TVisTV Book 3: Chapter 40 (RAW)

Chapter 40 - The Autumn Court

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

- Buddha

Seraphina only believed in going around an object when it was absolutely necessary, and, equipped as she was, this new possible impediment did not feel like an object that needed to be avoided. The only problem in her mind was how messy she was prepared to get. Having Cornelia dispose of a group of adventurers in the woods was one thing; a few thousand men were quite another. People would question where they went, for a start, and questions bred more questions. Then suddenly you had a bunch of people poking their noses into places where they were not welcome. It would be a great inconvenience.

The young girl realized that perhaps she might actually have to be diplomatic for this encounter. No matter. She could play the game better than anyone, if she had to. The galling part, of course, was the “had to”—the concession that elegance must wear the mask of patience rather than the blade of certainty.

Running a few scenarios through her mind, she commanded her group to proceed onward; there was little use in delay, after all. So on they went, advancing along the road with their intent as clear as day. Looking through the carriage window, she saw that her escort of knights looked tense and troubled—Sir Gravens especially so. The burden of this might be a bit too much for him, she thought. Unlike her, he had only his current years to inform his wisdom; Seraphina, on the other hand, despite her youthful looks, had at least a decade on him in lived experience. A decade spent as an adult. It was really unfair to ask too much of him. But, it seemed, children in this place and time grew up faster because they simply had to. There were no modern sensibilities here to allow them the space and time to grow—only the cruel crucible of necessity that hardened soft metal into serviceable steel. 

Ultimately, however, she was slowly viewing him as a sort of toy… or perhaps an accessory to be paraded around as and when necessary.

A large party detached itself from the main host, perhaps fifty lances sparkling to a mirror polish in the sun. Their passage could be clearly heard as they approached, a rolling rumble of steel and horses. They came at a measured pace, stopping just fifty meters from the carriage and blocking the road with professional indifference. Dust hung, wavered, and settled on the shine of their tack.

A smaller group of ten broke off, a show of force without being too threatening; the host behind them was threatening enough, after all, and no one here wished to pretend otherwise. Spears tilted, then held steady, like a row of cold intentions.

A man armed in plate, with a tabard of blue trimmed with white, lifted the visor of his helm and finally declared his intent. The sunlight struck his cheek like a coin. He launched his declaration to Sir Frest at the front of their small column. “I am Gendrae de Lanton of Her Order of the Twin Blades. What business do you have coming this way? There are troubles—the capital of Aran is all but besieged,” he announced, his face a storm of tension and anger, the kind a man wears when preparing himself to kill.

The horses stamped their feet, sensing the tension in the air and translating it into restless motion. Leather creaked. Someone coughed, then regretted the sound.

Before Frest could muster a reply, Seraphina opened the window of the carriage and gave her answer. “Sir Gendrae, I am Seraphina de Sariens,” the young girl declared imperiously, her voice laced with an authority that belied her youth. “We were on our way to the capital to deal with the troubles, as you have so astutely put it.”

Sir Gendrae’s eyes narrowed as he focused upon the blonde highborn girl in the carriage. Seraphina could almost see the thoughts turning in his head: here was the very focus—the daughter—of the source of the problem his order was being marshalled to confront. If he were able to take her hostage, he would gain significant leverage against the Ogre. Leverage was a cheaper currency than blood, and yet it often bought more.

Seraphina smiled sweetly, unsettling him. It was time to press, to make the polite thing look like the inevitable thing.

“I have come, of course, to convince my father to go home,” she stated, using the full force of her charisma to bear down upon the Knight of the Twin Blades. She let confidence do the work that threats could spoil, and let certainty carry where arguments might snag.

His face became an expression of warring thoughts. He was calculating the cost and political fallout of taking in a “guest” of the highborn, weighing that against the possibility of swiftly solving the rapidly growing crisis that was the siege of Aran. Seraphina, on the other hand, was offering him a way out—a path that ended the whole debacle entirely, and did so with signatures rather than spears. The question now, for Gendrae, was which path held the most sureties of success, and which left the fewest witnesses to regret.

A part of Seraphina hoped that he would try to take her hostage; unarmed as she was, she was fairly sure she could kill them all with the assistance of her knights. The arithmetic of violence, at certain scales, favored decisiveness. Another part of her was annoyed at these bloodthirsty thoughts—thoughts that lacked a certain elegance but also, ironically, possessed an elegance in their simplicity, the straight line drawn through a knot rather than the patient work of loosening it.

Sometimes, the girl was learning, it just felt good to watch the world burn—if only to prove one could call down rain afterward.

Gendrae seemed to reach a conclusion. “I will, of course, bring this up to my superiors, Lady de Sariens. They will decide what to do.” The formality was a shield; the deferral, a sheath.

The decision was passed on. The current crisis was taken away. It was the cowardice of lower and middle management, the reflex to escalate when choice cuts too near the bone. It was something that Seraphina understood intimately from her previous life’s business dealings, where people built ladders not to climb but to hide behind the rungs.

To push further now would be seen as threatening. To retreat would be read as cowardice. So, she decided to stay—neither advance nor flight, but a third posture entirely: possession of the moment.

“Milly, have tea ready, if possible. I quite fancy enjoying the remainder of the day and having a picnic,” the blonde girl ordered, as if commenting on the weather rather than on the shadow of a siege.

From any other person facing down a host, it would have seemed the supreme height of arrogance and absurdity. For Miriam, in that moment, it felt just like any other day. She was well used to her mistress’s eccentricities—indeed, she filed them away with the same neatness she reserved for linens and ledgers. Her lady lived, at times, on a very different plane of reality, and the world had a habit of rising, albeit grudgingly, to meet it. With people like Seraphina de Sariens, reality had a habit of warping itself to better suit them.

Little did she know that was, in fact, very true in some senses of the word.

So, with that, the rest of her entourage began to impose Seraphina’s will on the current reality: a carpet unrolled to claim a measure of earth, a low table unfolded with practical grace, cups and a kettle and a small set of jars filled with jams and preserves set out beneath the indifferent late autumn sky. The show of war was answered with a liturgy of civility, and the field, for a heartbeat, hesitated to decide which it preferred.

De Sariens however had no such compunctions with hesitation. Greed was one of the things that defined her, so she would have both. She would have her little picnic under the shadow of potential violence. The blonde girl did not see her death here, a day’s ride before the capital. The girl did not even deign to judge this a delay in her journey, her mind already editing the events up until this present. Seraphina had always planned for this moment to happen, this picnic was part of her schedule.

So the young lady held court, complimenting her staff, buoying the spirits of her warrior that would draw steel in her name. That would draw steel in front of even the great host before them, because on some unconscious level they were all believers in her. Adherents to a faith that had, as of yet, no real name. A cult of personality.

As the sun continued its journey across the sky, and many cups of tea and cookies were partaken of, a new group appeared coming ever closer. She saw, barely looking up from the rim of her cup, that this group did not consist of just purely martial professionals. Among their number was a collection of rather portly gentlemen clad in the vestments of high ranking members of the Church.

Finally, she thought to herself, people of import—relatively speaking that was.

The group dismounted a small distance away as if they thought that the dust of the road would upset the idyllic scene they saw before them. For this small measure of grace, Seraphina decided she would treat them kindly in turn. Kindly, of course, relatively speaking that was.

As the self-important looking men came closer, proud and sure in their steps, she gave them a smile without rising from her chair that would have inspired artists to commit their lives in attempting to commit that memory to brush. The effect it had on the envoys was devastating.

These were men of a martial branch of the faith of the Goddess, men who had sworn off the temptations of lesser men. But such an innocent smile, beatific smile caught them completely unguarded. It made them reconsider, if even for a fleeting moment, the sanctity of their vows that they had taken so long ago. Regret, although it had not found fertile soil, could be a most stubborn flower. 

Seraphina in her largesse had scored the first bloodless point.

She opened up with her next salvo. “Ecclesiarchs of the Church, I greet you this fine autumn day,” she said, the words delivered in perfect pitch, with the correct amount of deference without descending into servility.

They would have to answer such civility in kind or be forced to look like boors before their own servants. Their lessers.

“Lady de Sariens,” one of them offered, a thin stick-like man who had finally recovered from Seraphina’s opening attack. “We offer you greetings on this fine day.”

“Yes, yes, de Chavlon,” another man huffed close by him said, the last traces of a blush remaining on his face. “We have come to…”

Seraphina cut him off, the interjection timed with a swordman’s consummate skill. “Why Lord de Chavlon, your esteemed graces, won’t you join me for tea? My servant Milly has just prepared a fresh brew, though I doubt it will be suitable to such men of exquisite taste. Still, that is all that I have to offer.”

She did not give them time to rally, instincts telling her to press the advantage when she had them. Instincts honed from experience for the girl knew full well how a pretty, no beautiful face, could be devastating if applied correctly. To her, even her own beauty was a weapon to be wielded, and Seraphina had wielded beauty for a long time.

The blonde girl shooed off Miriam, pouring the cups for her “guests” herself. Each movement looked so graceful that it might have been part of a dance, a truly mesmerizing sight. This was not what the Bishops had expected of the daughter of the Ogre. Almost against their will they found themselves sitting next to her, Seraphina’s adhoc court now comprising some of the most powerful people in the militant orders

The girl shifted stance, going from raw beauty to tranquil serenity with just a dash of melancholic sadness. “Now then, it has come to my attention that my lord father has been a little naught with pressing his ducal privileges. I have come to convince him to hopefully come to his senses and to hopefully prevent any more silliness from occuring.”

Like snakes before a serpent charmer they found their heads nodding as if in agreement.