TVisTV Book 4: Chapter 20 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 20 - A New Page

“If my ship sails from sight, it doesn't mean my journey ends, it simply means the river bends.” 

- Enoch Powell

Optimism was an almost incurable affliction that affected those with nothing. It made the impossible seem possible, provided one only put in enough effort, endured enough indignity, and smiled through enough hunger. At best, it was a lie, though a useful one for keeping those at the bottom in line. At worst, it was a suicidal instinct wrapped in raw, brittle hope. But for those with actual talent, skill, or social standing, optimism could be something rather different. In those already blessed by fortune, it could drive one to heights that lesser people would mistake for miracles.

And it was optimism that drove Seraphina de Sariens, former fiancée of the Crown Prince, alleged traitor, heir to the Sariens Duchy of Aranthia, and daughter of the Oracle Witch Anaselena.

It was not merely hope for a better tomorrow that moved her through the long winter months, despite the dangers closing in from all sides, but will, drive, and a ruthless, manipulative intellect that had never been particularly interested in waiting for permission. It was the memory of success she had achieved before on a truly world stage that served as fuel. It was frustration that guided her hands through martial training and through the slaughter of monsters even the local Adventurer’s Guild preferred to avoid. It was that same feeling that led her to research all potential suitors, perfect her mastery of the soft arts, and delve ever deeper into her magic with boundless optimism caged by the logic of Crystal during her time in Carcaronne.

As for her direct progress in advancement and self-improvement, she had indeed made great gains, finally grinding her way up and ascending to level twenty-eight. She placed her bonus attribute points into Luck, and her bonus skill point into Improved Blind-Fighting. After that, she had made a point of systematically improving all of her skills through raw, grinding repetition, raising each by at least one level. 

Likewise, she had done the same with all her current spells and magical abilities, though the cost there was greater. For something to be gained outside the leveling process, something had to be given, at least in part, when it came to magic. She simply hoped the price had not been too much.

More importantly than all of this, between her growing mastery of Improved Blind-Fighting, her class choice of Oracle, and her maxing out her Identify spell, she was quite sure she was only a hair’s breadth away from unlocking another most useful ability.

She just needed that one little push. 

And, predictably, during all of this, assassins had come for her. She had expected it. Indeed, she would have felt almost insulted if they had not. 

The assassins, at least those who made it past the burly guards, had not expected the invisible blade of her Fae, Tia, nor the nocturnal prowlings of Desdemona, who had proven to possess an unsettling enthusiasm for playing with the interlopers. Seraphina was a true believer in layered defenses. Many times they had come, and many times Seraphina had been given ample opportunity to test her information extraction techniques in the dungeons of Carcaronne.

Rather surprisingly, the assassins who survived long enough for interrogation, and there had been many thanks to a generous supply of Healing potions and her own Heal spell, had not come from the King. Instead, they came from mercantile concerns, shadowy syndicates, and even a Holder House from Al-Lazar, one that stood in rivalry to Rashana’s maternal family.

It seemed Seraphina had most certainly rocked the boat in the correct circles.

What was surprising was the lack of lethal overtures from the many factions of the Imperial Jade Dragon Throne. They would come later, of course, the young girl had no doubt of that. People with ancient titles did not move quickly until they had to, and it would be quite rude of her to assume they had no knives simply because they had not yet shown them. Or perhaps they had just learned from their previous failed attempts.

On a more positive note, the fruit of her optimism had made her mercantile interests positively phenomenal. Bottleworth’s Confectioneries now controlled huge swathes of once near-useless marshland, all steadily being converted into sugarcane farms to supply her factories with their sweetness. The company had acquired forests for lumber, farms for grain, and arable land wherever it could be bought. It had easily secured a stake in the Mithril mines of the Sariens Duchy, where workers mined in the dark in exchange for wages, protection, and training from Dwarven smiths.

A certain tribal warrior had begun his rampage even in the winter months, when campaigns were unheard of. The Empire had been caught off guard, and dozens of towns and villages had been laid to ruin. The tribals attacked over the mountains, ignoring the passes and the inclement weather, and they were united under the banner of the Three Bears.

And all of this meant that quite a few people had been displaced.

This meant that Seraphina’s lands and ventures were worked by a fresh legion of orphans and refugees, alongside the usual mix of debtors and desperate people whom Bottleworth’s had taken in. The sort of people willing to work for a safe place, a roof over their heads, and the promise that tomorrow might be better than yesterday.

But Seraphina’s methods were more insidious than simply offering the bare minimum. She gave them hope when there had been none. She paid them well, but made sure the money flowed back through the company’s own dormitories, kitchens, stores, schools, healers, and all the little comforts that kept a human going. The young business magnate trained them to become better, more useful, and more loyal, while ensuring that their improvement bound them more tightly to the system that had lifted them.

It was not mere charity, nor mere exploitation, but a feedback loop of loyalty and dependence. They and their children would be part of her organization. It was the corporate structure imposed upon a feudal society, unfettered by labor laws, civil codes, or any tiresome notion that workers might organize in opposition to their savior.

In short, it was a self-perpetuating system of greed, gratitude, and avarice that funneled huge amounts of shadow wealth to Seraphina de Sariens and Lehman’s Bank.

It was, she thought, one of her more elegant and pure works. 

But now the first snows had begun to melt, and it was time to begin the next stage of her life; finding a husband at the tender age of sixteen in the Court of the Imperial Jade Dragon.

The hundred armed men of her escort, enough to dissuade bandits, arranged themselves around the carriage, their mounts stamping with eagerness in the softened mud and slush of the courtyard. A team of horses would not pull the vehicle, but her barded Unicorn.

With daily exercise, regular hunting, a robust diet, and the judicious use of healing magic, Spike had put on perhaps a third again in mass, making him a truly terrifying thing to behold. He was strong now, more than strong enough to pull a carriage by himself, and that was precisely the point. It was a statement of power. She had not merely tamed a Unicorn; she had harnessed him to her own personal conveyance. Subtlety had its uses, of course, but there were moments when displays of strength were simply more efficient and effective.

Spike was not docile. At least, not quite yet. His simmering resentment and general anger toward the world could not be so easily lanced like a boil, but he was controllable. Seraphina had tamed the beast properly, and he allowed himself to be led forward and latched to the carriage with only a few offended snorts and one particularly hateful glare at an innocent groom.

The driver sat nervously upon the seat, wearing the stiff smile of a man who had just realized that his continued employment depended on the mood of a mythic beast.

Be good, the young noblewoman ordered across their bond.

To this, Spike stamped one massive hoof against the ground, but offered none of his usual mental diatribe of kill, kill, kill. 

It was a marked improvement, if Seraphina was being honest with herself.

The young woman took one last look inside the carriage and nodded to herself. It was a thing of spacious and sumptuous luxury. The seats and interior were lined with soft velvet, the panels polished to a deep shine. The wheels of the carriage had a fine suspension of her own design that would take the worst of the road’s bumps. She had had it made to the best of the current technological know-how of current civilization.

Still, nothing could quite beat flying on a private jet. There was something quite satisfying about having a bath or shower a mile high up in the air while drinking a Dom Perignon 1932.

Boris stood beside the carriage with the expression of a man with the self-satisfied expression of a man who had examined every hinge, strap, latch, wheel, trunk, servant, animal, and weather omen.

He bowed as Seraphina approached.

“Your Grace,” he said, managing to sound both dutiful and exhausted. “The final inventory has been checked. Your personal trunks are loaded, the dowry cases have been sealed, the God-metal is under guard, and your additional stores have been placed in the third and fourth wagons. The provisions should last until the first Imperial post station, assuming no unreasonable delays.”

“Excellent, Boris,” Seraphina replied. “ You have outdone yourself.”

“You are too kind, Your Grace.”

“You have served my grandmother well,” she stated. “And, by extension, me. I shall remember it.”

Boris bowed a little more deeply at that. “You honor me, Your Grace. I wish you a safe journey, and success at the Imperial Court.”

Lianor Vey waited a little farther along the courtyard, wrapped in a severe travelling cloak she had no intention of travelling in. Her posture was as straight as ever, her face composed, her severe hair pinned without a strand out of place. Even the cold and wind seemed to treat her with proper respect, moving around her rather than daring to put anything out of place.

Seraphina approached her with a faint inclination of her head. “Mistress Vey.”

“Lady Seraphina,” she returned cordially

For a moment, the two regarded each other with the careful politeness of teacher and student.

“I suppose this is the point where you tell me that I am still woefully unprepared,” Seraphina surmised.

“You are very prepared,” Lianor replied. “Too prepared, and that is what concerns me.”

Seraphina blinked. “How very ominous.”

Her teacher sighed lightly. “The prepared tend to believe preparation has made them immune to consequences.”

“You will excuse me if I do not quite appreciate the irony in that statement,” returned the young girl. 

Lianor’s mouth moved in the smallest suggestion of a smile. “You have learned the steps, the forms, the greetings, the ranks, the seating orders, the colors, the turns of phrase, and the dozen ways in which a woman may refuse a thing while seeming grateful to have been offered it. You know enough not to embarrass yourself.”

The girl smiled. “High praise.”

“But surprises will come in the gaps that you are not prepared for,” the older woman warned.

Seraphina accepted that with the dignity it deserved, shelving that bit of “wisdom” in the useless pile that the elderly always had a habit of inflicting on the young.

Lianor stepped closer and lowered her voice, not enough to hide the words from everyone, but enough to make them feel private. “Remember this above all else. At the Imperial Court, truth is rarely the point. Face is the point. You must learn when to save face, when to give face, and when to take it. A person can forgive you for a poor deed, though they rarely will forgive for how you made them feel.”

Seraphina’s interest sharpened.

“If a lord makes a foolish suggestion,” Lianor continued, “do not correct him before his allies. Give him a bridge to retreat across. If a lady insults you through praise, praise her more beautifully and leave the blade hidden until later. If an elder offers advice you do not intend to follow, receive it as if it were a jewel, then place it somewhere safe and never look at it again.”

Again, the universe, with its ability to throw out coincidences, thought the young girl. If she did not know better, Seraphina might have thought her tutor could read minds.

“You may win every argument and still lose the room,” Mistress Vey explained. “You may be right and still be made ugly by how you choose to be right. Graciousness is not surrender, Lady Seraphina.”

“I shall try to remember,” she replied airily.

This was, as the fat Americans liked to put, ‘not her first rodeo,’ she reflected.

“You will remember. Whether you choose to obey is another matter,” sighed her tutor.

From within her voluminous sleeve, Lianor produced a folded fan and held it out with both hands.

It was red, lacquered along the ribs, with a blue bird painted across the silk in delicate strokes. Not a phoenix, not a crane, but a smaller thing in flight, wings caught open against the red.

Seraphina accepted it graciously, as she had been instructed to.

“A farewell gift?” she asked.

“A tool,” Lianor corrected. “A fan may hide a smile, interrupt a glance, soften a refusal, mark irritation, conceal boredom, summon attention, dismiss it, or save you from having to answer a foolish question immediately. I thought it suitable.”

The young smiled. “It is beautiful.”

Seraphina opened the fan with a flick of her wrist. The blue bird spread itself across the red silk, bright and sharp and rather pleasing. She practiced hiding the lower half of her face behind it and was immediately satisfied by the possibilities.

Lianor bowed. “Be gracious, Lady Seraphina.”

Seraphina lowered the fan just enough to show her smile. “I shall miss you, Mistress Vey.”

At that, Lianor’s expression softened by a degree so small that only a properly trained student could have noticed it.

Then came her grandmother.

Duchess Adelaide did not hurry. She was far too important to hurry. The courtyard simply arranged itself around her progress as if the stones, servants, horses, knights, and banners had all been expecting her. She wore dark blue and white fur, her hair pinned beneath a northern veil, and in her hand she carried a slim leather folder sealed with the crest of Carcaronne.

“My darling Sera,” she said.

“Grandmother.”

For once, Seraphina did not make the word sound like a title, a weapon, or an accusation. It came out softer than intended.

Adelaide took her hands. “You will not trust anyone too quickly.”

The girl looked into the older woman’s eyes. “I would not dream of it.”

“You will not insult powerful men merely because they deserve it,” Lady Adelaide insisted.

“I shall make an effort,” she conceded.

Like her tutor, her grandmother sighed.

Adelaide squeezed her hands once, then released them and gestured toward the escort drawn up around the carriage. A hundred Knights and men-at-arms of Carcaronne waited in disciplined rows, armor polished, cloaks heavy, banners stirring faintly in the cold wind. They were not a token guard. They were a statement in steel and horseflesh, men who had served her grandmother, her father’s blood, and the old ambitions of the house.

“My first gift,” Adelaide said. “One hundred Knights, their squires, their men-at-arms. They will escort you to the Imperial capital and remain in your service while you are there, unless circumstances require otherwise.”

Seraphina looked over them, measuring the weight of the gift. “A most generous gift.”

“A necessary one, and this my second gift,” continued the Duchess, handing Seraphina the sealed leather folder.

Seraphina took it and broke the outer ribbon, careful not to damage the seal more than necessary. Inside lay a contract already signed, witnessed, and stamped by the Mercenary Guild. The terms were clear enough at a glance. Redeemable in the Imperial capital. Two Dragons of men. Two thousand professional soldiers, available upon presentation and activation of the agreement.

For a moment, even Seraphina was quiet with the weight of the moment. Two Dragons, and an elite core of around four hundred men, a small army by any standards.

Adelaide’s expression had lost all softness. “The Empire respects beauty, blood, scholarship, poetry, and manners. It respects omens, Heaven, and the old stories. It respects a girl who can ride a Unicorn. But should all of that fail, my dear, it also respects men with sharp weaponry.”

Seraphina closed the folder carefully. “Two Dragons is a very expensive way to tell me you love me.”

“It is a very northern way.”

Seraphina laughed softly despite herself.

Adelaide reached up and touched her cheek, gloved fingers cold against her skin. “Do not let them make you small.”

The words settled in a place Seraphina did not particularly enjoy having touched.

For a moment, there was no court, no Empire, no Crown Prince, no assassins, no marriage market waiting like a civilized pit of snakes. There was only an old woman and her granddaughter in a courtyard where the last snow of winter was melting into the stone.

Then Spike snorted loudly and tried to bite one of the carriage traces.

“Spike,” Seraphina said without turning, “Stop that or I will have your feed mixed with calming herbs for a month.”

The Unicorn stamped, offended. Kill herbs.

Her grandmother’s mouth curved. “You do have a way with beasts.”

“And men, too, one hopes,” the young girl replied.

“With men, as with beasts,” Duchess Adelaide of Carcaronne advised, “the trick is to let them think the harness was always their idea.”

Seraphina just nodded and tucked the contract safely away and lifted Lianor’s red fan, opening it just enough to hide the smile that came despite herself.

“Come now, Desdemona, the road awaits,” declared the blonde girl.

“Oh, finally,” Desdemona said, with the bright enthusiasm of someone who had spent the last several minutes pretending not to bounce on her heels. She gathered up the skirts and climbed into the carriage after her friend and rival. “I was beginning to fear we would spend the whole morning saying goodbye to everybody.”

“One must occasionally feed sentiment,” Seraphina replied, settling herself among the velvet cushions, the red fan resting across her lap and the leather folder containing two Dragons of men tucked beneath her hand. 

Desdemona dropped onto the opposite seat with far less dignity and considerably more delight, her eyes already moving to the small tray of refreshments secured for the journey. “If this is how one travels to the Empire, I may forgive you for dragging me into exile.”

“I am not in exile,” bit back the blonde girl.

“Of course not. You are merely taking a very long, very expensive road away from everyone who offended you,” was her retort.

Outside, her grandmother stood tall beneath the banners of Carcaronne.

Spike pulled against the harness with an enthused huff. The carriage lurched forward, Desdemona gave a delighted little laugh, and Seraphina de Sariens began her journey toward the Court of the Imperial Jade Dragon.