TVisTV Book 4: Chapter 26 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 26 - Imperial Holiday

Everyone is playing a game of hiding their feelings or hiding from their feelings.

- Unknown.

Now, as with so much of life, came a period of waiting. Seraphina would have to wait until she was summoned to court by the Court or by the Emperor, the two not always being the same thing. A summons might also come from the First Minister of the Left, the First Minister of the Right, or even the Chancellor. But, rarely actually from the Emperor himself. The wheels of responsible government took time to turn, as this was no ordinary visit, after all.

Which meant the girl had time. Not a lot, perhaps, but enough.

The Spring Palace, though relatively close to the center of the city, also lay within a stone’s throw of the Foreign Quarter, which meant Seraphina would not stand out too much. However, a beautiful young girl was always going to draw some attention, for beauty had that tendency. But her features, albeit rare, would not be entirely alien here. The Empire had, after all, often intermingled with its neighbors through either conquest or trade in its long and storied history.

Her hair, however, was another matter, and that would have to be dealt with. Fortunately, hair color was merely the correct application of dyes, and dyes were easy enough to source in the capital.

Why did she wish to dye her hair? The practical answer was simple. She wished to blend in as a "normal" person and use her time productively: scouting the city, learning its roads, and all the other sensible precautions one could explain if anyone dared to bother her with questions. The truth, however, was that she was simply curious.

This was a place from the game. A major place at that. To see it made real, not as a thing of polygons and scripted events, but in true three dimensions, with all the commensurate sights, sounds, smells, dirt, noise, heat, and humanity, stirred something in her that she had not felt in quite a long time. A sense of wonder.

Seraphina de Sariens was genuinely intrigued.

Naturally, there was also a bit of morbid curiosity involved. It was well noted that the people of the Empire did, in fact, eat flies. Not ordinary flies, but the great flies, insects and bug-like things that resembled cicadas and other horrible creatures. It was disgusting, barbaric, and precisely the sort of thing she wished to see for herself.

So she had Miriam dye her hair with a fruit-staining mixture that turned her perfect gold into a more familiar black and left a subtle fragrance behind. Looking into the mirror afterward, Seraphina approved. The result was not flawless, of course. Nothing done in haste ever was. But it would serve.

Next came the matter of sneaking out, which had been surprisingly easy with Tia’s magical assistance. “Borrowing” some clothes from the servant quarters. Before she left, the girl made Miriam swear to keep her mouth shut about the whole matter and to tell anyone who inquired about her that she was to be left alone as she was feeling quite out of sorts.

She decided to go “alone” because going without an escort would enable her to blend in more easily and, rather ironically, might even be safer. And, she supposed, she wanted to see the truth of the Heavenly Splendor.

It was then that the young noblewoman realized her own stupidity. Seraphina could have simply asked Tia to cast a glamour on her. Then, as she climbed easily over western wall of the palace with her absurd strength, she reconsidered and decided the idea had not been entirely stupid after all. There were certain things a glamour could not conceal perfectly, especially from those trained to look for such trickery. More importantly, the flighty Fae was not always the most reliable creature in existence. Still, as always, the best defense was a layered one.

“Tia, darling,” Seraphina said, dropping lightly down on the other side of the wall, “can you make me look a little bit like Eloise? The one who looks like a beautiful doll, you know.”

She landed in the street, looked around, and was faintly surprised to see that no one cared. The Fae, it seemed, had already cast some other sort of glamour on her.

“Of course, Seraphina!” Tia chirped from somewhere behind her. “Your souls are in tune. The rhythm is good! As if that was yours and is only borrowed and lent!”

That was the problem with Fae. Understanding them half the time was less a matter of language and more an act of imaginative interpretation. Sometimes, it could become quite annoying, especially at moments like this.

Seraphina felt the magic around her, for lack of a better word, solidify. Something settled over her skin and shape, forming around her like a veil she could not see but could faintly sense. Something had changed, though she could not quite put her finger on what.

She checked her reflection in a puddle of meltwater and saw her own face looking back, albeit with short black hair instead of blonde. Not Eloise’s face. It seemed there was a limit even to a Fae’s mastery of illusion. Still, it would do.

Smiling to herself, now in possession of a few stolen fragments of freedom, Seraphina began to hum as she walked in the general direction of one of the main markets.

***

The market was exactly as terrible and wonderful as Seraphina had hoped, a living thing that occupied several streets at once and spilled from a proper square into narrower lanes, covered arcades, and temporary stalls shaded by dyed awnings. Merchants sold bolts of silk, lacquered boxes, hair ornaments, paper charms, inkstones, bronze mirrors, little jade animals, knives, tea bricks, honeyed fruits, medicinal roots, and at least three separate kinds of pickled things that looked as if they had begun life with too many legs. Porters shouted as they shouldered bundles through the crowd. Customers haggled with the passionate dishonesty of people who believed a fair price was whatever could be extracted from another human. Vendors praised their wares loudly enough that one suspected repetition was meant to serve in place of truth.

Above it all hung the smell of the capital: smoke, oil, hot stone, river fish, sweet bean cakes, horses, perfume, sweat, incense, frying dough, and exotic spices. The noblewoman moved through it in borrowed servant’s clothes, her black-dyed hair tucked neatly beneath a modest scarf, Tia’s glamour lying across her like a half-remembered dream. People’s gazes slipped from her more easily than they should have. Not perfectly, of course. A few men looked twice, and one elderly woman selling combs gave her a suspicious glance that suggested old women in markets were immune to most forms of magic and all forms of nonsense. But for the most part, Seraphina passed unnoticed, and the novelty of it pleased her far more than she cared to admit.

Then she found the flies.

They were being roasted over a long charcoal grill by a man with forearms like hams. The creatures were, unfortunately, as advertised. Great dark things, somewhere between cicadas, beetles. Their wings had been removed, their bodies skewered, brushed with oil, dusted with spice, and turned slowly over the coals until their shells crackled and shone. A line of customers waited for them willingly, and one man bought three skewers before biting into the first with visible pleasure, the shell snapping with a rather audible crunch.

Seraphina stopped walking and stared, not in horror exactly, for this was closer to scholarly fascination. Disgusting, certainly, but one could not pretend it lacked educational value. A little boy beside the grill looked at her and grinned, holding up his half-eaten skewer as if offering testimony in defense of the local “cuisine.”

“Good,” he said in Imperial.

Seraphina looked down at the child, then at the roasted insect, then back at the child. “How brave of you.”

He beamed, apparently taking this as praise. She did not buy one. There were limits even to curiosity.

Instead, she drifted deeper into the market, following no plan beyond where her interest took her. She admired a stall selling silk cords braided with tiny bells, inspected a tray of rings with the air of a queen judging petitions, and eventually stopped before a small display of hair ornaments. There, among lacquered pins, ribboned combs, and little dangling beads, was a hairclip shaped like a sleeping fox, carved from pale wood with its tail curled around its body and two tiny chips of green glass set for eyes. It was not expensive, not noble, and not even particularly well made. It was, however, cute.

Seraphina picked it up, turned it over between her fingers, and immediately decided that someone in her household would be forced to admire it later.

“How much?” she asked offhandedly.

The stallkeeper, a thin man with clever eyes, named a price so absurd that Seraphina nearly admired him for the confidence. Not because she could not afford it, naturally, but because he had looked at her plain clothing and foreign features and decided she was prey.

“Milly,” Seraphina began, turning slightly, “pay the—”

She stopped herself, for Miriam was not there.

Of course Miriam was not there. That was rather the point of sneaking out without an entourage. The young girl swallowed the rest of the sentence with the grace of a woman eating a very sour lemon, then turned back to the stallkeeper with a smile.

But before she could anything, a hand reached past Seraphina and placed several coins upon the stall.

“For the clip,” offered a gallant male voice.

The voice was pleasant, warm, amused, and possessed of the easy confidence of someone who had never once had to wonder whether a door would open for him. Seraphina turned her head only after granting herself the smallest moment to arrange her expression into polite surprise, if slightly annoyed, surprise.

The young man standing beside her was dressed well enough to be a merchant’s son or minor gentleman, though not so richly that he announced himself as anything worth robbing or kidnapping. His outer robe was deep blue, embroidered only at the cuffs, and his dark hair was tied back with a simple silver clasp. He had a straight nose, strong brows, and dark, dreamy eyes. His face was infuriatingly handsome.

Seraphina recognized him at once. Huan, First Prince of the Empire.

In the game, his character portrait had been handsome. Naturally it had been. The First Prince had been designed to appeal to the female players. Reality, annoyingly, had improved upon even this ideal. Such a thing was dangerous. Very dangerous.

But, Seraphina’s face showed none of this. She merely looked from him to the coins, then back again, allowing her careful measure of surprise to soften into guarded politeness. 

“My thanks,” she said. “Though I had not yet surrendered to thrift, young master.”

“No,” the young man replied, smiling dashingly. “But it seemed a close battle.”

“How gallant and generous of you,” Seraphina replied with a small bow.

At that, he laughed, and it was a good laugh. Not too loud, not false, not a polished court laugh. It surprised her enough that she simply had to take the hairclip from the stallkeeper. The stallkeeper, having been paid more than the ornament deserved, bowed deeply.

The young man inclined his handsome head. “My name is Chen.”

Of course the First Prince was wandering the market under a false name. Of course Seraphina had escaped the Spring Palace for a few stolen fragments of freedom only to immediately collide with a royal incognito. Fate, as always, enjoyed its little games.

“Chen,” she repeated, as though the name meant nothing at all.

“And yours?”

For one horrifying moment, her mind could only offer Seraphina de Sariens. Then another name rose from somewhere warmer.

She looked down, as if caught by a moment of embarrassment. A moment of embarrassment that was not entirely feigned. “Catherina, young master, if it pleases you” she replied in small voice.

“Catherina,” Chen repeated. “A very pretty name.”

“One is not worthy, but one wishes to live up to it,” she said quickly.

His smile deepened slightly, and for a moment his gaze remained exactly where it should, upon her face. Then, it dipped for the briefest fraction of a second toward her chest before returning upward. 

Tia’s glamor was not perfect at all.

“And what does Master Chen do,” she asked, “besides rescue strangers from predatory stallkeepers?”

“I know the city,” he said. “A little. Enough, perhaps, to show a foreign maid where she ought to go if she wishes to see Tianhua properly.”

Seraphina nearly smiled. So that was what he thought she was. Some foreign servant hired by one of the merchant houses, perhaps attached to a household in the Foreign Quarter or sent from one of the city’s guest compounds on an errand. Her clothes were plain, her hair was dark, and Tia’s magic had clearly done something to change the world’s perception of her.

“A bold offer from a man I have just met,” she answered coyly.

He smiled again, a thing of white teeth. “A harmless one, unless you believe I intend to abduct you in the middle of a crowded market. There is a saying that those who have exchanged names are no longer strangers, or so my tutors say.”

Seraphine looked to his eyes then down to his full lips. “I believe many men intend and say many things.”

He glanced toward the hairclip. “Then allow me to begin with something harmless. There is a better ornament seller two streets over. You were overcharged. Or rather, I was.”

“I know.”

“Then why try to buy it?” he asked, raising one eyebrow

“Because I wanted it. A woman buys for the dream, more than the object itself. It seems you do not know much of women, young master.”

Chen considered her for a moment, and amusement softened his face. “That is a very expensive habit for the fairer sex.”

“Yes,” Seraphina said. “Many people have often complained about that throughout the ages. But, nonetheless, I shall accept your gift for the moment.”

They began walking together, not quite side by side at first, but close enough that the crowd accepted them as a pair and parted around them accordingly. Chen moved through the market with careless ease, greeting a tea seller, and stepping around a puddle and offering her his hand. He had the manner of a man who belonged everywhere he stood, the girl noted.

Tianhua unfolded around them in bright, crowded layers. Chen led her first along a row of bookstalls where old scholars argued. Beside them, a young scribe copied love letters for illiterate customers with a most bored expression. Further on stood a shop selling mechanical birds that flapped their wings when wound with a key, their bronze heads bobbing as children pressed close to the display and their parents pretended not to be equally charmed.

He bought her a cup of warm plum drink from a vendor whose cart steamed fragrant clouds. The drink smelled sweet and spiced, and was served in a little clay cup that warmed her fingers through the gloves she had borrowed. Seraphina accepted it with appropriate caution and watched Chen take a drink from his own cup first, before drinking some herself.

“It is not bad,” she admitted after tasting it.

“The lady gives most high praise,” he chortled.

They continued through a courtyard where traveling performers balanced bowls upon spears.. A six-limbed monkey in a tiny embroidered jacket attempted to steal wooden coins from the audience that its masters had given out as a challenge for the audience to hide about their person. When the animal escaped its handler and bounded toward them with a stolen purse clenched in both little hands, Chen caught Seraphina lightly by the wrist and drew her aside before the monkey could use her as a launching point.

It was a small touch, barely a touch at all, really. Nevertheless, Seraphina glanced down at his hand on her wrist, then slowly up at him as her heart almost skipped a beat. 

Now, that was just Cornelia stirring in her sleep, she decided forcefully as she schooled her face to placid neutrality.

Chen released her at once. “My apologies.”

“How many rescues do you intend to perform today?” she questioned perhaps too stiffly.

“As many as necessary,” he returned with a twinkle in his eye.

His words were far delivered much too smoothly, but Seraphina decided not to punish him for it yet.

Next, they paused before a stall selling carved seals, where the old craftsman studied Seraphina’s face and offered to carve her name in Imperial characters. Seraphina politely declined with a slightly too forced smile as she had no coins to her name. Chen, meanwhile, purchased a strip of red paper from the neighboring stall and offered it to her along with a brush.

“For wishes,” he said, nodding toward a bridge just visible beyond the lane. Its railings were tied with hundreds of fluttering ribbons and paper strips, each carrying prayers for passed examinations, marriages, safe births, profitable trades, and all the other fragile hopes people surrendered to the gods.

The dark-haired girl looked at him archly. “Do you make a habit of this?”

“Only when escorting mysterious young women through the city,” he replied in a voice like silk.

“How practiced you sound.”

“Then, it seems, I must improve my delivery,” he replied with a sweeping bow.

They crossed the bridge together beneath the restless flutter of other people’s desires. Seraphina wrote nothing at first, because writing an honest wish in public seemed like the sort of vulnerability. Chen, to his credit, did not press her. He stood beside her, took out a brush and ink kit and placed it on the railing. Then, he wrote his wish with quick, neat strokes before folding the paper so she could not see it.

“How secretive,” she observed.

“They say wishes should be allowed a little privacy,” he said, looking into the middle distance before turning to her. “And yours?”

Seraphina looked down at the red slip in her hand. For a moment, several answers offered themselves. In the end, she borrowed his brush and wrote only a single word in careful Imperial script. The only word that really mattered that allowed all other words to be true.

Power.

Then she folded it before he could read it and tied it among the others, where it vanished into the rustling red.

At one corner, Chen pointed toward a narrow side street hung with paper lanterns painted in black ink. “That way leads to the Fragrant Ink Market. It is best visited after lunch, when the poets have grown hungry enough to be skilled in their recitals, but not yet drunk enough to give truly terrible verse.”

“A dangerous district, then,” she sighed.

“Very. Words are always more dangerous when spoken without much thought, sold cheaply, or given as advice in the marketplace of ideas,” he counseled with an air of false wisdom.

“And that?” she queried, indicating a broader avenue where two lines of stone columns supported a covered walkway crowded with men in fine robes and foreign traders wearing layered coats, veils, turbans, and hats of strange shapes.

“The Street of Fortune,” Chen said. “Merchant houses, loan offices, caravan factors, foreign traders, and men who can count faster than honest people can pray. The banks, also.”

“Useful to know,” she commented.

“For a maid?”

She shrugged.

He looked at her then, more carefully this time. This time his eyes only straying slightly to her chest, but, thankfully mostly at her face, as though some minor inconsistency in his assumptions had begun to trouble him. “You speak very well for someone newly arrived.”

“A maid who cannot listen and understand her master’s words does not remain employed for long,” the young girl explained.

“And are you employed by one of the merchant houses?”

Seraphina let herself hesitate, not long enough to suggest guilt, only long enough to suggest privacy. “Something like that.”

“Something like that,” he repeated, amused. “A mysterious household, then.”

“All households are mysterious to those who do not work in them, or know of them,” she shot back adroitly.

For a moment, his expression shifted from amusement into something quieter, and Seraphina wondered how much of him was acting. Or perhaps, he was simply a handsome prince using a false name to wander markets and rescue and seduce pretty maids. 

They turned down another lane where food stalls crowded close together beneath red awnings. Steam rose from bamboo baskets and fish cakes sizzled in oil. A woman with silver hair folded dumplings faster than the eye could follow, while beside her, two boys fanned a charcoal brazier over which skewers of spiced meat smoked and spat. Then, inevitably, came another grill of the great flies, their shells lacquered with oil and spice, their bodies crackling over the coals while customers waited with far too much enthusiasm.

Seraphina’s gaze betrayed her.

Chen followed it and smiled. “Have you tried them?”

“No.”

Chen touched her upper arm. “Would you like to?”

“No, I do not think I would,” she replied, a little too forced, letting him keep his arm for a second more than appropriate on her arm. 

He bought one and Seraphina watched in appalled silence as the First Prince of the Empire, heir to one of the greatest states in the world, bit into a roasted insect with casual enjoyment. The shell cracked and he chewed thoughtfully, as if this were a perfectly reasonable thing for a civilized person to do in public.

“Barbarian,” she whispered.

Chen laughed so hard he nearly choked, which improved the scene considerably.

After that, the afternoon settled into something dangerously close to pleasant. Chen showed her a covered arcade where foreign merchants sold glass beads, scented oils, spices, painted icons, and knives with curved blades, speaking in a dozen languages that overlapped into the music of trade. They passed a shrine to a river goddess where old women burned incense, and Chen, without making a show of it, paused long enough to bow his head.

That, Seraphina found more interesting than his face.

“Pious?” she asked.

“Careful, it can never hurt to have more than one blessing,” was his mysterious answer.

At some point, the hairclip ended up tucked into her darkened hair, because Chen insisted that purchases ought to be used and Seraphina decided there was no tactical reason to refuse. He positioned it with surprising care, standing close enough that she caught the faint scent of sandalwood and clean fabric from his robes. 

“There,” he said. “A fox for Catherina.”

“I will treasure it,” she said, looking up at him and realizing that he was quite tall for an Imperial

“You should not. It is common,” he replied, rubbing the back of his head.

“Common things are often more honest,” she said almost wistfully, the words coming out softer than she intended. 

Around them, the market continued in all its noise and color, but for a moment Seraphina felt the oddness of standing there, speaking to a prince who wore a borrowed life, while neither of them wished to be found. Yet, had somehow found each other.

Then Chen stepped back with a small bow, light enough to turn the moment safely aside. “Then I thank you for correcting my ignorance.”

Seraphina did not look at him. “Then perhaps you are teachable.”

“Only with patient instruction,” he replied, some of his earlier playfulness returning.

“Then you may be doomed,” snorted the girl delicately.

By the time the sun began to lower behind the roofs of Tianhua, the lanterns had been lit in the market, and the city changed its face. Gold light pooled beneath awnings. Shadows gathered in alleys. Musicians began playing near the square, and the scent of wine, grilled food drifted together through the streets. Chen walked her back toward the broader road leading in the direction of the Foreign Quarter, not so close as to presume ownership of her path, but close enough that men in the crowd gave them room.

“You should return before your household notices you are gone,” he advised with a straight face.

“How responsible of you,” she drawled. 

The First Prince chuckled. “One of us ought to be.”

“Bold, considering you spent the afternoon feeding yourself insects and encouraging strange women to wander,” she said with a small huff.

“Only beautiful strange women.”

The girl raised an eyebrow. “How very selective of you.”

“I try to be,” he stated, puffing out his chest.

Seraphina covered her mouth to suppress a giggle she had been holding back all day.

She looked at him then, this prince calling himself Chen, this handsome man with careful manners and a hidden station. The game had made him a route, a collection of flags and affection values and scenes to be unlocked under the correct conditions. Reality had made him warmer, more irritating, and far more troublesome.

“I suppose I should thank you for the tour,” she admitted slowly.

“You may, if you wish.”

She bowed to him formally. “Then, I shall,” she decided, taking a small breath before continuing, “Thank you, young master Chen.” 

“Then you will allow me this. I shall thank you, too, Catherina, for allowing me to show you a little of my city. And, please, just call me Chen.”

My city. The Prince had used the royal possessive. The slip was small, perhaps intentional. Perhaps not. Those who had a secret, those who committed a wrong of some kind, almost always flaunted it where it could be seen by others if they looked hard enough.

Seraphina gave him the smile of a foreign maid who had noticed nothing worth noticing. “It is a beautiful city, Chen.”

He looked rather pleased by that.

They parted at the edge of a quieter street, beneath delicate lanterns painted with clouds and cranes. Chen bowed first, not too deeply, but with enough grace to make the gesture feel sincere despite the lie of his name. Seraphina returned the courtesy with the polished modesty of someone who knew exactly how much education to hide. Then she turned away before the moment could grow too maudlin and walked back toward the Spring Palace with the little fox hairclip resting in her dark hair.

Behind her, unseen, Tia giggled.

“Your rhythm is funny now,” the Fae whispered.

Seraphina did not look back. “Be quiet, darling,” she snapped, but there was no venom in it.

The young Aranthian noblewoman was still humming when she found the wall and began her climb back up.