TvisTV Book 3: Chapter 39 (RAW)

Chapter 39 - Impediments

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

- Albert Einstein.

Now that she held a secret weapon, perilous as it was, she decided it was finally time to stop her father before he tore the realm apart in answer to the insult Velens had dealt her. Inherited memories showed her, again and again, cleaning up the Crown Prince’s messes ever since they were but children.

The girl took a moment to look outside the window, to sift through memories that were hers, and at the same time were not. She remembered the midsummer fête from oh so very long ago—Velens, all of eight years old, insisting that a “true prince” must be inventive, that one must always seek to push the limits of what was possible for the good of the people. 

A childish prank wrapped up in dreams of grandeur. This unfortunately involved falconry and imported fireworks from the Empire simultaneously. As it turned out, birds of prey did not mix well with rockets. Prize birds were killed and half an orchard went alight. Little Seraphina, despite her age, small and furious, had herded nobles behind overturned tables, smothered sparks with saturated tapestries, and bribed a trembling steward with her entire allowance to swear the blaze was from “spontaneous foxfire.” Velens called it “a grand experiment.” She just slapped the stupidity out of him.

The spoilt prince’s comical muddles only grew with him. At thirteen he forged the Lord Chancellor’s seal in beeswax to deliver mock “summons” to select classmates: a harmless jest, he claimed, until five minor houses arrived in full regalia demanding trial by combat to settle long standing disputes. 

Seraphina spent two nights drafting apologies and inventing a ceremonial contest, the “Tournament of Ink,” so everyone could save face by dueling with words and quill in a sort of poetry-off.

But some messes had certain edges. 

There was a violent dock strike in the capital of Aran. A young Velens, thinking to prove himself capable, promised to “fix” this problem. Unfortunately, his solution was requisitioning hard bread and grain meant for winter stores; Seraphina rerouted caravan grain and secretly paid the ledger shortfall from her dowry, justifying to herself that she was just giving it to him early. 

Despite his seemingly incompetency, Velens did excel in one thing. He was very good at magic, just not very good at controlling his power or curiosity. There was the night he “tested” a Magister’s ward, cracking some of the Runes of the palace; she bartered three heirloom sapphires to the Aran College of Wizardry for a discrete repair and carried the blame as her own miscast, though everyone knew that Seraphina had yet to come into her magical gifts. 

And once, in the Narilmu’s embassy, he bragged of a hunt that crossed a holy wadi, sacrosanct to their people for places of water in the Whispering Wastes were sacred in their eyes. Seraphina memorized the old treaty verse, knelt, recited it perfectly, and gave the most heartfelt apology begging their forgiveness of a boy’s ignorance, turning a brewing incident into a ceremonial exchange of salt. 

The girl had been mopping his footprints from marble and blood from stone for so long that stopping her father now felt like the right thing to do. Even if it was to be, the last time she cleaned up the Crown Prince’s mess. 

Emotions melded together. Her infatuation for him as a character in the game, and old Seraphina’s longing. The would-be future queen realized then that she truly loved him, but some loves were simply not meant to be. It was a love that had been, and still was, one-sided no matter what she did. Velens had never seen her, he had always just seen someone convenient and familiar.

But as much as melancholy was threatening to overtake her, underpinning it all was a simmering anger. Unconsciously, the girl thought that it was all the protagonist's fault, Este Lize, who had disrupted their lives. The girl had thrown off-kilter a pre-determined life of joy that should have been hers. If only she had never existed. If only Seraphina had never created her.

And with that thought the young girl had a moment of existential crisis that she quickly pushed down. This was not the time for maudlin thoughts.

What she felt was illogical, but there could be denying that she did feel them. It was time to take a page from the Budha: right though, right action.

So with that she made her way to the Principal Hegandia’s office.

***

Despite the purported “equality” that the Academy followed, having a meeting with its Principal, even at short notice, was an easy thing for a student with Seraphina’s family name.

And that was how she found herself in his office, being served a light floral tea.

***

Principal Hegandia’s office was a room that tried very hard not to look nervous. Everything inside it was organized to a careful, almost ceremonial neatness: shelves aligned like soldiers, ledgers squared in ranks. Through the tall window, the Academy quadrangle lay in its measured geometry—paving stones arranged like a chessboard dotted with students who hurried as if late to their next move.

The principal himself fussed with the teapot, then the cups, then a tray of biscuits. “Rosehip and quince,” he uttered with a smile. “Good for the nerves.”

“Why thank you,” Seraphina replied lightly, accepting the cup. Steam beaded and fled along the porcelain rim. She took a small sip, let the warmth settle, then glanced toward the window. “The south lawn is rather green even so late in season, I must commend the groundkeepers.”

“Ah, yes.” Hegandia brightened, relieved to be on safe terrain. “New drainage channels. The groundskeeper claims he can hear the soil grumbling when it’s unhappy. I am unsure how one verifies such a claim; nevertheless, the lawn, as you say, looks marvelous.”

Sipping more of the tea, Seraphine kept her silence, letting Hegandia fill it.

The Principal’s mouth twitched. “How are you finding the new format for ‘The Founding History of Aran’? I daresay the new teacher is said to be rather stimulating.”

“He looks up to check whether we’re still breathing,” Seraphina said, amused. “His whisper is more like a low drone. But the discussions afterward make up for it. He lets the room argue the various points of debate. It can get rather intellectually heated.”

“Excellent. Spirited debate is the ideal we always strive for.” Hegandia paused, considering. “I have been told you’ve been getting along with your peers.”

“I am,” she replied, and, to her own surprise, realized it was true to a degree. “I owe some of that, of course, to this wonderful environment that you have created for us.”

The girl knew how to flatter.

“An encouraging state of affairs,” the old man murmured offhandedly.

Seraphina let herself smile at that, then adjusted the front of her dress and sat up ramrod straight. Only then did she set her cup down. The sound was not loud. It was simply final.

“Principal Hegandia,” Seraphina said, “I’ve come to request leave from lessons for one month.”

Hegandia did not drop the teapot. He did set it down with what dignitaries called “controlled care” and ordinary people called “hope this isn’t happening.” 

“A month,” he repeated, his voice almost a squeak.

“Yes.”

“You were… absent for nearly that duration not long ago,” he said cautiously. “The faculty prepared supplements. There was a period of adjustment when you returned. It would be academically unwise to repeat the experience so soon before examinations. The Lady Anaselena… would disapprove. Were your grades to slip…”

Of course, she thought to herself with a sigh, Hegandia was also one of her mother’s creatures. She had to give her mother credit, she worked fast.

“It will be quite all right,” Seraphina said, and let the confidence be just an unadorned plank across a gap. “I’ve completed all of the relevant readings. Even if the examiners are feeling creative this year, I am sure I will match them.”

Hegandia at Seraphina, and then briefly out the window, as if hoping to be anywhere except here. “It is not your capacity I doubt,” he said, each word carefully placed. “It is the complications that arrive to embrace you at the worst possible moment. Would you—can you—assure me that your grades will remain above ninety percent?”

“Of course, anything except a perfect score I deem a personal failure,” Seraphina countered smoothly, and then—more gently—“Principal, I understand your fears. Truly I do. But I do so need this month. I simply must stop my father… you really must grant me this dispensation.”

He shut his eyes for one heartbeat, calculation and worry sorting themselves into piles behind his forehead. When his eyes opened again, he reached for a quill, turned to the leave-register, and paused. “I am required,” he stated with a weary sigh, “to at least record a reason.”

“Urgent family business that has the future of the realm at stake,” Seraphina answered diplomatically. “The matter in Aran has grown… misshapen. My withdrawal from the royal engagement has unsettled a lot of things. It has hardened things into something like a siege. I intend to un-harden it.”

“I see.” He dipped the quill, scratched his name. “May I suggest—purely as an administrative nicety—that you return before your exams? I would regret giving you a zero for non-attendance.”

The golden-haired girl smiled back prettily. “I will be back, of course, before then.”

“And your escort?” he asked, as though this too were an administrative curiosity and not a calculation about risk that set his stomach on edge. “As you say, things have been unsettled.”

“I have my household Knights led by Sir Frest,” Seraphina said. “They will suffice against any common brigands on the road.”

She also had a creature that could swallow cows whole, a fairy assassin, and could summon a being that could possible end the world. However, the girl thought that mentioning that would not be tactful.

Hegandia nodded, a broken man. “Very well. One month as of today. I will inform your instructors. They will grumble, and I will point to your reading lists, and they will grumble more gently. Please do not allow yourself to be kidnapped, adopted by a traveling troupe, or otherwise detained by colorful distractions.”

“I will try to restrict myself to uncolorful ones,” she answered with one of her trademark smiles, rose, and inclined her head. “Thank you, Principal.”

He stood as well, as was proper, and escorted her to the door. Just before she reached it, he said, not quite able to help himself, “Lady Seraphina?”

She glanced back.

“I truly wish you success,” Hegandia said. “Do what you can for the Kingdom of Aranthia.” 

“Oh, I will,” Seraphina said simply as if it were already a foregone conclusion. 

***

They left the Academy before noon. The air had a certain edge to it. Miriam bustled in quiet competence: wax-sealed packets of correspondence, pouches of coin and smaller pouches of smaller coin, a sheaf of blank paper, and a jar of barley sweets she pretended were for Seraphina but were actually one of the small things that kept her going.

Sir Frest, once a bandit, now a knight by Seraphina’s word and steel, led the formation. He wore the adjustment of respectability like a new cloak that hadn’t quite broken at the shoulders, but his eyes were calm. The five sworn knights of House de Sariens assembled in their accustomed order with Sir Gravens as Frest’s second-in-command.

The carriage itself wore elegance without ostentation: lacquered panels, trim picked out in satin-dark lines, and tasteful silk curtains at the windows. Seraphina had customized it just so that it announced the de Sariens presence without shouting like a boor. And, of course, the most important feature of the carriage that she “appropriated” from the royal family was the comfort. The suspension made the journey along the Kingdom of Aranthia’s roads tolerable.

They took the King’s Road at a hurried pace that ate the miles without overly taxing the horses and the days flowed smoothly one after the other with regular stops at respectable inns and waystations.

One late afternoon, two days from the Capital of Aran, Frest tapped on the carriage’s window.

“Unknown standards, a lot of them and the glint of a lot of armor, milady,” Sir Frest reported simply. “I do not like the look of it.”

“Unknown?” Seraphina replied with a raised eyebrow. “I told you for the umpteenth time to learn your heraldry, or at the very least, you could have described them to Gravens and had him tell you before making this report.”

“As you say, milady. But at this distance, all we could see was that they were blue and gold,” Sir Frest answered stiffly.

The girl sighed before she explained “Well they are either de Orleanes, de Caracal, or, heaven forbid, the Holy Order of the Twin Blades. Perhaps all three.”

Frest kept studiously silent.

“Which means they are trouble either way, Frest,” Seraphina explained, her expression hardening.

It looked like she would have to use one of her delete buttons earlier than planned.