TVisTV Book 4: Chapter 21 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 21 - Enter the Dragon

Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you.

- Danny Meyer.

The roads were still hard with winter, though spring had begun to bite back. From the carriage window, the world was an endless rolling vista of white as they crossed her grandmother’s demesne. Fields lay sleeping beneath the snow, broken here and there by dark lines of hedgerows, bare trees, and the smoke of distant farmsteads. Seraphina’s entourage, being as numerous as befitted a person of her rank, made steady progress, though not especially swift. Such was to be expected when traveling with several hundred men, a modest baggage train, and all the many trappings that came with being important.

They passed through the Free Cities next, the small city-states governed by ambitious or desperate men. They were of the border people who had spent generations as pieces pushed back and forth between Aranthia and the Empire. The people of the Free Cities were used to armies arriving with banners and leaving behind burned homes, missing children, ruined fields, and digging graves for their neighbors. Now, however, they enjoyed the dubious honor of acting as the buffer between two greater powers. Yet, like a wildflower that grew from the curb, there was a toughness about them that refused to give up, and the years of peace had even allowed a few seeds of prosperity to sprout here and ther.

The Free Cities also held a rather large number of Hagazadami people. Seraphina saw them in the villages and towns as her party passed through, their red eyes peering from doorways, alleys, and behind half-closed shutters. Cursed, many called them. Naturally, people were always more comfortable calling a thing cursed than admitting they had simply treated it poorly for generations. But such was ignorance.

Now they approached the fortress of Tianxiaguan, the Gate Beneath Heaven.

It was an imposing thing, carved from the granite of the nearby mountains and built to guard one of the great passes into the Empire. Its walls rose from the stone as if the mountain had decided to grow teeth with its tiered battlements and watchtowers. Banners snapped in the cold wind, marked with the symbols of Imperial Power. It was a statement that this was where the Empire began.

It had also, if the reports were correct, been quite thoroughly ignored by the invading tribals, who had apparently decided to solve the problem of the Gate Beneath Heaven by going over the mountains instead. It was this maneuver that had allowed Enkarn to completely bypass the legions guarding the borders and strike deep into their lands.

It was something that perhaps even the Aranthians, for all of their military prowess, could not do, and a part of Seraphina found that actually impressive. The old part that was born here. There was a certain elegance to it.

By the time her party drew near the outer gate, riders emerged from the fortress to meet them. They came in disciplined pairs, horses lean and winter-coated, tack polished, spearpoints upright, and armor arranged in dark overlapping plates across their chests, shoulders, and thighs. Their helmets sat close around their faces, with flared guards at the neck and narrow crests of black horsehair that moved faintly in the cold wind.

It was quite a splendid sight.

But as they closed in, whatever display the riders had intended was somewhat spoiled the moment they saw what had been harnessed to Seraphina’s carriage.

The formation did not break. Imperial discipline was too well hammered into them for that. But there were little failures all the same that threatened at the seams. A horse slowed half a step before its rider corrected it. One spearpoint dipped ever so slightly, then snapped upright again. A younger soldier stared openly until the man beside him hissed something sharp under his breath.

A Unicorn.

A living myth, forest-colored and fanged, with a spiral horn rising from his noble head and murder behind his eyes. In the Empire, beasts of his kind were not merely beasts. The first Empress, if the old stories were to be believed, had ridden one beneath the gaze of Heaven itself. A Unicorn was a creature of Heaven’s mandate and a symbol of purity, conquest, and divine recognition.

It was not supposed to be harnessed to an Aranthian noblewoman’s carriage like a common draft animal.

Seraphina watched and took great delight as the realization moved through them.

Confusion first. Then disbelief. Then something closer to fear, though not fear of Spike alone. This was a fear of one entering the birth of the age, and the curse of interesting times.

Through it all, she sensed their other fear. The long fear that had yet to fall. For if the reports were true, then these men were already condemned, even if no decree had yet been written. Once the dust settled, even if Enkarn and his tribals were ever truly pushed back, someone would need to explain to the Emperor how the border had failed. Someone would need to be blamed, punished, and made into a lesson. They would, of course, be decimated.

And now, as if Heaven had a taste for cruelty, an Aranthian noblewoman had arrived at that same failed gate with a Unicorn in harness. Evidence that the rumors were true, in all the ways that mattered.

They looked upon the Aranthian party with properly schooled faces, but resignation had crept into the edges of their perfect order. Their captain halted at a suitable distance from Spike, proving himself a man of some intelligence, then dismounted and bowed with both hands clasped before him.

“Lady Seraphina de Sariens of Aranthia,” he called in clear but accented Aranthian. “The Gate Beneath Heaven has received notice of your coming. I am Captain Liu Wen of the border garrison. By order of the commandant, we are to escort you through the fortress and see to your party according to the courtesies due your rank.”

The wording was precise, the words professional in the strictest sense. It was a bridge and olive branch all at once, and it was perfect except that his eyes betrayed him by flicking once more toward Spike before returning to her carriage.

The young noblewoman nodded to Miriam who drew down the window of the carriage. Seraphina opened Lianor Vey’s red fan with a small flick of her wrist, allowing the painted blue bird to hide the lower half of her face.

“Captain Liu Wen,” she replied, in careful Imperial. “Your commandant honors me with his courtesy. I accept the escort with gratitude.”

The captain bowed again, lower this time just as Spike bared his teeth at one of the Imperial horses.

The horses whinnied in fear, some of them threatening to almost rear.

Behave, Seraphina ordered through the bond.

Spike stamped once, but gave no greater argument. A triumph of diplomacy on her part, really.

The Imperial riders arranged themselves around the procession with quiet efficiency, though their discipline now had a faintly brittle quality to it. Some moved ahead, others took the flanks, not quite enclosing Seraphina’s escort but certainly suggesting where it was expected to go. Her own men-at-arms watched them with the restrained hostility of professional soldiers meeting other professional soldiers under circumstances that forbade immediate testing.

Captain Liu Wen remained bowed for a moment longer than was strictly necessary before straightening.

“Arrangements have been made for Your Grace and your party at the residence of Marquis Wen Ruyang,” he explained. “It lies a few miles beyond the fortress. The Marquis has been informed of your arrival and has prepared suitable accommodations according to your rank.”

“How considerate,” Seraphina replied in careful Imperial, the painted blue bird on her fan hiding the lower half of her face. “Please convey my gratitude to the commandant for his courtesy.”

“I shall do so, Your Grace.”

She gave a slight nod to Miriam, who immediately drew the carriage window closed. The world outside became muffled at once, reduced to the rhythm of hooves, the creak of wheels, and the faint murmur of men arranging themselves back into motion.

Then, beneath the gaze of the Gate Beneath Heaven, the procession moved forward. Once they passed through the main outer gates, The road bent sharply between its defenses, passing beneath murder holes, and through more portcullises. Soldiers watched from above, their faces half-hidden by helmets and winter scarves. Men, and some women, in dark robes stood beneath covered walkways with tablets in hand, already noting the size of her escort, the number of wagons, the banners of Carcaronne, and, of course, Spike.

Beyond the inner gate, the Empire opened before them.

The road that led down from the pass was excellently paved, broad enough for four wagons abreast. Stone drainage channels ran along either side, cleanly cut and well maintained, carrying meltwater away from the road and down toward the frozen fields below. Seraphina approved of the display of civic engineering.

On either side of the road stretched terraced paddies, their stepped fields frozen. In warmer months, she imagined the terraces would gleam with water and green shoots, reflecting the sky in careful fragments. Now they lay sleeping, their boundaries marked by low stone walls and narrow paths.

They passed a few Imperial villages as well, neat clusters of tiled roofs, smoke rising straight from chimneys into the cold air. Red paper charms fluttered by doorways. Strings of dried vegetables hung beneath eaves. Children peered from behind their mothers’ skirts, and old men watched them all with looks of suspicion.

A shadow crossed the snow from above, making Seraphina look up through the carriage window. She saw Imperial gryphons wheeling above the road, their great wings cutting through the pale sky. One circled lower for a moment, close enough that Seraphina could make out the hooked beak and broad feathered chest of the beast before it rose again with a powerful beat of its wings.

No doubt bearing news of me, she concluded.

Desdemona pressed close to the opposite window with entirely too much enthusiasm. “Do you think one could ride a gryphon? I hear they have bred them bigger…”

“No,” Seraphina sighed. “If you were still a child, then perhaps it could bear your load.”

De Savant looked mildly put out. “I feel almost offended, I am not that heavy!”

“No, you do not understand. Only young children can ride Gryphons… or perhaps midgets. To fly in the air for any long distance comes at a great cost. So even if it could bear you… I doubt it could bear you for long.”

“I see,” returned Desdemona, still unmollified

“And it would be dangerous,” continued Seraphina. “I would not like to explain to your siblings why you returned from the Empire flat as a pancake.”

The other girl looked at her friend in deadly seriousness. “We will return… won’t we, Sera?” 

The blonde girl was about to laugh, but some instinct, some sliver of empathy told her that that would not be wise. “Of course, darling,” she replied instead.

The road passed from terraced fields into a stretch of woodland, the trees standing close and dark on either side. Their branches above wove together in a pattern of black lines against the sky. 

Then, Seraphina felt it before she properly saw it. Not danger in the true sense, exactly. But, a sense of being observed.

Her eyes moved to the left side of the road, where the trees stood thickest. For a moment, between one trunk and the next, there was a shape darker than the shadows around it. She did not call out. She did not press her face to the glass like some anxious merchant’s daughter on her first journey to the capital.

Desdemona half growled.

“What is it?” Seraphina asked.

“Perhaps nothing, just something odd,” her friend confirmed, her senses sharp and of wild and woods.

Seraphina smiled at her friend, secretly pleased that her own instincts had served her well. “That is a very unpleasant answer”

“It usually is, but whatever, or whoever they are, I doubt they can do anything about a group our size,” the brunette concluded.

The woods thinned not long after, though Seraphina did not mistake that for reassurance. Eventually, the road climbed a low rise, and the Marquis’s residence came into view.

It was not a castle in the Aranthian sense. There were no arrogant towers reaching for the sky, no curtain walls trying to impress the landscape into submission. Instead, the residence spread outward in layered courtyards, tiled roofs, covered corridors, and white walls trimmed in dark wood. It sat among old pines and bare winter gardens. Stone lions guarded the entrance and red columns supported the gatehouse. Banners bearing the Marquis’s sigil, a triple-headed swan, stirred in the wind.

A man waited at the front steps beneath the gate, his feet planted and his hands clasped behind his back, looking more the part of a general than host.

Marquis Wen Ruyang was in his late forties, short but broad, and every inch a warrior dressed for ceremony rather than comfort. His armor was lacquered dark and red, worked with bronze and gold at the edges, and over it he wore a heavy cloak trimmed in black fur. Upon his head sat a high, plumed helm, the crest rising in extravagant arcs of peacock feathers that should have been ridiculous and somehow were not. 

When the carriage halted, he came forward and bowed with a warrior’s stiffness, deep enough to be correct, not so deep as to pretend he was anyone’s servant.

“Lady Seraphina de Sariens,” he greeted. His Aranthian was rougher than Captain Liu’s, but passable. “My house is honored by your presence.”

“The honor is mine, Marquis Wen,” Seraphina replied in Imperial, allowing Miriam to open the carriage door before stepping down with her fan held just so. “Your hospitality is most gracious.”

“No, you honor me,” he replied in his mother tongue before his eyes roved over Spike.

To his credit, he did not stare like a common soldier. His gaze sharpened, acknowledged the impossible, measured the political wound of it, and returned to Seraphina with only the smallest pause.

Not easily rattled, then, the blonde girl observed. How troublesome.

Desdemona descended after her, bright-eyed and looking as if she had already decided she had had quite enough of the road.

The Marquis clapped his hands once.

The sound cracked through the courtyard, and the household staff, who had been waiting in careful rows, moved at once. Servants bowed low. Stablehands hurried toward the horses before slowing markedly upon realizing what Spike was. Porters came forward for the baggage. A senior maid in dark robes began issuing quiet instructions with ruthless efficiency.

“See to their needs,” the Marquis ordered. “The Lady de Sariens and her companions are to lack for nothing.”

The staff bowed even lower, obsequious enough to satisfy rank and swift enough to suggest fear of their master, which Seraphina considered a perfectly respectable combination.

The Marquis turned slightly. “Shen.”

A thin, elderly man stepped forward, his hair white, his robes immaculate, his expression that of smooth neutrality.

“Show Lady Seraphina to her rooms,” the Marquis said. “Her companions as well. The evening meal will be prepared once our guests have refreshed themselves.”

“As my lord commands,” Shen replied, bowing low, but bowing quickly.

Seraphina inclined her head with the proper degree of gratitude. “Then I shall place myself in your household’s care.”