TVisTV Book 3: Chapter 41 (RAW)

Chapter 41 - Settlement

“If your first objective in the negotiation, instead of making your argument, is to hear the other side out, that’s the only way you can quiet the voice in the other guy’s mind. But most people don’t do that.”

- Christopher Voss

For a rare moment, Seraphina let the silence grow—just enough to tighten around their throats like a lace noose. The autumn wind stirred through her short hair, carrying with it the muted sounds of thousands of soldiers waiting for direction in the distance. That weight, of a host ready for war, pressed invisibly upon them.

Finally, the thin Bishop de Chavlon cleared his throat. It was a timid sound, almost apologetic. “You would propose that we simply let you speak to your father?”

No doubt he was weighing up holding Seraphina as a “guest”, a hostage in all but name as leverage against the Duke Anatoli.

“Yes, I believe that would be the most logically sound way to resolve this amicably. It would involve, well, a lot less red stains which I am told by my maid Milly are a devil to get off,” the blonde girl replied lightly, eyes glancing at them all.

Analyzing.

“Lady de Sariens,” he began, folding his hands so tightly that the knuckles whitened like polished bone. “Your intentions may be pure, but it is… unbecoming—rash, even—to approach your father’s camp in such circumstances. We do believe he is in a negotiating mood.”

The last word was laced with a certain profound distaste, as though “mood” were a sin listed in scripture.

Seraphina offered him a perfectly practiced expression of polite confusion. “My father has always been a man of passion. And, in this case he has every right to be passionate. My house has been delivered an insult. I personally have received such a grave insult, yet here I am, volunteering to make things right. And, passion need not be a sin. The trick is holding the keys to those passions and the ability to govern my good father’s mood. I am one such key.”

The bishops exchanged looks. Passion, when potentially accompanied by a dead city’s gates and smoke on the horizon, was indeed a sin. That and the wailing of new made widows and so forth. Duke Anatoli was most definitely not renowned for his mercy.

Then the second bishop spoke—the portly one, the one still unable to fully shake off her earlier devastating smile. “Lady de Sariens… his lordship the Duke has demanded the surrender of Aran’s entire council. He has demanded that Velens be stripped of his right to inherit the throne… he has given them until tomorrow. If they refuse, he says he will become wroth.”

Seraphina blinked once, slowly. “‘Wroth? Tomorrow?” she echoed, her voice a bell dipped in honey. “Such dramatic words. Then we must be quick must we not? Every second is a delay, and I assure you that my father’s wrath can be managed. It merely needs redirection.”

“Redirection? The Ogre means to slaughter the city because a young boy refuses a girl and finds another,” Bishop de Chavlon hissed quietly, as if naming the act would summon it faster. “Men, women, perhaps even children. The Goddess’s judgement does not overlook such things. We cannot simply allow you to march into his camp and encourage him further.”

Ah. There it was—the opposition. Soft-spoken and dressed in velvet words, but opposition nonetheless.

Seraphina set down her tea just as the sun decided to peak out from behind a cloud, highlighting her golden hair perfectly, giving her an almost angelic quality. Providence, perhaps, or maybe just an overly healthy dose of luck. 

“Encourage, Your eminence?” she questioned smoothly, tone shifting by a hair’s breadth, “Do you truly believe I would advocate violence? The very reason I am here is to try and avoid a very messy situation altogether. He listens to me. My father may be fierce, but he is not a fool. He is one of the best generals in Aranthia.” She took a moment to parse this thought, Anatoli really was one of the best generals with a “Strategic & Planning Tactical” planning skill that was always in the highest tier even on random starts for the game. “He will hear me. He will forgive the Crown Prince’s insult, if I forgive the Crown Prince. This I can wholeheartedly assure you,” Seraphina assured calmly, slowing her voice down a little.

“And if he does not?” the portly bishop demanded, his face growing slightly red.

“Then,” she answered matter-of-factly, “I will make him.”

The silence that followed was not merely still—it shuddered. It was indeed, to put it lightly, a very bold claim.

The collected bishops visibly stiffened. They did not know what she meant, but they understood enough to fear the possibility. The air tasted suddenly of storm and cold iron. It tasted of an old magic.

Almost as one they wondered if they were witnessing a direct confession of a future patricide, a truly heinous sin in the culture of Aranthia.

Bishop de Chavlon tried a different tactic. “Lady Seraphina… it is not only the danger of your father. The nobles of Aran believe you are perhaps his co-conspirator, that you personally instigated… well I shan't call it a revolt, this “situation.” If you walk into the siege lines, and they see you—”

There, Bishop de Chavlon had named the word they were all dancing around. Siege. With treason wrapped around the word revolt like dirty silks.

“Yes?” she asked, tone soft as a blade sliding free.

“And they will not hesitate to use you as leverage for their own personal gain! There will be many who seek to curry favor with the crown in these trying times,” the fat bishop cut in.

Projection at its finest, the girl thought with an inward sneer.

De Chavlon gave him a look that could have rotted wood.

This amused her. The smile that curved her lips was the kind that made pious men reconsider their calling.

“My dear bishop,” she said, “if the nobles of Aran attempt to capture me, I promise you they will regret it long before I do. Because I will have only the strongest of protectors. You.”

A flash of something—not quite fear, not quite respect—passed between the powerful clergymen.

The girl leaned forward, her golden hair pooling over her shoulders like spilled sunlight, her eyes fixed on them with a calculating serenity that did not belong to a child.

“Let us dispense with pretense. You are not blocking me for my safety. You fear what my arrival will do to the delicate politics you have woven. You fear that if I calm the Ogre, you will lose your righteous pretext to interfere. You fear that peace will make your swords irrelevant, you much like those ardent nobles, wish for a dramatic ending.”

The bishops stiffened as though she had struck them.

“And,” she added sweetly, “you are correct. At least, in a way.”

The portly bishop bristled, wearing his outrage like a porcupine with its quills. “How dare you!”

“How dare you,” Seraphina cut in, voice a silken dagger, “But the Goddess is kind… You may not be the swords of peace, but you can be its shield.”

There it was—the blow landed cleanly. Their composure momentarily lost. The girl could almost feel her Charisma grinding away at their mental walls of resistance.

Before the bishops could muster a verbal counterattack, Sir Gravens suddenly stepped quietly forward, one gauntleted fist crossing his chest in a knight’s salute.

“Lady Seraphina speaks truth,” the young knight stated simply. “And we stand ready to escort her. If harm comes, it will pass through us first. But, if we had the shield of your authority then perhaps the day may yet be saved.”

A foolish promise, she thought—but loyalty was still a currency, even when poorly spent. Bless his little heart, she thought to herself.

“You are thinking perhaps it best that I be kept as a guest, a bargaining chip. I assure that you will just stoke the flames of my father’s rage even further. He loves me, yes, but he loves my mother more and they are both still very young. He will visit upon this realm things that would make his campaigns against the Empire seem like children’s stories,” added Seraphina as if commenting about the weather.

The bishops wavered, glancing back toward the distant main camp. Torches smoldered there in the afternoon gloom, ringed around Aran like a crown of impending judgment.

Bishop de Chavlon exhaled, sounding older than his years.

“Fine,” he said. “We cannot stop you by force. Not without causing the very bloodshed we hope to avoid.”

The ad hoc conclave of bishops murmured among themselves, weighing the paths before them. They chose, rather predictably, the path of least resistance.

The portly bishop crossed his arms. “But understand this: your father must be made to see reason and to return to his lands.”

Seraphina rose from her seat, brushing some non-existent crumbs from her skirt with regal poise. “Oh, I am quite sure I can make the good Duke, my father, see reason. I am, in these troubling times, the voice of reason, after all.”

They sensed this was a conclusion. A final and elegant end to these negotiations.  

The bishops watched helplessly as her entourage folded the picnic with mechanical efficiency. The carpet was rolled. The kettle emptied. The table stowed. The last crumbs of civility swept aside before the possibility of more blood, a vintage that both sets of Seraphina’s memories knew that Anatoli loved almost as much as Anaselena.

The girl walked past them without another glance, her knights falling into formation behind her—the quiet thunder of armored boots upon soil.

Before mounting the carriage, she paused only long enough to deliver her final words:

“Come then, gentlemen, we will either have ended the siege… or started another war.”

The bishops swallowed.

She smiled.

And then Seraphina de Sariens set off toward her father—the man called the Ogre—the man she intended to stop. She only hoped that the upjumped priests would follow behind her. Bloodstains, after all, did not go well with her fashion style.