TVisTV Book 4: Chapter 9 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 9 - The Same Old Things

If the world ever grew quiet and at peace, I would not mind living as the drifting clouds do, idle as cranes beneath an open sky. 

- Unknown poet from “The Land of Streams” [Xizhou Province of the Empire]

She watched the tribals depart from the window of one of the towers.

That, she thought, was how one defeated an enemy: not by crushing them outright, but by making them into unwitting pawns. Privately congratulating herself, she prepared for the next trial the day had chosen to inflict upon her.

The new tutor assigned to teach her the manners and language of the Empire.

The language itself would not be a problem, for it was, for the greater part, like Mandarin Chinese. Nor, she suspected, would learning how to behave like one of them. The real difficulty would be enduring the endless little passive-aggressive barbs for which the Emperor’s court was so justly infamous.

She sighed. Even here, she had not escaped the clutches of education, that eternal bane of children and adolescents across every world. Worse still, the Academy coursework had arrived.

The Kingdom of Aranthia might be teetering on the verge of civil war, but Seraphina could hardly allow that to tarnish her academic record. Her pride would not permit it.

So, with another long-suffering sigh, she made her way to the library, passing through the surprisingly warm corridors and nodding to the servants and guards as she went. Her pixie, Tia, fluttered just behind her, a thing of endless curiosity as it flitted about. The servants, to their credit, were disciplined enough not to collapse into hushed whispers the instant she turned a corner. They were, in her estimation, almost worthy of praise.

Soon enough, she found herself in front of a set of rather extraordinary doors. The doors of the library were rather special. One of her forebears, if the records were to be believed, had commissioned a Quassian craftsman of no small skill to make them. They were imposing things, twice her height and formed from heavy imported white marble, flecked through with black and red.

They looked as though it would require all of her formidable strength to force them open. Instead, a single light push was enough. The doors swung inward smoothly, without so much as a groan. Inside was a library that, while not as comprehensive as the Academy’s, remained impressive in its own right. Bookshelves rose high along the walls, stacked with all manner of volumes, from light-hearted poetry to ominous dark tomes bound in chains and practically begging to be forbidden.

No fire burned in the room, yet the stone floor felt warm beneath her feet as she crossed the threshold. Some form of central heating, no doubt, likely drawing from the hot springs beneath the fortress.

Light streamed in through one of the windows overlooking the courtyard, clean and bright. On a long table, she found writing tools already prepared for her, along with a small heap of documents. No doubt these were the Academy assignments she was expected to complete.

It was not the first time Seraphina had been forced to bloom in adversity, and it probably would not be the last. With yet another long-suffering sigh, she pulled out a chair and sat down. The hardest parts of any task were beginning and finishing. The finishing was still several hours away, which left her with only one option.

At the top of the pile was Aranthian History, a tedious and dreary subject filled, for the most part, with a collection of nobodies inflicting internecine warfare upon one another while simultaneously fending off foreign invasions. Aranthians, it turned out, loved fighting. Perhaps because they had no other proper avenues of entertainment.

And no, it was not merely the nobility. The peasantry also seemed to view war as a kind of pastime, a bloody family event best enjoyed once the seeds had been planted or the harvest brought in. Seraphina came to the conclusion that warfare was, in effect, Aranthia’s national sport and pastime.

Their society had been shaped around it. Healing potions existed, yes, but people still died, and in considerable numbers. As a result, families were large. Very large. Among commoners, merchants, and often enough, the nobility too. In Aranthian society, war was simply another vector of social mobility.

That Seraphina was an only child was a rarity indeed.

The people fought because they were bored. It had taken the Church, for better or worse, many years of persistent effort to place limits on the worst excesses of the nobility.

Just as she was about to put ink to paper to finally begin her assignment, Desdemona rounded the corner of one of the bookshelves with a small tome in hand. She took one look at Seraphina preparing to engage her enemy and gave out a sigh of her own.

“One of the small mercies heaven granted us was relief from that drudgery,” Desdemona complained, only half-feigning her dismay. “And yet here you are, about to throw yourself back into it.”

“Best that it be done sooner rather than later,” Seraphina replied, dipping her quill into the prepared pot of ink.

Desdemona rolled her eyes. “You always have to be right. To do the proper thing, even now. One would think your priorities were utterly deranged. I would have expected you to spend your time on one of your schemes.”

Seraphina did not look up. “Schemes, Desdemona? I do not scheme. I merely plan for eventualities in a world that seems highly intent on putting women down.”

“Putting women down? Hah!” Desdemona shot back bitterly. “We both know we live lives of privilege. Everything we want is given to us.”

“And in exchange, we have no freedom. No power beyond smiling prettily. Our worth is decided by our husbands.” Seraphina’s voice sharpened. “I said no to that, and look what it has earned me. Hounded. Pursued. Treated like a common criminal.”

It was a conversation that had been brewing for a long time, a storm of feelings and resentments forced aside in the name of survival. Now, at last, they surfaced, and with them came certain painful truths.

“Your pride cost Sir Gravens his life,” Desdemona spat, her eyes flashing with fire.

Seraphina lowered her head into her hands and rubbed at her temples. This was yet another fire to put out, then.

She looked at her friend for a long moment. “My pride? My pride in refusing to be taken prisoner? In refusing to become a ‘guest’ of His Royal Majesty, our great King Elidion?” Her gaze hardened. “What would you have done in my place? I stopped a war there and then, in the capital, and we both know it. So tell me, Lady Desdemona de Savant. What would you have done in my shoes?”

The fire still burned in Desdemona’s eyes, but now it was banked, smothered beneath thought. Her brow furrowed as she searched for some suitably biting retort.

Desdemona had always been a creature of emotion, though Seraphina supposed that could hardly be held against her. Not everyone could possess Seraphina’s perfect and enviable level-headedness.

So Seraphina decided not to let her answer. Instead, she rose from her chair, crossed the distance between them, and simply embraced her. She needed to head this line of thinking off as soon as possible.

“Velens,” she whispered into her friend’s ear.

She felt Desdemona stiffen, then nod once and return the embrace.

They were bound together now, not merely by friendship, but by a path of vengeance against the Crown Prince himself. A path that, if followed to its end, could only be called treason.

The trick, of course, was learning how to justify it.

“I cannot promise you his death for I never make promises I cannot keep,” Seraphina whispered, her voice low and fierce as her own eyes began to sting despite herself. “But I can promise you satisfaction. We will take what is owed to us. One way or another.”

Desdemona gave a soft, broken sniff.

“But first,” Seraphina continued, tightening her arms around her, “we must prepare. Knowledge, discipline, education, all of it is part of the same blade. A dull knife cannot cut a prince’s throat.”

Desdemona let out something that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. “You’re doing it again,” she said bitterly, though there was a small dollop of respect in it.

“Of course I am,” Seraphina murmured, smoothing a hand over her friend’s back. “That is why I am always ahead. I put in the work even when I despise every moment of it.”

***

Later, both girls were summoned to a smaller hall near the conservatory to make their introductions to their new tutor.

Their education, it seemed, would be a crash course in the language and etiquette of the Empire, with an emphasis on polishing away the worst of their provincial imperfections. Seraphina already knew they would never truly be accepted at the court of the Jade Dragon Throne. Trying to ingratiate themselves with such people would be an exercise in futility. And, she had an advantage from her memories and experiences in modern Korean. The Empire was based, for the greater part, on quasi-Confucian values, so it should not be too great a shock to her system.

Still, she held her tongue for the same could not be said of Desdemona.

The blonde girl was coming to the conclusion that she would not shine because she was the same as them. She would shine because she was different. In a land of fawning, fragile “jade beauties,” she would show them the temptation of gold and the strength of Saint’s Silver.

Besides, she had to choose her battles wisely, and knowledge, after all, remained knowledge. Her understanding of the Empire’s lore, gathered from both sets of her memories, was reasonably strong, but far from comprehensive. Pride was one thing, but ignorance was quite another. It would also let her get into the nitty-gritty of learning about the other culture that she would be exposed to.

The woman awaiting them was not what Seraphina had expected.

For one, she was small. Not merely short in the way some women were short, softened by comfort and age, but small in the manner of a blade hidden in a sleeve. 

Their new tutor stood at the center of the hall with her back straight, her hands folded before her, and her chin lifted just enough to suggest that the world had disappointed her many times, and that she had long ago ceased to be surprised by it.

She was past middle age, though not yet old. Her dark hair had been drawn back with severe elegance, the black of it threaded through with grey like silver wire worked into silk. Her face remained striking despite the years, or perhaps because of them. Dark, almond-shaped eyes watched the two girls approach with cool, assessing patience.

In one hand, the woman held a folded fan.

That, more than anything else, caught Seraphina’s attention. It was a beautiful thing, lacquered dark and painted with pale blossoms that curled across the ribs in a pattern both delicate and precise. It reminded Seraphina of her mother’s fan, the one she had very reasonably borrowed and had not yet found a convenient moment to return. Unfortunately, she had left it behind in her rooms at the Academy.

It was a tool and a weapon. Not in the obvious sense of something to keep one cool in the summer months, perhaps, though Seraphina would not have been shocked to discover a needle hidden somewhere in the carved frame. But a shield, a curtain, and a delivered verdict.

Lady Adelaide stood nearby, watching with the faintest smile on her lips.

“Seraphina. Desdemona,” her grandmother said. “This is Mistress Lianor Vey. She has agreed, at my request, to instruct you in the language, customs, etiquette, and courtly expectations of the Empire.”

Mistress Vey inclined her head by the smallest possible degree.

It was not quite a bow, Seraphina noticed. Desdemona noticed, too, if the slight narrowing of her eyes was any indication.

“Lady Seraphina de Sariens,” Mistress Vey said, her voice smooth, low, and crisp as the winter air outside. “Lady Desdemona de Savant.”

Her Aranthian was excellent, though touched with a faint accent that placed each syllable with almost excessive care. As if she wished them to understand that she spoke their tongue as a courtesy, not because she needed to.

“Mistress Vey,” Seraphina said, dipping into a polite curtsy. 

Desdemona followed a heartbeat later, though with somewhat less grace and considerably more resentment.

Mistress Vey’s fan opened with a soft snap. The sound was not loud, but it cut through the hall all the same.

“Again,” she commanded, now in the language of the Empire.

Surprised, Seraphina blinked. She thought she had performed admirably.

Desdemona’s lips parted. “I beg your pardon?”

“No,” Mistress Vey replied, looking at her over the edge of the fan. “You do not. That was not a proper apology, nor was it a proper request for clarification in the correct register. Here you are ladies, there you will be supplicants, or so I am told. Again.”

For one precious, shining moment, Seraphina thought Desdemona might actually combust. More than that, it seemed that her friend actually had some grasp of the foreign tongue. It was, Seraphina grudgingly admitted, impressive.

Her grandmother’s smile deepened. Seraphina decided, with some reluctance, that laughing would be unwise.

Desdemona drew in a breath through her nose, gathered herself, and curtsied again. “Mistress Vey, I humbly ask for your instruction.”

“Better,” said Mistress Vey. “Still provincial. But better. But one does not curtsy in the Empire. I will show you civilized people show respect.”

The fan shifted toward Seraphina. “And you, Lady Seraphina.”

Seraphina performed a formal bow at the hip, hands just under her chest. It was a bow that was a tiny bit higher than where propriety dictated it should be.

Mistress Vey watched her in silence for a moment. “Confidence,” the new tutor stated, “is tolerable when supported by competence. Intolerable when it is not.”

“Then I shall endeavor to be tolerable,” Seraphina replied, eyes still facing down.

Lady Adelaide coughed delicately into her hand, and Mistress Vey’s eyes sharpened.

“Well then,” Seraphina’s grandmother said, smiling at the two girls. “I shall leave my two new charges in your capable care.”

And with that, she turned and swept from the room, leaving the pair with their new teacher.

“Well then, Mistress Vey,” Seraphina asked now in Aranthian. “What are we to learn first?”