made her look like someone who had crawled out of a war.

“Running is all very well, Seraphina,” Desdemona said, lips pinched. “But where, exactly, are we running to?”

Seraphina sat up slowly, the movement controlled, measured. Her body wanted to spring. Her mind wanted to bite. She made herself breathe instead, drawing in air calmly through her nose before exhaling her troubles partially away.

Where indeed?

Home was the logical choice. Home was also her mother’s embrace, and the thought of returning to that velvet snare made Seraphina’s throat tighten.

Meridian Academy was neutral ground, protected by its bylaws and stout traditions. But its protection came at the cost of neutrality: titles surrendered, claims to the throne abandoned, reducing Lady Seraphina de Sariens to just Seraphina de Sariens.

She would sooner swallow a bowlful of glass.

The young noblewoman pulled off her gauntlets, the action smooth and measured, before threading delicate fingers through her short blonde hair. 

Her smile was thin-lipped and sharp. “There is only one direction that matters.” 

Desdemona arched an eyebrow. Waiting.

“The north,” Seraphina stated. “We ride to the north of Aranthia.”

Even the forest itself seemed to pause at this dramatic declaration.

“The north?” Desdemona scoffed, laughter spilling out too fast and too bright. She covered her mouth with a dainty hand, as if manners could plaster over fear. “What’s the north save snow, more snow, and a summer so short you might blink and miss it?”

Seraphina felt the old urge flare hot behind her eyes. The urge to slap Desdemona. The urge to remind her who held the leash in this little pack. She forced it down. Hard. It sat in her stomach like a stone.

She noticed, then, that Desdemona’s laughter was not truly aimed at her. Not entirely. It was a pressure valve. A girl bleeding her fright through humor. It was not a true and meaningful challenge.

Seraphina gave herself a silent, bitter nod. Fine. Let her vent. Better laughter at her expense than betrayal, a fair trade indeed.

“The Lady Adelaide de Carcaronne,” Seraphina said, voice going flat, “is my paternal grandmother. She will give me what I need to see that my honor is restored.”

Desdemona laughed harder at that, a rich peal that edged toward tears. Sir Gravens flinched as if the sound might draw hunters from miles away.

Seraphina watched her. The anger was still there, but now it had something like shape. Understanding, perhaps as the de Savant girl rolled the possibilities in her mind.

“So that, my dear, is where I must go,” she finished. “Whether you come with me is, of course, your choice.”

Desdemona snapped her laughter shut like a book closing. Her eyes sharpened. “You would abandon me now? After all of that at the King’s court? I am as disowned as you are. My family will cut ties. No one will risk being even seen sheltering me.”

Good. Desdemona had teeth and understood where she stood. To her credit, it was not the first time that she had fought for Seraphina.

“I will make a statement,” Seraphina said carefully, “that you were forced. That you acted in self-defense. That a man drew steel on a lady.”

Desdemona gave an unladylike snort. “Do you think anyone will care? The Crown Prince defending the King is a story people will swallow without chewing. The rest of the details can choke.”

She leaned closer, voice low. “No, Seraphina. Our fates are tied now. Oh, rival of mine. For better or for worse.”

Seraphina, quite tactfully, did not correct her. Now was not the time to inform the uppity girl that rivalry required at least the appearance of equality. She was, after all, cut from quite a different and altogether finer bolt of cloth than Desdemona.

Desdemona paused as if weighing the moment, or prying at a vulnerable scab. “And Ibn, you will go with your lady? After losing what looks like twenty years…”

“My place is with my lady,” he said in a gruff soldier’s voice, deep and gravelly. “I gained enough in memories of steel.”

“Then the north it is,” Seraphina said, and turned her gaze to Sir Ferdia Frest. “Which way must we travel to the north? I confess I am… out of sorts.”

Frest made as if to spit, caught himself, and swallowed the impulse with visible effort. He was not quite housebroken, at least not yet. “I can get you there, milady. We’ll want to stay off the King’s road. We may have outrun word so far, but news like this grows wings quick. There’s an old trail. Less eyes.” He hesitated. “Just… a warning. It may be perilous.”

“Perilous?” Seraphina echoed, prim irritation lacing the word. “I assure you, we can handle a wandering beast or two.”

Frest scratched the back of his head. “That’s not the main danger.”

Seraphina’s patience thinned. “Then speak.”

“Our path takes us across Gall’s Chasm.”

“I don’t need a geography lesson,” she cut in, then caught herself and forced the word through clenched grace, “please.”

Frest exhaled, as if bracing. “The crossing is tricky. There’s a single rope bridge.”

“A bridge,” Seraphina said. “And? Is this meant to be a problem?”

He glanced at her, then at the others, then back, as if ashamed to admit the truth. “It’s… a long way down. Between you and the River Aran there’s nothing but rope and wooden slats. Looking down makes people do stupid things.”

Seraphina stared at him. “Frest,” she said slowly, “are you afraid of heights?”

“No, milady,” he replied, dead serious. “I’m afraid of falling from them.”

Despite herself, something like a laugh threatened at the back of her throat. She crushed it vindictively.

“Are you trying to be funny again?” she asked, voice icy. “You remember what I told you about your little bouts of humor.”

Frest coughed. “As clear as day.”

It is a bit overcast, Seraphina thought as she rose, dusting a few leaves from her armor. Her cold smile returned, neatly in place. “Good. Then it’s settled. We move at once.”

She turned her head toward Gravens. “Sir Gravens. Stop pretending the forest floor is a featherbed. We still have daylight.”

The poor boy did not have it within him to protest and soon found his feet. Ibn just gave her a tired nod.

Somewhere beyond the grove, the world would be rushing to keep up with the events that Elidion had unleashed.

Seraphina swung back into the saddle.

They would ride north and find whatever destiny had set aside for her.