TVisTV Book 4: Chapter 3 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 3 - The Dowager Duchess

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

- Mignon McLaughlin

You have gained 1 Wisdom.

It seemed the game approved of her decision to come here. Unfortunately, Wisdom was a far less useful attribute than Intelligence, granting only half the bonus to Mana. True, it offered a minor increase to magical resistance, but that benefit required such heavy investment as to be practically unnoticeable for a very long time. To invest in Wisdom deliberately, outside of “organic” gains, was the act of a fool determined to dilute her build into mediocrity. Worse still, Seraphina outright refused to believe that Wisdom was truly her lowest attribute.

Her escort of towering Carcaronne knights cut through the town’s bustle with effortless authority, the mere sight of them enough to part the flow of people before them. Even the town’s rougher sort had the sense to step aside when the knights approached.

As they rode deeper into the streets, Seraphina found herself the subject of no small amount of attention. Tradesmen paused in the act of hauling crates or sweeping snow from their shopfronts. Women wearing heavy cloaks with baskets tucked beneath their arms stopped to stare, and red-cheeked children gawked. 

Carcaronne had little softness to it. The streets were paved in old, uneven stone made slick in places by ice and snow, while the buildings on either side seemed built less for beauty than endurance. Timbered upper stories jutted over the roads, their dark beams crusted with rime, and smoke poured steadily from chimneys into the pale winter air. Here and there she glimpsed splashes of color: painted shutters, a strip of dyed cloth, a flower crest worked into a signboard. They seemed to her like the banners of spring, displayed openly in defiance of the new winter.

As they advanced, whispers followed in their wake as the people of the town gossiped among themselves. The young noblewoman sat a little straighter in the saddle beneath their scrutiny. If they wished to look, then they could look properly.

The central keep rose above the rest of the town like the clenched fist of some ancient giant. Solid was the only word for it. It had none of the airy elegance of southern architecture. This was a fortress in the oldest and bluntest sense of the word, built from enormous blocks of stone that looked as though they must have required giants to move into place. Giants, or, she supposed reluctantly, the simple application of physics. Its walls were thick, its towers broad and squat, and every line of its form was a promise that it would endure siege, storm, and time alike.

The gate already stood open, and passing beneath it felt like entering the maw of some steel-toothed beast. Bloodaxe led them toward the stables, where boys in her grandmother’s livery hurried forward to take their mounts and help Seraphina dismount.

Once the horses had been seen to, Seraphina and Desdemona were escorted deeper into the keep, through a broad hall and into a side chamber called a warming room. Frest, meanwhile, was led elsewhere to a different room. Here, a fire crackled merrily in the hearth, and steaming bowls of cinnamon-scented water had been set out beside stacks of soft, fluffy cloths to wash away the grime and chill of the morning’s ride.

After a few moments, several maids entered, girls not much older than Seraphina and Desdemona, bearing trays of light refreshments: dried fruit, nuts, and cups of hot mulled wine fragrant with spice. Seraphina, realizing this was a far warmer welcome than she had expected, discreetly fed some of the fruit to Tia and to Kiwi, the crow perched nearby.

“We like this place, mistress!” the Fae exclaimed brightly. “Cold, yet warm. The people here are warm, but they look like ice cliffs.”

Seraphina did not so much as glance in Tia’s direction, though Desdemona wore the faintest look of someone who had sensed something she could not quite name.

“I must say, I truly needed this,” Desdemona said with a smile, taking a long drink of the mulled wine in a fashion that was, to put it kindly, less than ladylike. “Whatever this is, it is wonderful.”

“Honestly, Desdemona, a little decorum, please,” Seraphina chided, though there was little force behind it. Her thoughts were elsewhere, fixed more on her grandmother than on her companion’s manners, even as she watched Kiwi and Tia caper near the window.

They were not being watched, after all. Or if they were, which she doubted, it was through some hidden peephole. Such a thing would not have surprised her in the South. But from the memories she had borrowed, she knew the people of the north were cut from a very different bolt of cloth.

Intrigue here namely consisted of striking someone across the back of the head when they were not looking. Still, manners were important.

“Must you always be so insufferably stuffy, Sera? At last, we get to rest in real beds!” the de Savant girl exclaimed in delight.

It was in moments like this that Seraphina was reminded that, although Desdemona—like all those born to nobility—had been trained in the great game, she was still, at heart, a very young girl, and the road had been hard by her standards.

For a little while, Seraphina let herself speak with Desdemona of smaller, simpler things. Then yet more maids entered, this time bearing gowns of pale blue for them both and warm slippers.

That, more than the mulled wine or the warmed water, was a statement.

To clothe her guests was a declaration on her grandmother’s part—an assertion of ownership, or something close to it, and a subtle exercise of power. Worse still, they were gifts Seraphina could not refuse without insulting her hostess. The message was plain enough. Even if no one spoke it aloud, she understood it all the same. Choose where your allegiance lies.

Seraphina smiled and allowed the girls to dress her. The maids worked in a brisk, no-nonsense manner, swift and efficient, as though dressing a fresh kill. And yet, despite the rough practicality of it, Seraphina could not help feeling a flicker of relief. Against all the odds, she was here. She was truly here.

Once they were ready, one of the serving women addressed her with her head bowed. “If it pleases you, milady, we will show your companion to her rooms in the east wing, and the Duchess will receive you in the conservatory.”

Seraphina sighed. “Very well. Lead on…” she said, leaving the last part hanging.

“Esme, your grace,” the maid supplied. “Now, if you would please come this way, Lady Seraphina. My sister, Miriam, will show your companion to the east wing.” She kept her head bowed as she spoke, one hand gesturing toward the open door.

Desdemona shot Seraphina a look that spoke volumes—equal parts playful curiosity and careful caution—before following.

They walked on for some time, their slippered footsteps whispering over the cool stone floors of the inner. The corridors here were broad but not ostentatious, built with the same stern solidity as the outer fortress, though softened by generations of wealth and memory. Iron sconces of precious Zajasite cast a steady blue glow over the walls, their light glancing off polished stone and dark wooden beams blackened with age. 

The maids moved with quiet competence, heads bowed when propriety demanded it, but with little of servile obsequiousness that Seraphina had grown used to. Miriam was fair and curvy, with ruddy cheeks and thick brown hair pinned up in a practical coil, while Esme was slimmer and darker, her grey eyes sharp and observant despite the deference in her manner. Both wore the duchess’s colors in neat, well-made livery, and there was something sturdy about them, as though they might just as easily have carried firewood or skinned game if duty required it.

Along the walls hung paintings and tapestries depicting the deeds of Seraphina’s ancestors: stern-faced lords in mail and fur, proud ladies with winter flowers braided into their hair, hunting scenes, battlefield victories, and old marriage pacts immortalized in thread and pigment. One tapestry in particular caught the eye, its embroidery so exquisitely worked that the clash of arms and streaming banners seemed almost to move in the firelight. Even the snow stitched beneath the warriors’ boots had been rendered with care, each white thread touched with pale blue silk so that it shimmered when the light caught.

At a junction in the corridor, Miriam stopped and bowed politely, gesturing for Desdemona to follow her down another passage. Esme, meanwhile, continued on guiding Seraphina toward the conservatory. Not that Seraphina truly needed the guidance. Her borrowed memories served her well enough, and with every step the keep felt less like a place she was being shown and more like somewhere waiting for her to remember it.

At last, they arrived. The conservatory was an indulgence in the truest sense of the word, a chamber of imported glass from across the seas that trapped the pale winter sunlight and held the warmth prisoner. Within, flowers still bloomed despite the season, gathered from every corner of the continent: white lilies, Crimson Starblooms, trailing vines, and delicate blue petals Seraphina did not know by name. Their colors spilled across the room in a riot of life against the cold world outside, all of it a testament to her grandmother’s favored hobby—and to the wealth required to sustain it.

Lady Adelaide herself was trimming away dead leaves with a pair of small silver shears, finishing her task before she deigned to acknowledge her granddaughter.

Unlike many of the north’s people, the Duchess of Carcaronne was a slight woman, perhaps a little past the midpoint of her forties, and still handsome in the way a bird of prey was handsome: sharp, elegant, and wholly without softness. Her dark eyes, nearly black, and the same color as her hair, held the particular mixture of wisdom and old heartbreak so often found in the matriarchs of Great Houses.

“Greetings, granddaughter,” she said, still fussing with the plants and sparing Seraphina only a single glance. “They tell me you arrived in the company of the de Savant girl. Curious company you keep.”

“Greetings to you, honored grandmother,” Seraphina replied, sinking into a formal curtsy. “The Lady Desdemona has been a rock of support in these trying times.”

“Trying times?” her grandmother responded with an eyebrow raised before shaking her head. “Come closer, child. Let me look at you. It has been years since we last met,” Lady Adelaide said, at last turning her full attention upon her.

Seraphina stepped forward, spine ramrod straight, doing her utmost not to look down at the older—and smaller—woman. Her grandmother studied her in silence, then ran a hand through Seraphina’s short blonde hair and shook her head. After that, she caught her lightly by the chin and turned her face one way and then the other, inspecting her with the cool detachment of someone assessing bloodstock.

Then, in an unexpected gesture of affection, she cut a white Aeyory flower from a nearby shrub and tucked it into her granddaughter’s hair. It was the flower of war.

“You have grown, and you have more of your mother in you than your father,” the Duchess said, a faint bitterness edging her voice before she gave a small snort. “Though, in its own way, that may be a blessing. And at least you have good hips on you,” she added, as though remarking upon a promising mare at market.

It took everything Seraphina had to keep the polite smile fixed upon her face. “I am here, grandmother, because…”

“I know full well why you are here, child. I have my own eyes and ears in the south. We are not so provincial here as you might otherwise expect,” Adelaide scoffed, beheading another wilting flower with an irritated snip.

“It seems not all seeds bear noble fruit. Even so, I will not commit my forces—not even against a mad king—if it means weakening Aranthia, child,” she continued, casting a critical eye over another plant in need of tending. “Though perhaps certain lines of the Great Houses could do with a little pruning.”

Adelaide paused, then gestured for Seraphina to sit in one of the chairs.

“It was I who suggested the match between you and Velens, did you know?” she said, almost wistfully. “Back then, Elidion still had need of friends and allies and was capable of listening to reason. Your witch of a mother, Anaselena, was against it, of course. But I saw that you and Velens had a certain bond. And then, my granddaughter, it did not take you long to shatter it.”

“The fault was not mine! The insult he and Velens cast…the aspersions!” Seraphina protested. “I had no choice!”

“No choice? He cornered you so completely that you had none?” Adelaide shook her head. “What utter piffle. By breaking the engagement so publicly, you let the king slip free of a trap that might have weakened House Barbierri for generations and made our family the strongest in the land. And you refused because you were afraid to let someone test your purity. That was not an insult, girl—that was them using your pride against you. You practically declared to the world that you were not pure and gave weight to every claim they made. Silly, foolish child.”

“And now,” Adelaide went on with a scoff, “you expect me to send men to bleed and die over an insult leveled at you, when your own father—my son—has already yielded? Or worse, you expect me to step into one of Anaselena’s games?”

“Then have I wasted my time coming here?” Seraphina asked, her eyes narrowing, though she kept the anger from her voice. “Was all of this merely to heap insult upon insult and injury, grandmother?”

“No,” Lady Adelaide said, fixing her with those dark, fathomless eyes. “There is a way—one that will make Aranthia great again, and stronger than before.”

“Well, do not leave me breathless with anticipation,” Seraphina said sharply.

Adelaide looked at her then, truly looked at her, before pronouncing sentence. “You will marry a prince of the Empire.”